There are ghost towns in the world — places where the humans were annihilated in retaliation for the slaughter of the shape-shifting Others.
One of those places is Bennett, a town at the northern end of the Elder Hills — a town surrounded by the wild country. Now efforts are being made to resettle Bennett as a community where humans and Others live and work together. A young female police officer has been hired as the deputy to a Wolfgard sheriff. A deadly type of Other wants to run a human-style saloon. And a couple with four foster children — one of whom is a blood prophet — hope to find acceptance.
But as they reopen the stores and the professional offices and start to make lives for themselves, the town of Bennett attracts the attention of other humans looking for profit. And the arrival of the Blackstone Clan, outlaws and gamblers all, will uncover secrets…or bury them.
I am just not convinced of Virgil's background and he can still become a Sheriff of a town like Bennett. It just doesn't compute. The authenticity factor is shot to hell and back. Another issue I have trouble suspending disbelief with is that there were a lot of humans able to accumulate around Bennett in the wild country territory with the Elders around when the Elders were suppose to eat humans in the wild country. The story line there just doesn't add up. And others things like that, peppered through out the book that brought the ratings of this book down.
At the end of it, I still enjoyed this book, but not as much as I did the previous books.
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 3
Story itself = 3.5
Writing Style = 3.5
Ending = 3.5
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 3
Pace = (17 hrs & 57 mins listening time)
Plot = 2
Narration = 1.5
Anne Bishop lives in upstate New York where she enjoys gardening, music, and writing dark, romantic stories. She is the author of fourteen novels, including the award-winning Black Jewels Trilogy. Her most recent novel, Twilight’s Dawn, made the New York Times bestseller list. She is currently working on a new series, which is an urban dark fantasy with a bit of a twist.
An ocean of darkness lives in the journal of Philip Pinkerton. Ancient things with no place in our world are rising from the Abyss. Ezekiel, the arrogant, mad god has called us into battle. Does he think we can't touch him, or does he know we can't? I wish I knew. The world’s only hope lies in a forgotten weapon, the strength of our allies, and one necromancer of questionable ancestry. Yeah, this is going to end well.
In the last instalment in this series, the entire book is about our group of protagonists running around from one fight to another. This book is more of the same. Having said that, this series is starting to feel like "same old, same old". Being book 4, I hope that the author has more tricks up his sleeve to keep this series alive.
In this book, the story arc embarks on to a, "coming of age" theme. The entire world is no longer the same. So from urban fantasy, this book is taking on a post-apocalyptic genre cross-over. Thus the title "This Broken World". The world is permanently changed and expecting chaos. It would be fun to see how Eric Asher spins this story arc into. For now, we see the birth of a new world. And its broken. Meaning we will see more fighting like we have been seeing for the last few books. But I still like the idea of Vesik so I will continue following this series until I've had enough...
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 4
Story itself = 3
Writing Style = 3.5
Ending = 3.5
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 4.5
Pace = 1.5
Plot = 3
Narration = 5
Eric is a former bookseller, guitarist, and comic seller currently living in Saint Louis, Missouri. A lifelong enthusiast of books, music, toys, and games, he discovered a love for the written word after being dragged to the library by his parents at a young age. When he is not writing, you can usually find him reading, gaming, or buried beneath a small avalanche of Transformers.
New York Times and Publishers Weekly Best Selling Young Adult Series. Book Three by international writing phenomenon David Weber. Two young settlers on a pioneer planet seeks to stop a war and to save the intelligent alien treecats from exploitation by unscrupulous humans.
The fires are out, but the trouble’s just beginning for the treecats
On pioneer planet Sphinx, ruined lands and the approach of winter force the now Landless Clan to seek new territory. They have one big problem — there’s nowhere to go. Worse, their efforts to find a new home awaken the enmity of the closest treecat clan — a stronger group who’s not giving up a single branch without a fight
Stephanie Harrington, the treecats’ greatest advocate, is off to Manticore for extensive training — and up to her ears in challenges there. That leaves only Stephanie’s best friends, Jessica and Anders, to save the treecats from themselves. And now a group of xenoanthropologists is once again after the great secret of the treecats — that they are intelligent, empathic telepaths — and their agenda will lead to nothing less that treecat exploitation.
Finally, Jessica and Anders face problems of their own, including their growing attraction to one another. It is an attraction that seems a betrayal of Stephanie Harrington, the best friend either of them have ever had.
