KindleUnlimited – Page 4

Into the Fire by Jodi McIsaac (The Thin Veil #2)

May 13, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: Cedar returns to Tir na nOg with her husband Finn and daughter Eden to restart their lives after they defeated the previous evil King.

Last summer I picked up the first book in the series (Through the Door) on a whim. It had an interesting blurb and was cheap.

The series takes a single mom who discovers her daughter has the power to open a door to anyplace she can think of.

Through the first book Cedar finds the father of her daughter who left to protect her, the fact that her mother is not her mother and that she is really the daughter of a king and queen of another world of immortals that were ancient Gods of celtic lore.

Cedar, with her “˜gift of humanity’ was able to defeat the evil king, save her daughter and be reunited with her true love. It wasn’t a great book but it was an enjoyable enough beach read.

Into the Fire picks up again almost immediately. Cedar, Finn and Eden head to Tir na nOg to start a new life. But almost immediately she finds that the council has been infiltrated by Nuala (who had kidnapped Eden) in the first book. This comes to a head when Nuala tries to become queen and the only one that has a better claim to it is Cedar herself.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

April 30, 2014 by Adam Shields

Part of my goal this year is to catch up on all of the classic audiobooks that I have picked up over the years. I picked up nearly 20 free classics last year when Audible and Amazon were promoting their kindle book/audiobook integration (whispersync). And you can still pick up over 100 classic audiobooks for $0.99 each.

While I have seen a couple of movies based on Jane Austen books, prior to this reading of Pride and Prejudice, I have not read Austen before.

As I have been reading through a number of classics over the past year or so there has definitely been a mixed bag. Some are clearly classics because they brought something new (but do not feel all that great because that new feature is now common, think Citizen Kane.) Others really are great and their greatness is still visible. I would put Pride and Prejudice in the later category.

The story is fairly familiar. It is a proto-romantic comedy. There is misunderstanding and unrequited love. There is the guy that looks good but is not. There is the guy that seems annoying, but is really the right one. There are all kinds of situations (and personal pride) that keep the lovers apart. And there is a real sense of comedy, although not the slapstick or baudy that is common among a lot of modern romantic comedy. What is clear is that family honor is one of the biggest reasons that keeps the two apart and that is certainly not what would keep a couple apart today.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming

April 21, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: Ernst Bloefeld (of SPECTRE) is back and has come up with a new scheme.

When I was a kid I loved James Bond movies. And I still mostly like new James Bond movies. But as I re-watch old ones the cartoonish villains bug me. Lasers to shoot down rockets, stealing all the gold in Fort Knox, etc. are just a bit silly.

I stumbled on the movie of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service sometime last year and made it through 20 or 30 minutes. The set up is a bit ridiculous. The bad guy has a lair in the Alps where beautiful girls go to get rid of their allergies. James Bond sneaks in find out what is going on.

Timebound by Rysa Walker (Chronos Files #1)

April 3, 2014 by Adam Shields

I am reposting this review because the kindle edition of Timebound on sale for $1.99 is part of the Oct $3.99 or less sale. Also the rest of the series is on sale as well.
Summary: Sixteen year old Kate must time travel to restore the timeline and stop her Grandfather and Aunt from taking over the world.

One of the things I like most about Amazon is their willingness to experiment. Amazon started the Breakthrough Novel contest several years ago and it has really generated some good books. Timebound is the overall winner and the young adult category winner for 2013.

But that is only one part of the experimentation of this book. Amazon also has started pre-releasing 4 books a month to Amazon Prime members with their Kindle First program. If you are an Amazon Prime member you can pick one of those four books to keep for free (and buy the others if you want.) Timebound was part of the December offering. I picked the kindle version up for free, and then used some promotional credit at Audible to get the audiobook (it was only $1.99 with purchase of the kindle book.)

Amazon’s experiment seems to have worked. After only a month from its official release, Timebound has over 1300 reviews and more than 1200 of them are 4 or 5 star reviews.

Timebound is about a 16 year old girl that discovers that her grandmother (whom her Mother does not get along with and whom Kate barely knows) is dying of cancer. Her Grandmother (Katherine) has moved to DC to be near Kate and wants Kate to move into her home part time so they can get to know one another. Kate will inherit the house and the entire estate when Katherine dies.

Through the Door by Jodi McIsaac

February 16, 2014 by Adam Shields

Reposting this review from last summer because Through the Door and the sequel Into the Fire are on sale for $1.99 (audiobooks are only $0.99 with purchase of the kindle book) as part of the Kindle Daily Deal for Feb 16th only. The third book in the series is available as a pre-order for only $4.99.

