Category: ebook

Posted in author, book review, Book Tour, books, ebook

Book Review: The Blood Of Faeries By Dan Rice

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

I signed up to read books for Black Phoenix Book Tours and this happened to be the first one up. The Blood of Faeries by Dan Rice. This was actually the second book in his series The Allison Lee Chronicles. I went and read his first book Dragons Walk Among Us before reading this second installment.

The Blood of Faeries continues the story of Allison Lee. She’s found out she’s half skaag and her long lost mother (a skaag assassin) is now living with her and her dad. Oh, and the world knows Allison is a shapeshifter who saved the world from other skaags invading Earth, so every time she goes out of her house, she has to fight the media mob.

For a teen who just wants to live a normal life and be left alone to enjoy her hobby of photography, her new found celebrity status is really cramping her style. It’s also not so fun being followed around by a bunch of body guards, especially when she has super strength and can fight of most baddies all on her own.

Allison tries to adjust to her new life, but it’s a struggle. Things go from bad to worse when one of her best friends goes missing. Allison gets her team together to find him, but ends up in far more trouble than she was looking for.

In a prison halfway around the world, Allison comes face to face with some of her darkest fears. She also learns that skaags and dragons aren’t the only alien species that walks the Earth. Allison has to dig deep to save herself and her friends before their captors kill them all.

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Posted in book addict, book review, book series, book spotlight, ebook, reading

Book Series Review: Cradle By Will Wight

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

This next series I am reviewing is by far one of my absolute favorites. And I mean top five of all time favorites, favorites. Yeah, it’s that freaking good. This was another series that was recommended to me. It is similar to LitRPG, but without all the status updates and player progression information. From what I understand, this series called Cradle is a cultivation (I think that’s the word?) or progression book.

Anyways, the series follows the adventures of Lindon who grows up thinking he is unworthy to be a sacred artist, but that’s all he wants to become. His clan, and even his family doesn’t think he has the power to do it (and won’t help him either). He was born unsouled, and can never truly harness the powers of even a low level sacred artist. Lindon doesn’t accept this fate.

After a truly bizarre experience where he nearly dies, Lindon is given the opportunity to change his fate and become a powerful sacred artist. So he makes the decision to leave everything he has ever known behind to do just that. He also knows there’s a looming threat to his clan and family sometime in the far future, and he’s determined to become the best sacred artist he can, so he can stop it.

On his journey, he meets Yerin and Eithan, who are also dedicated to advancing through the stages of sacred artist as fast as possible. And so the three of them race against an unknown clock as they advance, and face surmounting enemies and devastating monsters.

This series has a very martial arts feel to it that reminds me of a kung fu movie, but it certainly has it’s own and unique world. Will Wight really makes the characters and story come to life with his lovely descriptions and well thought out storyline. He had me hooked from the very beginning of book one.

Right now, there are ten books in the series. The titles are…

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Posted in author, book review, book series, ebook, hooked on books, reading, science fiction

Series Review: Star Scavenger By G J Ogden

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

A few months ago, I decided to take the plunge and get Kindle Unlimited for awhile. Up to this point, I’ve been buying all the books I’ve read to help support authors, but I also realized this was limiting me on how many books I could read, and I wanted to really step up my reading so I could dive into whole series and still stay on a budget. Once I signed up for Kindle Unlimited, I found I had an abundance of stories (and series) at my finger tips. I felt like a kid in a candy shop.

One of the first series I started reading with my new membership was Star Scavenger by G.J. Ogden. This series got my attention because I was looking for something science fiction with space travel. The best part is that it was a completed series (it sucks having to wait on books!) of five books, so I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed.

The five books in this series are Guardian Outcast, Orion Rises, Goliath Emerges, Union’s End, The Last Revocator (and yes, as of writing this post, all of them are available on Kindle Unlimited).

