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The sequel to our gamer novel FOREVER FANTASY ONLINE is here! LAST BASTION comes out TODAY in ebook and audio!
Bastion was supposed to mean safety. It was supposed to mean a break from fighting for their lives and a chance to talk to someone who might actually know what’s going on. Access to their gold and some beer would have been nice, too.  They got none of those things. When Tina and James arrive in the capital, they find a city on fire in more ways than one. Players and non-players hunt each other in the streets, while the king who controls the city’s all-powerful artifact cowers from the chaos in his castle. Desperate to warn somebody about the Once King’s coming invasion, James wants to try to talk to the king anyway, while Tina just wants to meet the royal portal keepers who might be able to send them home. It shouldn’t be hard to get an army of the world’s best-geared players through one city, but when they discover that the captain of the Royal Knights has been massacring low-level players in revenge disguised as justice, James and Tina will have to decide what is more important: the lives of their fellow gamers, or the stability of this world’s last great city. Both choices deserve a champion, but with the Once King’s armies closing in, taking the wrong side may doom everyone to an eternity as slaves to the Ghostfire.  Get your copy now! Only $4.99 or free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers!
It's almost summer, and you know what that means! Rachel and Travis release books!!

We've got a whole lot of awesome coming for y'all in 2019, and to kick it off, today's the day the long awaited (and just long in general) sequel to our first gamer novel FOREVER FANTASY ONLINE is finally released to the world! LAST BASTION is out right now in both ebook and audio format!

As always, print editions are lagging a little behind. We're in the process of moving both our print production company and our actual house, so things are chaos, but I promise you print is coming for both FFO and my DFZ series. And speaking of the DFZ, the sequel to MINIMUM WAGE MAGIC should be out this summer as well! It's a summer of books!!

My New Release mailing list is always the first to know when the release date goes up, so if you're not already a subscriber, sign up now and be cool! It's free, I only mail you when a book is coming out, and you get a list exclusive Heartstrikers short story. It's win all around!
Anyway, we really hope you love LAST BASTION! And for those of you who haven't given our gamer novels a try, I hope you'll change your mind. It's basically a Fantasy epic with modern characters and a whole lot of action and drama. Also, both books are available for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers, so I hope you'll give book 1 a go. I promise you wont' be disappointed!

As always, thank you so so much for being our readers! You folks are the ones who make the magic possible, and we can't thank you enough. Travis and I hope you enjoy LAST BASTION, and I really can't wait to announce the next DFZ book!

Thank you again, and we'll see you soon!

Yours always,
Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach Spawn Camping Loot Hoarders Opportunistic Treasure Enthusiasts
LAST BASTION is the second book in the FFO series. If you're new, start from the beginning with FOREVER FANTASY ONLINE! I promise you won't be sorry!

As I wrote Dark Triumph, I wanted to be sure and populate the book with some of the colorful characters from the Middle Ages that I had come across in my research, and yet it had to feel organic to the story and not wedged in there.

As Sybella and the wounded knight were racing through the countryside, trying to escape pursuit, I had to do some serious thinking as to who they would actually run in to, and of those people, who would help, who would hinder, and who would turn them in in a heartbeat for a reward. Since they would need to slip into the forest to evade capture, I decided to draw from those who lived in the forests or obtained their livelihood from the woods, and settled upon a group of charcoal burners.

Oddly, it is often the outcasts in society who are most accepting of other outcasts. Their very disenfranchisement sometimes makes them more willing to challenge the status quo or thumb their nose at rigid authority. While charcoal burners were not (probably) true outcasts, they did keep to themselves somewhat, confined by their livelihood to dwelling in forests and tending their charcoal fires rather than living in cities or villages.

In the middle ages, one of the most efficient fuels at the time was charcoal. Coal itself was rare and difficult to mine with their technology, but charcoal could be made through the slow burning of wood, then stopping the process before the wood was fully burned to ash. Charcoal burning was a tricky thing, requiring fairly esoteric knowledge of how to build the fire pits just so, how to pile the wood so it wouldn’t burn too quickly, and how to read the smoke to discern when the charcoal was ready. There were a number of occupational hazards, primarily involving collapsed fire pits and burns. It was also an occupation full of hazard, for a stray spark or ember could start a conflagration in minutes.

As I continued to research charcoal burners, I came across a curious mention of the Carbonnari, a branch of Italian charcoal burners. They started off as a guild, as many medieval trades did, and developed into an organization or brotherhood similar to Freemansons, only with their charcoal burning trade being at the center of their rituals and organizations. While their organization and political involvement was most evident in 19th century Italy, it is believed the groups’ origins began in the middle ages. When I learned they had a French counterpart called the Charbonnerie, I knew I’d found my outcasts.

As a writer, a dozen questions immediately went off in my mind. Who were they? What would compel them to become political and engage themselves in the affairs of the kingdom? How would they make those decisions? And, most importantly in a world populated with patron saints, whom would they worship?

Any deviation from normal church doctrine in the middle ages was rigorously opposed, so it made sense to me that they would worship someone not approved by the church, one of the older gods who’d not make the transition to patron saint.

Dovetailing nicely with this was my personal fascination with the concept of the Black Madonna. There are various theories for the origin of the Black Madonna, whether it was simply the color of Jesus and Mary’s skin before Renaissance artists reimagined them as fair skinned and blonde, or an origin that spoke to possible African roots. There is some speculation that the huge popularity of the cult of the Virgin Mary in the middle ages was a redirecting of earlier earth/mother goddess worship.

