Spotlights for October 2022

 October was a busy month for new releases and I didn't write a blog for all the new books I read. But here are some spotlights for a few of the books that released in October 2022 and didn't get the full book blog treatment: 

Station Eternity- Mur Lafferty

Release Date: October 4

Rating: 📚📚📚

A science fiction spoof on the murder mysteries where there's that one person who always happens across dead bodies no matter where they go. Mallory Viridian runs away from the human race to Station Eternity to keep humans safe, only to have humans, murder, and chaos follow her to space.

The Women of Rothschild- Natalie Livingstone

Release Date: October 24

Rating:📚📚📚📚

A well-written and well-researched book on the English branch of the Rothschild family, following the women of the family (by blood and by marriage) across the 19th and 20th centuries. If you are looking for a book that covers social, political, and religious experiences of a Jewish family in England  over centuries and how change slowly happens, as well as watching how women could wield power in the shadows of a male dominated society, this is definitely a book to check out.

Murder at Balmoral- Chris McGeorge

Release: October 25

Rating: 📚📚📚

When King Eric of England dies under suspicious circumstances on Christmas, only one of the Royal family could have poisoned him. Friend and Royal Chef Jonathan is tasked with figuring out who did it before the authorities arrive in this closed room mystery whose dark side some may like, others will definitely not, and the timing of which must be under review by the publishers.

Revolutionary Samuel Adams- Stacy Schiff

Release: October 25

Rating:📚📚📚📚

A well written, well researched biography of a little known American Founding Father, Samuel Adams may be hard to pull from the shadows because he left little written work behind, but others certainly left plenty of their opinions written about him! Whether the truth behind what others believed Adams the mastermind of will probably never be fully known, this is certainly a biography every American interested in history should read.   

Brave Hearted- Katie Hickman

Release: October 25

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Well written and well researched, this new book explores the American West and the women who lived there. It wasn't all cowboys, miners, and outlaws- from early missionaries and pioneers in wagons to women following their mining and military husbands to the first hand accounts of Native American women who saw their lands and cultures taken away from them- this book covers the entire range of women of the early American West. Letters and diaries make it personal and touching while Hickman places people and events in historical and social context.

The Woodville Women-Sarah Hodder

Release: October 30

Rating:📚📚📚

A look at three generations of women during a century of medieval England's turbulent history. Elizabeth Woodville, her daughter Elizabeth of York, and her granddaughter Elizabeth Grey moved among the highest circles in England: queens of England and cousins to kings of England, they balanced the political storm of the Wars of the Roses and Henry VIII's court.

Girl In Red

The Girl in Red- Christina Henry
Berkley Publishing
Release Date: June 18, 2019

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead!

Synopsis: It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.

There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined. 

Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....

_________________________________________________________________

If you're a fan of horror movies or post-apocalyptic novels, you know the rules. Stay together. Keep your gear on you at all times. Never deviate from the plan. Follow the rules and you live. Don't and Something Bad Will Happen. But what happens when you aren't the hero of the horror movie, but just trying to get to grandma's? 

Red is a twenty year old college student who is addicted to horror movies when the Cough starts. A virus that infects at random, within months the world has changed. Millions are dead, the electricity is out, communications are down.  The military is sending people to quarantine camps for their own good. But Red doesn't believe that.  A naturally suspicious and paranoid individual, she convinces her family they need to hike hundreds of miles through the woods to her grandmother's house, where they would be safe. But even though millions are dead, others are still alive.  And what Red has forgotten about the movies is: it isn't the apocalypse that's the problem.  It's what happens after.

The Girl in Red is one of Christina Henry's (Lost Boy) dark twists on a classic fairy tale, in this case Little Red Riding Hood.  Red is a stubborn, often obnoxiously know-it-all type who isn't less annoying for being right most of the time. She's a loner, paranoid and suspicious, but when the world changes those are some of the best survival skills to have.  She often seems younger than twenty (if I just get to Grandma's house everything will be ok), but also has the world weary wisdom of someone much older.  She doesn't need to learn the hard way that just because someone is human they aren't also a predator, or that there are things even in the post-apocalyptic world that are worse than death.  She knows, as we all do deep inside, that the darkness of humanity doesn't go out just because a Crisis Has Occurred. As emotional as the book is, Red can only function by mostly being in a state of shock or emotional numbness the wholes time.  It is the reader who mourns for the ones who die, because Red can't (which made me feel a little guilty for not especially liking her. Who would be at their best in this situation?).  

