Audiobook Review: Calamity

Author: Brandon Sanderson
Series: The Reckoners, #3
Released: February 16th 2016
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

When Calamity lit up the sky, the Epics were born. David's fate has been tied to their villainy ever since that historic night. Steelheart killed his father. Firefight stole his heart. And now Regalia has turned his closest ally into a dangerous enemy.

David knew Prof's secret and kept it even when Prof struggled to control the effects of his Epic powers. But facing Obliteration in Babilar was too much. Once the Reckoners' leader, Prof has now embraced his Epic destiny. He's disappeared into those murky shadows of menace Epics are infamous for the world over, and everyone knows there's no turning back....

But everyone is wrong. Redemption is possible for Epics - Megan proved it. They're not lost. Not completely. And David is just about crazy enough to face down the most powerful High Epic of all to get his friend back. Or die trying.

Calamity! I can’t believe it’s over! I’ve waited so long to read this… When this trilogy started, I’d been mostly unfamiliar with Mr. Sanderson’s work, but his easy style and humor won me over in a heartbeat. This trilogy has been a favorite of mine since the very beginning, and while the ending didn’t quite provide the entertainment I was hoping for, it was nevertheless a satisfying finale that gave me answers and more or less the type conclusion I was hoping for.

Audiobook Review: Of Dreams and Rust

Author: Sarah Fine
Narrator: Alexandra Bailey
Series: Of Metal and Wishes
Released: August 7th 2015
Publisher: Audible
Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins

In the year since the collapse of the slaughterhouse where Wen worked as her father’s medical assistant, she’s held all her secrets close. She works in the clinic at the weapons factory and sneaks away to nurse Bo, once the Ghost, now a boy determined to transform himself into a living machine. Their strange, fragile friendship soothes some of the ache of missing Melik, the strong-willed Noor who walked away from Wen all those months ago - but it can’t quell her fears for him.

The Noor are waging a rebellion in the west. When she overhears plans to crush Melik’s people with the powerful war machines created at the factory, Wen makes the painful decision to leave behind all she has known - including Bo - to warn them. But the farther she journeys into the war zone, the more confusing things become. A year of brutality seems to have changed Melik, and Wen has a decision to make about him and his people: How much is she willing to sacrifice to save them from complete annihilation?

Of Dreams and Rust is the second part of Sarah Fine marvelous fantasy duology. Fine is an author of considerable experience and strength, who’s proven herself more than capable of executing even the most elaborate plots while paying much attention to the psychological development of her characters. With a PhD in psychology and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University, Fine puts her extensive knowledge to good use. Her characters are works of art in their own right, with layer upon layer of true personalities and consistencies in their behaviors.

Audiobook Review: Rise & Fall

Author: Charlie Cochet
Series: THIRDS, #4
Released: May 28th 2015
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Amazon
         Audible
         Dreamspinner Press

After an attack by the Coalition leaves THIRDS Team Leader Sloane Brodie critically injured, agent Dexter J. Daley swears to make Beck Hogan pay for what he’s done. But Dex’s plans for retribution are short-lived. With Ash still on leave with his own injuries, Sloane in the hospital, and Destructive Delta in the Coalition’s crosshairs, Lieutenant Sparks isn’t taking any chances. Dex’s team is pulled from the case, with the investigation handed to Team Leader Sebastian Hobbs. Dex refuses to stand by while another team goes after Hogan, and decides to put his old HPF detective skills to work to find Hogan before Theta Destructive, no matter the cost. 

With a lengthy and painful recovery ahead of him, the last thing Sloane needs is his partner out scouring the city, especially when the lies—however well intentioned—begin to spiral out of control. Sloane is all too familiar with the desire to retaliate, but some things are more important, like the man who’s pledged to stand beside him. As Dex starts down a dark path, it’s up to Sloane to show him what’s at stake, and finally put a name to what’s in his heart. 

A quick note: This was supposed to be an LGBT Monday review, but the first thing you need to know about THIRDS agent Dexter J. Daley is that he lives to bend the rules. He never does what he’s told, so I knew better than to schedule this post on a day that would actually make sense. That’s Dex for you: loving, unruly, and hilarious.

In Dex’s world, being gay is perfectly normal and accepted, but the two co-existing species, humans and therians, are constantly at war. Humans fear the shapeshifting Therians, and Therians resent being forced to register and get tattoos on their necks. The conflict is always brewing and acts of terrorism from both sides are far too common. Enter Therian-Human Intelligence, Recon, Defense Squadron, also known as the THIRDS, whose only mission is to keep the peace between the two races.

