I Need Your Help with an Ethical Dilemma!

When I started this blog I never even imagined I’d have the opportunity to make money from it.  Get some free books, yes.  But actual money?  Not in a million years.  Even now, three years later, I never really thought I’d have that opportunity.  Except now I do.

Yesterday I received an email from Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.  She gave me a pretty good offer that was essentially this:

  1. If you become a reviewer for us, you can receive free swag OR
  2. You can directly get $20 per review, positive or negative.

I thought this sounded a little fishy so I did about two hours of research on Sansevieri and the history of the company.  As far as I can tell, it all seems legitimate and I think the offer is a valid one.  It seems more than fair to me to either get swag or money for doing a review, positive or negative.  But will the company stick to the ‘money for a review positive or negative’ or will there be pressure to only write positive reviews?  If I were to accept the offer and take the money for reviews I would be my usual brutally honest self.  If I received undue pressure to only write positive reviews, I would walk away rather than compromising my principles as a book reviewer.

My main concern lies with you guys, my readers.  Without going too much into my financial situation, essentially in the next half of this year my expenses are going up and my income is going down for a bit after my move to the city.  I need a little more incentive to keep going with my blog and having a little bit of positive cash flow would be nice so I don’t keep spending my own money on giveaways.  If I were to take the offer I would likely just sink the money back into The Mad Reviewer so that maybe I could finally afford to get my own domain name and move off the free WordPress site where the threat of arbitrary suspension constantly hangs over my head.  And if I had any extra cash it would also go to more giveaways.  So essentially it would make my blog a net neutral in terms of cash flow.

However, the trust of my readers will always be my number one priority.  Even if I disclose when I am being paid for a review, you guys may not be comfortable knowing the fact I was paid.  After writing 650+ reviews over three years I believe that the money will not influence me but if you guys are uncomfortable with that I will not take the offer.  Honesty is always my priority and I do want to hear from you guys.

So:

1.  Would I be compromising my integrity by accepting money in exchange for my usual honest reviews?  (As a side note, my own personal submissions will always remain free of charge.)

2.  Are you comfortable with the fact that I might be paid for reviews?  (Note: I will always disclose whether or not I was paid, as has been my policy from the beginning regarding where I get my books from.)

Please let me know in the comments section.  Or, if you’re not comfortable with that, feel free to drop me an email directly or go to my Contact page.  I really do want your input and feedback, positive or negative.  It will certainly help me decide whether or not to accept the offer.

The Best and Worst of April 2015

Um, where did April go?  I feel like it went by in a blur.  One day I was doing the March financial statements at work and after what felt like one week later I started doing the April financial statements today.  So really I can’t say how my April went other than fast.  I was glad Game of Thrones started up again and that the weather has been really nice here in my corner of Saskatchewan.  My formal dress that I ordered came in the other day and only needs some tiny adjustments to fit perfectly.  Things are really looking up for May.

Stats-wise April was not bad.  I received 5,242 views in total, which is down from March by about 600 but I’m not too worried.  My unique views were pretty decent with 3,550 in total in April.  That’s a lot less than I received last April when my Game of Thrones rebuttal article really took off with the premiere of season 4.  I really can’t complain.  I’m just happy that my daily views are consistent and that Game of Thrones is back.

So what were my best articles this month?

1.  Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal

2.  How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour

3.  The Day an Author Suggested I Kill Myself

4.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

5.  The Game of Thrones Rape Problem

There aren’t really any new ones here except for #5.  What’s more interesting to me is that in regards to #3, Bruce Willis was shoved back into the spotlight when he launched yet another highly sexist and swear-heavy attack on an editor who dared to edit.  She posted it on Twitter and although I won’t link to it, it was pretty shocking and disgusting.  Well, not for this guy, who has previously launched anti-Semitic attacks against some editors, but shocking to polite society.

So what were my worst posts this month?

