Review: ‘Dancing on Knives’ by Kate Forsyth
Posted: September 4, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: AWW, reviews 1 Comment
At twenty, Sara is tormented by an inexplicable terror so profound she hasn’t left her home in five years. Like the mermaid in the fairytale her Spanish grandmother once told her, Sara imagines she is Dancing on Knives, unable to speak. She feels suffocated by her family, especially her father – the famous artist Augusto Sanchez – whose volcanic passions dominate their lives.
Then one stormy night, her father does not come home. His body is found dangling from a cliff face. Astonishingly, he is still alive, but the mystery of his fall can only be solved by the revelation of long-held family secrets.
At once a suspenseful murder mystery and a lyrical love story, Dancing on Knives is about how family can constrict and liberate us, how art can be both joyous and destructive, and how strength can be found in the unlikeliest places.
This book was a really hard read, you guys. Really hard.
I went into it not knowing exactly what to expect. I was hoping it might be urban fantasy, given the Little Mermaid reference in the title. Kate Forsyth has written a lot of fantasy and magic realism, and Dancing on Knives could be loosely described as the latter, but it really is closer to straight adult contemporary.
I would’ve picked it up anyway, because I love Kate Forsyth, but I thought you should know, just in case that’s not your thing.
The story, told from Sara’s point of view, covers both a single Easter weekend and her entire lifetime, alternating between the two. I want to say it jumped around between times, but that might make you think it felt disjointed. It didn’t. I never had a problem following with the story, so masterfully did Kate handle the transitions. And her prose is beautiful. Heart-wrenchingly beautiful. (Also, it often made me hungry. Her descriptions of food are to die for.)
So why do I say it was a hard read? Because Sara’s life is awful. This is a girl who has hit rock-bottom, crushed by the huge, passionate and abusive personality of her father, a famous Australian-Italian painter named Augusto Sanchez. I suspect if Augusto hadn’t fallen over that cliff in the first chapter (no spoiler: it’s in the blurb), I might not have been able to finish this, as much as I adored Kate’s writing. Knowing how he ended up gave me the strength to read about how he lived until that point.
Augusto is truly awful — verbally abusive, degrading those he should uplift, womanising, drinking, wasting money while his kids struggle to make ends meet. But at the same time, during some of Sara’s flashbacks, you caught glimpses of why she stuck around, hoping for the good times to come back — in the same way an abused spouse craves the happy moments when they aren’t being thrown against a wall. She blames herself for his behaviour, because she should have known better than to do things that made him angry.
I hated him. A lot. I just wish I’d pushed him off the cliff.
Happily, in the course of figuring out what happened to her father that day, Sara also starts to find the strength to stand up for herself, and to escape her prison for good. The ending is uplifting. But I can still only give the book four stars, because reading it made me melancholy. I was sad about other things in my life, and reading Dancing on Knives to distract myself was maybe the dumbest thing I could have done at the time.
If I’d read this another time, maybe it would’ve been a five-star read. I don’t know. But if you like contemporary novels that look at hard issues with beautiful writing, this may be the one for you.
Review: ‘We Were Liars’ by E. Lockhart
Posted: August 28, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: reviews, young adult Leave a comment
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
A lot of friends have raved about this book. A LOT. I ordered it out of curiosity and then got a little nervous about reading it. I’m a bit of a snob for commercial fiction, if that’s a thing. Literary fiction where nothing much seems to happen bores me. And literary fiction where none of the characters are likeable makes me cross; at university I did a review presentation of a litfic book where I got up in class and said the main character should just stop whining and being an ass to everyone.
I got pretty good marks for that class.
I’m not sure if We Were Liars is literary in the purest sense, but it has some of the trappings of literary fiction.
So. I was nervous. But also intrigued, because the blurb, as you can see, makes a big deal about keeping the plot twist a secret, and my friends were being all cagey. “What is this thing?” I thought to myself. “I must know.”
I read the book yesterday evening.
That’s the first thing. We Were Liars is a short read. In the end, that’s one of the reasons I picked it up when I did; I didn’t want to dive into something huge. In this case, its (lack of) length is a virtue — it meant that the various plot revelations moved at a decent pace, which stopped me from getting bogged down in the occasionally dense prose.
