I listened to the audiobook version of The Queen's Poisoner by Jeff Wheeler, read by Kate Rudd. The story opens with the Duke of Kiskaddon returning home from battle. His side was victorious, but there was a small problem, or rather a major problem. At a crucial point in the battle, when it looked like they...
I'm a big Scott Westerfeld fan and was pretty psyched to start reading Zeroes. It is the story about 6 teenagers who each have a unique, special power. I wouldn't call them "super powers," though they were pretty cool: Flicker is blind but can see through other people's eyes.Crash is able to "feel" electric and...
The Star-Touched Queen takes place in the milieu of Hindu mythology: the worlds of gods, goddesses, demons, illusion, and reincarnation. The story is about Maya, a young princess in a kingdom that has long been at war with the many surrounding kingdoms. In a bid to bring peace, her father the king proposes that Maya...
The Fifth Season is a compelling and multifaceted story set on a geologically unstable and volatile “Earth”. Earthquakes and volcanoes are a constant threat and if severe enough can cause a fifth season, or extended winter, due to the amount of dust and ash sent up into the atmosphere. Tsunamis created by “shakes” can wipe...
I just finished listening to The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman. The narrator, Fiona Hardingham, an accomplished actress and reader, picked me up, transported me to Regency London and set me down among the aristocracy. It is 1812 and Lady Helen Wrexhall is 18 and ready to go out and live life to its...
I was immediately hooked by The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge. As an anthropologist, I had read a number of works by "armchair anthropologists" that tracked the history of science through the Victorian era, the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species, the gradual unearthing of fossils that called into question a worldview based on counting...
Cindy spoke highly of Truthwitch, by Susan Dennard, so I decided to read it also. Her review of Truthwitch really does a good job of summing up the book, so I won't cover the same ground. Rather, I'll report that the book was fun to read and that its fast pace held my interest throughout. The...
Sefia, the main character of The Reader, had a happy childhood and was loved by her parents and close to her Aunt. However, they had prepared her a hiding place in case something bad happened. One day assassins come and kill her parents and she goes into her secret room where she finds an unusual...
Smoke by Dan Vyleta is one of Cindy's favorites in our Hugo reading quest. She spoke so highly of it that I thought I should read it also. I started off with the first disk of the audiobook, but when that had to be returned to the library I continued with the hardcover. The audiobook...
This young adult book was a great read and should satisfy teens and young-at-heart adults who yearn for adventure, humor, close calls and an engaging fast-actioned book set in an original and well-constructed world. Safiya is a Truthwitch. She can tell when someone is telling the truth or lying, which makes her valuable to those...
All the Birds in the Sky opens up with a six year old girl, Patricia, finding a wounded bird. Immediately I felt I was entering the magical world of a fairy tale and thought that this would have been a great book to have read to my kids when they were young. It is at...
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a collection of three stories that take place in Westeros a hundred years before the events in the Game of Thrones series, a Song of Ice and Fire. The stories are tales of a poor hedge knight, Ser Duncan (or Dunk), who tends to find himself embroiled in the...
A Court of Thorns and Roses is a young adult fantasy / romance by Sarah Maas. The story opens with the central character, Feyre, out hunting. It is winter, her family is hungry, and she has tracked her game deep into the wilderness, near the border of the land of the fairies. There is no...
I just finished listening to the audiobook Smoke by Dan Vyleta, read by Allan Corduner, and I must say it is one of my favorite “listens” of the year. There is nothing better than the perfect pairing of a great book and a talented narrator who can capture the essence of a story. Smoke takes...
Sabaa Tahir made quite a splash last year with her debut young adult novel, An Ember in the Ashes. Her book has been in my “To Be Read” pile for quite a while, and now that I’ve finally read it I can go right into book 2, A Torch Against the Night. This dystopic tale...