The reader also wonders more than Red about the Big Picture.  What is the virus killing people and can a cure be found? How many people are dead and how are others surviving? What really happens at the quarantine camps? What are the monsters and what can be done to stop them? Will civilization be able to rebuild in any way? Red isn't (as she admits to herself) the Chosen One who can discover the answers and solve the world's problems.  She (and the reader) learn more than others might about the monsters in the dark, but she accepts (as the reader must) that it isn't her place to find the answers.  She is the Every Person just trying to stay alive based on knowledge gleaned from genre fiction and the childish belief that getting to grandma's will make everything ok again.  And maybe, in this strange new world, that is the hope that counts the more than anything else.

I recieved an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Allegiance of Honor

Allegiance of Honor (Psy/Changeling #15)- Nalini Singh
Penguin Group
Release Date: June 14, 2016

Rating (out of 5):
📚📚📚📚📚

Warning: Spoilers Below!

Synopsis: A staggering transformation has put the Psy, humans, and changelings at a crossroads.  The Trinity Accord promises a new era of cooperation between disparate races and groups.  It is a beacon of hope held together by many hands: old enemies, new allies, wary loners. But a century of distrust and suspicion can't be so easily forgotten, and it threatens to shatter Trinity from within at any moment. As rival members vie for dominance, chaos and evil gather in the shadows and a kidnapped woman's cry for help washes up in San Francisco, while the Consortium turns its murderous gaze toward a child who is the embodiment of change, of love, of piercing hope: a child who is both Psy . . . and changeling.
To find the lost and protect the vulnerable- and to save Trinity- no one can stand alone.  This is a time of loyalty across divisions, of bonds woven into the heart and should, of heroes known and unknown standing back to back and holding the line.  But is an allegiance of honor even possible with traitors lurking in their midst?

The latest Psy/Changeling adventure by Nalini Singh, Allegiance of Honor, acts to, in Singh's own words, "see how far the world and its characters have come since Slave to Sensation" as she closes "season 1" and begins "season 2" of the Psy/Changeling saga.  It continues to explore how the world is changing on every level, and does that in the best and most all encompassing way possible- through the eyes of many people instead of one main couple.  DarkRiver and SnowDancer sit at the heart of the book, as they have of the series, but the definition of what it means to be DarkRiver or SnowDancer has changed.  Both packs have expanded, connecting with not only other changelings but Psy and human, Arrow and civilian as well.

The world itself has both expanded and become more connected.  We get to see more of the mysterious BlackSea water changelings and watch their changing attitudes towards connecting with the outside world.  When a message in a bottle begs for help from a kidnapped member of BlackSea, it is a combination of changeling, human, and Psy who put their connections and their abilities to use in order to rescue her.  When Sascha and Lucas' daughter Naya is endangered both changelings and Psy act to protect her.  Naya is a symbol of the change in the world and is fast becoming a magnet for those both for and against that change.

It was great to "catch up" with so many characters. Seeing how so many of our book friends are becoming friends themselves was a lot of fun.  Lucas and Hawke have become friends as well as allies, and the connections between the packs are perfectly symbolized by the party at the end of the book to celebrate the birth of Mercy and Riley's pupcubs. Since I can't say enough good things about the party scenes I won't even try, except to say that it was a perfect way to close what Singh has called "season one" before moving on to whatever adventures come next.  Relationships are deepened, some unanswered questions receive surprising answers, and the whole thing was perfect.

I also loved the scenes where we get to see how various Psy are learning to cope in a post-Silence world.  The Arrows especially were great to see as they start to learn from the changelings how to be both structured and fun, and start experimenting with partying.  Kaleb's development may have been the most fun to watch- largely because he still denies any change at all.  Is that true or just the image he wants to project to the world? Always hard to tell with him, but Sahara is doing her best to drag him into, as he puts it, "having more people".  There's also a great scene between Nikita and Sascha that makes me want to reread some of the earlier books, especially Slave to Sensation, with it in mind.  The relationship between Nikita and Anthony remains a big question mark, but like Sascha and Faith we have to ask ourselves if we're ready to find out the answer? Always assuming of course, that Nikita and Anthony know.  They are great examples of different ways parents considered Silent still protected their children under Silence, and are now struggling to balance a post-Silence world with present dangers.

