Monday, March 17, 2014

What I'm Reading Over Spring Break



Seems crazy that on Saturday where I live was seventy for a high and then yesterday it didn't even hit forty and was snowing. So, I would love to escape to the beach - or barring that, a couple good beach-y reads. However, I seem to be fresh out of tropical climates on my book shelf. Instead, here are the books I plan to read this week.

The king’s orders were clear enough. “Move the tower’s shadow,” he bellowed. “I refuse to deliver my commencement speech from the dark.”

As the newly appointed mage to the Crown of Tirlin, Meralda Ovis has no choice but to undertake King Yvin’s ill-conceived task. Tirlin’s first female mage, and the youngest person to ever don the robes of office, Meralda is determined to prove once and for all that she deserves the title. The Tower, though, holds ancient secrets all its own. Secrets that will soon spell destruction for all of Tirlin—unless Meralda can unravel a monstrous curse laid by a legendary villain seven centuries before she was born.

An ancient curse. A haunted tower. A clamorous gathering of nobles, mages, and kings from the Five Realms come together in Tirlin for the fifth-year Accords. Meralda finds herself facing far darker foes than any mere shadow of the tower.


Before the Dawn Cataclysm, Moander the Darkbringer corrupted Tyche, Goddess of Luck. In a desperate attempt to preserve Tyche's goodness, the gods clove her in twain, creating two daughter goddesses: Tymora, Lady Luck; and Beshaba, Lady Doom. In the eons since then, the two sisters have existed in total enmity. 
Now a great power has hatched a mad scheme to re-create the goddess Tyche by reuniting Tymora and Beshaba, regardless of the potentially calamitous consequences. 

In a decision fraught with godly intrigue, Joel, the Rebel Bard, priest of Finder, is chosen to uncover whoever is behind the abduction of the sister goddesses. Aided by his old allies, Holly Harrowslough and Jas, and his new friend, the kender Emilo Haversack, Joel must find a way to prevent the merger of Tymora and Beshaba before disaster overtakes the luckless Realms. 


From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil.

Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart.


Then one terrible night, the secrets they have all been keeping lead to an unspeakable tragedy. As Celaena's world shatters, she will be forced to give up the very thing most precious to her and decide once and for all where her true loyalties lie...and whom she is ultimately willing to fight for.



These books will be read in order and I've already started the first one. Of course, I'm not sure I'll make them all before the end of Spring Break, but I'll sure try. How about you? Are you taking books with you on vacation? If not a vacation, do you at least have some warm weather reads?