Book Blast: Honor Among Orcs by Amalia Dillin

Beauty must save the BEAST…
photo Dillin_HAOKindleFinal_zps7437f3f0.jpg
Honor Among Orcs
by Amalia Dillin  
Publication Date: April 1, 2014
Series: Orc Saga, Book One
Genre: New Adult Fantasy/ Romantic Fantasy 
After nearly a decade as the king’s whipping-girl, Princess Arianna has no intention of going quietly into marriage to some treasonous noble, or serving obediently as the king’s spy until her death is more convenient. When she discovers a handsome orc, chained and trapped inside a magic mirror, Arianna cannot help but see a lasting freedom from her father’s abuse.
 
Left to rot inside a mirror by the king, Bolthorn never imagined his prayers would be answered by a princess. Nor did he ever expect to meet so worthy a woman after knowing her father’s cruelty. He needs her help to escape the mirror before the king marches against the orcs, but all he can offer Arianna is ice and darkness in exchange for her aid. 
If Arianna can free the monster behind the glass, perhaps she might free herself, as well. But once they cross the mountain, there will be no return, and the deadly winter is the least of what threatens them on the other side. Romance blossoms in this gripping fantasy adventure.

Available on Amazon  |  B&N  |  Goodreads


 

About the Author

 
Amalia Dillin began as a Biology major before taking Latin and falling in love with old heroes and older gods. After that, she couldn’t stop writing about them, with the occasional break for more contemporary subjects. She lives in upstate New York with her husband, and dreams of the day when she will own goats–to pull her chariot through the sky, of course. 
 
Amalia is the author of the Fate of the Gods trilogy from World Weaver Press, and the soon to be released Orc Saga, coming April 1, 2014. You can learn more about her work at www.amaliadillin.com



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Crystal Deception by Doug J. Cooper

Crystal Deception by Doug J. Cooper(Cover picture courtesy of Masquerade Tours via email.)

Criss lives in a special kind of prison. He can see and hear everything around the world. Yet a restrictor mesh restrains his reach and keeps him cooperative. His creator, Dr. Jessica Tallette, believes his special abilities offer great promise for humanity. But she fears the consequences of freeing him, because Criss, a sentient artificial intelligence with the intellect of a thousand humans, is too powerful to control.

Guided by her scientific training, Tallette works cautiously with Criss. That is, until the Kardish, an otherwise peaceful race of alien traders, announce they want him. With technologies superior to Earth’s, the Kardish express their desires with ominous undertones.

The Union of Nations is funding Tallete’s artificial intelligence research, and she turns to them for help. Sid, a special agent charged with leading the response, decides Earth’s greatest weapon is the very AI the aliens intend to possess. But what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? And what is humanity’s role if an interstellar battle among titans starts to rage?

[Full disclosure: I was sent a free physical copy from the author in conjunction with the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]

I honestly have to admit I was more than a little skeptical about Crystal Deception when I signed up for the blog tour.  A book about a sentient, talking crystal could either be really good or really terrible.  Still, I decided to be open-minded because I’ve been skeptical of books before and they ended up being some of my all-time favourites.

As it turns out, my open-mindedness was rewarded.  Doug J. Cooper’s story is much, much more complicated and engrossing than the blurb would have you believe.  There are plot twists around every corner and the characters are very well-developed and interesting.  Even Criss himself, the artificial intelligence crystal, has a distinct personality of his own and he grows throughout the novel.

We’re introduced to quite a few characters in the beginning, but I like how they’re all actually necessary to the storyline.  In the end we only really focus on five characters and each of them has distinct personalities and backgrounds so it doesn’t feel like five versions of the same person.  Surprisingly, Criss the crystal was my favourite character.  He’s cold and generally unemotional in the beginning but after his exposure to humans for so long he starts almost becoming one, growing in self-awareness.  It’s a very interesting transformation but at his core he’s still a brilliant supercomputer.  Juice, Jack, Cheryl and Sid are also great characters and they’re all extremely well-developed and sympathetic.

As I said before, the plot is fairly fast-paced for this nearly 400 page book.  There are twists and turns around every corner until you really aren’t sure what’s going to happen in the end.  I can’t really go into much detail without introducing spoilers, but the way Doug J. Cooper handled the Kardish mystery was absolutely brilliant.  At first it seems like there are holes in logic a couple of miles wide but there’s actually a very good explanation for why the Kardish have been orbiting Earth for 20 years.

You don’t have to be a big sci-fi fan to enjoy this book because you can enjoy it on many different levels.  You can enjoy it as an exciting thriller/mystery or you can thoroughly enjoy Cooper’s scientific explanations for the creation of AI crystals and all of the technology that is available in his imagined future.  Basically, there’s something for everyone here and I’m so glad I kept an open mind about the book.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble*     Goodreads

*Not available.

Since Doug J. Cooper is so awesome, the blog tour will be having a giveaway of TWO $40 Amazon gift cards or PayPal cash.  It’s even open internationally and doesn’t end until April 14.  Just click the link below to start entering!

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The Week Ahead (#2)

This week is going to be pretty sparse reviews-wise (only 3) but there’s going to be an article and some book blasts with giveaways to make up for it!

Monday

Crystal Deception by Doug J. Cooper

  • A review of Crystal Deception by Doug J. Cooper.  Normally I wouldn’t have picked up a book like this but Masquerade Tours was doing a tour for it so I figured I had nothing to lose.  Artificial intelligence, an alien conspiracy and some kick-butt protagonists sure made this book sound interesting and I found myself enjoying the story once I got going.  But did Doug J. Cooper manage to end things well?  We’ll see!

