The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-14-15

Posted on June 14, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

We are on the road again, so I’ll have to let everyone, including the winners, know who won what of last week’s giveaways next week.

And I’m not just writing this early, but I’m writing in the middle of a thunderstorm. I’m wondering when we’ll lose either power or ‘net. Or both. The fweeping sound the UPS (uninterruptable power supplies) make drives the cats absolutely bonkers.

Or at least more bonkers than they are normally.

One of the things about being on the road is that while I may get plenty of time to read, time and space (and quiet) to write in can be hard to come by. Some people are multi-taskers – Galen can write and even code in the living room with the TV on. Me – I need surround-silence, as opposed to surround-sound.

On that other hand, when I’m reading, the world could go to hell in a handbasket right next to me, and I wouldn’t hear a thing. I’m not there. I’m in Middle-Earth, or wherever the book takes me.

Current Giveaways:

Hot Cowboy Nights book bundle by Victoria Vane
$25 Gift Card + ebook copy of The Rhyme of the Magpie by Marty Wingate
5 copies of Night of the Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper

Blog Recap:

A- Review: Rock with Wings by Anne Hillerman
B- Review: Sharp Shootin’ Cowboy by Victoria Vane
Guest Post by Victoria Vane on Art Imitating Life + Giveaway
B+ Review: The Rhyme of the Magpie by Marty Wingate + Giveaway
A Review: Night of the Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper
Guest Post by Isabel Cooper on her Favorite Author + Giveaway
A- Review: Sinner’s Gin by Rhys Ford
Stacking the Shelves (139)

Coming Next Week:

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (review)
Zack by Sawyer Bennett (blog tour review)
Favorite Heroines Giveaway Hop
Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell (review)
Inherit the Stars by Laurie A. Green (review)

Guest Post by Isabel Cooper on her Favorite Author + Giveaway

Posted on June 11, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | blog tours> Giveaways> Guest Posts

Today I’d like to welcome Isabel Cooper to Reading Reality. Isabel is the author of today’s marvelous featured review book, Night of the Highland Dragon, and also the author or the award winning genre-bending No Proper Lady.

Her post today is about one of her favorite authors, and also one of mine. Robin McKinley was writing memorable female heroine/warriors in fantasy before it was cool. Her Damar books, The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, are utterly awesome.

Guest Post: Who’s your favorite non-romance author? Why?

Picking a favorite is hard: not an uncommon sentiment, I’d imagine, and one I’m glad of, since “there are a lot of good authors out there” is a pretty great problem to have. After some thought, though, I’m going to say that my favorite author currently writing is Robin McKinley.

First of all, I like her writing style. The sentences themselves are poetic and memorable while still being concrete and unpretentious. The books themselves mostly give me a good idea what’s happening at any point in the story, while still moving along at a good clip: they don’t get bogged down in the sort of detail I like to call Hey Look I Read a Book About This (yes, yes, you know what a buttress is and how a Glock operates, your mother and I are very proud) but there’s still good, vivid imagery in there. McKinley’s books are easy to read, but they also stick with you. She’s even good at that when she’s worldbuilding or explaining elements that a reader might not know, like beekeeping or baking, and that’s rare in my experience—see above.

Second, she covers a lot of genre. I mean, it’s pretty much all fantasy, which is fine by me—I read very little that doesn’t have what my college friends referred to as “mystic noonah”—but within that there’s epic fantasy with the Damar books, urban/modern fantasy with Sunshine, Dragonhaven, and Shadows, a whole bunch of retold fairy tales, and whatever Chalice is, other than maybe “domestic fantasy” (it’s an original world and story, significant things are being done, but the focus is very much on a specific locale and specific people rather than Saving the World) and also awesome. I like all of the above, and it’s nice to have an author who covers them.

Third, her characters are great, particularly her heroines. Some of them, particularly the earlier ones, physically kick ass, of which I deeply approve, but even the ones who don’t go in for magic or swordfighting are competent. They do things, they do them well, and when shit goes ill, they pull up their socks and spit on their hands and deal, to sort of paraphrase P.G. Wodehouse. That’s kind of a requirement for me—a friend of mine, referring to roleplaying games, says that there are plenty of people who don’t deal with themselves, but we don’t want to read stories about them, and I agree.

