The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: High Fantasy
Ebook: 586 pages
Publisher: Hyperion Books
Release date: September 24th 2010

Series:  Seven Realms #2

Source: Purchased

Reviewed by: Tynga

Order: Amazon | Book Depository

The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

Book Stats:  

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: High Fantasy
Hardcover: 506 pages
Publisher: Hyperion Books
Release date: October 6th 2009

Series:  Seven Realms #1  

Source: Purchased

Reviewed by: Tynga

Order: Amazon | Book Depository

Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch. Reformed thief Han Alister will do almost anything to eke out a living for himself, his mother, and his sister Mari. Ironically, the only thing of value he has is something he can't sell. For as long as Han can remember, he's worn thick silver cuffs engraved with runes. They're clearly magicked—as he grows, they grow, and he's never been able to get them off. The thrilling debut in a new high fantasy trilogy, from New York Times bestselling author, Cinda Williams Chima (The Dragon Heir).

Hello Summer!
It's June, and post-Memorial Day in the U.S. which means that summer has unofficially started, at least in the northern hemisphere. School is either out or the end is in sight, and it's supposed to be warm and sunny. I live in Atlanta now, and one of the great things about living here is that while we definitely have all four season, winter generally just deals us a glancing blow. On that other hand, summers can get pretty beastly.

Which makes the height of summer the perfect time to curl up with a good book in an air conditioned house and a glass of iced tea. Come to think of it, there are no bad times to curl up with a good book, not even when the cat is sitting on it.

While my full shelf-stack is, as always, over at Reading Reality, here are a couple of teasers from this week's stack.



Cover Fire by Jess Anastasi
The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare



And speaking of teasers, the Beach Reads Giveaway Hop also just started, so hop on over to Reading Reality for a chance to enter.

The Heart of Betrayal by Mary E. Pearson

Book Stats:  

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Hardcover: 470 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Release date: July 7th, 2015

Series:  The Remnant Chronicles #2

Source: 

Reviewed by: Kara

Order: Amazon | Book Depository

Held captive in the barbarian kingdom of Venda, Lia and Rafe have little chance of escape. Desperate to save Lia's life, her erstwhile assassin, Kaden, has told the Vendan Komizar that she has the gift, and the Komizar's interest in Lia is greater than anyone could have foreseen.

Meanwhile, nothing is straightforward: There's Rafe, who lied to Lia but has sacrificed his freedom to protect her; Kaden, who meant to assassinate her but has now saved her life; and the Vendans, whom Lia always believed to be savages. Now that she lives among them, however, she realizes that may be far from the truth. Wrestling with her upbringing, her gift, and her sense of self, Lia must make powerful choices that will affect her country... and her own destiny.

I really enjoyed the transformations of our three main characters in this second story as we have unraveled who is who, assassin vs. prince, and seen how that plays into their relationships and political allegiances. Now with the Komizar in the picture, this places a third suitor for Lia's affection (or simply her political status) in play, since he decides to marry her and thereby make her a traitor to Morrighan in one fell swoop.

While Lia shows she is really in love with Rafe, she has a complicated relationship with Kaden. His betrayal of her still stings, but she sees his love of her clash with his loyalty to Venda and the Komizar, even if the latter is stronger. As the Komizar's cruelty and manipulations come to light, Kaden becomes more conflicted, especially when Lia lies to him, pretending to be more in love with him than she is though she does manage to get him to open up about his past, his parents, and his abuse, which he has never spoken about to anyone.

Rafe, too, is playing a dangerous game since he masquerades as an emissary from the Prince of Dalbreck and spins a number of lies as a desperate ploy to buy his small elite team of soldiers more time to help him and Lia escape. Meanwhile, he and Lia are also hiding their secret relationship from everyone and might at any moment be discovered for lovers not spurned enemies.

In this second book, Lia really has the opportunity to confront and explore more of her gift as well as her relationship with the true history of Venda and the Remnant, partially revealed to her by the vagabond leader Dihara. Though Venda has always been considered full of barbarians by those in other kingdoms (possibly due to their history of bloodshed and war), Lia is faced with the reality of her prejudices when she meets other Vendans like Aster and her clan who welcome Lia in light of an ancient prophecy. In meeting Aster, Eben, Calantha...the unnamed enemy has a face and is real and quite not the enemy she pictured. Instead, Lia embraces some Vendan culture and recognizes that the prophecy has tied her to the real Venda in some way, not the same cruel one ruled by the Komizar and that killed her brother and wars with her country.

