Book Review: Grave Dance by Kalayna Price

Grave Dance
Author: Kalayna Price
Series: Alex Craft (Book 2)
Publication: Ace (July 5, 2011)

Description: After a month of down time, Grave Witch Alex Craft is ready to get back to solving murders by raising the dead. With her love life in turmoil, Alex is eager for the distractions of work. But when her new case forces her to overuse her magic, it might be the last mystery the Grave Witch ever gets to solve...

My Thoughts: Though Alex's love life in sort of in disarray, professionally she is doing better. When her friend John the homicide detective calls her in to consult on a case where all he has is left feet from a number of victims. Unfortunately, one foot isn't enough for Alex to manifest the shade and find out what happened.

Besides her new talent of ripping holes in reality is making her too popular with the fae. The Winter Queen wants to attach her to her court. Meanwhile, Alex's friend Rianna comes to her with a request. As a changeling, she must stay in faerie and she sort of belongs to Alex. When Alex defeated the body stealer in the previous book, she inherited all of his property including Rianna, a castle, and a brownie housekeeper. However, she has to go to faerie to claim it.

She has also brought a problem to Death and the other soul collectors. It seems there is a rogue soul collector in the left foot part of the story. He is collecting souls before the people die. What he wants them for and how he is using them are a mystery that Alex needs to solve. Her relationship with Death is also causing complications. He is interested in a romantic relationship which is being heavily discouraged by the other soul collectors.

Her relationship with Falin is also going through a stressful time. She didn't see or hear from him for a month after their first adventure. And when he does return he has been mortally injured. He is trying to keep her away from the Winter Queen but she needs to go to faerie to rescue her best friend who has disappeared there. In faerie, it is confirmed that Falin is the Winter Queen's assassin and was once her lover. She isn't willing to let him go and he is bound to follow all of her orders.

This was an entertaining urban fantasy story. I like the characters. I like that Alex is developing new powers which make her stronger and which make her life much more complicated. I'm eager to find out what is next for her and the men in her life.

Favorite Quote:

"You think I'm letting you out of my sight? Alex, you are a magnet for trouble, though, in trouble's defense, you go out looking for it. What with tearing holes in reality in the middle of populated streets and wandering the wilds using raw meat to draw out a fae will know for tearing people to shreds and eating them, it's a wonder you're not completely entangled in trouble." He shook his head. 

I bought this one on July 7, 2012 and am rereading it. You can buy your copy here.

Book Review: Grave Witch by Kalayna Price

Grave Witch
Author: Kalayna Price
Series: Alex Craft series (Book 1)
Publication: Ace (October 5, 2010)

Description: Not even death can save her now. 

As a grave witch, Alex Craft can speak to the dead-she's even on good terms with Death himself. As a consultant for the police, she's seen a lot of dark magic, but nothing has prepared her for her latest case. When she's raising a "shade" involved in a high profile murder, it attacks her, and then someone makes an attempt on her life. Someone really doesn't want her to know what the dead have to say, and she'll have to work with mysterious homicide detective Falin Andrews to figure out why...

My Thoughts: Alex Craft is a grave witch. She can speak to the dead. In fact, she is set to make a witness appear from beyond the grave at a groundbreaking court trial. She needs the work. Her rent is overdue, her refrigerator is empty, and her Chinese Crested's vet bill for a broken leg still needs to be paid.

When she gets a call from her estranged sister to see if she can check out her boyfriend's shade to find out who killed him, she finds herself deep into a long-running fae plot. Her sister's boyfriend was the governor of Necros. She gets into the morgue by way of her friend John who is a homicide detective. He wants help identifying a body from a body dump. While she's there she'll get a look at the body her sister is interested in.

John's corpse rises screaming but Alex recognizes her as a fellow student at the wyrd academy her father sent her to when he disowned her because of her witchcraft. After all, her father is a leading proponent of the Humans First party in Necros and, since his daughter's boyfriend's death, he's the new governor.

At the morgue she also becomes haunted herself by a ghost who is claiming that the former governor stole his body twelve years ago. She also gets hit with a soul-stealing curse. And she meets the Falin Andrews who is a man of mystery in charge of the investigation into the governor's death.

This was an interesting urban fantasy mystery as she works with Falin to find out about the body stealing entity who impersonated the governor and is now in someone else's body. She has until the full moon to find the impersonator or she'll die and the impersonator's plan with bring devastation to Necros.

