Title: The Jade Talisman (The Jade Chronicles, #2)
Author: Alanna Mackenzie
Genre: Adult, Dystopian, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Release Date: 28 March 2021
Cover Reveal: The Jade Talisman by Alanna Mackenzie
The Jade Talisman by Alanna MacKenzie
Browse Category by Dystopian
Book Review: The Hive Queen by Robin Kirk
The Hive Queen by Robing Kirk
Title: The Hive Queen (The Bond Trilogy #2)
Author: Robin Kirk
Genre: Dystopian Young Adult
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am so pleased to have Fir’s story! What a story he has to tell!
Robin Kirk’s second book in The Bond Series, The Hive Queen, picks up with the Living Wood’s escape from Bounty. Fir and his nineteen brothers are heading east to the Master’s land. They’ve heard from the wildmen that he has a cure for the virus and that it’s a place for males–where men aren’t in the service of mothers.
Fir is against unbeatable odds from the start. He is full of self-doubt while trying to lead, and it tears him apart when anything goes sideways. And everything is going sideways. I liked that Robin Kirk builds Fir with such vivid internal struggle. It makes you understand his motivations and his actions better for it. It also helps that she highlights some of the Living Wood so you can see that his brothers pull him in all directions and muddle the pot often when he’s trying to do the right thing.
Continue ReadingBook Review: The Bond by Robin Kirk
The Bond by Robin Kirk
Title: The Bond (The Bond Trilogy #1)
Author: Robin Kirk
Genre: Dystopian Young Adult
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love these Dystopian/Sci-fi stories where I’m in a world where women control EVERYTHING. This sounds like it would be all good or super bad.
The Bond by Robin Kirk isn’t questionable at all; it’s all good.
Dinitra 584 KxA is a student struggling to pass her courses at the Collegium. It’s graduation day, and she has a dismal compendium with one weak merit. Truth be told, she spends most of the time she should be working on her studies drawing or painting. As she has to make and mix her paints–that takes up a lot of time. That’s how she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, with two Legion’s Commanders questioning her for her artwork.
Oh, this book is sheer brilliance and so twisty-turny. I had no idea where we were going. Robin Kirk lead me around by the proverbial ear, and I read like an addict because the story is pure joy. Well, not joy like it makes you happy because much of it makes your heart a little sore but joy in that it’s a damn good book.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Lock Down by Aella Black
Lock Down by Aella Black
Title: Lock Down (Supernatural Prison #1)
Author: Aella Black
Genre: Paranormal, YA Fiction
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Disturbing.
A couple of years ago, I read the series Into the Shadows by Karly Kirkpatrick, and Lock Down kept reminding me of those books. If you like those books, this is for you!
Phoebe is doing her best to remain low-profile because any attention will mean that someone could see she’s fending for herself. While she’s a competent sixteen, Phoebe’s still sixteen, and no one is letting her be her own guardian if they find out she’s alone. But the last of her problems is foster care when she dies and resurrects from the dead, ending up in a Supernatural Prison for juveniles. Suddenly, foster care sounds much better–especially when she’s told supernaturals aren’t considered humans.
The Phoenix can’t begin to imagine the awful that happens outside her cell in prison, and the days get dismally worse, even when unimaginably promising things come to her in Leavenworth. Nothing is worth the price she pays there.
Lock Down is a terrifying look at the violation of dehumanized people. Aella Black does a fantastic job of dragging you further and further down a dismaying rabbit hole. The fact that she is giving you a view from a child/young adult’s eyes is more devastating. I couldn’t turn away from the story; Lock Down is a page-turner.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Knight in Paper Armor by Nicholas Conley
Knight in Paper Armor by Nicholas Conley
Title: Knight in Paper Armor
Author: Nicholas Conley
Genre: Dystopian, YA Fiction
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Are you feeling your life is lacking a little social rhetoric? Knight in Paper Armor is what you are looking for to fill that need. I’m just not sure anyone needs this much preaching from an otherwise decent story. Keep in mind this is a dystopian novel set in the future, but it is playing with metaphors of today’s news reports.
Natalia Rodriguez Gonzales is poor and bullied, growing up in a family of undocumented immigrants. Heaven’s Hole has little to offer her, so she gets lost in sketching out her memories and drawing a future she hopes to come.
The author Nicholas Conley makes a lot of tongue in cheek cultural comparisons in Knight in Paper Armor, one of which is Natalia Gonzales being this freedom fighter for Heaven’s Hole. Natalia is a seventeen-year-old girl with an edgy look who, at one point, shaves her head. But it’s more than that she rallies her people with a ‘Never Again’ slogan, and dares to challenge the patriarchy and the great Thorne Century Corporation that has it’s named on everything and owns a little bit of everything.
She could be plucked right out of our current headlines.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Athena’s Choice by Adam Boostrom
Athena's Choice by Adam Boostrom
Title: Athena’s Choice
Author: Adam Boostrom
Genre: YA Sci-fi, Dystopian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
You have those reads where they are great–BUT! This book has a BUT in it, and I think it’s what doesn’t work for me.
Athena Vosh is an average nineteen-year-old girl struggling with things like her relationship with her girlfriend Nomi and getting her art displayed in a gallery. She treats her mother well, and she’s an exemplary citizen.
She hides the fact that she is fascinated with the idea of bringing back men; since most seem to believe that the Y-Fever was a good thing, and society is better for it now, as a sisterhood. Athena keeps her drawings of the male form from the eyes of everyone, including Nomi. That is until her dreams become enigmatic and prophetic and lead her to the Core, their world’s great processor of information and database–who leaves her with more questions than answers.
Continue ReadingBook Review: The Blind Hordesman by Milana Jacks
The Blind Hordesman by Milana Jacks
Title: The Blind Hordesman (Hordesman #6)
Author: Milana Jacks
Genre: Omegaverse, Sci-fi Romance
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hmmm. Are all Tayseers essentially the same?
The Blind Horseman reminded me a lot of the Alpha Collects, and it wasn’t anything heavy-handed that came to mind; it just felt like a hundred little things that kept pelting me. It was as if things were coming full circle but also all over again.
The Hordesman series ends with this book, all the offspring having their HEAs. Tayseer, much like his namesake, finishes this series, and instead of being a collector, he’s a warlord like his father, Loven. Still on the search for the Impostor and sent on the king’s mission, and by the word of the real King Father, to rid the earth of all of the Impostor’s assets, Seer is battling a future that includes his own coronation. He wants to war, not be king.
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