News & Updates: The Rocket that Flew to Mars

Hi! I’m back again, very briefly.

So...

...without ever coming here to mention it, I’ve got another book done, and it’s finished, formatted, up for sale, and everything. I'd like to get some of my old novels back on my project list at some point, but it's been easier to focus on short projects. And, realistically, I don't have have the time to run two separate blogs right now, so it’s unlikely I’ll be back here for a while. Which means that if you want to know what I’m up to, you can find me one of these places:

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/aesauble
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/audreysauble
Website: www.aesauble.com
Email list: http://eepurl.com/cADKCH

And my book? It's another picture book--this one a proper space-age nursery rhyme. It's patterned after the poem 'The House that Jack Built,' but it tells the story of a a rocket, a robot, a 3D printer building the first biodome for the first colony on Mars, with a surprise at the end.

I do have a giveaway running for this book, if you want to check it out and enter. I'm giving away three hardcover copies of the book. Hope you'll take a look!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07664Q5MC
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ebook/the-rocket-that-flew-to-mars

King's Blood: Review

The Five Woes have come, and the Five Realms are now fleeing.

With his world caving in behind him, Sar Wilek has to lead the remnants from his nation--and from the other four realms--in a desperate search for a new land. A new home, where they can settle down and start over.

Starting over, of course, includes resurrecting all of the ancient grudges and feuds between the Five Realms.

King's Blood: the fantasy story that is part Christopher Columbus, part children of Israel wandering in the desert.

That makes for a fascinating premise, and King's Blood, the second book in Jill Williamson's Kinsman Chronicles series, follows along a dizzying number of routes. To keep up with them, you might need to start with the first book, King's Folly, which I reviewed here, last May.

This book actually reminds me a lot of L.B. Graham's Binding of the Blade series. There is a fair amount meandering along, a complicated backstory, and a very strong thread of (alternative) Biblical history.

Beyond that, I'm not quite sure how to describe the book.

For one thing, there are just so many main characters.

When I said it had a complicated backstory, I meant the whole thing is complicated--really complicated. Once you sail beyond the basic premise of "onboard ship, must find land," there are a dozen different plot threads to follow. Each of the Five Realms has its own leaders and often multiple factions among the leaders, each chasing their own interests. Then there are the religious factions (usually muddled up with the political factions), and the romantic interests. Yes, I may have gotten a little lost along the way.

Even still, I did genuinely enjoy King's Blood. There's a lot of intrigue and action going on, I care about the characters, I love how Williamson ties the story to her previous fantasy series (Blood of Kings), and I love how she's created an Old Testament/Hebraic fantasy world for her story.

So, if you are up for following a busy story--have at it! (Even more so, if you've read Williamson's Blood of Kings trilogy, since you'll get to spot all the extra little touches in this story.)


[My thanks to Bethany House Publishers for sending me a copy of King's Blood to review. All of the opinions above are my own.]

"Who" Giveaway!

It's out--check it out on Amazon! (For the next couple of days, the ebook will be free, plus getting the book lets you claim an entry in the giveaway down below.)

Who Laid the Egg: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VYGVVFT

¿Quién Puso el Huevo? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WRXK5QH

(I've also got a rehash of this on my website, plus a couple of coloring pages just up yesterday.)


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book updates

Just quick note this time:

First, my author website is up. You can visit it over at 'Audrey Sauble'. In fact, I've got a new post up this morning, with an update with a little info more about "Who Laid the Egg" and how the book happened (http://www.aesauble.com/2017/02/about-who.html). I'll have to do a longer one someday with all the weird details about getting ready for publication, because that is an extremely complicated process, especially for a picture book.

Second, "Who Laid the Egg" will be released this weekend. I'm planning a small launch party with a giveaway and an ebook sale to celebrate. I'll post here when that happens, but you can also sign up for email updates on my new site, since I will be posting more book details there as well.

Third, my plan for now is to keep writing/story posts over here, while starting an occasional series about kids' art projects at my new site. Again, I've got a form there if you want to follow that. I'll try to avoid duplicating posts on the two sites as much as I can.

Finally, on a different topic, I just got my review copy of Jill Williamson's newest release in the Kinsman series, King's Blood. I haven't written my review yet, but I'm planning to get that up at some point next week.

See you in a few days!

Who Laid the Egg?

Changes are coming...

I haven't updated since late November, but since then I've started working on a children's book. It's almost done now.

