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The Lillim Callina Chronicles #5
Hardboiled
Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ASIN B00WDN9QSE
When Lillim Callina takes a case from a local police detective, she finds herself trapped in the Greek Underworld alongside Thes, the captain of her high school football team.
To get back home, she'll have to fight her way through Tartarus, cross a river of fire, ascend the stairs into Hades, and battle Spartacus himself.
It's a good thing Thes is a werewolf because, otherwise, she'd be screwed.
When Lillim Callina takes a case from a local police detective, she finds herself trapped in the Greek Underworld alongside Thes, the captain of her high school football team.
To get back home, she'll have to fight her way through Tartarus, cross a river of fire, ascend the stairs into Hades, and battle Spartacus himself.
It's a good thing Thes is a werewolf because, otherwise, she'd be screwed.
- GenresFantasy
195 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 24, 2015
39 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
About the author
J.A. Cipriano
92 books586 followersWhen New York Times Bestselling author, J. A. Cipriano was in second grade, his teacher gave everyone in class a journal to write down whatever they wanted. Their first subject was to write about something they didn’t like. J. A. chose to write about why he didn’t like writing. His reasoning was simple. He had bad handwriting. Even then, he was destined to be an engineer due to his messy scrawl.
Unfortunately, he found through the course of this little adventure that he actually liked writing. That year was sort of the high point for his writing career because he won a writing contest for the state. He got to go to a big dinner and his teacher was all dressed up.
He kept writing little stories, year after year, and in sixth grade, won another contest. In seventh grade, he broke his arm and got the cast signed by both Dean Koontz and Stan Lee. It is, by far, the coolest cast he’s owned. That was about the time he found video games and anime. His writing turned mostly toward fanfiction until about ninth grade when he wrote his first novel, a small book about twenty thousand words called Revelations. In sophomore year, he wrote two more books to complete the trilogy because he saw Star Wars that year and learned trilogies were the cool thing to do.
He rewrote Revelations during his senior year, and his wife swears it is the best thing he’s written. J.A. is not so sure. Every time he reads it, he cringes, but then again, he hates everything he writes, so there is that.
It was about that time, he got heavily involved in a fanfiction writing group, but that isn’t one hundred percent accurate. It was a world based on a popular anime but everything was created especially for this world. It made it so that every story someone wrote was unique.
Imagine writing a Star Wars novel set 1,000 years after A New Hope, where everything that happened was a distant memory and you get the idea. You have the force, some distant memories of the past, and that’s pretty much it.
He wrote about a million words (863K to be exact) for them before he decided to do his own thing. He wrote another novel. He put it in a drawer. He wrote another one that eventually became the basis for The Hatter is Mad. His next novel was Kill It With Magic, his first real novel. It’s not bad, but it’s bumpy. This is unfortunate because the books get loads better as the series progresses.
Since then, he’s written six more novels, four of which are in the Lillim Callina Series, and one in the Abby Banks series. The other is stuck in a drawer for time undetermined. He’s writing his next book now which is about werewolves fighting mummies in Ancient Egypt. After that, he will move onto Abby Banks 2. The Spy Within will come out in June or July.
J.A. also has three chinchillas. Two of them are grey, and because of this, they are named Slate and Cadmium. The third is named Jet because he’s black, and Jet is old English for black. See, creative. He also has a cat named Turtle. This does pose problems for his two-year-old from time to time.
Unfortunately, he found through the course of this little adventure that he actually liked writing. That year was sort of the high point for his writing career because he won a writing contest for the state. He got to go to a big dinner and his teacher was all dressed up.
He kept writing little stories, year after year, and in sixth grade, won another contest. In seventh grade, he broke his arm and got the cast signed by both Dean Koontz and Stan Lee. It is, by far, the coolest cast he’s owned. That was about the time he found video games and anime. His writing turned mostly toward fanfiction until about ninth grade when he wrote his first novel, a small book about twenty thousand words called Revelations. In sophomore year, he wrote two more books to complete the trilogy because he saw Star Wars that year and learned trilogies were the cool thing to do.
