Daily Deals: Starting at the end
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. $ 2.99 Amazon & Google Play
From the Jacket Copy:
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.
But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.
Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.
His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.
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Kushiel’s Avatar by Jacqueline Carey. $ 2.99 Amazon | Google Play
From the Jacket Copy:
The land of Terre d’ Ange is a place of unsurpassed beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good…and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule:
Love as thou wilt.
Phèdre nó Delaunay is a woman born with a scarlet mote in her left eye and sold into indentured servitude as a child. Her bond was purchased by a nobleman, and he was the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel’s Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.
Phèdre’s path has taken a strange and sometimes dangerous course. She has lain with princes and pirate kings, battled a wicked temptress who is still determined to win the crown at any cost, and saved two nations with her courageous actions and sacrifices. Through it all she has had the devoted swordsman Joscelin at her side, who knew from the beginning what she was. Her very nature is a torturous thing for them both, and it is a bane on their lives–but he is sworn to her and by accepting who she is, Joscelin has never violated the central precept of the angel Cassiel: to protect and serve.
But Phèdre’s plans will put his pledge to the test, for she has never forgotten her childhood friend Hyacinthe. She has spent ten long years searching for the key to free him from his eternal indenture to the Master of Straights, a bargain with the gods that he struck so that a nation could be saved; in doing so, he took Phèdre’s place as a sacrifice. She cannot forget, and she cannot forgive–herself or the gods. She is determined to seize one last hope to redeem her friend, even if it means her death.
Their search will bring Phèdre and Joscelin on a dangerous path that will carry them across the world, to fabled courts and splendid vistas, to distant lands where madness reigns and souls are currency, and down a fabled river to a land forgotten by most of the world.
And to a power so mighty that none dare speak its name.
Kushiel’s Avatar is the concluding volume in Jacqueline Carey’s evocative novels about the enigmatic Phèdre nó Delaunay; the third in a triptych of beautifully constructed historical fantasies that combine passion and danger, great battles of the sword and soul, deep eroticism, and mystical enigmas.
At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
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Forever His by Shelly Thacker. $ .99
From the Jacket Copy:
Overview
Sizzling Summer Sale! Buy all 3 Stolen Brides books today and save! (Regular price $4.99)
On New Year’s Eve, she tumbles 700 years back in time–and into the bed of a darkly handsome knight.
Sir Gaston de Varennes wanted a docile bride who would fit into his plans for vengeance and justice, but a trick of time finds him married to a thoroughly modern American lady who turns his castle, his life, and his heart upside down. Will her desperate secret tear them apart after only a few bittersweet weeks of stolen passion–or will they conquer mistrust, treachery, and time itself to discover a love that spans the centuries?
allow their stories to unfold which affords the reader a longer time to thoroughly enjoy the characters’ interactions.” In fact, this was originally published by Avon back in 1993 back when historicals, in particular, were longer and lusher.
I’ve never read this book but the BN reviewer enjoyed it!
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Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon. $ 2.99.
From the Jacket Copy:
Eleven thousand years ago a god was born. Cursed into the body of a human, Acheron spent a lifetime of shame. His human death unleashed an unspeakable horror that almost destroyed the earth. Brought back against his will, he became the sole defender of mankind. Only it was never that simple. For centuries, he has fought for our survival and hidden a past he never wants revealed. Until a lone woman who refuses to be intimidated by him threatens his very existence. Now his survival, and ours, hinges on hers and old enemies reawaken and unite to kill them both.
War has never been more deadly… or more fun.
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I’m trying to remember how far in advance of Acheron I stopped reading the series. Will I be lost? I may just buy and read at some point. Of course, I say that about most books I buy.
@Kati: The first half of Acheron is Ash’s history, which precedes anything in the other books, so you wouldn’t be lost. The first half was really good, in a gut-wrenching, ahmigahd-how-could-you kind of way.
The romance in the second half suffers from the now-I’m-famous-and-people-will-buy-any-crap-my-name-is-on problem that made me stop reading Kenyon, terminally bland and loose with the deus ex. Being lost would be the least of your problems.
But for $2.99, it might not be a total ripoff for the first half, provided you’re into sad, sad boys.
I skipped the first half of Acheron when I discovered it started before Ash was even born.
In anticipation of the release of Acheron, I started a re-read of the first books of the series and bought the others to catch up so I could come at Ash’s story with all the books fresh in my mind. Unfortunately, I broke 1 book before Ash’s book and I still haven’t picked up another of Kenyon’s stories. They’re sadly sitting in my TBR (paper book) shelf eyeing me with resentment and shame. There are some occasions where a glom is a very very bad thing I have found.
I enjoyed the Shelley Thacker, and if I’m remembering correctly the heroine was a chef who impressed people by making brownies and other delights probably not found during the time period she found herself in. Of course I read this so long ago, I’m not sure how it will stand up now.
@Ren:
This. Absolutely.
I think the reason the first half is so much better is that it was started when SK started writing the series – you can see where some paragraphs and scenes were copied and pasted from other books in the series where Ash’s history was explored.
@ Ren
Agreed. I loved the terminally sad, heartbreaking first half but the second half was a wallbanger for me. I wanted epic love for an epic badass. Sigh. I stuck it out until Bad Moon Rising (which was sadly just a rehash of Night Play from a similar POV and added nothing) but have broken up with Kenyon. I loved Acheron and I loved Nick and Kenyon turned them both into suckfests that I don’t want to waste time with. Even the YA Nick books are just a cash cow sucking in $$$ for Kenyon as they were marketed at a time when it would bank more and still no end in sight.
Off soapbox now.
@DeeCee:
So glad to know that i’m not the only one that feels this way…
I too wanted an epic love for Ash.