Giveaway-Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith

The US publishers of Alexander Gordon Smith's Escape from Furnace series have very kindly doneated one copy of book one, Lockdown, to giveaway!

I read Lockdown quite a while ago, and enjoyed it, so I have to say this is a book worth reading.


A bit more...
The blurb to Lockdown...
Beneath Heaven is Hell....Beneath Hell is Furnace! Furnace Penitentiary: the world’s most secure prison for young offenders, buried a mile beneath the earth’s surface. Convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, sentenced to life without parole, “new fish” Alex Sawyer knows he has two choices: find a way out, or resign himself to a death behind bars, in the darkness at the bottom of the world.

Escape from Furnace Series by Alexander Gordon Smith
Includes: Lockdown, Solitary, Death Sentence, Fugitives (Available in 2012), and Execution (Available in 2012).

Here's the trailer...



Here's some links...
Website: www.alexandergordonsmith.com
Become a Facebook fan: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lockdown/126095974414
Macmillan page for the book & author: http://us.macmillan.com/author/alexandergordonsmith


Terms and conditons

• You don't have to follow to enter, but if you want to, please do!
• You must have a US or Canada mailing address to enter. Publisher's request. I can't do anything about it.
• You must be at least 13 to enter, or have your parent's permission.
• This closes at 12.01am EST on 1st September 2011. You will be emailed. You have 24 hours to reply or another winner will be chosen.
• The publishers will directly ship a copy to the winner.

Thanks to Tara from Zeitghost Media and Macmillan Publishing for offering a copy of Lockdown to give away!

Book Review- Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L Howard

Title: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

 Author: Jonathan L Howard

Series:  Johannes Cabal #1

Published:  7 July 2009

Length:304 pages

Warnings: profanity, violence, the devil, hell, vampires

Source: Library

Other info: There are many more in this series.

Summary : A charmingly gothic, fiendishly funny Faustian tale about a brilliant scientist who makes a deal with the Devil, twice.
Johannes Cabal sold his soul a year ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. Now he wants it back. Amused and slightly bored. Satan proposes a little wager: Johannes has to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever. This time for real. Accepting the bargain, Johannes is given one calendar year and  a travelling carnival to complete his task. With little time to waste, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother Horst, a charismatic vampire, to help him run his nefarious sideshow, resulting in mayhem at every term.

Review: Johannes Cabal sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the secrets of necromancy. A little later, he decides he wants his soul back. So he goes to Hell and asks. Satan tells him that if he can get 100 people to sign their souls over to him, Cabal gets his soul back. Cabal sets up a travelling carnival, gets the help of his older vampire brother Horst, conjures up some things as attractions and staff, and sets out/

The book is basically all of that happening. I like the idea behind it. It’s not often we see people who have entered into a Faustian contract, decide they want out, skip the queues and the paperwork to get into hell, and makes a bet with the devil. A fun and original concept.

I like the little sidestories that document what happens at each stop on the way. It doesn’t document the whole year, as that would take too long, but it gives you a very good idea of what happens at every stage.

I liked the characters. I think Horst Cabal was my favourite because of the way he handled his brother and the fact that said brother is trying to get 100 people to sign forms agreeing to eternal damnation. They were all well characterised and easy to distinguish. However, there were a few characters that appeared for about three pages, then were never heard of again. All right, these three pages described who they were and how they died, but still it would have been nice if they’d have been cleverly worked in somewhere along the line.

The humour in this seemed to come and go. It had a extremely funny opening, where Cabal summons a demon and has an arguement with it about how he should have correctly summoned it, with Cabal saying that the demon was there now and therefore it didn’t matter, but then the humour died down, came back, and went and came back throughout. The writing was third person, kept the book going, but kept you slightly distanced from the characters.

With the ending there was, I’m not entirely sure how a sequel could be produced. However, there’s a whole series, and I’ll read book two some day.

Overall:  strength 3 tea to an original and somewhat funny book.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Author website | 

Waiting on Wednesday #20 Steampunk! An anthology of Fantstically Rich and Strange Stories

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where we show off books that we want to read but have not been published yet. 

