Reviews

Fortune’s Pawn: a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment
image from http://www.goodreads.com
Devi Morris isn’t your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It’s a combination that’s going to get her killed one day – but not just yet.
That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn’t misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she’s found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn’t give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.
If Sigouney Weaver in Alien met Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, you’d get Deviana Morris — a hot new mercenary earning her stripes to join an elite fighting force. Until one alien bite throws her whole future into jeopardy.

Overview

Devi Morris wants nothing more in life than to become a Devastator – the elite personal guard of the King of Paradox himself. So when an opportunity comes knocking to drop ten years from the wait, Devi follows it, and becomes security detail on the Glorious Fool. The only problem is, the Fool is notorious for being cursed. Crewmen don’t live long on her jobs, despite her being a trading ship. Still, nothing is more stubborn than a mercenary’s ambition (or at least this mercenary) and Devi’s dream is on its course – until she starts hearing screams that short out her powered armour, screams cried by invisible tentacled monsters and killed only by vacant little girls and faceless black aliens. But Deviana Morris is nothing if not adaptable, and these things she can overlook.

That is, until she starts seeing glowing, translucent, many-legged bugs immune to time, space, and atmosphere.

Bugs that no one else can see.

This is one job that’s going to stretch her to the limit, unlike any other. Continue reading →

Wizard’s First Rule: a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment
Image from http://sot.wikia.com/
Image from http://sot.wikia.com/

In the aftermath of the brutal murder of his father, a mysterious woman, Kahlan Amnell, appears in Richard Cypher’s forest sanctuary seeking help … and more. His world, his very beliefs, are shattered when ancient debts come due with thundering violence.

In their darkest hour, hunted relentlessly, tormented by treachery and loss, Kahlan calls upon Richard to reach beyond his sword– to invoke within himself something more noble. Neither knows that the rules of battle have just changed … or that their time has run out.

This is the beginning. One book. One Rule. Witness the birth of a legend.

Overview

Richard Cypher is a man on a mission: after the curious murder of his father, he sets off on a personal quest to find the killer, despite all misgivings. The only evidence he has is a branch of thorn that he soon finds in the forests near the boundary – carnivorous, semi-sentient thorn. On his way home, not much closer to finding out his father’s killer, he encounters a beautiful woman hiking through the woods in clothes not at all appropriate for hiking: and she is being followed by four men.

With Kahlan’s help, Richard saves her from the men and they hurry home. Soon, Richard and Kahlan both are swept up in a dangerous adventure out of their control, and together they must save the land from evil reminiscent of dark magic from many years before, with the help of eccentric wizard Zedd and boundary warden Chase.

Wizard’s first rule: People are stupid. Continue reading →

My Head Is An Animal, an album review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

My_Head_Is_An_Animal

My Head Is An Animal

OF MONSTERS & MEN

Dirty Paws
King and Lionheart
Mountain Sound
Slow and Steady
From Finner
Little Talks
Six Weeks
Love Love Love
Your Bones
Sloom
Lakehouse
Yellow Light
Numb Bears

My Head Is An Animal is the debut studio album by the Icelandic group Of Monsters & Men. You, like me, might have heard their song Little Talks all over the radio for the past year and a half. And, like me, you probably got it stuck in your head a thousand times before finally finding out what it was called and who it was by.

After finding out what it was and listening to it several times on YouTube, I decided that I needed it for myself.

Now, I’m one of those rare few who still prefers to buy music than to download it. Not just for ethics’ sake – though I do genuinely want to support artists, as I am one myself – but because I like having my own copy and because I’m paranoid about getting viruses on my beloved computer. I considered for a moment ripping the song off YouTube – then decided, without research, hey, the rest of the album must be good, too.

So off to iTunes I went, in search of glory.

And, boy, did I find it. Continue reading →

Through the Door, a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

through the door

Celtic mythology and the modern world collide in Through the Door, the first book in the new urban fantasy series The Thin Veil.

Cedar McLeod lives an ordinary but lonely life, raising her six-year-old daughter Eden on her own while trying to balance the demands of her career and the expectations of her mother. Everything seems normal until the day Eden opens her bedroom door and finds herself half a world away – and then goes missing. Suddenly, Cedar realizes her daughter is anything but normal. 