1.  The Best and Worst of March 2015

2.  The Mad Reviewer’s First Giveaway

3.  My Interview with John Heldt (2)

4.  Writers: Beware the False Editor

5. Spoils of Olympus: By the Sword by Christian Kachel

At least this month every single ‘worst’ post on the list is new.  Some of them, like #1 and #2 are completely dated by now while others are books that are not very popular, authors that are not exactly bestsellers and articles on topics that are quite common like bad editors.  I’m not disappointed by any of these on the list because I know that as usual there will be different ones next month.

So how was your April?  Did it go by as quickly as mine?

City of Fae by Pippa DaCosta

City of Fae by Pippa DaCosta

(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

From the moment Alina touches London’s hottest fae superstar, breaking one of the laws founded to protect all of her kind, her fate – and the fae – close in.

Below ground, the fae High Queen plots to claim the city as her own and places her pawns, ready for the battle to come. A battle she cannot lose, but for one small problem – Alina. There are four ancient keepers powerful enough to keep the queen in her prison. Three are dead. One remains … And to fight back, Alina risks sacrificing everything she has come to love.

This New Adult urban fantasy is packed with action and suspense and will have you yearning for more forbidden fae romance.

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

I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I picked up City of Fae but Pippa DaCosta blew any expectations that existed away.

First we meet Alina, a reporter who has just lost her job.  She’s living in the present day but things are very, very different from what we would expect: the fae have come out to the world.  In fact, they did this a couple of decades ago and they’re basically just a fact of life now.  Everyone knows not to let a fae touch them because they can bespell you but there are always exceptions because some people live to be spelled.  The rule is three touches and you’d better get to therapy to wean yourself off because you’re pretty much guaranteed to be under their control.  So the fae are both dangerous and attractive?  Well, you can guess what many of them do for a living: they go into show business.

And that’s how Alina, a rather ordinary reporter, comes into contact with Sovereign, London’s hottest fae superstar.  Why on earth does she touch him?  Working in the entertainment industry, you’d think she would know better.  She does know better and she does it anyway because Alina is the sort of person that wants to help everyone, no matter how dangerous it might be.  Alina doesn’t have a sort of annoying martyr syndrome but she is a good person and that leads her into an entirely new world of trouble.  That’s in part why her character carries the story so well: she really is an average person in the beginning.  She wants to get a new job, focus on moving on with her life but events don’t seem to let her.  Throughout the story you can really feel her frustration with Sovereign for dragging her into this whole mess but also her undeniable attraction to the man.  He’s handsome and infuriating and can be a jerk but he’s not really that typical YA/NA hot jerk.  The main difference here is that Pippa DaCosta actually does give him depth and we do actually get to see why he’s sort of justified in being such a jerk.  I don’t like many of the romances in NA because they come off as feeling slightly abusive (mentally or physically) but this is one sizzling attraction between two people that evolved into something a little more.

As I’ve hinted at in my opening summary, the world-building here is fantastic.  It’s interesting to see how humans react to the fae since most of them are superstars.  Therefore you have the normal idiotic celebrity worship combined with the really compelling attraction humans have to the fae; it’s not really a good combination for a lot of people.  Pippa DaCosta’s fae are not cuddly, friendly nearly-humans.  They’re vicious and will use humans unashamedly for their own ends.  These are magical creatures hundreds of years old with very little in the way of consciences or morals and DaCosta really does this portrayal well.  You get that odd feeling of awe around the fae but also that sense they’re dangerous throughout the novel.  It’s hard to describe but as a reader you’ll be fairly attracted to them (particularly Sovereign) while at the same time pleading inwardly for Alina to get away from them.  This dual nature of the fae is done incredibly well and my description here really doesn’t do it justice.

The plot was surprising and that’s definitely in a good way.  There was a huge twist about Alina that I definitely did not see coming but does make sense when you consider the whole plot.  Sovereign himself is not everything as he seems but the difference there is that he actively hides his secrets while Alina doesn’t necessarily do that as well.  In addition to the character twists I really did love the antagonist in the story, the High Queen.  She’s fascinating, at the same time gorgeous and hideous and she’s a woman on a mission.  What that mission is, I’ll leave you to find out when you read the book but let’s just say it isn’t to solve world hunger or poverty or anything as nice as that.

