Hi, lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Sandy
Lender and her new book, “Move the Stars”! For other stops on her Goddess Fish
Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in
this post.
Be sure to make it to the
end of this post to enter to win a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Sandy
and to increase your chances of winning!
Thanks for stopping
by! Wishing you lots of luck in this
fabulous giveaway!
Move the Stars
by Sandy Lender
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GENRE: YA Fantasy
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BLURB:
“Move
the Stars” offers a sometimes-humorous, but always magical, story of
16-year-old Ava Stonebreaker finding and using her voice for the good of her
world. With Eddag Fen afire behind her, she journeys to her father’s home, at
first fearing she returns to him with failure as her legacy. Bringing with her
a half-blood fae, a star reader’s apprentice and news of storm stars closing
in, she also carries hope. Fanciful creatures have encouraged her to seek out
the giant dragons beyond Modric’s Pass. With spunky shoulder dragons and the
endangered arabesque to whom she sings accompanying her, Ava devises and
undertakes a daring plan to re-shake the world…and move the stars.
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EXCERPT TWO:
Ava
didn’t stop but raised a curved hand to signal that the man should follow. If
he could. She saw none of the faces in the chaos around her, merely hoping her
few friends in this wretched place would be safe.
She
dodged cracking branches, a tipped, stinking waste bucket, and stumbling people
to cross a heaving floor. Few elders would risk the loose and waving ivy
ladder; they could barely descend it if someone held its base on a calm day.
Tonight, Ava tugged its anchor to assure herself it was secure, threw the mass
of woven twigs-and-ivy over the side of the gatherers’ floor, and swirled
around to climb down.
On
the far side of the gatherers’ quarters, she glimpsed one of the elevators made
from carved wood and iron bolts splintering under the pressure of too many
elders crowding onto its base and too much shaking ripping it apart. The steam
that powered its cogs and wheels failed, spewing a plume of vapor through a
moonbeam.
She
looked away, unwilling to see anyone plummet to a long death. Their screams
descended in volume as they accompanied the breaking elevator to a pile of bars
and bolts and bones below.
A
voice whispered directly in her ear, “This way, Ava.”
The
luminescence of an arabesque glowed softly near her hands. Another of the
floating globes bobbed near her feet, offering a gentle pink light there as
well, guiding her down the ladder as it undulated from the quake’s unending
shocks. She’d never descended the ivy as fast as she did that night, making a
quick leap to the floor of the fen. There, she positioned herself to hold the
ladder for what few elders could follow her.
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MY BOOK REVIEW:
This book took me on an exciting, magical, and mystifying adventure
filled with cleaver story lines, and well-developed characters, or technically
well-developed creatures!!
This book is interesting, intriguing, and entertaining!!
I
really enjoyed the many main and supporting characters – Ava, Devon, Brydei, Jayndor,
Ava’s brother Leon, Ava’s sister Alleeta, Arabesques: Celia and Frond; Shoulder
Dragons: Strike and Flame; Giant Dragons: Stone-Crusher, Ice, Mountain-Dweller,
and Dust-Maker; Elder Goira, Elder Aldoy, Elder Mace, and Jack!! They all were important to the story and
played their roles well, especially while engaging with the main characters.
I
really liked Ava the best as she was a sweet 16-year-old girl, who was strong,
tough, brave, sincere, honorable, persistent, caring, compassionate, and hopeful. She worked hard in the kelp swamps which caused
her disfigurement and pain. But she knew
she needed to provide for her family as they needed the money. So, she continued to plow away and put her family’s
needs above hers. In what little down
time she had she was spending time with Devon, the star reader’s apprentice, as
he was educating and teaching her. It’s
clear that Ava is quite special and has a way of engaging and interacting with
all creatures and elements of the world.
So, it was no real surprise that Devon would want her on his mission to
save the world.
There
are many characters and creatures thrown at you at the beginning of the book
and it’s somewhat difficult to determine who to pay attention to and remember
all their details. However, it isn’t
long before the book mellows out enough that you’re able to catch up and
realize what you need to know.
I was intrigued by the author’s world-building and the development
of such unique creatures.
This
book genre is marketed as a young adult/fantasy book and yet the author found a
way to throw in adventure, mystery, intrigue, and suspense elements into the
book. It definitely added a fascinating
extra component to the story!
I
really liked all the additions to the book besides the story. This book included a map at the beginning of
the book. It showed the continent,
Frumschaft, where the story takes place.
It was great to see all the villages and towns that are mentioned in
this book. The characters go on a big
adventure and it takes a while to get to each place, so it was cool getting to
see how far they journeyed around Frumschaft on a map.
