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Monday 15 December 2014

Masquerade Book Tour!!!!! Carla Presents The Greatest Sin #2: Harbinger By Lee French and Eric Kort

This is my first book tour. I had a lot of fun doing it because the organizer Maquerade Book Tour were very organized. They even reminded me on what day my review was due. I have no idea why, but I was sure that I was supposed to post it on the 19th.

 Basically, this morning I checked my email box, like pretty much everyday. Masquerade had sent me an email, I opened it, obviously. You must imagine my surprise when I saw I was scheduled to post my review TODAY! Everything is fine and well now. I've learnt my lesson. Next time, I'll be more careful.

Anyway, let's leave my ditziness aside. I'm going to review Harbinger the second book in The Greatest Sin series by indie author Lee French and Eric Kort. I made a very short and somewhat messy review of the first book Fallen on Goodreads.


About The Authors




Lee French lives in Olympia, WA with two kids, two bicycles, and too much stuff. She is an avid gamer and active member of the Myth-Weavers online RPG community, where she is known for her fondness for Angry Ninja Squirrels of Doom. In addition to spending much time there, she also trains year-round for the one-week of glorious madness that is RAGBRAI, has a nice flower garden with one dragon and absolutely no lawn gnomes, and tries in vain every year to grow vegetables that don't get devoured by neighborhood wildlife.







Erik Kort abides in the glorious Pacific Northwest, otherwise known as Mirkwood-Without-The-Giant-Spiders. Though the spiders often grow too numerous for his comfort. He is defended from all eight-legged threats by his brave and overly tolerant wife, and is mocked by his obligatory writer’s cat. When not writing, Erik comforts the elderly, guides youths through vast wildernesses, and smuggles more books into his library of increasingly alarming size. 






Published: October 2014 
Genre: Fantasy
Summary: Adjusting to her new life as a soul-bound agent of the Fallen has Chavali pushing herself harder than ever before. Between learning to fight, dealing with idiots, and climbing stairs - lots of stairs - she has little time to waste on thoughts of the future. Or the past. 

When another agent fails to report in, Chavali is sent on the mission to discover her fate. Ready or not, she saddles up for a new adventure with new dangers.

The search takes her to Ket, a coastal city slathered in mystery. There, she faces ghosts from her past and demons of her future as she seeks answers. All she seems to find are more questions.

Plague, murder, lies, espionage...this city harbors much more than meets the eye, and maybe too much to handle. 



-MY THOUGHTS-


I was afraid Harbinger might suffer from the Second Installment In A Series syndrome. You know that syndrome which render anything second, be it a movie, a book or an album, not as good as what came out first and sometimes even makes it plain bad. Fortunately for me, Harbinger was immune to that illness.

So, we meet up with Chavali, our grumpy heroine with telepathy. She still gets annoyed easily and still lack a romantic partner (Why? Just why?). Even thought Chavali loves to pretend that she’s some sort of great divineress who can eat people’s soul, she’s actually only able to read people thoughts when she touches them. Due to that, she prefers to remain single. Do you imagine knowing your man every careless, embarrassing thoughts while you’re making out with him, or worse when you’re doing It? That would too horrible.

Since she’s hell-bent on staying single, I kept wanting her to get with someone. I was like that annoying aunt who keeps telling you that it's about time to get married. Me throughout the book: “Come one, Chav, let loose a little. Why not flirt, maybe kiss even? Just a little romance...Or maybe a lot.” The worst is that despite her “Don’t Even Try” attitude, men aren’t indifferent to her. So far, I’d love Chavali to date Elliot, but I’m about sure she’ll end up being more than friend  with Colby. Life isn’t fair *sights*

Chavali occasionally also have very painful vision. 

In this book, still working for The Fallen, Chavali is sent to Ket to discover what happened to a fellow Fallen agent who doesn’t give any signs of life. She’s accompanied by Colby, Portia and a brand new character Harris.

By the way, The Fallen is a mysterious organisation whose majority of members have died and then been resurrected. Yep, even Chavali went through that process. She killed herself in book 1 and was brought back to life. It wasn’t exactly a suicide because it was either dying or being used as a rat lab against her will by an evil dude. 

Anyway, Chavali and co’s mission seemed simple enough. Go to Ket, find out what happened to an agent and come back home. But as usual, things are easier said than done. Harbinger isn’t very long. It’s less than 200 pages, but so much happened in it. There a bit of political intrigues, magic battles, strange illness, a mysterious woman and a MAJOR twist. In spite of that, as I read the last page, the questions I wanted to ask largely outweighed the answers I had received. 

For me, Harris was the outstanding character in this book. I didn’t think I was going to like him that much. He was so funny, and his attempt to seduce Chavali were hilarious. Not that he was bad at it, but Chavali has such a way to reject men. Let’s just say that the guy is very courageous (or very silly). At first, I expected to see him for a few page, never to be heard again, but not at all. He’s there from the beginning till the end.

Like in Fallen, I really enjoyed Chavali. I like the fact that even though she knows how to protect herself and has an impressive talent, she isn’t ridiculous powerful. It makes her a tad more believable and relatable. In Harbinger, she’s starting to understand that people outside her clan do matter too. It was nice to see her grow. She’s still judgemental and easily annoyed, though. Old habits die hard. But I'm cool with that.

I should have hated Colby, really I should have, but strangely I couldn't. Actually, I’m kind of fascinated by the guy. I mean, I wonder what led him to only want to see the world in black and white to the point of hypocrisy. The colour grey doesn’t exist for Colby. In its case, it’s not exactly that people are either good or bad. The problem is that he thinks that people needs to be 100% honest with each other at all time. If he had a girlfriend, I wonder what he would answer to the deadly question: “Do you think I put on weight?” A smart guy would say “Nah, not at all,” but he I’m not quite sure.

Lee French and Eric Korts are an amazing writing tandem. I’m really eager to read the next book in the series. If you guys have never heard of The Greatest Sins series, I totally encourage you to check it out.





7 comments:

  1. Congrats on your first blog tour! I know it is helpful to keep a calendar and on there I write in when my reviews are due - because otherwise I think I would be prone to forgetting my deadlines as well! Either way I am glad you liked this one so much, it seems like it doesn't have second book syndrome at all!

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  2. You know the worst is that I read this book in early November, so it would have been seriously silly if I ended up not participating because I got confused over my deadline. And yeah, that one definitely live up to the first book.

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  3. Great review! and this book looks great, I'm going to add it to the already-too-full TBR. Also to echo Olivia-Savannah - congratulations! I've never done a book tour before. (Still not 100% sure how it works.) Merry Christmas!

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  4. Thank you. I'll definitely recommend this book, what it lacks in exposure it makes up in good content! Lol, I had never done a book tour either and had no idea how it worked. In the end it was pretty simple, when I accepted to participate, I received a copy of the first and second book of the series in ebook. Afterward, I filled a form where I mentionned which day I prefered to post my review and later, I received an email with the posting Schedule. All in all, it was pretty simple, lol.

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  5. HAHAHAHHA I KNOW THAT ANNOYING AUNT. Granted, they're only just beginning to get started on me, I've watched them gnaw at my cousin for years now. She's 29 and living it up single and they're all getting anxious hahaha I've never heard of this series AND they're co-authors as well! Interesting! You've definitely opened my eyes to something new, Carla! Fantastic review, m'dear <3 x

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    1. Thank You!!! Loool, everybody's got a aunt like that in their family! Harbinger is a fun book, hope try it out, if you have time:)

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