Top Ten Tuesday – Books I read on Vacation

On October 12, 2022 By The Unseen LibraryIn List1 Comment

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that currently resides at The Artsy Reader Girl and features bloggers sharing lists on various book topics. For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, participants are required to list their top ten favourite books that they read of vacation. This is a rather unique topic that I was quite intrigued to try and implement. Like many fellow readers, I always enjoy a good book while on vacation, and I have managed to get into some cracking reads while away on holiday. As such, it was an interesting experience to dive back into my trips for the last few years and try to remember what I was reading. I ended up coming up with a pretty good list in the end, including a few honourable mentions. I might have stretched the definition of a book to include audiobooks and other productions, but I am overall pretty happy with how this turned out. Hopefully this following list will give you some reading ideas next time you are on vacation.

Honourable Mentions:

Asterix series – Foster/Tuncurry

I absolutely loved the Asterix comic strips when I was younger (still do to be honest) and I always remember bringing them with me to our regular coast trips as a kid. These proved to be very fun reads while away at the beach and I would have brought most of them with me at one point or another. The one I most distinctly associated with coast trips however is Asterix and the Banquet, as my parents got a rather good photo of me reading it, however all make pretty awesome and light reads while your away.

Cabin Pressure – Road Trip – Canberra to Coffs Harbour and Back

My editor/wife got me into British radio dramas during several road trips we did, so I thought I would include a couple here, even if they technically aren’t books. One of my favourites is the outstanding Cabin Pressure series, which she owns on CD. Made up of 27 episodes and featuring an exceptional British cast (including Stephanie Cole, Roger Allam, Benedict Cumberbatch, and John Finnemore), Cabin Pressure follows the chaotic crew of the world’s smallest airline. Intensely funny and utterly brilliant, the road flew away as we listened to this and it comes very highly recommended.

Inspector Steine – Tasmania

In that same vein as Cabin Pressure, I also must recommend Lynne Truss’s outstanding Inspector Steine series, which we listened to while driving around Tasmania. The Inspector Steine series is set in Brighton in the 1950s and follows an incompetent police station who fail to notice that their charlady is Brighton’s criminal mastermind. Slick, deeply amusing and well worth a listen, this was a hilarious series to enjoy on a fantastic trip.

Unleashed by Amy McCulloch – Nevada

The follow up to the cool young adult science fiction novel, Jinxed, Unleashed made for an excellent and compelling read while we were busing it around Nevada in 2019. I read most of it on the coach trip up to the Grand Canyon, and I managed to pass a lot of drive time getting through this awesome conclusion to a fantastic story.

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Top Ten List:

World War Z by Max Brooks – Road Trip – Canberra to Gold Coast

Let us start this list off with one of the best road trip accompaniments I can recommend, World War Z by Max Brooks. This iconic and brilliant zombie novel really made a recent length road trip from Canberra all the way up the coast to Queensland really easy, as we got quite hooked on its exceptional audiobook format. Featuring an unparalleled voice cast and an exceedingly clever narrative, World War Z is a must read for all zombie fans, and this is honestly one of the better audiobooks I have ever had the pleasure of listening to.

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Assassin’s Code by Jonathan Maberry – Sydney to San Francisco

Long flights are the bane of my existence as I never get any sleep on them. Luckily one lengthy flight I had between Sydney and San Francisco proved to be very entertaining as I was listening to one of Jonathan Maberry’s incredible Joe Ledger books, Assassin’s Codes. Featuring a highly thrilling narrative about modern vampires attempting to end the world, I powered through this audiobook on the flight and even managed to write and post a review for it (written in the airport during our stopover at Fiji). An amazing read for the best holiday ever.

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Age of Assassins by R. J. Barker – Japan

I had a lot of fun getting to know one of my favourite new fantasy authors, R. J. Barker, when I was traversing Japan. While Japan is such an incredible country with so much to see, there were a lot of train rides involved, so I spent a bit of time getting into some great books. Easily the best was Age of Assassins by R. J. Barker, which was a particularly impressive debut. Following two assassins as they are tasked to save a life rather than take one in a cursed castle, Age of Assassins was an excellent read and one that made me a lifelong fan of Barker, who has written some amazing stuff since.

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The Sandman by Neil Gaiman – Road Trip – Gold Coast to Kangaroo Valley

Another epic audiobook I enjoyed on my recent road trip was the full cast adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s iconic The Sandman comic. You can really get to grips with the complex and brilliant story contained in The Sandman comics when listening to it, and the exceptional voice cast really helped to bring everything to life. As such, the second leg of our road trip from Gold Coast to Kangaroo Valley was a lot of fun, especially once we got wrapped up in the powerful narrative. Another exceptional audiobook that is a very good option if you are looking for some entertainment on the road.

