Audiobooks – Page 7 – Lyndsey Hall

Review: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Wow. I haven’t read a book I’ve enjoyed as much as Graceling in ages. If you’re looking for a book to get you out of a slump, or just a really fantastic little YA fantasy, you can’t go wrong with this one.

TL;DR Katsa is Graced with the ability to kill. Her uncle, the king of one of seven kingdoms in the realm, has trained her to be his enforcer and assassin, but Katsa has had enough of killing. When she meets a Graced prince from another kingdom, she finds herself falling in love and running towards danger. But both are hiding secrets and neither of their Graces are quite what they seem…

After accidentally killing a man during a childish tantrum, Katsa (and everyone around her) realised she was one of the rare Graced: people who possess a particular skill – more than just a natural ability – and that her skill was, unfortunately, killing. Her uncle, one of seven kings who rule the realm, saw an opportunity and decided to turn his young niece into a cold-blooded killer, using her reputation to inspire fear in his enemies.

Now seventeen, Katsa is well-known around the Seven Kingdoms, having been her uncle’s enforcer for years. But she’s sick of doing his dirty work, so along with a few allies, Katsa has formed a council that works under the king’s nose to spare his would-be victims. On one mission to rescue a kidnapped grandfather being held in the dungeon, Katsa runs into Prince Po, another Graceling with the skill of fighting.

Katsa finds herself falling for the mysterious prince, and when she finally builds the courage to tell her uncle she won’t do his bidding anymore, the two royal Gracelings end up on a journey to a far away kingdom where rumours abound and strange happenings are all too common. But, as they say, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Secrets come to light, life-changing self-discoveries are made, and lies are exposed in the explosive final chapters of this book!

I fell in love with Graceling the way you fall asleep, slowly and then all at once (little The Fault in our Stars reference for you there). It builds quite slowly at first, in my opinion, but once I knew who was who, and the story started to kick into high gear, I was absolutely hooked.

I gave it 5 stars, because it’s a new favourite, I haven’t enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed this for months. Maybe even a year? It’s a pretty classic YA fantasy, done exactly right, and now joins the ranks of A Court of Mist and Fury and Nevernight in my ‘best books ever’ section.

That’s all I have to say about it really, just go and read it if you haven’t already, and you’re a YA fantasy fan. I’d even recommend it to adult fantasy fans, the characters are teens but it’s definitely got a more broad appeal, I would say. Plus, there are two more books in the series – not exactly sequels as they follow different characters (with the occasional cameo I believe) in the Graceling realm. I’m planning to get the other two books, Bitterblue (a character who appears in Graceling, so that’s exciting) and Fire, on Audible at some point, as I listened to the audio book of Graceling and really enjoyed the experience, and I tend to stick to either audio or paperback depending on how I read book one of a series, for continuity.

I’ll be sure to review books two and three as soon as I read them, but my Audible library is currently bursting at the seams with Children of Blood and Bone, The Lies of Locke Lamora, An Ember in the Ashes, Scythe, Escaping from Houdini, and lots more fabulous reads. And that’s not even counting my physical TBR pile, or the podcasts I’ve got stacking up…

I’d better get reading! See you next time.

Lyndsey

Review: Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco

Review Hunting Prince Dracula Kerri Maniscalco

Love historical fiction? Fan of dark fantasy? You’ve come to the right place! Today we’re talking about Kerri Maniscalco’s Stalking Jack the Ripper series, and more specifically book two, Hunting Prince Dracula.

(I just looked for my review of Stalking Jack the Ripper to see how many stars I gave it, and realised I never wrote one! Sorry about that, I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads, so it’s definitely worth a read before you dive into this one – although the way book two is written there are no spoilers for book one beyond who survives, so it’s up to you!)

Remember last week when we discussed ‘speculative fiction‘? This is a prime example of ‘alternate history’, taking well-known legends and giving them a completely new and fresh spin. Book three tackles the story of Harry Houdini, and I cannot wait to read it – I feel like I know the Jack the Ripper and Vlad the Impaler/Dracula stories reasonably well, and have read a few fictional takes on them, but I’m basically a newbie to Houdini. All I’ve heard is he was pretty good at disappearing.

Speaking of which, don’t you love how Maniscalco has twisted the book titles to show how the eponymous character operated in the original story, and how that’s been flipped on its head in her versions? STALKING Jack the Ripper, HUNTING Prince Dracula and ESCAPING from Houdini. I love that little hint of what’s to come from the author.

(According to Google, Houdini was born Erich Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, before moving with his family to Wisconsin, USA, so fingers crossed we see a bit of both countries in book three. I’ve always wanted to visit Budapest!)

Book two picks up a couple of weeks after book one ended, and Audrey Rose Wadsworth and Thomas Cresswell are on their way to Romania, where a school of pathology and forensic science has taken up position in the old castle where Vlad Dracula once lived.

Audrey Rose is running away from her problems, she’s having nightmares and hallucinations caused by the Ripper case, and hopes she can escape them by leaving London. Unfortunately, that’s not how life works, and her problems follow her to Romania. Not only that, but a whole crop of new problems arise on the way there, when a man is murdered on their train. His wounds look like the work of a vampire, but surely they’re the stuff of myth?

