Review: Blood Vow by J.R. Ward

Blood Vow

J.R. Ward

(Black Dagger Legacy #2)

Publication Date: December 6, 2016

Hardcover, 459 pages, Ballantine Books

Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance

B&N | Book Depository | Amazon | Goodreads

The Black Dagger Brotherhood continues to train the best of the best to join them in the deadly battle against the Lessening Society. Among the new recruits, Axe proves to be a cunning and vicious fighter—and also a loner isolated because of personal tragedy. When an aristocratic female needs a bodyguard, Axe takes the job, though he’s unprepared for the animal attraction that flares between him and the one he is sworn to protect.

For Elise, who lost her first cousin to a grisly murder, Axe’s dangerous appeal is enticing—and possibly a distraction from her grief. But as they delve deeper into her cousin’s death, and their physical connection grows into so much more, Axe fears that the secrets he keeps and his tortured conscience will tear them apart.

Rhage, the Brother with the biggest heart, knows all about self-punishing, and he wants to help Axe reach his full potential. But when an unexpected arrival threatens Rhage and Mary’s new family, he finds himself back in the trenches again, fighting against a destiny that will destroy all he holds most dear.

As Axe’s past becomes known, and fate seems to be turning against Rhage, both males must reach deep—and pray that love, rather than anger, will be their lantern in the darkness.

My Review

I have to be honest, I really didn’t enjoy The Chosen or The Beast, so I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did. But J.R. Ward just has this way of immersing readers into her Black Dagger Brotherhood world so seamlessly. I couldn’t help but get sucked in once again.

In this spinoff book, Axe, a new BDB recruit, and Elise, a vampire grad student, get together to have their steamy, angsty romance that Ward is very much known for. However, I do have to say that the story focused a lot on Rhage, Mary, and (spoilers if you haven’t read The Beast), their adopted daughter Bitty. While I found myself going back and forth between which storyline I preferred most throughout the story—Axe and Elise’s vs. Rhage and Mary’s—I did think there wasn’t enough going on in Axe and Elise’s plot arc. Their POVs most definitely could not add up to an entire book. Maybe a short novella, but not a book.

That’s my main problem with this sequel: what was left unexplored between Axe and Elise. For the Rhage and Mary bits, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked their scenes. Like I mentioned, The Beast just wasn’t my thing, even though I loved Lover Eternal, but this one was less about Rhage being whiny. (He was very whiny in The Beast.) Instead, the vampire family actually had a problem going on that I was engrossed in. It was a nice change of pace.

Basically, for this one, I’d say don’t go into it if you’re looking for a simple hot, steamy romance book. Know that it’s truly just a continuation of the BDB series that focuses on Rhage and Mary. The scenes between Axe and Elise are fine, but there could have been more development on both their parts.

All in all, I think every Black Dagger Brotherhood reader will enjoy this one, even if they didn’t necessarily enjoy some of Ward’s past books in the series. New readers, though, make sure to start with Dark Lover, get sucked in, and never leave the world J.R. Ward has created.

*Note: I borrowed a copy of this book from the library. This in no way affected my opinion/review.

My Thoughts on the New Avengers: Infinity War Trailer

I thought I’d share my thoughts and feels about the new Avengers: Infinity War trailer. In case you haven’t seen it, I’ve posted it below. 

Ermygawd. I can’t take the wait for this movie any freakin’ longer! I mean, I’m super glad they decided to move the film’s release date up to April 27, but GAH! This trailer has me way too hyped.

We got some Thanos and Gamora flashbacks, which have me super curious as to where Nebula is in all of this. We got some of Thanos’s lackeys doing bad things, especially that one dude to Doctor Strange. And, we even got Peter Quill + Tony Stark banter.

Everything about this trailer was great, but, my favorite part was Thor. Not the part where his head is about to be squished (Side note: I don’t actually think his head is going to be squished as that scene looks like it will take place in the beginning of the movie). No, my favorite part is him making lightning while sweet teenage Groot and Rocket watch. I’ve been completely fangirling over the theory that Thor will get a new weapon in this film. I need it to be true. I also can’t wait to see Peter Dinklage help Thor make his new hammer/ax thing.

