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Crossing in Time is what I would call a ‘Sexy Sci Fi’. It’s like if you took Timeline by Michael Crichton and inserted sex.  And quite a lot of sex at that. We have two main characters, Diego and Isabel. They used to have sex, but haven’t had sex in a while as Isabel married another guy (who turned out to be an ass who was probably not very good at sex). But now they meet up again at the start of this and you guessed it, that means its time for sex. 

Haha ok, I’m making fun. Actually the book is really well written, yes there is quite a bit of sex, but that is not necessarily a bad thing is it? And it mainly comes at the end anyway. What we have here is a very clever tale, that I feel spans a few genres, but mainly science fiction and romance. The heart of the book is the relationship between the two main characters with the hook being the time travel aspect. They need to fix what went wrong in their relationship in the past. To raise the stakes they need to do this to save the world. If they don’t a horrific pandemic (hmm sounds kinda familiar?) will wipe out all of humanity.

The main thing I didn’t like about the book was that to me it felt like it presented the most important thing about a relationship as being the sex. This came across strongly in the final quarter of the book. I won’t say this was bad really, I just felt more could have been done on the emotional side of things regarding ‘fixing’ a relationship than in this area.

All said and done Crossing in Time is very well written and the plot though complex is easy to follow once you are paying attention. I’d probably call it a four star read but for two things, 1. The audiobook narrators are brilliant (I got both the ebook and an audiobook). And 2. Its an indie book which is perfectly presented, from the cover, the editing, the formatting, the audiobook, all absolutely perfect and top quality, as good as and possibly even better than you will see in many traditionally published books. Its a shining example of what good indie books should and can be. 

Thanks to TheWriteReads for letting me join another great blogtour.

This summer, Marcie is spending time working at Angel Mounds, the archeological dig her mother heads, along with her brother, Eric, and his girlfriend, Renee. The dig is the site of an ancient indigenous civilization, and things immediately shift into the paranormal when Marcie and her teammates meet Lorraine and Zeke. The two mysterious dig assistants reveal their abilities to access the Universal Energy Field with their minds – something Marcie knows, only vaguely, that her brother has also had experience with. Marcie learns how our planet will disintegrate if action is not taken. She and her team must decide if they are brave enough to help Lorraine and Zeke in their plan to save Mother Earth, her resources, and her history. It looks like the summer just got a lot more interesting…

My review

4 Stars

If I was to describe Catalyst or put it into a genre I would call it a YA fantasy eco-thriller. It’s not at all what I expected really. I don’t know if I would say it is character-driven really, and rather issue-driven. Indeed my main criticism really is that it is perhaps a bit too focused on the message and not so much on the story. Be ready for a lot of talk about the environment, fracking, nature and spirituality. I would have liked if there was a bit less of the spiritual elements in particular, but I understand why the author went there.

It’s a book I feel that will appeal to YA fans who want something a little bit different to the norm. It’s actually part 2 of a series, but I haven’t read the first part and I don’t think you need to. It seems to stand on its own just fine and I never found myself to be confused or unsure about what was going on. I LOVED the archaeological elements.

So what’s it about? Well, the main character, Marcie, is a teen with a sixth sense which begins to emerge as she works on an archaeological dig for the summer.

She’s a really likable protagonist, she’s intelligent, energetic, kind and passionate, but doesn’t come off as a Mary Sue either, she certainly doesn’t back down to Leo who has very different opinions than her. Her powers are deeply connected to the earth and indeed it is the earth that she and her friends have to save. Literally they have to save the world from destruction and exploitation. 

