It’s weird how sometimes a book series grows on you. I initially only started the October Daye series cause I had read Feed (also Seanan McGuire but written as Mira Grant) and wasn’t that impressed by the first book. It was fun and okay, but nothing that screamed out at me “MUST READ NEXT BOOK”. I had already bought the 2nd and 3rd books second-hand though, so I thought why not go on with it and see what I think. By the end of the third one, I was at the “ooh, I wonder what happens next” stage. Now with the 6th one I’m totally at “AWESOME. MUST READ NEXT BOOK. WTF. I HAVE TO WAIT A YEAR?!?”.

So Ashes of Honor is the 6th book in the October Daye series. If you haven’t read any of them, it’s an urban fantasy series about the half fae, half human private detective October “Toby” Daye. Toby is an awesome, kick-ass heroine, who only gets more awesomer as the series progresses. If you like urban fantasy, I can highly recommend this series (and as usual you should start at the beginning of the series with Rosemary and Rue… you also shouldn’t read further cause I’ll spoil some stuff from previous books).

In this latest installment Toby has to find the changeling daughter of fellow knight Etienne, a daughter he didn’t even know existed before she went missing. To make things worse the missing changeling also has the power to rip apart the world of Faerie, if Toby can’t find her in time. On top of that, trouble is brewing in the Court of Cats and Tybalt may need Toby’s help…

I thoroughly enjoyed Ashes of Honor. It’s yet again a Daye book that has Toby track down a missing kid, which she does with the supernatural help of the Luidaeg, but it still feels fresh somehow. The usual Toby supporting characters are all there: Quentin, Tybalt, May, the Luidaeg, Walther, Raj, Sylvester and Luna, plus we get to revisit some of characters from Tamed Lightning. Despite so many characters though the book doesn’t feel overcrowded; everyone is there for a reason.

It’s been a year since Connor died and Toby is still recovering from it. I’m glad though that McGuire has skipped forward a year, giving Toby enough time to deal with her loss, but not making the readers have to go through every single bit of it. At the start of the book Toby is still very much grieving and pushing people away, but throughout the book she slowly opens up again and let people in.

I love Tybalt and in this book he really gets to shine. I’ve always preferred him over Connor (honestly I was quite glad to see him go in the previous book) and Toby and him are great together. I quite like how McGuire is handling their relationship and so want to read more about them.

Duchess Riordan has been hinted as a potential villain in previous books and I’m glad we finally get introduced to her. I’m hoping we’ll see more of her, even though I’m not sure how that can be arranged after her fate at the end of this book. Who am I kidding? It’s Faery. Of course that will be possible. Plus she’s not the only character who I think we’ll see again.

I can’t believe I’ll have to wait almost a full year till the next comes out. McGuire has said she DAW have purchased 10 October Daye books in total from her, so there will still be at least 4 more books. The next Chimes at Midnight will be out next September. In the mean time, we can look forward to her next Incryptid book, Midnight Blue-Light Special, which will be released in March 2013.

Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.95 and on Amazon.com for $7.99.

I just started reading The Name of The Wind last weekend and so far it’s great. It’s beautifully written and it’s one of those books that once I start reading I can’t put down. Sadly I haven’t found enough time this week to read, otherwise I think I would have finished it by now!

The book starts off in a small town in a small inn with a quiet innkeeper called Kote. You soon find out though that he hasn’t always been just an innkeeper, but the assassin/thief/magician/who-knows-what-more Kvothe (pronounced like Quothe). Once a scribe and chronicler arrives in town, Kvothe starts telling his story…

The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is available on Amazon.co.uk for £6.29 and on Amazon.com for $11.56.

Ooh, the latest October Daye book came out yesterday! I really enjoyed this series from Seanan McGuire and the previous book was just soooo good. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one!

Here’s the description from Amazon:

It’s been almost a year since October “Toby” Daye averted a war, gave up a county, and suffered personal losses that have left her wishing for a good day’s sleep. She’s tried to focus on her responsibilities—training Quentin, upholding her position as Sylvester’s knight, and paying the bills—but she can’t help feeling like her world is crumbling around her, and her increasingly reckless behavior is beginning to worry even her staunchest supporters.

To make matters worse, Toby’s just been asked to find another missing child…only this time it’s the changeling daughter of her fellow knight, Etienne, who didn’t even know he was a father until the girl went missing. Her name is Chelsea. She’s a teleporter, like her father. She’s also the kind of changeling the old stories warn about, the ones with all the strength and none of the control. She’s opening doors that were never meant to be opened, releasing dangers that were sealed away centuries before—and there’s a good chance she could destroy Faerie if she isn’t stopped.