Okay, I’ve rambled on about Thor for a while now, so I want to mention some more awesome scenes. Cap trying to hold Thanos’s hand back was pretty awesome. I don’t think it’ll work out very well for Cap, but it’s a cool scene. Starloard/Peter Quill using Strange’s magic as stepping stones in the air is very cool. And the battle scenes are so crazy!

I think the DCEU should really take note here. This is what a team-up superhero movie should feel like. It shouldn’t be rushed. The characters have had time to come into their own, and now, they need to learn to work as a team. It’s going to be epic watching them all come together to take on Thanos. I’m so ready for it.

Stacking the Shelves: The No More Snow Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Oh, man. This week sucked. Between family drama and it snowing for the umpteenth time, I’m just ready for this month to be over. I mean, it snowed on the first day of spring! Granted, I’ve seen snow in the middle of April before, but I haven’t had to walk in it in a dirty city before. Blugh.

Just a heads up, I may or may be taking a blogging break in April. Between the family issues and trying to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo, I’m just kind of feeling a little meh about the blog. I’ve got some things scheduled, so maybe I can muster up enough umph to keep posting throughout the month. We shall see.

Fireblood by Elly Blake

Stranded by Bracken Macleod

It was a pretty low-key book week this week. I took another ARC home from work, and last Friday during my lunch hour, I bought a copy of Fireblood from Barnes & Noble. I was going to get a copy of Frostblood too, but I couldn’t justify dropping $40 on two books. I think I’ll just order that one and the upcoming sequel online.

Oh, and my B&N purchase has me at $40.50 for my book-buying budget. I have $34.50 left to spend, and I don't really think I'm going to be spending that much, if any of it, next week.

What books have you bought/received lately?

Dean Winchester Friday

Dean Winchester (or sometimes Jensen Ackles) Fridays make me a very happy fangirl. You'll see why when watch the gif.

Be prepared. I think the next three or four Dean Winchester Fridays are all about food. And Dean. Because where would Dean be without food?

My Thoughts on The 100 Season Five Trailer

I thought I’d share my thoughts and feels about The 100 season five trailer. In case you haven’t seen it, I’ve posted it below. Please don’t watch it if you haven’t seen the previous seasons. There are lots of spoilers in the video.

First off, I’m wary about the time jump. I don’t like it when TV shows jump five or six years into the future. It just throws off the timeline of the story. There’s also a loss of some of the tension that was carried over from previous seasons. And, on the note of the time jump, I don’t think I like how Clarke has an adopted daughter in this season. It just feels off to me.

Now, moving past the time jump, I’m also a little sad that we’re seeing the dynamics of previous seasons being reversed here. The Skaikru have been merged with Trikru, but now a new set of space outsiders have come to take over, exactly like Skaikru originally set out to do. I just feel that this plotline is too similar to what’s already been done. Thus, it makes the storyline for the season seem dull.

However, I don’t want to pass too many judgments. There have been seasons the of The 100 that I’ve thought would mega suck, but they didn’t. Season two and three’s arcs had me very disappointed at first, but once I was watching, I was hooked. I’m hoping that’s how this season plays out as well.

As for the characters, I’m glad we get to see some new faces. It increases the pressure. I’m also super happy to see Octavia still kicking butt. Whoop! Whoop! I seriously hope she and Bellamy work out their squabbling. I just want them to be a family again, gosh darnit!

All in all, this was a super long trailer, and it showed some exciting scenes. However, I’m conserving any verdicts until I’ve watched the first episode of the season.

Waiting on Wednesday: Sanctuary by Caryn Lix

 "Waiting On Wednesday" is a weekly event, hosted over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating.

This week, what's really got my pages in a twist is...

Sanctuary

Caryn Lix

Publication Date: July 24, 2018

Hardcover, 480 pages, Simon Pulse

Genres: YA, Sci-Fi

B&N | Book Depository | Amazon | Goodreads

Alien meets Alexandra Bracken’s The Darkest Minds in this thrilling debut novel about prison-guard-in-training, Kenzie, who is taken hostage by the superpowered criminal teens of the Sanctuary space station—only to have to band together with them when the station is attacked by mysterious creatures.

Kenzie holds one truth above all: the company is everything.

As a citizen of Omnistellar Concepts, the most powerful corporation in the solar system, Kenzie has trained her entire life for one goal: to become an elite guard on Sanctuary, Omnistellar’s space prison for superpowered teens too dangerous for Earth. As a junior guard, she’s excited to prove herself to her company—and that means sacrificing anything that won’t propel her forward.

