The Northern Witch's Book Blog

The Last Praetorian By Mike Smith 2 out of 5 Synopsis Commander Jonathan Radec is a man desperately trying to escape from the mistakes of his past. Now the owner of Vanguard Shipping, his primary concerns are trying to keep his ships flying and his crew alive. However, the shadowy Syndicate organisation has set their sights on the Commander and his business, having sent a beautiful assassin to kill him. To make matters worse, she’s become the target of his infatuation, much to the dismay of his ex-girlfriend. Recently elevated to President of the Confederation, she’s still very much in love with him and capable of making his life a living hell. Surrounded by a galaxy beginning to tear itself apart, with enemies on all sides, he’s now also unwillingly tasked with trying to save the Confederation – for which he has little regard. Jon has little going in his favour, except a crew consisting of the elite of the old Imperial Navy, all of whom would fight to the death for ...

The second part of the Witch-Hunter series will soon be available to buy from Amazon.  Catch up now, with Part 1 -  The Shadow Rises . And get a free snippet of the opening pages of Part 2 - The Shadow Reigns , below. (warning, contains series spoilers from the beginning) Happy Hallowe'en! F or hundreds of years witches have been persecuted; forced to keep their heads down and conform to laws that we never agreed to.  To be a witch is to live a hunted life; to suffer the stupidity and ignorance of those around you, even though you could outclass them with the simplest spell. I was born to free the witches from oppression.  I am the Shadow Witch.  I have freed my kin from the so-called justice of the witch-hunters and their Malleus Maleficarum Council.  In one night, the world was thrown into chaos, and for once it was the witch-hunters that were forced back. We followed our victory with a second.  We pitched the world into darkness, and rem...

Nadine Christian http://www.nadinechristian.com Author of: Remember Love Quintal's Return (The Bounty's Retreat #1) Home Again, Home Again (The Bounty's Retreat #2) Following on from the review of the first in the Bounty's Retreat series:  Quintal's Return , Nadine Christian has taken the time to answer a few questions for this blog. 1) First of all, a major factor in your book is the Island itself, was it always your aim to promote Pitcairn in your work? Well, it started off as a way to introduce my island to readers if I'm honest. I wanted to share what it's like to live here, with a little fictional oomph to mix in to the scenery. I'm glad you found both worked!  Unfortunately Yeti-man is a fictional character darn it all!  2) What was the inspiration behind the Bounty's Retreat hotel? (ie the economic importance) We don't have a hotel/motel here. We do homestays for our visitors, and we love it, but wondered what ...

Quintal's Return The Bounty's Retreat - book 1 Nadine Christian 5 out of 5 Synopsis A new job, a new love…and someone out for revenge. Hotelier Kate Quintal and her sister Jen are hired to run a new luxury hotel on Pitcairn Island. Anticipating only the hard work that running the new facility would entail, a burgeoning romance with the burly and handsome Bryce Brown is the last thing she expected. With a new love and the success of the island’s new tourism endeavor, life seems sweet.  So, why are things suddenly falling apart? Who is trying to sabotage the hotel, and why? Kate finds herself fighting, not only for her job, or her heart…but her life. Review The sisters, Kate and Jen Quintal are relocating to their parent's home of Pitcairn Island, where they are running the hotel that will make or break Pitcairn's tourism trade.  The small community of Pitcainers are depending on them to do a good job, and nothing else counts. Until romance and revenge compl...

The Fall of the Misanthrope: I bitch, therefore I am By Louise Wise 5 out of 5 Synopsis Valerie Anthrope is a cut-throat business woman and happy being alone. She answers to no-one. She's The Boss. But enter Ellen in the guise of her fairy godmother wanting to make the world rosy and smelling of marshmallow. How can Valerie cope with this burst of sunshine? It gets worse, Ellen has a nephew who's equally chirpy, but he thinks it's Valerie taking advantage of Ellen and sets out to take her down a peg or two! Review Valerie Anthrope is content with her life. It's logical, and ordered, and has no soft edges. She doesn't need her time wasted with friendships, she'd much rather spend it improving her business. Long time do-gooder Ellen Semple has decided to be Val's self-appointed fairy godmother and make her life better; with a little help from Lex, Ellen's nephew, who just so happens to be the most eligible bachelor around. Ok, so the prologue ...

Water (Akasha #1) By Terra Harmony 1 out of 5 Synopsis *Mature Content* Elemental powers in the palm of her hand...and it won't be enough to save her. When Kaitlyn Alder is involuntarily introduced to a life of magic, she becomes part of an organization hell-bent on saving the Earth. Just as her new-found life holds promises of purpose, romance, and friendship, the organization divides and a rogue member holds Kaitlyn hostage. Now one of the most terrifying men the human race has to offer stands between her and Earth's survival. Review *Spoilers* Kaitlyn is just your average, troubled young woman. After losing her parents, she's never stayed put in one place, never felt the need to connect with people. Then after an avalanche, she regains consciousness on an island where she is to learn the truth about all those little coincidences that niggle away at her. Like the fact that wherever she goes, natural disasters follow - could it really be here causing them? I...