I liked Alex. I liked that using her grave magic had a cost. Using it too much makes her blind and has totally ruined her night vision. I liked that she learned some new things about herself and her family. I liked her relationship with Falin and her relationship with Death who is a collector of souls.

Favorite Quote:

He held up his hands, palm forward, and mouthed something, which could have been anything from "I'm sorry" to "please help."

One day I had to learn to read lips. But not today.

I bought this one March 12, 2011 and am rereading it. You can buy your copy here.

Friday Memes: Grave Witch by Kalayna Price

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

The first time I encountered Death, I hurled my mother's medical chart at him. As far as impressions went, I blew it, but I was five at the time, so he eventually forgave me. Some days I wished he hadn't - particularly when we crossed paths on the job.

Friday 56:

I needed to know more about Bartholomew. I hit the icon to bring up my Internet browser. My e-mail was set as my home screen, and I groaned at the number of unread messages in my in-box. I scanned, deleting as I went. As expected, most were from the press.

One wasn't.

This week I am rereading a book I read in 2011 - the first in a series - to refresh my memory before I read the sixth book in the series. Grave Witch by Kalayna Price is urban fantasy. Here is the description from Amazon:

Not even death can save her now. 

As a grave witch, Alex Craft can speak to the dead-she's even on good terms with Death himself. As a consultant for the police, she's seen a lot of dark magic, but nothing has prepared her for her latest case. When she's raising a "shade" involved in a high profile murder, it attacks her, and then someone makes an attempt on her life. Someone really doesn't want her to know what the dead have to say, and she'll have to work with mysterious homicide detective Falin Andrews to figure out why...

Book Review: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold

Beguilement
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Series: The Sharing Knife (Book 1)
Publication: Harper Voyager; First Edition edition (October 10, 2006)

Description: One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold has won numerous accolades and awards, including the Nebula and Locus Awards as well as the fantasy and science fiction genre’s most prestigious honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, four times (most recently for Paladin of Souls.

The Sharing Knife series, Bujold creates a brand new world fraught with peril, and spins an extraordinary romance between a young farm girl and the brave sorcerer-soldier entrusted with the defense of the land against a plague of vicious malevolent beings. Meet Fawn Bluefield and Dag Redwing Hickory in Beguilement, the first book in Bujold’s unforgettable four-volume fantasy saga, and witness the birth of their dangerous romance—a love threatened by prejudice and perilous magic, and by Dag’s sworn duty as Lakewalker patroller and necromancer.

My Thoughts: This is Lois McMaster Bujold's take on epic fantasy but twisted in the Bujold way. Fawn Bluefield is a young Farmer girl who has run away from home and is taking an unplanned pregnancy with her. She's looking for a new start in a place where she is valued and isn't made to feel stupid.

Dag Redwing Hickory is a Patroller, a Lakewalker, who spends his life looking for the malices who randomly pop up and who, if left unchecked, can totally destroy the world.

Their first encounter has Fawn hiding up and tree and Dag resting beneath it. She thinks she's hidden but her spark of life makes her very visible to him. Their next encounter is when she is kidnapped on the road by a bandit and a mudman and Dag rescues her. He takes her to a nearby abandoned farmplace where she can stay until he deals with the malice. But then she is captured by mudmen sent by the malice and Dag is barely in time to rescue her.

In the course of the rescue, the malice steals the groundsense from her baby and kills it and Fawn is the one who manages to insert Dag's sharing knife into the Malice killing it. Fawn has accidentally primed Dag's second knife which is a baffling circumstance that needs Lakewalkers with more knowledge to explain.

Dealing with her miscarriage and his injuries brings them close together. In fact they fall in love which is an unlikely and unwanted thing for a number of reasons. He's much older and battered and battle scarred. She's young and naive but bright and full of life. But Lakewalkers and Farmers don't fall in love and they certainly don't marry. Farmers are generally suspicious of the mysterious Lakewalkers and Lakewalkers generally look down on the Farmers.

In this episode, Dag has to first convince his patrol of his decision to be with Fawn and he is given lots of reasons why this relationship won't work. Second, on their way to get some clarity about his newly primed knife, they need to stop at Fawn's home and convince her parents and brothers that getting married is a good idea.