The book started with the munchkin helping me cook up some eggs for breakfast one morning. He's been terribly fascinated with eggs and counting them out for me. He's also fascinated by breaking them open for me. The only challenge is slowing him down enough for me to keep up.

Munchkin has also helped collect eggs with his aunts, so we naturally started talking about...

Who Laid the Egg?

Sneak preview of one answer over on the right:

Ostrich!

I've been working to finalize the book the last few days, and I'm almost ready to put it out, starting with paperback and Kindle version, and possibly a hardcover as well, if people are interested. I'll update you as that happens.

With that said, I've posted on this blog for a lot of years. I may keep it around and post occasionally, but I'm in the process of setting up a new Internet home. If you currently use my www.aesauble.com domain to get here, that's going to change in the next couple of days, and you will need to use www.theloremistress.blogspot.com once again.

The Shattered Vigil: Review

What matters most when evil threatens the land and even the smallest detail matters? It's elementary...

Actually, it's The Shattered Vigil, Patrick Carr's newest book, the second in The Darkwater Saga series.

The first book in this series, The Shock of Night, centers around a vicious attack on the capitol city of Bunard, but even before that book, Carr’s novella By Divine Right sets up a really fascinating world where you can quite literally ascribe someone’s skill to their talent or ‘gift’—ranging from medical abilities to musical performances.

Willet Dura stands out against that backdrop of ‘gifts’ as an ungifted man, a commoner, until the day he encounters someone carrying the most dangerous gift a man could possibly gain.

If you want, you can read my review for the previous book here, but the main thing you need to know is: yes, you should start with the novella and work through the series in order. Carr picks up the threads pretty well in this story, but I went back and reread The Shock of Night before starting The Shattered Vigil. It was just as fun the second time and made the story much easier to follow. My only (small) regret is not rereading By Divine Right at the same time.

For the Shattered Vigil itself, I think it is a worthy addition to the series.

As the story begins, Dura and his companions hope that they have ended the evil that invaded Burnard, but a series of near-disasters force them out of the city and into new perils. Though he is no longer the king's reeve, Dura and the others set out on a journey consisting of equal parts forensics investigation and fantasy quest.

I will admit that the story lost me a couple of times. The plot jumps back and forth between a handful of main characters, and it gets very quest-y at times, but it kept moving and kept turning out new adventures. Even better, Carr pulled in some highlights from the first book that I didn't expect to show up again, much less to be really important clues.

Oh, and there is also a romance...it's not quite a side-story, because it's also very important to the main story (something Carr seems to do well). Dura's lady-love is a very spunky (good) lady (literally), and between them, they produce a lot of smoldering-eyes scenes (meh, from my perspective, but good if that's what you like).

Basically, though, I really liked this story, as I've really liked Carr's previous stories. They are adventure stories--fun, a bit mature, a bit dark in places, and pleasantly inventive.

I recommend it if you like that sort of thing.


[My thanks to Bethany House Publishers for sending me a copy of The Shattered Vigil in exchange for my honest opinion of the book.]

Puppy Observations

Back in college (over five years ago now), I spent one class reading, re-reading, and generally analyzing short sections of Scripture. The goal was to come up with as many observations as possible.  If you spend enough time on a project like that, you can come up with quite a lot.

And, as it happens, you can make quite a few observations on children’s books too, after multiple re-readings—especially when you start with the basics, such as:

1. This is a book about puppies.

2. There are five puppies in this story (not counting the mother).

3. These are very unusual puppies, because they get chocolate custard for dessert.

Then there are the more subtle observations, and the various inferences you can draw from them:

4. Four of the puppies, on three different occasions, have to look for the fifth, the pokey puppy.

5. Even after finding the pokey puppy in the green-grassy space twice before, the other puppies don’t think to look there first when he disappears again.

6. If the puppies see a strawberry while on a walk, they get strawberry shortcake for dessert.

7. The puppies see six other ‘creatures’ on their walk, besides the desserts.

8. Five of these creatures, including a toad, a grasshopper, and grass-snake, are pictured in the book.

9. Only one creature, the “big black spider,” is not shown, suggesting that it must have been a truly terrifying spider, unfit for the pages of a children’s book.

Also:

10. If you listen carefully, you can identify chocolate custard by the sound a spoon makes as it is scraped over the side of a bowl.

