Defying Fate – Two Tales of the Warden by D. L Morrese
I have just finished reading the free ebook Defying Fate – Two Tales of the Warden by D. L Morrese.
At the beginning this seemed to be a very simple, but slightly humorous fantasy story, but after a while, I realized that there was more to come. As I kept reading, the story became more complex, but still, to some extent, slightly humorous, which is ok with me. Briefly, it’s the story of a young prince, Donald, who’s travelling around his father’s kingdom (and a neighbouring country) as a learning experience. He is accompanied by a guide/bodyguard, who’s an old soldier with a very pessimistic outlook on life. Later on Donald makes more friends. It turns out there’s even more to this story than I originally thought. One of Donald’s new friends, is really a several thousand years old android. Another is an equally old robot dog. Basically, the plot centers around Donald’s quest to stop an unnecessary war between his country and the ‘stoutfolk’ (dwarf) country Gotrox. At first it seems his task is hopeless, but Donald just won’t give up and his friends do their best to back him up.
Mostly, this is a well-written and fascinating, but simple story. My only complaint is about the grammar – the author seems to have an inexplicable dislike of the perfect tense. It’s only ever seen in some of the dialogue. Without exception, the author seems to have chosen to replace the perfect tense with the past tense (imperfect). It was driving me crazy. I found myself rephrasing each sentence in the way I felt it should have been. Other than that, this was a fun, light read, with many sympathetic and funny characters.
Never Buried, Leigh Koslow Mystery Series, Book 1, by Edie Claire
I just finished reading Never Buried, Leigh Koslow Mystery Series, Book 1, by Edie Claire. It’s a mystery, that I found for free on Amazon. It’s also available on Smashwords.
I think that the reason the author made this book available for free is that it’s the first book in a series, and was originally published in 1999.
This was a fun, fast read, but also a really good mystery. I didn’t guess ‘whodunnit’ at all, until the end of the book.
I’ll just say a few words about the plot. Leigh has just moved out of her apartment (cockroach problems), and moved in with her pregnant cousin whose husband is in Japan. One of the first nights Leigh’s sleeping in the old newly renovated Victorian house, she notices a strange man in the yard. The following morning she makes a very unpleasant discovery in the hammock outside. It’s soon apparent that someone wants the two cousins out of the house and the threats escalate. Leigh’s cousin won’t be scared from her home and she and Leigh start looking into the history of the house (despite the disapproval of the investigating police officer, Leigh’s old room mate from college).
Unlike many other Kindle freebies, this was a well written and well edited book. I think I only spotted one spelling mistake in the whole book. I can recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries (or who appreciates any well written freebie book).
Kitty, by Catherine E Chapman
I have also just read the short story Kitty (an e-book), by Catherine E Chapman. It’s very similar to a Jane Austen story, so if you love Jane Austen’s books, you’ll love this one. The main character, Kitty, is the second daughter in a family with three girls. Mum is all set on marrying off her oldest daughter (who goes by several different nicknames) to a certain young, handsome captain. The story is simply about that, but as far as that goes, it’s a fun, light read. I can really recommend it to all Jane Austen lovers.
The Night Also Rises, by C B McCullough
I have just finished reading The Night Also Rises by C B McCullough (in the form of an e-book). His book is what I would describe as a hard-boiled mystery noir, set in the future, on a different planet. The only important difference between Earth and Jannix that I can detect, is the fact that the day (and night) lasts several weeks. Perhaps oddly enough, I enjoyed this book a lot (though I usually prefer cosy mysteries).
The main character is a middle-aged private investigator who gets an assignment by a famous millionaire. He’s supposed to investigate the murder of the old man’s son. Not surprisingly, not all is as it appears and the case becomes a life and death struggle. It seems that this is the first book in a series, but it can be read and enjoyed as a standalone.
Penelope, a Madcap Regency Romance, by Anya Wylde
When I downloaded this book, it was temporarily available for free. It’s not that expensive even now. And it’s hilarious.
At the beginning of the book, Penelope comes to London to stay with a dowager duchess, her excentric father, her only a little less excentric (but extremely handsome) son and fun-loving daughter. Penelope lost her mother at birth and was raised, reluctantly by a mean stepmother. When she arrives she has her maid and her faithful pet goat in tow. The dowager duchess, who was a close friend of Penelope’s late mother, has promised to look after her friend’s daughter but feels she’s neglected this duty and invites Penelope to stay for her first season (of balls and dinner parties).
It’s not going to be as easy as it sounds, because Penelope is the most awkward and accident-prone girl in England. The duchess has to ask the help of the mysterious Madame, who has hllarious secrets to hide, and an endless knowledge of how to catch a husband.
I won’t say much about the plot because it’s nearly all just a lot of fun. This is probably the funniest book I’ve read since the Stephanie Plum ‘mysteries’ by Janet Evanovich. I can recommend both Penelope and Stephanie Plum to everyone who needs a good laugh (or two, or three…).
