Stacking the Shelves (140)

Posted on June 20, 2015June 19, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

I knew that this week would make up for last week. I just didn’t realize how much!

Last week I said it was too early to see Christmas books on NetGalley. I spoke much too soon. This week, I saw eARCs on Edelweiss for books that are not scheduled for publication until March 2016! Too soon, too soon! Make it stop!

There’s one book on this list that I don’t think I can resist reading way early. That’s The End of All Things by John Scalzi. I love his Old Man’s War series, and I’m a bit sad that this will be the last book for a while. He’s promised to go back later, but this is it for the moment. The book is being released as a serial ebook right now, but I’ve discovered (see Monday’s review of Dissident) that I just don’t like the serial novel format. I need a beginning, middle and an end, even if it’s just a temporary end. This makes me doubly glad to have the entire End of All Things to chomp through at once. Which won’t stop me from buying a print copy the next time I see him and can get him to sign one. Maybe WorldCon?

doctor who the drostens curse by al kennedy

For Review:
The Bourbon Kings (Bourbon Kings #1) by J.R. Ward
The Dark Forest (Three-Body #2) by Cixin Liu
The Devil’s Brew (Sinners #2.5) by Rhys Ford
Doctor Who: The Drosten’s Curse by A.L. Kennedy
The End of All Things (Old Man’s War #6) by John Scalzi
Gold Coast Blues (Jules Landau #3) by Marc Krulewitch
Gray Card by Cassandra Chandler
If You Only Knew by Kristan Higgins
The Kill Box (Jamie Sinclair #3) by Nichole Christoff
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Part of Our Lives by Wayne A. Wiegand
Tequila Mockingbird (Sinners #3) by Rhys Ford
Tough Love (Ultimate #3) by Lori Foster
Whiskey and Wry (Sinners #2) by Rhys Ford
Wrath of the Furies by Steven Saylor

Review: The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe

Posted on June 19, 2015June 18, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: print book provided by the publisher
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genre: historical fiction
Length: 240 pages
Publisher: Norton
Date Released: June 1, 2015
Purchasing Info: Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

On June 17, 1815, the Duke of Wellington amassed his troops at Hougoumont, an ancient farmstead not far from Waterloo. The next day, the French attacked―the first shots of the Battle of Waterloo―sparking a brutal, day-long skirmish that left six thousand men either dead or wounded.

William is a white rabbit living at Hougoumont today. Under the tutelage of his mysterious and wise grandmother Old Lavender, William attunes himself to the echoes and ghosts of the battle, and through a series of adventures he comes to recognize how deeply what happened at Waterloo two hundred years before continues to reverberate. “Nature,” as Old Lavender says, “never truly recovers from human cataclysms.”

The Sage of Waterloo is a playful retelling of a key turning point in human history, full of vivid insights about Napoleon, Wellington, and the battle itself―and a slyly profound reflection on our place in the world.

My Review:

“What is legend, though, but history written in the way that moves us most?”

The above quote is from The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe, and it seems like a pithy saying that contains much truth.

The story itself is a mixture of what history, through the survivors, records of the truth of the Battle of Waterloo, or at least one small but vital section of it, and the legends that have accreted around that truth, both among the humans and among the rabbits who are the narrators of this particular little tale.

While it’s the stories writ small, downright rabbit-sized, that fascinate them most, it is still a truism that, as the narrator-rabbit William says, “Truth and legend are tricky bedfellows.”

This is not a coherent, day-by-day or hour-by-hour account of the huge battle, or even of the events that took place in one small theater of that battle, the farm at Hougoumont. Instead, it is the persistent legends that occupy the telling – those big events encapsulated into small, nibble-sized pieces.

But while the rabbits see the events in small and distant bits, they still see the whole of the battle. Also a few of the events that legend created out of the whole cloth, like the story of the haunted well.

If you are looking for a factual, but still eminently readable, account of Waterloo, take a look at Bernard Cornwell’s Waterloo: The True Story of Four days, Three Armies and Three Battles, reviewed yesterday.

One wants to label The Sage of Waterloo as the story of the battle, as told by rabbits living on the farm two centuries later, as though it were Waterloo filtered through Watership Down, or possibly Redwall. It isn’t really.

Besides, Redwall is about mice. Not the same thing at all.

Instead, it’s a story about collective memory, collective consciousness, and the way that history fades into legend. It’s also about all of those places that send a shiver up your spine because you can feel what happened there, whether there is any evidence on the ground, or not.

It just so happens that this particular version is told by a fluffy bunny, who is far from fluffy in the head where it counts.

