That was just stunning!

Another book that reads just like a movie!!

I swear it was like watching a movie!!!

*breathes*

Okay.. so I'm not the the biggest Sci-fi reader, but I do read AND WATCH Scifi. I'm telling you, this is awesome! Not only does it give you action, adventure and thrill... It will also make you think hard. It will make a person be clear about his/her ethical stand. It's as great as it is also a mind boggling book. :)

The characters are pretty unique if I may say so myself.

Have you ever imagined being so sick that all you can do is look on as life passes by? Naaaww, I don't think so.

Well.. some of our characters have. I sort of symphatized with each and every one of them.

You see, the main characters in this book are dying.

Yes people, they're dying...

And just like that line in TANGLED says.. "that's when people usually start to look for miracles".

In this case, they didn't find a magic golden flower though. They found an ultra advanced technology that will allow them to live on.. only in a wayyyy different state. They found more than what they bargained for and it's their choice whether to take it or not.

As I told you, there really is an ethical battle here. My stand? I'm all for living on, so I'm all good with the plot. :) I am in fact, fascinated with the story line.

Their main dilemma comes when that thing regarding dying is resolved. They have to do everything that they can to stop an AI from invading. I know it sounds cliche, but hear me out okay? It's different. The feel is different because for one, these are teens. There are parents involved and God knows with teens, there's a certain recklessness to them sometimes. It is damn fascinating (pardon me for being redundant, I just can't find another word for it!) and very, very exciting!

These teenagers face the battle head on and hope for the best. I love their spirit and I love how they value life itself. I guess that also happens when you're kind of give a second chance. A REAAAALLYYY BIG SECOND CHANCE!!! They each have their own set of traits. Personally, I am looking forward to the next book just to see how they will interact with one another after everything that happened to them in this book.

There are loopholes in this book, but I trust that the author will reveal everything in due time. It makes it more interesting though! :)


All in all, such a good book! I had a good time reading this!

perfect 5!


An ARC was provided to me by in exchange for an honest review.

Moonlight Reader started the TBR Thursday, and I think it's a good way to a) show what new books I've got and b) confront myself with my inability to lower my TBR. In fact, since I started recording it, it has risen significantly. I get the feeling I'm doing something wrong here...

 

Still more books than planned, but less than other weeks. I hope to have a bit more time this week so I'll be able to finish some books.

 

Rings in time

 

First dates can be so awkward, especially when instead of a kiss the night ends with a semi-truck running into a convenience store. When Jenna meets Pearl Connolly, her handsome yet oddly familiar new neighbor, she's more than happy to agree to a date, but the night takes a turn for the worse when her store is destroyed. Jenna isn't the only one that thinks the 'tragic accident' was no accident at all. Fortunately help comes in the form of Pearl and his sister, researchers bent on learning the truth, but hiding truths of their own. Sending Jenna back in time to find out what happened seems like the best way preserve the future, but what she learns about herself and her forgotten past in the midst of disaster changes everything. Rings of Time is a charmingly funny science-fiction romance that traverses motherhood, relationships, and time itself.

 

Fairy Keeper

 

Forget cute fairies in pretty dresses. In the world of Aluvia, most fairies are more like irritable, moody insects. Almost everyone in the world of Aluvia views the fairy keeper mark as a gift, but not fourteen-year-old Sierra. She hates being a fairy keeper, but the birthmark is right there on the back of her neck. It shows everyone she was born with the natural ability to communicate, attract, and even control the tiny fairies whose nectar is amazingly powerful. Fairy nectar can heal people, but it is also a key ingredient in synthesizing Flight, an illegal elixir that produces dreaminess, apathy and hallucinations. She’s forced to care for a whole hive of the bee-like beasties by her Flight-dealing, dark alchemist father. Then one day, Sierra discovers the fairies of her hatch are mysteriously dead. The fairy queen is missing. Her father’s Flight operation is halted, and he plans to make up for the lost income by trading her little sister to be an elixir runner for another dark alchemist, a dangerous thug. Desperate to protect her sister, Sierra convinces her father she can retrieve the lost queen and get his operation up and running. The problem? Sierra’s queen wasn’t the only queen to disappear. They’re all gone, every single one, and getting them back will be deadly dangerous. Sierra journeys with her best friend and her worst enemy -- assigned by her father to dog her every step -- to find the missing queens. Along the way, they learn that more than just her sister’s life is at stake if they fail. There are secrets in the Skyclad Mountains where the last wild fairies were seen. The magic Sierra finds there has the power to transform their world, but only if she can first embrace her calling as a fairy keeper.