This book is filled with fascinating characters and set in an intriguing world. Fawn is loved by her family but neither valued or listened to. It is surprising that she is as sane and well-grounded as she is after their loving abuse. Her relationship with the father of her child broke her tender heart. His callous cruelty could easily have destroyed a weaker girl. Dag is also a wonderful character who has magic and who has managed to survive horrible things including the loss of his wife and most of his patrol. He's been surviving and doing his duty for his people but it isn't until he meets Fawn that he really begins living again.

Luckily, this is the first of four books about Dag and Fawn. There is so much more for them to do and for them to learn about each other.

Favorite Quote:

"Walking the patterns isn't some emergency where you can drop everything, deal heroically, and then go home for good and all. It all starts again tomorrow at dawn. Ad you'll have to get up and walk your share just the same."

I bought this one back in 2006 and am rereading it. You can buy your copy here.

YA ARC Review: Killing November by Adriana Mather

Killing November
Author: Adriana Mather
Publication: Knopf Books for Young Readers (March 26, 2019)

Description: November is trapped.

At the mysterious Academy Absconditi, a school that's completely off the grid, there's no electricity, no internet, and a brutal eye-for-an-eye punishment system. Classes include everything from knife-throwing and poisons to the art of deception. And the other students? All children of the world's most elite strategists, in training to become assassins, spies, and master manipulators. November Adley doesn't know why she's been sent to this place, or the secrets that make up its legacy, but she'll quickly discover that allies are few in a school where competition is everything. When another student is murdered, all eyes turn to November, who must figure out exactly how she fits in before she is found guilty of the crime...or becomes the killer's next victim.

From the #1 New York Times  bestselling author Adriana Mather comes a captivating thriller that will leave you breathless.

My Thoughts: This was an entertaining and engaging boarding school mystery. November was raised in a quiet Connecticut town by her father and aunt after her mother died. Now seventeen and with her family in danger, she is sent to Academy Absconditi - a hidden and dangerous boarding school - where she learns many of the secrets of her past that the other students already expect her to know.

Worst of all for November is that someone is either trying to kill her or trying to frame her for the murders of some other students. Though she has more physical skills than she realized she had, she is totally ignorant of the politics and rivalries here at the school which trains the best of the best of the Strategia secret society.

She isn't totally on her own. Her roommate Layla and Layla's brother Ash are willing to make a deal to give her some information. Of course, trusting anyone in the school is dangerous. Everyone has an agenda that is hidden from November.

I liked the worldbuilding that creates a secret society begun in ancient times, a society whose members have manipulated history for all that time. I enjoyed learning about the ins and outs and rivalries in the world along with November. I really enjoyed November. She was smart, gregarious, and trained by her father to think outside of the box. She'll need all her skills to survive her time at Academy Absconditi.

Favorite Quote:

He plops on the couch. "Welcome to Academy Absconditi, November, where the scheming never stops, and where someone is always trying to push you off a ledge. You're in a dangerous situation. You're taking calculated risks to get out of it. But risks are still risks."

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

Book Review: The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch

The Hanging Tree
Author: Ben Aaronovitch
Series: Peter Grant (Book 6)
Publication: DAW; Reissue edition (January 31, 2017)

Description: Suspicious deaths are not usually the concern of Police Constable Peter Grant or the Folly—London’s police department for supernatural cases—even when they happen at an exclusive party in one of the flats of the most expensive apartment blocks in London. But the daughter of Lady Ty, influential goddess of the Tyburn river, was there, and Peter owes Lady Ty a favor.

Plunged into the alien world of the super-rich, where the basements are bigger than the houses, where the law is something bought and sold on the open market, a sensible young copper would keep his head down and his nose clean.

But this is Peter Grant we’re talking about.

He’s been given an unparalleled opportunity to alienate old friends and create new enemies at the point where the world of magic and that of privilege intersect. Assuming he survives the week…

My Thoughts: This sixth Peter Grant novel begins with Lady Ty calling in a favor. It seems that her daughter was at a party filled with drugs where a young friend of hers died from an overdose. Lady Ty wants Peter to make it go away and to keep his involvement secret from Nightingale. Naturally, Peter's first phone call is to Nightingale and his next to the police to find out what is going on.

A group of young people from one of the neighboring high class schools has broken in to a posh apartment to have a party complete with illegal drugs which results in the death of seventeen-year-old Christina Chorley. Beyond Lady Ty's daughter Olivia's involvement, it isn't long before the case gets even more complex and more magical.

As Peter and Guleed investigate connections are made to a long-missing magical book written by Isaac Newton and the number of people who would like to get hold of it. There are also links to the Faceless Man that Peter and Nightingale have been chasing for the whole series which culminate in them actually finding out who the Faceless Man is.