In William’s world, that long-ago battle is a metaphor for everything that happens in his life and to his little clan. His grandmother, Old Lavender, is a military historian who has gleaned her knowledge from the collective consciousness, from the currents in the air, and from tourists who wander the old battlefield while reading accounts of the battle to each other within earshot of the hutch.

Some of the history that Old Lavender learns and passes on is correct as history records it. Some is legend. But all of it informs her life, and William’s life after. As William said, “What is legend, though, but history written in the way that moves us most?”

Escape Rating B: I’m very glad that I read Cornwell’s book first. The Sage of Waterloo references a lot of the facts, as well as some of the legends, of that battle, and it helped a lot to have the knowledge of what happened when, and what didn’t happen at all, fresh in my mind.

There is, as I said, a temptation to think of this as Waterloo by way of Watership Down or Redwall, but it isn’t. Old Lavender, and William, tell and retell their version of the story of the battle, they do not experience it or anything like it themselves.

There’s no dangerous quest for them, just a determination to keep the history alive for the lessons it teaches, even when there is no one to teach it to.

One of those lessons, that the rabbits ponder upon because they have no analogy in their own lives is, “Strange, isn’t it, how men who can fight, suffer and die in close proximity to each other have such difficulty actually living side by side?”

There is a surprising amount of philosophical musing going on between William’s fluffy ears. In that way, the book reminded me a little of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder, which is a study of philosophy wrapped in an adventure tale.

In short, The Sage of Waterloo isn’t nearly as twee as it sounds. The way that William’s family tells the story of the battle isn’t that much different from how it is remembered in legends, and the device is a cool (and cute) way of showing how legends persist.

But personally, I much preferred Cornwell’s strictly factual account. The extensive quotes from survivors gave the story all the human drama it needed.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell

Posted on June 18, 2015June 19, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genre: military history
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Harper
Date Released: May 5, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

On the 18th June, 1815 the armies of France, Britain and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days the French army had beaten the British at Quatre-Bras and the Prussians at Ligny. The Allies were in retreat. The blood-soaked battle of Waterloo would become a landmark in European history, to be examined over and again, not least because until the evening of the 18th, the French army was close to prevailing on the battlefield.
Now, brought to life by the celebrated novelist Bernard Cornwell, this is the chronicle of the four days leading up to the actual battle and a thrilling hour-by-hour account of that fateful day. In his first work of non-fiction, Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting account of every dramatic moment, from Napoleon’s escape from Elba to the smoke and gore of the battlefields. Through letters and diaries he also sheds new light on the private thoughts of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, as well as the ordinary officers and soldiers. Published ahead of the upcoming bicentenary in 2015, Waterloo is a tense and gripping story of heroism and tragedy – and of the final battle that determined the fate of Europe.

My Review:

To meet one’s Waterloo, has become almost a cliché, a byword for meeting one’s final or ultimate defeat.

The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, by Jacques-Louis David, 1812

The term, as well as all of the cities and towns named Waterloo, come from one singular battle – the place where Napoleon Bonaparte met his own personal and political Waterloo at the hands of the Duke of Wellington.

Today, June 18, is the 200th anniversary of that battle. While a cannon’s weight of books have been published this year to commemorate the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, I wanted to pick just a couple to hopefully expand my understanding of what happened that day.

It is a difficult thing for an author, any author, to build excitement and anticipation into a story where we already know how it ends. Wellington won, Napoleon was finally and ultimately defeated.

The story of the Battle of Waterloo, at least as told by Bernard Cornwell, is a story where we know the ending, more or less, but it is the middle that is obscured, both at the time and even 200 years later.

Or perhaps especially 200 years later, as there has been plenty of time for myths, legends, obfuscations and half-truths to find their own little corner of that field.

As the battle was taking place, a lot of the confusion can be blamed on the fog of war. In that battle, and in that era, it was at least partially a real fog, the smoke from the hundreds of cannons and howitzers, and from the tens of thousands of muskets, all seemingly firing at once at obscuring the participants’ view of anything not immediately next to them.

What we all know is that Napoleon escaped from his exile on the Island of Elba, was declared Emperor again, and marched on Brussels. He intended to retake Belgium, which had been severed from the French Empire after his earlier defeat.

The Duke of Wellington, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Painted in 1814, a few months before the Battle of Waterloo.

Wellington met him at Waterloo, and eventually defeated Napoleon after three days of bloody battle. Napoleon retreated, and finally surrendered to the British, who promptly exiled him to Saint Helena, where he remained until his death.

This book of Waterloo is an attempt to bring coherence to all of the various eyewitness and survivor accounts of what was a long, hard-fought and ultimately confusing battle fought on multiple fronts by multiple armies over a lot of churned up and muddy ground.

