Monthly Archives: October 2016

Review of Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things by Martina McAtee

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So I have been quiet with my reviews of late because I have been reading Children Shouldn’t play with Dead Things by Martina McAtee. Coming in around 500 pages (device depending) it’s not a light or quick read!  
We start by being introduced to 17 year old Ember, who has just lost her father.  She works in the local funeral home and spends more time with the dead than the living.  We are then introduced to Mace, sent to watch Ember but he has no idea why which irks him.  We then meet Kai and Tristin, Embers forgotten and estranged cousins.  All of them come together for an event that will change them forever, although for some it isn’t immediately clear to what degree.
Ember discovers that she is part of a family of Reapers, collectors of souls to help them cross to the other side.  She is brought to her cousin’s home, which she discovers is home to the Belladonna Wolf Pack, with the fiesty Isa as Alpha.  A home for strays of sorts from the human, Fae, reaper and shifter community.  They live and work together and for the most part all is well, until the gravity of Kai’s actions when he met Ember really come to fruition.  Strange things start happening, zombies are found roaming and everyone is keeping secrets from each other of varying magnitude.  Ember struggles to understand how she became so hidden from this world she finds herself in and everyone she meets has a different side of the tale to tell – none of them really ending particularly well.  One things for certain, Ember is powerful and her ability to control it comes from an unlikely source.
Whilst this is going on we have several relationships forming, again with varying degrees of success, but despite this being a YA PNR I didn’t find the romance aspect too much or out of context with the story.
So did I enjoy it?  I have mulled it over for a while and I have to say that I did, there were times that I really couldn’t put it down and I got completely immersed in the story but it took me some time to get there.  There are a lot of characters and chapters are from 4 different POV’s which took me some time to get my head round.  But I don’t mind multiple POV’s I think that they really help get every side of the story told, I just hate when there are so many characters that I can’t remember who everyone is from chapter to chapter.  I think that’s where my hesitance lies, I don’t like being pulled out of a story, which this did.
The story is full of twists and has clearly been well researched, the cover is beautiful and captivated me long before I had the time to read it and I love the little artistic flourish at the start of each chapter. The upside of such a long story is that you really feel invested in the characters, the slow burn romances, the heartbreak at lies that are told, the fear and emotion are all made more intense by the amount of time you spend getting to know them.

This is an amazing story, which is completely immersive, with fun and feisty characters who you can really identify with if you were ever the teenager who felt they were always on the outside looking in.  Not your typical High Schoolers for a not so typical world in an unexpectedly captivating read.

Blessed Knights by Mary Ting Release Day blitz and Fraud by Casey L Bond Release Day Blitz/

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Title: The Blessed Knights
Author: Mary Ting
Genre: YA Fantasy/Paranormal
Editor: Jessica Nelson
Cover Designer: Regina Wamba at MaeIDesign & Photography
Blurb: Above a small hill lay a home.
And green men peer out under the dome.
Thirteen crisscrossing arches behold,
with angels singing must be told.
Cubes like teeth thus showed,
pierce one and the door shall glow.
Part the sea like Moses,
to see the bundle of red roses.
Only then you shall see,
what is destined to be free.
Eli, Lucia’s half-demon love interest, has been stabbed with a true-cross dagger and captured by Cyrus, master of the possessor demons. The Chosen Knights must work together once again not only to save Eli, but also to decipher a clue to find the second missing page of Jacques de Molay’s journal. Meanwhile, Uncle Davin informs Crossroads’ Divine Elders of the danger ahead and learns there is much to fear. Countless children are being taken from all over the world to be turned into demons. Michael, one of the Divine Elders, has no choice but to intervene. The Chosen Knights track down Mortem, the demon who is the key to finding Cyrus, and learn they must travel deep into the pit of a Hawaiian volcano. When they astral travel to the past in search of a clue and follow Jacques de Molay to Rosselyn Chapel in medieval Scotland, what they find will rewrite history.
Mary Ting resides in Southern California with her husband and two children. She enjoys oil painting and making jewelry. Writing her first novel, Crossroads Saga, happened by chance. It was a way to grieve the death of her beloved grandmother, and inspired by a dream she once had as a young girl. When she started reading new adult novels, she fell in love with the genre. It was the reason she had to write one-Something Great. Why the pen name, M Clarke? She tours with Magic Johnson Foundation to promote literacy and her children’s chapter book-No Bullies Allowed.
Author Links:
Buy Link:
The Angel Knights: http://amzn.to/1RyYWdZ
The Chosen Knights: http://amzn.to/1TENB2Y
The Blessed Knights: http://amzn.to/2aMemRd
Click HERE to enter!
Title: Fraud
Author: Casey L Bond
Genre: NA Paranormal
Cover Model: Ashley Caruso
Cover Designer: Cover Me Darling
Cover Photography: Nadege Richards of Vellum and Wing Photography
Editor: Stacy Sanford
Hosted by: Lady Amber’s PR
Blurb:
Every curse has a beginning.
Every curse has an end.
But no curse is fulfilled without sacrifice.
Someone has been lying to Porschia Grant—someone she loves. And the secrets withheld might spell disaster for her and the world.  Much like curses, lies can hurt. They can ruin everything.
When everything falls apart, is happily ever after even a possibility?
Hunger is deceitful.
Award-winning author Casey L. Bond resides in Milton, West Virginia with her husband and their two beautiful daughters. When she’s not busy being a domestic goddess and chasing her baby girls, she loves to write young adult and new adult fiction. You can find more information about Bond’s books via the following links: 

