Before I get started, City of Blades is the second book in Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities trilogy. I am a terrible judge of whether you will need the earlier book to understand this one, and I apologize for that. I don’t think I need to spoil anything about the first to talk about the second, but everyone has their own tolerance level. Non-spoilery, but necessary background about the world of the Divine Cities. One hundred years ago, the gods were real. The Continent was […]
Humanity and Purpose
Peter doesn’t know how old he is. He only remembers waking in the dim light of the basement of the palace of Peter the Great. Peter and his sister Elena do not recall how they came to be in this place, at this time. They are avtomat, human-looking beings animated by a mysterious clockwork device. The device not only keeps them alive, but provides them with a specific purpose for living. Peter and Elena soon learn that danger haunts their existence. Avtomat have lived side-by-side […]
Making out in the food truck is definitely a code violation
Summary: Camille Marino owns an up-and-coming food truck in San Francisco. While the truck does well, she’s barely holding her head above water. Coupled with the challenges of being the guardian of her younger sister, Camille is in desperate need of a night out. She gets a little more than she bargained for when that night out leads to reconnecting with her first love, Drew Bautista. Drew is thrilled to see Camille again, though the timing could definitely be better. His Army unit will be […]
Interracial contract babies for the win
Because I’m trying to make more of an effort to read interracial romances, perhaps it was inevitable that Amazon was going to flag me for the BWWM subgenre. Either that, or their algorithm has correctly deduced that I am a black woman married to a white man. (Well done, algorithm!) When this book popped up in my Amazon recommendations, I remarked to my husband that the title had a lot going on. We’ve got a middle-aged heroine, a billionaire, and some contract babies. Using the […]
It’s dope to be black until it’s hard to be black
The hype gets it right yet again. I avoided reading Angie Thomas’s debut novel until two days before it was the borrow expired (despite waiting over three months for my turn in the queue). I had heard great things about the book, but some days I’m not up for taking a book-driven tour through the dark places. And the blurb of this one is dark. Just in case you don’t know the plot summary: Starr Carter is a typical high school junior. She plays on her […]
Am I out of breath from laughing or running?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing good can come from reading. Let us observe Joel Cohen. Cohen, a writer for The Simpsons and noted couch potato, found himself under the spell of Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run (reviewed by Halbs) and decided to take up running. When running didn’t kill him, he decided to run a marathon. See where reading leads you, dear reader? But it seems the damage is done for you and I, and if one must read, I can wholeheartedly […]
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