Catalyst is a great, as I said above ‘YA eco fantasy’ that I’d be happy to recommend to people. Thanks to the author and Dave at TheWriteReads for my copy

About the author

THE AUTHOR

TRACY RICHARDSON wasn’t always a writer, but she was always a reader. Her favorite book growing up was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. In a weird way that book has even shaped her life through odd synchronicities. She has a degree in biology like Mrs. Murry, and, without realizing it, she named her children Alex and Katie after Meg’s parents. Tracy uses her science background in her writing through her emphasis on environmental issues, metaphysics, and science fiction. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her doing any number of creative activities — painting furniture, knitting sweaters, or cooking something. She lives in Indianapolis, and, in case you’re wondering, yes, she’s been to the Indianapolis 500.

Philip’s adventures as the Devil’s apprentice have changed him—in a good way. Although he misses his friends in Hell, he has made new friends in life.

But when the future of the underworld is threatened once again, Philip’s help is needed. Death’s Die has been stolen and immortality is spreading across the globe.

Philip throws himself into the search—and discovers a horrible truth about his own life along the way.

The Die of Death is volume 2 in The Great Devil War-series and winner of the ORLA-Award.

The Great Devil War-series is a humorous and gripping tale about good and evil, filled with biblical and historical characters, such as Judas, Goliath, and Pontius Pilate, as well as modern figures such as Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and many more.

The Great Devil War-series is a Danish bestseller, topping library and school reading lists among teens and young adults. The books have been published in more than ten countries and have won numerous awards.

Review

I’d like to thank dave at The Write Reads for inviting me onto this tour for the second book in the series by Kenneth B Andersen.

I really liked Book 1 so was greatly looking forward to tucking into this. I will admit to a little apprehension however as I often find the sequels rarely live up to the original. I need not have worried though. Andersen has done it again with this. 

Just like the last book, Philip is killed again,  but this time on purpose. This time Death has a mission for him. He has to find Death’s die! After all how can Death do his job without it? Fast paced with lots of action I’d definitely recommend it. I did find it was a little predictable, but still a highly enjoyable read. I just add that the supporting characters in this really help bring the world to life, this is something I think a lot of new authors could learn from. For the world to feel real, the characters in it need to feel real and not just be there for the MC to bounce lines off. 

I can’t see anybody who liked the first book not liking this one. It’s probably a stronger book all around, though I don’t feel that it engaged me to quite the same degree, that is not a slight on the book, I think its just because the first book was such a surprise. This one, like I said, is probably by all scientific evaluations a superior book and I definitely recommend it.

4 stars out of 5

About the Author

Kenneth B. Andersen (1976) is an award-winning Danish writer. He has published more than forty books for children and young adults, including both fantasy, horror, and science fiction. 

His books have been translated into more than 15 languages and his hit-series about the superhero Antboy has been turned into three movies. A musical adaptation of The Devil’s Apprentice, the first book in The Great Devil War series, opened in the fall 2018 and film rights for the series have been optioned. 

Kenneth lives in Copenhagen with his wife, two boys, a dog named Milo, and spiders in the basement.

• Website www.kennethbandersen.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/WriterKennethBAndersen/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kenneth_b_andersen/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/K_B_Andersen
• Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kenneth-b-andersen

Book: Kingshold

Series: The Wildfire Cycle

Author: DP. Wooliscroft

Published by: Self-published

Genre: Epic Fantasy

How I got it: Via a Blog Tour with TheWriteReads

Rating 4 stars

Kingshold is an epic fantasy based around the transition from Monarchs to democracy and all the craziness, power struggles and shenanigans that entails. The king and queen have been murdered by the ancient wizard Jyuth, who is basically tired of their shit and wants to do away with monarchs once and for all. Ut equally mouth is not exactly the most proactive of wizards and so after killing them he kinda sits back and enjoys the fun as others fight for power, survival, respect. 

While I did find that the book starts a little slowly, it is soooo worth sticking with this one. It just gets better and better as it goes along. I love DP Wooliscroft’s humour and imagination.  I found myself chuckling out loud more than once and just becoming steadily more and more absorbed as I went along, after an admittedly rather shaky start. 

