Wednesday 2 May 2012

REVIEW, Graceling



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Graceling
Series: Seven Kingdom, book 1
Pub: 2008, Gollancz
Author: Kristin Cashore
Cat: fantasy
Format: paperback (lar); 340 pp w/ 40 chapters
Age Range: YA

                Synopsis
In a world where people born with an exceptional skill, known as a Grace, are both feared and exploited, Kasta carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing.

 As a Graced killer who has been able to kill a man with her bare hands from the age of eight, she’s forced to work as the king’s thug. Feared by the court and shunned by those her own age, the darkness of her Grace casts a heavy shadow over Katsa’s life.  Yet Katsa remains defiant, and when the King of Liend’s father is kidnapped she investigates, and stumbles across a mystery. Who would want to kidnap the old man, and why? And who was the extraordinary Graced man whose fighting abilities rivalled her own?
 
The only thing Kasta is sure of is that she no longer wants to kill. The intrigue surrounding the kidnapping offers her a way out – and little does she realise, when she takes it, that something insidious and dark lurks behind the mystery, something spreading from the shadowy figure of a one eyes king...
 
With elegant, evocative prose and a cast of unforgettable characters, debut author Kristin Cashore creates a mesmerizing world and a death-defying adventure that will captivate you and leave you wanting more.

REVIEW, Skin Tade


I’d worked my share of serial killer cases, but none of the killers had ever mailed me a human head. That was new.


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Skin Trade
Series: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, book 17
Pub: 2009, Headline
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Cat: paranormal fiction
Format: paperback (mid); 594 pp w/ 78 chapters
Age Range: adult                                             

            Synopsis
My name is Anita Blake and my reputation has taken some hits. Not on the work front, where I have the highest kill count of all the legal vampire executioners in the country, but on the personal front. No one seems to trust a woman who sleeps with the monsters. Still, when a vampire searial killer sends me a head from Las Vegas, I know I have to warn Sin City’s local authorities what they’re dealing with.

Only it’s worse than I thought: several police officers and an executioner have been slain paranormal style. When I get to Las Vegas, I’m joined by three other federal marshals. Which is a good thing because I need all the back-up I can get when hunting a killer this powerful and dangerous.