Tag Archives: fantasy

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Book Review: These Darker Streets, by Abigail Linhardt

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Earlier this year, Abigail Linhardt‘s These Darker Streets was featured over on Sadie’s Spotlight and I was lucky enough to win a copy of the book.

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Tragic loss. Eternal love. Ancient magic.

Brigit is dealing with the loss of her mother and brother while trying to run her mother’s shop of magical oddities. She used to believe in magic and had hopes for a great future. When fate took her family away before she was ready, all of her belief in happiness and love died with them. When a mysterious man named Ildanach appears and is everything Brigit is not–happy, fun, adventurous, and extremely handsome–she feels her stable life of hiding being threatened as he calls her out into a vulnerable relationship. There is more to this man than meets the eye. He brings with him a life Brigit is not sure she believes in. One that doesn’t even exist in her reality. Plagued by visions of past lives, Brigit’s trust in a magicless existence is about to be shattered.

Ildanach has been the fairy guardian for centuries. Every few lifetimes, he meets a woman who is the reincarnation of his love and together they can protect the earth. Ildanach thought he had found his love in this century, but she was killed by a rogue fairy from the underworld, taking his hope. Now he has met Brigit, a woman hell-bent on denying anything that she cannot touch in this reality. When he sees the spark of his love in her, he knows she’s the one with whom he can stop the dark spirit for good. However, she is dead to the world of magic; too wrapped up in her trials and the darkness that mortal life has given her.

The world is in danger as the lord from the underworld, Arawn, taints mortal souls in order to grow his army of the underworld and stop the guardian and the goddess once and for all.In a battle of life or death, Idlanach must save the mortal world before time runs out and Brigit must decide once and for all if she can believe in something as mysterious as magic.

my review
I think the idea of this story was bigger than the author’s ability to relay it. She very clearly wanted to show big emotions and a moving moral dilemma, cast over millennia. But the writing is just too shallow to pull it off. Instead it feels contradictory and stilted. All of the fantasy elements feel secondary to the very simple romance plot. And none of it has the feel or tone to match the awesome cover.

Having said all of that, I did like Idanach and Brigit. It was interesting to see elements of old Celtic lore (or Celtic-like lore) incorporated. Robin was a delight (my favorite character) and the book wraps up nicely (with a bit of an epilogue setting the stage for a sequel). So, I wouldn’t call it a total failure, just not as good as it might have been or I’d hoped it would be.

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Other Reviews:

Jessica Belmont: Book Tour These Darker Streets Book Review

 

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Book Review: Wake of the Phoenix, by Chelsea Harper

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I accepted a copy of Chelsea Harper‘s Wake of the Phoenix for review, as part of it’s tour with R&R Book Tours. It’s also over on Sadie’s Spotlight. You can hop over there for author info and contact information, as well as an excerpt.

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War Hero. Thiefmaster’s apprentice. Traitors. Every title comes with a price.

Arkaen is a gods-damned saint. He sacrificed his childhood innocence fighting for the beleaguered rebellion in a civil war and relinquished a comfortable life with the man he loves to reclaim his place as high lord from corrupt nobles. Now, a hidden enemy is manipulating his lower lords into talk of rebellion, including the powerful Rogue Baron who is slowly swaying the city into questioning every move Arkaen makes.

With the help of his near-omniscient lover’s gift of foresight, Arkaen finds a potential ally in Niamsha, a reluctant thief trying to pay for her brother’s education. But Niamsha owes an insurmountable debt to the mysterious leader of her thieves guild and failing to pay means death—for her entire family. When her guild leader demands she join forces with the Rogue Baron himself, she finds herself caught in a political battle beyond her skills. Torn between protecting her family and following her conscience, Niamsha doesn’t know who to trust.

If Arkaen can win Niamsha’s loyalty, he might just prevent a second civil war and the destruction of everything he fought to protect. Or he might get them all killed.

my review

I really enjoyed this. It took me a little while to get into it. Or rather to figure out what was what, with the fantasy land and a few fantasy words. But I caught on pretty quickly and even more quickly came to adore the characters. Each was trying desperately to do the right thing in difficult situations, with the information available to them at the time. All of which often set them against one another and, at times, their own interests.

I’d probably have given this a 5-star rating right up until the end. The writing/editing is clear and easy to read. As I said, I liked the characters. And the plot kept me gripped. There is a lot of history hinted at, which felt a bit like there should be a previous book. But even still, I think I’d have given it 5 stars, except for two things. Even if shocked, I couldn’t buy Niamsha believing as she did at the end and not seeing through the ploy. She’d been too savvy up to that point. And I was ready for the story to wrap up and it didn’t. It came to an acceptable place to pause, true, but I was ready for an ending. I felt denied by the lack.

All in all, however, I was really pleased with the story.

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Other Reviews:

Eye-Rolling Demigod: ARC review – Wake of the Phoenix

https://wealthofgeeks.com/review-wake-of-the-phoenix/

 

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Book Review: The Rise of Chaos, by Aeyla Reed

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It would be an exaggeration to say that I downloaded this book by accident, but it wouldn’t be an untruth. I signed up for Edelweiss a long time ago, possibly even years ago. But since I was happy with Netgalley (and familiar with it), I never really explored it. Until yesterday, that is.

Let me tell you, Edelweiss may not actually be overly complicated, but it is so HUGE as to feel complicated. In all of my floundering around I ended up downloading The Rise Of Chaos, by Aeyla Reed. I mean not in an “Oops, look what I did” way; more of an “Oh, I started the download process without really meaning to commit to that…well, might as well stick with it” kind of way. I had time to backtrack, but opted not to. I let fate take the wheel, or whatever

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A perilous adventure with trouble lurking under every unturned stone.
In the world of Terae, a war-torn place ravaged by eldritch monsters and wild magick, a young officer named Airis suddenly finds herself in the midst of a rebellion in humanity’s last city. Along with two close friends, she begins a long journey to secure a home for her lost people. Amid all this: a new romance blooms, secrets of a lost empire reveal themselves, and heroes are forged in the flames of combat.

my reviewI used to read quite a lot of manga (and watch as much anime). But I’ve fallen out of the habit over the years. Lately, I’ve been drifting in that direction again and have been wanting to explore books that are manga or anime-like. I’ve seen the genre called Progression Fantasy, but there might be a more precise title out there. (Just in case the previous sentence doesn’t make it obvious, I’m not coming at this from any sort of expert position.)

Regardless, looking at the cover of The Rise of Chaos you can probably understand why I picked it up. I figured it would be an anime-like story, and it is. But I didn’t realize it is also full-on LitRPG —with all the D&D-like character mark-ups and abilities, video game-like character health bars, etc—which I’m not an avid fan of. I flat out skimmed ever time a one of these passed (and some of them were quite long):

I skipped thes

But outside of the LitRPG aspects that didn’t appeal to me, I liked the characters. There was quite a lot of cute interplay between characters and I appreciated the m/f platonic friendships and the budding f/f relationship. However, I did feel like the world was only loosely described and we’re given the framework of political upheaval and then the book settled into filler and monster-battles that did little to move the plot along…or develop it at all, really.

All in all, I’d say this was a middle of the road read for me. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t really an all out winner either.

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Other Reviews:

THE RISE OF CHAOS: Genesis