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AllBooksReviews

Deal With The Devil by Kit Rocha — Spoiler-Free Review

Posted on by J.W. Martin

 

DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
by Kit Rocha

Tor Books
July 28, 2020

From Goodreads:

Nina is an information broker with a mission–she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America.

Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he’s fighting to survive.

They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…

Or they could do the impossible: team up.

Thanks to the good people at Tor Books and Raincoast Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book had me with four words: “mercenary librarians,” and “super soldiers.” Nothing after that mattered. 

After receiving the ARC, I looked into the author a bit since I had never heard of Kit Rocha before. That’s when I saw Kit Rocha usually writes erotica. That threw me for a loop! I’ve never read erotica and never been interested in reading any. But all of a sudden I start wondering if I’m about to crack open an erotica novel with mercenary librarians doing super soldiers and vice versa. And now that I’ve finished the book, I still don’t know if that’s what I read or not. 

It may not sound like it, but that’s a compliment. As someone who has no frame of reference for erotic books, I couldn’t tell you if this qualifies, but I also can’t say that it doesn’t. Sure, there’s sex, but nowhere near what I would have thought would be in an erotic story (again, no frame of reference.) What I know I found was a great story full of action, suspense, and pretty decent characters.

Oddly enough, considering my lack of interest in erotica (and romance) I found I really enjoyed those aspects of this book. The main characters with their back and forth, their longing for each other, mixed with a mistrust for, well… everything, was a a roller-coaster ride that had me burning through pages.

The chapters bounce us around from Nina’s head to Knox’s, and getting to know what she’s thinking, and what he’s thinking, but seeing them unable to connect the dots was maddening. It’s like when the staff of The Office was watching that logo bounce around the tv screen, desperately wanting it to perfectly hit the corner. And then it finally does and everyone cheers. That’s what the relationship felt like.

The plot could have used a little more… something. It was fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I wasn’t bored, but I just wanted a little more. Instead of it being an integrated aspect of the story, it was more or less an excuse for the characters to spend time together and be in a certain place. The stuff that happened could have happened anywhere for a number of reasons. I guess I wanted something that only could have happened in one a specific place because the setting and everything else was so deeply engrained with everything else.

Then again, maybe that’s me expecting too much.

Overall this book was a ton of fun to read. I looked forward to picking it up each time, and if there’s a sequel it will definitely be on my TBR. 

Fun fact about this post: Kit Rocha is the pseudonym for co-writing team Donna Herren and Bree Bridges.

AllMemesTop 5 Tuesday

Top 5 Opening Lines

Posted on by J.W. Martin

Confession time. I’m hijacking this Top 5 Tuesday post and turning it into a writing/brag post. (Sorry Shanah!)

I’m terrible at remembering which books I’ve read had great opening lines. So normally, I’d just tap out on this week’s, but instead I thought I’d take the opportunity to share the opening line to the book I’m currently writing. I could use the feedback, and I think it’s a pretty darned good one. One of the best opening lines of all time? Certainly not. But if it makes people want to read the second line, it’s done it’s job, hasn’t it?

This story begins the same way all the best Rex Roderick stories begin: fighting over a woman.

I’m about 70K words into this novel so far, and I’m loving (almost) every minute of it. I think I’m going to end up being prouder (more proud?) of this book than any of the others. Let’s hope that’s a good sign toward this being the one that finally gets some attention from literary agents.

Fun fact about this post: I have an entire trilogy planned out in my head for this one, which hasn’t happened before.
AllMemesTop 5 Tuesday

Top 5 Series I Want to Start

Posted on by J.W. Martin

Top 5 Tuesday is created by the prolific and always entertaining Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm. This week we’re talking about series, and ones that we haven’t started yet, but really want to.

I have a confession when it comes to series. I’m GREAT at starting series. I’m just not always great with continuing and finishing them. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s probably about 50/50. Regardless, here are a few of the series I’ve got my commitment-challenged eyes on:

 

       

The Murderbot Diaries
by Martha Wells

 

   

Likelike
by Jay Kristoff

 

 

The Band
by Nicholas Eames

 

 

The Locked Tomb
by Tamsyn Muir

 

   

The Divine Series
by Robert Jackson Bennett

 

Fun fact about this post: I own at least the first book of all these series. YAY!
AllBooksReviews

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett — Spoiler-Free Review

Posted on by J.W. Martin

SHOREFALL
by Robert Jackson Bennett

Del Rey Books
April 21, 2020

From Goodreads:

The upstart firm Foundryside is struggling to make it. Orso Igancio and his star employee, former thief Sancia Grado, are accomplishing brilliant things with scriving, the magical art of encoding sentience into everyday objects, but it’s not enough. The massive merchant houses of Tevanne won’t tolerate competition, and they’re willing to do anything to crush Foundryside.

