Letterbox Love: the LonCon edition

I was at LonCon a couple of weeks ago, and of course picked up a few books :) All links go to Goodreads.



The Heroes, by Joe Abercrombie - I still haven't read any of Joe Abercrombie's books, but I've seen him do a few pannels and he's really funny, and I've heard great things about the books, so I'm looking forward to reading this.

Memory of Water, by Emmi Itaranta -   I'd seen this on a couple of blogs, and the author was signing coppies. It looked interesting, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Songs of the Earth, by Elspeth Cooper - This one I'd never heard of before,  but it sounds really interesting, I'm looking forward to starting it. It's another fantasy, so right up my street :)

The City of Silk and Steel, by Mike, Linda and Louise Carey - I actually heard Mike Carey talk last year about co-writing this book with his wife and daughter. Knowing I like his work and curious about how the writing together process worked out, I decided to pick this one up too.


I also bought a few books, but amazingly managed to limit myself to three!

The King's Bastard, by Rowena Corey Daniels - I had wanted to read this one for a while, but it was a bit disappointing. Review here.

The Winter Long, by Seanan McGuire - the next in the October Daye series. Observant people will notice this wasn't actually released at the time of the con, but Forbidden Planet had a couple of copies in the dealer's room, so I snagged one. Fans of the series - you are going to love this one, it might be my new favourite in the series.

Deadly Curiosities, by Gail Z Martin - again, seen this in the shops a few times and been interested. They were on sale so that was all the push I needed! I expect this will be one of the next ones I pick up when I get home from my current travels.

I'd love to know if you've read any of these books, and the books you've bought recently!

-Ailsa

Letterbox Love/Stacking The Shelves

Another week has gone by, so it's time to look at the new books again! I haven't bought anything myself this week, and unfortunately I was ill for a lot of the time, so I didn't get the reviews written that I wanted, but that just means I'll have more to post about this coming week.
Although I didn't get any myself, my boyfriend sent me three books from my wishlist that I'm really looking forward to reading.

Title links go to Goodreads.

'Tempest's Fury', by Nicole Peeler. This is number 5 in her 'Jane True' series, about a girl who is half selkie. I have the first 3 on audiobook and they're my 'comfort listens', for when I'm sick and stuff like that - I'm really excited to read about what's next for Jane and her boyfriend Anyan.

'Midnight Blue-light Special' by Seanan McGuire - 2nd in her series about the Price family, who study and take care of cryptids, or supernatural creatures, this one continues to follow Verity, who we met in the first book. I've actually read the first couple of chapters of this one, and I'm really happy to finally be able to read the whole thing. It also features some of my favourite made-up creatures, the Aislin Mice, who I'll talk about when I review it. (You can see my review of book one by clicking here.)

'Chimes At Midnight' by Seanan McGuire - 7th in the 'October Daye' series. This one came out at the start of the month, and I really want to see what happens to Toby. Despite being definitely an adult, she did a lot of growing up in the last book, and it'll be interesting to see how much of that she's managed to hold on to here, and how the events of the last book have affected her. Even with strong plots in all of them, I think this is a very character driven series. 

So, I'm very excited about all three of these books! How about you, what did you get this week?

One Salt Sea, by Seanan McGuire

Title: One Salt Sea

Autor: Seanan McGuire

Publisher: DAW

Release date: September 6th - Available now!

Source: Bought in Barnes & Noble, Philadelphia

Warning: This is book 5 in the series, review may contain spoilers for earlier books

Description: October "Toby" Daye is settling into her new role as Countess of Goldengreen. She's actually dating again, and she's taken on Quentin as her squire. So, of course, it's time for things to take a turn for the worse.

Someone has kidnapped the sons of the regent of the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist. To prevent a war between land and sea, Toby must find the missing boys and prove the Queen of the Mists was not behind their abduction. Toby's search will take her from the streets of San Francisco to the lands beneath the waves, and her deadline is firm: she must find the boys in three days' time, or all of the Mists will pay the price. But someone is determined to stop her-and whoever it is isn't playing by Oberon's Laws...

My review: I love these books, so I couldn't wait to see what would happen to Toby in this installment. This has to be one of the most consistent series', for me, in terms of how the characters are treated and how much I like what is going on. I think what I'm trying to get at is that McGuire doesn't mess readers around - horrible things happen to the characters, but someone you think is one thing doesn't suddenly become something totally different. We are 5 books in to the series now, and I've never ended up suddenly hating a character, or throwing a book across the room feeling betrayed betrayed, or wondering if I want to keep reading. I have loved these books since the first one, and I love how each new adventure manages to meet the standards of the previous one, or even improve on it.

In this book, we start with Toby being asked to attend a formal event to help prevent a war. Of course, that doesn't work out, so she enlists her usual allies and starts trying to find out who took the missing boys and where they might be now. You'll have to read the book to find out how successful they are ;) As part of the investigation, she gets to visit a sea kingdom, and learn about some of the cool creatures there, which I enjoyed reading about. I hope we get to see a little more of them in the future.

Something I really liked about this book was that we got a little more time between the things that were happening to see what 'normal' life for Toby and her friends, like May and Quentin, is like. There was still always tension, but it was like being able to surface to grab a mouthful of air before you go back in to the water again. There's also plenty of enigmatic Tybalt to keep me happy, and also a lot more Connor, now he's no longer married to Rayseline. I'm not sure how I feel about the relationship between Connor and Toby - in previous books it always seemed like it was never going to work out between them as well as they'd like, and I can't help feeling that there's still a little of that here. I'll have to read it again for second impressions. Another of my favourite characters, the Luidaeg, answers several reader/Toby question about her but raises some even bigger ones - I feel like this is another character we got to know a lot better in this book.

Although there's some very sad parts towards the end of this book (I cried a lot, I'll admit) I do like the way things finish up at the end of it for Toby. There's a lot of potential for interesting things happening in the future for her, I think. It's going to take a little while for her to be completely back on her feet after this book, just as with any of the others, but I'm looking forward to when it does happen.

I'll give it 9 out of 10