Monday, April 28, 2014

A to Z April - X: EXtras





One plus I would definitely say about e-books, is that there seems to be a plethora of short stories that are so much easier to get a hold of since you no longer have to wait until a compilation of short stories is released.  And today they are called novellas a lot of the time, and are often stories in between or before a series of books even started.  It is often neat to me to find out how things in a dystopian world became that way, since it often doesn't get into the nitty gritty details in the actual full length stories sometimes.  I also enjoy when an author does a little spin off with a minor character that may have stood out and I really would like to know more about them and their own story.  So below I will list 5 novellas that I think were of great added value to the stories they go with.


1.

Now this is the one I read the most recently, so is the freshest in my mind.  But, it was such a great prequel to the book Dorothy Must Die.  As I read the actual book, I wondered what had happened to make Dorothy such a bad person, and why was  Glinda not the good witch we remembered?  You learn quite a bit, about Dorothy mostly, in this really great prequel.

2.

Now this is actually a printed book, with 3 short stories in it.  But, it was an e-galley of this that I read. I had received the book The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa when I went to BEA in the summer of 2012.  But I had yet to pick it up, mainly because while I knew she was a popular author, I hadn't read anything of hers, and wasn't quite sure about it.  I read the short story in here, Dawn of Eden, which is a prequel to the story, and I was sold.  The writing, the plot, all of it was great.  So once again I think this was an awesome "EXtra" for a book series.

3.

The Goddess Test series by Aimee Carter is one of my favorite series.  This is a short story I also got to read as an e-galley.  But it has since been published as part of a physical short story collection called The Goddess Legacy.  This one tells the story of Hera/Calliope.  And I really enjoyed it because you don't really like her in the overall book series, and this book gives you a bit of sympathy for her, even though I still don't agree with things she does.  

4.

I love the Splintered series by AG Howard, it got me interested in Alice in Wonderland, when it had never really been one of my favorite fairy tales.  And this is a short story that gives another side of the story, from Morpheus and Jeb's points of view, instead of just Alyssa's.

5.

I hadn't read any of the series since I got to read an e-galley of the very first one before it was published.  And then I saw I could get an e-galley of the 3rd in the series.  So, I checked the 2nd one out at the library, and downloaded this short story.  And this was a great prequel short story that got me back into what the plot and who the characters were.  And Roar is someone you just really love in the books, so it was fun to read his side of the story and find out what made him the way he was.

So, have you had a chance to read many of these short stories that go with novels or books series?  I could have done a separate list of ones that were kind of a waste of time, especially if I had to pay for them, but I try to keep things on here positive and recommend things I liked.

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