And now, the last.

 

BookCon first popped up in 2014 when the creative minds behind BEA decided to cash in on the supernova that was the YA market and separate the bulk of it from the main show. They sectioned off the wing where the Autographing tables were and pushed every small/indie YA booth over there with them.  Wheras BEA is pretty much an industry- related event, BookCon was wide open to the public.  

 

This was most likely where the term "shitshow" first started.

 

While BEA attendees could travel back & forth, BookCon patrons were kept corralled on their side.  Which meant you couldn't move, you couldn't talk to any vendors and there was no point in going over there since every nook & cranny was filled with people who had nowhere else to go.  All lines for all drop/events/autographs were filled hours beforehand mainly because there wasn't anything else for them to do.

 

As I'd explained in my first post, since my application for BEA had been rejected I signed up for BookCon.  Since it was a separate event happening after the Expo, I hadn't given it any thought and they had to have improved things since then... right?

 

Well... the price was cheap.  It was only about $60 for the weekend as opposed to $300 for the 2 1/2 days of BEA, but you also get what you pay for.  Like any big event, the devil lies in the details.  Unlike BEA where only the high profile events and celebrity appearances require pre-registration, for BookCon you need to sign up (and pay) ahead of time for EVERYTHING- lectures, seminars, even the Autographing Tables!  A big reason I attended was to try to get some things I'd missed at BEA- and turned out I still didn't.  All the stuff that's free upon admission at BEA is treated like DLC at BookCon. Heck, where BEA is for promoting the main reason for BookCon is to sell.  It's more like a flea market than anything.  

 

 

First thing I noticed was that the showfloor's been halved.  For the BEA the entire floor was available; for BookCon they cut off the side where all the indie & smaller publishers were located.  

 

Instead of letting us all queue up on the atrium floor as we do for the BEA, were we shuffled off to the side wing- again where the Autographing Tables were usually located and behind the UnBound vendor area.  Which meant you were gonna have 4x the attendees in literally half the space.  

 

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To top that off, everyone who'd attended those panels & lectures that you had to preregister for got early access to the showfloor.  So they were already in line for drops & events that were listed to happen at right 10am when the floor opened up, which blew my morning since now I couldn't do any of the stuff I wanted to.  Real smooth.

Did manage to pick up a couple of titles I'd missed out on at BEA.  Only thing was because of the crowd the line took over TWO HOURS to move and yeah- I missed out on two other signings because of it.  *sigh*

 

 

I did manage to snag a copy of an exclusive ARC by Melissa de la Cruz, so there's that.

 

 

Finally, there was a particular ARC I'd wanted from Harper Collins- the Tiger Queen- that was listed to drop that afternoon, right before the close of business. Come to find out they'd given out all their copies the day before and didn't have any left for the advertised drop that afternoon... 

 

For me, BookCon was basically mop-up duty for the BEA.  I met some folks, had a few good conversations and managed a few things but overall... it's literally just for people who don't attend BEA, publishers to sell their catalog & a cash cow for the promoters.

 

There was only one thing left for me to do after all the bullshit:

 

 

Here's the BEA haul and the good stuff from BookCon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought the book was pretty good. I really loved the characters of Nova and Cole the most in the book. I think there really cute together. I thought Pen whom is Cole's sister is alright. It sad when Nova's sister dies. ( Am not revealing a spoiler, since it mentions this in the description.)  Its really sad because you get to see what an awesome sister she was to Nova. 

 

The ending of course ends in a cliffhanger, a super hero type of cliffhanger. I thought it was not worth a five star but it was good enough for a four star review. It did seem pretty slow at first but once Nova meets Cole and Pen it really starts getting good and staying good. 

 

I received this book by the author for just agreeing to give my honest opinion on the book, I would definitely buy the next book. So I can find out what happens after the hero type of cliffhanger ending. I really hope the next one starts the adventure right away and keeps going until the very end. 

The story of two star-crossed lovers continues in this second book. It is just as exciting as previous book. William and Sydney's relation develops further but not everything is as it should be. Firstly, Sydney is having hard time dealing with going back to school and seeing Jeff again. Her behaviour is very unpredictable and there might be more to it then what meets the eye. Secondly, threat to her life is not over and there is very real imminent danger. William has vowed to protect her but will he be able to is another question entirely.