He rewrote Revelations during his senior year, and his wife swears it is the best thing he’s written. J.A. is not so sure. Every time he reads it, he cringes, but then again, he hates everything he writes, so there is that.
It was about that time, he got heavily involved in a fanfiction writing group, but that isn’t one hundred percent accurate. It was a world based on a popular anime but everything was created especially for this world. It made it so that every story someone wrote was unique.
Imagine writing a Star Wars novel set 1,000 years after A New Hope, where everything that happened was a distant memory and you get the idea. You have the force, some distant memories of the past, and that’s pretty much it.
He wrote about a million words (863K to be exact) for them before he decided to do his own thing. He wrote another novel. He put it in a drawer. He wrote another one that eventually became the basis for The Hatter is Mad. His next novel was Kill It With Magic, his first real novel. It’s not bad, but it’s bumpy. This is unfortunate because the books get loads better as the series progresses.
Since then, he’s written six more novels, four of which are in the Lillim Callina Series, and one in the Abby Banks series. The other is stuck in a drawer for time undetermined. He’s writing his next book now which is about werewolves fighting mummies in Ancient Egypt. After that, he will move onto Abby Banks 2. The Spy Within will come out in June or July.
J.A. also has three chinchillas. Two of them are grey, and because of this, they are named Slate and Cadmium. The third is named Jet because he’s black, and Jet is old English for black. See, creative. He also has a cat named Turtle. This does pose problems for his two-year-old from time to time.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 30, 2015
This books is too short. I wanted to find out what happened after Conner walked in. Its funny, awesome, and interesting. To be completely honest I was confused a bit because I didn't read the other books. But gave me some sense of understanding becaus they described who this person was and when this happened and so on. HURRY UP WITH THE NEXT BOOK PLEASE!
May 4, 2016
Received this book in exchange for an honest review.
Okay... so this book started with the "dumb teenager on adventure" cliché, which, to be honest, made me somewhat expected it to be not very good. I am going to list what I like and dislike about it:
Like
- The ending of the chapters: it's kinda cliff hanger - y so it'd make the readers want to read the next one.
- The events in the book are detailed, so far no plot holes that I found.
- The last 2 chapters basically left me go WTF. Good idea there, Cipriano.
Dislike
- The first 50 pages or so were kinda repetitive. I still have the word "reverberate" stuck in my mind right now.
- Lillim's character: okay, this is the only book that I've read in the series. But she's supposed to defeat numerous supernatural creatures before, right? It seemed to me that she's really egotistical, always thinking that she could easily defeat something and then went "Oh shit" in the end, then BOOM! Something magically happened or she's regained her power and now's fine.
- Japanese -y weapons powered by Egyptian gods and goddesses sound really corny.
- Lillim's feelings for Connor made the book less interesting. Just my thought.
- Book cover. (not going to count this in my rating though)
- "Main character's parent(s) convieniently go out for an extended business trip, etc. so the main character could do whatever the hell they want." thing.
- Dude keeps being obsessive that his daughter has a normal life. "Normal teenage girl things" is also stuck in my head.
- Thes got naked. Lillim blushed. Somehow reminded me of Twillight (sorry for comparing that trash to your book).
-
Really, Caleb? Reeaaally?
Also, a few errors:
- "He smiled his dad smile at me that made me blush and look away from him."
- "I'm sorry, but I can't do things that."
- "under me bed."
- "staring at him face"
- "I opened my senses, letting the magic in the air flow around me as shut my eyes,"
- "'Hello, I'm Lillim. This is my friend, Thes. We mean you know harm.'"
- "a horrible angry that gushed up from me before I could stop myself."
Repetitive:
- "his body will die before long before Thes frees his soul."
- "His jersey was melted away as a gout of blue flame faded away."
Favourite part in the whole book: "That was when I died because my heart exploded, and I became completely insubstantial as I tried to melt through into the ground and hide amongst the grass."
I apologised for my shitty English, I'm not a native speaker. Thank you for the free copy of the book :).