In a desperate search for answers, Cedar tries to track down Eden’s father, who mysteriously disappeared from her life before Eden was born. What she discovers is far beyond anything she could have imagined. As she joins unlikely allies in the hunt for her daughter, Cedar finds herself torn between two worlds: the one she thought she knew, and one where ancient myths are real, the stakes are impossibly high, and only the deepest love will survive.

Facebook was actually the one to recommend this book to me, by advertising along the sidebar telling me that it was similar to my favourite book in the whole world and beyond, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. High praise indeed, so I clicked the link and decided to wait until the day came that I would own a Kindle. Then I would buy it and revel in Celtic lore. This is something that has always fascinated me, partially because of my love for history, partially from Outlander, and partially because I’m Celtic (my father was born in Wales). The other day, in order to test how Purity looked in format, I downloaded the free Kindle app to my smartphone. I remembered how I wanted to read Through the Door, and here we are. I read it in about two days.

Through the Door follows the story of Cedar McLeod, who is an ordinary woman from Halifax only trying to be happy. When she finds out she’s pregnant, she is anxious to tell her baby daddy, Finn, the good news. But before she can even get the words out, he vanishes from her life without a word. Fast forward seven years, and their daughter, Eden, is coming into some very strange powers, and these powers get her into trouble when she vanishes. In order to explain the inexplicable, Cedar hunts down Finn’s family and finds herself in a world beyond imagining. Continue reading →

The Spirit Thief: a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ 1 Comment

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Eli Monpress is talented. He’s charming. And he’s a thief.

But not just any thief. He’s the greatest thief of the age – and he’s also a wizard. And with the help of his partners – a swordsman with the most powerful magic sword in the world but no magical ability of his own, and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls – he’s going to put his plan into effect.

The first step is to increase the size of his bounty on his head, so he’ll need to steal some big things. But he’ll start small. He’ll just steal something that no one will miss – at least for a while.

Something like a king.

I work at a bookstore, which means every day I am able to see just what books are coming out, popular, etc. One of the many perks of working in said bookstore is the discount – and the free books. I encountered the Spirit Thief, and subsequent novels, this way, when I saw the Spirit Thief on the new release mass market wall and decided to give it a go. It was one of my best decisions to date.

The Spirit Thief follows the story of Eli Monpress, a legendary thief with the power to speak with the spirits of nature. Though all wizards are able to communicate with spirits, Eli’s gift is unique, and his charm in the spirit world keeps him one step ahead of bounty hunters after his growing prize. When he goes to the kingdom of Mellinor to, well, steal the king, he is pursued by Miranda Lyonette, a Spiritualist wizard, and her ghosthound Gin, as well as a mysterious, scarred bounty hunter and a wronged prince. Continue reading →

Tome of the Undergates: a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

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Adventurer. The term has long been synonymous with cutthroat, murderer, savage, zealot, and heathen. And Lenk, an errant young man with only a sword and a decidedly unpleasant voice in his head, counts all five among his best and only associates. Loathed by society and spurned by all merciful gods, he and his band are recruited for only the vilest of jobs.

Denaos, a lecherous thug; Asper, the cursed priestess; Dreadaeleon, the pubescent wizard; Gariath, the psychotic dragonman; and Kataria, the savage shict who farts in her sleep, have all followed Lenk out of necessity. But as their companionship increases, so too does their enmity for each other. Thrown together by necessity, motivated by their distrust for each other, it falls to Lenk to keep them from murdering each other long enough to allow something more horrible the pleasure of killing them.

When an esteemed clergyman hires them to track down a missing book stolen by a zealous foulness risen from the depths of the ocean, intent on using the tome to raise its abyssal matron from her hell-bound prison, Lenk finds his skills put to the test. Faced with titanic, fishlike beasts, psychotic purple warrior women, and the ferocity of an ocean that loathes him as much as his own people do, the greatest threat may yet be the company he keeps.