The Prose
We Were Liars is written in a very choppy, fragmented style. The chapters are short — often a single page — and Lockhart makes great use of sentence fragments. I didn’t mind those, but one thing that drove me nuts was the way she
put in line breaks
when the main
character
was felling intense emotion.
Every time I hit one of these little snippets of poetry — usually when Cady, said main character, kissed her love interest, but occasionally at other times — it jarred me right out of the moment and I had to re-read the sentence two or three times to make sense of it. Ick.
On the other hand, interspersed throughout the book are these little fairytales Cady writes about a king and his three beautiful daughters. They are metaphors for Cady’s mother and two aunts, and their rather awful father. I quite enjoyed those.
The characters
The first two things you encounter in this book are a map of the island (largely unecessary but a nice touch), and a family tree. During the first part of the book, I got so confused by all the names that I flicked back to that family tree every other paragraph. I did eventually — more or less — get a handle on who was who, but Lockhart doesn’t take the time to introduce you gently. She throws you in the deep end.
Cady is a somewhat insufferable, priviliged girl who doesn’t really understand how lucky she is until it’s pointed out to her — and even then, she doesn’t really get it. Every summer she and her family go to her grandfather’s private island (as you do). She hangs out with the two other cousins her age, Johnny and Mirren, and Johnny’s best friend, Gat. Gat is American Indian and is the only one that calls the cousins out on just how lucky they are. I quite liked Gat.
On the other hand, I had mixed feelings about Cady. Honestly, I’m not sure we’re meant to like her that much. The way she tells her story is quite detached and often cold. As an example, her offhanded comments about not knowing the names of the long-term household staff was a bit of a shock. (At least by the end she knows their names. She does grow, so she gets points for that.)
For reasons I don’t understand, once Gat starts coming to the island the rest of the family begins calling the gang of four “the Liars”. I wish this had been explained better, because they don’t seem particularly deceptive for the most part. The label didn’t fit, and felt a bit too much like the writer was trying to be clever.
The story
When Cady and the rest of the “Liars” are fifteen, Cady has an accident and winds up with amnesia and crippling migraines. The accident leaves her with a curious lack of telltale scars, which would have rendered her less beautiful, when being a beautiful member of her family was one of her defining characteristics. (Scars would have also tipped the reader off to a certain extent as to the nature of the accident, and undermined the TA-DA moment at the end.)
Two years later, she goes back to the island and starts to unravel the mystery of what happened that summer.
I’m not going to go into details. There’s very little you can say about this plot that isn’t totally spoileriffic. I didn’t guess the plot twist (although I had suspicions heading in that general direction), so that was kind of neat. And I didn’t hate it; it was interesting enough that after I finished the book I flicked back through the pages for half an hour, revisiting certain scenes to admire the foreshadowing. It did feel a tiny bit derivative, but not so much that it bothered me.
One thing the ending didn’t do was make me cry. Maybe that makes me a bit of a robot, or maybe it’s a sign that the book just didn’t pull me in as much as it did others.
I’m giving We Were Liars 3.5 stars. It interested me enough that I stayed up past my bedtime to finish it in one sitting (with a break to watch the new Doctor Who), but I wouldn’t read it again.
Review: ‘Servants of the Storm’ by Delilah S. Dawson
Posted: August 21, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: delilah s. dawson, horror, reviews, urban fantasy, young adult 2 Comments
A year ago Hurricane Josephine swept through Savannah, Georgia, leaving behind nothing but death and destruction — and taking the life of Dovey’s best friend, Carly. Since that night, Dovey has been in a medicated haze, numb to everything around her.
But recently she’s started to believe she’s seeing things that can’t be real … including Carly at their favorite cafe. Determined to learn the truth, Dovey stops taking her pills. And the world that opens up to her is unlike anything she could have imagined.
As Dovey slips deeper into the shadowy corners of Savannah — where the dark and horrifying secrets lurk — she learns that the storm that destroyed her city and stole her friend was much more than a force of nature. And now the sinister beings truly responsible are out to finish what they started.
