Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 4 days

Pages - 437

Publisher - Orbit books

Source - Review Copy

Blurb from Goodreads

A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure.

Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.

But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.

To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.





My Review

The book has an awesome opening, chapter title "Save the Cats" - the cover features cats in wee space helmets and every chapter has a wee hand drawn cat in a space helmet. They are sassy, trouble and did I mention psychic? What isn't to love, they were some of the things that made me want to read the book as I don't go in for a lot of fantasy/space type fiction. With a strong opening chapter I thought I was going to love this book, cats in space and psychic cats at that not to mention a whole whack of sassiness. However they feature very little after that and it really did have a huge impact because I thought with them being over so much of the cover/blurb/chapter headings they would have been integral.

The main character is Captain Eva Innocente and her crew on her ship, battering about in space and she ends up taking on a very unsafe mission to save her sister even though she is estranged from her family. She doesn't tell her crew, part of the agreement and she thinks in their best interest. What follows is a multitude of dangerous missions, being targetted by a sexist eejit, unbelieveable danger, a ton of swearing, attitude and more types of beings/creatures than I could keep count of. The main character also would have whole sentences of phrases that weren't english (the majority of the book is in english), I later picked up some of it was a type of spanish but mixed with something else. So I would stop to google the phrases which some would translate and others made no sense at all. I found it to be quite frustrating and I was possibly missing key information from those scenes.

Other times I have Guardians of the galaxy vibes and really enjoyed parts, space, action and even a wee bit of romance. I think if the book had a glossary to describe the different beings & maybe a wee explanation of the language used might have helped a wee bit as I did feel lost at times. I am hoping if this is a series then book two will embrace and include the space cats as I just feel there was so much they could have added and been part to. Who doesn't want more cats, psychic cats, cats, lol, 3/5 for me this time. It was nice to try a different author and it is no mean feat to create a whole different universe let alone beings but a wee space on a website or glossary in any following books to help the readers get to grips with all the new creations would be great, well I think so.

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Meg by Steve Alten

Meg by Steve Alten
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1.5 days

Pages - 438

Publisher - Tsunami Books

Source - My keeper shelf

Blurb from Goodreads

Revised and Expanded. On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists - Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.



My Review

This is a re read for me guys, prep for the upcoming movie (which I went and saw and loved and want to see in 4D). Let me say, for those who don't know, I LOVE sharks, shark books, shark movies so when something shark related comes along I tend to be over the top excited anyways.

Meg is about the long extinct Megalodon shark and our main character Jonas Taylor. Jonas used to go deep, he went to the Marina Trench seven years ago where something happened to change him. He is thee expert on Megs and once was very respected in his field, now his career is flailing, his marriage is in trouble and Jonas is still plagued by past events. When things come to pass that force Jonas to face his past and mans most terrifying adversary the question can only be who will survive?

EEEEEEK I love this, I love that we have some real facts in there and you learn stuff as you are scared out of your wits. The opening chapter just made me think of Jurassic park, the same feels and a sneaky peek into something we will never see in our live times.

Jonas is a great character, I think, can't say I loved a whole lot of the others but even the characters you hate/dislike bring something to the book. Meg herself is just a magnificent creation, Carcharodon megalodon with a bite sized estimated to be 10 feet, 10 feet!!! The ultimate killing machine, I could read about them all day long. The book has a lot of research put into it and any book that you learn stuff as you go gets thumbs up from me, then add in a shark, a HUGE shark and you just have a book that blows right out the water (see what I did there, the jokes never get better!).

This is the first in the series, the movie is currently in the pictures, I absolutely recommend this to shark fans, Jurassic park fans, fans who like a bit of horror/suspense I mean come on she is the ultimate killing machine! It has humanity, feeling, suspense, terror and one of those I couldn't read with my feet hanging over the edge of the couch, yes I am one of those! 5/5 for me this time, I have the next four on my keep shelf and the newest one is on order.

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Q&A with Karl Drinkwater

Welcome to So Many Books, So Little Time Karl. Thanks for taking time out for a bit of a grilling with me. FYI readers, there are some swear words ahead!






So "Lost Solace", for anyone who hasn’t read it or heard of it, tell us what is it about?

If I was being flippant, I’d say it is the first of a trilogy about a kick-arse pair of women taking on every-fucking-threat in the universe, including the military-industrial complex, and still finding time for noodles and sisterhood. I don’t want to list their main goal, because it’s one of the revelations at the end of Lost Solace. If I was being serious, I’d say it’s a sci-fi book with a heart that gives me the chance to ask questions. What is strength and humanity? Can a machine feel things like a human? How does a woman make her way in a man’s world? And how far will someone go to keep a promise?


You normally write horror, what made you change over to sci fi genre?

To be honest, horror is what I’m best known for, but it’s only one of the genres I write in. For example, my Manchester 2000 books are purely about finding love and happiness, and how our pasts and our obsessions sometimes get in the way of that; one of my current works-in-progress is a literary and contemporary short-story collection with a big focus on love and ethics. My primary interest is telling a story; the genre and style evolve out of that. My books contain different combinations of elements that fingerprint me, but not all are present in every book: examples include family, horror, suspense, love, strength, humanity, action, and reality breaking down.