Singh also uses Allegiance to give us clues to where the series may be going in the future.  At some point you have to figure we'll get a book with a member of BlackSea as a main character.  At the very least she's going to have to stop teasing us and let us find out for sure what kinds of shifters Miane and Malachai are!  There are changes happening among the Forgotten that will have to be explored more in depth, although that may not be quite ready to get a full book just yet.  We have to figure out how Trinity will grow stronger and weed out the Consortium spies.  We're going to have to deal with the Architect and his/her Consortium and Ming LeBon is still a threat- although Hawke and Judd have developed some entertaining new ways of dealing with him.  The main focus, of course, will have to be on how the Psy learn to deal with the fall of Silence.  The PsyNet is still dying and by the end of the book we've figured out the solution- but it is one of the heart and not something that can simply be "fixed".  Psy and humans are going to have to learn to change their approaches to each other but a century of disdain on the Psy end and animosity on the human end won't go away overnight.

Nalini Singh continues to build a wonderful, complex, and colorful world around three species trying to come to terms with how different and similar they actually are.  An all star cast book like this can't have been easy to write but each character is still fully formed and fully themselves from earlier books.  Even characters who only appear briefly like Riaz or Annie don't feel like they're getting short-changed in any way.

Allegiance of Honor is as beautiful as its cover art, answering old questions while asking new ones, reinforcing the bonds of family and pack, and perhaps giving us a new way to look at what family is and how it can change the world.  It celebrates the series, opens new doors, and shows how a few individuals can change not only themselves, but the world. Can't wait to see where this world takes us next!




   

Invisible Library- Genevieve Cogman

The Invisible Library- Genevieve Cogman
Roc Press (Penguin Random House)
Release Date: June 14, 2016

Synopsis: Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a shadowy organization that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. Most recently, she and her enigmatic assistant Kai have been sent to an alternative London. Their mission: Retrieve a particularly dangerous book. The problem: By the time they arrive, it's already been stolen.  London's underground factions are prepared to fight to the death to find the tome before Irene and Kai do, a problem compounded by the fact that this world is chaos-infested—the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic to run rampant. To make matters worse, Kai is hiding something—secrets that could be just as volatile as the chaos-filled world itself. Now Irene is caught in a puzzling web of deadly danger, conflicting clues, and sinister secret societies. And failure is not an option—because it isn’t just Irene’s reputation at stake, it’s the nature of reality itself...

The Invisible Library is a mix of mystery, magic, science, humor, and books. An incredibly rich world of alternate universes and the Librarians who gather important works of fiction from all of them.

The main character, Irene, is a wonderfully complex character- a true bibliophile who wants nothing more than to protect books and read them.  Clever and quick-witted, she returns from one mission only to be sent out instantly on another- this time with an apprentice.  Things go from complicated to seriously complicated in the alternate world they've landed in when murder, book thieves, Fae, rogue Librarians, werewolves, centipedes, and alligators become involved.  This alternate reality is a delightful blend of steampunk and fantasy, vampires and zeppelins, science and magic. Irene is sure there's more to this story than what she's been told, but she'll have to stay alive before she can worry about what she isn't being told!  Her apprentice, Kai, is hiding some big secrets of his own, a competing Librarian keeps getting in the way, and their only ally is this world's version of Sherlock Holmes, who may have his own agenda.

This was a brilliant debut novel by Genevieve Cogman.  The worlds are detailed, all her characters are rich and three-dimensional, the plots and intrigues keep you guessing without overly complicating the storyline, and the humor is snarky and dry.  I couldn't bear to put this book down once I'd started, but as much as I wanted to reach the end to see how everything was solved I didn't want to reach the end and have to leave the world of the mysterious Invisible Library.  Fortunately, there are at least two more books scheduled for release, and I hope this series lasts for many more books to come.

Fans of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, Deborah Harkness' Discovery of Witches trilogy, TNT's The Librarians tv series, and book lovers in general will fall in love with the world of The Invisible Library.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley for an honest review.