NetGalley November Challenge!

Completely by chance, following a link from Twitter to a giveaway, I stumbled upon this post from Bookish Treasures about a new challenge, called NetGalley November.

What's this challenge about? Well, apparently is not rare for any book blogger to have quite a huge TBR pile of eARCs on NetGalley to read and review (so glad to hear I'm not the only one!) so the ladies at K-Books, Bookish Treasures and A Daydreamer's Thoughts have created a challenge to attack that pile and improve our approved to reviewed ratio on NetGalley! In case you are wondering, yes publishers do take that ratio into account before approvals, so better get it into the recommended 80%!

There are different targets to choose from:

Easy: 1-4

Medium: 5-10

Hard: 11-15

Difficult: 16-20

Netgalley Superstar: 21+

 

To really give me a boost and aim high I'm gonna go for Hard and hope to read and schedule reviews for between 11 to 15 NetGalley ARCs! What I really need to achieve is get to the 80% ratio!

Wish me luck!

Friday Reads: ARC Review of Katya's War by Jonathan L. Howard!!

For this week's first edition of Friday Reads I'm starting with the second book in a great new addition to YA science fiction, The Russalka Chronicles.


Katya's War by Jonathan L. Howard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got the ARC for Katya's War via NetGalley and that reminded me that I already had book 1 (Katya's World) and that I needed to read it, which means I've read both books in quite quick succession.

Since this is the review for book 2 in the Russalka Chronicles series it means it will have inevitably spoilers for book 1, so be warned. I will however try my very best to keep the review as spoiler free as possible for all the twists in this book.

Katya's War starts a few months after the ending of Katya's World, and we see Katya still adjusting to her new position as the hero of Russalka, the captain of the Lukuyan and still trying to recover emotionally to all the hardships she went through. But her emotional turmoil has nothing on the war turmoil that Russalka's going through, the civil war is getting more brutal by the minute.

Katya is trying to do her job and make a life for herself but it seems that she won't be allowed to limit herself to that. When Kane barges again into her life with completely unexpected revelations and an even more unexpected crazy mission for her, she's thrown back into the action with her world completely thrown upside down.

This book has all the things I loved from Katya's World and takes them to the next level. There's more world building, more character development and the plot keeps on thickening! Katya does a lot more growing up in this book, trying to deal with the tough truths that are put before her eyes and struggling to decide what to do about it and how to do it. Katya is not the only character that grows but she's the one that's mainly in the spotlight. Her choices won't just affect her or a band of people, this time her choices can change the course of history of the whole world.

As with book one, there's plenty of action, plenty of moral dilemmas and no romance whatsoever, even if I keep on wondering if we're not getting a few hints here and there about what might be? Still, I don't see romance becoming a driving force in this books at any given point!

The ending... well, I really didn't see it coming at all! And what an ending! It clearly qualifies as a cliffhanger but even though I just can't wait to read the next book, I don't consider it one of those killer cliffhangers (maybe I'm getting used to them now?).

Katya's War is what any second book in a trilogy should be, a fantastic read on itself, one where the action progresses the plot, the stakes keeps on getting higher and we get some unexplained lil tidbits that we hope will make sense in the last book! No middle book syndrome for this one at all! Very well deserved 4.5 stars!


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Waiting On Wednesday #14!

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted at Breaking The Spine  that spotlights those can't-wait-to-get-my-hands-on-them books that we are eagerly awaiting!

The book I'm anticipating this week is Revelations by J.A. Souders!

Goodreads summary:

"The follow-up to J. A. Souders’s riveting SF psychological thriller for teens, Renegade

Six weeks ago, Evelyn Winters was locked away in Elysium, a city hidden miles beneath the sea, brainwashed into submission. With the help of Gavin, she fought free of her captors and the fog in her own mind. He took her back with him to the Surface, a world she's never known. Now she will begin a new life.

But her past is closer than she thinks..."