Everything was important, from the drenching rain and mud, to the stone farmhouses and barns that dotted the region, to the tempers of the commanders and the trust (or lack thereof) between the armies.

Even the style of the various commands – where Napoleon led from the rear and delegated everything and Wellington, who seems to have led from everywhere at once and delegated nothing to Blücher, the Prussian general who came to Wellington’s aid, who fought while wounded and at the age of 73, pressing ever forwards in the midst of his men.

The personal accounts are often humorous, in the sense of gallows humor that war brings out in both fact and fiction. Some of the survivor’s’ accounts contradict each other, as they each only saw or heard one tiny sliver of a massive campaign.

Cornwell brings the disparate sources into a coherent whole, and gives even someone with only an extremely casual interest in military history and tactics a sense of what happened and why it happened.

Even though I knew how it ended, finding out how they got there was fascinating.

Escape Rating A-: Waterloo is a battle that was such a turning point in history that we all know how it ended. One of the things that this book does well is to make the reader see how easily it could have gone the other way. Actually, several other ways.

One has the feeling that the contest turned out to be between Napoleon’s overconfidence and Wellington’s ability to pick his ground and utilize it to the fullest extent. Wellington found a place that he could defend, and then settled his troops in to defend it.

We also see the fruits of the trust between Wellington and the Prussian General Blücher, which may have been unlikely (and one of Blücher’s aides hated Wellington) but saved the day.

The descriptions of the way that artillery worked and how it did what it did give the reader an awful sense of just how deadly they were, even if they were damnably difficult to aim. I also finally understand the different infantry formations for the first time.

The author describes the calculus of warfare as a deadly game of rock, paper, scissors, and the analogy works very well.

This is not the only book this author has written titled Waterloo. In his Sharpe’s series, there is a fictional book about the battle and Sharpe’s participation in it. The Napoleonic Wars, including the Battle of Waterloo, have been used as a backdrop in fiction in virtually every genre.

You may have read about the Napoleonic Wars and Waterloo without even realizing it.

In science fiction, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series is the Napoleonic Wars as fought between star empires. In Naomi Novik’s Temeraire, the Napoleonic Wars are fought with dragons. In C.S. Harris’ Sebastian St. Cyr series, the titular character finds himself aiding the police as a way of dealing with his own PTSD after Waterloo. Stephanie Laurens’ Bastion Club features a group of men who were English spies in France during the Wars, and now that the war is over, have discovered that one of their greatest foes is operating in England.

Last, but certainly not least, the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian details a naval officer’s career during the heady years of the Napoleonic Wars.

So for even an inveterate fiction reader, Waterloo and the Wars that it ended have a tremendous influence on so many works that came after. Reading so many things that are set in or influenced by the era, it is easy to think that we know all we need to know.

Bernard Cornwell’s non-fiction account of Waterloo shows us just how much depth there is to explore.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Favorite Heroines Giveaway Hop

Posted on June 17, 2015June 16, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Blog Hops> Favorite Heroines Giveaway Hop> Giveaways

The Favorite Heroines Giveaway Hop is organized by The Herd Hops and hosted by Herding Cats & Burning Soup.

What makes a heroine? There are all sorts of ways to be a heroine. There are warrior heroines and princess heroines (sometimes those two things are combined) but there are also plenty of other ways.

In fantasy there is always the option of the wizard/sorceress/enchantress heroine. You know, someone who can light lamps with the flick of her fingers – or set the entire world on fire.

Contemporary stories also provide different ways to be a heroine – women can save lives through medicine or crime-fighting (or fire-fighting). Or they can just be the heroine for their own families or neighborhoods.

When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I was in grade school. I remember being annoyed because there were no women on that epic quest. I wanted there to be someone I could identify with in that motley crew. At the time, I was particularly wishing for a female wizard, but I could be flexible about it.

It’s 40 years later, and I’m still pissed that there was no kick-ass warrior woman on that journey.

On the other hand, I think that Harry Potter (and Ron Weasley) would have died an ignominious death early in The Sorceror’s Stone without Hermione. And I know I’m not the only one who thinks that. (But why she ended up with Ron I’ll never understand.)

Jeffe Kennedy’s recent Twelve Kingdoms series features three different types of heroines – the oldest sister is the warrior princess, the middle sister is the magic practitioner, and the youngest sister becomes a goddess avatar. But they are all active heroines with agency. They also do a kick-ass job of showcasing the power of sisterhood.