Fatal Boarding and Deep Crossing, by E R Mason
Ever since I discovered ebooks I’ve been searching for freebies to download and read, first on my iPod Touch, then later on my Kindle and my Cybook Odyssey. Most of those freebies have been – to put it charitably – ok for a freebie, some even exceptionally bad.
Fortunately, I have also come across a few really good ones.
Two books by an author named E R Mason belong to the latter category. I’m amazed that this writer is giving away his books for free.
I grew up reading the classics among fantasy, sf and horror. I never took to horror stories (except for some ghost stories) and though I enjoyed the classics, I never really liked modern sf until a few years or so ago when I discovered To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (a time travel novel). And suddenly I was enjoying science fiction again. A little later I came across a Swedish book called Alba about a young woman who is among a group of people exploring a distant planet. It seemed I was on to something. Not that I stopped reading fantasy, mysteries and the other genres of books I enjoy, but it was unusual for me.
And I now I’m getting to E R Mason’s two novels Fatal Boarding and Deep Crossing. There are some aspects of the books I don’t like so much, but in general I love both books. Though I normally prefer mystery to suspense, these books have both and they’re very well written (except for needing a bit of editing). I’m amazed that these two books are available for free. I’d happily have paid to read both of them and now I’m going to read the other books by the same author.
The first book is set aboard a space ship where the main character Adrian Tarn is chief of security. Not long into the journey the ship runs across a wreckage drifting dead in space (thank you, Star Trek, for that phrase). It’s decided that a team will investigate. That’s their first mistake…
I could describe this book as a thriller set in space (and in the future) but in any case I think my dad, the major sf fan, would have enjoyed it.
The second book is also about Adrian Tarn, this time on an expedition to a very distant star system. There’s some suspense in this book too, but mainly it’s fascinating. I had no idea where the book was heading at the beginning.
I can really recommend these two books, to anyone who enjoys science fiction or thrillers.
Death of a Serpent by Susan Russo Anderson (A Serafina Florio Mystery)
I have just finished reading this fascinating historic mystery. It’s set in 1860’s Sicily, a (more or less) new time and place for me. Other than from my studies of history, I haven’t read anything from this era.
What I really like about this book, apart from the very interesting plot, is that I like most of the main characters. Lately, I’ve been disappointed in so many books, because even the ‘good guys’ are such extremely unsympathetic characters. It’s hard to really get into the plot of a book, if you hate everyone in it. With this book I didn’t have that problem.
I was a little surprised to find that most of the plot takes place in a brothel! But strangely enough you ended up sympathizing with many of the people there, and not just pitying the ‘girls’.
The ‘sleuth’ is a recently widowed midwife with seven children (one of them has run away from home and another has gone off to university). The madam of the brothel is Serafina’s best friend, and that’s why she agrees to look into the gruesome murders taking place on the very doorstep of the brothel. Someone seems to have it in for Rosa, the madam, or is there another motive behind the killings?
One of the few things that bothered me about this well-written book is the fact that almost no one questions Serafina when she suddenly becomes a private investigator. Only two of her sons even comment on the fact!
Another thing that I’ve been wondering about is that everything is so modern. Serafina has studied at the university. She and her friend and some of the children go on idyllic little outings by train. Everyone seems very up to date about things happening in America, though in all fairness many people are emigrating and many others probably have relatives living there who keep in touch regularly. Maybe that part isn’t too surprising. But really, even if the setting is a bit too ‘modern’ I don’t care. This was such a wonderful reading experience I won’t question all the details. The author must have done her research, quite probably she knows more about the time and place than I do anyway.
I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes historic mysteries.
Hespira by Matthew Hughes
I have just finished Matthew Hughes’ novel Hespira. Like in the first two books in the series, the story is about future private investigator, Henghis Hapthorn. He’s a bit full of himself but rather funny. There are plenty of wonderfully weird and fascinating details, such as the fact that Hapthorn’s intuition has moved out and now lives in a separate body and the equivalent of a personal computer is turned into a cute little creature called a grinnet, who’s like a mix of cat and monkey.
The story is set in Earth’s ‘penultimate’ age – a bit like in Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth, and is scientifically based but is changing into an era of sympathetic association, meaning magic. Hapthorn isn’t looking forward to that, without his intuition.
In this book, Hapthorn accepts a seemingly simple case, but it leads to unexpected complications that force Hapthorn to leave ‘Old Earth’ for a while. At the same time he meets a mysterious woman who’s lost her memory. He takes her along on his trip. While travelling, Hapthorn and Hespira run into more mystery.
The two earlier books didn’t work completely for me, though I loved some of the ideas. This book feels a lot better though I have a feeling there was nothing actually wrong with the other two, it’s just that I prefer the plot in this one. On the other hand I’m looking forward to re-reading the other books. Maybe I’ll feel differently about them now. There’s also a collection of stories about Hapthorn that I have bought and downloaded. Unfortunately, for me, just a week or so later, the book was available for free, in fact, it might be still.