But then a routine drill goes sideways and Kenzie is taken hostage by rioting prisoners.

At first, she’s confident her commanding officer—who also happens to be her mother—will stop at nothing to secure her freedom. Yet it soon becomes clear that her mother is more concerned with sticking to Omnistellar protocol than she is with getting Kenzie out safely.

As Kenzie forms her own plan to escape, she doesn’t realize there’s a more sinister threat looming, something ancient and evil that has clawed its way into Sanctuary from the vacuum of space. And Kenzie might have to team up with her captors to survive—all while beginning to suspect there’s a darker side to the Omnistellar she knows.

My Thoughts

This one has a mix of Prison Break vibes meets a little bit of Illuminae. I’m excited to get my hands on this one, especially since it’ll be coming out close to when season three of The Expanse, a sci-fi television show, ends. I’ll need a good YA sff book to get me out of my funk. I’m just hoping my roommate can nab me a free copy. ;)

What book are you waiting for this Wednesday?

Top Ten Books On My Spring TBR

It’s Top Ten Tuesday time!

If you’re unaware, Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly original feature created by The Broke and the Bookish, and it’s now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week there’s a new Top Ten theme that the blogger responds to with their own list of answers.

This week’s theme is… *drumroll please*…

Books On My Spring TBR

Some of these are spring releases, while others are just ones I own and need to get to.

***

This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman & Meghan Spooner

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

Everlife by Gena Showalter

Blood Vow by J.R. Ward

City of Lies by Sam Hawke

Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

Exquisite Captive series by Heather Demetrios

Hero at the Fall by Alwyn Hamilton

War Storm by Victoria Aveyard

***

Alright, there you have it. My spring TBR. What did you put on your list? Let me know in the comments section.

Review: Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton

Traitor to the Throne

Alwyn Hamilton

(Rebel of the Sands #2)

Publication Date: March 7, 2017

Hardcover, 516 pages, Viking

Genres: YA, Fantasy

B&N | Book Depository | Amazon | Goodreads

Rebel by chance. Traitor by choice.

Gunslinger Amani al'Hiza fled her dead-end hometown on the back of a mythical horse with the mysterious foreigner Jin, seeking only her own freedom. Now she’s fighting to liberate the entire desert nation of Miraji from a bloodthirsty sultan who slew his own father to capture the throne.

When Amani finds herself thrust into the epicenter of the regime—the Sultan’s palace—she’s determined to bring the tyrant down. Desperate to uncover the Sultan’s secrets by spying on his court, she tries to forget that Jin disappeared just as she was getting closest to him, and that she’s a prisoner of the enemy. But the longer she remains, the more she questions whether the Sultan is really the villain she’s been told he is, and who’s the real traitor to her sun-bleached, magic-filled homeland.

Forget everything you thought you knew about Miraji, about the rebellion, about Djinn and Jin and the Blue-Eyed Bandit. In Traitor to the Throne, the only certainty is that everything will change.

My Review

The Blue-Eyed Bandit is back, and she’s causing just as much chaos as she did in the first book. I love it!

So, this sequel starts off in kind of a weird place. It’s been six months since the events of the first book, which made for a very confusing start. At first, I thought something was wrong and that the publisher accidentally printed the text for the third book in the paperback copy of Traitor. That’s how confused I was. But nope. It was just a jump in time. So be prepared for that. I know it took me a few chapters to really comprehend what was going on.

As for the characters in this book, Amani is still a fierce fighter and friend. She’s dedicated and angry and everything you’d expect a young woman who’s been undermined for so long to be. Also, I really love Amani’s dynamic with the other ladies in the rebellion. It was like a ragtag group of girl friends in high school, only they’ve been transported to a desert fantasy land. They’re written so well that they seem very real.

However, the female character greatness brings me to something I found a little lacking in this one: the male characters. Two complaints here: One, I wanted waaaaaay more Jin than I got. The scenes he was in were good, don’t get me wrong, but there just weren’t enough of them. And two, the villains are a little cliché in this one. Not terribly so, but the Sultan was doing a little bit of that whole villain spiel thing that I never understand. I guess in a roundabout kind of way, it makes some sense as to why the Sultan would want to talk with Amani, but still…Also, his son and heir was a typical douche bag.

