Just a quick update...

Hey guys. Some of you might remember that I posted a review of Wolf Dawn by Susan Cartwright the other week and said that I was not a fan of the cover.

Well....

Susan e-mailed me with her new cover, here it is!

I think the new cover looks great! It really shows what the book is about with the spaceship crashing onto a foreign world. It also clearly defines the book as a sci-fi novel which I didn't think the old cover did.

But what do you think, let me know in the comments below and go and check out Susan's great book at Amazon.co.uk

Psychs, A. H. Amin

Publishers: Author House UK

Pages: 423

Main Characters:

Hassan, Solomon, Adam

Based in the near future, set in the two great cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Psychs tells the story of Hassan, a man with a unique gift. Hassan has eight spiritual guardians who protect him throughout his life. One of them is his mother Sara and the other seven are U.S. soldiers who died in the attempt of protecting Sara from Iraqi soldiers during the First Gulf War. The ghosts protect Hassan as he grows from a boy into a man and guide him throughout his life in Abu Dhabi and his days as a student in Liverpool.

However, the ghosts also teach him some of their own skills that give Hassan an edge. These include first aid, martial arts and other techniques that the ghosts learned during their time in the U.S. army. Hassan believes that the ghosts were sent to protect him for a reason and that with this gift, he can do real good in the world. Hassan decides to use his guardians and the skills they have taught him to become a vigilantly and help stop bad people from operating in his city. However, when an international terrorist organisation plans to destroy parts of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Hassan soon finds that he is in over his head. He will need help not just from his ghosts, but also from a former U.S. Seal to overcome this threat!  

Although I did enjoy the story behind this book, I did have some issues with it. The first of these was A.H. Amin’s style when writing. At times, it really confused me. I found the grammar in the book hard to read and in some parts; it just did not make sense! For me, this made the book really hard to get into because sometimes you’d have to stop and re-read the sentences to understand what was been said/meant. At first, I thought the grammar was unintentional, but after reading some other reviews of Psychs, I discovered that other people enjoyed this style. I don’t know if it was me or if Amin’s writing style went totally over my head, but I just couldn’t get into the book as much as I usually would.

Another problem I had was the dialogue between Hassan and the ghosts. I found it difficult to follow what was been said by them and who said it because the characters were so similar. The ghosts were also always chopping and changing between who went to scout, or who was communicating between Hassan and another ghost or who was watching the bad guys. This further confused me when trying to picture which ghost was where! Plus, when you add in the fact that I was having problems following the story anyway, this issue made it even harder to get into the book!

I know it probably sounds like I’m making this book sound totally unappealing but I am giving an honest review and these were the problems I had with it. Of course, there were parts of the books I enjoyed. I really liked the idea of the ghosts and them teaching Hassan their skills and him using them for the greater good. I also liked that the fact that it was set in the UAE, because it was refreshing reading a book that was not based in Britain or America. But most of all I really liked Adam’s story; I just wish Amin did a better job putting that story across to me!

Overall, I did enjoy the book but couldn’t get into it because of how it was written. I would suggest this book to anyone who enjoys these sorts of paranormal thriller novels. If you would like to purchase a copy of this novel, it is available on Kindle at Amazon.co.uk or for Kobo click here.

For author’s official Facebook page click here.

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my Book of the Month Competition for your chance to win a FREE copy of the Sword and Scimitar by Simon Scarrow! To enter, just follow the instructions on this post and for more information click here.

Happy Booking Christmas- An Epic Giveaway!

Hello everyone! There’s only about six weeks left until Christmas day and it got me thinking ‘I should do something special for all of you guys’. As some of you know, I have been blogging now for over one year! I wanted to do something special on that anniversary but because of university deadlines and other commitments I didn’t have the time to do it. Anyway, as part of that celebration and because it’s Christmas, I am going to do a massive give away where ten of you could win one of ten Christmas presents including books, sweets and a £10 Amazon gift card for absolutely FREE! Here are the prizes you could win:

1.       One Amazon.co.uk £10 gift voucher.

2.       Sworn Sword and The Splintered Kingdom by James Aitcheson

3.       The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien

4.       50 Books to Read Before You Die Book Mark.

5.       75g tube of sweets

6.       The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

7.       75g tube of sweets 

8.       The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien

9.       Fatherland, Robert Harris

10.   75g tube of sweets

If you would like the chance to win a FREE £10 Amazon voucher or one of these other great prizes then all you have to do is go to my Facebook page and ‘like’ it. Once you have liked it, please leave me a quick comment on my wall telling me you would like to enter this Christmas competition. If you have already liked my Facebook page all you have to do is leave me a comment saying you would like to enter J

The winners will be chosen my putting all the entrants’ names into a hat and picking the names out one at a time. The first named picked out will win the 10^th Prize (75g tube of sweets) and the last name picked out will win the 1^st prize (£10 Amazon gift voucher). I will make a video of the winners been chosen and post it on my YouTube channel on Christmas Eve (24^th December). I will announce the winners on my blog, Facebook page and the prizes will be posted as soon as the Post Offices have re-opened after Christmas.

