First Lines Friday – 07 August

August 7, 2020August 7, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here are the rules:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“The gallows had been erected in the shadow of the clock tower, partly so that the spectators could witness the executions without the nuisance of sun in their eyes, and partly so that the Tribunal could keep its killings on precise schedule. Order in all things, that was the Tribunal’s motto.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

Blog Tour Review: The Hollow Gods by A.J. Vrana

July 31, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads7 Comments

I’m back with another blog tour and it’s my first one with The Storytellers on Tour for The Hollow Gods by A.J. Vrana. Thanks to the Timy & Justine for organising this tour and thanks to Parliament House Press and A.J. Vrana for the free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Be sure to click on the banner below to check out the rest of the bloggers on tour!

Goodreads: The Hollow Gods (The Chaos Cycle Duology #1)
Publisher: The Parliament House
Publication Date: 28 July 2020
Genre: Paranormal Horror, Fantasy, New Adult
Panda Rating:

A perfect story for contemporary fantasy readers who love their narratives razor-sharp and their secrets dark and deadly.

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret.
For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker—an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

When Kai wakes up next to the lifeless body of a recently missing girl, his memory blank, he struggles to clear his already threadbare conscience.
Miya, a floundering university student, experiences signs that she may be the Dreamwalker’s next victim. Can she trust Kai as their paths collide, or does he herald her demise?
And after losing a young patient, crestfallen oncologist, Mason, embarks on a quest to debunk the town’s superstitions, only to find his sanity tested.

A maelstrom of ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Can three unlikely heroes put aside their fears and unite to confront a centuries-old evil? Will they uncover the truth behind the fable, or will the cycle repeat?

Blog Tour Review: Resurrection Men by David Craig

July 29, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads3 Comments

I’m back with another blog tour and this time it’s for Resurrection Men by David Craig. Thanks to Rachel @ Rachel’s Random Resources for organising this blog tour and to the author for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Be sure to click on the banner below to check out the rest of the bloggers on tour!

Goodreads: Resurrection Men (Sooty Feathers #1)
Release Date: 31 August 2018
Genre: Gothic Horror, Fantasy, Paranormal
Panda Rating:

Glasgow 1893. Wilton Hunt, a student, and Tam Foley, a laudanum-addicted pharmacist, are pursuing extra-curricular careers as body snatchers, or ‘resurrection men’, under cover of darkness. They exhume a girl’s corpse, only for it to disappear while their backs are turned. Confused and in need of the money the body would have earnt them, they investigate the corpse’s disappearance. They discover that bodies have started to turn up in the area with ripped-out throats and severe loss of blood, although not the one they lost. The police are being encouraged by powerful people to look the other way, and the deaths are going unreported by the press. As Hunt and Foley delve beneath the veneer of respectable society, they find themselves entangled in a dangerous underworld that is protected from scrutiny by the rich and powerful members of the elite but secretive Sooty Feathers Club.

Meanwhile, a mysterious circus arrives in the middle of the night, summoned as allies to help avenge a betrayal two centuries old…

Buy: Elsewhen Press | Amazon (UK) | Amazon (US)

Blog Tour Review: Knightmare Arcanist by Shami Stovall

July 16, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

Hey, hey friends! I’m so excited to be back for another @WriteReads blog tour for Knightmare Arcanist. This was such a fun and fast-paced read and I’m so glad this was put on my radar because of this tour 😍 Be sure to check out all the other bloggers participating in this tour over here.

Super big thanks to Dave for organising the tour and to the author, Shami Stovall, for the free copy in exchange for an honest review! Let’s get to it…

Goodreads: Knightmare Arcanist (Frith Chronicles #1)
Publisher: Capital Station Book
Published: 18 June 2019
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Panda Rating:

Magic. Sailing. A murderer among heroes.
Gravedigger Volke Savan wants nothing more than to be like his hero, the legendary magical swashbuckler, Gregory Ruma. First he needs to become an arcanist, someone capable of wielding magic, which requires bonding with a mythical creature. And he’ll take anything—a pegasus, a griffin, a ravenous hydra—maybe even a leviathan, like Ruma.

So when Volke stumbles across a knightmare, a creature made of shadow and terror, he has no reservations. But the knightmare knows a terrible secret: Ruma is a murderer out to spread corrupted magic throughout their island nation. He’s already killed a population of phoenixes and he intends to kill even more.

In order to protect his home, his adopted sister, and the girl he admires from afar, Volke will need to confront his hero, the Master Arcanist Gregory Ruma.

A fast-paced fantasy with magical creatures for those who enjoy the Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera series) by Jim Butcher, Unsouled (Cradle Series) by Will Wight, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan.

Buy a copy: Amazon

First Lines Friday – 03 July

July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“It is better to be a coward than a corpse.
The phrase was a cacophonous jingle in Tillie Pembroke’s mind.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

Book Spotlight: The End of Magic by Mark Stay

July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads2 Comments

Hi everyone, today is my stop on the blog tour for The End of Magic by Mark Stay and I’ll be sharing a spotlight for this SFF standalone novel! Special thanks to Heather Fitt from Overview Media for asking me to be part of this blog tour and to the author for providing a copy. Don’t forget to check out the other bloggers on tour!

