Empty Altars

I’m so glad that I had a chance to read Empty Altars through GoodReads R2R. I enjoyed it so much, that I read for 2 ½ hours to from start to finish because I was so intrigued by the book.
Post does an excellent job of blending mythology with urban fantasy, even though the book doesn’t really involve the urban aspect very much. I’ve only read one other book similar to this & that combined all three aspects of mythology (Roman, Greek, and Norse ) into several gods all at once.
Diana, the protagonist is known as the Roman Goddess of witchcraft, Hecate the Greek Goddess of the moon, and Artemis the Greek Goddess of the Hunt.  She relies not only on her magical powers of witchcraft, which since she is basically the mother of all witchcraft are extremely powerful but also on her runes. When her runes transport her to Aasgard with Norse Gods and a Goddess, she adapts quickly and builds relationships, both with humans and the Gods.  Her 21st century slang is at first confusing to her friends, but they soon catch on. In the meantime, I got several chuckles out of people taking her slang quite literally. She becomes fast friends with the Goddess of Fertility and Love as well as the Queen of the Valkyries, Freya and Tyr the God of the Sky, but will these 3 deities paired with human warriors be enough to win the war?
Considering her various deities, she has no problem standing up for not only herself but everyone else as well. She has a temper, that when provoked is quite fierce. I enjoy this in the books that I read. I like smart-ass women, who can hold their own and she lives up to that!
She has to stay with the villagers and other deities, because a seer tells her that if she leaves the war with the evil black witch will be lost. So, she’s trapped initially by her own conscience, and then once she makes friends she is determined to make sure this war will be won by the good guys. However, there is no guarantee that they will win the war. Post does a great job of alternating between light-hearted banter and the seriousness of the upcoming war. She sucks the reader right into a fantasy world they won’t want to leave. The antagonist Heid, is an evil black witch that has spies in every corner, shape shifters at her disposal, and yes even dragons.
This book focused a lot on relationships, great dialogue, excellent character development, as well as witchcraft and deities. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and anyone else that likes paranormal or mythology type books is sure to like it as well.
I’m hoping it turns into a series and not just a stand alone novel. There is no cliff-hanger, but the ending alludes to an ancient seer predicting that Diana will be working with her Norse peers in other battles, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!!

Legendsl Lost Amborese

I have mixed feelings about this book. I thought McNulty and Rose did a great job with the character development. I was able to watch Amborese develop from a scared child to a woman with inner strength. I loved the “gang” of characters from Scypher (the bad boy with a good heart) , Zolo a powerful wizard who has known Amborese her entire life and became a father figure to her over the course of the year they traveled together, Kylanisha a fairy who joined the group and protected them as best she could, Philip, and of course Sposa and Bali the talking cats. Sposa was the former queen of Tesnayr who was turned into a cat for letting her country be torn asunder by Clymorus (an evil and powerful man).

The character development was good, the adventures were interesting, and the banter especially with Sposa was hilarious. SPOILER ALERT* My eyes teared up when Sposa jumped in front of the blade to save Klyanisha. Their conversation before Sposa died was heart wrenching. END SPOILER ALERT
However, I did have some issues with the book itself.

First, something happened when the authors uploaded this version because any word that had a double “L” in it dropped the last “L”. For example, instead of saying “Let’s call Amborese” it was printed as “Let’s cal Amborese.” I’ve never paid attention to how many words have double “LLs” in them, but after reading this I’m pretty sure I can name them all!! This wasn’t a typo on the authors’ part, because I didn’t really notice grammatical mistakes anywhere else throughout the book. I must confess, if I wasn’t a speed reader I would have put this book down and walked away, it truly was that frustrating. Words were even separated onto different lines because the computer or software didn’t recognize it was the same word due to the missing “L”. Truly, it would have been a shame to put the book down, because it was well written by McNulty and Rose .

One of the other issues that was slightly frustrating to me was that instead of paragraphs, every description or dialogue was put into two lines, then a space was added for the next 2 lines. That’s just a personal preference though; it might not bother anyone else.

The other thing that did detract slightly from the story was that I thought it was evident the the concept arose from The Lord Of the Rings. I freely admit, I could be completely wrong. However, the minions of Clymorus were called Lorks, and in several pages they were referenced as Orcs. The initial name of Lorks set up red flags in my mind, but when the pages came up with the correct spelling of Orcs that sealed the deal in my mind. When you combine that with the fact that Ambroese has to unite the 5 separate kingdoms back under 1 ruler, plus she has an entourage similar to The Lord of the Rings, it just seemed very coincidental. With that being said, we as writers all draw inspiration from what we read, see, & experience so there will always be overlap. There are only so many themes that you can write about or make movies about. I did enjoy that the protagonist was a female, who had no idea what her heritage was, yet she rose to the challenge.
Overall, once the authors can fix the “L” problem I would recommend this book. It has some comedy, personal challenges and growth, friendship and love, and good vs. evil.

I do wish I McNalty and Rose would have given more background after Amborese became queen; did she marry and have children to carry on the line, what happened to Seypher and Zolo?
Maybe this will be answered in various other books, I’m not sure. I just wish I could have had answers wrapped up in the end, if they’re not going to be addressed in future books. Had the spelling beeb accurate I would have definitely given it a higher rating, but this was just too much hasle for to give it 3 stars or above.

101 by Margaret Chatwin

Trigg and Ren are brother and sister living in an abusive home with their father. One night he begins to beat Trigg so badly, after hitting Ren as well, that both siblings believe this will be the end of Trigg’s life. Instead Ren takes matters into her own hands and as a result the 2 siblings steal their dad’s car and are arrested and put in a prison known as 101. Few to no details are know about this prison, only that it houses the “worst of the worst” offenders. The governmental party in power is known as the NAO (New Age Order) and the trial the siblings is given is a farce as are the prison facilities.

