I read the first book in The Illuminae Files a while ago, and then I got distracted from continuing with the series. Which, as I’m figuring out now was a fair bit of a mistake. So, shortly after reading Gemina, I blitzed through Memento. And it was understandably fantastic, as all these books are.
Whilst Aidan is a little chilling in Illuminae, I didn’t quite feel that holy crap, evil being thing from him. Maybe because there is a lot of humour in all of the dossiers provided by this. That ambivalent feeling was completely removed by this novella.
I was kind of heartbroken by this to be honest, I really loved Ethan and Olivia. And their romance was just too damn cute for words. There is something great about how Kaufman and Kristoff are able to write in the romance to the main story. And the realism of HOW people gush over instant messaging… be still my beating heart.
Wow. Holy moly. This is one of those ridiculously unforgettable, stop my brain, overwhelmingly awesome stories. I’ve heard of N.K. Jemisin a few times in my literary delving, but it’s taken me this long to dive into one of her books. And, as with many of these moments of FINALLY getting around to it – the hype is damn well deserved.
From the very beginning, Jemisin’s writing style was so starkly different to anything else that I’ve ever experienced. It felt like she was reaching through the pages to speak to ME directly, no one else in the whole wide world. And that is just the prologue. Then, you get into the chapters. And you literally experience Essun’s journey as though you were her. I’ve read first person POV before, but nothing quite like this. Some of that attachment may have been because of my own (relatively recent) experience as a mother. But still it was a pretty intense reading simply because of this.
And then we get into the storyline, Jemisin is able to create a stunning multilayered world that is completely impossible to look away from. Not just built throughout Essun’s (your) journey, but also the stories of Damara and Seynite. It does take a little while to see how everything is interconnected. But when you have that lightning bolt moment of realisation… this story is just one one continues to get better and better and better. It’s honestly a little bit surreal and ridiculous.
I knew that this book would be fairly complex, being a high fantasy / Scipio novel. But you don’t actually realise how complex it all truly is until you’re out onto the otherwise. Jemisin is fantastic at leaving Easter eggs throughout that, when reflected on, give you an idea of how the tale will end. But when you’re in the thick of it… just wow. Definitely a suggested read. And I can’t wait to have the brain capacity to read The Obelisk Gate.
Claire and Ven are just too damn cute. Which I’m finding with pretty much every Ilona Andrews couple. I mean, they are bad asses who can kill. But they’re also just too damn freaking cute. I particularly like that Ven falls in love with Claire on two fronts. Partially as the Silver Shark he sees on the bonnet, but also as his assistant and woman who stands beside him in the business world.
I always love the world building in Andrews’ work – the world is almost like a secondary character. In the case of this tale, it was the creation of the bionet that I fell in love with. Each version and visit was slightly different, and I loved that each person had a totally different perspective and view of that world. I wonder how I would view that bionet…
Alongside the fact that this is totally an office romance, there was also the fact that this was a refugee story. It’s all about Claire adapting to a whole new culture and world and trying to figure out how to live in it. She’s also having to deal with her ptsd and find a way to cope with the past. I loved the collision of cultures and that assimilation which is being experienced. Something that I felt was very true to a lived experience.
Ilona Andrews manages to do it yet again. She constructs an amazing world that you can’t turn away from in a matter of words. For such a short novella, a whole, irreplaceable world is formed. One I look forward to visiting again.
This world and story had echoes of the Hidden Legacy series. And I like that although this was set I space, it felt quite familiar. I also loved how the lead female managed to take control of her own life. After all, she got dealt an incredibly shit hand. And then decided to become an assassin.
Petty revenge makes me stupidly happy. I’ll admit, I’m not that bigger person that it isn’t something I’d want to do myself. That the lead I’m this enacts her revenge across two fronts… I’m a little bit in love.
Just from the title, I knew that I was quite likely to love this. I mean, it’s about a group of Disasters. I’m always a sucker for a tale of misfits and outcasts. And the fact that it’s set in space? Brilliant!!!
It was almost impossible to put this down. One insane high jinks after another had me laughing and smiling at the sometimes-bizarre difficulties the crew finds themselves in. England certainly has a gift for weaving a story that draws you in. I look forward to seeing what else she can do.
The variety in this cast added to my enjoyment. There is cultural diversity, sexual identities and familial relationships galore. Each and every character has a great structure and identity that is completely unique. One that quickly makes you bond differently with each of the characters.
