#CBR8 Book 133: "My Lady Jane" by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows and Brodi Ashton

Page count: 512 pages
Rating: 4 stars

According to history, when King Edward VI, Henry VIII's son died young and childless, certain noblemen who wanted to make sure a ruler of the Protestant faith ruled the country put his young cousin Lady Jane Gray on the throne. She ruled for nine days, before Mary Tudor arrived with her armies, removed the poor girl and had her beheaded. This book bears a vague resemblance to that story.

In the England of this story, the conflict in England isn't between Catholics and Protestants, it's between non-shapeshifters, also known as Verities, and shapeshifters, better known as eðians (pronounced eethians). King Henry VIII himself turned into a great big lion, on occasion, but even so, the eðians are generally hunted and distrusted by the populace in general. Princess Mary is staunchly against them and want them all killed, while young King Edward and his best friend and cousin, Lady Jane Grey read everything they can about them and would like nothing more than to discover eðian abilities of their own.

Sadly, Edward appears to be dying. He has been told by Lord Dudley, his chief adviser and his physicians that he's suffering from "the affliction" and that he is unlikely to have long, certainly not long enough to marry and produce a male heir. Luckily Dudley has a plan to secure a succession that will make sure an eðian-friendly ruler ends up on the English trone. He suggests that Edward change the line of succession to ensure that his cousin Lady Jane's heirs inherit. Of course, Jane needs to be married to produce heirs, but Dudley has just the candidate. His younger son, Gifford. There is the minor difficulty that Gifford Dudley is an eðian and spends every day from sunup to sunset as a magnificent stallion, but any heirs would be conceived at night anyways, so Dudley is sure Jane wouldn't mind too much.

When the extremely intellectual Jane finds out that she's to be married off within a few days, she travels to the Dudley estate (carrying with her a suitable supply of books to entertain her) to meet her intended. Unfortunately, because of some rather shameful nightly pursuits, Gifford (just call him G) has let it be known that he's a rampant womaniser. It's more socially acceptable than what he gets up to. Hence his older brother mistakes Jane for one of his younger brother's many suspected floozies and Jane believes her impending husband is a lecherous libertine (he's not, he's actually a poet). Nor does anyone deem it appropriate to tell her about her husband's eðian status, so she has quite the surprise the morning after her wedding, when the groom turns into a big horse in the middle of her bedroom.

As Edward takes a rapid turn for the worse shortly after the wedding, his sister Elizabeth warns him that he mustn't trust his physicians and he realises that Dudley is up to no good, and that Jane may be in terrible danger as well.

This is a delightful farce of a book, where we follow the points of view of Edward, Jane and G (he never liked the name Gifford) as the story progresses. Since there are three authors, I suspect each of them took one character and wrote their sections. Having loosely based the first half on actual historical events (if you ignore the shapeshifters), the second half is pure fantasy and a lot of fun. The book is clearly inspired by The Princess Bride, with the narrators occasionally interrupting the narrative to address the reader directly. Readers will recognise that most of Gifford's poetry is strikingly similar to that of one William Shakespeare. There is humour reminiscent of Monty Python and Blackadder, while at least one plot development brings to mind the lovely Ladyhawke, one of my favourite eighties movies (I'd love to get a version with a non-synthy soundtrack).

I've seen this book included on several best of 2016 lists, and while I'm not sure I enjoyed it enough to include it in my top ten of the year, it's a very enjoyable romp from start to finish. My one complaint is that the book is a bit long and I think some of the parts in the second half could have been edited a bit more. As a huge fan of Tudor history in general, and having always been sympathetic to poor Lady Jane, the nine days queen, who really didn't have much choice in the matter and was a political pawn her entire life, it was nice to see a story that reimagines a much happier ending for her. Possibly not the book for you if you take your history very seriously, but highly recommended for anyone who wants a fun, creative and irreverent reimagining of history.

Judging a book by its cover: While on first look, this may seem like any old historical novel, with your red-headed girl in Tudor era clothing and a big red font bringing your attention to the title, you need only take a closer look to see that there's more here. In little "hand-written notes" and arrows pointing to the girl on the cover, the writers explain that "Sometimes history gets it all wrong". The other notes say "It's not easy being queen" and "Off with her head".

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.  

#CBR8 Book 131: "The Queen of the Tearling" by Erika Johansen

Page count: 643 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Kelsea knows that when she turns nineteen, it is time for her to take her rightful place as Queen, like her mother (who died when she was a baby) and grandmother before her. She has been raised far from civilisation, by two loyal servants, who did their best to prepare her in every way they could for the duty she would be facing. What they have not done is socialise her in any way, she's barely seen another living soul since she was little, and they've refused to tell her anything about her mother or her mother's reign. So while she has a lot of theoretical knowledge about her realm, the Tearling, and its surrounding neighbours, she has little to no practical experience and is in for a sharp learning curve once some of the remaining members of the queen's guard come to pick her up to take her back to the capital.

The road back to her palace is fraught with danger, as her uncle, the regent, has sent assassins to dispatch Kelsea. He doesn't want to surrender his power, and there is more than one attack on the princess and her guards on their way to the capital. Along the way, Kelsea is rescued from an attack by hired killers by the Tearling's most wanted, a legendary outlaw calling himself the Fetch. This man and all his compatriots wear masks while they dispatch Kelsea's attackers, but later, when she spends some time in their camp, she gets to see him unmasked. He clearly has sinister plans for her uncle and is very curious about what sort of ruler Kelsea is going to be. She refuses to show fear and promises to rule the country to the best of her abilities. This seems to satisfy the bandit leader.

Once she returns to her palace, Kelsea discovers how her mother made peace with the neighbouring country, ruled by a powerful and seemingly ageless sorceress after an invasion several decades ago. Suffice to say, Kelsea is appalled and by her first actions, she sets in motion events that may very well trigger a new invasion. Shortly after, there is another assassination attempt on her while they are trying to get her crowned. It becomes obvious to Kelsea that her long-dead mother was a vain, weak and fairly useless queen who quite happily sold out the freedoms and rights of her people to keep herself safe. Her brother, Kelsea's uncle, has continued the mismanagement of the realm and most of the people are suffering badly. If she can survive, she has a hell of a job ahead of her, righting the wrongs of her predecessors. Luckily, she appears to have some sort of magical abilities too, bestowed on her by the royal sapphires that all heirs to the Tearling wear.

I've seen a lot of people give this book incredibly low ratings, probably because it seems that when the book was first released it was marketed as "Game of Thrones meets the Hunger Games". Clearly this was invented by someone who threw darts on a large board full of things that sold well in the publishing industry. "What if Hermione Granger was the heir to a really down-trodden, pseudo-medieval but somehow also set in our future kingdom, where the biggest danger was the evil sorceress in the next country over" would be a better description. Note that I didn't pick Hermione completely out of the blue. Emma Watson has apparently bought the adaptation rights and wants to star as Kelsea. I'm assuming that if that is the case, they're going to have to uglify her but good, as just in case you forget it, every third chapter or so, the author reminds you how plain, unassuming and dumpy Kelsea is. You are never really allowed to go long without being told how the new queen is rather ugly. So I can't really say that my mental image of her was Emma Watson, and also, I really felt that the girl had more important things to worry about than her appearance, but what do I know? I've never had to rule a fantasy kingdom that's pretty much been colonised and run into the ground by another.

The world-building is strange. There are references to America and England, and some generations ago, a man called William Tear apparently gathered all the scientists, doctors and learned people on ships to sail away to a new continent (no hints as to where this is), but a lot of their technology and medical expertise was shipwrecked on the way. So while there are knights and sorcery and people riding horses or using carts, and mostly very downtrodden serfs rooting around in the mud (it all got a bit Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the descriptions of the countryside and the populace, as far as I could tell), this is somehow set in the future. Also, the Red Queen who rules the neighbouring kingdom (I could look it up, but I can't be bothered to dig out my e-reader) seems to have lived for at least a century, clearly through nefarious magical means.

Kelsea has a sapphire around her neck that apparently cannot be removed until she is dead, as well as a second one that will belong to her heir. This one the Fetch could take from her though, and he gives it back to her later in the book when he feels that she has proven herself worthy to rule. Said necklace seems to be trying to communicate with Kelsea and can bestow her with magical powers. She also has a servant who appears to be a psychic of some sort, but only in the sense that she gets premonitions about bad things about to happen, she can't give specifics (that would be far too useful). Oh, and Kelsea has grown up reading and loving books because her guardian had lots of shelves worth, but in the rest of the kingdom, books are super rare and no one knows how to print them anymore or seems to care about relearning this skill (this is my nightmare).

For the first third or so, the book didn't interest me much and I actually put it down and read a bunch of other books in between. Then she finally arrived at her palace and discovered just how messed up a situation she was faced with as queen (I don't want to go into specifics, but trust me, it's pretty bad) and I started getting interested. This book is clearly just establishing the beginning of Kelsea's reign. Since each new chapter seems to contain excerpts from books written much later in Queen Kelsea's lifetime, possibly even after her death, I was never overly worried that she wasn't going to make it though to the end of the book (also, this is book one - I suspect she may survive until book three).