With Venda being a patriarchal and violent society, both Kaden and the Komizar discount Lia's capacity for resourcefulness and brilliance, seemingly much like her own family did. As we find out, our heroine is strong, fierce, and determined to make her own choices about her future, even if everyone tries to take it away from her.

I also listened to this book on audiobook as a refresher (I'm finally getting to read book 3!), and that was very good too, even if the brief breaks to Gaudrel and the Song of Venda histories were irritating. Still one of my top favorite fantasy series! While this was a middle book, it did not disappoint! It was just as well-written and fantastic as the first. This series is very character-driven with enough satisfying world-building to keep you hooked to the end and dying for the adventure to continue.

Welcome to my very first co-hosting of Stacking the Shelves! And for those of you in the U.S., happy 3-day weekend!
My name is Marlene and I'm a biblioholic. I'm always reading, and never caught up with everything I want to read. You probably know how that goes. I've been participating in Stacking the Shelves for years, and when Tynga started recruiting for new team members, I offered to help a bit with Stacking the Shelves. I post my entire stack every Saturday, including today of course, at Reading Reality. But when I'm over here at Team Tynga, I'll just post a little teaser to whet your appetite.
Because I also suffer from abibliophobia (that's the fear of running out of things to read) my stacks are frequently a bit unwieldy. Meaning occasionally huge. (All virtual, I read ebooks)
Just a word about the co-hosting before I give you that teaser. The link-up will be here at Team Tynga, as always. The exact same link-up will also appear at Reading Reality. No matter which site you are on when you add your link, it will appear in both places.
This should be grand!
And speaking of grand things, I picked up a couple of rather grand books that I am grandly looking forward to reading in the next few weeks...

If you want to check out my full list, head on over to Reading Reality. And if you want to show off the new additions to your shelves, add your post to the link-up so we can all ooh and aah over the covers.

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

Book Stats:  

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Hardcover: 342 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release date: April 26th, 2016

Series:  The Star-Touched Queen #1

Source: 

Reviewed by: Kara

Order: Amazon | Book Depository

Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of death and destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father’s kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran’s queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar’s wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire…

But Akaran has its own secrets—thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Soon, Maya suspects her life is in danger. Yet who, besides her husband, can she trust? With the fate of the human and Otherworldly realms hanging in the balance, Maya must unravel an ancient mystery that spans reincarnated lives to save those she loves the most…including herself.

I had been wanting to read this for a while, especially as it is more diverse YA fantasy. Plus what a gorgeous cover!

I was able to listen to part of this on audiobook which was super helpful as it really brought to life the accents and the pronunciations of the Indian names which I found really beautiful and fun to memorize. For example, "Bharata" is quickened and sounds more like "Bahrta" and "Mayavati" is more like "My-ah-vath-ee". The narrators were wonderful and really brought the story to life. However, I found this book to have a lot of description and that detracted from the story. There was much use of imagery and while that was beautiful, it was almost overkill. It had so much description that it was hard to picture so many details or to allow the reader to have their own idea of the picture, especially since I was only listening to the audiobook.

Also, I kept getting sucked out of the story by how fated Amar and Maya's love was supposed to be. First, you look at him like he's saved her, awesome...but then...he seems to be more than he is and he's hiding a lot of secrets. Yet, they are supposed to be so deeply in love like epic stories of Paris and Helena of Troy. Having never been much of one to believe in love at first sight even in normal YA, this takes everything to an entire next level as Maya and Amar's love is supposed to span time (if you've watched the tv show Legends of Tomorrow, this reminds me of Kendra and Carter).  However, since Maya is virtually told nothing and mentally spinning in circles (or literally, since she is completely lost in Akaran a lot), this results in some frustration for the reader. So much of the time the reader only knows what Maya knows and since Maya is trying to figure things out...I felt as if I did too! That was super irritating.