Title:  Steampunk! An anthology of Fantstically Rich and Strange Stories
Author:  Kelly Link (Editor), Gavin J. Grant (Editor), Garth Nix, Christopher Rowe, Kathleen Jennings, Dylan Horrocks, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Cory Doctorow, Shawn Cheng, Ysabeau S. Wilce, Delia Sherman, Elizabeth Knox
Release Date: 11 October 2011
Link to / Summary from Goodreads: Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and re-craft a world of automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, utopian revolutionaries, and intrepid orphans solve crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships. Here, fourteen masters of speculative fiction, including two graphic storytellers, embrace the genre’s established themes and refashion them in surprising ways and settings as diverse as Appalachia, ancient Rome, future Australia, and alternate California. Visionaries Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant have invited all-new explorations and expansions, taking a genre already rich, strange, and inventive in the extreme and challenging contributors to remake it from the ground up. The result is an anthology that defies its genre even as it defines it.
Why I want it: Because steampunk=awesomeness. I love the whole steampunk and the aesthetic and the whole blend of Victiorians and futuristic elements (more raving about this can be found here, on my Happy Steampunk day post), but the majority has been for the adult market. YA has recently been getting some more, such as Clockwork Angel and The Girl in the Steel Corset, but I still see a lack of the stuff out there…. And then there’s a whole collection??

What are YOU waiting on this week?

Cover to Cover #4- Vampire Edition

Cover to Cover- Vampire Edition
Another cover feature. This time I'm going to post a lot of covers, then see if I can see any trends in the designs....shouldn't be that difficult, should it?
Picture Heavy

Book Review- Montmorency: Thief Liar Gentleman by Elanor Updale

Title: Montmorecy: Thief, Liar, Gentleman?

 Author: Elanor Updale

Series:  Montmorency #1

Published:  10 May 2006 by Scholastic

Length:240 pages

Source:Library

Other info: There’s three more in this series.

Summary :Montmorency is a thief leading a double life – a distinguished gentleman and his servant.

Review: Montmorency begins a thief. He's in prison after a long run of not being caught, and then only got caught because he fell off a roof, or something like that. And then it's time for his release. Determined he wants a better life, he decides he's going to be a proper gentleman. But he can't do that without money. To get around this, he creates two personalities: the gentleman Montmorency and his servant Scarper. This is the story of his double life and the dangers he faces.

The plot was interesting, but not the most memorable. It progresses through various parts of Victorian London, going from prison, to the back alleyways, to the posh end of town and back.

I liked the way Montmorency thinks, his logic behind it all. The way he kept on top of everything was my favourite thing about the book.

It's a different take on the Victorian era, for me anyway. Unlike what I tend to read, this book makes no mention of anything paranormal or futuristic. This is simply a well researched tour of Victorian London, both the posh front and the underworld.

The characters were easy to distinguish, but, like the plot, not the most memorable. But they do stick with you somewhat, such as Cissie,  who is most likely the most annoying character I have ever met in a book.

Overall:  I give this strength 3 tea to a book that was good, but not amazing. Recommended for younger readers.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Author website |

Summer reading update 3

Halfway through the holidays already...it's going by too fast. Here's what's happened this week

RECEIVED THIS WEEK (the IMM part of the post)

• Angel Sanctuary vol 1
• Texas Gothic
• King of Thorn vol 1
• Black Bird vol 9
• Black Bird vol 8
• Sakura Hime vol 1
• Fairy Bad Day (won from http://mykeepershelf.blogspot.com/)

READ THIS WEEK

• Angel Sanctuary vol 1 (review coming)
• Black Bird vol 8
• Black Bird vol 9
• Spooks Apprentice (review coming)
• Skin Hunger (review coming)
• Godchild (review coming)
• Think of a Number 
• Zombies of the World (review coming)
• The Invention of Murder
• Periodic Tales
• Virals (review coming)
• Undead and Unwelcome

READ BEFORE

• Teeth, Vampire Tales  (review here)
• The Bell Jar (review here)
• How to Be A Woman (mini review here)
• The Vampire Blog  (review here)
• Lord of the Flies (review here)
• Acadia (e-book) (review here)
• Vampire Doll vol 1 (review here)
• Dead Streets
• Mail vol 2
• Black Swan Rising (review here)
• Haruhi 3
• Haruhi 4
• Haruhi 5
• Much Ado About Nothing manga version
• Johannes Cabal the Necromancer  (review coming)
• Montmorency (reviewcoming)
• Tantalise (review coming)
• A Study in Scarlet graphic novel (review coming)

READING

• Descended by Blood (e-book)
• Monster Island

ON MY PILE TO BE READ

• Catalyst (e-book)
• Quest of the Demon (e-book)
• Dr Faustus
• Empire of the Rising Sun
• Pride and Prejudice
• To Kill A Mockingbird
• Carrie
• Pegasus and the Fight for Olympus
• Halo
• Wish Me Dead
• The Undertaker’s Gift
• Crescendo
• The Divine Comedy
• The Resistance
• Mercy
• Life as We Knew It
• Death-At Death’s Door (bought)
• Texas Gothic
• Sakura Hime vol 1
• Fairy Bad Day (won from http://mykeepershelf.blogspot.com/)
• King of Thorn vol 1

NOT GOT YET

• Hetalia 1

ALSO THIS WEEK...