The tone of the book is also a bit strange. This is totally YA, and nowhere near George R.R. Martin territory (nor are there anything vaguely resembling Hunger Games - seriously publishers, did you read the wrong book before you sent out the press release?), but there are some scenes of pretty graphic violence and while there isn't a lot of sexual content, the Red Queen clearly isn't big on consent and doesn't care who she takes her pleasure with, and neither does Kelsea's weaselly uncle.

I've seen complaints that Kelsea is a special snowflake of a character, I didn't really think so. She is young, and has a lot of book smarts, but clearly needs to learn to rule properly, and has impulsively made decisions that are going to come back and bite her in her royal behind later. She seems to nurse an ill-advised crush on the Fetch, but there isn't really anything romantic hinted at with anyone. There are a lot of factions who want to oppose her, and she will clearly face a lot of challenges in the next two books before I'm sure she becomes triumphant and takes her people into a new golden age or something. As long as she makes sure there are books, I'll be happy.

It's a decent enough beginning to a fantasy trilogy. I'm really curious as to where exactly these books are set, as unless the ships mentioned were actually spaceships, I'm unsure where the Americans and English of old actually sailed to. As long as I'm entertained, and it doesn't play too important a part, I'm willing to turn my brain off in that particular respect. Since the trilogy is now completed, it seems likely I'll be reading the rest of it in the next year or so, but it's not like I'm impatient to pick up the next book either. I hope Kelsea stops moaning about how ugly she is in book two, though. Looks aren't everything, girl.

Judging a book by its cover: I've seen several covers for this book, the one that comes with my edition evokes a volume of fairy stories to me, with the red background and the black, swirly embellishments. In the centre "cutout", there is a palace on a hill, so you can probably guess from both the title and the image that this is a fantasy story. It's not the most exciting of images, but it's not bad either.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 124: "Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame" by Mara Wilson

Page count: 265 pages
Audio book length: 7 hrs 22 mins
Rating: 4 stars

I wasn't initially going to get this book. While I've seen Mrs. Doubtfire and Matilda, possibly the two films that Mara Wilson is most famous for, I haven't really watched any of the others she was a child star in, nor do I follow her Twitter or writing career as an adult. It just didn't seem like this would be all that interesting to me. Nonetheless, this book got a lot of positive write-ups from people with good taste, including Patrick Rothfuss and Wil Wheaton (himself a child star once upon a time) and several of my Goodreads friends. I do like an entertaining audio book, so I changed my mind and used a credit on it. Now I'm glad I did.

As with a lot of celebrity autobiographies, Ms. Wilson reads the book herself, and she has a very wry and self-deprecating way of telling the stories about herself. As she reveals later in the book that one of the things she does for a living now is storytelling, it should come as no surprise that this is a well-told book. The book is an anthology of observations, many dealing with Ms. Wilson's childhood, not just as a child actress, but also dealing with her anxiety and OCD, the death of her mother and how and why she made the choice to give up acting when she became a teenager. There's an open letter to Matilda, the character she is most famous for, and there are stories about her college years and her writing as an adult. The chapter dealing with her mother's death and how it feels growing up without a mother, even though she seems to have a lovely stepmother; the one where she talks about determining the fairly severe levels of her OCD, not to mention the one where she talks about Robin Williams and learning about his death were probably the ones that affected me the most.

The reason this book doesn't quite get one of my highest rating is that it really is quite short. I was surprised at how quickly it was finished, and some of the stories are just not all that interesting and felt a bit like filler. This book was written before Ms. Wilson came out openly as bisexual, and as others have already pointed out in their reviews, I suspect some of the chapters would may have been written a bit differently if this was public knowledge. It's a good book, and Wilson is a witty story teller. While not on the same level as Craig Ferguson's or Amy Poehler's books, it was stil a good read.

Judging a book by its cover: It's a fairly simple cover, and shows Mara Wilson as she is probably most well-known and recognised. As a little girl, from her role as Matilda. I suspect most people don't know what Wilson looks like as an adult (I had to do a Google image search), so putting one of her most iconic images on the cover of a book that deals with her life as a child star, and has several chapters dealing with Matilda, it seems like good marketing strategy. I know she says in the book that she hates being called cute, but she really was.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 117: "The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You" by Lily Anderson

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Beatrice "Trixie" Watson has two goals for her senior year. She wants to save enough money to buy the collectible Doctor Who figurines at the local comics shop and she intends to knock her nemesis, Benedict "Ben" West down to fourth place in their fancy prep school ranking. The two have always had a tense and antagonistic relationship, going all the way back to when Ben caused Trixie to break her arm on the monkey bars during first grade. This year, she is determined to do everything it takes to crush him academically.

Ben and Trixie's friends, however, are less than thrilled about their decade-long rivalry, which only seems to be getting more mean-spirited with every year. When Trixie's best friend Harper starts dating Ben's best friend, Cornell, they are forced to spend more time in each other's company and their group of friends is adamant that they need to stop the constant sniping, as it's getting on everyone's nerves. Once they start actually talking civilly to one another, they discover that they share many geeky interests and possibly they don't need to savage each other verbally every chance they get.

As the school year proceeds, several students get accused of cheating, an unforgivable offence at a competitive school like Messina Academy for the Gifted. The group think little of it until one day, it seems these people may have been framed, by none other than Harper, who is immediately expelled. Cornell seems to abandon her and Trixie is furious. Will Ben pick Cornell's side or help Trixie investigate and clear Harper's name?

Back in July, Caitlin gave this book 5 stars over on the Cannonball group blog. A clever YA retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, where all the various characters are nerds of all varieties attending a prestigious prep school? They are deeply opinionated about Firefly and Doctor Who (more on that later) and flirt about Saga. How could I not love this? While Caitlin said that all the nerdy references didn't work for her, they were part of what made me really get into the story. It really is so well done, and the modernised take on how Harper/Hero is ruined is much better than ZOMG! She may not be pure as the driven snow! of the original play and they don't actually have to fake anyone's death to resolve things, I was amused and happy throughout the story, with one notable exception.

Lily Anderson is a school librarian and has clearly spent a huge amount of time around teenagers. That much is clear. She's probably done quite a lot of research into the various fandoms she has her characters geek out about. She cannot, however, have spoken to anyone sane about Doctor Who, because in a moment that pretty much felt like a nails down the chalkboard, abrupt record scratch sort of an incident, she has her two main characters discussing their favourite Doctor Who episodes. Trixie claims her favourite episode is the Neil Gaiman-scripted The Doctor's Wife. As this is also my favourite, so far, so identifiable. Then Ben proceeds to say that no, his favourite episode is Nightmare in Silver (also scripted by Gaiman).

And I almost had to throw my e-reader across the room. I interrupted my focused Read-a-thon reading to rant loudly at my husband (the biggest Doctor Who fan I know) about this for some time, and it made me so sad, because up until that point, this book was well on its way to becoming a five star read. But no one in the history of ever who has actually watched the show and knows anything about how the episodes are recieved would have a character claim Nightmare in Silver was their favourite episode. It may have been written by Neil Gaiman, but it's also acknowledged by Gaiman himself, and Steven Moffat, the current showrunner, as a failure of execution and it's frequently rated as one of the least popular in the show's fifty year history in fan polls. As well as ranting to the husband about it, I posted about my outrage on Goodreads, and got support from others that this wasn't just a plotline choice that bothered me, but seemed baffling to others, as well.

I did stick with the book, although more filled with scepticism and distrust than before. The various twists and turns of the original play really are very well modernised and while I'm not entirely sure about the motivation of the person who is eventually revealed to be behind framing Harper, as I said, no one had to fake their death and there was a lot less judgemental virtue-shaming. The book clearly takes inspiration from great movies like Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You. Even two months later, the complete failure on the author's part to properly research Doctor Who still upsets me, though. To someone less nerdy than me, this will probably not be such a big deal. If you like Shakespeare and/or cleverly written YA, give this book a try.

Judging a book by its cover: With two characters whose lives revolve around nerdy and geeky things and their weekly visits to the local comics shop, and who fall in love while discussing Saga, it seems very appropriate to have a cover evoking comic book panels. The leg up pose while kissing is possibly a bit cheesy, but I'll let it slide. Unlike that thing with Nightmare in Silver. Which is unforgivable!

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 115: "The Invisible Library" by Genevieve Cogman

Page count: 352 pages
Audio book length: 10hrs 31 mins
Rating: 3.5 stars

Irene is an agent of the Library, a place that exists outside normal space and time. In fact, as long as the agents and librarians that work for the Library are there, they do not age in the slightest. Only when they are out in the different worlds of the multiverse, do they visibly age, and how much depends how time passes in the various worlds they find themselves. As an agent of the Library, Irene is sent to retrieve books that are deemed of value, because they are represent something different from what already exists in the archives. Sometimes she has to disguise herself and go undercover for months, sometimes she can just stroll into a shop and buy a book. Having just completed a several month stint as a scullery maid at a posh boarding school, Irene is looking forward to some down-time. Instead, she is told she is to mentor a trainee library agent and that they are to start their new mission immediately.

