Get Rec’d with Amanda – Volume 118

9 hours ago 3

Welcome back!

We have a very rare, all fiction edition of Get Rec’d. I feel like that rarely happens. However, it is very sci-fi and fantasy heavy.

Are there any great recommendations you’d like to pass along? Leave them in the comments!

A Vow to Heal
I’ve been dabbling into omegaverse romances lately and most have some mix of shifters and humans. However, this has an elf and an orc (a very sensitive, lanky orc at that!).
Korik the Steadfast has never fit in anywhere. Tall and gangly even for an orc, he’s always stuck out like a sore thumb in Drol Kuggradh, where he is the only healer to make the city their permanent residence. But he’s content with his solitary existence—until the unification between elves and orcs suddenly draws him into the inner circle of Drol Kuggradh’s new royalty.
Just as he’s getting his bearings with his new lot in life, he’s pushed even further out of his comfort zone; he’s the only healer available to accompany a pregnant elf, Enriel, and her arrogant older brother, Varen, back to the elven capital. Enriel is nice enough, yet he and Varen butt heads immediately, and he resigns himself to an unenjoyable journey with the most aggravating man he’s ever met.
But the roads prove more treacherous than they a simmering orc rebellion against the new King Zorvut boils over, and when Enriel is kidnapped, he and Varen discover a plot that has taken several other elves captive. Before he’s even realized it, Korik is catapulted into the center of a mounting conflict threatening to break out between elves and orcs once again—alongside Varen, who is as distractingly handsome as he is annoying.
In pursuit of the orc rebels, Korik and Varen must learn to rely on each other if they hope to return home unscathed. It’s an inconvenient time to fall in love, especially as winter’s cold grip tightens around them and their very survival is on the line. But Varen’s confidence proves to be more than just empty words, and when it’s just the two of them alone against the elements, giving in to their attraction feels inevitable.
As they fight to survive, Korik and Varen must decide if their feelings for each other will remain unspoken in the wilderness, or if they’re willing to give up the lives they once knew to discover where they truly belong.
A Vow to Heal is an MM, slow burn, forced proximity fantasy romance featuring an anxious orc healer and a cocky elf commander. This 18+ novel contains omegaverse elements and other adult situations.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
The Archive Undying
I have two friends who read this one and have slightly different opinions. Both spoke highly of the ambitious world building. One felt the setting carried the story well, while others felt the characterizations didn’t match the level of world building. Just putting it out there! (I’m tempted by the mechs.)
War machines and AI gods run amok in The Archive Undying, national bestseller Emma Mieko Candon’s bold entry into the world of mecha fiction.
WHEN AN AI DIES, ITS CITY DIES WITH IT
WHEN A CITY FALLS, IT LEAVES A CORPSE BEHIND
WHEN THAT CORPSE RUNS OFF, ONLY DEVOTION CAN BRING IT BACK
When the robotic god of Khuon Mo went mad, it destroyed everything it touched. It killed its priests, its city, and all its wondrous works. But in its final death throes, the god brought one thing back to life: its favorite child, Sunai. For the seventeen years since, Sunai has walked the land like a ghost, unable to die, unable to age, and unable to forget the horrors he’s seen. He’s run as far as he can from the wreckage of his faith, drowning himself in drink, drugs, and men. But when Sunai wakes up in the bed of the one man he never should have slept with, he finds himself on a path straight back into the world of gods and machines.
The Archive Undying is the first volume of Emma Mieko Candon’s Downworld Sequence, a sci-fi series where AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests with corrupted bodies.
Come get in the robot.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
Tales of a Monstrous Heart
This is a vibes-heavy book, but might be worth a library borrow if you’re in the mood for more Gothic fantasy with an undercurrent of magic and romance.
An instant Sunday Times bestseller and love letter to the Brontë sisters, Tales of a Monstrous Heart is a delicious gothic fantasy, filled with forbidden romance, magic, and monsters.
Be careful of the dark and those that call it friend.
Katherine Woodrow is fey, and all she wants is to graduate from the Institute of Magic. But when the prejudiced mortal council threaten her position at the institute, she is left with only one option: accept a Mage Partnership with the elusive Lord Blackthorn.
Emrys Blackthorn is a riddle Kat is fearful of solving. The mysterious, cursed war hero with his stormy eyes and unpredictable ways leaves Kat with more questions than answers. What she does know is that she is irresistibly drawn to him . . . no matter how forbidden it might be.
In this intoxicating gothic fantasy where passion collides with peril, and sorcery awakens monsters, a string of murders and fey disappearances herald the return of dark magic. Kat and Emrys are thrown into a world of ancient books that hide hideous monsters, dark fiends who play with nightmares, and mortal men who wish nothing more than to see them both burn.
But what haunts them both are secrets even ghosts dare not whisper, while insidious shadows lick their teeth and sharpen their claws, waiting for the moment that all tales will come to light—even the monstrous ones.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
Valet
A tech CEO’s rudderless adult son, a valet robot, and a plucky golden retriever go on a road trip. I’m a huge Kevin Wilson fan and love how he’s able to blend fantastical scenarios with really tender, introspective plots, so the comparison here really made me perk up.
For fans of Kevin Wilson and Andrew Sean Greer, a helper robot and his 35-year-old ward embark on a mad-cap adventure to save the fate of the family company in this whimsically speculative ode to Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster.
Cy wants nothing more than to be useful, raise his utility score, and receive the next update for his operating system. But that’s easier said than done when he’s tasked with helping his owner’s 35-year-old son “get out of his funk.” Grayson is nothing like his go-getter, CEO sister Charlotte. He didn’t inherit the family robotics company when their dad passed last year, he doesn’t have a master’s degree, and he just can’t seem to figure out the San Francisco dating scene. He’d rather eat synthesized mozzarella sticks and make pottery at his studio, Kilning Time.
When Grayson learns of Charlotte’s plan to sell the company to a tech conglomerate, he panics. It’s not just the family business at stake, it’s all the technology—like Cy—their dad invented over the years. So he does what anyone would he steals the flash drive with his father’s most important work stored on it and plans a corporate takeover. If only he knew what that meant.
To make matters worse, a fellow VALET deserts his owner and asks Cy to help him hightail it out of town, Grayson’s first real date—and her dog—keeping showing up at inopportune times, and the behemoth tech company wants this deal closed yesterday. Grayson, Cy, and their trusty golden retriever, Sasha III, must go on the lam until they figure out exactly what to do, and whom to trust.
A hilarious, mad-cap adventure that is as tender as it is insightful, Valet asks not just what it means to be human, but what it means to be family.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!