Title: The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase & The Gods of Asgard #1)
Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Disney - Hyperion Books
Published: October 6, 2015
Number of Pages: 528
Genre(s): Mythology, Fantasy, YA
Date Read: November 1, 2015
Acquired: Walmart
Summary:
Magnus Chasehas just turned 16, but he's not like most other 16 year olds, Magnus has been living on the streets of Boston, on his own for the last two years since his Mother died. Well actually she didn't just die, she was killed, by inexplicable wolves. So Magnus hates wolves with a passion now, and really who could blame him. For many teens who've just turned 16 their looking forward to a birthday party with lots of their friends, and maybe learning how to drive. Magnus is just looking for his next meal and to stay out of trouble. Magnus doesn't get what he wants though because apparently turning 16 triggers something, something that he doesn't understand, some sort of destiny. Somehow he ends up on a bridge fighting a fire giant for a barnacle covered sword, while being defended by his two homeless friends who are wielding a make way for ducklings sign and a toy store bow and arrow, after listening to an Uncle he hasn't trusted since long before his Mom was killed.
After his fight on the bridge Magnus finds his way to the einherji where the strange things just keep on coming, and the more answers he gets the more confused he gets. The aforementioned homeless friends come to rescue him, and it turns out they've been protecting him from unseen enemies all along, and they're not really homeless humans either, one is a deaf elf and the other is a fashion conscious dwarf who turns to stone in the sunlight. They set off on a quest to find Frey's Sword of Summer and keep Surt from releasing Fenris Wolf and starting Ragnarok. Will they succeed?
Review:
I have been waiting for a Rick Riordan Norse mythology series since The Kane Chronicles (KC) so when this was first announced I was freaking out and I have been so excited for it. I followed all the progress updates on Facebook, I gleefully and eagerly counted down the days until the release date. I was jealous that my friend Rachel got her copy before me and resisted the urge to ask her for spoilers beyond telling me exactly HOW Magnus is related to Annabeth (it had been circulating for months that he was going to be her brother so I HAD to know whether he was or not and I was impatient). I hurried to finish the book I was reading when it was released and then the book that I had gotten while reading that book (Chess Queen Enigma) so that I could get myself a copy of Magnus and read it. So to say I had expectations and high hopes it putting it rather mildly. But oh man did it ever live up to my expectations. Once I got it it was near next to impossible to put it down. I would think about reading it while I was at work. I loved every single page of it, it hooked me right from the beginning and just stayed awesome all the way through.
Rick Riordan just has a thoroughly enjoyable writing style, he's informative and educational while being highly entertaining. His humour is spot on and perfectly irreverent which I love. My favourite chapter title in the book for example is the one where is breaks the fourth wall "Hearthstone passes out even more than Jason Grace (Though I have no idea who that is)". I was really looking forward to seeing how Riordan would make Magnus stand out from Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus (PJ/HoO) and the KC because he did so well at keeping those two mythologies from being too similar even though they were both dealing with the same type of character really (modern teenagers with ties of some sort to mythological gods/goddesses). In PJ/HoO, you'll recall, the kids were all children of first the Greek and then the Roman aspects of the Greek/Roman pantheons (Thanks for catching that I typed Freek instead of Greek the second time there Google) while in the KC the teens were descendants of Egyptian magicians who could channel the auras and powers of the Egyptian pantheon. What he does with Magnus and his companions definitely stands on it's own from the previous two series and perfectly fits the Norse mythology.
As with his other two previous series the world of Norse mythology is well woven into the modern world, this time in Boston instead of a borough of New York. I'm sure given Magnus's connection to Annabeth that as the series goes on we'll get more and more references to people and events from the other series' especially PJ/HoO and I am really looking forward to that. I don't know how many books Riordan has planned for this particular series but I plan to read all of them.
--Ren
Title: Snakecharm (The Kiesha'ra, #2)
Author: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Published: September 28, 2004
Number of Pages: 167
Genre(s): Fantasy, YA
Date Read: February 17, 2013
Acquired: Amazon.ca
Summary:
In the wake of Charis Cobriana's death, Zane Cobriana, Diente to the Serpiente and Danica Shardae, Tuuli Thea to the Avians are still married and still ruling the two different tribes together; they divide their time between the Serpiente court and the Avian Keep trying valiantly to bridge the divide between their two peoples and further the tentative peace that their marriage has created. They have settled into this routine of travel, it is comforting, familiar and happy. But that happiness is not to last.
Syfka, a Royal Falcon has come to their court with a message from the immortal Empress Cjarsa; there is a Falcon hidden among their court and the Empire wants them back and will stop at nothing to secure them. Danica and Zane are in disbelief, they don't understand how a Falcon could have hidden themselves amongst the avians and serpiente. Syfka explains that Falcon magic enables them to change their appearance, including form and colouring, at will. Syfka refuses to tell them anything about this supposed criminal they should be seeking and not knowing her motives puts everyone on edge.
Matters are only made more stressful when it comes out that Danica is pregnant with Zane's child; the child with be a hawk-cobra---and the Falcons do NOT like interspecies breeding; they don't even like it when a peregrine and a gryfalcon breed! So when Danica and the would be child are almost killed, Zane knows exactly who to blame this time. But that's not the only concern about the babe, will it be accepted? Can a half-breed truly rule both courts? Or will it destroy the peace simply by existing?
All he wants is to find this mysterious lost falcon so that they can send Syfka away and his wife and child will be safe. Will Syfka actually stay true to her word and leave? Will they even be able to find the Falcon? Will they like what they find when they do? Can they really give up someone they love to the monstrous Falcon empire? And what of their child? They know the Falcons won't accept her...but what about their own people? Surely their own people will accept their child as the heir to both courts? What other choice is there?
Review:
As one would expect from a sequel this one picks up pretty much exactly where Hawksong left off. Zane and Danica are settling into their fledging new rule when the dangerous Falcons start trying to stir up trouble. It was rather obvious that their rule wasn't going to be smooth given the events at the end of Hawksong but the Falcons waste no time sticking their beaks in.