But interestingly, over the years I’d also run into mentions of the Black Artemis, rumored to have been worshipped by the Amazons, or Black Demeter, the aspect of the earth goddess when she was in deep mourning for her daughter Persephone. I took all those threads and swirled them around until I had the Dark Matrona, the unsanctioned aspect of Dea Matrona, the former earth goddess now patron saint. I decided that her darkness would be of a more spiritual nature, not unlike the Egyptian god Osiris, for in the Egyptian pantheon, black was not only the color of the underworld, but regeneration as the rich dark silt from the Nile river allowed them to grow their crops each year, and so black was also the color of regeneration, which dovetailed nicely with the book’s themes of finding hope in the darkness.

 

While the Nine Old Gods of Brittany are my own invention, they were built on a number of historical, geographical, and ancient theological precedents, so I thought I’d share some of those here for those of you who are curious to know what my inspirations for world of His Fair Assassin were.

As the Catholic Church struggled to gain acceptance among people who were reluctant to let go of their own pagan beliefs, it made a conscious decision to actively subsume those beliefs into Christianity, white washing and Christianizing them along the way. They felt it would make it easier for people to accept the new religion if they could recognize parts of their old beliefs in it.

Brittany was also home to the last remaining group of druidesses, called the Gallinezae, who were said to possess mysterious power. Additionally, Brittany had nine bishoprics, or districts, that were based on the nine earlier Celtic tribes who inhabited the land.

Since Brittany was originally inhabited by the Celtic tribes, I built the mythology of His Fair Assassin on a Celtic foundation. It’s also important to note that I drew from Continental Celtic roots for my mythology rather than the Irish Celts.

Trying to accurately recreate any Celtic beliefs is tricky however, because the Celts themselves did not create any written record of their beliefs or practices; it was all passed along through the oral tradition. In fact, druids in training were required to study for twenty years in order to learn all their lore and history by committing it to memory.

Consequently, nothing of the Celtic religion or spiritual beliefs and practices was written down until they were invaded by Rome. In addition to viewing the Celts practices with scorn, the Romans often interpreted other pantheons according to their own, thus a mother goddess must be equated with Zeus’s wife Hera, or a god of the Underworld with Hades, etc. This Interpretatio romana colored everything we knew about Celtic practices up until fairly recently when improved archaeological techniques and methods began revealing a more complete and accurate picture. The funny thing is though, by the middle ages the myth and folklore of these earlier Celts would have been very much written over and ‘tainted’ by the Romanization of those myths, so that those living in the 15th century would have been more familiar with this Romanized version. Since I set the story in that timeframe, I wanted to be true to that worldview rather than our own, more knowledgeable one.

Here is a list of the Nine Old Gods of Brittany along with their Roman/Greek or Celtic influences/inspiration:

Saint Mortain – god of death. The Celtic equivalent to Dis Pater, the Romanized Celtic god of death, with some similarities to the Welsh Arawn. Greek and Roman counterparts would be Pluto and Hades, but the Celtic Dis Pater had other aspects to him that tied him to older beliefs that enveloped not only the underworld, but the entire cycle of life and death. Also inspired by the Breton figure of personified death, the Ankou.

Dea Matrona – Gaulish mother goddess, responsible for the earth’s bounty. Similar to the Celtic Anu or Ana.

Saint Amourna – daughter of Dea Matrona and one of the twin goddesses of love. Amourna is the gentle aspect of love. The Celtic pantheon had no goddess of love per se, so she definitely has aspects of Aphrodite or Venus. However, the idea of twin sister goddesses representing the dual aspects of love was my own invention.

Saint Arduinna – daughter of Dea Matrona and goddess of love’s sharp bite, protector of virgins. There was a Celtic goddess Arduinna who was a goddess of the forest. Boars, highly revered by the Celts, were sacred to her. Similar to the Gallo-Roman Diana.

Saint Mer – goddess of the sea. While there is no known Celtic god of the sea, there were many deities of springs and lakes, most of whom were goddesses so I decided to make the deity of the sea in my world in keeping with the feminine representations the Celts seemed to favor.

Saint Camulos – god of battle and warriors. Wears a corona of oak leaves and ram’s horns. The Romans equated him with Mars, but I also drew slightly on the cult of Mithros.

Saint Brigantia – goddess of wisdom; brought medicine and healing knowledge to mankind. Based on the Celtic goddess Bridget, who is one of the most widely known pagan goddesses to have become a saint. Her Greek and Roman counterparts would be Athena and Minerva.

Saint Cissonius – god of crossroads and travelers. I took the Celtic Cissonius, god of trade, and expanded on it a bit.

Saint Salonius – god of mistakes and patron saint of bastards. Ah, this is my most historically tenuous god. I have always been a fan of the trickster god who appears in so many pantheons, and I saw a fleeting entry on the Wikipedia Celtic Gods and Goddesses page that reference Salonius, god of mistakes. Alas, when I later went to reference it, the entry was gone and I couldn’t even find it in the Google cache search. Although it seems fitting that my god of mistakes might have been born of one of my own.

Anne of Brittany was a real historic person. At twelve years old, upon the death of her father, she inherited one of the last remaining duchies in Western Europe. By all accounts, she was a remarkable girl. Groomed since birth to inherit the duchy, she was reading and speaking Greek and Latin by the time she was five years old.

