From the Ashes by K.L. Kerr

From the Ashes by K. L. Kerr(Cover picture courtesy of K. L. Kerr’s website.)

For a simple eternity, all Michael Roman has to do is let it all go: the mystery surrounding his maker’s murder, the memory of his mortal life, and the basic idea that killing is wrong.

“From the Ashes” chronicles Michael’s early vampire life spent fighting on the Tournament circuit and falling for another vampire’s familiar.

This is a Blood of Ages Companion Novel. It can be read independently of or in addition to the Blood of Ages series by K.L. Kerr; if reading as part of the series, it is advised to read at any point after “The Genesis (Blood of Ages, #1)”.

[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

In The Genesis we got to see Fox through the eyes of another person.  But in some ways I actually like the companion novel From the Ashes even better because we get to see Michael’s evolution from regular guy to Fox, the toughened Tournament fighter.

The plot is not exactly fast-paced in the beginning because it focuses more on Michael’s character and his transformation to a vampire.  Of course in the beginning he has no idea he’s a vampire until the mysterious Vincent rescues him from a police officer determined to turn him in to the ACA.  After that the plot is a little slow while Michael gains his bearings in this terrifying new world of vampires.  But then the plot starts to pick up when Vincent decides it’s time Michael became useful and throws him into the Tournaments to prove his fighting capabilities.

It’s there that poor Michael meets Amy, who is the familiar of Chino, the Tournament organizer.  Falling for another vampire’s familiar isn’t exactly the greatest thing to do and it explains why Michael is so distant toward Catrina in The Genesis.  Sometimes companion novels or novellas don’t really add any backstory or greater understanding of the world of the original novels, but this is certainly not the case with From the Ashes.

Sure, I suppose you could read From the Ashes before you read The Genesis, but then The Genesis won’t be nearly as awesome if you already know Fox’s tragic backstory.  I don’t think reading From the Ashes will be required to understand the second book in Blood of Ages, but it certainly gives Fox and Dayson city a lot more depth.  If you loved the first book, I highly recommend reading this companion novel.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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*Not available.

The Hittite by Ben Bova

The Hittite by Ben Bova(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

This is the tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search of the vicious slave traders who kidnapped his wife and sons.  He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy.  There he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles.  Lukka is the man who built the Trojan horse for crafty Odysseus, who toppled the walls of Jericho for the Isrealites, who stole beautiful Helen–the legendary face that launched a thousand ships–from her husband Menaleus after the fall of Troy and fought his way across half the known world to bring her safely to Egypt.

I wasn’t really sure what I expected of The Hittite, but it certainly wasn’t what I got.  The opening scene takes place amidst the chaos of the sack of Hattusas where Lukka is desperately trying to keep discipline in the garrison while finding his family.  The once mighty Hittite empire has been thrown into chaos by a bloody civil war and once Lukka learns that his wife and sons are bound for Troy as slaves, there’s only one place he can go.  Except when he gets there, not all is as it seems.

The thing I like most about The Hittite is how Ben Bova portrayed all of the famous characters from the proud (and vain) Achilles to Helen.  I love how Achilles is the proud fool he was in the original legend while Helen is an independent woman desperate to survive in a world where women are, for the most part, chattel.  The most heartbreaking part of the whole novel is when we hear Helen’s tale from Apet her nursemaid and see just how much she really did suffer in Sparta.  It’s a much more realistic portrayal of Spartan life than I’ve ever seen and had I been in Helen’s place I would have done the exact same thing: use Paris to escape to Troy.

The other thing I liked was that Ben Bova’s writing style has the perfect balance for historical fiction.  He is able to describe everything so that I felt like I was there, but he never really gets into the long-winded descriptions that some authors of historical fiction do.  I liked how he explained the implausible things from the Trojan myth (Achilles’ weakness, the Trojan horse) in a way that makes you believe it really could have happened that way and the story could have just grown into something more.

Overall, I absolutely loved The Hittite.  I wasn’t going to pick it up at first, but it was in the bargain bin at my local bookstore so I figured I had nothing to lose.  Trust me, you’re pretty much guaranteed to fall in love with The Hittite once you start reading it.  It’s well worth the cover price.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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Desired by Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs

Desired by Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs(Cover picture courtesy of Paperblog.)

Betrayed…A modern-day ghost story with a twist.

Kidnapped on her way home from work, Maggie is thrown into a terrifying world of shadow. Narrowly escaping death, she flees her kidnappers only to come face to face with her greatest fear.

Helping a dying stranger, Maggie unleashes a terrible curse when she saves Robert. Now with only a week to break the curse, time is running out as they are locked in a deadly fight with forces that will stop at nothing to destroy them.

Intensely romantic and thrilling, Desired by Shadow portrays the struggle between redemption, retribution and the desire to find a love that transcends time.

If you enjoy persnickety gods, supernatural creatures and ghosts with the ability to manifest physical bodies, then Desired by Shadow is for you.

