GARGOYLE GUARDIAN OMNIBUS (Books 1-3)

Gargoyle Guardian by Rebecca Chastain
Books 1, 2, and 3 of the Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: ebook

About Gargoyle Guardian:

To help gargoyles in peril, Mika will risk everything

MAGIC of the GARGOYLES (Book 1)

Mika Stillwater is a midlevel earth elemental with ambitions of becoming a quartz artisan, and her hard work is starting to get noticed. But when a panicked baby gargoyle bursts into her studio, insisting Mika is the only person she’ll trust with her desperate mission, Mika’s carefully constructed five-year plan is shattered.

Swept into the gritty criminal underworld of Terra Haven, Mika jeopardizes everything she’s work so hard for as she attempts to save the baby gargoyle from the machinations of a monster—and to stay alive…

CURSE of the GARGOYLES (Book 2)

Mika Stillwater isn’t known for her skills with combat magic. As a gargoyle healer, she spends her days mending broken appendages and curing illnesses in the living-quartz bodies of Terra Haven’s gargoyles. But when a squad of the city’s elite Federal Pentagon Defense warriors requests her assistance in freeing a gargoyle ensnared in a vicious invention, Mika jumps into the fray.

No one could have predicted that her involvement would ignite a chain reaction set to destroy the city, the world, and magic itself.

SECRET of the GARGOYLES (Book 3)

In her brief career as a gargoyle healer, Mika Stillwater has faced some daunting challenges, but none have stumped her—until now. A strange sickness infects a handful of gargoyles in Terra Haven, rendering them comatose and paralyzed. Worse, the cure she seeks is shrouded in the gargoyles’ mysterious culture and the secret they guard with their lives.

Gaining the gargoyles’ trust is only the first step. To save the sick gargoyles, Mika must embark on a perilous mission into the heart of deadly wild magic to a place no human has ever survived...

Source: Info in the About Gargoyle Guardian was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31197366-gargoyle-guardian-chronicles-omnibus on 09/09/2018.

Get book 1 for free at:

My Thoughts:

My advise is, don't read Magic Of The Gargoyles and Curse Of The Gargoyles unless you have Secret Of The Gargoyles in your hands already because books 1 and 2 ends in big whooping cliffhangers! I am soooo not a fan of cliffies!

What I'm wondering about is that, why is it with all the near death experiences of our heroine, we don't see her parents or her sister? Where are they?...

Plot is not this author's biggest forte. However, this is an urban fantasy series so I am not expecting a twisty plot like I would if it was a crime fiction, so in my point of view, it is not really a demerit.

This gargoyle image I have with this post does not really fit any of the gargoyles in the story but he is cute enough and I needed a gargoyle with a gargoyle post! So he will do.

At the end of it, I enjoyed this omnibus a lot and I would recommend it to any urban fantasy geek!

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4.5
Writing Style = 4.5
Ending = 4
World building = 5
Cover art = 5
Pace = 5
Plot = 3.5

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries

Meet The Author

About Rebecca Chastain:

Rebecca Chastain has found seven four-leaf clovers to date, won a purebred Arabian horse in a drawing, and once tamed a blackbird for a day. She has been employed as a VHS sales clerk, bookshelf straightener, government pseudo-employee, professional finder of lost sporting goods, and strategy guide wrangler in the video game industry. Dreaming up the absurd and writing stories designed to amuse and entertain has been her passion since she was eleven years old, and she’s incapable of stopping. She lives in northern California with her wonderful husband and two bossy cats. To find out about new releases, sales, and freebies, sign up for Rebecca's newsletter: http://www.rebeccachastain.com/newsletter

www.rebeccachastain.com | twitter | facebook | amazon | goodreads

FTC Disclosure:
This book was purchased with private funds.
No money received for this review.

FOR THE BIRDS

The Book

For The Birds by Angela Roquet
Book 3 of the Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. series
Read by Hollie Jackson
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: ebook & audiobook

About For The Birds:

Lana Harvey isn't just any reaper. She's the new captain of the Posy Unit, a specialty group dedicated to harvesting mass quantities of souls from natural disaster sites, battlefields, and the like. The new title didn't come without a price though. Lana made some promises along the way, and now it's time to follow through... even if that means putting herself in the path of the three Fates, a fickle and mighty force to be reckoned with. The Fates run a soul recycling plant in Limbo City, and if Lana isn't careful, they just might recycle her.

Source: Info in the About For The Birds was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17830430-for-the-birds on 30/12/2017.

Books in the Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. series:

               

Review

My Thoughts:

With this book, the series has really taken off. The first two books were good, but they mainly involved establishing the "basics", as in, laying the ground work for the rest of the series. Like a "coming of age" kind of theme. With this book, our main protagonist kicked ass! So this book is no longer a 4.5, but a full 5, even though it still ended in a cliffhanger. This book therefore is the best in the series yet. Hopefully, it will be up and up from here on and not a jump off the ledge at some point... Like the previous book, the title still do not make sense... And this book might be the best story but it is the worst cover art yet in the series... However, despite all that moaning, I would still give this book a five. Yes, it was a good read! And no, the individual rating of the parts does not come up to 5, but, the whole is more than its parts. By now, this series and author has gained a firm fan in me. So much so that I bought the first book in another series by this author. We'll see how the goodness of this author translate in her other books...