I must stress that the competition is only open for people LIVING IN THE U.K. I’m afraid it would cost me too much to send the prizes abroad.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my post. If you have any questions then just let me know J Good luck to anyone who enters and have a great Christmas.

Best Wishes, adam-p-reviews

Link to Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/adampreviews

Wolf Dawn, Susan Cartwright

Publishers: Hotspur

Pages: 344

Main Characters:

Ash, Lindha, Neopol Jones, Larren Forseth

Hundreds of centuries in the future, where humans have conquered and settled the galaxy, Wolf Dawn tells the tale of Ashton Chayton; the Prince of Delian. Delian was one of the first planets in the galaxy to become colonised by the human race. Because of this fact, the long period of habitation there has given the Delians a unique evolutionary gift, the ability to mind-touch. Mind-touch lets Delians read another being’s mind and for a time, lets them jump into that being’s body and become them. However, the gift is also a curse on the Delians as the evil and cunning Admiral Neopol Jones and his overlord John Andros attack Delian in an attempt to exterminate the Delian race because of this unique gift!

Luckily, Ash’s father, the King of Delian, mind-touches Neopol Jones and discovers his plans. The King smuggles Ash and his mother off Delian in an attempt to save his life and in an attempt to save the Delian race. They make it just in time and escape into space. However, this is only the first trail in young Ashton’s life. The death of his home world will plague him for the rest of his life. Ash’s need for revenge will see him grow older and stronger in the hopes of killing the man who was wrongly accused of destroying Delian; Larren Forseth. But during that time, Ash will learn to control his gift and find love as he tries to answer the many questions asked about his past and his future.

This book was amazing, but I must confess that when I picked it up to read I didn’t think it was going to be as good as it was. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling the book was going to be about werewolves! I think the front cover threw me a little bit. However, when I started reading it, I was pleasantly and excitingly surprised to find that it was an epic sci-fi novel and I mean it was really epic! From the first page, I was hooked! I love Ashton as a character. He is so vulnerable at the start of the book but he grows to become the hero he is destined to be!

I also loved the detail Susan Cartwright puts into the book. At the top of each chapter there is a short verse giving some context to the themes that happen in the chapter. I thought it was great how Cartwright used these to subtly give some more depth to her universe by giving the reader a little bit of history to help explain events in the book.

What I will say is that there are some weird parts to the book like Ash mind-touching a man who is making love to his mother! It may seem a bit of a strange topic, but stick with it because it is a crucial part in explaining what Ash’s motives and goals are and why he is the way he is.

Overall, this book was great and is by far one of the best books I’ve read this year. I think I liked it so much because it was not what I was expecting. Also, I was already looking for a sci-fi epic to read and Wolf Dawn really fits the bill!

I’d like to say a massive thank you to Susan Cartwright for getting in touch and introducing me to her wonderful work, I can’t wait to get my hands on the next book in the series Wolf Revenge! I would suggest this book to anyone who is a sci-fi lover! If you would like to purchase this novel, it is available in both paperback and for Kindle at Amazon.co.uk.

For author’s official website click here.

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my Book of the Month Competition for your chance to win a FREE copy of the Sword and Scimitar by Simon Scarrow! To enter, just follow the instructions on this post and for more information click here.

From Man to Man, D. E. M. Emrys

Publishers: Four Branches Publishing

Pages: 25

Main Characters:

Draven.

A man, with a mysterious past and an attitude for violence, From Man to Man tells the short tale of Draven Reinhardt. After giving up his old life as a ‘Merc’, Draven retires to a small village with his woman in the hope of living out a simple, peaceful life. What he doesn’t know is that the life of an average villager is hard and good wages aren’t easy to come by. With the desire to earn more money, Draven grudgingly takes on an easy job that brings him back into his old life. With his trusty axe and his friend Shrike, Draven sets out on his mission to escort the local tax collector to the village. He soon finds out that the job isn’t as easy as it seems but as Draven says ‘Any coin’s a coin’.

This was a great book. The story had me from the start and I really liked the character of Draven. He has a dark past, is quick to temper and is funny at the same time, which for me is an ideal character. The only problem I had was the length of the story, it was only twenty-five pages long and by the end, I wanted to just keep on reading! Luckily for me, David E. M. Emrys is writing a full-length novel based around Draven and I can’t wait to read it!

Great short story and a very promising start to a full-length novel. I would suggest this book to anyone who is a fan of fantasy or to anyone who liked reading the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss or the Broken Empire Series by Mark Lawrence.

If you would like to buy this novel, it is available at Amazon.co.uk and for author’s official website click here.

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my Book of the Month Competition for your chance to win a FREE copy of the Sword and Scimitar by Simon Scarrow! To enter, just follow the instructions on this post and for more information click here.

