series books

Archangel’s Heart by Nalini Singh

 in Book Reviews / Books / Series by

Archangel's Heart by Nalini Singh

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Summary

“One of the most vicious archangels in the world has disappeared. No one knows if Lijuan is dead or has chosen to Sleep the long sleep of an immortal. But with her lands falling into chaos under a rising tide of vampiric bloodlust, a mysterious and ancient order of angels known as the Luminata calls the entire Cadre together to discuss the fate of her territory.

Accompanying her archangelic lover Raphael to the Luminata compound, guild hunter-turned-angel Elena senses that all is not as it seems. Secrets echo from within the stone walls of the compound, and the deeper Elena goes, the uglier the darkness. But neither Raphael nor Elena is ready for the brutal truths hidden within—truths that will change everything Elena thinks she knows about who she is…

Nothing will ever be the same again.”

Review

Once again I am not disappointed in Nalini Singh’s books! I have been waiting since the last book, Archangel’s Enigma, came out. That was a side book with side characters however. This was with the main characters and it was following Lijuan again and her issues, however, she wasn’t actually in it. It followed a new group, called the Luminata. And yes, I did pre-order it so I got it the day it came out on November 1st. Which was SOOO exciting. Haven’t done that for a while.

Essentially they are Angels who search for enlightenment. But then shit hits and the fan and these secret people seem to be keeping a really  big secret that is bad. As it always happens to be with secret societies.

Now I’m not going to talk about the story exactly as you need to read it for yourself. And the fact that this is book 9 I believe means that you either love this series so far or hate it, so if you’ve been reading it, I just need to tell you that it has Raphael and Elena in it and you’ll buy it.

But if you’re expecting lots of steamy romance in this book, be prepared for a surprise. Out of all of the books, this one is in my top few that has the least amount of romance in it. This was about the story and the entanglement of characters and how they relate to Elena. Which, by the way, everything does. I’m waiting for Ms. Singh to just write that Elena has some prophecy about her or something because one way or another she is somehow intertwined into the lives of all of these Archangels and she has no clue how. Just one day she woke up and BAM, she found out her lover was an Archangel and people knew her ancestors, people who she herself doesn’t even know, and she’s somehow intricately entangled into their lives. I mean how cool is that? I wish my life was that exiting!

Anywhoooo, there were a lot of characters in this book as you had the new characters from the Luminata and then the entire Cadre was there as well. My only disappointment with this book was that the Legion was not in it. Yeah, remember those flying things from the end of the last book which were all cool and mysterious? I really thought they may have been in this book. But they were only mentioned once when Elena was talking about the new marking on Raphael’s head. So they were not talked about whatsoever which was kind of sad. But it was okay as we had this new group of characters which was interesting.

The story was not predictable as the ending I never saw coming and it ends with you wanting more and wanting some questions to be answered. So of course, I am going to have to wait another year for the next book to come out. Which really sucks. But it’s alright, I’ll have to read other good books in the mean time.

Also I love the cover. Just look at it and you’ll know why. I don’t really need to explain it. I mean those wings! That dress….ugh! Love it!

Which, BY THE WAY, I have not been doing. Schoolwork shoves wonderful literature in my face but it’s literature which is either in another language or is non-fiction and no one would ever read. Sadly. So finding time to read for fun is difficult. Except in the case of this book, I MADE time. Which I will be doing more and more now as I miss reading and boy is it a way to de-stress.

So anyhow, I really loved this book and it is another one in the series which you MUSTTTTT read. If you’ve read it, what was your opinion on it? If you haven’t read it, will you? And if you haven’t started the series….you’d better!

Happy Reading!

 

Archangel’s Heart by Nalini Singh – PREORDER NOW

 in Books / Fantasy / Series by

NEW BOOK RELEASE EVERYONE!

Yes, I am still alive. Just casually been dying with school work. But I have revived for a fangirl post.

