Tag: Books: Fantasy

Review: The Obelisk Gate

Posted 14 June, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2)
By: N.K. Jemisin
Format/Source: Paperback; my purchase

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS… FOR THE LAST TIME.

The season of endings grows darker as civilization fades into the long cold night. Alabaster Tenring ñ madman, world-crusher, savior ñ has returned with a mission: to train his successor, Essun, and thus seal the fate of the Stillness forever.

It continues with a lost daughter, found by the enemy.

It continues with the obelisks, and an ancient mystery converging on answers at last.

The Stillness is the wall which stands against the flow of tradition, the spark of hope long buried under the thickening ashfall. And it will not be broken.

So I read the first book sometime before my exams and meant to continue onward but then I was so busy getting ready for my holiday, and then of course busy when I returned (and distracted by all the other books I picked up while I was on holiday) that I didn’t get around to continuing the trilogy until now.

Review: The Armored Saint

Posted 20 May, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

The Armored Saint (The Sacred Throne #1)
By: Myke Cole
Format/Source: eBook; from Tor.com’s eBook Club

In a world where any act of magic could open a portal to hell, the Order insures that no wizard will live to summon devils, and will kill as many innocent people as they must to prevent that greater horror. After witnessing a horrendous slaughter, the village girl Heloise opposes the Order, and risks bringing their wrath down on herself, her family, and her village.

This is annoying but I could’ve sworn I had already typed up a review for this book and had scheduled it on my blog but it seems I had deleted my draft instead before it got there #fail Let’s see if I recall much of what I had thought about it (as I read this book before I went on holiday and never wrote anything about it in my reading notebook (another #fail))

I’ve seen this book around for a very long time but never really gotten around to picking it up until it was featured in Tor.com’s eBook Club. So here we are 🙂

Review: The Black Tides of Heaven

Posted 8 April, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate #1)
By: J.Y. Yang
Format/Source: eBook; courtesy of Tor.com reading club

The Black Tides of Heaven is one of a pair of standalone introductions to JY Yang’s Tensorate Series. For more of the story you can read its twin novella The Red Threads of Fortune

Mokoya and Akeha, the twin children of the Protector, were sold to the Grand Monastery as children. While Mokoya developed her strange prophetic gift, Akeha was always the one who could see the strings that moved adults to action. While his sister received visions of what would be, Akeha realized what could be. What’s more, he saw the sickness at the heart of his mother’s Protectorate.

A rebellion is growing. The Machinists discover new levers to move the world every day, while the Tensors fight to put them down and preserve the power of the state. Unwilling to continue to play a pawn in his mother’s twisted schemes, Akeha leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. But every step Akeha takes towards the Machinists is a step away from his sister Mokoya. Can Akeha find peace without shattering the bond he shares with his twin sister?

Hmm, I never posted a review of this book…Anyway I’ve long been seeing this book around the fantasy lists and whatnot so it was really cool that it was featured for the Tor.com reading club last year so I was able to read it sooner than anticipated.

Review: The Fifth Season

Posted 11 March, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1)
By: N.K. Jemisin
Format/Source: eBook; my purchase

This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

I finally read this book!!! The Fifth Season has long been on my TBR queue–up there with her Inheritance trilogy–but it was always pushed off by other books on the queue. I finally picked up the other two books in the trilogy last year which I figured was a signal that it’s time to read it lol. And here we finally are…May contain some mild spoilers ahead!

Review: The Queen of Sorrow

Posted 22 February, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

The Queen of Sorrow (The Queens of Renthia #3)
By: Sarah Beth Durst
Format/Source: Mass market paperback; my purchase

The battle between vicious spirits and strong-willed queens that started in the award-winning The Queen of Blood and continued in the stunning The Reluctant Queen comes to a gripping conclusion in the final volume of Sarah Beth Durst’s Queens of Renthia trilogy . . .

Queen Daleina has yearned to bring peace and prosperity to her beloved forest home-a hope that seemed doomed when neighboring forces invaded Aratay. Now, with the powerful Queen Naelin ruling by her side, Daleina believes that her dream of ushering in a new era can be realized, even in a land plagued by malevolent nature spirits who thirst for the end of human life.

But then Naelin’s children are kidnapped by spirits.

Naelin would rather watch the world burn than see her children harmed-and she is ready to start a war with the north to secure their return.

But defeated Queen Merecot of Semo has grander plans than a bloody battle with her southern neighbors. Taking the children is merely one step in a plot to change the future of all Renthia, either by ending the threat of spirits once and for all . . . or by plunging the world into chaos.

Alrighty, here we are at the concluding volume of the Queens of Renthia trilogy. Obviously there were some loose threads that needed addressing after the end of the second book, like everyone wasn’t exactly in the clear just yet, so I was obviously curious how everything was going to wrap up.