It's Monday! What Are You Reading #218, August 10th

It's Monday! What Are You Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week...and anything in between! This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well...you never know where that next "must read" book will come from!

What happened in the past week:

Weekly Memes:
It's Monday! What Are You Reading #217
Teaser Tuesday #225
WWW Wednesday #225
WOW #222
Will the Time Come #218
Third Sentence Thursday #208
Random Reads #193
First Lines Friday #212
The Reward Challenge Update #203
Follow Friday #195
LLFL Reading Challenge Update 58
How Well I Stuck to It #47
Wrote that Review Update #52

Week 32 Reviews:
Everything That Makes You
Don't Call Me Baby
A Winter Wedding
Gilded
Silvern
Madly
The Vanishing Season
The Last Time We Say Goodbye

Broken Hearts, Fences, and Other Things to Mend
Hallie Hath No Fury...
Revenge, Ice Cream, and Other Things Best Served Cold
Perfect Ruin
The Last Best Kiss
Talker 25
Invisible Monsters
The Things You Kiss Goodbye
Delicate Monsters
Dragonbane
None of the Above
Magic Shifts
Her Dark Curiosity
A Cold Legacy

Tours:
Written On My Heart: Review
The Nightmare Charade: Review

Random:
Michelle Lang Author Page
Joshua McCune Author Page
We Have the Cover of Dark Saga #29!!!!
We Have the Title of Charley Davidson #10!!!!

OK, so I got 36 posts in 7 days, which is pretty great, considering how much I read, which was a lot! And hopefully I'll do the same this week, seeing as I only have one day of work this week! What about you guys? Happy reading!

So this week I want to read Ward Against Death, Ward Against Darkness, Ward Against Disaster, and Promises to Keep.

Twenty-year-old Ward de'Ath expected this to be a simple job—bring a nobleman's daughter back from the dead for fifteen minutes, let her family say good-bye, and launch his fledgling career as a necromancer. Goddess knows he can't be a surgeon—the Quayestri already branded him a criminal for trying—so bringing people back from the dead it is.

But when Ward wakes the beautiful Celia Carlyle, he gets more than he bargained for. Insistent that she's been murdered, Celia begs Ward to keep her alive and help her find justice. By the time she drags him out her bedroom window and into the sewers, Ward can't bring himself to break his damned physician's Oath and desert her.

However, nothing is as it seems—including Celia. One second, she's treating Ward like sewage, the next she's kissing him. And for a nobleman's daughter, she sure has a lot of enemies. If he could just convince his heart to give up on the infuriating beauty, he might get out of this alive…

The last thing Ward de'Ath wants is more trouble. On the run from both the law and the criminal underworld, Ward and Celia flee Brawenal City only to stumble into the mansion of a powerful evil necromancer. And when Ward discovers the man possesses a dangerous grimoire, his duty leaves him no choice. He can't allow the necromancer to keep the grimoire. But the mansion is filled with monsters--human and undead--and Ward has no way of telling who's friend or foe. The only person he can trust is Celia who dominates more of his thoughts and feelings everyday. But there are still laws in the way of anything but friendship. She's still dead and he's still alive . . . for now.

Ward de'Ath should be dead by now. Instead, he's chasing after a soul-eating creature—that he unleashed— and is bent on stopping her before she slaughters more innocents. Fortunately, Celia Carlyle remains by his side, a nobleman's gorgeous and deadly daughter, who is…well, dead. Celia claims she'll champion Ward wherever he goes, even when she thinks his quest is hopeless. He can only hope her pledge comes from her heart, and not because she's bound to him through his magic. When they enter Dulthyne, they stumble upon a dark power that threatens the entire town. Ward, with his unreliable necromancy, is determined to help but finds himself ensnared in the lure of white-hot magic…blood magic he struggles to resist. But if Celia's love is a lie, it might just doom his soul to the dark arts forever.

For three years, Michael O'Shea has been forced to act as a personal assassin for Livingston Shaw, the cold-blooded puppet master who controls the remote bioweapon implanted in Michael's back. When Shaw offers to release him if he can recover a kidnapped child, Michael works with every ounce of his being to put the pieces together before all the witnesses are murdered.

