Review - Within the Light by Carly Fall

Paperback: 458 pages
Publisher: Westward Publishing
Publication date: 31 October 2011
ISBN13: 9781479128662

First Line - "Noah had seen a lot of dead bodies in his time."

When Abby and Noah meet, there is an explosive attraction between them that neither can deny...

As a shy, awkward, social misfit, Abby has gone her whole life feeling as though she's different from everyone else and she simply doesn't fit in well with society as a whole. She longs to feel a real connection with someone, and she finally does when she meets Noah.

Unbeknownst to Abby, Noah is from another world and his sole purpose is to hunt down the evil of his people that was unleashed on Earth hundreds of years ago. He's certain he isn't going to be able to return to his home, and anger and the need for revenge are his constant companions. His focus has been eradicating the evil and making them pay for taking his life on his world away from him.

Noah tries desperately to fight his attraction to Abby so he can keep his focus on his mission. But when Abby gets dragged into the evil and mayhem from Noah's world, he realizes that maybe with Abby he can find a home here on Earth...if he can save her in time.

Well, that was a nice surprise. This was downloaded earlier in the year as a kindle freebie (I think it still is free) and a lot of times with the free ones you get what you pay for, but this one was pretty good.

I was a bit concerned going into it as it it had a definite 'Brotherhood' feel to it. I thought it was going to be like the BDB series which I really didn't like and I only made it through the first one of those but I shouldn't have worried, it was fine. One of the similarities that got me fretting were the 'Saviors' themselves. Six of them, Alien Warriors in human form, each taller and more pumped full of testosterone than the next. Living together in a secret silo underground and only venturing out to fight crime and rarely to mingle with the mere humans. Turns out they were actually kind of likeable and I'm looking forward to finding out more about them in the rest of the series.

For those that hate insta-love I'd steer clear of this one as there's plenty of that and if you don't like your leading men to be cavemen types I'd give it a wide berth on that score too... Me? I'm not keen on the "Me man, you woman. Assume the position" muscle bound hero's but Noah wasn't toooo much of that. He got a bit over-dramatic with the 'she's mine' carry on at times but he was really just a big lug and it didn't get on my nerves as much as it usually does.

Any mention of their home planet and customs and language and mostly anything at all to do with that part of the story didn't really ring true and I started to question the mechanics of it all so I tried not to dwell on those bits too much as it was pulling me out of the story. It was just the planet-y stuff I glossed over though, the actual Saviors were interesting in how they differed from humans. I really liked how that was done.

Verdict? The story was good, I liked Noah and Abby and I'll definitely work my way through the rest of the series. I'm just hoping the vampires that were mentioned in passing will get a little more page time, I'd be interested to see how they fit in to it all.

Review - Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Indigo
Publication date: 6 June 2013
ISBN13: 9781780621418

First Line - "The Servants called them malecnchki, little ghosts, because they were the smallest and the youngest, and because they haunted the Duke's house like giggling phantoms, darting in and out of rooms, hiding in cupboards to eavesdrop, sneaking into the kitchen to steal the last of the the summer peaches."

The Shadow Fold, a swathe of impenetrable darkness, crawling with monsters that feast on human flesh, is slowly destroying the once-great nation of Ravka.

Alina, a pale, lonely orphan, discovers a unique power that thrusts her into the lavish world of the kingdom’s magical elite—the Grisha. Could she be the key to unravelling the dark fabric of the Shadow Fold and setting Ravka free?

The Darkling, a creature of seductive charm and terrifying power, leader of the Grisha. If Alina is to fulfill her destiny, she must discover how to unlock her gift and face up to her dangerous attraction to him.

But what of Mal, Alina’s childhood best friend? As Alina contemplates her dazzling new future, why can’t she ever quite forget him?

If you open a book and the first thing you see is a map showing the four Kingdoms then it's probably a safe bet that you are about to read a Fantasy. Shadow and Bone has the intro maps, but it turns out it's more YA Fantasy Lite than full on Fantasy.

It's got the four kingdoms at war with each other and the hard to pronounce place names, it has a medieval overall feel to it and a bit of 'magical abilities' (or small science as it's known here) and at it's center it has the 'special one' who is actually quite plain at the start and who must save the world. Yep, that'll be a fantasy then.

It's quite a good story and it kept me interested throughout but I wasn't as sucked into the story as the hype surrounding the book led me to expect. It's maybe just that it's age appropriate for a YA audience and I'm no longer YA.

It's set in what can only be described as a boarding school, complete with mean girls, crushes on an older authority figure, bad tempered teaching staff and teenage angst regarding body image. There's a love story in there somewhere too with a touch of 'love triangle' going on but all is not what it seems so don't be put off by that, if those kind of things bother you. The story itself is quite good and the pace is just right.

