Me on Waiting on Wednesday (354)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: The Defiant
Author: Lesley Livingston
Release Date: February 13, 2018
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada (US publisher: Razorbill/Penguin Random House)

From Goodreads:

The darling of the Roman Empire is in for the fight of her life.

Be brave, gladiatrix… And be wary. Once you win Caesar’s love, you’ll earn his enemies’ hate.

Fallon was warned.

Now she is about to pay the price for winning the love of the Roman people as Caesar’s victorious gladiatrix.

In this highly anticipated sequel to THE VALIANT, Fallon and her warrior sisters find themselves thrust into a vicious conflict with a rival gladiator academy, one that will threaten not only Fallon’s heart – and her love for Roman soldier Cai – but the very heart of the ancient Roman Empire.

When dark treachery and vicious power struggles threaten her hard-won freedom, the only thing that might help the girl known as Victrix save herself and her sisters is a tribe of long-forgotten mythic Amazon warriors.

The only trouble is, they might just kill her themselves first.

Considering the first, the battles and the harsh reality of Fallon's situation and the manipulation, this will probably be just as brutal.

Me on Retribution Rails

Title: Retribution Rails
Author: Erin Bowman
Release Date: November 7, 2017
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint)

When Reece Murphy is forcibly dragged into the Rose Riders gang because of a mysterious gold coin in his possession, he vows to find the man who gave him the piece and turn him over to the gang in exchange for freedom. Never does he expect a lead to come from an aspiring female journalist. But when Reece's path crosses with Charlotte Vaughn after a botched train robbery and she mentions a promising rumor about a gunslinger from Prescott, it becomes apparent that she will be his ticket to freedom—or a noose. As the two manipulate each other for their own ends, past secrets are unearthed, reviving a decade-old quest for revenge that may be impossible to settle.

Retribution Rails is all about investigation and redemption, a story about two people willing to use each other to get free of terrible situations and the truths they discover along the way.

Reece was once lost but now part of a group. Which at least means safety, even if they are a gang of bandits and thieves. Murderers. Robbing trains and carriages, stealing. Taking in order to survive. Not the Reece necessarily wants to be there, but he has no choice. Not until he finds the man who gave him a strange gold coin. Then he'll be free. Then he'll be able to forget about all the things he's done, all the people he's hurt. But you can't run from the past.

Charlotte is intelligent and persistent. She'll stop at nothing to uncover the truth, to tell the story as it is. The truth is absolute, no matter who it'll hurt. Who she'll manipulate in order to get her story. Especially if she wants to survive a train robbery and an accidental kidnapping. Even if she stumbles across the best story she's ever heard. But there's the truth as it happened and the truth people want to believe, and sometimes the latter needs to be told instead of the former.

This definitely holds up as a companion to Vengeance Road, but I think you can read this without reading the first. Reading the first certainly provides some backstory to some somewhat important characters but not the main ones of Reece and Charlotte. They're like oil and water when they come together, ready to use each other in order to stay free or alive. The western setting is harsh and unforgiving, cold and painful, where consequences often lead to being on the wrong end of a gun barrel. This is very much a story about two people willing to do anything they can to be free f their circumstances, and the harsh reality that their actions have real consequences for both them and others they never meant to hurt. For readers who enjoyed the first book and readers looking for more western-set YA, I would suggest this.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Raincoast Books.)

Me on This Week's Book Week (283)

This Week's Book Week is rather similar to Stacking the Shelves hosted by Tynga's Reviews only with far more rambling and a less witty title. ;)

Hi! It snowed! Which was terrible. But not that much. But still. It doesn't give me hope that the winter won't be as cold and snowy as it was last year. It's not supposed to be that cold and snowy here in the winter. Curse you, climate change. *shakes fist*

Reviews going up this week will feature Retribution Rails by Erin Bowman (Tuesday) and a blog tour featuring Renegadess by Marissa Meyer (Thursday). :)

Bought/borrowed/received:
A Poison Dark and Drowning by Jessica Cluess (borrowed from the library)

Me on Last Star Burning

Title: Last Star Burning
Author: Caitlin Sangster
Release Date: October 10, 2017
Publisher: Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster imprint)

Sev is branded with the mark of a criminal—a star burned into her hand. That's the penalty for being the daughter of the woman who betrayed their entire nation. Now her mother's body is displayed above Traitor's Arch, kept in a paralyzed half sleep by the same plague that destroyed the rest of the world. And as further punishment, Sev is forced to do hard labor to prove that she's more valuable alive than dead. When the government blames Sev for a horrific bombing, she must escape the city or face the chopping block. Unimaginable dangers lurk outside the city walls, and Sev's only hope of survival lies with the most unlikely person—Howl, the chairman's son. Though he promises to lead her to safety, Howl has secrets, and Sev can't help but wonder if he knows more about her past—and her mother's crimes—than he lets on. But in a hostile world, trust is a luxury. Even when Sev's life and the lives of everyone she loves may hang in the balance.

Last Star Burning is a layered story, a story of fear and sickness and rebellion. A story about a girl wanting to prove she's more than her traitor mother and the places she's forced to go in order to stay alive.

Sev knows her place in the City, even as she hates it. Hates what her mother did years ago. Hates that no one can look past her name, her scar that marks her as a traitor, her face that looks so much like her mother's. But she's hoping that one day, maybe, she'll prove her place as someone useful. But then there's an attack and Sev's on the run to stay alive, afraid the City will finally punish her like they did her mother. But then she meets Howl, who knows more about her and her mother than she expects, and discovers so many things she thought she knew were lies.

This was interesting to read. I could see where the author drew inspiration from Chinese history and culture, but it's very much set in a slightly ruined futuristic fantasy dystopian setting. I kept waiting for something different to happen, something to happen to Sev because of her illness and her delusions. It's a story that seems to be all about the people in it, their decisions, their plots and plans. Some twists were predictable, but some weren't. There were times when I felt it dragged, where it was slow. It was something a little different than past dystopian books, and I was interested in some parts, but it was a bit too slow for my tastes.

(I downloaded an e-galley of this title from Simon & Schuster through NetGalley.)

Me on Waiting on Wednesday (353)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: Robots vs. Fairies
Editors: Navah Wolfe & Dominik Parisien
Release Date: January 9, 2018
Publisher: Saga Press

From Goodreads:

Get ready for the ultimate deathmatch between the mechanical and the magical.

Travel with us to distant stars, step sideways into worlds under the hill, journey across ruined landscapes at the end of the world, solve riddles in the Old West, and follow that strange music to the dive bar down the road. The robots and fairies are waiting for you there, they are waiting for you everywhere. And now the time has come to choose a side. Old stories will be upgraded, worlds will collide, science will give way to magic and magic will become science.

Join 18 bestselling, award-winning and up and coming authors as they pick a side and take a stand to answer the question on everyone’s mind: when the lasers cease firing and the fairy dust settles, who will triumph in the epic battle between the artificial and the (super)natural?

I WANT. That is all. ;)