Flailage: Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

Title: Dreams of Gods and Monsters (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #3)
Author: Laini Taylor
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Fantasy
Release Date: 8 April, 2014 (US); 17 April, 2014 (UK)
Goodreads | The Reading Room

By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.

Common enemy, common cause.

When Jael's brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.

And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.

But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz ... something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.

What power can bruise the sky?

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.

At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?

Review by Nara

Reading Update (28/3/13)

Well, about a month has gone by since my last update. I really shouldn't leave these this long, but I thought I'd read less once the uni term began. Guess not lol. #procrastinationFTW

Review: Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell

Title: Dear Killer
Author: Katherine Ewell
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Thriller
Release Date: 1 April, 2014
Source: HarperTeen via Edelweiss

Average Goodreads rating: 3.41 out of 5.00 (140+ ratings)
Goodreads | The Reading Room

Rule One—Nothing is right, nothing is wrong.
Rule Two—Be careful.
Rule Three—Fight using your legs whenever possible, because they’re the strongest part of your body. Your arms are the weakest.
Rule Four—Hit to kill. The first blow should be the last, if at all possible.
Rule Five—The letters are the law.

Kit takes her role as London’s notorious “Perfect Killer” seriously. The letters and cash that come to her via a secret mailbox are not a game; choosing who to kill is not an impulse decision. Every letter she receives begins with “Dear Killer,” and every time Kit murders, she leaves a letter with the dead body. Her moral nihilism and thus her murders are a way of life—the only way of life she has ever known.

But when a letter appears in the mailbox that will have the power to topple Kit’s convictions as perfectly as she commits her murders, she must make a decision: follow the only rules she has ever known, or challenge Rule One, and go from there.

Katherine Ewell’s Dear Killer is a sinister psychological thriller that explores the thin line between good and evil, and the messiness of that inevitable moment when life contradicts everything you believe.

Review by Nara

Review: Salvage by Alexandra Duncan

Title: Salvage
Author: Alexandra Duncan
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction
Release Date: 1 April, 2014
Source: Greenwillow Books via Edelweiss

Average Goodreads rating: 3.93 out of 5.00 (240+ ratings)
Goodreads | The Reading Room

Ava, a teenage girl living aboard the male-dominated deep space merchant ship Parastrata, faces betrayal, banishment, and death. Taking her fate into her own hands, she flees to the Gyre, a floating continent of garbage and scrap in the Pacific Ocean, in this thrilling, surprising, and thought-provoking debut novel that will appeal to fans of Across the Universe, by Beth Revis, and The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

Review by Nara

The Search for the Panacea [5]

If you're going "WHAT?! Another book haul vlog, Nara?! But it's only been on week since you posted the last one?", well, that would be because I was super late posting last week's which actually should have gone up sometime early February lol.

Anyway, this is the February book haul, and ermahgerd there are some serious pretties! As always, the book will be listed for those who don't want to watch.

And my bad, the focus was off. I couldn't be screwed re-filming it lol.

Review: Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong

Title: Sea of Shadows
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Genre: Young Adult, High Fantasy, Horror
Release Date: 8 April, 2014
Source: HarperTeen via Edelweiss. Thank you!

Average Goodreads rating: 3.64 out of 5.00 (180+ ratings)
Goodreads | The Reading Room

In the Forest of the Dead, where the empire’s worst criminals are exiled, twin sisters Moria and Ashyn are charged with a dangerous task. For they are the Keeper and the Seeker, and each year they must quiet the enraged souls of the damned.

Only this year, the souls will not be quieted.

Ambushed and separated by an ancient evil, the sisters’ journey to find each other sends them far from the only home they’ve ever known. Accompanied by a stubborn imperial guard and a dashing condemned thief, the girls cross a once-empty wasteland, now filled with reawakened monsters of legend, as they travel to warn the emperor. But a terrible secret awaits them at court—one that will alter the balance of their world forever.

Review by Nara

Review: Tin Star by Cecil Castellucci

Title: Tin Star (Tin Star #1)
Author: Cecil Castellucci
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction
Source: Macmillan via NetGalley

Average Goodreads rating: 3.65 out of 5.00 (180+ ratings)
Goodreads | The Reading Room

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station.

When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

Review by Nara