 

The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter

 

A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them. He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organisation wants more? A meeting at a club. An offer. A brief. A target: Lewis Winter. It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences. An arresting, gripping novel of dark relationships and even darker moralities, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter introduces a remarkable new voice in crime fiction. The second book in the Glasgow Trilogy How A Gunman Says Goodbye will follow soon .

 

The Deep Beneath

 

H.A.L.F. 9 has taken his first breath of desert air and his first steps in the human world. Created to be a weapon, he proved too powerful for his makers and has lived a sedated life hidden from humans. But H.A.L.F. 9 has escaped the underground lab he called home, and the sedation has worn off. He has never been more alive. More powerful. Or more deadly. Erika Holt longs to ride her motorcycle east until pavement meets shore. She bides her time until graduation when she’ll say adios to the trailer she shares with her alcoholic mother and memories of her dead father. But a typical night in the desert with friends thrusts Erika into a situation more dangerous than she ever imagined. Circumstances push the two together, and each must make a fateful choice. Will Erika help H.A.L.F. 9 despite her “don’t get involved” rule? And will H.A.L.F. 9 let Erika live even though he was trained to kill? The two may need to forget their rules and training and if either is to survive the dangers of the deep beneath them.

 

Qualify

 

You have two options. You die, or you Qualify. The year is 2047. An extinction-level asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, and the descendents of ancient Atlantis have returned from the stars in their silver ships to offer humanity help. But there’s a catch. They can only take a tiny percent of the Earth’s population back to the colony planet Atlantis. And in order to be chosen, you must be a teen, you must be bright, talented, and athletic, and you must Qualify. Sixteen-year-old Gwenevere Lark is determined not only to Qualify but to rescue her entire family. Because there’s a loophole. If you are good enough to Qualify, you are eligible to compete in the brutal games of the Atlantis Grail, which grants all winners the laurels, high tech luxuries, and full privileges of Atlantis Citizenship. And if you are in the Top Ten, then all your wildest wishes are granted… Such as curing your mother’s cancer. There is only one problem. Gwen Lark is known as a klutz and a nerd. While she’s a hotshot in classics, history, science, and languages, the closest she’s come to sports is a backyard pool and a skateboard. This time she is in over her head, and in for a fight of her life, against impossible odds and world-class competition—including Logan Sangre, the most amazing guy in her class, the one she’s been crushing on, and who doesn’t seem to know she exists. Because every other teen on Earth has the same idea. You Qualify or you die.

 

 

The Six

 

Avatar meets The Terminator in this thrilling cyber-tech adventure. Crippled by muscular dystrophy, Adam spends his days playing virtual reality games, until a dangerously advanced artificial intelligence program that can control other machines tries to kill him. Created by Adam’s father, Sigma has escaped its cyber prison and is threatening world domination. In order to stop Sigma, Adam and five other terminally ill teens sacrifice their bodies and upload their minds into weaponized robots. Together, The Six must learn how to manipulate their new mechanical forms—and prepare for epic combat—before Sigma destroys humanity.

 

The Guild of Immortal Women

 

“When one is immortal, one should keep a low profile.” A new comedic romp through a magical tapestry maintained by Earth's Immortal women.