This book switches perspectives, where Hawksong was narrated by Danica we get Zane's point of view for Snakecharm, which was a dead give away from the title of the book; rather obvious. I personally prefer Zane to Danica, he's more in touch with himself and with the people around him than Danica was. But I have major problems with this volume in the series, and I think most of my problems stem from the issues that seem to come up whenever Atwater-Rhodes puts a major focus on a male character. She has a problem developing her male characters, it's something that I and countless other fans of hers have noted throughout all of her books and Zane suffers the same fate. He had so much potential when he was the secondary character in Hawksong, but then he became the narrator and all of that potential just flew out the window. She didn't develop him, she didn't develop his relationship with Danica, instead she used him to focus on everyone and everything else around him. He does well doing that, he's insightful and a very good narrator, but he's also a let down because he was built up in the first book to be this badass character, but he doesn't actually do a whole heck of a lot, and certainly nothing I would describe as badass.
After getting to the end of this particular book, I wish Rei had been the narrator instead; in fact I wish there had been two stories of these same events; that way Zane could have focussed on narrating his growing marriage and impending fatherhood, and Rei could have focussed on the political intrigues and his own budding romance. That way we could have also been treated to content about what exactly happened on Ahnmik.
That's the worst limitation and pit fall of first person narrators; they can't provide us every detail because they can only share with us the things they experience or what other characters tell them. Snakecharm could have been improved by either doing what I suggested above, or just simply changing to a third person narrator.
At least the villain here isn't repetitive; yes their end goal is still to destroy the tentative peace Danica and Zane are building. But Syfka and the formidable and intimidating Falcon empire taken it to the extremes; they don't just want to break up the peace they want to plunge the two races so far back into war that they will never be able to break out again. What makes that so ominous is the fact that we don't get to find out their motives for this desire until halfway through Falcondance.
Overall it's a good second volume, it has it's flaws and it could be better, but it does what it sets out to do; it drives the plot forward and introduces the series Big Bad. But it suffers the problem most sequels suffer, it just doesn't end up living up to the memory of the first book.
--Ren
Title: Hawksong (The Kiesha'ra, #1)
Author: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Published: July 8, 2003
Number of Pages: 243
Genre(s): Fantasy, YA
Date Read: February 15, 2013
Acquired: Amazon.ca
Summary:
A long, long time ago in a far away land lived many magical races of Shapeshifters, from birds, to snakes, to tigers and wolves these being could take the form of animals and of humans. This is the saga of the Kiesha'ra, the races of The Serpiente and the Avians who all descended from the ancient Kiesha. These two factions have long been divided, they have been at war for so many generations neither tribe can any longer be entirely certain of why they started fighting but they continue now out of retribution and because they know no other way. They are so diametrically opposed in their values and views that neither populace believes peace is even possible, their hatred is so entrenched.
But everything these two great tribes think they know is about to change when the young heiress to the title of Avian Tuuli Thea, Danica Shardae, a Hawk, ventures out onto the battle fields and holds the dying Gregory Cobriana, one of the sons of the ruling house of the Serpiente in her arms so that he will not die alone and will die knowing comfort, even though he had just murdered her brother Xander. That single act cements her desire to see peace between their two peoples, so that no Avian or Serpiente ever has to lose another loved one. She vows to do whatever it takes.
At the same time word gets back to the Diente of the Serpiente, Zane Cobriana, Gregory's older brother, about Danica's actions and he too is moved. Long having desired to see peace between the Avians and the Serpiente Zane has been formulating a plan for years and now he sees his moment to enact it. Arranging for the Hawk Royals to meet him at the encampent of the Tiger King for arbitration and negotiations he seeks out Danica in her bedroom and makes his proposal, literally, he proposes that they join their two houses and kingdoms by marrying one another. At first Danica is scandalised by the idea, but the more she thinks about it the more she agrees with Zane that it is the only way. So she agrees.
Can their relationship survive? Will the Avians accept a snake as their Tuuli Thea's alistair? Will the Serpiente accept a bird as their Naga? Is love really enough to overcome centuries of brutal, bloody war?
Review:
I still remember the first time I picked up a book by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, I picked up her very first book, In the Forests of the Night right around the time it came out I believe, because that was during my poet phase and I was really really into the William Blake poem she used as inspiration. If I remember correctly that may have been the book that was responsible for getting me interested in vampire fiction...it's been so long I cannot recall with 100% accuracy. So yes, I am a long time Amelia Atwater-Rhodes fan, so I really can't believe it took me so long to actually read this particular set of books by her. I mean really, it's been out almost 9 years. That being said I'm really glad I finally got around to it. HawkSong is really interesting.
In the early books of her main series, The Den of Shadows she alludes to the Shapeshifters very briefly, like with Jaguar in Midnight Predator. Hawksong and it's four sequels are a companion series to The Den of Shadows giving more history and background on three of the tribes of Shapeshifters.
While the Hawks and the Serpiente in this book are interesting I am disappointed that she didn't choose to expand on some of the tribes that she'd already mentioned in The Den of Shadows. I'd love to know more about the tribe that Jaguar descended from, and I know the Tigers actually got mentioned in this series before they got mentioned in Den but they were in Hawksong so very briefly that we learned next to nothing about them, certainly nothing that comes close to hinting about what we learn about them in Poison Tree.
Aside from the intricacies of the cultures, the story line of Hawksong really isn't complex at all, and I feel like it's been done to death. Two races at war, the children of the ruling houses decide to join the two kingdoms by marrying, tentative peace is achieved, and then you're left with a cliffhanger about whether or not it could really last. It's a tired plot line and the reader knows how it's going to end, but I still think the journey in this case is fun, if only because of the cultures of the tribes as a whole. This novel is from Danica's POV so we're locked into her Hawk sensibilities as she tries to understand and immerse herself in the Serpiente culture. I like the fish out of water angle of it and I like that Danica, by the end of the book, really, really is trying to open her heart and mind as much as possible to the Serpiente people.
