Yay! My Holiday Book Exchange books arrived!!!! NTE selected some really excellent books. After hearing Roselle Lim talk on an author panel I have been dying to read her books. Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck & Fortune and Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop are beautiful books and I can’t wait to read them. I reviewed an arc of A Touch of Stone and Snow last year and really wanted a physical copy for my shelf. Look at how pretty they all are!!!!!!
So much angst and pining and a big sabre-toothed snow cat (Double Cannonball!)
A Touch of Stone and Snow by Milla Vane
Official book description (cause I haven’t finished the book yet): Danger lurks in the western realms. The Destroyer’s imminent return has sent the realms into turmoil as desperate citizens seek refuge—but there’s no safety to be found when demons and wraiths crawl out from the shadows. Even Koth, a northern island kingdom left untouched by the Destroyer a generation past, is besieged by terrors spawned from corrupt magics. When Lizzan leads the Kothan army against these terrors, only to see her soldiers massacred and to […]
Don’t insult a goddess in her own temple – gonna have a bad time
The Beast of Blackmoor by Milla Vane
Mala, sent on a quest by the goddess Vela, comes to Blackmoor to locate and tam the legendary Beast. She initially believes the beast to be a demonically possessed mammoth that plagues the area and is surprised when she instead discovers that it is the warrior Tavik, who she first met protecting a caravan of refugees from blood-thirsty revenants. Tavik is pretty much a broken man, who once foolishly defiled a temple of Vela and now believes that everything that happened since then is divine […]
A sequel far superior to the first
A Touch of Snow and Stone (book 2 of A Gathering of Dragons) by Milla Vane
I had extremely mixed feelings about the first book in this series. The only two reasons I ended up picking up the second book were (1) the incredible world building that for once doesn’t feel like Tolkien fan fiction but its own thing, and (2) Emmalita telling me I’d like it better than the first. Emmalita was 100% correct. Plot: We’re picking up from the first book with a caravan of emissaries from Kosh (the island nation untouched by the Destroyer the first time around) […]
Proper fantasy world building, what a concept!
A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane
I should start this review by saying I might change it based on how reading the second book goes, and that Vane created a really interesting and cool world to play in, but in my opinion, the romance, which is prominently featured in the story, is a dumpster fire. Plot: The leader of a small nation of warriors that live in the wilderness, resentful of their more “cultured” allies to the south and are totally not Scots, learns of the murder of his parents. Being […]