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| 4.10
| 6,530
| Nov 18, 2019
| Nov 18, 2019
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liked it
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RATING: 3 stars to Fallen King ★ ★ ★ Dark king (opener to the series) courted a moreish sense of thrill in me. I already had its sequel prepared to lau RATING: 3 stars to Fallen King ★ ★ ★ Dark king (opener to the series) courted a moreish sense of thrill in me. I already had its sequel prepared to launch myself into immediately after. The first book did have its foundational shortcomings but I was delighted enough by the impression that I easily saw myself ready to plow through the remaining books in this trilogy. The plot continued with interest, excitement and mystery, the suspense and foreboding enmeshed in its atmosphere, the movements were swift, seductive, sultry and actionable, the thrill of having Aenor and Salem in the same room again set my veins abuzz and I looked forward to the relatable wit that made book one the fun adventure it was. As enthused as I was for another urban fantasy fae adventure, I confess that while entertaining and imaginative, I wasn't as impressed by the outcome of Fallen King. The flaws of book one did what I didn't want them to do: they perpetuated with book two. The follow up is productive, targeted, pointed, fast-moving and very sexy but the elements that anchored this continuation still felt fairly shallow. Perhaps the authors have cemented a deliberately stylistic choice in the way they've concocted their storytelling voice but what we often get in heaps and hills with action, pace and suspense, we lack in narrative depth, character depth and meaningful integration. To approximate a likeness to a well known phrase, it seemed to thrill in swiftness, atmosphere, activity and sensuality over a balance with substance. As soon as something happens it's swiftly suppressed with imminent developments without a thought to the gravity of any one particular thing. The authors could likely benefit from curbing some plot activity in favour of slowing down with some character development. Or, at least, creating some parallelism between outward action and inner depth. As much as I enjoyed the character personalities on page - the dark, devious and downright unrepentant Salem and the driven, independent protector of the seas that is Aenor - there really isn't a palpable sense of character building or character connection either. I have to say that I was disappointed by that, but by looking to book one by example, I should have assumed the same for Fallen King. Even with a clear goal, the story developments lean more into the abstract as opposed to a wider, well-handled orchestration. It's more a case of one conflict arising immediately after another, forming a sequence of energised movement which is the primary driver that forces Aenor to take immediate action where the situation demands it. And since it's a world-changing, world-bending, lives-at-stake kind of engagement, it's a lot for a one-woman effort. Even still, the story does make for entertaining reading with likeable elements, and there's a reason I've made it a point to remain open to the author's backlog of urban fantasy. I just feel less enthusiastic to read the trilogy closer than I was to read the sequel due to the flaws that marred this experience. Whether I make the decision to finish the series is up in the air for now. This might be disturbing to admit to some readers but I'm rarely averse to the idea of a love interest swap, moreso because Lyr and Aenor didn't have the deepest connection bar the sexual intensity of their attraction to begin with. I was thirsting for it as soon as Salem entered the dynamic in book one. That being said, I wasn't particularly impressed with the way the writers navigated the love triangle swap. Had the shift in romantic interest been tactical, well-handled and interestingly orchestrated I would have loved it. In truth? It very advantageously buried any interest between them as soon as the book begins without an adequate need for explanation. And whatever feelings may have been there between our couple of book one, were abandoned as if the relationship they had wasn't worth the scrutiny of a more considerate etiquette. If it was the intent to distance Lyr from Aenor with a gesture of mistrust, the apparently widening gulf between them conveniently in place, the transition should have mattered more than it seemed to. As it was, Lyr's withdrawal was vague and suspicious, even if some suggestion can be implied. As a personal opinion though? As sultry, thrilling and forbidden her relationship with Salem was, I can't say it felt superior to her relationship with Lyr. That might be a bold thing to confess but I also use the term 'relationship' very loosely. (view spoiler)[Perhaps only in ways that a mating bond would permit (hide spoiler)]. Book one burned with the potent seduction attraction-wise (I still remember how I felt reading the sizzling intimacy scenes) but book two had a different kind of heat in translation for Salem and Aenor. In so many words, I'm just going to say that I expected a superior sexual - and otherwise - connection to that of book one and this did suffer on that front. (view spoiler)[ Even if I really enjoyed that illusory boat spanking scene (hide spoiler)]. What C.N. Crawford does very well? Imbuing their protagonists with a powerfully palpable presence, of fierce purpose and intention. The descriptions of magic, power and desire are burnt to the page like the marks of a fingerprint. Our anti-hero in particular received the best of this quality, the essence of their gifts brought to life with a divine supernaturalism. Whether it be cutting visions of doom, the visage of a world on fire, the burden of a great power, or a lust for the forbidden, the story burns with a longing for sensation and desire, of every kind. This isn't a series about love, romance nor even relationships forged I'm coming to realise. The only yearning you'll find in this series of Fae authority is that for lust, desire, destruction and possession; of powers, of long awaited fates, cravings and a return for stolen things. The writing superbly stokes up a smut scene with a searingly sexual impact, and I was not unaffected by it. Whether it be the disturbingly deviant history of Salem and the visions of a fiery doom his presence prophesises or Aenor, as a fierce fae of the sea, with a great desire to safeguard the very element that is the life source of her magic from him, the writing enlivens the sensations with a palpable delicacy. More than anything, Aenor wants to be reunited with her magic. Slaying Salem is a close second though since she's convinced that her captor is set to burn the world. But he's just as determined to return the favour. There's a lot of fun tension to be had in two people silently prepared to kill the other, couldn't be more different in desire for their lives and fates and whose fated pairing could mean utter annihilation in facing the worst imaginable that could come to pass. The foreboding visage of a world on fire; that's what Salem's presence shall deliver should be meet his destiny. Everything Aenor is trying to prevent. When Aenor runs into a breed of Fae she's never seen before, she knows that this encounter can only mean doom. And that the Evening Star - none other than Salem, her soon to be captor - is responsible. He has life changing, world changing plans, and Aenor's bound by an unbreakable enchantment to help him get what he wants by any means necessary. And potentially set fire to it all. Her mission remains the same: Salem has to die, only faster now that recent discoveries have revealed the kind of damnation he intends to enforce, knowingly or unknowingly. To carry forth this series we have a new love interest, a Fae legend who burns like smoke, flame and ash with a disturbingly devious history, more prophesies and predictions, visions of world damnation, a very likely catastrophic pairing who could fall to either extremes and forbidden intimacy that shifts from enemies to lovers to I-still-may-have-to-kill you. An interesting, action-packed follow up but the lack of depth and reasoning can alienate a reader's experience. Which did mar my own unfortunately. But that's not to say that readers won't enjoy this sequel since I'm sure it'll prove plenty entertaining for other readers. If you liked book one, you'll likely enjoy this instalment as well! But Fallen King still gets a solid three stars from me. Maybe a stronger integration of book one's humour and pop culture references might have enhanced the experience to some degree, but as it is, I can't say I feel as confident for the trilogy closer since it fell short on the fulfillment factor. EXTRA THOUGHTS (WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!): 1) I'm very familiar with the mythology of fated mates and fated pairings but I have to admit that cosmically matched or not, the concept loses its credibility when two love interests (determined to end the other for most of the story) are only thwarted by those killer desires because of the baser instincts of their mated destiny. I wanted more intricacy and nuance in the development of Salem and Aenor's 'relationship'. Sure, they're not going to want to hurt or harm the other, and there's a nice play between an intense inner conflict when desires are wholly unmatchable to the force of instinct, but it bothers me when that's used as a way to pair two people together when necessary development is also needed to foundation that. Just because a bond is preventing you from harming someone, you'd likely harm them anyway were any bond not in place, so on that front - and referring back to my earlier point about character connections - their attachment felt underdeveloped. Salem may very well have killed her if that wasn't the case, and Aenor may very well have killed Salem had the bond influenced her not to. 2) Just to pick on something other readers have commented on, I wanted to point out that I personally didn't experience any likeness to ACOTAR with this series, bar the swapping of a love interest and some Tamlin vibes courtesy of Lyr. The series, the worldbuilding, the characters, the tone and developments are completely different. Content warning/Listing: general warnings for violence, conflict and blood. Some profanity. Mentions the (past) intentional killings of children as sacrifices. Depravity, Imprisonment, enslavements, mentions starved emaciated bodies. Smut scenes (imagined, hallucinated and one sex scene on page). ________________________________ Visit my blog: V.L. Book Reviews T W I T T E R: @TheVicarious1 I N S T A G R A M: @Vicarious.Hearts ________________________________ ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 30, 2023
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Jan 03, 2024
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| B07Q58FWZZ
| 3.95
| 7,560
| Apr 04, 2019
| Dec 2021
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really liked it
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RATING: 4 stars to Praying for Rain ★ ★ ★ ★ A raw-nerved, edgy, pained, tender, dystopic end-of-world anarchic frisson by BB Easton. After only thus fa RATING: 4 stars to Praying for Rain ★ ★ ★ ★ A raw-nerved, edgy, pained, tender, dystopic end-of-world anarchic frisson by BB Easton. After only thus far lending but an ear to talk of this bestselling writer and her unique set of romantic lit, what an interesting way to start my Easton experience; with a gritty trilogy opener where April 23rd becomes a looming death promise of mythicalised proportions. Since April was the very month I sat down to read this, I tried very hard to not let the paranoia of the paralleled synchronicity spindle its way outside of the fictional borders of this book. The human population plagued with sweat-swilling nightmares of the four horsemen, an intimidated world maddened by its own fear-forwarding end, a deeply vulnerable heroine anaesthetising her way to an unchallenged death and sheltering herself in the hard comforts of her captor, a self-serving biker she raspingly rides to the end with, a cynicalised setting homogenous to the tone of mysterious doom and a fatal attraction that might not matter at all when three days marks an uncontested finality. This book really was quite evocative, curious, well-imagined, vividly visualised, deliberately surreptitious and fast-paced. Something of a punchy, sibylline thrill ride seated on a motorbike well-worn by Wes while fumes rise, existence is soon to fall, smoke warps the truth and angst punishes its protagonists with losses, pain and a doomed but desperate faith found only in each other. Finalised by a perfectly projected cover illustration that lighthouses the couple at the heart of the atmospheric coming and this pre-apocalyptic romance is an uncharted but unique roadrunner in the genre. A storyline told within a three-day span might influence most readers to lift a cynical brow at the mere thought, but the heightened nature of the doomsday crisis overcast by the current existential disorder, lifted with the graceless mortality of Wes's I-don't-play-nice-with-others conditioned modus operandi and Rain's desperately temperamental anxiety, and it's enough to get swept up by the queer calamity and the picturesque intensity. The relationship chemistry is quite instantaneous but I suppose it has to be given the story's brief timestamp. Ordinarily, had this been your typical romance sans the fantasy-touched, dystopian setting, perhaps I would have found difficulty with the protagonists. I did struggle with the character personalities, but the troubled profiling of West and Rain combined was quick to find alignment with the invented tone, both its fractured hopelessness and its fragmented hopefullness. Both tormented and tortured as Wes and Rain are, her capricious mood and his unfriendly bearing, the wounded intensity of their emotional sittings as they push through the disaster in the only way they know to humanises them. Rainbow with her desperate dependency and her acquiescence to embrace the threadbare remains of the end of the world, and Wes with his cold and selfish me-against-the-world rule of life. It also shapes, probes and sharpens the harshness in how Wes initially relates to Rain, only for him to then succumb to the mutual desperation in keeping her by his side (despite his deeper resistance) because in his tortured way, it's nothing less than his unspoken need for her. After a hugely unsettled childhood where his prime experience of the world was neglect and abandonment, after being used himself, he's become a lifelong user and convinces himself that Rain is little else but the most recent amenity to take from. He's of a survivalist mindset, and Rain goes and makes herself the very threat to that living principle. With the tone of a doomed worldscape, the interrelationship between Wes and Rain becomes its own torch that beacons in time with the flaming state of the world. The way Wes and Rain relationship together, away, in thought and in the very confines of each other rose and fell with the pitch of the unknown and the tempo of their reluctant - albeit impulsive - attachment. Tormented as it is, conflicted as it is, furious as it is, offhand and angry as it is, there was a palpable delicacy that always toed a frail and coming growth. Wes was incredibly rough around the edges, the coarseness to Rain's much softer soul, but he's also tenderised quite exquisitely by his own unbecoming and his own vulnerability. The first bedroom scene echoes the transition with a well-captured articulacy; Wes's inner conflict, the war, the release and the rhapsody, the shaky partnership, the intensity and the tentative edge that outlines their relationship. The romance almost felt sure footed in its own unsure footedness. A really great intimacy scene to forge a point of growth and invite a transitional turning point. All they have left is the immediacy of the moment, for Rain that's the utter despair of knowing a few days await certain worldwide death and dimming her switch on reality any way she can, and for Wes it's to fly the flag of his own sobered belief over the fear fever of speculation. The romance itself almost felt like it cauterised the speculative bite while also biting back. All the worst and the best surges up between them, channeled by the graceless urgency of life outside every door. A hoax or a hell, or just the epically unordinary? It really doesn't matter when the final three days of life spell three things for all: lawlessness preceding the running hooves bolstering symbols of tribune and myth, damnation and an end of world etiquette of people turned primal. Everyone has nightmares of the approaching invasion, of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Gangs have claimed or monopolised public territory, turf has been claimed, fires lit, road routes are inoperable, crime proliferates, many capitalising on the current chaos and fear courting the desperate, and defeat and rage have cultured small town Georgia to its most dangerous. And yet, a popularised food joint bizarrely has its doors open to all. It's a worst case scenario come to life. And an unordinarily strange one. For Rainbow Williams, she's miserably sinking into the catastrophe, welcoming it all with open arms, eager for her pain to end. Just stepping out of her home is a curse and a reminder that the world is not the same. It's a disaster zone. That is, until the fatalised meets the survivalised and a tatted rough-and-tumble captor companion makes her feel like the light may be bigger than the dark. Set in a small town, BB Easton flips the script with a dark, gritty, emotive interpretation of a doomsday storyline. Picturable imagery, tonally entertaining, a speedy pace, angst that challenges, curbs and winds matched only by a pace and temper irritable with its own mystery and this contemporary hybrid has made a curious reader out of me. Ever since my reading life formed its genesis I've been fascinated by dystopic settings. Always drawn to dystopian fantasy just as I am to survivalist scenarios and struggling backdrops. Co-partnered with my deep fondness for a building romance and this clustered assembly of elementals lands a unique mix that really interested me. Definitely different from your quintessential romance! Themes of love, survivorship, grief and catastrophe, the budding impression is one of 'against a crumbling world, live or die, we do it together.' Content Warning/Listing: Death, killings. Alcoholic parent. Frequent profanity. Frequent painkiller use. Violence. Shooting. Mentions rape often but no central characters are abused in such a way. Suggested rape of a central character. Mentions dead/mauled/injured/ravaged bodies. violence. References childhood neglect and the starvation a baby. Parents with addictions. Unprotected sex. Gory Descriptions of death and injury. Attempted suicide by Overdose. ____________________________________ Visit my blog: V.L. Book Reviews T W I T T E R: @TheVicarious1 I N S T A G R A M: @Vicarious.Hearts ____________________________________ ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 06, 2023
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Apr 27, 2023
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Apr 25, 2023
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| B00TE8LHXI
| 4.05
| 23,809
| Nov 03, 2015
| Nov 03, 2015
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really liked it
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RATING: 4 stars to Ten Thousand Skies Above You! ★ ★ ★ ★ The plot thickens in a colossally orbicular bowl I'm going to call a Multiverse soup with Fire RATING: 4 stars to Ten Thousand Skies Above You! ★ ★ ★ ★ The plot thickens in a colossally orbicular bowl I'm going to call a Multiverse soup with Firebird #2 where dimension travel fiction has uprooted me from my ordinary for a second cycle sequence. So much fun, and the concept persists with no less a generous helping of interest. The stakes become steeper, love is used to leverage twofold, scientific ingenuity continues to be inextricably harmonised with human agenda, surprises travel across worlds, relationships are challenged, conspiratorial collaborations form a new face and Marguerite's love life hypothesis meets contention in newer forms. It's rarely plain-sailing in paradise for this teen. In Marguerite's world, her problems come stacked with the weight of many. Literally. And with the weight of family. And with enemies who want to use them against her. Her parents' cross-travel innovation is proving to be more trouble than it might be worth in pioneering science. Because with the triumph of an empirical breakthrough comes the flaw of misguided human ambition, and those who are closer to tweaking, tinkering and orchestrating their way to unthinkably inappropriate ends are much closer to her than she could ever have thought. And the possible end to countless lives in the process is but dust in between worlds, debris in between dimension. True to from, she's doing her effort best to pick up the pieces, literal and figurative. It's not just a matter of being acquired to weaponise for Marguerite, nor is it just about her Paul becoming the splintered example of what can be done to a soul and an adversary's desire to capitalise on every modern possibility that can come from puppeteering the multiverse. Those are big problems, of course, but it gets much more personal than that when she's exposed to the unchangeable aftermath of her own multiverse faux pa. The sequel brings us up to speed speedily but like book one it opens up with interesting plot-based action. Ten Thousand Skies Above You skips ahead a few months on and the alternative world jaunt picks up with a new set of challenges our protagonists have to face. But with all the reveals of book one, we get more secrets with book #2. Poor Theo's been hiding health woes, suffering the secret ravages of what was done to him through the manhandling of a multiverse twin. As such, the state of his health is indefinite. He's been distant with the rest of the gang, and it becomes pertinent soon why. I was truly happy to see Theo get some page time to shine since he became such a source of questionability for Marguerite. He needed it, deserved it and supports her endlessly. Paul, is again, consistently AWOL. Like book one, we have a Paul who is mostly absentee amid the story bulk (bar the dimensional others of him we meet), and in that sense, I appreciated the needed collaboration space lent to the real Theo and Marguerite. They were robbed of their chance to really bond over a dimensional journey of their own. But back to Paul? If he's mostly AWOL again come book three, the final partner to the trilogy, I may have to disown him I've decided. I'm going to play devil's advocate and say there may be something that feels a bit too promised about our leading lady artist and her beloved student physicist, and I'm losing confidence that he's the soul mate we're led to believe he is, not because we face different facets to his character (which was necessarily and realistically grounding as Marguerite's often remiss in placing too much stock in her idea of perfect paragon Paul) but because he feels more echo, like a possibility in between worlds as opposed to solid form sans adequate romantic relationship progress. There's something intangible about him, and I'm very curious to see what transpires. I'm analysing the value of activising a 'where is Paul Markov' campaign, however. He completely disarmed me in only the best possible way in A Thousand Pieces of You, but his place in book two felt more redundant. Their relationship is currently in a place of challenge so we'll see how the challenge transpires! I was prepared to usurp my extraordinary love for Paul moreso with Ten Thousand Skies Above You but I'm shocked to say I might have loved him less. And that statement right there is placing me within the biology of intrinsic uncertainty. Maybe the trilogy closer will conclude with a different kind of ship, or shock us further entirely by introducing a multiverse throuple. I joke, but as it stands I don't know where I stand with this fledgling love triangle that seems to know precisely what it wants but also doesn't. I feel as I if I know every other Paul we meet more than I do Marguerite's actual Paul, which contributes to her protracted love hypothesis and inner struggle to see beyond her made belief system, or perhaps Paul's too issued up to really show up with the fight Marguerite's going to need from him. Where I thought the love triangle was snugly put to bed upon finalising book one, the author draws it back to life again a little bit here, and I had to question whether it was really necessary, unless Claudia Gray has plans, plans she's singularly sidelined us with so far. I was pleasantly curious at the semi-revival since I believed the author might be heading somewhere clever with it for round two, this potentially reasoning why I felt a lack of a developed connection between Paul and Marguerite. We all know who Marguerite believes she's destined to be with but could there be a maybe in that equation, even as adamant as she is in where and with whom her heart currently lies? Of course I want to believe in destined