What do you think, can you enjoy a book that has a plot line that's been played out to the point of becoming predictable?
--Ren
Title: Soulbound (Legacy of Tril #1)
Author: Heather Brewer
Publisher: Dial Books
Published: June 19, 2012
Number of Pages: 394
Genre(s): Fantasy, YA
Date Read: February 14, 2013
Acquired: Wal-Mart
Summary:
Kaya has lived her life knowing that she and her parents are fugitives, that their entire existence depends on discretion and secrecy. They are on the run from the ruling council of Tril, the Zettai Council run by the most powerful Barrons in the land. The Barrons are the warrior class, the highest of the Skilled and the most revered; every Barron has a single Healer bonded to them, that is the way it has always been and should always be according to council law, one Barron and one Healer and nothing else. After losing their respective Healers to the War and falling in love, Kaya's parents knowing they were breaking this law went in to hiding and raised Kaya, born a Healer, to know and hate these traditions. For 15 years this life of secrecy has worked, for 15 years they have been free in a way, living life hidden amongst the Unskilled who know nothing of the Barrons and Healers or their Council.
But suddenly and inexplicably and without any warning the war is on Kaya's front door and her father must give them all away in order to save not only Kaya's life but their entire village. In exposing them Kaya is discovered and is summoned, on pain of death for her parents if she disobeys, to Shadow Academy to be trained as a Healer, forced into a Bond with a Barron she does not know, and made to follows strict rules of Protocol that her parents had spent her entire childhood trying to keep her away from. Kaya chaffs under the rules of Protocol, unable to accept the passive, dangerous role of the traditional Healer, she does not understand why she should not be allowed to defend herself, why she should have to rely on her Barron to protect her at all times and at any cost. So she sets out to get herself trained no matter what the cost to herself, her family, or the people she asks for help.
Review:
This was the book that prompted me to bring up world building last Wednesday. I did something that I keep telling myself not to do while reading a book; I looked at the GoodReads reviews, I already learned that doing that does nothing but colour my opinion of the book as I continue to read it and yet I did it again with this book anyway. I swear lesson learned this time, promise. It was this review in particular that ended up being the route of my problems. Up until that point I honestly hadn't been bothered by the world building because I usually give the first book in a series the benefit of the doubt that further books will continue to expand the world. The problem lies in that this reviewer and all the other reviewers who mentioned poor world building are right. Brewer does not lay enough of a foundation here in Soulbound, so I have little hope that the rest of the series will be able to sufficiently make up for what is lacking here. We get a general description of what it means to be Skilled and Unskilled, but we get absolutely no information about why those labels came to be, who created them or why people like Kaya's parents haven't revolted and tried to change things. We get told about a war that is suppoed to be devouring Tril, meanwhile the only people who know about this war are the Skilled, and we get very little information about who the Big Bad is or what his motives are. I understand that a lot of this might be able to be attributed to the narrator, which in this case is the main character who has been sheltered from all of this information and so is probably unreliable; but I don't know, I feel like Brewer didn't even bother trying to world build, she envisioned Kaya to supposedly be this game changing character who is completely against the current hierarchy, but she really never does any real hard questioning or digging so how can she be expected to change anything when she doesn't understand any of it? Am I the only one thinking that way?
Another thing that bothered me about this book? The buzz words highlighted on the back: deeply romantic adventure, heart-stopping action and impossible to forget heroine; my problem with these buzzword is that none of them are true. I find nothing at all romantic about any of the relationships in this book, they're both unhealthy. We're told that Kaya's relationship with Trayton is this huge romantic thing, sure Trayton does a couple of nice, sweet, romantic things, but for every one of those moments there are another two-three where he's either manipulating Kaya, belittling her, abusing her, or neglecting her, and she lets him do it even though she's supposed to be this independent spitfire. Forgive me if I don't see the deep romance there. And don't get me started on her relationship with Darius, he's just as bad as Trayton especially when you get to the end of the book and find out he's been lying to her the entire time. Although if you're observant, which Kaya is not, at ALL, you'll have the big twist figured out pretty much the first time Darius is introduced, I know I did.
As for heart-stopping action, yes there were some nice action scenes thanks to the sword fighting, but I wouldn't class any of the battle scenes as heart-stopping not by any means, especially when the narrator herself spends most of the time worrying about not cutting herself on her own katana. Which brings me to the claim that Kaya is impossible to forget, from the cover I was expecting her to be the ultimate badass, I was left highly disappointed as she turned out to be full of stereotypes; yes she wants to learn to defend herself instead of relying on Trayton to defend her, very feminist, very independent I applaud her for that. She actually achieves that goal by the end, except she still does need rescuing at some point in pretty much every one of her fights. And honestly, she was damn whiny. For how much emphasis was put on battles and war and breaking Barron protocol, Kaya spent an inordinate amount of time angsting over her supposedly romantic feelings for the two male leads, even though she self identified as not being interested in boys when she was first introduced.
If I don't actually stop and think about all of those things then I can enjoy the book. I hope that the next book in the series is narrated by a different character, I'd much prefer to see things from either Darius's point of view or Maddox's they seem to be the most interesting characters to me. I know that's not going to happen though because this series is the Kaya show for better or for worse. I really hope that Brewer delves more into world building in the next book, because I think that she could have a really, really interesting world going here and I want to know more about the mythology. There is culture blending galore you've got names like Patrick and Samantha mixed with names like Trayton and Darius and Sharya; Japanese katanas and European Chain mail, the cover depicts leather armour but there's never mention of any in the actual story, they just all seem to be dressed like ninjas are always depicted.
Overall, even though I have complaints, I will continue reading the series out of sheer curiosity to see just where she is going with all of this.
--Ren
Since Friday was a Holiday I'm choosing to post what would have been Friday's First Read Friday today, enjoy!