Guardian Outcast starts the story out with a middle-aged spaceship pilot Hudson Powell whose looking for a purpose to believe in. He thinks that’s signing up with the RGF, a force that polices the mysterious alien ships wrecks that are left abandoned throughout the galaxy, but he quickly realizes he’s just joined the biggest corrupt organization in human civilization. What does he do when he finds himself in a morale and life threatening situation?

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Posted in book review, book series, ebook, hooked on books, Indie Author

Book Review: Obsidian Eyes by A.W. Exley

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

Obsidian Eyes Book One in the Queen’s Blade Series by A.W. Exley is available in kindle and paperback.

Last Friday, I had a desire to find a book the had a strong female character, was sexy, and a little bit weird. So I decided to try one of A.W. Exley’s books. I read her Artifact Hunters series last year, and absolutely loved it, so I wanted to see if another one of her series could deliver again. It did, at least so far with the first book Obsidian Eyes.

Set just before the Victorian Age, Allie Donovan is a seventeen-year-old who is full of secrets as she attends an aristocratic school, a place she really has no business being since she’s a commoner. But her grandfather’s position as the school’s librarian gives her a way into the exclusive St. Mathew’s Academy.

Once there, Allie makes some friends and enemies as well, and also meets a young man that infuriates her as well as captivates her at the same time. But she is cautious of him, because he’s supposed to be the enemy. Allie tries to find a way to walk between her world of a commoner and guild member, and the elite gentry of England and Scotland, but it’s full of potential disasters, including her biggest secret, the man who put Allie in the exclusive school to begin with and why.

This story is full of wit, friendship, estrangement, intense action, subterfuge, political conspiracies, and steampunk brilliance. It also has a hint of the exotic as it explores some of Allie’s ties to an Egyptian harem.

I really enjoyed this book a lot. It was a little slow reading at first. Exley develops a very rich and complex background for her Heroine Allie. So I think it was a little bit of a struggle to put all the pieces together because some of the background information Exley sprinkles into the story seems a contradiction. But as the story progresses, Exley brilliantly weaves the pieces together for a very colorful and interesting past for Allie. After I hit the halfway point, I couldn’t even put the book down, and ended up finishing the book in the early hours of the morning.

So if you are looking for a book full of weird and wonderful steampunk inventions, an intense forbidden romance, and a story you simply can’t put down, try out Obsidian Eye’s.

The Queen’s Blade has two other books in the series Opaque Lies and Oubliette Lost, which I very much look forward to reading next.

Posted in book addict, book review, book series, ebook, series review

Book Series Review: The Iron Druid Chronicles By Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a series review, but I recently finished this series and really wanted to share my thoughts on it.

I have to tell you the Iron Druid books left an impact on me. I can honestly say that this is definitely one of my favorite series, but it’s also one that I dislike as well. But before I get into all of that, let me tell you a little bit about what this series is about.

The Iron Druid Chronicles starts with the book Hounded. A 2,100 year old druid is masquerading as a 21 year-old who owns an occult book store in modern day Arizona. To every one he looks like some stoner college student, but in reality he’s packing a lot of ancient knowledge and power. But don’t tell anyone, because he’s supposed to be hiding out from an Irish god who wants to kill him.

And it just gets better (and more complicated from there). lol…

The story follows Atticus on many and crazy escapades as he tries to hold his own against a bunch of religious pantheons that don’t like him very much. It might be because he’s a little bit snarky and doesn’t really care what anyone might think about him or what he does, he also has a big issue with people (or gods) who harm the earth, because he’s druid, duh. So that can really get him riled up sometimes.

My absolute favorite part of this story is that Atticus has a faithful companion named Oberon who is an Irish wolfhound, and Atticus has taught him how to speak (mentally). So it’s just a lot of fun to watch their awesome conversations play out, and see this deep friendship between hound and human grow over the course of the series.

This series includes 9 books and a bunch of novellas and short stories. The short stories and novellas help to bring more depth to the main story, and in many cases, I found the novellas and short stories to be superior in story quality to some of the novels. So I highly recommend them.

I’m not going to list out the whole chronological order of stories, novellas, and novels. You can find that information on Hearne’s website. But here are the 9 books in the series.

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