For some reason this little meerkat munchkin reminds me strongly of Survivor and this meerkat society of the Skinny Cat Clan, including two pups play fighting and another two little ones sleeping in a pile. They're very cute! If I had a photoshop software, I would give this little guy six legs, a more feline face and otter hands, and he will be Survivor!
Unlike the previous books, this one has a more layered plot this time. The authors threw in a couple of unexpected twists, which is great! So the character development and the world building has long been established a long time ago with the previous books. And also like the previous books, this one is also a very good read! This being the third installment in a trilogy, I was kinda hoping for a great grand finale to the Stephanie Harrington series... but it wasn't... it was just kind of another book in the series with lots of room for more to come. But this book having been published in 2013, I don't think there will be another installment in this series, like six years later, which is the greatest downer with Treecat Wars. Of course, there is always a hope that the authors will someday pick it up again and write another installment... hopefully.... As usual, the narration is fabulous! Can't complain with Khristine Hvam at all!
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4.5
Writing Style = 5
Ending = 4
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 5
Pace = 4.5
Plot = 4.5
Narration = 5
David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952.
Many of his stories have military, particularly naval, themes, and fit into the military science fiction genre. He frequently places female leading characters in what have been traditionally male roles.
One of his most popular and enduring characters is Honor Harrington whose alliterated name is an homage to C. S. Forester's character Horatio Hornblower and her last name from a fleet doctor in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. Her story, together with the "Honorverse" she inhabits, has been developed through 16 novels and six shared-universe anthologies, as of spring 2013 (other works are in production). In 2008, he donated his archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.
Many of his books are available online, either in their entirety as part of the Baen Free Library or, in the case of more recent books, in the form of sample chapters (typically the first 25-33% of the work).
Jane Lindskold is the author of more than twenty published novels, including the six volume Firekeeper Saga (beginning with Through Wolf’s Eyes), Child of a Rainless Year (a contemporary fantasy set in Las Vegas, New Mexico), and The Buried Pyramid (an archeological adventure fantasy set in 1880's Egypt).
Lindskold is also the author of the “Breaking the Wall” series, which begins with Thirteen Orphans, then continues in Nine Gates and Five Odd Honors. Her most recent series begins with Artemis Awakening, released in May of 2014. Lindskold has also had published over sixty short stories and numerous works of non-fiction, including a critical biography of Roger Zelazny, and articles on Yeats and Synge.
She has collaborated with several other SF/F writers, including Roger Zelazny, for whom, at his request, she posthumously finished his novels Donnerjack and Lord Demon. She has also collaborated with David Weber, writing several novellas and two YA novels set in his popular ”Honorverse.” She wrote the short story “Servant of Death” with Fred Saberhagen.
Charles de Lint, reviewing Changer, praised "Lindskold's ability to tell a fast-paced, contemporary story that still carries the weight and style of old mythological story cycles."[1] Terri Windling called Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls "a complex, utterly original work of speculative fiction." DeLint has also stated that “Jane Lindskold is one of those hidden treasures of American letters; a true gem of a writer who simply gets better with each book.”
Lindskold was born in 1962 at the Columbia Hospital for Women, the first of four siblings and grew up in Washington, D.C. and Chesapeake Bay. Lindskold's father was head of the Land and Natural Resources Division, Western Division of the United States Justice Department and her mother was also an attorney. She studied at Fordham, where she received a Ph. D. in English, concentrating on Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern British Literature; she successfully defended her Ph.D. on her 26th birthday.
Lindskold lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband, archaeologist Jim Moore.
Khristine Hvam is an award winning audiobook narrator, director, and voice over actress. Having studied acting for the theater and film, she soon discovered a love of voice over. You will hear her in TV/Radio commercials, video games, animated series, and most notably in over 200 audio book titles. Khristine has been honored with several Audio Publishers Association Audie Award nominations and in the summer of 2012 earned her first Audie Award in the fantasy category for her performance of Lani Taylor’s “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” and a second for “Astray” by Emma Donoghue. Khristine has also received five AudioFile Magazine’s Earphone Awards for her performances. Most recently she has begun directing audiobooks, a journey she never imagined taking, but one she is thrilled to be exploring. Khristine is a proud member of SAG/AFTRA.
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