Zombie Crawl 3

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Zombie Crawl 3


Hello and welcome Playgrounders!  I am very honoured to be taking part in this years BOD Zombie Crawl! This is the 3rd year that this awesome event has been running but it’s the first time that I have taken a shot at hosting for a day, so I hope I do them proud.


To keep up to date with everything Crawl related and to make sure you don’t miss out on some Zombietastic flash giveaways make sure you are signed up to the Zombie Crawl event on facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1943815195845479/


I have an awesome giveaway going at the end of this post so please enter when you get there!

So we are big gamers in our bunker and the one gaming franchise that never fails to get us scared to open doors and go down dark tunnels is the Resident Evil Series (it is also my biggest guilty pleasure when it comes to films – I mean the final film has zombie dragons, it’s going to be epic).  For us, the stand out resident evil game has to be number 4, purely for it’s volume of moments when we really didn’t want to go somewhere.   I mean come on, would you want to go down a dark corridor in an abandoned medical facility where those snuflling and moaning noises were coming from?   Although in some ways they were preferable to Ashley’s insufferable shouting of “Leon” every time she was rubbish at something, which was frequent.  


Resident Evil 4 really has a bit of everything, our intrepid Leon starts in the villiage for some good old hack and slash fun, moving into the Church for some Tomb Raider worthy puzzling, to the lake for more boss battling and finally to the aforementioned medical facility. Dr. Salvador easily beats Resident Evil 3’s “Nemesis” as the most scary boss of all time in our book, the sound of a chainsaw was enough to send us into a run and hide frenzy.

We also have to tip that hat to Leon for managing to maintain perfect hair no matter what the game threw at him.

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For our Halloween delectation this year we have just downloaded the re-masted version of the original Resident Evil for PS4, lets hope it’s all we remembered it to be!  I know there may be die hard Silent Hill fans who may disagree, but in this bunker, Resident Evil rules the apocalyptic zombie roost.  Did I mention the new film has Zombie Dragons, check out the trailer – you’re welcome 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfby7XwoBl0

To make sure you don’t miss out on any of the great giveaways, make sure you crawl to every stop!

z-crawl-schedule

Zombie Crawl 3

a blog party from Band of Dystopian Authors & Fans
October 24 – 31, 2016
How it works: Each day, the scheduled authors and bloggers will post awesome zombie-tastic content for your enjoyment along with a giveaway on their site/blog/page. You can hop around to all of the participating sites and enter as many giveaways as you like! The easiest way to make sure you don’t miss a post is to join our Facebook event page, where we’ll post links each time an author or blogger participates on their scheduled day. We’ll also have several flash giveaways on the event page as well as a grand prize giveaway on BandofDystopian.com. And of course, you can use the schedule below to click through to each site. Make sure to leave comments and interact with the participating sites. Have fun, and thanks for joining the party!

The Schedule

OCTOBER 24 – Monday
Jeffrey Clare (publisher, group host)
OCTOBER 25 – Tuesday
OCTOBER 26 – Wednesday
R.L. Blalock (author)
Bryan Way (author)
OCTOBER 27 – Thursday
OCTOBER 28 – Friday
Grivante (author)
OCTOBER 29 – Saturday
Kate L. Mary (author)
Brea Behn (author)
OCTOBER 30 – Sunday
Cameo Renae (author)
J.W. Vohs (author)
OCTOBER 31 – Monday
Casey Hays (author)
Lee Ryder (author)
– – –
To learn more about Band of Dystopian and/or to enter our Grand Prize Giveaway, visit BandofDystopian.com and don’t forget to join the group on Facebook!

