Blog Tour Review with Giveaway: Courting Darkness by Robin LaFevers

Book info:

Title:  Courting Darkness
Author:  Robin LaFevers
Series:  Courting Darkness duology #1 (sequel to His Fair Assassin trilogy)
Genre: YA historical fantasy
Release Date:  February 5th, 2019
Publisher:  HMH Books for Young Readers
Source:  ARC received from publisher which did not influence my opinion
My rating:  5 stars

Synopsis:
Death wasn’t the end, it was only the beginning…

Sybella has always been the darkest of Death’s daughters, trained at the convent of Saint Mortain to serve as his justice. But she has a new mission now. In a desperate bid to keep her two youngest sisters safe from the family that nearly destroyed them all, she agrees to accompany the duchess to France, where they quickly find themselves surrounded by enemies. Their one ray of hope is Sybella’s fellow novitiates, disguised and hidden deep in the French court years ago by the convent—provided Sybella can find them.

Genevieve has been undercover for so many years, she struggles to remember who she is or what she’s supposed to be fighting for. Her only solace is a hidden prisoner who appears all but forgotten by his guards. When tragedy strikes, she has no choice but to take matters into her own hands—even if it means ignoring the long awaited orders from the convent.

As Sybella and Gen’s paths draw ever closer, the fate of everything they hold sacred rests on a knife’s edge. Will they find each other in time, or will their worlds collide, destroying everything they care about?

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD

See where it all began! Grab the His Fair Assassin Trilogy now! You don’t need to read these to read Courting Darkness but they’re amazing!

Grave Mercy- Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD,   My Review

Dark Triumph- Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD,  My Review

Mortal Heart- Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, TBD,   My Review

My Review:
Delving back into the world of the assassins of Saint Mortain was something I'd been looking forward to ever since I heard about this book.  I was worried I'd be unsure of who was who, but it wasn't hard to join with the characters at the stage they were in.  Truly, Sybella had been my favorite, even if her book wasn't my favorite.  The other main character in this book, Genevieve, took me a little bit to come around to. But once I did, I was rooting for her, and hoping that she could have a romance herself, with Maraud, the prisoner she'd rescued from the dungeon, even if the rescue was only to serve her own purposes.  Now when something happened in the book, I kind of assumed it was going to be the prisoner, I won't say what happened, so maybe you won't expect what I did.  So when we did find out who he was, well, all the little puzzle pieces started to fall into place.

The author is great about keeping certain details from coming out until moments that will have the reader gasping in surprise!  The other thing I love is all the history that is interwoven throughout the plot.  The author has a note at the end that does clear up what is actually true and what she had to adjust and tweak to fit her story.  Not only is there an afterward talking about the history of the story, but there is a letter at the beginning to the readers, talking about what motivated her to write further in this world.  It was a touching note, with some deep topics and worth reading. 

The ending of the book left me on the edge of my seat, satisfied with this reunion of some of my favorite characters, but sad that I'll be waiting until 2020 to see what will happen with where we left off.



About the Author:

Robin LaFevers was raised on a steady diet of fairy tales, Bulfinch’s mythology, and 19th century poetry. It is not surprising she grew up to be a hopeless romantic.

Though she has never trained as an assassin or joined a convent, she did attend Catholic school for three years, which instilled in her a deep fascination with sacred rituals and the concept of the Divine. She has been on a search for answers to life’s mysteries ever since.

While many of those answers still elude her, she was lucky enough to find her one true love, and is living happily ever after with him in the foothills of southern California.

In addition to writing about teen assassin nuns in medieval Brittany, she writes books for middle grade readers, including the Theodosia books and the Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series. You can learn more about those books at www.rllafevers.com.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Tumblr | Goodreads


Giveaway:

• 20 winners will receive His Fair Assassin character card sets, US Only.

   a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

1/21/2018- The Pages In-Between- Review

1/22/2018- Fiction Fare- Review

1/23/2018- YA Books Central- Excerpt

1/24/2018- Two Chicks on Books- Excerpt

1/25/2018- Tales of the Ravenous Reader- Review

Week Two:

1/28/2019- Colorimetry- Review

1/29/2019- Here's to Happy Endings- Review

1/30/2019- A Gingerly Review- Review

1/31/2019- Moonlight Rendezvous- Review

2/1/2019- Novel Novice- Excerpt

Week Three:

