Life Blood : Ebook Review

2.5/5 Stars

Life Blood
By Thomas Hoover
Kensington Publishing (December 1, 2000)

Genre: Thriller

I spotted this is the free section of kobo and I thought, what they hey this looks interesting enough. Something else to read that's different from all the YA books I've been stockpiling.

Synopsis:

New York film maker Morgan James inadvertently stumbles upon a dark conspiracy when interviewing a new mom for her film 'Baby Love'.  Thinking her film needs a little extra kick she interviews a woman to tell her story of how she is now the mother of a newly adopted caucasain boy and instead of years he was hers in months! With her own self-motives - a deep seeded need to have a child of her own and fearing adoption is her only option - Morgan pushes for more information about this miracle adoption agency 'The Children of Light.' The more information she gets about the Children of Light and its founder Alex Goddard the more dangerous her life becomes. Wanting a baby, answers, and possibly a great documentary, Morgan is determined to find out all she can about where these miracle babies are coming from, which leads her deep into the Mayan jungle of all places.

My Thoughts:

The writing was done well in this book, the characters are pretty real, the story is an interesting concept, and there was some beautiful descriptive language; that being said, I wasn't really a fan of this book.  There were definitely some great aspects about this book, but my main two problems were: I didn't feel connected with the main character and I found the book to be overly predictable.  Most of the books I read I can connect to the protagonist in some aspect, unfortunately I wasn't able to in this book, I'm not sure what it was, but part of the problem might have been her baby craze - I'm 25, I'm not even thinking about babies. On a separate note this is what also bothered me about Breaking Dawn, Bella willing to throw everything with Edward away for a baby.  But back on track, I wasn't the biggest fan of Morgan's character.  The other main problem was I had the ending of the book and the path it would follow almost figured out to a T by the first hundred pages, I continued reading the rest of the book - 400 pages I think - to confirm that 90% of my suspicions were correct.  It was pretty interesting to see it get to the end, and that pacing was pretty good. A couple times near the end I did the 'just one more chapter' but it usually wouldn't be much more than that and I had no urge to try and sneak a peak in the morning. The fact that I seemed to be seeing all the cards and I was just waiting for them to be played out was a little boring for me.

Would I recommend this book? Probably not, unless someone I knew had a particular interest in Mayans or I would think they would relate to the book better than I would.  Would I read another book by the author?  Perhaps, but I'd want to read lots of reviews about the story and characters before making a decision.

Everneath : Ebook Review

4/5 Stars

Everneath
First in Series
By Brodi Ashton
Balzer & Bray (January 24, 2012)

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Crickey! Falling behind on my blogging, what a busy week! Well I'm just going to have to make up the lost posts, :).

The tale of Persephone and Hades with a twist. The tale takes place in the Everneath, but this is not the Underworld. The Everneath is where the Everlings dwell a race of Immortals that survive by draining the emotions out of mortals, most of which forfeit their lives for this undertaking.

Synopsis:

After an one-hundred year nap Nikki wakes up in the arms of an Everling named Cole. Drained of all emotion, she feels hollow when Cole releases her from his grasp, but an image plays through her mind, one that she can't shake, the image of a boy's face. But Nikki has done what few other's have, she's survived.  Cole wants to make her his Queen of the Everneath, but Nik refuses proclaiming she has to return to the surface and say goodbye to the love one's she left behind, and see the boy who's face she has kept in mind for the last 100 years, Jack. There's a catch, fleeing the surface is not that simple, in six months time the Tunnels are coming for her and she can't stop that horrific future, unless she agrees to go with Cole, or something even more unlikely figures out how to escape them. Though 100 years have passed in the Everneath, only 6 months have on the surface. Nik has only 6 months to salvage the broken relationships she left behind, and say her true good-byes to the people she loves.

What I thought:

I really liked Everneath, I just flew through the book, and I had a hard time putting it down.  It was fast paced and I liked the characters: Nik the broken girl trying to make peace with her life she destroyed due to a stupid decision, Jack is the ever dedicated boyfriend/friend, and Cole is the mysterious bad boy.  I've always been big into mythology so that was a plus for this book, and I liked the interesting twists Ashton added into the novel. There were a few things I didn't like. I'm sure I'm not the only person that feels this way, maybe I am, but I actually felt bad for Cole. Nikki hurled herself at him, begging him to take her pain away - he has the power - and although she didn't realize at the time the consequences of her actions, it was her not him that initiated it.  Unfortunately their 100 year cuddle fest had an unexpected side-effect, he developed real emotions for her.  Do I think Cole is up to no good persisting that Nik becomes Queen? Absolutely. Do I think he actually cares about her and just isn't out for himself? Yup, sure do. But this doesn't stop Nik from being mean and mad at him.  The other thing I didn't like was the ending, darn you cliff hangers! If there wasn't another book in the works - January 2013 BLAH - I would say this book was not finished, but since it's part of (a trilogy I think) that makes up for it a tad.  Having to wait months and months for the second book doesn't offer much consolation.