Giveaway

So I know i’m stepping away from the Zombie Theme but I think you will agree that this is an awesome prize that the Zombie Hoards will be clamouring to get the decaying hands on.

I recently went to London to see the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, whilst I was there I picked up for one lucky winner an official Bookmark from the Theatre Store!

To be in with a chance of winning this awesome prize just head over to the Post-Apocalyptic Playground facebook page and give me a like (I will be checking) https://www.facebook.com/postapocalypticplayground/ and then play the game below! Enter your answer in the comments and I will use random.org to chose a winner at the end of the Crawl.  This giveaway is open internationally.


Author Interview with LC Morgans

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For this weeks spotlight, we welcome LC Morgans, Author of the amazing Invasion Day Series. The 3rd book in the series, Resonant, was released this week but she still found time to take part in our interview in between all the release week fun!

Q: For those that are new to LC Morgans, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your books?

LC: I write dystopian science fiction and currently have the first three in my Invasion Day series for sale on Amazon. It’s a story set a thousand years in the future, in which humans have used and abused the planet beyond repair to both the earth itself and to society. Close to cataclysm, an alien race called the Thrakorian’s step in to save the planet, and the humans, but at a price. The human race is then enslaved to their new masters, albeit willingly, and this is the story of a young girl and her journey into adulthood beneath their reign.

Q: Are your characters always a complete work of fiction or is there an element of someone you know to start the idea rolling?

LC: They always start off as their own person of complete fictional creation, but then inevitably they end up with some traits from people I know or have come across along the way. I think those small edges make them real, as though they’re as flawed and lifelike as the reader getting to know them. I love developing elements like that within the storyline.

Q: What are your experiences of being an Indie Author, do you find that social media is a help or a distraction to your writing?

LC: I love the freedom being an Indie Author gives me, and am lucky to have some great people on my team who help me along the way and keep me excited for my projects both new and older. Social media is a massive tool in cultivating those friendships and also getting your name out there into the big, wide world. Just as long as you don’t spend too much time on them when you ought to be writing or working on your manuscript, I think they’re a great tool.

Q: In the Invasion Day series you have created a whole new race and latterly a whole new world, how do you even begin to go about creating a whole new world like that?

I started with just a simple concept of ‘what would happen if an alien species invaded Earth?’ and I simply began to imagine a future in which it’d happened, but also that they weren’t all too bad. As though our race was in desperate need of help and they stepped in, but of course with their own agenda. After that, the concept progressed naturally and as I typed I loved coming up with new ideas and elements to their race and lives away from Earth.

Q: What are you currently working on or is it a secret!?

LC: Well, I’m pleased to confirm that I’ve started writing the fourth Invasion Day book so that’ll be coming in 2017 and I’m so excited with where the story is going so far. After the epic ending of Resonant, I was excited to get started on the next one and hope I don’t disappoint!
Q: If you could be any character you have written who would you choose?

LC: Wow, well of course it has to be Kyra! She’s the strong heroine of my series and has fought hard to find her way. I also fell in love with the leading men in her life a little too!

Q: You also pen under Laura Morgan, those books are very different in content and tone, is it difficult to genre hop?

LC: Yes, they’re incredibly different! It is hard at times to genre hop as the other books are aimed at purely adults and are dark, so I’ve been bouncing around between the two depending on my current moods and which story is most prevalent in my mind. I wanted to keep the two as separate as possible, and hope I’ve managed it, even if a little romance still crept into my science fiction and I simply couldn’t fight it!

Q: You’re a regular on the UK signing circuit, what is it about signings that keep bringing you back in for more?

LC: I love the energy and experiences on the day, as well as the opportunity the signings give me to develop my readership and hopefully come away with new friends, reader and connections in the book world such as the blogs and models. Everyone is so friendly and we’ve had a great time at all of my events so far. I urge all readers to attend one if they can, not only to see their favourite writers, but also to discover new ones while they’re there.

Q: What are you currently reading?

LC: I’ve just introduced my daughter to the Harry Potter series so we’re reading them together at the moment. I read them so long ago it’s lovely having the chance to revisit some of my old favourites!
Q: Fictional Dinner Party – give me 5 fictional characters or authors who you would have as dinner companions.

LC: I guess it’d have to Harry Potter for sure, and then I’d love to invite the late Terry Pratchett so I could pick his brain about the worlds he created and impressive creatures. After that, I’d love to know what other big female heroine’s would make of Kyra so I guess it’d have to be Katniss (Hunger Games), Triss (Divergent) and then Bella (Twilight) just to see what they’d be like!

Wow, thank you so much LC Morgans for taking this time, very excited to hear that you have started writing book four in the series, I can’t wait to find out what happens next!