• Mini review of Princosa
• Waiting for Flame of Surrender
• Review of Timeriders

Think we've had a good week? I think so.  Links to your mailboxes and anything I should know about please?

And also, do you think a weekly round up should be done every week, not just in the summer? 

Book Review- Vampire Doll Guilt Na Zan vol 1 by Erika Kari

Title: Vampire Doll Guilt-Na-Zan vol 1

 Author: Erika Kari

Series:  Vampire Doll #1

Published: 12 September 2006 by Tokyopop

Length: 200 pages

Warnings: vampires, violence, fanservice,

Source:  Library

Other info: There are six volumes  in the series. 

Summary : Guilt-Na-Zan is a vampire aristocrat who was sealed into a cross by Kyouji's ancestor more than 100 years ago. Now Kyouji has revived him - although he was resurrected as a doll and can only transform into his real figure when he sucks blood from Kyouji's sister Tonae..

Review:  Parajunkee's Vampire Challenge #11 
100 years ago, an exorcist locked vampire lord Guilt-Na-Zan into a cross. Today, exorcist Kyoji, a descendent of the first one, releases Guilt-na. And puts him into a female wax doll, with the intention of using Guilt-na as a maid. It is possible for Guilt-na to attain his original form; if he drinks the blood of Kyoji's sister Tonae, he becomes the lord of the night once more. Add in a bat/human, a stupid younger brother,  a little action and a lot of laughs, and there you have Vampire Doll.

This has suprisingly, a lot of plot, for 200 pages of first volume. There's a fight between Kyoji and his idiotic younger brother Kyoichi, we meet batman Vincent who turns out to be the friend of Guilt-Na-Zan, we meet a creature who sucks the evilness from others and leaves them civil and nice to others, and we get the insanity of life in Kyoji's house.

The storyline isn't your normal vampire story. There's elements of one, such as something to defeat them (the original exorcist) and requiring  human blood for something (Guilt-na an Tonae), but there's also some original stuff too.

It's rare to have character intros in a first volume. This book does. And they're pretty fun too: the name, one of their characteristics and then a plea to read this book to find out x. Funny from the first page.

The actual manga starts with a flashback to when Guilt-na-zan was first trapped. It then goes to his resurrection, his discovery he is in a female body and then his realisation his magical powers now only stretch to flowers and cakes. And then the aforementioned things happen and so does some more stuff until we reach a fitting conclusion that can still make you want to read volume 2.

Tokyopop classed this as a horror and comedy. The horror part wasn't that accurate-just because it has vampires and other dark creatures, it doesn't necessarily make it a horror story. The comedy on the other hand is a very large part of this. From the first page it was funny, and this continued throughout the entire book. In addition to the humour throughout the main story, we also get bonus strip at the end of each chapter and about 12 more at the back.

The characters were different to your normal stock cast  of a vampire tale. They're all very likeable,  but there's very little in the way of character development.

The art is detailed and realistic. The costumes are drawn well, as are all the little things. However in a couple of places it's hard making out what's happening because the lines blend so much into the shadows.

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a vampire story that will make you laugh if not much else.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | 

Book Hop #14

Hello. Thank you for getting to Death Books and Tea. Here we review horror, dystopian, fantasy, manga and the like. You'll get a better idea if you settle down and have a look. Hope you like us!

For this week's question...
“Let’s talk crazy book titles! Highlight one or two (or as many as you like!) titles in your personal collection that have the most interesting titles! If you can’t find any, feel free to find one on the internet!”


I went through my goodreads list and chose my favourite. I'm saying Kamikaze Girls by Novala Takemoto. This is because when you see Kamikaze, you think of WW2 and suicide missions. However Kamikaze Girls is pretty much the opposite: friendship, two girls, and awesomeness. I suggest you read it. If not just for the title.]#


That's my choice. I'm sure there's many other books with awesome titles.
Comment, look around,  follow, link back?