Mundie Moms

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Cassandra Jean's Tarot Cards - Cristina Rosales and Jaime

Another Cassandra Jean masterpiece. I love seeing the new characters from The Dark Artifices represented through tarot cards. 

Here's what Cassie says about the card (from her tumblr):

We’ve moved on from the Major Arcana to the minor Arcana — the first suit is the suit of Rings, which takes the place of the suit of Pentacles. The Three of Rings shows Cristina and Jaime Rosales from The Dark Artifices. Cassandra Jean has included Cristina’s pendant and Jaime’s crossbow, and the rose-pattern ring of the Rosales family. Jamie and Cristina are not brother and sister. Interestingly, the Four of Pentacles is a card that can be about fear of love: losing it, or getting it.

MTV News to Unveil City of Bones Exclusive Tomorrow Featuring Jace


Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz), managing editor/correspondent of MTV News, tweeted this today. Hmm, what could it be, Mundie Moms? An exclusive? Something with Jace? Well, we will be waiting to see what this fun is all about. 

Should be a great Wednesday!

Monsters by Ilsa J. Bick, Cover Reveal, Excerpt & Giveaway

Hello! Welcome to today's cover reveal for Ilsa J. Bick's MONSTERS, the third & final book in her The Ashes Trilogy. I'm thrilled to be hosting today's reveal and giveaway. Check out this cover!


I'm loving this cover. Look closely and you just might see an image among the title and the green fog that's wrapped around MONSTERS. The trees in the back ground add to the eeriness of the cover. Thank you to Egmont USA, I've also got an excerpt and a giveaway to go along with today's cover reveal.


Monsters by Ilsa J. Bick
Prologue

ALEX had fallen like this only once in her life. That happened when she was nine and took a wild leap from Blackrocks Cliff off Presque Isle into the deep sapphire-blue of Lake Superior. She remembered that the air was laced with the scent of wild lilacs and early honeysuckle. Although hot sun splashed her shoulders, her bare arms and legs were sandpapery with gooseflesh because the wind skimming Superior was, even in June, still very cold—and she was also, frankly, freaked out. Standing at the cliff’s edge, her monkey-thin toes gripping rough basalt, she looked down past her new emerald green bathing suit, felt her stomach drop, and thought, Seriously? That cove looked pretty puny. Her dad, who’d gone first with a whoop and a leap, was only a dot.
“Come on, you can do this, honey!” She could see the white flash of his grin—a tanned, muscular, bluff, and confident man, who carried her on his shoulders and boomed out songs. “Jump to me, sweetheart! Just remember, feet first and you’ll be fine!”
“Oh-oh-oh . . .” She meant to say okay, but her teeth chattered. Heights scared her something stupid. Stephanie’s birthday party last month? The indoor climbing wall? Mistaaake. Not only was she the only one to freeze and then slip; she came this close to wetting her pants. And now her dad was daring her to jump from way up here? For fun?
Can’t do this, I can’t . . . Every muscle locked in a sudden, whole-body freeze, except for her head, which swelled and ballooned. I’m going to faint. Her brain seemed surprised. This is what it’s like to—
There was a whirring sensation, like the blast of a jet engine gushing through her skull, blowing her sky-high. All of a sudden, she wasn’t in her body at all but floating waaay up there, looking down at this teeny-tiny girl in a deep green bathing suit, an emerald smudge with hair as red as blood. Far below, so small he was nothing more than a mote in a very blue and watery eye, was her dad.
“Alex?” Her dad’s voice was the size of a gnat. “Come on, sweetheart, jump to me.”
“If she doesn’t want to . . .” Her mom, the worrier, on a faraway crescent of gravel, hand to her eyes as the wind whipped her hair. “She doesn’t have to prove—”
But yes, I do. Her mom’s words—her doubt that Alex had the guts—cut the string of the strange kite to which her brain was yoked. That weird distance collapsed, and Alex plunged back into her skin, faster than a comet, to flood the space behind her eyes.
Then she was out over open water, with no memory of launching herself from the cliff—probably a good thing, because she’d have spazzed, I’ll slip, I’ll slip, I’ll bust a leg or break my face, and only scared herself more. Long red hair streaming like a failed parachute, she sliced through air in a high whistle of wind.
Slapping the water, still icy at that time of year, was a shock. She punched through with her hip, a hard smack that jolted a mouthful of air past the corkscrew of her lips. Silvery, shimmering bubbles boiled from her mouth and all around her. Water gushed up her nose, the pain of the brain freeze scaring her even more than losing what was probably no more than a sip of air. She could hear herself, too: a choked little underwater raspberry, a bwwwuhh, not quite a scream but close enough. The water wasn’t blue at all but murky and a really weird, brassy green. She couldn’t see more than a few feet—and was she still sinking? I’m going to drown! She could feel a panic-rat skittering in her skull, nipping her eyeballs as she whirled, her hair fanning like seaweed. I’m going to drown! Wild with fear, she looked for her dad but didn’t, couldn’t see legs or feet or hands or anything. She wasn’t sure where the surface was. Craning, she saw how the water yellowed with diffuse sun. Go, that’s up, go, go, swim! Thrashing, she bulleted up and then crashed through, her breath jetting in a thin shriek: “Ahh!”