I play videogames, and the Dragon Age series also contains a terrific group of different types of active and action heroines as well as allowing the player to choose the sex, race and job classification of their player/character hero or heroine. There is a scene early in Dragon Age: Inquisition where Cassandra, the warrior woman and Leliana, the spymistress, turn over the reins of power in a very public ceremony. When the player is female, the scene of two powerful women handing over those reins of power to a third equally powerful woman gives me chills every single time. (If you are curious, the sequence of events is captured in this Youtube vid)

And now it’s time for you to tell everyone who your favorite heroine (of any kind) is. Answer the question in the rafflecopter for your chance at either a $10 Gift Card or a book of your choice ($10 or under) from The Book Depository.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
There are plenty of other terrific prizes at the other stops on the hop. Check them out!

Review: Zack by Sawyer Bennett + Giveaway

Posted on June 16, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: sports romance
Series: Cold fury Hockey #3
Length: 294 pages
Publisher: Loveswept
Date Released: June 9, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Rising star Zack Grantham has been stuck in a downward spiral of grief ever since the car accident that left him a single dad and put his career on hold. Back on the road with the Carolina Cold Fury and still crippled by emotional baggage, he’s in need of some serious help with his son. But while the nerdy new nanny wins his son’s heart, Zack isn’t sure he’s ready for a woman’s touch—even after getting a glimpse of the killer curves she’s hiding under those baggy clothes.

Kate Francis usually keeps men like Zack at a distance. Though his athlete’s body is honed to perfection, he refuses to move on with his life—and besides, he’s her boss. Still, the sparks between them are undeniable, tempting Kate to turn their professional relationship into a personal one. But before she makes a power play for Zack’s wounded heart, Kate will have to open him up again and show him that love is worth the fight.

My Review:

Sawyer Bennett has a gift for making the reader sympathize with heroes who are being complete arseholes to their heroines, and for making us understand why those heroines stick around to redeem the guy who starts the story jerking them around.

This is a good thing, because it so shouldn’t work. But as Bennett has demonstrated in the two previous books in the Cold Fury Hockey series, Alex (reviewed here) and Garrett (here) she knows just how to make it work.

Zack isn’t the complete Grade A arsehole that Alex starts out his story as. No, Zack is only a prick to Kate. And even though it’s easy to understand where he’s coming from, there are a lot of points where you want to shake him for his idiocy, and knock some sense into Kate for putting up with it.

So how does this work out?

In the previous book in the series, Garrett, Zack is in a major automobile accident. His wife Gina is killed, and Zack is left the grief-stricken single father of an adorable 4-year-old boy.

There’s a whole lot of guilt mixed-in with that grief. While Zack is lost without Gina, especially when it comes to little Ben, he is also kicking himself that he never gave Gina the one thing she really wanted – they never did get married. He knew she wanted to (and they had a child) but he felt something was missing – that she wasn’t the person he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with.

A part of me wonders what the hell he was going to do if he met that right person while he was still in the relationship, but that’s not what happened. However, that thought does not endear me to Zack.

In the depths of his still very real grief, Zack also has a dilemma. He’s recovered from the accident, and he plays pro hockey for a living. There are going to be a lot of days and nights on the road, and he no longer has Gina to take care of Ben. His sister picks out a nanny for Ben, and in a fog, Zack lets it happen.

That nanny is Kate. She’s a poor girl from a tiny North Carolina town, but she’s starting graduate school in the fall and needs the money. Her undergraduate degree is in child psychology, and she and Ben bond instantly.

Zack can’t stand seeing someone else in Gina’s place. He also can’t see how bubbly, nerdy Kate in her baggy clothes could possibly be the right person to take care of Ben, or to fit into their life. But she is.

Not just because Ben adores her, although he does. But she also falls in love with the little guy, and does a terrific job of caring for him.

It’s dad’s negativity and sometimes outright antagonism she can’t get past. Until Zack sees the very pretty woman hiding under the baggy clothes, and can’t make himself unsee the first woman he’s wanted since Gina died.

But Zack decides that he’s only in it for the fantastic sex. He tells Kate at the very beginning that he absolutely does not want a relationship outside the bedroom, and if she can’t deal with that, then she needs to tell him at the very beginning.

Kate is an incredibly blunt person. She lets him know that if she can’t handle it, she’ll tell him. And she means it.

The real problem isn’t that she can’t handle it, but that he can’t. As much as he keeps saying all he wants is sex, he keeps letting Kate further and deeper into his life and his heart. A heart he doesn’t think he has. And the more he breaks past his own boundaries, the more Kate hopes that there is something real between them.

Until he’s an arsehole one too many times in front of one too many people, and she tells him she’s had enough. Finally.

It takes Kate standing up for herself to bring home to Zack exactly how big a stupid idiot he’s been.

Escape Rating B-: A long time ago, someone told me that it is impossible to make love with someone and not feel at least a little love. Zack and Kate’s story is an illustration of that conundrum.

