In Pursuit of My Own Library

I have ranted previously of my distaste for alternate history fiction. Even with the badge ALTERNATE in front of the history part, these novels pollute our understanding of history just for a garnered fifteen minutes of entertainment factor. It is always great to play the what-if game with hindsight being 20-20 and all, but we should have a responsibility to the future generations to get the story right (what happens in 30 years when the fiction  part gets lost in translation?). Authors can create a fascinating world of how history could have been glorious with our romantic visions of the steampunk genre in an entirely created universe. That romanticism is what actually draws me to the movement most of the time. Emma Jane Holloway is one of my favorites by revitalizing a much beloved fictional  character with modern twists of science. Chris Kohout fell drastically short for me by using very real, historical persons in his twist. I really thought it might have turned out differently and

An excellent weekend for watching the poodles clean the yard and reading on the deck. I was invited to continue on with The Sundering series and after Paul Kemp's Godborn was excited to continue forth. I am still very honored to continue being invited to read these ARCs and happy to lend my review power to (hopefully) my many viewers.  The Adversary by Erin M Evans I am getting a little more settled with this series. Ms. Evans did a better job pulling the plot lines that came before her into her installment. This book really felt like it was supposed to be one of the series while being a standalone story. However, (don't you just hate those) I stumbled to get into this story from a writing perspective. Paul Kemp so far has had the best writing. For this installment, I was back to the internet for research on the vast races that appear in the D&D landscape. Our main protagonist is a tiefling. Completely foreign to me, but I wanted to know what the background of th

I seem to be coming across many more novels these days surrounding the Russian/Slavic theme. Code Breakers was an excellent insight into British-Russian relations during the first World War and Lost Girl on TV has covered some of the Russian demon baddies in their episodes. Now I find myself researching the old stories in full and finding how they may have influenced many of the folktales I grew up reading (or maybe the other way around? Which came first the chicken or the egg?). Mistress of the Solstice by Anna Kashina What drew me to the book was a new avenue of folklore for which I am not currently familiar. I am a sucker for folklore. I have read the Brothers Grimm, Goethe, Rhymes of Mother Goose, Aesop's Fables, and other lesser known Western folklore. I have also recently become familiar with the tales from the Celtic histories of Ireland (who isn't intrigued by a giant named McCool?). The Slavic stories were completely new to me, yet so very familiar.  Baba Yaga is