Title: Falcondance (The Kiesha'ra, #3)
Author: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Published: September 13, 2005
Number of Pages: 192
Genre(s): Fantasy, YA
Date Read: February 22, 2013
Acquired: Amazon.ca
Summary:
When we last saw the Avians and Serpiente their leaders Zane Cobriana and Danica Shardae were pregnant and setting out with their Falcon friends, Rei and Kel, to create a Wyvern's Court in hopes of bringing their people together to not only achieve peace but to keep out the hateful influence of the Falcon Empire.
Now we fast forward several years and meet Nicias the pure blooded Falcon son of Rei and Kel, and the Grandson of the Heir to the Falcon Empire, Araceli. He's part of the Royal Guard of Oliza Shardae Cobriana, the heir to the Wyvern's Court. He is sworn to protect her with his life, a duty he takes very seriously, but his duty puts his life at stake when suddenly and without warning he begins to have nightmares of Ahnmik, nightmares which lead to a black out and a fall when flying with Oliza. His parents have no choice after that but to send him back to Ahnmik and to Araceli, because if they don't the Falcon magic that has awakened within him will drive him to total insanity.
Nicias is both drawn to and appalled by Ahnmik, simultaneously wanting to be there, succumbing to the seduction of Lily and the pull of the magic, and wanting to flee and get as far away from the place his parents hate the most. But he stays, because Araceli is the only hope he has, or so he is led to believe, until he finds himself drawn to the supposedly dangerous criminal Darien and her mysterious daughter Hai. Suddenly he finds himself smack in the middle of the royal power struggle his parents sought to keep him out of a struggle that will force Nicias to choose between duty and destiny. Is he strong enough to do what is necessary?
Review:
As the middle book of the series it has the task of moving the plot forward, but honouring what came before it. I'm not entirely sure it's successful in accomplishing that task. By skipping forward about 15-20 years Atwater-Rhodes has glossed over extremely important details about the building and growth of the Wyvern's court. It went from not existing at the end of Snakecharm to being an almost completely functional kingdom where the only real threat is what will happen when Oliza takes the throne, and for some reason her parents aren't as concerned about this as one would expect. In Hawksong and Snakecharm the readers were treated to Danica and Zane as highly conscientious people who thought about every detail of their plans and how those plans would affect their people. But either parenthood changed them or I completely misunderstood them in this book, because Zane at least seemed extremely different than the previous two instalments. I think this is compounded by the fact that we have Nicias as a narrator, he wasn't around during the events of the previous two books so maybe it's just that his perspective is skewing the reader's knowledge. That makes sense because he's a very introspective narrator who doesn't really seem to have a complete and full understanding of Wyvern's Court, which could be chalked up to the fact that he's a Falcon and the one thing the Avians and the Serpeiente can actually agree on is that they really really have a hard time trusting Falcons who look like Falcons. So not only are we not treated to how exactly the court was formed but we have little to no information about what exactly the Falcons were doing to work against them for the last 20 years.
At the end of Snakecharm the characters were well aware that the Royal Family of Ahnmik wasn't just going to let them get on with it. But from the sounds of the narrative that seems to be exactly what happened? Nicias coming into his magic seems to be the catalyst that gets the Falcons interested in acting again. But given what Nicias discovers about the Falcons' motives while he is on Ahnmik I find it REALLY hard to believe that the Falcons just sat back for all those years without interfering and just let Danica and Zane work towards re-uniting the Avians and the Serpiente after all the work they put into ensuring they would never re-unite. It doesn't make any sense; perhaps it's fleshed out more in Wolfcry? I haven't gotten around to reading that yet maybe I should make it my next book.
Moving away from plot and narration, one of the major themes of the series has been the personal growth of the narrators, watching them wrestle with their heritage and find a way to synthesize their histories with their day to day realities. Nicias has the hardest time doing this out of all 3 narrators so far. He's the son of two exiled Falcons living in a place where no one trusts someone who has a Falcon form. He has to learn how to control magic he didn't ask for and wasn't warned about from a woman who his entire family and extended family hates in a place he has never wanted to go. And while he's there he makes discoveries that not only change everything he knows about himself but everything he and everyone else knows about the world in which they live. Heavy stuff for a teenager. Nicias handles all of this surprisingly well. There are very few outbursts on his part. He's very level headed and mature.
I have to say that even though the book feels out of place, and I think the series would have benefitted from a book in between Snakecharm and Falcondance, something from Rei or Kel's perspective, that overall I enjoyed this instalment in the series. Nicias is by far the best of the three narrators so far. He also has the most interesting and involved story of the three which makes for an engaging read. Even though I feel it's weak as the third instalment and that it has it's flaws (what book doesn't?), it's still a good and enjoyable read.
--Ren
Title: The Unwanteds
Author: Lisa McMann
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: August 30, 2011
Number of Pages: 390
Genre(s): Fantasy, YA, Dystopian
Date Read: February 11, 2013
Acquired: Wal-Mart
Summary:
Quill is a veritable fortress, surrounded by high walls with only one closely guarded gate, even the sky above is caged in, whether it is to keep enemies out or the populace within under control only the High Priestess knows for sure, and as her word is law, no one dares to question. After all who would try and rise up against a tyrant who ritualistically annually declares that a certain portion of Quill's population that have just turned 13 will be culled and sent to die in a lake of boiling oil?
Alex knows this is his rate, he knew from the moment he defied the High Priestess's ridiculous edicts. He knows, and is constantly reminded that Quill has little value for creativity, the Quillitary, and High Priestess Justine especially, value strength, detachment and clear headed logic above all else. And so it is that Alex is selected for culling as an Unwanted while his identical brother Aaron has been labelled not just Necessary like their parents but given the title of Wanted, the highest honour a citizen of Quill can hold.
So it is that Alex and the other Unwanted children are sent to the ominous Death Farm to face the Eliminators; when they arrive they put on stoic faces and bravely face the prospect of their deaths, only to be told, by the Death Farmer no less, that he has no plans to kill them. For he is a Mage and he has created a magical haven for the Unwanteds where they can be safe and free to not only hone their creative skills, but to use them as weapons in case they ever have to defend themselves against Quill should the High Priestess find out how Mr. Today has been defying her for so many years. Alex has finally found a place where he is wanted and can be himself, but what will happen when his new found peace is threatened? Can Artimé and the Unwanteds really prevail over the mechanical might of the Quillitary?
