Settling: Book Two of the Solid Series & Giveaway



Guest Post by Shelly Workinger, Author of the Solid Series

The leading lady of the “Solid” series – Clio – is certainly not just like me. But when she says, “I was definitely not going to be one of those weird girls who won’t eat in front of guys. The guy thinks you’re freaky while you sit there all hungry and crabby – totally a lose-lose,” she is voicing my exact thoughts.

Just because girls and food have had such a love-hate relationship for, well, ever, doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. Even as I write this post, my husband is telling me how he vividly remembers taking a girl on a date that wouldn’t even order anything; just watched him eat. Seriously. Well, it’s about time someone stood up and said Calorie is a far lesser evil than Crazy.

That’s why it was a given when I started fleshing out my “Solid” heroine that she would eat. Real food. Without obsessing over it. Hey, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I can establish the opposite standard for my bad guys – that they don’t eat! That may or may not be a spoiler for my future books – you’ve been warned!

Anyway, my “FoodFic” campaign is about more than just saving girls from thinking that food is their archenemy; it’s also about giving food some of its dignity back! The vilifying of food is false, mean, and just plain wrong, since we all know that the aroma of a favorite meal can resurrect an apocalyptic day. Food is a hero! Okay, that may be going a little too far.  But food is integral to our lives – chocolate-dipped strawberries for romantic interludes; birthday cake and ice cream to celebrate life; casseroles to offer solace at funerals – and it deserves a place in our fiction!

The meals Clio dives into in “Solid” and “Settling” include fried chicken with mashed potatoes and snappy green beans, and a picnic of roast beef po’ boys with blue chips and Tabasco-laced guacamole. Sometimes I make myself hungry just writing the scenes, and I hope to whet your appetite for both good reads and good eats!

Mini-Review

I LOVE this series.  It's a step outside of my normal reading but both novels are intriguing and well written, they have captivated me from start to finish!  Settling is the second book of this series and picks up right where Solid left off.  Instead of leaving the campus, Clio and her friends decide they want to stay and continue their course of self -discovery.  They are all quite unique and not ready to give up the freedom and likeness they have with each other that they don't have outside the military campus.  However, not everyone on campus wants the same thing.  Some will stop at nothing and will kill, if that's what it takes to get rid of everyone.  This novel is every bit as good as its predecessor.  I really enjoyed it!  Shelley has a great writing style that hooks your interest and leaves you wanting more!  Beware, the third book is not yet out, you will want more!   Stay Tuned for my full review to come soon.  Read my review of Solid HERE.

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1 copy is available for a resident of the US or Canada thanks to Shelley!
Contest ends July 15th at 11:59pm. 
If you don't win the author is running a special promotion for the month of July with this title!
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Special Interest

Author: Aaron T. Knight
ISBN: 978-1439211083
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Source: Author for Review
Contributing Reviewer: Megan Bennett

Synopsis from Amazon:
An altruistic scientist discovers a source of perpetual electrical energy that will eliminate the need for fossil fuels. To safe guard the invention he has hidden the formula in sections around the world. Special interest groups scramble for possession of the discovery with comic results.

Megan's Review:

Joe has just relocated after having a broken engagement and being forced out of his accounting job. Everything appears to be getting along nicely with his new life until his flowerbed reveals a mysterious clue to a murder. Soon Joe is involved in a risky operation involving a new energy source that could change how the world operates. Joe soon finds out that there are limited people that he can trust and many special interest groups are after the clues to this energy source and will stop at nothing to obtain the information, not even murder. Joe doesn't want to be involved in this scheme but soon a love interest and his best friend are entangled as well and he finds that he has no choice but to help solve the puzzle.

I have to hand it to the author for coming up with a creative storyline; however, I didn't find that much of the plot was very realistic. Every time a problem arose in the story, there was a quick fix and many of the characters seemed to have just the right set of skills (i.e. a license to fly a plane, and a sports car) at just the right time. The main character, Joe, was not a person that I had much in common with and I started out disliking his personality. I can't say my impression of him improved much throughout the book either, however, I did really like the character Hulk, Joe's best friend. The story was humorous, but at times it took away from the plot and seemed reaching. I read this book in e-format and there were many spelling errors and typos. Also, the dialogue moved from one character and scene to the next without good separation. These errors were distracting and I had to re-read paragraphs to understand what was happening.

