Literary Brooding

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #1) by Tamsyn Muir Published September 10th 2019 by Tor Two young women are tethered to lives neither have chosen. Harrow is leader of the Ninth, a talented necromancer who wants to save the people who follow her. Gideon has been raised on the Ninth and she hates it with a passion and has planned her escape from the planet and is ready to start a new life. At the last moment Gideon finds herself back in the throes of the Ninth and even worse being part of a bigger scheme involving the Emperor. The Emperor has summoned the eight houses to compete for a prized position that offers eternal life. None of that really rankles Gideon, what annoys the crap out of her is that she is now required to protect Harrow. As the two women become entangled in the machinations of this game they are forced to play, they also come to realise that perhaps they are not enemies. Muir has created one richly dense world with deftly created characters and you are sucked into it

  Dark City (Tales of the Shadow City #2) - Anna Mocikat Expected publication: 17 September 2020 by Black Rose Writing  ISBN1684335809 (ISBN13: 9781684335800) The world is a mess, something called the Glitch has decimated the human population but there are survivors. The survivors have to eke out an existence between the harshness of the land and a vampire colony with an agenda of their own and the Dark Ones who seek to end the human race. There is also a cyber race that assists the humans. It certainly is not an easy world for anyone to navigate. We meet all the characters a couple of weeks after a major battle has occurred in which the humans with the assistance of the vampires have secured a major victory over the Dark Ones. Everyone is smarting from their wounds and even victory has had a cost. At the start of the story everyone is regrouping and developing strategies for their next moves. For the humans, it is about affirming their alliance with the vampires through blood. For the

Well it has been a shitty year (so far, I remain an optimist) for everyone. For me, it has come with some extra challenges of moving interstate, buying a new house and starting a new job. So updating writing blogs has fallen to the wayside but I am back. For my legion of imaginary fans, I am here to tell you the reading mojo may have curtailed but purchasing of books did not.  So what have I read in the since I last wrote, well the following: The Anthology of Scottish Folk Tales Resistance (Divided Elements, #1) - Kopievsky, Mikhaeyla  Codename Villanelle (Killing Eve, #1) - Jennings, Luke The Dark Tide (The Dark Tide, #1) - Jasinska, Alicia  Babylon Berlin (Gereon Rath, #1) - Kutscher, Volker I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1) - Angelou, Maya La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust, #1) - Pullman, Philip Daybreak - Alsop, Cheree  Shoot the Messenger (Messenger Chronicles, #1) - DaCosta, Pippa  Howl's Moving Castle (Howl's Moving Castle, #1) - Jon