Also, all of her heroines have a certain amount of sexual agency and desire, whether that’s stated outright or just implied; none of them are shrinking back and pulling up their necklines, with which I have no patience. And she’s written at least two books where the heroine is in love with, or at least interested in, two guys at once, without portraying that as either immoral or tragic or a Vast Conflicted Love Triangle. This is a seriously refreshing change from most literature, especially most fantasy with female protagonists, and gets just mountains of extra points.

About the Author:
During the day, Isabel Cooper maintains her guise as a mild-mannered project manager in legal publishing. In her spare time, she enjoys video games, ballroom dancing, various geeky hobbies, and figuring out what wine goes best with leftover egg rolls. Cooper lives with two thriving houseplants in Boston, Massachusetts.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Isabel and Sourcebooks are giving away 5 copies of Night of the Highland Dragon to lucky winners!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-7-15

Posted on June 7, 2015June 19, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

I had a couple of really terrific books this week.

One of my terrific books here this week was The Talon of the Hawk by Jeffe Kennedy, the epic conclusion of her Twelve Kingdoms series. I loved the series so much that I am giving away a copy of the winner’s choice of title in the series, so that I can share the love. If you like epic fantasy and/or fantasy romance, this series is awesome.

And over at The Book Pushers I was part of the gang for one of our epic group reviews, this time for Shards of Hope by Nalini Singh. Shards was also absolutely awesome, and everything I’ve come to expect from Singh’s Psy/Changeling series. And now we wait for next year’s installment.

Speaking of awesome, my first book this coming week is Rock with Wings by Anne Hillerman. It is a more than worthy successor to last year’s fantastic Spider Woman’s Daughter, and to her father’s terrific Navajo Mysteries series.

Coming Next Week:

Rock with Wings by Anne Hillerman (review)
Sharp Shootin’ Cowboy by Victoria Vane (blog tour review)
Rhyme of the Magpie by Marty Wingate (blog tour review)
Night of the Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper (blog tour review)
Sinner’s Gin by Rhys Ford (review)

Stacking the Shelves (138)

Posted on June 6, 2015June 5, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

I already own a print copy of Snake Agent, but when I saw the sale dealie from Open Road, I couldn’t resist getting a cheap copy in ebook. I love the Inspector Chen series, which is an Asian-based urban fantasy set in celestial realms that are culturally diverse. It’s an awesome and strange place where “demon” is a cultural marker and not necessarily prejudicial. Of course, sometimes demons act demonically, and other times, they are just “people”.

If you like seriously weird in your urban fantasy, the series is definitely worth checking out. And if you have an interest in seeing works of all genres from the last 50 years or so become available again, and in ebook, take a look at Open Road’s catalog. They publish ebooks from authors who have gotten their rights back, and do a terrific job with everything.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to see ARCs at NetGalley and Edelweiss for books that won’t be published until January and February of 2016. I know time flies, but this is wild. It’s just barely summer, and the winter books are going up.

For Review:
The Crescent Spy by Michael Wallace
The Determined Heart by Antoinette May
Ink and Shadows (Ink and Shadows #1) by Rhys Ford
Keeper’s Reach (Sharpe & Donovan #5) by Carla Neggers
The Perfect Bargain by Julia London writing as Jessa McAdams
Siren’s Call (Rainshadow #4, Harmony #12) by Jayne Castle
Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8) by Julie Ann Walker
Updraft by Fran Wilde
Wildest Dreams (Thunder Point #9) by Robyn Carr

Purchased from Amazon:
Snake Agent (Detective Inspector Chen #1) by Liz Williams

Review: The Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato

Posted on June 5, 2015June 2, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: steampunk, fantasy
Series: Clockwork Dagger #2
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Date Released: June 9, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Narrowly surviving assassination and capture, Octavia Leander, a powerful magical healer, is on the run with handsome Alonzo Garrett, the Clockwork Dagger who forfeited his career with the Queen’s secret society of spies and killers—and possibly his life—to save her. Now, they are on a dangerous quest to find safety and answers: Why is Octavia so powerful? Why does she seem to be undergoing a transformation unlike any witnessed for hundreds of years?

The truth may rest with the source of her mysterious healing power—the Lady’s Tree. But the tree lies somewhere in a rough, inhospitable territory known as the Waste. Eons ago, this land was made barren and uninhabitable by an evil spell, until a few hardy souls dared to return over the last century. For years, the Waste has waged a bloody battle against the royal court to win its independence—and they need Octavia’s powers to succeed.

