kiwigirl reads. . . .

Synopsis:   Necromancer Eric Carter returns home to Los Angeles looking for answers following the brutal murder of his sister. He figures it’s the least he can do after abandoning her fifteen years earlier. After reconnecting with old acquaintances and crossing paths with powerful gangsters — both alive and dead — he soon realizes his return was never mere chance.  Review: Published in 2013, this was a more recent read for me, and I was pleasantly surprised. It’s one of the better urban fantasy books I’ve read in a while. I’m also a sucker for a Chris McGrath cover, so that definitely didn’t hurt either. There are about nine books in the series so far so it is nice to know there are quite a few to get onto in the future. Dead Things is a dark, gritty noir-style urban fantasy packed with intriguing magic and necromancy. There is plenty of violence and action, and just the right amount of grim humour and sarcasm. It has a very fast-moving feel to the story that kept me engaged ...

The Great American Read from PBS is an eight part series exploring the power of reading. 100 books were chosen as the top 100 most-loved novels in America. PBS conducted a survey asking Americans to name their favorite fiction novel and around 7,200 people participated.  You can find out more about the series, books and how they were chosen on the official website . Here is a list of the 100 books chosen: 1984 - George Orwell A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving A Separate Peace - John Knowles A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho Alex Cross Mysteries (Series) - James Patterson Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie And Then There Were None - Agatha Chistie Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery Another Country - James Baldwin Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand Beloved - Toni Morrison Bless Me, Ultima - Ruldolf...

Premise: Good girl librarian, Jane Madison, has a few problems  - she has been passed over for a raise she deserved and is generally unlucky in love . That is until she  finds a hidden room filled with ancient spell books. Soon she's got a feline familiar and is irresistible to men. On the other hand she is also under investigation for misuse of magic. But Jane's having too much fun to stop. After all, no one ever said being a witch was easy… Review (Cross-posted on Goodreads) I got this free from the Book View Cafe Instafreebie Giveaway. They have a few books that are being offered for free by the authors and I went there to get a specific book and then this one caught my eye. I thought it sounded interesting, I like my noir Urban Fantasy but I also like a little happy fluff sometimes too. I started reading it as soon as I downloaded it and was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed it and it's one of the few free books that I can say that about. It was well written, engaging an...

Good news from one of my favorite authors recently. Chaz Brenchley has re-released his Northern Lights duology on Amazon. It's hard to believe but the first one - Dead of Light is 21 years old and the follow up Light Errant is 19 years old. They have snazzy new covers and all. Below is his post from Facebook which I have shared here. You can follow the link to the original. I reviewed Dead of Light a while back on this blog so you can also check that out here . Chaz Brenchley via Facebook: People, you won't believe this, but it's been twenty-one years since the first publication of DEAD OF LIGHT. (My baby's old enough to drink legally in America! Snf!) In due celebration of which, we have published new anniversary editions of both DEAD OF LIGHT and his nineteen-year-old baby brother LIGHT ERRANT, both with lovely new covers by Layla Lawlor. At the moment these are technically Amazon-only, because reasons. However, I do have epub and pdf editions ava...

Not every fairy-tale needs a Prince Charming. When a troll no one else can see attacks her outside the bar on her 30th birthday, Caitlin Moore thinks someone spiked her drink. It isn’t until a team of faeries rescues her and reveals that she has a special Gift that she realizes it’s something worse: she’s just become the star of her own twisted fairy-tale. Her newly awakened Gift of the Warding makes her immune to fae magic, something unheard of in a human. Her rescuers are exiled enemies of the High King who has allowed bestial creatures like the troll to cross the boundary that separates their worlds. They promise to right the King’s wrongs, but first they need her Gift to find the key to breaking their banishment. Unable to a turn blind eye to the danger she now sees in every shadow, Caitlin dives headfirst into their world of crazy. In return for her help they teach her to fight back against the nasties, but she isn’t prepared for the thrill she feels on t...

For those of you who don't live on the internet or twitter like I do you may not have heard - they are making ' The Mortal Instruments ' book series by Cassandra Clare into a TV series called ' Shadowhunters . Wait! Wasn't that a movie? I hear you say. Yes they made it into a movie staring Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower but if you actually went and saw it you will know the problem. It was just not good. They certainly tried but so much was left out and a lot was not explained or explained too much. I was left very disappointed.  Because it did not do very well, plans for the follow up movie have been pushed back and it looks like it will never happen now. Can't say I'm that worried about the decision. What they have done is decided to start again from scratch on TV. The show is from ABC Family and they are casting at the moment. Most of the leads have been announced - here is the link to the Facebook page if you are interested - https://www.f...