Irene's new assistant, Kai, is very handsome and very tight-lipped about his background. The Library never recruits anyone with living family, unless they are the children of other Library agents (like Irene) and therefore understand the need for secrecy and the strange customs and traditions that surround the work. He seems eager and helpful enough, but it becomes clear to Irene that he's not entirely truthful about where he came from, and she wonders if the senior librarians know of his falsehoods.

Irene and Kai are sent to a world resembling a Steampunk Victorian England. It is a world heavily influenced by chaos magic (some worlds are heavy in magic, some are almost devoid of it. Some worlds are highly technologically advanced, some very primitive) and there are vampires, werewolves, sinister dark fae and mechanically enhanced alligators waiting to attack. Irene and Kai discover that the owner of the book they're after was a vampire, recently murdered rather spectacularly. A cat burglar with a glamorous reputation appears to be involved and the fae ambassador for Lichtenstein is very keen to get his hands on the book, as well. To complicate matters further, Irene receives word that Alberich, a centuries old Librarian gone rogue and evil, is also in this reality, wanting the book for unspecified reasons. Their mission, which was supposed to be a fairly innocuous training exercise is turning out to be very dangerous, and they'll be lucky if they even survive, let alone succeed in getting the book back to the Library.

The world-building in this story is intriguing. There's the Library, where they clearly have fairly advanced technology, existing in a place where time apparently stays still. No one ages while within its walls. The agents of the Library can travel in both space and time, visiting hundreds of alternate worlds, some very like our own, some very different. The agents are trained in the use of magic, and there is a secret magical language that can be used to manipulate the world around you, but only if you speak it with the right vocabulary and inflection. Who exactly runs the Library and how one ascends through the ranks to become Librarians or even Senior Librarians was only hinted at, but I hope it's revealed in later books.

The main characters, Irene and Kai, were fun to spend time with. All agents take their names from literary characters and Irene loves all kinds of detective fiction, so named herself after the famous Ms. Adler. Being sent to a world that so closely resembles the setting of her beloved Conan Doyle novels is thrilling to her, especially when they befriend a gentleman detective who certainly fits right into the genre Irene so enjoys. Having always been aware of the Library, she doesn't really question its organisation, and how it goes about recruiting people. She starts having questions once she gets to know Kai more closely, though, and wonders if it's right that only people wholly unconnected in the world get to be recruited.

While there is a more contemporary, modern setting to some bits of the book, most of this is set in a Steampunk, late Victorian setting, with dirigibles and the occasional mechanically enhanced menace. There are quite a lot of action sequences, with our protagonists finding themselves in peril of various kinds. One of Irene's rival agents from the Library pops up with her own agenda, and there is the looming threat of the sinister Alberich. As a first book in a series, it was a good introduction. I certainly want to read more.

What I'm not going to do is continue with the audio books. The audio book (which I got in a big Audible sale last year) is narrated by Susan Duerden, whose inflection is just so annoying. Her voice had a tendency to go up and down at the strangest time, and she frequently ended sentences on a high point, making it seem as if everything was a question. It was incredibly distracting, and meant that I spent much longer getting through the audio book than usual, because I actively avoided it for a time, just because the narrator's voice was so grating to me. Searching the Audible catalogue, I notice that she's the narrator for the sequel of this, as well as for a lot of other books in fantasy and romance. I'm going to have to pay attention when getting new audio books, because I'm not interested in having this narrator worsening any more listening experiences for me.

Judging a book by its cover: I quite like the cover design, with the green, slightly marbled background and the almost golden font and decorations of a lady and a gentleman silhouetted in period costume. Not entirely sure what the snakes at the top have been included for (there are no snakes in the story as far as I can remember), but they add a sense of danger, I guess. The cover designer could possibly have made more of an effort to try to convey more of the adventure and action aspects of the book - if you remove the rather cheesy taglines, there's nothing to suggest to a reader that this isn't just some sort of run of the mill historical novel.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 112: "How Not to Fall" by Emily Foster

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Annabelle "Annie" Coffey is writing her final thesis and with only a few weeks left of term, she propositions her adviser, the postdoctoral fellow at her lab, Dr. Charles Douglas, because she believes they have "A Thing". In a truly embarrassing and painfully awkward scene, handsome British guy Charles gently turns her down, because he is her boss and it would be massively inappropriate for him to sleep with her. Annie is convinced she's not wrong about the chemistry between them, and that she's not misreading the signals between them. She's hoping that were she no longer Charles' student, the situation would be different. So she refuses to give up hope entirely. She will have a month after she graduates, before she goes off to New York to go to medical school and she's determined to spend them with Charles.

Charles agrees, so long as Annie is well and truly no longer his student, they can explore their "Thing". He's initially a bit daunted by the prospect that Annie's a virgin, and a very inexperienced one (in practise, not in theory) at that. With the understanding that their affair is only to last a month and with the goal that when they go their separate ways, they will remain friends, Charles and Annie begin to explore their attraction to one another. Because Annie has never had any sort of sexual encounter with another person before, Charles insists on them spending a whole day on each of the four "bases", before they do the deed, so to speak. He takes his responsibilities as Annie's first lover very seriously, making sure to teach her everything she wants to know about sex, while still being careful to respect her boundaries, even when she's sometimes eager to push them further than before.

Their affair becomes more than a meeting of bodies, it also becomes a meeting of minds, with the two of them being entirely honest about their interests, hopes and fears. That is, Annie is completely truthful and open as a book. As the weeks pass, and Annie grows more attached with every hour spent in Charles' company, it becomes clear that he has not revealed everything about himself and that there is darkness in his past that looks likely to create major hurdles for their joint future.

Before you read any further, it is important that I mention that this book ends on a cliffhanger! There is NO Happily Ever After at the closing of this book. There is a second part, How Not to Let Go coming out in December, and on her blog as Emily Foster, the author suggests that if waiting is a problem, you wait to read the duology until both parts are out. Ms Foster, who also writes non-fiction scientific books under the name Emily Nagoski. She explains on her science blog that she wrote these novels as a response to reading (and being deeply disappointed) by 50 Shades of Grey. She loves romance because it's pro-woman, pro-sex, pro-pleasure and full of happy endings. Ms Foster/Nagoski felt that E.L. James' book failed at all of those things and really felt betrayed by it.

As a result, Ms. Nagoski set out to write a romance with a virgin college senior (she's 22) experiencing her sexual awakening with an older (he's 26), more experienced, powerful man who treats her with dignity, respect and affection. She calls it a feminist, sex-positive, science-driven erotic romance. Because she normally writes science non-fiction, she was unsure whether she needed a different agent to represent her, but she got the books sold under the name Emily Foster and How Not to Fall is the first part.

There is really a lot of sex in this book. This is very much on the erotica scale of romance, where there are a lot of smexy times, described in a LOT of detail. There are BDSM elements, but I think, as far as these things go, they are fairly light (I have not read a lot of that sub-genre of romance). I still felt that there was a good portion of the book with the characters getting to know each other, and where the reader got to know each of the protagonists, seeing how they could work as a couple.

Both Annie and Charles are huge nerds and there is a fair amount of the book devoted to science and the pursuit thereof. As opposed to a lot of romance, where the prose is very purple, all the body parts are referred to in very scientific names, which I thought made a nice change. I know very little about the field that Annie and Charles are working in, but didn't feel that the scientific parts detracted from the steamy smexy times. Annie is a wonderful narrator, and frequently says and does embarrassing things. To me, she seems extremely open-minded and adventurous in the bedroom, considering she's a virgin, Charles is always the one putting on the breaks. Of course, I have no idea what college era women get up to these days, based on a lot of New Adult, they are certainly getting a lot more action than I ever did.

About two thirds of the way through, the book changes in tone, and becomes a lot darker and more serious, as the secrets of Charles' past are uncovered and it becomes clear that the couple are in for a hard time before they (hopefully, I'll be cranky otherwise) reach their HEA at the end of the next book. Again, because the author seems to have a scientific basis behind the angsty reasons that Charles and Annie will not just have sunshine, puppies and rainbows in their lives, it felt a lot less bothersome to me than in a lot of these novels. There was a very believable theoretical explanation for his behaviour, and I'm looking forward to how the author is going to solve the problems she has thrown in the couple's way.

I liked this a lot, and as it's already October, I'm not too annoyed about the wait for the next book. If cliffhanger endings are a problem for you - wait another few months and read both books at the same time. I will be eagerly awaiting the second instalment.

Judging a book by its cover: A couple kissing passionately in the rain. A perfectly good cover for a romance - except for that pesky (but oh so common) fact that at no point does this scene feature in the novel. I know I'm picky and that it's a silly thing to get annoyed about, but I still am. Annoyed, that it. There are lots of delightful scenes to choose from. Quite a few that don't even involve smexy times. Why not pick one of those?

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 108: "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Rachel, trying to drown the sorrows of her recent divorce in alcohol and denial travels to London on the train every morning and back to the suburb where she shares a flat with an old friend in the evenings. As she passes the area where she used to live, she observes a seemingly golden couple and makes up a fantasy narrative about their life to comfort herself in her loneliness. She's named them Jess and Jason and believes them to have a perfect relationship, in contrast to her miserable life, post failed-marriage.

