To celebrate the release of the latest Hobbit film in December, join the blog hop to win books with a fantasy or supernatural slant, a box set of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books, as well as an amazon gift certificate. Very handy for your holiday shopping! Don't forget to visit each author's blog during the hop, where you will also have the chance to win an individual prize from each author.
Hop Sponsors:
by Christine Pope
Amazon
Author blog/website: http://christinepope.com/Wordpress/
Prize: Paperback copy of Ashes of Roses
Blurb: Even the Emperor of Sirlende cannot always do as he pleases, but when custom demands he find another bride after the death of his betrothed, a princess he barely knew, Torric Deveras defies his counselors and changes the rules rather than make a loveless marriage.
Ashara Millende is the only daughter of a nobleman, but had her inheritance stolen from her by her unscrupulous stepmother. A servant in the house that should have been hers, she dreams of escaping the drudgery of her life and finding someone who will love her for who she truly is.
When Torric invites all the marriageable women in his kingdom to a five-day holiday of feasts, tournaments, hunts, and balls so that he might choose an Empress from among them, Ashara never dreams that she can attend, much less catch his eye and win his heart. Then a woman with hidden secrets appears who will give Ashara the chance to win her heart's desire — if only she is bold enough to take the first step.
Christine Pope’s Ashes of Roses sets the timeless story of Cinderella in the world of her Latter Kingdoms series, weaving a spellbinding tale of royal intrigue, familial deceit, and the magic of love.
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by Ryan Sullivan
Amazon
Author blog/website: http://ryansullivanauthor.blogspot.com.au/
Prize: ebook copy of Aundes Aura
Since their father was taken to the dungeons of the capital city, Eoin and Saera have had to fend for themselves. If Eoin can find an apprenticeship in the capital, they can work on freeing him.
But Saera is afflicted with an evil goddess's light, and when her Aura flares up in the middle of the street, the power-hungry Church Regency are quickly on their heels, keen to eradicate the threat.
With more than the Regency after them, their only hope is to relinquish the Aura. Making alliances they would never have dreamt of, they find themselves swept up into a struggle against the kingdom they once called their own.
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Boreal and John Grey (Season 1 boxset)
by Chrystalla Thoma
Amazon
Author blog/website: http://chrystallathoma.wordpress.com
Prize: ebook Season 1 of Boreal and John Grey
Centuries ago, they nearly conquered humankind. But their Gate to our world closed, leaving them out. Now the elves have found a way back.
Ella Benson, agent of the Paranormal Bureau, fights the Shades when they cross into our world, keeping everyone safe. But increasingly dangerous creatures are slipping into her city, her work partner has just gone missing, and a mysterious – and, quite frankly, hot — guy saves her life. His name is Finn and, as it turns out, he’s a natural when it comes to fighting the Shades.
When the Gates between the worlds start opening and the elves make a comeback, Ella needs a new, temporary partner. Enlisting the mysterious Finn is a no-brainer, until she realizes he is guarding dangerous secrets of his own.
Together with Finn, and the fate of the world on her shoulders, what’s Ella to do but grab her weapons and figure it all out, one way or another.
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by Annette Gisby
Amazon
Author blog/website:
http://agisby.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/fantastical-blog-hop-giveaway.html
Prize: ebook copy of The Chosen
The neighbouring kingdoms of Oscia and Arcathia have been at a tentative peace for three years after centuries of warfare. Prince Severin of Arcathia has been brought up to put duty before all else and as the only son of the King and Queen, it is his duty to marry and produce an heir. His parents want him to marry an Oscian princess to cement that tentative peace. Unfortunately Severin isn't interested in princesses. Now, if he had his pick of princes that would be another matter.
Havyn has been a slave all his life. When his aptitude for wizardry is discovered, he finds himself purchased and freed by Prince Severin and apprenticed to the royal wizard, Ildar. His duty is to stay chaste to keep his powers strong, but his feelings for Severin sorely test his resolve.
With kingdoms at war, the throne hanging in the balance, magic in the air, and outside forces trying to keep them apart, can the two men find happiness together, or is duty more important than love?
***
by Becca Price
Amazon
Author website/blog: http://www.wyrmtalespress.com/
Prize: ebook copy of Dragons and Dreams
“I am three thousand, four hundred and ten years old,” The Dragon told the man. “And for every single night of every single year of those three thousand four hundred and ten years, I've slept on my treasure. It’s how dragons sleep. It’s how dragons have always slept.” And he closed his eyes with a snap.
Then he opened one eye cautiously.
“What’s a bed?”
Brave princesses, grumpy dragons, princes competing for a kingdom, and children seeking answers to age-old questions. These six modern fairy tales include stories for pleasant dreams, and stories for stirring thought.