Kate has been hiding under those baggy clothes and thick glasses because she developed early, and got threatened by the guys who started noticing her when she was much too young to know how to handle it. So she wore armor and hid in plain sight behind her glasses and her bubbly sense of humor. Also behind her nerdiness – she’s a bookworm and happy to be one.

At first Zack just thinks she’s too goofy to be a good caregiver for Ben – and Zack has an understandable problem seeing another woman in Gina’s place.

He does start caring about her before he sees in her in pjs and discovers what she’s hiding underneath the baggy sweats, but he kind of gets obsessed at that point. She’s the first woman he’s wanted since the accident, and he can’t let her go, even though he knows their relationship is bad for her, and that he isn’t treating her well.

At first, Kate can’t believe that the hot hockey player is interested in her. By hiding under the baggy clothes, she’s mostly kept herself from having a love life. Having fantastic sex with a handsome lover is a welcome change for her. And she understands the limits from the get go, even as she questions how long she can manage to protect her heart.

Zack plays a “come here/go away” game with Kate that is very hurtful, and he knows it. While she puts up with his crap a lot longer than she probably should, her hope is also realistic. He does feel more than he’s admitting to himself, and his arseholishness is his way of navigating that river of Denial.

Someone still needs to clock him one. And Kate finally does. It just takes her awhile.

In many ways, Kate is the much more interesting part of this story. She starts out hiding herself, and ends the story by reclaiming the parts of herself that she hid. She is also very self-motivated, and does not wallow in grief when she tells Zack to take that hike. She’s hurt, but she never loses sight of her goals, and those goals are an education and a future brighter and bigger than her family circumstances would have normally led her to. She’s a winner whether Zack ever comes around or not.

But he does. I just wish Kate had made him grovel a little more.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Loveswept is giving away a prize pack of Flirt and Loveswept mugs along with a Loveswept ebook bundle.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Posted on June 15, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: audiobook purchased from Audible; ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: fantasy
Length: 446 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Released: April 1, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an “accident,” he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.

Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.

Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend… and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne – or his life.

My Review:

I just want to squee. I absolutely adored this from beginning to end. My only regret is that it’s finished. The Goblin Emperor gave me a terrible book hangover and I did not want to leave this world.

As June is Audiobook Month, it is fitting that I started out listening to this book on a long trip, and was utterly absorbed from the very beginning. However, as wonderful as the audio was, it just didn’t go fast enough. A little past halfway, I dove into the ebook and raced to the end.

The story is one that has been told before. The emperor is dead, long live the emperor. Except that this story is not nearly that straightforward.

The Emperor of the Elves is murdered when the airship containing himself and his three oldest sons is sabotaged. He has two remaining heirs; his oldest son’s son, a boy of 14, and his disregarded and disrespected fourth son, a young man of 18. The Empire has a very poor history when it comes to minor Emperors and their regencies (no surprise there), so Maia suddenly finds himself the new Emperor. At 18, Maia is barely old enough that he will not require a regency. Whether he’s experienced enough to do the job is a completely different question.

He has no training for the job. He was raised in exile, not because he did anything wrong, but because his father hated his mother. Not that she did anything wrong either, but the previous emperor was a man who could not bear to admit to his mistakes – and marrying the Goblin princess while he was still mourning the loss of his beloved third empress and her unborn child was definitely a mistake.

A mistake for which Maia pays the price, over and over.

While somewhat knowledgeable about court etiquette and logic, at least in theory, Maia has no experience of life in the cutthroat political atmosphere of the imperial court, or even of life among the nobility. He can’t dance, he can’t ride a horse, and he has no clue how to make small talk or write meaningless letters.

Even more embarrassing, he has spent the last ten years of his life being beaten and bullied by the man who was supposed to be his guardian. Maia’s first lessons are in “emperoring up” and presenting an impassive expression in the face of everyone who tries to take advantage of his inexperience – including his former guardian.

Maia is on his own. He has had no teachers, and he has no guide to the strange new world in which he finds himself both a king and a pawn. Everyone who surrounds him has heard tales that he is unnatural, dim-witted or crippled in some way, when in fact the only things that hold him back are his youth and his ignorance. Ignorance is curable, and Maia struggles to overcome it while continuously dodging attempts on his power and his life.

Maia sometimes questions whether he will manage to outlive his youth. The reader does too.

And he never loses sight of the fact that he is only on the throne because someone sabotaged an entire ship full of people in order to take down the emperor. And who may also want to take Maia down, if one of his courtiers or relatives doesn’t get there first.