Now, the plot of the book was one I expected to thoroughly hate as I realized about fifty or so pages in what was going to happen. I normally don’t like plotlines in fantasy books that rip the main character away from her ragtag group of rebels a la Empire of Storms or King’s Cage style, but for this one, I was thoroughly impressed with how I could not stop reading, despite Amani being in a whole new setting with new characters to interact with. I kept flipping pages and flipping pages.

All in all, if you’re looking for a fantasy series that’s out of the ordinary, Rebel of the Sands is one you should definitely pick up. There are genies, exiled princes, swordswomen, guns, and even kisses.

*Note: I purchased a copy of this book for myself. This in no way affected my opinion/review.

My Thoughts on The Crimes of Grindelwald Trailer

I thought I’d share my thoughts and feels about the newly released Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald trailer. In case you haven’t seen it, I’ve posted it below:

Oh gosh. I waited four days to watch this trailer, just because I thought I’d be disappointed. And, while there are some disappointing elements, I’m still super pumped about this film.

I guess I’ll start this off with the negative stuff. One, as most people have pointed out already, you can't apparate onto Hogwarts’ grounds, so that’s really weird. Two, Johnny Depp is undeserving of the Harry Potter franchise and should have been replaced immediately. And three, there will be no mention of Dumbledore’s sexuality or relationship with Grindelwald in this movie, and that’s just sad.

Okay. So, other than those three things, this trailer was everything I didn’t know I wanted in the Fantastic Beasts sequel. To be honest, I thought FB was just okay. It didn’t particularly wow me or have that nostalgic quality that the original HP films do. However, this trailer did manage to give me some of that nostalgia. Maybe it’s because Hogwarts and Dumbledore are actually in this one? And they used the original HP music?

Speaking of Dumbledore, it’s weird seeing him in regular-people clothes. Shouldn’t he be in robes? I’m a little confused about the costume design in this one. Why would Dumbledore be wearing a suit when in every headmaster picture in Hogwarts the witch or wizard has robes on? It’s not a super huge thing, but it’s a little baffling to me.

Anywho, I don’t know where the plot for this particular film is going, so it’ll be exciting to see what adventures Newt and co. get into this time around. I’m also interested in seeing Newt and his brother’s family drama play out.

All in all, this film is going to have its rough patches, but I’m definitely going to be watching it. It actually releases two weeks after I’ll be seeing Cursed Child on Broadway. So, yay for a month of awesome Harry Potter times!

Oh, and just a warning, be prepared for a lot of trailer thoughts over the next week. There have been some big ones that have just been revealed, and I want to talk about them all!

Stacking the Shelves: The Underbudget Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Man, this week has just gotten away from me. I just caught up on blog comments, and I haven’t been to the gym as much as I should have. I think it has something to do with losing an hour. But, I am glad that when I step outside before and after work, it’s still light out. It boosts my spirits and energy. So yay for sunlight and books!

Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson (ARC)

The Rising by Heather Graham and Jon Land (ARC)

Blood Vow by J.R. Ward

Okay, so this week featured another unexpectedly large book haul. Hello Stranger is a book I won over at Carole’s Random Life blog in a giveaway she hosted for Avon. Last Year and The Rising are more of those ARCs I didn’t want to recycle at work; thus, I took them home. I still have a few left that I need to bring back, though, so be prepared for next week’s haul containing some more ARCs. I borrowed Blood Vow from the library.

Lifeblood & Everlife by Gena Showalter

I also randomly decided to buy Lifeblood and Everlife when I saw how cheap Lifeblood was on Amazon. It was $7.75 for the hardcover! So yes, I ordered both books. Because I’m weak. However, they’re the only books I’ve bought so far this month, which means I’m at $20.50 out of $75 for my book-buying budget. Whoop! Whoop!

The Raging Ones by Krista and Becca Ritchie

This one is a NetGalley ARC that I already finished. I’ll have a review up closer to its release date.

What books have you bought/received lately?

Dean Winchester Friday

Dean Winchester (or sometimes Jensen Ackles) Fridays make me a very happy fangirl. You'll see why when you watch the gif.

I feel like Dean is confused like 90% of the show. He’s just so adorable when he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Right?