Audiobook Review: Chantress Fury

Author: Amy Butler Greenfield
Series: Chantress, #3
Released: May 5th 2015
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

Power and politics, heartbreak and danger, magic and mermaids - Lucy must conquer it all in the compelling conclusion to the enchanting series that began with Chantress and continued with Chantress Alchemy.

With a song Lucy can control the wind and the water; she can bring castles and kingdoms to their feet. Since Lucy mastered her powers, King Henry has kept her close. And now he's called her to investigate attempted murder - by a mermaid. All Lucy can glean from the creature they've captured is a warning: The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all.

And then the floods begin. Swaths of London are submerged as the people scramble to defend themselves against the water, and the monsters, that are flooding their streets. As mistrust of Lucy's magic grows, the king relies on Nat, Lucy's great love, to guide them through the storm. But Nat is cold and distant to Lucy. He swore his love only a year before, but now he calls her stranger. Lucy is determined to defeat this powerful new magic alone if she must. But then she hears an eerie song within the water.... Can it mean she is not the last Chantress after all?

Chantress Fury, the final book in Amy Butler Greenfield’s YA historical fantasy trilogy, continues in the same vein as its two predecessors. It’s beautifully written, gorgeously detailed, deeply emotional and romantic. Greenfield’s writing is elegant and perfectly polished. It’s something I always admired about her – her style is graceful and flawless without being flashy or disruptive. She also does a lot of research, so even though her story is filled with magic, it is loosely based in reality. King Henry in Lucy’s story is Henry Seymour, an actual historical figure and a distant relative to King Charles I.

Audiobook Review: This Is Your Afterlife

Author: Vanessa Barneveld
Narrator: Stephanie Bentley
Series: Standalone
Released: February 13th 2015
Publisher: Audible Studios
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

When the one boy you crushed on in life can't seem to stay away in death, it's hard to be a normal teen when you're a teen paranormal.

Sixteen-year-old Keira Nolan has finally got what she wanted—the captain of the football team in her bedroom. Problem is he’s not in the flesh. He’s a ghost and she’s the only one who can see him.

Keira's determined to do anything to find Jimmy's killer. Even it if means teaming up with his prickly-yet-dangerously-attractive brother, Dan, also Keira's ex-best-friend. Keira finds that her childish crush is fading, but her feelings for Dan are just starting to heat up, and as the story of Jimmy’s murder unfolds, anyone could be a suspect. 

This thrilling debut from Vanessa Barneveld crosses over from our world to the next, and brings a whole delightful new meaning to "teen spirit".

This is Your Afterlife first came to my attention because of its beautiful cover and the person behind it – our very own Jenny from Seedlings and Supernatural Snark. The cover reflects the book perfectly: it is upbeat, sweet and light. Just what the doctor ordered. If you’re looking for a comfort read, look no further. This book will make you laugh, swoon, and despite its title, it will leave you smiling ear to ear.

Audiobook Review: End of Days

Author: Susan Ee
Narrator: Caitlin Davies
Series: Penryn & the End of Days, #3
Released: May 12th 2014
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
Buy: Audible

End of Days is the explosive conclusion to Susan Ee's bestselling Penryn & the End of Days trilogy. After a daring escape from the angels, Penryn and Raffe are on the run. They're both desperate to find a doctor who can reverse the twisted changes inflicted by the angels on Raffe and Penryn's sister. As they set off in search of answers, a startling revelation about Raffe's past unleashes dark forces that threaten them all.

When the angels release an apocalyptic nightmare onto humans, both sides are set on a path toward war. As unlikely alliances form and strategies shift, who will emerge victorious? Forced to pick sides in the fight for control of the earthly realm, Raffe and Penryn must choose: Their own kind, or each other?

End of Days is the conclusion we’ve all been anxiously waiting to read since early 2011, when Susan Ee first released what was to become a self-published sensation. Angelfall was quite a surprise for readers and publishers alike and luckily, the quality was recognized on all sides. But if Angelfall was a huge success, the book that followed, World After, was an even bigger hit. Not only did Ee manage to reach the same level of excellence, she somehow doubled the excitement and our own emotional investment.

