Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani Release Week Blitz: Excerpt & Giveaway!!

 

Hi there guys!

Today I'm super glad to take part of the Release Week Blitz for

Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles #2) by Intisar Khanani

Fantasy lovers, this one's for you! Love magic, look no further! And you definitely need to check out the awesome giveaway found below.

 

Happy Book Birthday Intisar!

Let's celebrate everyone!!

 

 

In the year since she cast her sunbolt, Hitomi has recovered only a handful of memories. But the truths of the past have a tendency to come calling, and an isolated mountain fastness can offer only so much shelter. When the High Council of Mages summons Brigit Stormwind to stand trial for treason, Hitomi knows her mentor won’t return—not with Arch Mage Blackflame behind the charges.

Armed only with her magic and her wits, Hitomi vows to free her mentor from unjust imprisonment. She must traverse spell-cursed lands and barren deserts, facing powerful ancient enchantments and navigating bitter enmities, as she races to reach the High Council. There, she reunites with old friends, planning a rescue equal parts magic and trickery. If she succeeds, Hitomi will be hunted the rest of her life. If she fails, she’ll face the ultimate punishment: enslavement to the High Council, her magic slowly drained until she dies.

Title: Memories of Ash 

Series: The Sunbolt Chronicles, Book Two

 Author: Intisar Khanani 

 Cover Designer: Jenny Zemanek 

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy 

Release Date: May 30, 2016 

Publisher: Purple Monkey Press

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple | Kobo

 

 

“It needs a meal,” the mage says, voice rasping, “and it won’t be me.” He yanks me off balance. I cry out, jerking away from him and lashing out with my glowstone. I manage to smack him hard across the face, but then his boot comes between my feet. For a sickening moment I teeter on the edge of the stairs.


Get back! 


I barely register the words ringing in my mind before the mage shoves me, hard. I swallow a scream, throwing my arms up to shield my head as I fall. I slam down the stairs, bouncing toward the mass of tentacles.


Feet first—get your feet first!


I follow the shouted advice mindlessly, twisting my body as I come to a stop amidst a tangle of three or four great tentacles.


Don’t move. 


Someone is talking inside my head, and it’s not me. Somehow, that’s almost worse than lying surrounded by the talons of a nightmare monster. Almost.

OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES:

 

 

The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the powerful and corrupt Arch Mage Wilhelm Blackflame.

When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges, it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.

 

 

Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. Born in Wisconsin, she has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. She first remembers seeing snow on a wintry street in Zurich, Switzerland, and vaguely recollects having breakfast with the orangutans at the Singapore Zoo when she was five. She currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband and two young daughters.

Until recently, Intisar wrote grants and developed projects to address community health with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy. Intisar's current projects include a companion trilogy to Thorn, following the heroine introduced in her free short story The Bone Knife, and The Sunbolt Chronicles, an epic series following a street thief with a propensity to play hero when people need saving, and her nemesis, a dark mage intent on taking over the Eleven Kingdoms.

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Complete the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win!

 

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Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani Blog Tour: Review & Giveaway!!

Hello there guys!

I'm starting this week with taking part in another Blog Tour! I find that it's the best way to get myself into the thick of things since I had been into a bit of a blogging slump even before my vacation time.

Today I'm going to share my review for Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani and there will also be a giveaway at the end of the post. Do make sure to check the rest of the tour stops HERE.

But before we get to my review and the giveaway, let me share a bit more about the book and author!

Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani
(The Sunbolt Chronicles #2)
Publication date: May 30th 2016
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

In the year since she cast her sunbolt, Hitomi has recovered only a handful of memories. But the truths of the past have a tendency to come calling, and an isolated mountain fastness can offer only so much shelter. When the High Council of Mages summons Brigit Stormwind to stand trial for treason, Hitomi knows her mentor won’t return—not with Arch Mage Blackflame behind the charges.

Armed only with her magic and her wits, Hitomi vows to free her mentor from unjust imprisonment. She must traverse spell-cursed lands and barren deserts, facing powerful ancient enchantments and navigating bitter enmities, as she races to reach the High Council. There, she reunites with old friends, planning a rescue equal parts magic and trickery.

If she succeeds, Hitomi will be hunted the rest of her life. If she fails, she’ll face the ultimate punishment: enslavement to the High Council, her magic slowly drained until she dies.

Amazon | Barnes&Noble | Apple | Kobo

About the author:

Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. She has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. Until recently, Intisar wrote grants and developed projects to address community health with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy. Intisar's current projects include a companion trilogy to Thorn, featuring the heroine introduced in her free short story The Bone Knife, and The Sunbolt Chronicles.