The world building is well done. The main focus of the story is the island of Edland where medieval Kingshold is situated, but we do also learn something of the neighbouring territories, including the dangerous Pyrfew. There is a whole bunch of magic, pirates shape shifters, magicians etc. more than enough to keep your average epic fantasy fan happy. 

The best thing about it though is certainly the characters. Mareth, Neenahwi, Alana, Motega, Jyuth all very well fleshed out and believable and there is some greater banter between some of them. They also grow and evolve as the story goes along which is something I find that a lot of self published works lack in their characters. 

I won’t say too much about the plot or ending other than that is is a bit twisty and has left me feeling interested in reading more from this world.

About the author

Born in Derby in England, on the day before mid-summers day, David Peter Woolliscroft was very nearly magical. If only his dear old mum could have held on for another day. But magic called out to him over the years, with a many a book being devoured for its arcane properties. David studied Accounting at Cardiff University where numbers weaved their own kind of magic and he has since been a successful business leader in the intervening twenty years.

Adventures have been had. More books devoured and then one day, David had read enough where the ideas he had kept bottled up needed a release valve. And thus, rising out of the self doubt like a phoenix at a clicky keyboard, a writer was born. The Wildfire Cycle is David’s debut series.

He is married to his wife Haneen and has a daughter Liberty, who all live with their mini golden doodle Rosie in Princeton NJ. David is one of the few crabs to escape the crab pot.

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About the book

Beneath rock and soil, trees and oceans, she lies.

Under concrete jungles and poisoned rivers, she slumbers.

She is Mother Earth.

And mankind has turned its back on its mother.

The visions begin on Terran’s seventeenth birthday. Horrifying images pummel her brain, while a voice commands her to see beyond the world she thought she knew and into the heart of it. Gaia has awakened, brought to consciousness by the greed of a species that has tainted every aspect of her being in a tide of indifference. With this awareness, comes rage. Gaia calls upon her children to unleash her fury, wreaking vengeance on humanity.

Terran will emerge in a world on the brink of collapse, to face a being whose wrath is beyond imagining.

My review

Rise of Gaia is a quick easy read that also touches on some bigger, more important messages such as climate change and just the state of the planet in general. With all the recent storms and bush fires the book certainly comes at an appropriate moment in time.

In the first chapter we are introduced to Terran. Terran has a comfortable life as your typical teenage girl, she spent ends most of her time hanging out with her best friend, her parents love her and treat her well. But on her 17th birthday everything begins to change.  She is wracked by a terrible vision of doom and destruction. 

So we come to learn that Terran is Gaia’s (mother Earth’s) chosen one. Meant to redress the balance and fight for the planet. Something which initially at least Terran is on board with, but she has no idea just how far Gaia wants her to go. This leads to a great dynamic where Terran does want to help the planet but equally is not willing to do some of the morally abhorrent things Gaia demands. 

My favourite aspect in rise of Gaia though was definitely the relationship between Teran and Beth. Too many YA fantasies like this end up focusing on the pretty boy who falls for our unusual, but plain looking main character. I love how, without getting too spoilery, that dynamic is turned on its head in Rise of Gaia and the true heart of the book ends up not being the teenaged girl’s insanely gorgeous and mysterious boy crush and rather her relationship with best friend. Very satisfying. 

The book is well written throughout and just an all round solid, quick and entertaining read. Recommended to anybody who likes YA fantasy/sci fi.

4 stars

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to Dave from the WriteReads and Kristin.

Christmas is coming to Denver, Colorado, but it isn’t only snow that’s falling.

A beautiful young woman, who also happens to be a Truman County Assistant DA, tumbles from her apartment balcony to her death on Christmas Eve.

The incident is ruled a suicide, but the DA’s sister, newspaper reporter Samantha Church, isn’t buying it.

Feverishly Samantha throws herself into finding out what really happened to her sister. She pursues her sister’s killers, maneuvering through a minefield of intrigue deliberately set out to divert her from the truth. She invariably stumbles when confronted by the inescapable specter of a greater enemy: the alcohol dependency that has already cost her the respect of her peers, and, worse, custody of her daughter.