Her substantial inheritance was complicated by two things. One, she was a woman at a time when traditionally women did not inherit kingdoms. Since the time of Charlemagne, Salic Law had been invoked to prevent women from becoming rulers. When Anne became Duchess of Brittany, it defied all the conventions of that time. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, not only was she unmarried, but her father had promised her hand in marriage to at least half a dozen European nobles, if not more. As he plotted and strategized, trying to keep his lands and title safe from the French Crown, he dangled his daughter (and her substantial dowry) as bait for the aid he needed from other princes and dukes. Consequently, when he died, she had been promised to more than one suitor.

To say that this created problems for her in keeping her duchy independent is an understatement. Which is why she needed the help of assassin nuns. What? Doesn’t everybody call for assassin nuns when they’re having political difficulty? If not, they should….

 

In preparation for the publication of COURTING DARKNESS, and because I realize not everyone has time for a re-read of the original trilogy, I thought I would put up some “refresher” posts to help readers reacquaint themselves with the His Fair Assassin world before diving back in. First up: the legends and folklore of Brittany that planted those first seeds in my imagination, lo those many years ago . . .

As I combed through history, looking for the perfect setting for this story, four things caught my attention and eventually solidified into the world of His Fair Assassin. The first was a twelve year old duchess who inherited a kingdom, that inheritance hugely complicated by the fact that she had been promised in marriage to half a dozen princes and nobles.

Next was a mention of the Gallizenae, nine druidesses who lived on the Ile de Sein off the coast of Brittany and possessed mysterious powers.

While Googling for images of the Ile de Sein, I came across of photo of a small, medieval chapel standing next to one of the old, pagan standing stones that are so plentiful in Brittany. It was such a vivid illustration of one of the things that has always fascinated me—how the Catholic Church was so successful at absorbing bits and pieces of the older, ancient religions.

I also learned of a Breton folklore figure call the Ankou, a personification figure of Death.

 

Then lastly, I read about the Passage de l’Enfer—a Breton folktale of fisherman who receive a knock on their door at midnight and were required row the souls of the dead across the ocean at night. Those legends soon became intertwined in my mind and the story idea began to take shape . . .

I get asked this a lot, so thought I’d try to address it here.

Courting Darkness is meant to be able to be read without having read the original His Fair Assassin trilogy. But it is not the first book of Sybella’s adventures.

If you read an ARC and were lost—I’m sorry. That is one of the absolute downsides to ARCs—they are unfinished and sometimes relatively unpolished copies. I made THREE more rounds of line edits after the ARCs were printed. A large portion of those changes were to help make Courting Darkness more accessible to new readers and help bring former His Fair Assassin readers up to speed.

I think we succeeded in making it less confusing to new readers. But part of that depends on what sort of reader you are.

Some readers hate to read reviews or synopsis and love trying to piece together the backstory from context clues. Others like every detail spelled out and like a lot of explanation in the narrative. There are definitely readers who hit Courting Darkness cold and thoroughly enjoyed it! Where exactly their reader preferences fell on the above spectrum, I’m not sure.

Part of the problem as a writer was finding a way to revisit the events of Dark Triumph without utterly violating who Sybella is as a character. She is an extraordinarily private person whose past was so difficult that she blocked out most of it for four years. Those early memories will never be something she takes out causally to mull over. To have her do so felt like it cheapened her experience, turning it into something exploitative, even though it would have filled readers in on what had happened in her past. But honestly, I think those experiences of hers will mean more if they are experienced with her rather than recounted in a narrative recap.

So I believe (hope?) you can read Courting Darkness first. With luck, you will enjoy it enough that you’ll want to know more about Sybella and give Dark Triumph a try—it will answer so many questions you might have! But it is very likely that reading Courting Darkness will be a richer experience if you’ve read the trilogy first. But if you haven’t, don’t despair! Sybella’s full backstory will be revisited more fully in the second book in the duology—when events give her no choice but to confront it.

 

(LATE) ME ALERT!!!

I’ll be attending Nine Worlds this weekend since I had such awesome fun there last time. I’ll be there on the Friday and Sunday, but not Saturday as some friends of mine have inconveniently decided to get married right in the middle of the year’s greatest geekfest! Don’t people check their calendars anymore? *eyeroll*

Schedule:

FRIDAY 10 am (bright and early): Megan Leigh (Breaking The Glass Slipper podcast) interviews little old me about all kinds of stuff! Signing at the Big Green Bookstore stand right after.

6:45 pm – Twisted Tales: a panel about the darker side of fairytales

SUNDAY

1:30 pm Things You Never Thought Could Be: a panel about YA fiction.

For more info click here and type ‘Wooding’ in the search field.

 

When I’m not in panels I shall very likely be in the bar, er, ‘networking’ or in the gaming room nerding out on all the boardgames I can find all at once. Also I use conventions as an opportunity to hunt down potential rivals and assassinate them, so if they’ve written a good book in the last year or so and they’re at Nine Worlds, they’re probably on my list.

 

 

At last! All is revealed! Here is the doorstopper I’ve been working on all this time. Release date 15th February 2018. Available for preorder now. All the info here.

1941 and for the idealistic young detective Georg Heuser his new posting to the renowned headquarters of the Berlin Police dept was a dream come true. Under the guidance of commissioner Ludtke, Hauser hopes to make a big impression on his bosses.

He gets his chance quicker than he expects when rumours of a killer haunting the Berlin Railways reach the murder squads ears. Targeting lone women commuters, the killers assaults and then bludgeons them to death. 

As the body count rises, the Berlin Murder squad comes under increasing pressure from the ruling Nazi party to capture and execute this deviant. With war raging across Europe Hauser must use all of his brilliant skills if he is to stop the killer and earn the gratitude of SS chief, Heinrich  Himmler. 