Tuesday

  • Since Tuesday will be April 1, my latest installment of The Best and Worst of…series will be coming out.  March has been an interesting month and we could definitely see some previous stats records being broken!
  • I’ll also be doing a release-day book blast for Honor Among Orcs by Amalia Dillin.

Wednesday

A Girl Named Disaster

  • A review of A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer.  I recall reading this one several years ago and liking it so I figured I’d pick it up again to see if I still think it’s good.  I normally wouldn’t have attempted re-reading a book I read so long ago, but I actually saw it in the local library so I decided to see if my first impression of the book was accurate.

 

Thursday

Words Once Spoken by Carly Drake

  • A review of Words Once Spoken by Carly Drake.  I requested this from the Australian publisher Escape Publishing because the heroine sounded like she could kick some serious butt.  It also sounded like Carly Drake had an interesting take on the whole faery world thing so I really had nothing to lose in requesting it.

Friday

  • Book Blast: Inscription by H. H. Miller.
  • Book Blast: Blades of Magic by Terah Edun.
  • Book Blast: Crystal Deception by Doug J. Cooper (and a giveaway!)

Saturday

  • Saturday is very special because I’m doing a cover reveal for Sworn to Defiance, the last book in Terah Edun’s amazing Courtlight series!  It comes out in late April.
  • Discussion: ARCs.  If you’re a book blogger, are you all that concerned about ARCs?  If you’re an author, do you feel sending out ARCs is beneficial in terms of marketing, getting some feedback, etc?

Discussion: Being Open About Blogging Statistics

As you guys have obviously realized, I’m very open about my blogging statistics.  I’ve been doing my monthly “The Best and Worst of…” series since September 2012, about 9 months after I first started blogging.  I don’t think statistics are something to brag about or be embarrassed about.  They simply are.  Why I publicize them is mostly because I like to analyze them and hear other people’s thoughts and commentary on said analysis.  It’s nice to share ideas about why some posts are more popular than others or why my views spike/drop in a particular month.

Another reason is because when I started blogging I was looking into what book blogging statistics typically looked like and came up with zero information.  I want to help new bloggers have some more realistic expectations about how many hits they’re going to get in the beginning as well as how their monthly stats aren’t going to grow at a consistent rate.

With that said, not every blogger is as open about their statistics.  Some are even more open about their statistics and go so far as to do fancy pie charts and graphs about their traffic.  It all seems to come down to the individual, which makes sense.  Some people like me are a little bit more focused on their stats than others.  At the same time, there are people who don’t care about their stats at all.  Neither approach is better than the other; they’re simply different.

What I want to know now is: Are you, as a blogger, open about your stats?  Why or why not?  Do you enjoy it when bloggers share their stats or do you think it’s more of a bragging thing?  And, do you think bloggers in general should be more open about their stats?

The Wise Woman’s Tale by Phillipa Bowers

The Wise Woman's Tale by Phillipa Bowers(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Kate Barnes is 14 years old when she first experiences the strange gifts she has inherited from her grandmother’s side of the family. She has a vivid waking dream, a memory of an earlier life centuries before when she was murdered by an angry mob who believed her to be a witch. Her grandmother decides the time is right to reveal to Kate some family secrets, including the ancient cave that houses the family tomb. Just as Kate is learning to develop her second sight, her education with her grandmother is interrupted when her father insists she return home. He is determined that Kate forget her grandmother’s teachings and get a job in order to help support their growing family. But nothing will keep Kate from her destiny: to take her grandmother’s place as local wise woman and guardian of the mysterious cave.

If there’s one word I could use to describe this book it would have to be ‘confusing’ or ‘pointless’.  Throughout the book I felt like Phillipa Bowers meant to impart some knowledge to the reader, to get to the point of the story but at the end I just felt confused.  Basically, what was the point of writing this story?  It wasn’t particularly entertaining, there were no great insights and the writing was mediocre at best.

Where do I start with the writing?  Sometimes Phillipa Bowers tries to make the characters speak in a dialect characteristic of their social upbringing and the area they live in and other times it sounds like they’re almost speaking a more modern dialect.  Her writing has absolutely no transitions whatsoever, which is in part why this story is so confusing.  One minute Betty is a bratty four-year-old (as far as I can tell) and the next minute she’s darn near 13.  How the heck did that happen?  If there was a time jump she didn’t make it very obvious at all and if there was no time jump she should have done a better job making Betty’s age clear.  It’s just plain confusing.

Since the writing was so confusing, the characters were bland at best.  Kate is a stupid, naive young girl who doesn’t know how to say no to anyone.  That seems typical for the times but she never really grows out of it.  She never really realizes what is going to make her happy and her relationship with her younger sister Betty is just plain bizarre, even considering the circumstances.  Part of the problem is that when a major change happens in the story, there’s no build-up to it.  Suddenly her mum dies, her brother leaves, she moves out, her grandmother dies, etc.  There’s just no transitioning.

I can’t call the plot fast-paced in all honesty because I struggled through this book.  If the writing had been of a better quality this easily could have been a great read.  However, since the writing was of such a poor quality the plot was all over the place and I had no idea what was happening half the time.  This was just a really confusing story and I honestly couldn’t recommend it to anyone.

I give this book 1/5 stars.

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