Dovey’s running out of time and torn between two paths. Will she trust her childhood friend Baker, who can’t see the threatening darkness but promises to never give up on Dovey and Carly? Or will she plot with the sexy stranger, Isaac, who offers all the answers — for a price? Soon Dovey realizes that the danger closing in has little to do with Carly … and everything to do with Dovey herself.
This is a book that is going to polarise people. I gave it five stars so clearly I’m in the “I loved it” category, but I can’t think of the last time a book pulled the rug out from under me in the last chapter like this one did. I lay awake half the night thinking about it. If there were a sequel available for me to read RIGHT NOW, that wouldn’t be so bad. But there isn’t. And I want to cry a little from frustration.
I see from perusing other reviews on Goodreads that some people had assumed this was a psychological thriller, and so were disappointed when it took a supernatural turn. Although there are elements of psychological thriller to the story — Dovey spends the first part of the book coming down off heavy medication and her memory is unreliable at best — the story is more a cross between urban fantasy and horror (which I guess is where gothic fiction often sits).
There are supernatural beasties, mostly demons or their various offspring. And the horror elements are a combination of the creeping sense that something was rotten just beneath the shiny surface, and the way the book leaves you gasping, like the freaky scene right at the end of a horror movie where all is revealed. I was reminded of Silent Hill by parts of it, if you’re familiar with those games (and that movie) — the way you’d turn a corner and something that looked shabby but more-or-less normal would peel back and reveal a slice of something deeply disturbing.
Other than the amazing atmosphere, the thing that made this book for me was Dovey. I love how complex a character she is. She is deeply flawed, in that she has a one-track mind (and may or may not have been dangerously insane before the antipsychotics). Her goal, to find out what happened to her friend Carly a year before, is what inspires her to stop taking her medication, and it’s what drives her to do pretty much everything from that point on.
Sometimes her actions are almost daft, the way she dives into trouble after having been warned of the danger. The ease with which she resorts to violence as the drugs go out of her system is both a warning sign and, I have to admit, deeply satisfying (because who doesn’t love a tough main character?). But her clear and enduring love for her friend, and her natural distrust of the gorgeous but suspicious Isaac — the one providing all the warnings of danger in the first place — are the cause of her recklessness. I can respect that.
There is a bit of a love triangle here, in the typical YA way: Baker is the childhood friend with a longstanding crush, and Isaac is a little bit of a bad boy … but not that bad, really, given the other YA bad boys out there. He came across as more of a bookworm who’s fallen in with a bad crowd to me, which made me like him more than I like most bad boys. Either way, the romance is definitely a subplot, a bit of extra spice, which is how I personally like it.
If you like paranormal stories with a serious creep-factor and a dark conspiracy, then this is the book for you. Five stars.
…now, where’s my sequel? 
Review: ‘Splintered’ by A.G. Howard
Posted: August 15, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: reviews, urban fantasy, young adult Leave a comment
Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.
When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.
This book. I’m really torn about giving it four stars instead of 4.5 or five, because there are parts of it that I really love. But then there are a couple of things that annoyed me, and I deducted half a star for each. (That’s how I rate books, I’ve come to realise; I allocate them full marks and then start taking points off for things that bug me.)
Let’s start with the positive first.
Like anything inspired by Alice in Wonderland — well, anything good — Splintered has atmosphere by the bucketload. Alyssa believes that, like her mother Alison, she is crazy. She hears plants and bugs talk, and is worried that one day she’ll end up in a strait jacket pumped full of sedatives too. Even when she discovers she’s not crazy, she might as well be, because Wonderland’s laws of physics are a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you know what I mean. Wonderland isn’t cute. It’s bloody, strange and violent. It’s not a sweet, sunlight dream; it’s a nightmare — more Tim Burton than Disney.
Fiery and independent, Alyssa is a little bit punk, a little bit skater and a little bit goth. She keeps her hair long and blond for her father, but then does her damndest to reduce any other resemblance to her mother — whom she loves but doesn’t want to emulate.
