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Book Review: Three Half Goats Gruff & Dragons Don’t Eat Meat, by Kim McDougall

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I had several loads of laundry to fold yesterday. So, I borrowed an audio copy of Kim McDouGall’s Valkyrie Bestiary through Hoopla. It included the prequel Three Half Goats Gruff (which I actually have a Kindle copy of) and Dragons Don’t Eat Meat and was narrated by Hollie Jackson.

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Three Half Goats Gruff:

Is he a vampire? A shifter? Something worse? Thrown together to save a middle school from an infestation of satyrs, Kyra and the mysterious Captain of the Guardians share one heart-stopping night.

Critter wrangling rule #4: There isn’t much you can’t kill, confuse, or disgust with a can of bug fogger.

my review

At only 45 pages, this is was only a taster of the series to come. But it was enough to know I’d like the main character, Kyra, and the writing of the series at large. Plus, how cute is that cover!?

Dragon’s Don’t Eat Meat:

Someone is killing dragons. And the killings point to a civil war brewing among the fae.

When Kyra finds an abandoned baby dragon, she doesn’t want to bring him home. But until she can hunt down his thunder and stop the dragon killers, she’s on babysitting duty.

As a pest controller with a soft heart, Kyra already has an apartment full of rescues, including a basilisk who thinks he’s a turkey, a banshee nanny, and even a pygmy kraken. She might take care of them, but they also fill her need for family. And when that family is threatened, she’ll risk everything to save them. She’ll even join forces with the handsome and irritating captain of the city’s vigilante Guardians, who never fails to be around at her most undignified moments.

Along with a quirky cast of misfits and unruly critters, Kyra leaves the safety of Montreal Ward and travel through the dangerous Inbetween—the land beyond the protected city states, where magic is the only rule of law—to reunite the lost dragon with his thunder and stop a new and sinister force from invading their home.
my reviewI enjoyed this. I liked Kyra and her menagerie quite a lot. The world was interesting. I thought the writing readable and the narrator did a good job with the audio version. I didn’t feel like I got to know Mason as well as I’d have liked and at times the adventure felt a little go here-do that random, while the overarching plot a little predictable. Plus, in a post-apocalyptic world where travel was dangerous and limited and fossil fuels were no longer allowed, there seemed to be an awful lot of people not from the area in the area (lots of individuals with Welsh or Irish accents for example) and I wondered how they got there. Magic, maybe, but it wasn’t addressed. I still enjoyed the experience quite a lot though and will continue the series. Though not immediately, as I’ve other commitments to attend to.

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Other Reviews:

Books and Pals – Review: Dragon’s Don’t Eat Meat

https://rockebahcstewart.com/book-review-dragons-dont-eat-meat-valkyrie-bestiary/

 

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Book Review: The Hollow Gods, by A. J. Vrana

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A.J. Vrana‘s The Hollow Gods‘ sequel, The Echoed Realm, was featured on Sadie’s Spotlight a while back. The post included some absolutely gorgeous art for the series and I’ve seen even more since then. (I mean check out the covers of these special edition copies!) Beautiful! So, I borrowed an audio copy of The Hollow Gods through Hoopla to give the series a shot. It was narrated by Eva Kaminsky.

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Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret.

For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker—an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

When Kai wakes up next to the lifeless body of a recently missing girl, his memory blank, he struggles to clear his already threadbare conscience.

Miya, a floundering university student, experiences signs that she may be the Dreamwalker’s next victim. Can she trust Kai as their paths collide, or does he herald her demise?

And after losing a young patient, crestfallen oncologist, Mason, embarks on a quest to debunk the town’s superstitions, only to find his sanity tested.

A maelstrom of ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Can three unlikely heroes put aside their fears and unite to confront a centuries-old evil? Will they uncover the truth behind the fable, or will the cycle repeat?

my review

I liked this quite a lot. I’ll admit it wasn’t quite as intense as I’d expected, but I enjoyed it all the same. It was very atmospheric.

I liked the way Kai never truly tried to act human and how Miya accepted him for it all the same. And I liked the way Miya showed vulnerability, but also wasn’t a pushover and Kai appreciated that about her. I understood Mason’s difficulty and obsessive need to find answers. Though I thought his reluctance to believe lasted well past when it should have.

The prose is a little on the purple side. But I have a pretty high tolerance for that, often enjoying writing others complain about being too full of adjectives, similes, and metaphors. The story also wrapped around itself in a pleasant way, coming full circle and concluding nicely. But I never quite grasped The First’s motives, Madrix’s but not The Firsts. (I’m not certain I spelled that name right, since I never saw it in writing.)

All in all, I plan to read the second book too. But I’m not leaping straight in at the moment.

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Other Reviews:

https://dinipandareads.home.blog/2020/07/31/blog-tour-review-the-hollow-gods-by-a-j-vrana/

The Hollow Gods by A. J. Vrana – Review & Blog Tour

 

https://paperfury.com/the-hollow-gods-a-j-vrana-review/

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Book Review: Cold read, by Renee Joiner

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I borrowed an audio copy of Renee Joiner’s Cold Read through Hoopla.

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His future is in her hands….

Tasia Jackson is a psychic working occasional cases with the police department and the rare one-off for an old friend at the FBI. Her real business is super-secret because even the government doesn’t know just how powerful and dangerous she is and what she can actually do. Her FBI friend Daniel Cordeiro probably has his suspicions, but he’s never voiced them until she gets a strange vision of him pleading for her help.

Daniel’s latest case is a run-of-the-mill missing persons, but it’s personal this time. It’s his missing person, his sister, and he’s desperate to beat the 48-hour clock imposed by her kidnapper. So, he goes it alone and gets himself in deep trouble. His hail-Mary hope is Tasia and the powers she is afraid to fully use. He can only pray she hears him when he calls….

Can Tasia tap into things she knows are better left alone in time to save innocent lives, or will her dangerous magic do them all more harm than good?

my review

I wouldn’t say this was bad, just thin. There’s a plot, but there’s not much to it. There’s a world, but it’s not overly robust. There’s the bare bones of a romance, but it’s not particularly developed. There’s a mystery, but it’s not elaborate. I think this would have really benefited from an additional 100 pages and the extra meat that would have allowed the author to give the book.

I thought Kate Poels—the narrator—did a passable job. But the accents are pretty inconsistent. And lastly, I like the cover a lot (it’s what convinced me to pick the book up), but it doesn’t accurately represent the story. The heroine shepherds the life energies of the dead and has visions/prophetic dreams. She doesn’t read tarot cards or use any circle based or academic magic (as the books on the cover would suggest). I don’t suppose it’s a big deal, but it did lead me to expect something entirely different than what’s actually in the book.

All in all, I’d probably read another Joiner book, but she’s not making the favorites list based on this showing.

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