Thursday Thoughts: The Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine!!!

Hey there guys!

Given my failure this week at blogging so far, I needed to add another extra Thursday Thoughts to the so far empty week!

I had a fairly good reason for the radio silence since I've been reading multiple books at once (not that it is new) but most have been re-reads or readalongs and also, FINALLY my living room furniture arrive!!

And because I'm crazy excited about them, I'm just gonna share a pic of them just as they had been finally assembled, will have to share pics of them filling up with stuff next time!

Now, onto today's review!! I think those of you who know me a bit are aware that I love fantasy books, but at the same time I'm not usually a fan of retellings, but one of my auto-buy authors go and write one, I have to check it and thankfully, trusting the author pays off!!



The Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


First things first, I'm not the biggest fan of retelling stories there is, and when I see a book is a retelling of something else I'm usually a little wary of it. BUT C.J. Redwine became an auto-buy author since the very first book of her Defiance trilogy, so when she announced this one, a retelling of Snow White, I knew I'd read it!

And I'm really quite happy that I kept my trust on the author, because The Shadow Queen was a fantastic retelling! It mixed the fairy tale feel & also made it more regular fantasy-like if that makes sense! The prologue was very much done in a more typical fairy tale story format & style, but then when we move forward in time to meet Lorelai again, the narrative is less typical and much more engaging!

We have two main POV characters, Kol and Lorelai, but Lorelai IS our main character, our Snow White! I feel like the story is a bit inspired by both the classical story and the Snow White & the Huntsman movie, at least given that our Snow White is a fighter and not like the Disney version! ;) And no, there are no dwarves in this one, we get something way cooler, since we get DRAGONS!!

Lorelai has magic and is determined to defeat the evil queen, Irina, and is simply an amazing main character! Driven, brave, capable and compassionate. She's an absolute warrior and ready to do the right thing at any personal cost but not at the cost of those around her. I simply adored having a princess that didn't need rescuing, although she welcomed allies of course! She dealt with grief but didn't let it paralize her turn her cold, didn't let a pretty boy make her loose the view of what's the most important and has been for the past 9 years, but still allows herself to be open to connections and to love!

Kol is the other POV character and he is so much more than a prince that kisses our girl to wake her up, although weeeell, nope, not saying anything else. Kol is a reluctant prince that finds himself in a position that he never thought he'd be in and never wanted, but that raises to the occasion and that like Lorelai, is fighting to do what's right for others more than for himself.

The relationship between those two was quite fantastic, and slowly developed from "casual meeting where the girl save his life and his friends" to "I'm going to kill you but I don't want to" to allies and much more!

I must also talk about the Evil Queen in this story... Irina is evil but not because of her magic but for her own twisted reasons that you sort of can understand. You really don't because she's just blinded about her sense of entitlement and what she thinks she's been robbed of, but it's not random evil, it's rooted on a sense of loss and it twists her to forgo love for power. A very intriguing character and a well developed villain!

All in all, I really loved this one! It's very much its own story although you can see the nods here and there to the original story and the roots of it. I cannot wait to read the next book in this series and see what fairy tale will be retold, C.J. Redwine style! Well deserved 5 stars!!

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Saturday Pages: Mini reviews of Outcast & Swamp Bones!!

Hello guys!

This week's Saturday Pages is happening a lil latter than usual, but they almost didn't happen... I was extremely tired last night and went to sleep without having any posts ready and today I woke up feeling rather tired still, but I decided to still manage to crank up a pair of novellas reviews that I had pending!

One of them is a novella that I got this week on NetGalley so it will totally count for my ARC August list!

 Swamp Bones: A Novella by Kathy Reichs

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I've always been a big of both this series by Kathy Reichs and Bones the tv series (at least till I lost interest once the drama got a bit too much for me) even if they were rather different. I had forgotten a bit about the books till I saw this novella on NetGalley and realized I had missed reading one book and there was another coming! So I just got the previous book to this one and preordered the next!

Swamp Bones is a novella that can be read without having read all the Tempe Brennan books since it's a story on its own, but I don't think it's the best of the Tempe stories either.

But even as one of the weakest stories in the mystery sense of the murder(s) to be solved, cause there was a point were the suspect was pointed at too easily, so much that I was expecting it to be a red herring, the story was always fascinating because of the way the science is weaved in. Even if most of the science was about pythons in this one, and snakes are one of my few irrational fears!

Tempe can be a bit too rash and impulsive and given some of the bad situations that has got her into in the past, it makes me wonder why she doesn't seem to learn given how intelligent a character she is. I guess we all have our flaws, and hers is being a bit rash and overly optimistic on outcomes.

All in all, a good enough novella that really got me in the mood to read more Tempe Brennan books! 3 stars to this one (for the too obvious resolution).




Outcast by C.J. Redwine

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Outcast is the very much awaited novella featuring our dear Quinn and his sister Willow's story before they meet Rachel and Logan and become allies. This is the story of why Quinn understands how broken Rachel can be and how both he and his sister got exiled from their tribe and came to meet Rachel's dad.

Quinn has always been a very interesting character and we knew there was a lot more to his past than what he himself or his sister had revealed before, both about what caused their exile and why Quinn refused to kill when fighting and in this novella, we find out exactly how horrible their childhood was being trained to be killers with the excuse of being defenders, and how abusive their relationship with their father was.

We see Quinn from feeling like what they're doing is wrong, to finding the strenght to face his father and try to put a stop to his madness when he thinks of protecting his sister and finds an unexpected ally on Rachel's father when Jared stumbles onto the village's perimeter trying to hide from Rowansmark agents.