“Attagirl!” Her father was instantly there, laughing, his wet hair dark and slick as seal skin. “That’s my Alex! Wasn’t that fun?”

“Uh,” she grunted. Still booming a delighted laugh, her dad wrapped her up and boosted her—shrieking deliriously now—way up high, nearly out of the water, before bringing her back down to earth and to him, because he was that strong.

Then, together, they stroked for the gravel beach, her father pulling a slow sidestroke, staying with her the whole way as she churned for shore, and home.


That was where the memory ended. She couldn’t recall if she and her dad climbed the cliff again. Knowing her dad—how much she adored and wanted to please, be his girl and dare anything—they probably had. Knowing her dad, he’d treated her to a waffle cone of chocolate custard topped with Mounds and Almond Joy chunks because, sometimes, you just feel like a nut. Her dad probably stole from her cone so she could dip into his, right backatcha. She bet her dad told her mom, Relax, honey, she’s wash and wear, as Alex crunched almonds and chewy, juicy coconut and licked sweet chocolate runnels, molten in the afternoon heat, from her wrist and forearm and the knob of her elbow. Her father was that kind of man.
More than likely, she’d been underwater less than ten seconds. She got herself out of it, too, and all because her dad dared her to try. After that leap, she really believed she might dare anything, because no matter what, if she jumped, her father would be waiting to swim by her side, stroke for stroke, into forever.
Of course, she was nine and her dad was immortal.
And nothing lasts forever.

Years later, after her parents were dead, her doctors said she’d had an out-of-body experience. Commonplace, no voodoo. For example, certain epileptics had similar experiences all the time. Hoping to walk the stars and know the gods, mystics and shamans drank potions. It was all funky brain chemistry, the doctors said, the mind’s switches already primed, requiring only that you tickle the brain in the right spot, goose it just so. Easy-peasy. Figure out how to bottle it, and we’d all be rich.
In fact, her last doctor thought what happened at Blackrocks— that shove from the shell of her mind—might’ve been the monster, just beginning to wake. That her sleep going to hell and the smell of phantom smoke weren’t her first symptoms after all. That her little baby monster was hatching, chip-chip-chipping a peephole to peer with one yellow baby-monster eye—why, hello there—way back then.
And she had been falling, falling, falling ever since . . .
Into now.


About the Book:

The Changed are on the move. The Spared are out of time. The End...is now.

When her parents died, Alex thought things couldn't get much worse-until the doctors found the monster in her head.

She headed into the wilderness as a good-bye, to leave everything behind. But then the end of the world happened, and Alex took the first step down a treacherous road of betrayal and terror and death.

Now, with no hope of rescue-on the brink of starvation in a winter that just won't quit-she discovers a new and horrifying truth.

The Change isn't over.
The Changed are still evolving.
And...they've had help.

With this final volume of The Ashes Trilogy, Ilsa J. Bick delivers a riveting, blockbuster finish, returning readers to a brutal, post-apocalyptic world where no one is safe and hope is in short supply.

A world where, from these ashes, the monsters may rise


Published by: Egmont USA
To Be Released on: September 10th, 2013
Pre-Order it from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Add it to Goodreads

About the Author:

Among other things, I was an English major in college and so I know that I'm supposed to write things like, "Ilsa J. Bick is ." Except I hate writing about myself in the third person like I'm not in the room. Helloooo, I'm right here . . . So let's just say that I'm a child psychiatrist (yeah, you read that right)as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe (meaning I did an internship in surgery and LOVED it and maybe shoulda stuck), former Air Force major—and an award-winning, best-selling author of short stories, e-books, and novels. Believe me, no one is more shocked about this than I . . . unless you talk to my mother.

