Saturday Pages: ARC Review of Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman!!

Hello guys!

Happy Saturday! I'm having the weekend off and I'm hoping to catch up on some reading and writing some reviews because as of late I've been rather busy with things about the apartment, with visits to the bank, getting estimates for the kitchen... and I wasn't very much in the mood to read!

Today as the first Saturday Pages entry I have a review of an eARC that I got thanks to my friend Linda from La La In The Library because she let me know that this one was as a Read It Now on NetGalley!
As a book for review it counts towards my 105 Challenge in my books for review category!

Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Being lucky enough to grab this eARC as a Read It Now on NetGalley was the push I needed to finally read Seraphina, the first book in this (so far) duology and loved it.

Shadow Scale is a very interesting sequel and one that I ended up really enjoying even if I had to stop reading for a while. Once I reached 35% I hit a part where my dear Seraphina was missing some really obvious clues about something, and that quite bothered me. It took me a while to get back to the book but once I got back to reading and passed that point, I got hooked on the narrative, world building and the fantastic characters once again.

I must confess that I felt the book was a lil slow sometimes, not so much through the traveling in search of the other half-dragons and where we get introduced to Goredd's neighbouring countries and we explore their differences in customs and leyends and religion... but the way the plot and pace slows down while Seraphina tries to figure out anything that involved Jannoula.

I love me a great villain, and Jannoula IS a great villain, and I understand that for Phina it is very hard to be her usual analytical self when it comes to Jannoula given their past history and how very manipulative and what a great strategist she is. Like Phina, there were occasions when I felt bad for her, but it was really frustrating when it seems that Jannoula is progressing her plans and no one seems to even think of something that could be done!

I adored that we got more world building and information about the saints and I love that I guessed a twist just a paragraph before it was revealed, and that's always rewarding, because you feel like you guessed the twist before it's revealed but not too early or you'll end up feeling irritated.

The rest of the half-dragons where quite fascinating and I was glad to meet each one of them and see how they differed from their corresponding avatar in Phina's mind garden. All of them felt very well crafted and had a very unique voice. And seeing the changes once Jannoula entered the picture gives you an even bigger sense of urgency to figuring her plan.

I loved that the romance was mostly equally as subtle as it was on book one, even if there is a certain resolution of the so called love triangle that we have in the series. And I love how unconventionally it was done and how it avoided all the cliches!

And another thing that I absolutely loved was how it included all kinds of diversity and how well it handled how differences can be both unite us and segregate us, and how we need to see the potential of those that are not like us, instead of treating them as inferior because we fear them.

Well worth reading despite that snag at the beginning. Very well deserved 3.5 to 4 stars to this final book! Although I've heard that there might be companion books with other secondary characters!



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Friday Reads: ARC Review of Golden Son by Pierce Brown!!!

Hello guys!

Friday Reads is back a lil later in the day than usual, but this week has been a bit strange and yesterday though full of good news and potential good news left me completely drained, so I've slept in today like there's no tomorrow.

Today's book is a sequel without middle book syndrome and one that absolutely made my day when I was approved by Random House via NetGalley to read it (THANK YOU!!)! The only bad thing about reading it as an ARC? The even longer wait for Book 3!!

As an ARC it will be counted towards my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge and as a science fiction dystopian it will be counted towards my Dystopian Reading Challenge 2014!

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


When the first book in a series sets itself up as a 5 stars, there's always the question of how will the second one fare compared to it but in this case have no fear. Golden Son doesn't suffer from second book/sequel syndrome AT ALL, if anything I'd say it's even better than Red Rising, and that's quite a feat in itself!

Darrow has found himself a successful place in the Gold elite, apprenticing under Nero au Augustus, the ArchGovernor of Mars and a man that believes he has the best interests of the human race and that his way is the only way to proceed.

Darrow's plight is as dire as ever, he needs to get a position of power so he can follow the plans of the Sons of Ares to destroy the Society from within, and that is not getting any easier the higher he climbs. The amount of political intrigues, tactical changes and who to trust, who not to trust in this book is estupendous!

Darrow has gained himself some enemies within the Augustus family and due to their conspiring, he loses his place there. But it doesn't stop there, because the Sovereign is involved and soon everything progresses into a bigger scale for Darrow, for the Augustuses/Augustii and maybe even for the Society as a whole.

I am simply in love with the complexities of the world the author has crafted in these books, with how the Society elite being so rooted in Roman tradition, and not only by family names or Gods, but also because if there was something the Romans knew about was politics and intrigue!

One word of warning, this is a LONG book and although it is quite full of action everywhere and politics and intrigue and tactics and counterattacks and it never seemed slow for me and I couldn't turn pages fast enough and I finished the second half of the book before sleep, it reads a lil different, the pace is not as fast but every page is full of fascinating and intricate relationships, changes of alliances and quite shocking reveals!

Yes, there are twists and reveals, and like Darrow I felt like I should have realized that before, but I was completely blindsided, and no don't worry I'm not gonna give more hints as to what reveal I'm talking about.

After more epic scheming, and seeing what a great team in political matter Mustang and Darrow make, an epic battle and when you think that things are finally looking up... the othe shoe drops, and holy shitzu does it drop the big way. The ending of the book is painful and a full on cruel cliffhanger that will give you a very serious book hangover!!

Golden Son earns its gold fair and square and it's a sequel that does what every sequel ought to do, bring up the stakes even higher, make the world more complex and leave you pining and crying for the next book! Very much well deserved 5 stars!!



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Tell Me Tuesdays #21!!

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!

 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.

 Symbiont by Mira Grant

THE SECOND BOOK IN MIRA GRANT'S TERRIFYING PARASITOLOGY SERIES.
THE ENEMY IS INSIDE US.

The SymboGen designed tapeworms were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world's population began attacking their hosts turning them into a ravenous horde.

Now those who do not appear to be afflicted are being gathered for quarantine as panic spreads, but Sal and her companions must discover how the tapeworms are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is, and how they can be stopped.

Seems like this is the week of sequels! I got approved on NetGalkey for the sequel to Red Rising: Golden Son and I started reading it right away! It's a rather big book and I have been working for the past few days, so I have been reading slowly but surely through it! And Symbiont I'm doing a buddy read with Faye from The Social Potato and Jeann from Happy Indulgence and we're reading 3 to 4 chapters per day! So far, I'm loving both so much!

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!!