Wednesday, June 6, 2018

[Archive] LITERAL ADDICTION's Review of SPARROW HILL ROAD

Seanan McGuire was born in Martinez, California, and raised in a wide variety of locations, most of which boasted some sort of dangerous native wildlife. Despite her almost magnetic attraction to anything venomous, she somehow managed to survive long enough to acquire a typewriter, a reasonable grasp of the English language, and the desire to combine the two. The fact that she wasn't killed for using her typewriter at three o'clock in the morning is probably more impressive than her lack of death by spider-bite.
Often described as a vortex of the surreal, many of Seanan's anecdotes end with things like "and then we got the anti-venom" or "but it's okay, because it turned out the water wasn't that deep." She has yet to be defeated in a game of "Who here was bitten by the strangest thing?," and can be amused for hours by almost anything. "Almost anything" includes swamps, long walks, long walks in swamps, things that live in swamps, horror movies, strange noises, musical theater, reality TV, comic books, finding pennies on the street, and venomous reptiles. Seanan may be the only person on the planet who admits to using Kenneth Muir's Horror Films of the 1980s as a checklist.
Seanan is the author of the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies. In case that wasn't enough, she also writes under the pseudonym "Mira Grant." For details on her work as Mira, check out MiraGrant.com.
In her spare time, Seanan records CDs of her original filk music (see the Albums page for details). She is also a cartoonist, and draws an irregularly posted autobiographical web comic, "With Friends Like These...", as well as generating a truly ridiculous number of art cards. Surprisingly enough, she finds time to take multi-hour walks, blog regularly, watch a sickening amount of television, maintain her website, and go to pretty much any movie with the words "blood," "night," "terror," or "attack" in the title. Most people believe she doesn't sleep.
Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly-held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.
Years of writing blurbs for convention program books have fixed Seanan in the habit of writing all her bios in the third person, so as to sound marginally less dorky. Stress is on the "marginally." It probably doesn't help that she has so many hobbies.
Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.
Keep up with Seanan online at her Website, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram and on GoodReads.

TODAY'S FEATURE:

SPARROW HILL ROAD
Ghost Roads Book #1
Original Release Date: 5/7/14 
Re-Release Date: 6/5/18
ISBN: 0756409616

Add to your GoodReads shelf

Buy from Amazon / B&N / iBooks / Kobo

Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross—a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea.


It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running.

They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her. 

You can’t kill what’s already dead. 


Our Review by LITERAL ADDICTION's Pack Alpha - Chelle:
If you're a fan of ghost stories, creative worldbuilding, and fun, quirky heroines, you'll want to check out SPARROW HILL ROAD. 

Rose Marshall is a sixteen-year-old from the 50s, killed nonsensically on prom night and taken from her one true love. For over 60 years, she has performed the job given to her by the Lady upon death, and has traveled the roads as a hitcher, helping other ghosts that die on the road get home--one way or the other. But she has one other driving purpose: find and eliminate the jerk who killed her. Bobby Cross. 

Told as a series of interconnected snippets jumping from past to present in her encounters with other ghosts and witches and the living, SPARROW HILL ROAD is a very creative tale that engages and entertains. It can get a little confusing at times if you're not thoroughly invested, as McGuire uses small chapter flashbacks to help drive the tale and there is lots of random character interaction for different purposes depending on the ghost story she is attempting to tell, but the creativity that went into the creation of this world and its characters was a breath of fresh air.

SPARROW HILL ROAD







[Archive] LITERAL ADDICTION's Review of The Hills Have Spies


Mercedes Lackey entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70’s she worked as an artist’s model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts & Music, a small recording company specializing in science fiction folk music.

