Happy Thursday, friends! I’m super excited to be shining a spotlight on one of my favourite fantasy/mythology reads: The Goddess of Nothing at All by Cat Rector. I first discovered this book when I signed up to read it for a tour in 2021 and was immediately wrecked by the story—the characters, the emotion, the angst—it all got me so good in the feels and I remember sobbing by the end of it. I was so excited and happy to see it get more recognition when it placed second in the 2022 BBNYA!
About BBNYA
BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 15 finalists and one overall winner. If you are an author and wish to learn more about the BBNYA competition, you can visit the official website or Twitter. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the @Foliosociety (if you love beautiful books, you NEED to check out their website!) and the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads.
Happy Saturday, friends! Today I’m excited to share my review for Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani, the third finalist of the 2022 BBNYA! I read this book as part of the BBNYA Finalist Blog Tour hosted by The Write Reads.
Special thanks to the tour organisers for having me on tour and to the author for providing a digital copy of the book in exchange for an honest review!
About BBNYA
BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 15 finalists and one overall winner. If you are an author and wish to learn more about the BBNYA competition, you can visit the official website or Twitter. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the @Foliosociety (if you love beautiful books, you NEED to check out their website!) and the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads.
The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the powerful and corrupt Arch Mage Wilhelm Blackflame.
When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges, it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.
⚠️CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS
Death of parent, mild xenophobia, violence, blood, imprisonment, torture
TL;DR: This is my first book by Khanani and I can see why so many of my blogger friends love her writing and her books. There was so much to enjoy about this novella and the author does a good job of teasing elements of a world that I’m hoping will be further expanded in the next book. The characters are a rich mix of different cultures and I also enjoyed the paranormal fantasy setting. We’ve got the typical vampires, werewolves and shapeshifters, but also other supernaturals that I’ve not read about before, combined with an interesting magic system that I’m looking forward to understanding more of. Overall, I thought this was an intense, action-packed novella that excited me for the next book in this series and I want to read it ASAP!
In less than 200 pages, Sunbolt takes us on a whirlwind adventure with plenty of action and magic. Our MC is Hitomi, an orphaned teen who is strong-willed, honourable and willing to fight and sacrifice to see justice prevail. It was so easy to root for Tomi and to want to see her get free of her various captors throughout the read. One thing is for sure, she’s not the “weak young thing” that people perceive her to be and she’s definitely not someone who’s easily defeated! I loved her grit and strength of character and despite hiding a huge life-changing secret and encountering fearful monsters she’s only ever briefly encountered before, she doesn’t let that fear stop her from taking action and using her brain. This determination combined with her big heart was something that I also really loved about her!
There’s a big cast of side characters that we briefly meet along the way and there were some I loved (Hotaru!), some I strongly disliked and wanted to give a good shake to (IFYKYK), and others that I was very curious about (Val, Mistress Stormwind), but they mostly existed to move things along in this novella. I hope that we return to and get to learn more about many of them in the next book because I loved the levity of their humour and the lightness of their interactions with Tomi.
I think what would’ve made this book stronger is better world-building. I appreciated the rich mix of cultures and the diversity of the characters—from Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and the West (from what I can tell), but what was lacking was a clear history and geographical understanding of this world. I don’t know if this Karolene and the other lands have already been established in a previous book/series but we’re kind of thrown into it without much context. We do get drops of information further in the read about historical conflicts, mages and different types of magic, as well as other supernaturals, but it’s very minimal. This is a book that would’ve benefitted from having a map available at the start, but I appreciate that the author provided a short pronunciation guide (although I found it funny that the first word after said guide wasn’t included in it and it would’ve been great if it was! 😂). The world-building we got was enough to pique my interest though and the need to know more drove me to keep reading.
Overall, I thought that this was a great first book and I’m looking forward to continuing Hitomi’s story. I’m also really looking forward to reading more by Khanani cos their writing has an intense but wonderfully compelling quality that made me want to keep reading.
Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. She has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah, on the coast of the Red Sea. Intisar used to write grants and develop projects to address community health and infant mortality with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy. She is the author of The Sunbolt Chronicles, and the Dauntless Path novels, beginning with Thorn.
Hello, friends! I’m back with another The Write Reads blog tour post for you today and it’s a spotlight for TheMeeting Point by Olivia Lara! There are so many wonderful reviews that you can find here and I hope that you do check them out if the plot piques your interest 😊
Goodreads: The Meeting Point Publisher: Aria Fiction Publish Date: 02 September 2021 Genre: Contemporary Romance
What if the Lift driver who finds your cheating boyfriend’s phone holds the directions to true love?
‘Who are you and why do you have my boyfriend’s phone?’
‘He left it in my car. You must be the blonde in the red dress? I’m the Lift driver who dropped you two off earlier.’
And with these words, the life of the brunette and t-shirt wearing Maya Maas is turned upside down. Having planned to surprise her boyfriend, she finds herself single and stranded in an unknown city on her birthday.