Review:
First and foremost I have to say that even though I adore the cover image on this book, how could I not it's got a flying stone feline and live origami fire breathing dragons, that it's actually a really poor cover choice. It gives away FAR too much. After reading the book I really wish they'd gone with a desolate image of Quill instead, it would have intensified the dystopian nature of Quill and the abject horror of the idea of culling 13 year olds just for being creative, which is one of the main draws of the blurb. A missed and wasted opportunity in my opinion. Although one that somewhat continued into the story itself. McMann is obviously trying to create a place and a leader that the reader will be horrified by and hate, try to make us see just how horribly the people of Quill have it. But it never goes quite far enough, yes the practice of culling children because they aren't logical or emotionless is cruel, unusual and disturbing, but the jacket blurb and cover have both already given away that this practice doesn't actually take place, and aside from that practice and the fact that Justine is a cold-hearted dictator, the people of Quill don't live in abject poverty or squallor, Quill seems to me to be more of a cross between Castro era Cuba and Medieval England than an Orwellian dystopia. I get it, the target audience for this series is tweens, but that's the same target audience that both Harry Potter and The Hunger Games were targeted towards and the covers claim that this book is "The Hunger games meets Harry Potter" led me to believe that there was going to be some darker content, and all it did was hint at it, it just didn't go far enough for my taste.
My other complaint is that it was super rushed. If you will allow me to compare it to Harry Potter for a few minutes, let me say this on the subject of magical education in each series; it takes a good 3-4 books arguably in HP for the kids to become proficient enough in magic to hold their own in head to head combat with other wizards, actually I'd probably say they aren't really capable of that until book 5, that's 3-5 years of magical education and training. The kids in Unwanteds are shown to be mastering their respective arts and moving on to magical warrior training after only a few weeks and it's not like these kids had ANY experience before coming to Artimé, they came from a place that banned all creativity. The climax of the book takes place around the 1 year mark of their arrival and they are able to not only hold their own but win in a battle against an army, granted the army they are going up against doesn't have magic but still I find it incredibly hard to believe that this group of 13 year olds could have gotten that good that fast.
That all being said overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable read, the characters where likeable, with the exceptions of Will, Justine and Aaron, the antagonists, McMann was clearly on a mission to make these characters as unlike-able as possible because I can't think of a single redeeming quality in any of them, and for the blurb I've read for the second book in the series apparently Aaron is only going to get even more unlike-able. The use of creativity as magic was entertaining, the idea of a stinging soliloquy or fire step is pretty neat, but I like the idea of literally boring your enemy to death with a story best, because I think we've all felt in the past that we had teachers who were doing that to us at one point or another.
Any really creative person can easily sympathise with the Unwanteds and Artimé is a truly imaginative place filled with wonders, it's really easy to get into Artimé and want to know more. This book definitely kept me engaged and even though it didn't push the envelope as much as I wanted, and I found the pacing awkward I liked the book I believe it does its best to try and live up to the promise of being The Hunger Games for Harry Potter fans (although in my experience Potterphiles in general seem to be a large portion of The Hunger Games fanbase) and I am looking forward to reading the next one in the series as soon as I've made a noticeable dent in the pile. (Been banned from bringing any more new books into the house until I have done so...)
--Ren
Title: Splintered
Author: A.G. Howard
Publisher: Amulet Books
Published: January 1, 2013
Number of Pages: 371
Genre(s): Fantasy, YA
Date Read: February 8, 2013
Acquired: Wal-Mart
Summary:
It's not normal to hear voices; it's even less normal when the voices you're hearing appear to be coming from bugs and flowers right? Well in Alyssa Gardener's family, it is normal, at least for the women, and it's all her great, great , great grandmother's fault. You see Aly's great, great, great grandmother (on her mother's side) was the infamous Alice Liddell, yeah that Alice, the one who inspired the nonsensical children's story written by Lewis Carroll. Apparently Alice actually really did go to Wonderland and she told Carroll all about it when she came back. She left out the part about how she was cursed though, and now all the female members of her family go crazy and start to hear talking plants and animals. It happened to Alyssa's mom Alison, who is locked up in a psych ward, and now it's happening to Alyssa.
All Aly wants is a normal life, she wants her mom to come home and she wants the guy she likes to like her back. But the only way for those things to happen is for her to break the curse, and the only way for her to break the curse is to go back down the rabbit hole the same way her great, great, great grandmother did. After a fight with her crush, she finally snaps and decides that there's no time like the present to clean up Alice's mess, she didn't count on Jeb following her along though. And when they get to Wonderland they find out that it's not exactly the wonderful place that Lewis Carroll painted it to be, little Alice must have gotten some things wrong in her descriptions because Wonderland and its Netherling inhabitants are even stranger and darker than Aly and Jeb could've ever imagined. Upon their arrival they find out that the only way to break the curse and get back home is to clean up all of the messes that Alice made, but there are a few catches, and a few unforeseen problems, and Aly and Jeb aren't sure, but they feel like their being manipulated somehow. Will they ever get home? And even if they do, will they ever be the same?
Review:
I am and always have been, without a doubt a HUGE Alice in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through The Looking Glass fan. They are two of my favourite childhood stories, and Wonderland is one of my favourite fantasy worlds, I would go to Wonderland in a heartbeat, it would be my vacation destination of choice. So being that I am a huge fan of the original works, you can guess that I also really, really like movie adaptations, and literary retellings. The minute I see that a film or book claims to use Alice as source material I will watch it or read it without fail. Disney's 1951 animated version, the Time Burton live action extravaganza, the Syfy channel's sci-fi adpatation simply called Alice, Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars novels, Hatter M. graphic novels, and Princess Alyss of Wonderland companion book have all been devoured and all grace my shelves. The only reason I haven't played American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns is because my computer is getting on in years and refuses to play it, and I refuse to buy a PS3 copy since I already bought a copy for my PC...And none of that takes into account all of the other various Alice merchandise that I have, multiple versions of the original stories, a hand printed White Rabbit messenger bag, tshirts, sweaters, music boxes, posters and prints, the only things I'm really missing are stuffed animals and props, and the only fandom I have more merchandise for is Harry Potter (for which I do have stuffed animals and props, but lo that is a digression!).