1959 and in West Germany two lawyers, Max Kraus and Paula Siebert are in pursuit of Nazi war criminals, in particular those men involved in the brutal suppression of the Eastern Front in the area the Nazis called Ostland.

Charged with clearing the area of Jews, communists and any deviants deemed undesirable, these men killed and butchered their way across Eastern Europe. Millions were killed and Max and Paula are determined to these men to justice.   

While they are targeting many, one man is particular is in their sights. A cold, calculating and efficient killer of men these man oversaw and took part in some of the worst atrocities of the entire war. This mans name is Georg Heuser. Paula and Max what to find out how this good man became a monster. 

 

So where do I start with this book review? Okay I will start in a easy part…This is probably the best book I have ever read! So why? well that is harder to explain.

The book is based on real events and real people and has three aspects to the book. The first half of the book is a murder mystery as Georg attempts to capture the killer. The second half of the book is more complex as Georg is sent to police the occupied areas on the Eastern Front and the slow descent into criminality and murder. The intertwining thread is the 1959 court case as Paula and Max attempt to bring him to justice.

The first half of the book sets up Georg as an engaging and likeable character, his enthusiasm  for his new job and his belief in the law and law and order make him a an easy character to empathise with. As he brings his skills to the task of capturing the killer he enjoys life in Berlin and falls in love.

This sets up the second half of the book as he is sent to the Eastern front and begins the slide into cynicism and despair as his belief in the law and law and order means he must comply with the orders of the Nazi government and facilitate the removal and extermination of  people they class as undesirable.

It is quite a harrowing story as his very belief in the power of the law means that he struggles against the orders he receives and his belief that he must spare his men from the horror and so he takes on more of the killings himself.

This book is a fantastic study of how a man can descend from an upright and decent citizen to a bitter and drunken killer of men, women and children and how he can live with himself afterwards. It is a compelling and engaging book that captures your attention from the first word and keeps it to the last.

I know I haven’t done justice to just how good this book is but I honestly can’t recommend it enough.

 

 

For Imperial agent, Cassius Corbulo the last three months have been something of a holiday, While Bostra was hardly a Rome or Antioch it was still a pleasant posting and his duties were hardly taxing . 

The arrival of his boss, Abascantius to Bostra suggests his life of ease is coming to an end. With rebellion breaking out in neighbouring Palmyra and the tribes of Arabia growing restless the Emperor himself is leading his armies to bring the area under Roman control once more.

For the authorities in the east everything must be perfect for the Emperor’s arrival but when a mysterious enemy attacks a temple and spirits away the Black stone of Edessa, a stone claimed by the Emperor then they must get the stone back before he arrives.

Cassius is charged with finding out who stole the Stone and what they intend to do with it. With an escort of select troops, Cassius with his faithful followers Indavana and Simo must travel into the desert and into the middle of the restless tribes.

As they travel deeper into the relentless desert  they see signs that the tribes are ready to rise up against the Roman yoke and Cassius’s mission gets more and more complicated. 

Can Cassius travel into the heart of the storm and not only find the Black Stone but also retrieve it before the Emperor arrives in the East?

The Black Stone is the fourth book in Nick Brown series featuring Imperial Agent Cassius Corbulo.

This series just gets better and better and The Black Stone is the best book so far.

Unusually for series set in the Roman period the author tends to avoid the large set piece battles and the massed ranks of the legions that other books seem to fixate on.

This gives the books a very “local” feel, instead of sweeping across the whole empire the books focus on one particular area of the Empire. The last book (The Far Shore) looked at Roman colonists on the African coast and this book focuses on the Tribes of Arabia and their relationship with Rome.

The one advantage of this plot device is that you get to really understand the customs and traditions of the area. The author can devote much more time to really developing how they interact with Rome and then officials sent to administer them.

Another interesting facet of these books are the three main characters. Cassius, Indavara  and Simo are all complex and interesting characters. All three of them are struggling with who they are and maybe this is why they get on so well and the relationship really works in the books.

Cassius is the reluctant hero, unlike most “heroes” he isn’t particularity brave or proficient with weapons, he dislikes violence and would rather live a life of debauched idleness. His one strength is his sense of duty and a desires to complete his mission successful.

Cassius is an excellent character and is one of the main reasons the books work, he is very likeable without being the superhuman killing machine most heroes are portrayed as.

Both Indavara and Simo both have different internal struggles that affect their relationship with Cassius. Simo struggles between his duty to Cassius and his desire to follow the teaching of Christ and this cause some real tension between the two.

Indavara is struggling with who he is the most, a cold eyed killer he remembers nothing before his life in the arena.  This plot line is one of the most interesting because you can see the conflict between the efficient killer and the nice, normal guy that is trying to break out.

In this book the first cracks appear in the relationships between all three and their struggles between loyalty to each other and the desire for happiness.

The Black Stone is a cracking read, the plot is fast paced and the action scenes very exciting. The escape from the enemy stronghold in particular is very good.

I can’t recommend this book, or series enough and I’m glad to say it keeps getting better and better.

For 16 year old Blythe, the Horse Thieves Picnic was the highlight of her year. Her school crush had come back into town and is escorting her to it.  Little does she know how her life is going to change when she accepts a lift from Dobbs, a family friend.

Waking up in a cold dark concrete bunker, Blythe realizes she is a captive and is in an underground nuclear bunker. Why would Dobbs take her? What does he want with her?

