Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen’s alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire’s enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name ‘The Sword of Kaigen.’īorn into Kusanagi’s legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family’s fighting techniques and defend his homeland. High on a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores? A mother struggling to repress her violent past,Ī son struggling to grasp his violent future,Ī father blind to the danger that threatens them all.
0 Comments
Like the title drug, you can’t be completely sure how you’re going to react to it until you try it. Clarke award and has been compared to A Clockwork Orange and Neuromancer, but it has its detractors: Kirkus Reviews called the plot “wildly kaleidoscopic” but unsatisfying, and Entertainment Weekly said the book’s “sentimental incest and adolescent self-congratulation…is never really startling or disturbing.” Helped by his gang, the Stash Riders, hindered by shadowcops, robos, rock and roll dogmen, and his own dread, Scribble searches along the edges of civilization for a feather that, if it exists at all, must be bought with the one thing no sane person would willingly give. Her brother Scribble will risk everything to rescue his beloved sister. The beautiful young Desdemona is trapped in Curious Yellow, the ultimate Metavurt, a feather few have ever seen and fewer still have dared ingest. And Yellows-the feathers from which there is no escape. Silver feathers for techies who know how to remix colors and open new dimensions. A few of Vurt’s colors: Blues for lullaby dreams Blacks, filled with tenderness and pain Pinks, doorways to bliss. Effects of Vurt are hallucinations or maybe a shared alternate reality-its never explained precisely what’s going on. Vurt is a drug accessed by sucked on color-coded feathers. Claire takes the case.įrom the first page we see the inner workings of Claire’s troubled mind. Vic’s luxurious apartment in the French Quarter didn’t flood there’s no sign of a break-in. She meets Leon Salvatore, a scruffy 40-year-old whose uncle, Vic Willing, an assistant district attorney in the city prosecutor’s office, hasn’t been seen since the hurricane hit. Claire’s been summoned back to the Big Easy to investigate a missing persons case. Claire herself is a sympathetic antihero, and little by little you get her backstory to understand what makes her believe she’s the world’s greatest (if unconventional) PI. It also has some quirks: Claire DeWitt’s adherence to the methods of an obscure French detective, for example. It’s got lots of slangy dialogue, rampant drug use, and a smattering of sex and violence to keep things edgy. It’s set in a gritty urban environment, this time New Orleans post-Katrina. There’s a self-destructive protagonist who may or may not be a reliable narrator. There’s something really fun and escapist about hard-boiled detective novels, and Sara Gran’s first Claire DeWitt mystery, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, delivers in spades. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Deadby Sara Gran That’s it! But you can also add in spices, herbs, and other add-ins like cheese, nuts, or seeds if you like to further flavor your bread! And you only need 4 ingredients to make it: water, flour, salt, and yeast.īasic no-knead bread only calls for 4 ingredients: water, flour, salt, and yeast. It will get your feet wet and make working with yeast feel less intimidating. No-knead bread is the easiest yeast bread you can bake. But yeast bread is one of those things in baking that can range from being incredibly simple to being very complicated. I have been told by many of my readers that they are intimidated by working with yeast. With only 4 ingredients (water, flour, yeast, salt) and no-kneading you can have fresh bread out of your own oven! If you are scared of using yeast, this bread will get your feet wet! She attended the High School for Creative and Performing Arts for creative writing, where freedom of expression was the order of the day. You can learn more a Dana Marie Bell wrote her first short story when she was thirteen years old. She lives with her soul-mate and husband Dusty, their two maniacal children, an evil ice-cream stealing cat and a bull terrier that thinks it’s a Pekinese. Dana has lived primarily in the Northeast (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, to be precise), with a brief stint on the US Virgin Island of St. When her parents moved out of the city and placed her in a Catholic high school for her senior year she tried desperately to get away, but the nuns held fast, and she graduated with honors despite herself. Dana Marie Bell wrote her first short story when she was thirteen years old. |