Good News! This year I did it, I reached my goal of 50 books for the Goodreads Challenge! I actually went over it by one, so even better.  You might remember in 2013 I was a bit disappointed because I only managed to get to 45. I was so close.  I definitely think I've made a good effort in the past year, I also re-read a few old books and tried some short stories, these ones I didn't count in my overall numbers so I know I read even more than what I set out to do. I have set my 2015 goal to 50 again. I only just reached it so I don't want to push it too much and not be able to achieve the goal. I think 50 is a good number to ensure that I don't get too far off track and just spend all my time watching TV.  My friend sent me this list from the website 9gag.com . I think it sounds like fun so I might try and fit my books into this also. I have put a copy of the list from the website below in case you are interested. The link to the arti...

I have been meaning to put this post up for a bit but am as usual behind. I was very lucky to win a signed Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of the last Lotus War book - Engsinger by Jay Kristoff.  It's my first ARC - exciting. I have not actually had a chance to read it yet. I haven't read the second one in the trilogy so need to get that finished first. I am planning to do a review on the first one Stormdancer in the near future. Endsinger is out now so if you are looking for something a bit different then check it out, the series is kind of steampunk/fantasy set in feudal Japan. I would also recommend you check out Jay Kristoff's blog , he is an Australian author and a funny guy. The blog site is http://misterkristoff.wordpress.com/. This is where I won the ARC from, it was a worldwide competition which was great for me as I live in an obscure part of the world. Also came with a nifty bookmark

It's officially November which means it is the first day of National Novel Writing Month (Well it is here in South Korea, you might have to wait a few hours if you live on the other side of the world). I have written about this for the past two years. It's a time for you to challenge yourself to write that novel that you have been thinking about forever. All over the world people are committing themselves to the challenge of writing 50,000 words. There are huge online communities in different areas that are set up to make the solitary life of writing a bit more social. They have write-ins at local cafes, word games both online and in meetup groups and many other activities aimed at socializing but also getting your word count up.  If you have never heard of it before I would suggest you check out their website . It has all the information you need. You can find out if there is a writers group near you (there probably is) and get started. If you have al...

I wanted to share the new trailer for the Morganville Web Series that will be coming out soon. I just watched it and it looks really good. Very true to the books. I think that by going the Kickstarter and webseries route, Rachel Caine, the author was able to keep more of a hand in what was happening. Usually when these books get sold to movie producers they change things and very often screw up the casting just to get someone who has a name that will sell. I really enjoy Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampire series of books. I think it was a great fresh idea with good characters and plot lines. I have not finished the series yet but will do in the future. In the meantime I will be checking out the series as soon as it becomes available. You can also go to the website  http://www.morganvilletheseries.com/ to find out more about the series. A while ago I reviewed the first book in the series, you can check it out here . 

Just thought I would write a quick update, I have not been writing much here lately but that is nothing new. You will see however that I have been better in my reading this year so far, I am 31 books in to my Goodreads Reading Challenge of 50 books. I think this year I will be able to complete it. I am trying to make sure I put some time aside each week to do a bit of reading. I also recently took a course on Creative Writing though the Gotham Writers website, they have courses in New York but they also offer an extensive online catalog. I did the introductory course Creative Writing 101 which is just a six week course, very low pressure and basic for beginners or people just getting back into writing. I really enjoyed it, I was not really sure where to start or what to do so this was the perfect introduction for me. There was good information about lots of different writing styles and key ideas, there were weekly assignments but they were very small and I found them interesting...

Well, I am disappointed to report that I did not quite reach my goal for 2013. And while I am sad about this as I was really close to getting to 50 books, I am still pretty happy to get what I did done. My final count for the year was 45 books. Considering that most of these were read in November and December I think I did OK. I was really pushing it at the end, the last book I read on the 31st and I read it in one day because at that stage I knew I was not going to make it to 50 books so I at least wanted to make 45. So I have made the same challenge for this year. I am sticking to 50 books again, I think that a good number and I am starting earlier. I think I started in March last year so this gives me more time to get orgainsed and hopefully get a jump on things. I do have two books I have not finished from last year that I need to finish quickly as they do not count towards my 2014 goal.

