Cerece Rennie Murphy

I normally tend to be fairly resistant to anthologies. (I tend to feel like I need to read every story in full for it to "count," yet the variety of authors means often one story or another doesn't work of me.) But I was sold on this almost entirely due to Carlos Hernandez's involvement. And I did not live to regret it.

Hernandez's story -- "Your Two Better Halves: A Dream, with Fairies, in Spanglish" was my favorite, as expected. The story is a choose-your-own adventure encounter with fey, with a personality quiz aspect as your story choices determine your options for the two halves of your fairy self at the end. I was so charmed by EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS. (I was half sturdy tree, half planetarium, by the way.)

That story would have been worth the price of admission alone, but I also loved "See a Fine Lady" by Seanan McGuire (a woman rides a unicorn into Target), "Or Perhaps Up" by C.S.E. Cooney (a woman takes an ill-fated river journey on a swan boat), among others. In general the collected tended to be a bit darker than my usual preferences, but I found enough delights here to be very happy with the book overall.… (más)

Like most anthologies, this has a lot of highs and lows and in-betweens. Unfortunately, I felt like there were more lows than anything while reading this, and even the highs were more like just okay stories that I found entertaining. Overall, my biggest grievance is that the overall reading level of the stories felt like YA or younger, despite the content being very adult. If this was a YA collection that would be perfect, but NetGalley has this categorized as adult. (I double-checked halfway through reading it because I genuinely couldn't remember.)

My rating is based on an average of all the story ratings, rounded to the nearest integer.

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Individual story ratings:

Quest for Tear Heaven - 2 Stars
This one just sort of seemed like it was written for young kids.

Glamour - 2 stars
I didn't care for the plot or the characters. The dialogue also wasn't that well-written, in my honest opinion.

See a Fine Lady - 3 stars
This was cute and whimsical. It was a pleasant enough read, but nothing really special about it.

Or Perhaps Up - 1 star
I honestly felt like the writing in this story was trying too hard to sound descriptive, including what I suspect was the misuse of a thesaurus. Did not end up even finishing the story as I didn't care for it.

Don't Let Go - 3 stars
This was engaging and fun to read, but nothing particularly blew me away about it.

The Loophole - 4 stars
A pretty solid story overall, but the romance aspect seemed a little contrived.

The Last Time of Master Tranquil Cloud - 2 stars
Took too long to kick off, I think a lot of the exposition could have been cut. I ended up skipping the story because I was bored in a few pages.

Your Two Better Halves - Not Rated
I decided to skip rating this one. It's a choose-your-own-adventure, which sounds fun in theory, but in practice is a pain in the fucking ass to try to read on a kindle. I don't want to rate the story poorly because of that, but I wasn't really able to engage with it in the way intended so I ended up skipping the story completely.

Take Only Photos - 2 stars
The writing felt like geared toward a YA audience, despite the main character being a full-on adult. That just didn't work for me.

Old Twelvey Night - 4 stars
Very well-written, entertaining, the perfect amount of whimsical. I really enjoyed this one.

The Seal Woman's Tale - 4 stars
The best story of the bunch. I thought this was really well-written, engaging, and the character work was just right for the length. Maybe more like 4.5 stars, but I only rate in whole numbers.

The Storyteller - 3 Stars
I'm not mad at this one, but it also didn't do anything for me.

Summer Skin - 3 Stars
I don't know how to feel about this one. The writing was decent, though, so I guess 3 stars is fair.

Colt's Tooth - 2 stars
Not a very strong ending to the anthology. I feel pretty shrug emoji about this.

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An e-ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for honest review.… (más)

For the past sixteen years, the Knight family have effectively been hiding in plain sight. Jill Knight, a widow with a sixteen-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old daughter, has kept the truth about their father's accidental death from them for as long as she could; now, with time running out, they have been discovered and Jill must prepare her children for what they will soon face.

Liam Knight and his sister Lilith are being hunted by The Guild - a ruthless worldwide organization that seeks to capture Lilith and exploit her unique abilities as a Seer to envision the future. Soon after they are forced to leave their home and go on the run, Lilith and Liam discover that she is not alone. There are other Seers like Lilith who are routinely kidnapped and enslaved by the Guild for the express purpose of consolidating wealth and power around the world.

But from within the organization there is a revolt brewing; Marcus Akida, a captured Seer with extraordinarily powerful visionary capabilities, quietly plots his daring escape with the help of a beautiful and tormented Seer named Alessandra. Soon joined by two other desperate Seers, also intent on fleeing, the escaped Seers travel to the same remote commune in Iowa where Liam and Lilith are living. When they are drawn to such a place, Marcus and the others each find a place where they can slowly begin to rebuild their lives and rediscover their passion for life and love.

As the Guild's efforts to locate them intensify, the Seers ban together with the misfits of the commune to fight back against the organization that threatens their lives. As they battle to save themselves, the actions of the Seers will set off a chain of events which unleashes their full power and will ultimately change everything we know or understand about the true potential that lies dormant within each of us.

This was quite the beginning to a fascinating trilogy. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the story; it was intensely dramatic and full of action. I'm completely engrossed in the Seers plight, and can't wait to find out what will happen next. I give Order of the Seers by Cerece Rennie Murphy an A! On to Book 2 of The Order of the Seers Trilogy: The Red Order!… (más)

I have never read a book about stories. I may have read books that had seers but not they weren’t the major focus. If you don’t know what seers are, seers are humans with powers that can see the future in visions. It starts off with a brother and sister, Liam and Lilli, who find their mother dead because The Guild was searching for Lilli who is a seer. Their mother leaves some videos for them, explaining why she never told them about The Guild, about their father’s death, among other secrets. After the siblings hear this discovery, they follow the instructions their mom left them and travel to a place where they will find help.

The Guild is a place where people capture seers in order to study them and use them against the world to manipulate. At The Guild, we are introduced to two seers: Alessandra and Marcus. Marcus has been waiting for Alessadra, for she will help restore the order of the seers. Out of all the seers in this book, I believe Alessandra is the one that has gone through more torture, has seen the most deaths and this is why she is shy and reserved. Marcus shares his story with Alessandra and she starts trusting him more and more each day. They come up with an escape plan and finally they leave The Guild with other seers that managed to see what was going to happen. They travel to the same place that Liam and Lilli traveled, which is where humans are living.

Alessandra has seen visions of Liam and herself being together, which to her is strange because Liam barely acknowledges her. I ship these two characters a lot. There is a scene where absoluetly nothing is happening and I was already fanning my face because it was intense and steamy…without anything happening, I know. You have to read to find out ;)

Humans and seers unite to fight the evil that has overpowered their nation to destroy the seers. The ending is sad. There isn’t really much of a cliff-hanger. Yes, it continues but it doesn’t leave you hanging, but what it does do is that at the end it includes ONE page of the second book and it includes a cliff-hanger!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is described in third person point of view, which gives more insight into the other characters and I found that quite enjoyable and I could understand more of what was going on.… (más)