Soup Dish: on my mind this week
✽ Love this article from Book Riot on why the word "clean" to describe books without explicit sex is problematic, as well as this good-natured response from Delilah Dawson:
✽Emerald City ComicCon is here again, and once again I have failed to take advantage of the lonnnng list of amazing authors who are here. Maybe next year I'll make my children the happiest of teens and set aside my introvert dread of crowds and do the thing.
✽I'm now reviewing for Reedsy, which is a new site that helps indie authors find a production team, and also offers reviews. It launched about two weeks ago, with some good publicity from Forbes, Good e-Reader, and The Digital Reader. My first review is up, a contemporary by Katy Regnery, and can be viewed here. I'd love to hear what you think of the site!
On the podcast: the sound of my voice
✽New Shelfbyte (5- minute review) of Kill The Queen, by Jennifer Estep (5 stars!)
✽Have you been following the #3Bloggers1Series podcasts? If not, catch up with us on Kresley Cole's YA post-apocalyptic fantasy series, The Arcana. We spoiler the heck out of these in our discussions so we recommend you read along and listen AFTER you finish the book. We have just gotten started on this series so catch up and join us! If you like to listen real-time, we are hosting listen-along parties on Facebook for this series. Join the Shelf Addiction Facebook Group to keep up on details. Podcast link for Poison Princess by Kresley Cole.
Recent Reads
✽A Hope Divided, by Alyssa Cole. I loved the first in this series and I'm not sure why I waited so long to get going on this one. It's a wonderful story, but at times difficult to read. As a kid I used to enjoy stories of the Underground Railroad; the stories sounded exciting and adventurous, with heroic people along the way, helping slaves find their way to freedom. Cole reframes this narrative, elevating the "passengers" in a way I haven't seen before, and pointing out that by focusing on the "heroes," the escaping slaves are subtly dehumanized. Further dehumanized, that is. I would call this book, more so than the first, uncomfortable and important to read.
✽The Iron Lance and The Black Rood, by Stephen Lawhead. I've read some of Lawhead's books before, in his Arthurian series. At some point, I picked up The Iron Lance and while it's a bit of a slower read, hefty with a lot of history, I really enjoyed it. So I grabbed the second in the Celtic Crusades trilogy. The first follows a Scottish noble who chronicles the sacking of Jerusalem, which is surprisingly not something I've read about before. This book pulls no punches about how gruesome and dishonorable the event was. The second book follows his son, who returns to the Holy Lands because he believes that he's been called to reunite the four pieces of the Holy Cross, which were split up in order to be able to motivate Christian armies in more than one direction. If that makes sense. Epic quests, with a touch of supernatural to them. I'll most likely pick up the third this summer. Very enjoyable.
✽Wicked and Wild, by Cynthia Eden. I believe I acquired this book as either a freebie or a 99-cent deal. I'm not sure why else I would have picked up number 7 in a series without reading any of the earlier ones, but I want to tell you all -- it works just fine. Yes, there are characters with history that make you go "oh, I should read their book too!" but not "well crap, I don't get what's happening here." Smart heroine with a great arc; I enjoyed the worldbuilding, and the plot had some good twists. I will most likely go back and start at the beginning of this series. Thumbs up from me.