One day, she sees "Jess" kissing a man who is most certainly not "Jason" in the garden, and this causes Rachel to have a minor breakdown. Waking up after a particularly epic drinking binge, she has a cut on her head, several bruises and absolutely no memory of what happened, but she believes it may have involved her old street, and possibly seeking out her ex-husband. She also discovers from the news that Megan Hipwell, as "Jess" is really called, has disappeared.

Rachel knows (as everyone else) that the husband is always one of the main suspects in disappearance cases. She believes very strongly that "Jason", in reality Scott Hipwell, couldn't have hurt his wife. She's determined to notify the police about the strange man that she saw Megan with from the train. Due to her habitual drunkenness, Rachel's not really treated as a reliable witness by the police, further hampered by the harassment complaints made about her by her ex-husband's new girlfriend. Because she knows the police aren't taking her seriously, Rachel feels compelled to contact Scott as well, pretending to be a friend of Megan's. She needs him to know about the man Megan was seeing.

As she keeps returning to the area where she used to live, where Megan disappeared from, Rachel struggles to remember what happened to her on the night she has completely blacked out. She knows she was in the area the same night that Megan left her home - could she have seen or heard something that could help the case?

The Girl on the Train came out in early 2015 and has been reviewed a lot of times on the Cannonball Read already. I've seen it compared to Gone Girl in the press (really not a fair comparison at all) and the movie version starring Emily Blunt as Rachel is about to be released in cinemas. I put it on my TBR list when it came out, and have kept putting it off for various reasons. Now that the movie is right around the corner, I figured I should read it, so movie reviews didn't spoil the book for me. I didn't know that much about the details of the book, and probably wouldn't have chosen to read about a fairly broken woman, struggling with alcoholism and reconciling herself to a divorce in part caused by her involuntary infertility struggles, when I myself am trying to get over my own very recent failure at yet another IVF attempt. I had figured a mystery suspense novel would be a good break from the romances I normally read, where quite a lot of the books end with pregnancy and the heroines always seem to be frustratingly fertile. So this book, not the best choice to read right now.

I can only assume that The Girl on the Train has been frequently compared to Gone Girl because they both feature quite unlikable female protagonists, there is a disappearance in both books, suspense/mystery novels written by women. There are also unreliable narrators in each of the books, but having read both novels, the similarities are superficial at most, and when you get down to it, they are very different books within a genre. I'm not going to go into other ways in which they are different, as that would spoil the reading experience.

Much of the book is told from Rachel's POV, but due to her drinking, we cannot entirely trust her memories or narration. There are also sections from Megan's POV, which start more than a year before she goes missing. It gives the reader insight into her actual life, which is a lot less idyllic than Rachel's fantasy narrative. There are also some chapters from the POV of Rachel's rival, Anna, the woman her husband had an affair with, who now lives in her former house, with Rachel's ex-husband, raising their baby girl.

Rachel used to work in marketing, but lost her job after turning up to work drunk. She still goes back and forth into the city, so as to not alert her flat mate to the fact that she's unemployed. She's suffered drunken blackouts more than once, and while her ex-husband's cheating contributed to the dissolution of the marriage, Rachel's depression and increased drunkenness after the failed fertility treatments caused her to act violently and erratically and their marriage had no hopes of surviving. Rachel is still a bit obsessed with her ex-husband and the reason Anna reported her to the police is because she once showed up at their home and snatched up their baby while Anna was napping. In fact, after this episode, that increased Anna's anxiety about Rachel (who keeps calling and occasionally shows up to talk to her ex, Tom), was the reason she hired Megan as a babysitter for a time, although Megan quit from boredom after only a few weeks.

While the book is a bit slow to start (and I really didn't enjoy spending so much time in Rachel's drunken, self-pitying head), it builds the suspense nicely and gets more exciting as the story unfolds. I figured out the identity of the killer (this is not a spoiler, it's obvious from the very first page that Megan ends up dead) some time before it was revealed, but that may very well have been intentional. It certainly adds more to the tension when the reader knows more than the characters in the book, and just waits for them to catch up. The book didn't entirely work for me (but again, that could have been because it further exacerbated the pain of my own recent failure to conceive a child), and I found it a bit confusing in places. Nonetheless, I can see why the book has become so popular and I'm sure the movie will be entertaining.

Judging a book by its cover: As far as I can tell, the version I read, has the movie tie-in cover, which means it just features the movie poster on the front. A train in the background with one lit-up window, speed lines illustrating the speed of the moving train. Slight blurring of the font and the movie tag line underneath. I don't really care for tie-in covers, but it was what I got. I don't think this poster is what's going to sell the movie.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 105: "Dumplin'" by Julie Murphy

Page count: 384 pages
Audio book length: 9 hrs 2 min
Rating: 3.5 stars

Willowdean "Will" Dickson is a teenager in a small town in Texas, with nothing much to recommend it, except being home of the oldest beauty pageant in the state (possibly the country, I don't remember). The Miss Teen Bluebonnet is a big deal and Will's mother's biggest claim to fame is that she won it when she was young, and still fits into the evening dress she wore. She now wears it every year, as she presents the pageant. Will is not skinny like her mother, she's fat and this is something she's not actually bothered about much of the time. Despite her mother's many attempts at putting her on diets, and fears for her health, Will is fairly confident in herself and doesn't care what others think of her.

Will's beloved aunt, Lucy, was very obese and died about a year ago from a heart attack. Will and Lucy shared a love for Dolly Parton, and it was because of this that Will met her best friend, Ellen. They both love Dolly immensely, and both miss Lucy a lot. Having shared everything growing up, however, the two girls are starting to grow apart. Ellen has been dating Tim for ages, and is ready to take things to the next level. Will is supportive, but inwardly panicking. If El has sex, while Will has yet to even kiss a boy, what will they really have to talk about any more?

There is a boy in question that Will wouldn't mind kissing at all. Bo, a handsome private school kid who works with her at the local fast food place surprisingly starts taking an interest in Will over the summer, and soon they seem to be making out in an abandoned parking lot after every shift. Yet excited as Will is about this, she doesn't tell El, and while normally completely comfortable in her own skin, she gets deeply self-conscious about her body every time Bo touches her. She's also worried about what other people will say if they see them together - because why would a gorgeous guy like Bo want to be with a girl like her?

As summer is coming to an end, Will discovers that Bo will be transferring to her high school, but didn't tell her. Nor does he seem to want to acknowledge her as anything but a colleague when they meet at the Mall when he's there with his family. Angry because her deepest fears have been confirmed (Bo is ashamed to be seen with her and wants to keep their relationship secret), Will breaks up with him. She still hasn't told El, who is nonetheless noticing her friend behaving strangely every time she sees the cute new guy.

Mitch, one of the school's star football players, asks Will out and seems to like him a lot. She's flattered by the attention and agrees, even though she's in no way over Bo, and doesn't feel anything but platonic affection for Mitch.

Needing a shake-up in her life, Wil enters the Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant and inadvertently becomes an inspiration for Millie, Amanda and Hannah, other outcast girls at the school. Sadly, fuelled by her jealousy at El having made friends with several of the "cool" girls in school over the summer, and her increasing insecurities, she has a massive argument with El (because she too joins the pageant) and has to navigate the next few months completely estranged from her BFF.

I'd heard a lot of good things about Dumplin' online, and was happy to pick it up in an 2 for 1 sale at Audible a while back. It's nice to have a teen heroine who describes herself as fat, and while I've seen criticism that the book isn't as body positive as purported because Will occasionally has misgivings about her own weight and makes mean digs at thinner girls more than once, I don't think that's fair. Willowdean is a teenager, and there is not a single teenager alive who isn't self-conscious on occasion, no matter what they look like or how much they weigh. Of course she feels jealousy and is bitchy when she feels insecure. That's not even exclusive to teenagers, but when constantly hormone-fuelled, it's difficult to be zen-like and forgiving all the time. Frankly, it makes Will a more complex and believable character that she's jealous, judgemental, petty and stupid on occasion.

I thought the main conflict of this book was going to be that Willowdean, a teenage girl who didn't exactly fit the beauty pageant contestant looks, joining the pageant her mother once won. Her entering the contest doesn't happen until almost halfway through the book, though, and most of the book is just about Will living her life and trying to come to terms with her aunt's death and her and her mother's different approaches to grieving. The structure of the story is one of the things I didn't really like so much, it's a bit all over the place, and the book could have benefited from more structure.

I didn't really understand what was so great about Bo, although I liked him better towards the end of the book when he seemed to have figured out that he'd been an ass earlier and realised he was going to have to shape up and really court Will properly. I thought Mitch was a total sweetie, and was not at all happy with the way Will treated him. She kept stringing him along because she liked the attention, but should have been honest with him after their first date was disappointing. She also treated El appallingly during the pageant sign-up and should have made more of an effort to try to see her friend's side of things. I was wholly and completely on El's side in that conflict, but teenagers are complete idiots most of the time, so I can also forgive Will (who grovels very satisfyingly later).