Why am I eagerly awaiting Revelations? I read the first book in this series, Renegade, and really liked the twist on the dystopian and sci-fi genre that it had, being much more than what it seemed at first. And after how it ended, I just can't wait to see how Evelyn deals with the new world she finds herself in!

What are you all (im)patiently awaiting this week?

Friday Reads: ARC Review of Parasite by Mira Grant!

This week's next ARC review for Friday Reads is one book that held me captive as soon as I started it and I highly recommend to everyone who isn't of the squeamish variety!

Parasite by Mira Grant

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got an ARC from Parasite via NetGalley quite a while back, but hadn't got to it till now and wow, what a book I had been missing on!

Parasite is not an easy book to define, since from the start you are not exactly sure what you are reading: is it a science thriller? is it a zombie book? or maybe is a dystopian? I have to say it does have a bit of everything since it is set up in the future, there is quite a lot of science in it but never in a overwhelming way, and despite there not being any zombies in it, at least not proper zombies, it does have the disquieting and creepy factor of a zombie book.

The way the story is told is mostly from Sal's POV and with some extracts from scientific reports, interviews, books and news at the start of every chapter, which serve as a reminder all along that despite the book starting from the very personal, following Sal's story, it will have a wider scope in the end, and all that information we've been getting will add up in ways we might have not realized at first. I will be trying my best to make sure I keep this review as spoiler free as possible, but some minor spoilers could slip off, so sorry in advance for that!

Sal used to go by Sally till 6 years ago when she had an car accident that left her in a coma so deep she was considered brain-dead and was about to get disconnected when she unexpectedly woke up with her mind a complete blank state, not knowing who she was, no memory of her family or her past, not even of basic motor abilities or even speak or read English. Her "miracle" recovery was thought to be caused by her SymboGen parasite implant and since then she's been under the care of SymboGen and submitted to many tests to figure out how that happened.

Sally's family treat Sal like a child, even if her sister and father seem to be happy to get a second chance to connect with her. Nathan and the people she works with at the rescue do treat her as her own person, and the people at SymboGen treat her mostly as a lab rat or as an experiment.

The story moves from being very personal following Sal's life and struggles to the more broad of the rest of the population when strange happenings are happening in front of her and Nathan. They discover it's something that's being happening all over and when it happens again at SymboGen when Sal is there for her tests. That's when it's clear that the owner of the company and the company itself do have many secrets that could be endangering the general population well being.

There are plenty of creepy moments involving the "Sleepers" and all the science involved it's so plausible that it's disturbing to think how something like this could be in our future! Also, with such a big focus on the parasitic implants and science talk, this is so not a book for the squeamish!

The ending is not exactly a cliffhanger per se, cause if you've been quite focused on all the clues spread out in the book you're quite likely to have guessed the final reveal, but still, you have to wonder what is going to happen in the next book!

A very unique premise, great pacing with plenty of action, creepy moments and a few twists here and there, this book is very much worthy of 4.5 stars!

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Friday Reads: ARC Review of Unbreathable by Hafsah Laziaf!

We're gonna be starting  this week's Friday Reads with the review of an ARC of a new science fiction YA book, that hopefully will be the start of a series!


Unbreathable by Hafsah Laziaf

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was lucky enough to win a copy of Unbreathable in a Twitter contest done by the author but that  didn't influence my opinion on this book.

As soon as I read the blurb for Unbreathable I knew I wanted to read it! I've always been a huge science fiction fan and there's not enough Sci-fi in YA for my taste (though that seems to be changing!) and when I saw that cover... goodness, instant cover lust!

Since I want to make sure I don't spoil your enjoyment of the book, I'll try to keep myself away from spoilers as much as humanly possible.

Unbreathable is the story of Lissa, a human girl living in Jutaire, a planet where the humans fled to when Earth was destroyed. Jutaire is not exactly perfect for humans since the atmosphere is different and oxygen has to be manufactured and they owe the Jute, the native inhabitants of the planet for the technology they have to survive. The rules are that Jute and humans have to be apart, and both races have a xenophobic distaste of each other.