Why did I just tell you all of that? Because it's important background information, before I review Splintered I wanted you to understand just how seriously I take the Alice stories and world, and how much the story and characters mean to me! So now that I've gotten that out of my system, let us continue with the review at hand.
I know I've got the labels adaptation and retelling applied to this novel already, but in the strictest use of those terms, they are not what this book is. Not at all. A.G. Howard has taken the Caroll stories as source material yes, but she isn't rehashing the story or re-envisioning it. This is more akin to a sequel. Alice herself is a background character, long dead and only mentioned. The main character in this novel is her look alike great, great, great granddaughter Alyssa. I don't know why A.G. thought it would be fitting to give all of the female descendants of Alice Liddell names similar to Alice, especially given that they believe Alice brought a curse down upon them, you really think they'd actually want to stay as far away from Alice-like names as possible, or at least that's my thinking, what do you all think? So anyway, it's about a descendant, and the ramifications of Alice's adventures, both on her relatives, and on Wonderland. I really like the idea about going back to a fictional world a long time after the "happily ever after" and exploring what really happened; I've had visions of doing similar things myself, in fact in my head I have completely extrapolated a life for Susan from The Chronicles of Narnia post-Last Battle. But that's another thing to talk about another time.
All of the characters and places from the source material are here, as to be expected, but they're all a lot different than the way we remember them from Carroll's books, chalk that up to Alice only being a little girl when she first met them all, and she wasn't really capable of understanding just how weird and scary they really are. Rabid White/The White Rabbit was the hardest one for me to handle, he's extremely grotesque in the "real" Wonderland, and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are replaced by the Twid Sisters, arachnid-like Netherlings who mind the souls in Wonderland. One thing that gets me about this story, and most/if not all adaptations and retellings of Alice is the fact that Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass always seem to get mashed together into the same story. And when this happens the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts always seem to become one person.
The world in Through the Looking Glass is completely separate from Wonderland, and therefore the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts (and their respective kings) should be two separate sets of people. But in A.G.s novel, as with other adaptations, that seems to have been forgotten and the two worlds have once again been mashed together to become one. At least in this story A.G. has some elements that try and account for that: the rabbit hole is how you get IN to Wonderland, mirrors are the portals OUT and can also be used by the Netherlings to travel from one place to another both within Wonderland and in the mortal world. And there was also all of the chess references, cunningly placed to be reminiscent of the chess game in Through the Looking Glass. Although it still falls prey to the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts problem. Yes there are two Queens and it's rather easy to tell that Red = Queen of Hearts and Grenadine = Red Queen, but there's only one King so it still doesn't sit completely right with me. Geographically both Wonderland and the world of Through the Looking Glass are represented in A.G.'s Wonderland, all the locales an Alice fan like myself is expecting to see are recognisable if slightly changed by the darker, edgier vibe, and melded in are some places meant to evoke Through the Looking Glass, the checker-board sands of the desert for example, and the addition of the Walrus (Octobenus), Carpenter and Clams to the pool of tears.
Overall this book succeeds in doing exactly what the author set out to do. She wanted to explore what happened after Alice came back and she did that magnificently. This darker, edgier Wonderland will appeal to teenagers whether they liked Alice as children or not. I also give the author huge props for doing something I've always wanted to do, but have also always been fearful of doing. When you love a story as much as I, and A.G. love Alice of course you want to put your own mark on it, but that's a scary, daunting thing to actually do, because if you screw it up? Oh man you would never hear the end of it, it would just be humiliating and bad. But A.G. Howard has nothing to worry about there in my humble opinion because I feel like she has done Lewis Carroll's legacy proud.
--Ren
Title: The Taker (Book One of The Taker Trilogy)
Author: Alma Katsu
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: September 6, 2011
Number of Pages: 464
Genre(s): Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy, Historical Romance
Date Read: February 1, 2012
Acquired: Wal-Mart
Summary:
Luke is working what starts off as a quiet night shift in the ER of a small town Hospital in rural Maine. That quiet relaxing shift ends when the Deputy shows up with a murderess; an ethereal waif with a mass of blonde curls, slight, beautiful, and covered in blood. Luke is immediately and inexplicable intrigued by this girl, but not because she is a murderer, he can't pinpoint why, and then she starts to tell him her story. The story starts with an admission that, yes, she did kill her companion, but it wasn't murder, he had asked her to do it. He being Jonathan St. Andrew, Luke doesn't believe that it is a coincidence that the man shared his name with the town they are in.
Lanny, that's the name of the beautiful killer, convinces Luke to help her escape the hospital by beguiling him with her sordid tale. With her story she takes him back over 200 years, to her birth and early life with Jonathan as the children of the founding generation of St. Andrew, Maine. How she loved him all of her life, and he never loved her back; the multitude of ways they hurt each other until she was sent to Boston. In Boston Lanny finds herself ensnared by a hedonistic group led by a charming, sado-masochistic, madman who falls in lust with Lanny's beauty and capacity for "perfect love". As they run for the Maine-Quebec border crossing Lanny's story changes to Lanny's story about this man, Adair's story, and from then on the three tales are interwoven. Lanny is trapped with Adair, forced to entrap Jonathan; has she trapped Luke the same way 200 years later after killing Jonathan?
