Wednesday 27 June 2018

Book Review: Ivory and Bone


First step when reading this book: forget everything! Think I’m insane? Well I’ll explain… if you haven’t read a prehistoric fiction book before (like me) then the first thing you need to do is take a minute… picture a world with nothing, really imagine yourself 3.7 million years ago when everything you know now didn’t exist.

As soon as I did that I enjoyed the book a lot more. Learning small things from the hidden details about how they lived was awesome, of course the hunting mammoths and escaping from saber tooth tigers holds its own level of excitement I really enjoyed the little things, like Kol walking into the clans kitchen and explaining the room with his mother’s carving stones that his father carried back to the camp after a hunting trip and handmade knifes made from all different materials or when Kol and his brothers create a new sleeping hut out of mammoth bones for you and your family the visiting guests and filling it with pelts collected from many different generations of hunters.

The story is told by Kol talking to you Mya a girl from a visiting clan who many believe will soon become your wife … but romance is never easy especially when you clans have a dark history together. Figuring you (Mya) out is the hardest thing Kol has done, your stand-offish domineer and unforgiving untrusting personality is just too much for Kol but when your younger sister and Kol’s younger brother develop strong feels for each other it seems that you will be around each other for longer than he was intending…

The story itself was a different pace then I’m used to with the accurate world building that needed to go into this book the author does really well holding your interest while still staying true to the facts of that time period. I have seen that this book will be a trilogy but you could read this one as a standalone and still be happy.


Thursday 7 June 2018

Book Review: Revenge and the Wild



Westie, our rough around the edges main character, is on the hunt for her families killers, a group of cannibals that left her an orphan and only one arm. As a child Westie was saved and nursed back to health by the Wintu tribe then was adopted by Nigel Butler a local inventor who is also responsible for the new piece of clockwork hardware she calls an arm. Westie and Nigel live in the sanctuary of Rouge City, a western town protected by Wintu magic where humans and creatures can live side by side without killing each other. But now seventeen, Westie wants revenge, and will search high and low if she has too. But fate has other plans for Westie and her crew and with a new troubling discovery about magic and an even more troubling set of visitors Westie is going to need a lot more help and smarts to get the revenge she craves.

This story is full of amazing characters including a vampire with an agenda of his own, werewolves, a boy with a clockwork mask, Orks and other mythical creatures that all still manage to fit the western theme of the story. I loved the relationships Westie has with the different characters and found myself loving them all in the same ways she does. I haven't read a stand alone book in a while and it was nice to have the 'situation' resolved all in the one book, it also made the story flow quickly

This is a good book to read between series or while your waiting for the next book in a series to be  published! (like i was HURRY UP WAR STORM haha), or if your just wanting a 'bookpallet' cleanser because this books is definitely 'interestingly different' .