Joined by unlikely allies, including a menagerie of gremlin companions, she must evade killers and Clockwork Daggers on a dangerous journey through a world on the brink of deadly civil war.

My Review:

In Genesis, there is a famous quote that states, “So God created mankind in his own image…” While many of us might quibble about God as male, and whether mankind is the proper inclusive term for all humans, the essence, either way, is the same.

There is also a competing quote, often mangled, but I’ll use the version from Ludwig Feuerbach, “It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.”

For anyone who has read anything of Greek and Roman mythology, that second quote has a ring of truth as well, because their myths certainly reflect a perspective of deities who are all too often all-powerful and continually misbehaving humans.

In The Clockwork Crown, we, along with our heroine Octavia Leander, discover that in her world the second quote is all too true, and in ways that may prove life-altering if not disastrous for Octavia herself.

I read Clockwork Crown immediately after finishing The Clockwork Dagger (enthusiastically reviewed here), because it was obvious at that point that Octavia’s adventure wasn’t over, and that things might get pretty dark before all of the issues finally got resolved.

Also, Miss Percival had some redemption coming, and I wasn’t too picky how she got it. The way that particular plot point resolved was awesome. And truly redemptive.

But a lot of Octavia’s story in The Clockwork Crown has an element of “out of the frying pan and into the fire”. Every time she thinks she’s solved one piece of the infernal puzzle, or has earned herself just a tiny break, events go spinning out of her control and she is back in the thick of it again.

There’s a bit of a “Perils of Pauline” aspect, except that Pauline’s perils mostly only affected herself, where the outcome of Octavia’s perils is either going to save or condemn two countries, and possibly the world.

Whether Octavia gets her own happy ending – well that is in the lap of the gods. Or at least one particular god who doesn’t even have a lap.

Escape Rating A: I don’t want to spoil the story, and there are so many possible ways to spoil things.

Everyone who Octavia has met along her journey has a part to play in this epic conclusion. Some of those parts are for good, and some, well, not so much.

Octavia finds out that nothing and no one in her life or history is exactly what she thought. There was a point in the story where I thought it was going to go the way that M.J. Scott’s The Shattered Crown (reviewed at The Book Pushers) or Jeffe Kennedy’s Twelve Kingdoms series (reviews here, here and here) have done. Meaning that the heroine would discover that the roles of good and bad were reversed from the way she had been taught.

The Clockwork Crown does not use that particular out. Admittedly, neither the Caskentians or the Dallowmen, as the Wasters prefer to be called, are particularly admirable by this point in a 50-year war. But neither of them is really evil. They are both corrupt and both exhausted and they both want victory after decades of violence and destruction.

It’s not that they don’t each perform some evil acts, because they both do. But there’s no Sauron and no forces of irredeemable darkness. They’re just people who have been hanging onto the end of their fraying rope for far too long.

There’s also an element in the story that I think of as coming from Battlestar Galactica, but of course this trope has been around forever. “This has all happened before and it will all happen again.” What drives this story is that it has been so long since it happened before, and the secret has been held so close, that no one knows what it means or even what “it” is, until the very end.

A point at which it is almost too late for everyone, especially Octavia. Who still just wants a cottage and a garden and people to help and heal. The only way that her dream has changed is that she now knows she wants Alonzo Garret to share it with her.

But she has to choose between her own dreams and saving the world. The questions are both “should she?” and “does she?” The answer is marvelous.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Guest Post by Author Jeffe Kennedy about Warrior Women + Giveaway

Posted on June 2, 2015June 1, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | blog tours> Giveaways> Guest Posts

Today’s guest post is from one of my favorite authors. Jeffe Kennedy is the author of both the Covenant of Thorns paranormal romance series and the fantasy-with-romance The Twelve Kingdoms. She is the author of today’s featured book, The Talon of the Hawk, which stars a marvelously portrayed warrior woman, Ursula of the Twelve Kingdoms, and concludes the series. I asked Jeffe to give us her take on writing a warrior woman heroine, and here’s what she had to say.

The Joy of Writing Warrior Women
by Jeffe Kennedy

One of my favorite parts of having THE TALON OF THE HAWK be live in the world is seeing how readers react to the amazing cover. Not just any readers, but women – especially younger ones.