 

For Dobbs it is all about survival, survival of himself and ultimately the human race. The Armageddon is coming and he has to be ready. He has been preparing for this his whole life. Stocking up his bunker with seeds and plants he is preparing for ‘after’, all he need is his Eve to save mankind.    

He picked Blythe because she is strong, able to survive the isolation and darkness. She will come round in time, when she understand he has saved her but Blythe only has one thing on her mind…Home.

Now this isn’t normally the type of book I would read but I wanted a break from Historical fiction and it was sitting on the bookcase so I thought, why not!

I have to say I’m glad I did because I really enjoyed it, its very different but superbly written.

As with a football match this is a book of two halves, now I don’t want to give away to many spoilers about second half of the book so this review will concentrate on the first half.

It starts off as a run of the mill kidnapping story, hope and escape are all that are in Blythe’s mind. As time goes on and Blythe tries to adjust to captivity it descends  into a  dark tale of lost hope , anger and madness.

The writing style was a little strange to begin with but as the story condenses into Blythe and her surroundings it comes together to really capture her emotions.

It was a little tough to read at times as this young girl struggled to keep her sanity and struggled to know what was real and what is a figment of her imagination.

For a story that is on the main two people and a concrete bunker it certainly maintains your attention and the narrative flows at a quick pace.

While this book is a dark story of kidnap and the struggle against despair and madness it ultimately is a story of redemption and hope.

As I said, not my usual fare but very enjoyable.

Above is released today.

 

 

Sigurd, son of  Harald is keen to make his name in battle. As a son of a Jarl he knows he must forge his own path if he is to emerge from his fathers shadow and weave his own name into the sagas.

His opportunity comes quicker than he expects when his father is betrayed by his King and a powerful Jarl. With his home destroyed, his family slaughtered and his sister captured by his enemies, Sigurd must flee for his life.

With just a few trusted friends, Sigurd roams the seas as an outlaw, hunted by his enemies and prey to every Jarl and chief keen to curry favour with the king.

Sigurad’s chances of survival seem to be slim but Sigurd is determined to wins the gods favour, especially Odin’s who he plans to attract with blood and chaos.

Travelling to the edges of society he collects together a band of desperate men, they are killers and warriors but all believe in Sigurd and his cause.

Keen to show his crew that their cause is blessed by the gods, Sigurd endures an ordeal of pain and horror which he hopes will bind the gods to his favour.

Beset on all sides by enemies, Sigurd and his crew are tested by blood and fire but his crew love and trust him for he has shown them he  blessed by the gods and a warrior born.

They will need all of their skills in blood and iron as Sigurd and his crew go up against the King and his Jarl but Siguard is relentless, he wants his sister and he wants revenge on those who brought blood and terror to his family.

God of Vengeance is a prequel to Giles Kristian’s highly acclaimed Raven Series.

Anyone who has followed this blog will know I am a huge fan of Giles Kristian’s books. I have mainly reviewed his English civil war books (Bleeding Land and Brother’s Fury)  but his Viking books are where he is in my opinion, at his best.

The ECW books are brilliant but when Giles is writing about Viking you really feel the passion and love he has for the subject.

Giles writing style is fast paced, punchy and brutal but also at times utterly beautiful as he weaves Norse saga into the action and his passion for the subject really shines through.

It never feels forced and it reads so naturally, lurching from blood and gore into simple yet almost poetic lines of saga and then back to the blood.

The action comes at you like a train as scene after scene of brutal and bloody action hit you, at times leaving you feeling drained as the sheer power of the scenes punches you in the stomach.

I’ve said it before and I will repeat it here, I doubt there is a better writer of battle scenes than Giles. He likes to liberally soak his scenes in blood and gore but it never feels gratuitous or unnecessary. They are powerful and at times very moving.

The scene where we first meet Black Loki is a fine example. Brutal, bloody and violent it is also beautifully written and the description of the various moves feel balletic at times. It is a fantastic introduction to a brilliant character.

I would like to add that this book is more than just a book of battles and blood, it is also a book of friendship, honour and tradition.

Fans of the Raven books will love this book. We get to meet all our favourite characters again and its great seeing how they all met. It is also interesting seeing the bonds and comradeship develop that were so evident in the Raven Books

I honestly can not recommend this book enough, it is Giles Kristian at his very best.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giles Website

 

Book Description:

They say that the cure for Love will make me happy and safe forever.

And I’ve always believed them.

Until now.

Now everything has changed.

Now, I’d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

Lena looks forward to receiving the government-mandated cure that prevents the delirium of love and leads to a safe, predictable, and happy life, until ninety-five days before her eighteenth birthday and her treatment, when she falls in love.

Rating: 4 Stars

Favorite Quotes:

But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.

This is a dystopian book that’s a little different from The Hunger Games & Divergent and the like.  The world isn’t ending, necessarily but the government has mandated that everyone over the age of 18 has a procedure that basically renders you incapable of love and most of the other strong emotions.  They literally cut a piece out of the brain to achieve this!  I cannot imagine a time when the majority of people would be pushing for this to happen, but here it does.  I guess I can see some appeal to not suffering through a broken heart but to cut out a piece of my brain to achieve this?  Uhhhh, no thank you!

The story follow Lena Haloway as she is preparing for her procedure.  She got about 3 months until it is scheduled and there are interviews that have to be done so that the government can pick a husband suitable for her (because if you don’t care, how could you choose for yourself?) and what she will do for a living (will she go to college or just get a job until she is married?).  They regulate the music that your allowed to listen to and the books that you can read.  Something that Oliver did that is really different from most dystopian stories is the fact that everything we once had still exists.  There are cell phones and cars and the internet.  They are all strictly monitored and not everyone has them but they are still in use.  So many times you read these types of books and its like living in the dark ages and I thought this was a nice touch.