Audiobook Review: Suicide Notes

Author: Michael Thomas Ford
Narrator: Joe Caron
Released: January 12th 2010
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
Buy: Audible

Fifteen-year-old Jeff wakes up on New Year's Day to find himself in the hospital. Make that the psychiatric ward. With the nut jobs. Clearly, this is all a huge mistake. Forget about the bandages on his wrists and the notes on his chart. Forget about his problems with his best friend, Allie, and her boyfriend, Burke. Jeff's perfectly fine, perfectly normal, not like the other kids in the hospital with him. Now they've got problems. But a funny thing happens as his 45-day sentence drags on: the crazies start to seem less crazy.

Compelling, witty, and refreshingly real, Suicide Notes is a darkly humorous novel from award-winning author Michael Thomas Ford that examines that fuzzy line between "normal" and the rest of us.

After an attempted suicide, Jeff wakes up in a psychiatric ward where he is forced to spend the next 45 days. He doesn’t want to and he’s determined not to cooperate, but his stay isn’t optional and his parents refuse to take him home. Finding their son almost bloodless in a bathtub isn’t something they particularly want to relive, and if the psych ward is what it takes to keep him alive, that’s where he’ll stay for as long as it takes.

LGBT Monday: Shattered Glass

Author: Dani Alexander
Narrator: Joseph Northton
Series: Shattered Glass, #1
Published: April 4th 2014
Publisher: Dani Alexander
Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
Buy: Audible
         Amazon

A male prostitute, a mangy cat, a murder, and an obsession that threatens his career, his impending marriage and his life...nothing is going as planned for Austin Glass.

Austin Glass seems to have it all: a loving fiancée, a future with the FBI, and a healthy-sized trust fund. At least on the surface. He also has a grin and a wisecrack for every situation. But the smile he presents to the world hides a painful past he’s buried too deeply to remember, and his quips mask bitterness and insecurity. Austin has himself and most of the whole world fooled - until he meets a redhead in a pair of bunny slippers.

As events unfold in the biggest case of his life, Austin’s carefully planned future unravels, and he finds himself pushed into making quick, life-changing decisions. But can he trust himself or anything he feels, when each event seems to be just a series of volatile reactions?

There are days when I need a serious book, days when I need to read something relaxing, and days when I need to be shaken to my very core. There are books that are appropriate for each of those days, but only one I can think of that’s appropriate for all of them. From a reader’s point of view, Shattered Glass is a dream come true.

Audiobook Review: The Mime Order

Author: Samantha Shannon
Series: The Bone Season, #2
Released: January 27th 2015
Publisher: Audible
Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

In the internationally best-selling The Bone Season, Paige Mahoney escaped the brutal penal colony of Sheol I, but now her problems have only just begun: many of the fugitives are still missing and she is the most wanted person in London. As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on Paige, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take center stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided. Will Paige know who to trust? The hunt for the dreamwalker is on.

Sixteen hours of audio – sixteen long, agonizing hours filled with tension and often even fear – and still it wasn’t enough to satisfy my need for this series. Samantha Shannon may be young, but her talent is astonishing.

Audiobook Review: Hellhole

Author: Gina Damico
Narrator: MacLeod Andrews
Relased: January 6th 2015
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 9 hrs
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

A devil is a bad influence.... There was a time when geeky, squeaky-clean Max Kilgore would never lie or steal or even think about murder. Then he accidentally unearths a devil, and Max's choices are no longer his own. The big red guy has a penchant for couch surfing and junk food - and you should never underestimate evil on a sugar high. With the help of Lore, a former goth girl who knows a thing or two about the dark side, Max is racing against the clock to get rid of the houseguest from hell before time, and all the Flamin' Hot Cheetos this side of the fiery abyss, run out.

Gina Damico, author of the Croak series, once again delivers all the horror, hilarity, and high-stakes drama that any kid in high school or hell could ever handle.

Gina Damico, author of the Croak trilogy, is known first and foremost for her fabulous sense of humor. Her books are always hilarious, which more than makes up for the occasionally weak plots. On the surface, Hellhole is a pretty weak story about a boy who accidentally ends up taking care of the devil (one of 666 of them, apparently) and makes all sorts of ill-advised bargains with him along the way. But there are many other things underneath, and it’s precisely those things that make this book worth your time.

Audiobook Review: Firefight

Author: Brandon Sanderson
Series: Reckoners, #2
Released: January 6th 2015
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

Newcago is free. They told David it was impossible, that even the Reckoners had never killed a High Epic. Yet Steelheart - invincible, immortal, unconquerable - is dead. And he died by David's hand.