OKAY SO NALINI SINGH IS RELEASING ANOTHER BOOK ON NOVEMBER 1st. It’s the 9th book in the Guild Hunter Series. Like I have already pre-ordered this and plan to read it within 24 hours of it arriving.

I had to let my readers know because I hope you all my remember my love with her books through my interview with her as well as my review of the general series.

So I just needed to let you all know. Head over to Amazon and purchase it here!

Gol (The Legends of Ansu) by J.W. Webb

 in Adventure / Book Events / Book Reviews / Books / Fantasy / Older Readers / Otherworldly / Young Adult by

Gol Book CoverSummary

“An island beset by the Sea God’s wrath. Once a mighty kingdom, now six provinces torn apart by treacherous barons. In one province, two young lovers strive to stay together when all else prises them apart.

Lissane and Erun must survive to guide their people through the coming storm. The odds are stacked against them. Erun, dreamer and fool, is chosen for a dark path, whilst Lissane is given away by her father the baron to wed the brutal son of a rival ruler. Meanwhile, at the far side of the world, a sorcerer has freed the fire demon, Ashmali, setting off a chain of events that could ultimately bring about Gol’s long foretold ruin.

Caught between rising seas, civil war, and approaching fire, the continent’s time is fast running out. Gol is book one in the forthcoming Legends of Ansu series. Within lies an epic tale of love, hatred, vengeance and destruction. In Gol, the high courage of a few individuals is all that stands against the will of fickle gods and the treachery of men.”

–From Amazon.com

Review

This was a fantastic book! I probably never would have found this book had it not been for the Books & The Bear book tour. I never really got into the Lord of the Rings series and was never really into that kind of story line where there were tons of characters and epic quests. I don’t know, I always found them kind of cliche. However, this book was really really good and overall was highly enjoyable.

First thing I will mention is that it had a LOT of characters all from different provinces and kingdoms and such. I wasn’t aware of this, but at the end of the book (I read the ebook as that’s what’s emailed for book tours and such), was the list of characters which I wish I knew about before I started the book because it would have helped keep track of who was who a little bit more. I would sometimes read and think I was reading about one character and something drastic would happen and I’d be like ‘no, he would never do that’ and then I’d realize that it was a completely different character than who I thought it was. That wasn’t a massive problem but it meant I would sometimes need to go back to see what I had just read again or take a few minutes to straighten out who was who exactly.

With all of these characters, there was a lot of character development as well. Sometimes it was for the better and sometimes it wasn’t. Which was definitely nice because it wasn’t a  fairy-tale ending. That helped to make it more realistic and kept you on your toes a lot more.

The next thing I wanted to mention is the age group which this book is for. I would definitely recommend this book for older readers due to the fact that there was sex, language and a lot of violence.

The sex was not exactly graphic, but there was a fair amount of it and it was quite….I guess the word would be violent. In the world, as well as times, that the book was set, women weren’t necessarily, well usually, were not married to men whom they loved. So with Lissanes love life, her sex scenes were generally a little more along the lines of rape, as that is kind of what it was like (think Game of Thrones for those of you who watch it). Also a lot of the men were pig and so they would just have sex with women left, right and center without caring about what they did. So in that aspect it was kind of graphic but it was true to what it would be like though.

The language wasn’t excessive but with certain characters, to highlight the fact that they were rude and uncivilized, they may use more foul language than others. So there were moments when words were used that definitely were not appropriate for younger audiences.

For the violence, there was a lot of that. Whether it be from torture scenes to just general fighting. It generally wasn’t terribly graphic, but there was lots of threats of removing the male member from people, as well as various torture scenes that weren’t that vivid but if you’re like me who reads and really gets into the book, your mind makes up wonderful images, so in that sense it was kind of brutal.

I personally didn’t mind the sex, language and violence as it added character to the book. In my opinion it stayed quite true to what the medial sort of times would have been like with rivaling kingdoms and magical kinds of creatures.