love, but perhaps the author has clandestine goals to maintain the subtle misdirective for reasons she's not willing to disclose just yet. I hope. I pray. I'm at her mercy. We know that Paul and Marguerite have a destined connection across parallel spaces, sparing others where she discovers the lack of him in certain lives, but we needed more relationship development between the two of them in lieu of relying on who he is and has been to her in every other world they encounter. Getting caught up in the semantics of every personality profile of Paul not within parallelism to her assumed beliefs does hurt her general sense of inner solicitude and her lack forethought as a protagonist, and It didn't escape my reader qualms that her belief system pertaining to Paul became the big theme that it didn't quite need to be. Even though Marguerite's inner conflict over Paul's indivisibility in her life repetitively perpetuates her unease and puts her conviction in him being her fated other deep into question, I do believe Ten Thousand Skies Above You becomes the book by which she meets her biggest learning curve. She really learns the consequences of her actions when she revisits the Russiaverse. Although she has her shortcomings in the way she doesn't make the most out situations and seems delayed in learning lessons most would come to with minutes of contemplation, this instalment really does play to some needed reflection and course change on her part. The book makes a great point of commenting on how arguably no one person should possess such uses of great and grand inventions, when they can even be used by good people misguided by their own humanity, where anybody can and will weaponise their feelings into mass destruction. That the universe we should be concerned with first and only is the one we exist within, not manipulating multiverse strings for schematic modification. One of my major concerns over book one was the autonomous ramifications of body hopping, and while it didn't push forward with every point I wanted it to, it did push forward with others. What this sequel accomplishes really well is coming full circle with the moral aftermath of Marguerite's poor choice making in book one. She tangles with the ethical dilemma of her actions and the unavoidable consequences, which I now realise may have been the author's truest intention with the often debatable choices our heroine made preceding. I love the way each universe leans into and layers the story like a building trifle, whether It's a plot point push, a revelation discovered, relationships in trouble, an inner struggle, we do always learn something from each visited universe. In that sense, there's always a sense of perspective. The destined concept of universal familiars is a deeply comforting concept, and Gray really digs her pen into this particular theme. There's a beautiful boundary-crossing sentimentalism about it that plays to familial conviction and universal affection that spans any gap between universes. As I'm sure I've likely already voiced, there something very readable about this set of books and I'm having such fun time exploring the author's ultra-fine sense of chicanery. As much as a very desperate part of me was deeply anticipating our heroine to experience the hollows of being an 'imperfect' traveller, I did not expect that adequately dramatic cliffhanger. The sequel's conclusion really came toting the surprise factor. The author plays with some interesting questioning in the curious sense of meditating on who we'd be in worlds existing in ones alongside our own but aren't our own. And the rightness of claiming ownership of every person in existence just because they're yours in another life. Interesting stuff. The series is back for round two and Marguerite is poised to make some hard choices as the people she loves never seem to be immune from the danger that now feels second nature with the open can of worms that spilled the multiverse before them with her parents universe hopping contraption. To kill two birds with a few leaps, she hopes to save both Paul and Theo, and deals with the devil/devils to do it. She has to breach familial boundaries and work against her family and friends in a handful of other parallels to stay the course to her mission. But It's one thing to choose against ill schemes and wily will, quite another for your hand to be forced by them anyway. And this is where Marguerite finds herself, cooperating with her enemy, sabotaging her dimensional hearth and dangling by the threads of scientific manipulation while roped into the calculating machinations of the tech entrepreneur that is Wyatt Conley who continues to use the love between the Caine family and their student researchers like tokens, bribes and offers they can't refuse. She's a hot commodity with a special skill and Conley will stretch lengths to have her, or worse. But if Marguerite's being honest with herself, she's quite sick of his face by this point. Nobody can outrun their problems though, since each of them can be found and leveraged in any dimension, in creatively cruel ways, or loved ones can even wear the faces of their other selves. Having come away with more knowledge of the multiverse as well as the loved ones that dwell in each one, Marguerite's learnings have taught her how precious her family is and how love can carry a familiar faith within each world. The consequences of scientific ingenuity and creativity are twisted to meet the needs of a high powered wrongdoer with dimension-spanning plans. Book two continues to lean into alternate world visits, which services the inner struggle of each character. The plotline is an ever-moving, ever-changing hook and I loved the alternate world settings we're dropped into with the sequel; a grim, war-ravaged San Francisco where her parents are using their Firebird research to turn the tide and maneuver a war to their favour; one that manifests a completely different side of Conley, apprehended by an organised crime syndicate where an unsuspecting Paul leads a very different life than any she could have ever imagined for him; back in the royal life of a duchess Marguerite but in the richest, ritziest old age Paris which isn't the safe, recuperative hideaway she thought it would be; a current day NYC that challenges her future, dreams and her relationship with Paul; and a severely undressed corporate culture of skyscrapers built upon skyscrapers where industrialism wears no shade but the truth - a layered society built to trade human for a consumer, where not even the sky can be seen from the lowest level of the earth. The Caine family are in a messy multiverse situation and Marguerite's the one to bulldoze ahead and press her way forward for a solution. The plot does lose itself to romantic speculation and belief perplexities more often than not but I was always eager for the readable plotline. There's more action, well-placed interludes of suspense and surprising turns. As with A Thousand Pieces of You some angles are decidedly guessable and some really aren't, though I'm hoping that the trilogy closer comes toting its weight in multiverse brilliance. For now, I'm trying not to worry over the fact Theo doesn't even get a courtesy mention in the blurb for Firebird #3 Content Warning/Listing: An on page seizure. General warnings for violence, injury and blood. Describes war and it's consequences (mentions the death of young children). Kidnapping/violence. Shootings. Detailed description of injury. EXTRA THOUGHTS: 1) I would have really appreciated seeing Paul and Marguerite's relationship blossom on page rather than having it shared retrospectively and just believed in for the sake of supporting the fated perspective. And while I love the concept of transcendental love to lean on it without the accompanying development feels a bit untrustworthy. 2) Marguerite is frustratingly represented at times. I found myself troubled by her assumption that every Paul fundamentally, essentially and elementally is the same as her own and would hence always act and behave like the Paul in every universe would. The concept of an essential sameness is very realistic and consistently believable with an idea such as this but that doesn't seem each one his own person with his own life. It's like she's blinded by her perceptions and fails to want to see the nuance in character and how people travel differently and circumstantially in different lives. For an artist she should be able to desseminate the more of the nuance in people, surely? She may have gathered insight through the many dimensions she's visited but she doesn't take anything else into account with the exception of who Paul is at his core. Good people do bad things. It does irritate the nerves when she continually shares in the idea of their interchangeability, but like I mentioned in my main review, she does actually make a turnaround. Just because Paul might be a certain kind of Paul in most universes, one so remarkably, familiarly similar, it doesn't quite mean that speaks true to each one. I was glad Theo gave her a bit of a truth talking so she could see the light and question the error of her ways. 3) Also, Josie’s been conspicuously absent through the books, or more covert a character which I’m finding curious so I’m wondering if the final book will have her come through with some surprises of her own (or if she’ll be used some way). Or maybe I’m letting the dramatic nature of teen fantasy get the best of me. See we shall! _________________________________ Visit my blog: V.L. Book Reviews T W I T T E R: @TheVicarious1 I N S T A G R A M: @Vicarious.Hearts _________________________________ ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 26, 2023
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Mar 07, 2023
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| 1548579513
| 4.39
| 77
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| Jul 13, 2017
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really liked it
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R A T I N G: 4.5 stars to A History of Madness! ★ ★ ★ ★ 'Anais is one of the few places in the world where scars can be erased by creams and lotions R A T I N G: 4.5 stars to A History of Madness! ★ ★ ★ ★ 'Anais is one of the few places in the world where scars can be erased by creams and lotions. I hate that I know that now. I hate that I've seen how many things can be erased, as if they never happened. As if the damage was all a dream.' 'You cannot live in a cage forever, darling,' he said. 'Humans were meant to be free. One day you'll wish you came with me.' 'Dangerous words.' 'We're dangerous creatures; some of us have just forgotten how. Evermore memorable. Evermore intense. Curious hereafter, a wall-to-wall dystopian teeming with wall-to-wall passion, and I do love a chase for freedom. If this title doesn’t accurately (fortuitously) pay a personal homage to me, it’s like we were made for each other. But I’m not here to drop a deluge and flesh over over the innards of my fragile sanity. No, I’m hoping to do that with Rebecca Crunden’s hero, Nathanial Anteros. I was fully mindful of just how excited I'd be (by benchmark of design) to re-enter the darkly dystopic and grossly imperfect Kingdom that centres Rebecca Crunden's Outlands Pentalogy. The book that establishes and launches this series completely took me by surprise, the author affecting such a crystal-clear simplicity and character-driven complexity that the pages turned unbidden and the protagonists’ artlessly eased their way inside the humble lodging I call my heart. For all my fear for their fates, my desire to follow them anywhere is perhaps as radical as Nate’s audacity. And I'd be damned if that preface didn't whisk up a rippling flush of sweeping expectancy. The forecast: expectedly unknown if not for a widespread overlay of symptomatic, characteristic depression and despair, machinated by Crunden's trademark close-to-the-bone indelicate justice that never bridles the binds or blows to befall these characters in a setting sick with educated diminution. Nate and Kitty aren’t pardoned from suffering. There Is no saint or saviour or saving grace prowling in the shadows, even for the flush-pocketed. Ever since I completed A Touch of Death, the rest of this powerful and painfully mortal world has mulled an earthy tune in my mind, a returning birdsong that demanded I reorganise my reads and prioritise this character-driven marvel. It might be nearing on only a handful of years since I knighted myself as a book-loving sleuth of fictional locales (late reader that I am) but it might be nearing on less than that as I later dubbed myself a lover of dystopian fantasies. The author deposits us back in this demonstrably familiar and frightening Kingdom of punishing orthodoxy with a terrifying shortage of freedom. Old beliefs haven been broken, newer ones have taken their place, and the rest is left to the heavens of chance. Deference is demanded. Discipline, encouraged. Law is safeguarded and to be free is to be a disbanded menace to legislation. This is a world with something all-encompassing to fight for, something important to fight against while surviving out of sheer establishment and demand makes this a colonised land where free will and autonomy died with the ancestors that devastated the future for posterity to come. We know Nate as the red-haired rebel who once seared with molten ire. Challenger to the Kingdom. Despiser of its council. Hater to the limbs of the law. Antagonist to its devastating ethic. His freedom-fighting spirit dropped after being criminally brutalised in a Kingdom that had never permitted him his own mind. With little left to fight for but to lock eyes with the only place he can't be caged, home to the human race's immemorial enemy, the Outlands dangles his ripe and waiting salvation. There, he can’t be disturbed by law. There he’s a free man. There, his soul cant’ be touched. In A Touch of Death we knew Nate through Kitty's mind and saw him through Kitty's eyes. In A History of Madness, we're graced with a POV change as we read from Nathanial Anteros, a Firebird in irons, incarcerated, as his loathing for a diabolical Kingdom only grows. While his mind dances a mercurial anthem from dejection to desperation, from mayhem to misery, the shuddering, palpitating flux of his mind boasts a biography of madness that speaks to a famine for freedom. And it’s where Nate, Crunden’s highly-feeling and thoroughly tormented hero is concerned, that the author titles this instalment with perfection. History seems wickedly primed for a repeat because while Nate attracts life with a resolve that sabotages his need to meet his maker, he's back in the hell where all his nightmares materialised. Nate and his friends were what felt like one last sprint away from freedom, but with no news of what happened to Evander, Kitty, Tove and Zoe, his despairing wait for execution unexpectedly changes to a five year sentence bound to a labour camp on the flip of a choice. He doesn't know how or why this change of fate has fallen, how he's evaded death yet again. But as he builds his strength within an encampment of convicts, he needs to know what happened to Kitty while he toiled away in the gruelling workforce. It's time for a fugitive homecoming and a convict jailbreak because this furious jailbird now intends to fly free like his favourite animal of choice. The quartet reunite and while they plan to follow through in departing a dastardly kingdom, they're on the same trail of evading capture, hoping for the best, fearing the worst and pulling themselves evermore through the cutting hand that has sliced through their hope, their conviction, their credence and all that is decent time and time again. Rebecca Crunden lets her characters bruise, burn, suffer and rage as their world thieves from them In this sequel still. While Nate spoke about Kitty as the ‘silver-tongued’ woman with bite, bravery and intelligence that claimed his heart, she’s now subdued, withdrawn and contemplative in a way she wasn’t after enduring a sacrifice to see her friends spared. She’s not the same as she once was as she and Nate close the distance between their separation, and while we’re no longer a guest to her point of view, we’re privy to her transformation through Nate’s sight. If you think these characters haven’t been put through enough, the suffering doesn't quite stop here. As with the first in series, we're dropped into the indefinite. We’re in a world that was once ravaged and savaged by a mysterious disaster. We're blessed with horror without quite knowing from whence it came, only its current state of becoming. We're aware of the world's current tyranny, law, penology and layered structure. From the bits of provided backstory we know about the Devastation that levelled land and race, we know about the Last War between humans and Mutants and we know how far the rulers of the world went to secure power. In this sequel, the author is still in no elaborate rush to allay discretion and spill every secret but we do learn more about the state of the world, about the rabids and Radiants, about the strange dreamland I was really curious about and why the world became a ruin before its rebirth. The Kingdom does take us to a few different places, having us meet new characters. Just in A Touch of Death, we have a world that slowly but surely reveals itself, with continuity, mystery and a taste for newer developments that I'm so excited to see the advantage in. I’m really looking forward to learning more about their mutant mutuals, to see what Nate and Kitty’s newly acquired adapted genes might grant them and to undress the rest with the prophecy and the budding insurgency angle. The author smartly reveals without revealing too much, even if I was hoping for a few more giveaways. The pace doesn’t bulldoze and neither does it dawdle but I did feel that the edge of suspense was amiss. The pace aims to comfort as opposed to inflame so I did feel it slacken in that respect. I need to get to the heart of this book and that is the man who already inhabits mine. I love, dote and champion everything that is Nate - he makes my heart pinch, ache and crumble all at once. The author consistently draws out the narrative, the tone and the continuity of her characters but if she arguably masters anything, it’s her leading man Nathanial Anteros. His home is with the misfits, criminals and lawbreakers. He’s as brittle and breakable as a time-sensitive explosive with a heart etched from feeling fire. Delicately anxious and courageously enraged by a civilisation that defeats human nature. Characterised by passion and a bleeding heart, Nate is deeply-feeling, deeply fearful, complex and restlessly haunted, a man poised at the edge of ruin, always a hand’s width short of losing himself. While Kitty is his light, his brother is his lifeline and despite Thom’s announced death, Nate still feels his aliveness in every part of him, an immortal awareness he won’t let go of. The Kingdom is his sickness and the Outlands is his recovery. I have an unfounded gravitational pull towards the passionate, and with Nate’s raw sting, his smouldering resistance, his sharp grief and of course, his always-welcomed smug sarcasm he’s just a fictional keeper for me. The author doesn’t aim to tame her characters, even if some are more contained than others, but they’re all fallible and abraded with unseasoned authenticity. There’s an overarching feeling that the main characters really are alone in this world. With their urgency, self-reflection, rest, unrest, displaced morality and adjusting identities, my sympathy soared as high as the walls of their Kingdom and I just wanted to hoard them, dress them in the finery of faith, arm them with love, swaddle them with curative salves for their scars and free them like butterflies trapped in a jar. There’s still a sense of wonder though - if they’ll see each other, if they’ll see their destination, see the fall of a wretched complex of control, gauging who to trust after being burned, where to go with no solid plans and hoping that hope isn’t as ethereal as it seems. Nothing really is certain. Something that hadn’t escaped my notice is how acutely the author highlights the physical grind and grit that surviving is for the central characters. Their bodies are pushed through a lot and Crunden describes the exhaustive toll of this imperious world as equal harassment on their minds and bodies; they’re not their own, used, abused, bargained and traded. As they travel, as they flee, as they’re captive, as they weather what’s out of their control, the author makes sure to give weight to the corporeal malaise, the shifting map of their changing bodies; scarred, starved, violated and honed by the uncharted. The above deepens the material durability of the characters; their worn bodies aren’t without discomfort and aren’t free from the oppression. It’s clear that surviving does age them quickly, almost expedites it and it’s all done without a sense of sensationalising the struggle or lingering on the terrible. We can see the struggle and the hardship, we know it’s bad, and we’re left to deal with it as the characters scramble to do the same. The struggle is physical as it is emotional, existential without being overly sympathetic to sentimentality. I don't think there's another genre as relatable and inherently speculative of the human race as a flawed society. Survival is one of my favourite tropes, perhaps the main reason for my fascination of a hard-hitting dystopian. The pool of Indie-published titles are congested and choked with leagues of creativity and Rebecca Crunden’s ‘Cuttaverse’ delivers a memorably original sample of great dystopian literature. This futurised era is excellently imagined and the author doesn’t pacify the darkness by way of a one-for-all restorative, remedial tonic. Everyone is robbed of the right to their ancestral history, of their human nature, educated with a legion of told enforcement, told lies, and with characters who don’t quite know their own strengths. Without any sort of embellishment, I confess that I honestly just can’t stop turning the pages with this pentalogy! I suppose that makes this a page-turner because needing to know what happens next is a must and I resent having to put these books down when I’m no longer primed to imbibe. Only two books in and my brain keeps turning over what might happen next while chastising me to catch up. You can look forward to the rage of injustice that lights up Nate’s bedeviled soul, flawed and flaking characters intimately bonded by their travels, a continuation of Nate and Kitty’s slow burn romance and a star-crossed brotherhood unlike any I’ve read before as a ride-or-die peregrination sees to believe in a life past the dividing frontier. As Nate sees Kitty and Thom as the stars that guide him as long as their lights remain aglow, I need this author to do the same for me and hopefully see me safely through the rest of this series! A History of Madness ends taut but excitingly and I now hurriedly run into the arms of the next book as it is a truth universally acknowledged that to wait is to deny a fine pleasure. I don’t think I've ever read a book where the love between two brothers runs deeper than love, that runs harder than the romance; the devotion is enviable. The author is a talent and so far this series pulls flush with moreish grit. C O N T E N T_W A R N I N G: Mentions (retrospectively) moments of self harm, self-destruction and attempts at suicide. General warnings for violence, alcohol consumption and profanity. Mentions being hanged, drowned, starved, beaten and whipped. Also deals with themes of forced/arranged marriage, past miscarriages and there is an on-page abortion scene that may be sensitive to readers. Bear in mind that there is sensitive content surrounding this including absent attitudes towards the death of life. Also mentions execution and off-page rape (there are conversations that allude to rape throughout). Detailed descriptions of tortured bodies and there is one non-descriptive/vaguely described bedroom scene. The main male character's struggle with anxiety and PTSD is also chronic. E X T R A_T H O U G H T S 1) Another minor theory on the way (perhaps don’t read on further if you haven’t read this book!). (view spoiler)[I think the reason that Kitty kept miscarrying was because of her mutated genes. I’m thinking her body somehow rejected the human genes? (hide spoiler)] 2) With Kitty and Nate’s relationship, I am truly invested in them as a couple but I still think they need more development. Clearly, they’re on the run and there’s always an intensive and worrisome burnt-out edge which doesn’t give way a lot of romantic exploration. I do feel the intimacy between them but I’m hoping to see more communication between them. We know that Nate’s love for her is diehard but I’m feeling that Kitty has a ways to go in getting there and I’m looking forward to seeing how the author might nurture their connection. 3) So, this comment really speaks to my weak kness for a hero who takes a common term of affection/endearment and individualises it. Every time Nate calls anyone 'darling' my giddy heart does take a turn *grins* ---------------------------------------------------- Visit my blog for more reviews: V.L. Book Reviews T W I T T E R: @VicariousHearts I N S T A G R A M: @Vicarious.Hearts ---------------------------------------------------- ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 13, 2021