This is definitely a book that I’ll read again. It’s fun and an easy read. One that took me on a fun and light adventure. Alright, there’s death and betrayal… but still…
Title: Honor Among Thieves Author: Rachel Caine & Ann Aguirre Series: The Honors #1 Rating Out of 5: 5 (I will read this again and again and again) My Bookshelves:Science fiction, Space, Young adult Dates read: 9th – 14th August 2021 Pace: Medium Format: Novel Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books Year: 2018 5th sentence, 74th page: I already knew – however impossible it was – why Marko Dunajski was here.
Petty criminal Zara Cole was shocked to be recruited into the Honors, an elite team of humans selected by a race of sentient alien ships to explore the outer reaches of the universe as their passengers.
Zara seizes the chance to change her life, and when she meets Nadim, the alien ship she’s assigned to, she feels like she belongs for the first time. But nothing – not her Honors training or her street smarts – could have prepared her for the dark, ominous truths that lurk behind the alluring glitter of starlight.
This book is just so dang good!!! I honestly didn’t want to put it down and found it really hard not to leap for Honor Bound the second I finished this. I have a huge stack of books to read… but man was it still tempting. This was such a phenomenal beginning to a trilogy.
Zara is a fantastic lead. She’s feisty and has a seriously horrible past. And, the part that I found the most attractive? She’s rebellious as all hell. It gives her this fun edge and relatability that made me feel connected almost immediately. It also created a really good coming of age feeling to this story. As the story unfolds, Zara slowly comes into her own and finds her own identity.
I’m still fairly new to the Sci Fi genre as a general. And particularly, fairy new to the stories of sentinent ships in space. They do have a bit of a same same to them. But Caine and Aguirre are able to add in this extra layer of mystery that is lacking in most of the other similar stories I’ve read. You know that there is a Big Bad out there somewhere… you just don’t know what or whom.
All in all, I absolutely loved this book. It was hard to put down, easy to relate to the characters and filled with twists and unexpected turns. The world building is phenomenal and the relationships help to further support this incredible reality that was created. This book was amazing and completely impossible to put down.
Angela Knight does it… in the psychic realm of a woman attuned to the touch of strangers – and the powerful temptations of a seductive and mysterious protector.
I really, really loved this concept – that random people get powers and are called hypers. And that the source of these powers is aliens… I love how Knight’s novellas are able to take a concept that you kind of expect… and change it into a really unique SciFi spin!
Arial and Josiah are a great couple. I thought that they were seriously cute from the very beginning. And I definitely was routing for them from the very beginning. I also love the way that Josiah is trying to keep celibate (and the reasons for why). And how Arial just steadily and happily makes him give it all up… it’s a fun storyline. Or at least, my happy little brain finds it fun.
But, mostly I love how these characters with superpowers have managed to find a way to coexist and find their happily ever afters. I can completely imagine Arial and Josiah and Psych running off into the future fighting more bad guys and making more sense of the incredibly unique world that Knight has managed to create.
Title: Zeroes Author: Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan & Deborah Biancotti Series: Zeroes #1 Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!) My Bookshelves:Science fiction, Superheroes, Young adult Dates read: 21st February – 5th April 2021 Pace: Medium Format: Novel Publisher: Simon Pulse Year: 2015 5th sentence, 74th page: All those training missions, shepherding crowds around a shopping center while listening to Glorious Leader’s orders in their earbuds.
DON’T CALL THEM HEROES
But these six Californian teens have powers that set them apart. They can do stuff ordinary people can’t.
Take Ethan, a.k.a. Scam. He’s got a voice inside him that’ll say whatever you want to hear, whether it’s true or not. Which is handy, except when it isn’t – like when the voice starts gabbing in the middle of a bank robbery and lands him in deep. The only people who can help are teh other Zeroes, who aren’t exactly best friends these days.
Enter Nate, a.k.a. Bellwether, the group’s “glorious leader”. After Scam’s SOS, he pulls the scattered Zeroes back together. But when the rescue blows up in their faces, the Zeroes find themselves propelled into whirlwind encounters with ever more dangerous criminals across the city. And at the heart of the chaos they find Kelsie, who can take a crowd in the palm of her hand and tame it or let it loose as she pleases.
Filled with high-stakes action and drama, Zeroes unites three power-house authors for the opening instalment of a thrilling new series.
This book is an absolute chunkster. Which is why I have kept putting it off for ages. I just find books that are this big to be kind of intimidating at times. Plus, there’s the fact that sometimes I tend to get distracted and bored halfway through these monster tales. Yet, in spite of all of my concerns… I just couldn’t put this down! It was an amazing chunkster, one that I seriously and thoroughly enjoyed.
I loved the flickering of points of view throughout this story. It is most definitely a difficult tactic in stories – but these three authors have managed to give each and every one of the six superheroes a wonderfully unique voice. The fact that it also gives you these great views into their lives and the different ways in which they see one another… it was a brilliant journey. And, unlike many other stories I’ve read that flicker between points of view, I wasn’t more or less attached to each of the characters. This is wonderfully unique and had me grinning throughout.