And then there’s Morpheus, the childhood “imaginary” friend who taught her everything she needs to know about Wonderland. He’s self-confident, arrogant and presumptuous, but he also trusts Alyssa to be able to handle herself and respects her desire for independence… something you can’t say about Jeb.
Jeb is the first of the negatives. He’s another childhood friend of Alyssa’s, and she’s had a crush on him forever. It’s pretty obvious he’s got a crush on her too, but for reasons that aren’t entirely clear he instead ends up dating the popular blond girl who picks on Alyssa. I suspect his own self-loathing plays a part, as does his completely infuriating desire to treat her like a small child. Maybe he doesn’t want to date her because he still thinks she’s twelve?
Regardless, I wanted to punch him in the nose a few times throughout this book. It wasn’t just that he was protective but that he was physical about it that pissed me off. When Alyssa tries to do something he thinks is dangerous, he doesn’t grab her hand and try to reason with her; he physically restrains her, lifting her off the ground like she’s a toddler. When he sees that she has a knife in her backpack, he appropriates it without even asking. When she’s offered something during the course of the quest, he takes it before she can and puts it in his pocket. WHAT THE HELL, JEB?!
He does redeem himself somewhat throughout the book, which is why it only loses half a point for his bad behaviour.
The other thing I found difficult to contend with at times was Howard’s prose. I didn’t really need a couple of paragraphs to describe each funky new outfit Alyssa wore, or what Morpheus’s hat looked like. I found every time I hit one of these paragraphs I wanted to skip it. Likewise, some of the descriptions of Wonderland itself were a trifle overblown. Not always, mind you — but it was enough that I noticed it and it would pull me out of the story. I realise that something like taste in prose is highly subjective, and others will love it; but this is my review, so nyah! :p
Despite these negatives, I still enjoyed Splintered enough that I’ll read the sequel. (As an aside, if you haven’t already, feast your eyes on that gorgeous cover for a minute. No, two minutes! Isn’t it lovely?)
Review: ‘Shimmer’ (The Rephaim #3) by Paula Weston
Posted: August 9, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: AWW, reviews, urban fantasy 3 Comments
Gaby thought her life couldn’t get more complicated.
She’s almost used to the idea that she’s not the nineteen-year-old backpacker she thought she was. She can just about cope with being one of the Rephaim—a 140-year-old half-angel—whose memories have been stolen. She’s even coming to grips with the fact that Jude, the brother she’s mourned for a year, didn’t die at all.
But now Rafa—sexy, infuriating Rafa—is being held, and hurt, by Gatekeeper demons. And Gaby has to get the bitterly divided Rephaim to work together, or Rafa has no chance at all.
It’s a race against time—and history. And it may already be too late.
(Two reviews in a row from me? I know, right?! It’s because I’m between writing one novel and the next, and it’s been so busy and stressful at work I’ve been comfort reading at night time. Anyway, enough about that. On with the review!)
Shimmer is book three of four in The Rephaim series, and I usually don’t see much point in reviewing books this far into a series. You’re presumably either reading it because you loved the first two books—and really don’t want to read spoilers—or you haven’t encountered it yet and would probably be better served by a review of the first book.
But the blurb itself contains all the spoilers I’m going to reveal: that Gaby is a Rephaim, Jude is alive and Rafa has been taken by demons. I pinkie swear.
I commented in my review of the previous book, Haze, that the first two books are set over the space of about two weeks, and how the fast pace is one of the breathtaking things about the series. Shimmer continues and accelerates that action-packed trend; the events in it are set over a total of about 24 hours. But that doesn’t mean the story is hollow. In fact, it’s packed with tension and combat, and starts to reveal more of the hidden truth about the Rephaim and others around them. The next and final book, Burn, comes out in 2015 and—if the cliff-hangery, super-exciting end of Haze is anything to go by—promises to be even more jammed full of awesome.
Also, I love these characters like you would not believe. With the exception of the demons themselves, there are very few people to hate in this—even the enigmatic politician of a fallen angel, Nathaniel, is a character I can sympathise with, despite the fact he’s frustrating as anything and blinded by his own goals. One of the interesting thing about the story is how some of the characters I really didn’t like in the first book have grown, and grown on me: Mya, Malachi, Taya and even Daniel are all good examples.