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Aug 22, 2021
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Aug 13, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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| B07KNBGN4Z
| 4.51
| 249
| Nov 16, 2018
| Nov 16, 2018
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really liked it
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R A T I N G: 4 stars to Dyrwolf! ★ ★ ★ ★ “Some wrongs we seek to excuse by any means, because we believe so ardently in a cause we do not stop to qu R A T I N G: 4 stars to Dyrwolf! ★ ★ ★ ★ “Some wrongs we seek to excuse by any means, because we believe so ardently in a cause we do not stop to question the methods by which we fight.” 'A curse without a name, burning beneath my skin. In my blood. Lea Wylder, the girl they banished to the darkest part of the woods. The girl who swore her name would join the Carving at the end of a long, victorious life as the one who set her people free.' - Wolf/lycanthrope Shifter Fantasy - Disability representation - Chronic Headache/migraine rep We have 16-year-old Lea Wylder as Dyrwolf's lead, a headstrong huntress with a sharp and practical mind for all things woodland and wilderness, but not at all by choice. Two decades prior, the shape-shifting Dyrwolves slaughtered the only human community stationed in the sparsely populated Northern mountains. After rights stolen, a town butchered and their people persecuted, the Dyr commandeered their Colony, forcing the surviving humans to migrate across the river to a village deprived of resource, barely able scrape out a living. From hearty, dense lives to a slight, rough-as-bark existence all in the space of a night that marked their blood, the humans are determined to redeem their land from the beasts that stole from them remorselessly and rained on them a downpour of their own blood. Everything can be blamed on their enemy predators. Carved from the bite of living small and remote only cements their need to take back. They've been gradually building up their forced for a counterstroke and the Insurgents have been since preparing. Lea is most familiar with a modest, unimposing life, living by day from the earth and taught and trained into bedlands competence by her father. The arid, uncompromising conditions might have whittled the townspeople down to grit and bark and a full-sighted call for blood to war against the Dyr, but Lea has always been on the far periphery as the Village's cast off. With an incurable illness that strips her senses and plunges her into depthless pain, she's the whispered-about outsider that has no place among her people. Brought up on stories of the genocide of their people, the names of their stolen worn into the bark of the Gathering Hall, the unforgivable sins of the Dyr are never forgotten and their missing are always remembered. When her best friend's name joins the Carved, it only instills within Lea more reason to despise the wolves across the river. So when she finds an overfamiliar, fair-haired wolf trapped on their land, it's the perfect opportunity to save her friend. If every Dyr has an agenda, she's not above using one to get her way. She's not about to start trusting the enemy, even if he's one and the same, one who crawls the space of her dreams beyond any partition that severs wolf from man. May has been a time of catching up on arc-requested reads. After sitting unread for nearing on eight months, I finally got the chance to catch up on Kat Kinney's Dyrwolf. Kinney commands an inspired story with an original angle on werewolf fantasy, one that cares for an unassumed identity pulled further into crisis for our caustic coming-of-age Lea, a combat for love and bad blood while told narratives drive wedges and war between human resistants and wolf settlers. An interesting us vs. them tale where sequestered sides of a war aren't, after initial prediction, strictly polarised to human and wolf, but geared also towards a shared need for wholesome rights. In other words a mutual intent makes for a story where taking sides comes, not entirely from species segregation but species-wide captivity in this colonised settlement. And it all starts when an adorable fluffy shifter and a tense young girl meet at a junction. It’s that gray sphere where black against white, where evil vs good and human vs wolf isn’t the checkerboard model that’s partitioned down the middle. I'm assuming there's an alternative world backdrop in Dyrwolf. From the bits of history aired along with the environmental impression and lifestyle framework of both the Village and the Colony, there's a threadbare, pre-modern feel that lends itself to what feels like a bare-bones dystopian setting. It is a post-war native homeland, but one that's always circling and readying for another one. With disunity, antagonistic ethic, caste difference, deference to an alpha power, flawed rationale, trickery and kept secrets, this is a world that presents itself in a true-to-life extreme, 'its them or us' fashion. Dyrwolf is a convincing fantasy, characteristic to careful plotting and complex relationships between friends and enemies and all the people with something to fight for or against in between. Without feeling overworked or self-conscious, Dyrwolf opens with a slow-stepping rhythm that might take a slow measure but is still plotted contemplatively, enough for the twists to begin hitting you at the halfway seam, one after the other in a hopeful 'what's to come next'. That was when the story really picked up and occupied the attention that was halfway lacking for me in the initial build up. The first part takes the time to introduce Lea’s life, her burdensome sickness, the Village principles, the deficient land, and her life with her father, also the Village Leader. And when she meets a white wolf under the night sky, it’s then that she confronts the challenge of betraying disclosure - where a different side to a long war is perceptible through clashing sets of eyes. The history and taught bias becomes less morally superficial and more morally questioning. The second part held my favour because it’s where the intimacy of trekking through the wilderness as a twosome with Henrik evolves into open story space and we’re introduced to more cast members and unpredictable intrigue, courtesy of the Colony itself. It’s also when the pace changes up enough to take notice. Through the back and forth of a few rotating emails, the author and myself exchanged some details of the shared struggle with chronic disease for us both. While we each live restricted and homebound for a separate set of reasons, Kinney explained that her severe sensitivity to light and sound leaves her most often trapped in the dark, just like Lea Wylder. And that was where Dyrwolf was born, perhaps in the dark, and where Lea gives a voice to a debilitating variant of migraine disease. With chronic migraine/headache representation, you can expect an inclusive story where unremitting sickness can’t be magicked away with the swipe of a hand or used as a supernatural device to explain away the diehard day by day hardship to just exist. Chroncially ill readers will appreciate the untempered chronically ill realism. Stripped to the bare bones of piercing agony in waves of volleying firestorm where all shades, faces and textures of the world blend to the background and paralysing pain transcends it all, the author so very realistically, finely and expressively strings words over word, over and over again, to sketch an illustration of Lea’s senseless sickness and her lingering struggle. In the felt-more-than-seen hostility and short-sightedness of the villagers, the stigma of difference and being denied equal opportunity to integrate within her community attests to the non-inclusive perception of disability discrimination - that her illness makes her useless and her efforts to belong, pointless. She’s a marked girl for being different in more than just one way, and with the claim of being persistently afflicted naturally shoulders the label of being an outcast. It’s so close-cutting actually that she’s expelled to the outskirts of the village. It tolls the truth bell as it bears the real-life intolerance of being a fringing afterthought to a society blind and hostile to invisible illness. For being misunderstood in something Lea can’t control. Her suffering takes so much from her and the painted prose explicitly, and with an exacting imagination, describes the sensation of being lost to the world by pain - the paradox of pain construed with pressingly beautiful prose. It’s not only what’s been hidden from Lea by her community, her parents and Henrik that keeps her in the dark, but the fear of being blinded and vulnerable by her turbulent health. The chronically ill are some of the strongest warrior-esque survivors on the planet and Lea narrates a heart-hitting perspective with points that sing for the unnamed. The writing is strong and a striking force in describing both the internal mappings of Lea’s feelings and the forthcoming action and even every idle moment between. It takes great writing to blow a breath of felt life into every moment and movement, and in this, I can confidently say that Ms. Kinney verges on pictorial brilliance. A times though, the drawn out fluttery prose and overly used metaphors do disrupt the situational flow, especially in a scene that’s dense with an anticipatory pull. It’s here that the delicate and detailed prose works better in some areas than others. The writing can also lead a reader to get their wires and senses crossed because it’s not strictly easy to mark present from past or present from future. The patchwork of lies, misunderstanding and the bereaved setting works to engage a dark and weary perspective world view. This is after all a survival story. If you’re looking for a sunny-side up quest, this might not be the book for you but as it’s a classified YA, it’s not unsuited for the younger flock of readers. There is a HEA guaranteed but it’s not without losses, persistent misery and anticipated distresses along the way. While there are elements that speak to the YA crowd, the scale, the creative precision and range tells to a dynamic written piece of fantasy in Dyrwolf. Stylistically speaking, Kinney pictures a superb story with picturesque prose that graphically makes vivid the intensity of Lea’s hunt, the discovery within and the revelations without. Stunning attentions to detail, brilliant action sequences, and a story with revealing meaning marks a world where torture touches the brave and ordinary and no one is spared from the power of an alpha. Where a turf war spans decades and in waiting for a revolution. With a vivid set of characters all with something to gain and hide, an intricate social order and intrigue of the political and romantic medley, it’s a fevered time for Lea, and with her coming of age, she staggers from twist to mist in the expanse of the unsung. With a nod to a community of long term, incurable illness and marginalised voices, I give my personal thank you to Ms Kinney for sharing Lea’s story. Extra points for Henrik the fluffy, shaggy ball of fur. I’d brave his thick rug of fur for one eternal hug on any given day because as resonant as Lea is, this book could not have been the same without that fleecy furball with cheek to cheek humour! 'It’s the reason I weave through miles of forest every month to get down to the coast and that wide stretch of unencumbered sky, the only salve for the secret sickness no one can ever find out about, even if I’d never truly understood what it was about the freedom of running, the open sky, or the stars that made me whole.' A big thank you to the author for offering me a copy of Dyrwolf to review! C O N T E N T W A R N I N G: Non descriptive scenes of abuse, torture, whipping and describes blood and injuries. Mentions/implies suicide and child abuse. Also mentions hangings and a past rape in non-explicit terms. Only very few uses of mild profanity. With humans being enslaved and a society of discrimination, bear in mind that there are some strong themes. ------------------------------------------ Visit my blog for more reviews: V.L. Book Reviews T W I T T E R: @VicariousHearts I N S T A G R A M: @Vicarious.Hearts ------------------------------------------ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 12, 2021
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May 21, 2021
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May 16, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.02
| 233
| Feb 23, 2017
| unknown
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really liked it
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R A T I N G: 4 stars to A Touch of Death! ★★★★ 'Just because our world is wrong doesn't mean people don't enjoy the binds which are holding them in. R A T I N G: 4 stars to A Touch of Death! ★★★★ 'Just because our world is wrong doesn't mean people don't enjoy the binds which are holding them in. At least their binds are safe.' 'The look he gave her was impossible to decipher, but after a few moments he nodded and looked ahead at the road, squinting in the sunlight, his eyes slightly amber - with blood or nearing death, Catherine didn't know - and his skin yellowing; even so, there was something undeniably strong to his posture, as if not even the promise of imminent death frightened him.' A thousand years forward, a Kingdom of deference and compliance is encouraged while freedom, temerity and knowledge of the historical past is an expressly outlawed sacrilege. With an impregnable intolerance to disobedience, the new Kingdom is an oppressive regime dressed as a present-day utopia. One with an organisational structure that preys on tyranny and savage punishments to await both small and sizable infractions to the law. Not even the rich are resistant to the heartless hand of the law. Catherine Taenia and Nathanial Anteros are both children to families of high society in the flush privilege of Cutta. To Nate, notorious opposer to the Crown, a life under legislation has always been a humid, unlivable nightmare, and to sheltered Kitty, you can’t be broken by safety. So when the least favoured Anteros brother appears over two years later after being saved from the gallows by the skin of his teeth, he brings the type of lawbreaking trouble to their lives that Kitty has long since detested him for. Only, it might be the beginning of the end this time when a miscarriage of science becomes a drip to their veins. It’s a positively painstaking touch of death. When the man she loves, the law-abiding opposite to his wild brother, is taken by arrest, Kitty is forced on the run with the brother she hates; their destination the banned wilds of the Outlands, home to their enemy and a banned land untouched by Kingdom dwellers. Hunted by enforcers, a price on her head, running with a known dissenter, plagued by a bizarre abnormality and exposed to uncharted curiosities and disturbing verity, Kitty is as misplaced as she’s ever been. She’s now having to place her store of faith in a rebel she condemns. Far away from a city rich with convenience and welfare, out of touch with the certainty of a planned life, not even their family names can save them now. Kitty and Nate are renegades. Wow. What a book. One that eclipses the expectant as much it monopolised the entirely of this reading excursion for me. This dystopian survivalist adventure is a gut punch to a believable repressive society of endorsed censorship. I inadvertently took a long leave from the dystopian scenery because I naturally gravitated to other genres as one does when the curious bug propels you to test the deep blue of the written world. I owe a debt of gratitude to Rebecca Crunden for a not-so-gentle reminder to switch lanes back to an old friend from time to time. A Touch of Death is a well-built and weighted opening volume to the Outlands Pentology. A brilliantly coasting story that reads authentically, with prose as plain as its blatant grounding gravity. If my memory works well enough, there are a few tells to an impactful dystopian: an extreme conceptualised state of poverty and neglect where suffering humans are shackled by some social or political force, one that pushes to an extremity that merits a retaliatory extreme. There’s a need to restore humanity or humane rationale. This is where the reformists are built from normal people wanting progressive revisement, not for hero-worship esteem but for necessity - we call them the mavericks… Then there’s a conspicuously tainted setting that relativises that privation and deficiency. And lastly, characters who are skinned enough to court tenuous hope within setting, and whittled by the condition of the earth, bring forth the humanity to take us through the pain of winning something bigger for themselves. A Touch of Death frames the importance of these dystopic elements. Working in tandem, they adjacently betray a plausible story in passing. But as always, It’s the characters who make me visceral with faith and care. Every feature motivates the onerous struggle of a malfunctioning civilisation and the obstacles in place. I willed, wished and coveted the best for these dejected characters. I was with them, for them and followed them every resonant moment of the way. This story doesn’t camouflage the impact of authorised abuse and persecution, and it’s a reality we really get to see most prominently through the wonderful, wounded, resistant Nate. Bad boy to the Crown and just about everyone else, he’s a champion to me. A true dreamer made to wilt from drought of a free life. His heart as aflame as his hair, he’s alert enough to pay attention to what’s deeply insufferable about the world. Having been a firsthand recipient of the Crown’s discipline, he’s aware, knowing, daunted and sees the Outlands as the free lands. It’s through characters like Kitty and Nate, Thom, Evander, Zoe and Tove that we taste the hope and the burn and the cinder; as they challenge the King’s power and risk the aftermath. Now, Nate is a changed man. After losing so much, his faith is as brittle as his direction and only his soul-bonded connection to his brother keeps him whole and alive. He might be more attuned to the life of a criminal, but he’s perhaps more emotionally astray than Kitty. A brilliant character to front this story with her, he just might be my favourite! It takes Kitty longer to lose her hate for Nate and filter through bigotry of the law. You’ll be roped into the heartache, the tumult and the depressive unrest. A Touch of Death is a misadventure of the spirit as much as it twists and treads the surviving undertow. What’s to be loved about these characters is their definition and durability, it attests to the complications they’re presented with. Fitted to this dystopian, Nate and Kitty’s resistant partnership to fragile friends to post-friend uncertainty develops at pace steady to the temperament and temperature of the survival conflict. The strong and very human characterisation is needed in lieu of a world without humanity. I have big plans for their budding romance and I’m praying to the book gods that their haunted souls twine deeper! Kitty might have nested in the privilege of Anais, but it’s her character-defined ability to assimilate to frightening change that surprised me. She’s tougher than you might think. There is a long way to go before the silhouetted future catches sight for Nate and Kitty, and the for the forthcoming entirely, but I’m itching all over to see how they’ll stray from the struggle (and knuckle-fisting thin air as i hope they’ll be ok!). My heart wrenched from pillar to post as they made friends only to suffer the fates of the law. While this is only the gradually-paced first of a five-parter, it’s clear by means of an abstract backstory and abridged details that there’s more to peel back before I’m sure we’ll be face to face with some bigger secrets. So exciting! Most stories enable the ability to easily predict future conditions and plot possibilities, and this is the first time in a while that I’m near vacant with guesses… Interesting world-building carefully pulls the blinds to a developed and declined post-war kingdom. While a reader might want streamlined specifics, and though I wouldn’t have denied more transparency, I didn’t mind being in the dark because there’s an interestingly cautious world imagined in A Touch of Death. Almost old-world with arranged partnerships, extreme punishment and a micromanaged society. It has the retrofuturism of science fiction and the retrograde of a dystopian post-apocalypse with tradition, transportation and the other parts of practical life that’s modern, futuristic and anachronistic. Being members of nobility might plead concession but it’s not a free life as Kitty learns we’re never as safe as we believe we are. Now’s she’s open to a life of bereavement, disease and detriment, swaying under the strain of survival and paying for mistakes she didn’t make. Ignorance might cushion a pipe dream but it consents to scores of sin. Outrunning the risk of capture, the Kingdom looks soulless, privilege looks hollow and her heart bleeds bare as she wonders how choice could be more than just a liberty. This is a world where anyone can become an enemy to king and kingdom by chance and misstep, where nobody is encouraged to have a mind outside of law. To disturb lawful propaganda is a death sentence and to live prostrate through restriction is fostered. It made me think about the potential for regression after any natural/made disaster. The disease thread gripped and the idea that only the rapid decline of mortality can come from an unsparing precept, through small mischief to outright radicalism made for reflective reading. It’s a severe setting that initiates a deep need to see the characters survive and stand tall by any means. Rebecca Crunden envisions a dystopic habitat where the rich live uncaring and the starved sit apart in an organised regime of oppression, one where real freedom is as marginal as the mass population. While every written element of this fashioned fantasy world heightens the despotic setting, it’s the measure of these characters, whose lives are made visceral with urgency and uncertainty that is so strong. It’s the fraught, taut fatalism and the hope of love and friendship that stirs the sober and the reflective insight that sees to state and condition. A Touch of Death is an atmospheric post-apocalyptic fantasy that underscores a stern illustration of a present dystopian. A world that marks a dehumanising system and spotlights heartworn characters weathering obstacles through a censored culture of written and applied propaganda. With genre divisions of science fiction and romance, it’s worthwhile and creative. A dramatic map of brutalisation and recession mirrors a dystopic downstream where superheroes don’t exist and real people are famished for free will. This book is an on-the-edge-of-suspense debut of deep intrigue and Crunden writes characteristic to a draconion scenery. ________________________________________ A big thank you to Rebecca for sending over a copy for review! C O N T E N T_W A R N I N G: General warnings and descriptions for abuse, violence, blood and torture. Mentions severe punishments as execution, authorised rape, beatings and whippings. Also mentions drugs and exhibits instances of smoking and drinking. Describes some specifics of declining health and emaciating bodies. There are also attitudes inclined to death and mildly describes a suicide attempt. ------------------------------------------ Visit my blog for more reviews: V.L. Book Reviews T W I T T E R: @VicariousHearts I N S T A G R A M: @Vicarious.Hearts ------------------------------------------ E X T R A_T H O U G H T S: (view spoiler)[ 1) While Thom is supposedly dead, I have a strong feeling that he’s alive. From the way he’s described, he’s too intelligent and all-knowing to kill off. I’m certain that he’s a chamelion with many secrets. He’s one of the more abstract pieces of this story and it seems obvious to me that there’s so much to him than just the man Kitty knows. I also have a sneaky feeling that he maybe knew about the experimentation that happened during the war… 2) Theory time: Not a big theory here, but I do think Nate might be the King’s son. It would explain how he has the luck of the fortunate every time he’s in trouble. 3) Though Nate still believes Thom is alive, I found it a bit odd that he pursued Kitty without guilt. I don’t mind because I’m desperate to see them together, and while I’m fine with the way their unhasty relationship develops, Kitty is still his brother’s lady… 4) I’m not really keen on the front cover, I’ve got to say. It represents the story well but I don’t think it does the book justice. 5) I think the book could use a map to help get a better picture of the placement and settlement of each country as Kitty and Nate travel. Aside from that, I think a glossary would work really well here too because the terminology isn’t explained right away and to be honest, I’m still uncertain about some the events that happened and some of the words used. After talking to the author I found out a map of the Outlands Pentology can be found here: https://rebeccacrunden.com/2019/08/06... (hide spoiler)] ...more |
