Books I’m Eyeing is a (hopefully) weekly series wherein I show you the books that have intrigued me, and the blogs and reviews we can all blame that on. My goal is to make my library hate me because of all the holds I have placed. This feature will show you just how I’m accomplishing that.
Do any of these books interest you? Or are there some that I’ve missed but should check out? Let me know!
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First, news: TO EVERYONE AT WORLDCON – I hate you all.
Now, onto my list of books.
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A Different Kingdom – Paul Kearney
(Re-released January 2014)
Discovery blamed on: Only the best SciFi
About the Book
A different kingdom of wolves, woods and stranger, darker, creatures lies in wait for Michael Fay in the woods at the bottom of his family’s farm.Michael Fay is a normal boy, living with his grandparents on their family farm in rural Ireland. In the woods there are wolves; and other things, dangerous things. He doesn’t tell his family, not even his Aunt Rose, his closest friend.
And then, as Michael wanders through the trees, he finds himself in the Other Place. There are strange people, and monsters, and a girl called Cat.
When the wolves follow him from the Other Place to his family’s doorstep, Michael must choose between locking the doors and looking away – or following Cat on an adventure that may take an entire lifetime in the Other Place.
This is Paul Kearney’s masterpiece.
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The Black Guard – A.J. Smith
Discovery blamed on: The Speculative Scotsman
About the Book
The launch of an heroic fantasy saga set in the lands of Ro, an epic landscape of mountain fortresses, vast grasslands, roiling ocean and slumbering gods.
The Black Guard is the first in a major new fantasy series, The Long War, set in an invented world somewhat similar to medieval Europe in terms of technology, heraldry and ethics. Magic features in the world, but is rare and mostly confined to the various priesthoods. The city of Ro Canarn has been assaulted by Knights of the Red. Amongst them is a Karesian Enchantress of the Seven Sisters, intent on manipulating the men of Ro to her ends. Her Sisters intend the assault to be the first move in a longer game, a war intended to destroy worship of the Gods of men and bring back the malevolent Forest Giant of pleasure and blood.
The young Lord of Canarn, and one of his closest friends, plan a desperate gambit to take back the city, whilst his sister journeys north and confronts more of the Sisters’ schemes as they try to conquer the rest of the lands of men.
Divided by geography and surrounded by enemies, a disparate group of Clerics, Priests, Knights, criminals and warriors must defeat overwhelming odds to seize back the lands of men from those unknowingly under the sway of the Dead God and his Enchantresses.
The Duke of Canarn is dead, executed by the King’s decree. The city lies in chaos, its people starving, sickening, and tyrannized by the ongoing presence of the King’s mercenary army. But still hope remains: the Duke’s children, the Lord Bromvy and Lady Bronwyn, have escaped their father’s fate.
Separated by enemy territory, hunted by the warrior clerics of the One God, Bromvy undertakes to win back the city with the help of the secretive outcasts of the Darkwald forest, the Dokkalfar. The Lady Bronwyn makes for the sanctuary of the Grass Sea and the warriors of Ranen with the mass of the King’s forces at her heels. And in the mountainous region of Fjorlan, the High Thain Algenon Teardrop launches his Dragon Fleet against the Red Army. Brother wars against brother in this, the epic first volume of the long war.
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The Woken Gods – Gwenda Bond
Discovery blamed on: 52 Book Reviews
About the Book
The more things change…
Five years ago, the gods of ancient mythology awoke all around the world.
The more things stay the same…
This morning, Kyra Locke is late for school because of an argument with her father.
Seventeen-year-old Kyra lives in a transformed Washington, D.C., dominated by the embassies of divine pantheons and watched over by the mysterious Society of the Sun that governs mankind’s relations with the gods. But when rebellious Kyra encounters two trickster gods on her way home, one offering a threat and the other a warning, it turns out her life isn’t what it seems. She escapes with the aid of Osborne “Oz” Spencer, a young Society field operative, only to discover that her scholar father has disappeared with a dangerous Egyptian relic. The Society needs the item back, and they aren’t interested in her protests that she knows nothing about it or her father’s secrets.