Lissa's father discovers that Earth wasn't destroyed and he is killed for that. After than double shock Lissa discovers she can breathe the toxic air of Jutaire, and that's only the beginning of Lissa's ground-shaking revelations and surprises. After a lifetime of it being just she and her dad and her books about Earth, now she's thrown into the frey of a conflict bigger than she could have imagine and she will discover that almost everything she thought she knew is a lie!

Lissa is a quite girl that has been a recluse for most of her life, with a father that was big on lectures and lessons and not so much on emotional support and get he dies, she finds herself attempting something risky trying to spread the truth he discovered, but she's captured and then she's pushed from the back to the limelight and gets her world shaken in all possible ways! There's a lot of growing up for her to do, she needs to learn to fight, she needs to learn to navigate politics and she has to deal with probably the biggest maze of all for her, the emotional mess that is dumped on her and how she has to discover for herself how love really feels.

The plot has a few twists here and there, not entirely unexpected but it managed to surprise me with the characters more than the plot. There are a lot of questions unexplained about Earth, the Jute, Jutaire itself, but I'm hoping all be covered in a sequel (and a prequel).

Fair warning, there is a love triangle in this book, and despite my dislike of them, I wasn't irritated by it. Lissa is an emotional mess that isn't even sure how to negotiate all the revelations that have been thrown at her and now she has to deal with the interest of Rowan and Julian, who look similar enough to be twins and are a bit like the Yin and Yang of the spectrum. At certain points I would have liked to tell Lissa to get a grip and not to get herself into even deeper crap, but most of the time she manages to deal with the very tough cards she's been dealt in a good way.

This was a great first book from the author and a good addition to the YA sci-fi genre, well deserved 4 stars. Really looking forward to read more about the story!



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Waiting On Wednesday #13!!

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted at Breaking The Spine  that spotlights those can't-wait-to-get-my-hands-on-them books that we are eagerly awaiting!

The book I'm absolutely going crazy waiting for this week is Sentinel by Jennifer L Armentrout, the fifth and final book on the Covenant series!

Goodreads summary:

"It's a beautiful day for a war.

As the mortal world slowly slips into chaos of the godly kind, Alexandria Andros must overcome a stunning defeat that has left her shaken and in doubt of their ability to end this war once and for all.

And with all the obstacles between Alex and her happily-ever-after with the swoonworthy Aiden St. Delphi, they must now trust a deadly foe as they travel deep into the Underworld to release one of the most dangerous gods of all time.
In the stunning, action-packed climax to the bestselling Covenant series, Alex must face a terrible choice: the destruction of everything and everyone she holds dear… or the end of herself."

Why am I eagerly awaiting Sentinel? Are you kidding me? Aiden St Delphi? Alex vs Ares? That evil evil cliffhanger at the end of Apollyon? How can I not be bitting my nails in anticipation of the final book for this series? I can't wait to see how Alex and Aiden get through everything that will be thrown at them in this book!

What are you all (im)patiently awaiting this week?

Mark This Book Monday: Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano!!

For the next entry of this week's Mark This Book Monday, one of my highly awaited reads of the year and fortunately one that didn't disappoint!


Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Perfect Ruin has been one of my highly awaited books of the year. I really liked Lauren DeStefano's Chemical Garden trilogy and the blurb and snippets of the book I saw online were really intriguing. As usual, I'll keep my review as spoiler-free as possible!

Perfect Ruin is the story of Morgan, a girl living in the floating city of Internment. It is a slow building story where we're summerged into Morgan's life and her head. We discover Internment from her eyes, with the way she loves it and the way she wants more than just her floating city. With how she deals with her everyday life, her damaged family and her "jumper" brother. We learn the edge of Internment is dangerous and anyone that tries to look over it or even try to jump is returned to the surface damaged or dead.

Everything is controlled in Internment, from the time you are born to who you'll spend your life with, since you are paired with your intended since even before birth. You can only have a child if and when you're approved for it, you will live till the alloted time and then be disposed of to make space for new members of the society. The lack of space in a floating island surely will mean a tight control of the populace, but all the restrictions can get stiffling to some of the less conformist and indoctrinated of the population.

