Looking for Your Next Book

As you might suspect from the title, this is a 'heist' novel in a fantasy setting.  As I enjoy some of the better heist movies and I like a good fantasy, why not give it a shot? A woman, Loch, is looking to retrieve a priceless Elven manuscript that was stolen. Adding insult to injury, the woman was also locked up by the too-powerful man. It certainly benefitted the criminal that he has friends in high places.  But the woman has friends, too. She pulls together a crack team of oddballs - Ululenia the unicorn, the priestess Desidora and her hammer, the illusionist Hessler - to name just a few. They must find a way into a floating fortress, past golems, then past sorcerers, just to get to the vault holding the manuscript. And as Loch and Kail (her partner in crime) have just escaped from prison as the book starts, they'll be hunted, too. Right from the start I was going to struggle a bit with this book. I'm not a huge fan of books with multiple points of view in t...

1800's, Bangor, Maine. Three women struggle to survive and thrive in a male-dominated world. Maude Richmond is bright young girl who wants to become a doctor like her father, but, because she's female, it won't be possible. So she does the next best thing - she becomes a midwife and by choice she elects to help the 'fallen' girls. Fanny Abbott is one of Maude's patients. A young girl who has been completely taken advantage of - seduced and abandoned.  She gives birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Fanny knows that she needs to find work, but the prospect is made doubly hard with a baby in tow, so she asks her sister to look after the child while she looks for work in the city.  She'll send for the baby as soon as possible.  But that good time never seems to arrive as Fanny flounders about trying to find work.  Finally she manages to get a job ... running the day-to-day business of a brothel ("Pink Chimneys") - and sends for her daughter, now a young wom...

A graphic novel, titled The Writer, about a comic writer who becomes his own character in a battle against a slough of demons and creatures straight out of Jewish folklore?! Heck yeah I'm wanting to read this! Stan Siegel, a renowned comic book writer (ha! I guess we already know this is a fantasy) learns the significance of a family ring which once belonged to King Solomon. Wearing it gives him powers which he'll need to fight off the various demons - well known demons in the Jewish community. Stan will get a great deal of help from his surprisingly adventurous, sword-wielding mother. Stan's daughter Izzy will be along for the adventure. Among the demons that family will face are the most dreaded of all creatures, straight out of hell ... Nazis. The artwork here by Ariel Olivetti is outstanding. In fact, if it weren't for the beautiful appearance of this book, this would be a clear DNF. The story here is all over the place. In barely 100 pages we get Solomon's hist...

Kirmen is different. Seriously different.  Due to some cruel-though-for-good-reason experiments by a doctor, Kirmen, one of the last humans born after the apocalypse, is slowly seeing his physical form reshaped and adapted for a better life in the new world. He is becoming more plant-like. While the adaptation may make life easier in the future, it's hellish today. He is also becoming a pariah among his peers, an outcast. AS the transformation becomes more and more complete, will he be so different that he'll no longer be able to interact with his community - the only people he knows and loves? I am always looking for science fiction and fantasy that is rooted with an environmental theme. Other than the awesome Kim Stanley Robinson, I haven't found much, so when I read the description of this book I was thoroughly excited. The concept here is fabulous! Wow. Why I haven't I seen anything like this before? It's just brilliant. It works on so many different levels - th...

Bards sing songs of the hero Elysia Dayne - she's a hero, monster slayer, and renowned for killing a dragon in one-on-one combat. Sometimes, though, the bards build up the truth to make a better story. There was a time, after all, that Elysia admired the dragons and thought of them as beautiful. Even a hero needs to work and Elysia takes on a job to rescue Princess Isabella Solemaine who's been taken prisoner by goblins in the dangerous Borderlands. Knowing that one of the keys to a successful  rescue is careful planning, Elysia prepares for everything she can think of, yet still things go wrong and she and Isabella are left to wander through unfriendly territory. And in case it wasn't bad enough that the goblins are unhappy to have lost their prize, Niemirian raiders are tracking the pair, looking to kill them both.  It will take time and trust and Isabella will slowly come around to Elysia and a soft romance will develop, but the Niemirian challengers may cut any r...

