Waiting On Wednesday: An Elegy of Heroes

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and continued now by Tressa at Wishful Endings under the heading “Can’t Wait Wednesday” where readers and bloggers share and discuss books they are excited about reading and which have generally not yet been released. I’m sticking with “Waiting On Wednesday” just because I like the way it rolls off the tongue.

Author: K.S. Villoso
Publisher: Liam’s Vigil
Series: The Agartes Epilogues
Length: Hardcover 774 pages; Paperback 771 pages (according to Amazon)
Publication Date: January 16, 2019

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Waiting On Wednesday: The Gutter Prayer

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and continued now by Tressa at Wishful Endings under the heading “Can’t Wait Wednesday” where readers and bloggers share and discuss books they are excited about reading and which have generally not yet been released. I’m sticking with “Waiting On Wednesday” just because I like the way it rolls off the tongue.

Author: Gareth Hanrahan
Publisher: Orbit
Series: The Black Iron Legacy (Book 1)
Length: 560 pages
Publication Date: January 22, 2019

OK, not gonna lie, I was sold on this book by the cover alone. I’m a huge sucker for a good cover and with one glance I knew it was by Richard Anderson my favorite current fantasy artist. Put Anderson to work on some cover art and you’ve got my money.

But yeah eventually you have to read the thing. Well I guess you don’t HAVE to read it. It could just sit on your shelf and look pretty. But you WANT to read it right? So lets assume you’re gonna read it because it’s a book and that’s what you do. Eventually the plot has to interest you.

Update: 12/5/18

Hey everybody. I wanted to take a moment to give you a quick update on what’s going on with me and the blog.

THANKS!

First, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who responded to my Rating Scale Update post. So many of you left a comment either here on the blog, or on Twitter and each of you gave me some great feedback and left me with things to consider. I really do appreciate it. I’m still contemplating what I want to do in terms of whether or not to continue giving a star rating, and I may do a trial run for a few reviews to see how it goes.

THE DREADED CERTIFICATION EXAM

On Tuesday night I took the “final” exam for the certification course I’ve been enrolled in this fall. I say “final” because it’s the only test we’ve taken and it isn’t for a grade. This is just one of those preparatory courses to help you take the real exam later. Tuesday was a 90 question test and I have no real idea how I did. I’ll find out next week. But the good thing is the class will be over after this Tuesday. Woohoo! The bad thing is I still have to study for the real exam which will be twice as long. Did I mention before it only has a 57% pass rate for first time test takers? Yeah…57%. This is gonna suck.

I’m scheduled to take the exam December 31st. Between now and then I have work (obviously), family coming into town, have to clean house before family comes into town, multiple ballet performances to attend (to watch my daughter), and Christmas. At some point during all that I’ll be studying for the exam. All that to say I won’t be publishing much here on the blog until January. I may do some quick easy stuff like Waiting On Wednesday posts and maybe even some year end stuff like best of’s and ideas for next year, but don’t expect a review. It may happen but don’t count on it. Reviews just take more bandwidth than they probably should.

Rating Scale Update

I’ve really been thinking about how I rate books lately. It’s been gnawing at the back of my mind for a while because I’ve noticed how most of the books I’ve reviewed have been 4 or 5 stars. I think so far on the blog I only have one 3 star review and one 2 star review. If I’d have started the blog a couple of months sooner I’d have a few more three star reviews, but most would still be 4’s and 5’s. It’s the “why” of this that keeps bugging me and the inevitable follow-up questions, of whether I’m being too generous with my reviews and ultimately do I want to keep giving a score?

The other day I came across a Twitter thread where another blogger was discussing her defensiveness after someone commented on one of her reviews saying it was “stupid” that she had so many 4 and 5 star reviews. I chimed into the discussion and it turns out a number of us are in the same boat and their response was much like mine.

The more I think about it the more I realize the following:

October Update II: Study Breaks And Halloween Reads

 

This is just a quick update/addendum to my last October post – October Update: Study Breaks And Halloween Reads where I discussed how I was procrastinating and not getting much studying for my certification exam done this month. Instead, I was doing something infinitely more enjoyable…reading. Well I’d be lying if I said I changed my ways. I did study a very little, but I mostly kept reading which is what this post is about. I’m coming down with a little head cold so I won’t be putting a lot into this post but I want to get it up before we get any further into November.