I would recommend this, I really liked it, but I would tell that person WAIT, don't read it till like next year, or December because it'll just make you mad not knowing!

If you'd like more insight check out this fellow bloggers blog: http://smallreview.blogspot.ca/2012/02/book-review-everneath-by-brodi-ashton.html

Cute!

I was looking at pictures of goats online for a 3D model I was making and found this adorableness!

Lenobia's Vow: Book Review

5/5 Stars

Lenobia's Vow (Novella)
House of Night Series
By P.C. Cast
St Martin's Press (January 31, 2012)

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

This story follows Lenobia, a horse mistress at the House of  Night Zoey is attending.  It takes place in the 1700's when Lenobia is but a teenager herself.  We discover she is a bastard child living on her father's estate as a servant girl.  Her mother is a very beautiful woman with grey eyes like her and her father desired her so much he had her brought from England to become his mistress.  There is much resentment from his real family towards Lenobia and her mother, and it doesn't help she bears a striking unmistakable resemblance to her half sister.  Her half sister that just fell ill and died, and no one outside of the property knows of yet.
Lenobia is pulled aside by her mother and told to flee the estate, away from a family that looks at her with disdain and a priest that looks at her in a very unpriestly manor.  There is a carriage about to arrive to take Cecile (Lenobia's half sister) to the docks, from the docks to a grand ship, and from that ship to the New World, New Orleans. Here Cecile's new husband awaits. Reluctantly Lenobia agrees to assume Cecile's life.   When the carriage arrives it dawns on Lenobia this the last time she will ever see her mother, and with a tearful goodbye they depart. Lenobia heads towards her new fake life; remembering her mother's words to be Cecile not to become Cecile. Now the only thing left to do is not get caught on the 8 week voyage to New Orleans.  But what Lenobia doesn't know is that something sinister is about to board the ship with her, and her life is going to change entirely in the most unexpected way.

Lenobia's Vow was a very quick read and not just because it's a novella.  It gives a little bit of background on Lenobia, one of Zoey's favourite teachers, and what had happened to her.  I would read this after you have caught up in the series because it gives background to her scars and also why she is so reluctant to fall in love, especially with a human.  If you love the series, and you like Lenobia's character, dive in! It's well written and a quick easy read.  The style in which it is written is a little different from her other books, but I think that it gives more character from Lenobia's perspective, and there is quite a bit of French text in it.  Most of it is repeated in English after they say it, and I was able to translate some of it myself (since I'm Canadian and they teach us french and I actually chose to learn it instead of staring at the ceiling not listening), but for those of you qui n'a pas etudier francais, you might want to google some of the words if it bothers you that much.

The Questing Beast: Ebook Review

4/5 Stars

The Questing Beast
By Ilona Andrews
Smashwords (May 16th, 2010)

Genre: Sci-fi 

Since it's a short I don't want to give too much away so I'll keep this as brief as possible. A small group of people are on a mysterious planet conducting research on its environment, and inhabitants; one of which are small furballs that eat metal so there are no laptops, no computers, no tv's, no internet for 2 years, all notes are taken by hand -ew. With 4 weeks left on the expedition sh** hits the fan and the only computer (which is really more like a server taking in information, sealed behind glass so the fuzzies can't eat it) get's a virus and all the data is corrupted.  Their only hope of not wasting two years of their life and salvaging the data is Nannybot (an odd robot that backs up information), which get's backed up one a week, so they're safe! Wrong. Someone else backed it up and now it's also infected with the virus, but Nannybot being an AI has made the virus infect it in an odd way.  Making it very hard to retrieve the data when the Nannybot is convinced it is a 14th centry knight who must capture the Questing Beast!

My Opinion:

Short and sweet just like the story!

I really like the way this short was written, and it was surprisingly funny.

Would I recommend this short? Yes! Would I read more books by this author? Yes!

Publishing Ebook How to: "I did it all by myself"

Now for the second instalment of creating your very own ebook. Last post I described what places you should plan on posting you book(s) on. Now I'm going to go into further details on how to do it.

If you have decided to go the route that is harder but makes you more money than doing it by yourself is the way to go.  Though you must keep in mind that some sites only allow aggregators to publish their books (ex Smashwords), like the Sony store.  If you’re American you’re in luck, you can publish (if you have the patience and requirements) at the iBookstore, Amazon.com is A LOT easier, and you can use PubIt! to publish on Barnes and Nobel. 