Overall I thought the author had a creative idea and I was captivated and wanted to know how the story would end. The characters' motives were hidden well until the end of the book when the author did finally start to place doubt in your mind about who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. The science behind the energy source was unique too - would be nice if such a thing existed! So if you can put aside the distracting errors and don't mind a story that isn't all that realistic, you may enjoy this unique tale.

2.5 out of 5 

Outlander

Author: Diana Gabaldon
ISBN: 978-0385319959
Publisher: Delta
Source: Pump Up Your Book Blog Tours
Purchase: Amazon

Synopsis:
Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century, and a lover in another...

In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon--when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an "outlander"—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord...1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire's destiny in soon inextricably intertwined with Clan MacKenzie and the forbidden Castle Leoch. She is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life ...and shatter her heart. For here, James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire...and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

Review:

The Outlander Series has been recommended to me on more than one occasion by different friends who all enjoy different genres. This seems to be the series the most readers seem to all agree on! When Outlander became available for me to review for this tour, I couldn't resist! I figured it was time to read it and now I wish I hadn't waited so long.....

Storyline/Plot: I enjoyed the storyline of this novel. It captures your attention and keeps it! Everything starts off normal enough as Claire is on her second honeymoon with her husband Frank. When she decides to go exploring and accidentally stumbles across a way to travel back in time the story takes an interesting turn. She ends up back in Scotland during the 1700s on the brink of a tumultuous historical time. Almost instantly she catches herself in a dangerous situation and is kidnapped by a group of Scottish men who think that she is an English spy. Within the group that takes her is a wounded man and Claire tends to him with her army nurse background. Soon she realizes that she is stuck in the past and basically being held prisoner. She uses her nursing skills to find a niche while all the while searching for a way to travel back to the future. Also, the wounded man that she tended to, Jamie Fraser, has been a presence in her new life and she can’t help but forming an attachment to him. Claire is torn between risking it all to escape back to her husband and life in the future and risking it all to stay behind with her new love and the new life she has become accustomed to.

Setting: Who doesn't love a novel set in Scotland? I don't think I ever tire of reading novels set in Scotland or England. Something about historical romance just screams "set me there"! I enjoyed the setting and couldn't imagine it being elsewhere.

Writing & Characters: Diana Gabaldon definitely did her research before writing this novel. Reading this book really taught me a lot about Scotland’s history and was so detailed and seemed incredibly realistic. The characters and the events are very detailed and all play an important role in the story either in the past, present, or (I've been told) her future novels. (This is the first book of the series to which many of the following books are already released) The time travel aspect to the novel is just one of the characteristics that had me wanting to read more. I also really liked how the author brought in Claire’s nursing background. Claire working as a “healer” back in the 18th century really put things in perspective. It also helps Claire cope with her situation in the past and allows her to keep her mind off of the future (or present) and her husband. It is also just interesting if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Overall: I loved everything about this book! The best part about this novel is the romance between the two main characters Claire and Jamie. This is one of the best love stories I have ever read. I myself have never been attracted to red-haired men in kilts…but after reading Outlander I have to say if I ended up back in the past with Jamie Fraser I think I’d choose to stay! There are steamy scenes to say the least, but it is also about the relationship they must form given their situation. They have to learn to trust each other and love each other. There are many barriers they must overcome and none of it is easy. I can’t wait to read the rest of the novels in the series!

Recommendation: Read this series! (In order... this series is one that is best to be read in order. The novel are all fairly long, though you won't feel like they are!) Start with Outlander and see why the many who have fallen in love with it are raving to their friends!

Giveaway: 1 copy of Outlander is available for US/CAN addresses only. Follow this blog, comment on this review and fill out the form below! 1 extra entry is available by spreading the news about this giveaway. Make sure to leave the link if you share the giveaway.

About the Author:

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling OUTLANDER novels, described by Salon magazine as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting “Scrooge McDuck” comics.”


