It's Monday! What are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.

Five of seven posts in the last week have been about books or reading.  Monday was, well, IMWAYR?  Tuesday and Wednesday were review/giveaways for ebooks on  Premier Virtual Author Book Tours; Thursday began as a promo for the Big Kindle Boogie promo but became more; Friday was the story of my encounter with a review copy first offered to me last November and what has happened to prevent me from getting my review up in a timely fashion.

I expected Saturday and Sunday to continue the theme but then Saturday evening my missing crochet hook turned up after three weeks of playing hide-and-seek with me and my attention shifted like an avalanche back to crochet for the last 48 hours.

The two reviews with still open giveaways:

The Firelight of Maalda by Melissa Douthit  which is the second book in a planned fantasy trilogy, The Legend of the Raie’Chaelia.   I was given the first book, Raie’Chaelia, and two prequel short stories as well to get me up to speed but the review/giveaway of one ebook copy tomorrow, Tuesday, January 31st, is for this one only.

The Firelight of Maalda: A story that unites the real with the fantastical and turns science into magic …

My review was posted last Tuesday and the giveaway for an ebook copy is open until the 12th.

I posted a review of the first book and the two prequels two weeks ago.

Hot Chocolate by Dawn Ireland, is a  cozy a mystery that is raucously funny.

My review was posted last Wednesday and the giveaway for an ebook copy is open until the 14th

Both of these novels are more than passingly competent and worth the read so if you like either YA fantasy or cozy mysteries you might like to stop by and enter the drawings.  I'll also posted the links to the other giveaways on the tour.

And So It Goes
by Charles Shields

Currently reading:

I have another review book I need to finish and review by the end of the month.  And So It Goes by Charles J. Shields.  It is a bio of the author Kurt Vonnegut.

 I wrote about my 'adventure' with this book which started last November in last Friday's post.  It is a long story about a storyteller and a story about a storyteller.  And because it is so long my review is way late.  Not that anybody put a date on it.  Just that Early November to late February just seems negligent.  I'm not really sure what the protocol is but I definitely don't want to choke off the stream of books coming my way recently by getting a rep.

But I am a Vonnegut fan and used to enjoy biography and autobiography by the book bag full and no surprise I am enjoying this one.

Her Frozen Wild by Kim Antieau.  This is a review copy ebook.  Kim is an author who has gone the self-pub ebook route after being published by the traditional press several times.  Her material is often heavily influenced by folklore and fairytale from many different cultures and emphasizes the female archetypes.  Every one I've read has had a strong female lead.  This one is no different.

Scientists in the Altai in Siberia uncover the 2,500 year old frozen mummy of a tattooed priestess. This mummy has the same genetic material as American archaeologist Ursula Smith whose mother disappeared in Siberia 30 years earlier. Ursula travels from the U.S. to Siberia to unravel the mystery of the “lady” and meets Sergei Ivanovich Polyakov, a Russian doctor who graciously invites her into his home. After they become lovers, she discovers Sergei has the same tattoos on his body as the tattooed lady. He tells a disbelieving Ursula that they have met before and she is destined to save the ancient People, considered as devils by some and shape-changing gods by others. A shaman takes Ursula to one of the sacred timeless caves where Ursula’s mother vanished. When Ursula allows the shaman to tattoo her, she is thrown back in time where she must unlock the mystery of the People and their link to her past in order to save them and Sergei—even if it costs her her life.

I'm 77% into it and eager to finish it tonight.  :)

I've also already begun The Red Church by Soctt Nicholson, another novel which was a free download during the Big Kindle Boogie promo last week and got five or more chapters in before I made myself set it aside to finish Kim's novel first.  I'd just opened it to get a sense of the flavor of this new to me author and next thing I knew I was 15% in.

From the amazon.com blurb:

A boy and a sheriff must solve the mystery of a haunted Appalachian church when a strange preacher returns to town. Stoker Award finalist.
....
My spiritual thriller "The Red Church" explores a boy's struggle with faith when his mother attends a haunted church. Inspired by real-life legends in the Southern Appalachian Mountains where I live, the novel mirrors my own search for faith, love, and deeper mysteries. 

For a couple of days I went back and forth between the two novels but my brain started to feel like a Twister game trying to keep both worlds in my head at once.  It was doing neither story justice nor respecting either author.

I'm hoping I'll finish Kim's book in time to get back to Scott's for awhile tonight.

Next up is another novel for Premier Virtual Author Book Tours:

The March 7th blog tour review is for Finding Katie  by John Smith author of the ebook Delayed Flight which I reviewed for its blog tour in December.

From John's email:

Finding Katie is about a very wealthy and very sheltered Preston Meadows who lives his life protected from even the hint of harm. His world is safe and secure until someone kidnaps his sister, Katie. Against his parents’ wishes, Preston sets out on his own to find her. Preston works hard to blend in with the “regular” people roaming the streets of Dallas – but the real world is zany, insane, full of danger and filled with ruthless criminals. As I mentioned, it is a comedy filled with mystery and romance.