Tag: science

Books, fantasy, great reads, Reviews, scifi, Urban Fantasy

Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs

Karen

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I read this book twice back to back it was so interesting, and I never do that. I have been following the Mercy Thompson series for awhile but the last two books have changed, with the plots having more twists in them, but not in a bad way, breathing new life in this series for me. First the blurb.

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in the heart of Europe…

Unable to contact Adam and the rest of the pack, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the ancient city of Prague, old ghosts rise…

I want to be straight up honest with you guys, even though I loved book nine I still went into this book with a lot of doubts. I really didn’t like a lot about this preview into the story: (1) I don’t like Adam and Mercy being split up. Look I get that this series is about Mercy, but at this point they are accepted in my mind as a team and honestly I’m getting fatigued with them having trouble in their relationship no matter if it is physical or mental. I just want them to be together and happy already! (2) New characters. The one complaint I’ve had with the last few books is that characters have been bleeding over from Patty’s other series (Alpha and Omega) or just new people are constantly be introduced. I like the core characters and when we are always meeting others they don’t get enough, or any, page time. (3) Personally I didn’t like the idea of this series going to Europe. Just didn’t. I don’t have a good reason except maybe too much change to fast? I don’t know I just was not excited for this idea either.

So when I got an ARC from netgalley of this book I actually went into with more of a critical eye than I’ve ever gone into any of Patricia Briggs books. I had decided if this book fell flat that this might be the end for me and the Mercy Thompson series which would be sad since this is the longest standing Urban Fantasy series that I still read. I’m happy to say this book was fantastic, it made me a believer again. Chapter by chapter all my doubts went away, I became so engrossed in the story that I just didn’t care that Adam and Mercy were separated, or that all new people were in it..and this is the brilliant part. I noticed that Patty has started to evolve as a writer, she is still an amazing Urban Fantasy author but she has taken what she does so well and built on that making her stories richer and more complex. It has forced someone like me, who was comfortable with our relationship as reader/writer to pay attention again, even to the point with this book, reading it twice to make sure I got everything out of it. That is a great story.

If you are new to this world I suggest starting with Moon Called but if you know these books you need to preorder this now, it releases on March 7,2017

Here is the Amazon link https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Fallen-Mercy-Thompson-Novel-ebook/dp/B01H17UAF4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Out of the Box Blogs

The Martian by Andy Weir

Karen

This book is amazing! There is so much I feel like I want to talk about, but I figure I should just give it to you straight. Why did I love The Martian? Because it did what great SicFi books do, it combined that little bit of reality in science with fiction to create a blockbuster story. I could see Mark (the main character that is stuck on Mars) as a real person, this is how the people in my life actually talk, and I loved the interaction between him and NASA and his fellow characters. I’ll even give you an example, when Mark is emailing one of his fellow astronauts he says: Frankly, I suspect you’re a super-villain. You’re a chemist, you have a German accent, you had a base on Mars…what more can there be?  Great stuff! I also enjoyed some of the secondary characters, like Venkat, Mindy, Teddy, Mitch, Martinez, Johanssen, the list could go on and on. I found them to be interesting “full” characters that I looked forward to reading about. I also loved that the book was about a Mars mission, which is what the space program is about right now, and had a lot of solid technical facts, yet still held true to the futuristic scifi genre that I love. I laughed, worried, fought, and was generally consumed by this book. It’s a worthy read.

As a side note, I don’t know anything about Andy Weir, I believe that authors books should speak for them not their background or schooling or how old they are, so I don’t like to read bio’s. It’s their business not mine. But from this book I gather that Andy has some scientific background so when I noticed that the second highest rating on goodreads for this book is a 5 star rating from Wil Wheaton, the actual Wil Wheaton (you know who I’m talking about) I fangirled a little for him. That’s awesome for a scifi writer. And if he’s a nerd? Even better! Good for you Andy Weir!!

As with most of life’s problems, this one can be solved by a box of pure radiation. I can’t help myself, I’m going to be quoting this book for weeks! I loved this book!!!!