 

Dragons are people, too

 

Never judge a dragon by her human cover... Sixteen-year-old Kitty Lung has everyone convinced she’s a normal teen—not a secret government operative, not the one charged with protecting the president’s son, and certainly not a were-dragon. The only one she trusts with the truth is her best friend—and secret crush—the über-hot Bulisani Mathe. Then a junior operative breaks Rule Number One by changing into his dragon form in public—on Kitty’s watch—and suddenly, the world knows. About dragons. About the Draconic Intelligence Command (DIC) Kitty works for. About Kitty herself. Now the government is hunting down and incarcerating dragons to stop a public panic, and a new shape-shifting enemy has kidnapped the president’s son. Kitty and Bulisani are the last free dragons, wanted by both their allies and their enemies. If they can’t rescue the president’s son and liberate their fellow dragons before getting caught themselves, dragons might never live free again.

The Fury family has lived in hiding for thousands of years, marked as witches, the women in the family in the family have a genetic abnormality that give them extended lifespans.  The men of the family are not so lucky they have  a normal lifespan and are infertile.  In the present day, the Furies hide on an extensive compound, posing as an Amish community.  They are ruled by a council of their Elder women and have to get permission to leave if they would like to find a mate. When Ariel meets John, she plans to do just that; but her enemies have followed her and John gets pulled into a battle that he can not begin to understand.

I'm pretty sure I picked up this book because I had a severe case of cover love combined with the word witches and genetic enhancement in the blurb and I thought this was going to be something completely different than what it actually was.  It was mostly a running from people shooting at you type of thriller for the first third of the book. I was really intrigued by the Fury women's abnormality and their history. Unfortunately, most of this information was given in dumps when Ariel has to fill in John on her family's complicated back story.  The prologue is set in the 1600's and then the rest of the story is in present day, it may have helped to jump back and forth in time. I kept reading because I really wanted to know what happened to the antagonist, Sullivan and find out  more about the genetics behind the women.
This book would be better for someone who wants a shoot-em-up action-thriller rather than a new outlook on witches. 

This book was received for free in return for an honest review. 

 

Also, witches for Holiday bookish bingo:

Mark Alpert takes the readers to a secret culture that has hidden within the USA since the Europeans traveled to North America and it has been their seclusion that has ensured their survival.

 

For centuries and in different regions throughout the world the Furies have lived amoung us, they worked with the people, were their wives and created lives. But during the age of century where everything suspicious was a verdict for death, especially for women, they settled into the New World America where they could forge their own way and land and be left alone in peace. Fast forward to our time, John is not really living his life, he doesn't have a job, has lost his family and he is existing not really living. On a chance encounter in a bar, John is instantly taken in by Ariel's beauty and the fact that she seems interested in him, is even more shocking. This one moment, this one event is about to drastically change John's life forever, and he doesn't know whether he will survive this change or not, but he knows that he has finally found something worth living for and protecting once again.

 

When I originally read the premise of this book I assumed that it was going to be about the Fae, I could not have been more wrong. Alpert created a very interesting, creative and different twist on witches or Wicca. It is always nice to have someone put a different spin on things and I like that he started the book during the witch hunts in Europe. This helped explain some of the culture choices that the Furies made in the future and the rules that were created in America. I am always interested in the cultures that an author sets out in a book and while we get a hint of the Furies culture, the main information you get is the difference between the Men and the Women both culturally and genetically.

 

I  would classify this book as a light fantasy thriller novel that is basically non stop action through out. You will find it hard to find a place to put the book down as who wants to put down the book on a fight scene, especially when there are badass bikers around. It is light on the fantasy side of things, as the world is basically the same as ours, just with a secret society, where the women have some special abilities (I don't want to give away the book) and the men are born normal but strive to be extra special like the women.

