Tag: Cherie Priest

Waiting on Wednesday: Cherie Priest’s Maplecroft

Posted July 2, 2014 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Wednesday again, and time for Waiting on Wednesday!

I’ve been watching for tweets about this one like a hawk. I haven’t loved every Cherie Priest I’ve read, but I’ve appreciated and enjoyed them all, and I’m excited about this one.

Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one….Cover of Maplecroft by Cherie Priest

The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny.

But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness.

This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted May 28, 2014 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

It’s apparently a freebie week for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and The Bookish. I saw someone else talk about the top ten books/series they want to get round to rereading if they have time, which sounds like a good idea. I’m a chronic rereader, with some favourites I never get tired of, but I feel guilty doing it because I have so much I should be reading already!

  1. Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series. I’m actually trying to work on rereading this, since I have the new one as an ARC, but there’s so many books out there, it’s hard to find the time. I remember being utterly enchanted back when I first read the books, though, so I hope the shine hasn’t worn off.
  2. Tanya Huff’s The Fire’s Stone. I just recall finding this one really fun, and enjoying the romance plot.
  3. Cherie Priest’s Cheshire Red books. I love these. I have them to reread, it’s just getting round to it. Adrian is the most badass ex-navy SEAL drag queen you could wish for, and I love the unconventional family Raylene builds up around herself.
  4. Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series. I ate these up the first and second time, but it’s been a while now. I’m looking at the new, cheap editions as ebooks and thinking it might be about time. I’m not a big fan of Imriel’s series, but I adore Phèdre and Joscelin, and the politics of it all. “I’ll be damned in full and not by halves” is one of the more memorable quotes in any book I’ve read.
  5. Jo Walton’s Sulien books. Plus A Prize in the Game, which isn’t strictly about Sulien. Asexual protagonist who is a kickass woman in the Arthurian world, what’s not to love? Plus interesting relationships with the people around her. I remember this really fondly.
  6. Robin McKinley’s Sunshine. There’s something about Sunshine and the unrelated Chalice that pull me back again and again. It’s the characters, I think, the way people interact, the way magic works. And the focus on homely things as well, like Sunshine baking and the heroine of Chalice keeping bees.
  7. Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan. Well, actually all of his books (I’m revisiting them in publication order, to watch the development of his style), but especially Lions because I think that’s the only one apart from Under Heaven and the latest that I haven’t read at least twice, and I invariably appreciate GGK’s work more on the second go.
  8. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. This is more or less a permanent state of being for me. Having studied the books, I can see so many more layers and bits of interest than I ever did before. It’s also interesting because I’m exploring the world via a different medium, in Lord of the Rings Online, which no doubt will make me pay attention to different details.
  9. Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy. I have the ebooks, all ready for a reread, it’s just getting round to it. I remember enjoying these books a lot, and my partner’s just recently read them and feels the same, so I have high hopes.
  10. Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles. I loved Cornwell’s take on Arthur and his men, and this is another case where I’ve bought e-copies for my collection and for an excuse to reread, and… am taking forever to get round to it. Well, hopefully not forever.

So, what interesting top tens are you seeing around, people? Any you’d like to see me do?

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted March 8, 2014 by Nicky in General / 40 Comments

So, as you can tell if you just scroll down a bit, or maybe the speed your browser has crawled to, I acquired a lot this week. That would be because my mother gave me a £40 Amazon voucher. She would claim I made her give me it, but I simply reminded her that she had promised it to me. Her guilty conscience did the rest…

Anyway, so this is my weekly haul, for the meme as hosted by Tynga’s Reviews! A couple of these have already appeared before, but now I’ve bought my own copies rather than borrowing them!

ARCs/review copies

Cover of Sunstone by Freya Robertson Cover of The Wizard's Promise by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Non-fiction

Cover of How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom Cover of Just Babies by Paul BloomCover of The Righteous by Jonathan Haidt Cover of Time's Anvil by Richard Morris    Cover of The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris Cover of Twelve Caesars by Matthew Dennison

Fiction

 Cover of Clementine by Cherie Priest Cover of Dreadnought by Cherie Priest Cover of Ganymede by Cherie Priest Cover of The InexplicablesCover of Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest Cover of The Grendel Affair by Lisa Shearin  Cover of Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara Cover of Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini TaylorCover of The Pirate's Wish, by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Comics

Cover of Spider-girl: Family Issues Cover of Saga vol 2 by Brian Vaughan

I’ve already read Saga, and I’m going to polish off Spider-girl today hopefully, so other than those, hmm. Of the ARCs, I’m more excited about The Wizard’s Promise; I’ve enjoyed Cassandra Rose Clarke’s work, and I haven’t yet read Freya Robertson’s first book. (Oops.) Many thanks to Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry for those, though.

Of the non-fiction, most of it ethics/morality related, I’m most interested in Paul Bloom’s books. He taught a class I was in on Coursera, Moralities of Everyday Life, which I really enjoyed. Of the fiction, it’s gonna have to be Night of Cake and Puppets, because Laini Taylor! Can’t wait for Dreams of Gods and Monsters. I kept an eye out for an ARC but I didn’t see it anywhere, woe is me.

All these new books, and yet I have to work this weekend. *dramatic sigh* What about you guys? Frivolous weekends of reading ahead? Anything spectacular new on your shelves this week?

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Review – Those Who Went Remain There Still

Posted November 5, 2013 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Those Who Went Remain There Still by Cherie PriestThose Who Went Remain There Still, Cherie Priest

I didn’t get on with the first Cherie Priest book I read (Boneshaker), but I enjoyed Bloodshot and Hellbent enough that I’m starting to try her other stuff. It seems like she can be a bit hit and miss, with me: I wasn’t a big fan of Four and Twenty Blackbirds, either, but I enjoyed this short horror novella. It’s mostly the atmosphere that works, the fact that she invokes her three narrators’ voices well, brings to life the valley and the simmering resentment between the two halves of the family.

She doesn’t over-explain or even over-describe her monster, letting it be more frightening because the characters have no idea, because we can’t even really picture it. It’s just a fear in the dark, huge and formless, and I think that stories that invoke that are really the horror stories that work. It ends abruptly, without any consolation or certainty, and I really like that — I like that Cherie Priest knew when to stop the story and let the reader go on uncomfortably wondering, because it takes as much skill to know when to do that as to carry a story through right to the inevitable end, if not more.

Still, her narrators are still somewhat talkative, and I don’t think this is one my partner will be enjoying anytime soon, since she didn’t get into Bloodshot with its more engaging (to my mind, anyway) narrator and characters. It’s not exactly creepy — or maybe with my anxiety issues I just can’t tell when I’m creeped out and when I’m just normally jumpy — but it’s intriguing and has that breathless, edge of the seat quality where it counts.

Review on Goodreads.

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