Showing posts with label mechanica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mechanica. Show all posts

Monday, July 27, 2015

Mark This Book Monday: ARC Review of Mechanica by Betsy Cornwell!

Hiya there people!

So today is Monday and for me it is a Monday after a tough night shift at work and a tough Monday when I try not too sleep too much or too little so I can still function during the evening when I'm meeting friends from India here in vacation but also manage to fall asleep at night!

For this week's Mark This Book Monday I have yet another ARC review! This one I got both approved via NetGalley but also got gifted a physical ARC by my friend Britt from Please Feed The Bookworm! Such a lovely cover, so I'm super happy to have the physical ARC!

As a 2015 release it counts towards by 105 Challenge too!



MechanicaMechanica by Betsy Cornwell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I fell in love with the cover of this book and really wanted to read a Cinderella retelling with not your typical ending. I ended up with both a physical and an eARC of this one and I'm beyond grateful for them!

Mechanica is a more "faithful" retelling than others that I have read before, but I cannot generalize much since I haven't read many. Nicolette is an orphan that's left with her Steps once her father dies. She's treated like a servant and lives like one. There's even a ball and a prince in this story too, but the setting and the way the story is woven sets it apart from the more known versions of Cinderella.

This is a world of clockwork and magic and secrets. Where the Fae were treated like servants before being expelled and where rebellion and a war are looming. I loved all the lil stories woven here and there about the magic and the Fae.

My favourite part of the whole book has to be seeing Nicolette working on her clockwork inventions and discovering all that had been shut down and finding a way to connect with her mother through the memories and diaries. And to see her planning and plotting a way to escape the Steps with her own work and talent, without needing anyone to rescue her!

I love that no matter what hurdles she faces, Nicolette continues to work and try to fix herself a new and better life, with her friends and some of those lovely mechanical critters that were her very first friends (and quite a wink to the Disney rodents).

I really loved many things in this book and you might be wondering why it didn't get a higher rating, but the thing is that the overall feeling was not one of overwhelming love or amazement, so I cannot give a 4 or 5 stars rating, but THIS is the kind of fairy tale I wish I could have read when I was a pre-teen and one I'll make sure young girls that I know will get to read.

We don't need books that have girls being rescued by marriage to a prince, but girls that despite being treated badly are still capable of finding friends and getting over heartbreak without bitterness and through their own work and talent rescue themselves. And this is a book that says exactly that. So big kudos to the author for writing a modern version with a very classical fairy tale feel to it.

Very much deserved 3.5 stars to this one. It'll be in the Xmas list for some young girls this year from me!



View all my reviews

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Tell Me Tuesdays #28!!


Tell Me Tuesdays is a meme/feature created by the awesome ladies of Please Feed The Bookworm and 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!

After quite a while since my latest Tell Me Tuesdays post, I'm back again on the saddle, trying (and failing) to get back into a more regular blogging schedule!


Mechanica by Betsy Cornwell

Nicolette’s awful stepsisters call her “Mechanica” to demean her, but the nickname fits: she learned to be an inventor at her mother’s knee. Her mom is gone now, though, and the Steps have turned her into a servant in her own home.

But on her sixteenth birthday, Nicolette discovers a secret workshop in the cellar and begins to dare to imagine a new life for herself. Could the mysterious books and tools hidden there—and the mechanical menagerie, led by a tiny metal horse named Jules—be the key to escaping her dreary existence? With a technological exposition and royal ball on the horizon, the timing might just be perfect for Nicolette to earn her freedom at last.

Gorgeous prose and themes of social justice and family shine in this richly imagined Cinderella retelling about an indomitable inventor who finds her prince . . . but realizes she doesn't want a fairy tale happy ending after all.



 The Veil by Chloe Neill

Seven years ago, the Veil that separates humanity from what lies beyond was torn apart, and New Orleans was engulfed in a supernatural war. Now, those with paranormal powers have been confined in a walled community that humans call the District. Those who live there call it Devil's Isle.

Claire Connolly is a good girl with a dangerous secret: she’s a Sensitive, a human endowed with magic that seeped through the Veil. Claire knows that revealing her skills would mean being confined to Devil’s Isle. Unfortunately, hiding her power has left her untrained and unfocused.

Liam Quinn knows from experience that magic makes monsters of the weak, and he has no time for a Sensitive with no control of her own strength. But when he sees Claire using her powers to save a human under attack—in full view of the French Quarter—Liam decides to bring her to Devil’s Isle and the teacher she needs, even though getting her out of his way isn’t the same as keeping her out of his head.

But when the Veil threatens to shatter completely, Claire and Liam must work together to stop it, or else New Orleans will burn…



 Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas

 In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king's champion. Her name is Celaena Sardothien. 

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass--and it's there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.





Back after a while and with 2 ARCs, one physical gifted by my friend Britt from Please Feed the Bookworm, another an eARC from NG and re-reading my gorgeous hardcover of Throne of Glass for the #ReadThroneofGlass re-read in preparation for the release of Queen of Shadows on Sept 1st!! I hoping to finish the two ARCs this week, so I can have their reviews up on the before their release date of August 4th!

 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!!