I enjoyed Arkangelsk but it's an odd combination of a book. It's part murder mystery, part dystopian, part romance, and part there's something niffy going on.

The book kept jumping between Anya the peaceofficers viewpoint, and Maddie the captain of a spaceship. There is also records in between certain chapters that tell of the history of Arkhangelsk before the original ship landed on the planet.

I'd call it a romance, but that's probably a little up to debate. You could just as easily make an argument for fierce friendships as this was an entirely clean story, the worst you got was some handholding. But the instant fascination between the two screams ace romance to me. I kind of want that plot, so maybe I'm biased.

At some parts there were quite a lot of suspense, and I wish it was just a little bit more that I could have called it horror. But sadly there it is lacking a little. It kept teasing "there's something iffy going on here" but the revelation isn't that big of a horror show as I'd want. I kept waiting for the records to show some big nasty secret, but most of them were rather dull imo.

Either way, a thoroughly enjoyable read. I enjoying getting to know this society under the ice, how they've developed into the society they are, the blossoming friendship between two strangers and figuring out the mystery behind it all.

Thank you NetGalley for the free copy
I greatly enjoyed this book, it was fantastical and full of creatures.
I'm a big fan of creatures, and I greatly enjoyed how there were over a dozen introduced in this tiny 200 or so page book and only one of them had even a familiar name. Which made the book feel quite unique.

This book tells the story of Ara, 17, who is rescued by two Beast Hunters when a monster attacks her family. And the two hunters, Topper and Khendric take her under their wing and try to teach her their ways. I'm not sure I can call this Young Adult, but then I don't have a lot of experience with YA. Despite the age of Ara, there is quite a deal of gore in the book. There were also none of the pesky YA tropes you generally see, despite one of her rescueer seeming to be in his young 20s there wasn't even a hint of romance, which I greatly enjoyed.

My biggest complain is that I wish the book was larger and slower. (which is usually a sign of a good book) Ara at the beginning showed many personality traits of someone who not only came from an abusive family, but from a bad place. Mistrustful and secretive, I loved how grey she was. It wasn't black and white, she still loved her family. Which is often the truth in those cases. I loved the scenes where Topper and Khendric were trying to get to the soft gooey center of her personality. Alas, the change from mistrustful slum child to the typical heroine of a fantasy novel happened a little too quickly. Like blink and you missed it. I wish the change was more gradual, more realistic instead of a flip of a switch.

I'm also not the biggest fan of the cover, I was expecting big ass dragons. But the closest thing we got was the large dog sized thing (small horse?) in the prequel. Everything else was human or smaller sized. But, I enjoyed the story nonetheless and I cannot wait to see the next book. Maybe we'll see something bigger in the end!

I also loved the bestiary at the end, I loved how we got to see pages from the Red Book of creatures that weren't even mentioned in the first book. I wish there were illustrations available and would love to see an edition in the future that held them.

What can I say about Till Undeath Do Us Part?

Well, first of all, it might be the saddest horror book I've ever read. I didn't find it scary, or even unsettling. Jack was simply sad. And kinda stupid. We'll get to the stupid part later.

This book features flashbacks to showcase the relationship between Jack and his wife Linda. We get to see their first date, and meeting the parents, and the wedding and other small glimpses. Everything to underline how amazingly in love these two people were. We also get flashbacks of the beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse, when Linda was still alive.

The present in the book however, features Jack alone. Jack looking at fences, Jack counting supplies. And jack feeding chicken to his zombie wife chained up in the spare bedroom.

And this is the stupid part. While Jack's story is usually not the Main Character of a Zombie book, we've seen this kind of behavior from side characters. Mad men keeping their wives, husbands or children chained up and feeding. Jack however, isn't mad in that sense, isn't sacrificing humans to his loved ones. He's just an overall OK dude.

So what is he doing? He's feeding chickens to his wife. Trying to rehabilitate her back to normal. And that's okay, in an he's-a-little-crazy kind of way. But everything in the book, all the tension, was "he's running out of chickens, what will he do now to feed Linda?"

And the stupid part? He used to have a rooster, he had roosters and chickens. And since the Zombies in this book would happily eat animals, if he'd kept the rooster alive, he'd have an endless supply of new chicks to give his wife.
But no, no no, he brought the rooster to his dead wife, since the rooster was her favorite, and she ate it. It was how he found out she could eat animals. But still, if you're going to try to keep your zombie wife alive, trying to give them live animals seems to be like the first step.

But maybe I'm being too harsh on poor old Jack. He was in shock, he was traumatized and in denial over an event that had just happened. But still, he had the perfect setup, and he fucked it up.

So the story starts, with Jack having to make a trip into town to find Linda something to eat.

The one thing this book did for me however, was find a line in the sand that is unacceptable in my relationship. Jack crossed it, he did the ultimate sin, and I'll be having this conversation with my husband later. And if you're married to your soulmate, maybe you need to read this book and have that conversation with your spouse too.