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Thursday, May 31, 2018

Hands of the Colossus by Nicole Grotepas blitz


Hands of the Colossus: A Steampunk Space Opera Adventure
Nicole Grotepas
(A Holly Drake Job, #2)
Publication date: May 31st 2018
Genres: Adult, Science Fiction, Steampunk
One massive shadow organization. One bad ass heroine.
Holly Drake just wants a simple thing–to destroy the Shadow Coalition and the evil at the heart of their business. Using tip-offs from the secretive government official pulling her strings, Holly and her crew swoop in, break up the cash drops and steal the money. If one or two baddies die on accident, no big loss. Right? Holly could do this forever, picking the Coalition apart till not even bones remain.
Until someone goes missing. In that moment, everything changes.
To save the victim, Holly and her team will put everything on the line to penetrate the mysterious Shadow Coalition and stab at their enigmatic leadership: the Hands who protect the Heart. Treacherous journeys across the 6-moon system in space-zeppelins, dangerous infiltrations of the Coalition, bartering with thieves, and relying on the seedy underbelly of the 6-moons. Anything it takes.
But … is the whole set up a trap? How many snares will Holly and her crew have to spring to the save just one victim?
This is Holly Drake and her crew of thieves. If they have to, they’ll go into the hornet’s nest to get the job done. But will it be their final job?
The Hands of the Colossus features a snarky, strong, bad ass heroine fighting against the odds to save the helpless.
If you don’t like seeing a woman experience self-doubt, overcome obstacles, and then dominate, this book is not for you.
Love strong female leads, an entertaining cast of characters, and adventure? Then grab your copy today!
EXCERPT:
“What do you think, Trip?” Holly Drake asked. She glanced at the pilot of the ship the SC Olavia Apollo. The female was a Centau, which Holly would have never imagined using in her life. However, tech genius crew-member Darius had sworn that she wouldn’t compromise the operation and turn over their illegal activities to the Centau leadership. Despite his scoundrel ways, Darius had proven himself enough that Holly trusted him. “Can you do it?”
The Centau turned to the stare at Holly, where she sat in the co-pilot seat, and smirked. “‘Think I can do it?’ What sort of question do you ask me, Drake?”
“A nervous question. I hate space-flight.”
“Yes. So you’ve said. Repeatedly.” Trip’s dark gaze flickered over Holly’s face, then went back to the monitor.
Charly was already suited up in the air-lock and waiting, while Odeon was strapped in behind Holly, humming. This mission wasn’t the sort that lent itself to drinking for nerves. Was it a terrible thing to ask her Druiviin friend that he hum to help her through the ordeal?
Probably. But there weren’t a lot of options at the moment.
“You needn’t worry the least. Centau ships are the most advanced in the known galaxies. He’s mapping the gravity of this misshapen moon as we approach for landing. It won’t even be rough. And I will have very little to do with the actual landing. It is in the hands of the Olavia Apollo’s AI.” Trip gestured at the video image of the moon on the monitor as they approached.
It was a small one, indeed. Around seven and a half miles at its longest and as lumpy as a potato-tuber hybrid. Darkness and unfiltered sunlight gave the moon’s surface relief, revealing its pockmarks, scars, and vast gouges. There were several transponders attached to the surface. These transponders were what had brought Holly and her team to the small moon in the first place.
Holly held her breath as their ship, in some mysterious advanced physics and engineering, slowed upon nearing the touchdown. A low noise began suddenly, whining through the background sounds of the ship’s systems. Holly looked around, panic rising as the danger seemed to grow.
“What is that?” she whispered, clutching the hard cushion of the edge of her seat.
A calming violet hand appeared on her shoulder. She could see it in her peripheral vision.
“It is you, Holly Drake,” Odeon said. There was a song in his voice, and a slight tone of humor. “Peace. You are nervous. All will be fine.”
Trip’s gaze was also on Holly.
“Shouldn’t you be watching this landing?” There was a definite edge in Holly’s tone. No peace at all.
“The AI. If I interfere, I could ruin the landing. Olavia Apollo has it.” Trip nodded at the sleek control board. “Don’t worry.”
The first time they’d ridden with Trip, Holly had expected wood, brass, and a large steering wheel—like the space zeppelins. Not at all what she found. Instead the small space cruiser was something right out of the future. Trip barely even piloted it.
That didn’t stop the Centau from wearing a white jumpsuit with patches on the upper arms and a pair of goggles with amber tinted lenses. Right now the eye-pieces were on top of Trip’s ivory stubble-covered head as she watched the surface of the moon float toward their ship on the video image on the screen.
“What is it you want to do with the transponders?” Trip asked. She watched the video footage onscreen as they moved closer to the surface.
A knot tightened in Holly’s gut. Her stomach stretched taut. Her shoulders arched back against her seat slightly. Odeon’s hand burned through her jacket, seeming to heat up as the tension tore through her body. She wasn’t sure what she feared—crashing too hard into the unforgiving surface of the moon or their ship ripping apart and sending them all careening into the void of space, like flecks of ice off one of the un-terraformed ice moons of Ixion. The one they were about to land on was one of the few asteroid-like moons, and therefore peppered with transponders on all sides, repeating audio and video signal through the 6-moon system.
If Odeon’s hand hadn’t been there, if Odeon’s low song hadn’t been worming its way into her ears, digging deep into her brain, pirouetting across her neurons like an ancient earth-ballet dancer, soothing her like a pied-piper of lore, Holly knew that she would have been nothing more than a puddle of adrenalin, dispersed through the low-G-interior of the ship, floating around like rain drops.
She did not like space-flight.
The ship balanced, thrusters fired, a harpoon-like anchor ejected and tethered their ship to the rock and they connected with the moon in a light thud, touching down.


