K.N. Salustro's Blog, page 4

Review – Minor Mage

This is a charming book with some very fun and unique concepts, which I really enjoy in T. Kingfisher’s writing. The writing style feels like it was written more in the vein of a children’s book rather than an adult novel (as the author herself notes in the acknowledgements), which maybe made some things a little too simplistic. But it also managed to lend itself to higher tension whenever main character Oliver was in trouble. Like when he accidentally stumbled across a pair of human-eating ghul...

Thoughts on “Knight’s Fall”

DNF at 55%

Wow I’m about to get mean here, but…

I can’t finish this book. I just can’t. I’m a little more than halfway in and I’m swinging between bored and unable to believe how unconnected the plot is. This doesn’t read like a single book but rather a full season of a TV show that rips you from plot point to plot point with only vague connections between them. Of course, with TV, that can work better because your actors can visually convey things to the audience, and there’s more room for dial...

Review – The Twisted Ones

Well.

I’m a bit of a lightweight when it comes to horror and it’s multiple cousins. Chalk it up to an overactive imagination as a kid multiplied by some interesting, anxiety-fueled nightmares and you get a bit of an aversion to the stuff. I’ve been building up a bit of a tolerance thanks to a long-term relationship with a horror fan (who has put up with a lot of accidental headbutts in movie theaters when I went to bury my face in his shoulder, but hey, I’ve gotten better).

All of this to say th...

“Cause of Death: ???” is Available NOW

My fourth book and first fantasy book, Cause of Death: ??? is officially live and available for purchase!!

The book went live last Wednesday, and is available in both digital and paperback formats. I had a lot of fun working on this one, and I’m really excited to be able to share it with the world. You can check it out on any major book retail site, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Smashwords. Paperbacks are currently only available through Amazon, but should be coming t...

Review – Hope is Swift

This turned out to be a very sweet story starring Raj. It was interesting to see things from his point of view, particularly since this is the first time I’ve read a Toby Daye story from a Cait Sidhe perspective, although I will admit that I didn’t actually like Raj in the beginning.

This was weird to me because I liked him a lot as a character in the main series, but getting inside his head started to grate on me a bit. He was a little too quick to proclaim his own entitlement, and while I unde...

Review – The Unkindest Tide

Hmm… so, here we come to what ended up being probably my least favorite book of the Toby Daye series, and that surprised me so much. I expected to love this book, since it was time for the Luidaeg to call in both Toby’s numerous debts to her and the Selkies’ deadline. And for the first third or so of the book, it was great. Tensions were high, interesting characters were coming into play, and we got to see a brand new part of Faerie and it’s politics.

But then things started happening in such a ...

Review – Suffer a Sea Change

I liked this novella a lot. I’m not sure that I can talk about it without major spoilers, so I’ll have to say that this review is full of them. Big ones. Kindly stop reading if you’re not up to this point in the Toby Daye series, because a lot of stuff goes down and I’d hate for the impact to be dulled.

Okay. All good? Yes? Great.

So. This novella… wow. I didn’t give it five stars because the beginning was pretty slow for me, but given that it was retreading events that I just read about, only f...

Review – Night and Silence

It is amazing how satisfying this book is. It starts off with Toby in a painful emotional place, and with signs of trauma haunting her family. Especially Tybalt. Poor, sweet, fierce, dramatic Tybalt… seeing that guy hurt just hit me right in the gut.

Seanan McGuire is an expert at showing that injuries may heal, but they can and will leave their scars. Seeing the main cast of Toby’s world have to deal with that is a powerful thing, and reading this book just felt good. Not because I liked everyt...

Review – Mind of My Mind

So I actually read the sequel to this book, Clay’s Ark, several years ago, long before I realized that it was part of a series. To that end, I will eventually have to get a copy of that book again since I forget a lot of what happened in it, but it was really, really interesting to see all the things that came before. Because I do NOT remember Clay’s Ark being a gentle book.

Mind of My Mind is especially interesting, then, because not only do we get to see Mary come into her own as the new Patte...

Review – Midnight Blue-Light Special

[image error]4 stars on Goodreads, 3.5 in my mind

The Incryptid series is proving to be a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed seeing Veritys training as both a dancer and a cryptozoologist pay off, but I havent really been able to connect with the characters of this series yet. Dominic in particular. He just feels a bit flat to me, too one-note to really be a character that I care about.

Thankfully, doesnt get in the way of the story of this book, which I think would have been an issue for another writer....