Meanwhile, police Inspector Sabrina Vaughn--the woman Michael passionately loves but has been kept from seeing--discovers the body of a little boy that bears a striking resemblance to the missing child. Against all his instincts, Michael must draw Sabrina into his life as one of the world's most notorious assassins if he's to overcome the legacy of his bloodthirsty past.

Week 32 Reviews: Talker 25, Invisible Monsters

From Goodreads:
Debut author Joshua McCune's gritty and heart-pounding novel is a masterful reimagining of popular dragon fantasy lore, set in a militant future reminiscent of Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and Ann Aguirre's Outpost.

It's a high school prank gone horribly wrong-sneaking onto the rez to pose next to a sleeping dragon-and now senior Melissa Callahan has become an unsuspecting pawn in a war between Man and Monster, between family and friends and the dragons she has despised her whole life. 

Chilling, epic, and wholly original, this debut novel imagines a North America where dragons are kept on reservations, where strict blackout rules are obeyed no matter the cost, where the highly weaponized military operates in chilling secret, and where a gruesome television show called Kissing Dragons unites the population. Joshua McCune's debut novel offers action, adventure, fantasy, and a reimagining of popular dragon lore.

From Goodreads:
Finally free after spending three months locked in a secret government facility where she was forced to torture and assassinate dragons for the popular television series Kissing Dragons, all Melissa Callahan wants is a quiet recovery. Hiding in an Alaskan cave with fellow escapee Allie (known as Talker 21), Melissa does her best to stay out of the dragon politics. 

However, when a group of rebels called the Diocletians discovers their hideout and captures Allie, Melissa soon realizes she must finally choose who she's fighting for—the humans or the dragons. Joshua McCune once again keeps readers on the edge of their seats in this gritty and masterful reimagining of popular dragon fantasy set in a militant future, reminiscent of Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker and Ann Aguirre's Outpost. 

My Review:
I didn't know going into reading Talker 25 how much I would enjoy the both of these books! I had been putting it off, because I'd only barely read the synopsis, and as a fail as a reader, I'd judged the book by the cover. But the first book was just so freaking good, that I had to read the both of them! I just have so many thoughts about these books that it's hard to type them all down!

The world in these books, oh, wow. There was a lot of unfairness, from the picture that was edited to make her look like a terrorist, to how they killed the baby dragons, because they thought that the dragons couldn't have babies, and now they were, so they were scared. Horrible! Oh, and the way the show was, well, shows, with the lies

There was a lot of pain in these books, a lot of loss, of lies. But there were also some good things, like the dragons. They were prickly, some of them, and they had their own distinct voices, and were just so awesome to read about!

I really enjoyed the titles, that Talker 25 was what the military called her, and then Invisible Monsters was what the dragons called the military. Which hopefully means that the 3rd book's title has something to do with what dragons are called or something! That'd be pretty great!

There are two mysteries for me, that are hopefully solved in the next book (or explained further because I might've missed some details that really explained them) and those are, where did the dragons come from? And why are their memories missing? Then the other, is why James joined and stayed with the Diocletians. Is he undercover? Or does he truly want to be a part of their group? So confused!

There's so many reasons that I want to read the 3rd book, from these two being so great, to me wanting to have some peace between dragons and people. Yep. Really want that third book!

Author: Joshua McCune
Series: Talker 25 #1, 2
Read: August 3rd, 4th, 2015
Source: Edelweiss, Tuebl
Reason Why: Sounded good, and they're 2015 Dystopia Books and Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2015 Books, and Talker 25 is a DAC Book!
Publisher: Greenwillow/HarperCollins
Published: April 22nd 2014, April 21st 2015

Talker 25:

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars

Invisible Monsters:

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars

Joshua McCune Author Page

The Story: I received a copy of Talker 25 from Edelweiss. And to be honest, I didn't care too much, it wasn't a book that I'd heard of. Fast forward a year and a half to now, and I'm reading a lot of the early Edelweiss books that I haven't read and reviewed yet, and this is one of them, so I read it. And love it! So now I'm going to (and have by the time this posts) read the next book, and be waiting impatiently for book #3, because I know it's going to be so freaking great!

Website

Series: Talker 25.

Talker 25: Talker 25 and his site, my review, Invisible Monsters and his site, my review, Untitled.