I mean, there’s my very tough warrior princess with her steely gaze, a leather bustier with studs, vambraces and a great big, gleaming sword. Seriously, one after another, I saw women’s eyes light up with unholy joy.

I’m hearing about it, too, with the new Mad Max movie. I even reposted this great gif on my Tumblr of Charlize Theron answering questions at Cannes. (Fair Warning: there’s a lot of very sexy stuff on my Tumblr, very NSFW (not safe for work) pics, so know that if you go exploring there. :)) Someone asked her where the anger came from in the movie’s women warriors and she answers “Women have that.” And clearly the crowd cheers because she adds that she’s not the only one.

Yes. Women have rage like men have rage. Because people have anger when things don’t go our way – and rage gives us the energy to make the necessary changes so things DO go our way.

Sometimes I think women might have more anger because we have fewer acceptable outlets. And not the same number and quality of escapist images. We go to the movies and the guys get the whole trip of the awesome hero defeating everything and everyone, while the woman helps in some feminine way or is simply rescued.

This is why I *loved* writing a woman warrior! I got to live the fantasy of being Ursula – blazingly fast, able to defeat even a much bigger man. She’s smart, tough, strong and a hero to those around her. No, she’s not perfect. She’s also incredibly stubborn, prickly and doesn’t trust easily. Much like any number of male action heroes. Some readers have said she reminds them of Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones and I can totally see that.

I would love to see more women warriors in all genres. One of my long time favorites is Kerowyn in BY THE SWORD, by Mercedes Lackey. What are some others you can think of? Hit me!

Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook. Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera, which released beginning January 2, 2014. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and a fifth, the highly anticipated erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, will release starting in July.

She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Foreword Literary.

To learn about Jeffe, visit her website or blog or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

GIVEAWAY

I loved this series so much that I can’t resist sharing it. Therefore, I’m giving away a copy of any book in the Twelve Kingdoms series to one lucky winner. So that’s a choice of either The Mark of the Tala, The Tears of the Rose or The Talon of the Hawk.

This is an international giveaway. If you are located anywhere that The Book Depository ships, you’re welcome to enter. For U.S. winners, you can choose between ebook and paperback.

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Review: The Talon of the Hawk by Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on June 2, 2015June 1, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: fantasy romance
Series: The Twelve Kingdoms #3
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Kensington
Date Released: May 26, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

A HEAVY CROWN

Three daughters were born to High King Uorsin, in place of the son he wanted. The youngest, lovely and sweet. The middle, pretty and subtle, with an air of magic. And the eldest, the Heir. A girl grudgingly honed to leadership, not beauty, to bear the sword and honor of the king.

Ursula’s loyalty is as ingrained as her straight warrior’s spine. She protects the peace of the Twelve Kingdoms with sweat and blood, her sisters from threats far and near. And she protects her father to prove her worth. But she never imagined her loyalty would become an open question on palace grounds. That her father would receive her with a foreign witch at one side and a hireling captain at the other—that soldiers would look on her as a woman, not as a warrior. She also never expected to decide the destiny of her sisters, of her people, of the Twelve Kingdoms and the Thirteenth. Not with her father still on the throne and war in the air. But the choice is before her. And the Heir must lead…

My Review:

When I finished this marvelous book, one of my first thoughts was that it was an absolute tragedy that too many people will see the label “fantasy romance” and turn away, because The Twelve Kingdoms series is an absolutely awesome epic fantasy series, complete with oath-breaking kings, witchy queens, black and white magic, political skullduggery and epic betrayals and reversals of fortune. Good triumphs, evil gets its just desserts, justice prevails. Kingdoms fall, kingdoms rise. The King is dead, long live the Queen.

It just so happens that in each of the books in the series, one of the High King’s daughters finds true love, amidst a whole lot of struggle and also with a kingdom to fight for. And through these fantastic women, we also see lots of different ways to become a heroine, whether by magic, by religion, or by the sword.

Also a marvelous celebration of sisterhood. In the end, the daughters of High King Uorsin and Queen Salena discover that they are fated to either rise together, or fall together. And that no matter what happens or how their paths may diverge, they are always stronger together. The men they love are there to help and assist, but it is the women who run this show.

Evil wears a woman’s face, too. So we have fantastic heroines and dastardly female villains. Evil is not vanquished with a hair pulling cat fight, but righteously with a sword, also in the hands of a woman.

