Monthly Archives: March 2013

It’s Read and ebook Week at Smashwords!

5 Replies

ladyOh Gawd, I love Smashwords, and what timing! With the introduction of Amazon’s new Affiliate rules I’ve found that the aggregate sites listing free books have started to dry up. Really, what do they expect me to do while I drink my morning coffee? Check my email? As it! For the rest of the week Smashwords has the perfect solution though, READ AN E-BOOK WEEK.

Read an Ebook Week isn’t new. It’s been around since 2004 and is part of…wait for it…yes, Read an Ebook Month (March). It even has its own website: RAEM. There are contests and tons of authors are offering books for free or at a discount. My own book, The Weeping Empress, is participating, as are a number of other authors I admire.  Here are a few worth checking out, in no particular order:

  1. Marjorie F. Baldwin
  2. Michael Cargill
  3. Valerie Zambito
  4. Jacques Antoine
  5. Kevis Hendrickson
  6. Nadia Scrieva
  7. Travis Luedke
  8. Charlotte E. English
  9. HP Mallory
  10. Nicky Charles

OK, some of them are just free to start with. I admit it. These are the ones from my own Smashwords Library, but there are sooo many more and I’ll probably add a few here and there as I come across authors I’ve read and know are worth recommending. In the mean time, if you have a book participating in the sale feel free to add a link in the comments. I’ll check them out and who know who else might.

Idea: See something you’ve read and reviewed elsewhere? Why not grab a Smashword’s copy while it’s free so you can post a review there (’cause of course you can only review a book on SM that has been ‘purchased’ on SM)? The author will love you forever…unless you wrote a horrible review, maybe not so much then. You take the bad with the good though, so…

Book Review of Valerie Zambito’s Island Shifters

Leave a reply

The Island ShiftersSome time ago, I missed out on a chance to win a copy of  Valerie Zambito‘s fantasy novel, Island Shifters – An Oath of the Blood (Island Shifters #1), in Mysti Parker‘s 20K hit Giveaway. Lucky for me, Mrs. Zambito is a generous woman and offered to send me a copy. As I write this post, Island Shifters also happens to be free at Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Heroes are born not made. 

The idyllic lives of four young shifters living in the exiled land of Pyraan are shattered when a tour of legion duty gives witness to a brutal enemy invasion. Born with magical prowess none has seen in over three hundred years, the friends become pivotal in a race against time to save a people they hardly know, but are sworn to protect. 

The journey exacts a terrible price from Beck, Kiernan, Rogan and Airron as they battle demons, both real and personal, to save the Island of Massa. But, whatever the chances, the shifters will fight.

The blood oath will have it no other way.

Review:
I initially had this marked as YA, probably based on the cover and the description of the heroes and heroine as ‘young.’ As a result, I drug my feet about reading it. I just didn’t know if I could take another angsty teenage drama. I’m beginning to think I might have to admit that I’ve finally outgrown them.

To my delight, it isn’t YA at all. In fact, it includes some fairly explicit sexual innuendo. Luckily, the story doesn’t fall victim to the painfully common sexy, simpering slave-girl trope. What Mrs. Zambito does is far more varied and insidious and, therefore, realistic. I’m not complaining. I like it. I don’t mean that I got any sort of sadist joy out of it, but it is unrealistic to think that truly evil people would just happen to be evil in every realm except for the interpersonal. It also allows for an interesting foray into different types of power. I’m probably making more of it than I need to. It is a very small part of the book, after all. But it was so unexpected that I can’t help but mention it.

The book’s strengths are definitely in the world-building and love the main characters both carry for each other and garner from those around them. Despite the heavy task before them, the book has a definite ‘feel-good’ quality to it. It feels downright sappy at times, in a good way. I did have a little trouble with the lack of contractions. Now, I’ll grant you there isn’t really any reason that people from another world would talk just like us, but it gave everything a formal feel that didn’t seem natural to me. Despite that, Island Shifters is an enjoyable example of the indomitable power of the human (or elven or dwarfian) spirit to persevere and of good triumphing over evil. I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to read it.