There is only one way to not take a loss and that is to have customers purchase your ebook off your webpage.  Quite a few people don’t have their own website and even less know how to throw a shopping cart on it.  I have my own webpage, but I don’t see the sense in making a shopping cart.  You might be asking yourself, why wouldn’t you want to make a 100% profit? My answer: Nobody knows who I am. why would they go to my site and buy me ebook? 

I think having your own site and own checkout is a great idea, but if you’re not established I don’t see it generating much income. If you’ve released a few ebooks and they are doing well then I would definitely consider this option and promote your website to your readers. Ex, put your website at the end of your ebooks, develop a fan page on facebook and tell your readers where to find your ebooks.

Now you have to decide where you want to release your ebook, the best thing to do is to release it on as many sites as possible. Please see my previous post for all the sites you can release it on.

Some tips:

Release your ebook for .99 cents (I know who wants all their hard work to get them less than a dollar, I sure don’t!) BUT people are much more likely to give an author they never heard of a chance for .99 cents.  Don’t fret though, you could set a goal for yourself like, if I sell 2,500 books I’m going to start selling my ebook at $1.99, and if your sales don’t drop after the price change you might say to yourself, if I sell 10,000 I’m going to change it to $2.99, etc, etc.  I wouldn’t go any higher than $3/4.99.

An Important thing to remember is once you start selling your ebooks don’t hike it up right away, you could deter people and then get less reviews than you want.  I am a strong believer in reviews if I see a book released with 300 reviews compared to one with 3 I am more likely to look at the 300 reviewed one, aren’t you?  SOMEONE out of those 300 is going to have a well detailed opinion, and we humans are drawn by popularity. We would trust a 4 star book with 300 reviews than a 5 star book with 3 reviews?

The more popular your book is the more popular it will become, period.  So don’t cut your books growth short too soon by hiking up the price to make a few extra dollars.

Option two (if you didn’t like the last option you’ll like this one even less) release your ebook for free and when it gets popular (set a goal for this two like maybe 10 reviews or 1,000 downloads or maybe just free for the first 2-4 weeks) start selling your ebook.  If you peeps have learned anything from my site, if it’s free I give it a go!

Next Wednesday: I'll be talking about converting you .doc to other files. 

77 Shadow Street : Book Review

4/5 Stars

77 Shadow Street
By Dean Koontz
Bantam (December 27th, 2011)

Genre: Horror, Sci-fi, Paranormal

It was odd reading this book, I'm not saying this as the content was odd or that there was something wrong with it, but that it had been so long that I'd read a book of this genre that that itself was odd.  It had been probably at least 6 months since I read one of his books (aside from picking up Lightning again to read it), and the last couple hadn't really been that scary more like a suspense than an actual horror.  It doesn't help either that most of the book I've been reading, while super natural aren't really scary or unnerving.  So I was a bit unprepared for this book.  When I first started to read 77 Shadow Street it was so creepy that I didn't even want to read it at night before I went to bed, I was afraid of having nightmares (sadly this happens often when I watch or read really scary stuff).  This is definitely one of his more chilling especially compared to what he's written lately. The story focuses multiple main characters from a soldier to a scientist, a song writer to a hitman, all destined for something terrible to happen.

Synopsis:

The Pentleton, an upscale apartment building that had been converted from a famous mansion, houses something dark and deadly, something that its about to unleash on its unsuspecting inhabitants.  Strange things begin to occur, things that can't be explained or comprehended.  A flicker here, a flicker there, the residents notice disturbing glimpses of alternate worlds, strange creatures, people that seem to be from a different era appear then disappear, and even the city disappears in a flash of lightning.  Something's not right.  But before the renters have a chance to understand what's happening, their world shifts and they're no longer in the Pentleton they live in, instead it has mutated in a landscape of nightmares.  Now they must band together or let this strange world devour them one by one.  77 Shadow Street is no longer their home but a homage to a future beyond disaster.

My Opinion:

It was refreshing to read such a scary novel by Koontz again, though most of his books follow human killers and sometimes mutated ones, few actually follow the theme of 'things that go bump in the night'.  This book is sure to leave you wanting to read during the daytime.  The creature creations he describes are disturbing to the say the least and the atmosphere so chilling it'll make your hairs stand on end.  If you're looking for something genuinely creepy this book will do it.  While it is not my favourite, it still had a very interesting concept, was of course wonderfully written, and had a shout out to Golden Retrievers at some point which is to be expected.  I would definitely recommend this book for others to read if this is a genre they enjoy, and as always I can't wait to see what he releases next!

His next book is scheduled to be released next month and it is the fifth in the Odd Thomas Series. I have yet to actually read this series, my sister read the first two and said it wasn't his best, but the series keeps on going. Makes me think if I should give it a go at some point. Possibly after I'm done reading the Frankenstein Series.