Series: The Winternight Trilogy #2
Release Date: January 25th 2018
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Pages: 364
Find it on: Goodreads. BookDepository. Waterstones.
Source: The publisher kindly sent me a copy of this book to review
Rating: 5/5 stars
Synopsis
The magical adventure begun in The Bear and the Nightingale continues as brave Vasya, now a young woman, is forced to choose between marriage or life in a convent and instead flees her home—but soon finds herself called upon to help defend the city of Moscow when it comes under siege.
Orphaned and cast out as a witch by her village, Vasya’s options are few: resign herself to life in a convent, or allow her older sister to make her a match with a Moscovite prince. Both doom her to life in a tower, cut off from the vast world she longs to explore. So instead she chooses adventure, disguising herself as a boy and riding her horse into the woods. When a battle with some bandits who have been terrorizing the countryside earns her the admiration of the Grand Prince of Moscow, she must carefully guard the secret of her gender to remain in his good graces—even as she realizes his kingdom is under threat from mysterious forces only she will be able to stop.
Review
This is the second book in the Winternight trilogy. The first book has become one of my favourite books of all time and so I was incredibly eager to see what was next in store in this magnificent series. I was a little apprehensive that I wouldn’t love it as much as I did the first book, but if possible I loved The Girl in the Tower even more than The Bear and the Nightingale.
The thing that I love most about this book and in fact this series is the detail, the vivid and imaginative world that Katherine Arden has created. It leaps off the page and is so full of magic and folklore that you can’t help but fall in love with this beautiful world. The Girl in the Tower has a fantastic plot that kept me eager for more and on one occasion I almost missed my bus stop on the way home because I was just so absorbed in the story.
Vasya was my favourite character in The Bear and the Nightingale and I loved seeing her grow and prove herself in this second instalment. She’s brave, stubborn and the most wonderful protagonist. I can’t tell who I love more, Vasya or her fearless horse Solovey. There are a whole host of other characters which are well developed and complex, which makes the story come alive even more.
The story manages to encompass so much – not just magic and adventure but friendship, family, romance, politics and lots of other themes in between. The Girl in the Tower has something for everyone, and I cannot recommend it enough. The writing is lush and beautiful, I loved The Girl in the Tower from start to finish and my only problem now is waiting to read the last instalment in Vasya’s story.
This is the epic conclusion to Jen Williams’ The Winnowing Flame trilogy and I am just dying to find out how this series ends. Book one and two were so incredibly addictive and The Bitter Twins ended on such a cliff hanger that I have no idea what is going to happen next. This series is an epic fantasy/ science fiction mix that is completely unlike anything I’ve ever read. It also features one of my all time favourite characters – Vintage who is brilliant in every way. The whole thing is a big, crazy adventure full of action and mystery. I loved that the synopsis for The Poison Song is really vague because it means I’m able to come up with a million different theories of what is going to happen. If you haven’t started this series yet and are a fan of big fantasy books with magnificent characters and epic world building – this is definitely one to get started on. 
I loved this book so much, it was so beautifully written and it was definitely a stand out book for me in 2018.
This is a very recent read for me and it’s one that I raced through because it was so addictive. The first in a new crime thriller series, I’m already dying for more!
This exciting fantasy tale is the first in the Sovereign Series from Josie Jaffrey. I really loved reading this first instalment and I am itching to get started on book two and three!
This is the second instalment in one of my all time favourite series, I loved this book and it was pretty much an instant five star read and I need book three like yesterday.
This is another second instalment in a series that I just absolutely adore. It got quite a lot of buzz on social media when it was released so I was really surprised it ended up on this list!
I really loved Den Patrick’s Boy with the Porcelain Blade so I was really excited to find out he was releasing a new fantasy series and I definitely wasn’t disappointed!
This is a beautifully told middle grade story full of magic and mystery. I absolutely adored it and it’s fast become one of my favourite middle grade books.
The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces – talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
I loved this YA dystopian/science fiction story and thought it was a really interesting take on the genre. I have book two on my TBR and I can’t wait to find out what’s in store for these characters.
This is the concluding book to the Sin Eater’s Daughter trilogy and honestly this book broke me a little bit. I love Melinda Salibury’s writing and this series is one of my favourites.
This was a fantastic, gripping read from author Jane Lythell, full of twists and turns. When a new woman joins the team at work, Liz feels the balance of power has shifted. She has to keep a lid on all her feelings as she maintains her role as a television producer. Coupling this with raising her daughter and dating, Liz’s life is full of surprises and shocks.
I wanted to like this book. I thought it would be a light and fun read that I could enjoy over the weekend, but it just wasn’t for me. Ada and her mum are entering a competition to create a robot with the most human intelligence, meanwhile there’s a band of wizards from the past (who were almost wiped out by a group of time travelling robots who are being mind controlled by a force known as the Spawn), hellbent on stopping them from creating it. Meanwhile in the future The Spawn have wiped out almost everyone and only the remaining few robots at the Hadron collider can stop the Earth being destroy completely. Confused yet?
You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.
I really loved the first book in this series so I just had to pick up the second instalment of Amdanda Lovelace’s inspiring poetry. I’ve also read this one too and loved it as well.
Take this as a warning: if you are not able or willing to control yourself, it will not only be you who suffers the consequences but those around you, as well.
