Tag Archives: Fantasy

Contest | Win a copy of Kelley Armstrong’s Visions!

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Have you been to Cainsville yet? Heads up on this awesome series by Kelley Armstrong, author of the bestselling Darkness Rising YA trilogy and the Women of the Underworld series of adults, both of which blew me away with their strong female leads, smart character choices and page turning plots that pretty much guarantee you’ll end up forgetting a meal or two. I enjoyed the first book in the series, Omens, and can’t wait for the second!

Want to check out this series for yourself? Random House Canada is offering a great prize package for one of my readers. CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY (Canada only) for a chance to win a paperback copy of Omens and a hardcover of the new book in the series, Visions.

ABOUT THE BOOKS

Omens:

978-0-307-36053-3Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor Jones has the perfect life. The only daughter of a wealthy, prominent Chicago family, she has an Ivy League education, pursues volunteerism and philanthropy, and is engaged to a handsome young tech firm CEO with political ambitions.

But Olivia’s world is shattered when she learns that she’s adopted. Her real parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving a life sentence. When the news brings a maelstrom of unwanted publicity to her adopted family and fiancé, Olivia decides to find out the truth about the Larsens.

Olivia ends up in the small town of Cainsville, Illinois, an old and cloistered community that takes a particular interest in both Olivia and her efforts to uncover her birth parents’ past.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/books/213514/omens-by-kelley-armstrong

Visions:

978-0-307-36055-7Omens, the first installment in Kelley Armstrong’s exciting new series, introduced Olivia Taylor-Jones, daughter of notorious serial killers, and Gabriel Walsh, the self-serving, morally ambiguous lawyer who became her unlikely ally. Together, they chased down a devious killer and partially cleared her parents of their horrifying crimes.

Their success, however, is short-lived. While Olivia takes refuge in the old, secluded town of Cainsville, Gabriel’s past mistakes have come to light, creating a rift between the pair just when she needs his help the most.

Olivia finds a dead woman in her car, dressed to look like her, but the body vanishes before anyone else sees it. Olivia’s convinced it’s another omen, a sign of impending danger. But then she learns that a troubled young woman went missing just days ago—the same woman Olivia found dead in her car. Someone has gone to great lengths to kill and leave this young woman as a warning. But why? And what role has her new home played in this disturbing murder?

Olivia’s effort to uncover the truth places her in the crosshairs of old and powerful forces, forces that have their own agenda, and closely guarded secrets they don’t want revealed.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/books/213515/visions-by-kelley-armstrong

CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY (Canada only)
Just in case you missed the link above. 🙂

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Thank you to Random House Canada for providing the contest prizes.

Review | The Oathbreaker’s Shadow, Amy McCulloch

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13643064In a market saturated with YA dystopians, Amy McCulloch’s The Oathbreaker’s Shadow stands out by turning to the past. Not necessarily a historical past, but rather a classical take on story telling. McCulloch’s style of world building is reminiscent of Lois Lowry’s in The Giver in a setting reminiscent of Frank Herbert’s in Dune, and while Oathbreaker’s Shadow is less allegorical than The Giver and so far less epic than Dune, it contains that vital sense of classicism that I hope will make this series endure for generations to come.

In this book, promises are represented by knots and bound by magic. When someone breaks a promise, their knot disappears and leaves behind a scar that marks them as an oathbreaker and leads to public shame and exile. For Raim, he has had a knot since the day he was born, which represents a promise he does not know and cannot possibly have made himself. So when he vows lifelong fealty to his best friend and his society’s future Khan, and this knot is broken, Raim sets off on a quest to discover what promise he had inadvertently broken, and more importantly, to reclaim his lost honour.

I cannot say enough good things about this book, and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good tale. McCulloch weaves Eastern philosophy, magic, and social and political conflict into the classic quest narrative of the disgraced hero. It’s a tradition that stretches back to ancient literature, and Oathbreaker’s Shadow serves as a testament to the enduring appeal of the classics as well as rejuvenates the form with a contemporary feel. This is an exciting new take on fantasy, and a much needed breath of fresh air in a market too enamoured with trends. Oathbreaker’s Shadow is high adventure; friendships are strained, loyalties are betrayed, and hope arises in the most unlikely place. All this occurs in a world where magic is real, and literally burned into your skin, or embodied in a shadowy form.