Escape Rating A+: I absolutely loved this one, which makes it difficult to review it properly. Or even improperly. As The Goblin Emperor is one of this year’s Hugo nominees for Best Novel, I am also immensely grateful that it is a real choice. I’m having a difficult time deciding between this and Ancillary Sword (reviewed here). I’m looking forward to reading Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu to see if it’s a real horse race.

Back to The Goblin Emperor. The story is one that is familiar in some ways. It is also one that it much easier to do wrong than it is to do right. Addison (now revealed to be Sarah Monette) did it very, very right.

This is a combination of coming-of-age/into-power story and political court intrigue. What makes it so good is that the author made the very insular court intrigue extremely fascinating by combining it with Maia’s coming of age story. There are no big battles in this book, but there are lots of tiny and important ones. Perhaps I should have said that there are no big army battles, because this book is not about warfare. The climax is in many ways quiet, but extremely compelling, and utterly fitting, in its quietness.

The plots come to their current conclusion, not with a bang (or a lot of bangs) but with a whimper. Maia goes from needing to tell himself that he is the emperor to fully inhabiting his role and his life, even if neither are what he wanted. They are what he has and he is determined to make the best of them. In the end, he wears it well.

Because we see this world from Maia’s often confused, sometimes frustrated, and constantly worried perspective, we feel each blow against him, whether it is political or physical or psychological, right along with him. We start out the story every bit as confused as he is about who is who and what is what. We thrill at his small triumphs as well as his big ones, because we are inside his skin. A place where we are often as befuddled as he is, but he is such a fully drawn character that we desperately want him to succeed.

Which he finally does, in his own way. As he tells himself at the beginning, he is not his father, and he will not be emperor in the same way that his father was. His way finally triumphs. We become his friends, as do many of the people around him, even though they have been taught that they shouldn’t.

And it is absolutely awesome.

Note on the audiobook version: The reader was terrific, and did an excellent job voicing all of the many, many characters in the story. Some reviewers have commented that there are a plethora of tongue-twisting names in this story, which there are. As a court intrigue, this court is fully populated with schemers and dreamers alike. While the names look almost like nonsense syllables in print, the audiobook made those names easier to follow. It also pointed out that none of the names are pronounced quite the way we expect.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-14-15

Posted on June 14, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

We are on the road again, so I’ll have to let everyone, including the winners, know who won what of last week’s giveaways next week.

And I’m not just writing this early, but I’m writing in the middle of a thunderstorm. I’m wondering when we’ll lose either power or ‘net. Or both. The fweeping sound the UPS (uninterruptable power supplies) make drives the cats absolutely bonkers.

Or at least more bonkers than they are normally.

One of the things about being on the road is that while I may get plenty of time to read, time and space (and quiet) to write in can be hard to come by. Some people are multi-taskers – Galen can write and even code in the living room with the TV on. Me – I need surround-silence, as opposed to surround-sound.

On that other hand, when I’m reading, the world could go to hell in a handbasket right next to me, and I wouldn’t hear a thing. I’m not there. I’m in Middle-Earth, or wherever the book takes me.

Current Giveaways:

Hot Cowboy Nights book bundle by Victoria Vane
$25 Gift Card + ebook copy of The Rhyme of the Magpie by Marty Wingate
5 copies of Night of the Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper

Blog Recap:

A- Review: Rock with Wings by Anne Hillerman
B- Review: Sharp Shootin’ Cowboy by Victoria Vane
Guest Post by Victoria Vane on Art Imitating Life + Giveaway
B+ Review: The Rhyme of the Magpie by Marty Wingate + Giveaway
A Review: Night of the Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper
Guest Post by Isabel Cooper on her Favorite Author + Giveaway
A- Review: Sinner’s Gin by Rhys Ford
Stacking the Shelves (139)

Coming Next Week:

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (review)
Zack by Sawyer Bennett (blog tour review)
Favorite Heroines Giveaway Hop
Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell (review)
Inherit the Stars by Laurie A. Green (review)

Stacking the Shelves (139)

Posted on June 13, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

Welcome to my shortest book stack ever. I can’t remember a week where I picked up so few books.

Admittedly, I’m cutting this week a bit short as well. We’re traveling this weekend, so I had to compile this post on Wednesday. I kinda hope I found something else interesting by the end of the week.

On a completely other note, I’m starting to see Christmas books on NetGalley and Edelweiss. Just a few, but definitely a harbinger of things to come. I know galleys have to be well ahead of the date of publication, but it is WAY TOO EARLY to think about Christmas stuff. Not to mention winter stuff. Summer just got here!

For Review:
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
Reed (Hell Squad #4) by Anna Hackett

Review: Sinner’s Gin by Rhys Ford

Posted on June 12, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook borrowed from the library
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: M/M romantic suspense
Series: Sinners #1
Length: 260 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Date Released: December 24, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

There’s a dead man in Miki St. John’s vintage Pontiac GTO, and he has no idea how it got there.

