Burned

WARNING: There are some spoilers ahead. Short non-spoiler version: This was a good follow on from the other novels. Found some surprises in here. There were things I liked and didn’t like. Was interested very much in how she developed Dani’s character whilst hating it at the same time.

This book seems to be receiving some serious flack in some of the reviews I have read. I was pretty happy in general with this book. I didn’t tear through it as much as the other books in the series for some reason, but it certainly wasn’t the travesty that people are making it out to be. There were parts of it I loved and parts not so much, but the likes far outweighed the dislikes.

In general this was a good installment in the series and I am looking forward to the next one. I still LOVE the world building in this series. There were a couple of completely new areas that we visited with the characters and I could completely construct a visual in my head thanks to Moning’s world building. Her descriptions of the Crimson Hag are just spot on and at times made me cringe, they could possibly give someone nightmares haha.

The characters interacted well and I still love the arguing between groups and the banter that goes on. We saw more of some characters that have so far been mostly in the background which was great and I liked the development of Lor’s character very much. I also appreciated getting to know more about the Nine and finding out about some of Ryodan’s much protected secrets.

-WARNING – BIG SPOILER – SKIP THIS PART IF YOU WANT –

I loved the character of Dani from the other books, I was a bit put off with the changes to her character. I knew something was coming with her because it felt like this was the way we were going with some kind of hidden personality. I was just disappointed when Dani disappeared right at the beginning of the book and I guess her character was so full of life that I really felt the loss in the group. Especially when she was replaced with this next gen Dani/Amazon warrior with the personality of a paper bag. I struggle with this because I love Dani, but at the same time it was such a clever development.

I’m glad I finally got to read this book. It has been on my TBR pile for some time (like you know… since it was published haha). Looking forward to getting hold of the next one.

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52 Books in 52 weeks – November

Yay, before 2015. I knew I could do it 🙂 I have to warn you there are a couple of spoilers today, I swear not many, but just consider yourself duly warned okay?!

Here is the list 🙂

Number	Title	Author
47 – Oct 27 – Nov 2	Shadowfever	Moning, Karen Marie
48 – Nov 3-9	Iced	Moning, Karen Marie
49 – Nov 10-16	Famous last words	Sanders, Annie

November was great, as you can see I finished the Mackayla Lane series and actually started the Dani series with “Iced”. I am so close to my goal now, but honestly I have fallen behind with everything going on at the moment, but that my lovelies is a story for a different post 🙂

Shadowfever – Karen Marie Moning

I need to be honest here, in my last review I was talking about struggling with these books and the first one I absolutely struggled. In fact I think it took me awhile to read because I was just not interested at all. Book 2 I was a little bit more interested, towards the end of book 2 I was all in and seriously you guys I tore through the rest of the series over 1 weekend! One weekend! I mean I didn’t really see my Hubby much, but I went into total book lockdown. I try very, very hard not to put spoilers in my reviews because I want you guys to make the decision to read the book on your own and I don’t want to ruin any of the experience for you 🙂 For this reason it is inherently difficult to discuss this last instalment properly because even by discussing the characters that are in the last book I could be providing spoilers. It does make it difficult because I really want to talk about it with you. Let me just say that I had kind of guessed one or two of the big reveals, not because it was obvious, more because I think my story weaving mind works similarly to the authors. There were points where I went, ‘if I was writing this I would totally twist it like this at the end’ and it just so happened that two of the twists I thought of happened. Trust me you guys there is at least two awesomely big twists at the end of this series that you will probably not see coming 🙂 Naturally at the end of the series I had that hangover you get when the story ends and you have to leave that awesome world you had immersed yourself in. To me that is how you tell if you really enjoyed a book or not. The whole series is worth reading for this final instalment.

Iced – Karen Marie Moning

Luckily as it turns out I do not have to give up the world completely. It seems the story continues, not from Macs point of view, but from Dani’s. Crap, SPOILERS for Shadowfever you guys!!! SPOILERS!

I have just realised that again I cannot really discuss anything from this book without giving away seriously big plot points from Shadowfever. Hmm… okay I have given away one… Dani survives. There that is done LOL.

I really enjoyed her character development. I really like the character of Dani, I like the bad guy, like the plot development and really like the Big Boss scenes. But… sorry people there is a huge but coming… I have an issue with the fact that again there is a massive sexual undertone to the whole book. This protagonist is 14 and you have males (can’t mention names due to spoilers) that are following her around having seriously kinky thoughts about her. The best way of handling it is to forget that she is fourteen, which works until the males in question start talking about the fact that their thoughts are wrong because she is only 14. This book leaves you on a serious cliff-hanger, particularly in regards to the fate of a number of the main characters. I can’t wait for the next instalment in 2015!!