[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

What I found interesting about Desired by Shadow is that it continues on where Lost in Shadow left off by telling the story of someone else.  That someone else is Maggie, a woman who can see Shadow Walkers and is kidnapped by the Day Walkers to spot them so they can be hunted down and killed.  She already knows a little about this mysterious world when she accidentally saves Robert, the charming pirate from the last book, on the anniversary of his death while trying to escape from the Day Walkers.  As for Robert, he is a typical playboy and doesn’t want anything to do with the whole soulmates thing his friend Colin and Emily went through.

Maggie is a very different woman from Emily in the first book.  She’s spent most of her life out on the streets and things are finally starting to look up when she’s kidnapped by the Day Walkers.  Maggie is a very capable woman and successfully escapes from the clutches of the Day Walkers all on her own, which was quite impressive.  However, what I like the most about her character is that she learns to trust again.  She learns to trust people in general, but more importantly she learns to love and trust Robert when circumstances bring them together.

The romance between Robert and Maggie develops similar to Colin and Emily’s but there are some nice, notable differences so it doesn’t feel like a complete repeat episode.  The only thing I can really criticize is that the proofreading doesn’t seem to be as good as it was in the last novel.  I caught way more typos than before and I’m not sure if it’s because I just noticed more or that there were actually more.  None of them really take away from the story, but it’s certainly worth mentioning.  They may have been corrected in the actual ebook now that it’s been out a few weeks and I was reading an ARC through NetGalley.

If you liked Lost in Shadow, you’ll probably like Desired by Shadow even more.  It expands on the world-building from the first book, the characters are believable and the plot is fast-paced if a little predictable.

I give this book 4.5/5 stars.

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Doomed by Tracy Deebs

Doomed by Tracy Deebs(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Beat the game. Save the world.

Pandora’s an average teen, glued to her cell phone and laptop, until the day her long-lost father sends her a link to a mysterious site featuring photos of her as a child. Curious, Pandora enters the site, unwittingly unleashing a global computer virus that plunges the whole world into panic: suddenly, there’s no Internet. No cell phones. No traffic lights, hospitals or law enforcement. Only Pandora’s Box, a virtual-reality game created by Pandora’s father, remains up and running. Together with her neighbors, gorgeous stepbrothers Eli and Theo, Pandora must follow the photographs from her childhood in an attempt to beat the game and track down her father—and rescue the world. Part The Matrix, part retelling of the Pandora myth, Doomed has something for gaming fans, dystopian fans, and romance fans alike.

[Full disclosure: I received this book from an unknown person that is not the author or the publisher.  There was no expectation to review it as far as I know so of course this review is honest.  See here for more details about the Mystery of the Randomly Appearing Books.]

Doomed is an okay book as long as you don’t think about it too much.

What I mean by that is on the surface it has an okay premise (technology being destroyed, world going into chaos) but that it’s executed in such an implausible way that you can’t help but think that there’s no way this could happen.  First off, I seriously doubt that there would ever be a virus that destroyed everything electrical.  Computers, cell phones, the internet, electricity, etc.  But hey, it’s science fiction so I’ll buy into that.  Then throw in a computer hacker genius early high school graduate who’s going to Harvard and things start to get really annoying.  These things happen in movies; rarely in real life.

Pandora is an okay character I suppose.  She acts like such a brat, but that’s somewhat believable considering her circumstances.  The fact that she never really changes throughout the story from that bratty mold is annoying though.  She keeps telling Eli and Theo how she’s not a damsel in distress yet she has panic attacks left, right and centre and rarely does anything for herself.  It’s always the boys coming in to save her butt.  Nevermind that the boys themselves are so one dimensional that you would expect to see them in some trashy tween flick.

Okay, so the only redeeming feature about Doomed is that although it’s over 400 pages, the writing style is really simplistic.  I got through it in about 2 1/2 hours when a book that long should have taken more like 4 hours.  It makes for a decent amount of suspense but as I said before that’s only as long as you don’t think too hard about the whole thing.  The authorities that chased Pandora and the boys were completely incompetent caricatures that were totally incapacitated by the lack of technology despite the fact that radios still were working!  Who uses radios and walkie talkies the most?  The police!

If you want a fast-paced science fiction novel, go ahead and read Doomed.  But if you actually think about what you read I don’t recommend this book.

I give this book 1.5/5 stars.

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Giveaway: You Are Mine and Mine to Tarnish by Janeal Falor

You Are Mine by Janeal FalorToday I’m happy to announce that my latest giveaway is in conjunction with the lovely Janeal Falor, whose debut novel You Are Mine is an awesome mixture of romance and speculative fiction.  Even if you’re not heavy into romance I would highly recommend it because the romance isn’t the main focus.  So if you love dystopias, well fleshed out characters and fantastic world-building, the best thing you can do is enter this giveaway.  Go ahead!  You know you want to.

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