Btw it’s raining outside, it just isn’t cold. I can’t sing the song if it isn’t cold and raining…

October Update: Study Breaks And Halloween Reads

It’s been a while since I last posted anything and I thought I’d give everyone a quick update on what’s been going on.

If you read my last post you’ll remember I was all excited about Self-Pub Fantasy Month and then that kind of fell by the wayside. That’s because I started a class to help me prepare for a certification exam for work. I work in Human Resources and I’m studying for the SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP exams(s). If I pass I’ll get some coveted letters after my name which in theory attests to the fact that I’m a professional in my career field. The exam (whichever I take) lasts 4 hours and costs like $400.00 and you can only attempt it twice a year. The CP exam only has a pass rate of about 67% and the SCP exam has a pass rate of about 57% so I need to take the class and all the reading (I’ve got four large books) pretty seriously. The class is three hours one night a week and then there’s all the reading and studying, the combination of which began to interfere with the latter half of Self-Pub Fantasy Month. I didn’t get to write the last two reviews I’d hoped to post or some of the additional things I wanted to do. I still plan on getting those reviews done…at some point.

This month though I’ve had a hard time focusing on the reading for the class. All I’ve wanted to do was read some fiction…which leads me to part two of this post…

Self-Pub Fantasy Month In Review (And A Pause)

Well September has come to a close and with it so has Self-Published Fantasy Month. It seems like it started with a bang and then finished with a whisper. That’s on me for some poor planning.

I only managed one review this month for The Great Restoration: A Tale of The Verin Empire by William Ray. I also posted my first ever author interview which you can read at Author Interview: William Ray.

Waiting On Wednesday: The Family Blood

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and continued now by Tressa at Wishful Endings under the heading “Can’t Wait Wednesday” where readers and bloggers share and discuss books they are excited about reading and which have generally not yet been released. I’m sticking with “Waiting On Wednesday” just because I like the way it rolls off the tongue.

Fans of the blog will know how much I loved Quenby Olson’s supernatural/horror novel The Half Killed. If you’re not a regular follower check out my review in the link in the previous sentence. Here’s the blurb from the back cover of that one:

“Dorothea Hawes has no wish to renew contact with what lies beyond the veil. After an attempt to take her own life, she has retired into seclusion, but as the wounds on her body heal, she is drawn into a world she wants nothing more than to avoid.

She is sought out by Julian Chissick, a former man of God who wants her help in discovering who is behind the gruesome murder of a young woman. But the manner of death is all too familiar to Dorothea, and she begins to fear that something even more terrible is about to unleash itself on London.

And so Dorothea risks her life and her sanity in order to save people who are oblivious to the threat that hovers over them. It is a task that forces her into a confrontation with her own lurid past, and tests her ability to shape events frighteningly beyond her control.”

As I said in my review, it’s story that will seduce you. I absolutely love Olson’s dark, intimate, and immersive writing style and the Victorian setting. It was a five star read for me, and I’ve been waiting on a follow-up novel for months. Unfortunately this isn’t a Waiting On Wednesday post about book two in the series. From what I understand Olson is working on that story, but it isn’t ready yet. She did write a short story though…and that’s what this post is about

Author Interview: William Ray

Today marks the first ever Author Interview on Off The TBR! William Ray graciously accepted my interview request and I want to take a moment to thank him.

Ray is the self-published author of the Tales Of The Verin Empire series which at this point consists of two full length novels, Gedlund and The Great Restoration and a short story, A Case of Eager Heirs . You can read my reviews of those novels by clicking on the links in the titles above.

The Great Restoration: A Tale of The Verin Empire Review

Author: William Ray
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date:  2017
Format: Paperback
Pages: 483
(I received a copy of his book from the author in exchange for an honest review)

Gaslight, elves, goblins, secret societies, kidnapping, detectives, and black-powder fantasy. All of these come together as William Ray continues his Tales Of The Verin Empire series with The Great Restoration. Where Gedlund, the first book in the series was a mix of black powder fantasy mixed with sword and sorcery while on military campaigns at the boundaries of the empire, for this installment Ray took a different approach. In fact he kinda went with a slightly different sub-genre. The Great Restoration is a detective-mystery story set within both the heart of the empire and one if its recently acquired territories.