GIVEAWAY TIME!!!!

To celebrate Heir of Fire's upcoming release, I will be giving away a Throne of Glass tote bag ( ITS SO PRETTYYY) and some super-awesome bookmarks- perfect for using when reading...and rereading the ToG series!

This is my first giveaway- so I hope you all like! Im very excited for this!

 
Sorry international people but this ones only open to UK residents because of postage costs.


REMEMBER: Heir of Fire is released in the UK on September 11th!! GO PREORDER!! and then prepare yourself to re-join Celaena in her adventures...id keep a box of tissues handy...










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Take Back the Skies

By Lucy Saxon

 

Catherine Hunter is the daughter of a senior government official in Anglya meaning she is privileged, however she longs to escape the confines of her life before her father can marry her off. So, Cat stows away on the ship the Stormdancer hoping to get away.

 

For 19 years old, Lucy Saxons first book is pretty good. She certainly has a lot of potential talent which I’m sure will improve as she writes more.

 

The plot of TBTS is fairly good, it has a dystopian ‘overthrow a terrible government’ feel to it but different and in a completely new world. However, at the start of the book, Cat’s objective is to escape her life, but we don’t get enough detail on it to know exactly what she’s escaping from- she dislikes her father, but doesn’t every teenager at some point and her mother still lives and she’s ill, doesn’t she mind abandoning her? I felt it needed more on her father cruel behaviour so that she felt forced to leave rather than seemingly like a stroppy runaway teen.

After Cat leaves there is too big a gap in the plot where nothing really happens. She just lives happily on the Stormdancer with nothing building in the background and you wonder what the rest of the story is going to be about. It leaves you bored just waiting for the plot to pick up.

Once things do pick up, sometimes you’re left thinking, really? The main characters have snuck in to a secret government building and to avoid being caught hide in a cupboard, where they begin talking. Surely, they couldn’t be at all surprised when they’re shortly after discovered and hauled out.

 

The characters I think could’ve been better developed with more stand out individual characteristics, you had the stereotypical enigmatic male with a dark past he doesn’t wish to speak of. He didn’t seem in anyway different to past heroes. The heroine was a usual stubborn girl wanting to escape her life and finds herself falling in love with the first boy she encounters.

 

The language used seemed unnatural and forced almost. The dialogue just didn’t flow but seemed disjointed; it needed to be more conversational.

 

The world building was good; Lucy has built an odd and new world with hopefully opportunity for later books set in it. It was easy to slip into the world and imagine it and want to be aboard the Stormdancer.

 

The end of the book I feel isn’t satisfying, you’re left hanging and angry that the end just isn’t nice. After finishing, I liked that the end was different and sort of angered me because it made it stand out but I felt saddened by it in an already quite dark book. It didn’t change and end lightly, which was surprising.

 

Overall, I’d give this book 2 stars out of 5.

The Bone Season

By Samantha Shannon

 

“Nothing’s worse than a story without an end.”

 

On Goodreads the description of The Bone Season is:

It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others’ minds.

Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.
But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly—as soldiers in their army.
Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.

 

The Bone Season is a gripping debut novel from Samantha Shannon. The pages really do turn themselves, you get swept up on page one and aren’t released until you’re finished, where you’re left reeling and eager for the next ride.

 

Samantha has been named the next JK Rowling by some critics, which is enough for anyone to be encouraged to pick up this book. The subject of the book is very different to that of Harry Potter, but Samantha’s talent for writing at such a young age in her first book really does shine and promise of amazing things to come. She has a beautiful style that is a joy to read. It feels great knowing that a young British woman has written this, not much older than me, she’s really leading young women into writing. The book has a very British feel to it which I love.

 

The world of The Bone Season is so vivid and feels real. You feel as though the world could really be like this in 50 years as she blends modern things with new future ideas. Samantha has clearly thought a great deal about the world of The Bone Season including all the many different orders of Clairvoyance, which are shown at the beginning of the book, and what I like is that the detail is there for fans to enjoy and yet isn’t totally essential for the book, you don’t have to try to learn all the names and what they mean to read the book, you can enjoy it without them. It really helps to have that part of the book separate from the story as many readers don’t like to have information dumped on them heavily at intervals during the book. The very start does info-dump as it lays down the foundations but the odd thing you may not understand isn’t crucial to the storyline.