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May 05, 2021
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May 10, 2021
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May 09, 2021
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| 4.24
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really liked it
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Rating: 4 stars to Odriel's Heirs! “Have you courage, girl?” the cat asked. Kaia swallowed. “I am the Dragon Heir. Of course I have courage,” she Rating: 4 stars to Odriel's Heirs! “Have you courage, girl?” the cat asked. Kaia swallowed. “I am the Dragon Heir. Of course I have courage,” she whispered.’ Kaia Dashul is the ascending, purposeful champion in this stellar, action packed, high-stakes, high-octane, high risk YA fantasy adventure. Opening with the wishes of a young mountain girl, a bedeviled castaway, both doubtful and bold, Hayley Reese Chow brings forth a story charged with trying times of bravery and responsibility that companion young Kaia and the burden of her leadership. Eddying with the waves of indecision, grief, faith and worth, spurred by all that questions the ambivalent merit of this bringer of fabled fire. ’A cyclone of flame whipped around the Dragon Heir’s body, and her rage grew with exponential speed, as did the pressure of the howling heat within her. And Kaia exploded.’ It’s Kaia Dashul’s birthright as the Dragon Heir, alongside her two counterparts, to defend the people of Okarria. When the real threat of history’s notorious necromancer grows warmer as the past repeats itself in a game of demise and devastation, 17-year-old Kaia lunges at her opening to prove herself and her path as the adept heir of legend. Without a second glance at Arimoke, her home of snubbing ostracism, Kaia leaves for a time of new experience, novel exploit and chance to practice what her roots have cultivated within her. ‘Courage, she thought to herself, remembering her father’s words. The first battle is in your head.’ “A desperate girl who entreated Odriel for help—alone, barefoot, and heart bared.” With her steadfast hound, Gus, courting her lead, the offensive and strapping, perspicacious Shadow Heir, Klaus Thane at her side, and their feline guide Shad, this travelling foursome face both the beauty and bane Okarria sets at their feet in the form of helpful allies, beastly dangers and impish bothers, with the omnipresent threat of a dark demon pursuing every shadow and shade of light with the vibrations of dark promise, the weight of his danger blossoming a pitch-black omen through every onyx night as the waning sun bristles with its counterpart to survive the arctic dusk. ‘There would be no drinking or dancing this night, just the sharpening of blades and the oiling of armor.’ More than anything, Kaia wants to live up to a namesake that she’s yet to fit into, but refined by fire, spirit, despair and rage, her shortcomings of the untried forge a wall of corroding uncertainty, and it’s with bitter despondency that she carries the stave of the mighty and feared Dragon Heir, swallowed by the contempt of Okarria’s people. Doing right always seems to call for a cost, and as the barrier between defense and menace grows feeble so to does the simmering glow underneath Kaia’s skin. Amid the din of sweeping emotions, doubt is as much a killing blow against any bringer of light. “I’m scared,” she whispered. The confession burned her throat. “I’m glad to see you have some sense, after all.” Belief is a life force, gifted from others and born from within, to nourish and infuse zeal, and with Kaia’s heart crawling with the riotous feelings of remorse, trepidation and dread, the heft of an infernal glow coupled with armies of death stalking to swallow the land’s vitality, a questioned sense of worth means there will always be something to prove. And with the Shadow Heir’s unexpected belief and slow-burning trust, Kaia has no choice but to source her strength, a position of power and pain, and a willingness to believe in the inheritance she was meant to walk with - the immense gift of Dragon’s rage. "It’s like they say, ‘The Dragon Heir walks through fire alone.’" "Except when you walk with me," Klaus countered’ Wow! When the seconds dried up after i polished the last sentence of this book I took a drawn-out contented sigh, not one of exasperation, but the kind you take after a full meal and an ever fuller belly. Comfortable, copious and sated without the need for more - that’s exactly how I felt after reading ‘Odriel’s Heirs’ . Hayley Reese Chow writes a story that climbs with intensity and speedily passes by with abundant action that barely lets you breathe. I could feel Kaia’s throttling urgency to do well and I wanted her to win - a sure sign of my own belief in her and the story. The first half of the story eagerly builds itself, but the second half? Wow, does it bolster through with power. “Now that you’ve seen the bad, you’re about to witness the miraculous.” If there is anything In the fantasy genre that fills me with honeyed satisfaction, it’s a well-placed and well-executed battle scene, and we get two very well described and written battle scenes in Odriel’s Heirs! Overflowing with anticipation, thrill and mortal fear, they were, for me, the best scenes to read. Though Kaia was committed and devoted, she was realistically plagued by very real human fears with trial and self-assurance - vulnerability always looks nice next to strength. I loved Klaus too! He gradually morphs from the barbed and sharp-hewn to warm and affectionate, and yes I saw it coming and was just waiting for this bond to flower sweet petals. Klaus, as a character forms a beautiful balance to Kaia and I backed the reshuffling of their relationship dynamic the whole way. "When you grieve, the sun does not shine, and when your heart is light, the whole world smiles with you." "Except for the stoic, Guardian Thane," As with any story of darkness, we need a radiant flagstone to source the way, and the light in this story comes from Kaia’s spirit, her drive to do right, her love for her friends and family and the warm, trusty relationship that commences between her and Klaus. An expansive knell of doom casts Okarria in a hellish infernal glow, and as brash, doubtful Kaia travels the paths of it, subject to both it’s frightening and bewitching, it comes close to heart that nobody is immune to the threat of a dark lord and his pungent army of the dead. Facing kinship, savagery and exploitation, Kaia is graced with the gift of Odriel’s telling, and with fire cupped in her palms and flames low in her belly, it is with the weight of Okarria’s survival that sits on rusted hinges, as it then falls to the Odriel’s heirs. ‘Now, sitting atop his majestic stag, with his grave countenance and freshly healed wounds, he looked every bit Odriel’s Assassin, the dangerous Shadow Heir of legend.’ An atmosphere choked with foreboding and the sky raining pelts of raging promise from a demon lord’s keening blanket of black death poised to snuff out Okarria’s life-force with a voracious maw of infallible death, the mysterious forces, beastly and beautiful coalesce across the land, bound by the all-seeing Odriel. With every budding hero comes the luggage of dicey doubt and delicate dignity, and Kaia is here to show us the value of courage against both. “When he steps foot upon the land, the sky will not grow light again.” ‘She smiled to herself. Time to burn bright.’ From a sheltered mountainside home to fighting a vicious darkness shadowing Okarria, here arrives a condemned Kaia on an expansive adventure, treading fear and unease as she fills the sizable shoes made to fit the heir of dragon fire; a story that twines the larger troubles of war with the internal conflict of Kaia’s mortal vigour. Kaia is a protector, a vision of fear and carrier of grave uncertainty in this hard hitting, crawl-to-keep-up, keep you on your toes, acute, shapely story of hearty ambition labouring against the forbidding throes of a darker time. Well written and keenly crafted is a transformative coming of age fantasy that hails this genre as one that continues to make magic. Thank you Hayley Reese Chow for reminding me of why the YA fantasy genre is never one to be overlooked. A brilliant mouthful of duty, misgiving, love and foreboding, with a harbringer’s flaming scythe that barricades an army of death from the promise that always comes with light. “Light the darkness, Dragon,” A big thank you to Hayley Reese Chow for sending me a copy of Odriel's Heir in exchange for a review! ______________________________ Trigger Warning: I’d definitely place this in upper YA - although no scenes of torture of gory death are explained in any extreme detail, there is still mention of characters being tortured, body mutilation etc. Very minimal swearing (a few curses here and there). ______________________________ S O M E T H O U G H T S/ C O N C E R N S... 1) Some parts of the story could use a bit more explaining - the circumstances around why the heirs fled the royal family, why the magi went into hiding and more about Kaia’s past would have been a tad more helpful. It takes firm concentration of the mind to keep up with the running story - a reader can get a little lost trying to appoint names to faces and remember character histories. If you don’t keep up with the story, you might fall behind at times. 2) A lot is condensed into a 300+ page novel - while there is more than enough to feed on as a reader, the story does speed on by with some time lapses (mostly when the characters are travelling). _____________________________ Twitter I Instagram Visit my blog for more reviews: V.L. Book Reviews ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 22, 2020
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Feb 25, 2020
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Feb 23, 2020
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| 4.02
| 4,472
| Jun 25, 2015
| Jan 2018
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Rating: 'Not sure how many stars to give this book' stars If you like the captive trope with a sci-fi-active plot, strong military women underestimated Rating: 'Not sure how many stars to give this book' stars If you like the captive trope with a sci-fi-active plot, strong military women underestimated and minimised by their alien captives as they conquer galaxies you might like Alien Lord’s Captive . But for me non-consent is problematic. I might have liked the book a tad more if we had consent that didn’t hinge on a bargain. Message: Don’t fall on the wrong side of an enslaved woman. What i liked: 1) The promising exciting plot 2) The story had a lot to offer - great characters, humour, action, bold military women up against an advanced alien race 3) Great world-building element 4) I loved the idea that the downfall of Tarrick’s clan hangs on their less-than-stellar perceptions of human intellect. What i didn't like: 1) Tarrick (the male protagonist) blackmails Cat into 'claiming' her. I didn't realise that there would be non-consent in this book and non-consent is not something i can appreciate or tolerate. Tarrick basically took away Cat's choices by manipulating her decisions based on her moral code. Tarrick isn’t an aggressive or violent character at all, but he still did what he wanted because it ‘is the Lathar way’. The Lathar race apparently prize women and their values but they still have a modest, conservative view of women due to their cultural standards. Historical differences are one thing, and even though races are bound to have traditional differences I don’t think it excuses the non-consent issue. What's even worse is Cat gives in and melts in the presence of her gorgeous alien captive, and even at the end of the book when the dominating war commander/male love interest who kidnapped the females of her race proves that he is adaptable and alters his ways because of his love for Cat, she kind of romanticises Tarrick's kidnap because a bigger, crueler baddie (from an alternative alien clan) of the alien race attempted something much worse. 2) If we are considering the romance in the story it's unfortunately an element in that’s very underdeveloped. The rate at which Tarrick and Cat fall in love is too quick to be believable. I liked both Cat and Tarrick but didn’t particularly like how they went about situations. 3) I loved that we have some badass, military women but the rebellion against the aliens wasn’t really there (this was a real point that would have done wonders for this story). Cat had the intentions of gathering intel so she could plan an escape procedure but that quickly flopped. All in all, this started out great, but lost points of merit because of some phases of execution, the slightly confusing romance and the lack of consent with the main couple when Cat is initially kidnapped. Trigger Warning: Violence, abuse, swearing, sex scenes, attempted rape, non-consent ...more |
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Dec 23, 2019
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Dec 26, 2019
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Dec 23, 2019
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| B07BV5L2V9
| 3.88
| 635
| Jul 29, 2017
| Apr 15, 2018
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really liked it
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Rating: 4 action packed stars
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Notes are private!
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Dec 16, 2019
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Dec 21, 2019
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Dec 21, 2019
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| 3.41
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| Oct 23, 2019
| Oct 23, 2019
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liked it
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Rating: 3.5 stars ! ‘She was magnificent. He’d watched her break into a million pieces every time she’d gone into her room alone, shining in the dar Rating: 3.5 stars ! ‘She was magnificent. He’d watched her break into a million pieces every time she’d gone into her room alone, shining in the dark, and then build herself back up again. And every time, she had come out to her people with a sober face, only to give them something they needed, a little life. There was an intense ever flow of crashing waves in her soul, a force as vital and vivacious as blood, blood that brings nourishment and oxygen, with the power to live and grow, create life. It was the source of life and essence of vitality. If only she knew. She had the Vitality of blood.’ Atmospheric, mysterious and haunting with strong currents of the nebulous and bleary boundaries that blur the lines of the discernible, Ava’s world is one of chasing devastation, brawling emotions, and striving for freedom with a sliver of hope within her reach, consequently losing herself in an attempt to find herself on a road that could take her in either of two versatile directions. ‘Was there a way back to humanity? Would the pain be too much? Would it be worth it? Ava thought it would be. It would be worth everything. She was a starved soul with a heart big enough for two.’ This story, set in Massachusetts, Aberdeen takes 19-year-old Ava on an enigmatic and highly surreal journey of the real as it melds inextricably with the delusory as she fights for a way of life that holds her by a thin thread. Closed-off and self contained, Ava starts a new life away from her old one of mayhem and survivalism, but Ava can’t run away from her problems when they are problems of the highly strung mind and encumbered heart; strange problems that have plagued her for as long as she can remember. Ava is cloistered and deeply unsettled in a way that only amplifies her lonesome inadequacy to bond with people and the reality she lives in, because Ava’s sense of what’s real has long since been merged with the phantoms of the unreal, existent in a place of lost placement and morphing states as she continues to question a sanity that’s volatile as much as it feels brittle. She pulled up a chair to the window, watching outside in habit as the night lowered down over the trees and all the life around her, yet not feeling alive at all. Would she ever be able to breathe again? Ava is a fighter with no real place in her own life. Withdrawn and hard-hearted, Ava very much dances to the turbulent beat of a drum that seems to dictate her life. She’s a nonconformist who has only ever felt safe in her own company, ironically if not in her own skin. Thick skinned but fragile underneath, Ava tries tries hard to bottle the torrents of indescribable feelings and odd situations that only serve to unbalance her fragile sense of lucidity the more hallucinations take her life from her…but they’ll never take her strength from her. ‘They say, what you see is what you are… She only believed that, though, if a person could be defined by their fears, desires, traumas, but she refused to believe that; they may be able to shape your perception, but they do not shape your heart, and your heart can shape anything if you let it. What you are is not only what the world made you.’ With a strong drive to always fight on in an invisibly subdued way, keeping her head above water and in the land of the living has been one of Ava’s biggest fights, along with her disorienting identity that only offers perplexity when all Ava really wants is clarity. Who is Ava? Ava is fractured, trying to repair herself, goaded by pertinacity - because life for Ava is something to never say no to, least of all to give up on…and as she steps into a new life she questions and hopes that inside her remain pieces of herself that might one day piece themselves into a picture of redemption; because Ava is searching for it. But something bigger than that has caught Ava in its throes. “Little girls are taught at a young age that dreaming of love and nice things are silly, yet everyone longs for them, and under the eyelids, when secrets come out to dance, everyone dreams of them. So pitiful to live such a hateful lie. Such misery in the oppression of feeling so wrong for something that is natural, so that another can cope with its heartbreak. The fearful ridicule others for the same things they want, out of that fear — fear of life tainting happiness, so they taint it first. That fear will feed on you more than anything else can. It hinders all that you are and all that you want. All that you could be.” Drawn by intuition and something a bit more obscure, a pull leads Ava to this queer, abnormal town where people are avoiding something, where secrets seem to whisper with the wind, where oddities reside in almost every nook and cranny and everybody seems to either run with madness or avoid it like the plague. Ava hoped to find an air of normalcy, to find a way from her own cryptic hallucinations, but this place might just prove to unbalance Ava’s brittle sanity and push her down a road of shadows and misgivings. “Something wicked this way comes,” he whispered…’ Ava opens herself up to new friends and new choices, understanding that unprecedented bonds can form despite the differences In vice and virtue. But in the midst of this dubious town lies Lithium - a place of cavernous mysteries and eerie energies. Ava’s life condenses down to a sharp point, trailing this darkly mystifying place, soon to cross paths with a man who stands in the heart of Ava’s rotating world: Layton. ‘He was tall, dark haired, dark eyed, and divine..’ ‘The proximity of his beautiful dark features hypnotized her even further beyond the captivation of his presence; she was ensnared. And he smelled like heaven and hell.’ A new time and a new age becomes them as Ava and Layton coalesce in a seductive, abrasive meeting of desire, vulnerability, rawness, volatility and comfort tinged with the harsh bite of the threat that sits within reach. Layton is drawn by Ava’s unique vitality, an uncommon girl who night calls to and animals flock to. Layton normalises a strange world for Ava, a paradoxical man who promises to be a comforting threat. Layton is a taker, an oppressor of vitality, and Ava will always fight for the specks of it within her. As the two dichotomising parts of Ava - caring too much or not at all - argue the parts of feeling her heart and preserving desensitisation, Layton is warring between two base behaviours both calling for Ava from the pure and the impure - surfacing foreign feelings and finding life in her, or taking everything . As vertigo encourages these wandering souls in a nocturnal adventure of wild chases as they find freedom in the dark nights of surrender, both battle a fight of losing so much with the prosperity to gain even less. ‘But why did it seem that chaos festered as the distance grew between them? “You’re driving her to madness,” she whispered to his receding shadow. “She’ll lose what you seek.” “And what has she done to me?” ‘Vitality’ is a relationship-driven, intense story of invisible pain as Ava tries to shape herself into something bearable and hopeful while toying with letting go of her vulnerabilities or keeping them very close to her chest as she travels the untold. Living in a state of mind where dreams may not always be dreams, where perception is too malleable, where nightmares are phantoms waiting to pounce, and living does not feel real enough to make tangible sense of the world, Ava’s experience is one of slipping and sliding, losing parts of herself and losing sight of herself but still holding onto her mettle as all falls to pieces around her. From a place of self-destruction, bedlam will most always find a place to fester. A chaotic tangle of wispy mysteries and unearthly exploits claim Ava as she topples down a rabbit hole ridden with tricks and traps just as she fights to claim a foothold in her odd reality that seems to not want her to be a part of it. ‘Could he follow her voice back if he wanted to? Would she follow his or maybe save herself? Would it be too late, the sound quieted, the stars gone out forever? How many curses would be sent to him in all his lifetimes? Could she be the biggest one yet?’ The fictitious and the unfeigned blur in this narrative, simultaneously fusing and forming into the same thing. Ava is lost, trying to carve a path through claustrophobic tunnels. Her life is a fragmented sequence of disturbing visions and floating memories, trusting and burying a sense of rationality that is only oppressed by the nebulous phantoms she is plagued by. Is ava her own greatest tormentor? Perhaps she is her own biggest phantom, chasing the wind, while falling through steep channels that twist her, burn and bruise. The world doesn’t make sense to Ava, and she doesn’t make sense to herself, but she’s following an inborn draw, a determined tug forcing her to seek beyond boundaries that partition the absurd, lingering in illusions while trying to find the truth outside of them. ”It wasn’t the misery that mattered in the end… It will not be the misery that would matter the most now.” Though a man of nightly shades, Ava’s life feels all the more fuller, lighter, yet veiled each day that Layton is in it. He invades Ava’s life while she scratches away at his cold bearings. He’s a nightmare, but one that’s concrete and too lucid to be anything but a sinister dream. But maybe nightmares are just dark dreams that aren’t as favoured as the light. Or maybe nightmares are made to snuff out any source of light. It might be a little too late to feel the consequences of dancing with shadows as Ava is now caught in the blinding, possessive headlights of a shaded man. “You’re living on borrowed breath. You brought death and pain right to your door, girl, in the disguise of angel and savior. Now you will fear the dark, fear the reaper.” ‘The night no longer felt like night; it felt like the pit before hell’s entrance.’ It really is a questions of wondering if Ava will fall into a maddening mania, whether she’ll risk her friable sanity for said madness by looking beyond thresholds unbidden. What does lie at the bottom of the rabbit hole? Insanity? Uncertainty, instability - Ava isn’t new to those feelings. Losing yourself to find that you wont come back from it? Maybe lost just means an unconventional way of life that the rare few will see as a saving grace rather than a phantom of fear. But fear does have its purposes, and it’s up to Ava to listen to this call becaue every wall was built for a reason, so is it a prosperous choice to lower shields that are stoutly built to keep monsters out? “Be careful treading in the dark. It is only your own depths that choose what you behold in the shadows of the night.” Crysta Levere has done well with her character arcs for ‘Vitality’ , especially since this is her debut, and I’m excited to see where the second installment takes these characters! The first half of the book did have some hitches to get through as the pacing was very slow and drawn out, and it took longer than necessary to bring the story together. But that last 30% of the story had surprises in store that took my breath away. I found myself calculatedly distracted while the rug was pulled from my feet because this was not an ending I could have predicted! I was so sure the book was going to head a certain way so that cliffhanger was definitely a turning point for me. Some twists and turns during the first half would have been nice because I think I’d definitely have been more invested. ‘She was going to get through that door, she had explained to it. Not without the key, it laughed. ‘Vitality’ probes Ava’s life and drive to keep on living as she’s driven by a need to feel free, to always lock horns with anything that threatens that, and to battle with anything other than destruction irrespective of her tendencies to subject herself to it. Can she possible fall deeper down the rabbit hole, tumbling over deceptions and stalling in front of heartbreak, or will she find the freedom that her constitution has desperately been in seek of. Ava’s purpose was to move miles away from the strange, and now she’s embroiled in it. Ava and Layton both sit on opposite sides of a spectrum, knocking each other off kilter until finally the grand scheme comes into view. ‘Vitality’ is a contemplative, languid narrative and a coming of age with abrasive passion, empirical temptations , sage musings of nature and life, and fevered sensations as we wonder whether this will be a tale of sweet equanimity or dark surrender, or maybe both as Ava deliberates whether this new path is worth taking. Just like Ava is trying to push past barriers to find a certain freedom, this book is about looking past the peripheral to see what can’t be seen. ‘Vitality’ has it’s nuances as a story. It’s cut from a cloth that doesn’t walk with the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ but walks the passage between both and of both, swaying from one choice to the next. A chase will only last as long as the predator dictates and until the prey yields. Ava’s elastic heart might just snap if she’s not careful, and she might not be the only one falling down a well of questionable return. ‘Vitality’ is Ava’s rattling, unsettling travelling from feeling so little to feeling for life, to searching and escaping and discovering while understanding that walls are made to stand for a reason. And when they fall she’ll see whether her elastic heart has the fortitude to keep beating. Thank you so much to Crysta for offering a copy for review! Some concerns… 1) There were quite a few spelling mistake throughout the story. 2) The pacing did affect my overall experience of of 'Vitality', but the ending pulled it back for me. 3) The writing was, at times, difficult to follow - but this just might be in my case. 4) I understand that the mystery component is important to the story, but i wanted to see a bit more proactivity within the story - a bit more conflict/to and fro, because for the most part there is a lot of time spent on establishing Ava's situation and her bond with Layton, so I think we needed something that existed beyond that for a nice balance. So, more focus on Ava's external world wouldn't have gone amiss, and would have provided a balance between the writing style and the complete story. Twitter I Instagram Visit my blog for more reviews or to read my full review: V.L. Book Reviews ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 07, 2019
