Sarah

I picked this book up when it was mentioned on Fantasy News on Youtube and I'm so glad I did. This is a cool take on the dungeon crawl trope that really looks at the gamut of human atrocity. The main characters are growing and the plot hooked me, especially when I though it would peter out.

The relationship between the Duke and Nan felt creepy and the damn book is unfinshed. Its all fine and well that the notes tell you that Nan and Guy run off together but to not actually have it in the text is profoundly anticlimatic.

Sara is in a new city and stirring up trouble. I liked this volume but as an intro to the witchblade universe I probably could have chosen a better starting point. They do an alright job re-introducing characters but some are not as clear as if you had read earlier volumes.
That being said, the story line is solid, and the artwork is amazing with some beautiful full page spreads that would be great as stand alone pieces of art.
I will be reading more from this universe.

once again, as an Australian, we miss out on representation and recognition. Our ministry of magic really needs to pull its finger out and get some of our more spectacular magical creatures the recognition they deserve.
The rainbow serpent was not mentioned at all among the large serpents and they carve out rivers.
The Bunyip who are known to protect the local wildlife from outside forces.
Not to mention the world famous drop bear and hoop snake.
such a shame

I got about 80% of the way through this and I don't know if it's because I reading it at the same time as another book that I am really loving but I just don't care what happens at the end of this story and can find no motivation to read it....and if I'm forcing myself to read something in my own time Im not going to read it.

This was fantastic! The plot jumped all over the place for the first 300 pages with hilarious results and considering the main objective of the Character Fabrigas is to jump to another universe, this works beautifully.
One of the things I loved the most of the pop culture references. I wish the “traditional sea shanties” had continued into the second half of the book because the image of a dirty, disreputable rabble of grisaled sailors singing mixed up versions of pop songs is one of the funniest things I have read...ever!

The second half of the book is where the plot settles down and goes in a more linear fashion. This is where the action really heats up and once the homunculus shows up we're really cooking with gas.
Awesome book really worth the read.
I want more from these universes.

Promising start to a new story arc.

Ardent Forest by Nancy Jane Moore
This was a nice, if not overly complex, quick read that did not take much effort to get through.
The two privileged girls, Rosa and Cecily, are the step daughter and daughter, respectively, of the governor of Texas in a post economic meltdown of the US (and apparently that means the world too.)
The Governor, Guy Gisborn, seized the governorship from Rosa's mother 5 years before the story takes place and in a fit of paranoia exiles Rosa from the city.
This sets up the rest of the story but I felt that everything came to the girls without the hardship and trials that make a good science fiction/ fantasy story. It had all the elements and the set up but the complexities were not there. The people or things they were looking for were found almost effortlessly.
If Moore was trying to also make a statement about sexuality and gender stereotypes in the modern world, that was also done poorly as the characters that were addressing these issues did not face any sort of judgement or hardship because of who they were, which is unfortunately the case at this point in time.
I gave this 2 out of 5 stars.
I received this book to review through Library Thing Early Reviewers

Amari By Steven Atwood
Amari is a science fiction, dystopian future, space adventure where the UN took over the running of the known universe after the GFC. They became power hungry tyrants that basically became thought police. They shipped people off to Mars to be “Re-educated” in the mines and others who escaped colonised Europa and beyond, creating places ripe for piracy and black market trading.
I think I was hoping for Firefly and was sorely disappointed. I also thought I could read around the religious aspects of the book but couldn't. The idea that all the religious people were calm and righteous and all those against religion were cruel, callous and fear their own death more than anything else really grated on me. Mainly because I read science fiction because it reflects the world quite well and I don't see this as the way the world is. Simple being religious does not suddenly make you a perfect person as it seemed to do in this story.
The further you go in the book the more grammatical errors there are, which slows down the reading process dramatically.
If religion is the saviour of you world and you like science fiction with that flavour, this would be a great book for you but not me.
I received this book from Library Thing's Members Giveaways.

Wasps a the the Speed of Sound by Derryl Murphy

This is the newest edition of Wasps at the Speed of Sound, with 11 short science fiction stories (the original had 10). All of the stories have an environmental warning but this enhances the stories rather than detracts from them.

My favourite story was the Blue Train in which most of humanity that still exists after an extreme water shortage travels the world on a gigantic train in search of water and their subsequent freedom from this train by one man who dared to question the company's monopoly on the earths water.

Murphy constructs the world of each story so well, with little extraneous language as possible so the reader can create a vivid image of their own. Truly a pleasure to read for any science fiction fan and possibly for any environmentalist too.

I received this book from Library Thing Early Reviewers

This got an extra star because both the front and back cover are lenticular! And I am a magpie.

this story was poorly written and there seemed to be no continuity in the writing style. the character development was clunky and didn't inspire sympathy in any of the characters. I just didn't care what happened to them or the history of the world. Which is unfortunate because it started out well and just went downhill from there. 1 out of 5 stars

good steampunk elements but doesnt have the same comic writting style from the start in the second half of the book.