After Miki survives the tragic accident that killed his best friend and the other members of their band, Sinner’s Gin, all he wants is to hide from the world in the refurbished warehouse he bought before their last tour. But when the man who sexually abused him as a boy is killed and his remains are dumped in Miki’s car, Miki fears Death isn’t done with him yet.

Kane Morgan, the SFPD inspector renting space in the art co-op next door, initially suspects Miki had a hand in the man’s murder, but Kane soon realizes Miki is as much a victim as the man splattered inside the GTO. As the murderer’s body count rises, the attraction between Miki and Kane heats up. Neither man knows if they can make a relationship work, but despite Miki’s emotional damage, Kane is determined to teach him how to love and be loved — provided, of course, Kane can catch the killer before Miki becomes the murderer’s final victim.

My Review:

I pulled Sinner’s Gin out of the endless TBR stack as a treat to myself. It’s seldom these days that I get a chance to read a book just because “I wanna” and not because I’ve promised a book tour or picked up an ARC from NetGalley or Edelweiss that comes packages with its own commitment to read and review.

Not that I don’t love a good chunk of the books I get from those sources and in those ways, but sometimes I miss the days when I could read something “just because”.

I had to provide myself with an excuse this time, too. I wanted to read at least one book for Pride Month, and I’ll confess that I needed a relatively short book (under 300 pages) to round out the week because of, well, reasons. And because I love Rhys’ Ford’s other series and have had the Sinners series on my iPad forever, this seemed like the time to finally read it.

Boy, howdy, am I glad I did!

The story in Sinner’s Gin is incredibly sad, horribly frightening, and ultimately marvelous. It takes a lot of twists and turns to get to its surprising, in fact, downright shocking, conclusion. And I loved every minute of it.

One of the terrific things about this story is that it starts in a way you don’t expect. Where Olivia Cunning’s Sinners on Tour series shows a rock band at the height of its success, and sometimes excess, Sinner’s Gin shows the pride before the fall, and it cuts like a knife.

They’ve just won a Grammy. The garage band has finally made it to the top, and while they are all still young enough to enjoy it. Tragedy strikes in an instant, and a drunk driver totals their limo on the way back from the awards show, ending three of their lives, plus the limo driver, in a squeal of crashing metal.

We meet survivor Miki St. John months later, and he’s just barely surviving. His extensive injuries are still providing more than enough physical pain to give him nightmares, but its the survivor’s guilt that keeps him stuck in the sea of despond.

Until the dog he won’t even admit is his drags a cop into his life. And until someone leaves the dead body of one of the men who abused him as a child stuffed into his dead bandmate’s classic car.

A car that Miki can’t even drive. It’s just one of the many memories he hangs onto of the only time in his young life that he belonged. Or was happy.

The murder changes everything. But Miki has to wade back through all the bad shit in his life before he is truly ready to reach for something good. The cop that his dog drags into their lives, and into their hearts.

Escape Rating A-: Sinner’s Gin starts with a tragedy, and ends with a shock that kicks over everything that the characters have assumed at the beginning, although they don’t know it yet.

I will say that the whipcrack of that ending answered my questions about how this series was going to continue. Just before the end, it seemed like Miki had worked out his demons, and the mystery was solved with the murderer pleading his case before a much higher court. I didn’t know where the story could go next. And then boom!

Although Kane (and Dude’s) introduction into Miki’s life provide the impetus for the story, and sometimes the impetus for Miki to just manage to get out of bed, this is Miki’s story. It’s his pain, his anguish, and ultimately his re-emergence into the light that gives the story its heart and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat.

At first, the mystery of the trail of dead bodies (and dead body parts) feels like insult added to injury. Miki was lost in the foster care system until he got himself out at 15 and was discovered by the very fledgling band Sinner’s Gin.

He wasn’t able to get justice for the men who physically and sexually abused him, because they were upstanding members of the community and he was considered mixed-race trash who should be grateful for the roof over his head.

In other words, the system failed him. And it starts out failing him again when the body of one of his tormentors is discovered in his garage. It’s obvious that Miki couldn’t have committed the crime, but the cops still circle him like vultures. Until Kane Morgan reaches into the mess and pulls Miki to safety, and into his arms.

It’s a tough time for either of them to be starting a relationship. Miki has never healed from any of the damage that was done to him, either by his childhood or the accident that took his friends. Kane should not get involved with a suspect, or even a person of interest, in a murder case he’s investigating. But it happens anyway.