In that controlled and apparently idillic society happens something unheard of, a murder. And that murder shakes the usual if fragile peace of Internment, give even more fuel to the small lingering doubts that Morgan's life experience had created so far.

Morgan is an odd mix herself. She's always trying to stay low given her brother "jumper" status and how that puts her family in the spotlight for suspicion and mistrust from regular citizens and the guys in charge alike. She knows she is an odd one, wondering about the ground and questioning things but at the same time she keeps on trying to conform. She's unsure most of the time, feeling inadecuate and fears revealing who she really is to Basil, her intended and even from Pen, her best friend, since she thinks they wouldn't understand her discontent and would reject and denounce her.

Perfect Ruin is a slow read, you keep on learning little tidbits here and there, the story keeps a slow but forward progression as we get more information about what's going on and also some information about the past. Characters are well built up, even those secondary ones that keep on surprising us with their depth. Romance is present with Basil and Morgan, but it's more sweet and understated, more supporting than driving.

The first three quarters of the book are mostly world building and reading it in the gorgeous prose and style of Lauren DeStefano is a treat in itself. Then in the last quarter of the book all the action comes up and you are left as if a tornado had spinned you around! It's not that the ending is a horrible cliffhanger or entirely unexpected, but you're left wondering where the heck does the author plan to take things from here?

A very well deserved 4 stars for this one.



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Mark This Book Monday: Katya's World by Jonathan L. Howard!

Welcome to the first installment of this week's Mark This Book Monday! Since I'm leaving in a pair of hours to spend time with the bf on vacation, the blog will continue with scheduled reviews, but I won't have as much online time (I'm leaving my lappy behind) to answer comments and the like.
 


Katya's World by Jonathan L. Howard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I got Katya's World quite a while back cause I was very intrigued with the premise for it, but then it got lost in my ever growing TBR pile but then I requested Katya's War in NetGalley and remembered I hadn't read this one yet! As always, I'll try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible!

Katya's World is set up in the future, in a colony world called Russalka, quite different from Earth since it's a world with barely any land mass, all oceans but rich in minerals. It was colonized by humans of Russian origin, so that's the origin of the name of the planet and many other names of cities and ships and the like.

We're given an introduction to the planet, the world and the wars with Earth in a sort of prologue, I guess some might think about it as info-dumping, but since I love to know things about the how's and why's and what happened's, it was a very welcomed way to put you in place.

Then we jump into Katya's story, we aren't given a lot of background story on her family or her past, we just meet her as a 15 year old girl, a bit of a prodigy, on her first official voyage as her uncle's submarine navigator. But it all starts going stray since the first moment when a federal official commands their ship to transport a dangerous prisoner. After that it all becomes a matter of unknown dangers, wreckages, unexpected recues, pirates, conspiracies and shock after shock.

Katya is a rather mature character for a 15 year old but in a hard enviroment and society like post-war's Russalka that's the norm, and despite some teenage angst & silliness sprouting here and there, she was extremely likeable for me. She wants to be good at her job, she wants to be part of what's going on and help if she can. She starts with a rather black or white vision of the past and prejudiced against Earth because of the war and what she's been taught, but she learns about the need to learn from history to not repeat the mistakes and to not to take the official propaganda as the truth. Even if the action takes place over not too long a period of time, she does have to learn a few tough lessons that make her grow even faster.

There's no romance in this book, I kept expecting it to pop up at some point but it didn't and I'm glad to say the book didn't suffer at all because of it. There's plenty of political maneouvers and action all over the book to compensate. I think there are some hints here and there for it to maybe be addressed in the next book, but I might be wrong, so I'll have to wait and see.

The book ends quite wrapped up, with no cliffhanger as such (thankfully) but also with enough action unresolved to await the next book and see where things are taken there!

A well deserved 4 stars for Katya's World.



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