“I’m a storyteller; that’s what I see as ‘my job.’ My stories come out of my characters; how those characters would react to the given situation. Maybe that’s why I get letters from readers as young as thirteen and as old as sixty-odd. One of the reasons I write song lyrics is because I see songs as a kind of ‘story pill’ — they reduce a story to the barest essentials or encapsulate a particular crucial moment in time. I frequently will write a lyric when I am attempting to get to the heart of a crucial scene; I find that when I have done so, the scene has become absolutely clear in my mind, and I can write exactly what I wanted to say. Another reason is because of the kind of novels I am writing: that is, fantasy, set in an other-world semi-medieval atmosphere. Music is very important to medieval peoples; bards are the chief news bringers. When I write the ‘folk music’ of these peoples, I am enriching my whole world, whether I actually use the song in the text or not.

“I began writing out of boredom; I continue out of addiction. I can’t ‘not’ write, and as a result I have no social life! I began writing fantasy because I love it, but I try to construct my fantasy worlds with all the care of a ‘high-tech’ science fiction writer. I apply the principle of TANSTAAFL [‘There ain’t no such thing as free lunch’, credited to Robert Heinlein) to magic, for instance; in my worlds, magic is paid for, and the cost to the magician is frequently a high one. I try to keep my world as solid and real as possible; people deal with stubborn pumps, bugs in the porridge, and love-lives that refuse to become untangled, right along with invading armies and evil magicians. And I try to make all of my characters, even the ‘evil magicians,’ something more than flat stereotypes. Even evil magicians get up in the night and look for cookies, sometimes.

Keep up with Mercedes online at her Website, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on GoodReads.

TODAY'S FEATURE:


THE HILLS HAVE SPIES
Valdemar: Family Spies Book #1

Release Date 6/5/18
ISBN: 0756413176

Add to GoodReads

Buy from: Amazon / B&N / iBooks / Kobo

In this new series, set in the bestselling world of Valdemar, Heralds Mags and Amily must continue to protect the realm of Valdemar while raising their children and preparing them to follow in their footsteps.

Mags, Herald Spy of Valdemar, and his wife Amily are happily married with three kids. The oldest, Justyn, has the Gift of animal Mindspeech--he can talk to animals and persuade them to act as he wishes. Justyn's dream is to follow in his father's footsteps as a Herald Spy, but has yet to be Chosen by his horse companion.

Mags is more than happy to teach Justyn all he knows. He regularly trains his children, including Justyn, with tests and exercises, preparing them for the complicated and dangerous lives they will likely lead. Justyn has already held positions in the Royal Palace as a runner and in the kitchen, useful places from which he can learn to listen. As the next stage of Justyn's training, Mags proposes that Justyn joins a group of traveling players and musicians, to get experience away from home and out in the world. Justyn joins the troupe, and he starts collecting information for his father. And the patterns he finds are unsettling....

During the troupe's travels, Justyn witnesses growing rural unrest about an indigenous community of Valdemar, known as Hawkbrothers. When the troupe settles for a season at a fortified manor of a local lord, Justyn watches the unrest grow increasingly hostile. The manor lord dismisses Hawkbrothers as inhuman--and has a local militia to back up his hatred. When a child goes missing, the locals immediately blame Hawkbrothers, and Justyn finds himself in a dangerous position.

He enlists the help of a local stray dog, who knows a lot about the town's goings-on, despite being a bit...odd. Justyn must find the missing child and warn the Hawkbrothers community of the trouble headed their way--before tensions turn deadly.

Our Review, by LITERAL ADDICTION's Scholastic Siren: Sara: 
This is the start of a new mini-series set in Valdemar and its surrounds. Whether you are familiar with Valdemar or not, this is a great story. Feel free to start here.

This story takes place around fifteen years after the last series. Mags and Amily have three kids, the oldest of whom--Peregrine--is the main player in this book. Perry is training in the family business: espionage. He’s quite good at it, even though he is just thirteen years old. His training gets accelerated on a father-son trip/mission for the crown. Perry learns to hold his own and that adults aren’t always perfect. The mission is interesting, the characters are well developed, and the story wraps up nicely. I’m not big on cliffhangers in YA.

I never think of Valdemar as young adult, but it is. The main characters are usually in their teens, although not always. I started reading Valdemar and Ms. Lackey when I was a teen and continue to auto-buy the hardcovers on release date. I highly recommended this one!

THE HILLS HAVE SPIES