Besides, if Will had had El at her side the whole time, she wouldn't have made new friends in the oddballs who insist on joining the Miss Bluebonnet pageant as well. Millie, Amanda and Hannah are all even stranger and less popular than Will, and early in the book, she shows that she can be just as prejudiced in her opinions of them as the more popular kids. Spending more time with them and really getting to know them is very good for Will, though, and I would have liked the book more if there was less of a focus on the love triangle and more on the various female friendships.

I've read a lot of YA this summer and most of it, I enjoyed more than this one. It's well worth a look, though, if nothing else because of the different setting and the nice explorations of friendship.

Judging a book by its cover: The simple black cover with Willowdean portrayed in her red pageant evening gown, head back and arms outstretched, is a nice one. Nothing too elaborate and without revealing any facial features, so the reader can create their own mental image of the protagonist.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 104: "Crimson Bound" by Rosamund Hodge - double Cannonball!

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

From Goodreads, because I'm lazy and it's mostly a pretty good summary (I will point out the ways in which is it not afterwards):

When Rachelle was fifteen, she was good - apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless - straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in an effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand - the man she hates most - Rachelle forces Armand to help her find the legendary sword that might save their world. As the two become unexpected allies, they uncover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. In a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Inspired by the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Crimson Bound is an exhilarating tale of darkness, love and redemption.

Rachelle lives in a world where there are evil things lurking in the Forest and they believe that three thousand years ago, an evil entity known as the Devourer, god of the forestborn, swallowed the sun and the moon. A brave pair of siblings, known as Zisa and Tyr managed to recover the sun and the moon, and bind the Devourer in sleep for millennia. But soon, Rachelle's aunt, the village wood-wife (wise women trained to protect people against the evil of the forestborn) announces, the Devourer will awaken, to swallow the sun and moon once more.

With the foolish impulsiveness of youth, Rachelle decides to try to figure out a way to subdue the Devourer once more, should he really return. She starts walking in the woods, attracting one of the dangerous servants of the dark forces. She keeps courting danger, until one day, he persuades her to remove her protective charms, and (naturally) attacks her. Once marked by a forestborn, an individual has only two choices. Kill someone before three days are up, or die. Rachelle fights the compulsion, but ends up killing her aunt. She does discover, from the sinister and seductive forestborn who marked her, that the only way to defeat the Devourer, is with Zisa's legendary bone swords, believed lost forever.

Three years later, Rachelle is living in the capital, and is one of the king's order of penitent bloodbound. She was marked by the Forest and killed to stay alive, but has not fully submitted to the call of the Forest and become fully forestborn yet. Instead, she spends every waking hour hunting down the wicked creatures that threaten innocent civilians. She has a semi-flirtatious relationship with Eric D'Anjou, the Captain of the King's bloodbound, but refuses to give into his attempts at seduction, refusing to become another notch on his belt.

After foiling an assassination attempt at the King's bastard son, Armand, she is ordered to be his bodyguard. As Rachelle has only just gotten word from the shadowy forestborn who changed her that the Devourer will be rising as soon as the next Solstice, she has only a few weeks to try to locate Joyeuse, one of the bone-swords the legendary Zisa used to free the sun and the moon. Stories say it is hidden "below the moon, above the sun". She certainly does not have time to baby-sit one of the King's many illegitimate sons, especially one who has been proclaimed a saint by the populace after he was allegedly marked by a forestborn, refused to kill, but still survived after three days. He did lose both his hands, and now has silver ones he wears instead. The blurb claims he is the man she hates the most, this is wildly exaggerated. She despises him, believes he is a liar and a fraud - as there is just no proven instance of anyone surviving three days after encountering a forestborn, unless they kill someone, like she did.

As the assassination attempt on Armand that Rachelle foiled is not the first, she is told to accompany him to one of the King's sumptuous country estates. Rachelle is persuaded to bring her fully human friend Amelie, who wants to basically be Rachelle's stylist, now that she has to appear at court functions. Armand tells Rachelle a legend from his region of the country, that makes her believe that the sword she is looking for, may in fact be hidden somewhere in the palace they will be staying. As it is impossible for her to be on guard duty and keep on searching, she reluctantly enlists Armand's help. She is still convinced he is lying about how he lost his hands, but the more she observes him, the more unlikely it seems that he wants any kind of glory or fame, and he is clearly deeply uncomfortable being venerated by the general populace.

The return of the Devourer draws ever closer. Rachelle and Armand are running out of time and the closer to the solstice they get, the more the sinister Forest seems to be encroaching on the royal residence, even though protective spells are supposed to be all over the grounds. Will Rachelle find the legendary sword and stop the Devourer, before it's too late?

What I liked:
- I absolutely adored the dark fairy tale told at the beginning of many of the chapters, relating the story of Zisa and Tyr. There were clearly elements of Hansel and Gretel, but with much darker undertones throughout, and there are clearly other folkloric tales mixed in there too. The horror that the siblings go through and what Zisa is willing to sacrifice to rescue her brother is lovely. Creepy and fantastic as all the best fairy tales are.
- The various folklore elements woven throughout the story. 
- The sinister creeping dread of the Forest, and the almost vampire-like forestborn. The bargain the marked have to make to continue living and the ever-present threat that they submit fully to the call of the Forest, and become fully inhumane.
- I liked Rachelle's complexity, even though I didn't always like her. She made an incredibly stupid mistake in her youth (some TSTL behaviour right there), but strove so hard to atone for it. Working to fight the threats from the Forest and saving innocents, even as she believed herself wholly damned.
- The sweet and genuine friendship between Rachelle and Amelie.
- I liked Armand as a character. His cut-off hands and his silver replacements (that burn him when the metal gets too hot) was suitably gruesome. I was also impressed when it was finally revealed what actually happened to him - the full extent was both cool and horrible.
- The concept of the wood-wives, local wise-women who could weave various charms to protect the populace against the creeping evil of the Forest. Zisa was apparently the first of the wood-wives and they pass down the knowledge through the generations.
- I mostly liked the decadent Renaissance French court setting.
- I liked the monsters Rachelle had to defeat, both in her everyday fight against the encroaching Forest and when looking for Joyeuse. 
- The plot wasn't entirely predictable (for all that some things were pretty obvious to me from early on). There were a lot of cool reveals along the way.

Did not like:
- Erec D'Anjou. He gave me the creeps from the moment he showed up. He was an arrogant creep and the way he treated Rachelle was condescending and appalling. The fact that he was presented as charming, handsome and a supposed third in the love triangle of the story was baffling to me. He was pond scum.
- Rachelle's initial aversion to Armand really did seem very extreme and was really never well explained.
- Nor was her sudden change of heart, where she pretty much out of the blue loves him. Not at all sure at what point her feelings changed from distrust, disdain and slight loathing to true love.
- Absolutely and utterly hated the whole love triangle.
- The structure of the story was a bit messy and the book could have been tighter plotted. The ending seemed a bit confused and rushed.
- The Little Red Riding Hood inspiration was tenuous, at best. 

This is Rosamund Hodge's second book, and from what I can see from various reviews, a lot of people don't think it's as good as her first book, Cruel Beauty. As there was a lot that I really liked about this book, I'm now even more excited that I have the supposedly better book still to read. As some reviews also say that the plots are a bit reminiscent of each other, I think I'm going to wait a bit, so the books don't suffer too much in comparison.

Judging a book by its cover: I've seen some people complaining that the cover of this book is too close to Rosamund Hodge's debut novel, Cruel Beauty, but I honestly don't see why this is problematic. The books are published by the same company, they probably wanted to make it more obvious the books were by the same author. The spiralling stair motif is a cool one (even though it has very little to do with anything in the actual book), whilst the black and white, with the bright green of the trees and the splash of red of Rachelle's cloak are lovely contrasts. The way the trees seem to be moving ever closer to the stairs is a nice call-back to the encroaching Forest in the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 103: "As You Wish: Inconcievable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride" by Cary Elwes and Joe Layden

Page count: 259 pages
Audio book length: 7hrs 1 min
Rating: 4 stars

The Princess Bride is my favourite film. Probably of all time. Ask me to name my favourite book, and I really wouldn't be able to choose, as that would very much depend on genre, my mood, the weather, what I'd eaten recently and I would frankly have trouble even narrowing down a top 10. But my favourite film is The Princess Bride. I have loved it since I first discovered it back in the late 80s (or possibly very early 90s, I can't say exactly), when we had a number of movie channels on cable and I first saw the film. Because it was one of those channels that would repeat the movies a few times over the course of a month, I made sure to record it on vhs, so I could watch it whenever I wanted. I was the only one of my friends who had seen this film. I had no one to share my adoration with.