One of my gripes about this book is that if you take away the portion of the brain that controls emotion, how does anything get done?  If you don’t care, how do you take care of your children or get up everyday and go to work and cook and clean?  Love guides almost all the things we do.  We work because we love our families and want to take care of them.   We love our children and so we play with them and discipline them and laugh with them.  If you remove all those things are you really still alive?  Aren’t other things in our lives determined by a type of love?  If you were a police man breaking up an illegal party with a bunch of teenagers involved, would you care enough to just send them home or would you release the dogs against them and beat them with clubs and would it matter either way?  Very confusing to me.  I guess if love was that simple and it could be removed without interfering with everything else, then maybe, but it simply affects too many things.

Anyway, the story drags on a bit for me once the world is set up and you get a grasp on what’s happening.  Lena and Hana (her best friend) start to break the rules and go to unauthorized parties after curfew.  Up until this point, they’ve had almost no contact with the opposite sex besides adult males (parents and teachers who have all had the procedure) and these parties are full of uncured boy their own age.  So in typical teenager fashion they are rebelling before they can’t anymore.  Then Lena meets a boy, Alex, who shows her that there is so much to be missed by having the procedure done and how much the cureds have been lying to everyone (particularly Lena).  As they get to know each other and fall in love Lena realizes that there’s no way she could ever willing have the procedure and she tries to come up with a way for them to escape.

Will they find a way or will Lena have to lose part of herself?

*SPOILERS BELOW*

First of all, I cannot believe that there wasn’t a love triangle in this book!  It was kind of nice  to not have to be vacillating between two love interests!

I was wondering throughout the whole beginning of the book if it wouldn’t turn out that Lena’s Mom was still alive.  Considering how long ago she supposedly killed herself she was still very present in Lena’s mind and that usually means something is coming up.  It’s too bad that she didn’t  get to see her before she escaped though.

I cannot BELIEVE that Alex doesn’t make it with Lena to the Wilds!  He sacrifices himself up to the regulators so that Lena can get away.  He got shot and captured but I’m not sure if he’s alive or not!  What will she do now in the Wilds all alone?  Being with Alex was the main reason she decided to run away in the first place!  Sheesh, I wonder what Oliver has planned for book 2?

Book Description:

tick
tick
tick
tick
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it’s almost
time for war.

Juliette has escaped to Omega Point. It is a place for people like her—people with gifts—and it is also the headquarters of the rebel resistance.

She’s finally free from The Reestablishment, free from their plan to use her as a weapon, and free to love Adam. But Juliette will never be free from her lethal touch.

Or from Warner, who wants Juliette more than she ever thought possible.

In this exhilarating sequel to Shatter Me, Juliette has to make life-changing decisions between what she wants and what she thinks is right. Decisions that might involve choosing between her heart—and Adam’s life.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Favorite Quotes:

My troubles have arrived fashionably late to this conversation, inconsiderate beasts that they are.

It’s the kind of kiss that makes you realize oxygen is overrated.

He’s standing right in front of me and I miss him like I haven’t seen him in years.

“I think there’s something about the impermanence of life these days that makes it necessary to etch ink into our skin,” he says.  “It reminds us that we’ve been marked by the world, that we’re still alive.  That we’ll never forget.”

Another heart wrenching book by Mafi.  She really is a wonderful writer.  I couldn’t put the book down.  I devoured it in a day and now I’m dying to know what happens next.  I’m not sure but I think this is a three book series so the next one should be the end.  I love the way your heart is practically in your throat the whole book.  There is so much emotion happening and Mafi writes in a way that you can’t help but experience everything along with the characters.

Book two picks up shortly after where book one ended.  Juliette, Adam and James have been at Omega Point for about a week and things are starting settle down.  Once the immediate danger is over Juliette has retreated back inside herself because she is now surrounded by people who know what she can do and some of them include children.  She doesn’t want to scare anyone and so she decides to just keep to herself and only really talk to and associate with Adam.  What a hard thing to have to experience at the age of 17, to try to make friends when you’ve never done something like that before.  She’s always been immediately ostracized when she was around other people and so she doesn’t know how to start getting to know people.  I thought this was a good road for Mafi to take with this story, it makes it more believable.  Because of this, she comes off even scarier than she would have if she even made some small attempt to interact with people.  The story about how she killed that little kid years ago gets out and now everyone is looking at her just like people always have.  So much for being with people who would understand her because she wasn’t the only one with some bizarre powers.  Castle thinks that there might be more to Adam being able to touch her than it just being some fluke and now he’s undergoing some test to see if there’s another reason he can touch her.  The results are devastating and now Juliette has to decide how she’s going to back away from him to keep him safe.  She learning more about her own abilities and now she’s not just worried about her touch being dangerous.  Her whole body is a weapon and she has no control over it.  On top of that monumental obstacle, she is still keeping secrets from Adam.  She hasn’t told him that Warner can touch her too and that she kissed him right before she shot him.  I don’t know why she doesn’t say anything.  She should have told him as soon as he was healed.  There was no real reason for her not to except for the part where she actually enjoyed it.  She could leave that part out of it as far as I’m concerned but the rest of it she should have told him.  You can’t keep secrets like that.  The fact is that if they really loved each other there would be no reason to keep these kinds of secrets.  Adam might be a little pissed but the fact is she did what she needed to do so that she could save him and I don’t think that he would be angry for long.