And that’s another thing. There was magic and sorcery and demons but it wasn’t something that took up the entire book. It was a theme that kept appearing and it wasn’t really a massive thing until book two (the book was split into two books). Then Erun went on an epic quest to find his love. That kind of reminded me of The Princess Bride, in a few aspects now that I look back on it while I write this review.

But overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was about 550 pages so it took me a little while to read, but I finished it and thought it was pretty creative and a nice change from all of the other stuff out there.

I highly do recommend it. But a warning. Prepare yourself for a fantastical journey. You may just encounter fire demon along the way.

Happy reading!!!

Click here to purchase the book.

A Bargain in Silver (Solis Invicti Book I) by Josie Jaffrey

 in Book Reviews / Books / Fantasy / Older Readers / Young Adult by

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Summary

“After an attack by the infected, Emmy is rescued by a stranger who introduces her to the world of the Silver. Desperate to escape subjugation and confused by her attraction to him, she gathers what remains of her surrogate family and plans to make a break for freedom.  But she can’t hide from him for long.

Despite her efforts to resist, she is drawn further into the intrigues of the mysterious Silver through the agency of their ruler, but an attempt on her life soon makes it clear that he is unable to protect her from the political machinations of his race. As the connection between them deepens she must choose between her desire and her will to rebel, but how can she trust his intentions when everyone is after her blood?”

–From her website

Review

So Josie reached out to me over this book, asking me to review book one, and I have to say I absolutely loved it. It’s a romance book with like this love triangle kind of thing going on.

It was a romance book but it is not classified as erotic due to the fact that the fact that the sex scenes were not graphic. So you didn’t really need to worry about the love scenes being detailed, which was nice. It was more of a tension kind of thing.

One thing I really liked is that the fact that Emmy, the female protagonist, is a strong female lead. As you all should know, I LOVE strong female leads. Women who fight and aren’t afraid to state their opinion and go against the crowd and stand up to others. Emmy was definitely that. I mean come on, she stood up to vampires…um, sorry, I mean Silvers. That is awesome and I give her props for that. So automatically this book got a positive view for me.

I really liked the idea as well that there were Weepers (bad vampires) and the Silvers (who were the good guys). It’s interesting to think that the vampires would be split into two groups. Aristocrats and then everyone else. And the humans just being stuck there, or the few humans who were left, not that there were many. I have never come across this kind of idea before. I’ve come across good and bad vampires in books, but this was more like zombies versus vampires as the Weepers were like a plague and infected vampires and the Silvers were the ones who needed to deal with them.

The book had a lot more going on than romance as there was some type of political stuff going on. It was post-apocalyptic so it was based in a New World Order, and that kind of idea was quite interesting. In other books that are set after a kind of apocalypse, it is a free for all and everyone needs to fend for themselves or that the humans are scrambling to get some form of government. In this, after the apocalypse, the Silvers were waiting for the world to be in turmoil so that they would be able to come forward and take control, and use the humans as cattle. But it was definitely an interesting perspective of how it occurred.

My only complaint was that the set up to the post-apocalypse was kind of fast. In only a handful of pages, the world that everyone knew had come to the end and the vampires were in charge. I would have liked if it took a little more and if there was a little bit more of a war or something, but that was really my only complaint about it. A little bit more of a set up.

But this is a series so maybe something is explained later in the other books.

Overall I really did enjoy it and recommend that it’s given a read. It is short. Only about 250 pages or so, so it is not that big of a read and won’t take too long at all. I read it in about 2 days.

Click here to purchase it.

And happy reading!

What Order Do I Read The Star Wars Books?

 in Fantasy / Fiction / Movies by

What Order you ask?

Well Order 66. Or the First Order…

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Too soon?….Sorry. (Yes, that was a Star Wars joke – or a lame attempt at one).

Anyway, with all of these movies coming out and all of these new books and graphic novels, the question is which one do you read first? Especially with all these side universes and such, it can get so confusing. But thankfully BookRiot came up with the list of where the books fit in with the movies and with the other books.

It’s genuinely quite useful, especially if you’re looking for it to all make sense.

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