Opal is a long overdue kickass strong female character, tell me about her?

She’s flawed. She’s not all-powerful. She has a depth of emotion that she dare not reveal easily. She’s righteously angry. She’s quick-thinking. She hurts. All of that means she’s human. There’s no guarantee that she’ll survive what she faces, but we want her to, because she’s noble when she can be. We root for her. She’s a Greek warrior hero, a female mix of Achilles and Odysseus. A mortal Athena (Athene). She can do what we only wish we could do. But with a hero’s achievements there can be a hero’s suffering.


Is she based on anyone you know?

Strangely, no. Many of my female characters are based on women I’ve known and admired. A reader wouldn’t know it, and the inspiring women wouldn’t necessarily recognise themselves in the characters, but I could easily say who they were. Opal is different. She grew as I wrote her. She redefined herself in the flow of words.


I loved the AI (artificial intelligence) and the relationship between the two, what made you go for an AI?

In my story notes the AI was sexless and emotionless. A pure representation of efficiency, directed towards the purpose of killing by the (originally-male) protagonist. In fact, the AI was in the form of a companion robot. But as I wrote dialogue, things would pop into my head. Weird things; clever things; humorous things, but possibly overlaying either innocence or malice. That was irresistible to me as a writer. So I let the dialogue flow and the AI began to define herself. In my original notes I hadn’t even decided if the AI was going to be good or bad. That revelation just happened.


When I started reading this, I kept thinking Event Horizon type movie with a cross of Alien, particularly the AI. Was that intentional?

Yes, they were definite influences. Not so much events, but ideas – creepy abandoned ships in space; people surviving on ingenuity when technology fails; malevolent dangers that are difficult to comprehend because they are so alien to us. Works that I respect leave me with a feeling; it’s a feeling I then try to recreate in my own worlds, so other readers can experience it. I think at one point I made a list of works that had in some way influenced me, and maybe an element of which had crept into Lost Solace. I probably had about a hundred things on the list. It’s similar to what I once did with Turner.


Lost Solace left a lot of unanswered questions, for me anyway, was that intentional and will fans get closure?

Yes to closure. A book that opens a series can be difficult. You don’t want to bind it in the darkness of exposition. Discovering Opal’s motivation is a reward. The other questions are left unanswered because, at this point, Opal doesn’t have the answers, and we generally see through her eyes. But by the end of book three – if she survives – she’ll have more answers than she ever wanted, and knowledge does not always make you happy. The reader will find out the full deal on the Lost Ships and all the other elements of the story, and the outcome may not be what you expect.


What are you working on just now?

A lot of my time is spent on writing-related activity at the moment: finding the perfect narrator for the Lost Solace audiobook, running a big promo (that got Lost Solace to #3 in Amazon’s UK sci-fi top 100!), submissions for a writing residency and prestigious prizes, and some editorial work for other authors. I’m also revamping one of my early books, 2000 Tunes, and hoping to get draft two of a new short-story collection finished. I’m also drafting out my storyboard for the sequels to Lost Solace so that when I come to write them (hopefully in the nearish future!) the first drafts will be clean and well-structured.


What kind of research do you do for this kind of book? Keeping in mind Sci Fi fans are hardcore and can be uber critical, does that make it easier or harder for you?

It didn’t feel much different from any other work I’ve written. I always do preliminary research while storyboarding, but then write the first draft and just fill in the gaps with my imagination, so as not to break the flow. Then there is a lot more research and fact-checking during the numerous rewrites. With Turner I stayed on a remote island for a week; with 2000 Tunes I researched the history of Manchester music, and the city centre layout in the year 2000; whereas with Lost Solace I was researching repair gels, ship layouts, and biological sensing systems. Luckily my degrees mean I have some background in astronomy, geology, natural science, information science and computing, so that helped shape my story. I think there was only one correction that needed making to the real science aspect.





Where can fans connect with you?

My website and blog can be found at http://karldrinkwater.uk and it links to everything else. I am active on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/karlzdrinkwater/ and Twitter http://twitter.com/karldrinkwater and regularly interact with everyone there. Superfans also sign up to my quirky newsletter at http://bit.ly/newsletterkd


Anything else you would like to add I may have forgotten?

I love hearing from people. Only today I had a long email from someone who had just read Lost Solace, and it was fascinating because it was their first book set in space. It gave me a good glimpse into how that alters the reader’s expectations. Luckily they loved the book. I’m surprised you didn’t bring cats and dogs into the conversation. Thanks for having me!



And if a fabulous Q&A wasn't enough for spoiling you guys, I am giving away my copy of "Lost Solace" - to enter just fill in the Rafflecopter as usual. The more entries you complete the more times your name is entered into the draw.


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Monster In The Closet by Karen Rose

Monster in the Closet by Karen Rose
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 2 days

Pages - 448

Publisher - Headline

Blurb from Goodreads


The Sunday Times bestselling author of Every Dark Corner returns with an exclusive novel celebrating ten years of Karen Rose's thrillers in the UK. MONSTER IN THE CLOSET reunites readers with characters from Karen Rose's bestselling Baltimore series.