Kenji plays a much bigger role in this book and I’m so glad because I love him!  He’s like the only bright spot in the book; his personality is so bright and carefree that you can’t help but smile when he’s around.  This is not to say that he doesn’t have some serious moments and he does put Juliette in her place a few times but she really needed someone to kick her in the ass so she would quit moping around.  The reality is that she is the primary reason that The Reestablishment is hunting so fiercely for Omega Point.  Not that this wouldn’t have come to a head at some point in the future but the timetable’s been moved up and that is because of Juliette.  Warner can’t let her go and now that his father is involved he hasn’t got a choice but to find her.  After learning more about him in Destroy Me I was pretty sure he would be a big part of this book as well.  We learned even more about him and his past as him and Juliette spend some time together.

Kenji has been working with Juliette to help her figure out and hone her skills and she starts to get a little more control of it.  I was hoping this would naturally lend itself to help with her self-esteem but that doesn’t really happen.  If she should would just accept who and what she is life would start to become more manageable for her but she can’t stop seeing herself as a monster.  She’s come out of her shell a little bit and it starting to make some friends but everyone at Omega Point is preparing to battle Warner’s father and his men and they need Juliette to help them.  With the strength of her power she could be the edge that they need to win.

Will she be able to put her personal feelings aside and focus on the more important objective?  Will she be able to use her abilities against the “bad guys” to save the innocent citizens of sector 54?  How will she reconcile her feelings for Adam and Warner?

*SPOILERS BELOW*

Oh man this book was torture for me!  I’m still so unsure who I want Juliette to end up with!  Her and Adam have such an intense relationship and it’s been growing since they were kids.  Now that they have finally found each other and Adam can actually touch her things were looking up.  This was not to last, of course, and now Adam has discovered that he has an ability as well.  He’s a disruptor and that’s why he can touch her because he can cancel out her power. The problem with this is that he has to be constantly on guard in order for it to work and that can’t happen when they are getting physical with each other.  She nearly kills him at one point!  So she’s decided to stay away from him and it’s destroying both of them.  Then there’s Warner.  This is the first time that Juliette really gets to know him for who he is instead of the leader of sector 54.  When she was listening to his father tear him down and then again later when he was being held captive at Omega Point and she had to interrogate him.  He was so sweet to her and let her see a part of himself that I don’t think he’s ever shown anyone else.  The scars on his back, the way he really sees himself, the way he sees her and how she makes him feel.  It was breathtaking to witness.  Now she’s so confused about what to do and she hasn’t told Adam about any of this and she hasn’t told Warner that Adam is his brother (which shocked the hell out of me, by the way) and she’s somehow in the middle and unable to decides what to do.  She’s also hiding a lot of information about Warner.  She doesn’t tell anyone that she knows why he can touch her and what his ability is and I’m not sure why.  What could it harm?  It just makes her look worse for keeping it to herself.  I think she loves them both but who is the better choice?  Adam is so loving and caring and wants to take care of her and he loves her with a desperation that is a little frightening.  Warner can be gentle and caring and he doesn’t pull any punches.  He is who he is and he accept Juliette for who she is and what she is capable of.  He also loves her in an overwhelmingly obsessive way.  I wonder if this is something about Juliette or if it’s something in their DNA that she attracts?  Either way it’s a tough decision.

I wish that Kenji wouldn’t have stopped Juliette from killing Anderson.  That guy is a monster and someone needs to take care of him.  I understand why he did it but at the same time you don’t go to war with someone in his position if you don’t have his replacement ready to take over.  Then in the end when he just shot her in the chest and leaves!  This was the only real issue I had with the book.  Why would he have gone through the trouble of shooting her in front of Warner only to leave before he could witness what it did to him?  And, why would he have had “the girls” kidnapped to use to heal him only to leave them behind?  If anything, he should have at least taken them with him back to the capital.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how it all ends.

Book Description:

Perfect for the fans of Shatter Me who are desperately awaiting the release of Unravel Me, this novella-length digital original will bridge the gap between these two novels from the perspective of the villain we all love to hate, Warner, the ruthless leader of Sector 45.

In Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me, Juliette escaped from The Reestablishment by seducing Warner—and then putting a bullet in his shoulder. But as she’ll learn in Destroy Me, Warner is not that easy to get rid of. . .

Back at the base and recovering from his near-fatal wound, Warner must do everything in his power to keep his soldiers in check and suppress any mention of a rebellion in the sector. Still as obsessed with Juliette as ever, his first priority is to find her, bring her back, and dispose of Adam and Kenji, the two traitors who helped her escape. But when Warner’s father, The Supreme Commander of The Reestablishment, arrives to correct his son’s mistakes, it’s clear that he has much different plans for Juliette. Plans Warner simply cannot allow.

Set after Shatter Me and before its forthcoming sequel, Unravel Me, Destroy Me is a novella told from the perspective of Warner, the ruthless leader of Sector 45

Rating: 5 Stars

Favorite Quotes:

It’s a strange thing, to never know peace.  To know that no matter where you go, there is no sanctuary.  That the threat of pain is always a whisper away.

Love is a heartless bastard.  I’m driving myself insane.

