There’s been an awful lot of praise coming in for Broken, including this from the man known as Smarriveur:

I don’t often recommend books. I’ll mention if I’m quite enjoying a series, or blown away by an author. Generally, I’m rereading things these days anyway, and I don’t have much time to do so, so the old books are filling in just fine, even with much of my library still in my mother’s house. I’ll pull out something I read years ago, and with as much time as I can devote to reading, it’ll last weeks.

However, as a result of being on Candlemark & Gleam’s mailing list, and jumping on a giveaway, I recently laid digital hands on an ARC .pdf of Broken, by Susan Jane Bigelow. It didn’t hurt that I happen to know the driving force behind the publishing house, either. She’s awesome.

Now, you have to understand, I don’t own an e-reader. I haven’t been able to justify investing in one; I can barely justify buying new books at paperback prices. I’m also not a great fan of lengthy reading on my laptop screen. It’s a bit of a strain on the eyes, the weight and shape of the laptop makes reading in bed hard, I can’t take a copy in the loo, etc, etc. Not to mention that my laptop battery being dead and lengthy boot procedures make portability less than optimal.

So you need all that background–not reading more than a book every couple weeks, not much enjoying reading on my computer–to appreciate what it means when I say that I really only started reading Broken right before bed Sunday, and I finished it in bed at last (Tuesday) night.

I could tell you about the plot, about a has-been superhero living on the dystopian streets of declining, turn-of-the-22nd-century America and how she’s drawn into the visions of a young prescient who has vague flashes of needing her to help save the world from itself. I could tell you about the threat of fascism and the promise of idealism and about patriotism gone sour in the wake of wars lost, about hope and destiny and free will and accepting what has to be done when it’s all that can be done…

But what I think you need to know is, I generally read about a book every week or two when I’ve got a convenient, portable, lightweight version I don’t have to plug in, can take from room to room, and which allows me to curl up and shift around while reading in bed. And I just read through Broken on my laptop in a couple of evenings, the whole last half-plus in bed last night.

I know it won’t be for everyone reading this, and that’s fine. But check it out, because if you think it might be for you, it probably is. And since it’s not going to be on the shelves at your local bookstore or your national-bookmart chain, this may be the only way you’d find out about it–and you may be the only way your friends find out about it. Just sayin’.

And more than that, too. Check out what these fine folks have to say:

Nancy Brauer
Glinda Harrison
Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers
Tiger Gray
Bibliognome

Bibliognome also did a really phenomenal interview with the author.

And that’s our current review roundup, hopefully with more to come! Have you gotten your copy of Broken yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

Grab a copy now and see what all the buzz is about!