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Warhammer: Broken Honour by Robert Earl – Gold Coast

The next entry on this list is a book I actually picked up while away on holiday. I managed to grab several great Warhammer novels while visiting a second-hand bookshop in the Blue Mountains and I ended up reading one while away on the same holiday. That book was Broken Honour, a great fantasy read about a group of prisoners pressed into service as a regiment of soldiers. Fun and action-packed, this was a great read for a holiday trip.

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Extinction Machine by Jonathan Maberry – San Francisco

On the same trip where I listened to Assassin’s Code, I also had fun with the next Joe Ledger book, Extinction Machine. Featuring a fantastic plot loaded with conspiracies about aliens, advanced aircraft and men in black, Extinction Machine was an amazing read, and one I had fun getting through on a couple of long coach rides between San Francisco and other great locations. It was very easy for me to just dive into this compelling audiobook amid the long trip and I had a fun time getting through it.

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Redshirts by John Scalzi – Dubbo

Another excellent book for road trips is the hilarious Redshirts by the always clever John Scalzi. A very hilarious parody of Star Trek, Redshirts is a wonderful read and we had an outstanding time getting through it during a road trip to the town of Dubbo. We had so many amazing laughs during this trip and Redshirts is a great listen for a shorter road trip.

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Timeless by R. A. Salvatore – Tasmania

Another book I started to read after buying it during a holiday was Timeless by R. A. Salvatore. I always love a great high fantasy adventure and Salvatore does some amazing work in this genre. As such, I made sure to grab a copy of Timeless while down in Tasmania during a fantastic trip and I ended up reading it while I was gone. An excellent and compelling fantasy adventure, Timeless leads into an awesome trilogy by Salvatore and is a must read for fantasy fans.

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Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson – Los Angeles (Disney World)

I always enjoy a good Star Wars read but one book I was enjoying during a recent trip to America proved to be quite a fortuitous read. That book was Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson, which, while a fun book, is also a tie-in to Disney World’s Galaxy’s Edge park. I ended up reading Black Spire while visiting Disney World back in 2019 and it was kind of fun to see the connections between the park and the book.

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Mecha Samurai Empire by Peter Tieryas – Melbourne

The final entry on this list is Mecha Samurai Empire, which I picked up and read a few years ago while visiting Melbourne. I happened across this awesome book while visiting the city’s premier comic shop and I couldn’t walk past a book about mecha combat in an alternate history America. Mecha Samurai Empire was an outstanding read and I instantly got hooked on its brilliant and captivating story in between enjoying all the fun sights and shows of the beautiful city of Melbourne.

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That’s the end of this list and as you can see, I have had the pleasure of reading/listening to some excellent books on some great trips over the years. All the above make for excellent vacation reading, and I had a blast with all of them. While I only had a good break a few months ago, I am already excited for whatever trip I have next and hopefully I can chuck in some more international travel now that the world is opening up again. In the meantime, let me know which books you enjoyed on your vacations in the comments below.

Top Ten Tuesday – Books with Colours in the Title

On August 4, 2020 By The Unseen LibraryIn List15 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that currently resides at The Artsy Reader Girl and features bloggers sharing lists on various book topics. For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, participants need to list their top ten favourite books that feature a colour in their title. This proved to be a particularly interesting topic to do, and I was rather curious to see just how many of the books that I have read had a colour in the title.

While I had a few titles in the top of my mind when I first saw what this topic was, I had to dive through the bibliographies of some of my favourite authors and through my blog archives to see what I could find. This worked out well, and I was able to come up with a final list that I am rather happy with. This list is filled with a great range of different books which includes a combination of recent novels I have read and reviewed, as well as some old favourites. I managed to eventually cull this down to my absolute favourites, as well as including a few special honourable mentions.

Honourable Mentions:

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

When I first heard about this week’s topic this was the book that I initially thought of, even though technically it does not have a true colour in the title. Because of this technicality, I decided to include it as an honourable mention, rather than on the main list, but there was no way I could not mention this amazing first entry in Pratchett’s iconic Discworld series.

Gray Man books by Mark Greaney

This is another one that is technically ineligible for this list, as it is the series name which has the colour in it rather than the individual book titles. However, I have really enjoyed the two Gray Man novels that I have read (Mission Critical and One Minute Out), so I thought I would include it as an honourable mention.

