Tina's Reading Books

Second part of my four part look at my favorites of this year.  This grouping represents those authors that I have read and enjoyed in the past but whose work has never quite risen to the level of favorite of the year.  Until this year.

Part 2 - Familiar authors who stepped up to the plate

  I discovered Kristen Ashley last year and did a major glom of her work.  Own the Wind is the follow-up to Motorcycle Man -- a book that I felt was one of her best.  This book is the one where KA got some polished editing that fixed some of the technical issues I have always had with her books.  It felt tighter and more cohesive.  It also did Tabby and Shy major justice.  While subsequent books that came out later than this one seemed to me to have muted some of the raw charm of her voice, I think this one was a big hit.

   This is the first year my epic fantasy reading was in the single digits.  But this omnibus of the final two books of the Riyria Revelations represented hard!   The entire series was a delight from the very first page.  But these final two books did exactly what the final story in a great fantasy story is supposed to do.  It made great use of its wide case of characters, it was exciting, bad people got justice and good people got rewarded, questions got answered, dangling story ends got all tied up and I closed the book with a big ass grin on my face.  Perfect.

  This dystopian erotica anything goes alt fiction was a revelation!  By the time it got to this third book, I was in love with the series.  And the hero & heroine of this installment, Six and Bren, were beautifully rendered.  The world-building gets better each book and  the characters are fantastic.   Keeping my fingers crossed that the series stays strong and goes diverse.  Biggest downside for alt-future type book like this is how disappointing it is in the diversity department so far.

Next up Part 3 - The Newbies.