Jun
2014

Restorer by Amanda Stevens

categories: Review

FANTASY/HORROR/MYSTERY/ROMANCE

Title: Restorer
Author: Amanda Stevens
Publisher: Mira, 2011
Series: Graveyard Queen, Book 1

THE BOOK: Amelia Gray is a young woman with an unusual job: she restores cemeteries for a living. Working in and around her home base of Charleston, she has built up a reputation as an expert in meticulous restorations of historic burial places. She learned the trade from her father, and grew up watching him work as a caretaker at a local cemetery. But it appears she inherited more than a professional aptitude from her father. (more…)


Jun
2014

Featured Blend — Fairy Tale Romance

categories: Featured Blend

There are many, many fairy tale-inspired novels out there (if you wonder how many there is  a pretty good roundup here) and many of them have some terrific blend-y things going on. Most commonly they are fantasy/romance blends, but you can find some great historical romances that lean on fairy tales as well.  Some of these are fairly straightforward in their retellings, others are more fantasy (or romance) novels that use the bones of the stories and go off on their own narrative journeys. These are some of my favorites.  Have I missed one of yours?

FANTASY/ROMANCE

 Daughter of the Forest  by Juliet Marillier (Six Swans)

 Beauty by Robin McKinley (Beauty and the Beast)

(more…)


Jun
2014

Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour

categories: Review

FANTASY/ROMANCE

Title: Thorn Jack
Author: Katherine Harbour
Publisher: Harper Voyager, June 2014
Series: Night and Nothing, Book 1

THE BOOK:  Seraphina “Finn” Sullivan and her father have moved back to the small college town on the Hudson River where her father grew up, in part to get a new start after the suicide death of Finn’s sister Lily Rose. (more…)


Jun
2014

California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout

categories: Review

FANTASY/THRILLER

Title:  California Bones
Author: Greg Van Eekhout
Publisher: Tor, June 2014
Series: California Bones, Book 1

THE BOOK: Daniel Blackland is a thief and an osteomancer, able to use the magic imbued in certain bones to give himself power. Magical creatures like krakens and griffins are prized, but the bones of your fellow wizards will work as well. As a child, the ruler known as the Hierarch killed Daniel’s father in front of him, and Daniel has been running and hiding ever since. (more…)


Jun
2014

The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher

categories: Review

SCIENCE FICTION/HORROR

Title: The Burning Dark
Author: Adam Christopher
Publisher: Tor, 2014
Series: Spider Wars, Book 1

THE BOOK: From the moment decorated war hero Captain Idaho Cleveland arrives on the U-Star Coast City he knows something is not right. No one on board seems to have heard of him. Ego aside, the battle that he survived should have been known to anyone in the military, as it was the only successful fleet action against the Spiders. Ida is being eased out of the military, and this posting to the station is his final assignment. (more…)


May
2014

Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells

categories: Review

FANTASY/MYSTERY

Title: Dirty Magic
Author: Jaye Wells
Publisher: Orbit, January 2014
Series: Prospero’s War, book 1

THE BOOK: Kate Prospero is a cop in the Babylon Police Department (Babylon appears to be a stand-in for a rust belt city like Detroit or Pittsburgh). At the beginning of the novel she interrupts a crime in progress, chases the suspect, and is forced to kill him in self-defence. This was not a normal mugging, however. The dead perp has been deformed into a werewolf like monster, presumably by some new potion on the streets. (more…)


May
2014

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

categories: Review

SF/THRILLER/HORROR
Title: The Shining Girls
Author: Lauren Beukes
Publisher: Mulholland Books, 2013

THE BOOK: Harper Curtis is a time traveling serial killer.  How about that for a one-sentence pitch? Harper discovers purely by chance a key to a very creepy house whose doors open on different times.  The catch is that the house wants Harper to find and kill certain girls —  girls that shine. (more…)


May
2014

Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

categories: Review

FANTASY/MYSTERY

Title: Rosemary and Rue
Author: McGuire, Seanan
Pub.: DAW, 2009
Series: October Daye, Book 1

THE BOOK: At the start of this first book in the October Daye series, Toby is struggling at a minimum wage job, trying to hide amongst the mortals.  She is a changeling: part human, part fae. Once she was an honored member of the fae courts, knighted for her service to her liege lord, Duke Sylvester Torquill. (more…)


May
2014

Lexicon by Max Barry

categories: Review

SCIENCE FICTION/THRILLER

Title: Lexicon
Author: Barry, Max
Pub.: Penguin, 2013
Series: Standalone

THE BOOK: Car chases, kidnappings, blowing stuff up — all these elements are most often found in your bog standard thriller and yet they all can be found in the first 50 pages of Max Barry’s latest SF book Lexicon.  There are two storylines in Lexicon which playfully obscure and reveal truths about each other as they race to a action-packed convergence in the end of the book.   (more…)