Gertrude Hunt, the nicest Bed and Breakfast in Red Deer, Texas, is glad to have you. We cater to particular kind of guests, the ones most people don’t know about. The older lady sipping her Mello Yello is called Caldenia, although she prefers Your Grace. She has a sizable bounty on her head, so if you hear kinetic or laser fire, try not to stand close to the target. Our chef is a Quillonian. The claws are a little unsettling, but he is a consummate professional and truly is the best chef in the Galaxy. If you see a dark shadow in the orchard late at night, don’t worry. Someone is patrolling the grounds. Do beware of our dog.
Your safety and comfort is our first priority. The inn and your host, Dina Demille, will defend you at all costs. We ask only that you mind other guests and conduct yourself in a polite manner.
Okay, so I am a die-hard fan of this series and author so my review is biased. In fact it might all just be fan girling at this point. But that does not mean that the masterful story telling quality and world building as well as the wonderfulness of everything else about this book is any less true! A book I keep re-listening to for some time yet to come. Can't wait to get my hands on the next Innkeeper book!
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 5
Story itself = 5
Writing Style = 5
Ending = 5
World building = 5
Cover art = 5
Pace = 5
Plot = 5
Narration = 5
Philip, Zola's boyfriend from one hundred and fifty years ago, is not nearly as dead as we thought. I really wish he was. Not only has he kidnapped Zola, but he's raising an army to scour humanity from the earth. Hopefully the local werewolf pack will help. What could possibly go wrong?
Source: Info in the About Wolves And The River Of Stone was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18765663-wolves-and-the-river-of-stone on 24/12/2016.
My Thoughts:
As a follow-up to Days Gone Bad, this book also had the beautiful world building and character development seen in the first book. Another plus is the humour strewn through out the story telling! Kudos to the author's writing style! This series also introduced me to chimichanga which is quickly becoming a favourite of mine! I didn't know that such food existed until Vesik kept eating it! Another thing I like about this book is the appearance of the wolves! The already wonderful world building just kept getting richer! On the down side, for some reason I needed breaks from it every so often. This brought the pace of this book down. And the plot is a little bit on the thin side. However despite that, I still rate this book as a good read because I did enjoyed it!
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4
Writing Style = 4.5
Ending = 4
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 4
Pace = (10 hrs & 4 mins listening time)
Plot = 3
Narration = 5
Eric is a former bookseller, guitarist, and comic seller currently living in Saint Louis, Missouri. A lifelong enthusiast of books, music, toys, and games, he discovered a love for the written word after being dragged to the library by his parents at a young age. When he is not writing, you can usually find him reading, gaming, or buried beneath a small avalanche of Transformers.
Fire in the forest — and a cry for help from a trapped and desperate alien mother! Unfortunately, this is one cry no human can hear. Stephanie Harrington, precocious fourteen-year-old Provisional Forest Ranger on the planet Sphinx, knows something is wrong from the uneasy emotion that is flooding into her from her treecat friend, Climbs Quickly. But though Stephanie’s alien comrade shares a tight bond with his two-legs, whom he knows as Death Fang’s Bane, he cannot communicate directly to her the anguished call from one of his people.
Still, their strong and direct bond of feeling may be enough. Stephanie and fellow ranger Karl Zivonik respond to Climbs Quickly’s rising waves of distress. Fire season on the pioneer world of Sphinx has begun. But there are those who want to use the natural cycle of the planet for personal gain — and to get rid of the one obstacle that stands in the way of acquiring even greater land and power on Sphinx: the native treecats.
Now it’s up to Stephanie, Climbs Quickly along with their friends, family, and allies to prevent disaster and injustice from befalling a treecat clan. But in the process Stephanie must be certain to preserve the greatest secret all. It is the knowledge that the treecats of Sphinx are not merely pets or servants, but are highly intelligent in their own right — that they are a species fully deserving of rights, respect, and freedom. And keeping the secret that will allow the treecats time to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with humankind.