My favourite character, though, is Jude. If I could choose anyone in the world to be my long-lost twin brother, it’d be him. Although since the post of twin is taken by Gaby, I can think of other ways I could use Jude in my life. Phwoar! Just sayin’.
The romantic tension between Gaby and Rafa is, naturally, missing for a large slice of the book, since he’s, well, not in it. But we really get to see how much Gaby cares about him; all her ambivalence over the secrets he’s keeping about their past evaporates, and in turn his ambivalence about her possible reaction when she finds out those secrets falls away. I guess being tortured—or seeing your loved one tortured—by demons gives you a sense of perspective.
This is a great book and a great series. The only bad thing is that now I have to wait, like, a year to see how the story concludes. My plan is to stare at Paula Weston until she’s finished.
That’s not creepy, is it?
Review: ‘Because the Night’ by Kirsten Strassel
Posted: August 8, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: reviews, urban fantasy Leave a comment
Sex, Blood, and Rock n’ Roll.
Immortal Dilemma is the hottest band in the Las Vegas vampire rock scene. They draw insatiable fans from around the globe, thanks to a supernatural attraction called Bloodlust. Tristan craved such an opportunity to fill his empty mortal life, and now he has eternity to earn his place along the legends of rock n roll debauchery.
Callie always feared that Tristan’s excesses would get him into trouble, but she never thought they’d lead him to immortality. To reconnect with him, she must weave her way through a world not only she had no idea existed, but does not welcome her.
Blade turned down a spot in Immortal Dilemma after learning what he must sacrifice for that lifestyle. He finds Callie a refreshing change from the girls in the vampire rock scene. When Callie drags Blade back into the world of Immortal Dilemma, his resistance drives her into the waiting arms of Tristan, who shows her the true meaning of Bloodlust.
But the very things that Callie fights so hard to save are the very things that fight to destroy her.
I’m going to start off this review by saying that I almost never like the bad boy in a book. When presented with a choice between two love interests in a triangle, I almost always choose the guy who I’d actually like to know in real life: the reliable, dependable, safer option. Because the Night was definitely not written for someone with my tastes, as far as men go.
The reason I want to state this up front is that I think if I’d been the target reader, this would have rated much more highly for me. If you love bad boys, the things that were a negative for me might be a positive for you. 😉
At times (especially early on, before we saw his gentler side) I wanted to set fire to Tristan. He was all arogant vampire rock star, and totally insufferable. I simply couldn’t understand why Callie was drawn back to him, time and again. I get nostalgia for an old relationship, and I even get her desire to “save” him from his drug-addled lifestyle. But after he attacks her — in a scene that has rape metaphor written all over it — and tells her that she would have enjoyed it if she’d just relaxed…well, I nearly threw my Kindle across the room.
That being said, the fact that Strassel’s book made me feel so strongly, and yet kept me reading, is a testament to her pacing and the story. And once Callie got past Tristan’s arrogant exterior and he started acting a bit more, well, human, he wasn’t too bad. He really cared for her, and struggled with the darker side of his nature, the vampire side. I was definitely Team Blade all the way, though. He had moments where he was furious with Callie and was a little cruel, but I totally got where he was coming from. She was awful to him, without even thinking about it at times; such was the power of her obsession with Tristan.
My favourite character in the story was Lennon, Callie’s work colleague and, later, her best friend. The bubbly bartender, girlfriend to a vampire, and part-time makeup artist was a point of sanity in Callie’s life. She’s the sort of person I’d love to hang out with.
There’s definitely sizzle in this book, although the sex scenes don’t go into huge amounts of detail, which keeps it from being outright erotica. I never thought I’d think all that blood was hot, but it kind of was. There’s also implied (although not observed) drug use, which didn’t bother me but some readers may find it offensive.
Despite how much I loathed Tristan at times, Because the Night would have been a four-star read for me, except that there was also a smattering of grammatical errors that drew me out of the story every time I noticed one. (I’m a trainspotter when it comes to that sort of thing; it’s an occupational hazard.) So I’m giving it 3.5 stars.*
* I note on Goodreads that there’s a newer edition of this book than the one I bought a while back, so these errors may have been tidied up.