Review of Resonant by LC Morgans

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We pick up just where we left off at the end off at the end of Autonomy and begin to deal with Kyra’s struggle of not only dealing with the complete demise of Earth but also that she must suffer in silence, literally, as the task of not being discovered aboard the Thrakorian mothership must take priority.  With only a usually absent Thrayke as an outlet for her outpouring of grief, Kyra’s once agile and analytical mind starts to stall, but the end of their journey is in sight.  Despite having the HEA all planned out, risks need to be taken unexpectedly which leads to disastrous consequences for Kyra.  Whilst she arrives on Thrakor undetected by King Kronus, it’s fair to say her arrival is far from safe and Thrayke is unknowingly on a race against time…..


So LC Morgans has done it again, given us a book so full of twists that you’re head is left spinning!  At about ¾ way through i realised that there had already been so many plot twists that I had no idea where the book could go next.  The tone and pace of the book was constantly changing in surprising and unexpected ways.  Kyra’s physical and mental presence is pushed to every one of its limits, sometimes uplifting, often punishing, I have to admit that I did have an ugly cry moment, which I don’t have often!  

There is so much I want to say about this book and I know it is unusual for me to be so brief in my reviews but if I say any more I’m sure to inadvertently give something away.  This series really does go from strength to strength although be warned, there is the mother of all cliffhangers coming your way!

Review of Wicked Path (Daath Chroinicles #2) by Eliza Tilton

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Following on from broken forest, we continue with the adventures of Avikar, his sister Jeslyn and against all odds, Lucino.  


Jeslyn has gone to stay with her grandfather next to the sea and fills her days searching for shells and making goods to sell, however, she can’t let go of the necklace given to her by Lucino, which she continues to wear secretly.   Avikar prepares to take a treacherous journey with Raven and her old friend Cael, across the mountains, bringing him face to face with creatures he could never have imagined all whilst being chased by the vengeful Lucy.


Lucino pines for Jeslyn whilst back home in Mirth and sets about defying his family to see her, the necklace she covets becoming a beacon for Lucino.  Can she forgive him or learn to accept him for his true self?


A kidnapping leads Jeslyn to embark on just as treacherous a journey as Avikar’s, and whilst both strive to reach their goal the threat of an oncoming war shakes them to the core.


This is a story which is very much a prelude to bigger things to come, although there are set pieces throughout, there is a lot going on to set things up as the story continues. It’s by no means a dull read, plenty of information to take in and friendships and bonds are forged.   Lucino and Jeslyn’s tale continues to captivate, and I have to say that although Avikar’s journey is clearly crucial, I found myself wanting to get back to the chapters between Lucino and Jeslyn.  I love that Jeslyn is becoming a force to be reckoned with and Lucino continues to be the antihero you just can’t help but love


That saying, there is clearly something about Avikar and his family which is special, their heritage in this regard is silent but all roads point to something greater in my view


Another great read and intriguing follow up to Broken Forest.

Review of Broken Forest (Book 1 in the Daath Chronicles) by Eliza Tilton

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Broken Forest is a proper fantasy read, I have missed pure fantasy recently as it so often becomes diluted into paranormal, but this was a welcome surprise.  


Set in the world of Tarrtainya, we start in the simple farm life of our hero Avikar and his family.  Still haunted by the loss of his younger brother, he is pulled by a sense of family duty to be the one to recover his older sister, Jeslyn, following her kidnap.  He sets off with his best friend Derrick on the path to rescue.   The question is though, does Jeslyn really want to be rescued?  The enigmatic Lucino is her captor turned suitor, but all is not as it seems as Lucino hides a dark secret.  Caught up in the world of riches and finery though, Jeslyn seems to be oblivious to anything out of the ordinary in her new home.  Will Avikar and Derrick get to her in time to reveal all?  Lands of myth are ready to be explored and some unlikely alliances are formed along the way, be prepared to end up rooting for the one you shouldn’t though!


I really liked the writing style of this book the chapters are short and punchy, a style that really pulls you into wanting to keep on reading, even when you desperately need to stop and go to sleep!  Never have I said “just one more chapter” so much.  The book is written from 3 different POV’s which may seem too much, but whilst initially a bit much, it soon settles into an easy flow.  The multiple POV’s aren’t clumsy or confusing and the characters are easy going and likeable.   Although young, they are not full of angst and the romantic sub plot is clean.  

There has been a lot of attention to detail as well, there is some beautiful formatting which really sets this book apart from others I have read recently.  Altogether a light and fun read, I have already started book 2!