Author Bio:
I'm passionate about human rights, animal rights, and living life with no regrets. I love how becoming a parent has deepened my devotion to making the world a better place. I do that best by crafting stories that attempt to answer hard questions--the ones I think about most--while also being entertaining and fun. I live in a landscape that reminds me of my place in the universe, under an endless sky and towering mountains that are older than human memory, and I love it here.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Worlds We Want to Live In

 
All my book friends know that I LOVE the 1940s love stories, before anyone say something I DO KNOW TIMES WERE BAD BACK THEN, but I still would have loved to live back in the 1940s
I love the American soldiers, I love how woman dressed back then , I think they were beautiful
and very feminine, nothing like this time. I do try and dress like that sometime, do my hair too.
Good thing that my husband doesn't mind that I dress like that.
Now my 12 years old daughter does, she is embarrassed to go out with me dressing like this.
So whenever she wants to go shopping for clothes I dress up in my 1940s style
and when she sees me like that she says "never mind I don't want to go " haha
It saves me a few bucks haha

Please recommend any WW2 love story in the comments! Thanks!

LOL I am going to ruin Allyson'd beautiful post with my pictures :P

 
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 Well a world full of sexy fallen angels would be great! I love books about fallen angels too. If you have good one to recommend post it on the comments!

Well I love World of Warcrat!  
I am obsessed with it! I would love to live in this world and be a Night Elf!  
My Night Elf Shadow priest!

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Top Ten Tuesday: Books We Didn't Like, But Are Glad We Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.
Man, this book pissed me off so much, but I finished it.

This was big no no for me.
I did not hate this book but i could get into it, maybe I wasn't in the mood for it. I might give it a try some other time.
I did not think this book was great. I had to stop reading it because it was super boring.
The main reason why I wanted to read it was because of Rhysand but he wasn't in it. I started liking the book, but then it got boring. There was nothing great about this.
Another Super-overrated book and  every book page or blog I visit, all they talk about is this book  and how great it is, but it isn't. You people need to stop with your false advertisement hahaha.
I hated it so much! This book was Super overrated!

I think because I set up two months worth of posts all at once, it was really hard for me to come up with books for some of these lists! This one I was just drawing a complete blank. Mostly because I am incredibly lazy, and if I am not liking a book, I just don't finish it! So I don't really have anything that I could say I was glad I finished even though I didn't like it. 

K-dramas, however, are a completely different story. I have used quite a few Top Ten Tuesdays to discuss K-dramas that I have absolutely loved. But I have never really utilized a TTT to talk about dramas that I didn't. I figured this was a good chance to do that! 
3 Days

The President of South Korea goes on holiday at a private villa. In the middle of the night, three gunshots are fired, and the president goes missing. His bodyguards, led by elite agent Han Tae Kyung, have three days to find the president and escort him safely back to the Blue House.

Oh, Yoochun. Before he left for his military service, I was a diehard fan. After I Miss You, I was beyond willing to watch anything with him in it, even if it was outside my standard comfort zone. Of which 3 Days definitely was. I usually require at least a minimal romantic aspect to dramas, and this one barely met that requirement. But the story was just not good, and the characters didn't make much sense, nor were they very likable. All in all, this drama was a huge bust for me. Which is incredibly disappointing because Yoochun turned out to be a huge perv, and had a big scandal involving restrooms and prostitutes, and even if he had had a lot of dramas after this one, I probably wouldn't be able to watch them without thinking about what a scumbag he was. Even though he was exonerated from the rape allegations and the women admitted that it was all a scam to blackmail him and that the sex was in fact consensual, I still can't ever look at him the same. 

Just You
Qi Yi is a boss from hell. He is worst than a control freaking dictator. He is the saboteur of office romances. Cheng Liang Liang was tasked by her coworkers to break down the boss' defense and have him lift the anti-office-romance rule.