Furthermore,
at the end of this book is a list of a few characters names, creature types, locations,
and a brief description of each. This is
truly essential and a huge benefit for readers who easily forget things (like
me lol!!!) or get overwhelmed with books that are character heavy. Being able to quickly turn back to reference
the characters or find out their relation to the story or their relation to
other characters, etc. is a huge relief to be able to quickly find these
answers and not feel so lost or confused and then be able to instantly go back
to where you left off and continue reading.
I love that the author took the time to include this extra into the
story. And I enjoyed reading how she put
old words together and created new words for the story.
However,
I felt the glossary was quite limited as so many items were missing. For example, the glossary lists adornment as
a group of arabesque and lists a smoulder as a group of shoulder dragons, but
does not define what an arabesque or a shoulder dragon is. Of course, it’s somewhat described in the
book, but it took several chapters to finally have a better understanding. In case the author decides to add to the
vocab list at the back, I would have liked all the main characters to at least
have a brief bio, each creature type to have a description, and the words: fen,
steam elevator, an invalid, tendrils, tallow candles, patchwork of sunbeams,
undulating cells and cilia, delicate vibrissa, weeping yadoe trees, etc. Those are just a few of the lines that I Googled
from the book to get a better understanding.
And I can only hope that my search returns matched up with the author’s
meanings, since they had mentioned that many of the words used were created by combining
old words and making up their own.
I really liked the story line concept and found it very
intriguing!
This book has a couple important take-away messages that the
author skillfully integrated into the storyline and plot points!
I loved
the level of detail and specificity that the author spent on her
world-building. However, I felt that the
detail got a bit over too specific at times.
For instance, the number of times the word kelp is used while describing
Ava’s job is over 57 times!!! It just
felt repetitive and felt a bit overwhelming and annoying to keep going back to
that same reference. In addition, I found
some exact same sentences repeated throughout the book. For example, the sentence: “Shoulder
dragons understand the language of their chosen humans, but Strike ignored Ava’s
command on purpose.” (Lender 7) is
used at least twice word for word on page 7 and page 163. At times, I felt like I was re-reading some phrases
over and over again.
Although
the story line worked and there were definitely quite a few plot points to keep
the story going – this book seemed on the longer end even though it was
technically only 165 eBook pages. This book
felt a bit complicated and confusing at times as there was so much going on in
the story. This is not a book that you
can read lightly while doing other things.
This book needs your full attention to comprehend the full picture
otherwise you get lost in the words and it’s just a jumble of letters.
There are some predictable scenes. However, there are still a few very
unexpected twists and turns that you won’t see coming!
This book is Book One in The Gentle Dragons Book Series. It can be read as a standalone.
All in all, there were just a few hang-ups for me, but overall,
I still enjoyed reading this book and would still recommend it! I think all YA Fantasy readers and dragon
story fans will like this book too! So,
add it to your TBR List and get to reading – you won’t be disappointed!
Did you find this review helpful?
If so, please, please, please mark it as
helpful on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R3BCGJHU2FYH8B
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AUTHOR BIO:
Sandy Lender is a
magazine editor by day and author of girl-power fantasy novels by night. You
can check out her author page on Amazon or follow her facebook page at Fantasy Author Sandy Lender. She lives in Florida where she volunteers in sea turtle
conservation and parrot rescue. Sandy Lender Ink Inc., headquartered in Central
Florida, is her umbrella company for the copywriting, editing, and marketing
services she offers. With a four-year degree in English and 28-year career in
publishing, Sandy brings a deep understanding of public relations and
journalism to a variety of projects. Her successes include traditionally and
self-published novels, hundreds of magazine articles, multiple short stories in
competitive anthologies, a couple APEX technical writing awards, a 2019
Imadjinn Best Literary Fiction Novel Award for her #MeToo novel She’s Not
Broken, and a 2020 Pushcart Prize nomination for her short story Woman
off the Grid. In December, she finally updated her website at
www.SandyLenderInk.com and released her first non-fiction book “How to Train
Your Human: a guide for parrots,” which she wrote from a parrot’s point of
view. With a new publisher taking over her “Choices” series this summer,
she’s launching the “Gentle Dragons” series on her own, starting with
Ava’s story in Move the Stars.
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CONNECT WITH SANDY:
Website:
Email:
sandy_lender@yahoo.com
Facebook:
Twitter:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
Amazon Author Page:
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Amazon Paperback:
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
The Book Depository Paperback:
BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Sandy will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to
a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.
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