Review: ‘Behind the Scenes’ by Dahlia Adler
Posted: July 21, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: reviews, romance, young adult 3 Comments
High school senior Ally Duncan’s best friend may be the Vanessa Park – star of TV’s hottest new teen drama – but Ally’s not interested in following in her BFF’s Hollywood footsteps. In fact, the only thing Ally’s ever really wanted is to go to Columbia and study abroad in Paris. But when her father’s mounting medical bills threaten to stop her dream in its tracks, Ally nabs a position as Van’s on-set assistant to get the cash she needs.
Spending the extra time with Van turns out to be fun, and getting to know her sexy co-star Liam is an added bonus. But when the actors’ publicist arranges for Van and Liam to “date” for the tabloids just after he and Ally share their first kiss, Ally will have to decide exactly what role she’s capable of playing in their world of make believe. If she can’t play by Hollywood’s rules, she may lose her best friend, her dream future, and her first shot at love.
I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but I don’t normally read contemporary fiction. I picked this one up because I “met” Dahlia via Twitter and then started following her blog, where she posts all sorts of interesting and informative posts for writers (plus a whole passel of book reviews and recommendations). I love her snark, humour and heart — all of which are things that come across in Behind the Scenes. In spades. Truckloads, even.
Unlike my other recent contemporary reads, though, this book isn’t one that tears your heart out and stomps it into the dirt. I kind of appreciated that — I wasn’t in the mood to be sobbing into my pillow when I read this BASICALLY IN A SINGLE DAY!
The thing that makes Behind the Scenes is definitely the characters. None of them are perfect, not even the gorgeous Hollywood actors. Especially not them. I don’t think there’s a single character that doesn’t make a stupid decision at one point or another, but those decisions didn’t make me feel like I was watching a car accident. Instead, I was so immersed in the story and the characters’ headspaces (especially Ally’s, as the POV character) that I was totally understanding and supportive of them in all their complexity. To the point where when Liam’s friend Josh has a go at Ally for something dumb she did, I was all, “WOAH, WHAT?!” right there along with her.
The friendship between Vanessa and Ally is complex and sweet; it could have very easily have been one-sided, especially given Ally ends up working as Van’s assistant and doing most of the “giving” in the relationship. But Vanessa only hired Ally because the latter needed a way to make money for college, and Ally refused to just take the money as charity or a loan. Plus Vanessa does what she can to help Ally out in other ways.
Also, let’s take a moment to appreciate that Vanessa is a Korean actress, not a blond bombshell. This wasn’t just tokenistic diversity either; one of the reasons Ally is so keen to help her friend’s career is that she’s been there for her with icecream and tissues every time Vanessa was rejected from a role for not being Caucasian enough. It’s one of the layers that form their relationship. The racism Vanessa faces from some quarters is by no means the central theme of the book — Dahlia doesn’t rub our noses in it or anything — but it’s there and feels real.
And then there’s Liam. Ah, Liam. He’s a little bit troubled without being a bad boy (unlike Josh, who is both of those things). He’s intelligent, witty, charming, and — as you are if you’re a Hollywood heartthrob — drop-dead gorgeous. All the talk of his blue eyes and defined abs were enough to make a girl drool. *fans self*
Another key relationship is the one between Ally and her family. It was nice to see a YA book where the family unit is present — for the most part, anyway, as her dad spends a lot of time in hospital being treated for cancer — and all look out for each other. Ally’s little sister Lucy is adorable (and actually, I just realised she may be the only character that dosen’t make a stupid decision — there was one after all). I just wanted to give her all the hugs.
This is a great, light YA read with huge dollops of romance and some of the funniest dialogue I’ve read in a long time. I was disappointed when I finished it. Five happy stars!