Famous last words – Annie Sanders

This was a random book I picked up at the Library. I am not even sure what made me choose it to be honest. This was an interesting story, I certainly enjoyed seeing the character Lucy rediscover and embrace life. Some of the things she got up to I wish I had the courage to do, but aren’t we all afraid of doing anything and everything we want to do? Afraid of looking foolish or being ridiculed? I liked those aspects of the story, some even made me giggle. A few times I thought I had guessed the ending, to be honest it ended up more obvious than I had expected and I found that interesting. Rather than try to pack a punch with a big message they went with the slightly more realistic message, the weird part being that a realistic message appeared in the most unrealistic part of the story. To be honest I am still trying to sort out my feelings about this one 🙂

Just so you have a running score I thought I would let you know that the end of this post signifies 49/52 books

I swear December shall come… hopefully before the beginning of 2015, but I can’t promise 😛

52 Books in 52 weeks – October

I know, I know, this is so late guys and I am sorry. Very crazy, busy second half of the year for me.

Here is the list 🙂

Number	Title	Author
40 – Sep 29 – Oct 5	Pie Girls	Clark, Lauren
41 – Oct 6-12	Bloodfever	Moning, Karen Marie
42 – Oct 13-19	Faefever	Moning, Karen Marie
43 – Oct 20-26	Dreamfever	Moning, Karen Marie

October was great, I went back to continue the Mackayla Lane series after a number of you said I shouldn’t judge the series on the first book. Turns out you were right. You can read about my first experience here.

Pie Girls – Lauren Clark

I first read about this book in a review on someone else’s blog (I can’t remember who it is, if it was you please speak up so I can link back to your post!) and I decided to add it to my “to read” pile.

I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the story, the characters were interesting. I liked the display of someone changing everything about their life when tragedy strikes because let’s face it… many of us do that! I usually stop after a massive hair change and quite a bit of retail therapy AKA new wardrobe and totally different style, but this young lady went balls to the wall with it and thank god. Whilst there were some likable qualities about her in the beginning, mostly she was very shallow and obsessed with things that are totally unnecessary to be happy in life.

I loved all the talk about pies, oh my god! I think I put on 5 kilos every time she was talking about her pies!!!!! Nom Nom Nom!

Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever – Karen Marie Moning

Part of the reason I didn’t continue with this series was because the female protagonist really put me off in the first book. Another part of the reason is because the other books had all gone missing from the local Library and I wasn’t interested enough in the series to pay for them J Then a few of you told me I had to get past the first book because the series got so much better and I checked my Library again to find that they had replaced the lost stock. So I borrowed them all 😀 Go hard or go home guys I was determined to read them.

I have to admit I am glad that I stuck with it. In the first book I found the characters in general to be quite 2 dimensional, I didn’t really feel there was much depth to explore there at all. But as soon as I started reading book two I realised that they were indeed being developed into deeper characters.  I was still standoffish about Mac until end of book two beginning of book three.

There are lust undertones all throughout this series. Seriously… all through it. Originally I felt there was a love triangle developing with Jericho, V’lane and Mac… then there was Christian. Everyone this chick meets seems to want a piece of her ass. I figure she is like (who is someone who is really hot right now? Ooh yes…) the Emma Stone of Dublin.

Even up until the end of Dreamfever she is still making absolutely ridiculous choices, you sit there and rage, “WTF woman?! By doing this you are causing this, people are going to get hurt and others are going to have to try and save you!” Yet I am completely compelled to continue reading. I like the character of Dani, she is great. My favourite so far would have to be Dreamfever, you learn so much about the characters and more than that you learn a lot about the character’s motivations, what drives them.

To answer your question before you ask it… yes I continued the series… see next post.

Just so you have a running score I thought I would let you know that the end of this post signifies 46/52 books

I swear November shall come… hopefully before the beginning of 2015 😛

52 Books in 52 weeks – June

Some different books this month including one I was quite surprised to like.