11. The pokey puppy is a dog (presumably), and yet he manages to eat five servings of chocolate custard with no side effects.

12. And, even after eating 10 servings of dessert over the previous two days, the pokey puppy is still able to squeeze through a wide place in the fence that the other puppies have heretofore overlooked in their escapades.

If you really want to know what to take away from this story, though, just remember that the pokey puppy is the arch-villain here.

I mean—he lures the other puppies out under the fence and abandons them while he waits to discover what dessert will be. Then he ‘lets’ the other puppies arrive home before him. Once they are safely dispatched to their beds, he sneaks home to devour the dessert himself. 

But—in his final attempt—the other puppies accidentally foil him, saving the dessert! (For themselves, of course.)

#####

Oh, and I might be back next week with a more serious book review.

King's Folly: Review

Between the earthquakes devastating Armania, his father’s mad attempts to save his crumbling, kingdom, and the strange magic from across the borders, Sâr Wilek hardly knows where to turn.

The Five Woes are coming; the end of Armania is at hand…

Like my blogging in general, this review is long overdue. I was actually supposed to post it about a month ago. The reason for the delay actually goes back to March—I got an email from Bethany House with their list of review books for the month. Right at the top of the list was Jill Williamson’s new fantasy novel, King’s Folly.

I was excited to see Williamson starting a new fantasy series after reading a few of her more recent dystopian/sci-fi YA stories. So, of course, I requested a review copy and made it onto the list.

Unfortunately, this happened about a month after moving and changing addresses. Since I didn’t get my address updated in time, my review copy floated off to someone else. (I do hope he or she enjoyed the book as much as I did.)

After waiting over a month, I started investigating and found out what had happened. The result was that I ended up buying my own copy and waiting—again—for it to show up.

Was it worth the complications? I think so.

King’s Folly, the first in Williamson’s Kinsman Chronicles, is a massive, ground-shaking (pun intended) story.

As the King’s oldest son, Sâr Wilek mainly wants to survive the castle politics long enough to be declared his father’s Heir. He’s accompanied by half-a-dozen other major characters, each with their own quest, but all of the action revolves around Wilek.

Wilek is supposed to be the king’s main supporter. If he carries out his role well enough, Rosâr Echad might just anoint Wilek as his heir, and Wilek would be able to change his father’s superstition brutality for a milder rule. The kingdom, however, is falling apart around them as earthquake after earthquake shakes the realm.

Rosâr Echad believes that only sacrifices to the gods can save Armania, but the real secrets and the real corruption lay much deeper in his court than he or Wilek can dream. It will take all of Wilek’s allies to unravel the mystery, and even then they might be too late.

The book does start off a little slow. The first third of the novel focuses mainly on setting up the cast and some of the background to the main story. I actually skipped over the character list at the beginning of the book, since I don’t like reading off a bunch of names before meeting the characters. For this book, that didn’t really matter. Williamson’s first introductions are strong enough to carry the characters through the rest of the story. Everyone was important too, and Williamson makes good use of the various characters’ story-lines, but be warned that there are a ­lot of characters.

Two small caveats:

First, the specific format may be a little confusing—the Kinsman Chronicles is a trilogy, but each book will have three parts. King’s Folly is the first book in the trilogy, but it was released in three individual ebooks, before being released as a full novel. The first of these ebooks, Darkness Reigns, is available on Amazon for free here. The fourth part, starting off the second novel, will be released in early July.

Second, there is also a lot of sexuality inherent in the plot. None of it is graphic, and Williamson specifically notes that she’s modeling this story after the corrupt kings of Israel, which is a fair comparison for the story. If you’ve read Williamson’s Safe Lands trilogy, you know about what to expect. It is there, though, and I wouldn’t recommend the book to younger readers as a result.

With that said, I did enjoy the story. It met my expectations for a complicated, well-built fantasy novel, while keeping the adventures strong and filling the world with a mix of interesting, believable characters. A few of the characters border on stereotypes—faithful bodyguard, independent female sidekick, etc.—I found the world wonderfully complicated and unique.

I’ll be looking forward to reading what happens next.

[My thanks to Bethany House for sending me a review copy. My address should be correct and up-to-date now, for any future reviews.]

  

The Shock of Night: Review

Willet Dura was going to be a priest. Then the war happened, and he became a soldier instead. Now he's ostensibly a noble, but he's also the king's reeve, in charge of sorting out Bunard's dirty laundry in the poor quarter.