Taiwanese dramas are usually a big miss for me. It doesn't matter how high budget the drama is, it still is only on par with a very low budget Korean drama, complete with over the top acting you'd find in a daily makjang drama. Of course, I am open to suggestions if you think I am wrong on that point! But Just You definitely didn't disprove it. Aaron Yan is absolutely gorgeous, and I actually didn't hate this drama. But I also didn't love it. The leads were cute together, but overall that plot was kind of stupid and a lot of the obstacles are just irritating. Plus, I have learned that I really hate the Mandarin word for boss. 老板, pronounced lǎobǎn, is just so grating to hear repeated a hundred times an episode at high pitch. 
Cheongdamdong Alice
Han Se Kyung is a young woman with a very positive character. Her motto is "effort will take me as far as I want to go". She wins many designing contests and finally joins a clothing company. But, at work, Han Se Kyung does errands and chores rather than design. Meanwhile, the wife of an upper management employment at the clothing company humiliates Han Se Kyung. The wife is actually a formerhigh school classmate of Han Se Kyung who didn't do better than her in school. This makes Han Se Kyung look back on her life.

Just thinking about this drama makes me angry. I should preface this by saying I hate moon Geun Young with an unholy passion. Her face makes me feel stabby, and I usually avoid anything with her in it. But this looked so cute! I had no idea it was going to be about a manipulative liar who was going to constantly kick the figurative puppy that was the male lead. I would chalk this one up to a total waste of my life, but it did introduce me to Park Shi Hoo, who is ridiculously adorable. Though, as he also had rape allegations made against him almost immediately after this drama, maybe that wasn't a good thing. Even though the charges were dropped and she recanted her statement, it's not that easy to find work after you've been embroiled in a sex scandal. 

Secret Hotel
This drama will be about a woman who runs the wedding planning division of one of the country’s top 1% wedding destination hotels. And while planning perfect weddings for the elite, she’ll be caught in a love triangle between her ex-husband and a new man while a murder at the hotel turns things topsy-turvy.

I wanted so much to love this drama. I don't think I suffered from inflated expectations, even though Yoo In Na is one of my favorite actresses. This drama was just an absolute mess. The characters were mostly ridiculous. I think Yoo In Na cried in every single episode, sometimes several times an episode. Now, I don't mind a good damsel in distress every once in a while, I don't mind characters who have weaknesses. But that is all Yoo In Na's character was, weak. She was indecisive and allowed herself to be pulled in two different directions constantly. And I mean that quite literally. On more than one occasion, both boys each had a hand and was telling the other to let go. I was just hoping that she would tell them both to go take a flying leap since she wasn't a toy for them to argue over, but she never did. 
Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge
Blessed with good looks, Takano Kyohei, a college student, is always suffering from the unreasonable behavior of customers who want him and the sexual harassment of his store manager. Because of his hot temper, he loses his head on this occasion and is fired from his part-time job. Then one day, the glamorous owner, Ms. Nakahara proposes, "I'll give you free board-and-lodging if you can turn my niece, Sunako, into a lady!"Kyohei and Toyama Yukinojo, Oda Takenaga and Morii Ranmaru, the other guys living together in the same boarding house, are enthusiastic, but the person who appears before the four of them is a spooky girl whose hair covers her face and who loves horror and vampires. And so, their tumultuous communal life begins.

This was only my third Asian drama ever. I started with Full House (Korean), then Boys Over Flowers (Korean), and then somehow managed to find this one. Theoretically, it sounds like everything I would love in a drama. Reverse harems are totally my thing, I won't lie. But every Jdrama I have seen has been like watching live action anime, and that's never good. This one had a ridiculous plot, bad acting and horrible hair. Like seriously, the worst wigs ever. 

Monday, May 14, 2018

A little book Rant! ACOTAR


I am at home alone with my three dogs, my kids are at school and I am bored. I do not feel like cleaning, screw that shit. So I am sitting here writing a little piece of mind of how I feel about a certain book series,  A court Of Throne and Roses,and yes I am prepare for the hate of the fans. Keep in mind I am not bushing the books or anything like that.
I started the series, but I thought it was boring and very slow, there was a point where I thought I was going to like it but then it got bored again. I do not know if maybe had to do with the fact that a few characters weren't there, since that was the main reason while I started  the book, but I did not end up liking it.
I am going to be honest, when the movie comes out I will see it, I think that for me seeing the world , the characters, and whatever else , would be more entertaining than reading the book. But I have to say ( yes I know the books are popular, I get it) that I am tired of seeing about it every book related page, or even in Book subscriptions boxes. I had subscribed a few of them  and since I did, I have gotten some bookish stuff related to this series. I guess it is good so when my book friends birthdays come around they will get some of the stuff I have. Still I wish people would  give a chance to other great books they have read, spread the word about some great underrated books.
I wish book boxes  subscriptions would add some fandom items to promote other books like The Diabolic, this book was great! Or Falling Kingdoms, or Sunshine, or The Cruel Prince, or Tithe , these are all great books! So many books come to my mind...
But this is just me I am just a little tired of seeing about it all over the place.
I know I am in the minority!


 PS: I have to admit that I enjoy making fandoms stuff about this books to gift to my book friends that I know they love this series, because I know they will love what they get,  and they will be happy,  and it makes me happy to make them happy.hahaha
  I get very excited to make stuff for them.

Happy reading!
Mariela




Tuesday, May 08, 2018

Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Our Favorite Color on the Cover

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl 
This week’s topic asked us to come up with books that had our favorite color on the cover or in the title.