Tag: Read 2015

Review: The Pharaoh’s Daughter – An Egyptian Princess Risks Everything

Posted May 13, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: The Pharaoh’s Daughter – An Egyptian Princess Risks EverythingThe Pharaoh's Daughter by Mesu Andrews
Series: Treasures of the Nile #1
Publisher: WaterBrook Press (2015)
eARC, Paperback (384 pages)
Via: Blogging for Books
Rating:
Also by this author: Miriam, Isaiah's Daughter, Isaiah's Legacy
Also in this series: Miriam
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

“You will be called Anippe, daughter of the Nile. Do you like it?” Without waiting for a reply, she pulls me into her squishy, round tummy for a hug.
I’m trying not to cry. Pharaoh’s daughters don’t cry.
When we make our way down the tiled hall, I try to stop at ummi Kiya’s chamber. I know her spirit has flown yet I long for one more moment. Amenia pushes me past so I keep walking and don’t look back.
Like the waters of the Nile, I will flow.
Anippe has grown up in the shadows of Egypt’s good god Pharaoh, aware that Anubis, god of the afterlife, may take her or her siblings at any moment. She watched him snatch her mother and infant brother during childbirth, a moment which awakens in her a terrible dread of ever bearing a child. Now she is to be become the bride of Sebak, a kind but quick-tempered Captain of Pharaoh Tut’s army. In order to provide Sebak the heir he deserves and yet protect herself from the underworld gods, Anippe must launch a series of deceptions, even involving the Hebrew midwives—women ordered by Tut to drown the sons of their own people in the Nile.
When she finds a baby floating in a basket on the great river, Anippe believes Egypt’s gods have answered her pleas, entrenching her more deeply in deception and placing her and her son Mehy, whom handmaiden Miriam calls Moses, in mortal danger.
As bloodshed and savage politics shift the balance of power in Egypt, the gods reveal their fickle natures and Anippe wonders if her son, a boy of Hebrew blood, could one day become king. Or does the god of her Hebrew servants, the one they call
El Shaddai, have a different plan—for them all?

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Review: Divergent – Living With A Choice

Posted May 11, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: Divergent – Living With A ChoiceDivergent by Veronica Roth
Series: Divergent #1
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books (2011)
eBook (487 pages)
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue–Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is–she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are–and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she’s chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she’s kept hidden from everyone because she’s been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

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Review: Tortall and Other Lands – Wonderful Short Stories

Posted May 6, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: Tortall and Other Lands – Wonderful Short StoriesTortall and Other Lands by Tamora Pierce
Series: Tortall
Publisher: Bluefire (2010)
Paperback (369 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Alanna the knight, Numair the mage, Daine the wolf-speaker and more! Favorite and unfamiliar characters in 11 tales, including three brand new stories!
Collected here for the first time are six tales from the land of Tortall, featuring both previously unknown characters as well as old friends. Filling some gaps of time and interest, these stories, some of which have been published before, will lead Tammy’s fans, and new readers into one of the most intricately constructed worlds of modern fantasy. Also included are four other fantasy stories . . . one set in a remote desert, two in an unknown town, and one set in a very familiar locale: New York City, in the present day. Also, as a bonus, there is a non-fantasy story set in contemporary Idaho that proves that Pierce’s ability to spin a tale is not limited to realms of dragons and magic.

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Review: Arriving At Amen – Reminding Me Why I Love Being Catholic

Posted May 4, 2015 in Faith, Reading, Review / 4 Comments

Review: Arriving At Amen – Reminding Me Why I Love Being CatholicArriving At Amen by Leah Libresco
Publisher: Ave Maria Press (2015)
eARC (192 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

A former atheist makes sense of Catholicism and learns to pray by relying on the rosary and the rumba, avoiding sin and the sunk cost fallacy, and finding communion along Cartesian coordinates.

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Review: Grave Mercy

Posted April 29, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: Grave MercyGrave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
Series: His Fair Assassin #1
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2012)
Hardcover (549 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Also by this author: Dark Triumph, Mortal Heart
Also in this series: Dark Triumph, Mortal Heart
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?
Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.
Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

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