So when the mystery driver rescues Maya with the suggestion that she cheers herself up at a nearby beach town, she jumps at the chance to get things back on track. She wasn’t expecting a personalised itinerary or the easy companionship that comes from opening up to a stranger via text, let alone the possibility it might grow into something more…
Come on this 5* journey to love, laughter and back again, perfect for fans of Mhairi McFarlane, Josie Silver and Sally Thorne.
His name is Farden. They whisper that he’s dangerous. Dangerous is only the half of it. A spellbook has gone missing from the libraries of Arfell – a very old and extremely powerful spellbook from the time of dark elves and demons. Five scholars are dead, the magick council is running out of time and options, and the Arka is once again on the brink of war with the Siren dragon-riders. It falls to Farden the Written mage to keep the world from falling into chaos. Entangled in a web of lies and politics, Farden must recover the spellbook before an ancient enemy rises, even if it takes journeying halfway across icy Emaneska and back. In his fight for answers, Farden will unearth a secret that not only shakes the foundations of his world, but threaten the entire future of Emaneska. Sorcery, death, drugs and the deepest of betrayals await. Welcome to Emaneska.
Earlier this year, Noly @The Artsy Reader asked me if I wanted to join the biggest ever blog tour organized by Dave @TheWriteReads for the author Ben Galley, and I got so excited because I’ve never participated in one before so of course, I said YES and I’m so glad I did! There were four books to choose from and they all sounded great, but I decided to go with Galley’s debut: The Written. I haven’t read a fantasy yet in 2019, so I wasn’t really sure if I was in the right mood to read this or if I’d enjoy it, but holy wow, I loved this book! This book has everything that makes fantasy fun: adventure, raging asshole bad guys, magic, vampires, werewolves, elves, gods and daemons, mythical creatures, and best of all: DRAGONS. It reminded me of all the reasons why I love fantasy so much and diving back into the fantasy world felt a bit like coming home.
As this is the first book of the Emaneska series, there’s obviously plenty of worldbuilding. I thought Galley did a great job at describing the different regions of Emaneska, the cities/villages, the magick, and the creatures, and I felt myself becoming fully immersed in all the scenes. We also get to learn a bit more of Emaneska’s history through epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, which I really enjoyed. I did find though that the pace tended to dip a little at times because it could get very descriptive. The story itself was pretty fast paced, especially the last 50% of the book, and a lot happens in a very short amount of time.
You know that moment you think you know who the bad guy is, but then you think that’s too obvious, so then you become suspicious of someone else, and then everything starts playing out how you think it will, but in an even more epic way? That’s what happened with this book. The twists were so good and still shocking, and the fact that my suspicions were proven right didn’t make it less of an enjoyable reveal. There’s also some good humor thrown in the text that had me laughing out loud a few times, so that as a nice surprise I wasn’t expecting!
I was honestly a little ‘meh’ about Farden’s character when he first appears, but the more I read, the more I loved him. He’s kinda the typical fantasy novel hero–big, strong, gruff on the surface but caring deep down, but he’s also got a short fuse, is often reckless, and has a seriously bad and dangerous habit that I was worried would plague his character throughout the book. He’s also a bit of a loner and mostly doesn’t prefer the company of people, which I can relate to, but he has a few close friends who he greatly appreciates and respects. He’s really just a good guy battling his own demons, and the latter half of this book had me really emotional for him. I loved many of the others we’re introduced to in the story–Durnus, Eyrum, Lazy–but I have to say that my favorite were THE DRAGONS (Farfallen and Brightshow especially). The dragons could talk. They were magical, wise, and kind. Overall, they were just very awesome and I wanted to be their friend.
The only thing I can think of that really bothered me when I encountered it while reading were the various typos (once there was a chunk of text that didn’t belong in the middle of a paragraph). Confusing at times, but for the most part okay, I’m just a bit of a stickler for these things!
The Written was a great fast-paced adventure and it excites me that this is just the beginning. I think I’ll continue on with this series right now, as I don’t feel like I’m ready to leave Farden and Emaneska just yet. At least, not before finding out more about what happens next!
About the Author
Ben Galley is an author of dark and epic fantasy books who currently hails from Victoria, Canada. Since publishing his debut The Written in 2010, Ben has released a range of award-winning fantasy novels, including the weird western Bloodrush and the epic standalone The Heart of Stone. He is also the author of the brand new Chasing Graves Trilogy.
Thanks to Ben Galley for giving me a digital copy of the book as part of this Ultimate Blog Tour!
Special thanks to Dave for the tremendous effort of organizing this tour of 100+ bloggers?! Amazing! 🙌🏽 Be sure to check out the other bloggers who’ve participated in the #UltimateBlogTour coz there are loads of great posts out there! You can find their posts on Twitter @TheWriteReads OnTour. Happy reading, friends!
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