Okay... so this book started with the "dumb teenager on adventure" cliché, which, to be honest, made me somewhat expected it to be not very good. I am going to list what I like and dislike about it:
Like
- The ending of the chapters: it's kinda cliff hanger - y so it'd make the readers want to read the next one.
- The events in the book are detailed, so far no plot holes that I found.
- The last 2 chapters basically left me go WTF. Good idea there, Cipriano.
Dislike
- The first 50 pages or so were kinda repetitive. I still have the word "reverberate" stuck in my mind right now.
- Lillim's character: okay, this is the only book that I've read in the series. But she's supposed to defeat numerous supernatural creatures before, right? It seemed to me that she's really egotistical, always thinking that she could easily defeat something and then went "Oh shit" in the end, then BOOM! Something magically happened or she's regained her power and now's fine.
- Japanese -y weapons powered by Egyptian gods and goddesses sound really corny.
- Lillim's feelings for Connor made the book less interesting. Just my thought.
- Book cover. (not going to count this in my rating though)
- "Main character's parent(s) convieniently go out for an extended business trip, etc. so the main character could do whatever the hell they want." thing.
- Dude keeps being obsessive that his daughter has a normal life. "Normal teenage girl things" is also stuck in my head.
- Thes got naked. Lillim blushed. Somehow reminded me of Twillight (sorry for comparing that trash to your book).
-
"Yes. It's under the Prince of Space and Time," my boyfriend replied with a sidelong glance at me.
Really, Caleb? Reeaaally?
Also, a few errors:
- "He smiled his dad smile at me that made me blush and look away from him."
- "I'm sorry, but I can't do things that."
- "under me bed."
- "staring at him face"
- "I opened my senses, letting the magic in the air flow around me as shut my eyes,"
- "'Hello, I'm Lillim. This is my friend, Thes. We mean you know harm.'"
- "a horrible angry that gushed up from me before I could stop myself."
Repetitive:
- "his body will die before long before Thes frees his soul."
- "His jersey was melted away as a gout of blue flame faded away."
Favourite part in the whole book: "That was when I died because my heart exploded, and I became completely insubstantial as I tried to melt through into the ground and hide amongst the grass."
I apologised for my shitty English, I'm not a native speaker. Thank you for the free copy of the book :).
July 17, 2015
I loved it! Like the first reviewer, I accidently read my first Lillim book out of order and was super confused. However, I really liked the book and went back and read the first one, then the next and the next and - you get the idea. Once I got the whole Dioscuri mythos, I could totally see why our Lillim was running around unsupervised (like any teen over 15 is supervised any more anyway!)
I don't do technical reviews unless the writing prevents me from getting into the story or yanks me out of it, so I'll just say I love J.A. Cipriano's "voice". I actually sink into the story and can see and feel with the characters... (which makes me super pissed at the end of this book, btw, JA). I'm really glad JAC writes almost as voraciously as I read
I don't do technical reviews unless the writing prevents me from getting into the story or yanks me out of it, so I'll just say I love J.A. Cipriano's "voice". I actually sink into the story and can see and feel with the characters... (which makes me super pissed at the end of this book, btw, JA). I'm really glad JAC writes almost as voraciously as I read
August 5, 2016
I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I don't think I cared for it quite as much as the previous ones. It felt at times that she just wasn't making any progress. She'd 'escape' then get captured again and so on to where it felt like the last 20 pages weren't really worth the trouble. She does make big strides in character progression I feel as she really gains an appreciation for her mom and for Dirge, as well as a bit more for her Dad as well. Overall I enjoyed the book but felt there was room for improvement.
March 30, 2016
Why does Lillim keep hanging out with everyone except her boy friend? And I really lost my patience with this book because the last two chapters threw me off guard. No. I'm not reading any more. It's an insult to Lillims memory.
May 27, 2015
TOO SHORT! I feel like it ended in the middle, hurry up with the next one, I'm already Jonesing for the next book!
April 11, 2016
Lots of twists and turns in this one. Was very good.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews