I’ve become more and more interested lately in good shifter stories, especially with a kick-ass heroine at the helm. So when I received “Frayed – A Madison Lark Novella” from new author (and fellow reviewer over at BookCountry), Blakely Chorpenning I was happy to find that kind of heroine in Madison “Fray” Lark, a leopard shifter. This novella starts off something that could turn into a long-running and interesting shifter series.

Read more

A while back I was sent a review copy (Disclosure: At no cost to myself.) of The Settlers of Catan by Rebecca Gable (translated into English by Lee Chadeayne). To be honest, this review should have gone up already, but for some reason I thought it was coming out next week. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know how I got that idea. My apologies to the kind folks at Wunderkind PR.

The book is based on an ingenious strategy board game called, duh, The Settlers of Catan created by Klaus Teuber. The game sets itself apart from other strategy board games by encouraging cooperation. Winning isn’t achieved by defeating the other players, but by working with them to grow your settlement.

Story

A raid on the coastal village of Elasund, followed by a particularly harsh winter, pushes the Elasunders to face some hard facts. Their village can’t support them all. The rocky fields and its poor soil can’t supply enough grain, nor the sea enough fish to feed them year round. If they face another winter as hard as this one, many will not survive. After seeking the wisdom of their gods, they decide to search for a new home.
Read more

“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” — Henry Van Dyke

Official Review

GAFilk 2011 was less well attended than my last visit, two years ago, mostly reflective of the current economy.  That said, there was no lack of enthusiasm visible to our “posse”.

Four of us official Dragon*Con filk staff types and one unofficial (that would be you, Chip) member met up to do what filkers do, and put a current face to the (oft cursed name) of Dragon*con Filk.  For our fearless leader, Robby Hilliard (a relative newcomer to the filk world at under a decade ), along with Alex Boyd,  it was a chance to see some of the icons of classic filk for the first time.  For others of us, it was a chance to renew our unholy alliance, and savor some “old school filk”  juxtaposed with a variety of other styles and eras. Read more

I was very excited when I received the email wondering if I was interested in receiving an early copy of Wolfsbane, the sequel to Patricia Briggs’ fantasy novel Masques. I was entertained reading the first book, and I really hoped to get a chance to read the sequel after finishing the first. Slipping back into the high fantasy world that Patricia Briggs created so long ago was so easy and I didn’t have anything to be worried about that distance between when she wrote the first to the second.

Read more