Books and Chocolate-March 2025
Still taking suggestions on the name for our new Books and Chocolate Mascot. Ruby-as in Ruby Chocolate-is a front runner at the moment.
Last year was a doozy, and I fell behind in my reading, but this year I’m catching up, which is wonderful. But I think I might be overdoing it a bit. I find myself reading 3-4 books at the same time. Does anyone else do that, actively have several books going at one and be able to keep them all straight? Crazy thing is, I do that writing as well. I’ve got three novels in progress at the moment and work on at least two of them, if not all three, every day. Yeah, it definitely is weird.
Enough of that, let’s get to the books. Here are a couple I finished a while back and didn’t get to tell you about. Enjoy!
Just so you know, links below are Amazon associate links, so if you buy anything through them, I will get a couple of pennies from that.
Balanced on Blade’s Edge
Colonel Ridge Zirkander isn’t the model of military professionalism—
he has a tendency to say exactly what’s on his mind, and his record has enough demerits to wallpaper the hull of an airship—but as the best fighter pilot in the Iskandian army, he’s used to a little leniency from his superiors.
Until he punches the wrong diplomat in the nose and finds himself issued new orders: take command of a remote prison mine in the inhospitable Ice Blades Mountains. Ridge has never been in charge of anything larger than a flier squadron—what’s he supposed to do with a frozen fortress full of murderers and rapists? Not to mention the strange woman who shows up right before he arrives…
Definitely a fun adventure, with quirky characters and a memorable world.
Death Maker
It’s hard to plot against your enemies when you’re in prison with them.
When Lieutenant Caslin Ahn joined Wolf Squadron, she was prepared for the reality that she might one day be killed in the line of duty. She was less prepared for being shot down, assumed dead by her own people, and dragged off to the Cofah Empire as a prisoner of war. As if being thrust into a dungeon and interrogated wasn’t bad enough, the sadistic commandant decides to give her a cellmate: the notorious pirate Deathmaker. Given the crimes he’s committed against Iskandia, Cas owes it to her people to try and kill him.
There’s just one problem: it’s hard to plot against your enemies when you’re in prison with them. Cas and Tolemek will have to work together if they hope to escape the Cofah dungeon. In the process, they may find that neither is what the other expects, and that they have far greater problems to worry about than ensnaring each other…
An enemies to friends and maybe more trope at work here. I often have issues with the believability of such plots, but this one works really well.
Find more Books and Chocolate reviews here
How about free books?
click on the images to find the books.
Yeah, I know the image on the one above sucks, but they’re some good books in it anyhow
Just finished Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill , borrowed from my local library. It is a tale of a quest with a found family (a lake monster, a witch, and globin) who join to defeat a legendary evil (play list for this book should include a Schubert lieder). The book is a bit more ‘literary’ than many cozy fantasies. The prose descriptions of the journey are lyrical. You will be surprised and maybe delighted by the ending.