For a short novella this one packs a really emotional punch and we find ourselves loving and understanding much better both Quinn and Willow and even get a lil better understanding of what a good man Rachel's dad was. One of those novellas that are a joy to read, even with the tough themes in it which earns it 5 stars.



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Mark This Book Monday: ARC Review of Deliverance by C.J. Redwine!!!

As the last entry for this week's Mark This Book Monday I have one of my most awaited books of the year! I was extremely happy and grateful when I was approved for it on Edelweiss by Harper Teen, since I rarely get approved by them!

This one counts for two of my challenges, the 2014 Book Blogger Summer Reading Program and the 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge!

Deliverance by C.J. Redwine

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was a brilliant ending to a fantastic trilogy, but I don't think I'm ready to say goodbye to Rachel and Logan and Willow and Quinn... *clutches book*

I was beyond happy and honoured when I was finally approved for an eARC of this one Edelweiss by Harper Teen and I'm grateful, since they very rarely approve my requests!

As the final book of the series, there might be some spoilers for the previous books, so please be aware of that. I will be keeping my review as spoiler free as possible so it will be a bit vague.

After the nonstop action and heartbreak of Deception, I was kind of scared of reading Deliverance, even more after the very cruel cliffhanger ending! But I was quite reassured since C.J. had assured me on Twitter that Deliverance would compensate us from all that suffering!

Rachel and Logan are now separated and in extremely tough situations both of them and both have only themselves to rely on, Rachel because she's in enemy's hands and Logan cause despite it all, he's the leader and the man with the ideas & plans. Both are en route to Rowansmark, Rachel being dragged there as prisoner and Logan trying to rescue her.

Both Rachel and Logan are amazing characters, and they've both had such a wonderful character development throughout the whole trilogy and even if Logan's has been fantastic, I think Rachel's the most amazing of them both. She started as a headstrong and reckless girl that gets broken and is left as a mere shadow of what she was only filled with pain and revenge, but she continues to go on, to try her best and ends up facing her demons and finding the hope of healing.

I loved how Logan always respects Rachel and even though he wants to protect her, she never underestimates her and never tries to stop her from being the fighter she is at heart. And Rachel IS a fighter but she also learns that she can rely on her friends for whatever kind of support she might need, and learns to keep hope. She can rescue herself and she doesn't expect others to do so for her, but she keeps the hope of Logan coming for her and she plans to help once he does.

What I also appreciated very much was how well crafted the villains of the series are. Not only there are evil and repulsing ones but strangely enough we end up feeling for one them, unexpectedly understanding his hate and misguided actions, and in the end feel really bad for him and his fate!

The rest of the secondary characters feel very much alive, from Quinn and Willow to the many new characters that we meet in this book (and some of them are little easter eggs by name for anyone that follows C.J. on Twitter and knows of her fellow writer friends).

This was a brilliant final book for this very amazing part dystopian part fantasy series, one that I plan to re-read for sure, while I wait for the next book from C.J. Redwine, that has become one of my auto-buy authors! Very well deserved 5 stars for this one!



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Mark This Book Monday: Defiance by C.J. Redwine!

Welcome, welcome, welcome! To the start of a new week, to another Monday and to another edition of Mark This Book Monday!

Today I want to share with you all a book that I have been eagerly await since I first saw the cover and read the excerpt at Goodreads: Defiance by C.J. Redwine! Aside from recommendations, that's how I tend to pick up book, I see a cover I like, I grab it and read the excerpt, if it sounds intriguing enough, I pick it! The trouble of doing it in Goodreads is that sometimes the book you like is not out yet! That's exactly what happened with Defiance, and once the book was out, I had quite a fight to try and purchase it somewhere, just the epub file to read it on my android tablet... I have a huge rant about device-centric websites for books, and how that's simply beyond irritating for me, but I'll save it for some other day!

Now, onto the book itself! First compliment for this book? It got me out of my reading slump! I'm a huge bookworm, but as of late I had spent two weeks without reading any books, the previous week I had read one book to kill the 4 hours I had to wait at the train station in Valencia waiting for my AVE, and it was Saturday this week and I hadn't done any reading either! But, since I had bought Defiance on Friday before heading to work for night shift, as soon as I woke up, I decided to start reading it!

Let me tell you, it was a refreshing change from the paranormal books I had been reading as of late, no angels, no vampires, no nothing of the like! It's a fantasy mix with postapocalytpic/dystopian kinda book, and also quite unlike some of the previous female leads in other books, Rachel is not exactly your whiney teenager that you want to slap... She starts like a headstrong and rebellious girl, and ends up broken and looking for a way to live with herself, so it's quite a journey for her. The book switches between her point of view and Logans point of view, and like the characters themselves, they're different and balance each other out, complementing each other flaws and strenghts.

This is mostly a character driven plot and not a very happy book, things don't go as you want them to go, just as life itself tends to. The world of Defiance is one that progresses and we discover more of it as the characters show it to us, it's like they keep opening doors and drawing curtains for us to see. You get to know about the world as much as the characters themselves know, and you discover things as they do.

Defiance is the first book of a trilogy, and thankfully, although it leaves questions unanswered and many wounds unhealed, it doesn't end with a massive cliffhanger, cause frankly, I hate those! And they're particularly horrible when you have to wait for a full year to get the next book! According to Mrs Redwine herself, the next book will come out Fall 2013... 

So in the meantime, do check it out, and let me know what you think!