There is a message here, wrapped in an awesome fantasy series, that we can be and do anything, both good and evil (and also in between). It’s up to us to decide our fate.

The Talon of the Hawk brings the story begun in The Mark of the Tala (reviewed here) and continued in The Tears of the Rose (here) to its epic conclusion.

Ursula is High King Uorsin’s oldest daughter, and his putative heir. He has been constantly disappointed that Ursula is a woman, but at the same time has trained her to be the warrior-queen that the Twelve Kingdoms will need when he is gone. He just can’t admit that day will ever come, and he is also unable to let go of the idea of a male heir.

When Ursula’s youngest sister has a boychild, Uorsin wants to make the new princeling his heir, in spite of Astar being a) a baby, and b) the rightful heir to one of the principalities that make up the Twelve Kingdoms. Uorsin and the boy’s other grandfather, King Erich, are fighting over the little body of this tiny baby, while his mother hunts for his kidnapped twin sister.

Ursula can’t bear to take the baby from his mother, and won’t kidnap her sister and her child in order to please her tyrannical father. She wants him to be reasonable, but she should know better.

She returns to a court under siege. Her father has hired mercenaries to take over all the guard posts, and has imprisoned the entire town within its walls. He is also under the sway of a magic practitioner who makes even the tough mercenaries quake in their very large boots.

Ursula is ultimately faced with a dire choice – is she loyal to the High King, or to the Twelve Kingdoms? Until she returns to court without her sister’s child, she has always thought they were one and the same. Seeing the deepening paranoia that has descended upon the king, she finally admits that the needs of the Kingdom are more important than the corrupt wishes of its mad King.

This is Ursula’s quest – to escape her father’s madness, to find her sisters, and to free the kingdom from its descent into evil and death – before it is too late.

Escape Rating A+: I’ll admit that I didn’t much like youngest sister Amelia (until she got her pretty little self-centered head out of her ass) but I’ve always had a fondness for Ursula.

She is an absolutely stellar example of the warrior-princess, but like each of her sisters, she has hidden depths that have yet to be plumbed, and hidden heartaches that need to be lanced of their pain before she can be the queen she must be.

So this story is one about Ursula both finding her heart, and admitting what has been hiding in it all along. Ursula has spent her life pretending not to hear the rumors that she hates men and sleeps with her sword, and all the nastiness encased in those rumors, and in the court’s judgment of her appearance as a warrior and not a pretty girl.

Well, she does sleep with her sword. She needs to protect herself against attack. But those rumors also hide a much deeper secret, and it takes a mercenary captain to dig in and hold on long enough for her pain to finally be healed.

Ursula has always protected her sisters from the worst of their father’s abuses, and even from the knowledge that those abuses were happening. They don’t know the depths to which their father sunk, or the horrific nature of exactly what Ursula has been hiding from them.

Mercenary Captain Harlan helps Ursula to heal by getting her to finally talk about what is wrong. He listens. He encourages her to let out the pain she’s been holding in, because as a leader of fighters he has come to the conclusion that sharing the secret decreases its power to hurt.

What he does not do, what does not happen in this book, is a healing by “magic cock”. He loves her and he helps her to be her best self. While they do fall in love and become lovers, the physical aspects of their eventual relationship are not what cures Ursula. It’s her revealing the secret, and finally realizing that she was abused and not consenting, that it was not her fault, that allows her to heal. They only become lovers after Ursula is able to let go of the harm that has been done to her.

Meanwhile, there is a huge quest going on. Her sister Andromeda, and Andromeda’s husband Rayfe, are the rulers of the magic country of the Tala. There are resistance factions in their court that are responsible for the kidnapping of sister Amelia’s daughter Stella. The sisters are not just hunting Stella, but they are also trying to put down the plot and recover Andromeda’s kingdom.

As if that wasn’t enough, Amelia, as the avatar of the goddess Glorianna, is working to bring down the magical barrier between the Tala and the Twelve Kingdoms. Not, as their father desires, in order to conquer the Tala, but because the walling off of magic is sickening all the kingdoms.

Too little of a good thing turns out to be deadly. And too much of a good thing is equally as damaging, although less obviously.

All of the action, and the fate of all the sisters and all the kingdoms, ties back to the marriage of their parents. Queen Salena saw all of this when she married Uorsin (in the novella Negotiation) and bartered her own life and happiness in the hopes that one day her daughters would be able to fix the world.