Review:
What drew me to this book first was the striking cover; every time I went into the store it sat there on the shelf calling to me. Finally I caved and picked it up to read the summary on the back. My first thought was "Oh another vampire novel, sounds interesting enough." and with that it was promptly put into the cart and brought home. Where it then sat on the pile for a month or so calling to me as I read other books. I was in the process of trying to read The Thirteen Hallows, but I was having trouble keeping engaged, and I realised the reason was that I REALLY wanted to be reading The Taker, so I gave in and put the Hallows on hold to take it up.
To be honest I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it as I started reading it, and that uncertainty stayed with me for most of the books. Be warned that this is actually a very dark book, with quite a few morbid parts. It markets itself as a romance, a love story, but I really don't like those labels for this. None of the love in this book is healthy in any way, shape or form. You've got Lanny's obsessive love for a self-centred, arrogant golden boy who takes her for granted and strings her along for her entire life; KNOWS that he is doing it BUT STILL CONTINUES to do because she's his only friend. Then you've got Jonathan, the aforementioned golden boy who claims to love Lanny, but not enough to actually rectify the way he treats her. Adair claims to love Lanny, but I feel like he is completely amoral and incapable of love, he feels covetous of her beauty and her capacity to love, he doesn't love her but he desires her and wants to posses her. She in turn sort of falls for him for a time in what screams to me a clear cut case of Stockholm Syndrome until she rationalises herself out of it. And then there's Luke, who toward the end of the novel fancies himself in love with Lanny, even though he's only known her for a few months and most of the things he knows about her tell her that she's not exactly the delicate damsel in distress she appears to be.She needs him, and he needs her, but again I can't see anything healthy in their relationship and I definitely can't see the type of love that warrants giving this novel the label of romance. The interplay in these relationships is complex and intriguing, definitely keeps you thinking, I just really dislike it when a book tries to present itself as something it is so clearly not.
That all being said it did deliver as promised by the advanced review on the back, even if it couldn't be honest with itself, you can always count on a reviewer to point out the truth, it's a showcase of the dark side of romantic love; that is a statement I can agree with. I don't have any personal experience with the dark side of love, thankfully, but I feel safe in saying that Katsu's relationships in this novel definitely have crossed the boundary into that realm.
I think it's a bit of a breath of fresh air in that regard. Yes it's dark and twisty (like Meredith Grey always claimed to be!) and I frequently found myself highly disturbed by the fact that I was enjoying the book. Because of the content of the book I keep finding myself saying out loud, "I'm not entirely sure if it's all right to find this interesting or not..." and then I'd have to set the book down and walk away from it for awhile and work through what I'd just read in my head. With the exception of Luke none of the main characters deserve sympathy from the reader, Lanny comes close because of the circumstances and context surrounding her behaviour, but for the most part it's really hard to give her sympathy. What Katsu did amazingly well here was to create characters so utterly undeserving of sympathy that you can't actually help but feel sorry for at certain times and then that leaves you shouting "ACK NO S/HE'S AN ARSE I SHOULD NOT BE FEELING SORRY FOR THEM!!" and banging your head against the desk...or maybe that's just me, I have a tendency to get REALLY into whatever I'm reading...
How do you feel when you find yourself feeling sympathy for a character who you know doesn't deserve it?
--Ren
Title: Death Has Come Up Into Our Windows
(The Zombie Bible Book #1)
Author: Stant Litore
Publisher: 47North
Published: August 14, 2012
Number of Pages: 93
Genre(s): Horror, Historical Fiction, Mythology
Date Read: January 13, 2013
Acquired: Chapters
Summary:
Yerusalem is being ravaged by a plague, so what else is new? It's biblical times, something bad is always happening in Yerusalem! This isn't just your normal plague though, this isn't wine and water turning to blood, it's not frogs or fireballs falling from the sky, and it's definitely not something as mundane as a plague of locusts. No, this is an old plague, true evil, a sign that the people of Yerusalem have truly failed God and are doomed, it must be; for why else would the dead be walking the earth?
Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah for those of you unfamiliar with the biblical spelling) tried to warn the people, he truly did. He tried to stop them, did everything in his power to try and make them see the error of their ways. He has failed; the city is besieged by Babylon and there are more and more dead wandering the streets, soon they will surely out number the living. He is of course terrified and appalled, with his fellow men and especially with himself. He blames himself for their downfall, for not doing even more than he did to stop it from coming to this. Yirmiyahu has given everything to try and save Yerusalem, even breaking his covenant with his wife to send her away so that he could stay and try to save the city he loves. But now he is alone, for even God has left Yirmiyahu.
WIthout God how can Yirmiyahu hope to save Yerusalem and its people from the tide of walking dead that they unleashed upon themselves?
Review:
At 93 pages this is a lovely little one sitting read, or at least it would have been something I could have read in one sitting were it not for the fact that I've been having a hard time concentrating on anything for more than thirty minutes at a time thanks to my wisdom tooth headaches (I'm headed to the dentist on Wednesday to get that looked at). I like books that can be read in one sitting, I'd much rather spend two and a half hours reading a book from start to finish than watching a movie. The book is a much richer world and I have a very vivid imagination; I usually much prefer my own visualisations to those in film adaptations for example. Because of my headaches, I wanted something that would allow me to get through it quickly because I knew it would be an effort to focus so I scoured the pile and came away with this and it fit my reading needs at the time perfectly.
This is not the type of book I would normally gravitate towards, when it comes to supernatural creatures I'm usually a vampire or werewolf fan. I always used find zombies to be incredibly lame but then I took a class back in 2008 and we studied zombie movies and even though I still thought they were lame I enjoyed the symbolism of them. Milla Jovovich and the Resident Evil series can be attributed with eradicating my dislike of zombies; the zombies in that series are not lame at all. So thanks to that class, and Resident Evil when I won the third book in the Zombie Bible series from Book Riot's Name that Author contest one week back in November I was super excited to read it because a) Hey I won a free book! Yeah! and b) Oooh Christian mythology meets modern horror! so I decided then and there that I would acquire the first two books and read them in order. I asked my local library to order them, and they did; but then I ended up getting a lot of book money for Christmas and just bought them myself.
