Cover Reveal: Cogling by Jordan Mierek

COGLING

A Steampunk Fairy Tale for Young Adults

who love a little Romance in their Adventures

When fifteen-year-old Edna Mather tears an expensive and unfamiliar pocket watch off her little brother's neck, he crumbles into a pile of cogs right before her eyes. Horrified, Edna flees for help, but encounters Ike, a thief who attempts to steal the watch before he realizes what it is: a device to power Coglings—clockwork changelings left in place of stolen children who have been forced to work in factories.

Desperate to rescue her brother, Edna sets off across the kingdom to the hags' swamp, with Ike in tow. There, they learn Coglings are also replacing nobility so the hags can stage a rebellion and rule over humanity. Edna and Ike must stop the revolt, but the populace believes hags are helpful godmothers and healers. No one wants to believe a lowly servant and a thief, especially when Ike has secrets that label them both as traitors. 

Together, Edna and Ike must make the kingdom trust them or stop the hags themselves, even if Ike is forced to embrace his dark heritage and Edna must surrender her family. 

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COGLING has already gained advanced praise from NY Times Bestselling author Maria V. Snyder!

“This is a fun YA Steampunk novel. It's very different than many other Steampunk stories I've read. Basic plot is Edna's brother is kidnapped by hags and replaced with a "cogling" and she's on a mission to find and rescue her brother. The world is a Victorian-era with a strict class system for the humans and for those with magic. The woman with magic are called hags and the men with magic are orges and they're not nice and are planning to change the system. I really enjoyed learning about the world and the characters are well drawn and engaging.”

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Check out COGLING on GoodReads and Curiosity Quills.  

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Meet the author – Jordan Elizabeth Mierek lives in a dream world.  Sometimes she comes out to do her day job, but most of the time she is writing about her favorite people – her characters!  COGLING is her fourth book.  Her previous steampunk series, the Treasure Chronicles, include TREASURE DARKLY and BORN OF TREASURE.  Her debut novel, ESCAPE FROM WITCHWOOD HOLLOW, is a young adult fantasy-horror.  You can find her short stories in numerous anthologies.  Check out her website, JordanElizabethMierek.com, for contests and bonus stories!

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Top Ten Tuesday: 2015 Top Reads

This Week's Topic

Top Ten Best Books We Read In 2015 (you can do it by only 2015 releases,  overall , by genre (top ten fantasy books I read in 2015), etc. however you choose to make your BEST list)

I'm choosing to list my top 10 favorite books of 2015.  Although my goal was 60 books, I came up short by about 10.  That's ok.  I'm still proud of, not only how many books I read, but about the fact that I set aside specific time to read almost every day, even if it was only for a few moments.  Some of the books I read will be remembered forever and others forgotten and that's ok too.  Here are my most cherished books from this year:

Review: Asylum

I'd been seeing this book series popping up here and there for a while now.  I love the cover, which is what kept drawing me back to it while book browsing.  What finally caused me to purchase it however, was that it was recommended to people who enjoyed the Miss Perigrine series, which is one of my favorites.  It advertised that it included pictures from real asylums which I also found to be intriguing.  I had high hopes when I began reading.

I give the story a B for overall creepiness/suspense.  It is a YA book and I am, well.... not a young adult.  I just wasn't really scared.  I did however, love the premise of the old asylum being changed into a dorm but still having a basement full of dark hallways and rooms to explore.  The mystery of the threatening notes being delivered to the main character, the e-mails and texts that kept popping up and then disappearing, and the suspense when the kids went downstairs into the old wing of the asylum kept the book moving.  It was definitely engaging, just not really scary in my opinion.  The history of the asylum and its descendants was also fun to read.

Character development was ok.  I liked the main characters but I didn't really feel connected to them for some reason.  They were a bit flat but not necessarily uninteresting.  I think if more of the story was written in "show not tell" format, this could have improved a bit.  Dan was my favorite character and I liked the relationship that was developing between him and Abby but it didn't really come together enough before it began to fall apart.

The ending wrapped up neatly, maybe a little bit too neatly, but there is a second book so the story must somehow continue.  Will I read it? I haven't decided yet.  Overall, I would probably give this book three out of five stars.  Worth reading for the fun plot idea but not going into my top books of the year.