Welcome to the Scaredy Cat Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! Are you a scaredy cat when it comes to this scariest of seasons? Does the idea of doing to one of the inevitable haunted houses give you the shivers? Do you face your fears or run away from them as fast as you […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Just as it is in the ‘real’ world at the moment, it’s time for the Fall Harvest Festival in cozy, charming, Shady Hollow. Investigative reporter Vera Vixen has been eagerly anticipating the coming festivities and can’t wait to get back home from a research trip to the ‘big city’ to participate. And, of […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Lieutenant Alex Easton (Retired), late of the Gallacian Army, would much prefer to remain in Paris. Among the very tempting fleshpots and far, far away from the cold and dreariness back home in Gallacia. A place they never wanted to return to, and really don’t want to go back to ever again after […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Our cats watch us all the time. At least all the time they’re awake. When they’re sleeping we can do whatever we want as long as we don’t disturb them – although they can disturb us whenever they please. Because they’re cats. Today I have another picture of the ‘The Boys’ to show you. It’s […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
There’s some pretty, and a whole lot of pretty interesting among this week’s covers. The prettiest covers, at least from this perspective, are Letters from an Imaginary Country, People Watching, Some Kind of Famous and Turns of Fate, although as usual, they are far from pretty in the same way. Snake-Eater‘s cover is really well […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: There’s a saying that “War is diplomacy by other means”. The converse is often applied as well, that “Diplomacy is war by other means”. It’s also been said that “War is hell”, so either way, references to hell are certainly applicable in both cases. Which leads straight into the motivations behind many of […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The Adenashire series has been cozying up to each of the friends who ‘conquered’ the legendary Langheim Baking Battle since the first delightful book in the series, A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic. At the delicious end of the Baking Battle, although Taenya won the competition, it was the fellowship of Arleta, Doli, […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: “Back in the days when wishes still held power,” there was a human kingdom bordering the lands belonging to the Fae. In other words, this is a fairy tale. But not nearly as much like the fairy tales we all grew up on. Because this isn’t a story to entertain children, it’s a […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: We begin with just the sort of thing that lets the reader know that this story is going to go to some very dark places. Because it begins with three children being abandoned by their father at what appears to be the worst sort of orphanage without a backward glance. We don’t learn […]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Welcome to the Fall 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, hosted by It Starts At Midnight and Versatileer! Once upon a time, this was the Month of Books Giveaway Hop, now it’s the Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, with the hops starting on the days the seasons change. Today, September 22, is the first official day of FALL for the 2025 [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
book reviews, genre fiction, libraries| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I’ll admit that from the title I was expecting something a bit like The Fox Wife. Which I kind of got in a roundabout way but not in the way I intended. Nesi is, after all, sorta/kinda negotiating with the trickster god Fox for her own stab at immortality - just as Snow [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
book reviews, genre fiction, libraries| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I picked this up because, while I had mixed feelings about the author’s previous book, Bitter Medicine, it was her debut, andI liked it well enough to try again with this book. Howsomever, I’m left in exactly the same situation after finishing The Memory Hunters as I was at the end of Bitter [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
There were some hard choices in this Sunday Post - but at least it wasn't a "blah" reading week! I was a bit spoiled for choice for this week's 'Book of the Week' because there were THREE A- reads. I gave The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth the nod because the early scenes at Dishoom [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The fun - if sometimes frustrating - thing about reading the Hugo nominated novelettes and short stories is that I generally go into the reading without much in the way of preconceived notions about the story itself. That doesn’t mean I’m not already acquainted with the author, but that I haven’t seen anything [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Welcome to the Sparkle Time Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! This hop is always right before the Fourth of July, and that's always an interesting time at Chez Reading Reality even if it isn't always sparkly. This year, as in previous years, this hop is happening at around the same time as the [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Lake Michigan is a freshwater lake. There are no bodies of saltwater closer than