This series comes to a stunning conclusion, one that ties up all the loose ends and sets the stage for a marvelous future for the Twelve Kingdoms. Happily Ever After all around. And a lovely book hangover for any fantasy or fantasy romance fan.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Stacking the Shelves (137)

Posted on May 30, 2015May 29, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

I’ll admit that I really love these short stack weeks. But I’m starting to wonder whether its a lack of books, a lack of choices, my own changing tastes or, heaven forbid, the early signs of a reading slump.

Oh noes! Anything but that…

twelve kings in sharakhai by bradley p beaulieu

For Review:
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Fable: Blood of Heroes by Jim C. Hines
Inherit the Stars by Laurie A. Green
Opening Up (Ink and Chrome #1) by Lauren Dane
A Sword for His Lady (Courtly Love #1) by Mary Wine
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (Song of the Shattered Sands #1) by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Purchased from Amazon:
Negotiation (Twelve Kingdoms #0.5) by Jeffe Kennedy

Review: The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato

Posted on May 15, 2015May 14, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: fantasy, steampunk
Series: Clockwork Dagger #1
Length: 368 pages
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Date Released: September 16, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Orphaned as a child, Octavia Leander was doomed to grow up on the streets until Miss Percival saved her and taught her to become a medician. Gifted with incredible powers, the young healer is about to embark on her first mission, visiting suffering cities in the far reaches of the war-scarred realm. But the airship on which she is traveling is plagued by a series of strange and disturbing occurrences, including murder, and Octavia herself is threatened.

Suddenly, she is caught up in a flurry of intrigue: the dashingly attractive steward may be one of the infamous Clockwork Daggers—the Queen’s spies and assassins—and her cabin-mate harbors disturbing secrets. But the danger is only beginning, for Octavia discovers that the deadly conspiracy aboard the airship may reach the crown itself.

My Review:

The world of Beth Cato’s Clockwork Dagger is so enthralling that I started the next book, The Clockwork Crown, the minute I finished this one, and in spite of the TBR pile from hell. I just had to find out what happens next.

Not that this one ends on a cliffhanger. It doesn’t. It’s more that the ending comes to a nice interim conclusion but it is so obvious that Octavia and Garret (and Leaf!) have many more adventures to survive before they reach their goal. A goal that they still haven’t completely identified by the end of Dagger.

We start with Octavia Leander, the best medician of her generation, and possibly of every other generation. We first met Octavia in The Deepest Poison (reviewed here) and got a picture of her as gifted, talented and driven. Also as someone who obeys her own heart and her own conscience above any orders, no matter how sensible those orders might be.

Octavia is on her own now, traveling to take up a position as medician in the small, remote village of Delford, where an outbreak of plague requires the services of a medician in order to bring the village back to health.

The war between Caskentia and The Waste is over, or at least halted, so Octavia needs a position to keep herself occupied, employed and self-sufficient. Unfortunately for Octavia, and everyone else in both countries, this armistice, like all the ones before it, is deemed, or doomed, to be temporary.

Octavia has never traveled alone before. Medicians of the Percival School are generally protected and kept apart. The cacophony of voices who need their services makes it difficult for them to be among large groups of people. Octavia literally hears the music of their bodies, and can hear in an instant when someone is ill, or even just tired. In a large group, there are always lots of people who are not quite well. And even more who are demanding of the magical healing that only a medician can provide, whether they need it or not.

So even though Octavia is trying to hide her identity, she doesn’t know how to turn off her need to help people. A need that is sorely taxed when the airship she flies on is struck by a mysterious case of poisoning.

Medicinal magic as strong as that exhibited by Octavia in The Deepest Poison, can be a blessing or a curse. Octavia wants to heal all who need her, but realizes that her resources are finite, even if her desire is not.

The government of Caskentia fears her power. Even though she is a Caskentian citizen, the crown is all too aware that the power to heal can also become the power to kill. And Caskentia can’t afford for a potential weapon as powerful as Octavia to fall into the hands of the Wasters. The Wasters want to use Octavia’s power to heal their blighted lands, among other less benign “requests”.

Octavia just wants a cottage, an herb garden, and people to heal who like and respect her.

What she gets is a long-lost princess, a disabled and disgraced imperial assassin, and a grateful gremlin. While it is not certain that any faction specifically wants her dead, all the factions are certain that it is better for their side if she is dead instead of possessed by another.