The whole storyline and characterization of the Zeroes reminded me a lot of Umbrella Academy. There was that great feeling of dysfunction and coming together in a pseudo family. Although, being that this is a young adult story, it felt a heck of a lot less dark than the comic / Netflix series. I love stories of dysfunctional family units, they tend to feel all that much more humorous. Which left me grinning and smiling as I journeyed through the Zeroes reuniting and finding more depths to their powers.
This novel partners teenage angst with dysfunction and superpowers. I mean, really, what on earth could go wrong there? Turns out, everything and anything. Which then makes me want to pick up Swarms straight away… it’s surely just going to get better from here on out.
From a kill-or-be-killed gunfight with a vampire to an encounter in a steampunk bordello, the weird western is a dark, gritty tale where the protagonist might be playing poker with a sorcerous deck of cards, or facing an alien on the streets of a dusty frontier town.
Here are twenty-three original tales – stories of the Old West infused with elements of the fantastic – produced specifically for this volume by many of today’s finest writers. Included are Orson Scott Card’s first “Alvin Maker” story in a decade, and an original adventure by Fred Van Lente, writer of Cowboys & Aliens.
What a fantastic collection. And a great new genre to add to my ever-expanding knowledge of / collection of books. Before reading Dead Man’s Hand and Westward Weird, I had never heard of Weird westerns. And now it’s a genre that I’m seriously keen to find more of. There is just something amazingly fun and awesome about this collection. Very, very enjoyable.
The gunslingers and card players throughout this anthology took me on an absolutely joyous ride. One that I was kind of disappointed finished so quickly. The idea of the wild west has always intrigued me, making this the first time that I was completely able to thrown myself into this fascination.
This anthology didn’t quite get five stars because I didn’t fall head over heels for each and every story. Having said that, I would most definitely read this again. Even those stories which weren’t quite as holy crap amazing as the others.
Title: Obsidian Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout Series: Lux #1 Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!) My Bookshelves:Aliens, Romance, Science fiction, Young adult Dates read: 28th July – 17th September 2020 Pace: Medium Format: Novel Publisher: Hodder Year: 2011 5th sentence, 74th page: It wasn’t usually the safest way to travel.
The unputdownable first novel in the Lux series. Daemon Black will set pulses racing…
There’s an alien next door. And with his looming height and eerie green eyes, he’s hot… until he opens his mouth. He’s infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, he marks me. Turns out he has a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal his abilities and the only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to him until my alien mojo fades. If I don’t kill him first, that is.
When Katy moves to West Virginia right before her senior year, she’s anticipating a whole lot of boring. The last thing on her mind is getting involved with her sexy, exasperating neighbour – and then finding out he’s guarding a mind-blowing secret…
This was a seriously good novel. It took me a little while to read, but mostly because I kept getting distracted by other, shinier books. It was still wonderful and fun. This was a great teenage / young adult book with great world building and a lead female who I could really relate to. Definitely an enjoyable adventure. And, now that I’ve finished it… I can’t wait to read the next one and journey back into Armentrout’s world of the Lux.
This had a pretty typical level of the teen angst that I’m used to looking for in a young adult novel. But it was a little less painful than some of the other young adult books I’ve read – the angst was nicely balanced by the gumption and drive of Kat. I actually really enjoyed the angst that was a part of this story – it wasn’t over the top and painful, and honestly, if I had to deal with Daemon’s attitude like Kat does… I’d be pretty angsty and irritable myself.
I absolutely love the world building that Armentrout does in this series. I enjoyed the prequel Shadows, and that had a nice little introduction into this series. But it didn’t give me a full background into the world of the Lux. This novel most definitely did that. Although, I’m glad I know a little more about Dawson from Shadows. It’s a great world building that I can’t wait to sink my metaphorical teeth into… I just need to save up some money before I buy the next book is all…
Kat and Daemon definitely don’t have a cutesy, sweet relationship. Which I most definitely love. I get a bit fed up with relationships in books (both young adult and adult) which focus on the cutesy, love at first sight angle. That just doesn’t feel overly realistic to me. Instead, Daemon and Kat are constantly niggling at one another and making things somewhat difficult for each other. It’s a lot more similar to the healthy relationships that I see in my life (even if this one isn’t totally healthy).
I absolutely can’t wait to read Oblivion – I’m fascinated to see what all of the moments in Obsidian looked like through Daemon’s eyes. There are some wonderful and fun hints at the end of Obsidian, but I look forward to getting even more insight.
Earth and Skye 