As with all good examples of fantasy literature, this book feels emotionally real. Oathbreakers are haunted by shadows of people they’ve betrayed; the more egregious the betrayal, the stronger one’s shadow is. It’s a compelling metaphor, and one can only imagine how it must feel to have a shadow of a loved one (literally, a shadow of them, a mere shade of their personality) as a constant reminder of your betrayal. When one character’s hunger for knowledge leads to a realization on how to use this magic to their advantage, the results are horrifying. A scene near the end revealing the extent of one character’s betrayal feels painfully real, and despite its personal nature, feels akin to epic tropes.

The Oathbreaker’s Shadow is a brilliant book, the first in a series of two. It deserves to become part of classic YA literature, and I highly recommend it to readers of all ages.

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Thank you to Random House of Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Omens, Kelley Armstrong

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cover-2Imagine being the only child of a multimillionaire. You volunteer at a drop in shelter, helping young women put their lives back together, and you’re engaged to a handsome young CEO with political ambitions. Then imagine finding out that you were adopted as a child and that your biological parents are notorious serial killers and are now serving life sentences.

I’m a huge fan of Kelley Armstrong’s books, and to be honest, I think the serial killer parents angle is a potent enough hook to launch a hell of a series. As the book cover suggests, however, the story has a supernatural twist to it. The first in Armstrong’s new Cainsville series, Omens has almost a Stephen King feel to it, with eerie, inexplicable things happening in a strange small town. 

When heiress Olivia Taylor Jones learns her birth parents are serial killers, she runs away from the media circus and hides in sleepy Cainsville, Illinois. Small towns are notorious for not being welcoming to outsiders, but Cainsville takes this to a whole other level, and Armstrong immediately builds a sense of everything hinging upon the town’s supernatural aura. Olivia’s arrival in Cainsville is hinted to be destiny, somewhat because of her birth parents’ mysterious link to the town.

There’s a lot going on in this novel, and Armstrong masterfully weaves all the plot threads into an atmospheric page turner. A visit to her birth mother leads Olivia to investigate her parents’ crimes with the help of her mother’s former lawyer Gabriel Walsh. Is it possible that her parents are innocent after all? At the same time, Olivia is beginning to develop strange abilities — nothing too superhero-ish but rather something so subtle one would even wonder if incidents were in fact supernatural or mere coincidences. Olivia can read signs — a black cat or a certain flower catches her eye and an old rhyme pops to her head, a rhyme that uncannily turns out to be accurate. We know that it’s supernatural because of everything else that’s happening in the book, but I can just imagine something similar happening to myself in real life and dismissing it as mere coincidence. With the popularity of much more kickass super powers, I love the subtlety of Olivia’s, and I love the sense of unease Armstrong cultivates by hinting at but never quite fully revealing the reasons behind Cainsville residents’ odd behaviour.

The mystery behind Olivia’s parents’ innocence leads to a rather elaborate plot that reaches far back into the past. As with the supernatural angle, Armstrong reveals enough to make this book end on a sort of resolution, yet with enough left to still be investigated in future volumes. 

It took me a while to warm to this book. Olivia seemed rather spoiled and naive, particularly in the first part of the book. I love that Armstrong made her twenty-four, as similar books are more often found in the YA market, with teen protagonists. At the same time however, there are times when Olivia seemed immature — when her boyfriend fails to run after her after an argument, she is devastated and thinks that proves they shouldn’t be together. She may have been right, but her reaction struck me as petulant and overly romantic, a naive young woman longing for the swelling music and dramatic embrace from the movies. Yet at other times, Olivia seems far too self-assured for twenty four. The way she negotiates with Gabriel and the confidence with which she deals with her situation are remarkable, and rather questionable considering how sheltered her life has been so far. 

Still, by the last few chapters, I was devouring the pages and postponing dinner plans as because I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. Once Armstrong delves fully into the Cainsville setting, the reader gets sucked right into an exhilarating ride. By the end of the book, I just wanted more, and I can barely wait till the next book in the series.

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Thank you to Random House of Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.