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Oct 16, 2019
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Oct 06, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.09
| 35
| Jul 14, 2015
| Jul 14, 2015
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liked it
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Rating: 3.5 stars! “Stars are all fire and pressure, exploding ceaselessly in the abyss,” he whispered. “The world teaches us that violence is natur Rating: 3.5 stars! “Stars are all fire and pressure, exploding ceaselessly in the abyss,” he whispered. “The world teaches us that violence is natural, but the sky pretends it’s beautiful too. Stars die like we do - victims of their own mechanisms of survival. We don’t notice when it happens; we only see what we can’t avoid.” Brought up in a modest village, Kayla Steelryn is the moving force of this imaginative, downcast dystopian fantasy. Kayla’s past is most secretive, her only vessel of understanding is a trinket that holds the face of lurking hope. Unsettled by a restlessness that tugs at her bones, Kayla finally makes the desperate decision to flee the banal, rifle through her past’s identity and seek the face that may tie all of these pieces together. With a leap of expectancy, and a bigger one of fear she leaves her coy potter’s village for the uncharted remains of a post-apocalyptic society, both bare and heartsick. It’s time for this lonesome star to forge a path of dominion…even if she doesn’t know what the stars hold for her just yet. ‘His hazel eyes were sharp, and she felt as if nothing escaped his vigilant gaze. He didn’t smile. His voice was quiet and softly harsh, as if he spoke rarely. “I had no doubt we would meet again.” …”There were times I wasn’t as sure as you…and all I could do was dream.” Leaving the mundane and familiar, Kayla is now amid the profoundly indefinite; a world that threatens a lot more than just the unknown. By parting with her home she has traded inertia for a perilous venture that challenges her trusting nature and tests her feeble mettle as a young woman unchallenged. It’s a battleground for survival, only not predominantly in the visible cacophony of the loud and lairy, of raucous dwellers and evident battle - this is the kind of dreary survivalism experienced through stories and memories, through grief and loss, through leftovers of a world that no longer exists, and the somber endurance of travelling a barren society. “The world has fallen apart while you’ve slept in peace” Almost 18 years ago, a darkening eclipse initiated a pandemonius development; a phenomenon that crumpled life, destroyed people and sundered structure, only for antagonist Sebastian Za’in to rise and commandeer the remains in a fist that promised renewal and rejuvenation. Not only did the eclipse leave a legacy of darkness, it endowed a world without faith, without the heavenly, and without conviction, driven by the mythology of the nephilim and the stories of fallen Angels. But riding on the back of one eclipse is soon to procure another era of calamity; the second stage in a cycle of devastation. “When you hear ‘Angels,’ it sounds beautiful, right?…but even our legends have no room for redemption.” And Kayla immediately crosses paths with one particular embodiment of said sacrilege and volatility: Jeremy. Jeremy is a character that is twisted by passion, driven by pain and prompted by impulse, and although this made him unfavourable for me because he seemed built on a threat to destroy, he undoubtedly has the most punishing path in this whole story, caught in a thrall that dominates his personal autonomy. He didn’t care anymore if the stars were shining. Let them go on burning. Soon they’d have no choice but to watch what fires he’d be setting, down below their gaze.’ Jeremy is impelled by a force to secure a place of importance in this fallen world that’s about to fall further still. It’s about his and Kit’s survival. But he’s also driven by a bitter need for retribution and anger, running with an uncontrolled temper that can’t be suppressed. He runs like a tempest with the inflammatory nature to spread storms of pain; mirroring his own. Is he too skeptical to give his desire any worth or is he simply just a man without honour? Dominated by urges and impulses, his perspective is narrowed to an oppressive sight that hinders any bearing of the consequences and what sustains the image at large. Jeremy’s haunting, disabling thoughts push him down one path while his stubborn resilience urges his down another; you really never know whether he will be exhausted by darkness or find a way back from it. ‘He was born into darkness -that was the reason they gave him for his suffering.’ ‘He closed his eyes. What was his nature? Wasn’t it his nature to fight….everything?’ Jeremy isn’t the only man twisting Kayla from the inside out as she’s torn between men that promise different things; and right at the other end of the spectrum is the cool and collected to Jeremy’s fire, a former vision of change and nomad of the lost and found, Asher Serafin. Asher’s quest has been a long time coming and in a last attempt to chase forgiveness, his mission is set to protect Kayla, hoping it to be enough to make up for his personal privation. Asher is an enduring, tranquil tempered, austere pillar of strength and direction even if he doesn’t know where he is headed; a flexible man with a flexible perception that makes him an adaptable and admirable character - one of my favourites! - but he’s still a player of pent-up misgivings, his past a condensed package of unalterable anguish. ‘He wasn’t leading the Resistance this time. He had stopped resisting. This wasn’t the explosive human will to rebel or revolt. Instead, he was simply a vessel of divine retribution, a herald of a needed end.’ Will Kayla find love in the one who punishes her, or the one who protects her? One carves a life of reckless abandon while the other carves one of purpose and shelter; following one love, eternal only to her destruction, and another who walks alongside here as a constant construction of strength, understanding and companionship……and then the lord who stands above all: the persuasive, genial, inspiring teacher who offers Kayla praise, importance, and a fundamental expression of her identity - who makes he feel like a promising piece of light in a world that offers little in the ways of solution; exacting a movement embedded in the stories of legend and of the bones which came before them. But whether legends inspire strength; whether myth has only provoked a secular system of non-believing and suspicious, is Za’in a true bringer of knowledge and an age of improvement, or an entity of blasphemy, bathing in the blood of the lost while favouring those of the supernatural. “There must be something wrong with me…to miss them both like this.” “It’s the burden that those with a heart carry. You can’t let your emotions rule you, but don’t cut them off. Your feelings are not a sin against any of us.” Angelica Clyman has crafted this story with a unique blend of beautiful prose that lends itself to the haunting upset of the story while its poetic quality is engaging, selective and effective - if not a bit too drawn out and vague, with a significant portion of the book that is formed of very vague memories that were quite confusing - reality, dreams and the past were heavily blurred for me and I really lost my way in a way that made me feel removed from Kayla and the story (I also felt this way because i started to lose my understanding of what this story was about), but the ambiguity of the narrative did lend itself to a lot of misdirection for me. ‘A sense of dread began to settle with the knowledge that no man could escape his beginnings. Original sin wasn’t dealt out equally, and that girl couldn’t lift his portion. But she tried.’ ‘Dominion of the Star’ is the first book in the descendants of the fallen series; a story of outcasts and survivors bound together in an intense situation of inexorable feelings that imitate the drudgery of the world before them. A story that doesn’t offer a chiseled trajectory of guidance, but instead plods through in an attempt to mimic the uncertainty of our four main characters…A story of Kayla’s coming of age and coming of acceptance is unnerving for this sheltered girl who knows nothing of the disastrous Eclipse that shrouded the earth to begin with. Forcing control around her heart as opposed to being weakened by its impractical but desirable will; torn between loyalties, hard decisions and divided in this dynamic triangle of love. “You’re not just flesh and blood, and the sin of thought is just as dangerous for you. There are places you can’t let you mind wander. You have to promise me.” “...I’m responsible for the sin of thought? Suppose your dark imaginings could bring down this whole world. How would you handle that?” Asher grabbed her by the shoulders, one strong shake painfully raising her head. “I’d have to grow up quick…” This is more than a matter of trust for Kayla, she’s trapped in the cracks of a despondent world only looking on through the inexperienced eyes of shelter, as she trusts and stumbles in the face of broken trust and a broken heart. Kayla is a soft protagonist with an unpracticed and unprepared heart. She’s restless and hindered by uncompromising indecision, her scattered steps like walking on hot coals; her choices divided by her disparate identity: one that amalgamates the diverse sides of her - to reach a destiny that first begins with acceptance - her dominion begins with acceptance. There is choice in destiny, not suppressed by an overwhelming obligation to nurture the intentions of others. “Just because God has perished, doesn’t mean that we’re not left an inheritance. There are debts, I know, but there is great wealth in what Man can do. Your soul, even if it’s damned, is a spark of the divine. And Kayla…she possesses a unique fragment of that lost Heavenly glory. Within her is the defiant, brilliant pulse of a fallen Star.” Coming in just short of 500 pages, ‘Dominion of the Star’ offers a lot to get lost in, each character follows the line of warring with the different parts of themselves, an intense battle that could either spell a light of victory or the morose endeavour of absolute failure, but each of the four has a story to tell, even the antagonist has provocative roots as a villain. The fluctuating theme of who must be trusted underlined the dark quality of the book. ‘Dominion of the Star’ promises a suffering triangle of romance blended with complex characters, merged with mythology and grounds itself in a setting of the post apocalyptic waiting on another dooming eclipse to follow in its wake. ‘Dominion of the Star’ is a post apocalypse on the brink of sinking into another apocalypse. “You’re just one more storm or act of violence away from being taken out, and you know you’ll have to stop dreaming.” In a world that would rather believe in sacrilege than the divine, should Kayla ignore her heritage-bound duty or follow the impulse and path of personal faith and feeling - it’s Kayla’s overwhelming sense of uncertainty that fortifies her downfall. ‘Dominion of the Star’ is a troubling odyssey of the unceasingly uncertain as violence and doubt twist the world where the old world is just a memory. Za’in’s fantasy of rebirth and renewal is awaiting another dooming era, another hell that sits morosely at the heels of his construct. Following a fantasy or follow in experience.. A struggle to conquer and a struggle of yielding, this post-apocalyptic foundation exists as a backdrop of this tale of mythology, destiny and spiritual stimulation. “This is a world where it is acceptable for a worthless human to throw rocks at an Angel dreaming in a tree.” The rebellion began in loyalty and love to an Angel loved and then to preserve a world for an Angel born. An imaginative start to a series - Angelica Clyman is certainly an author to watch out for in the fantasy genre. ‘Where do I even begin? This was her answer. Above her, Orion’s belt shone brightly’ “We’ll have to trust her to fight for herself. That’s what it will come to in the end, when the sky darkens.” Trigger Warning: Some profanity and very mild, non-descriptive sex scenes. Thank you to Angelica for sending me a free copy for review! Twitter I Instagram Visit my blog for the full review of ‘Dominion of the Star’: V.L. Book Reviews ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 02, 2019
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Nov 11, 2019
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Oct 06, 2019
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Paperback
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| 4.35
| 4,320
| May 30, 2016
| Jun 01, 2016
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really liked it
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[image] ★★★To read my full review of 'From Burning Ashes' visit my blog★★★ Rating: 4 Honey-crunch, double-dipped-doughnut, rolled-in-honey, supersprite [image] ★★★To read my full review of 'From Burning Ashes' visit my blog★★★ Rating: 4 Honey-crunch, double-dipped-doughnut, rolled-in-honey, supersprite stars “We are survivors. We fight. We live. No matter what it takes, it’s who we are. We don’t let things beat us: DMG, an oath, Vadik. You and I are a team, and we will fight against whatever comes our way. Good or bad, we claw, we bite, and battle our way out.” “Ryker, you ready?” “I’m with you, human,” His deep voice snaked up through my hair to my ear. “Till the end.” After a rescue mission gone wrong, a resolute Zoey’s life is a dithering thing when placed in the hands of a Wanderer whose bloodthirsty desire to see Zoey’s death is more than overwhelming…only Zoey’s life doesn’t seem to want to end because even death keeps pushing her farther away from it every time she comes within its vague vicinity. ‘Hate, blame, pain, isolation could turn you into the precise animal they claimed you were.’ ‘In usual Zoey style, I didn’t slip peacefully into the quiet darkness.’ ‘From Burning Ashes’ is the fourth and final instalment in the ‘Collector’ series, and Zoey is put through the biggest test in this clashing journey of fighting, surviving and loving for the ultimate goal and the ultimate man. After revelations arose, splintering the potholed ground beneath her, Zoey’s reasons for living are flourishing – even if her circumstances aren’t - because the people she loves need her, and as loyal as she is Zoey’s fight has no confines. She has lost so much, raking her defeats, but she grabs the small but immeasurably precious treasures life throws her way: her life, her love, her family. “Some friendly advice? Your bleeding heart for those humans makes you easy to control, Zoey.” “Love and hate walk a fine line. Let’s see what side he falls on” Among the resounding threats following them, many dangers are still present in Zoey’s and Ryker’s tension-filled little group. Zoey and Ryker are bound by an oath, and Ryker is still on the brittle edge of fighting two primal desires: his longing for Zoey and his lust for her blood. Much to his heartache he is still a major threat to the human who somehow found his unforgiving heart and melded it with her own. Keeping Zoey at a safe distance has never been an easy or fair task, nothing with these two has ever been a laidback walk in the park, more like a trek through wild weather in deserted lands. “I’m not leaving. When will you get it through your thick skull that we are a team? We save each other. And right now I am saving your ass. So shut up and play the damsel in distress like a good boy.” Guarded hearts are not easy to leave their corrals behind, but barriers can also indeed be shattered with the right impact and the right person, and Zoey and Ryker have learnt the hard way that feelings are unavoidably singular because their hearts fought for each other long before they give in to the temptation. Their first meeting was built on chaos and grief and distrust and their relationships renovated with the same volume of energy into unbounding trust, decided faithfulness and indebted love. ‘It was always there with us. The passion mixed with fierceness, tearing at the seams, breaking me in pieces till I didn’t know which one I wanted more.’ ‘Not one bit of me remained hidden from Ryker.’ Stacey Marie Brown has pulled out a lot of stops for this last part of Ryker’s and Zoey’s story. ‘From Burning Ashes’ has plenty of palpitating action scenes, non-stop exploits in every chapter, while I was wondering and praying for my favourite characters to make it through this equally reforming but still volatile world. This being my eighth book of Brown’s, I’ve noticed that while her stories aren’t exactly meticulously, well-written, drawn out or put together, and aren’t always sound in storytelling, she writes with a continual tension and enthusiasm to give us the best characters she can. “Croygen?” I was at a loss for words. “Thank you.” “Oh jeez, just say you love me. Make it really dramatic.” The doors started to close. I grinned. “I love you.” “Wow” That lacked finesse. He frowned. “Stay safe, asshole,” Ryker snarled. “Kiss my honey muncher,” Sprig added. “See, now those had flare. I believed them.” I don’t know about you but that part in a story where undying love is declared between the characters is absolutely my Achilles heel, my knees weaken, tears drop, and my life is made…yes, I’m a simple being. This explosive fest of unceasing action, perilous engagements, raucous skirmishes, misgivings, disloyalty, and fierce love story, ‘From Burning Ashes’ concludes Ryker’s and Zoey’s tale with a heart-stopping ending that had my gut swallowing my stomach, wondering if death really would keep these two apart, and a few tears that found their way onto the page. Ryker has sacrificed for Zoey, and she would do it a million times over for him, and both would suffer worse if only to save the other. Both have played with fire, only strengthening a bond which stands stellar, and after finding each other through a city in embers, colliding through barriers between, crossing divides unforeseen, Ryker and Zoey have made their way from burning ashes to bourgeoning chance and a fire that I know has no intention of leaving them. ‘From the burning ashes a hazy outline of a man appeared. Like a Norse god he strode out of the smoke, a glistening axe strapped to his back.’ “Whatever is ahead of us, I want to be with you. As long as you want me.” “Is forever good?” he whispered.’ Trigger Warning: Mentions child abuse, swearing, prostitution, drugs, attempted rape, torture, and has sex scenes described in moderate detail and not grossly descriptive Favourite Quotes: (view spoiler)[ “Poor Ryker. So many women,” Croygen teased. “Is there a chance the three of you would duke it out in a ring? With mud…? “Shut up, Croygen,” Ryker snarled. “Or Jell-O?” ‘Sprig stood on his hind legs, his arms up. “Please, Gods, supply her bra with the magic of sugar. I bow down to honey tits.” I groaned, which morphed into a chuckle in my chest. “Honey tits!” Sprig sang out. “Do I get a hallelujah?” “Hallelujah!” Croygen lifted his hands in the air with Sprig. I looked over at him, “What?” He shrugged. “I sing hallelujah for tits every day.” “Do I want to know why Sprig is praying to your boobs?” Ryker asked, and eyebrow angling up. “No. You probably don’t.” “Respect the honey tits, Viking.” Sprig pointed down at my sports bra. “I miss money.” Croygen put his hand to his heart. “I used to roll around naked on the piles I inherited. Those were the days.” “Someone needs to be, especially when you are not thinking with your head.” “I think with my head.” Croygen grinned. “But neither of your heads actually holds a brain,” Sprig retorted “I don’t know how you did it or when…” he muttered. “What?” His throat bobbed but his words came out strong and hard. “You made me fall in love with you.” “I hate this. I hate knowing you completely have me by the ball sac.” I smiled. “I promise to be somewhat gentle.” “No safe words. Ever.” “Hey, gerbil. Get back to work.” Croygen nodded at his leg. “Or no honey packets.” “How ab-“ Sprig opened his mouth. “Or Izel’s pancakes, churros, mango chips, granola bars, honey sticks, or nuts…of any kind.” Sprig gasped.’ “Why don’t we trade this ass bandit in for Leanbh?” “Shut up, banana lover.” “Wha-at? How dare you say such a thing?” Sprig sat back on his heels. “Say you’re sorry or I will leave you here, gnawing on your arm like every poor girl who got drunk and woke up next to you.” “Croygen?” I was at a loss for words. “Thank you.” “Oh jeez, just say you love me. Make it really dramatic.” The doors started to close. I grinned. “I love you.” “Wow” That lacked finesse. He frowned. “Stay safe, asshole,” Ryker snarled. “Kiss my honey muncher,” Sprig added. “See, now those had flare. I believed them.” “I won’t lie to you, Zoey. This is going to be horrible and painful. You have hundreds and hundreds of steps ahead of you. But we have no choice. I am old; Annabeth is weak. I need you to dig down and find the place in you that keeps you moving.” “Because even against my better judgment, I can’t stop myself. Where you are, human, is where I want to be.” “It changes nothing.” He sighed. “Because of them, you lived…that is enough for me.” “And because I died for a moment, some went back to you. Saving your life. That is enough for me.” ‘Croygen shrugged. “This isn’t something we know. There’s not a manual or anything on this. I’m most likely talking out of my ass.” “Understandable. It’s where your brain is,” Sprig quipped “You have blood on your nose.” “You have a tendon sticking out of your hand.” “You have a wicked bite.” “Why you love me.” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 22, 2019
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May 26, 2019
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May 22, 2019
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ebook
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| 1947591703
| 9781947591707
| 1947591703
| 3.90
| 25,349
| Dec 11, 2017
| Dec 11, 2017
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really liked it
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Rating: 4 stars to Brave !