The adventure began in 1991 with the classic OUTLANDER (“historical fiction with a Moebius twist”), has continued through six more New York Times-bestselling novels–DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, VOYAGER, DRUMS OF AUTUMN, THE FIERY CROSS, A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, and AN ECHO IN THE BONE, with nineteen million copies in print worldwide

The series is published in 26 countries and 23 languages, and includes a nonfiction (well, relatively) companion volume, THE OUTLANDISH COMPANION, which provides details on the settings, background, characters, research, and writing of the novels. Gabaldon (it’s pronounced “GAA-bull-dohn”—rhymes with “stone”) has also written several books in a sub-series featuring Lord John Grey (a major minor character from the main series): LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER, LORD JOHN AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE, and LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS. Another Lord John book, LORD JOHN AND THE SCOTTISH PRISONER, will probably be published in 2011).

Returning to her comic-book roots, she has also written a graphic novel titled THE EXILE (set within the OUTLANDER universe and featuring the main characters from OUTLANDER), but told from the viewpoint of Jamie Fraser and his godfather, Murtagh. The graphic novel is illustrated by Hoang Nguyen, published by Del-Rey.

Gabaldon is presently working on the third Lord John novel (LORD JOHN AND THE SCOTTISH PRISONER), and the eighth book in the OUTLANDER series. In addition, she is working on a contemporary mystery series, set in Phoenix, and has written Highly Scholarly Introductions (with masses of footnotes) to recent Modern Library editions of Sir Walter Scott’s IVANHOE and Thomas Paine’s COMMON SENSE.

Dr. Gabaldon holds three degrees in science: Zoology, Marine Biology, and Quantitative Behavioral Ecology, (plus an honorary degree as Doctor of Humane Letters, which entitles her to be “Diana Gabaldon, Ph.D., D.H.L.” She supposes this is better than “Diana Gabaldon, Phd.X,”) and spent a dozen years as a university professor with an expertise in scientific computation before beginning to write fiction. She has written scientific articles and textbooks, worked as a contributing editor on the MacMillan ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMPUTERS, founded the scientific-computation journal SCIENCE SOFTWARE QUARTERLY, and has written numerous comic-book scripts for Walt Disney. None of this has anything whatever to do with her novels, but there it is.

She and her husband, Douglas Watkins, have three adult children and live mostly in Scottsdale, Arizona.

You can visit Diana online at http://www.dianagabaldon.com/

Solid

Author: Shelley Workinger
ISBN: 978-1453624821
Publisher: CreateSpace
*To price or purchase click the image to the left*


Eighteen years ago, a rogue Army doctor secretly experimented with a chromosomal drug on unknowing pregnant women. When he was killed not long after the children were born, any knowledge and evidence seemed to die with him - except for the living, breathing, human products of his work.


Almost two decades later, the newly self-proclaimed "open-book" military unearths the truth about the experiment, bringing Clio Kaid and the other affected teens to a state-of-the-art, isolated campus where they soon discover that C9x did indeed alter their chromosomes, its mutations presenting as super-human abilities. The military kids, who come from across the nation and all walks of life, come into their own as lighter-than-air 'athletes'; 'indies' as solid as stone walls; teens who can make themselves invisible and others who can blind with their brilliance.


While exploring her own special ability, forging new friendships and embarking on first love, Clio also stumbles onto information indicating that the military may not have been entirely forthcoming with them and that all may not be as it seems...

I stepped slightly out of my comfort zone with this novel and boy am I glad I did! The novel is easy to read with a great storyline that is easy to follow. Considering the scientific aspects of this book, this is a great quality for the book to boast. The characters are relatable on many ways; their relationships are natural and not forced. It makes sense for them to form as a group. Their different personalities work well together. The novel works up to a satisfying ending that ties enough questions together to leave the reader happy while leaving key aspects open for the next novel in this series entitled “Settling”. I anticipate the release of Settling and look forward to continuing Clio’s Story.


I would recommend this YA novel to readers looking for an exciting, fast paced read. The novel brings intrigue and suspense along with mystery, science and romance. None of these aspects overtake the others making it a well rounded, easy to enjoy book that has something for nearly everyone. If you stretch the idea a little it even has a slight paranormal feel due to the altered chromosomes and superhuman capabilities. I enjoyed the authors writing style and felt the novel was fairly original considering I haven’t read much science fiction to judge it as less or more than that.


For more information on “Solid” and a sneak peak at “Settling” visit http://www.solidnovel.com/.