This year I started off the year knowing that I was not going to be very good at keeping up with my blogging, it's really hard to keep the momentum running from the initial start up of the blog when it's all new and exciting. That being said I knew I wanted to keep it going and I hope that I can continue to blog about the books that I love when inspiration and time permits. Knowing how bad I had been at the reading challenges last year I decided to only do one this year and that one was just the Goodreads Reading Challenge where you set yourself a goal. I even made it a much more realistic goal than the 100 of 2012 which of course I did not even get anywhere near. I settled on 50, thinking that would be an easily achievable number, when I think about how many books I used to read in a year this is laughable but with the invention of TV on the internet I have to say my dedication to books is not what it used to be. At the start of this month I was startled to realize tha...

Well it's November again and as such time for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. This is the time when people all over the world challenge themselves to write 50,000 words. If you are interested in finding out more you can visit the website at www.nanowrimo.org . Best of luck to those involved for 2013 and if you did not get a chance to do it this year why not start thinking about it for next year.

Kiwi Eleanor Catton won the Man Booker Prize for 2013 becoming the youngest author to win, she is 28 years old. Her novel The Luminaries is also the longest book to win the award. This is a great honor for any author and it's awesome to see a fellow New Zealander doing well in the world. 'The Luminaries ' is a mystery set in the West Coast of New Zealand during the Gold Rush of the 19th Century. Follow this link for a full article about the win and to watch Eleanor Catton's acceptance speech on Stuff.co.nz . For another good article about the Man Booker Prize, the other nominees and a more in depth description of 'The Luminaries',   The Telegraph has a good article here .

There are a few movies coming up that are based on supernatural/fantasy/science fiction books that I wanted to mention.  Books from these genres especially the YA ones are now regularly becoming fodder for the Hollywood engine as more and more of them either make it to the big screen or to TV (I guess we can thank Twilight for that - if for nothing else).  I generally prefer the TV series because they are longer so get to tell the story in more depth but I also think that movies often stick more to the plot of the book than TV does.  This is probably for the exact same reason why I like TV more, it's length - when you have to fill so much more time you often have to add filler characters and story lines in order to keep it interesting and not overwork your main actors too much. I really like seeing books that I have read come to life, I do prefer it with ones that are a bit older and have had time to reach a good audience   I don't really see the point o...

Omens: A Cainsville Novel By Kelley Armstrong Release Date: August 20, 2013 Synopsis from Goodreads : Twenty-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. Aided by her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel Walsh, Olivia focuses on the Larsens’ last crime, the one her birth mot...

Fin & Lady: A Novel By Cathleen Schine Release Date: July 9, 2013 Synopsis from  The Book Depository : From the author of "The Three Weissmanns of Westport," a wise, clever story of New York in the '60s It's 1964. Eleven-year-old Fin and his glamorous, worldly, older half sister, Lady, have just been orphaned, and Lady, whom Fin hasn't seen in six years, is now his legal guardian and his only hope. That means Fin is uprooted from a small dairy farm in rural Connecticut to Greenwich Village, smack in the middle of the swinging '60s. He soon learns that Lady--giddy, careless, urgent, and obsessed with being free--is as much his responsibility as he is hers. So begins "Fin & Lady," the lively, spirited new novel by Cathleen Schine, the author of the bestselling "The Three Weissmanns of Westport." Fin and Lady lead their lives against the background of the '60s, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War--Lady pur...

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Neil Gaiman Release Date: June 18, 2013 Synopsis from Goodreads : THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac - as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly's wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark, from storytelling genius Neil Gaiman.  It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it.  His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang. From kiwigirl: I love what I have read of Neil Gaiman so fa...

The Willows  Plot Overview: Evelyn Magwire used to have it all, a happy family, great friends and a loving boyfriend. After her parents are killed in an accident things just keep getting worse and worse for Evelyn. Her grief isolates her from her friends and remaining family and it’s not until another tragedy strikes that she is forced to pull herself together. When one of her brothers goes missing in mysterious circumstances Evie finds that she is the only one who believes he is still out there and wants to track down the truth. Her enquiry leads her to The Willows – what was her brother doing out there, could he really be a killer, and what dark secrets are hiding in the chilled and deserted woods? Evie finds herself pulled deeper and deeper into a new world of darkness where it’s hard to tell who is friend and who is foe. In the end Evie must make a choice – will she give in to temptation and even if she can resist, will she ever be the same again? What I thoug...