BookCase Club December 2018 Subscription Box Review + 50% Off Coupon – Sci-Fi & Fantasy!

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Bookcase.Club sends hand-selected books to your door for less than $15 including shipping per month. With eight different reader options, there is something for everyone. I picked the thrill seeker case: mystery/thriller books. This box contains two books, one hardcover and a paperback and as well as a card with a quick description of each.

DEAL: Save 50% on your first month! Use coupon code CRATE50.

Select your genre when you sign up!

The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel by Katherine Arden ($10.87)

Katherine Arden’s bestselling debut novel spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice.
 
“A beautiful deep-winter story, full of magic and monsters and the sharp edges of growing up.”—Naomi Novik, bestselling author of Uprooted

Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil.

Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring. And indeed, misfortune begins to stalk the village.

But Vasya’s stepmother only grows harsher, determined to remake the village to her liking and to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for marriage or a convent. As the village’s defenses weaken and evil from the forest creeps nearer, Vasilisa must call upon dangerous gifts she has long concealed—to protect her family from a threat sprung to life from her nurse’s most frightening tales.

I love stories based on urban myths and this one seems to be brimming with folklore. I’m looking forward to how our main character is able to keep her town and loved ones safe. Personally, I think the idea of winter is scary enough but make that the backdrop for a bewitching book makes me want to drop everything to read this book. I will say this is one of the few sci-fi books that I have chopped at the bit to read.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O: A Novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland ($12.23)

From bestselling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world.

When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must swear herself to secrecy in return for the rather large sum of money.

Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace—the world’s fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world “jams” the “frequencies” used by magic, and it’s up to Tristan to find out why.

And so the Department of Diachronic Operations—D.O.D.O.—gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive . . . and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial—and treacherous—nature of the human heart.

Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterize all of Neal Stephenson’s work and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole Galland’s storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realized work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible, and take you to places—and times—beyond imagining.

Honestly, this doesn’t sound like my kind of book. I don’t like near future stories as I never feel they are set far enough into the future to really make sense. I do, however, like books written in collaboration because the authors have to work off of each other to create a masterpiece. Since this one doesn’t thrill me to my toes it will most likely sit on the shelf until I have a lull in time and books.

Sci-fi is getting more and more exciting for me. I used to think it was just for children but now I am becoming a true fan, though I do think most of these books are better suited for young adults. I have found that the books with more tangled webs intrigue me most. What I love most about BookCase.Club, I get to visit so many different worlds and writing styles. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

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