Even if you’re not a person who’s really into the New Adult genre, I think if you’re into fairies or fae as they’re called here, you’ll enjoy City of Fae.  It’s got a sizzling romance, some plot twists that will totally blindside you at first and some excellent world-building.  Will there be a sequel?  I’m not sure because DaCosta resolves the main conflict but leaves some other questions like what Alina will do next open.  So there could be a sequel but the book doesn’t really need one to satisfy you.  Go on and pre-order this book, though!  It releases on May 7.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble*     Goodreads

*Not available yet.

Daughters of Shadow and Blood: Yasamin by J. Matthew Saunders

Daughters of Shadow and Blood Yasamin by J. Matthew Saunders(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Buda, Ottoman Hungary, 1599: Yasamin, the naïve daughter of an Ottoman bureaucrat, finds herself trapped in an arranged marriage to the son of the powerful governor of Buda. She is unprepared for the gossip and scheming rampant in the palace but realizes she faces more than petty jealousies when someone tries to drown her in the baths on the day before her wedding. An unearthly menace lurks in the palace corridors, and the one person able to protect Yasamin is a soldier named Iskander, who seems to appear whenever she needs him. Charming and confident, he is nothing like her new husband, but trusting either of them could be a deadly mistake.

Berlin, Germany, 1999: Adam Mire, an American professor of history, discovers a worn, marked-up copy of Dracula. The clues within its pages send him on a journey across the stark landscape of Eastern Europe, searching for a medallion that once belonged to Dracula himself. But a killer hounds Adam’s footsteps, and each new clue he uncovers brings him closer to a beguiling, raven-haired woman named Yasamin Ashrafi, who might be the first of Dracula’s legendary Brides.

Adam has an agenda of his own, however, a quest more personal than anyone knows. One misstep, and his haunted past could lead to death from a blade in his back … or from Yasamin’s fatal embrace.

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

The first thing you really need to know about this first book in the Daughters of Shadow and Blood series is that it’s told in three different points of view.  We have the point of view of Yasamin from when she was human, the present day with Adam Mire and the past with Adam Mire as he tried to unravel the mystery that is Dracula and his brides.  I personally loved Yasamin’s point of view the most because I love history but Adam’s point of view was really just as good in a lot of aspects (particularly during his banter with Yasamin).

The thing that really stood out to me in this book is that Saunders is a master of plot pacing as well as suspense.  Sometimes the point of view shifts can be a little disjointed or disconcerting (in some cases quite disconcerting) but in each little chapter there’s that undercurrent of tension as we move closer and closer to the end of the story and the end of Adam’s time talking to Yasamin.  Will she decide to let him live if she enjoys his tale enough or will she kill him anyway because he knows too much?  Not only that, we want to know what happens within each story: how Yasamin came to know the man known as Dracula and how Adam Mire stumbled across the truth about Dracula and found Yasamin.  And of course, what does Dracula himself think of all this?  I don’t want to give too much away but let’s just say he’s not missing from the face of the earth like everyone seems to think he is.

Both main characters were fascinating for different reasons.  Yasamin is fascinating not only because of her association with Dracula but because she was a remarkable young woman when she was still human.  She grew up in the provinces and so never really was prepared for the secluded nature of the royal harem when she marries the oldest son of Buda’s governor.  When she realizes she isn’t really attracted to her husband and that she’d really rather have his little brother, things definitely get interesting.  Yasamin stays true to herself without and when she develops a dangerous attraction to the mysterious Iskander, things start to spiral out of control.  Adam Mire is fascinating because he’s an historian with a pretty exciting past.  After his best friend died he tries to search out clues hidden in his friend’s books and other documents to see what he was looking for and what he died for.  In the process, Adam encounters more than he’d bargained for but he’s not as unprepared as Yasamin would like to think.