Across the galaxy and war is being waged. And hence thrill continues. Not a single boring moment in this awesome read. It kept me on my toes and second guessing everything. Ending was simply epic, I think it is a must read for sci-fic fans especially if you have read book one then you don't want to miss it. With well-developed characters, action, a little bit of mystery and a lot of drama & thrill, this book is highly entertaining. I am glad I get the chance to read it.

P.S. I received a complementary copy of this book.

Supernova - Doug Dandridge This book is starting a new series in the Exodus: Empires at War universe or at least I am assuming that it is a new series since it is marketed as book one. It is a great addition to this universe that Doug Dandridge have created. In this series we take a pause from the war in the Empires at War and embark on another adventure. Well, the war is still there in the background but the story itself is not about the war.

The book starts of as a mission of exploration undertaken by the aptly named Exploration Command. Soon a, previously unknown, civilization is discovered and from there on it starts to get really interesting. Although the Exploration Command’s ships are by no means defenseless, as the more primitive natives are about to learn the hard way, they soon discover that it might be advisable to get themselves a bigger stick. Like a battle cruiser or two. And why not a few marines while we are at it?

As the book blurb states, the natives of this unknown civilization are deeply religious (most of them at least) and as some of us knows, when religion enters the equation then intelligent reasoning and common sense usually exits. Thus the good guys soon finds themselves battling religious fanaticism when trying to save this race from extinction. It is impossible not to draw parallels between these fanatics and the ones that are rampaging around in our real world today, or in the past for that matter. Sadly humanity never seems to learn some things. I suspect these similarities are quite intentional from the authors side.

Anyway, some rather interesting features of the aliens anatomy quite quickly makes them highly interesting for the empire which makes the effort to make these people survive so much more important. So important that ethics occasionally might have to take a back seat. Not that the humans are turned into the bad guys though, except from the point of view of the religious fanatics of course.

To complicate matters there are a number of alien artefacts in the system that are advanced well beyond the empire. They play a rather important role later in the story although this where I have an issue with this book. I will not give any details since it would be a spoiler but when you encounter an artefact that is well beyond your level of science and understanding and which seems to be more or less indestructible you do NOT poke it with battle cruiser weaponry. That is just dumb.

Now, as if there was not enough complications already, the reason why this series seems to be called Exodus: Machine War rears its rather ugly head. As a stand alone book the title is somewhat misleading as there is not really any machine war going on and the machines only appear at the very end. However, obviously this is just book one of a series and should be seen as a stage setter. At first it does indeed look like much of the book have nothing to do with the upcoming machine war but I am sure that the author have some plans on how to tie everything together. If nothing else the empire now have to defend this world.

This is really a great book. Great story, great characters, good writing as usual from Doug Dandridge, plenty of well done fight episodes both in space and on the planet. The balance between the technological superiority of the empire and the more primitive natives ability to give them a black eye despite this is quite good. I am eagerly looking forward to the next instalment in this new series, as well as the next instalment in the Empires at War story arc as well of course.

Equal Parts (Supernova, #1) - Emma Winte... So, what do we have here? Stockholm syndrome! Sometimes, we just have to fall in love with a bad guy.

The story was pretty good. I was kind of wondering how she would pull off this super hero theme, but in the end I liked how it worked out. You'd think there was only good and bad, but I really like it when there's a gray line in between, and enemies becomes friends, and then you have the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing going on, sort of.

Sometimes the heroine could be a bit annoying but overall, I'd say that was only like 10% of the time. It was mostly when Achilles would be with another girl, and Felicity was already jealous even though she knows him for like 10 secs.

Since the good girl gets the bad boy, we have the bad boy changing for good girl. That part kind of a bit got too good to be true. In the beginning he would easily chop off hands of people and bludgeon anyone to death without a second thought, yet at the end, he was all like, "I can't do it anymore because I want to be good for you" Not actual word for word, but you get the idea. Is it really that simple to change a guy?

Also, at some points, they were each majorly spilling their hearts out to one another, out of nowhere. It was a lot of telling, and I probably would have liked it more if there were more showing. Even in the book, he actually says that actions speak clearer than words or whatnot. Please less talking and more just grab her and kiss her! haha, but overall I liked the story. Will definitely read more of this author's work!