My favorite part came when Maya met Kamala, the demon horse, towards 3/4 of the way through the book. Kamala was the first character to have a real voice and personality. With Kamala and the unpredictability of Maya being out of Akaran, the plot picked up and, while things were still confusing, at least it was interesting rather than being trope or sickeningly sweet unbelievable romance. There will still be teen readers who will like this, absolutely, and those readers who like Cassandra Clare's books might be drawn to try this novel.

The next novel Crown of Wishes focuses on Maya's little sister Gauri, who Maya was forced to leave behind in her escape from Bharata. I'm not sure I will be reading that one, honestly. Have any of you read it? What did you think?

The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman

Book Stats:  

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Hardcover: 482 pages
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Release date: December 14th, 2015

Series:  Lady Helen #1

Source: 

Reviewed by: Kara

Order: Amazon | Book Depository

New York Times bestseller Alison Goodman’s eagerly awaited new project: a Regency adventure starring a stylish and intrepid demon-hunter! 

London, April 1812. On the eve of eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall’s presentation to the queen, one of her family’s housemaids disappears-and Helen is drawn into the shadows of Regency London. There, she meets Lord Carlston, one of the few who can stop the perpetrators: a cabal of demons infiltrating every level of society. Dare she ask for his help, when his reputation is almost as black as his lingering eyes? And will her intelligence and headstrong curiosity wind up leading them into a death trap?

I loved Alison Goodman's Eon & Eona series, so I was anticipating picking up this book/series!
When you typically think of Regency romances you think of young ladies being presented into society, trying to find a good marriage, perhaps attempting to navigate social hierarchy and intrigue...usually a Jane Austen-type atmosphere that is very chaste and free of impropriety. (And I <3 austen="" jane="" p="">
This is not your typical Regency romance. Not even for teens.

Instead it takes the typical Regency romance surface and exposes a dark, dangerous underbelly full of scandal, demons, deceivers, and graphic horrors--case in point, it describes the rape of a woman by a demon and how this is what gains the demons nourishment and allows them to continue their demonic line through the woman's children. The almost virginal contrast of the Regency era and this vivid violence made this a very hard book to read, not because it wasn't really good, but because of the expectation on our heroine Helen to be both innocent and demure and then having her turn around killing demons and witnessing sexual violence. It has a lot of shock value, both to Helen and the reader. In fact, the age range for this book is supposedly 8th and up; I would have trouble as a librarian recommending this to a middle schooler...

This book also moves slower than most YA, but is still engaging, especially once Helen starts finding out secrets about herself and her family (i.e. The Dark Days Club). I really enjoyed how thoughtful Ms. Goodman was with the level of detail in describing the demons and their history, their relationship to those who, because of bloodline, are in the Dark Days Club. She also pays particular attention to historical details that rings authentic. I really hope there's more of Queen Charlotte and other big-wigs in society in the next book.

My favorite part about the book was our heroine Helen who, despite being confined by the typical Regency society/rules and having an overbearing uncle who naturally thinks women beneath his level of thinking and reasoning, an aunt who tries to moderate the uncle but still tars Helen with her sister's supposed misdeeds, and a brother who is useless at protecting her and fairly self-concerned if not a bad guy. She really doesn't have a voice among the people she should, and this is likely indicative of the time period, especially most women in society. Others reviewers have pointed this out as Helen not putting up a defense for her actions, which is sort of true, but also conventional rules don't give her one.

In case you're interested, here are a few online articles about the subject that will shed light on why, I believe, Helen does act according to society, at least until she has no choice through Mr. Carlston. For historical context (Beau Brummel), check out this post by Carolyn McDowell, "THE REGENCY IN ENGLAND – MISTRESSES, CONSORTS & CLEVER WOMEN". To read more about women and marriage in the Georgian era, read the brief excerpt by author Charlotte Betts "Women and Marriage in the Georgian and Regency Period". For more about young ladies and the importance of etiquette in the era, Maria Grace guest posts on author Kim Rendfeld's blog on "The High Stakes of Etiquette for Young Ladies in the Regency."

It isn't until close to the end of the book that Helen gets to stand out a bit and make some decisions for herself, even if they come at a hefty cost. I almost forgot the romance! What exactly is going on with her and Carlston? What will she decide in regards to the Duke of Selburn, who by all accounts is an impeccable match? I'm not sure yet...I'll have to read book 2!