Spell Struck By Nicole J. Fawcett 4 out of 5 Synopsis Rhiannon Grey is a detective in a hectic police headquarters. She’s also a witch, in a society that’s learned not to think too highly of the supernatural, and her boss is a two thousand-year-old vampire. Rian has discovered the hard way that trouble is always just around the corner. This time, trouble is called Griffin King, a fifteen year old runaway whose strangled corpse is found floating in the river. He’s not the first street-kid to vanish recently, or to turn up later, very dead. When Rian starts to suspect he was a witch, too, and that his magic led to his death, her investigation turns into a personal crusade.  No one seems terribly concerned about the fate of a few disappeared urchins, though. And when a series of brutal murders starts panicked speculation about a nest of vampires, Rian’s boss has other things on his mind. But Rian won’t be distracted. Not by bureaucracy, not by murder, and certainly not by he...

The Princes Man (The Five Kingdoms #1) By Deborah Jay 5 out of 5 Synopsis Think James Bond meets Lord of the Rings. Award-winning fantasy, THE PRINCE'S MAN, is a sweeping tale of spies and deadly politics, inter-species mistrust and magic phobia, with a touch of romance.  Rustam Chalice, hedonist, dance tutor and spy, loves his life, never better than when he's bedding a gorgeous woman. So when the kingdom he serves is threatened from within, he leaps into action.  Only trouble is, the spy master, Prince Halnashead, teams him up with an untouchable aristocratic assassin who despises him.  And to make matters worse, she's the most beautiful woman in the Five Kingdoms.  Plunged into a desperate journey through the mountains, the mismatched pair struggle to survive deadly wildlife, the machinations of a spiteful god - and each other.  They must also keep alive a sickly elf they need as a political pawn. But when the elf reveals that Rustam has magic of his...

Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicle #2) By Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl 2 out of 5 Synopsis Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen. She struggles to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. Ethan Wate finally meets the girl who haunts his dreams. On her birthday, she must choose good or evil. In a town with no surprises, this secret could change everything. Review A part of me wishes I hadn't read any reviews before reading this book. There are a few constant themes in the reviews - that it's very long-winded; Ethan acts like a bitchy high school girl; and he spends so much time slating the clearly less intelligent people around them. And it's all true. But I kinda think that if I hadn't known these faults before opening the book, they wouldn't have annoyed me as much as they did. It is a very long book (nearly 600 pages), and I found it hard to keep going, and did pu...

Stitch (Stitch Trilogy #1) By Samantha Durante 4 out of 5 Synopsis Her heart races, her muscles coil, and every impulse in Alessa's body screams at her to run... but yet she's powerless to move. Still struggling to find her footing after the sudden death of her parents, the last thing college freshman Alessa has the strength to deal with is the inexplicable visceral pull drawing her to a handsome ghostly presence. In between grappling with exams and sorority soirees - and disturbing recurring dreams of being captive in a futuristic prison hell - Alessa is determined to unravel the mystery of the apparition who leaves her breathless. But the terrifying secret she uncovers will find her groping desperately through her nightmares for answers. Because what Alessa hasn't figured out yet is that she's not really a student, the object of her obsession is no ghost, and her sneaking suspicions that something sinister is lurking behind the walls of her university...

The Humans by Matt Haig 4 out of 5 Synopsis The critically acclaimed author of  The Radleys  shares a clever, heartwarming, and darkly insightful novel about an alien who comes to Earth to save humans from themselves. “I was not Professor Andrew Martin. That is the first thing I should say. He was just a role. A disguise. Someone I needed to be in order to complete a task.” The narrator of this tale is no ordinary human—in fact, he’s not human at all. Before he was sent away from the distant planet he calls home, precision and perfection governed his life. He lived in a utopian society where mathematics transformed a people, creating limitless knowledge and immortality. But all of this is suddenly threatened when an earthly being opens the doorway to the same technology that the alien planet possesses. Cambridge University professor Andrew Martin cracks the Reimann Hypothesis and unknowingly puts himself and his family in grave danger when the narrator is sent ...

Hetaera: Daughter of the Gods J.A. Coffey 3 out of 5 Synopsis *Mature Content* She was the original Cinderella....Doricha is twelve when her father is murdered by a roving band of Greeks. Betrayed by a jealous priestess and sold into slavery, headstrong Dori loses her most valuable possession-her freedom. She hopes that one day she can truly be free, but not even Aesop, her mentor, can protect her. The harsh world of classical Greece has little use for the minds of women, and she finds her body traded to another owner, who transports her to a new life of luxury and political turmoil in the faraway deserts of Egypt. All she has to do is be beautiful, all she has to do is love him, and she will be kept safe. The problem is, Dori doesn't want to be kept--by any man. Not even the god-king Amasis, Pharaoh of Egypt.  From the ancient Thracian temple of the Bacchae to the exotic lands of Egypt where political intrigue coils like a nest of asps, Dori learns that fulfilling her...

Entanglement By Dan Rix 3 out of 5 Synopsis: "...the scientific explanation is quantum entanglement, whereby the boy and girl—even when separated by great distances—react instantaneously to changes in each other's states..." —Dr. Casler Selavio, on the entanglement of halves. In a world like ours, humans are born in pairs. When a newborn boy takes his first breath in the coastal town of Tularosa, the exact time is noted, recorded in the Registry, and later compared to the birth times of other newborns around the globe. There will be one identical match—his half. They will meet on their eighteenth birthday and they will spend their lives together. Except this time, there is no match. Hotheaded heartthrob Aaron Harper is scheduled to meet his half in twenty-nine days, and he doesn’t buy a word of that entanglement crap. So what if he and his half were born the same day and share a spooky psychic connection? Big deal. After breaking one too many teenage girls’ ...