Tag: fantasy
Snow-Swept is here!
It’s Valentine’s Day, so you know what that means…
It’s release day for Snow-Swept!
This no-spice fantasy romance novelette is now available on Kindle Unlimited.
Featuring hearts in need of healing, grief, and a sweet romance that blooms alongside a gargoyle’s protective instincts, I can’t guarantee this little story won’t make you cry!
New on Vella: The Lamp Post Society
Welcome to The Lamp Post Society, where you’ll trade your true name for a roof over your head and solid wages. Oh, and you’ll also fight monsters.
My new quirky Victorian gaslamp fantasy, The Lamp Post Society, is now available on Kindle Vella! The Lamp Post Society is perfect for fans of W.R. Gingell and Suzannah Rowntree. This story publishes Wednesdays.
(Reminder: Kindle Vella is a serial storytelling platform on Amazon.com–meaning, sadly, it is still only available for US Amazon users.)
The Synopsis:
While London enjoys the progress of the Victorian Era, an endless series of disappearances plague the foggy streets of Elloc. The Lamp Post Society is on the case. Unfortunately, so is its newest and most oblivious recruit, Newfie Blake—and nothing can prepare him for the things that go bump in the night.
The Lamp Post Society is quirky, exciting gaslamp fantasy for fans of W.R. Gingell’s The City Between series and Suzannah Rowntree’s Miss Dark’s Apparitions series.
Cheers!
CKB
Protected: The Fishermen’s Princess Chapter Twenty-Four
Protected: The Fishermen’s Princess Chapter Twenty-Three
Find your next Kindle Vella read!
The first Potions & Passions Kindle Vella promo is LIVE, my friends, and you can find it here. How excited am I?
This promo runs January 8 – February 7, 2023, and has scifi, fantasy, romantic fantasy and fantasy romance (aka romantasy!) titles. With 18 stories and 13 authors to choose from, the BookFunnel page will help you find your next Kindle Vella read!
You’ll also find my stories Stone Circles: A New Fairy Tale (based on Irish myth) and A Court of Swords and Sugar Plums (which I describe as The Nutcracker meets The Cruel Prince).
This is my first time creating a BookFunnel promo, and I look forward to helping everyone find some new Vella readers. As Vella authors, we’re usually scouring Facebook posts for readers with tokens to burn and interest in what we’re writing, so I think this makes a lot more sense for writers and readers both!
Wondering what the heck Kindle Vella is?
Kindle Vella is an Amazon platform for serial storytelling.
If you’ve never checked out Vella before, there’s a good chance you have some free tokens just waiting for you to claim them. Besides that, the first three episodes of every Vella story are always free to try. Pretty cool, right?
Every episode costs a certain number of tokens, depending on the length. As readers, you can like, follow (and even favorite, if you have paid tokens) the stories you love, so Vella incorporates a bit of social media into its platform in that way. You can still review stories, too!
Vella authors often break their stories up into “seasons,” which they may break up into separate stories (or not). Anastasis Blythe, whom I’ve interviewed and reviewed ARCs from, is a prolific romantic fantasy author on Kindle Vella, but there are LOADS of authors and genres to choose from.
The only downside is that this is still a relatively new platform, so it’s only available to US Amazon users. (I know, I have quite a bit of readership outside the US, but authors always have the option of publishing their stories 30 days after removing them from Vella, which IS my plan).
That’s all for now!
Cheers,
CKB
Oathbound review
(The Royal Rose Chronicles #1)
YA fantasy, pirate fantasy adventure, romantic fantasy
Favorite quote: “‘Do you see how he looks at her as if he’s found a priceless pearl inside an oyster?’ Heat flooded my cheeks. I had noticed that.”
Note: I received a copy and this is an honest, voluntary review.
This book just got better and better as it went along!
Early on, Oathbound feels like historical fiction more than fantasy. Though it was on the slower side, I felt like I was on the Royal Rose. But the magic was still missing for me. Then came the magical creatures (and one creepy ghost ship) on the high seas. This book became a page turner for me from that point on.
The romance subplot is woven throughout the story and in the “friendship” between narrators Emme and Arn. It’s so lovely and subtle, a true slow-burn that goes beyond two friends having that conversation. With Emme’s distrust of pirates, Royal Rose captain Arn has a lot to prove.
I loved all the side quests and intrusions by magic and ghosts. Emme is also dealing with a congenital degenerative disease, so we see her struggling with mobility. Note that this book ends on multiple wicked cliffhangers. I can’t wait to read book two!
My rating:
4.5/5
Wizardom Legends: Thief for Hire review
(The Outrageous Exploits of Jerrell Landish #1)
Humorous Fantasy, Fantasy Adventure
fantasy heist, anti-hero, morally gray hero
Meet Jerrell Landish, the light-hearted version of Kaz Brekker!
An itinerant thief, gambler and flirt rather than a crime boss, Jerrell is still every bit the anti-hero with no compunction about killing. Yet Thief for Hire is the kind of book you read with a smile on the edge of your lips, and frequent head shakes. It’s not often the word “outrageous” is an understatement!
This book won me over. I found it easy to dive in, but all the casual violence (though not overly graphic) made it hard to root for Jerell for a while. As he got into increasingly tight spots, I became invested again and read straight through to the end.
My rating:
4/5
The Borderlands Princess review
(Stone Circle #1)
Spicy romantic fantasy, fae romance
Note: I received a copy and this is an honest, voluntary review.
I really enjoyed this debut novel from the Of Smoke and Shadows author. The story, though, is just getting started, so expect a bit of a cliffhanger!
The Borderlands Princess pulls a fun switcheroo on readers. At the start, I expected it to be the story of a human Princess betrothed to a fae king who is morally gray at best. While that’s true, it’s so much more than that! It’s really about a princess whose fate was decided long before she was born learning how to reclaim own life. She’s also a mature princess, not at all what I usually read.
The opening chapters were pacey and the plot had plenty of little twists, plus one big moment that I thought was a home run. There was also some clever play with timelines. I did wish it sunk deeper into Connall’s perspective and showed more of what happened on his end, since there was a lot going on in a short period of time. Note that there were also many line editing issues in the version I read, and the pacing lagged a bit in the middle. The last quarter, however, was truly exciting. It absolutely flew by for me.
I’m already looking forward to book two!
My rating:
4.5/5
Of Smoke and Shadows review
(Stone Circles # 0.5)
Spicy Romantic Fantasy, Steamy Fantasy, Prequel Novella
fated mates, fae romance, villain origin story
Note: This story is now available on KU. The version I read was a reader magnet and has some changes based on reader feedback.
This novella has some very steamy scenes towards the end and is for mature readers 18+ only.
This prequel to The Borderlands Princess is like ACOTAR meets The Witcher.
Of Smoke and Shadows is the intriguing backstory of the Fire Fae King in a forthcoming first book, author Ophelia Wells Langley’s Stone Circles series. It’s a series of vignettes of the moments that shaped Achill, beginning as a young, mateless prince afraid of his father. He quickly becomes brutal and has some hard life lessons that make him think twice.
There was spicy open door fae romance near the end, so if that’s your thing, the author has you covered! (And if not, consider yourself duly warned!) I also found Achill’s smoke magic interesting, especially since it’s considered substandard in his court. I’m curious how it will be used going forward.
Though not every period in Achill’s life had a full arc for his developing character (I wondered what happened while training with his uncle that changed him so much), the way the plot drops in on key moments very much reminded me of season 1 of The Witcher. The female characters were especially well-rendered, so I’m looking forward to reading The Borderlands Princess.
My rating:
4/5