the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles away. Unless you’re counting the gigantic saltwater tank and the Shedd Aquarium, which Chicago Police Detective Ethan Krol is forced to think about in this puzzle of a [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I came into this story not quite sure what I was getting into. Probably not helped by reading the “St.” in the title as “Saint” instead of “Street”. I think the “Brotherhood” bit led me astray. But only a bit. The opening of this story was a bit jarring, when the unnamed narrator [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Bianca Liliana of Damaria has been groomed by her parents to be a slave to her duty. Afflicted with a chronic, intermittently debilitating illness that not even the best healers can identify, Bianca has spent most of her life being told that she’s utterly useless for any role at all, and that the [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: “There’s nothing more disarming than a Jack Russell terrier,” according to Mary Russell’s long-absent rogue of an uncle, Jake Russell. Jake was so much the epitome of the black sheep of the family that he managed to fade completely into the shadows for fourteen long, and often dark, years. But now he’s arrived [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
This was an excellent reading week. Almost all in the A's of one stripe or another, and the one that wasn't (Wooing the Witch Queen) just barely missed. And I have a lot of friends who ADORED it so I think the reason it missed for me was a me kind of thing and reading [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: They say that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, and that’s certainly true when Archduke Felix of Estarion arrives, in the dead of night, at the castle belonging to Saskia, the Witch Queen of Kitvaria. He’s hoping for a sanctuary that he desperately needs. She’s in conference with her allies, Queen Lorelei [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The story begins on a saint’s day in one supposedly holy city, and ends on a different saint’s day in a different holy city. Which is just one of MANY ironic twists in the story, as there are absolutely ZERO saints anywhere else in it - and not much in the way of [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Once upon a time, there were two Ph.D students who fell in love and got married. Then reality set in, a particular academic reality known as the ‘two-body problem’. They are two bodies, both in need of those oh-so-rare tenure track positions, but for both of them to advance in their careers they [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Leona Griffin KNOWS she’s in the middle of a setup, she just doesn’t know what the setup is supposed to set her up FOR. The job seemed on the up-and-up, for select definitions of up all the way around. Leona is at the height of her career as a para-archaeologist, as well as [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: There are two sayings about home, and they usually contradict each other. There’s the one about home being the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in, and the one that says you can’t go home again. Darby never thought he’d want to go back to his [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: After scooping up the magically delicious series opener, A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic, I knew it would be impossible for this reader to resist this second book in the Adenashire series. So I didn’t even try, Who could resist this combination of books and dragons? Certainly not this reader. This second book is [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: I’m attempting to be a bit - just a bit - more deliberate in my Hugo reading this year, so I’ll be reviewing all of the Best Novelette nominees before moving on to the Best Short Story nominees. With one exception for Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie because I reviewed that year [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: The Paris Express is the story of a picture. The fictionalized story of a picture. In fact, the picture at left, of the wreckage of the Montparnasse train station in Paris, taken immediately after the Granville to Paris Express crashed through the flimsy wooden buffer at the end of the tracks and continued [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
It's Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S., so welcome to the UNOFFICIAL start of SUMMER! George says "Hai!" George seems to be having a good time, and so did I this week. Scrapping my original plans and putting in a week or two of books that were calling my name REALLY worked out for [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: Kellieth ReinAraneinth is caught between multiple rocks and abundant hard places, as when the story begins they can barely catch their breath. Literally. They may not be human but their breathing and sense of smell are both compromised by on-the-job chemical exposure resulting in a condition that may not quite BE chronic asthma, [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
My Review: As much as I enjoy audiobooks, I don’t listen much to podcasts. Howsomever, last year when I finally realized that a lot of the shorter works nominated for the Hugo Awards were available as podcasts, the penny dropped and I dove in. Last year, I opened my Hugo reviewing with a short work [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!
Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks! And audiobooks. Don’t forget audiobooks! In [...]| Escape Reality, Read Fiction!