Now Kyra must depend on her wits and the suspect help of scary Sumerian gods, her estranged oracle mother, and, of course, Oz–whose first allegiance is to the Society. She has no choice if she’s going to recover the missing relic and save her father. And if she doesn’t? Well, that may just mean the end of the world as she knows it. From the author of Blackwood comes a fresh, thrilling urban fantasy that will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman, Cassandra Clare, and Rick Riordan.
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Cold Steel – Kate Elliott
Discovery blamed on: The Founding Fields (actually, I need to read book 2 before I get to book 3, but the fact that it’s out slipped my radar)
About the Book
Trouble, treachery, and magic just won’t stop plaguing Cat Barahal. The Master of the Wild Hunt has stolen her husband Andevai. The ruler of the Taino kingdom blames her for his mother’s murder. The infamous General Camjiata insists she join his army to help defeat the cold mages who rule Europa. An enraged fire mage wants to kill her. And Cat, her cousin Bee, and her half-brother Rory, aren’t even back in Europa yet, where revolution is burning up the streets.
Revolutions to plot. Enemies to crush. Handsome men to rescue.
Cat and Bee have their work cut out for them.
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Crash – Guy Haley
Discovery blamed on: Zachary Jernigan
About the Book
This thrilling novel lifts some of the fiercest contemporary concerns of stock-market crashes, overpolulation and who rules society, to deliver a novel that finds answers beyond the stars – but will that be enough to overcome history and survive? • The Market rules all, plotting the rise and fall of fortunes without human intervention. Mankind, trapped by a rigid hierarchy of wealth, bends to its every whim. To function, the Market must expand without end. The Earth is finite, and cannot hold it, and so a bold venture to the stars is begun, offering a rare chance at freedom to a select few people. But when the colony fleet is sabotaged, a small group finds itself marooned upon the tidally locked world of Nychthemeron, a world where one hemisphere is bathed in perpetual daylight, the other hidden by eternal night. •The Market rules all, plotting the rise and fall of fortunes without human intervention. Mankind, trapped by a rigid hierarchy of wealth, bends to its every whim. To function, the Market must expand without end. The Earth is finite, and cannot hold it, and so a bold venture to the stars is begun, offering a rare chance at freedom to a select few people. But when the colony fleet is sabotaged, a small group finds itself marooned upon the tidally locked world of Nychthemeron, a world where one hemisphere is bathed in perpetual daylight, the other hidden by eternal night. Isolated and beset, the stricken colony members must fight for survival on the hostile planet, while secrets about both the nature of their shipwreck and Nychthemeron itself threaten to tear their fragile society apart.
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12 Responses
I guess my reviews of Woken Gods and Cold Steel had no impact?
Paul, I didn’t see them! I’ll go check ’em out.
Hunh. And here I think I overpromote my reviews. Interesting.
That’s not a reflection on how you promote. It’s a reflection of the fact that I have a two-year-old and I’m trying to make up for the first two years of her life with me being too sick (thanks, cancer) to actually do anything fun with her, so I’m spending more time offline than I am online. I miss more than I see, unfortunately. I have a Feedly thing going, but again, I miss more than I see there, too because by the time I actually look at it, I’m usually too tired to process what I’m seeing.
The Woken Gods was a pretty creative book, and fast and fun to boot. Definitely better than a lot of YA urban fantasy that I see on the shelves now, anyway. I hope you enjoy it.
The thing that interests me about it is the fact that so many people who don’t tend to enjoy YA (like me) are reading that book.
It does have a wide net of potential appeal. Godpunk, after all.
“Godpunk” – that’s a title I haven’t heard yet. It seems like everything is some sort of “punk” these days. Weird, but I like it.
I actually just finished reading that book. I thought it was rather boring and slow-paced for the first half and the second half was just… confusing.
Huh, well that’s a perspective I haven’t heard yet. I’m excited to see which viewpoint I align with most closely.
It was, admittedly, a bit slow in places. I mostly meant fast in that it was a relatively short book and so quick to get through, though if you found it boring, that tends to make a book feel way longer than it really is.
I can see your point on the second half, though. There were a few places where additional detail could have improved the narrative, and events were getting pretty hectic in the plot then, too.
Still, I’ve got a soft spot for deities interacting with human society, so in my mind, this book was still pretty good. 🙂
These different viewpoints are making me even more interested in reading this book. I love hearing different perspectives like this!! It gets me all weirdly excited.