But even the merchant houses of Tevanne might have met their match. An immensely powerful and deadly entity has been resurrected in the shadows of Tevanne, one that’s not interested in wealth or trade routes: a hierophant, one of the ancient practitioners of scriving. And he has a great fascination for Foundryside, and its employees – especially Sancia.

Now Sancia and the rest of Foundryside must race to combat this new menace, which means understanding the origins of scriving itself – before the hierophant burns Tevanne to the ground.

Thanks to the good people at NetGalley and Del Ray Books for providing me with an eGalley in exchange for an honest review.

So, this is book two of The Founders Trilogy, and now I need book three. Now. Right now. Go ahead, RJB. I’ll just sit here and wait. *checks watch, looks around for 3 seconds, checks watch again* Okay, maybe I can’t just sit around waiting for it, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to keep living on in quarantine without the next book!

What was so good about it? Well, I’m glad you asked. My answer is simple. Everything.

It’s these characters! 

In the start of book one, I didn’t know how to feel about any of them. Who am I supposed to like, and who do I hate? Who’s a good guy, who’s a bad guy? By the end, I still didn’t really know who was good or bad, but I loved them all. This rag tag group of survivors continue doing the one thing they seem best at: surviving while cutting you with sarcastic quips.

Between Foundryside and Shorefall, our cast of characters have been busy. They’ve been building. Creating a life for themselves that is part of what they used to be and partly something new. Their relationships have developed into something deeper and more meaningful and they’ve all changed a little as people. And none of this is given in an info dump. It’s something you see for yourself as the pages turn.

It’s this magic system!

This might be my favourite magic system I’ve ever read. RJB takes the time to acknowledge the science of how things work just before he shows you how the rules of physics, time, distance are snapped in half for our enjoyment. It’s not quite magic and science working hand-in-hand, but I’m a reader who really appreciates when science is addressed.

It’s this writer!

Robert Jackson Bennett might be a poet with prose, but I couldn’t tell you. Not only because I wouldn’t trust myself to make such a bold distinction, but also because I was relentlessly pulled through the pages without the time to look at sentence structure, style of prose, or choice of words. RJB is effortless to read. As someone who often stops dead in the middle of a page to ask myself, “why would the author use that word?” I can’t recall a single thing making me stop to ask myself anything.

It’s this trilogy!

When I found myself near the end of the book, and thinking I had reached the books ending, I felt a little disappointed. It was a better ending that I had read in a lot of books, but it wasn’t the kind of ending I expected after Foundryside. But the thing is, that wasn’t the ending. I turned the page, the ending began, and I could barely hold on to my seat! Chaos isn’t a wild enough word. 

Shorefall takes everything you knew from reading Foundryside, and changes it all. You think you know the characters, and they change. You think you know the magic system, and it expands. You think you know Tevanne, and it sheds its skin and becomes something new. 

RJB, if you happen the read this, just tell me what I need to do to get book three out of you. Keep in mind that the law frowns on human sacrifice. I’m not saying it’s off the table, just know the part about the frowning.

Fun fact about this post: This is the earliest I’ve ever posted an ARC review!

AllMemesTop 5 Tuesday

Top 5 Books that Made Me Laugh

Posted on by J.W. Martin

Top 5 Tuesday is created by the always prolific Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and this week we’re talking about books that really tickle the funny bone. And I don’t mean books that had a humorous line, or some quip that brought a smile to your face. I’m talking about books that made you literally LOL!

Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe
by Preston Norton

 

Whenever I’m confused with why I keep requesting ARCs when I clearly don’t have time for them, I remember this book. I wasn’t expecting much, but it was one of the first “big company” ARCs I was able to get. Then, I end up finding a spirit animal in Cliff (Neanderthal) and an insanely funny book.