I liked that we learn about more groups of practitioners than Peter or even Nightingale knew about. I especially liked meeting Lady Helena and her daughter Caroline who are also heirs of Isaac Newton's tradition but who branched off when magic became a boys only club. The American practitioners were also a new set of characters.

This story was entertaining as I can never get enough of Peter's determination and snark. I like the way his relationship with Beverly is progressing.

Favorite Quote:

One Hyde Park squatted next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel like a stack of office furniture, with all the elegance and charm of the inside of a photocopier. Albeit a brand new photocopier that doubled as a fax and document scanner. Now, I have - as Beverly says - views about architecture.

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (March 18, 2019)

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? is now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date.

It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week.  It is a great way to network with other bloggers, see some wonderful blogs, and put new titles on your reading list.

I will be combining my YA and adult reading and purchases on this one weekly roundup.

Other Than Reading...

We had really changeable weather this week. We had a couple of days of rain and fog which melted a lot of our snow and caused some localized flooding. Then it got colder again but bright and sunny.

This was my week to have my taxes done. Hearing all the horror stories about people expecting refunds and having to pay instead, I was a little worried. However, mine turned out okay. I got a pretty good refund from the Federal Government and owed the State less than $100. Now that my income streams have stabilized in my retirement, I could go in and adjust withholding but I don't mind getting a substantial refund each year.

My brother and I had intended to go out to dinner on Friday evening. But after driving by three different restaurants and seeing long lines at each of them, we decided ordering a pizza would be a lot less stressful. I still have a coupon for the first restaurant that we wanted to eat at and will probably go out by myself this evening. I am able to do that again now that the days stay light so much longer. Not driving in the dark does limit some of my restaurant choices for part of the year.

I have been busy watching Spring Training baseball games and The Voice. Otherwise, I've been concentrating on reading. This week I have my two final April releases and then can tackle some of my recent purchases.

Read Last Week

If you can't wait until the review shows up on my blog, reviews are posted to LibraryThing and Goodreads as soon as I write them (usually right after I finish reading a book.)

• The Ghost Manuscript by Kris Frieswick (Review; April 2) - Thriller regarding old manuscripts and the hunt for King Arthur. My review will be posted on March 31.
• A Hidden Magic by Vivian Vande Velde (Mine) - This dusty old paperback has been on my shelf since Oct. 5, 2010. It was an entertaining middle grade story with lots of fairy tale tropes. 
• Dreaming Darkly by Caitlin Kittredge (YA Review; April 9) - YA Gothic mystery. My review will be posted on April 2.

• A Dream of Death by Connie Berry (Review; April 9) - Mystery set in Scotland. My review will be posted on April 4.
• Come and Get Me by August Norman (Review; April 9) - a journalist comes back to her college to collect on honorary degree and finds herself involved with a serial killer and missing girls. My review will be posted on April 6.

• The Hummingbird Dagger by Cindy Anstey (YA Review; April 16) - Historical mystery/romance. My review will be posted on April 10.
• Under the Table by Stephanie Evanovich (Review; April 16) - Contemporary romance. My review will be posted on April 11.

Currently

• The Curse of the Silver Pharaoh by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris (Mine)

Next Week

• Wolfhunter River by Rachel Caine (Review; April 23)
• Hide and Seek by Mary Burton (Review; April 23)
• Spellslinger by Sebastien De Castell (Mine)

• Witchmark by C. L. Polk (Mine)
• The Drifter by Nick Petrie (Mine)
• Pit Perfect Murder by Renee George (Mine)

Reviews Posted

• Murder from Scratch by Leslie Karst
• Sherwood by Meagan Spooner
• The Deepest Blue by Sarah Beth Durst

• Secrets Never Die by Melinda Leigh
• Geekerella by Ashley Poston

Want to See What I Added to My Stack Last Week?

Bought:

• The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
• A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn

Review:

• Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (YA Review; May 7)
• Death in Kew Gardens by Jennifer Ashley (Review; June 4)

• A Liaden Universe Constellation IV by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (June 4)
• Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger (July 2)

• Singapore Sapphire by A. M. Stuart (August 6)
• Death Comes to Dartmoor by Vivian Conroy (August 13)

• Death in the Covenant by D. A. Bartley (August 13)
• Ice Cold Heart by P. J. Tracy (Sept. 10)

What was your week like?