Lauren Kate’s “Teardrop” will be released on October 22nd! I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Lauren twice already and to see just how passionate she is about the “Fallen” series, so I’m excited to read “Teardrop” and to see her venture into a new world and a new series.
Never, ever cry…Eureka Boudreaux’s mother drilled that rule into her daughter years ago. But now her mother is gone, and everywhere Eureka goes he is there: Ander, the tall, pale blond boy who seems to know things he shouldn’t, who tells Eureka she is in grave danger, who comes closer to making her cry than anyone has before. But Ander doesn’t know Eureka’s darkest secret: ever since her mother drowned in a freak accident, Eureka wishes she were dead, too. She has little left that she cares about, just her oldest friend, Brooks, and a strange inheritance—a locket, a letter, a mysterious stone, and an ancient book no one understands. The book contains a haunting tale about a girl who got her heart broken and cried an entire continent into the sea. Eureka is about to discover that the ancient tale is more than a story, that Ander might be telling the truth…and that her life has far darker undercurrents than she ever imagined.
Entertainment Weekly has the exclusive on the book trailer HERE.
Another October release: Kami Garcia’s “Unbreakable” (October 1)! I’m excited for this as well.
I never believed in ghosts. Until one tried to kill me.
When Kennedy Waters finds her mother dead, her world begins to unravel. She doesn’t know that paranormal forces in a much darker world are the ones pulling the strings. Not until identical twins Jared and Lukas Lockhart break into Kennedy’s room and destroy a dangerous spirit sent to kill her. The brothers reveal that her mother was part of an ancient secret society responsible for protecting the world from a vengeful demon — a society whose five members were all murdered on the same night.
Now Kennedy has to take her mother’s place in the Legion if she wants to uncover the truth and stay alive. Along with new Legion members Priest and Alara, the teens race to find the only weapon that might be able to destroy the demon — battling the deadly spirits he controls every step of the way.
Kami Garcia and her publishers just announced that the audiobook will be narrated by the lovely Candice Accola a.k.a. Caroline from “The Vampire Diaries”! I love her! Yay!
There is a preview of the audiobook on Entertainment Weekly, but I think the media is blocked for users outside the US. You can still try, though! CLICK!
Book Riot interviewed Neil Gaiman recently. Par for the course with Gaiman, there are so many quotable quotes in the interview, but this is the part that I really loved and the part that made me THINK. Yes, making his readers think—and think deeply—is par for the course with Gaiman, too.
A recurring theme in all your work is that the magical and fantastical lies mere millimeters below the surface of everyday life. After creating these worlds where gods walk among us and fairy lands are a mere crack in the wall away, do you ever get bored with everyday life? For example, do you ever wish Odin was propping up that bar?
What I find fascinating about the real world is that fantasy is one of the few things that allows you to talk about the imaginary. From what I can see, the imaginary is the thing that occupies most people’s lives and allows them to function.
Money is imaginary. It is a concept, an idea. Here’s some pieces of paper and metal. We are claiming they’re scarce when they are not. They represent something.
Scotland is right now arguing if it should be part of the UK or not. National borders are imaginary things. You get up high and look down you cannot see the border. There is none. It’s an imaginary thing that is agreed upon.
Let’s go even further into it. The World Trade Centre getting blown up. If you stand a little bit further back, Islamic-Christian antipathy, Islamic-Jewish antipathy, Catholic-Protestant antipathy, has all the reality of Odin sitting at that counter over there. You take just one step back and it is a bunch of people willing to pervert and destroy, kill and change the world just to say my imaginary friend likes me better than your imaginary friend.
That’s all weird imaginary stuff. So the glory of fantasy is that it allows you to inspect that. It allows you to take one step away from a quotidian reality in which we accept imaginary things as real. Do you realise the amount of blood that has been spilled and is still spilled to this day about people arguing about whether or not a cracker, literally or metaphorically, becomes the body and blood of someone who may or may not have lived, and if he did, died 2000 years ago? And bombs go off. And people lose hands and lives. So, I figure that anyone who wants to tell me that fantasy isn’t dealing with the material of daily life is kinda missing everything that goes on in daily life.
Thank you for stimulating the Little Grey Cells, Sir!
Full interview: In conversation with Neil Gaiman (Book Riot)
And lastly, Maggie Stiefvater’s “The Dream Thieves”—the sequel to the magical “The Raven Boys”—was officially released yesterday, September 17th. I’ve been reading an ARC for the past 2 weeks. I had reservations about the first book despite liking it, but “The Dream Thieves” just took a hold of me from the first line of the Prologue. I wish I can read faster so I can review it faster!
Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life.
Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after…
Goodreads posted this great interview with Maggie in celebration of the release of the book:
The Girl Who Read and Other Stories 