I liked the story well enough and will probably read the next one, I'm just not in a mad rush to get to it.

I received an ARC of this book for review purposes. Opinions are my own.

Review - The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 29 August 2013
ISBN13: 9781405911665

First Line - "It was all because of the Berlin Wall."

At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

"My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died..."

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive...

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all — she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia — or each other — but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

What a wonderful story! I'm always a bit hesitant to read a book that is so hyped because I'm usually the one to upset the apple cart and hate it. Not this time though! I loved every word and the hype is spot on! It's such a good book. Believe the hype and the great reviews. It's marvelous.

I was a bit confused at the start, trying to keep up with all the different characters because there are three different storylines going on and I lost track of the names and characters for a while. It didn't take long to get them all sorted out though and I was invested in each little story. Usually with these split storylines I like one line better than the others and get frustrated with the less liked parts but here I loved all the characters and rooted for all of them.

It's a layered plot and I'd go so far as to say I've never read a layered plot done better. The three semi-seperate plot lines are filled with flawed, interesting and real characters and gradually they all start to intertwine and become one big story and I loved watching it all come together. It's very skillfully done and eminently readable.

The husband's secret lies at the core of the story (obviously) and I'll be honest, I guessed the secret before the reveal but that didn't really spoil anything because the real story is what happens 'becasue of' the secret, not actually the secret itself. It's just so good and so very well done.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to friend's, family...strangers on street corners...anyone and everyone. I just loved it and if you're considering this as your next read I'd say definitely go for it. It's so good!

I received an ARC of this book for review purposes. Opinions are my own.

Review - The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Headline
Publication date: 04 July 2013
ISBN13: 9781472204677

First Line - "It was only when Hannah Wilde reached the farmhouse shortly after midnight that she discovered how much blood her husband had lost."

The String Diaries.

A jumble of entries, written in different hands, different languages, and different times. They tell of a rumour. A shadow. A killer.

The only interest that Oxford Professor Charles Meredith has in the diaries is as a record of Hungarian folklore ... until he comes face to face with a myth.

For Hannah Wilde, the diaries are a survival guide that taught her the three rules she lives by: verify everyone, trust no one, and if in any doubt, run.

But Hannah knows that if her daughter is ever going to be safe, she will have to stop running and face the terror that has hunted her family for five generations.

And nothing in the diaries can prepare her for that.

I didn't really know what to make of this one in the beginning but within a few chapters I was drawn in and enjoying it. Told over three periods of time the chapters alternated between Modern day Wales, 1870's Hungary and 1970's Oxford.

It has a Dan Brown feel to it with ancient mysteries and clues and academia...but with shapeshifters. It's not Urban Fantasy shapeshifters though it's more the gothic horror type of shapeshifting and it's very well done. It didn't take long to get gripped and I was enjoying it but by page 400 I was starting feel like I'd heard it all. The story is good but it felt unnecessarily drawn out. The characters are great, the plot is enjoyable, it's well written and it's different enough to keep it interesting...I just felt like I'd had enough by 200 pages to the end.

I received an ARC of this book for review purposes. Opinions are my own.

Review - Lexicon by Max Barry

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Publication date: 20 June 2013
ISBN13: 9781444764659

First Line - "He's coming around."

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren’t taught history, geography, or mathematics—they are taught to persuade. Students learn to use language to manipulate minds, wielding words as weapons. The very best graduate as “poets,” and enter a nameless organization of unknown purpose.

Whip-smart runaway Emily Ruff is making a living from three-card Monte on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization’s recruiters. Drawn in to their strange world, which is populated by people named Brontë and Eliot, she learns their key rule: That every person can be classified by personality type, his mind segmented and ultimately unlocked by the skilful application of words. For this reason, she must never allow another person to truly know her, lest she herself be coerced. Adapting quickly, Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy, until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Parke is brutally ambushed by two men in an airport bathroom. They claim he is the key to a secret war he knows nothing about, that he is an “outlier,” immune to segmentation. Attempting to stay one step ahead of the organization and its mind-bending poets, Wil and his captors seek salvation in the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, which, if ancient stories are true, sits above an ancient glyph of frightening power.

Wow! What a book! This guy can write! Even though I had no clue at all what was going on in the beginning I was sucked in and gripped from the very first page. The story is completely unbelievable and yet I believed every single word. It's genius! It's scary how easily something so far fetched can be plausible but that's exactly what I felt...scarily plausible.