They are just the right length for bedtime reading. Each is a gem that will delight the entire family.
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by Elizabeth Baxter
Amazon
Author website/blog: http://www.elizabethbaxter.blogspot.com
Prize: ebook copy of Everwinter
Can science and magic ever exist in harmony?
The powers of old and new are on a collision course in the land of Thanderley. Ancient gods have broken free of their imprisonment and cursed the lands with a terrible winter, a scourge that is sweeping science and the new ways from the earth. In the city of Ral Tora, Bramwell, a young engineer, battles to save his home from the encroaching ice. But there will be no exceptions. The gods will reclaim what was theirs and destroy any who oppose them.
Once more, the balances are tipped. Magic and science cannot exist in peace, yet Bramwell must master both to save everything he loves from destruction.
Everwinter is a full length epic fantasy novel from The Wrath of the Northmen fantasy series.
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by Jeroen Steenbeeke
Amazon
Author website/blog: http://www.jeroensteenbeeke.nl/blog/
Prize: Ebook set of the Hunter in the Darker Trilogy - includes Gift of the Destroyer, The Raven's Endgame and Hunter's Chosen
Arek is destined to turn the world into a desolate wasteland, draining the life out of everything on the planet. Future warrior Brenor must cross the Forbidden Lands to reach him, but no one's ever returned from such a journey. Only farm girl Lianna's powers can help him. First, he must convince her he's from the future not the madhouse, and that she can control her Gift, the Destroyer's mastery of the elements.
But a predator stalks them, hungry for the energy Brenor's journey from the future unleashed. If Brenor and Lianna can't escape him, their mission will end before it's even begun.
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by Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick
Amazon
Author website/blog: www.fourmoonspress.com/news
Prize: Ebook of Lesson of the Fire
As a newly graduated wizard, Sven Takraf served poor villages in Marrishland because he wanted a peaceful place to raise his young family away from magocrats – wizards who used magic to enforce their reign. When a powerful magocrat sought to annex the villages under his protection, though, Sven fought back ruthlessly in their defense.
Fought back but lost.
Devastated by the deaths of the people he had sworn to protect, Sven devotes himself to breaking the power of the magocrats. His vision wins many loyal disciples but also makes countless powerful enemies, and soon he finds himself presiding over the bloodiest civil war in living memory.
Beyond the nation’s borders, an ancient enemy gathers its forces to invade, and Marrishland is not prepared. If Sven cannot unite the nation he has divided, all his plans will come to naught but the extinction of his race.
***
by Sean Van Damme
Amazon
Author website/blog: http://seanswritingadventure.blogspot.com/
Prize: ebook copy of The Lost Tower
Fifty years have passed since the Long Night befell Hilltop and the lands around it. Life has returned to normal with the stories of that terrible time starting to fade into myth. At the same time though, magic is again becoming common place. Spells that once befuddled the most confidant mage now come with ease. It isn’t just spells! Relics with magical enchantments are having their long dormant powers reawakened.
Far to the west, the long quiet city of Tygosh is building an army, an army with a single purpose: to destroy their old rival Lysta. Radford, a mage in the employ of Lysta’s richest lord, has a plan. He must find the Star of Fla’net, a long lost object of mythic power from an Empire of days gone by. To that end, he sends out a trusted servant of his employer, an outcast and Pathfinder by the name of Cor’lan. Her mission is to find anybody that knows anything about the Star.
Kiren and Jonah are two down on their luck treasure hunters. The market has dried up and they owe some very bad men a large sum of money, a sum of money that they cannot hope to repay, especially with the price that is now on their heads. Hiding from civilization, they will take any job they can get, which is why they are in the cursed town of Hilltop. One of the Sisters of Tam, an order of crusaders, has hired them to find the lost sword of her order’s patron saint. The brothers know that this is a foolhardy quest, but what choice do they have? The Crusader is offering coin and no questions.
Together fate and a few scraps of paper will bring their quests into alignment as they set out in search of the lost tower.
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John & Annette Gisby
Amazon
Author website/blog:
http://agisby.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/fantastical-blog-hop-giveaway.html
Prize: ebook copy of New Zealand with a Hobbit Botherer
What should you do if your spouse becomes addicted to the Lord of the Rings movies and swoons at the very mention of Orlando Bloom's name? (Thud. Quick, fetch the smelling salts.)
How about taking the advice of a strange apparition that reveals itself in a dream? An apparition that looks remarkably like the director of the movies, Peter Jackson, but not quite remarkably enough to prompt legal action.
An apparition that recommends touring New Zealand in an effort to prove that its sheep pastures aren't really filled by frolicking Hobbits. Just sheep and the occasional zorbing local.
