Author: Kristen
The Leaning Pile of Books

This week I’m excited about watching A Game of Thrones on HBO tonight – finally!  But first I’m going to talk about some books (yay!) and do some cleaning (boo!).  The OCD part of me also wants to decide what to read next since I just finished Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, which was a great fantasy book. For the books – this week brought 3 ARCs and 2 finished review copies. The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein I’d never heard […]

What Works: Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly

This is a new feature I’ve been considering doing for a while – talking about a small portion of a book and why it works (or doesn’t perhaps in some cases).  For my inaugural post, I’m going to discuss the first chapter of the book I am currently reading and why it works.  What it does so well is setting up the book as being not-quite your traditional high fantasy novel and really making the characters involved interesting immediately.  This […]

Oops!

I keep expecting this to happen since often when I close my Twitter while I’m working on a post, it ends up over the “Publish” button in WordPress.  A post I was revising for tomorrow just went up because of this.  I’ve removed it from the site, but of course it’s still showing up in my RSS feed.  Oops!  Look away, for it is unfinished! In that case, I’ll try to put it up tonight instead of tomorrow.

Deathless Review of Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Deathless by Catherynne Valente is a more modernized retelling of the Russian folktale about the death of Koschei the Deathless, often known as “The Death of the Immortal Koschei” or “Marya Morevna.”  It’s set in Stalinist Russia and is mainly about the aforementioned Marya Morevna, the woman who was sought after by both Koschei and Ivan in the story.  Deathless was released in hardcover toward the end of March and is also available as an ebook. When she was six […]

Castle in the Air The Leaning Pile of Books

This week I got the rest of my birthday books from the UK and one ARC.  The ARC is one I actually already had (Eona by Alison Goodman) and just mentioned not that long ago so I won’t include a photo and description here this week. I’ll be reviewing Eon, the book that precedes it, soon anyway and will hopefully be reading and reviewing Eona soon as well. Now that some of the busy events of the past couple of […]