 

It is always interesting to read a book and not like either main character, however, I do not think that that is what Alpert was going for in this book. I found John was too complacent and  too willing to please and falling right in love with Ariel was a bit annoying. John also was so unsure of himself and seems to think he has no good qualities that you can only really feel sorry for him and that is about it. I found that Ariel was really really manipulative and I struggle to wonder if Ariel ever really loved John. I'm not sure if this is just what she has trained herself to do after living for so many years but she definitely uses John's feelings towards her to her advantage, even when she knows it could lead to his death. This is where Alpert did not succeed in his story, I never really believed the relationship between John and Ariel and in order to really enjoy a story I think you have to like the characters somewhat or at least have some sort of strong feelings for them. I think that Ariel and John just fell and felt really flat.

 

This book was able to keep me entertained and I liked Alpert's writing style, I found the plot interesting and he had some great fight scenes (I mean who steals a ferry boat) but I found the character development and chemistry lacking between characters and I think this is important must within a book. Still the plot and ideas in the book were enough to get me though. I would read another book by Alpert, but I do not think this book is a must read, only a read it if this review piques your interest.

 

Enjoy!!!

The Furies are a family who live on the very edges of society.  After centuries of being hunted and massacred as witches, they have pulled away and try to live peaceably. When John first meets Ariel, he is over come by her beauty.  What he doesn't know is this meeting will put him right into the middle of the Fury civil war. He finds himself almost in a world outside of time, where people use an older version of English and even dress in fashions made popular during the 1600's.  Will his love of Ariel  give him the courage to find a way to thrive in Fury society?  Now that the FBI are looking for John, in connection with a drug deal and terrorist acts, he can never go back to the life he had.

In many ways The Furies has elements of a typical discrimination flip.  The Fury society is matriarchal because the women are extremely long lived, while the men only live the normal human span. We are even told of a mother who tells her son that she simply cannot invest in him because of his short life.  All of the elders are women and the men have no seat on the high council, or right to vote on a course of action for their family. The difference in longevity leads to a gender imbalance causing the women greatly outnumber men. The men are used for physical strength to work the farm.  Fury men are also infertile, which means the women must leave the family compound to be able to breed.  The women meet paramours in the outside world and leave the moment they discover they are pregnant.  Women are almost revered and fear investing in men because of their short lifespans.  The men feel disgruntled because of the lack of power they possess and covet the women's long lives. This comes to head when a formula is discovered which could potentially make the Fury men as long lived as the women, but the council wants to proceed with caution given the difficulty processing the anti aging formula and the concern about potential side effects. In the end, Alpert casts the men as villains because they break their family's code of silence, kill several women and even involve the FBI in their mission to gain their supposed equality. 

I don't believe that the FBI would be so gullible as to simply follow along with the directions of Basil. I don't believe that they would invest such huge resources on any informant without any real investigation. I further find the constant involvement in major historical events by this family to implausible and times wondered if I were reading a sci-fi version of Forest Gump. 

The Furies is extremely action packed, including descriptions of weapons.  John finds himself on the run with no idea of who is actually chasing him or why and yet he is steadfast about protecting Ariel and staying by her side.  This makes absolutely no sense to me because there is nothing that really binds these two together. Alpert is forced to rely on insta-love to make his story work.  John's devotion continues though he learns that Ariel lied to him from the moment she met him and only interacted with him to use him as a sperm donation. He isn't even really a person, just an entity capable of making her pregnant.  For his part, John justifies his instant devotion of Ariel because he is divorced, his child is dead and he has no friends or family to speak of. Ariel continually justifies her ongoing usage of John by claiming to want to protect him and fear that the burning times will return Though it is genuine to believe that their secret of longevity would cause them to be imprisoned and experimented on by the government, it does not justify what she does to John and it reads as a denial of privilege and power.

Though a gender imbalance exists, Ariel has White privilege and she most certainly has class privilege where John is concerned  It is telling that the two men whom Ariel chooses to mate with are both men of colour. That they instantly fall in love with her speaks of covetous nature of men of colour for White women.

John is an African-American man and a former drug dealer who turned his life around.  Heaven forbid he be some sort of professional man.  There is very little discussion about the racism that he faces as a man of color in a White supremacist world; however, Alpert does include the following false equivalency.