Eliminating Steelheart was supposed to make life simpler. Instead, it only made David realize he has questions. Big ones. And no one in Newcago can give him answers.

Babylon Restored, the city formerly known as the borough of Manhattan, has possibilities, though. Ruled by the mysterious High Epic Regalia, Babylon Restored is flooded and miserable, but David is sure it's the path that will lead him to what he needs to find. Entering a city oppressed by a High Epic despot is risky, but David's willing to take the gamble. Because killing Steelheart left a hole in David's heart. A hole where his thirst for vengeance once lived. Somehow, he filled that hole with another Epic - Firefight. And now he will go on a quest darker and even more dangerous than the fight against Steelheart to find her, and to get his answers.

Holy Firefight, Batman! I’m such a Brandon Sanderson fangirl.

Here’s what you can expect from the second book in Sanderson’s Reckoners trilogy: A new city. Entertainment. Goofiness. Laughs. Almost unbearable tension. Hurt. Betrayals. So many tears. Frustration. Elation. Hope.

Audiobook Review: Half-Off Ragnarok

Author: Seanan McGuire
Narrator: Ray Porter
Series: InCryptid, #3
Released: June 17th 2014
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

What do gorgons, basilisks, and frogs with feathers all have in common? They're all considered mythological by modern science, and some people are working very hard to keep them that way. Alexander Price is a member of a cryptozoological lineage that spans generations, and it's his job to act as a buffer between the human and cryptid worlds - not an easy task when you're dealing with women who have snakes in place of hair, little girls who may actually be cobras, and brilliant, beautiful Australian zookeepers.

After two very entertaining InCryptid books with Verity Price and her Covenant boyfriend Dominic, we now join her older brother Alex in Ohio. I had my doubts about McGuire’s decision to leave Verity and change narrators in the third book, but Alex proved to be a very entertaining, albeit completely different protagonist.

Audiobook Review: The Retribution of Mara Dyer

Author: Michelle Hodkin
Narrator: Christy Romano
Series: Mara Dyer, #3
Released: November 4th 2014
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

Mara Dyer wants to believe there's more to the lies she's been told. There is. She doesn't stop to think about where her quest for the truth might lead. She should. She never had to imagine how far she would go for vengeance. She will now. Loyalties are betrayed, guilt and innocence tangle, and fate and chance collide in this shocking conclusion to Mara Dyer's story. Retribution has arrived.

The heart-stopping conclusion to Michelle Hodkin’s Mara Dyer trilogy is everything you want a finale to be – more tense, more violent, more exciting, more romantic, and just more! Although it was safe to expect as much, it was still a relief to discover that this wonderful author found a way to give us more of everything. Leaving Mara was by no means easy, but me suffering from a book hangover is a sure sign that the author did everything right. And she did.

Audiobook Review: The Evolution of Mara Dyer

Author: Michelle Hodkin
Series: Mara Dyer, #2
Released: January 21st 2014
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Audible

The truth about Mara Dyer’s dangerous and mysterious abilities continues to unravel in the New York Times best-selling sequel to the thrilling The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer.

Mara Dyer once believed she could run from her past. She can’t. She used to think her problems were all in her head. They aren’t. She couldn’t imagine that after everything she’s been through, the boy she loves would still be keeping secrets. She’s wrong.

In this gripping sequel to The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, the truth evolves and choices prove deadly. What will become of Mara Dyer next?

In many ways, The Evolution of Mara Dyer is a better book than its predecessor. It’s certainly a more mature work, free of the usual genre tropes. While The Unbecoming was emotionally challenging, The Evolution takes things a step further as our uncertainty and fear for Mara reach a whole new level.

Audiobook Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

Author: Michelle Hodkin
Narrator: Christy Romano
Series: Mara Dyer, #1
Released: January 21st 2014
Publisher: Audible Studios
Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
Buy: Audible

Mara Dyer believes life can't get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. It can. She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed. There is. She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. She's wrong.

Sometimes, a book you least expect to like takes you completely by surprise. Sometimes, even though you respect their opinion, you disagree with some of your most trusted friends. For me, this is one of those times.

Nice Dragon Finish Last Audiobook Clip!

Hello, my nocturnal readers!
A few months ago, I reviewed the first book in a wonderful new urban fantasy series by Rachel Aaron (also known as Rachel Bach, author of the Paradox trilogy). Nice Dragons Finish Last is a delightful blend of genres, and its protagonist, a young dragon named Julius, one of the most memorable characters I've come across in a very long time.