As she dodges repeated assassination attempts, and fails to dodge repeated kidnapping attempts, she learns who she can really trust. And finds love in the arms of her greatest nightmare.

Escape Rating A-: In Clockwork Dagger we see the roots of, and the effects of, the battle that Octavia was caught in the middle of in The Deepest Poison. The battle, the war, the reasons surrounding it, even the people that Octavia relies on – nothing and no one is as it seems. Not even The Lady, the tree from whom Octavia derives her healing power and whom Octavia and all the Percival medicians worship as the source of all healing power and healing herbs.

The seeds sown in that earlier battle all bear fruit, much of it poisonous. Out of jealousy, the woman who raised and trained Octavia betrays her for money. Even worse, she also betrays the long-lost princess of Caskentia, the woman whose kidnapping began the war 50 years ago. Octavia’s solution to the poisoning plot brought her to the attention of the Wasters, who want to kidnap her and use her against her own country – or force her into become a short-lived broodmare like all the other Waster women.

Even her own government would rather have her killed than let the Wasters have her. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for Octavia, they sent Alonzo Garret to assassinate her, expecting him to fail. But certainly not expecting him to fall for his charge, and absolutely not expecting her to fall for him.

Alonzo is the son of the man who burned Octavia’s village and orphaned her. He is also an apprentice Clockwork Dagger, and he lost the lower part of one leg in battle. The clockwork mecha that replaced it keeps him from acting or appearing disabled, but also provides a weak point for enemies to attack.

The romance between Alonzo and Octavia is very sweet, actually quite courtly, and very slow. They each have layers and layers of lies and misdirection that they have to reveal to each other before they can reach a level of trust. It takes a lot of time and effort on both their parts to get there. It is a revelation for Octavia that she is able to trust Alonzo, when his father’s name has always been the source of her greatest fears.

My favorite character in this story is the gremlin Leaf. Octavia rescues the tiny creature from a brutal attack, and comes to love him as a pet without caring that he is part construct or realizing that he is much, much more intelligent (and communicative!) than he first appears. She needs someone or something to care for in her aloneness, and Leaf is there and adorable and loving. She loves and is loved in return, expecting nothing, but receives everything.

There is more magic than steampunk in the worldbuilding of this series, but the way it blends together is awesome. This is a war where there are no good guys, and frankly no bad guys, at least at the level of nation-states.

Plenty of individuals do plenty of bad things, but there are no evil causes, per se. Everyone is using their limited means to attempt to heal and fix two countries that have both become corrupted, albeit in completely different ways.

At the end of The Clockwork Dagger, it is clear that the necessary healing is going to be hard-won. And that Octavia is going to be at the center of it whether she wants to be or not.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 5-10-15

Posted on May 10, 2015May 8, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Happy Mother’s Day to those of you who are mothers.

And for those of us who are not, one of my reviews this coming week is Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed, a collection of essays about choosing to be childless, edited by Meghan Daum. Because I still get people telling me I’ll change my mind about not wanting to have children. And let me tell you, not only has that ship sailed, but it’s no longer even remotely able to re-dock at this facility.

After having been teased by (meaning read) The Deepest Poison last week, I’m really looking forward to The Clockwork Dagger this week!

Current Giveaways:

Giveaways from 11 Shops and a $280 Prize Pack in the Spring Fling Fabulous Giveaway
The Dismantling by Brian DeLeeuw (paperback)

Blog Recap:

Spring Fling Giveaway Hop
A Review: Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial by Kenji Yoshino
A+ Review: Pleasantville by Attica Locke
B- Review: The Dismantling by Brian DeLeeuw + Giveaway
A Review: Dead Wake: the Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
B Review: The Deepest Poison by Beth Cato
Stacking the Shelves (134)

Coming Next Week:

Ryder: Bird of Prey by Nick Pengelley (blog tour review)
A Match for Marcus Cynster by Stephanie Laurens (blog tour review)
Lowcountry Boil by Susan M. Boyer (review)
Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed edited by Meghan Daum (review)
The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato (review)

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Coming Next Week:

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Guest Post: Who’s your favorite non-romance author? Why?

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

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The Joy of Writing Warrior Women by Jeffe Kennedy

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TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

The Joy of Writing Warrior Women
by Jeffe Kennedy

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