Meanwhile an evil from abroad has crept into the city, spreading like a plague among all the different classes of Bunard's society. As reeve, Willet has to be on the scene, which puts him on an accidental collision course with an ancient, deadly secret--a secret that will change the way he sees the world.

Welcome to the world of The Darkwater Saga.

I introduced By Shock of Night briefly in my last post for the CSFF blog tour, but now it's time to do a more thorough review. Since this story is so closely tied up with its prequel novella, and since I haven't reviewed that story yet, I'm going to conflate the two books just slightly in this review--without giving any spoilers, if I can avoid that.

First of all: if you're going to read this series (and I recommend you do), start by reading the novella By Divine Right. You also don't necessarily need the novella to know what's going on in The Shock of Night, but it does help a lot to understand the cultural context for the story. Once you've read the novella, though, go ahead and skip over the first chapter or two of the novel. Those chapters show up at the end of the novella, so you won't miss anything and you'll avoid a small bit of jarring repetition.

Combined, the two books are a good story--a bit grim in places between a slew of mysterious, bloody attacks and Willet's work in the street's of the poor quarter. Carr paints a realistic setting, and fun isn't exactly the right word to describe these books, but I enjoyed them.

I'll admit, I was a little concerned at first. After reading just By Divine Right, Willet's character felt a lot like Errol Stone's character in Carr's previous series (A Cast of Stones, et al.). The two characters are a similar type--one not too different from G. A. Henty's typecast heroes if you are familiar with that author--but the similarities didn't bother me as much once the story got started. I also strongly object to the way Willet is set up to win his lady-love (even if she doesn't mind). It looks like there could be an interesting plot twist coming up with that, though, and I'm waiting to see how that plays out.

Apart from those issues, the story offers plenty of vim and excitement to balance out the negatives.

As with Carr's previous series, I loved the amount of world-building and general cultural development in this new world. There doesn't seem to be much throwaway material, just a lot of interconnecting details about the special 'gifts' and the caste system they've created, about the neighboring countries, past wars, and the overall unrest in society at court, among the merchants, and in the poor quarter where Willet Dura spends much of his time.

[Edit: In writing this post and the previous tour post at the same time, I neglected to mention in either that I received a review copy of The Shock of Night from the publisher in conjunction with the CSSF blog tour. My apologies for the oversight.]

Shock of Night: Blog Tour

Willet Dura is a sleepwalker--but only when someone has been murdered in Bunard. It's an unnerving trait, to say the least. Even that trait, though, is not nearly as unnerving as the rare (and unheard of) gift he receives from one of the murdered men.

Welcome back to another Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour!

This month, the group is featuring The Shock of Night, the first book in Patrick Carr's new Darkwater Series. I really enjoyed Carr's previous series with A Cast of Stones, The Hero's Lot, and A Draw of Kings (reviews here, here, and here), so I was excited to find out that he had another novella available, leading into this new series.

That novella, By Divine Right, sets the stage for the main story by introducing the complicated social system in Bunard. In this world, some people have special gifts or skills that set them apart from the others in their trade. The gifts can be passed down from generation to generation, and over time, they have created a caste system of haves and have-nots. The purer the gift, the greater a person's ability, and the more influence he holds, whether as a leader among the street orphans or as the king himself.

Stealing someone's gift is illegal, of course, but illegal never stops some people from trying--and that's were Willet comes in. As an assistant reeve, it's his job to notice things--like the fact that several of the most gifted have died recently without passing on their gifts to any known heir.

That's just the background to the story, though. I'm writing another post with my review for the story overall. Meanwhile, you can find The Shock Of Night on Amazon here, the free novella prequel By Divine Right here, and more information about Patrick Carr and his books here.

The other tour participants will be posting reviews and commentary through Wednesday, so be sure to check back a couple times and see what they have to say.

Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Carol Bruce Collett
Carol Gehringer
Victor Gentile
Rani Grant
Rebekah Gyger
Bruce Hennigan
Janeen Ippolito
Carol Keen
Rebekah Loper
Jennette Mbewe
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
Audrey Sauble
Chawna Schroeder
Jessica Thomas
Robert Treskillard
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White

[Edit: In writing this post and the other tour post at the same time, I neglected to mention in either that I received a review copy of The Shock of Night from the publisher in conjunction with the CSSF blog tour. My apologies for the oversight.]