Rachel Vincent revealed the cover to the third book of her Unbound series, [amazon_link id=”0778314308″ target=”_blank” ]Oath Bound[/amazon_link]. Set to release February 19, 2013 by Mira.
Oath Bound by Rachel Vincent
The girl sorta kinda looks like Miley Cyrus, don’t you think? Overall it looks fine.
Summary (Goodreads)
The Tower Syndicate will fall…
The secret daughter of the head of an infamous Skilled crime family, Sera Brandt has hidden her past, her potential and especially her powers. But when a tragedy strikes her other family, Sera needs justice. And the only way to get it is to reveal her heritage– including a rare Skill– and take the reins of the Tower Syndicate from her cunning and malicious aunt.
if he can figure out how…
Kristopher Daniels might have the answer. He’s fought the syndicate to protect his sisters, but he’d never realized just how close to the new heir he needed to get….
And if they can survive.
Neither is used to trusting. But there’s something between them that can’t be ignored. And so Sera is on the run with a man she can’t figure out, a target on her back and the new knowledge of just how powerful she really is….
eARC via NetGalley from Harlequin UK (my request should have been declined because it was the UK publisher but I was so excited it was approved!).
My Grade
Plot: 5
Setting: 4
Writing: 4
Originality: 5
Characters: 4
Romance: 4
Overall: 26/30 86%
Title/Cover Bonus: 5
Overall
A nice addition to the Unbound series with a likeable hero and a broken woman with a sailor’s mouth who cares more about her loved ones than she does about herself.
I won a signed copy from Rachel herself! It was supposed to be an ARC but she accidently signed and shipped finished copies instead. Her mistake was greatly appreciated. 🙂 Thanks Rachel!
My Grade
Plot: 5
Setting: 4
Writing: 5
Originality: 5
Characters: 5
Romance:4
Overall: 28/30 93%
Title/Cover Bonus: 4
Overall
An epically twisted plot full of tension, conflict, and action. Rachel Vincent has penned a masterpiece of Urban Fantasy.
“Spoilers Don’t Spoil Anything“. Do you agree with this? Go read the article if you’d like more information. If you haven’t read Harry Potter or seen the last two movies AVOID THAT SITE!
To an extent I guess I can agree. But am I happy that I’ve stumbled upon a spoiler? NO! I actually do not want to know what happens in anything really. Trailers and summaries make me nervous; especially when it comes to a book I want and or plan to read. This also goes for movies.
For example, I’m currently reading BLOOD BOUND by Rachel Vincent. I went to Goodreads to update my reading progress and just decided to go ahead and read the summary. I was on page 172. 172. I thought for sure I was safe from finding out anything too terribly spoilery but NO! The summary told me what was going to happen in the next 20 pages or so. There are 463 pages in this book so that’s approximately half way through the book and the back summary of the book is disclosing information that happens beyond the half way mark! That to me is way too much information into the story to be putting it right out there.
The summary spoiled that plot point for me. Of course it wasn’t a huge plot point but it was a pretty big one that I hadn’t figured out yet and I was quite upset because this book has some serious tension! And I was just given some relief and then MORE tension because of the summary. Now, if I had read the summary before I started the book I would have been like, when the hell is that going to happen? I’m nearly half way done with this book. Needless to say I stopped reading the summary once I stumbled upon that bit of spoilery information. Yes, I didn’t even finish reading a stinking summary to avoid spoilers!
I tweeted about that summary to Rachel and she responded back saying sorry, she didn’t write the blurb. I say to her, it’s okay, but really, whom ever did write it should be hung. There’s no reason why that much information would have to be disclosed to get a reader to pick up the book. There are ways to say something to grab a reader’s attention without giving out specific information. GAH! To say I’m a bit upset is putting it lightly. I may never read another summary again. I usually don’t but like I said I thought I was safe! YOU ARE NEVER SAFE! Unless you’ve already read the book or seen the movie of course.
Two other times I have come across spoilers that affected me personally.
One was when I received my hardcopy of BREAKING DAWN, I started it in Kindle Version, and flipped to the back of the book because I’d heard there was a cool cheat sheet to the vampires and their respective abilities. I got to one name and was like, who the hell is Reneesme(highlight to see spoilery name)? DUN DUN DUN…. SPOILER ALERT! OMFG!
And lastly, I received several emails or Goodreads messages from readers who had seen that I had received an early copy of the last book in Rachel Vincent’s Shifter series, ALPHA. They begged me to know if Marc and Faythe ended up together or if Jace win over Faythe. I did reply but I did not give them what they wanted to know. I just can’t support spoilers!
I guess when it comes to the last book in a series you’re almost dying of anticipation that you may be okay with finding out that must know piece of information. Me? Not so much. I want to harness that lust for the next word and the next piece of information while I’m reading. Finding out a spoiler takes that reaction away from me. I want to feel the suspense. I want to feel the anxiety that the character is feeling. I don’t want to know whether or not they end up together before I find out with the characters! A great example of this very thing is SHADOWFEVER by Karen Marie Moning. DREAMFEVER left off on a MASSIVE cliffhanger. I mean gigantic! I did not peruse the internets to find leaked spoilers. Instead I used my love for the books (characters) to fuel my need to read it for myself.
What about you? Do you avoid spoilers at all costs like me? Not even reading summaries?
I write my reviews with the point to not disclose even the smallest piece of spoilery information. I do post the summaries though, so it’s your choice of whether you read them or not!
Get your FREE Rachel Vincent novella from her Soul Screamers series a full week earlier than the release date!