Of course when you have fantasy colliding with history there are going to be some liberties taken with the facts but Saunders does a really good job of mixing the two together to create a great story.  I loved how he meticulously researched the Ottoman Empire and gave little details of everyday life to make Yasamin’s story all the more authentic.  And he mixes in parts of the Dracula legend everyone will recognize while adding in some other parts to make it more of his own.  (I particularly liked the Michael the Brave and Iskander connection.)  If you’re a fan of the Dracula legend or just vampires in general I think Daughters of Shadow and Blood: Yasamin is at least worth checking out.  Who knows?  Maybe by the time you finish the book you’ll be as eager as I am for the sequel.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble*     Goodreads

*Not available.

The Doom of Undal by Katrina Sisowath

The Doom of Undal by Katrina Sisowath(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

The Dragon Court has ruled Tiamut uncontested for millennia, bringing knowledge and prosperity to all.

Yet all is not as it seems—far to the West in the land of Undal, mightiest of the nations, the Royal Queen and her children are struck with a mysterious illness and perish. Was the Dragon Court responsible? Or had the Queen had been experimenting with dark magic?

Her grieving son, trained in the dark arts by the goddess Eris herself, swears vengeance. When he defies the Dragon Court and they rescind their blessing on his royal house, he must turn to his mother’s experiments and ancient blood rituals to achieve his aims. In his quest for truth, he will become the greatest threat Tiamut has ever known.

With details pulled directly from Plato (yes, THAT Plato), The Emerald Tablets of Thoth, Sumerian and Egyptian mythology, The Doom of Undal tells the story of the Fall of Atlantis.

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

The Doom of Undal is the second book in a series but since it was not presented to me that way I decided to request it.  I was a little mad when I learned that this was the second book but in the end it doesn’t really matter.  The names are more confusing in the beginning than they would be if you read the first book but it’s nothing you can’t overcome.

For the first 60% or so, you may be a little confused by the blurb because The Doom of Undal does not start out with a mysterious death.  No, it starts with the childhoods of our main characters and their introductions into the different temples.  They all become acolytes of different gods and goddesses depending on their powers as well as their personalities.  Hathor, for example, is a sort of whimsical child who learns the arts of the love goddess because it suits her talents as well as her whimsical nature.  The boys go into more warlike temples.  It’s all quite interesting in its own right but starting the book off that way really, really slows down the plot.  The plot has to be slow at the beginning because of the sheer volume of names being introduced but that super slow plot also meant I had a really, really hard time getting through the first half of the book.

What I absolutely love about this book is how Katrina Sisowath blended together Sumerian and Egyptian mythology as well as a few other things in order to tell her story.  Since I love Egypt, the Egyptian influences were quite obvious: the pyramids, the brother-sister marriages of the Dragon Court, some of the Egyptian deities like Hathor, etc.  I’m less familiar with Sumerian mythology so I can’t really comment on that but I really did enjoy all of the thought Sisowath put into developing her world.  It’s fantastic and her enthusiasm for this world really does show through in her writing.  The world-building is probably the only reason I didn’t give up on the book completely while I struggled through to the more exciting half.  Really, this is what fantasy should be like when you’re mixing magic, myth and history.

As I said before, the plot is slow for about half of the novel until we travel with Rhea to the court at Undal.  While travelling there she reconnects with an old childhood friend named Cronous, who is the heir apparent for the hereditary rulers of Undal.  However, she is supposed to marry his father while he is sent away to become even more bitter and perhaps bring out that underlying cruelty a bit more.  While Rhea does her duty to her much older husband and even seems to enjoy some of being queen, when Cronous returns complications arise as she finds herself falling in love with him and not her husband.  I don’t want to spoil too much but the lovers then embark on a path that, as the blurb said, is the greatest threat Tiamut has ever known.  Both characters go through some pretty drastic changes as they embrace their darker sides a bit more but it’s the reactions of Rhea’s siblings that will probably seal the fate of Undal’s rebellion.

To sum up: I would strongly recommend reading the first book before reading The Doom of Undal.  You don’t have to, but I think I would have received far more out of this book had I read Serpent Priestess of the Annunaki.  If you read that, then I think the first part of the book will be a little more exciting than it was for me, since it basically closes the chapter on the older generation and introduces the newer one.  Still, I think The Doom of Undal was a fairly good read and if the blurb has intrigued you, go check out the Dragon Court series.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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