Words are powerful, we all know that but in this book powerful words take on a whole new meaning. It's really hard to say why or how I liked this without giving huge plot spoilers but I'd hate to ruin such a terrific book for any new readers so I won't go there. What I can say though, is that I urge everyone to at least give this one a whirl and try it out. It's really hard to pinpoint a genre as I've not come across anything like it before but 'Thriller' probably comes closest...maybe...I think. It's sooo much more though. This would definitely make a fantastic movie and I'd go to see it in a heartbeat! Try not to read any spoilers for this before you go into it as I think it was the complete mystery surrounding everything that made it so exciting for me. I enjoyed it so much more not knowing what was coming next as I hurtled at breakneck speed though it. It's better to find out what's going on as the characters find out.

LOVED IT!!

I received an ARC of this book for review purposes. Opinions are my own.

Review - Exodus by Paul Anthony Jones

Paperback: 302 pages
Publisher: 47North
Publication date: 11 June 2013
ISBN13: 9781477805060

First Line - "Commander Fiona Mulligan had made a habit out of watching the sunrise"

Reporter Emily Baxter survived the alien red rain that blanketed and annihilated the human race. But after the downpour, and the lethal contagion it spread, came an even greater horror: the rampant transformation of the dead into something utterly unearthly.

With a terrifying new form of life emerging from the mutated landscape, Emily’s only hope is to flee toward distant Alaska where she can unite with the survivors who have reached out to her from a remote science facility. The journey from New York will be long and painstaking, and Emily has only her faithful dog and whatever she can carry. But, after discovering a small family of refugees along the way, Emily’s determination to escape the unfolding catastrophe and carve out a new future is renewed. Standing in their way are Earth’s new masters, equally determined to survive and thrive, and possessed of monstrous capabilities Emily and her allies can’t begin to imagine…until they’re face to face with the hideous reality.

In the battle about to begin, there will be no room for mistakes or mercy—only the most ruthless instincts to survive.

This is the second book in the Extinction Point series and I read both this one and the first one back to back. It's easy to get into and I really like the story but I was a bit apprehensive about starting this as I wasn't a big fan of Emily in the first book, which is unfortunate as Emily has been pretty much the only character for most of it up to this point. By the end of this though she was starting to grow on me...a little. She still frustrates me but if she continues to grow as a character then we might get along better in later books. The story- I like very much. Emily - Not so much.

This part of the series felt more 'road-trip' than 'alien apocalypse' if I'm honest, but I was relieved that at least Emily's bike wasn't such a feature on that road trip. It was ridiculous that she wanted to to travel from New York to Alaska (approx 4000 miles) on a bicycle as the world around her was being overrun with aliens so I'm eternally grateful that that frustration is out of the picture. The fact that she's 30 (I think) and was living in New York and working as a journalist on the New York Tribune points to her being a fairly intelligent and able woman but yet she has no idea how to even start an automatic car (far less drive one), it's just too unbelievable. She maybe never learned to drive but surely she's been IN cars and/or taxi's and saw how others got them started? I'm not buying it. It was just one of the many, many things about Emily that agitated me. Things like that just didn't make any sense and felt like poor plot devices.

Despite all that though I'm still looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series as they become available, I'm just hoping Emily and I can connect a bit better than we have so far.

I received an ARC of this book for review purposes. Opinions are my own.

Book Review - Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

Paperback: 418 pages
Publisher: 47North
Publication date: 23 July 2013
ISBN13: 97816121836408

First Line - "The radio host had said there was a war coming, said it like he was looking forward to it, and Cooper, coatless and chilly in the desert evening, was thinking that the radio man was an asshole."

In Wyoming, a little girl reads people's darkest secrets by the way they fold their arms. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They're called "brilliants" and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in - and betray his own kind.

This would make a great film! Which is handy since the film rights have just been sold to Legendary Pictures (Dark Knight series, Inception).

It's wasn't the book I thought it was going to be though. The blurb focuses on tiny bits of the story and based on that I thought I knew what I was getting into. Some of the people in the story are 'gifted's', 'brilliant's', 'abnorms'...whatever, and those are the people I wanted to read about, the one's with the 'special talents'. I wanted their stories. I did get a bit of that but mostly it's a tense, action filled, political thriller. I think. Kind of. It's a bit hard to pigeon hole, actually. There's lots of action, a bit of political and it's thrilling - But the characters were where I wanted all the attention focused.

However, the story is well written and kept me turning pages. There's espionage, romance, family drama, races against time, suspense...it's all there and worth a read. I think this may be the first book in a trilogy(?) but I'm not sure where I read that. I hope it's true. Maybe in follow on books I'll get to find out more about the characters and all of their wonderful talents.

Can't wait for the film!

I received an ARC of this book for review purposes. Opinions are my own.