A mother is dead, and now her killer hunts the child that witnessed the brutal crime...

Private Investigator Clay Maynard locates missing children for clients, but has nearly given up hope of finding his own daughter, cruelly stolen from him by his ex-wife twenty-three years ago.

Equine therapist Taylor Dawson has chosen to intern at Daphne Montgomery-Carter's stables so that she can observe the program's security director - her father, Clay Maynard. Trying to reconcile the wonderful man she's getting to know with the monster her mother always described, Taylor never expects to become the target of a real monster, the man who murdered the mother of the little girls she works with at the stable. Neither does she expect to fall for Ford Elkhart, Daphne's handsome son, who is dealing with his own demons. As family and friends gather for a wedding, Taylor starts to imagine a permanent life in Baltimore.

But not if the real monster gets to her first...



My Review


Taylor Dawson has gotten herself a position at a horse therapist stables where they help to treat children who have been victims. Taylor has ulterior motives, she is checking up on her father, a man she has ran from her whole life and been terrified from. Until, on her death bed, her mother gave her a confession of sorts and Taylor has to find out the truth about her biological father. The clients of the program are often traumatised and or at risk, Taylor meets one such child and finds herself the target of a madman and putting those around her at risk too.

So some of the characters in the book are part of another series and this one is book five, I haven't read all of the previous books and the ones I have haven't been in order. I think you can get away with picking this up and reading it as a standalone as it gives you enough info to get the jist of the background characters. I would advise though if you are reading or planning to read the others I would read them first as there are spoilers in this one.

The book features murder, relationships, secrets, lies and as is Rose's signature there is some lust, petting and sex or sexual thoughts. There is a fair amount of violence also and the pace is fast as we have a brutal murder from the first chapter and it kicks off from there. A cat and mouse game played between one psychotic criminal and those trying to protect an innocent, a budding attraction with a host of emotions, dilemmas, dangerous situations and how a close knit family pull together. I have read Rose before and I will read her again, 4/5 for me with this page turner.

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Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp

Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1 day

Pages - 245

Publisher - Graymalkin Media

Blurb from Goodreads

High atop a Los Angeles skyscraper, an office Christmas party turns into a deadly cage-match between a lone New York City cop and a gang of international terrorists. Every action fan knows it could only be the explosive big-screen blockbuster Die Hard. But before Bruce Willis blew away audiences as unstoppable hero John McClane, author Roderick Thorp knocked out thriller readers with the bestseller that started it all.

A dozen heavily armed terrorists have taken hostages, issued demands, and promised bloodshed all according to plan. But they haven't counted on a death-defying, one-man cavalry with no shoes, no backup, and no intention of going down easily. As hot-headed cops swarm outside, and cold-blooded killers wield machine guns and rocket launchers inside, the stage is set for the ultimate showdown between anti-hero and uber-villains. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fight to the death. Ho ho ho!


My Review

A Christmas party in a LA skyscraper, terrorists armed & dangerous with a mission to be completed and no qualms about killing their hostages. One man, an ex cop now anti terrorist consultant, visiting one of his family at the party ends up taking on the killers by himself with no shoes and his quick wit and at times banter to get him through.

Sound familiar? Instead of John McClane in Die Hard we have Joe Leland, instead of visiting his wife he is visiting his grown daughter. Otherwise the story paved the way and became Die Hard, Leland is less gun-hoe than McClane we see a much softer side and some of his quips mirror one of our all time favourite characters Bruce Willis brought to life on the screen.

The book brings a more human side and lets us get inside the head of Joe, what he is thinking and how the killings of the terrorists affects him, something that is missing in the movie. The pace and tension is very much evident and draws the reader in quickly. Joe, whilst a force to be reckoned with is also very human, flawed and I think that may make the character real because he suffers so much but powers through. The movie took the heart of this book and enhanced and blew it up to a well loved film. It isn't very often I prefer the movie to the book and for its time this story packs a punch and keeps the reader engaged but if you have seen the movie I think the book does pale in comparison. If you haven't seen Die Hard read this book first as you will absolutely love it, then check out the movie. This is the second book in a series, I haven't read the first and don't feel I have missed anything out by reading this but I think I may go back and pick up the first. Murder, mayhem, survival, terrorism, family, love, a smart mouth and fast action is the best way to highlight the main topics of this story.

This has been my longest waiting review book, actually years on my tbr purely because it was my first approval Netgalley book. Back then I had no idea how it worked and by the time I got it the book had been archived and I couldn't access or download it. I bought it as I really wanted to read this, I ploughed through it in one day and had to watch the movie immediately after. I would put this as 3/5 stars, I liked it and I think for its time it has been fabulously done. However seeing the movie prior to reading it and actually loving the changes for the film I debated between a 3.5 and a 4 star rating. If you like action and a story with violence, survival whilst looking at the human aspect of it then you can't go far wrong with this. This was my first time reading this author, I will certainly be checking out his other work. Thanks to Netgalley for highlighting this author and initially providing me with a review copy, I wanted to read it so much I ended up buying it and can finally remove it from my NG shelve.

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