★ ★ ★ ★ ‘I’d forgotten that there could still be an us through the storm.’ Ivy is left more than mentally scarred aft Rating: 4 stars to Brave ! ★ ★ ★ ★ ‘I’d forgotten that there could still be an us through the storm.’ Ivy is left more than mentally scarred after escaping her maniacal abductor and the atrocities she was forced to commit under his instruction. Contending with symptoms of PTSD from her disturbing experience with Drake, Ivy is suffering through nightmares, shameful thoughts, and angst-ridden memories, and a dark hunger is growing inside of Ivy, a hunger that has nothing to do with food, and everything to do with possibly hurting those she loves. Ren believes Ivy will never harm him. But he doesn’t know that she doesn’t trust herself, not anymore. ‘Violent rage and bitter fear swirled like a storm inside me, feeding strength I didn’t realise I had.’ Now living with the prospect of benevolent, good-willed fae, Ivy is living with the creatures she tamely slaughtered for many years, but good fae or no, do they really have Ivy’s best interests at heart?... Secured with the secret society of munificent fae, the diligent trio place their trust in what is left of the Summer court, planning ventures of attack against the Winter prince, securing an object of power and ridding the cold prince from their world for good. Nowhere is safe though, and though the ‘good’ fae have survived in peace for so long in their well-guarded territory, it may not be enough to contain a powerful Prince that no magic can ever restrain. ‘’Each hit I took either broke skin or my will. Each new burst of pain seemed shockingly too real. Each time I got knocked down, it was harder to get back up. But I did. I kept getting back up.’ Sinking into a kind of self-collapse, losing herself in silence and powerlessness, Ivy is restless to the ninth degree, anger sprouting to another degree, and she is becoming rasher and inattentive, more irresponsible than usual, being swept away by her feelings, making tactlessly dangerous decisions which inflict much more hurt than any kind of good. Still yet, the unreceptive, unfriendly fae she must live with make her feel nothing more than a stranger. Lacking control in the largest parts of her life, Ivy keeps a patient Ren a miles-length away, and with their strained relationship testing its delicate binds, she tries to fight back for control and scrounge up the scraps of her frayed will. “I can’t lose you.” “You haven’t.” He brought my hands to his mouth, kissing the top of both of them. “Then why does it feel like I already have?” Though Ren believes Ivy will never hurt him, Ivy’s native instincts are awakening, and she doesn’t trust what she is becoming and whether her loved ones will ever be safe from her. With what feels like an ever-mounting well between them, Ivy and Ren are growing apart in the middle of a submerging world. The settings of their relationship catch up to them, because intense beginnings lead to fraught endings, and as Ivy and Ren work through their trauma – and how to find each other through it – they can’t forget that there is a larger battle, one that requires their duty to mankind. “I’d rather have you pissed off at me for the rest of your very long life than to allow the world’s brightest fucking star to go out. You can hate me today and tomorrow, but at least you’ll have a tomorrow, and I’ll make damn sure you have a whole bunch of them to be angry with me.” Rebuilding her splintered self and grasping back at what is in her capacity to control, Ivy and Ren find themselves learning the secrets of the fae and secrets of the Order, changing everything they ever thought they knew about the society they grew up in. Ivy is left appraising her former mentor’s role in this mess, how many lies and false histories their lives have been built on. Ivy has to set aside her jarring, overrun feelings to ally with the people she trusted, the people who betrayed her, the enemy who fractured her, and the people who are hiding what role Ivy has to play to end this struggle. “You’re right. I don’t need reminding. I know where I’ve been.” “But do you know where you’re going?” Sacrificing and giving their lives to an organisation, who not only horded situation-changing dishonesties, but may be just as complicit as their long-time enemies, Ivy and Ren are forced to face questions about whether they ever fought for the right side, why the order has hidden vital secrets and spread ‘vital’ lies. Ivy and Ren are two people who were born into a life of obedience, whose actions were born from an untruthful past, leaving them to fret over choices made and the self-contempt they carry because of those choices. But two people who find a way out together. ‘And that’s what made this different, made this special, because I knew out there in the normal world, there were people who never made it past the first hurdle, who gave up the moment it got hard or required them to admit they’d been wrong. And our hurdles had been high. They were still there, the size of skyscrapers, looming over us like the shadow of winter when you’re desperately clinging to summer.’ There are one or two notable points that were touched on in the story I picked up on that weren’t tackled further, which makes me assume that this series could still be ongoing, possibly evolve into a spin-off/companion series, or a change of character perspective. Saying that, each book in this trilogy supersedes the one prior to it, takings things up a notch or two, and continues to provide vigorous tension while wrapping it all in a good dose a humour. Though both series are different in many ways, this trilogy has aspects that reminded me of the 'Fae Chronicles' series by Amelia Hutchins, and the 'Darkness' series by Stacey Marie Brown. So if you liked those, this would be a best bet. “I trust you.” His eyes met and held mine. “I’m going to make sure you start trusting yourself.” To save Ivy, at any and all costs, Ren takes Ivy’s fate in his own hands, making a life-changing decision that revises everything for Ivy, turning her world upside down, sideways, and then some… Ren readily makes sacrifices, even at the expense of himself, not permitting himself to ever let Ivy go, willing to risk anything all over again just to make sure his beloved is alive and breathing. Wicked allure, unanticipated cunning, underhanded double-crossing, plot twists I did NOT see coming, ‘Brave’ ends the ‘Wicked’ series on a satisfying note of an expectant future – possibly turning into a spin off series with some threads life untied - for our main protagonist Ivy, and a tomorrow now visible through the tempest. A fantastic fae-centered urban fantasy that brought the struggle, action and dramatic love to a convincing close. Miss. Armentrout has my glazed attention and i won't stop the hunt until she pops out another fae gem. “Whatever you want to do, where you want to be, that’s what I’ll do- that’s where I’ll be.” “You are so many amazing things, Ivy, but most of all, you are so damn brave.” Favourite Quotes: (view spoiler)[ “I have never been more afraid than I was right then and there. I was going to lose you before I even got to have you.” “Look at me.” “I’m looking at you, Sweetness. Always am even when my eyes aren’t on you.” ‘I loved this man. I loved him because he chased when I ran. I loved him because he never gave up on me, not when I was being held captive and not when I’d closed myself off, shutting everyone out. I loved him because he was a good man, and if I wanted to say screw all of this and leave right now, he’d be right there with me. I loved him because I knew that he would be standing next to me later, ready to fight by my side. I just loved him.’ (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 28, 2019
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Feb 2019
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Jan 28, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0986447994
| 9780986447990
| 0986447994
| 4.00
| 33,077
| Jul 19, 2016
| Jul 19, 2016
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really liked it
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Rating: 4 stars ‘Every ounce of my being was dedicated to keeping my head above water, but with every passing minute, I drowned a little more.’ I Rating: 4 stars ‘Every ounce of my being was dedicated to keeping my head above water, but with every passing minute, I drowned a little more.’ Ivy is in trouble. Terrible trouble. Staggering from the discovery of her own identity, Ivy does everything she can to hide her true heritage as the hunted halfling, for her own safety, the safety of the world and for Ren, the man who has won her love, but he is the same man whose duty it is to kill what Ivy is if he were to ever find out the biggest secret she has kept thus far…and it might just break this new bond they have forged. Though pondering the notion of ripping herself away from new-fangled love and her eternal duty, Ivy’s selfishness and desire for idealism forces her to stay, and she can’t leave, won’t leave, not when she has found what she wants. ‘This whole entire time I’d been petrified that he’d die on me like everyone else had. Never once had it crossed my mind that I’d lose him because I would have to walk away.’ Now that the ominous, heartless fae Prince, Drake, has entered this realm and he knows what Ivy is, he is resolute in his endeavour open all gates into this world and organise this realm to fit into the palm of his hand. He has his forbidding and pitiless eyes set on Ivy, using trickery, treachery and awful means of manipulation to toy with Ivy in the ways of the cruel fae, enforcing control and taking Ivy’s away, waiting for the day when she will be his to impregnate, and set the apocalypse into motion. “Once we figure out what’s happening, we’ll fight back. And yes, the fae have abilities we don’t, but we have a reason to fight no matter what.” “And what reason is that?” “We value freedom above anything else.” From the woes of a disgraceful friendship to the loyalties of a true one, Ivy is put through the ringer of ever-changing, and sharp-hitting emotion. She is a hardwired tangle of fragile and compulsive feelings, compounded by internal conflict and grabbed by the reins of overriding sentiments. Still recovering from a near death experience, and coping with the cutting infidelity of her best friend, hunting, and running, Ivy’s life only manifests further impediment with impossible secrets, disturbing tension, and hidden histories. ‘Repeating those words over and over, I slowly stitched myself back together, because I had to – because I wasn’t going to wake up and find myself safe. There were gaps in the stitches, gaping holes, but it was the best I could do. The only chance I had to get out of here with my life and sanity was by following my earlier plan while keeping it together. That was the only thing I could control now.’ The Icy coldness of the fae is spreading, merging and afflicting the mortal realm, and the fae are ready, and have been preparing for longer than the humans know. With a frenetic secret eating away at Ivy’s discipline and duty she realises that fantasy was always just a palliative consolation to soothe and curtain the irreversible when reality was always there and fractures the façade of her wishes. And reality is here, forcing Ivy to bear its unfair strikes, and brave though she is… she is Torn. Fighting against her healthier - or not so healthier - judgment, Ivy can’t bring herself to solicit the wisest course of action, not when she doesn’t want to run anymore, and how can she walk away from the man who taught her to walk onward again? “You’re Ivy Morgan.” He was breathing rapidly. “You’re this beautiful, wild, and brave woman. You’re incredibly loyal, and I don’t deserve your love, but I’ll take it. I’ll keep it close to me and I’ll never regret a damn second of doing so.” I value themes such as friendship and loyalties, bonds, and ties that bind and ties that break, and I would have liked to see more female esteem as there was a fair amount of female hostility and antagonism in this book, but saying that there was also reason for that unfriendliness. Tink however, is a strong favourite of the Wicked trilogy , he is a lovably peculiar, a comical, choice friend, and though he is more than infuriatingly exasperating to Ren and Ivy, I absolutely love what he brings to the threesome, and the dimension he alone spins this book into. He offers flippancy and reprieve from Ivy’s troublesome dilemmas with his unsolicited advice, and often proves himself as more than he appears when Ivy suffers. He is a great representation of friendship when it really counts, even though this larger than life brownie has secrets up his own sleeve. ‘And those tears came from the dark, cold place inside me that his words, those three beautiful words, had begun to thaw and shine light upon.’ From questionable Order members, faces from Ren’s past, missing persons, and more death at the hands of the fae, Ivy’s identity plays havoc on her, and with secret forces other than the order managing the evil fae, Ivy and Ren are subjected to some of the worst the fae can offer, with only sacrifice saving each other from true detriment. ‘The hate building inside me burned brighter than a thousand suns, but even with that rage, I always, always, felt cold. With each passing day, it was like I was filling up on the inside with ice and shadows. Reaching into the disparity of friendship, the shades of deceit, the disputation of nuanced relationships and unconditional love, ‘Torn’ is incredibly eventful, if not for the substance of Ivy’s mind, then the action in the world outside of her. Torn feelings, Torn hearts and Torn duties, Ivy’s torment is ongoing, and Ren’s indecision is equivocal, and though Ivy has somewhat shouldered her past to this day, she doesn’t even know the truth of it. ‘I was a little torn, frayed around the edges, and it was going to be a long, bumpy road to being a hundred percent okay. And nothing was going to stop and wait for me to get there.’ Warning: Scenes of death, torture, captivity, attempted rape and forced intimacy. Favourite Quotes: (view spoiler)[ ‘I didn’t understand how I could feel so much pain for a person who’d done one of the worst things, but I did and the heartbreak wasn’t any less because of her actions. It was more.’ ‘His eyes shone like glittering emeralds. “You’re the bravest person I know,” he said. “I love you. I’m fucking in love with you. I don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you, but it was probably that night you flipped me onto my back, straddled me, and held a dagger to my throat. If it wasn’t that night, it was the first time you let me get close to you, let me see the real you under everything.” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 23, 2019
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Jan 27, 2019
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Jan 23, 2019
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Paperback
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| 4.14
| 105,198
| Nov 19, 2013
| Nov 21, 2013
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really liked it
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RATING: 4 stars to World After “Finally. It’s time for Judgment Day. The legendary apocalypse is here!” ‘World After’ follows on from the Resistance u RATING: 4 stars to World After “Finally. It’s time for Judgment Day. The legendary apocalypse is here!” ‘World After’ follows on from the Resistance uprising’s attack on the angel’s stronghold, igniting chance but also hope for the oppressed humans strewn all over world, enduring the apocalypse by any means necessary. Walking different paths, Raffe and Penryn are separate in their individual quests; Raffe, believing Penryn is dead is on the hunt for his wings and the brutish angel Beliel who stole them; Penryn is still leading her family’s survival, searching for her haunted sister after her brutal capture. Paige is irrevocably altered, seen as nothing more than a monster for what has become of her in the hands of the angel persecutors. ‘I watch the men watching me, and I know that there is no such thing as a safe harbour in the World After.’ The prejudices of difference and diversity is addressed as the changed and maltreated are outcasts for their obscure appearances alone, namely Paige, who herself is so heartbrokenly unaccompanied in her suffering, misunderstood by even the very people she loves and calls family. Though Penryn’s heart is in the right place, she too is predisposed in distancing herself from her little sister’s isolation in being seen as human and a prey of abuse. Yearning for the one angel who could understand her rejection and the ongoing hostility she faces by her own people, Paige follows her own quest in finding her manipulative angel captor. As unfortunate as Paige’s circumstances are though, she could be potential aid in humanity’s rising against the angels, her abilities possibly becoming pivotal in what will become of the World After. “I may have lost faith in humanity. Maybe they’re right to exterminate us…You’re a hero. I’m hoping you’ll restore my faith and show me that we’re worth saving.” There is nothing civilised about this world. Survival is always at the forefront of Penryn’s mind, dreams and possibilities are void impossibilities for her when she has to rely on instinct and knack alone. Penryn is self-controlled, and even though she doesn’t know the right course of action most of the time, her drive and forthright attitude always pushes her in the right direction, that’s not to say though that she doesn’t always entangle herself in troubling situations. I love that Penryn as a woman always succeeds in facing off male attackers who underestimate her, and I can’t help but cheer for her when she proves that she is more than her size. ‘I leap up at the last second and stab my blade into his crotch with all the force of my sprinting legs. Why bother attacking their strengths when you can go straight for their weaknesses? This instalment is bundled with ongoing action and suspense, and granted there is new content, but I would have liked more backstory, information and angel history, how the apocalypse came about precisely and why the angels are actually here on earth. Raffe is absent for about 75% of the book, and even though there is mention and memory of him throughout, I felt that his separation from Penryn eliminated something from the story and I didn’t feel that it was necessary for their parting to be prolonged. This book is gory and ominously divisive, heart-wrenching and heart-provoking, and sometimes heart-restoring. Often the hero is the person who doesn’t feel like the hero, but their actions are heroic without intending to be heroic because it's about a person’s incentive and inspiration for being courageous, and Penryn does what she does not for herself as herself has always been subordinate. She does it because of her faithfulness to her family and that she maintains a sense of ethics in this broken world of ruin and dilapidation. This gives her prominence in her own right. ‘Anyone who is alive now is a survivor. They’ve done what it takes to make it this far, and they can’t help but keep going.’ Even at the end of the world, groupings, categorisations and biases never cease, and outsiders exist more than ever. Though an apocalypse can at times bring out the best in people, it can more often than not bring out the worst…and though the masses are slaves to the harbingers of catastrophe, humans are surreptitiously climbing the ladders in this fight, and faith isn’t adrift yet. A story of forbidden love between a human and an angel, wanting what rules won’t allow them to have in any lifetime. ‘He is the one pocket of warmth in a sea of ice. Being in his arms feels like the home I never had.’ Penryn and Raffe’s hearts are aligned, but their goals are not. Dire punishment is reserved for the Fallen but will they both cross drastic lines to unite in love, or will this putrefying world of political machinations divide them… “It’s dangerous to be with me.” “It’s dangerous to be without you.” ‘The sun is rising, giving the dark ocean below a glow that shimmers with blue, gold, and green. It’s a new day in the World After.’ Warning: Distressing scenes involving children. A lot of physical violence and inhumane treatment of humans, and slavery. Favourite Parts/Things I liked: (view spoiler)[ 1) Penryn and Raffe’s reunion. 2) Pooky Bear 3) Clara reuniting with her family. 4) Paige’s vengeance on Beliel. 5) Raffe getting his wings back. 6) Penryn’s kill at the end of the book. (hide spoiler)] Favourite Quotes: (view spoiler)[ “You broke me out of the grasp of a living horror when I thought all hope was gone. You gave me the opportunity to crawl back to life when no one else could.” She glances over at me, her eyes shining in the dark. “You’re a hero. Penryn, whether you like It or not.” “The right thing is a luxury for rich and sheltered people. For the rest of us, the only right thing is staying out of trouble and surviving as best we can.” ‘It’s amazing how many times we have to go against our survival instincts to survive.’ ‘His laugh is weak and in need of air but it may still be the greatest sound I’ve ever heard.’ “I hadn’t realised just how attached I’d gotten.” He reaches and moves a strand of wet hair out of my face. “How dangerously addictive she could be.” “We’re mortal enemies and I should be trying to kill you and everyone like you.” He leans over, touches the tip of his forehead to mine, and closes his eyes. “Yes.” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 05, 2019
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Jan 09, 2019
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Jan 05, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0988982951
| 9780988982956
| 0988982951
| 3.95
| 54,575
| Dec 08, 2014
| Dec 08, 2014
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really liked it