“My fight-or-flight response was currently telling me to get the hell outta there. Except that my fight-or-flight response had a third, less-evolved option called deer-in-the-headlights.”

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams

A classic. And timeless. I’m sure there are piles of books that were funny during their time, but age has a way of removing relatability or making a shocking punchline seem banal and obvious. This however, retains all of its original magic. Clever, witty stuff that is keeps being funny even with re-reads.

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

 

A Man Called Ove
by Fredrik Backman

This book wrecked me. Oh, sure, it has comedy and plenty of it. It’ll make you laugh one moment and melt your heart the next. Then just as it allows your heart to become something as stable as jello, STOMP! But, yes. Lots of funny!

“Now you listen to me,” says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. “You’ve given birth to two children and quite soon will be squeezing out a third. You’ve come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You’ve learned a new language and got yourself an education and you’re holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I’ll be damned if I’ve seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now….I’m not asking for brain surgery. I’m asking you to drive a car. It’s got an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Some of the greatest twits in world history have sorted out how it works. And you will as well.” And then he utters seven words, which Parvaneh will always remember as the loveliest compliment he’ll ever give her. “Because you are not a complete twit.”

 

Furiously Happy
by Jenny Lawson

This was another surprise. Not that I wasn’t expecting comedy. Everyone and their mom told me this book was funny. I went in with a bit of skepticism. How can it be that funny? It is. It’s that funny.

“Like my grandmother always said, “Your opinions are valid and important. Unless it’s some stupid bullshit you’re being shitty about, in which case you can just go fuck yourself.”

 

A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

This one is a very different kind of comedy. The lines themselves aren’t funny. The situations aren’t necessarily funny. But the main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is really, really funny, even though he’s never trying to be. He’s funny in his audacity, the things he’s willing to say, the apparent lack of shame he has in everything he does. All made more interesting by the idea that the author just might have been writing something semi auto-biographical…

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

Fun fact about this post: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!
AllMemesTop 5 Tuesday

Top 5 Sanity Savers

Posted on by J.W. Martin

Top 5 Tuesday is created by the always prolific Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and this week we’re not talking about books at all! We’re talking about the things we do to stave off insanity. What are we doing with our time now that there seems like so much more of it?! How are we going to survive if quarantine doesn’t go away AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!!

Work (Believe it or Not)

 

 

I’m one of the lucky ones that gets to keep working by commandeering my wife’s crafting room and turning it into a home office. For the first two weeks, I was so busy getting used to the new accommodations, adjusting to everything taking longer from home, and generally just putting out little fires everywhere. (see what I did there?) It was so much work that I barely had a moment to spare thinking about isolation and the world going insane around me. Now that I’ve climatized, I can’t seen to keep hitting refresh on cnn.com!

Reading (of course!)

 

I mean, we’re readers, right? We read in the best of times, how can we be expected not to read in the worst of times! I was hoping this would mean that I’d have so much more time to read, but honestly, that hasn’t changed. Probably because of the other things on this list, but there it is.

Catching Up on TV (and Video Games)

I know, it’s a bit of a cheat to put TV and video games as one item, but they both serve to destroy my time doing anything productive. When it comes to video games, I’m a bargain shopper. I don’t buy them when they come out. I buy them when they go on sale (half price or less) thinking I’ll play them when I “have time.” I should have more time now, but as I said above, I don’t. And when it comes to TV, my wife and I usually take forever to get through a season of something. Lately though, we start and end a season within the same week, or close to it. Our latest was The Stranger on Netflix. As most of the best shows usually are, this one was based on a book. Now we’re struggling to find the next show to watch. Please drop me your binging recommendations in the comments!

Writing (sometimes)

Another of the more productive things I tend to do in the best of times, and another thing that I still wish I was doing more of. I started off last week writing and thought I’d continue the momentum all week long. NOPE! But alas, the times I do sit down and do it, I love it. It’s maybe the best escape of the list, especially if I can find myself completely immersed in the worlds of my own making.

Home Projects

I never thought this would make the list, but it did. I’m a procrastinator, through and through. But since we aren’t really leaving the house, I’m stuck nose-to-nose with all those things that are on the “eventually I’ll get to this” list. So far, I’ve done a bunch of landscaping in the front yard and a bunch of organizing in the basement. That may not seem like a lot (and it’s not) but for me, it’s A LOT!