Samantha must summon the courage to face not only a cartel of criminals, but also her own demons. Physically threatened and betrayed, she nearly defeats herself through her own insecurities and fears. She not only must summon the courage to get beyond her own shortcomings, but she must work quickly to beat her nemesis – a reporter at the major metropolitan daily newspaper, who is also in close pursuit of the developing story.

Can Samantha ultimately prevail, write the biggest story of her career, and finally begin to change her life before it is too late?

My review

Firstly, I want to say that I feel the author writes about alcoholism in a very honest way. Sometimes that is a bit brutal, but it is always real, so for that alone I think she and the novel deserve some credit. When it opens Sam’s life is a mess. Everything has gone wrong for her. She has lost her daughter, due to her problem with alcohol and her sister has committed suicide. At least, that is what the police decide. But Sam, a reporter with The Grandview Perspective Newspaper refuses to accept it. And so begins her quest to find the truth.

It took me a while to get to grips with the book, but I felt it steadily picked up pace as it went along and after a while I found myself rapidly turning the pages to see what happens next. For the most part it is the story of a deeply flawed individual who is trying to do the right thing, but who’s past and problems keep battling her. She has a small but close group of family and friends, literally, this group can be counted on one hand, and then she has others who she thought she could trust, but who actually are not what they seem.

A well-written mystery, possibly a tad predictable, but I think Sam’s personal struggles and story more than make up for that.

4 stars from me

I received a review copy as part of a blog tour. It has not affected my opinions. 

I want to say a big thank you to The Write Reads and Kenneth B. Andersen for having me on the Ultimate Blog Tour for The Devil’s Apprentice. I received a complimentary digital copy but that has not affected my review in any way.

Blurb

Philip is a good boy, a really good boy, who accidentally gets sent to Hell to become the Devil’s heir. The Devil, Lucifer, is dying and desperately in need of a successor, but there’s been a mistake and Philip is the wrong boy. Philip is terrible at being bad, but Lucifer has no other choice than to begin the difficult task of training him in the ways of evil. Philip gets both friends and enemies in this odd, gloomy underworld—but who can he trust, when he discovers an evil-minded plot against the dark throne?

The Devil’s Apprentice is volume 1 in The Great Devil War-series.

My Thoughts

So, what can I say? I think I will just jump straight in with I freaking LOVED this one! Phillip Engel is literally the nicest, kindest, angel of a boy you could ever meet. So it makes perfect sense that the Devil should pick him to be his successor! Lol right? No. He meant to choose a horrible bully of a boy but due to a mix up he ended up getting Phillip instead! And, yes, you guessed it, that means a whole load of hilarious and ludicrous situations rapidly follow. If you haven’t already guess yes, the Devil actually meant to take that horrible bully boy (Sam). 

I really didn’t know what to expect going into this book. I’d never heard of it before, but then I saw that it was going to be the next Ultimate Blog Tour so I knew I had to check it out. Definitely glad I did. It’s just a great, funny, original YA fantasy that steps away from the tropes that seem to abound these days and dares to be a bit different. And although I’m certainly a lot older than the target audience, all I can say is I loved it. I also really liked that it is actually more complex morally than you may initially think. Good and evil are not necessarily completely black and white things. 

You can definitely see some inspirations in the great classics at play here, particularly in some of the descriptions of Hell. Reminded me a little of a Christmas Carol and of course, there is some Dante’s Inferno in there too, so even though the target audience is YA there is definitely, in my opinion, more than enough to keep the older reader interested. Can’t recommend this one enough really.

5 out of 5 stars!!!

Big thanks to The WriteReads for letting little old me on another one of their fantastic blog tours!

