In attempt to get through the huge stack of books to review, I am going to do some “mini” reviews of some of these books using the book description instead of writing my own. (I put mini in quotes since it still ended up being about 1,000 words long in the end.) Cold Steel is the concluding volume in Kate Elliott’s Spiritwalker trilogy, following Cold Magic and Cold Fire. The author’s website describes this series as “an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk […]

Omens is the first book in the new Cainsville series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong, best known for her Otherworld series. The second Cainsville book, titled Visions, is in progress. Olivia Taylor-Jones, the daughter of the wealthy owner of a department store, recently received her master’s degree from Yale and does volunteer work in her spare time like her philanthropist mother. She is soon to be married to the CEO of a tech company who was […]

Shattered Pillars is the second book in the Eternal Sky trilogy, following the phenomenal Range of Ghosts. The final book in the trilogy, Steles of the Sky, is scheduled for release in April 2014 (and the gorgeous cover was revealed not too long ago). Since this review covers the second book in a series, it will contain spoilers for the first book. If you are curious about Eternal Sky but do not want to start with a review of the […]

Magic Rises is the sixth book in the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. The book includes a short story, “An Ill-Advised Rescue,” that takes place before events in Magic Rises. I went to the end of the book and read it first as advised on the Acknowledgments page, but I was unsure about how it tied in with the novel before reading it and whether or not I really wanted to follow that suggestion. It is set before the […]

The Best of All Possible Worlds is Karen Lord’s second novel and her first science fiction novel. Her debut, the fantasy novel Redemption in Indigo, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and received the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, the William L. Crawford Award, and the Frank Collymore Literary Award. The Galaxy Game, her third novel and a sequel to The Best of All Possible Worlds, is scheduled for release in March 2014. With only six days left […]

Zenn Scarlett is Christian Schoon’s first novel and the first book in a new young adult science fiction series. It does end on a cliffhanger, and I’m not sure when the sequel will be released. Seventeen-year-old Zenn Scarlett lives on a cloister with her uncle where she is training to become an exoveterinarian. The cloister once flourished, but it is now struggling. While it was once full of aspiring exovets, the number of students has tapered off since the Martian […]