I'm extremely glad that I did decide to dive in and give the zombie lit. a chance because this book didn't disappoint me. That being said, if you're a zombie fan a word of warning, do not be fooled by the gory cover image above, the title or the summary; the zombies are in there, assuredly, but they are not the stars of the action so if you're expecting gory action scenes all over the place and life or death chases this is not the zombie book you are looking for. I for one am okay with that because I really enjoyed the direction that the author took the story but maybe that's just the religious culture scholar in me? There's a lot of philosophical and religious waxing on the part of the main character; a good 90% of the book is him working through his own actions and those of his fellow Israelites, trying to figure out if they are capable or even worthy of redemption by God. For that reason the narrative is not linear it jumps around a lot between the present and several different points in the past through flashbacks.
On the plus side you really don't need to know anything at all about Christian mythology because Litore has taken little almost meaningless biblical incidents and imbued them with a new fantastical life. It is a bold undertaking indeed, and I know that there are people out there who are perfectly willing and ready to label this as sacrilege or blasphemy, but I am not one of those people. I applaud him for having the courage to take on this idea and it is a brilliant one. He has executed his vision amazingly, and he is so completely into this project that even his historian's note at the beginning and about the author section at the back do not break from the character he has created for himself of a zombie historian who has survived a 1992 outbreak of zombies in the Pacific Northwest. That right there is dedication to one's art.
I am excited to read the rest of the series and Stant Litore is now most definitely on my list of authors to watch for.
Check him and his zombies out at http://zombiebible.blogspot.com
--Ren
Title: Casino Royale
Author: Ian Fleming
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1953
Number of Pages: 181
Genre(s): Thriller, Action, Suspense
Date Read: January 11, 2013
Acquired: Waterloo Public Library
Summary:
His name is Bond, James Bond. He's slick, suave, and dashing; also ruthless, cold and calculating, all of the ingredients that make a spy like 007 good at his job. If you happen to be the head of British MI6 and you have a job that needs doing, you call on James Bond because he's the best. That's exactly why M chooses him for a very important mission at the Casino at Royale in France. MI6 has the chance to bring down a big fish in the Soviet intelligence network, Le Chiffre, but only if they can beat him at one of the things he does best; gambling, in this case baccarat. Bond is the nine up M's sleeve, the best card player in the service, so he sends him in to clean Le Chiffre out.
You'd think from all the boozing and gambling that Bond was on a holiday, but he wants you to know he's very serious about his work. Royale isn't all fun and games, there are dangerous Soviet spies running around with bombs and guns hidden in ordinary every day objects! His room is being bugged! He's not in the game alone though, Mathis the French agent is at his side, along with another British agent, Miss Vesper Lynd, who is so beautiful, composed, and focussed on the mission that Bond names a drink after her and then falls for her, but only after the job is done! He also meets his American counterpart, and future best friend, in Felix Leiter, who gallops in on a white steed to save Bond at his hour of need right when he's about to fail his mission. With the help of these three he manages to fulfil his mission parameters but then he is betrayed, and captured, as one would expect from a spy novel.
There's a twist at the end, and it's as bitter for Bond as the lemon twist in his signature Vesper martini.
Review:
The character of 007 is one of the most well known literary and film characters in existence. Almost everyone knows at least one thing about James Bond; even if it's just the catchy tune they created for the theme of the movies. I'm young enough that the first James Bond I ever knew was Pierce Brosnan. It wasn't until late 2012 though, thanks to the 50th anniversary hype, that I decided instead of just knowing trivia tidbits about James Bond I should probably watch the movies, so that's where I started. I grabbed 3 of the movies that I could get my hands on through the local public library and I watched them. I was immediately hooked. The films are fun and entertaining to watch; so I went out and bought all of them and spent December working my way through them. Halfway through I figured that since I was enjoying the films so much I should probably give the books a try.
That was how I came to acquire Casino Royale from the library. I like to start at the beginning of things and this is Fleming's first Bond adventure. It's well written and it's what one expects from a spy thriller, especially when one remembers that Fleming and Bond helped set the tone for all of the espionage and political thrillers that abound in the reading market today. Is it perfect? Of course not, if you analyse it through the lens of 21st century values, morals and culture, like the vast majority of the reviews on GoodReads seem to do unfortunately, it falls apart. But good literature analysis practice dictates that you have to analyse the book according to its context which means that you must think about the book in terms of the values, morals and culture of the target audience at the time when it was written. I find it supremely disappointing that this guiding principle has gone out the window with this particular book.
It is a good book in my opinion, but my opinion takes context into consideration. If I take context out of the equation, then I am left with pure hatred for the literary Bond; the character is a brash, boorish, racist, sexist, arrogant pig of a man that defies all aspects of being a decent human being in our society. That's the key, in our society, Fleming's Bond doesn't live in our society, he lives in 1950s, Cold War era, Britain; in a time and place where his behaviours and attitudes were still considered normal by most and ideal by some. The target audience for Bond's escapades saw the type of man Bond is as the model of masculinity and there's nothing wrong with that because those were the values and beliefs of their time. Values and beliefs change over time because we as humans assimilate knowledge and information to grow and change. The producers knew that and that's why they toned down the silver screen Bond, somewhat, when compared to the literary Bond.
So the lesson here is take it for what it is, judge it based on its context and you'll find it an enjoyable read, try and force it into the lines of the 21st century value set and you're going to have a bad time.
And talking of bad times? I am firmly of the mind set that both Fleming and the producers all missed out on a chance to make Bond truly timeless and immortal. The Bond character should have been like the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride, it should have been a job title (007) and code name (James Bond) that went along with the job instead of having James Bond be a real man. Think how epic that would be?! Especially in terms of the movies! Instead of trying to suspend our disbelief whenever a new actor takes on the roll and completely changes the character, or wrestle with believing the fact that supposedly Bond's apparently been in his 30s for the last 50 years, we could have been happily enjoying the premise of each new actor being a successor to the previous James Bond, taking over the title and code name upon the death or retirement of his predecessor.
Seriously, think about it!
--Ren
