Showing posts with label skyscape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skyscape. Show all posts

21 November 2015

The Casquette Girls Review + Blog Tour

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The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden 
Published November 17th, 2015 
Published by Skyscape 
Genre: YA Paranormal/Fantasy 
Find out more about signed copies HERE!

Seven girls tied by time. Five powers that bind. One curse to lock the horror away. One attic to keep the monsters at bay. 

After the storm of the century rips apart New Orleans, sixteen-year-old Adele Le Moyne wants nothing more than her now silent city to return to normal. But with home resembling a war zone, a parish-wide curfew, and mysterious new faces lurking in the abandoned French Quarter, normalneeds a new definition. As the city murder rate soars, Adele finds herself tangled in a web of magic that weaves back to her own ancestors. Caught in a hurricane of myths and monsters, who can she trust when everyone has a secret and keeping them can mean life or death? Unless . . . you’re immortal.  

About the Author

Alys
Alys Arden was raised by the street performers, tea leaf-readers, and glittering drag queens of the New Orleans, French Quarter. She cut her teeth on the streets of New York and has worked all around the world since. She either talks too much or not at all. She obsessively documents things. Her hair ranges from eggplant to cotton-candy-colored. One dreary day in London, while dreaming of running away with the circus, she started writing The Casquette Girls. Her debut novel garnered over one million reads online before being acquired by Skyscape in a two book deal. Rep’d by ICM. Website Twitter: @alysarden Facebook Blog


 The Book Trailer:



  The Giveaway 5 physical copies open US only. 



The Casquette Girls: The Casquette Girls | Alys Arden
Published by: SkyscapeNovember 17th 2015
Genre: YA, Gothic, Paranormal, Witches, Vampires
Pages: 565
Format: Ebook

Source: Skyscape, via Netgalley

Seven girls tied by time.
Five powers that bind.
One curse to lock the horror away.
One attic to keep the monsters at bay.

**

After the storm of the century rips apart New Orleans, sixteen-year-old Adele Le Moyne wants nothing more than her now silent city to return to normal. But with home resembling a war zone, a parish-wide curfew, and mysterious new faces lurking in the abandoned French Quarter, normalneeds a new definition. 

As the city murder rate soars, Adele finds herself tangled in a web of magic that weaves back to her own ancestors. Caught in a hurricane of myths and monsters, who can she trust when everyone has a secret and keeping them can mean life or death? Unless . . . you’re immortal.


This book WAY exceeded my expectations. I thought it'd be a pretty cool gothic story but it's so much more. You need to add this to your to-read list immediately.

The first thing I loved about The Casquette Girls was the amazing writing, and how detailed the world building is. You can literally feel the author's love for New Orleans when you read this, and it made me fall in love with the city too (It's now added of my list of places to visit!) Along with the setting, the rich gothic tone of this book sucked me in. Plus there's a guy described as part James Dean part Italian Vogue and that always helps.

The book only got better the more I read it, and while I could have done without the love triangle (I still don't trust or like Isaac...) I ADORED Nicco, my precious Italian child. I actually loved most of the characters, both past and present, and instead of just being implanted in a setting and reacting to it like in most books I read, these characters felt like they were part of the city, like they'd truly lived there their whole lives. They were as strange and wonderful as all the part of New Orleans I loved. AND the minor characters were as vibrant and interesting as some of the main characters! AND the romance is sweet and dangerous and everything I ever wanted (Nicolo, my love!!) AND the plot is tense and suspenseful and mysterious, and there's betrayal and plot twists (that I totally called way earlier!) and witches and girls being amazing friends. This book is perf. 
(EXCEPT FOR THE ENDING. DO NOT READ THAT EVER.)

If you're looking for a YA gothic that literally feels like you're reading Dracula in places, this is the book for you. If you're not looking for that, read it anyway.

Characters ★
Setting/world-building ★
Writing ★★

13 November 2015

The Infinite (ARC Review)

Gates of Thread and Stone: The Infinite | Lori M. Lee
Published by: SkyscapeMarch 10th 2015
Genre: YA, High Fantasy, Magic
Pages: 378
Format: Ebook
Source: Skyscape, via Netgalley

The walls of Ninurta keep its citizens safe.

Kai always believed the only danger to the city came from within. Now, with a rebel force threatening the fragile government, the walls have become more of a prison than ever.

To make matters worse, as Avan explores his new identity as an Infinite, Kai struggles to remind him what it means to be human. And she fears her brother, Reev, is involved with the rebels. With the two people she cares about most on opposite sides of a brewing war, Kai will do whatever it takes to bring peace. But she’s lost her power to manipulate the threads of time, and she learns that a civil war might be the beginning of something far worse that will crumble not only Ninurta’s walls but also the entire city.

In this thrilling sequel to Gates of Thread and Stone, Kai must decide how much of her humanity she’s willing to lose to protect the only family she’s ever known.


I wasn't overly impressed with the first book, but there was enough things I liked for me to enjoy it. Not so much with this book. The first 10% wasn't so bad, but I just got more and more disillusioned. I didn't like Avan anymore, the world was expanding and I wasn't that fussed on it even though I should have loved it (underground cave city!) and I just lost interest in the story. The issue I had in the first book where I didn't care overmuch about the characters became worse in this, and by 25% I had stopped caring about literally everything, reading for reading's sake. Unlike the first book, I couldn't get into this at all and I didn't enjoy it.

