Recruit of Talionis by C.J. Milacci - Spotlight and Excerpt! (With a giveaway!!!)

 

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Recruit of Talionis by C.J. Milacci, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Recruit of Talionis
Series: Talionis Series #1
Author: C.J. Milacci
Publisher: Fayette Press
Release Date: November 3, 2022
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi Dystopian

"Forget where you came from. Forget the life you knew. You are now recruits of Talionis!"

A teen with a dark past. A secret military force that kidnaps new soldiers. Can she survive as a Recruit of Talionis?

America has fallen.

Seventeen-year-old Bria Averton grew up in a small town of survivors near the ruins of Portland, Maine. It’s all she’s ever known — until she’s kidnapped along with hundreds of other teens and brought to the city of Talionis. A city no one knew existed.

The soldiers tell them the intense trainings are for the good of the survivors, and Bria resists being forced into a new life as a recruited soldier. But she soon finds the dangers in the city are greater than she imagined.

Escape is impossible, and Bria fears drowning in the evil of the city… and the guilt from her own past. But can she find hope, even here?

PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | IndieBound | BookBub

Excerpt:

A shock zips through me, and I bolt upright, gasping for breath.
“She’s alert, sir,” a woman kneeling on the floor next to me says.
The empty syringe in her hand causes me to try to move away from her, but my bound
hands and feet make it almost impossible. With a rush, everything comes back to me.
Waking up in the forest.
The soldiers.
The other teens.
Golden Eyes.
The man comes into view as though he could read my thoughts. “Good. We’re two mics
out. Prepare for landing.”
“Yes, sir.” The woman puts the needle in a box, seals it, and then stands.
My muddled brain struggles to process everything. I look down and immediately wish I
hadn’t. My stomach roils. I’m suspended in the air, the tops of trees passing by in a blur beneath
me.
“Where am I? What’s going on?” The questions burst from my mouth, coated with fear.
The soldiers ignore me, and I open my mouth to ask again, desperation pushing aside any
sane thought.
“Girl, I would stay quiet if I were you.” The words are a whisper, but they catch my
attention.

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About the Author

CJ Milacci has found creating to be therapeutic in the chaos of life. Writing is her favorite way to create, and she seeks to take her readers on a grand adventure that begins with a single word. As a referee, she is always relearning the hard lesson that it’s impossible to make everyone happy, and she’s discovered that stories can be found anywhere, even on a lacrosse field. She is passionate about crafting stories of good overcoming evil, finding hope in the midst of seemingly hopeless circumstances, and true acceptance. Always willing to get real about hard issues, C.J. also enjoys the cheesiest of puns. She loves deep conversations, yo-yos, roller-blading, and finding reasons to throw a dance party. She chats about writing, her faith and the hope found in Jesus, bubble tea, and other fun adventures online (@cjmilacci) and at cjmilacci.com.

Connect with CJ by visiting cjmilacci.com to follow her on social media or subscribe to email newsletter updates.

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Tour Giveaway

(2) winners will each receive a print copy of Recruit of Talionis with swag and a $15 Amazon gift card!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight March 27 2023 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on April 3, 2023. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.

Enter Giveaway

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Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!

Oh My Arabian Stars!

The Wrath & The Dawn

In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad's dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph's reign of terror once and for all.

Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she'd imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It's an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid's life as retribution for the many lives he's stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets?

Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, The Wrath and the Dawn is a sumptuous and enthralling read from beginning to end. 

My Thoughs:

I love audio books and I'm so glad I listened to this one.  I would suggest that, even if you've already read the book, you might still want to listen to the audio book.  It was more than captivating.  The world building itself is perfectly designed. Ahdieh, is a master of writing and you can read it or listen to it and be utterly amazed!

When Shahrzad decides to basically be the bravest person ever, she does so without haste and readily sacrifices everything, including her heart, in order to discover the truth.  I loved Shahrzad's tenacity in all of her thinking. Relentless but careful, she goes toe to toe with Khalid and pushes a little bit at a time, just as much as she THINKS he can handle.  But can she handle what truths she discovers?  Ah, that is the question.  

Khalid is king to be fearful of.  He takes a bride every night and has killed her the next morning. A little greedy I thought.  He gets what he wants when he wants. So, then why does he take head to Shahrzad and her tactics?  I started off hating this man, and then loved him, and then hated him??  The perfectly constructed character for such a notorious role.  

You will find yourself not being able to stop reading this or if you'll like me, stop listening to it.  Seriously ya'll, in my car, at work, and in bed. I had to hear this story and I did in two days!  I highly recommend it to anyone that craves adventure, foreign settings, and suspense in their YA novels!  

A New Blog in a Blog Eating World

New Bloggers

This post is for all of the bloggers, who like myself, are either brand new or fairly new to the wonderful world of book blogging...

Hello to you beautiful blogger, you.  I'm so thankful that you've decided to stop here and read this review because as you are well aware by this point, it's fairly difficult to have people stop and take the time to parooze your blog.

My most important point of this blog, is to remind you, that you more than likely created your blog to review books!  Don't let the hype of receiving ARC's and gaining a thousand followers in a week discourage you. It's a lot easier said than done.  I know.  Let this time, be your time to have fun reading and reviewing!

I love to read!  As I'm sure you do as well.  Anything YA, mostly fantasy and science-fiction YA, draws me into a world that helps me escape from my every day life.  Whether you are 17 or 47, life get's hectic and we all need an escape.  I'm a mother of an awesome little boy and a wife to an amazing husband, but I need me time too!  

I think the ultimate goal of all book bloggers is to build a nice amount of followers and eventually proceed to requesting ARC's from publishers.   At least that is my goal and since I'm your average person, I imagine others have the same mind set.  We simply want to read them early before they're available to the public and be able to share our perspective on an amazing author's writing.  Well, take my advice and do not rush into this.  I've tried and failed miserably like many of you might have or might still if you decide to write into them anyway, without being established.

Take this time to build up your blog.  Read books and try to read the newest released one in order to draw the followers attention.  Older books great but with so many books being released on a regular basis, it's hard enough to keep up with them and your followers want to read reviews on them not on a book 10 years old.  Most of the time. I am no expert fellow bloggers, this is all only my opinion as I am, again, a fairly new blogger.  

There's always other tactics to building your blog like giveaways, guest posts, author interviews and more, but remember if you don't work on building your blog (reviews, blog posts)  there won't be much for the follower to be able to come back to.  Also, not many will enter your giveaways thus not spreading the word to your liking.

A Tip:  Just a little advice, I found that listening to audio books is a much faster way of still enjoying the books that you want to read but also enjoying them faster.  I can listen to an audio book on the way to and from work, and I'm lucky enough to be able to listen to them sometimes at work too.  Maybe you are too?  But there's also when you're cleaning or cooking or relaxing on your lawn chair!  And you can rent the audio books right from library and add them to your phone people!!!  

So, try to keep in mind why it is that you originally wanted to have a blog and don't let all of the Twitter feed, Instagram feed or any other feed discourage you in any way.  Learn from your more experienced bloggers, don't envy them.  Read their blogs and follow them, you will learn a lot.  I want to say thank you to all of you again for following me and taking the time to read any of my reviews/blog posts!  Comment below with a URL to your blog and I will follow you, because in a blog eating world, we bloggers need to be there for each other!