One of the lovely and marvelous things about the start of Kane’s and Miki’s relationship is that no one is giving Kane any crap over being gay. He is accepted for who he is by everyone, both his fellow cops and his family – not that there isn’t considerable overlap between those two groups. He does take some heat for getting involved with a potential suspect, but that’s an equal opportunity problem.

We do end up following Kane as he is frustrated by his inability to deal with Miki’s very dark night of the soul. Miki is being victimized all over again by the deaths of his tormentors, and by the media leak of his trauma. All Kane can do is be there for him, because Miki has to conquer his demons himself.

I also liked the way that Miki figures out not who exactly, but what drives the person who is attempting to frame him. And the way that he ultimately saves himself.

Just a couple of little niggles that keep this from being an A or A+, as much as I enjoyed it. Kane and Miki’s relationship feels like it goes from zero to 60 in no time flat. While sometimes a sex-into-love relationship works, this was more of a “get under each other’s skin into love and sex” relationship. They seemed to fall in love with each other without this reader feeling it happen. YMMV. It also seemed like Kane’s mother Brigid was a bit of a stereotype of the overpowering mother. I would have pushed her out of my apartment, too. I wanted a bit more nuance to her. Or something.

But I loved Dude. He is such a cute scamp, and exactly what Miki needed.

I can’t wait to make up an excuse to read the next book in this series, Whiskey and Wry. I desperately want to discover how that BOOM of an ending plays out.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Guest Post by Isabel Cooper on her Favorite Author + Giveaway

Posted on June 11, 2015June 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | blog tours> Giveaways> Guest Posts

Today I’d like to welcome Isabel Cooper to Reading Reality. Isabel is the author of today’s marvelous featured review book, Night of the Highland Dragon, and also the author or the award winning genre-bending No Proper Lady.

Her post today is about one of her favorite authors, and also one of mine. Robin McKinley was writing memorable female heroine/warriors in fantasy before it was cool. Her Damar books, The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, are utterly awesome.

Guest Post: Who’s your favorite non-romance author? Why?

Picking a favorite is hard: not an uncommon sentiment, I’d imagine, and one I’m glad of, since “there are a lot of good authors out there” is a pretty great problem to have. After some thought, though, I’m going to say that my favorite author currently writing is Robin McKinley.

First of all, I like her writing style. The sentences themselves are poetic and memorable while still being concrete and unpretentious. The books themselves mostly give me a good idea what’s happening at any point in the story, while still moving along at a good clip: they don’t get bogged down in the sort of detail I like to call Hey Look I Read a Book About This (yes, yes, you know what a buttress is and how a Glock operates, your mother and I are very proud) but there’s still good, vivid imagery in there. McKinley’s books are easy to read, but they also stick with you. She’s even good at that when she’s worldbuilding or explaining elements that a reader might not know, like beekeeping or baking, and that’s rare in my experience—see above.

Second, she covers a lot of genre. I mean, it’s pretty much all fantasy, which is fine by me—I read very little that doesn’t have what my college friends referred to as “mystic noonah”—but within that there’s epic fantasy with the Damar books, urban/modern fantasy with Sunshine, Dragonhaven, and Shadows, a whole bunch of retold fairy tales, and whatever Chalice is, other than maybe “domestic fantasy” (it’s an original world and story, significant things are being done, but the focus is very much on a specific locale and specific people rather than Saving the World) and also awesome. I like all of the above, and it’s nice to have an author who covers them.

Third, her characters are great, particularly her heroines. Some of them, particularly the earlier ones, physically kick ass, of which I deeply approve, but even the ones who don’t go in for magic or swordfighting are competent. They do things, they do them well, and when shit goes ill, they pull up their socks and spit on their hands and deal, to sort of paraphrase P.G. Wodehouse. That’s kind of a requirement for me—a friend of mine, referring to roleplaying games, says that there are plenty of people who don’t deal with themselves, but we don’t want to read stories about them, and I agree.

Also, all of her heroines have a certain amount of sexual agency and desire, whether that’s stated outright or just implied; none of them are shrinking back and pulling up their necklines, with which I have no patience. And she’s written at least two books where the heroine is in love with, or at least interested in, two guys at once, without portraying that as either immoral or tragic or a Vast Conflicted Love Triangle. This is a seriously refreshing change from most literature, especially most fantasy with female protagonists, and gets just mountains of extra points.

About the Author:
During the day, Isabel Cooper maintains her guise as a mild-mannered project manager in legal publishing. In her spare time, she enjoys video games, ballroom dancing, various geeky hobbies, and figuring out what wine goes best with leftover egg rolls. Cooper lives with two thriving houseplants in Boston, Massachusetts.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Isabel and Sourcebooks are giving away 5 copies of Night of the Highland Dragon to lucky winners!

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