When I went to the US, on a language exchange trip before I was about to start high school, in 1995, I discovered that not only did most American teenagers my age know about the film, they loved it and could quote it pretty much verbatim (as evidenced when we watched the movie in our dorm during my stay there) It was an eye-opening and absolutely wonderful experience and I was also told about the book it was based on, and bought my first paperback copy (I now have the book in both paperback and hardback, as well as the 25th Anniversary edition, which includes the first chapter of the unlikely to ever be finished sequel, Buttercup's Baby). I have owned the film on VHS, multiple versions of DVD (because of new extras), and while I have yet to get round to buying it on Blu-Ray, it's only a matter of time. While initially, none of my Norwegian friends had seen it, I made it my life's mission to show it to as many as possible, and I still cannot wholly trust a person who doesn't see what a magical film it is. I don't require them to love it as much as I do (cause that's not likely to happen), but they need to at least like it. This was an important test early in my relationship with my now husband, just as we would have had serious difficulties if I hadn't really liked Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

All of this is to explain why once Cary Elwes' book came out, it was a very natural present for my husband to buy me. Now, because I have literally hundreds of actual physical books (even after my big and very necessary purge when moving house a year ago, I think I have more than 700) and closer to twice as many if you count all my e-books, I gratefully accepted my pretty hardback copy, flicked through it and looked at some of the pictures included, put it on a bookshelf and sadly forgot about it. Then in August, this was an Audible Daily Deal and I picked up the audio book (because having the book read to me by Cary Elwes seemed a pretty good thing) but it wasn't until fellow Cannonballer Beth Ellen actually reviewed the audio version that I decided that enough was enough.

Cary Elwes was a young and relatively unknown actor when he was cast in The Princess Bride. Because his American step-father worked in publishing, he had read and loved the book and couldn't believe his luck when he was cast as Westley. He talks about the casting process, the months of intense fencing training he and Mandy Patinkin had to go through to manage the stunning fencing scenes. He recalls the camaraderie among the cast, how much fun everyone had making the film, everyone's absolute love for the project and their disappointment at how badly marketed the film was upon its initial release, causing it to bomb at the box office. He also talks about how despite his long and varied career, and that of many of his cast members, most will always be remembered for their part in the movie, because it is now such a well-known and deeply loved phenomenon. As well as Elwes' own recollections, there are stories from most of the other cast members, as well as input from Rob Reiner, the director and William Goldman, the author and script writer.

If you're looking for juicy celebrity gossip, this is not the book to go for. Elwes is glowing in his praise of the whole experience, and it seems that not a single person involved with the filming had anything negative to say either (if anyone did, they certainly haven't been included in the book). I loved hearing about the kindness of Andre the Giant, how Elwes broke his toe while in the middle of shooting, or was literally knocked out during filming (both incidents you can see in the film if you look closely). How Billy Crystal came up with the mannerisms and look of Miracle Max. How after months of gruelling training, Elwes and Patinkin were so skilled at fencing that the originally planned fencing scene was over far too quickly and they had to go back and rehearse an extended, much more impressive fight. I don't want to reveal too much, but if you like the movie and/or novel, this is absolutely a behind the scenes book that's worth checking out.

Judging a book by its cover: It's Cary Elwes at his hottest, dressed as the Dread Pirate Roberts, holding a sword. What more do you want from a cover? 'Nuff said.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 102: "The Dark Days Club" by Alison Goodman

Page count: 496 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Lady Helen Wrexhall is 18 and nervous about her imminent presentation to the Queen. As her parents died when Helen was young, and there is scandal attached to her mother (she is believed to have been a traitor), Helen and her brother have been raised by their aunt and uncle. She desperately hopes that no one is going to mention the scandal connected to her mother, but can't resist the urge to take her mother's miniature with her to the presentation either, wanting something to remind her of her parents on her big day. Before she has a chance to see the Queen, the infamous Earl of Carlston (rumoured to have murdered his wife), a distant relative of her family, deftly steals the miniature from her, but promises to return it the next day. Helen is also shocked when the Queen not only mentions her mother, but seems to imply that the rumours about her may not all have been true.

When Lord Carlston comes to call the next day, accompanied by Beau Brummel (making Helen's aunt slightly less mortified by the whole thing), he actually flings her mother's miniature at her when no one is watching. Reacting with lighting reflexes she didn't suspect she had, Helen snatches it out of the air before it hits her face and is deeply puzzled by the whole encounter. In the last year, she's noticed herself going through changes. Her hearing is more acute, her eyesight is sharper. Lord Carlston clearly knows something about her mother, and suspects things about Helen too, since he is willing to test her in such odd ways. What connection does a man with such a black reputation have with the deceased Lady Catherine, and what could he possibly want from Helen?

Helen's aunt and uncle wants her to have nothing to do with Lord Carlston, and her uncle would prefer it if she denounce her mother entirely and claim publically that Helen is glad that she died when she did. Both of them want Helen to behave demurely and make a good match. That her brother's best friend, the Duke of Selburn, seems taken with her is certainly a good sign. Yet Lord Carlston reveals to Helen that she has rare and unusual gifts, and that she needs to be trained in the use of her powers to help save the country from horrible soul-sucking beings. He shows her a side of London that she never suspected existed and clearly has support in the highest places. Helen begins to sneak out to be trained by the scandalous earl, but just as she is beginning to trust him, a letter from her dead mother is delivered into her hands, making her unsure of whom to trust. Her mother offers her a choice from beyond the grave, Helen could give up her dangerous monster-hunting destiny, but the cost could be higher than she's willing to pay.

In an unusual twist on a chosen one story, Helen discovers that she is what is known as a Reclaimer, only one of eight in all of Britain, and the only woman of the bunch. Because her mother was also one, she is a direct descendant, something very unusual, and there are those that believe her existence is a portent for darker things to come. The Reclaimers fight the Deceivers, horrible soul-sucking monsters, that can move from host to host, and look just like ordinary humans when they're not sucking the life force out of their unsuspecting victims. The Reclaimers can see them using special lenses, and Helen is able to see them when holding her mother's miniature portrait against her bare skin.

The Reclaimers are part of what is known as The Dark Days Club, a secret branch of the Home Office, and the reason Helen's mother was considered a traitor is because she wanted to stop her work with them and leave the country. Lord Carlston, who was still young when Lady Catherine and her husband, the Earl of Hayden, died, wants to mentor Lady Helen and teach her how to use her special gifts. When Helen discovers from her mother's letter that the Reclaimers get slowly more and more corrupted by the evil they fight and that they frequently succumb to madness and lose any ability for love or affection, she worries about her future and considers using her mother's amulet to remove her powers once and for all. She is torn between her wish for a normal Regency life, with balls, dress fittings, flirting and a possible future with the Duke of Selburn and a life fighting dark forces, saving lives, making a real difference and spending more time with the enigmatic Earl of Carlston (who she doesn't believe actually murdered his wife, although he's not telling what really happened).

There is a lot of things I liked about this book, but it is longer and the story is WAY slower than it needs to be. It is both a positive and a negative that Alison Goodman is clearly a huge Regency nerd and has done meticulous detail into all aspects of the society. Sadly, in what I like to call Diana Gabaldon syndrome, she cannot help but reveal all of said research in often painful and tedious detail. I really did like that there is a lot more attention to the time period than is common, and certainly a lot more than I was expecting from a young adult novel. Yet when it bogs down the plot because I keep having to read about all the mundanities of Helen's existence, I get frustrated. The pacing of the story is especially slow in the first half of the book, and if Narfna hadn't so highly recommended the book, I might have considered giving up on it.

Goodman does a good job with Helen as our heroine, she's intelligent and strong-willed, and despite her uncle's disapproval, opposes him in quiet and small ways. Despite being the daughter, and sister, of an earl, Helen treats her personal maid Darby with kindness and Darby, in return, is fiercely loyal and protective of her mistress. One of the subplots of the book involve the two of them investigating the disappearance of one of the maids of the household. While Helen's uncle is pretty much completely horrible (someone in a review I saw, probably on Goodreads, compared him to Uncle Vernon in Harry Potter, and that's pretty much spot on as descriptions go), her aunt is kind and well-meaning, if worried about public opinion and the family's reputation. Helen's brother Andrew, the current Earl of Hayden is really quite dull and also very worried about Helen and the family's reputation. He cannot understand why she keeps behaving in such a hoydenish fashion and why she seems to end up in Lord Carlston's company, especially when his BFF, the Duke of Selburn seems interested in making her his wife.

I find the main conflict in this book intriguing, and wish that it had gotten to the action-packed and supernatural evil fighting parts sooner. I really do appreciate the attention to historical detail, but not when it makes the book at least a third longer than it needs to be. I hope to God that Goodman doesn't continue with the vague love triangle that she has introduced in this book (because I find them tedious in the extreme) and look forward to reading about the continuing adventures of Lady Helen, Darby and the hopefully unfairly maligned Lord Carlston (I refuse to believe that there isn't a good explanation for his wife's disappearance) in future books, in which Lady Helen herself hopefully fights more evil instead of just learning about it.

To anyone interested in the trope of young noblewoman in Regency England fighting evil monsters and trying to juggle suitors, balls and dress fittings, I also highly recommend Colleen Gleason's five books about Victoria Gardella, in the Gardella Vampire Hunters series. I read them all back in 2008-2009 and they are now all available in e-book format.