Summary: Modern fantasy using Celtic lore as a basis for the storyline.

Book discovery is the biggest problems for authors in a world that has an over abundance of free or cheap ebooks. No reader has to ever pay for a book again if they choose. Every day there are literally hundreds of free books available through Amazon or other ebook providers. This is in addition to the thousands of public domain books and library books available.

This is why being chosen for Amazon’s Kindle Daily Deals is so important. Almost every Kindle Daily Deal book breaks into the top 100 for at least the day of the deal and often for several days after.

I rarely buy books from the Kindle Daily Deals, not because they are not great deals but because I have have hundreds of books already purchased and unread already on my kindle.

But for some reason I picked up Through the Door when it was a Kindle Daily Deals and also picked up the accompanying audiobook (so kindle book and audiobook were $3.98 total).

Through the Door is another modern fantasy using the Irish fairy tales as the jumping off point. Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan, Michael Scott, Orson Scott Card and many other authors have already used the ancient stories to mine ideas for new books. While the ideas are not completely original, the execution is pretty good.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Book & Movie Review)

January 17, 2014 by All Old Users

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is known by many to be an American classic. The novel, which takes place during the American Civil War, is about a family of a mother and four sisters. Because their family has fallen on hard times and their father is off fighting in the war, the story is about these young girls coping with poverty and the hardships of life with only each other and their mother there to guide them. Beloved by many, the novel can be seen as a comedy, romance, tragedy, and drama because the story contains aspects of a number of different genres and is based on real life.

Our Common Prayer: A Field Guide to the Book of Common Prayer

January 9, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: A guide to the parts and functions of the book of common prayer service (not really to using the book itself).

Over the past several years I have been paying much more attention to the resources of higher church, especially in the areas of the liturgy. However, temperamentally and experientially I am still a clearly low church Christian.

Part of what I have been talking about with Spiritual Director has been exactly that. I have been trying to get back into the practice of fixed hour prayer. Several years ago, I was able to do that fairly regularly when my oldest niece was an infant (and I was the nanny.) But then a second niece was born and the naps were no longer overlapping and fixed hour prayer went out the window.

Even before reading Alan Jacob’s Book of Common Prayer: a Biography or reading Susan Howatch’s Church of England series, I was interested in the Book of Common Prayer as a spiritual practice.

Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century

January 8, 2014 by Adam Shields

Reposting this review because Farewell is the Jan 8 Kindle Daily Deal and on sale for $1.99 (the audiobook is only $0.99 with purchase of the kindle book.)

Takeaway: The actual workings of spy tradecraft is as odd as the fictional ones.

Farewell is the code name of one of the most important spy stories of the 20th century. A Russian KGB agent, frustrated with his treatment by the KGB, turned over thousands of pages of documents to the French secret service (the FBI equivalent, not the CIA equivalent) and was perhaps more responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union than any other single person.

The story really is both incredible and fairly simple. Vladimir Ippolitovitch Vetrov, a talented athlete, a good student and a handsome young man is recruited to the KGB. He is trained as a foreign operative and serves two terms outside of Russia. But because of some of the problems of the KGB and some of Vetrov’s own problems he gets called back to Moscow and ends up as a technical analyst.

Frustrated by his lack of importance and the lack of respect he feels he is getting, he decides to become an informant and contact the French DST. Working with a French secret service he is first given a handler (a businessman that is close, but not a spy) and then a single agent. But it may have been the very lack of tradecraft that allows Vetrov to sneak out hugely important technical details of the Soviet infrastructure, military and spy systems.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

December 4, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: The children’s dystopian book that everyone but me has read. The Giver always makes me think of the Giving Tree. That association has kept me from reading it all these years. And I am too old to have read it in school myself. But these days it is on lots of “best books for … Read more

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries #2)

October 21, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: Lord Peter’s brother is accused of murdering his sister’s fiance and Peter has to find the truth.

Dorothy Sayers is best known as an early 20th century crime novelist. But she was also a well known apologist, one of the intellectual founders of the modern classical education movement (which is popular among many Christian homeschooling groups) and was a friend of CS Lewis, Tolkien and many other better known authors.

Clouds of Witness is the second of the Lord Peter Wimsey books. It can be read as a stand alone books (and it is in the public domain so it can be found for free or cheap in ebook formats.)

Lord Peter is the middle child in an aristocratic family. His older brother is a Duke and a Peer of the Realm. His younger sister is an eligible young woman and engaged to married. Lord Peter has a hobby, solving crimes, especially murders. Being a detective is not particularly encouraged by his brother, but once his brother is accused of murder, it is a needed skill.