I’m at a loss for words with this novella.  At the end of Shatter Me I had already firmly decided that I didn’t like Warner.  I didn’t necessarily think he was a bad person, per se, but that he wasn’t a good person either.  Now I find myself saddened by his story.  Raised by a man who never had a nice thing to say to him and never receiving any kind of affection.  It’s very similar to Juliette’s story, really, only that in Warners situation it wasn’t because people couldn’t touch him but because no one did.  It makes a lot more sense now why he felt to connected to Juliette and now that he has her journal from when she was institutionalized he’s even more determined to find her and bring her back to be with him.  I’m not sure if he’s going to have much success with this due to the way he tried to get her affections the last time but I at least have a better feel for who he is and why he is the way he is.  I think that anyone can change, given the proper motivation.  The question is, will Warner want to change and is love enough of a motivator for him?  I think we’ll find out in book two which is next up on the list.

Book Description:

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war– and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

Rating: 4.5

Favorite Quotes:

Truth is a jealous, vicious mistress that never ever sleeps, is what I don’t tell him.  I’ll never be okay.

my cheek is pressed against his chest and he smells like strength and courage and the wold is drowning in rain.

I remember you every day forever in every single broken moment of my life.

His hands are shaking so slightly, his eyes brimming with feeling, his heart thrumming with pain and affection and I want to live here, in his arms, in his eyes for the rest of my life.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book when I first picked it up.  It was a recommendation from a friend and I thought, what the hell, I’d give it a shot.  It was surprisingly good!  The writing style took a little getting used to as most of what Juliette thinks is in run on sentences.  This makes a little more sense once you figure out that she has been locked up all alone for almost a year and hasn’t spoken to another living soul for that whole time.  I think I’d be a little nutty too.  Mafi is a very emotionally descriptive writer and because of this it doesn’t take very long for you to be attached to certain characters and to really despise others.  I only used four of my favorite lines from this book above but I think I highlighted around 10 or so which is really high for me in any book.  I think she’s an amazing writer and once I got used to her writing style, I really liked it.

I’m not sure what year the book is set in but basically we’ve destroyed the planet and there’s not enough food or clean water and The Reestablishment has taken over power of everyone. They’ve decided that in order to correct the problems that society has caused they need to make several changes.  Only the strong get to survive, they are getting rid of all the books they can find and trying to create a whole new language.  All the unhealthy, weak and old are gotten rid of.  It doesn’t specifically say how this happens maybe they are all killed or maybe they are just segregated from the rest of society?  Juliette has some sort of weird power where it is dangerous for her to touch anyone.  She had an incident in a grocery store and after that she was locked up in what she assumes is an insane asylum.  One day she gets a cell mate, Adam Kent, and then things start to change a little for her.  Can you imagine not speaking to anyone for a year?  Just as she’s starting to get used to the idea of him she’s taken out of her cell and introduced to the sector leader for The Reestablishment, Warner, who informs her that he’d like her to join their cause.  He thinks that her “talent” could be really useful to them.  Which means, of course, that he would like her to help him kill the rebels.  Warner takes her to their base and sets her up with a nice room and nice clothes and good meals and thinks that this is the way to get her to agree to join him.  He’s got more on his mind than just how she can help their cause too.  Luckily for her, people can’t touch her (at least not most people) so she seems to be relatively safe for the time being.

Adam has been assigned to guard her and as time goes on we learn a little about their past and get to see their relationship develop into something very sweet and intense.  Juliette’s got to escape from The Reestablishment, especially from Warner as he’s got some kind of weird obsession with her, and Adam is going to help her to this.  When they finally get free, it’s a mad dash to find their allies and get somewhere safe.  Then everything gets turned on its head when they do finally find safety.  Will this new group be the good guys?  Will they want to use Juliette for her “talents” as well?  With her suddenly being in a situation of acceptance, how will she handle it and will her and Adam be able to stay together?

*SPOILERS BELOW*

I love the relationship between Adam and Juliette.  I wasn’t sure how this would work out in the beginning, since she can’t be touched and was relieved that Adam was the exception to this rule.  The fact that they knew each other when they were younger went a long way with me to support the intensity of their feelings for each other.  You can’t just meet someone and all of a sudden be in love with them.  I liked that they each had formed feelings for the other growing up even though they had never had a conversation before now.  Adam is so sweet to her and the fact that he remembered all the small things she did growing up for the same people who treated her so terribly was a nice touch.  I’m not sure how this will all play out as Juliette has no experience with relationships of any kind.  How will she handle something so intense?

I was disappointed to learn that Adam wasn’t the only one immune to Juliette’s dangerous touch when Warner touched her right before they escaped.  I’m not sure exactly how I feel about Warner.  I think that he is a product of his upbringing.  Even though he can be ruthlessly cold and calculated, I’m not sure that he is a bad person.  I think this is all he knows.  He seems to have real feelings for Juliette although they way he got to know her was a little stalkerish with reading all about her history and then watching her in the asylum for the past year.  He’s obsessive though and he’s not going to just let her go without some sort of fight.

I actually really loved the ending to this book!  I totally didn’t see it coming.  A whole group of people who all have different abilities.  How wonderful for Juliette to finally feel like she belongs somewhere.  Adam made a little headway with her self-esteem over the course of the few months they got to spend together but think about how horrible her life would have been.  Can you imagine not being touched by anyone for almost your entire life?  It’s pretty incredible that she’s still such a good person.  The kind of power that she has would have been so dangerous in the wrong hands.  The way her parents made her feel like a monster especially pissed me off.  As a parent you love your children NO MATTER WHAT and how could you let her feel so alone her whole life?  They could have ruined her forever.  I’m excited to see what book two brings.  I’d like to know what other kind of gifts the people of Omega Point have and how they deal with Warner and the threat he represents.

Next up is Destroy Me, a novella before Unravel Me.