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Rating: 4 stars ‘A slow, sated grin pulled at my lips. “It was. You…you really are wicked.” His gaze slid to mine. “You have no idea.” ‘And as I f Rating: 4 stars ‘A slow, sated grin pulled at my lips. “It was. You…you really are wicked.” His gaze slid to mine. “You have no idea.” ‘And as I followed Ren to his truck, I no longer knew what was more dangerous to me-the fae or Ren, because both had the power to drag me under.’ Set in New Orleans, 21-year-old hearty Ivy Morgan is a member of a secret organisation that hunts and kills the intruding fae who breached centuries-closed-gateways, escaping from their homeland of the Otherworld. Depending on humans for sustenance, the fae enslave and feed off of their bodies until they are reduced to doltish entropy. An iron stake through the heart is all it takes to send them to whence they came, but its not enough to remove the scarcest and deadliest breed of the fae - the ancients - from plaguing the city, ancients who not even among the Order are believed to exist in this realm. Secret: they do. Another secret? they have their sights set on claiming the mortal realm. ‘I’d made major mistakes in my life and people paid the price in blood.’ Having a special kind of hatred of the creatures who reduced her life to a self-inflicted remoteness, a lonesomeness and a stubborn propensity to bar all from ever entering her personal world, Ivy safeguards the unwitting nation from these manipulative, ethereal beings who are well-planted in every nook and cranny of the earth, hidden from most and blending into the very society who knows nothing of their existence here or just how much danger they are in. Shot by a rare ancient one night, Ivy starts to unravel the realities of what is lurking through the shadows on this earth and just how much jeopardy all are in. ‘We lived with death and we knew it waited for each and every one of us. We were taught not to fear the inevitable, but again, what we were never taught was how to live on when those around us left.’ Gutsy, and a lively spirit though she is, Ivy is a young woman, a young girl who has known demoralising loss, walking through her life with a cargo of secrets on her shoulders and blood on her hands that she can’t quite wash away, despite the approaching storm heading her way…and the secrets just keep on building. Though her duty is to the order she was born into, Ivy is sorrowed that her secrets keep her from having a normal life, that her life was always meant to be dedicated to this organisation that does so much good for its citizens, but Ivy covets diversity, she wants more than what was already chosen for her. The storm has a name, Ren, the storm also has eyes the colour of lightest emerald who sees Ivy with a strange, unsettling clarity and wants nothing more than to embrace Ivy through thunder and lightning. “I’m a lot of things, but today I’m your fucking saving grace.” ‘Hair plastered from the rain and rivulets running down his face, he looked like a god of the sea.’ The right amount a cocky and charming, Ren is a transfer to the Order, paired with Ivy – much to her dismay – to patrol and hunt the fae through the nights. As light-hearted as he seems, as teasingly flirtatious as he is with Ivy, Ren has surprises of his own and a purpose he can’t forgo, secrets that change not only Ivy’s guarded life, but the state of the current world. Loaded with concealment, most are suspect, trust is a friable thing not to be given out freely, and Ivy is warring with inborn want and what her duty symbolises. Ivy doesn’t like that this attractive, inviting man is sparking long-buried emotions in her, not wanting to recognise what he is bringing out in her, not when her past won’t let her, and tomorrow is unconfirmed. “You are bizarre.” “I think you kind of like my bizarreness.” “I don’t know you well enough to like anything about you.” “Now you know that’s not true. You know I’m from Colorado. I use a lot of sugar in my coffee. I steal bacon.” He dropped his voice. “And you know I hand out cheek kisses to those in need of them.” Not sure whether her heart has more room to store further loss, and if her mind has the endurance to want to go on if loss were to show its hollow face again, Ivy wills her own seclusion, fanning out her thorny branches, but her complex, growing feelings for Ren stalk her like a floating shadow, and the man himself never lets her forget it. Ren and Ivy’s relationship starts out facetious, lust-addled, reeling In desirability, but as they are drenched in the truth, and when the storm finally cracks and lightning assaults, it brings out the best in them, the depth in them and the love in them. “If you tell me to leave, I’ll turn and walk away. I swear that, Ivy, but I had to try one more time. I’m not going to possibly go to my grave without trying. Please. Don’t let me go.” Reintroduced to the affections and interactions of being with and wanting another person after depriving - but craving - herself of ‘normalcy’ for three years, Ivy is learning how to acquaint herself and her life with the novelty of excitement, walking the awkward line of romance and making space for Ren in her wispy, compressed heart. This is about a protagonist opening herself to living and wanting, to give herself the chance for her hidden courage to stem through and say ‘I’m terrified but my fraught past is now gone and the anxiety-inducing future isn’t yet here so I’m going to take the ephemeral life that I have and try to live for what a moment can gift me’ with the help of a man who encourages her and shakes her fears to sleep. As expert as she is in all things responsibility, it was endearing to study Ivy’s more defenceless, untried side, her naivety where romance was concerned and her indecision in the social norms and acceptances of what is required in a relationship, and Ren is nothing less than caring and thoughtful in holding Ivy’s hand through it all, especially when Ivy’s remorse needs unleashing. “Maybe neither of us can truly forgive ourselves. Sometimes we do things or we enable things to happen that we can never go back and change. Maybe our shit choices aren’t truly forgivable, and the only thing we can do is learn from them and not make them again.” Reporting to a brutish and aggressive leader who is as hard as iron, Ivy is surrounded by members who see her as a crazy, weak woman, and I have a special energy and bias for female leads who always prove their underestimating companions and counterparts wrong, which is something Ivy never shies away from. I love reading about strong females, stand-up-for-themselves females who do not see other females as a threat, and badass, kickass females who change worlds without intending to, make worlds and break worlds without realising it and Ivy seems to be following those footfalls. We have a bisexual best friend uncluttered in her sexual freedom, a delightfully dramatic, sugar-crazed, harry potter loving brownie companion who pulled many laughs from me and is my favourite brownie thus far in fiction, and a swoon-worthy male lead who I’m not reprehensible to admit has made it onto the shamelessly growing list of book boyfriends. “Oh, sweetness, you did wrong in all the right ways.” A darkening disquiet is settling over New Orleans, and in Ivy’s line of work where death can happen at a moment’s notice and lives are not sworn, she is about to embark on something that requires more bravery than her obligation as an enforcer. Paranormal action following a paranormal romance, ‘Wicked’ is wickedly sinful, wickedly witty and wickedly menacing. This story is a page turner with great pacing, building impetus, namely at the halfway point when things get serious, emotions become deeper, fears become stronger, and Ivy is drowning in a rippling sea of secrets and dishonesty, and Ren is her only anchor, but an anchor that could also pull her deeper into the nadirs of endless and free-flowing waters. Strong and diffident, bright and naïve, frank and a forthright fireball, Ivy is everything that her wrongs made her, the opposite of all that is good about her and the defiance of all that is flawed about her. Though one can predict certain deductions in this story it didn’t contain my astonishment when the truth unfolded. Quirky, adorably funny and admirably fiery, Ivy is a relatable character. Great banter, cheeky flirting, this is a great and easy read that builds into something perfidious, ending in one hell of a concluding cliff-hanger. ‘I repeated his words from earlier. “Don’t let me go.” His eyes flared as he stared at me intently. “Never.” ‘When it came to everything with Ren, I was most definitely still floating underwater, but I wasn’t alone.’ Favourite Parts/Things I liked: (view spoiler)[ 1) Ivy kneeing Trent in the groin! 2) Everything Tink says and does. 3) Tink’s unconditional sugar addiction and dramatization. 4) Dimples… 5) When Ren gives Ivy the blue flower. 6) Ren is amazing! 7) When Ren tells Ivy about his friend Noah. 8) When Ivy explains to Ren what really happened to her foster parents and Shaun. 9) Though the sex scenes and that of intimacy are steamy, the sex is consensual and safe what with talk of protection. The male lead is considerate and careful knowing the female is somewhat inexperienced in that area, and there is always positive thoughtful dialogue, Ren always asking how Ivy is feeling, whether she is okay. 10) Ren’s first meeting with Tink. 11) Ren taking care of Ivy after the incident. (hide spoiler)] Favourite Quotes: (view spoiler)[ “But you got one hell of a bite- a kick to that sweetness. It’ll be rough getting in there, and you’re going to fight it every step of the way, but it’ll be smooth once I’m there.” My eyes grew to the size of saucers. There were no words. None whatsoever. “You like me.” Letting go, he smiled up at me, that angelic face a picture of innocence. “You just aren’t ready to admit it.” All I could think as I gawked at him was, what an observant son of a bitch.’ “You are absolutely beautiful, Ivy.” “What I know is that there is no guarantee of tomorrow. There is no promise there will be another day or week for us. When you want something, you go for it. I don’t need to know your life story to want you.” “Do you really ever lose anyone, Ivy? They may be gone, but they still exist.” My lips trembled as I struggled to keep myself under control. He brought my hands to his chest, above his heart. “They still live here. They always will.” “Sweetness, you can’t hold your life back on a bunch of what ifs. Who the hell knows what could happen? Either one of us could walk out of this house and get struck by lightning, or both of us could live until we’re ninety. Tomorrow we could die or we could come back here. We don’t know. Sliding his hands up to my cheeks, he lowered his forehead to mine. “But we’re both here right now and that’s all that matters. The right now.” “The right now?” “Yeah. Right now. We’re both here. That’s all that matters, and I can’t promise that I’m not going anywhere, but I’m going to try damn hard not to. That is one thing I’m going to tell you to trust.” “Did you think you’d get rid of me that easily?” Ren smiled, showing off his dimples. “Honey, that’s the last thing I ever want.” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 18, 2019
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Jan 22, 2019
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Dec 24, 2018
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Paperback
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| 0440244412
| 9780440244417
| 0440244412
| 4.39
| 110,298
| Jan 18, 2011
| Aug 30, 2011
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it was amazing
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Rating: 5 glorious stars !!! “Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to kee Rating: 5 glorious stars !!! “Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes its good.” With an open heart and an open mind, the root from which I tackle any and every book I desire to devour, I read this series with one goal In mind (as I do with all reading experiences) to extract all the good, the bad, the beautiful, the wonderful, the anguish, joy and bliss, the heartache and dark splendour it discharges, only to take even more from me as soon as my eyes fix upon the first page, to put me at a mercy for which It gives and I take, for which I give and it takes heatedly and tremendously. But I say, take from me, take all you want, until I’m nothing but a vacant vessel, fretful, and stumbling, hollow and reverberating, so full and brimming with eyes open and yet determinedly closed to the unavoidability of having to observe and bear witness to the demise of a story that is more than just a story, possibly a facet of life in its own existential realm. “Can there be any act of creation that does not first destroy? Villages fall. Cities rise. Humans die. Life springs from the soil therein they lie. Is not any act of destruction, should time enough pass, an act of creation?” “Shadowfever” is one of the best conclusions to any book series I have ever read. It was everything and more than everything the settlement of a series should be. Moning’s world of the Fae and Irish, humans and beast, man, and creature, expounds and challenges the human race at its best and worst, picks apart the subtle discolourations in the degrees of virtue and disposition, in idiosyncrasies, in the drives and gluttony of humankind, a complex world without definition and open for speculation, characters of lawlessness and chaos, without generic structure and desire to be anything other than what they are. “Some people wouldn’t see a traitor when they looked at me. Some people would see a survivor. Call me anything you like – I sleep fine at night. But you will look at me when you say it. Or I’ll get so far in your face you’ll be seeing me with your eyes closed. You’ll be seeing me in your nightmares. I’ll scorch myself in the backs of your eyelids. Get off my back and stay off it. I’m not the woman I used to be. If you want a war with me, you’ll get one.” Conflictions are predominantly internal for Mac, the best stories for me are about battling those innate prejudices and clashes of the heart and mind and so much does Mac transmogrify into a formidable fighter in her own right. Determinism and destiny are central models for which this whole story orbits, with Mac defining or rather undefining her place in life and how much of her will shapes her reality in comparison to the fates drawing her life out for her. Moning sticks steadfastly to her characterisations of the people who walk her world and they are consistent through and through in their ethics and beliefs. Mac and Barrons’ finale was alarming and not without its blindsiding U-turns of unpredictability and plot twists. This story was persistent, but also forgiving in feeling and excitement, vast in scale and was cunning in its own attempts in feigning illusion in the raw tangibility of the characters who punch through the pages and a world that feels only a blink of an eye away. “Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain…Try living for someone. Through it all – good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.” I was engrossed and indulgent, becoming more and equally less human as I read it. I spared many tears for the characters, my heart plummeted from perplexity, I laughed and found amusement between the lines of pandemonium, losing my way and finding my way as Mac found her way to love and freedom. This story isn’t predominantly a love story or a paranormal romance, it’s an all-around fantasy at its best, epic at its core just like Mac and unrepentantly furtive just like Barrons. I love watching characters learn, dredge up hidden depths. I love hearing talk to me about who they are and what they think they are not. I love them failing only to find them never accepting failure again. I love them reform, merge, create, destroy, alter, and evolve. I love them for their potential worst and potential best. I love their openness and honesty, if never to their companions to themselves but to me. I love the way that author’s such as Moning weave mythology and legend into such credible tales, eradicating the notion of myth all together just by the faith in which they tell a story. “Do you think love just goes away? Pops out of existence when it becomes too painful or inconvenient, as if you never felt it? … If only it did. If only it could be turned off. It’s not a faucet. Love’s a bloody river with level-five rapids. Only a catastrophic act of nature or a dam has any chance of stopping it – and then usually only succeeds in diverting it. Both measures are extreme and change the terrain so much you end up wondering why you bothered. No landmarks to gauge your position when it’s done. Only way to survive is to devise new ways to map out life. You loved her yesterday, you love her today. And she did something that devastates you. You’ll love her tomorrow.” This series is a melodious, dark composition of a world in self-destruct, earnest in redemption and correspondingly subject to suffering the worst at their own hands of making. It affected me in the ways my most favourite books have thus far – challengingly, chargingly, intensely, convincingly and in all the dynamic ways I want a book to. I feel so aggrieved to leave Mac and Barrons and this world behind, i can't imagine this Mac and Barrons sized hole being filled without more of this tale. In a world where silent stories walk past us every day, whisper beneath clouded breaths and pushed so far into the subconscious of a person’s soul, we’re usually left with a deafening silence cleaving person from person. Stories for me, turn that silence into noise and nourishment, into conversation my inner self can talk to and I can’t wait to fill myself more noise! “Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.” “Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing.” “You’re Mac. And I’m Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond rules for me.” Things I liked/Favourite Parts: (view spoiler)[ 1) Thanatos and Eros concept. 2) Mac and Barrons! 3) K’Vruck 4) Barrons being alive! – and never being able to die. 5) Mac facing off with Lor. 6) Jack Lane. 7) Mac reuniting with her parents. 8) Mac giving Dani a belated birthday party. 9) Mac changing her hair back to its natural colour. 10) Pretty much everything about this book :) 11) I'm a sucker for intelligently written prose, head- swivelling quotes, and parables that teach as much as the author tells the story. This series educated about life as much as anything else. (hide spoiler)] Queries/Thoughts: (view spoiler)[ 1) I still want to know who fathered Isla. Nana O’Reilly said Patrona carried the identity of Isla’s father to the grave. Was it the Unseelie King? 2) As much as I like the nuanced intricacy of his character, Barrons does have double standards. 3) I realise that it’s in keeping with Barrons’ character for his past to continue to be a thing of question and ambiguity but I still want to know certain things about him. Like, in ‘Dreamfever’ when Mac is ‘pri-ya’ and penetrates into his mind to hear him talking about a woman who was the epicentre of his world, who was she? Was he in love with her? Was she the mother of this child? When Mac penetrates another memory of him being in the Seelie court and killing the princess, he says that ‘they don’t remember him’ but he ‘will make them fear him’. It’s not spoken of ever again, which personally leaves some holes in the story. Did he want revenge for something they did? 4) Fiona says to Barrons that ‘you should have let me die where you found me’ – there is not more information about this either. 5) I guessed some of the major spoilers (with my overactive mind) but the author constantly kept me on edge with questioning my own theories with her bluffs. 6) I would have liked more chapters from Barrons’ point of view. (hide spoiler)] Favourite Quotes: (too many) (view spoiler)[ “That simple adage is master of every situation, every choice. Each morning we wake up, we get to choose between hope and fear and apply one of those emotions to everything we do. Do we greet the things that come our way with joy? Or suspicion?” “Small creatures create small things.” “Large creatures’ egos are so big they don’t see the small things coming.” “The real thinkers of the world aren’t the best dressed. Staying on top of the latest fashions, accessorising, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy, and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that – ask yourself what they’re running from.” “Sometimes I worry that there’s not enough room in my brain for both my dreams and reality, that I’m a hard drive with limited gigabytes and one day I won’t be able to maintain the firewall between them. I wonder if that’s what senility is.” “It’s so easy to lie. What’s even worse is how we cling to those lies. We beg for the illusion, so we don’t have to face the truth, don’t have to feel alone.” “I wasn’t prepared for death. Nobody is. You lose someone you love more than you love yourself, and you get a crash course in mortality. You lie awake night after night, wondering if you really believe in heaven and hell and finding all kinds of reasons to cling to faith, because you can’t bear to believe they aren’t out there somewhere, a few whispered words of a prayer a way.” “Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.” “Until he’d been gone, I hadn’t understood how empty the world was without him.” “’Like’ is such a puerile word. Mediocre people like things. The only question of any significant emotive content is: Can you live without it?” “You choose what you can live with. And what you can’t live without.” “There’s nothing I can’t live with. Only things I won’t live without.” “Fear is more than a wasted emotion. It’s the penultimate set of blinders. If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t be a part of it, can’t control it. You may as well throw in the towel and yield to the whims of anyone with a stronger will.” “If you believe a seed of evil exists within you, it may consume you.” “One might also argue that if you believe a seed of evil exists within you, you have the opportunity to learn to control it.” “One might also argue ignorance is safety.” “Safety is a fence, and fences are for sheep. I would rather die at twenty-two, knowing the truth, than live in a cage of lies for a hundred years.” “Keep hoping to see the light in her eyes. Even knowing it’ll mean she’s saying good-bye.” “When you know who I am. Let me be your man.” “Everywhere I looked, I could see only shades of gray. Black and white were nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which by which we tried to judge things and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, were as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We could only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we could no longer see the light.” “Sex should be a choice.” “I’d walk through hell and back, smiling, as long as he was beside me.” “During a blackout, people do what they’ve wanted to do all along but have repressed, afraid of the consequences. Worried what others might think of them. Afraid of what they’ll see in themselves. Or simply unwilling to get punished by the society that governs them. You don’t care what other people think anymore. Nobody’s going to punish you. Which raises the question: Why are you still afraid of me?...Some things are sacred. Until you act like they’re not. Then you lose them.” “There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened.” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 2018
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Dec 2018
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Dec 01, 2018
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0440244404
| 9780440244400
| 0440244404
| 4.38
| 103,601
| Aug 18, 2009
| Oct 26, 2010
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it was amazing
