Tag: author

Out of the Box Blogs

Dragon on Top by G. A. Aiken

Les

*****WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS ONE VULGAR WORD IN A QUOTE********

WOW! This book is short, but AMAZING! All about dragons. Dragon queens, Dragon Warriors, Dragon politicians. I didn’t want to put it down.

Main character Ghleanna, is a dragon warrior captain, and she is hilarious. She is sent to protect Bram the Merciful on a peace treaty mission. Along the way her family of warriors becomes involved and the family dynamics are so freaking awesome. Of course there are fights, love, sex, banter, and foul language. I love it.

Everyone knows I love good banter, but this was awesome and I found myself loving all the characters. I love they way they interact with each other. The name calling, head butting, sibling affection.  The author did well with the characters, they told you key points about all of them.

All in all, I loved it, I would read it again. It is not a cliffhanger. So it has an ending, and if I might add, a good one.

I will give you some quotes from the book. I mean, you know I leave you guys hanging so you will read it, but I am in a giving mood today. HA!

“Wake up, ya lazy sow. Wake up!” – Ghleanna’s aunts

“Leave me be, you mad bitches!” – Ghleanna

And my favorite:

“I didn’t go through half-a-century of training and more than that in battles to end up the babysitter of Bram the Merciful.” -Ghleanna

Bram the Merciful responds “Would you like an actual blade to twist in my gut, Ghleanna?”

“It’s nothing personal,” she responds.

Ha! I love it! I could probably find one hundred quotes I loved. So you need to read it, so you can see what I am talking about.

GO NOW! RUN MY FRIENDS! YOU HAVE A BOOK TO READ!

Peace

Les

Books, great reads, Reviews

Needing Moore Trilogy by Julie A. Richman

debra

Hey everyone,

This is a longer than normal review—I couldn’t decide what to leave out!!

I think this trilogy is possibly the best story I have read this year.  If you have not read it, you owe it to yourself to try it.

Two friendly warnings upfront:

  1. The story takes all three books to tell.  Books 1 and 2 are cliffhangers!! Be forewarned.
  2. This story has a lot of emotional upheaval in it, especially as it relates to the character of Mia.  Emotions, both good and bad, are very strong in this story.

Now, for a brief synopsis.  Schooner (I love this name) and Mia meet in college.  They are soul mates and know it.  Through a misunderstanding, the characters’ immaturity in knowing how to straighten out misunderstandings, and some devious behavior on the part of another character, they are torn apart and their lives take very different paths.  Twenty-four years later, they find each other again and are determined to be together.  The story starts present day and their lives are told largely in flashback, so to speak.  We learn what happened in college and their respective lives apart while they are re-discovering their relationship and figuring out how to make things work.  I laughed and cried throughout this story.  The moments of humor, largely due to a secondary character, are so very important, especially in contrast to the moments of total heartbreaking sadness that occurs as the story unfolds (see warning #2 above).

What I thought made this story so strong:

  1. The characters.  Obviously, Schooner and Mia are front and center.  They are well-developed throughout the story and we fall in love with them for who they were and who they become.  Mia in my opinion is a very strong female who is not afraid to tell Schooner what she thinks when he needs to hear it. Schooner is a wonderful character.  Also, all the secondary characters are completely essential to the story.  They all play an important role in the story of Mia and Schooner’s lives.  There are not any extra characters who just take up space.
  2. The story itself.  I don’t think the author uses any extra “filler” materials.  Everything that happens in the story (especially in Mia’s life) is important to how Schooner and Mia matured and developed as characters.  Life happens (the good, the bad, and the very ugly).  The author wasn’t just using up pages in the books.

This story is an emotional roller-coaster, but a ride well worth taking.  Do yourself a favor and if you decide to read it, go ahead and get all three books—you will need them.D

Happy reading,

Debra

Books, great reads, Out of the Box Blogs, Reviews

Montana dragons part 2 & 3 by Chloe Cole 

Les

Hmmmm…. Ok so I am finished with parts 2 &3. So I am finished with Drake and Willa. It was short, but enjoyable. I liked the story.

First, please excuse this review. I am under the weather and so it will be short.

So Willa is married off to Drake without her permission. Like any strong girl she is looking for any way to escape. But when it backfires she is hurt and now has to do some hard work to prove herself.

Give it a chance. It’s a quick read and it’s good.

It’s not the best ever, but I didn’t feel like I wasted my time.

Peace

Les

Out of the Box Blogs

My Love/Hate of Ebooks

debra

First of all, I have a love relationship with my Kindle Fire and my ebooks.  Sometimes, I am a mood reader which is why I keep a couple of books going at a time.  With my Kindle, I can take it with me and have many books available if I am in a mood for something particular.  I enjoy the portability of having lots of my books available to me while only carrying a few ounces of weight.  However, I also have a hate relationship with some ebooks I have gotten over the years.

I started reading ebooks before ereaders were common place among us.  At that time, I downloaded the books from ebooks sites generally in PDF formats.  I still have them, have converted them using Calibre and moved them to my Kindle.  When I got my first Kindle (keyboard generation and still my favorite although it died), I got a lot of inexpensive ebooks from new authors or authors who had not been traditionally published and had opted for self-publishing. Before continuing, I want to say that I have found some authors this way that I love and am very happy with.  However, I have also noted many problems with these types of ebooks.  My pet peeves:  bad grammatical errors, spelling errors, etc.  Kid you not, I purchased an ebook from an indie author that had a sentence in it wherein the lead character went to one of the tropical island paradises and the author mentioned the name of the capital city.  Immediately after the capital city’s name was a set of parenthesis with a question mark in them, so we had the name and then (?) behind it.  My only thought was that I did not have a problem with the author in their draft not being sure of the name of the capital and leaving herself a note to check it out, but then it was published with the question mark still there!  Really?  I don’t remember now if I checked to see if the name of the capital city was accurate, but at that point, I did not care.  More than once, I have screamed, “Where is the editing in this book?”   I certainly do not mind the occasional error—it happens.  Nobody is perfect.  But repetitive errors in the same book are not acceptable to me when I pay hard-earned money for a book.

I need to stop ranting now.  Seriously, I love ebooks, but I feel that the industry has a lot of work to do.

To Be Continued.

Happy Reading,

debra