January Book Haul

Okay, so I'm going to have a slightly different post today. My From the Stacks review will be up tomorrow, but I still want to have a Friday post so I'm talking about the books I've bought for the month of January.

Because I'm trying to focus on saving aside a bit of money and because I'm trying to actually accomplish writing, I'm limiting the books I'm allowed to buy. Basically just the authors on my auto-buy list, and books on my most anticipated list are being purchased. Of course, exceptions can be made for books that are free or really cheaply discounted.

I purchased three books from my most anticipated Jan/Feb list, because they were released this week, plus I got the first book in a series I've been wanting to try for a while. Then there are all the NOOK book deals I've seen.

So, here's a quick rundown of everything I've purchased this month and will be reading fairly soon:

First up: Unbound by Jim C. Hines. This is the third book in his Magic Ex Libris series that follows librarian Isaac Vainio, a man who has an awesome fire-spider companion named Smudge. Oh and Isaac also is a libriomancer, meaning he can reach into books and pull smallish items out to use in the real world, which is just really cool. This series is one of a small handful that I'll pay the extra price to own in hardcover. They're so good.

Now for the paperbacks. I devoured the Trylle trilogy rather quickly, and then did the same with the Watersong series. Amanda Hocking is great, so learning that she was going to return to the Trylle world and focus on another group, the Kanin, was exciting news. I'm excited to see what happens in this series, even more so because all three books will be out this year. Book two is out in May and book three is out in August. I love the short waiting period between books, and really admire Amanda Hocking's work ethic.

Finally for the new release books is the newest book by Amber Benson. I own her Calliope Reaper-Jones series but still haven't read them. However, I was still super excited to hear that Amber Benson (popularly known as having played Tara in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") was writing a series about witches. That's a good enough reason to buy for me. Plus, that cover is pretty.

Then there's the book series I've been wanting to try for a while. It's considered a historical romance, but based on the series descriptions and the covers, I'd say that it's paranormal historical romance or steampunk-ish romance. Either way, I finally decided to get the first book and see if I like it, which is great timing because the newest book (Soulbound, book 6) comes out next month.

That's it for physical books and pictures. I'm just going to run really quickly through the NOOK books I've purchased.

- Ancilliary Justice by Ann Leckie
- His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
- Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch
- Called by Fire by Delwyn Jenkins
- A Soul for Atonement by Crista McHugh
- The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
- Shadows of the Realm by Dionne Lister
- The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I've heard/read rave reviews for Ancilliary Justice and His Majesty's Dragon by the Sword & Laser Book Club, and they were on sale so easy decision to make. Snow Like Ashes sounds awesome and Jennifer Estep recommended it while reading it herself, and I've been reading a lot of Jennifer Estep lately. I saw a post for the sequel to Called by Fire, which also said that the first book was currently free, so I'm always game to try a free book if they sound interesting. A Soul for Atonement is Crista McHugh's newest book and I own all her other ones so that was an auto-buy. I've heard a lot about The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and again, it was on sale. My author/poet buddy Ben Ditmars raves about a lot of author friends whose works he's read and I'm trying to branch out to new authors, so I decided to pick up Shadows of the Realm and support other self-pubbed/indie authors. Finally, The Naturals seems to combine "Criminal Minds" with super-powered teenagers and that is just cool enough to intrigue me.

So there...that's all the books I'm buying until my next book haul, which should happen towards the end of February.

From the Stacks: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemison

Wow, and here we are at the first VF book club review of the year. I'm hoping to be able to keep up with reading their book pick each month and have it as my final review, but writing and finances might get in the way. Still, I was able to finish off the January pick because I bought it over a year ago and somehow never got around to it, a shame since it was a pretty darn good read.

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Plot: This was a fun and interesting pick for the VF book club, because the book seemed to focus a bit more on the political side than the romantic side. It took a long time for the romance to appear and even then it took some time before there were any love/sex scenes. Now look, I don't need to have lots of smutty scenes to make a romance worthwhile, but sometimes those books do somewhat cheer me up, because romances practically always end with a happily ever after (or a happily for now, whatever). I did like the political scheming but I also feel that it could have been developed a bit more. There were a couple of mysteries brought up near the beginning of the novel, such as who killed Yeine's mom, and they drew out that mystery until about the very end, which was both nice and frustrating. Having not met her mom and only getting tiny bits and pieces of past memories and such, I didn't find it to be all that important. But I did like the intrigue of figuring out which of the gods was telling the truth and which were lying and whether or not to trust the other heirs to the throne. 

I found another review of this book that summed up the plot of the gods rather nicely and I'll try to paraphrase it. Basically it is the story of three gods, who for simplicity's sake we will call Order, Chaos, and Balance. Taking elements of both Order and Chaos, Balance created the world. But since Order, Chaos, and Balance were also siblings they had their fights and long story short, Order killed Balance and then enslaved Chaos as well as the children of the gods, forcing them to obey the Arameri (humans). Obviously the lack of Balance in the world caused problems, and this story is really about the world sort of beginning again, with a new Balance being created. I'll probably read the other two books when I have the time and some extra cash.

Characters: Yeine seemed capable in some respects but pathetic in others. I get that she had never been to Sky before and therefore didn't know how they operated, but she seemed to be led around quite a bit by the other characters. And once she figured out that she was only named an heir so she could be the sacrifice that named the true heir, she spent quite some time just accepting that and not fighting for her own life, which seemed to contradict her "barbarian" lifestyle.

I thought Nahadoth (he would be the Chaos I mentioned earlier) was a really intriguing character. He had so much depth to him and you never really knew if you were going to get the dark beast side of him or the gentle and almost human side. It was mostly for him that I kept reading the story in the beginning.