Review: ‘Tur’ by S.T. Bende
Posted: July 20, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: new adult, reviews, romance, urban fantasy 1 Comment
Inga Andersson is the envy of every girl in Asgard. On the surface she has it all — great friends, a job as Odin’s personal fight choreographer, and a happy ever after with her realm’s hottest assassin. But when evil invades Asgard, her perfect world comes crashing down. Someone is planning to kill off the gods, and Inga’s best friend Ull is first on their list. With the Norse apocalypse a nanosecond away, Inga has to decide how she’ll spend her final moments of freedom. Because from the moment this battle begins, Inga’s happily ever after will be nothing more than a memory.
Some things are worth fighting for.
TUR is an Elsker Saga novella. It is approximately 10,000 words long.
As I mentioned a few days ago during the launch blitz for book two in this series, I just finished reading Tur, the novella from Inga Andersson’s perspective that is set just before the events of Elsker start to unfold.
I really enjoyed this little tale from Inga’s perspective. There’s enough action and foreshadowing in here to keep the momentum of the novella going, and it seeds the romance between Ull and Kristia in the sweetest way. (That last page or two. Aww!) Ull is a very serious and intense fellow — as you would be if you were the God of Winter being drafted into a different portfolio, one you really didn’t want — and it was fun to see Inga trying to get him to lighten up.
Inga and Gunnar are definitely the focus of the novella, though — Inga’s drive to be taken seriously as a warrior by Odin, and Gunnar’s desire to, well, spend some “quality time” with Inga. This is a sweet romance though, like the rest of the series, so it fades to black at appropriate moments. Part of me regreted that, to be honest, because it was so promising. 😉
One touch that I really love in this series is that the gods are given a modern makeover. Even in Asgard they live in modern houses and wear modern clothes. It made the sprinkling of references to the more ancient parts of their world stand out even more. Fun!
I felt Inga’s frustration at the blokes’ desire to protect her, given what a kick-butt warrior she is. At first I thought it was old-fashioned chivalry or even sexism (she’s weak; we can’t let her go to battle). It was a relief to discover it was more about politics, in Odin’s case at least. Gunnar on the other hand just didn’t want his wife in danger; I can respect that, because who wants to see their loved ones get hurt?
Also, if this has intrigued you, here’s one more thing to consider: Tur is a great opportunity to try a new author, because it’s free. It can be a risky proposition buying a book by an unknown author, but you can, ah, suck it and see. (Speaking of Gunnar…)
Review: ‘The Raven Boys’ by Maggie Stiefvater
Posted: July 11, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: reviews, young adult 5 Comments
“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”
It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.
But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all — family money, good looks, devoted friends — but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.
For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
I can’t remember when I first heard about The Raven Boys. I know it was from a recommendation on line, from someone who also recommended Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake, which I reviewed over at Goodreads more than six months ago. Maybe it was a blog post about ghost novels?
Either way, I owe that person a lot. Anna was good, but The Raven Boys was great. And it’s all about the characters. There were a lot of characters — there’s the four raven boys themselves, plus Blue, her mother, and all the crazy female aunts and her mother’s aunt-like friends, who all live in the same house as Blue (there are four of those too, if I’m counting right). It takes some skill to be able to describe that many characters of a “type” (teenage boy at a rich school; middle-aged psychic woman) and make them all distinct and alive. I’ve never read a Maggie Stiefvater novel before, but I’ve clearly been missing out, you guys. She’s got game.
Plus I decided early on that the Blue in the novel looked like my friend Blue, which really worked for me — except when Noah patted the “tufts” of her her and I was, like, what?
Blue is great. I was trying to think of the perfect way to describe her, and I realised what it is: she’s just so grounded. I love the way she approaches everything with logic while at the same time completely accepting the magic all around her. She’s grown up in a world with different rules than most people, and because those rules are fact to her, her logic doesn’t turn her into a “deny the obvious” Scully-type character.
She’s the perfect foil for the raven boys, and at the same time grounds them in a way that they all desperately need — because even though she has that pesky “curse” to angst about, she’s quite pragmatic about it for the most part. Of the boys, Gansey is driven, obsessed with making his life mean something more than his rich-boy upbringing; Adam is trying to educate himself and get into a good university so he can escape his trailer park life; Rohan is bitter and struggling after the death of his father; and Noah…well, Noah’s just Noah. Of the four of them, Rohan was definitely the least likeable, but then he spends a lot of time trying to drive people away, so that’s hardly surprising. Adam was probably my favourite, although I found him just as infuriating as Gansey did at times. So maybe my favourite is Gansey, because of the way he looks out for his friends as though he’s their mother.