Goodreads: The End of Magic
Publication Date: 07 February 2019
Publisher: Unbound Digital
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy

Two powerful mages. One steeped in privilege, the other bound by a moral code. Their world is thrown into chaos by the end of magic.

‘What will you do when the magic is gone?’
Sander Bree is a royal mage. He lives an easy life advising the king on matters of court and politics, yet he still complains that he’s stuck in a rut.
Rosheen Katell is a wandering mage and, with Anzu her griffin, she’s worked hard to build a reputation as a trustworthy truth seer. She never lies, never kills.
Very soon, their magic will be gone. A cataclysmic event will change their lives and world forever.
Sander must keep a promise that would have been difficult enough with magic, but is a suicide mission without it.
Rosheen is forced to side with a murderous warlord, and her once-solid principles are tested and found wanting. Both will be set against one another in a war unlike anything the world has seen before, in this sweeping fantasy of magic’s ending.

A stand alone fantasy novel for fans of Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch.

Amazon US | Amazon UK

Goodreads Monday – The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind

June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Welcome back to Goodreads Monday! This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it. Easy enough, right? Feel free to join in if you want to! I’ll be using a random number generator to pick my books from my insanely long GR Want-to-read list.

This week’s featured book is The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind by Jackson Ford. This is book one in The Frost Files series and has a 3.67 rating on Goodreads!

Top 5 Saturday: Books I Need to Finish!

June 20, 2020June 20, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads25 Comments

We’re back with another Top 5 Saturday! Just in case you don’t know Top 5 Saturday is a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and it’s where we list the top five books (they can be books on your TBR, favourite books, books you loved/hated) based on the week’s topic. You can see the upcoming schedule at the end of my post 🙂 This week’s topic is actually: books I’d give a second chance.

But as we know by now I don’t normally DNF books for a number of reasons but mostly guilt. Most of the time I power through that baddie and just “get it over with” (which also doesn’t sound great), but that’s also a longer discussion for another time! So since I don’t have (m)any DNFs to choose from, I decided to dig deep into memory banks and recall the books that I have put to the side but am determined to (eventually) finish!

As a mood reader, it can be pretty tough to stick to a book when my mood is swinging wildly all over the place. It doesn’t happen often because most of the time I settle into a book/story and I end up really enjoying the read and my moods quickly “calm down”… But when my moods are particularly erratic, I usually end up jumping through at least 5-10 books until I find one I can handle (this is making me sound insane, right? Lol). Most of these were put down because my mood just wouldn’t comply and I ended up repeatedly re-reading passages until I decided it’s not for now. Without any more waffling, here we go:

Book Spotlight: Crossing in Time by D.L. Orton

June 18, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads5 Comments

Hi everyone, I’ve joined the @WriteReads gang on another tour and this time it’s for: Crossing in Time by D.L. Orton! Today I’ll be sharing a spotlight of the book. Huge thanks goes to Dave for organising these tours. Don’t forget to check out the other bloggers on tour here.

Goodreads: Crossing in Time (Between Two Evils #1)
Publication Date: 21 April 2015
Publisher: Rocky Mountain Press
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance

The past isn’t over, it’s an opening. The future isn’t hidden, it’s a trap. If she ever wants to see him again, she’ll have to take the risk.

Fall into this “Funny, Romantic & Harrowing” (Publishers Weekly Starred Review) dystopian love story and prepare to encounter a finicky time machine, a mysterious seashell, and a very clever dog (some sex, some swearing, some violence, but no vampires and absolutely NO ditzes!)

When offered a one-way trip to the past, Isabel sacrifices everything for a chance to change the rapidly deteriorating present–and see her murdered lover one last time. When she arrives twenty years in the past, buck naked and mortally wounded, she has 24 hours to convince a stunned but enraptured nineteen-year-old to change their future. Definitely easier said than done, as success means losing him to a brainy, smart-mouthed bombshell (her younger self), and that’s a heart breaker, save the world or not.

This offbeat tale is about falling madly in love when one is too cynical for such things, letting go of pessimism when it’s the last life jacket on a sinking ship, and racing against the clock when one doesn’t have the proper footwear. It’s a coming-of-age story for old fogeys, a how-to-make-love guide for diehard celibates, and a laugh-out-loud tragedy with a hopeful twist.

Goodreads Monday – Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

April 13, 2020April 13, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

It’s the first Goodreads Monday of 2020, friends! This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it. Easy enough, right? Feel free to join in if you want to! I’ll be using a random number generator to pick my books from my insanely long GR Want-to-read list.

This week’s featured book is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I’m still not sure why I haven’t read this yet since I’m a big fan of Gaiman’s books. I’ve never read anything by Pratchett though so I’m curious about what I’ll think of this book in the end. This urban fantasy has a 4.25 star average with 499k+ ratings and 25.4k+ reviews, which is pretty wow!