Judging a book by its cover: I like the understated elegance of this cover. The squiggly font implies history and possibly adventure, and the dark colours add to the atmosphere. The girl in the distance, beautifully attired with her lace parasol, the light through the trees, the lace edging suggesting you are viewing the scene from behind a curtain, it all works for me. The other cover for this book (I think it's the UK edition) is a lot more garish and I really don't like the cover model they have portraying either of the main characters of the book. I much prefer this one.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 99: "A Promise of Fire" by Amanda Bouchet

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Catalia "Cat" lives with a travelling circus, disguising herself as a soothsayer. She's been on the run for years, hiding for a number of reasons, primarily that she can tell instantly when someone is lying (she gets a shot of visceral pain throughout her body) and she can frequently divulge the truth an individual is hiding when they lie, as well. Additionally, she has the ability to siphon magic from someone else, and in turn, use that magic against the individual or others. Thirdly, she's immune to harm by any magical means. Cat is what is known as a "Kingmaker", an individual who comes along rarely. There is also a prophecy involving her, and this is the reason that Andromeda, Queen or Alpha, of Fisa, will turn heaven and earth on its head to find Cat again.

Griffin, Beta of Sinta, a Southern kingdom, a powerful warlord whose rebellion removed the magical ruling elite in the country, only to place his sister Egeria on the throne as Alpha, has been following the circus, and watching Cat closely. He suspects she is the Kingmaker, an invaluable weapon to help his non-magical family keep the power they seized, and after testing her powers, confirms his theories. Cat isn't interested in going to Sinta, and so Griffin emotionally blackmails her by threatening her friends at the circus and abducts her instead. Literally bound to Griffin by a magical, unbreakable rope, Cat has no choice but to go along with the warlord and his little band of loyal men, but she's certainly not going to submit graciously.

Cat's childhood and adolescence was characterised by both mental and physical torture, numerous near-death experiences and psychological mind-games that could crack anyone. She has learned the hard and bloody way to never let anyone get to close and to not form lasting attachments. Even so, she cares for the members of the circus (leading to Griffin being able to emotionally blackmail her), and as she spends more time with Griffin and his men, she starts liking them too, despite herself. Normally plagued by horrific nightmares every night (with good reason), she sleeps peacefully and soundly when next to Griffin. She knows chances are that now that she's no longer safely hidden with the circus, Alpha Fisa is going to track her down eventually, and so she offers to train Carver, Kato and Flynn in knife-throwing and other combat skills to increase the chances that they will survive whatever ruthless fighting force Andromeda sends after her.

Just as Cat fears, while the group journey towards Sinta, Cat's blood is spilled during a careless moment. This allows Andromeda to start tracking her again, and she sends increasingly more powerful threats to reclaim what she considers her property. Cat has grown substantially more powerful since she escaped the Fisan court, however, and with some aid from her divine godparents (more on that later), she and the little warrior band are able to defeat the various forces sent to find her.

Once they arrive, and Cat sees how completely unlike any of the neighbouring royalty Griffin's family are, she despairs at their chances of ever surviving very long to defend their claim to the throne. Having made Griffin swear that he'll tell no one of her Kingmaker powers, she's basically presented as a member of the powerful Fisan magical elite, who is there to advise them all. It's quite obvious to all of Griffin's family (and his men) that Cat is also someone Griffin is absolutely gaga for.

Cat, while she can't deny being attracted to Griffin in return, is deeply uncomfortable with any thoughts of intimacy and human closeness, mainly because she knows that anyone that she is close to, will be used against her or just plain murdered by Andromeda to punish her for escaping. Initially, she is constantly furious with Griffin for abducting her, but he keeps treating her with courtesy and kindness. He just also makes it perfectly clear that he can't let her go, because his sister's claim to the Sintan throne needs all the magical help it can get. As they travel together, fight hostile forces and later some fairly gnarly monsters, he falls more and more deeply for her, and wants to make her his wife. But Cat is keeping secrets about her past and her origins and she's not sure that Griffin's love will survive after he discovers the truth.

At the start of August, all the romance review blogs I read were raving about two books. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne, which I already know is going to be on my top 10 favourites list of the year, and this, which is also a strong contender. Really good fantasy romance is rare and difficult to come by, and therefore it is such a delight to find a book that really works. The world-building in Bouchet's book is excellent, even though I cringed at both her name for magic users, magoi, but especially the non-magical, the hoi polloi. 

This is a medieval style world, where the main three kingdoms in question are Tarva, Fisa and Sinta. In all three countries, they worship different Greek gods. Cat is literally a goddaughter of Poseidon, and receives magical assistance from both Hades and Zeus over the course of her journey. While she is spitting mad at Griffin for kidnapping her away from her safe haven in the circus, she becomes a less reluctant prisoner once he reveals that he was told to search for her in a prophetic dream, sent by Poseidon himself.

There are varying levels of magic users in the different countries, the further south they are, the more removed they are from the ice plains, where apparently magic is the most concentrated. Until Griffin and his brothers staged a rebellion in Sinta, all three countries had magic-wielding royalty. It turns out that the reason Griffin was able to succeed in his coup (apart from the fact that he's a hugely skilled warrior) is that he is impervious to magical attacks. He doesn't have a trace of magic himself, none in his family do, but he can't be harmed by magic either.

What has been common in these countries for as long as anyone can remember is that the magical ruling elite have tons of children, and then pit them against each other in ruthless power games until only the strong survive. Rulers are normally replaced when they are killed by the strongest and cruellest of their children. The ruler of a country is the Alpha, the second in line for the throne is the Beta, then the Gamma, Delta etc. Cat is amazed and incredulous that despite the fact that Griffin won the throne, he has placed Egeria on it as Alpha, taking the Beta position for himself. This goes against centuries of tradition and the new ruling family will clearly need to drum up some supporting magical family if they hope to stay in power.

As mentioned earlier in the review, Cat (not her real name) grew up in the Fisan court, used as a valuable tool by the absolutely merciless Alpha, Andromeda. Tortured in every way possible, despite her useful truth-telling abilities, she was at death's door more than once. Andromeda once gave her a puppy, then murdered it after about six months, when the young Cat had grown truly attached to it. She isolated Cat from anyone in court who could possibly be expected to help her, and while it's not clear exactly how Cat managed to actually escape her clutches, it's very obvious why she would rather die than go back to Fisa. She doesn't really want anyone else to be tortured or killed for her sake along the way, though.

Good world-building can only do so much, unless the cast of characters is also a good one. No worries on that score here. Cat is fascinating. She's abrasive, fierce and independent and tries so desperately not to form any human attachments because of her horrible upbringing. I found many parallels between her and Laurent in the Captive Prince trilogy, although Laurent's adolescence was all rainbows, puppies and kittens compared to Cat's. She is nonetheless capable of great affection and inspires both loyalty, friendship and protectiveness in others.

Carver, Griffin's younger brother and right-hand man, Kato and Flynn, the members of Beta team, Griffin's crew, grow to adore her platonically as much as Griffin does romantically. They are all cool, fun guys, although it took me a while to discern the differences between them. Griffin's mother and sisters are all great too, and while Cat clearly has not had many female friends in her life, they do their best to include her and make her feel welcome, not just because Griffin clearly loves her, but because they come to care for Cat for herself.

Then there's our hero, Griffin. There are some that may take offense at him abducting Cat at the beginning and keeping her captive, but he really is doing it for the best of intentions. It's not like they plan to throw Cat in a dungeon and force her to divine the lies that people at court tell. They want to give her a trusted and honoured position as one of the chief advisors at court, but the new Sintan ruling family really desperately need her help. He always treats her courteously and as they travel together, he begins to see that she isn't just a valuable tool for his sister, but that he loves who she is and wants to spend his life with her. She is deeply skittish to his advances, so he takes it ever so slowly, but makes it perfectly clear what his intentions are. He is a man used to working hard for what he wants, and he will lay siege to Cat for as long as it takes to win her over. He's a highly skilled warrior, and wise enough to know that the country of Sinta will thrive better if his sister is the ruler, with him as the head of the army. He doesn't in any way feel threatened by Cat's fighting prowess or obvious magical strength. He just finds it another attractive and impressive side of her.

I really really liked this book. I would have liked there to have been the hints of some sort of softer side to Andromeda, who seems like pretty much the epitome of evil, but perhaps a more complex characterisation will be revealed in the second or third book of the trilogy. Here she is mainly the chief horror of Cat's past and an off-screen threat. Cat is also terrified of how Griffin will react once he finds out the full truth about her, and I kept waiting for her to finally tell him, but nope, that scene never came. I suspect her secrets, while they are never spelled out on the page, will by the end of the book be fairly obvious to most readers, but that doesn't mean that Bouchet should have kept teasing a scene that never came. It felt anti-climactic to me, and is the main reason that I'm withholding half a star from the rating. The second book in this trilogy is out in early January, and I'm super excited to see what happens next. Any fan of fantasy and/or good romance should try this book, it's well worth a read. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really like this cover, in various shades of red, with Cat centre-stage, wielding both a sword and fire (both things she's highly skilled at). While her hair appears to have some assist from a wind machine, I'm going to assume that using powerful magic makes your hair flow impressively at the same time. The title, A Promise of Fire is most certainly delivered upon over the course of the book. I also like that only our heroine is on the cover and that Griffin isn't portrayed and taking attention away from the most important protagonist. Good job, Sourcebooks Casablanca.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Books 95-97: "The Captive Prince trilogy" by C.S. Pacat

Total page count: 1088 pages
Rating of series as a whole: 4 stars

I'm going to review this whole trilogy in one review. As such, there is bound to be some spoilers, and if you want to go in completely cold, you may want to skip this review and just trust me that while the first book is a bit slow, and not the most engaging of reads on its own, the trilogy as a whole is mighty compelling reading, and well worth your time. At least if you like well-written fantasy, tons of political intrigue and plots that twist and turn repeatedly.