Full of razor-sharp wit and characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunge the reader into a vivid world of adventure, this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

I first encountered this book after stumbling upon Sam Sykes’ Twitter page through a retweet of writerly wisdom. After perusing a bit, I discovered that the wisdom he could share was lost between bouts of animal photos and cruel but hilarious jabs at his friends. I came for the wisdom, stayed for the pigs. Continue reading →

Controlled, by Elisa Nuckle

~ JP Marshman ~ 4 Comments

My pal Elisa Nuckle has written an amazing short story for Fiction Vortex. It’s called Controlled, and it’s about dragons.

Not only is that badass already, but after having aforementioned short story published with Fiction Vortex, she won their July contest by a landslide. So that’s kind of a big deal.

So, hey, maybe go read Controlled, because you’re awesome and it’s awesome and together you’ll just be perfect.

Vicious: a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

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NO MOTIVE

For more than two years, he held Seattle in a terror grip. A cold-blooded killer who abducted young mothers right in front of their sons and murdered them execution style. Then, as suddenly as the killings began, they seemed to stop.

NO MERCY

Susan Blanchette is looking forward to a relaxing weekend getaway with her fiance, Allen, and young son, Matthew. But something about the remote lake house doesn’t feel right. A woman vanished from the area a year ago, and now Susan thinks she’s spotted someone lurking around the property. And when Allen disappears, her fear grows…

NO ESCAPE

A psychopath has returned, ready to strike again. Someone who can’t resist the urge to kill, who derives pleasure from others’ pain, and who is drawing nearer to Susan as each minute of the weekend ticks by. But she’s just one pawn at the heart of a killer’s deadly game. A killer who is unrelenting, unstoppable, and absolutely vicious…

Vicious was recommended to me by a close friend who has never really taken a keen interest in reading. When she told me about this amazing murder thriller she was reading, and how she was hooked, I had to read it. Anything that gets her reading is something to be commended. Being that I work in a bookstore, I was familiar with Kevin O’Brien’s name, but I had never read any of his books before.

The story follows that of Susan Blanchette, who is going to Cullen, outside Seattle, to a cabin her fiance Allen has rented for the weekend. On the trip there, she meets a strange man who is too friendly, and a group of shifty teenagers. One by one, their fates are entwined as they become caught up in the web of Seattle’s serial killer Mama’s Boy, who kills young mothers but leaves their sons unharmed.

Continue reading →

419: a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

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From international bestselling writer Will Ferguson, author of Happiness™ and Spanish Fly, comes a novel both epic in its sweep and intimate in its portrayal of human endurance.

A car tumbles through darkness down a snowy ravine. A woman without a name walks out of a dust storm in sub-Saharan Africa. And in the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the internet looking for victims. Lives intersect. Worlds collide. And it all begins with a single email: “Dear Sir, I am the daughter of a Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help…” Will Ferguson takes readers deep into the labyrinth of lies that is “419”, the world’s most insidious internet scam.

When Laura Curtis, a lonely editor in a cold northern city, discovers that her father has died because of one such swindle, she sets out to track down – and corner – her father’s killer. It is a dangerous game she is playing, however, and the stakes are higher than she can ever imagine. Woven into Laura’s journey is a mysterious woman from the African Sahel with scars etched into her skin and a young man who finds himself caught up in a web of violence and deceit.

And running through it, a dying father’s final worlds: “You, I love.”

First of all, 419 was the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, which is probably the most prestigious literary award in Canada. That alone piqued my interest in reading this, so as soon as it came out in paperback I was all over that like flies to honey – or corpses, because for some reason flies like both.

If you aren’t put off yet, keep reading!

Continue reading →

Songs of the Earth: a book review

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

Songs_of_the_Earth_Tor

Gair is under a death sentence. He can hear the music of the earth – music with power – and in the Holy City that means only one thing: he’s a witch, and he’s going to be burned t the stake. Even if he could escape, the Church Knights and their witchfinder would be hot on his heels, while his burgeoning power threatens to tear him apart from within…

Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper is an epic fantasy of, according to a Library Journal review, A Song of Ice and Fire proportions. It was an extensive story with a unique setting, and a very interesting and intricate magical system. It was a good read altogether, but it was one of the most confusing books I’ve read in a very long time. Let me explain why: Continue reading →