The Giveaway:
Thank you to EgmontUSA, I have an awesome The Ashes Trilogy prize pack to giveaway today to 1 lucky winner. The prize pack includes all three books from the trilogy (including an ARC of MONSTERS), and a camo Ashes backpack. To enter, please fill out the form below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

GODDESS by Josephine Angelini, Book Review


By: Josephine Angelini
Published by: Harper Teen
Released on: May 28th, 2013 TODAY
Source: arc from publisher to review
Series: Starcrossed #3
5 Stars: I Loved It Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Add it to Goodreads

After accidentally unleashing the gods from their captivity on Olympus, Helen must find a way to re-imprison them without starting a devastating war. But the gods are angry, and their thirst for blood already has a body count.

To make matters worse, the Oracle reveals that a diabolical Tyrant is lurking among them, which drives a wedge between the once-solid group of friends. As the gods use the Scions against one another, Lucas’s life hangs in the balance. Still unsure whether she loves him or Orion, Helen is forced to make a terrifying decision, for war is coming to her shores.
In Josephine Angelini’s compelling conclusion to the masterfully woven Starcrossed trilogy, a goddess must rise above it all to change a destiny that’s been written in the stars. With worlds built just as fast as they crumble, love and war collide in an all-out battle that will leave no question unanswered and no heart untouched.


GODDESS is a action packed, romance fueled story that will toy with your emotions. It will  have you feeling happy and sighing one moment, and totally heartbroken the next. With war on the horizon, friendships are tested, sacrifices are made, hearts are broken, and crucial choices have to be made. WOW! This book has it all. Josephine Angelini wraps up this series perfectly. Everything that has happened in this series so far was leading up to what plays out in the series's final pages.

With Goddess we not only get a more indepth look at the mythology and world these characters live in, and create, but we see the history, and the love and heartbreak that some of the characters and the Gods have dwelt with. In seeing this, and getting bits and pieces of their back stories I felt it was easier to understand what drove some of the characters to make the decisions they made, both in the past and presently. Some of them are still dealing with consequences from those action, and others are seeing how their actions effect others now. Helen's choices have consequences that will effect everyone, including the two people she loves, and the Gods they don't want to anger. 

These characters are awesome. Really. I love how they were molded from mythology that makes up their stories. I've always found this mythology to be romantic, as much as it is brutal. Aside from the Gods, some of the characters grew into characters who became more romantic, and some became more brutal. I love it when a story, it's mythology and characters all compliment each other the way it has in the STARCROSSED series. I loved seeing the characters grow and change, while also getting a deeper look into the Greek mythology and the intense, captivating world Josephine has created. She has done such a stellar job at creating a mythology that is truly unique to her own story, as well as staying true to the over all mythology. 

 Though this story centers on Helen, there are so many outstanding characters who help bring her story to life. I can't even pick a favorite character anymore. I loved what evolves in the story with Matt, Hector, Andy, Orion, Lucas, Helen and Claire. Ooh there are some relationships that start that I wanted more of! I fell even harder for some of the characters in this series with this book, which I didn't think was possible. Some of them surprised me with the direction in which they change and grow in and others shocked me with the relationships that start between in them. I hope there's some sort of spin off with this series, because I seriously want more. 

I love it when secondary characters shine like the ones in this series have, both good and bad. Talk about some twists.... yep, this story has them. Above all, I really liked the way Helen has grown, and how she learns to embrace who she is, and her powers. Part of this book is seeing her do that, and the rest of the book is seeing her in action. Aside from the rich friendships in this series, I LOVED the romances in this book. Yes there is heartbreak, but there are also plenty of moments that more than make up for that. Even with the romance, the friendships are what stood out the most to me. 

 After reading Dreamless I didn't think this series could get any better, than I read GODDESS. WOW! I love it when an author creates a story with characters I want to spend more time with, and a world I love discovering more of. Josephine Angelini has given me all that and more with this series. With GODDESS, Josephine provided the perfect ending for this captivating series. I'm looking forward to reading whatever it she's working on next. 

More Cassandra Jean Circle Art


Cassandra Jean always amazes us with her interpretations of Cassie's characters, and here we have Robert and Micheal from their Circle days.  

Here's what Cassandra Jean had to say about her drawing:

More Robert and Michael. (TMI written by @CassieClare) In the description of them when they were young, Robert is described as being very short, or Maryse is very tall (or both?) But I’ve become obsessed with the idea that Robert was shorter than everyone else when he was younger.

Twitter Tuesday - Simon's Tumblr






I'm still loving the "City of Bones" (@mortalmovie) marketing campaign because of the sheer level of fun they're having and then sharing it with all of us in the fandom. Here's an update from Simon's tumblr.
 like coffee.

I like coffee, a lot.

For real, if coffee was a human female named Coffy I would ask her out and date her, providing she was also into me?

That took a weird turn. Anyway…
Oh Simon, he just brings out the geeky-awkward in everything, doesn't he? Go read the rest here and have a great Tuesday, MMs.

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