It all begins with the friendship of a girl and her treecat.
I'm not sure why this second book in the Stephanie Harrington series got an additional author in it, but there you go. However, it doesn't seem to make any difference to the quality of the book. It is still the same very good read! The world building and the character development has been established in book one already and continued on in this book. And maybe I've just gotten used to the voice of the author or gotten more immersed in this world, that this book seems to go faster than the last one. Or maybe, this book is just more fast-paced than the first one. Either way, this book was a quick read. I still love the narration and gives it 5 out of 5! The only down side to this book is the cliffhanger ending, even though it did end the plot in the book. I just do not like cliffhangers! Other than that, this book is a wonderful follow-up to A Beautiful Friendship.
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4.5
Story itself = 4.5
Writing Style = 5
Ending = 4
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 5
Pace = 5
Plot = 4.5
Narration = 5
David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952.
Many of his stories have military, particularly naval, themes, and fit into the military science fiction genre. He frequently places female leading characters in what have been traditionally male roles.
One of his most popular and enduring characters is Honor Harrington whose alliterated name is an homage to C. S. Forester's character Horatio Hornblower and her last name from a fleet doctor in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. Her story, together with the "Honorverse" she inhabits, has been developed through 16 novels and six shared-universe anthologies, as of spring 2013 (other works are in production). In 2008, he donated his archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.
Many of his books are available online, either in their entirety as part of the Baen Free Library or, in the case of more recent books, in the form of sample chapters (typically the first 25-33% of the work).
Jane Lindskold is the author of more than twenty published novels, including the six volume Firekeeper Saga (beginning with Through Wolf’s Eyes), Child of a Rainless Year (a contemporary fantasy set in Las Vegas, New Mexico), and The Buried Pyramid (an archeological adventure fantasy set in 1880's Egypt).
Lindskold is also the author of the “Breaking the Wall” series, which begins with Thirteen Orphans, then continues in Nine Gates and Five Odd Honors. Her most recent series begins with Artemis Awakening, released in May of 2014. Lindskold has also had published over sixty short stories and numerous works of non-fiction, including a critical biography of Roger Zelazny, and articles on Yeats and Synge.
She has collaborated with several other SF/F writers, including Roger Zelazny, for whom, at his request, she posthumously finished his novels Donnerjack and Lord Demon. She has also collaborated with David Weber, writing several novellas and two YA novels set in his popular ”Honorverse.” She wrote the short story “Servant of Death” with Fred Saberhagen.
Charles de Lint, reviewing Changer, praised "Lindskold's ability to tell a fast-paced, contemporary story that still carries the weight and style of old mythological story cycles."[1] Terri Windling called Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls "a complex, utterly original work of speculative fiction." DeLint has also stated that “Jane Lindskold is one of those hidden treasures of American letters; a true gem of a writer who simply gets better with each book.”
Lindskold was born in 1962 at the Columbia Hospital for Women, the first of four siblings and grew up in Washington, D.C. and Chesapeake Bay. Lindskold's father was head of the Land and Natural Resources Division, Western Division of the United States Justice Department and her mother was also an attorney. She studied at Fordham, where she received a Ph. D. in English, concentrating on Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern British Literature; she successfully defended her Ph.D. on her 26th birthday.
Lindskold lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband, archaeologist Jim Moore.
Khristine Hvam is an award winning audiobook narrator, director, and voice over actress. Having studied acting for the theater and film, she soon discovered a love of voice over. You will hear her in TV/Radio commercials, video games, animated series, and most notably in over 200 audio book titles. Khristine has been honored with several Audio Publishers Association Audie Award nominations and in the summer of 2012 earned her first Audie Award in the fantasy category for her performance of Lani Taylor’s “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” and a second for “Astray” by Emma Donoghue. Khristine has also received five AudioFile Magazine’s Earphone Awards for her performances. Most recently she has begun directing audiobooks, a journey she never imagined taking, but one she is thrilled to be exploring. Khristine is a proud member of SAG/AFTRA.
