Tag Archives: science fiction

Being short’s a good thing, right?

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Cover of Kelly St Clare's The ReprisalWell, this week was another gorgeous reading week. I went straight from Sea and Sand to another new release, The Reprisal, by Kelly St Clare. This is the finale in her The After trilogy, and I’ve been waiting impatiently since I inhaled The Return the day it came out. It’s an utter delight. The relationships between Romy and her knot moved forward in fabulous ways, there was lots of humour, and the uncertain fate of those on earth and the space soldiers was resolved highly satisfactorily. Loved it.

And then I found a new series. I’d seen mention of Sarah K Wilson’s Dragon School on social media and thought it looked good. The premise is that a disabled teenager is determined to take on the highly physical role of a dragon rider – will she manage? It’s also fantasy with (you may have guessed) dragons, so there’s lots to love for fantasy readers.

Cover of Sarah K Wilson's Dragon School: First FlightThe books themselves are being presented slightly differently. Instead of novels, they’re novellas, but as a result of their shortness they’re being released more closely together. I’m finding myself growing more and more fond of novellas as I grow older. I daresay it’s just a perception, but it makes me feel as though I’m getting more new worlds in my life. Another positive is that most of them are available in KU, so I feel like I’m working my subscription hard by reading three books where I might only have managed one before!

The first three stories in the Dragon School series are available now (First Flight, Initiate and The Dark Prince), and I loved them. They’re very episodic, so you could think of TV just as easily as books. Amel is a great character (as is Raolcan the dragon), there’s stacks going on in the background so they rattle along at a terrific pace, and the writing is actually very visual so I found it easy to “see” what was going on. I want to read the rest, and I’m delighted to report I don’t have months to wait for the next episode, since it’ll be out at the start of February.

And then just last night (when I’d run out of Dragon School stories) I discovered that there is a book 4 in CN Crawford’s Fae FBI series. I kind of thought there must be another one coming, because book 3 left so many threads unresolved, but last time I looked on Amazon there was no sign. But it’s out now, so that’s what I’ll be jumping into once I’ve written this blog post. Can’t wait!

Y is for … why aren’t there more hours in the day?

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I’m sorry, I feel like I’m full of excuses lately. My alphabet challenge went so well for so long I think I thought I was home safe, but it seems to have derailed in the home straight.

I should have been reading a book whose title started with Y, but I don’t even have a Y book on my kindle, let alone read or partly so.

What I have been doing is reading my own book what feels like 37 times through as I complete proof-reading and formatting. I, frankly, ran out of time in the day to do any reading that wasn’t getting The Clockwork War ready for publication. However, I’m delighted to report that’s now done and the book’s uploaded and off my desk (it goes live on 8th August, so I’m nicely ahead of myself for once), so I should have more time to read (except that I’m straight on with the next book, plus a tie-in story. Some people just don’t seem to like a quiet life).

Cover of Kelly St Clare's The Return

And I have been reading! I could blame it on Kelly St Clare if I want to claim I’ve been led astray. If her The Return weren’t so utterly excellent perhaps I’d have found time to read a Y book. Instead, I was completely gripped by Romy and her friends’ ongoing adventures.

Oh my, reader, this series really is spectacularly good. Check it out for yourself.

Now, I swear I’m back on track. With this blog hanging over me I did another search on Amazon and asked for recs in one of my Facebook groups. I now have Saving Yesterday on my kindle, and when I’m in town tomorrow I’ll see about a paperback of The Young Elites either at the library or Waterstones. I’ll WILL get there, I promise!

I is for … Indulgent re-reading

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After the drama of last week’s H read, I decided to relax this week and allowed myself to indulge in a re-read.

Steven Gould’s Jumper series is one of my absolute favourite books. Jumper would certainly go with me to a desert island, and the follow-up, Impulse, is equally delightful, telling the story of original jumper Davy’s daughter, Cent (short for Millicent, after her mother).

impulse-cover
Sci-fi at its very best.

This must be my fourth or fifth re-reading of Impulse, and it was as much as joy as every other time. I was sad to finish – but it’s there on my shelf, ready to be picked up next time I need it.

I’m very tempted to make Jumper my next, ‘J’ read, but that would be a bit too indulgent. So tune in next week to see what I do choose.

How about you – Are you a re-reader? Is there a book (or two) that you always fall back on when you want a satisfying read?

Got (half) a minute?

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I’m not going to write about my free reading challenge today because I’m too excited about the launch of Discord next week.

Most of my head-space has been taken up with marketing stuff: graphics and promotions and adverts and blog posts.

The part I’ve truly enjoyed is creating a video trailer for Discord. I found the music first, then the script came to me one sleepless night. I found suitable images (thank you unsplash.com) and then software from Movavi let me put it together. I’m not in the least technical, so I’m really pleased that I got it to work with no screaming and shouting or hair-tearing-out!

Here is the final result, I hope you enjoy it:

Oh, and if you like it enough to want more, Discord can be found on Amazon. It’s available for pre-order now (at a special, pre-launch price of 99p/c), and will be delivered to your Kindle on December 8th (this coming Thursday).