Sword and Scimitar, Simon Scarrow

Publishers: Headline

Pages: 430

Main Characters:

Thomas, Richard, Maria.

Simon Scarrow is back with his brand new novel the Sword and Scimitar! The book is based around the Ottoman/Turk invasion of Malta in 1565 and tells the tale of an English Knight called Thomas. Thomas is part of the Templar Order of St. John that has its base on Malta. However, as a young man Thomas is exiled from the order because of a love affair he has with a young noble woman who is in the Order’s protection.

 Thomas returns home to England and lives out the next twenty years of his life on his small land holding. But, one day a French Knight turns up at Thomas’s farm with a summons from the Order’s new leader, telling Thomas to return to Malta to help fight off the imminent Ottoman threat. He decides that he will return to Malta, but not to help fight the Turks, but in the vain hope that his love (Maria) will still be there. Unluckily for Thomas, the French Knight has been noticed by the authorities in London and Thomas has to travel there to explain why a Catholic, French Knight has been in correspondence with a Catholic English Knight, in what is now a Protestant Kingdom. Thomas is confronted by Robert Cecil and explains about his summons back to the Order. Cecil seizes this opportunity and sets Thomas a mission to receive an important document that was lost in Malta with the death of Henry VIII. To aid him in this mission, Cecil sends one of his best agents called Richard to act as Thomas’s squire and to look for the document. What Thomas and Richard don’t know is that their coming together is not a coincidence, but part of a thorough plan of the Queen of England’s spymaster.

When the duo reaches Malta, they soon discover that finding the document is the least of their worries. They will have to fight the hardest battle of their lives to help the small Christian garrison stem the flow of the Ottoman horde that looks to conquer the whole of Europe! Plus, enemies within the Order of St. John will make it harder for Richard to find the document and Thomas to find Maria.

This was an excellent book from Simon Scarrow and shed some light on a period of history that I was not that familiar with, but which defined the era of conflict between Christianity and Islam. The story was also interesting because it told the tale of a Catholic Knight living in Elizabethan England. It showed the dual loyalties to both the crown and the church which many Catholics had, but which over the centuries were discriminated against because they were seen (by Protestants) as been only loyal to the Pope. The story of the siege was also brilliant and extremely detailed, telling of the new war techniques, which both sides used as warfare moved away from sword, shield and bow, to gun, cannon and pike.

However, I did have one issue with this book and that was the ending; it seemed to drag! I personally think if Scarrow ended the book a hundred pages earlier then it would have been much better. I thought the last hundred pages really didn’t need to be there, it sort of reminded me of a movie when it cuts to black and you think ‘that’s the ending’ but then it goes on for another thirty minutes which doesn’t really need to be there.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy the book and would suggest it to any Simon Scarrow fans. I would also suggest it to fans of C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series because they are both set in the Tudor period and both revolve around a mystery.

For author’s official website click here.

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my Book of the Month Competition for your chance to win a FREE copy of this book!. To enter, just follow the instructions on this post and for more information click here.

Book of the Month Competition- November

Wow I can't believe it's already November! Where has this year gone? What's even weirder is that today is adam-p-reviews' first anniversary! It was exactly one year today that I posted my first ever post 'My First Post: About me' and I'd like to say a massive thank you to all of you that have read my posts, liked my pages and commented on my reviews, you guys are the best!

Anyway moving onto the Competition! This month's Book of the Month is Simon Scarrow's brand new novel the Sword and Scimitar. Now, as I'm sure some of you are aware, I haven't actually finished or reviewed the Sword and Scimitar yet (I've about one hundred pages to go)! Nevertheless, the book so far has been brilliant and it has just been released so I think it would make a brilliant prize to any of you hisfic fans out there, and you can win it for FREE! The review for Sword and Scimitar is now up on my blog!

All you have to do is click on this link to my Facebook page, ‘like’ my page and then write a comment saying you would like to enter the competition. If you are not on Facebook but are a member of Blogger, you can enter the competition by following my Blog directly through Blogger by clicking on the ‘join this site’ button on the right hand side of the page. 

Remember it’s FREE to enter and it will not cost you a penny to get the book in the post. So why not have a go? You could win an excellent novel for absolutely FREE!

Good luck to everyone that enters, I hope you’ll have as much fun with the competition as I will. I’ll be choosing the winner on the 3oth November . For further details on the competition such as how the winner will be chosen and how the winner will be announced please click here.

And the Winner is...

And the winner of my October Book of the Month Competition is... Billy Lyons! Congratulations Billy I hope you enjoy Prince of Thorns it is an amazing book! If you could just e-mail me your details at adampreviews@gmail.com and then I can send your prize off as soon as possible!

Thanks to everyone that entered, sorry to all of you that didn't win, better luck next time. November's Book of the Month will be Simon Scarrow's brand new novel Sword and Scimitar (review of which will be up shortly) so why not enter for that competition?