Five high school kids - generally outcasts among their peers - are bonded by their oath to protect one another no matter what. This has served them well and helped each of them survive high school. When they chose to go on a camping trip they couldn't have anticipated the strange sight before them. A massive staircase is there, in the middle of the woods. One friend, Matty, runs up the staircase and leaps off, only to disappear. No amount of searching yields the whereabouts of Matty and before they know it, the staircase disappears. The four remaining friends have to suffer the glares of the townsfolk who are sure they are responsible for Matty's disappearance, and after intense scrutiny from the police, friend Nick chooses to admit to giving Matty drugs in order to get the heat off his friends. Twenty years later and Nick, out of prison, asks for a reunion of the four friends. He knows of another staircase in another forest and takes them there. On climbing and then leaping fr...

What happens when you put Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Frankenstein together in one book? In the hands of author Christopher Moore it becomes an absolutely beautiful, mesmerizing tale. It is 1911 in Vienna. Gustav Klimt is perhaps the best known artist in all of Austria. Late one night he discovers the body of a nude woman in the Danube canal. While the 'right' thing to do would be to call for a policeman, Klimt, taken with the sight, must first make a sketch of the woman. But while doing so, the woman coughs. Stunned that she's alive and not dead, Klimt gets her to his studio where his muse and model - a woman named Wally - tend to her. The nearly-drowned girl doesn't remember anything about who she is or how she came to be in the canal, and her personality is quite animalistic. Klimt chooses to call her Judith and seeks the help of Sigmund Freud (who seeks the help of Carl Jung) to find out who she is. The answer, however, is unexpected and unbelievable...

Wilbur lives a quiet life with his wife in an unassuming home somewhere in the United States. Life is disrupted when a package is delivered for Wilbur.  It's a HUGE package - too big to have fit through the door or any windows. His wife only remembers that a delivery came. It takes some time before Wilbur is willing to open it, but eventually does so - it was delivered to his house, after all.  What's inside, however, is definitely not something for Wilbur, his wife, or anyone he knows. What is delivered to Wilbur, and what is waiting for him in his basement, is a weapon of mass destruction. Literally. Calls to the military, politicians, and even the press seem to result in no result. No one is missing a bomb, but Wilbur is sure if one were to be discovered in his basement, it would bring nothing but trouble. But no one believes him, or cares. But the bomb in the basement is taking its toll on his marriage and he'd really like to go back to his unassuming contentment. I rea...

Elma York, often referred to as The Lady Astronaut, is bound for Mars.  After the meteor strike that destroyed Washington, Dc and triggered a global, catastrophic event, mankind began the earnest search for a new home. Elma is part of the second expedition to Mars but as she arrives she quickly realizes that something isn't right and that there may have been many problems on the First Mars Expedition that were never reported. In addition to dealing with whatever mess was left for her from the previous expedition, Elma has to deal with more emergent issues. While making Mars habitable for families is one of the goals, hence the number of couples on the mission, having a baby is not part of the plan. But an unplanned pregnancy is just what she has to deal with. There's no question in the mind of the pregnant astronaut that the pregnancy should be terminated, but the very question brings about turmoil on earth. Challenging the support on earth brings about other concerns over poss...

It's hard not to want to read a book about writing.  Especially a happy one! And author Marissa Meyer gets us with just that title. Meyer, the author of a a couple different fantasy YA series lays out a plan for writers to achieve a happiness in their writing routine. It's part 'how-to' and part 'self-help zen'. I've read a LOT of books on writing and I've rarely read anything new (Chuck Wendig comes closest with  Gentle Writing Advice ). The truth is, there are no secrets. There are no shortcuts. Of course this particular book isn't about how to write.  It's about how to find more joy in your writing  - and thereby become more prolific which will ultimately equate to more success, and so it IS a how-to for writers. It's just approached in a unique manner. Like all such books, there are plenty of nuggets of wisdom to take to heart ("this story was worth starting. That means it’s worth finishing"), and I also appreciated the recognit...

Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster is the titular warriorborn member of the Spire Albion nobility. He has much more advanced senses and abilities. He is sent on a special reconnaissance mission to a colony spire that has very suddenly stopped answering all call.  He is sent with three warriorborn prisoners as his backup. This, of course, is to create plausible deniability should the mission fail ... which it most certainly will. The book is billed as a Cinder Spires novella, but at only 137 pages (compared to book one's 650 pages and book two's 610 pages) it comes across as more a short story than a novella. But this is okay because there's enough action and story from start to finish to satisfy most readers. I've admittedly been slightly less than enamored with this series - I'm not a huge fan of epic fantasy which the Cinder Spires books seems to be. Mostly because I'm not patient enough for the format - I want more character and action instead of history, plotting, ...