I received this book to review through Library Thing Early Reviewers
This is another of the Double Down series that delivers two novellas in one neat little package.
Smog by Lisa Morton was a really easy read that flowed beautifully. Set in the 1960's when everything was more innocent and the only thing to fear was the Russians. This little slice of Americana becomes the setting of a chemical induced lord of the suburban flies where the main character , the tomboy Joey, has to fight for survival and deal with her first period. A fun take on the coming of age story.
Baggage of Eternal Night by Eric J. Guignard is less of an easy read but a far grittier story. This story touches at the hoarder and collector in all of us. Charlie's friend, the recovering problem gambler Joey Third, gets more than he bid for on the purchase of a suitcase from the hotel auctions. Feeling a bit like House of Leaves, this story uncovers the things in the shadows that we don't like to think about to truly giver the reader the yips.
The two novellas are certainly worth the Sunday afternoon perusal.

So once again I have found a book that I love that is a very short run.
I initially thought the artwork was a bit lazy as it looks very smudged and blurry. On closer inspection I found that the blurry effect was an overlay and the work underneath is quite good.
The story itself is a solid quest for home style story, with allies made on the way to come to the rescue during the final battle.
Mainly I liked the dragon but that goes for any story.

This series is a really good, old fashion, travel adventure story, set when the world was still an unknown and mysterious place. Not everyone is safe and the world is scary and dangerous, but that doesn't stop our young adventurer, Bren and it should stop anyone else!

This was a solid dystopian sci-fi that reminded me a lot of Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel.
Set in the lat 21st century in an isolated (by choice and governmental procedure) city of Kennedy, the local law enforcement are stymied by two new criminals; a thief who is targeting data pools and an assassin targeting council member in favour of reassimilation with the ReUnited States of America (RUSA).
The city is falling apart because they have got to the point were they have recycled everything they can and without an injection of new resources they are starting to go backwards.
Can our hero, Phillip Roads, find the crooks before the RUSA military rolls into town and takes over...

This would have been a 2 star if not for the ending. I really liked the art work but I found the story just a bit too simple. I thought that is could have had a little bit more in the way of plot to fill out what could have been a really meaty story. Ok not great.

I found this novel to be very clunky and pedestrian. The elements of the era were not solid with modern refences that come across as jarring against the back drop of 1930's Australia.
The literary clues seem ham fisted (especially the lamb scene) that came across as graphic just for shock value and not how a farmer would actually conduct themselves.
I realise that it was all from the perspective of the 13 yr old the disconnect between his revelations and his age were too much for me to have a suspension of disbelief.
Overall if you want this feel read To Kill a Mockingbird and if you want a good Australian small town story read Sun on the Stubble and give this one a miss.

Industrial sized poop slinging. Doesn't get better than that.

Read this for my work book club.
The character development was seriously lacking with the physical descriptions of the main character, Lotte, mainly described as fat and freckled and very little else. The family were also only very lightly sketched.
This could be due to the first person POV. However this perspective struggles because although the majority of the story is described by 12-13 year old Lottie, it is also from the perspective of a mid 20's (I'm guessing as I don't think it is actually stated) adult Lottie. There was no new opinions given due to hindsight of age.
For this reason, the child Lottie's story reads like young adult fiction with the drama of high school to focus instead of the heavier themes of child abuse and the ever present “Art Monster”
In a heavy handed way, I believe that the author was trying to get across that people value art and hence artists higher than that of an abused and sick child.
This would have been more poignant if the story around it wasn't written in such a childish manner.

Second Chance by David D Levine is an atypical science fiction story about humans slipping the surly bonds of earth to touch the cold reaches of a distant galaxy and conduct extensive scientific research. However Levine has done what countless science fiction writers have done in the past, take a current emotional and political theme and distance it from the present in order for the reader to objectively analysis the consequences of the lead character's actions and feelings.
The protagonist Charles “Chaz” Eades is a highly renowned scientist that has been chosen, along with a select few to be part of the crew aboard the Cassiopia. Chaz is also a prejudiced, homophobic Christian on a vessel with two homosexual men and a transsexual woman.
But there is a twist in the fact that its clones of each person that have been sent eighty years into space with the promise that several years of brain scans would be transmitted. However Chaz wakes up with only the memory of the first scan. What happened to the rest of his scans, why wasn't anyone waiting for him when he was revived and how will he come to terms with his faith out in the cold reaches of space?
David D Levine has created a wonderful analysis of the homophobic and transgender fearing mind in a genre that has traditionally allowed the audience to traverse “touchy” and emotive subject matter, and he has done so in a short story format that leaves you wanting more, not wishing him to just finish it. 4 out of 5 stars.

I liked this, merely because I like the genre. I'm going to go with the opinion that Jonas and Gabriel die at the end becasue it was a bit too Peter Pan like for it not to be ie Elsewhere and Neverland.... same place, death. 3/5 stars

A cute, short window into a world where magic exists but comes as an awful price. The world has been taken over by brambles that are death to touch. Each small work of magic causes more brambles to take root and grow and the only way to fight back is fire and the people are losing the fight. The Alchemist makes it his life's work to find a way to fight back that will free the world from the choking hold that the bramble has on them. But will it come at the cost of his family?
I just wanted to read more of this world. What came before when magic was used freely? What came after?

This was one of the sweetest stories I have read in a long time. A proper fairy tale fantasy and it had a dragon, a lost princess who is practical and not prissy and the magykal seventh son of a seventh son.
I will be reading the rest of the series very soon.