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 5
Writing Style = 5
Ending = 3
World building = 5
Cover art = 3
Pace = (6 hours and 45 minutes listening time)
Plot = 4.5
Narration = 5

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 cherries

The Author

About Angela Roquet:

USA Today bestselling Angela Roquet is a great big weirdo. She collects Danger Girl comic books, owls, skulls, random craft supplies, and all things Joss Whedon. She's a fan of renewable energy, marriage equality, and religious tolerance. As long as whatever you're doing isn't hurting anyone, she's a fan of you, too.

Angela lives in Missouri with her husband and son. She's a member of SFWA and HWA, as well as the Four Horsemen of the Bookocalypse, her epic book critique group, where she's known as Death. When she's not swearing at the keyboard, she enjoys painting, goofing off with her family and friends, and reading books that raise eyebrows.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT, the first novel in Angela's Lana Harvey, Reapers Inc. series, is now available for FREE on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, & iBooks. You can find Angela online at www.angelaroquet.com

website | twitter | facebook | google+ | instagram | youtube | goodreads

The Narrator

About Hollie Jackson:

With over 200 audiobooks narrated and produced, Hollie Jackson has worked with both indie and USA Today bestselling authors across a wide range of genres. Hollie's voice brings characters of all types to vibrant, compelling life, allowing the listener to sit back and enjoy the story.

Growing up in a military family, Hollie found herself lost in the world of poetry and prose, and truly enjoys sharing that joy with others through spoken and written word. As an author, she understands the importance of drawing the reader into the world of the story. As a voracious reader, she enjoys an eclectic range of genre and carries that over into the studio: from contemporary romance to paranormal thrillers, historical fiction to epic fantasy, from erotica to tamer New Adult/Young Adult titles.

Everyone has a story to tell, and Hollie loves to bring those stories to life, one word at a time.

The information about Hollie Jackson was taken from https://tantor.com/narrator/hollie-jackson.html on 25/12/2017.

https://tantor.com/narrator/hollie-jackson.html | goodreads

FTC Disclosure:
This book was purchased with private funds.
No money received for this review.

THE SKULL THRONE

The Book

The Skull Throne by Peter Brett
Book 4 in The Demon Cycle series
Read by Colin Mace
Genre: epic fantasy
Format: ebook & audiobook

About The Skull Throne:

The first three novels in New York Times bestselling author Peter V. Brett’s groundbreaking Demon Cycle series -- The Warded Man, The Desert Spear, and The Daylight War -- set a new standard for heroic fantasy. The powerful saga of humans winnowed to the brink of extinction by night-stalking demons, and the survivors who fight back, has kept readers breathless as they eagerly turned the pages. Now the thrilling fourth volume, The Skull Throne, raises the stakes as it carries the action in shocking new directions.

The Skull Throne of Krasia stands empty.

Built from the skulls of fallen generals and demon princes, it is a seat of honor and ancient, powerful magic, keeping the demon corelings at bay. From atop the throne, Ahmann Jardir was meant to conquer the known world, forging its isolated peoples into a unified army to rise up and end the demon war once and for all. But Arlen Bales, the Warded Man, stood against this course, challenging Jardir to a duel he could not in honor refuse. Rather than risk defeat, Arlen cast them both from a precipice, leaving the world without a savior, and opening a struggle for succession that threatens to tear the Free Cities of Thesa apart.

In the south, Inevera, Jardir’s first wife, must find a way to keep their sons from killing each other and plunging their people into civil war as they strive for glory enough to make a claim on the throne.

In the north, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn struggle to forge an alliance between the duchies of Angiers and Miln against the Krasians before it is too late.

Caught in the crossfire is the duchy of Lakton -- rich and unprotected, ripe for conquest.

All the while, the corelings have been growing stronger, and without Arlen and Jardir there may be none strong enough to stop them. Only Renna Bales may know more about the fate of the missing men, but she, too, has disappeared...

Source: Info in the About The Skull Throne was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13630171-the-skull-throne on 20/03/2016.

Review

My Thoughts:

The world building is nice, but that is not it's most prominent feature. It is woven in such a way that it hooks into your brain sneaky-like and you find yourself craving to read more of the world in odd moments. It encroaches into your real life. It is addictive. So if you are masochistic like that, just plod through Book 2 and Book 3 and you'll get here.

The writing style still has multiple threads but now the author writes them in bigger chunks and therefore is a whole lot less annoying. And I like that very much!

The Skull Throne still ends with a cliffhanger, but then, we already knew that going in. What makes it insidious is that, it seemingly ends in mid-chapter and The Core starts straight where it ends. Starts mid-chapter. Same sentence. Real stealthy! So my advise is, don't start reading The Skull Throne until you have The Core in your hands too.

I actually bought The Skull Throne when it first came out, like a year before The Core, and stopped reading about three quarters into the book because I knew it was going to end in a cliffie. Another incentive for me to stop reading there was that a favourite character died and it took me a good year to grieve him before I could continue on reading in this world again. It was that much of a shock.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4
Writing Style = 4
Ending = 3.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 4
Pace = 4
Plot = 3
Narration = 4.5

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 cherries

The Author
	Raised on a steady diet of fantasy novels, comic books, and Dungeons & Dragons, Peter V. Brett (“Peat” to his friends) has been writing fantasy stories for as long as he can remember. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Art History from the University at Buffalo in 1995, and then spent over a decade in pharmaceutical publishing before returning to his bliss. He lives in Brooklyn.
www.petervbrett.com | facebook | facebook author page | twitter | goodreads | pinterest | instagram | google+

Books in The Demon Cycle series:

FTC Disclosure:
The copies of these books were purchased with private funds.
No money received for this review.