Tod Hudson was a typical teenager. He liked girls, sports, food and tolerated his younger brother, Nash. In fact, he had his whole life in front of him–and due to his bean sidhe heritage, it was going to be a very long life indeed. And then the car accident occurred. Suddenly Tod’s future wasn’t so sure, and he had to make a choice. Life… Death… or something Between…. – Goodreads
BooksOnBoard has it for FREE in the PDF format! If you own an eReader you should be able to download and transfer it over. Kindle owners can send it to your Free Kindle Conversion email address, wait for the reformatted document and transfer it over and get to reading!
The KindleEdition will be available on December 1st and it should be for free even though right now it’s listed at $2.39.
The cover is pretty but he seems waay too young! He looks 13!
If you’ve been following me for a while then you know just how much I LOVE Rachel Vincent’s Shifter series.
This coming week she will release her final installment to this beloved series with ALPHA.
I’ve already devoured Alpha through the lovely promotion done by NetGalley. You can read my review HERE. While I wasn’t a fan of the ending, because of the fact that it was ENDING, I really enjoyed Alpha.
Rachel was so kind to add The Cozy Reader as a stop on her Alpha Blog Tour. Below she discusses the lovely and ever increasing in popularity, love triangles.
Love triangles. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t deny they’re a large presence in romance, as well as in genres which typically have heavy romance subplots, like my Shifters series. Now normally, I’m a path-not-taken kind of girl. So why, Rachel, you might be thinking, did you decide to take the Shifters series down the love-triangle path?
The simple answer is that I didn’t. Not originally.
I come to urban fantasy by way of horror and high fantasy, rather than through romance, so when I started Stray, I had no idea there were genre expectations for the romance subplot. And what little I may have intuited probably came through movie watching. I didn’t know that love triangles were a common “thing.” I didn’t know that romances were supposed to have happy endings. I didn’t know that what I was writing would eventually be shelved in the romance section of your local bookstore (if you’re in the US).
And I didn’t intend for the whole Marc/Jace thing to be a major focus of the books. So imagine my surprise now that “Who is she going to pick?” has become the question I’m asked most often. By far. You guys are really serious about this! 😉
So what did I intend? I intended for Faythe to have options. Choices. If you’ve read the series, you know that freedom and independence are two of the big themes. Faythe is a feminist living in a staunchly patriarchal society, and while her father is one of the more liberal Alphas, most of the others—even his allies—are not so eager to give the few women in their society such extreme freedoms of choice. Because they’re needed to repopulate the entire werecat species.
So it was really important to me for Faythe to know she has options, even if no one else recognizes that fact.
I’ve heard from a lot of people who seem to think that the love triangle aspect is the true fantasy element in my urban fantasy (Evidently the shape shifting doesn’t count!) because no one in real life could possibly have two such wonderful men interested in them. But that, I believe, is not true. I’ve known many people (and have, on occasion been one of them) who had romantic interest from more than one person at a time. How many people from your high school got more than one invitation to prom? How many girls (or guys) were secretly (or not so secretly) crushed on by their sig. other’s best friend? Or some stranger? How many junior high (or college girls) are in love with an entire string of boys they’ve never even spoken to?
Does everyone act on more than one interest at a time? Of course not. But some do. Even in real life. Especially at Faythe’s particular position in life.
By the end of the series, it’s easy to forget that Faythe is only twenty three years old. In the beginning, she’s stubborn and impulsive, fighting for her freedom before she really has the means to defend it. But a couple of books later, we have a better view of the society she grew up in and we come to understand that freedom isn’t just going to be handed to her. She’s going to have to fight for it, and fight she does. She takes on enormous responsibility and makes decisions knowing that someone’s going to die, no matter what she chooses. So it’s easy to forget that most people her age have no idea who they want to spend the rest of their lives with, and of those who have made that decision by twenty-three, more than half (in the US, at least) will later change their minds completely.
So let me pose a question (in good, clean fun) to all the Marc/Faythe/Jace skeptics out there, criticizing Faythe for “dragging” this out: do you think it would be responsible to make a decision of this magnitude—a life-long promise—without thoroughly exploring all of your options? Wouldn’t that be doing a disservice to both men involved? If you were Marc/Jace, would you want Faythe to commit to you without knowing for sure what she wants? Wouldn’t that be worse than taking the time to explore the issue properly?
Okay, that was more than one question, and since you can’t tell my tone from a type-written essay, let me assure you all that I’m smiling as I write this. I love all the discussion and dissenting opinions. 😉
That said, do I mind it if you prefer one guy over the other? No! I love that! I also love that the opinions so far are almost split down the middle. And I’m thoroughly amused by all the people who love one or the other the most because “he’s hotter.” I may be the writer, but you guys have some great imaginations! 😉
Thanks so much for having me Jessica!
Alpha Teaser
"Yeah. And if you try to stop her, she’ll ground you till your thirty." -from Alpha, pg 437
Giveaway
If you haven’t already pre-ordered your copy of Alpha yet, (why not!?!) then this is your chance to enter to receive a copy!
Share the trailer on your blog and report back to Rachel for a chance to win an early, signed copy of Alpha! Ends Wednesday, September 15, 11:59 (central).
I was a fan of the first cover of this series but then they switched it up after that with the cropping and the model and since then they just haven’t been awesome.
I’m loving that there’s a guy with Kaylee on this one. I like the blue. But I can’t wait to see what the UK version will be because the UK covers for this series are perfect.