Here is the list 🙂

Number	Title	Author
23 – Jun 2-8	False Impressions Stamping Sisters mystery #3	Thayer, Terri
24 – Jun 9-15	City of Dark Magic	Flyte, Magnus
25 – Jun 16-22	City of Lost Dreams	Flyte, Magnus
26 – Jun 23-29	Darkfever	Moning, Karen Marie

 

Continuing on my path of aiming to read books I wouldn’t normally I went to the Library and grabbed a couple of books by authors I had never read – I will neither confirm or deny that part of my choice was based on alluring covers 🙂

False Impressions: Stamping Sisters mystery #3 – Terri Thayer

This was an oops, I didn’t realise it was number three until I got it home… damn fine print 🙂 Luckily this series is one of those that does not have to be read sequentially so we got along fine. I found the characters interesting and the story overall was quite good. I liked that the book was different from your typical mystery and there were character/economic points that I felt really fit with real life situations, for example the main character April has to live in her fathers restored barn with his partners parents because she does historical stamping for restoration projects for a living and there is not much call for that so she has no money – so there are those kind of side stories that make the characters more “real” and relatable which is great. I am definitely considering going back to read the other two – although I am hoping the villain is better hidden because I figured out who it was really quickly and everything after that just confirmed my thoughts until the big reveal and I was kind of sitting there going, ‘oh come one April, you are not this stupid!’

 

 

City of Dark Magic – Magnus Flyte

This book held surprise for me, here I was thinking I was getting a paranormal suspense novel with a female protagonist (Sarah Weston) who is a music student working a summer at Prague Castle Cataloguing Beethoven’s manuscripts (hello! I am a Librarian and a muso – like that wasn’t going to catch my attention haha). What I wasn’t expecting was a sexual element – which at first was really strange and to be honest whilst I now understand why she had a high libido I am not entirely sure it needed to be talked about so much, but I suppose danger, magic and sex kind of go hand in hand. Once the sexual element came in I really wasn’t expecting to like the book, I admit… I judged. I figured it was going to be literary porn masked as a serious novel, but I was pleasantly surprised and indeed rather swept away with the twists and turns in the book. It hooked me and I really, really enjoyed it – it certainly was not porn and as you got into the story you came to understand what that first shock had been about. There is a book two and I am hot on the trail to finding it 🙂

 

 

City of Lost Dreams – Magnus Flyte

I found book two! 🙂 Hooray! I do hate when you start reading a series and have to wait forever for the next book *cough cough* George R. R. Martin *cough*. Slight spoilers, but not really.

This book did have a different feel from the first one, the story was split between Prague and Venice so whilst the main protagonist was still Sarah you spent more time than in the previous book seeing the story unfold from others points of view. I really enjoyed these books for their uniqueness, it was a really different concept that not only challenged the way you looked at the world, but also in the end looked at how people choose to spend their lives. Two different immortals; one who spent their life trying to achieve and brought science and medicine forward in leaps and bounds and one who spent their time frivolously searching for a way to end it all – don’t worry they are not Vampires 🙂 Just humans.

 

 

Darkfever  – Karen Marie Moning – SOME SPOILERS

This one I just grabbed from Overdrive because I had nothing to read and it sounded interesting and had a pretty cover. Turns out I was right with my earlier assumption… danger and magic mean that at some point or other in a book you’re going to end up with sex… why is that? Whilst the whole book was not a sexual tone the couple of times it was it was kind of a shock.

I found the story okay, you have no clue who is bad and who isn’t for the entire book. The female protagonist kind of grows on you, but she spends a lot of the book insisting she is not a bimbo, but whining about her looks and nail polish… I get the impression that the fact is at the beginning she WAS a shallow bimbo, but she is supposed to be slowly changing into someone of depth due to what is happening around her. I have no clue what is going on with the character of Barrons, if I was living in that place I would be spending my days (when he is not around) going through his house from top to bottom searching for ways to protect myself from him – he seems like a psycho and throws Mac around – it’s very strange!!!

One thing that really annoyed me was that I didn’t feel like the ending was an ending, I thought it was the end of the chapter, turned the page and there was the glossary… umm wtf? I google the title… dammit it is a series and nowhere has the second book, this annoyed me because the book had no kind of conclusion, seriously… the narration is done from some point in the future as though she is telling the story of how she got there… naturally I figured the end of the book would at least get me to the point the narrator was up to, but no… nothing. It was really weird, but it also drew you in so I kind of want to read the others, although admittedly that could be my love of closure 🙂 Don’t even get me started on how Mac magically transformed into Buffy TVS after one lesson on where to stick the pointy end… just… don’t.

And so we go into July… so many books… so little time. What are you reading at the moment? I am open to suggestions 🙂