This is the hilarious tale of such a tour, featuring snow capped mountains and turquoise lakes, flightless birds and flying cattle, bungy jumping grannies and the carrot mafia, strange yellow eyes peering up from a road map and hotel receptionists always desperate to know "win you are living."
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by Michelle McCleod
Book released Dec 1st
Author website/blog: http://michellemccleod.blogspot.com/
Prize: ebook copy of Psychic Appeal
Psychic P.I. Sofa Parker never thought she'd date a ghost, but when she accidentally kills her boyfriend, the phrase 'eternal love' takes on an unwelcome meaning. Then one of her cases results in being stalked by a necromancer, betrayal by dragons, the meddling of druids and the spark of a new relationship that drives the lovesick ghost of her boyfriend to come back from the dead...anyway he can.
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by V. A. Jeffrey
Amazon
Author website/blog: www.epistlepublishing.com
Prize: ebook copy of Schisms
The ancient capital, Assenna, has been in ruins for many ages and the line of kings that ruled from it are nearly forgotten. The very words, Red Kings, have become a curse and it is forbidden to even speak of them but it is precisely the blood of this kingly line, it was foretold, that would rule Hybron again and raise it up to its former glory. The Ainash priesthood, a powerful and ruthless faction in Jhis have fallen in power after a barbarian warrior has overrun the city-states, making himself king of the land. Under his rule Hybron has once again been reunited under one power. Is he, a wild tribesman of the desert, the future Red King of prophecy? As the kingdom remains embroiled in corruption and violence it does not seem so and his queen, a devout woman of the Aishanna-La has borne him no heirs. She has her own schemes that put her at odds with everyone at court: the priesthood, who seek to regain power and the king, who plans to carve out a great name for himself in the world. The queen becomes embroiled in a controversy that will have long-reaching effects on the fate of the kingdom and her own.
Ilim, one of the Ainash, is thrown out of the Golden Temple. Afterward, he has a prophetic dream with a commission to tell a dire message that most people do not want to hear, least of all the Ainash priesthood. His new spiritual path leads him back into the desert among the tribal peoples. He believes it will lead him to the answer that will save the kingdom from ruin - but, disappointingly, it leads him, not to a great warrior and a holy army but to a little girl at the fortress city of Gamina.
Visions are never straight forward, paths are perilous and the grand purpose of prophecy seems impossible, yet many are now seeking it; some strive mightily to make it come about while others are working just as powerfully against it and there are those who seek to insert themselves in it. All are caught in the river of Destiny and Purpose. Some will rise and others will drown. Who will triumph?
***
Speakeasy Dead: a P.G. Wodehouse-inspired Romantic Urban Fantasy
by Vicky Loebel
Amazon
Author website/blog: http://vickyloebelstuff.wordpress.com/
Prize: ebook copy of Speakeasy Dead
Have Clara Woodsen's attempts to save her silent film idol from an untimely death unleashed a zombie plague? Or are her speakeasy customers just really bad at dancing the Charleston?
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by Stacy Claflin
Amazon
Author website/blog: http://stacyclaflin.com/
Prize: ebook copy of Deception
When mysterious things begin happening to Alexis, she learns is that she’s been lied to her entire life. What she finds causes her to question whether she even wants to know the truth about herself...
Until she meets a handsome stranger and it feels that she’s known him her entire life, but she has never seen him before. What she discovers turns her world completely upside down. What that she believed to be false is suddenly her new reality.
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by Rinelle Grey
Amazon
Author website/blog: http://rinellegrey.com
Prize: ebook copy of Twin Curse
Born together, wed together…
The ancient law is a curse to Brianna, whose twin sister has fallen in love with a man Brianna can’t bring herself to marry. To avoid disappointing her family, she fakes her death and escapes Eryvale to hide in the dazzling city of Bymere…but the city doesn’t live up to its promise.
Lonely and homesick, Brianna regrets her decision until she meets Lyall, a handsome mage. Their instant bond grows deeper, and despite knowing she can never marry him, Brianna accepts Lyall’s offer to leave Bymere before travelers from her village discover she’s still alive. Journeying to the exciting Isla de Magi, Brianna makes plans for a new life and is shocked to find she possesses mage magic as well.
However, when a chilling dream warns of an impending threat to her village, Brianna must leave the Isle and rush home to help her sister. Soon Lyall follows, chasing after the same threat and longing to reunite with Brianna. But can the two work together to stop the danger? Or will Brianna be forced to choose between her love for Lyall and the safety and happiness of her sister?
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by J R R Tolkien
Picture for illustration purposes only, covers may vary.
Prize: paperback box set
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One lucky main prize winner will receive the following:
All the books mentioned above, either in ebook or paperback.
An amazon gift certificate, amount to be determined.
A box set of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit books (US and UK only)
Don't forget to visit each author's website or blog during the hop to see what other prizes you might win :)