The other worthwhile character in my mind was Sieh. He was also a god, and one who was very childlike and actually spent a lot of time in the form of a child. It was because of her fondness for the boy that Yeine actually had a few moments where she fought to protect and save others, so Sieh was nice to have around. Plus, he was one of the ones who helped Yeine get around and taught her a lot of what happens in Sky.

Get Your Own Copy: B&N, Amazon, BAM, Kobo, Audible

From the Stacks: Leviathan Wakes

Okay, and the time has finally come for me to jump into Leviathan Wakes, an interesting sci-fi adventure that took me far too long to read.

Summary:

"Humanity has colonized the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for - and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and the crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations - and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe."

My Thoughts:

There really were some things I absolutely loved about this book. I should probably point out for those who don't know, I usually am a fantasy reader, or a paranormal romance or YA reader. I'm also a sucker for a good piece of classic literature (probably why I ended up getting a B.A. in English Literature), but I'm trying to expand my horizons.

I've mentioned a few times a couple book clubs I joined, one being Vaginal Fantasy Hangout, and I've reviewed a few of those books already, but the other is Sword & Laser, which started as a podcast and is also a group on Goodreads, but last year it also joined the lineup on the Geek & Sundry channel on YouTube, becoming a web show as well. Sword & Laser is hosted by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont. I love the series and because they alternate their book picks from fantasy to science fiction, it has given me that push I need to try new things.

Leviathan Wakes was the book pick in July 2012, and that's when I started reading it. Though the characters were interesting and there was great development on the whole mystery of who was behind everything and what was going on, I could not read this book quickly. I typically read about 20 pages at a time and then would put the book aside to read something else. For some reason I was not so completely sucked into this book that I couldn't stop reading. I finally finished reading this book at the end of December 2012 and I'm glad I stuck with it and finished.

Overall I really was more interested in the chapters revolving around Holden and his crew, rather than those of Miller. Holden and his crew very much reminded me of the crew of the Serenity in the TV series Firefly. Their lifestyle, personalities, and banter really made me feel like I was watching some previously undiscovered episode and that was great. Miller's story ended up intertwining with Holden's but Miller was a detective, though I will say that Miller's mannerisms and such really reminded me of reading a Raymond Chandler novel, which was nice.

It was an interesting novel and I enjoyed learning about life in space, especially seeing as how this book also includes people inhabiting the asteroid belt between the inner planets and the outer planets of our solar system and creating this rather interesting society of people. I'm on the fence about whether or not I'll try to read the second book in the series. If I do read it, I'll probably wait a little while before I do.

So, even though it took forever for me to read, I thought it was well-written, well-researched, and had interesting and endearing characters. Leviathan Wakes earns a 4/5.

Leviathan Wakes at Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/leviathan-wakes-james-s-a-corey/1100293281?ean=9780316129084

Leviathan Wakes at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Wakes-Expanse-James-Corey/dp/0316129089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357418629&sr=8-1&keywords=Leviathan+Wakes

Other Readings:

Well, I've almost finished my book to be reviewed tomorrow, Throne of Glass, and I am loving it so far. I've also started in on Temptation by Karen Ann Hopkins and I seriously may have to add it as a bonus post next month. Oh, and I've made some really good progress on my first regular From the Stacks for 2013, Born at Midnight by C.C. Hunter. 

From the Stacks: Tigana

All right, well here were are for another From the Stacks post. This time I'm talking about a really great standalone epic fantasy with an interesting premise revolving around a county of people that no one remembers and the country itself is one that no one--aside from those born to that country--can speak its name.

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
ISBN: 978-0-451-45776-9

Summary:

Taken from the back of the book

"This is that rare, spellbinding novel in which myth comes alive and magic reaches out to touch us. Tigana is the magical story of a beleaguered land struggling to be free. It is the tale of a people so cursed by the black sorcery of a cruel, despotic king that even the names of their once-beautiful homeland cannot be spoken or remembered....

But years after the devastation, a handful of courageous men and women embarks upon a dangerous crusade to overthrow their conquerors and bring back to the dark world the brilliance of a long-lost name: Tigana.

Against the magnificently rendered background of a world both sensuous and barbaric, this sweeping epic of passionate people pursuing their dream is breathtaking in its vision, changing forever the boundaries of fantasy fiction."

My thoughts:

I would love to give this book a 4.5 or even a 5 but I think considering how long it took me to read it, I'm going to have to go with a 4/5. The concept was unique and the world was an intriguing one and it was interesting to constantly wonder what was going to happen next, but I can't say that this book grabbed me with the same fervor that a number of books I read do. Typically a book of Tigana's length (673 pages paperback) would take me a couple days max, even with work and other stuff, but I started reading this book back in June.

I kept reading about ten pages and then I would be pulled away to do something and then I would think that I have time to read a little more and then I would go back to my bedroom and pick up another book. The book was split into several parts and I liked the characters in the prologue but then (SPOILER) they all died just after the prologue and the first main part deals with a group of characters a number of years later. Then, when it was time to jump into part two, we left those characters behind for a time and moved onto another main woman from Tigana and the people around her. In some ways it felt like there was too much jumping around. I hadn't quite expected that.

So, overall I would recommend this book to fans of fantasy, but I don't think I would give it to someone who was looking for a book to introduce them to fantasy, both because of how slow it could be at times and because of the length.

Tigana at Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tigana-guy-gavriel-kay/1103274431?ean=9780451457769

Tigana at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Tigana-Guy-Gavriel-Kay/dp/0451457765/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347646087&sr=1-1&keywords=Tigana

Other readings:

I am making more progress with Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, but at the same time yesterday I was at the library and picked up Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines, and let me tell you I think I'm addicted to this book already. I've only read three chapters and right now I feel like I have to finish this post up quickly so I can get back to reading. It may be that I'll be reviewing it with next week's post, but we'll see what happens.