Oh, I can’t decide!
The writing is beautiful — so atmospheric — and I love the way each of the main characters has a “thing” that sums them up and gives us a glimpse into who they are. Blue’s is her eccentric clothes, handmade from scraps and recycled material. In Gansey’s case it’s his well-loved journal, overstuffed with newspaper clippings and full of fevered scribblings. Adam’s is the fray on his school jumper, which he hopes no one will notice. Rohan’s is his relationship with the baby raven he rescues — which he names Chainsaw — giving us a glimpse of his gentler side despite how cruel he can be. And Noel’s is how “smudgy” and quiet he is while noticing absolutely everything.
Despite all that, the best line of dialogue in the book goes to Calla, one of the “aunts” that lives at Blue’s house:
“Maura,” Calla said, “that was very rude.” Then she added, “I liked it.”
That made me laugh.
Review: ‘Scarlet’ by Marissa Meyer
Posted: July 6, 2014 Filed under: Reviews | Tags: reviews, sci-fi, young adult 3 Comments
Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison — even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive.
Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her.
As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.
I reviewed Cinder less than three months ago and now, having read Scarlet, I have one regret about that first review — that I already gave Cinder five stars, because there’s nowhere left to go with Scarlet. It deserves at least half a star more than the original. But I don’t want to adjust the rating for Cinder down either, as it was an excellent book in its own right.
The thing that made me enjoy Scarlet more was that the predictability that came with the Cinderella story — that she’d go to a ball and lose her (ahem) “glass slipper”* — was less obvious in Scarlet. Partly that’s because Queen Levana’s evil scheme is hotting up, and the political intrigue and world events of this awesome sci-fi Earth have more of their own life. Partly that’s because the elements of Little Red Riding Hood that Scarlet’s story pay homage to are woven in a little more loosely. There’s a girl with a red hoodie, a street fighter named “Wolf” from a gang of “wolves”, and a missing grandmother. But no woodcutter to speak of. Unless Thorne was meant to be the woodcutter…? If he was, I missed it!
That being said, I saw almost all of the plot twist coming. I don’t think it was telegraphed as clearly as was the one in Cinder; maybe it was just a lucky guess. My suspicions didn’t undermine my enjoyment of the book, though. (I also have my suspicions about who will play the part of Rapunzel in the next book, Cress, but I’ve only just ordered it, so I’ll have to wait and see. 😉 )
We have a few new characters in this book. I’ve already said how much I love Cinder, Kai and Iko, and all three are in this, some in particularly delightful ways (if you’ve read the book I’m sure you can guess what I mean). Scarlet is a fiery redhead of the old school of fiery redheads — she carries a gun and isn’t afraid to use it, and when we first encounter her she’s throwing tomatoes against a wall in a fit of rage. She’s rash, but loves her grandmother more than anyone in the world. Still, I really liked her, if not quite as much as I did Cinder. Wolf is the most beautifully depicted broken bad boy I have ever seen; tragic, dangerous and torn, he really struggles throughout the book with his attraction for Scarlet. (Ok, that’s a spoiler, but a tiny one — of course the boy is interested in the girl; it’s a YA novel! Also, it’s in the blurb. Phew, I’m ok.)
And Captain Thorne…well, I couldn’t shake the mental image of Captain Jack from Doctor Who and Torchwood. Although his ship was more like Serenity from the movie of the same name (and the TV show Firefly) — it even had two transport pods, a medbay located off the cargo hold, and an engine that sounded very similar to Serenity’s, full of cables going everywhere and an engine that rotated in the open.
I think I loved the ship more than any other character, for that reason. You can’t take the sky from me! ❤
Uh, sorry, got a little sidetracked there. Five stars.
* Note: if you haven’t read the first book, no, that isn’t a euphemism for anything naughty. The most either of these books have in them is kissing.
Cassandra Page 