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

REVIEW

I started reading my eARC of Memories of Ash as soon as I finished Sunbolt! I was very glad to have waited and read both books back to back because even if the ending of Sunbolt was not a massive cliffhanger and Memories of Ash doesn't start exactly were Sunbolt left us, no wait between stories that you are loving is always the best option!

Intisar's writing is fantastic, it's the kind that keeps you fully immersed in the story and that mixes descriptions with character development and moving the plot along. You might not be sure why a new character is introduced but she never does anything randomly, all dots will connect somehow at some point, and usually in rather unexpected but never unreasonable ways!

Hitomi is a fantastic character, she does have a tendency to get into things without all that much planning and plotting, but it's so much forgivable when she herself acknowledge it as a flaw in her character but one that goes hand in hand with her need to do what's right and to never take a life. She has got so much better at working with her magic although it seems that she doesn't realize how powerful she really is.

The political threads that we saw in Sunbolt here are explored more in depth and we see more of the fight for power and how it is possible for someone to continue to achieve power and control by manipulation and using others' support and even using their neutrality for their own means. We are shown that not taking a stand against what is wrong can be as bad as supporting it, and that gives us quite a bit of food for thought.

There is no real romance, even if there's a few hints of something that might or might not come to pass in the rest of the series, but there are plenty of other relationships and alliances to keep us engaged and wondering in some of the cases. Complex familial relationships, alliances and friendships from the past that need to be figured anew and rekindled or left behind... And new friendships and alliances that are introduced and forged here.

One of the best things for me in this book is that the plot was never easy to figure out or predict, even if some isolated parts of it were to be expected, you just never knew what would happen, and even the things you expected don't happen in the way you'd think they would!

My review might have been a bit vague but I wanted to make sure I didn't end up spoiling anything for anyone if I ended up talking a bit too enthusiastically about certain characters or events, but let me tell you that this series (and author) are very much worth checking out if you love fantasy!

Very much deserved 4.5 stars, cannot wait for book 3!

GIVEAWAY

 Enter the giveaway HERE!

COVER REVEAL for Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani!!

Hello guys!! I know it's been a while since I've been around here, but my laptop has been pretty pissy and I decided to take the time to be online less and read more (to be said in the same way that Mr Burr tells Hamilton to talk less, smile more).

Buuut today I’m very excited to have Intisar Khanani on the blog today, after adoring her debut book Thorn, revealing the cover for her newest novel Memories of Ash. This cover was designed by the amazing Jenny of Seedlings Design Studio. There's also a Kindle Fire giveaway, so make sure to scroll down to the end of the post to enter.

Now I leave you guys with Intisar answering a few questions and of course with the utterly gorgeous coverrr!!


Describe Memories of Ash in 3 words.

Walk with courage.

What compelled you to write your first book?

I always wanted to write a novel, so my senior year of university I decided I’d better buckle down and try. I chose a fairy tale (The Goose Girl) to give me an over-arching plot and narrative structure, and then went to town with it. I really wrote it as an exercise to test myself, not intending to do anything with it when I finished. But, by the time I finished, I loved my characters so much that I ended up working through over a dozen revisions to take it from “writing exercise” to my debut novel, Thorn.

If you could live in one of your books, which one would you choose?

Definitely the world of the Sunbolt Chronicles. Sunbolt follows Hitomi, a street thief with a propensity to play hero when people need saving, and her nemesis, the dark mage who killed her father. Although there is a lot of darkness in Sunbolt, there’s also a lot of light. It’s a real world, in its way, and I love the diversity and vibrancy of the cultures and creatures that populate it. I’d have my choice of living in a tropical island sultanate reminiscent of historic Zanzibar, or among the nomadic desert tribes that eke out an existence alongside the cursed Burnt Lands, to name my two favorite options. Then again, in Memories of Ash, there’s the decaying grandeur of the capitol of a fallen empire that feels a lot like an Istanbul of old, right at the heart of the Eleven Kingdoms. Plus, I wouldn’t mind having shape-shifting friends and charms to keep my bread from burning.

What authors, or books, have influenced you?

As a young duckling, I imprinted on Tamora Pierce and Robin McKinley's earlier works. I read pretty widely, but those are the authors I kept coming back to, especially McKinley’s Damar books. I am also an incorrigible Jane Austen fan, but my books don’t reflect that very much!

What are you reading now?

I just finished “Kingdom of Ruses” by Kate Stradling. In a kingdom where the eternal prince who rules is just a ruse kept up by the prime minister’s family (and most recently, Viola, our heroine), keeping the peace is a delicate thing. Enter a stranger who manages to take the place of the doppelganger the family uses, and Viola has her hands full.