Fun fact about this post: Oh, I also started running again on Sunday. Don’t forget to leave me your binging recommendations!
AllBooksReviews

Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan — Spoiler-Free Review

Posted on by J.W. Martin

 

RUTHLESS GODS
by Emily A. Duncan

Macmillan
April 7, 2020

From Goodreads:

Darkness never works alone…

Nadya doesn’t trust her magic anymore. Serefin is fighting off a voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him. Malachiasz is at war with who–and what–he’s become.

As their group is continually torn apart, the girl, the prince, and the monster find their fates irrevocably intertwined. They’re pieces on a board, being orchestrated by someone… or something. The voices that Serefin hears in the darkness, the ones that Nadya believes are her gods, the ones that Malachiasz is desperate to meet—those voices want a stake in the world, and they refuse to stay quiet any longer.

Thanks to the good people at NetGalley and Macmillan for providing me with a eGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wicked Saints, the predecessor of Ruthless Gods, was a strong debut with enticing characters, a great premise, a unique magic system, and limitless potential. Ruthless Gods, however, didn’t follow through on any of of the first book’s promises the way I had hoped.

As we rejoin our beloved characters from book one. A little time has passed, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing really happened and it seems like maybe they just say around waiting for the second book to start.

They thing proceed to embark on a journey that none of them knows anything about, including why they’re actually doing it at all. Each one of them then spends the rest of the book flip-flopping back and forth enough to frustrate any politician. It goes something like this:

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate hime, I LOVE HIM, I hate him, I hate him…

This kind of conflict can be great if there are reasons for each step, but without any reason at all it reads much more like a group of people who should be medicated.

Without a clear goal to the seemingly random quest and characters would say one thing and do another, everything about this story seems listless and random.

I was excited to read this sequel, but unfortunately I found nothing but letdown. It was left open for at least one more book, but at this point, I can’t imagine I’m going to pick it up.

AllMemesTop 5 Tuesday

Top 5 Authors – F, G, H, I, & J

Posted on by J.W. Martin

Top 5 Tuesday is created by the always prolific Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and this week we’re talking about favourite authors F through J. This one was even tougher than last week. If this theme has made me realize anything, it’s that I jump around from author to author A LOT. There aren’t very many that I’ve read deep into, and some are being put on these lists based off of a single book, or books that I have on my TBR!

F – Jonathan Franzen

So, right off the bat, Jonathan Franzen is one of those authors who I’ve only read one book from. To be fair, The Corrections is a fantastic book that has stayed with me 10+ years later. I have another of his on my bookshelf that I auto-bought on his name alone, though I haven’t read it just yet.

G – Neil Gaiman

Anyone who doesn’t have Neil Gaiman on their top authors list has probably never read a Neil Gaiman book. The guy has this ability to make you laugh at silly, slapstick antics and still come away feeling emotionally torn over one issue or another. It’s almost like he’s able to walk into a room and give you a bag of candy. And it’s really good candy, so you eat the whole bag. And when you’re done he comes back and says, “That wasn’t candy. It was vegetables. You’re healthier now.”

H – Hugh Howey

Hugh is another 1-booker, but what a book! Wool brought me out of a huge reading slump once upon a time, and I’m a fan of his online antics. There’s a video of him crashing a book party where a bunch of his fans were meeting in costume and he shows up, also dressed in costume. Pretty epic.

I – Walter Isaacson

Okay. This is my biggest stretch so far. I haven’t read any of Mr. Isaacson’s books, but I have 2 on my shelf. One on Steve Jobs, and one on Leonardo DaVinci. I’m very much looking forward to reading them, it just hasn’t happened yet!

J – Jay Kristoff

 

This guy. THIS guy! Jay Kristoff is a creative juggernaut. I imagine the stuff he’s thrown out is world’s ahead of some of the awful, awful books I’ve read in my time. I have to believe he has like a literary Midas touch. Jay works on a story, it’s dripping in gold.

 

Fun fact about this post: You think this week is bad? Just wait until I start inventing names because I can’t find an author with a name that starts with X!!
AllMemesTop 5 Tuesday

Top 5 Authors – A, B, C, D, & E

Posted on by J.W. Martin

Top 5 Tuesday is created by the always prolific Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and this week we’re talking about favourite authors A, B, C, D, & E. This was a tough one, and while sometimes I used the first name and sometimes the last, I didn’t have to cheat or really reach to use middle names of anything like that.

