Tag: young adults

The Rarkyn’s Familiar

An orphan bent on revenge. A monster searching for freedom. A forbidden pact that binds their fates.
Lyss had heard her father’s screams, smelled the iron-tang of his blood. She witnessed his execution.
And plotted her revenge.
Then, a violent encounter traps Lyss in a blood-pact with a rarkyn from the otherworld, imbuing her with the monster’s forbidden magic—a magic that will erode her sanity.
To break the pact, she and the rarkyn must journey to the heart of the Empire. All that stands in their way are the mountains, the Empire’s soldiers, and Lyss’ uneasy alliance with the rarkyn.
But horrors await them on the road—horrors that even rarkyns fear. The most terrifying monster isn’t the one Lyss travels with.
It’s the one that’s awoken inside her.
Monsters of a feather flock together.

Book Reviews

Manipulator’s War: Ruarnon Trilogy, Book 1

All roads lead to war.
Nonbinary Ruarnon is determined to prove their worth as heir to Tarlah’s perfect King. But when their parents are abducted, Ruarnon must rule Tarlah in the face of unreliable allies, a brutal expansionist neighbour, and binary male warriors who doubt the lead of a bookish enby youth.
Neighbouring King Kyura faces opposition, as peace-loving ruler of warmongering subjects who dream of expanding their empire. Ruarnon is vulnerable in the absence of their allies, but when Kyura rejects calls to conquer Tarlah once and for all, assassins threaten his family and mutiny threatens his reign.
Trapped in Ruarnon’s world, Linh is desperate to return to her family in Australia, and isn’t above using her host’s belief that she’s a figure from local myth to achieve it. But her gateway home lies on the far side of a brewing war, and her only transport is Ruarnon’s absent allies, sailing to Tarlah’s aid.
A new breed of creature threatens them all: a plague of monsters sailing towards Kyura and Ruarnon’s lands. Linh’s monster observations could save Kyura and Ruarnon’s people, ending the war between them, and clearing Linh’s homeward path. But the price is dear; Linh must risk her life aiding Ruarnon.
And to secure peace with Kyura’s unruly subjects, Ruarnon’s ultimate test as heir risks betrayal and Tarlah’s bloody defeat.

Book Reviews

Academy Bound

To dream you must have faith. To command requires conviction. To fail is not an option.
Sixteen-year-old Zach Aurelian has held the same dream since he was eight years old—to attend the Earth Alliance Fleet Academy and train to become a command officer like his mother, who went missing in the system-wide civil war that fractured the Alliance. He believes in his soul that she’s still alive, and is determined to reach the stars to find her, no matter the challenge. Zach soon learns that not only will he face down his anxiety disorder and the rigors of the Academy, but the ghosts of his mother’s past who would stand in his way.

Book Reviews

Madness

Death is not an escape.
One night Ezra Adkins is brutally murdered in her own home. As she was dying, she expects to wake up in the afterworld.
She was wrong.
She loses consciousness and awakens into a horrific game of kill or be killed. Players can be killed an infinite number of times, but the only permanent way out of the game is their actual death by suicide.
Players in the game ruthlessly hunt each other for points, while others kill for fun. Most players have given up on finding an escape from the game and spiral into insanity, killing without reason.
It’s mayhem.
Ezra soon learns who to trust and who to hunt down. But as she falls deeper into the game, she starts to lose herself as the bodies pile up. The line blurs between what she’s always known to be right and wrong.
Metal will clash. Blood will spill. Minds will break. And before it’s too late, Ezra must find an escape from the game before she becomes the real enemy…