The Kingmaker
The Kingmaker by Kennedy Ryan is FREE! If you’ve been looking to try out Ryan’s steamy, angsty contemporaries, you can’t beat free. This is the first book in a completed duet and I believe the first book has a bit of a cliffhanger. Correct me if I’m wrong!
From beloved, RITA-award-winning author Kennedy Ryan comes the first in her gripping All the King’s Men duology.
In a world of haves and have-nots, Maxim Cade’s family and their oil empire have it all…and he wants nothing to do with it. At odds with his mogul father, he’s determined to build his own empire, even if it means traveling far from home, painted as the black sheep.
Lennix Hunter is the exception to every one of Maxim’s rules. At a protest for the oil pipeline that threatens to mar her ancestral land forever, they meet in a flurry of stars and sparks, and that one moment changes everything. But Maxim’s family is the one stealing from hers, and his father is the man she hates most. He has to lie in order to have her once, and despite the truth, he’ll do anything to keep her.
Even though Lennix tries to hate Maxim, too, their hearts are pointed in the same direction. The inexorable pull between them, across miles and years, will not be denied.
And neither will Maxim.
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RECOMMENDED: Or What You Will by Jo Walton is $2.99! Catherine squeed about this one previously:
It is a story about writing wonderful stories and living wonderful stories, and while it is in no way a romance, it may be a love story after all – though the object of that love may be a story, or a person, or even one’s own self.
Or What You Will is an utterly original novel about how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton.
He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god.
But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years.
But Sylvia won’t live forever, any more than any human does. And he’s trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.
Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he’s got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her.
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RECOMMENDED: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley $2.99! Carrie loves the series, especially the sequel Stiletto. It’s urban fantasy set in London with a badass cast of characters. But some found the book to have a lot of info-dumping. Have you read The Rook?
“The body you are wearing used to be mine.” So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.
She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.
In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.
Filled with characters both fascinating and fantastical, THE ROOK is a richly inventive, suspenseful, and often wry thriller that marks an ambitious debut from a promising young writer.
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Bone Crier’s Moon by Kathryn Purdie is $1.99! Ellen mentioned this on a previous Hide Your Wallet and was very excited about the “bone magic.” Not that kind of bone magic, but necromancy of sorts. There also seems to be an enemies to lovers romance happening.
Bone Criers have a sacred duty. They alone can keep the dead from preying on the living. But their power to ferry the spirits of the dead into goddess Elara’s Night Heavens or Tyrus’s Underworld comes from sacrifice. The gods demand a promise of dedication. And that promise comes at the cost of the Bone Criers’ one true love.
Ailesse has been prepared since birth to become the matriarch of the Bone Criers, a mysterious famille of women who use strengths drawn from animal bones to ferry dead souls. But first she must complete her rite of passage and kill the boy she’s also destined to love.
Bastien’s father was slain by a Bone Crier and he’s been seeking revenge ever since. Yet when he finally captures one, his vengeance will have to wait. Ailesse’s ritual has begun and now their fates are entwined—in life and in death.
Sabine has never had the stomach for the Bone Criers’ work. But when her best friend Ailesse is taken captive, Sabine will do whatever it takes to save her, even if it means defying their traditions—and their matriarch—to break the bond between Ailesse and Bastien. Before they all die.
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The Rook did absolutely nothing for me but then I loathe excessive info dumping. I also hate shadowy organisations that take away young children from their families for training which happened in this book.
Then again as they say YMMV.
As Mary Balogh’s official representative (no not really but feels like it), I’m here to let you know that Someone to Hold is $2.99 on Amazon. It’s the second Westcott book, and it’s amazing. The heroine Camille has a wonderful arc, and I have so much love for it.
@Kit: I understand about the info dumping/other concerns, and yet THE ROOK is still one of my all-time favorites, STILETTO even more so. Myfanwy just appealed to me so much as a character who has no idea what her life/work are, but learns on the run. I’m hoping there is a third in this series.
Rook was awesome. MUCH better than the tv series. I understand there’s a 3rd book but only in Australia?
I think the third book is coming out next year. Maybe. It looked like there was a March 3, 2021 date, but no one has the book, fantastic fiction lists a title but doesn’t have any live links to it, all the reviews seem to say “We’re really excited for this!”, and current dates imply 6/2022.
Possibly a victim of COVID-related publication delays.
Power Play by Avon Gale is 0.99 at Amazon today. It’s my favorite of her Scoring Chances series, featuring brooding Russian Misha and sex puppy Max.
One thing I have really enjoyed about this series in general is that she writes character-specific sex scenes (something that as I age and my history of romance reading gets into the 1000s of titles becomes more and more skippable), and her arcs don’t feature contrived “bleak” moments. Basically, I don’t forgot who’s doing what in the sex because it’s important, and nobody breaks up for dumb reasons, they just learn to communicate better.
@omphale that sounds right up my street, thanks!
I listened to The Rook. Went in not expecting much, but loved it. I’ve put off starting Stiletto because I can’t imagine it being as good as The Rook and don’t want to be disappointed.
Don’t You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane is on sale at Amazon AU and UK for 2.99. I really liked this one — the characters are great and McFarlane’s writing is very enjoyable.
The Rook is one of my top favorite books of all time. (I will note that I am a fan of info-dumping, though I concur that the whole battles with the Grafters does have way too much of that even for me.) I swear, that book makes me think, “Hey, if I had a memory wipe, maybe I’d be a much braver and happier person!” Also, she’s a great snarker.
Glad to hear a third book is in the works, I found no info last time I looked.
I love fantasy, but was not a fan of Bone Crier’s moon. Both in the author’s writing style and the plot itself- felt too juvenile, choppy, & unrealistic for me (I’m usually a fan of YA books, but nope)
The Jo Walton looks very intriguing, and I’ve enjoyed every book of hers that I have read. May have to get that.
Kingmaker was so good – like Scandal in a book. Ryan
writes these really kickass heroines with rich back stories, and Lennix is one of her best. It does end on a cliffhanger but they are both so worth the read. After the Kingmaker duet, I highly recommend Queen Move, the story of Lennix’s BFF and business partner. I really can’t gush enough about Kennedy Ryan, she is a one click for me.
There should be some version of the Bechdel test for male authors, something to the effect that the author should not include a scene where the heroine rates her sex appeal during a Highly Unlikely Moment.
The Rook is an example of this tendency. It starts off with a woman who can’t remember who she is, or why she’s standing in a park at night surrounded by dead bodies, but someone is apparently trying to kill her. And yet one of the first things she does is check into a hotel, take off her clothes, and look in the mirror to evaluate how “hot” she is. Um… no. Sorry, male authors. No.
Apart from that, and yes despite the info dumps mentioned above, The Rook was entertaining. The author threw in completely irrelevant asides that I found charming, such as the Narnia reference “… why the hell a two-door wardrobe in the spare room of a country house is a matter of national concern…”