Upcoming releases in July
Miscellaneous / June 30, 2015

July is quite a quiet month in terms of books about which I am excited.  There are three new releases which I am anticipating. The first of these is Ian Drescher’s William Shakespeare’s The Clone Army Attacketh.  This is the second in Doescher’s reimagining of the Star Wars prequels (the original trilogy has already been adapted.)  Regular readers of my blog know how much I love these adaptations – they are witty, very clever and a lot of fun to read/listen to.  I am very disappointed, however, that neither The Phantom of Menace or The Clone Army Attacketh are available in audiobook format.  Random House Audio’s full cast productions of the original trilogy adaptations were nothing short of brilliant.  I have contented myself to preorder The Clone Army Attacketh in Kindle format, which is released on July 7th. This month sees the publication of two novellas in series I am following. Pale Kings and Princes is the next novella in the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy series by Cassandra Clare and guest authors.  This one is co-authored by Robin Wasserman. I adore Clare’s Shadowhunter world and have been loving these novellas to tide me over in the wait for The…

Reading roundup – June 24th 2015
Reading Roundup / June 24, 2015

First of all happy St Jean-Baptiste to those of you in Quebec!  It’s the provincial holiday here today and we have great weather for it. This week I finished Because You’ll Never Meet me by Leah Thomas.  I mentioned it in my last reading roundup – it’s the letter exchange between two young boys whose physical limitations leave them isolated.  I really loved the way their friendship was developed and a full review is coming soon.   I know many people really enjoy the work of Guy Gavriel Kay, especially those who enjoy high fantasy.  I started reading The Summer Tree, but I just couldn’t get into it.  For some reason, the characters just didn’t click with me and I didn’t find myself drawn into the worldbuilding as I normally am.  In all fairness, I think it was probably more to do with my not really being in the mood for epic fantasy than any fault of the novel or writer.  I will likely revisit it at some point in the future. This is borne out by the fact that the other book I read this week was Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins.  This is a…

Reading roundup – June 13th 2015
Reading Roundup / June 13, 2015

One of the books I started listening to this week is Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas.  This is the story of two young socially isolated boys who become penpals.  Their respective issues – one is highly allergic to electricity and the other requires an electrical pacemaker – precludes their ever meeting.  I’m about a third of the way through it and am very much enjoying it.  It is written in the style of letters the two boys send to each other – which means it’s about as perfect for the audiobook format as you can get.  Both narrators are doing an excellent job. I may do a full review on this later, so I won’t say much more. [book-info number=1] Another book I started reading this week was Patricia Briggs’ Dead Heat, the fourth in her Alpha and Omega series.  I felt in the mood for some contemporary fantasy.  I’ve only just started, but so far, so good.  Briggs is usually a reliable go-to for this kind of good, and her characters are generally well-developed and interesting.  I’m beginning to feel though that she has just about come to the natural end of the stories she can…

The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen – Review
Audiobook reviews , Book Reviews / June 12, 2015

The Invasion of the Tearling is the second in Erika Johansen’s YA Tearling fantasy trilogy.  It continues the story of young queen Kelsea Glynn as she prepares to deal with the aftermath of her actions in the first novel, The Queen of the Tearling. I’ll start this review by stating that I hadn’t actually intended to continue with this series, given that I had significant issues with Johansen’s worldbuilding and character development in the first book.  However, I recently read the book blurb which indicated to me that Johansen was taking clear steps to address some of the issues with the worldbuilding at least and so I decided to give the series a second chance.  What I liked Additional point of view character.  For this second outing, Johansen has added a second point of view character, Lily.  Lily is a woman from the pre-Crossing era who has a strange connection with our protagonist, Kelsea.  Through her eyes we learn more about the history of the Tearling’s founding and what led William Tear to strike out to begin his utopia. I absolutely loved Lily’s story and, personally, I was far more engaged with her plight than Kelsea’s.  These sections were wonderful…

Reading roundup – June 6th 2015
Reading Roundup / June 6, 2015

This week I’ve been in a real reading slump.  After finishing A Natural History of Dragons, I really couldn’t decide what to read next.  I tried several books including L. E. Modesitt Jr’s The Soprano Sorceress, Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn and  Graphic Audio’s full cast rendition of Brandon Sanderson’s Hero of the Ages, but none of them hit the spot. I was more interested in watching Animal Planet’s Cat Daddy.  Incidentally, this week Jackson Galaxy’s autobiography, also called Cat Daddy, was one of Audible’s Daily Deals so I was happy to pick that one up.  It’s narrated by Jackson himself, so could be a very good listen. Finally I was able to break my slump by picking up Mark Lawrence’s The Liar’s Key.  This is the second in his Red Queen’s War series and continues the story of Jalan and Snorri.  This series is set in the same world as The Broken Empire, and I adored the worldbuilding. I’m really enjoying this book so far – I’m just under half way through.  So far I’m not seeing quite the same character development in Jalan as there was for Jorg in The Broken Empire series, but…