SPOLIER ALERT*The government rules with an iron fist, Trigg was senteneced to 3 years for Grand Theft, and Ren is sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder. END SPOILER ALERT

One of the interesting things about this prison is that it is made up of small townhomes, each housing approximately 3-4 inmates. The men and women are segregated, but not fenced off so they can socialize. There is no curfew, or any other laws regulating inmates behavior. The hope of the NAO is that the inmates will kill one another, or at least give the guards a reason to kill them.

Trigg’s main concern is to find Ren and protect her, however he doesn’t find her for almost a month and during that time she has gone through hell. However she is resilient; and manages to help Trigg and his group of other inmates try and topple Ace, who is the absolute worst inmate around. Seeing him in my mind SPOLIER ALERT* kill both Dane’s girl and Billy Jo END SPOILER ALERT was enough to make me hate even more than I already did. I enjoyed seeing Trigg finally beat the crap out of him. I would have done even more knowing what had happened to his sister.

While reading the book it was easy to get caught up in the characters. I felt like Chatwin did a good job or developing her characters, so it was easy to understand where they were coming from. The only character that I noticed being slightly underdeveloped was Ren. While she started out with a good beginning development, I thought Ren wasn’t as fully rounded as Trigg and some of the other characters.

The ending was truly a shock for me, I anticipated the prison outcome. But, I had no idea what the actual ending for Trigg and Ren would be.  I think Chatwin does an excellent job of interweaving themes of governmental control/secrets, love, and taking a stand even when it means your life simply because it is the right thing to do.

I didn’t notice many grammatical errors, which contributed to the overall enjoyment of the book. However, I did notice sequential numbers throughout the book, almost as if Chatwin wrote an outline and forgot to take the numbers out once she fleshed the book out. I don’t know if this is a result of reading a pdf on my nook, but I’ve never seen this in any other pdf books or documents. However, there’s a first time for everything. Hopefully, it’s just something that showed up on my nook as a result of the pdf file; because that did detract from the book. It would break up sentences & leave pages half blank.

Overall, I would give this a solid 3 stars, and some people will probably think it is deserving of 4+ stars. Had it been a trilogy like the Hunger games where you really see the characters develop and go through paradigm shifts then I could myself a higher rating. Trigg and Ren didn’t change all that much considering what they went through. Granted, Trigg did learn to finally fight back physically, and mentally plan strategic attacks. However, their personalities & outlook on life I thought stayed the same throughout the book. What led them to prison, however wrongly were the same characteristics that put them there in the first place due to their dealing with their father.

I do look forward to reading for of Chatwin’s work, she is a talented author.

The Sin Collector

THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS*I went into this book thinking what an interesting concept it was. However, it didn’t really live up to what I had envisioned, but maybe lack of backstory, and some of the questions will be rounded out & explained in the next book . It was certainly an interesting read. Liliana, or LiLi as Billy called her is a Collector. She takes on all the sins a person has before they die. She is basically immortal, the only thing that can kill her is the Castus dagger long thought to be gone forever. 

She has lived for over 120 years, and seen the best and the worst in mankind. After seeing all the death and destruction in WWII she stopped taking on others’ sins. She is trying to live as normal a  life as she can, considering she  can sense everyone's sins. She is getting by until she runs into Billy, her first and only friend she had growing up. He too is a sin-eater, better known as a Collector. He lures her into believing that everything she knows is a lie; which is fairly close to the truth. She never had to take on anyone else’s sin; Billy didn’t. She become extremely frustrated with her former mentor, Olexander for never telling her these things.

All mentors leave the trainees after the trainee turns 20. This is when they have to learn to fend for themselves and begin to collect others’ sins. As Billy brings LiLi over to Dublin to supposedly relax while he visits with his mother (since no two Collectors can be in the same room without becoming physically ill). She passes out in a pub, because of another Collector being there. Billy believes that the Castus, a group of humans, who believe that Collectors should be eradicated, is nearby. As they begin to hunt for clues, Olexander and a group of Collectors pop up. LiLi is caught in the middle of Billy and Olexander. Each is telling her not to trust the other, and she begins to doubt who to place her trust in.

As the story continues, this is where I begin to have issues with it. Billy is the traitor; the Castus killed his mother and now he’s serving them. Why would anyone, especially someone who knows the history of the Collectors and the Castsus choose to serve them after watching his mother die a painful death? The author didn’t do a good job truly explaining why Billy would do this, and turn his old friend LiLi over to them? Was he truly that brainwashed?

Also, why is the Castus making a comeback now? They haven’t been around since before LiLi was born. Again the author provides no explanation.  I do like that LiLi was able to see people’s auras, but why did that happen? Maybe that will be explained in the next book. Rebecca, had that same gift, but she was extremely old, while LiLi is still quite young for a Collector. Also, it was interesting that Quinlan’s aura was red and orange, while another character who was not nearly as evil had black around his aura. That seemed a little strange, I felt like Quinlan should have been the one with black intermixed with his aura. However, that’s just my opinion; the author could have had her own reason for showing Quinlan’s aura the way she did.

I will admit, I did cry at the very beginning of the book when George died. For some reason it really struck a chord with me, and I loved how he didn’t want LiLi to take his sins. That is a life well spent in my estimation.  Overall, I would read the second book just to see if my questions are answered, but I’m not waiting for it on baited breath.

Grammatically, I didn’t notice a lot of errors. The one thing I did notice was that when the pdf format converted itself on my Nook, only 2 lines were typed before a space interrupted them. I felt like I was reading poetry. However, I believe that is purely a formatting issue with trying to read a pdf on a Nook. I doubt that the book is actually written like that.