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Rating: 4.5 stars “When the walls come tumbling, tumbling down, that’s the question that matters. Who are you?” “Who the fuck are you? Here on the flo Rating: 4.5 stars “When the walls come tumbling, tumbling down, that’s the question that matters. Who are you?” “Who the fuck are you? Here on the floor, in my final moments – Mackayla Lane’s last grand hurrah – I see that the answer is all I’ve even been. I’m nobody.” Dublin has fallen to the darkest creatures to prowl the world. It is a wasteland. The world’s population is dwindling. Dark Zones are spreading. The Fae world unfurls into the human. Mac has lost her mind. ….and without her only chaos can commence. “Don’t lose yourself in anger, Mac. It’s gasoline. You can burn it as fuel, or you can use it to torch everything you care about and end up standing on a scorched battlefield, with everybody dead, even you – only you body doesn’t have the good grace to quit breathing.” “But there was a part of me that wanted to go over the edge. Wanted to scorch the battlefield. Just to watch the damned thing burn.” This story is erecting into something stupendous and I can’t wait to read the final instalment. The book is well written and well-fleshed out; the direction is heading to a thrilling destination where I hope (just like Mac) I will retrieve long-awaited answers. Its fast-paced, packed with exploits and rammed to the hilt with anticipation and dark matter, nuanced in the dualities and conflicts of man and woman, the world at its weakest, surpassing its lowest and the incomprehensibility of the characters in it wreaking havoc and imploring restoration. “Revenge,” he says softly. “They took too much. You give up and die, or learn how to take back. Revenge, Mac.” I cock my head. I try the word on my tongue. “Revenge. “Yes. That is what I want.” Mac, I think, from the start epitomised a generation misplaced in life, misdirected and misguided in the laws of the truth of the world and a human’s place in it. This trajectory of hers was unceasingly about understanding and drawing out her own mettle, recognising her potential and forging a thicker skin, stronger bones, a sturdier mind and impenetrable will. Every time Mac thinks she is at the top of her game, she is always reminded that she has a longer way to go to get to where she needs to be and what she needs to become to fulfil her vocation - and I think that is the most important things for her: that her strength doesn’t hinder or halt at one point, one place, one time. Measures of strength are ever-growing, life does not start with weakness and end with strength, strength itself is an evolution and Mac must slowly climb that ladder, to earn the stages of strength through her own endless tragedies. Life checks her arrogance produced by the strength she gains and brutally screams that she must become more. Barrons teaches her with the tougher kinds of love, as opposed to the limitless, softer love she has received for the best part of her life. “There’s only one question that matters, Ms. Lane, and it’s the one you never get around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It’s the truth you can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die. Prove yourself. How much truth can you take, Ms. Lane?” Mac continues to grow, she is smarter in so many ways, her abilities becoming stronger and she has not even uncovered the full limits of her capabilities and what she is. She comes to play, employ and navigate the politics of the ‘sidhe seer’ society and their cunning Grand Mistress, while riding the waves of trust when it comes to her ominous companions’ aims. Mac is dependent on assurance, though she has little to none and without the stability of certainty, all else is dubious and unscripted knowledge. Tragedy is a lonely companion at Mac’s side, walking with her in her quest for vengeance and continues to forge Mac into a darker version of herself. Still, more secrets come forth and Mac’s own nature is as debatable as her assumed allies, enemies and the condition of the world. Mac’s assiduous journey is about extracting hope and promise and belief any way she can when her own life strips the basis for securing it. “Look, you can face what’s out there and get stronger for it, or you can stay behind these walls and take orders until our planet is beyond saving. You want to talk about damned? Our entire race is, if we don’t do something about it. “ I love the conflicting characters, even the ones I do not trust to the ones I secretly have hope for. I love watching Mac make friends and create allies, to fighting and breaking and hardening through her own failures and wrongdoing. I love Barrons even though I don’t really know what and who he is, but he is already a favourite of mine to read in fiction because the most difficult people to understand are the ones worth investing in. “Life didn’t explode in the sunshine and pretty places. Life took the strongest root with a little bit of rain and a whole lot of shit for fertilizer. Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle.” I have come up with a multitude of theories whilst reading this series and they always change due to the changing of events and manipulative dialogue! Ironic that Moning has captured a dream in the making of this book even though the content ensnares such dramatic bedlam and anarchy. Moning delves into the psyche of the primitive mind, as well as the broken and malleable one, of creature and habit and facets of mind and man and woman. “I’ve come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit, too, has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows when the harm is too much to bear.” This series isn’t an ostracization of ‘bad’ deeds or ‘bad’ people. Its an investigation and grasping of them; even the worst perpetrators have reason and a strange kind of rationality in decision-making and action. But does the ‘bad’ prevent the potential of becoming something other than ‘bad’? Does pure ‘good’ guarantee survival and triumph? Do we all contain a bit of ‘evil’ inside of us even though we are not ‘evil’ by the core? …Moning’s enthralling world of the ethically divided and morally distorted is excellently executed and I SO look forward to Mac’s final endeavour in this harrowing place she has found herself in, and I hope darling Barrons becomes everything I wish him to be. “Maybe in the moment of being born and the moment of dying, we’re nearer to pure. Maybe it’s the only time we’re ever still enough to feel that there’s something bigger than us; something that defeats entropy; that has always been and will always be. A thing that can’t be flipped. Call it what you will. I only know it’s divine. And it cares. It was no longer my “comfort zone”. It was my truth." Queries/Thoughts: (view spoiler)[ 1) I still don’t understand the importance of Mac’s hair being dyed? She is known by her enemies, so I don’t understand the point. If anything, I think she should dye it back, signifying her strength as who she is, needing to change for no one and nothing and not cowering from her enemies with anonymity. 2) Really cannot stand Rowena. 3) Despite the circumstances, I wanted Mac to be in her full faculties when she had sex with Barrons. I would have preferred them both to do it of their own will and in the right setting, not because it was somewhat of a necessity to bring her back from mindlessness. (hide spoiler)] Favourite Parts: (view spoiler)[ 1) Barrons bringing Mac back from being Pri-ya. 2) Mac and Barrons ‘Tubthumping’. 3) Barrons always being the one to try to save Mac in whatever capacity he can despite his unpredictable person. 4) Barrons’ backstory. 5) Mac finally meeting Ryodan. 6) Mac riding a hunter. 7) Visit to Nana O’Reilly’s. 8) Mac resisting ‘Voice’. 9) Mac using ‘Voice’. 10) When Mac finds Christian. 11) Mac and Dani’s sisterhood. (hide spoiler)] Favourite Quotes: (view spoiler)[ Bloodfever - "One day you may kiss a man you can't breathe without, and find that breath is of little consequence." Dreamfever - “He kisses me until I cannot speak or even breath again.” “So what’s the big picture about our lust for sex? We’re not trying to acquire something. We want to feel something: Alive. Good. Bad. Pleasure. Pain. Bring it on – all of it. For people who live small, I guess enough of that can be found in sex. But for those of us who live large, the most alive we ever feel is when we’re punching air with a fist, uncurling our middle finger with a cool smile, and flipping Death the big old bird.” “But my dream sky darkens, and sleep’s moon fills the horizon. “Don’t leave me.” I thrash in the sheets. “I’m not, Mac.” I know I am dreaming then, because dreams are home to the absurd and what he says next is beyond absurd. “You’re leaving me, Rainbow Girl.” “You can do this, Mac. I’m here. You’re safe now. It’s okay to remember. They can never hurt you again.” “Some say dreaming is another place we go to. That we don’t know it as such because it’s not a physical realm we recognise. It exists in another dimension, which mankind has not yet discovered and to which it attributes no credence. I dreamed my life back.” “Who wants to go back?” I said coolly. “I want to go forward. And if you’re always looking over your shoulder, worrying about the next step you’re taking, you can’t. Hesitation kills.” “There are moments in my life when I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. I pay attention to them. They’re my cosmic landmarks, letting me know I’m on the right path. Now that I’m older and can look back and see where I missed a turn here and there, and know the price I paid for those oversights, I try to look sharper at the present.” “Better the devil you know than the one you don’t know. Especially if the devil you do know is about to give you what you wanted. “ “There’s good everywhere. You just have to look for it.” “Strength wasn’t about being able to do everything alone. Strength was knowing when to ask for help and not being too proud to do it. “ “Life’s an ocean, full of waves. All are dangerous. All can drown you. Under the right circumstances, even the gentlest swell can turn tidal. Hopping waves is for the week-end warrior. Choose one, ride it out. It increases your odds of survival.” “It’s funny how, when things seem the darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places.” “Do you think the heart only follows blood?” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 26, 2018
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Nov 26, 2018
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Nov 26, 2018
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 4.29
| 104,900
| Sep 16, 2008
| Jul 28, 2009
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it was amazing
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Rating: 4.2 stars “The most confused we ever get is when we’re trying to convince our heads of something our heart knows is a lie.” “I keep expecti Rating: 4.2 stars “The most confused we ever get is when we’re trying to convince our heads of something our heart knows is a lie.” “I keep expecting to wake up and find it was all a bad dream. Alina will be alive, I won’t be afraid of the dark, Monsters won’t be walking the streets of Dublin, And I won’t have this terrible fear that tomorrow just won’t come.” Each time I complete a book in the ‘Fever’ series I think these books couldn’t get any darker, any more alluring, but they do. This series enriches in how dark its gravities become. So much more. Tenfold. “Nightfall. What a strange word. ‘Night’ I get. Autumn leaves fall, swirling with languid grace To carpet the earth with their dying blaze. Tears fall, like liquid diamonds Shimmering softly, before they melt away. Night doesn’t fall here. It comes slamming down.” Moning’s world of the Fae is truly gruesomely seductive, its raw, perverse, unflinching, exceptionally riveting and deceptive, her character creations are erroneously flawed, her writing is jaunty, only superseded by its richer tones of the grisly and macabre plot. staggering histories and exciting mythologies, corrupt, ancient books and bargains and prophecies, underhanded faeries, manipulative foes and power-hungry avengers. Implacable entities and charming acquaintances, Mackayla Lane rides the unhinged train and perilous possibilities of an approaching apocalypse, a damning Armageddon set to engulf worlds and collide the facets of dimension. “Between-ness is a defining characteristic of liminal. Limbo is another. Liminal in neither here nor there but exists between one moment and the next, poised in that pause where what’s passing hasn’t yet become what’s becoming. Liminal is a magical time, a dangerous time, fraught with possibility…and peril.” Objectives are more indefinable, indescribable, and the inscrutable nature of the men in her life only leaves room for sinister speculation. Moning doesn’t abide by the laws of archetypes and boundary in her examinations of species and nature, nurture and beliefs of ethical dilemma. There are no lines between friendlies and foes, as most wear the same faces, distinctions are almost impenetrable when the ‘bad’ guys and ‘good’ can easily exchange faces and trade places. “Why, oh why, do we find the most dangerous, forbidden men the most irresistible?” “Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it’s those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trials, or fractured by a permanent, damning fault line.” The Fae world and that of Ireland’s once charming city becomes more complex, the characters more potent, and though both plot direction and resolution seemed indecisive at times, the finale reserves that which all momentum builds. It was alarming and cruel and torture to read, it was not only a cliff-hanger, it was a heart-twister, a hope-killer and world-stopper. So unfortunate for such a promising protagonist, but Mac’s story has always been one for building and fortifying her own strength and vigour and I’m sure Mac’s luminosity will surely outshine any circumstance. “Because somewhere deep inside you, you know beyond equivocating that something greater, wiser, and infinitely more loving than we’re capable of understanding has a vested interest in the Universe, in the way things turn out. Because you can feel that, as much as the forces of darkness might try to gain the upper hand, there is an Upper Hand.” Moning, calculatedly keeps her cards very close to her chest, displaying little of how this tale will play out and keeps us gripping for tangibility and substance in a world of no concretes for the main lead. We don’t know who and what we can trust and though so much is indistinguishable, Mac is still a determined woman, channelling her independence and provoking her hidden strengths to keep herself smart and knowledgeable …and alive. She doesn’t cower, but she is still only one girl in an increasingly evolving and punishing world because free falling into the unknown is one thing but a void, a chasm of no end, perpetual horror, and ever-dwindling light means the voices of malevolence might be too vast to scatter to ashes. “The universe screeched in protest as barriers collapsed, and realms collided; then the night was filled with another kind of screeching.” “No, the walls had not yet fallen. They were falling now.” Things I liked/Favourite parts: (view spoiler)[ 1) MacHalo scene. 2) I love Christian! 3) Inspector Jayne becoming a potentially vital character. 4) V’lane’s gifts and attempts to win Mac over. 5) Ms. Rainbow and Mr. Night. 6) The notebook of a young boy held captive for centuries. 7) Birthday cake endeavours..seriously Barrons?! Who wastes precious cake. (hide spoiler)] Favourite Quotes: (view spoiler)[ “Sometimes my dreams feel so real it’s hard to believe they’re just the subconscious’s stroll across a whimsical map that has no true north. Sometimes it seems like Dreaming must be a land that really exists somewhere, at a concrete latitude and longitude, with its own rules and laws, treacherous terrains, and dangerous inhabitants.” “It’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters. It’s how you play the cards.” “We’re not here to speak of the dead but to plan for the living.” “You can’t change an unpleasant reality if you won’t acknowledge it, Mac. You can only control what you’re willing to face. Truth hurts. But lies can kill.” “I despise that phrase, Ms. Lane. Atrocities have been committed in its name. What is the greater good but tyranny’s chameleon? For eons it has changed skins to sate the current ruler’s hunger for political and spiritual dominion.” “We see ourselves in other people’s eyes. It’s the nature of the human race; we are a species of reflection, hungry for it in every facet of our existence.” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 21, 2018
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Nov 21, 2018
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Nov 21, 2018
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 4.25
| 110,440
| Oct 16, 2007
| Aug 26, 2008
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it was amazing
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Rating: 4.5 stars “Question: When you’re one of the few people who can do something to fix a problem, just how responsible does that make you for it Rating: 4.5 stars “Question: When you’re one of the few people who can do something to fix a problem, just how responsible does that make you for it? Answer: It’s how you choose to answer that question that defines you.” “The dark fever I’d caught that first night I’d set foot in Dublin had turned into a fever of a different kind: a blood-fever – as in I wanted blood, spilled for my sister.” Sidhe-seer, seer of the Fae, Mackayla Lane is still on her quest for retribution, intent on destroying the man who took something vital from her life and heart when her sister was murdered. Mac is still apprehensively traversing what she is, who she is and the disturbing, absolute world she has found herself to be living in, having been so uninformed for the best part of her very short 22 years of life in comparison to her companions. Her identity is a convoluted mess and in her lonely, colourless world, Mac is intent on finding purpose and principle – but can such a notion exist in a territory of monsters, where honourable intentions are nothing but a laughing matter where subsistence is concerned? “Criminally young, he charged, and I can’t argue. But I can change.” “When all the control you have over your world gets stripped away, leaving you no choice but to die – the only difference how you do it: quickly or slowly – life distils to a bitter pill. The pain I was in made it easier to swallow.” Being hunted by her sister’s murderer, the Dublin police spying on her every move, a dark spectre tracking her, a presumed dead Vampire missing, an O’Bannion’s vengeance to contend with, hordes of Unseelie Fae flooding Dublin and preying on its people, Mac Is boarded on every front and direly sustains herself on the knowledge that will maintain her existence on this this paranormal scene. Her ancient sisters are hiding in the shadows, an uncovered, organised sidhe-seer society being the last line of demarcation against the nefarious Fae and Mac, but allies and enemies may be one and same and Mac has no way distinguishing the difference in a game where too much is at stake and a person’s life is just about as expendable as the next. “You’re in a doorway, child, one foot in, one foot out. Make up your mind. That door may close.” “When everything else is gone, balls are all any of us really have left. The question is: Are yours made of flesh and blood, or steel? Mac and questionable Jericho Barrons are still allied in their hunt to find the coveted Dark Book of the Fae as well as the other lost relics, and though their relationship is far from comfortable or trustworthy, Barrons seems to be there when Mac truly needs it and the only who seems to save her when she is at death’s door. ‘Death –by –sex Fae’, V’lane, Royal Prince of the Fae is still resolved on Mac’s assistance in this war to help the Seelie Queen locate, but the Fae are illusory and unscrupulous, and Mac can’t afford to trust anyone in this squalid world, not even her alluring, taciturn mentor, Mr. Barrons – regardless of the web of brewing sexual attractions. “Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.” Mac’s life is irrevocably distorted in a dark world and even worse, is being kept in the dark by everyone when now is the most vital time for her to understand the rules of the game and play her part in this conflict. Darker sides of human temperaments seem to be provoked in very normal people. Human crime rates are spiking, Dublin in disarray and the Fae toying with the natures and will of the humans…and just when Mac organises the players on this board, more pieces fall into her lap. “Hope is a critical thing. Without it, we are nothing. Hope shapes the will. The will shapes the world. I might have been suffering a dearth of hope, but I had a few things left: will, desperation in spades, and a chance.” Mac seems to encapsulate the very human by-products of grief and the human tendencies to wear illusion to bear the burden of a cruel reality in this book. She finds herself changing, this dark world is bringing out the dark tones in Mac’s rainbow and her pain is rebirthing her into a bitter weapon. She is a lone cub amongst wolves who have sadistic desires to rip apart, and she is an even lonelier woman. Trust is provisional and conditioned for Mac, neither siding or completely opposing her companions of war. “I’m not in this for the little battles. I’m here for the war.” Dark magic, dark people and even darker incentives prompts this sequel to greater echelons. Mac is bolder, smarter, quicker, and better equipped with the dealings she encounters. She is cleverly comical in her quips, feisty in her battles and though somewhat of a novelty in this place, she crafts her own ideologies without the predisposition to become malleable to every voice in her ear. A discovering lead - the embodiment of lesson learner and usually the hard way, her strength comes from her willingness to understand those lessons, teaching her readers along the way. A mysterious anti-hero – despite his concealments and character flaws, whose actions are a language of their own and the only element that needs paying heed to where Mac is concerned. “It’s our actions that define us. What we choose. What we resist. What we’re willing to die for.” Morose atmospheres and dark humour. Grey characters, an even greyer world. Examining the facets of human nature in apocalyptic times, ‘Bloodever’ is a riveting fanfare of ageless myth and the spellbinding craftsmanship of an erotically sadistic world. “Welcome, dance partner. Welcome to my ball here in Hell’s grotto. Death is not seductive. It does not come silk-clad and sweet-smelling as I did for my chosen. It is lonely and cold and merciless. It takes everything from you, before it finally takes you.” Quotes: (view spoiler)[ “I may have been forced into this war, but I’m learning to choose my battles.” “They say home is where the heart is. I think mine’s satin-lined and six feet under.” “Have you ever had one of those moments when time just freezes? You know, when the world suddenly goes deathly still, and you could hear a pin drop, and the squishing sound your heart makes is so loud in your ears you feel like you’re drowning in blood, and you stand there in that suspended moment and die a thousand deaths, but not really, and the moment passes and dumps you out on the other side of it, with your mouth hanging open, and an erased blackboard where your mind used to be?” “If knowledge is power, I want all of it I can get.” “Some wounds need salve to heal. Illusion is the great salve.” “There are some lines you just can’t let another person cross. They don’t always make sense, they might not always seem like the most important things, but only you can know what they are, and when you butt up against one, you have to defend it.” “Think about the morning and what horrors await you there. Try to sleep. Wonder what might wake you. Dream. For they are all you have left now. I own your reality. Welcome to mine.” “Although it may not seem like it, this isn’t a story about darkness. It’s about light. Kahlil Gibran says ‘Your joy can fill you only as deeply your sorrow has carved you.’ If you’ve never tasted bitterness, sweet is just another pleasant flavour on your tongue. One day I’m going to hold a lot of joy.” “My fight wasn’t over. I might not like my choices- in fact, I might despise my choices – but my fight wasn’t over.” “Lies roll off us. It’s the truths we work hardest to silence.” “Life is not black and white. The closest we ever get to either of those colours is wearing them.” “It’s not the darkness that frightens me; it’s the things that come out of in it, and I was ready for them.” (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 16, 2018
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Nov 21, 2018
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Nov 19, 2018
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Mass Market Paperback
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![Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews] 's icon](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1700331868p1/85343546.jpg)
Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews]
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apocalyptic
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really liked it
|
Mar 12, 2023
|
Mar 07, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.39
|
really liked it
|
Aug 22, 2021
|
Aug 13, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 4.51
|
really liked it
|
May 21, 2021
|
May 16, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 4.02
|
really liked it
|
May 10, 2021
|
May 09, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 4.24
|
really liked it
|
Feb 25, 2020
|
Feb 23, 2020
|
|||||
|
| 4.02
|
Dec 26, 2019
|
Dec 23, 2019
|
||||||
|
| 3.88
|
really liked it
|
Dec 21, 2019
|
Dec 21, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 3.41
|
liked it
|
Oct 16, 2019
|
Oct 06, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 4.09
|
liked it
|
Nov 11, 2019
|
Oct 06, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 4.35
|
really liked it
|
May 26, 2019
|
May 22, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 3.90
|
really liked it
|
Feb 2019
|
Jan 28, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Jan 27, 2019
|
Jan 23, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 4.14
|
really liked it
|
Jan 09, 2019
|
Jan 05, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 3.95
|
really liked it
|
Jan 22, 2019
|
Dec 24, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.39
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 2018
|
Dec 01, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.38
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 26, 2018
|
Nov 26, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.29
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 21, 2018
|
Nov 21, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.25
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 21, 2018
|
Nov 19, 2018
|
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