Title: The Girl with All the Gifts
Author: M. R. Carey
Genres: Thriller
Pages: 460
Rating: ★★★★1/2
Synopsis:
Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her “our little genius.”
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.
Title: The Widow
Author: Fiona Barton
Genres: Thriller
Pages: 324
Rating: ★★★1/2
Synopsis:
A loving husband or a heartless killer…she’d know, wouldn’t she?
There’s a lot Jean hasn’t said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with accusing glares and anonymous harassment. Now her husband is dead, and there’s no reason to stay quiet. People want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them there were secrets. There always are in a marriage.
Title: A Darker Shade of Magic
Author: Victoria Schwab
Genres: Fantasy
Series: Shades of Magic #1
Pages: 400
Rating: ★★★
Synopsis:
Kell is one of the last Antari, a rare magician who can travel between parallel worlds: hopping from Grey London — dirty, boring, lacking magic, and ruled by mad King George — to Red London — where life and magic are revered, and the Maresh Dynasty presides over a flourishing empire — to White London — ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne, where people fight to control magic, and the magic fights back — and back, but never Black London, because traveling to Black London is forbidden and no one speaks of it now.
Officially, Kell is the personal ambassador and adopted Prince of Red London, carrying the monthly correspondences between the royals of each London. Unofficially, Kell smuggles for those willing to pay for even a glimpse of a world they’ll never see, and it is this dangerous hobby that sets him up for accidental treason. Fleeing into Grey London, Kell runs afoul of Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She robs him, saves him from a dangerous enemy, then forces him to take her with him for her proper adventure.
I’m a little late with this wrap-up but I wanted to wait until I had a chance to review all the books I read in September. Here’s a summary:
I will say that I felt the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy got more hype than it deserved but I can see how other readers could fall in love with this series. I’m not sure how much reading I’ll get done in October, but hopefully I’ll still manage to review each book I read!
What do you think of the books on this list? Will you be adding any of them to your TBR?
Title: Dragon Keeper
Author: Robin Hobb
Genres: Fantasy
Series: The Rain Wild Chronicles
Pages: 560
Rating: ★★★★
Synopsis:
The first book in a two part series from one of the greatest writers in the fantasy genre. Dragon Keeper returns fans to Hobb’s best-loved world, full of dragons, magical ships and unforgettable characters.
Guided by the great blue dragon Tintaglia, they came from the sea: a Tangle of serpents fighting their way up the Rain Wilds River, the first to make the perilous journey to the cocooning grounds in generations. Many have died along the way. With its acid waters and impenetrable forest, it is a hard place for any to survive.
People are changed by the Rain Wilds, subtly or otherwise. One such is Thymara. Born with black claws and other aberrations, she should have been exposed at birth. But her father saved her and her mother has never forgiven him. Like everyone else, Thymara is fascinated by the return of dragons: it is as if they symbolise the return of hope to their war-torn world. Leftrin, captain of the liveship Tarman, also has an interest in the hatching; as does Bingtown newlywed, Alise Finbok, who has made it her life’s work to study all there is to know of dragons.
