Sunday, January 31, 2016

Melanie's Week in Review - January 31, 2016




Let's all wave goodbye to January.  I am sure that quite a few of you are glad to see the back of it. Apart from January being both mine and the hubinator's birthdays it was also a month where I read some stonkingly good books. So last week was a bit lack lustre but this week was, what can only be described in the trade as, amazeballs. Want to find out why?


I was pretty lucky when the publisher approved my NetGalley request for J.C. Nelson's The Reburialists. Agent Brynner Carson is the star of the Bureau of Special Investigations. The Bureau's role is to save society from those who don't want to stay dead and Brynner has staked more undead than any other agent....well except for his father, Heinrich. When one of the corpses writes a message for Brynner in hieroglyphics in its own blood the Bureau call in their Senior Analyst, Grace Roberts to translate. Brynner's father seems to have stolen the heart of a god and now she wants it back. Brynner and Grace have to team up to find where Heinrich left the heart before an army of the undead kills anyone and everyone they hold dear.

The Reburialists is a great read. Nelson paces the action at just the right level so that you are interested from start to finish but not at the expense of the plot or characterisation. Both Brynner and Grace were flawed and this was what made them interesting to read about. Nelson also resisted the temptation to get the characters together too early in the story and let the attraction build as the story developed. I did guess a couple of the big reveals before they happened but this didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story. I hope this is the start of a new series as I want to read more about the hunky hero Brynner and the bookish Grace.


Another fantastic book I read was The Rogue Retrieval by Dan Kobolt. This is Kobolt's debut and he was interviewed here on The Qwillery so check it out. As this was a debut I wrote a full review which was posted during the week. Suffice to say I thoroughly enjoyed Kobolt's first foray into urban fantasy but rather than re-writing all the great things I said about it have a read of it here.


I have been very book greedy recently and have read a few books waaaay before their publication date so I can't review them quite yet. Sorry folks but you are going to have to wait to find out what I thought of Patricia Brigg's latest in the Mercy Thompson series - Fire Touched - and Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. I will try to be more organised next time (or maybe not...I can't resist!)


The final book I am almost too embarrassed to tell you about is C. J. Archer's The Sinner. I was caught in a moment of weakness on a really long train journey where I needed a book that I didn't need to concentrate too hard on. This was pretty standard historical fiction with the 'plain Jane' Cat finding herself widowed and in need of a husband. Enter stage left is the playboy Hughe who in his spare time is an assassin.  Hughe feels obligated to see the now impoverished Cat safe and sound after killing her husband. That is pretty much all I can say as that was the sum of the plot. It did it's job however as it was short and easy to read.


That is almost it for me. Just one more thing.  For fans of the  Innkeepers Chronicles  - the first chapter of the upcoming third book, One Fell Sweep, is up at Ilona Andrews' Innkeeper Chronicles site here. Don't forget that Sweep in Peace was in my top 5 for 2015 and I was super excited that the first instalment of the latest book is up already. HURRAH!






The Reburialists
Ace, March 1, 2016
Trade Paperback and eBook, 416 pages

The author of Wish Bound and the Grimm Agency novels returns with an all-new urban fantasy novel!

Burying the dead is easy.  Keeping them down is difficult.

At the Bureau of Special Investigations, agents encounter all sorts of paranormal evils. So for Agent Brynner Carson, driving a stake through a rampaging three-week-old corpse is par for the course. Except this cadaver is different. It’s talking—and it has a message about his father, Heinrich.

The reanimated stiff delivers an ultimatum written in bloody hieroglyphics, and BSI Senior Analyst Grace Roberts is called in to translate. It seems that Heinrich Carson stole the heart of Ra-Ame, the long-dead god of the Re-Animus. She wants it back. The only problem is Heinrich took the secret of its location to his grave.

With the arrival of Ra-Ame looming and her undead army wreaking havoc, Brynner and Grace must race to find the key to stopping her. It’s a race they can’t afford to lose, but then again, it’s just another day on the job . . .




The Sinner
The Assassin's Guild 4
C. J. Archer, August 2014
Trade Paperback and eBook

Elizabethan England

Lies, desperation and an offer she can’t refuse sends impoverished widow Lady Catherine (Cat) headlong into marriage with the man who killed her husband.

Guilt and desire battle within Hughe, Lord Oxley’s, soul. When the enigmatic leader of the Assassin’s Guild learns that the widow of one of his targets is at the mercy of a cruel man, he does the only thing left in his power to do. He marries her. Then the worst thing happens. He falls in love with her.

With more than one person trying to kill him and a family to rescue, Hughe needs the help of all his Assassins Guild friends to stay alive and keep his wife from learning the truth. Because he knows, and dreads, what will happen when she discovers what he did.


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