14 January, 2015

Slice of Life by Ellie Ann

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"This was no longer her world against the queen. It was the queen's world against her." 

The Queen wants to destroy the life force of earth and has destroyed the last being that can stop her. Or so she thinks . . . 
The last powerful mage in the world, Princess Aura, is the sole witness to the nefarious plot. The good news is she knows how to stop it. The bad news? She can't do it alone. 
Aura must summon someone she hoped never to see again. Saint George, her lover who left five years ago for another woman. And another. And another. 

Can they work together long enough to defeat the queen and save the world? 

Told collectively by a troupe of digital artists, Slice of Life employs every medium available: prose, pictures, poetry, illustration, audio scenes, and music, to provide an immersive and exciting reading experience. 
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Series: N/A
Release Date: 12 January, 2015
Publisher: Superstorm Productions
Genre: Historical Fiction/Religion
ISBN:  B00RY78C3Y
Edition: Kindle
Rating: 
Review Written: 14 January, 2015

Early on in my blogging I ran a review for another of Ellie Ann's book, the Silver Sickle. It seems I had impressed her a lot so I received an email from her asking if I'd be interested in reading her latest project and writing a blurb. Not one to turn down a free book despite the alarmingly high stack of both ebooks and paper books that request my attention, I agreed.

Slice of Life is the story of Aura, that is Princess Aurora better known as Sleeping Beauty. This isn't your typical Sleeping Beauty tale though, but one retold and in an enchanting captivating way. Though the book isn't long, it's hard not to get sucked into the tale of Aura who's attempting to save the world of good from The Queen. There's not a lot of time - six hours exactly to save the world or face the end of all the goodness in the world. Together with her very unfaithful lover Saint George, Princess Aura must do whatever is necessary to regain the world and find the one final spark of goodness left before the Queen. Readers will find excitement in the thrilling race against the clock, a twisted battle between lovers and enemies, and some less than savory promises made to familiar characters.

Ellie Ann and the talented team of writers, artists, and musicians have done a wonderful job in transforming this enchanting tale from it's original format as an iPad App to a book. The book is full of gorgeous drawings and passages of the tale come to life with both voices and music together. Definitely worth picking up this new twist on the classic theme of good verses evil chalked full of memorable characters, flowing prose, and even gorgeous musical accompaniment. 

07 January, 2015

Book Tour: The Oblate's Confession by William Peak

02_The Oblate's Confession

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Set in 7th century England, The Oblate’s Confession tells the story of Winwaed, a boy who – in a practice common at the time – is donated by his father to a local monastery. In a countryside wracked by plague and war, the child comes to serve as a regular messenger between the monastery and a hermit living on a nearby mountain. Missing his father, he finds a surrogate in the hermit, an old man who teaches him woodcraft, the practice of contemplative prayer, and, ultimately, the true meaning of fatherhood. When the boy’s natural father visits the monastery and asks him to pray for the death of his enemy – an enemy who turns out to be the child’s monastic superior – the boy’s life is thrown into turmoil. It is the struggle Winawed undergoes to answer the questions – Who is my father? Whom am I to obey? – that animates, and finally necessitates, The Oblate’s Confession.

While entirely a work of fiction, the novel’s background is historically accurate: all the kings and queens named really lived, all the political divisions and rivalries actually existed, and each of the plagues that visit the author’s imagined monastery did in fact ravage that long-ago world. In the midst of a tale that touches the human in all of us, readers will find themselves treated to a history of the “Dark Ages” unlike anything available today outside of textbooks and original source material.