2/4/2019- Lisa Loves Literature- Review

2/5/2019- Flyleaf Chronicles- Review

2/6/2019- Smada's Book Smack- Review

2/7/2019- A Backwards Story- Review

2/8/2019- Jena Brown Writes- Review

Week Four:

2/11/2019- Nerdophiles- Review

2/12/2019- Book-Keeping- Review

2/13/2019- Eli to the nth- Review

2/14/2019- Do You Dog-ear?- Review

2/15/2019- Book Briefs- Review

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Review: Mortal Heart (His Fair Assassin #3) by Robin LaFevers

I was lucky enough to get an ARC of this at BEA this past summer.  I've mentioned how much nicer the publishers seemed to be at the booths this year than they had been when I was there two years ago.  I'd seen another person with this one and so I went to their booth, but didn't see any of them sitting out.  The gentleman behind the counter asked what I might be looking for and when I told him it was this book, he said he just might have a copy, and then he went and grabbed one for me from their little cabinet.  Now I had been lucky enough to get an e-galley of the title earlier from Edelweiss, so I have to say thanks to HMH Books for Young Readers, kind of a double thanks!

Once again a series has ended perfectly.  I am so pleased with how this book went. Such a great series.  There was no second book slump, as you could tell from my review of Dark Triumph.  Just like the 2nd one, we are following a different character.  One of the three girls we met in the first two, this time it was Annith.  Who had lived her whole life at the convent.  Even having to deal with the prior abbess who had been cruel to her.  Annith is currently waiting on word from her friends Ismae and Sybella.  And while she waits, she hopes to soon get her own assignment to go out and help with the duchess and all that is going on in their country.  But it doesn't seem to be happening for her.  In fact, with her habit of being able to overhear things behind closed doors, it seems that the latest abbess, who once had seemed to be the one to help Annith out against the Dragonette, wants Annith to take the job of Seeress.  Annith can't imagine anything worse than this.  It is like a death sentence in a way. The Seeress never leaves the convent.  Really never leaves her quarters.  After all the times of being locked in dark rooms, being basically stuck inside for the rest of her life terrifies her.  And so Annith does what she thinks will help, she goes and makes sure to nurse the current seeress back to health, so that they will not need a new one. 

But it doesn't seem to help.  One of the younger girls is sent out instead of Annith, a girl who is not ready.  And Annith goes to protest it, only to find out that the abbess has decided to tell her she is going to train to be seeress. She gives Annith a choice when she refuses.  She can either stay and study to become the seeress, or the abbess will find her a husband from the surrounding area.  So Annith starts doing what she can to try to figure out if there is any way around this.  She's sent her whole life training to be an assassin, and feels that her skills will be wasted if she is stuck there.  When the abbess says she must go on a trip to see what is going on herself outside the convent, Annith must give her answer.  She wants to stay and find answers, so she says yes and begins her training. But once the abbess is gone, she begins looking for answers around the convent.  What she does find only leads to more questions, and so Annith realizes she must run away.  Not just to leave, but to go out and confront the abbess with what she has learned away from the convent.

On her way out she comes across a hunt of dangerous riders.  They are the hellequin, death's riders.  Out to catch people that death is looking for.  She figures maybe they are out looking for her after she's run away from Mortain's convent.  So she pretends to be someone else to use the protection of their leader, Balthazaar. But their hunt never seems to get her to the town she needs to be, and once again she finds herself running away.  But not before she learns more about these soldiers of Mortain.  And on her next escape she gets help from another group of servants to a god, the Arduinnites.  Who aren't really fans of Mortain and his followers.  So she must prove herself to them, even though they do help her.

She will finally reach her friends, and the duchess.  But along with all of them will be the abbess.  And soon she will learn things about her past, who her parents are.  Not to mention she will learn things that will turn everything she has known upside down, and she'll wonder if any of her life has meant anything, or if it was all a lie.  She will find love, with the leader of the hellequins, and find out he may not be exactly who she thinks he is.  And in the end, she will help the duchess fight in the only method left to save her kingdom and people.