Any questions at the content of the story can be referenced at the Glossary in the back of the book which helps with the world building especially.

 

The storyline really sticks in your head due to its difference from any other. It doesn’t feel like another overdone storyline but rather something fresh and brand new.

 

The main character Paige, is very likeable and relatable, you really get behind her the whole way hope for her happiness. As the story evolves, you see more and more of her and the layer are peeled back and past is dug up which makes you really admire her for enduring and staying so strong.

 

The growing love story between Warden and Paige is extremely enjoyable, it is subtle and doesn’t totally overshadow the actual storyline, and well paced. You never think it unbelievable or too rushed, but just enjoy the ride. It isn’t a big romantic story, which it may grow to be, but the very start of what could develop into an epic love.

 

The book series is supposed to have around seven books, at the minute I don’t know how the story will last that long, but hopefully that promises an expanding storyline that we will encounter in the second book.

 

I hope the second novel will bring alive the more secondary characters in the story as they’re more there to develop the story and act as expendables who help develop Paige and Warden’s characters at the minute. I’m fairly certain this will happen with characters like Jaxon and Nick on the scene who have GREAT potential to become favourite characters. The spark is there.

 

The end of the book leaves you with questions and an eagerness to find out what could possibly now.

I would highly recommend The Bone Season to anyone. It is a fantastic story with a promising future, the rights to a film of it have been picked up by Andy Serkis’s company Imaginarium.

 

4.5 out of 5 stars!

 

Can’t wait for the second book The Mime Order to be released!

 

 

3 Authors I Think Deserve More Attention

 

 

Cristin Terrill

 

Cristin is the author of All Our Yesterdays:

 

What would you change?

Imprisoned in the heart of a secret military base, Em has nothing except the voice of the boy in the cell next door and the list of instructions she finds taped inside the drain.

Only Em can complete the final instruction. She’s tried everything to prevent the creation of a time machine that will tear the world apart. She holds the proof: a list she has never seen before, written in her own hand. Each failed attempt in the past has led her to the same terrible present—imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic man called the doctor while war rages outside.

Marina has loved her best friend, James, since they were children. A gorgeous, introverted science prodigy from one of America’s most famous families, James finally seems to be seeing Marina in a new way, too. But on one disastrous night, James’s life crumbles, and with it, Marina’s hopes for their future. Marina will protect James, no matter what. Even if it means opening her eyes to a truth so terrible that she may not survive it... at least, not as the girl she once was. Em and Marina are in a race against time that only one of them can win.

All Our Yesterdays is a beautifully written, flawlessly plotted novel, full of sacrifice, love...and time travel. Its such an addictive read. For Cristin's first novel, its very evident she's destined for great things!

Maria V. Snyder

Maria is the author of many books, her first one being Poison Study:

Choose: A quick death…Or slow poison...

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.

And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear...

Each of Maria's books is just as amazing as the last, she creates brilliant fantasy worlds filled with magic and romance. If you like authors who write a few series' set in the same world in different places (sort of like The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices). Even better, Maria's writing more books set in Ixia/Sitia which come out next year, so more magicky awesomeness!

C.J Redwine

C.J is the author of the Couriers Daughter Trilogy (the last one: Deliverance, has just been released!).
The first book is Defiance:

While the other girls in the walled city-state of Baalboden learn to sew and dance, Rachel Adams learns to track and hunt. While they bend like reeds to the will of their male Protectors, she uses hers for sparring practice.

When Rachel's father fails to return from a courier mission and is declared dead, the city's brutal Commander assigns Rachel a new Protector: her father's apprentice, Logan—the boy she declared her love to and who turned her down two years before. Left with nothing but fierce belief in her father's survival, Rachel decides to escape and find him herself.

As Rachel and Logan battle their way through the Wasteland, stalked by a monster that can't be killed and an army of assassins out for blood, they discover romance, heartbreak, and a truth that will incite a war decades in the making

C.J is another great fantasy author who just draws you into her world with her gripping storyline. Defiance is filled with love, revenge... and a wormy dragon thing!


Each author has a strong female protagonist, which is just AWESOME.

Also, each of the books has REALLY PRETTY covers.