Your first reaction to the cover in GIF format.

 

And here it is...

In the year since she cast her sunbolt, Hitomi has recovered only a handful of memories. But the truths of the past have a tendency to come calling, and an isolated mountain fastness can offer only so much shelter. When the High Council of Mages summons Brigit Stormwind to stand trial for treason, Hitomi knows her mentor won’t return—not with Arch Mage Blackflame behind the charges.

Armed only with her magic and her wits, Hitomi vows to free her mentor from unjust imprisonment. She must traverse spell-cursed lands and barren deserts, facing powerful ancient enchantments and navigating bitter enmities, as she races to reach the High Council. There, she reunites with old friends, planning a rescue equal parts magic and trickery.

If she succeeds, Hitomi will be hunted the rest of her life. If she fails, she’ll face the ultimate punishment: enslavement to the High Council, her magic slowly drained until she dies.

Amazon Pre-order | Barnes & Noble Pre-order | Kobo Pre-order | Apple Pre-order

A Special Treat For Those Who Pre-order...

Not only is the pre-order of Memories of Ash on sale for only 99 cents, but anyone who buys the pre-order will receive a free digital art print of Hitomi by artist Grace Fong. Just email your proof of purchase to moapreorder@gmail.com!

Haven't read Sunbolt (Book 1) yet? It's been knocked down to just 99 cents to celebrate the release and is available at most major e-retailers. That's two fantastic books for less than a cuppa joe.

 

 

About Intisar Khanani

 Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. She has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. Until recently, Intisar wrote grants and developed projects to address community health with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy. Intisar's current projects include a companion trilogy to Thorn, featuring the heroine introduced in her free short story The Bone Knife, and The Sunbolt Chronicles.



 

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Tell Me Tuesdays # 36!!

Tell Me Tuesdays is a meme/feature created by the awesome La La In The Library, where we can share how we choose the book we are currently reading from our TBR pile!

I'm always curious about that, cause as much as I tend to make myself a rough schedule for books to read and the like, I'm quite a mood reader and sometimes I just HAVE to ignore my schedule and read something else!

Stolen Songbird by Danielle L Jensen

For five centuries, a witch’s curse has bound the trolls to their city beneath the mountain. When Cécile de Troyes is kidnapped and taken beneath the mountain, she realises that the trolls are relying on her to break the curse.

Cécile has only one thing on her mind: escape. But the trolls are clever, fast, and inhumanly strong. She will have to bide her time…

But the more time she spends with the trolls, the more she understands their plight. There is a rebellion brewing. And she just might be the one the trolls were looking for...

 Golden Son by Pierce Brown

With shades of The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, and Game of Thrones, debut author Pierce Brown’s genre-defying epic Red Rising hit the ground running and wasted no time becoming a sensation. Golden Son continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom from the overlords of a brutal elitist future built on lies. Now fully embedded among the Gold ruling class, Darrow continues his work to bring down Society from within. A life-or-death tale of vengeance with an unforgettable hero at its heart, Golden Son guarantees Pierce Brown’s continuing status as one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.

 Thorn by Intisar Khanani

For Princess Alyrra, choice is a luxury she's never had ... until she's betrayed.

Princess Alyrra has never enjoyed the security or power of her rank. Between her family's cruelty and the court's contempt, she has spent her life in the shadows. Forced to marry a powerful foreign prince, Alyrra embarks on a journey to meet her betrothed with little hope for a better future.

But powerful men have powerful enemies--and now, so does Alyrra. Betrayed during a magical attack, her identity is switched with another woman's, giving Alyrra the first choice she's ever had: to start a new life for herself or fight for a prince she's never met. But Alyrra soon finds that Prince Kestrin is not at all what she expected. While walking away will cost Kestrin his life, returning to the court may cost Alyrra her own. As Alyrra is coming to realize, sometime the hardest choice means learning to trust herself.

Thorn has received a Badge of Approval from Awesome Indies.


Both Stolen Songbird and Golden Son are re-reads. I've joined the official readalong to prepare for Warrior Witch on Goodreads, so each week we read a few chapters and discuss them! And I'm really enjoying Stolen Songbird, almost even more than the first time around! And Golden Son I'm re-reading on my own in preparation for finally reading Morning Star that arrived in the mail last week!

And Thorn is a buddy read with my friend LaLa for the #RockMyTBR challenge. It's a retelling of The Goose Girl and I'm really enjoying it!
  
So what are you all guys reading and how and why did you decide to pick up that book? Shiny new ARC? Comfort read? Scheduled for review? Must have new release? Tell me!!