A perfect ending I have to say.  And I love how the author adds in the historical notes at the end, because I wondered which of the characters were real.  I do like that there are bits at the end about where the characters will go after this.  Something I always like to know.  I could even enjoy a bit of spin off of some of the characters.  A great, great series.  I will always recommend this to someone looking for a strong female character (3 for sure!), as well as historical fiction with a bit of fantasy added in.

Review: Dark Triumph (His Fair Assassins #2) by Robin LaFevers

It's been two years since I read an ARC of the first book in this series, Grave Mercy.  And if you go back and read my review, you can see I loved it, gave it 5 of 5 stars.  Unfortunately I didn't get the sequel as an ARC, I was sad.  And so I didn't get to continue until just recently.  I saw that the 3rd book was available as an e-galley on Edelweiss, and wanted to request it.  But, I needed to read the 2nd one.  I was lucky enough to find a copy, and ARC copy no less, of this book on YA Book Exchange.  So I made the trade.  I picked the book up this past week, and while it took me a bit to kind of remember some of the story, the writing was just as great as before.

While this is a sequel, we aren't following the same main character, Ismae, from the first book.  We are following one of the other girls that were being trained as an assassin for St. Mortain, Sybella.  Now Sybella had a secret, she was the daughter of one of the evil men who was attacking the duchess in the first book, d'Albret.  And it is because of this connection that the Abbess sends her back to the castle that he has captured and chased the duchess out of.  The one reason Sybella agreed to go back to her hell of a life, was the promise that she would get to be the one to kill her father.

The book starts out with Sybella seeing an attack about to be sprung on the duchess, and she is able to warn Ismae who is with her and they take off.  All except for the soldiers that stay to fight and hope to keep the duchess from being followed.  One fights beyond what seems possible, until finally he is on the ground.  He is captured, and is actually still alive, so he is stuck in the dungeon, as d'Albret thinks to use him to get to the duchess.  Sybella gets a message from the sisters telling her to set free the man in the dungeon, known as the Beast of Waroch.  Like his name suggests, he is HUGE!  And he is close to death.  Infections set in wounds, broken ribs, many other injuries.  She is not sure how to get him out, let alone help him to escape.  When she finally figures a plan, to get a cart to take him out, first she gets help from his guard, who for some reason helps her with the Beast.  And she is able to anger the Beast enough to get him to move himself some parts of the way.  But when she is so close to getting him in the cart and on his way, one of her taunts is too much for the Beast, and he knocks her out.  When she wakes up, she is now traveling with him, and she knows the convent will not be happy with her.  Not to mention she cannot go back now, they will know he did not kidnap her, at least not enough to get out of prison in the first place, due to his condition.  As she travels with him to find the duchess, they must avoid d'Albret's men, as well as the French, and she must work on helping him to heal.

There is so much in this story, layer after layer, connecting all the characters in such a way that all the things that happen, and the ways they react make perfect sense as you read them.  The love story is good, not insta-love, and that is nice.  No love triangle, although there may be more than one man in love with Sybella, it is in no way a love triangle.  You really root for her as you learn more and more about her story, her past, and what she has endured in her life.  While it definitely ended, unlike the first book, you can definitely see there needs to be a sequel, or finale to the series.  And it seems that 3rd one will follow one of the other girls from the convent.  Now we did also get several parts of the story that included Ismae and Duval from the first story, and it was woven into the story quite nicely.  Now, can't wait to read on, although since it isn't being published until November, you won't get to read my review of it until October.  Although I will post a rating on Goodreads as soon as it is read.

Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin #1) by Robin LaFevers

Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I got this book as an advanced readers copy from an ad in Shelf Awareness. Later on there was an ARC on the table at the bookstore where I work too. It sounded really good. But then it sat on my shelf for a month or so. The back of the book said the publication date was April 3rd, so I picked it up the 2nd to last week of March, and when I walked into work that week, it was already out on the shelves! So this is not an advance review I guess. As I said, the book sat for awhile, other books seemed more interesting, and thinking I had till April, I waited. Well, I was crazy. Once I picked up the book, I was hooked from the very first page! Such a good story. The characters are so well developed, the back story is all there, and I thought the action and plots were good. I was on the edge of my seat at the end when Ismae was trying to help Duval. Of course you knew she would fall in love with him, but she knew to be cautious the whole time not knowing what he might really be up to. Ismae's life was horrible. Her father didn't want her, he even tried to make her mother miscarry her with homemade potions. It didn't work, and Ismae came out with scars. Everyone in the village thought she was cursed because of that. And finally her father got her married off to a man that was even more vile, and on the night he saw her scars, she was rescued by a priest, who passed her through the ranks until she came to the convent of St. Mortain. This was a time when the old gods had become saints in order for them to still be given respect with the new church. St. Mortain was the god/saint of death. And the girls here are trained to be assassins. Something that really appeals to Ismae, to be able to get justice on men who do things like were done to her. Who are traitors to their country. She is told who to kill, and she knows she is to do it when she sees the marque of Mortain on them. And quite often the marque is in the spot where they will be killed, the neck, the head, around the mouth for poison. One good thing Ismae has is that she is immune to the effects of poison.
Her first two assignments go well except for one small issue with each one. In fact, as she is getting assigned her 3rd person, it turns out that person shows up, and wants their help. It is Duval. She is assigned to show up as his "cousin" which during that time, is assumed to be a mistress. And she must help him protect the duchess from the French and help her find the correct suitor to save Brittany, their country. Duval is under suspicion though. And there are traitors and subplots going around the high court. Ismae must figure her way through all this intrigue and also deal with her feelings for Duval and knowing if that is why she trusts him, or if he is really trustworthy and has the duchess' best interests in mind. She learns that maybe Death's mark isn't always the end and that people can redeem themselves in St. Mortain's eyes. And she tests this, and finds it true.
I could just go on and on about how good this book was. Now, I feel it ended in a way that doesn't leave for a sequel, and this is part of a series. But from the blurb at the end of the ARC I see that we will follow one of the other convent girls, Sybella, who had become a bit of a mystery once she left the convent. So now I look forward to reading her story. My only complaint, not about the story, but that my ARC was missing pages in two places. The first place is where we learn that Duval is a bastard brother to the duchess, the 2nd part is where Ismae has finally found the marque of death on someone she has been ordered to kill, and she decides to test her theory of redemption. But we miss out on the whole thing, just getting in at the end. I will have to figure out how my ARC pages match up the real copy and go read those sections.
This will count as my "G" in my A-Z Reading Challenge. 

View all my reviews

A - Z Book Challenge

So, I really only did one book challenge last year, the Debut Author Challenge hosted by

The Story Siren. And I'm now debating whether to do that one again this year or not. But this is a challenge that sounds really interesting and different. So I'm going to try it. I'm going to go with the "B" method, of just as I read adding titles to the the list. In order to make this list, what I'll probably do is make a post, and then just add to it as I add books to the list and update it. Not sure how else to keep a list on my blog right now. I'm not so great with all the design stuff. But if any of you have suggestions on how I can do it, I'd love it! I'm kind of at the mercy of using Blogger's little widgets right now.

If you're interested in participating, just click on the button at the top of this post and follow the instructions to get involved!

A- Another Jekyll, Another Hyde by Daniel and Dina Nayeri
B- Bloodrose by Andrea Cremer
C- Fever (Chemical Garden series #2) by Lauren DeStefano
D- The Death Cure by James Dashner
E- Revealing Eden (Save the Pearls #1) by Victoria Foyt
F- First Kill (The Slayer Chronicles) by Heather Brewer
G- Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin #1) by Robin LaFever
H- Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo
I-  Incarnate by Jodi Meadows
J- Transcendence by C.J. Omololu
K- The White Oak (Imperfect Darkness #1) by Kim White
L- Rebirth (Aftertime #2) by Sophie Littlefield
M- My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers #1) by Rachel Vincent
N-  On Fire (Teen Wolf) by Nancy Holder
O- Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
P- Pure by Julianna Baggott
Q- Rift (Nightshade preQuel #1) by Andrea Cremer
R- Ripper by Amy Carol Reeves
S-  Spellcaster by Cara Lynn Shultz
T- Torn (Trylle Trilogy #2) by Amanda Hocking
U- Suck it Up and Die by Brian Meehl
V-  Redemption by Veronique Launier
W- The Weepers (Other Life #1) by Susanne Winnacker
X- Truth (XVI #2) by Julia Karr
Y- Monument 14 by EmmY Laybourne
Z- The Kill Order (MaZe Runner prequel) by James Dashner