Now Toby must find Chelsea before time runs out, racing against an unknown deadline and through unknown worlds as she and her allies try to avert disaster. But danger is also stirring in the Court of Cats, and Tybalt may need Toby’s help with the biggest challenge he’s ever faced.

Toby thought the last year was bad. She has no idea.

Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.03 and on Amazon.com for $7.99.

I enjoyed Maria V. Snyder’s previous two fantasy series, which were both set in the world of Ixia and Sitia (the Study trilogy and the Glass trilogy). With this new series though, Snyder brings us a whole new world, with new characters, new cities and new magic.

Here’s the book’s description from Amazon:

What s the cost of a deal with the devil when you have the powers of a god? When Avry was growing up, Kazan was a prosperous land, rich in resources and served by a respected tribe of healers. Until the plague came. Developed by the poor territories to the north and west, the terrifying disease ravaged the people of Kazan and drove Avry s family away. Four years later, imprisoned for using her powers, Avry’s beginning to lose hope, when a band of strange men break into her cell and steal her away. They need her special magic to save their prince. The Prince who ordered the plague’s first release. Avry’s freedom now rests on using her healing touch to save the very man who took away everything she loved…

Book of Lust is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.87 and on Amazon.com for $10.00.

Only one more day of July left! I’d been meaning to get these mini reviews out in the first week of July; ah well, better late than never. I’ve only read 12 books so far this year; that’s way below the amount of books I normally read. At this rate I’ll have read only 24 books in 2012. To compare, in 2011 I read 39, in 2010 I read 34 and in 2009 I read 41… I’ve got some serious catching up to do!

Naamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey

This is the final book in Carey’s third trilogy set in her alternate fantasy Europe. This trilogy takes place a couple of centuries after the first two trilogies and features Moirin, a half-D’Angeline and half Maghuin Donn. In this final book Moirin and Bao sail to Terra Nova (which is basically the Aztec regions) to recover the lost crown prince of Terre d’Ange. I love the world Carey has created; she manages to blend “real” mythology/religion with her own concepts, creating some intriguing new stories.

A Soldier’s Duty by Jean Johnson

I really enjoyed this book. It opens with Ia, a 15 year old girl, getting a terrible vision of 200 years in the future where the human race dies. However, she also sees all paths leading up to that terrible event and the one path she can take to prevent it all. The book then jumps a couple of years to an 18 year old Ia, when she joins the Terran army; certain events have to happen exactly the right way and Ia uses her precognition abilities to make sure that it all happens according to her plan, even though it costs her. What I liked here is that even though our main character knows exactly what is going to happen, you as a reader don’t. We only know something terrible is going to happen, but we don’t even know what that terrible thing is. And even during battle scenes although Ia can “see” what will happen to her, the writer manages to keep it exciting and unpredictable. It’s an interesting reversal of the typical case where the reader knows way more than the protagonist.

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

I love Seanan McGuire’s books. Her other series is the October Daye books, which has a Fae world living alongside ours (and then there is also her Newsflesh trilogy where she writes as Mira Grant; read on for my reviews below). This new book is the first part in the Incryptid series. It’s quite similar to the October Daye ones, only here instead of having the Fae living alongside us you have Cryptids. The Cryptids are creatures of which the human world isn’t completely certain whether it exists or not: think Loch Ness monster, Big Foot, vampires, etc. Our protagonist is Verity Price, a cryptozoologist: part Cryptid caretaker, part Cryptid slayer. She’s responsible for keeping New York’s Cryptid population in check, even if that might mean hunting them down. McGuire creates a fascinating world with a great heroine and I can’t wait to see her next adventures!

The Reluctant Vampire/Under a Vampire Moon by Lynsay Sands

The Argeneau vampire books from Lynsay Sands are always fun to read. They’re your typical vampire romance book, but with a bit of a twist: here the “vampires” are actually nano-infected descendants of Atlantis (the nanos fix everything damaged in a body, including sun damage, and of course requires blood to work). These were book 16 and 17 and I’m still amazed how interesting Sands manages to keep this series!

The Ambassador’s Mission/The Rogue by Trudi Canavan

This is the second trilogy from Canavan that is set in the world of Kyralia and takes place 20/30 years after the first one, focusing on our main character’s son Lorkin. I didn’t like the first trilogy when I read it the first time, but loved it when I revisited it a couple of years later (strange how a couple of years can change your perspective). These first two books expand the world even more and contains a couple of twists that I didn’t exactly see coming. Very curious to see how it all ends!