A – Amie Kaufman

Unearthed left me wanting a little more, but for her part in the Illuminae series, she totally deserves to be the first author named in this series.

B – Pierce Brown

Yup. You all knew this one was coming. Author of the Red Rising series, which is one of my favourite series of all time.

C – Chuck Palahniuk

This guy single-handedly brought me out of a multi-year reading slump, and inspired me to finish my own first novel. His writing style is truly unique. Also, it’s pronounced pal-a-nik. You know you were wondering.

D – Philip K Dick

The brilliant mind that brought us Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Man in the High Castle, and a ton of other titles that you’ve probably heard of multiple times in multiple forms of media, even if you’ve never picked up one of his books.

E – Ernest Hemingway

One of the smoothest writers I’ve ever read. The pages seem to fly by whether he’s writing about murder or an old man on a boat prepping a fishing pole.

 

Fun fact about this post: Wow. This list started out with the young and current and just got older and older the further down it went…
AllBooksReviews

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig — Spoiler-Free Review

Posted on by J.W. Martin

 

WANDERERS
by Chuck Wendig

Del Ray
July 9, 2019

From Goodreads:

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them–and an ultraviolent militia threatens to exterminate them–the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart–or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

There are many words that come to mind when I think about describing Wanderers. Thoughtful. Prophetic. Disturbing. Entertaining. Funny. Heartfelt. Relevant. Amazing. And that’s just the tip of this epidemic iceberg. If I had to boil it down to a single word to describe Wanderers: Important.

From the opening chapter, this book left me wanting more. More action, more confrontation, and more answers! Every time a question was answered, two more took its place.

The sleepwalkers are driven down the road by a cast of characters I won’t soon forget. Oddly enough, considering they become known as shepherds, they’re all black sheep of their respective flocks. Such personality in each one, and real enough that you can feel the joy when something good comes their way, or the dragging disappointment when they make a decision that you, the reader, don’t agree with. And there are plenty of bad decisions being made!

At 782 pages, it’s a long story! (If it’s ever made for the screen, it better be a Netflix series and not a 2 hour movie.) But the story doesn’t lose you. It doesn’t go off in tangents of whimsy. Believe it or not, it’s very streamlined. I tried to look at it and see what could have been cut, and the answer is nothing. Everything Mr. Wendig left in this book was crucial to telling the story. He didn’t even spend time leading into the “walkers”. You start reading, and in the back of your mind, you’re thinking, “I wonder how long it’ll be before we actually see a—Oh, there’s one.”

I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. I read it around the same time as a certain Bionic Bookworm, and I know she hated the ending. I pretty sure I don’t hate it. But I do have questions. And I don’t just mean the normal kind of questions where the author would say, “I’m leaving that up to your imagination!” Before giggling and running away to hide in a forrest (unless you’re inside somewhere, in which case they would have to hide behind a couch or a vending machine, but still giggling.) My questions are more like, HOW? Many things are explained, scientific reasons given that are convincing enough for lamen like me. And then there are a few things left completely unexplained. Small things, to be fair. Small but nagging. 

But why do I call this book important?

Wanderers tackles a wide gamut of cultural issues that are all extremely relevant, even more so in the wake of the current Coronavirus situation. In addition to that, racism, religion, sexism, politics, technology dependance, violence, and society as a whole. I wouldn’t say there’s a deep dive on any one of these issues, but they’re all there. At the very least, a book like this has the potential to start a dialogue that could turn into something bigger. It’s not going to solve racism, but maybe it makes a few people think twice. Maybe someone puts a little more kindness into their day and it spreads as far and as wide as any virus. 

This is easily my favourite book of the year so far. Warning: it’s going to stick with you. It’s a book hangover waiting to happen. And it’s the kind of book that made me worry that the more great books I read, the harder it’s going to be to find books that are great. Don’t wait. Start now, especially because it’s going to take a while!

Fun fact about this post: I first discovered Chuck Wendig on his blog where he doles out writing advice, long-ass posts about apples, and macro photography on Monday, and does it all while being absolutely hilarious. www.terribleminds.com