DNF at 41%.

12 November 2015

Gates of Thread and Stone (Review)

Gates of Thread and Stone: Gates of Thread and Stone | Lori M. Lee
Published by: SkyscapeAugust 5th 2014
Genre: YA, High Fantasy, Magic
Pages: 355
Format: Ebook
Source: Skyscape, via Netgalley

In the Labyrinth, we had a saying: keep silent, keep still, keep safe.
In a city of walls and secrets, where only one man is supposed to possess magic, seventeen-year-old Kai struggles to keep hidden her own secret—she can manipulate the threads of time. When Kai was eight, she was found by Reev on the riverbank, and her “brother” has taken care of her ever since. Kai doesn’t know where her ability comes from—or where she came from. All that matters is that she and Reev stay together, and maybe one day move out of the freight container they call home, away from the metal walls of the Labyrinth. Kai’s only friend is Avan, the shopkeeper’s son with the scandalous reputation that both frightens and intrigues her.

Then Reev disappears. When keeping silent and safe means losing him forever, Kai vows to do whatever it takes to find him. She will leave the only home she’s ever known and risk getting caught up in a revolution centuries in the making. But to save Reev, Kai must unravel the threads of her past and face shocking truths about her brother, her friendship with Avan, and her unique power.


First off I don't understand the title. I mean, it's hella cool and I love it, but apart from 'thread' I don't get the rest. What stone? What'd I miss? And what gates???

Anyway, confusion over. I quite liked this book. Didn't love it, and got bored in some parts, but overall it's a good book. I was quite happy to find a pansexual love interest (though I'm certainly expecting pan erasure in book two! joy!) and the world and magic system is pretty darn cool.

First off what I liked: how Kai could alter time, slow it's procession, by manipulating threads. I thought that was by far the coolest time-related ability I've ever read. And I liked Kai, and Reev, and especially their sibling relationship. I liked them even more, and appreciated their relationship more, when I found out they were non-biological siblings. I'm all for that. Now the other characters were hit or miss. Avan I really liked in the beginning and grew bored of, so the romance kinda went dull for me; it lost its spark. Irra, immortal, eccentric Infinite (aka immortal) was probably my favourite character in the whole thing. LOVED him, and hope we see more of him in the sequel. Another character to mention is Mason, and while he's fairly alright he isn't particularly memorable to me, even though it looks like he's a second love interest for Kai. SO characters were good overall, and since I'm a character driven reader, that was a great thing. But honestly, it was the world and the magic that kept me reading, along with the immortals and wanting to know more about them. Don't know if I've mentioned before but I LOVE love love incarnations, and Irra was the incarnation of Pestilence (not a rider of the apocalypse as I first hoped but still cool) and there's others like Death, Strife, Time, etc.

So that's what I liked. What I didn't like was more of just a feeling - something felt off. After a while I stopped trusting Avan and stopped liking him altogether. I got a bit bored at a part where the story changes and revolves around a tournament (tired of seeing this in YA tbh), and the fake swear word 'drek' grated on me after a while. It made the writing all stilted and unnatural. Plus the end seemed too neat, to happy ending-y, although maybe I was just happy to see the back of Avan at that point. 

But I didn't mind this book, I just expected to like it a lot more ...

Characters 
Setting/world 
Writing 

30 August 2015

Fire & Chasm (ARC Review)

Fire & Chasm | Chelsea M. Campbell
Published by: SkyscapeSeptember 22nd 2015
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Witches (Well, wizards...)
Pages: 172
Format: Ebook
Source: Skyscape, via Netgalley

Azeril is a ward of the Church, and their most cunning weapon. By day he hides in plain sight as a student, but with his beloved obsidian knife, he also kills wizards. Az has no memory of his life before the Church, until one night, when a wizard recognizes him from his past. The killer in Az never misses his mark, but he can’t destroy the only potential link to his life before this. For the first time, Az has a lead on who he used to be—if only he could escape the watchful eye of the High Priest long enough to investigate.
Azeril discovers that the line between good and evil—the primal forces of the Fire and the Chasm—is as shifting as his own moral compass. And the truth about who he is will put his entire world in danger.


This book had all the elements for an amazing book, but it just didn't click with me personally. I liked plenty - the characters and their motives were easy to understand, the threat was fairly unique, and I didn't mind the world/lore of the Fire and the Chasm. Some points felt a little overly religious like the ending where the MC overcame the Chasm (bad, corruption, sin) by accepting Fire (pure, wholesomeness.) For a book about a church I expected less of that, for some reason. 

But I did like a lot about this - the magic was fairly unique, having been gifted from the Fire, I loved the moments of darkness from the boy, and I'd never read anything like Az's addiction to Obsidian. Az and Leora's relationship was sweet, and I liked how they were friends at the beginning, instead of a growing romance. 

But nothing about this book really stood out to me. It wasn't bad, but it just wasn't anything new, and I can't imagine I'll remember it.

Characters 
Setting/world-building 
Writing