Darker After Midnight by Lara Adrian

This is the final book of the Midnight Breed series. And wow, what a final! I like how it finishes up all the existing story lines, yet also hints to another new potential series. Early on in the series I quite liked Chase, but as the series went on and the darker he went I began to loose interest in him. By the end of this book though I was so rooting for him again!

Deadline/Blackout by Mira Grant

I loved loved loved the first book (Feed) from this series. I didn’t think the sequels could live up to that, but, wow, I was wrong. The second book Deadline is again an awesome read and I think I might love it more than the first one. The third one is a bit of a letdown after that second book, but it still a satisfying conclusion to the entire trilogy.

Wolf Captured by Jane Lindskold

I struggled with this book. Actually I struggle with all of Lindskold’s books. I always like her stories, but there’s just written in a way that doesn’t click with my mind; I constantly have to go back and reread bits and it just generally goes slooooooow. The story is great though! This is the fourth of the six books in the Firekeeper series, and this one sees our main characters get kidnapped to another far away country. It’s great moving the plot to another place; we get different rules, different customs, different characters.

The Broken Kingdoms by NK Jemisin

I didn’t love this book as much as Jemisin’s first book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It still was a book though that I couldn’t put down and pretty much finished within two sittings. It’s set a couple of years after the first one, and our heroine is Oree, a blind girl, who during the aftermath of the first book gains the ability to see through magic. In the previous book we were introduced to the three main gods (Nahadoth, Enefa and Itempas) and three of their children. Here we see how much more vast the world is that Jemisin has created and we get introduced to a ton of other godlings. I like Jemisin’s take on the gods: they’re powerful, immortal beings, but each of them is inherently bound to a specific “nature”, which strengthen and restricts them. It’s an interesting read and the mythology is quite unlike any I’ve read before.

It’s time for some book coveting! We’re getting a bit swamped with zombie-themed books, but this one I love the sound of and seems to have its own unique perspective. The twist: the protagonists are the zombies.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

From a tropical resort where visitors can become temporary zombies, to a newly-made zombie determined to protect those he loves, to a cheerleader who won’t let death kick her off the team, to a zombie seeking revenge for the ancestors who died on an African slave ship– Zombiesque invites readers to take a walk on the undead side in these tales from a zombie’s point of view.

There are 15 stories in total and it looks like they’ve gotten a great bunch of authors: Nancy A. Collins, Charles Pinion, Tim Waggoner, Richard Lee Byers, Robert Sommers, Seanan McQuire, G.K. Hayes, Jim C. Hines, Sean Taylor, Jean Rabe, Del Stone Jr., S. Boyd Taylor, Loaszlo Xalieri, Nancy Holder and Donald J. Bingle. I’m mainly looking forward to Seanan McGuire’s story, but there are a couple of other ones that look great. I haven’t read most of the other authors, but a lot of them are still on my To Read/Want list.

Zombiesque is £6.29 on Amazon.co.uk and $7.99 on Amazon.com.

This is a cool idea: a bean bag for your book. I must admit I sometimes have difficulty finding the right position to comfortably read a book, and this seems like an interesting way to solve that.

The store describes the book rest bean bag as:

Shakespeare, Hemmingway, Kipling: their words deserve our full attention. The hands-free Book Rest,designed by sisters Angela and Ursula Hartig, lets you park your paperback so that you can concentrate on getting comfy. Made up of a book cover and a small bean bag, and held together with Velcro-strips, this helpful design will take unwinding to the next level.

Paperback?  I somehow imagine this being more useful for hardcovers. I also don’t think velcro strips will keep a paperback open that easily. It’s a cool idea though. If you want one of these bean bags for your books, it’s on Fab for the next 23 hours for €29.50. They also do a cute design for a mug bean bag (which is €19.70):

I came across these cool bookcases a while ago, but couldn’t figure out where you could order them. Fab has them now on sale though… well, “sale”. Even with the 25% discount the “Read Your Book Case” one is still a pricey $4700. Another item to add to my “When I’m rich and famous” wish list.

I love the XO design. The three x’s in red are just so cute! Each box is 51 cm high and wide, so I’m pretty sure the X shape would be the most optimal one for the size of my paperbacks.

I think the Fab sale only is for those specific letter combinations, but you can also order from the designer’s site directly. They offer all letter and number combinations! What would you make your book case spell out? I’d love to have one spelling out “Miss Geeky” to hang on my wall!

Cool stop-motion video with books in a bookcase:

Cute and pretty video about a bookmark surfing.

Much Better Now from Salon Alpin on Vimeo.