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Karou lives a double life. On the one hand she is a seventeen year old art student in Prague, only concerned about fending off her ex-boyfriend. On the other, she runs errands for Brimstone, a decidedly non-human being who raised her. Then one day, she meets an angel…
This is the premise of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone. It does get a lot more complex than that, but this is an adequate summary for the purpose of this review.
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The Cross is the second novel in Scott G. Mariani’s Vampire Federation series. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed the first instalment, The Uprising, when it was a Kindle freebie, I was more than happy to pay for The Cross – although currently it is only 99p on Kindle.
The Cross opens more or less immediately after the end of The Uprising. Our leading man, Joel, is still in Romania after the showdown with Gabriel Stone and his “traditional” vampires, which were rebelling against the Federation, which polices vampire behaviour. Joel is not the same man as he was in The Uprising however, and has to come to terms with the monumental change in his life. Alex, a vampire and Federation agent, returns to London to report on what happened. However, the story is far from over, and neither is the battle against the traditionalists.
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While browsing the recent selection of free Kindle books on Amazon, I was quite pleased to come across The Vampire’s Warden by S.J. Wright. I have quite a weak spot for supernatural fiction, particularly vampire fiction, and although there is plenty of it cheap on Amazon, it’s not often I spot a free book.
The full title as given on Amazon is The Vampire’s Warden, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #1), indicating it was the start of a series. The main character is Sarah, who in her early twenties has lost both her parents and is now responsible for running the family’s rural Inn. Things take a bit of an odd turn however when a stranger named Alex turns up and claims that her mother has sent him – her mother who was supposed to have died in a car crash when Sarah was just a little girl.
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The current popularity of supernatural or fantasy fiction means that there is an awful lot of rubbish out there. Searching through the cheaper options available as Kindle ebooks is like negotiating a minefield – you know that there is every chance you will download a clanger. At only 49p, I thought there was nothing to lose with John Lenahan’s Shadowmagic – the low price could indicate it was rubbish, but at least I wasn’t risking spending a lot on it.
Shadowmagic’s main character is Conor, an eighteen year old boy who lives with his eccentric father. His father seems to live in the past and in a world of mythology, but soon Conor sees his father in a different light once they are both pulled into Tir-Na-Nog, the Celtic land of immortality, where Conor’s father was once a prince.
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The Straight Razor Cure by Daniel Polansky is a blend of noir crime with fantasy fiction. It is set in Low Town, a crime-ridden and deprived region of a larger fictional world which is not described in detail. The hero of the novel is “The Warden”, whose history is gradually revealed during the course of the book. We learn early on that he is now a drug dealer (although he seems to consume at least as many drugs as he sells), a dominant figure in his own territory within boundaries agreed with similar neighbouring figures. He seems to be on good terms with most of the populace, though quickly and violently dealing with any incursions from other dealers into his space. In due course, it comes apparent that previously he had been a member of a law enforcement agency, although the events which led him to his current occupation are never quite made clear.
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The House of Night series by mother and daughter team P.C. and Kristin Cast is one of the most popular young adult supernatural series. Following young vampire Zoey Redbird and her friends at the Tulsa House of Night school, it is gripping and action-packed. When recently checking Amazon to see when the next book is due for release (October! Boo!) I came across the newly published Dragon’s Oath: A House of Night Novella, and immediately downloaded it to my Kindle.
Dragon Lankford is one of the professors at the House of Night. As Sword Master, he is a strong teacher and popular with his students. His wife Anastasia also taught at the school prior to her death during the struggles the school has faced. In Dragon’s Oath, we are taken back to the nineteenth century, when Dragon was a student and Anastasia was a new professor.
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How do you even begin to write about a book like this? A book so unlike any you have read before, a book so absorbing, so original, so intelligent and so magnificently written? A book that makes you want to rush home from work just so that you can pick it up again and find out what happens next? It’s not any easy thing to do, I can tell you. I am sure that many people have been put off trying the His Dark Materials series (of which this is the second installment) because it has been unfairly labelled as children’s fiction; let me assure you that this is a story that works on many levels and is just as good for adults as it is for children. It is the best fantasy adventure I have read since the Chronicles of Narnia (and that, for me, is saying a lot). So, how do I begin? Well, the opening seems like a good place…
“Will tugged at his mother’s hand and said, ‘Come on, come on…’. But his mother hung back. She was still afraid.
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My Blood Approves is the first novel in the series of the same name by Amanda Hocking. I discovered the series while browsing cheap supernatural fiction on the Kindle store, and thought it sounded reasonable for the bargain price of 70p.
Since the first time I read the Twilight saga, I’ve been searching for more series that had a similar effect on me – like Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings before it, the stay-up-all-night-to-finish-reading effect. I’ve read some great stories, some mediocre, and a reasonable amount of rubbish. Could My Blood Approves be the one?
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Uprising by Scott G. Mariani is the first novel in what promises to be a series called Vampire Federation. I came across it on Amazon whilst browsing for free titles for my new Kindle – Uprising was free at the time although it is not any longer. As a fan of vampire fiction I thought this would be worth a go – after all, if it turned out to be rubbish it wouldn’t really matter given that it was free.
The vampires of Uprising are not “out” to humans, but they are reasonably organised. They have a Federation which sets rules and monitors the vampire population. It produces drugs which enable vampires to go out in sunlight, memory blocker for the victims, and a poison which kills vampires if they have the slightest contact with it. They do not, however, have any care for humans – vampires live among humans, but humans are merely a food source to them.
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Awakened is the eighth novel in the popular House of Night series by P.C. Cast, along with daughter Kristen. In the beginning of the series, Zoey Redbird, a teenager in Tulsa, is Marked to become a vampyre, but it soon becomes clear she is not just any vampyre due to the strange and sophisticated markings that are given to her by the Goddess Nyx. She soon finds herself embroiled in events beyond her control, as evil threatens her and her friends.
Having read all the previous novels, I was keen to continue the story with Awakened. After the grief of book six (Tempted) and the uncertainty of what would happen in book seven (Burned), Awakened opens with Zoey and her Guardian, Stark, enjoying some well-earned rest.
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“Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings at all.” Philip Pullman.
Not so long ago, my search for something new and interesting to read brought me to the covers of “Northern Lights” by Philip Pullman. For those of you unfamiliar with the title, it is book one of the His Dark Materials trilogy; a publishing phenomenon that I’m sure will have filtered into your consciousness on some level over the past few years. Now, I am not normally one to read children’s books (although in my defence, the author does actually say that his did not intend this to be aimed at any particular target audience; it was for adults as much as for children) but I was motivated to read this after a number of promising personal recommendations, and good reviews.
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My Love Lies Bleeding is the first novel in the Drake Chronicles by Alyxandra Harvey. Published in 2010, it’s one of the newer offerings in the recent slew of teenage vampire novels.
The main characters are Solange and Lucy. Solange is the only female vampire ever born, not created, so she’s quite a hot commodity – everyone wants to either kill her or kidnap her, to have her genes in their family. Lucy is her best friend, a human. The vampires in Solange’s family are born, but go through the “bloodchange” to become a vampire around their sixteenth birthday; a date which is fast approaching for Solange. But will she survive it in the midst of all the danger which surrounds them?
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