Fall in love, break the curse. 
Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country’s bloody civil war—and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, the young king must find a way to refill Ravka’s coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.
Only fools think war is simple.
In a sealed-off city, it begins with a hunt. A young woman, Lena, running for her life, convicted of being a mage and sentenced to death. Her only way to survive is to trust those she has been brought up to fear – those with magic.
Can you love someone you can never touch?
A tragic, unnamed engineer-turned-criminal is immersed in chemicals that disfigure him bizarrely, driving him mad and thus giving birth to the Joker. While the insane criminal is imprisoned, Batman and Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) patrol Gotham City together, taking down perps such as the crime boss Maxie Zeus. Simultaneously Detective Harvey Bullock works with Commissioner James Gordon to take down a drug factory. Back in Arkham Asylum, Joker learns of a new technology he wants to acquire and escapes, setting out on a mission designed to break the Commissioner, forcing him to abandon his ideals as a police officer. In a violent home invasion he shoots and cripples Barbara, then takes Gordon hostage. Batman races to rescue Gordon, ultimately confronting his arch-foe in an amusement park fun house. This edgy adaptation by Hard Case Crime novelist Christa Faust expands upon the cast and adds intricate layers to the events of the graphic novel, further examining the nature of morality.
Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time
Adrana and Fura Ness have finally been reunited, but both have changed beyond recognition. Once desperate for adventure, now Adrana is haunted by her enslavement on the feared pirate Bosa Sennen’s ship. And rumors of Bosa Sennen’s hidden cache of treasure have ensnared her sister, Fura, into single-minded obsession.
Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.
Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield—her brother, fighting with the enemy—the brother she watched die five years ago.
Set in our world, spanning the near to distant futures, Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is a novel made up of six interconnected stories that ask how far we will go to remake ourselves into the perfect human specimens, and how hard that will push the definition of “human.”
Darwen Arkwright’s world is turned upside down when he is forced to move from a small English town to Atlanta in the United States of America. Feeling out of place and struggling to fit in at school, Darwen seeks solace in a mysterious shop full of mirrors. It’s there that he discovers the ability to step through mirrors into different worlds – worlds beyond his wildest imagination. Darwen befriends creatures including Moth, a tiny being with mechanical wings, but he soon learns that there is a terrible darkness threatening this new world . . . and only he can save it.
There are epic fantasies where magic is a thing of the past, spoken of in hushed tones until some kid pulls a sword from a stone and it all kicks off again… This is not one of those stories. The End of Magic will take you back to a time when magic collapsed, when the world went mad, chaos reigned, and we’ll get to see it through the eyes of three people who have everything to lose… Sander Bree is a royal mage. The personification of privilege, he lives a cushy life advising the king on matters of court and politics, yet still finds plenty of time to complain that he’s stuck in a rut. 
The Year After You follows a young girl named Cara who is sent to a boarding school in the remote Swiss Alps. On New Years Eve she survived a fatal accident, but her best friend Georgina did not. Consumed by grief, she wants nothing more than to complete the school year and move on, nothing is going to bring down the walls she has built around herself. But as she is drawn into life at Hope Hall, she begins to hope that maybe, things will get better.
This story follows the events of in which a series of nuclear bombings occur which triggers the end of the world as we know it. Jon Keller is attending a conference at a hotel in the middle of nowhere in Switzerland and so survives the attack along with 19 other people. Jon decides to document his time at the hotel in an attempt to process what has happened to the world. Whilst checking the water tanks the boy of a young girl is found and Jon begins to investigate her murder – but how will he get justice for her murder when the world as they know it no longer exists?
After many years of writing at home, I’ve recently managed to dedicate most of a room to writing. I painted it the deepest, darkest blue, which I find helps with concentration. It’s also filled with plants—on shelves, stands, even hanging from the walls—most of them on NASA’s list of top plants for using on the ISS, because I’m a nerd like that. There’s also another beloved item hanging from my study wall, my whiteboard. Here’s where the plotting and planning happens, usually beginning with a cast of characters (blurred out in this photo because it’s for a Sekrit Project!)
There’s a reason that multiple libraries feature in Shadowscent. I love them. There was a particular time in my childhood where we couldn’t afford to buy books, so the library was a paradise. When I went on to university study, I veritably lived in libraries. My favourite is the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Then, whenever I visit London, I try to make room for a writing or research session at the British Library. In Edinburgh, I love the Central Library for getting my fix of hushed voices and the scent of old tomes—it also has a gorgeous ceiling to gaze at while figuring out thorny plot points.
I do a fair bit of travel, both for author stuff and for my other job, so I’m often furiously drafting or desperately editing while on the go. I’ve learned to work in airports, and on planes and trains wherever possible. Last year, I finally invested in some noise-cancelling headphones and this has made all the difference.
Scotland doesn’t make a frequent habit of putting on prime outdoor writing weather, but when it does, I’ll grab the laptop and head out into one of Edinburgh’s beautiful parks. I’m also fortunate enough to able to get back to Australia once (sometimes twice) annually, so I squeeze in as much outdoor writing time while I’m there—hat and SPF 30+ essential! My favourite place is on the veranda at my sister’s house, if I can get the locals to let me concentrate…
The Bibliophile Chronicles 