{"id":3245,"date":"2013-03-05T01:03:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T06:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=3245"},"modified":"2013-03-04T15:07:08","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T20:07:08","slug":"phoenix-rising-by-pip-ballantine-and-tee-morris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=3245","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Title: <em>Phoenix Rising<\/em><br \/>\nAuthor: Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris<br \/>\nPublisher: HarperCollins (Voyager Imprint)<br \/>\nSource: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.netgalley.com\/\">NetGalley<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/phoenixrising_mm_c.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3246\" title=\"Phoenix Rising\" alt=\"Phoenix Rising Book Cover\" src=\"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/phoenixrising_mm_c.jpg\" width=\"80\" height=\"120\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>These are dark days indeed in Victoria&#8217;s England. Londoners are vanishing, then reappearing, washing up as corpses on the banks of the Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences&#8211; the Crown&#8217;s clandestine organization whose bailiwick is the strange and unsettling &#8212; will not allow its agents to investigate. Fearless and exceedingly lovely Eliza D. Braun, however, with her bulletproof corset and a disturbing fondness for dynamite, refuses to let the matter rest. . .and she&#8217;s prepared to drag her timorous new partner, Wellington Books, along with her into the perilous fray.<\/p>\n<p>For a malevolent brotherhood is operating in the deepening London shadows, intent upon the enslavement of all Britons. And Books and Braun &#8212; he with his encyclopedic brain and she with her remarkable devices &#8212; must get to the twisted roots of a most nefarious plot . . .or see England fall to the Phoenix!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was my introduction to recent steampunk. I had to smile at the\u00c2\u00a0pun of the main characters&#8217; surnames. They fit the characters personalities and interests. I rather liked Book and Braun and was rooting for them to solve the case. They balance one another.<\/p>\n<p>The plot was action-packed. My only complaint is villain related. A villain was introduced and then disappeared for most of the book only to return at the end. It&#8217;s almost as though Ballantine and Morris had him as a forgotten subplot but plan to use him as the main villain in the second book in the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: Phoenix Rising Author: Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris Publisher: HarperCollins (Voyager Imprint) Source: NetGalley These are dark days indeed in Victoria&#8217;s England. Londoners are vanishing, then reappearing, washing up as corpses on the banks of the Thames, drained of blood and bone. Yet the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences&#8211; the Crown&#8217;s clandestine organization whose bailiwick&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=3245\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[446,447,448],"class_list":["post-3245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-phoenix-rising-a-ministry-of-peculiar-occurences-novel","tag-pip-ballantine","tag-tee-morris","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3245"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4422,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions\/4422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}