Book Genre: Non-Fiction, Nature, Art, Animals
Publisher: Falling Leave Press
Release Date: August 25, 2016
Book Description:
Nature Inspired: Animal Edition offers you the opportunity to see animals both big and small through the eyes of different artists. With more than sixty works in this full color edition, it is a treasure trove of touching, charming and curious images.
Dani is a young orphan girl, living on the streets of a medium-sized border town. Her only friend in the world is a dragon. At fourteen years of age, she should be starting her apprenticeship, but all her schooling has come from a dragon. The same day he promises she can some day become a dragon herself, a Mage finally comes looking for her. But is he there to help her, or control her?
Source: Info in the About Orphan Dani was from the press kit from the publicity team.
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Excerpt:
Smooth stones shifted beneath my feet as I limped toward the dragon’s cave. Anger buzzed in my head with no outlet. Two miles of walking on a sprained ankle hadn’t helped my mood, or the injury. In addition to the ankle, which continued to complain with every step, my left eye felt swollen from a recent blow. The blow itself didn’t bother me so much. Instead, I was concerned by why she hit me and how I got away.
Two miles south lay Barrington, a village sandwiched between the kingdom of Puji and the mountains of Goldoon. Almost five thousand people lived in the village, including the families who had taken me in. Every winter for the past six years one family or another had taken me in as a housekeeper or cook, and shared what little food they had with me; rarely enough to truly satisfy me, or them. Eventually they would start to resent having me there. Thus every year, around the start of spring, I would find some reason to leave.
This year, the reason had reached out and grabbed me by the throat, literally. There was no real love for me there, and hadn’t been since my nanny died almost six years ago. Why should they care about a little orphan girl?
The cave before me wasn’t the adventure others might see. I wasn’t here in a vain attempt to gain treasure or impress someone with my bravery. No one else in the village knew there was a dragon nearby. For me, this was my one escape from the cruelty of the world. The only place left where someone showed me kindness instead of hatred and violence.
The last few feet were the trickiest of all and my injured ankle gave out. I scraped my hand on the cliff in a failed attempt to stop my fall.
“Cortiban’s bones!” The curse escaped my lips. Frustration boiled over and I had to close my eyes to contain the anger. Pulling myself up by grabbing the face of the cliff before me, I put all my anger to the task of overcoming the pain. I kept my eyes shut as I limped through the protective magic hiding the mouth of the cave. If someone watched as I entered, they would see me walk through solid rock. A protective spell hid everything inside. Now the magic hid me as well.
Simon Driscoll has published several books, including the Dragons’ Bane Chronicles, and the Warriors & Watchmen series. Writing is his passion, as well as his hobby. He studied creative writing in college to learn the mechanics of written stories. He has been influenced in his writing by great authors such as Sir Isaac Asimov, Terry Brooks, and Orson Scott Card, to name only a few.
Simon has been a student of the scriptures all his life, and feels passionately about helping others understand them better. The most difficult aspect of scriptures to comprehend is prophecy. That is why Simon has combined his passions for writing and the scriptures to create a fictional account of the fulfillment of End Times Prophecies. The first book in the Warrior and Watchmen Series was published in 2015.
Sure, everybody knows about the great heroes of legend. The ones people write songs about, the ones who lead the charge against the monsters that lay waste to cities or against an army of invaders that outnumber the good guys twenty to one—you know, the best heroes that money can buy. Trouble is, not everyone can afford their services.
Fortunately, the best heroes are not the only ones on the market.
Which is just what harried waitress Peg Brickner accidentally discovers after receiving an unusual—and, as it turns out, otherworldly—tip from a peculiar customer in the middle of one rotten dinner shift. Life on Earth is hard enough, but life in the magical world of Cantrial? Forget about it. Five minutes after being unsuspectingly yanked into it by an unscrupulous B-List talent scout for heroes, all Peg wants to do is get back home again before something in this crazy new world kills her or eats her with ketchup. Or both.
Trouble is, getting home may be a lot harder than leaving it was. Thanks to a bunch of greedy bureaucrats, Peg’s way home is about to be destroyed—unless she reluctantly joins a trio of magical misfits on a high-stakes heroes-for-hire mission in an attempt to recover stolen property before their rivals—or a roguishly charming thief—beat them to it.
Christine S. Feldman writes both novels and feature-length screenplays, and she has placed in screenwriting competitions on both coasts. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her ballroom-dancing husband and their Beagle.
Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day….
Because as Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful.
He doesn’t know the half of it….
Mab has just traded Harry’s skills to pay off one of her debts. And now he must help a group of supernatural villains — led by one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone — to break into the highest-security vault in town so that they can then access the highest-security vault in the Nevernever.
It’s a smash-and-grab job to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure hoard in the supernatural world — which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the freaking Underworld and generally unpleasant character. Worse, Dresden suspects that there is another game afoot that no one is talking about. And he’s dead certain that Nicodemus has no intention of allowing any of his crew to survive the experience. Especially Harry.
Dresden’s always been tricky, but he’s going to have to up his backstabbing game to survive this mess — assuming his own allies don’t end up killing him before his enemies get the chance….
Source: Info in the About Skin Game was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19486421-skin-game on 05/07/2014.
My Thoughts:
This is the only book in this series that took me this long to read. It actually didn't get interesting until Butters glided into the scene with his skateboard glowing orange. I bought this book on pre-order and I just finished it now. That's how long it took me to read this book. Not a usual pace for a Harry Dresden book at all! Hopefully Peace Talks wouldn't be as dragging... **fingers crossed**
When it was first announced that Harry Dresden 15 will be Skin Game, I was wondering why the book is titled as such. I presumed that there will be skin walkers or some such. And there are some such, but getting to it is the real journey. And that is the beauty of the plot. Dragging though it may be, but the plot is still substantial and unpredictable.
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 2
Character development = 5
Story itself = 3.5
Writing Style = 3
Ending = 4
World building = 5
Cover art = 5
Pace = 1.5
Plot = 4
Narration = 4
Mercenary Kate Daniels knows all too well that magic in post-Shift Atlanta is a dangerous business. But nothing she’s faced could have prepared her for this…
Kate and the former Beast Lord Curran Lennart are finally making their relationship official. But there are some steep obstacles standing in the way of their walk to the altar…
Kate’s father, Roland, has kidnapped the demigod Saiman and is slowly bleeding him dry in his never-ending bid for power. A Witch Oracle has predicted that if Kate marries the man she loves, Atlanta will burn and she will lose him forever. And the only person Kate can ask for help is long dead.
The odds are impossible. The future is grim. But Kate Daniels has never been one to play by the rules…
I like it when things nicely fall in together like pieces of a puzzle to reveal the picture. I was wondering what happened to Ana, Greg Feldman's ex-wife, who was first mentioned in Magic Bites. Then Kate mentioned in their dinner convention with Roland at Applebee's [I. Andrews, Magic Shifts, (Ace, 2015), p. 290] that Ana, the clairvoyant ex-wife of Kate's dead guardian, no longer return her calls. Telling me that Ana is still there but just not in the picture anymore and explains why she wasn't mentioned in so many books since Magic Bites.
However, I do not like it when the story lines contradict each other! In Magic Slays, Evdokia of the Witch Oracle told Kate that her mother, Kalina, came to attend Kalina's mother's funeral. [I. Andrews, Magic Slays, (The Berkley Publishing Group, 2011), p. 120]. Then all of a sudden, Kalina's mother was alive again and living in Seattle in Magic Shifts. Roland tried to lure Kate out of Atlanta with the idea of visiting her grandmother (Kalina's mother) who was supposedly old and not long to live anymore in Seattle [I. Andrews, Magic Shifts, (Ace, 2015), p. 285]. Kate's other grandmother, Semiramis, is in Mishmar trapped between life and death limbo. So Kate has three grandmothers?!... *Sigh*
Speaking of unsolved issues, I am still wondering if Gene Monroe (wolf alpha who owned a silver-producing land in North Carolina) was really Roland's lackey or not. Or was there some other explanation? It was not very clear in Magic Breaks and I was hoping that we'd get a little clarification in this book... but no such luck...
This book... beautifully continued the complicated relationship between Kate and her father, Roland. Told in this authors' trademark compelling story telling quality with a solid plot. What can I say? I am an old die hard fan... Can't wait for the next book and read more about Kate and Roland's saga! Would the author end it with a bang??? What kind of HEA (happily ever after) would they get? Or is it an HEA?... Love, love, love, this series!!
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 5
Story itself = 5
Ending = 5
World building = 5
Cover art = 5
Pace = 5
Plot = 5
