There are a bunch of reader favorites, especially in the fantasy genre, on sale today at Amazon as their Kindle Daily Deal. Have a look – and here are a few that might be of particular interest.
RECOMMENDED: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker is $1.99 today at Amazon as a Kindle Daily Deal. I'm not sure if it'll be price matched but as of right now it's not. This is a fantasy historical and reader favorite. Carrie S. reviewed this book in June 2013 and really liked it. She says doesn't have romance as its primary plot, but it's a beautiful read:
I loved this book, but not so much for the love story. I loved the mythologies, the settings, and the characters. The neighborhoods were incredibly detailed and vivid and interesting. The cultural and religious communities felt real and fascinating. I love books that let me see into another world, and this book gave me that feeling many times. The characters were all mesmerizing. I felt like I was in each setting, meeting these real people.
This seems like the type of story many of you might enjoy, and since it's $1.99 today (and I hope that'll be price-matched soon), I didn't want you to miss it.
I'm including the links to all retailers, but please know that as of right now (8:45am ET) only the Amazon link is showing the $1.99 price.
In The Golem and the Jinni, a chance meeting between mythical beings takes readers on a dazzling journey through cultures in turn-of-the-century New York.
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.
Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free
Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.
Goodreads | Amazon ($1.99) | BN | Kobo | iBooks
American Gods by Neil Gaiman is $1.99 today at Amazon – and is not yet price matched. Fingers are crossed! This is a reader favorite as well, though readers on GoodReads had a devil of a time trying to describe the book and what it's about. It's a mix of fantasy, mythology, and critical examination, and it has a 4+ star average. Have you read this one? What's your take?
Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.
Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, AMERICAN GODS takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what and who it finds there…
Falling for the Marine by Samanthe Beck is .99 today at many retailers ($3.99 at AllRomance). This book, which is military contemporary erotic romance, has a 3.9 star average, and is second in the McCade brothers series. Have you read it?
Pretending to be in love has never felt so sexy.
USMC helicopter pilot Michael McCade has two goals: Get his damn back into alignment and keep his nose clean until his commanding officer clears him to fly again. The doctor-recommended massage therapy seems like a necessary step toward returning to the cockpit, but when his too-hot-to-handle neighbor, Chloe Kincaid, turns out to be his masseuse, he strays from the straight and narrow in a major way.
Chloe Kincaid is looking for a simple, no strings attached, ego-boosting hook up. But when her positively panty-melting neighbor, USMC Major Michael McCade, (aka Major Hottie), shows up on her massage table, she lets desire get the better of professionalism. Now theyre pretending to be engaged to avoid a whole lot of unanticipated consequences of a momentary lapse in judgment. But can a girl who avoids attachments at all costs fake an engagement to a straight-arrow soldier without falling hard?
My daughter had to read “American Gods” for a college class, so I read it along with her, thinking my English teacher perspective might give her a sounding board. I don’t often put books down without finishing them, but I’d gladly have made an exception for this one. I found it boring, dull and colorless, with characters I never did learn to care about. I was insulted by various examples of mysogeny, and guessed at the “big reveal” long before it was introduced. I know Gaiman has many admirers, so I don’t think he’ll care that I’m not among them. But both my daughter and I had to force ourselves to finish this book. Even for free I wouldn’t advise anyone else to read it.
I’ll just throw in an opposing point of view. I enjoyed American Gods. I found Gaiman’s take on mythology interesting. I am also often intrigued by stories about conmen, though I am happy enough not to meet them in real life.
I loved American Gods! I read it at least once a year.
I’ve actually been hearing rumors that HBO was thinking about making a tv show out of it, but that just fell through.
It’s strange and a little scary and interesting. I recommend!!
I loved American Gods – its a favorite. I didn’t find the book to be misogynist overall although many of the characters are. Neil Gaiman is not afraid to write flawed women but he also makes the women people as opposed to sexy lamps (I’m a fan of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s adage that if you can replace a female character with a sexy lamp, you’re doing it wrong). It does have a slow, dreamy pacing and depressive mood that I suspect readers will either love or hate. I found the story to be ultimately uplifting and redemptive, but again can see why some readers might find the pacing and tone a turn-off. I was not a big fan of the sequel, Anasazi Boys simply because it didn’t stick in my head the way American Gods did. American Gods was transformative while Anasazi Boys was…OK.
American Gods was a DNF for me. I thought I was the only one who disliked it, as my friends all love it. I did really like the sequence set at House on the Rock (which I have visited many times) and loved Gaiman’s take on roadside attractions being places of ancient power where people are compelled to build remarkable things. However, like Fiona, I found the characters universally unlikeable and the story unbearable after a while.
I love some of Gaiman’s work, but I wasn’t able to like American Gods. That annoyed me. On one hand, the premise is awesome, and some parts of the book have stayed with me – but the protagonist is such a nonentity, the pacing is uneven, and the whole thing felt shapeless and grim, despite the awesome bits.
Lest anyone wonder if a man’s viewpoint would be different, I actually owned the copy of American Gods that I read. I had bought it for my husband after reading the review that raved about how excellent it was. He tried a few times but couldn’t get into it, never getting much further than the first chapter before he put it down. He’s a voracious reader also, so there aren’t that many books that he DNF. But this was one. I recycle books at the local library’s resale each year, so it’s hopefully found a new home.