Volume one: Captive Prince - 3 stars

Prince Damianos of Aikelos, better known as "Damen" to most close to him, is a war hero and utterly beloved by his people. When his long-ailing father dies, Damen's older half-brother Kastor seizes power, and Damen finds himself overpowered, cast in chains and sent as a pleasure slave to the court of the rival neighbour nation of Vere. Everyone in Aikelos is told that Damianos was killed by his rebelling slaves after the king's death, and to add to the betrayal, Damen's mistress Jokaste makes it clear to him before he is subdued and sent from the country that she is aiding Kastor in his coup.

In Vere, a decadent and indolent court, Damen is given to Prince Laurent, the young heir to the throne, whose older brother Auguste Damen killed in single combat during a war six years ago. Even if he could reveal his true identity and be believed, he's in the one place where he is truly hated, under the control of a man who has sworn revenge on Prince Damianos for the actions nearly a decade ago. Laurent doesn't really seem interested in a pleasure slave, in fact, there are rumours that he is frigid. The crown prince, nearly of age, is locked in some sort of complex power struggle with his uncle, the current Regent, and seems like he may in fact, be both immature and unstable. The Regent seems to think that Damen may be used to influence his nephew in a positive manner, but the seemingly spoiled Laurent trusts no one, certainly not a lowly slave from the country he hates the most.

Both Aikelos and Vere are nations that support slavery, although in Vere, it seems that slaves have the opportunity to buy their freedom if able to collect enough gifts and favours. In Aikelos, like in ancient Greece or Rome, slaves seem to be captured during wartime, but also bred to serve. They have no way of gaining their freedom and are completely dependent on the benevolence of their masters. In both Aikelos and Vere, slaves seem to be used for sex, although in Vere, there are strong taboos about heterosexual couplings outside of marriage, as illegitimacy is frowned upon and sex between men and women should be for procreation, first and foremost. At least among the elite, marriages seem to be mainly political alliances, with no one batting an eyelid if both parties have pleasure slaves on the side for enjoyment. Hence in Vere, men have and support male pleasure slaves, while women have female slaves.

The author doesn't really spend a whole lot of time giving details about the setting. As most of the books take place in Vere, we only really get information about Aikelos through Damen's recollections and the way he's constantly comparing Vere and his own country. Then there is the fact that most of the book takes place at court, so it's difficult to get a full picture of what the country as a whole is like. I pretty much pictured Vere like late Medieaval France, while Aikelos was more like the Roman Republic.

It's difficult to get a feel for any of the characters other than Damen in this book, and he's really a rather unreliable narrator throughout, as it's revealed in book two and three that he is unaware of so much of the plots and alliances bubbling under the surface in Vere and his initial judgement of the Regent and Laurent are formed without having enough information to understand the situation. Damen's only goal is to escape, get back to his own country and claim back his throne. He needs to be careful that his identity is not revealed to Laurent, as the young man wouldn't hesitate to kill him. Of course, despite his humiliation at being kept as a slave, and his disgust at the decadent ways of the Vere court, Damen finds himself both attracted and repelled by Laurent. Their relationship is certainly a strange one.

Volume two: Prince's Gambit 4.5 stars

At the end of the first book, Laurent is manipulated by his uncle into taking a troupe of men to patrol along the border of Vere and Aikelos. By this point, he has revealed to Damen that his uncle was behind the assassination attempt Damen helped foil, and Laurent takes his slave with him, as he has realised that the man is a highly skilled soldier and he needs his expertise to get his ragtag bunch of soldiers into shape, and survive his scouting mission. It's obvious that the Regent doesn't want his nephew to succeed, that they are likely riding towards a trap, and the men they have at their disposal are in no way fit to fight anyone.

Because Laurent is dangerously clever (he'd have to be to survive to adulthood), he uses the resources at his disposal. Together with Jord, the captain of his guard and Damen, he's actually able to turn the men assigned to him into a passable fighting force, but only after some very public demonstrations of his authority and some creative detours to give them more time to drill before they get to the border. Damen is in the incredibly unenviable position of having to help the man who currently OWNS him, and would probably straight up murder him if he were to discover his true identity, help secure his throne, despite the high likelihood of Laurent then turning right around and declaring war on Aikelos, Damen's home country.

On top of that, there is the growing trust between them, a much closer understanding and absolutely, mutual attraction developing between the two sworn enemies. Damen has to reevaluate everything he observed or experienced in the first book as he comes to learn more about the incredibly messed up power games between Laurent and his uncle. Damen is naturally constantly worried about what might happen if Laurent actually discovers his true identity, and more intimate their relationship becomes, the more uncomfortable he is about it. He killed Laurent's beloved older brother, and to a certain extent feels responsible for the lonely and f-ed up adolescence that Laurent has had, in the clutches of his seemingly benevolent, but in true fact super evil, uncle.

Damen keeps being torn between his wish to escape and go back to Aikelos to reclaim his own throne, and his growing affection for Laurent, that keeps him at his side, keeping him safe and aiding him in securing his own throne. Their growing romance seems impossible, and there is a fair amount of anguish on the part of the reader (at least there was for me), because how could the two of them ever really make it work. They are potential rulers of rival nations that have been at war countless times, and let's not forget - Damen killed Laurent's brother! It's difficult to forgive and forget that sort of thing.

At the end of the book, Aikelos seems on the verge of full out war with Vere, and Damen, instead of escaping, promises to hold an important border fort while Laurent rides into what is clearly an ambush orchestrated by his uncle. Then there are some revelations that made my mind literally boggle and forced me to start volume three as soon as I was able.

Volume three: Kings Rising 4 stars

Damen's secret is out, and everyone knows he is in fact Prince Damianos of Aikelos. Vere and Aikelos are on the brink of war, with Prince Laurent's uncle, the Regent, amassing his forces, and Kastor, Damen's usurping and treacherous half-brother also on the war-path. The only way Damen is going to be able to reclaim his throne is with the aid of Laurent, the man who swore to kill him. Can Damen convince Laurent to set aside his enmity to face the bigger threat, his uncle?

Can the hesitant trust and growing love between the men be rekindled, even with Laurent being fully aware of Damen's true identity? Will they survive to enact revenge on their usurpers and can they have any future together, with full knowledge of the terrible actions of their pasts?

Here's where it gets hella spoilery, people. Seriously, do not read this if you haven't already finished books one and two. So yeah, Laurent knew about Damen, from the beginning. Having grown up in the viper pit that is the court of Vere, fighting the influence of his wicked uncle (who it's clear sexually abused him shortly after Crown Prince Auguste and his father died), Laurent is presented with his worst enemy as a slave, and told he's not allowed to harm him, or risk diplomatic relations with Aikelos. Of course he twists the situation so he can flog the living daylights out of Damen. Of course he mentally tortures him. This is the man that killed his brother! It makes the trust that builds between them, the friendship that turns to romance so much more remarkable, because while Damen didn't know that he knew, Laurent went to bed with Damen, despite his many (understandable) sexual hang-ups, even knowing exactly who he was.

He trusted him with an army and gave him control over one of his border forts, even knowing that he was the Prince Killer from Aikelos. The uneasy truce they form in the beginning of this book is an uncomfortable one, because you just want them to kiss (and more) and make up and turn the combined might of their brawn and intellects towards pummelling their enemies.

While the first book is slow and a bit confusing, because we don't have all the cards yet, and the second book is full of espionage, double-crosses, intrigue and romance, this book starts out well, but sort of collapses a bit towards the end. The stakes are oh so very high, but then the ending is sorted out oh so neatly, almost depressingly so. Everything falls into place just that little bit too conveniently and it all happens a bit too quickly to be entirely satisfying.

Not that the book before that isn't extremely enjoyable. Damen is back in the northern reaches of Aikelos, needing to muster support from the powerful lords of the country, all the while convincing them to support him against his treacherous half-brother, despite the fact that he's in open alliance with the true ruler of their enemy neighbour state. Damen and Laurent make an uneasy truce and have to prove themselves worthy of support, and outsmart the men who have taken what is rightfully theirs. This bit was a lot of fun, even if the angry tension between Damen and Laurent got on my nerves. I totally understand it, it would be massively unrealistic if they just jumped into each other's arms and let bygones be bygones, but still. I wanted my HEA.

And yet I complain when in the end, I did get a HEA for my dudes, but it just seemed to come a bit too easily. Still, in its entirety this trilogy is excellent, and I had such a fun time reading it.

Judging a book by its cover: These books have had a variety of covers, depending on the release. The newer, wide-release editions of these books are not exactly all that exciting, but play in rather well to the fantasy and political intrigue aspects of the trilogy, rather than the "two dudes are gay for each other and have some sex, but that is really a very small part of the whole". Various pastelly colours, with a brick wall, battlements or a tower in the background. A fancy font. A rearing lion. I think the marketing department has done a good job making really very neutral covers.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.