The Red Ribbon by H. B. Lyle

Greenlight by Benjamin Stevenson

Top Ten List (no particular order):

Demon in White by Christopher Ruocchio

The first book that I am featuring in this list is the Demon in White, which I only just finished reading today. This was a fantastic and epic read which serves as the third book in Ruocchio’s amazing Sun Eater series of science fiction novels. This book has a couple of different cover designs, but I decided to go with the one above, as not only is it really striking but it features so much of the titular colour in it.

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

There was no way that I could create a list about books with colours in their title without featuring this incredible book. I absolutely loved Red Seas Under Red Skies, which is the second book in Lynch’s iconic Gentleman Bastards fantasy series, especially as, in some ways, it is a better novel than the incredible first entry in the series, The Lies of Locke Lamora.

Red Metal by Mark Greaney and Hunter Ripley Rawlings IV

Talon of the Silver Hawk by Raymond E. Feist

I had to include at least one book from one of my favourite authors, Raymond E. Feist, and I actually found a couple of good options here. While I was tempted to use Feist’s second book, Silverthorn, I ended up going with Talon of the Silver Hawk. This is mainly because Talon of the Silver Hawk was the first of Feist’s books that I ever read and it started my life-long love for the author’s novels, as I immediately went back and checked out the rest of the books in the epic Riftwar Cycle after I finished reading it.

Black Leviathan by Bernd Perplies

Usagi Yojimbo: Volume 24: Return of the Black Soul by Stan Sakai

Readers of this blog will know that I am a major fan of the Usagi Yojimbo series of comics, so when I started working out what to include in this list I made sure to check out which collected edition had colours in their titles. I ended up being spoiled for choice here as three full volumes had titles that could be featured on this list, and while I could have included Grey Shadows or Red Scorpion, both of which are truly outstanding comics, I decided to use the 24^th volume of the series, Return of the Black Soul, for this list. Return of the Black Soul contains an amazing story that reveals the origins of the compelling and terrifying antagonists, Jei, and it is a major and impressive volume in the Usagi Yojimbo saga.

Star Wars: Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson

Streams of Silver by R. A. Salvatore

R. A. Salvatore has written a phenomenal number of fantasy novels in his 30+ year career but only one of them has had a colour in the title, his second novel, Streams of Silver. This was a particularly good book from Salvatore, which served as a really strong sequel to his awesome first novel, The Crystal Shard, and it is a wonderful example of classic fantasy fiction.

Red War by Kyle Mills (based on the series by Vince Flynn)

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Well that’s my Top Ten List for this week. I think it turned out rather well, and I liked the intriguing collection of different novels that I ended up featuring. Not only are all the above books really amazing reads, but each of them have impressive covers and there are some great colour centric titles in there. It looks like the colour red is very popular for book titles, although black and silver are both also used a lot. Make sure to let me know which of the above books you enjoyed, as well as which are your favourite books with colours in their titles.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge – Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson

On October 9, 2019August 17, 2022 By The Unseen LibraryIn Extended Universe, Science Fiction, Star Wars, Tie-in Novel8 Comments

Publisher: Century (Trade Paperback – 3 September 2019)

Series: Star Wars

Length: 378 pages

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

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Man, it has been a good year for Star Wars tie-in fiction. So far in 2019 there have been a huge number of awesome books that cover some diverse periods of Star Wars history, from an intriguing look at a younger Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Master & Apprentice by Claudia Gray to the electrifying third book in Timothy Zahn’s new Thrawn series, Treason. As the year draws to a close, the focus of the Star Wars extended universe starts to turn to the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. As a result, the rest of the books coming out this year will set the scene of the Star Wars universe before the events of this upcoming film. This includes the focus of this review, Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson.

Black Spire is an interesting addition to this later year complement of Star Wars novels, and it is one that I have been looking forward to for a while. Dawson previously contributed to the Star Wars extended universe with 2017’s Phasma, and Black Spire is also part of the Galaxy’s Edge mini-series, which is connected with the Disneyland theme park area of the same name. As such, there are some intriguing elements to the book that make it worth checking out.

Following the events of The Last Jedi, the Resistance has been decimated, and only a few survivors remain. However, those survivors are still as determined as ever to fight the tyranny of the First Order, and need to find new recruits, allies and resources to continue this war. To that end, General Leia Organa has tasked her best spy, Vi Moradi, to find an isolated planet and set up a base to serve as a much-needed bolt hole for other surviving members of the Resistance. Still recovering from the trauma of her last adventure, Vi decides that the best location for this base is on the isolated planet of Batuu, which serves as the final stop between the known galaxy and the mysterious and unexplored expanses of Wild Space.