Sapphire Smyth and the Shadow Five by RJ Furness is part one of a 6 part serial about a girl who can see things just at the edge and beyond of what is normal. She can see shadows move and who knows where that will lead! I love that the author’s inspiration for this story is the shadows at the bottom of his own stairs. What if shadows can come to life?? Eek! Scary but also cool!

The writing really drew me in to Furness’s mysterious, shadowy world, questions followed by more questions popping into my thoughts and then just as I was really starting to get into it bang! To be continued book 2 … Arrgh!! Luckily I got TWR for the next book in the series, but I’m not sure how I feel about this serialized format as a general thing. I can understand why an author, particularly an indie author would do it, but gosh it could get annoying as a reader!

Anyway, onward! Sapphire is an 18-year-old girl who gets kicked out of her foster home on her 18th birthday. And with her father also having abandoned her you’d expect her to have a few issues, nonetheless, she is strong and can look after herself. I wish there was just a bit more time spent building her character though rather than just throwing her right in there, but maybe this is part of the problem of serialization. I would actually prefer if this first part was simply made into a full-sized, fully fleshed out novel giving us time to really get to know the characters and the world. But maybe that will come in the sequels? (Which I WILL be reading by the way.)

Overall I give the book 3.75 stars. A good read, I would definitely recommend. Don’t be looking for Dune or anything though. This one is not an in-depth, detailed, rich world with really deep characters, it is a fast paced, entertaining amusement park ride!

I’d like to thank The Writereads for putting me on this tour for Josie Jaffrey’s The Gilded King. 

Firstly I’d like to say I love the cover and the general idea of this book, great world-building and solid writing. I will say although the series is technically stand-alone, Jaffrey has some previous books (her Solis Invicti series) which I believe link in to it. I think perhaps things in this area could have been improved a little so the book actually stands on its own two feet a bit better. Probably the ideal when reading Josie Jaffrey would be to read Solis Inviti first. Having said that I found it easy enough to follow the story without too much difficulty.

The novel is divided into two stories, both quite different, and both quite good. A plague has spread across the world and vampires have built a haven where they keep uncontaminated humans to be used as slaves, and yes, as food. Of course, we then have the usual love affair business between the young human girl and her vampire master. Given how cliche this trope is I think the author would have been well served by delving into it more deeply and not rushing it too much. If you are going to go cliche, then take your time about it. But that probably sounds harsh, despite being a little cliche I liked it! And I will also add that you should not think this means the story isn’t unique. It really is. It’s just a very well thought out world that feels real. And when the world feels real, the rest usually follows.

I won’t say too much about how things develop but suffice it to say if you like vampires, paranormal romance, dystopian futures then you should definitely give this one a go.

I was so sad to learn of the death of Michael Crichton. Such a talented and prolific writer who will be greatly missed. I’ve decided to go on a bit of a Crichton binge and reread some of the old classics that I adored from my youth. First up is one of my favourite ever novels: Timeline.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Timeline is one of the greatest ever novels or anything it certainly isn’t, it just has an, I don’t know, a special place in my heart. Maybe because of where and when I was when I first read it. In fact I believe some people regard this as one of Crichton’s weaker novels, and I guess that is understandable, but for me it hits all or most of the right buttons.

Blurb

In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened up to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival — six hundred years ago.

I friggin’ love this novel! The premise is just brilliant. The lead archaeologist on a dig goes missing and then the others discover his glasses on site, but in an impossible location they could only have gotten there 600 years ago! This isn’t your standard time travel fair. In Timeline the characters are travelling through the multiverse, going to any number of alternative realities and pasts. Man, as usual I got kinda lost in the technical stuff here. But suffice it to say a bunch of archaeologists on a dig in France get to travel back in time to the site they are excavating and get involved in all sorts of adventures as the English and French do battle during the 100 years war.

The character development in this one is great. I loved seeing modern characters thrown into the past and seeing how their relatively good knowledge of the period helps them to survive. And seriously, just surviving is a struggle.

For me this one is an easy 5 star read!