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The Iron Traitor by Julie Kagawa (ARC)

The Iron Traitor (Call of the Forgotten #2)
Julie Kagawa
Pub Date: October 29, 2013

In the real world, when you vanish into thin air for a week, people tend to notice.

After his unexpected journey into the lands of the fey, Ethan Chase just wants to get back to normal. Well, as "normal" as you can be when you see faeries every day of your life. Suddenly the former loner with the bad reputation has someone to try for - his girlfriend, Kenzie. Never mind that he's forbidden to see her again.

But when your name is Ethan Chase and your sister is one of the most powerful faeries in the Nevernever, "normal" simply isn't to be. For Ethan's nephew, Keirran, is missing, and may be on the verge of doing something unthinkable in the name of saving his own love. Something that will fracture the human and faery worlds forever, and give rise to the dangerous fey known as the Forgotten. As Ethan's and Keirran's fates entwine and Keirran slips further into darkness, Ethan's next choice may decide the fate of them all. 

Ethan Chase can't seem to keep his feet in the real world. He just got back from the Nevernever and already his conscious to help a family member is guilting him back in. Anwyl, Keiran's summer fey girlfriend is on the verge of fading into nonexistence, which happens to all fey since the mortal realm has become a world of nonbelievers. Anwyl has accepted her fate, but Keiran refuses to lie down, determined to find a cure for her and all the other Forgotten trying to hold on. Unfortunately, he's willing to risk not only his life to save her, but as the journey takes it's toll and his soul begins to corrupt, he's willing to risk a hell of a lot more.

 

Keiran was a bit frustrating for me in The Iron Traitor. And with a title like that and knowing the prophecy regarding both Ethan and Keiran, you know what's coming, and you're forced to just sit there and watch a guy deteriorate in a way that will cause him to turn his back on his own family, consequences be damned. Sad thing is, Ash even told him there were other ways to go about it, but he still continues on doing his own thing, making more questionable moral risks with each fiasco. But still, his desperation makes you kind of hurt for the guy too.

 

I can honestly say I enjoyed this installment of the Iron Fey better than the first. The story was more captivating, I actually cared about what happened to the characters, and for once, I didn't want to use Kenzie's face as a punching bag. I won't lie - Megan, Ash and Puck are such compelling characters that they will forever steal the spotlight, but Ethan, Kenzie and Keiran are becoming respectable runner-ups.

ARC provided by Harlequin Teen for an honest review.

Amazon Freebie: Epiphany by Christina Jean Michaels

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“I had my first psychic dream when I was nine. Psychic implied power, and powerful wasn’t a word I’d use to describe myself. I couldn’t foretell the future or conjure visions at will, but I couldn’t think of a more fitting word to describe what I sometimes saw in my dreams.”

For 23-year-old Mackenzie Hill, tossing her life down the garbage disposal is easy after a painful incident shatters her life. Her heart is bleeding, and moving to Watcher’s Point is a chance to start anew, only she isn’t prepared for the guy who walks out of her dreams and into the flesh. Literally . . . because she’s been dreaming about this sexy stranger for years.

Mackenzie is even less prepared to face the dark nature of her dreams. They’ve turned disturbingly gruesome, full of blood and murder, and when they begin to coincide with the media’s headlines, she and Aidan realize her visions might be the key to stopping a madman from killing again.

Only Aidan has painful secrets of his own, and perhaps the biggest danger of all is falling for him. 

Captives by Jill Williamson (ARC)

Captives (The Safe Lands #1)
Jill Williamson

One choice could destroy them all.

When eighteen-year-old Levi returned from Denver City with his latest scavenged finds, he never imagined he’d find his village of Glenrock decimated, loved ones killed, and many—including his fiancée, Jem—taken captive. Now alone, Levi is determined to rescue what remains of his people, even if it means entering the Safe Lands, a walled city that seems anything but safe.

Omar knows he betrayed his brother by sending him away, but helping the enforcers was necessary. Living off the land and clinging to an outdated religion holds his village back. The Safe Lands has protected people since the plague decimated the world generations ago … and its rulers have promised power and wealth beyond Omar’s dreams.

Meanwhile, their brother Mason has been granted a position inside the Safe Lands, and may be able to use his captivity to save not only the people of his village, but also possibly find a cure for the virus that threatens everyone within the Safe Lands’ walls. Will Mason uncover the truth hidden behind the Safe Lands’ façade before it’s too late?

Like a few other small communities, the residents of Glenrock have managed to live peacefully outside the nearby Safe Lands for quite some time. Their existence is quite archaic compared to the posh lifestyle offered within city walls, but those city dwellers suffer from something the outer communities don't - infection via the thin plague, which has completely ruined their ability to reproduce. So it's not surprising when Glenrock is invaded and their women, children, and young men are taken at force, and their elderly killed off (because in the city's eyes, all people should be liberated (ie. put down) by the age of forty.)

 

Only one young man wasn't present for the invasion, and after failing to acquire help from the other communities, sets off with the delusion of being able to save his people and his bride-to-be. It's not long before they're all captives and forced to assimilate to city life or be put down themselves. The women are forced into a surrogacy program and the men forced to donate their sperm to impregnate them through in vitro fertilization. Disgusted with their newfound fame, with the women in a harem that literally treats them like queens while a part of the surrogacy program, the residents of Glenrock are desperate to find cracks within the civilization and reclaim the freedom that is rightfully theirs.

 

What I like best about Jill Williamson's novels, is that although she writes Christian fiction, she neither preaches through her writing nor shoves religion down your throat. So if you're hesitant to pick up her novel because of this, don't be, because even though the religious undertones are there, you probably won't even pick up on them if your not religious yourself. Captives is a great dystopian novel about a greedy, self-centered society so corrupted and run by desperation that they can no longer see how immoral their lifestyle and actions have become. And the fact that it was one of their own that sold them out to the city to begin with? Priceless.

 

 

Novel provided by publisher for honest review.

October 2013 Previously Loved Book Giveaway

October 2013!

A hardback of Wither by Lauren DeStephano!

 

 

Want a chance to win? Head here to enter!

 

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?