Heading out for Batuu with a ship full of supplies, materials for a base and a rather snarky droid, Vi is joined by Archex, a former captain in the First Order turned ally who is now seeking redemption. However, their mission begins poorly when they are forced to crash land on the planet and scavengers steal all their supplies. With no help coming from the rest of the Resistance, Vi is forced to make other arrangements to secure her objectives. Finding work in the Black Spire Outpost, Vi will have to make deals with local gangsters and barter with various businesses if she is wants to build up her base of operations and attract new recruits.

However, most of Batuu’s populace want nothing to do with the Resistance and are content to live their lives on the outskirts of the current conflict. But when a force of First Order stormtroopers arrive on Batuu led by a fanatical officer determined to hunt down Vi, they begin to understand the true power and terror of the group beginning to dominate the galaxy. As Vi’s small group of Resistance recruits band together to fight back against the superior force arrayed against them, will they be able to save Batuu, or will another planet fall to the destructive tyranny of the First Order?

The first thing that needs to be addressed is that Black Spire is tied into the newest themed area at Disneyland in California, Galaxy’s Edge. I have to admit, when I first heard that this book was going to be strongly associated with a theme park attraction, the rather blatant commercialism was a little off-putting, so I can totally understand why some people may be reluctant to check it out. However, those readers who give it a chance will be in a for a treat, as Black Spire is an exciting and at times emotional book that proved to be quite enjoyable.

I really liked the storylines contained within this book, as the whole concept of two opposing factions trying to win over a town for their own ends was one that I found to be pretty cool. Watching Vi and her allies attempt to gain resources and followers in the Black Spire Outpost was very entertaining, especially as the author comes up with several compelling Resistance recruits to help Vi in their fight against the First Order. The backstories of each of these followers, who include a young farm boy from an isolated anti-tech society, a flamboyant smuggler and a small alien mechanic, are explored in some detail, and each of them gets their own captivating character arcs. The author also spends some time showing the perspective of Black Spire’s sadistic villain, which makes for a great alternate viewpoint and intriguing change of pace at times. In addition to the fun characters, there is also a ton of action and adventure, as the two opposing sides face off against each other, the locals of Batuu and dangers of the surrounding wilderness. Overall, this was a really fun read, and it is worth checking out.

As I mentioned above, Black Spire is set in the immediate aftermath of The Last Jedi and helps showcase the universe and the Resistance’s struggle between this movie and The Rise of Skywalker. This book is also a sequel to Dawson’s previous book, Phasma, as Vi was the Resistance spy who was narrating Phasma’s life story, while Archex is a reborn version of one of Phasma’s antagonists, Captain Cardinal. While readers do not need to have read Phasma to enjoy this book, those who have will appreciate the continuation of several of the stories and character arcs that were started in the first book. Archex’s character arc, for example, is particularly fascinating, as he is a former First Order commander who has been deprogrammed from the organisation’s brainwashing and propaganda. His perspectives on First Order tactics and methods are really cool and help showcase the First Order as a truly evil and ruthless group. The guilt and regret that Archex experiences, combined with Vi’s mental trauma and PTSD from the events of Phasma, make for a compelling emotional heart to the whole book, especially as the author explores the extent of their new working relationship.

I think it is also important to mention that this book has some cool connections to the Galaxy’s Edge theme park area. In a mostly unplanned coincidence, I was actually halfway through Black Spire while visiting Disneyland and the Galaxy’s Edge area just over a week ago. As a result, while I was walking around through Galaxy’s Edge and enjoying the cool atmosphere, I noticed that a number of the characters and locations featured in Black Spire were inspired by the shops within the park area. In addition, some of the performances from the Disneyland cast revolved around the First Order hunting a Resistance spy hiding in the Black Spire Outpost, which is a cool reference to the events of the book. Indeed, one of the performances I saw actually kind of spoiled an event that occurred at the end of this book, although it is a rather minor reveal. I personally found that reading this book around the same time as I visited the theme park not only helped enhance my experience of Galaxy’s Edge, but it also made me appreciate a number of the elements of Black Spire at the same time. As a result, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is visiting Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland, and it is truly interesting to see how the setting of the book is brought to life.

Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson is another excellent addition to the Star Wars expanded universe with some neat storylines and compelling characters. While its strong connections to the newest themed area of Disneyland may not be for everyone, I felt that there were a lot of cool features in this book that make it really worth checking out. I am excited to see what Star Wars stories Dawson tells in the future, as Black Spire turned out to be an incredibly enjoyable read.

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