Tag Archives: Megan Crewe

Loving the end of the world

January 14, 2018Reading#amreading, #YAlit, Alex Lidell, apocalyptic, dystopian, end of the world, fantasy, Fiction, Megan Crewe, Nicholas Bowling, warfare, Young Adultkatyhaye

This week I have got firmly back into my groove of reading (I always think I’ll have loads of time to write at holiday time, but somehow, it’s much easier when I’m back in a routine of work/school).

I was helped by already being mid-way through Megan Crewe’s brilliant Fallen World series. As mentioned last week, I moved straight on to book two, The Lives We Lost, and because that was so entirely excellent I had to put all my other waiting-for-review books on hold so I could gobble up the finale, The Worlds We Make. Oh my giddy aunt, I feel like I barely breathed while I was reading that. It was so tense I was constantly on edge in case Kaelyn and her friends didn’t make it. The resolution was utterly stupendous. I recommend you read this series even more now I’ve reached the end.

Because I’m eschewing my Kindle for late-night reading-in-bed, alongside Fallen Worlds, I also read Nicholas Bowling’s Witchborn. That was fabulous (catch my review).

And then yesterday I got back into my review reading and caught up with Nile, Dominic and Prince Tamiath in Alex Lidell’s Tides series. Sea and Sand is the third in the series and it’s out – wowzers, today or tomorrow, I think. It’s another glorious fantasy and while I didn’t warm completely to new-girl Kyra, I am now YET AGAIN waiting impatiently for the next instalment. If you haven’t read these books, you should check them out IMMEDIATELY.

Phew, back to normal has never felt so good!

Check back next week to see what I’ve been reading – and please do let me know if you try out any of these books. I’d love to know what you think.

Books and chocolate, and other utopias

December 31, 2017Uncategorized#YAlit, apocalypse, Fallen World series, Megan Crewe, The Fallen World, The Way We Fall, Young Adultkatyhaye

My Christmas was, basically, books and chocolate. Sounds like a perfect festive season, to me!

Except that now I’ve got an even larger TBR pile than usual. I guess I’ll just have to read as quickly as I can, sustained by Green & Blacks and dark chocolate brazils. It’s a tough life, but I’ll do my best…

This week I zipped through Megan Crewe’s The Way We Fall. I’ve read Megan’s writing before (A Mortal Song is ACE) and it really shouldn’t have taken me so long to pick up something else by her (except – mammoth TBR pile, did I mention?). The Way We Fall is completely different, and equally fantastic.

It’s told from Kaelyn’s point of view, a girl who thinks herself a misfit and is missing her best friend fiercely … and then she needs to deal with a strange virus that means the island she lives on is abruptly cut off from the rest of the world.

The thing with Megan is that she writes emotion so well. It was all very small and understated, and yet my heart was cut into teeny tiny pieces in the way that good books can do to a person.

I loved it so much I’ve moved straight on to the next, The Lives We Lost (sorry to everything else waiting on my TBR pile).

My free reading challenge: independent writers oozing with talent

September 18, 2016Reading, Uncategorized#amreading, Facebook groups, fantasy, independent publishing, JA Andrews, Megan Crewe, self-publishingkatyhaye

This week has been more reading, reading, reading to slim down my TBR pile. Most of the books I’ve read in the past couple of weeks have been independently published because it turns out independent publishers are mostly the people I know and thus their books are the ones I get to hear about.

All my friends are virtual

Megan Crewe's A Mortal Song was an absolute stunner - click for my review. — Megan Crewe’s A Mortal Song was an absolute stunner – click for my review.

A lot of my online time is spent in a couple of Facebook groups dedicated to authors who have all taken on the challenge of self-publishing and the purpose of the groups is to share experience of what works (and doesn’t) and keep morale up when things go wrong.

A lot of what I’ve read recently has been written by people in these groups because I’ve heard about what they’re up to and been interested to read their books. Maybe it’s also because they are all eager for reviews and happy to provide review copies which fits perfectly with my current free reading challenge. And it occurred to me as I was reading what an enormous amount of talent there is out there.

Oozing with talent

There is a lot of grumbling about standards in publishing (I know I’ve been guilty of it myself – don’t get me started on publishing houses that appear to have opted out of the requirement for proof-reading a book before publication), but I think a part of that is just because the pool of books is now so big that if you’re looking at the wrong part of it, all you can see is wall-to-wall typos and cliches.

Cover of JA Andrews A Threat of Shadows — An absolutely glorious, vivid and lively fantasy everyone should know about. Click for the preview.

But as I scheduled yet another 5* review on the Paisley Piranha site yesterday I realised how much excellence is also out there. I’m a very fussy reader (if it doesn’t look like it from my reviews, that’s because I only select books I’m pretty sure from the preview I’m going to love, and if I don’t have anything good to write about a book I won’t review it), and I’ve been constantly both impressed and delighted by both the nuts-and-bolts quality and the imaginative verve of what I’ve read recently.

My conclusion this week: don’t grumble that standards are slipping – find the authors whose standards haven’t. I promise you, there are plenty out there!