The series about Henghis Hapthorn are science fiction books that are a little different to what I’m used to, but I can recommend them to anyone who likes science fiction, mystery and fantasy. I wish there were more books in the series about Hengis Hapthorn. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Hughes will write another one.
This book wasn’t available as a paperback which would have been my first choice. It wasn’t even available in hardcover, except at a ridiculous price (from about 90 dollars?). At first I had no idea why, but after a digital conversation with the author, I now know why and unfortunately, it’s inevitable. It’s a shame though, since I have both the other books in the series in paperback.
Amazon buying Goodreads…
i just found out that Amazon has bought Goodreads and now I’m a little concerned. Don’t get me wrong – I like Amazon. We rent dvd:s from a film rental club they own (Lovefilm) and we buy books and dvd:s from them all the time (sometimes other stuff as well). All the same, I find myself a little doubtful about this acquisition.
So I started looking around for alternatives. I don’t use Librarything much anymore. You can only add 200 books and it seems I’ve hit the limit there. Shelfari already belongs to Amazon and that hasn’t done the site much good. What I dislike the most is that they keep trying to make me log on using my Amazon ID (I don’t have one of my own, my family and I share one).
After a couple of tries, I found several, but a few of them don’t seem to be working properly and I’ll withhold my judgment on them. Another seems really good, a lot like Librarything, only better, but I still don’t fully understand how to use it, so I’ll leave that out as well. That leaves The Reading Room. So far that seems to work great (especially importing my bookshelves from Goodreads). Actually, it seems to be very much like Goodreads, so I feel right at home.
Before I go any further, I have a confession to make – I’m not quite as diligent at posting reviews on Goodreads or Librarything as I used to. I rate the books I’ve finished and I always check online first before I buy a book, but I suppose I like to save my reviews for my own homepage/blog. Which leads me to the second really great alternative to Goodreads: Booklikes.
At first I was a bit surprised and overwhelmed when I realized that not only was it a book review site, you get your own book blog when you sign up. Now, though, I’ve decided to just see how it goes. There were only three blog themes to choose between, but I’m not sure how much I’ll post anyway, so I’m fine just getting to know the site, for now. I think I’ve imported my Goodreads books, but so far nothing shows up, so I don’t know what’s happening. Maybe it just takes time.
Anyway, I think I know enough by now to recommend both sites to book lovers looking for alternatives to Goodreads.
Finally, I’ll just mention the few Swedish book communities I’ve found. They’re not anything like the international ones, just very basic sites. That’s rather disappointing, because I try to balance my book collecting so that I buy/borrow/read almost as many titles in Swedish as in English. When it comes to French, I’m just grateful there are some titles I can get.
Free legal downloads of books
Recently I read a post on Tumblr where someone listed links where you could download free books. Some of those books were modern or at least still copyrighted books. As far as I know copyrighted books aren’t available for free downloads.
Now I’m not familiar with the copyright laws in all countries throughout the world, but I do know that old books – in many cases, for instance in the USA, books published before 1923. In Scandinavia (Sweden) where I live, the copyright expires when the author has been dead for at least 70 years.
You can get modern books when the author chooses to allow people to download them for free. It might be the first book or some other older book, or the first book in a series. Many authors also allow free downloads of novellas and short stories, perhaps hoping to sell more of their full length work.
Another way to read ‘free’ books legally is to borrow e-books from the library (or for that matter, printed books too).
As far as I understand, it doesn’t matter if you’ve bought a title as a printed book. You still need to pay for the e-book if you want one. That is, unless it was a special deal where you buy a title as a printed book and an e-book.
Amazon is a very good source for free modern books. Some may have a sort of ‘message’ – I’ve read that sometimes authors try to promote their religion by writing free books. But like I described above, you can also get one book in a series or shorter fiction by a novel writer who is hoping to sell more novels. Don’t forget, if you live in the US and many other parts of the world you have to go to amazon.com, not for instance amazon.co.uk, unless of course you live in the UK.
The library is another great source for free books.
Here is a list of links to free (legal) download sites:
https://www.bookeenstore.com/fr/free
http://www.kobobooks.com/free_ebooks
http://manybooks.net/
http://www.baen.com/library/
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
http://www.freesfonline.de/Authors.html
http://runeberg.org/
http://litteraturbanken.se/#!start
http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/fiction/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/index.htm
http://www.readprint.com/
http://e-library.net/Fantasy.htm
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/?tag=fantasy
http://worldebookfair.org/
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/index.shtml
http://www.smashwords.com/
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?bbn=1286228011&qid=1354222865&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A!133143011%2Cn%3A!251259011%2Cn%3A1286228011%2Cn%3A157028011&sort=price
http://bookboon.com/se
http://blakatt.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=36&Itemid=53
http://www.bookyards.com/index.html
http://archiveofourown.org/
http://umrion.net/archives/
Many of these are in English, but you can also find books in Swedish, French and other languages. The last two are fan fiction sites.
