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Cold Magic by Kate Elliott is the first in the Spiritwalker trilogy and tells the story of Cat Hassi Barahal as she comes to terms with the strange new path her life is taking her and the new powers she acquires.  Cold Magic has been on my TBR list for some time.  I’d picked it up several months back when it was on special offer on Kindle for $1.99, but never got round to reading it.  It moved up the list a few weeks ago when I read an intriguing article on the magic system, yet it never quite made it to the top.  Finally  a couple of weeks ago, Audible released it as an audiobook.  This is the first of the books to be released on Audible, so I picked it up to listen to during my nightshifts and it finally made it to the top of the list.  I’m very glad it did! What I liked Interesting themes.  Elliott explores some interesting themes in this novel.  One of the major ones is magic vs technology.  The society in which Cat lives is beginning to make progress with industrialisation and this engenders conflict with the powerful Mage Houses, the…

It certainly isn’t a good week to be a bookworm in Quebec.  Canada’s Globe and Mail is reporting that Quebec’s legislature has opened a hearing on pricing for new books.  Being discussed is the question of whether or not to prevent the price of new books being discounted by more than 10% for the first nine months after release.  The stated intention behind this is to protect the smaller bookstores, especially smaller Francophone ones, from the big hitters such as Amazon and Walmart.  Now, while I can appreciate the sentiment, I’m really not certain that keeping book prices high is really going to help anyone.  Smaller bookstores are never going to be able to compete with Amazon on price, so perhaps the government should concentrate on supporting them other ways.  For example subsidising author signings in the province, sponsoring book groups, or subsidising the cost of Quebecois francophone books.  Most Quebec produced books are still noticeably more expensive than their English counterparts. This week I have been working nightshift.  As my job is very reactive – sitting around waiting on servers burping, not many human callers – I find it’s a perfect time to enjoy some audiobooks.  The books help to keep…

Once again, dear readers, here is my weekly update in what I’ve been reading. The Land of Stories: The Enchantress Returns is the second in Chris Colfer’s children’s book series.  However, it’s not nearly as enjoyable as the first one.  The setting and characters are still enchanting, but the plotline seems a little repetitious.  Once again our hero twins set off on a quest to gather magical objects that will allow them to cast magic to defeat the evil Enchantress.  Additionally, this book suffers from too much of a tendency to show rather than tell; too many stretches where characters explain about something that happened rather than being shown it.  Perhaps the novelty of the setting and characters carried the first book much further, and papered over inadequacies in writing style, but in this second installment it is not enough to cover up the recycled plotlines and the somewhat clunky narration. I’m not saying it isn’t a fun read to pass a couple of hours – I do love the world Colfer has built – but I do feel that with better editing and perhaps a different emphasis on story lines it could have been so much better.  I gave…