On arrival at the castle, we discover the deaths tie into the local myth of the ‘strigoi’, angry spirits of the dead that rise from the grave and drain their victims’ blood. As more victims are found, Audrey Rose and Thomas begin to question whether there’s a copycat killer on the loose, or if something more supernatural is afoot.

With the help of Thomas’s sister, the head teacher’s niece, and a castle maid, the pair hunt for clues and try to solve the puzzle before anyone else can be killed.

I gave Hunting Prince Dracula 4.5 stars, I enjoyed it even more than book one, there’s something about the boarding school environment that speaks to me (I went to a boarding school but I didn’t board as we lived 5 minutes away, and I’ve always loved YA in that setting, i.e. Harry Potter). The romance between the two main characters starts to heat up somewhat in this instalment, so I’m excited to see where that leads, and as always Maniscalco’s writing is beautiful and descriptive, with just the right amount of Victorian vocab mixed in.

If you’re into period dramas, alternate histories, dark thrillers with just a hint of the supernatural, then you’ll definitely love this series. My pre-order of Escaping from Houdini will be available to download in 5 days time, I’ll let you know how I find it!

Lyndsey

Six sequels I’m dying to read!

Hi folks, I thought I’d give you all a little look-see at which book series I’m loving right now and which sequels I can’t wait to read. I’m going to cheat a little bit today, some of these books are yet to be released, some are recent releases, and some are years old, I just haven’t managed to squeeze them into my busy schedule yet.

Let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you thought!

Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco

Stalking Jack the Ripper Kerri Maniscalco

How beautiful do those covers look together? I’m not usually a huge fan of people on covers, but these are just gorgeous. I especially like the cityscapes that are blended in, as a big part of these stories is the location they’re set in (London, Romania and a luxury cruise liner to America!). I just finished the audio book of Hunting Prince Dracula a couple of weeks ago and loved it even more than Stalking Jack the Ripper, so I’m really excited for Escaping from Houdini’s release this month! I’ve preordered it using my September Audible credit so I can download it as soon as it goes live.

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas

Probably my favourite series of all time (after Harry Potter, of course) and soon to be a TV series! I’m just about to finish reading the paperback of Tower of Dawn, which has been a new experience after listening to the audio books of the previous five books – I normally get through these in a week or two, but it’s taken months thanks to a new baby stealing all my reading time! Thank the gods I’m back to work and can listen to the audio book on my commute when Kingdom of Ash is released next month.

Now I Rise & Bright We Burn by Kiersten White

I still can’t believe I haven’t read Now I Rise! At least now Bright We Burn is out I can read both in quick succession instead of dying from the long wait. I listened to the audio book of And I Darken (and loved it!), and for some reason book two never appeared on Audible. I waited and waited, but I guess I’m going to have to get my hands on the paperbacks of these two. I’ll have to hit up the mobile library next time it comes around!

(Do you have mobile libraries in other countries? It’s basically a minibus full of books that drives around rural villages. You can order books like a normal library. They’re pretty great when you live out in the sticks, but might only come once a month depending where you live.)

Half Lost by Sally Green

Half Bad was such an unexpected joy of a book, I’d never heard of it until a friend who works for Waterstones gave it to me just after it was released, but I was hooked immediately. Green’s got such a captivating way of writing, she throws you straight into Nathan’s head and you barely get a chance to catch your breath until you’ve finished the whole book. I read Half Wild a couple of years ago, and I’ve just never gotten round to Half Lost (clearly putting off ending the series and saying goodbye to Nathan and Gabriel!).

Fire & Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Graceling was the best YA fantasy I’d read in about a year, and has cemented its position as one of my all time favourites. The story is just so well crafted, with beautifully detailed world-building and fully-formed characters. The whole concept of Graces is fascinating, like natural talents and affinities taken to the nth degree, and I can’t wait to find out more about them in the two companion books, Fire and Bitterblue. They follow different characters in the same fictional world, with some of the cast of Graceling popping up as cameos, and Bitterblue obviously focusing on one of the secondary characters from book one. If you haven’t read Graceling yet, I’d definitely recommend it, I jumped on the bandwagon late, but now I’m practically driving it!

Lord of Shadows & Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare

I’ve been obsessed with all things Shadowhunter since I first read City of Bones about 8 years ago, quickly ordering and devouring all the available sequels, and then The Infernal Devices, and stalking the filming of the Mortal Instruments movie with Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower. I actually enjoyed the film and was really disappointed when it didn’t do that well, so I was thrilled when they decided to turn it into a TV series. Now Shadowhunters is coming to an end and I’m left with the book series again. Not that I’m complaining, I’ve got Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy and Lord of Shadows sitting on my shelf just waiting to be read, and Queen of Air and Darkness will soon be out in the world. Then there’s the fourth series Clare is planning, The Last Hours, and I cannot wait to hear about Will and Tessa’s descendants! So it’s not like I’m struggling for content over here.

And that is a very non-exhaustive list of the sequels I’m desperate to read and plan to jump headlong into as soon as I get a spare moment (babies, amirite?). Which series are you loving right now and can’t wait to get your hands on the next book?

Lyndsey