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Posted:
Mar 25, 2013
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Days Of Blood & Starlight

daysofbloodandstarlightAuthor: Laini Taylor
First Published: November 2012
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone #2
406 pages (eBook)

I was so eager to read the second book in this series, but — if I may be perfectly honest — I feel really disappointed. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised since the second book in a trilogy is usually lackluster compared to the first or the final book. Setting up for the grand finale and all. Still, I didn’t think I would have been this … bored.

After Karou finds out that Akiva was responsible for the genocide of her chimera people, she breaks off  all contact with him and finds the remaining surviving chimera. She is their only hope now, their only resurrectionist, who can continue pumping out soldiers for the war against the angels. Despite her true intentions to help her own people, the chimera don’t trust her. They still see her as a traitor, and Karou can’t ever be sure that she is safe with them. Meanwhile, Akiva mourns the loss of Karou and deeply regrets what he has done. He is more determined than ever to end the brutal conflicts between chimeras and angels once and for all, but he is not sure how to begin such a venture, especially when he is hailed as the Beast’s Bane, a hero amongst his own angelic race.

I think my biggest problem with this book was that it simply felt like nothing much was happening. By the end of the novel, it’s clear that much of what happened in the story (which, to me, was not much) was a set-up for book three. Days of Blood & Starlight just doesn’t feel like much of a story on its own. While I can remember several memorable and series-defining events from the first book, there was only one or two significant events that occurred in this book. To put it plainly, I was simply bored by this book. When I was reading book one, I found it hard to put the book down (or rather, my tablet, heh). I had no troubles putting book two down at all.

There were also some chapters from the point-of-view of really random characters. For example, the Dama centaur chimera sisters Sveva and Sarazal and their escape story. There were a handful of chapters from them and then you didn’t hear anything from them again for the rest of the book. I found that quite odd …

A love triangle begins to emerge in this book, which I would not have minded so much if there was a hint of it in the first book. Karou and Akiva are more or less separated (for the time being, anyway), and we are introduced to Ziri, a chimera of the same race that Madrigal/Karou was. Cue intimate moments scenes. Insert a vague history between the two of them. See, all this was brand new information in book two, Ziri was never mentioned in book one, and it made it feel like this love triangle thing was an afterthought or something.

I also have to agree with my friend Paola that Zuzana had become super annoying in this book and I really hope she would be turned down a notch or two. I don’t know if she and Mik were supposed to be comic relief in an otherwise bleak and depressing environment, but they were not funny. They were irritating. Especially Zuzana, who came off as self-centered to me. A clashing of worlds is about to occur, your best friend’s life is going to be in danger, the entire WORLD is going to be in danger, and the only thing she seemed to care about was that she was in a dinky hotel room, away from all the action. Sigh.

I was happy with the direction of character development though. I feel Karou has grown up and matured a lot, enduring her trials and tribulations (unlike her best friend who seemed to have done the reverse of maturing), and Akiva also has gone through some serious self reflection. I like how they are not like two lovesick teenagers hell-bent on being together no matter the costs. They are level headed and realize there are greater stakes — worlds to save — and if they cannot be together because of this, then so be it, because it will be for the greater good. I do hope Karou and Akiva will resolve their issues with one another, but I feel it would be appropriate if they didn’t either. I guess either way, I will be content with their relationship.

Here’s hoping book three will be much better!

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Posted:
Mar 16, 2013
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Daughter Of Smoke & Bone

daughter-of-smoke-and-boneAuthor: Laini Taylor
First Published: September 2011
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone #1
391 pages (eBook)

I’ve been meaning to read this book for a while. When it was first released and the reviews started pouring out on blogs and Goodreads, the overwhelming majority that I read were very positive reviews. Needless to say, this book piqued my interest but I didn’t get around to reading it until now (an excuse I use for almost every book I read — “I didn’t get around to reading it …” Hah). I tried not to have my opinion of the book subconsciously swayed by the hype, though when it feels like EVERYONE loves this book, I feel pressure to love it too. Anyway, I definitely think this book is amazing, fun and creative, and I enjoyed it very much. I can totally understand why everyone loves it. I don’t think I love it quite as much as some other readers too, but I do think it is a very good book.

The story is about a young girl named Karou (pronounced ka-roo), who lives in Prague, alone in her own apartment, and attends an art school. She loves to draw and her friends love seeing the monsters she creates in her sketchbook. Little do her friends know, these monsters aren’t figments of Karou’s imagination; they are real. They are the monsters who raised Karou and Karou loves them as her own family.

Her “father figure” is Brimstone, who appears to be the leader of the four monsters. His life’s work is to collect teeth. All kinds of teeth, from humans to animals and even other fantastical creatures. Karou has no idea what Brimstone does with these bags and bags of teeth, she’s not allowed to ask. However, she runs errands for Brimstone and in return, he gives him small beads that allow her to make minor wishes, such as changing her hair colour to a natural blue, or giving her enemy caterpillar-bushy eyebrows.

When black handprints start appearing on doorways all over the world — the doorways to the world where the monsters reside — Karou’s world starts to change drastically. Suddenly, she loses all contact with Brimstone and the others and worse, she is being hunted by a beautiful but dangerous male angel named Akiva. However, little does Karou know, Akiva knows all about Karou’s true identity and how she is connected to him. Before she knows it, she and Akiva are embroiled in a forbidden love.

Before I say anything else, I want to make it clear that I did, indeed, fall in love with this book. I haven’t read a book this creative or imaginative since … well, it feels like a very long time. The best part of the creativity, for me, was the use of the teeth and wishes. I’m not going to spoil what Brimstone was using the teeth for, for those of you who don’t know, but I really liked that twist. Teeth! So simple, but so genius at the same time.

At its core, it’s still a pretty ‘common’ story. I would say the core of this novel is similar to the basic plot of Romeo & Juliet: two starcrossed lovers who cannot be together due to their affiliations. But in Daughter of Smoke & Bone, I feel Laini Taylor took that common story and re-imagined it on an epic grand scale, with angels and demons and an eternal war. The chronology of the story is also a bit different as well, telling the end first (although as the reader, you do not know it is the end) and then explaining the beginning, with how Karou and Akiva originally met and so on.

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book (or the ‘end’ of the story). I was totally loving being in Karou’s world, her art classes, her secret visits to Brimstone and her monster family, her annoying ex-boyfriend doing stupid stunts to try to win her back and all the little, and sometimes petty, wishes she made. Where the book began to falter, for me, was when the story shifted and began to tell the tale of how Karou and Akiva originally met. It was very removed from the setting I was already used to, and I was really not expecting that at all. I went from being on a slightly magical/paranormal Earth to a completely different world altogether, one where angels and monsters fought a war on a daily basis. New city names, new geography, new culture to know. The problem wasn’t the newness, it was just such a sudden shift for me that it almost felt like a disconnect between the first half of the book to the second half. The more I read, the more far away I felt from everything I read prior. It almost felt like a completely different story I was reading.

I wasn’t too crazy about was Karou and Akiva’s relationship either. It’s very sweet, but as I mentioned earlier, it is at its core, a Romeo & Juliet kind of story. Even though I praise the author for being so imaginative with it, the relationship is still as simplistic as what you think a Romeo & Juliet story would have. Their relationship is powerful, deep and passionate — and also quite instant. Even though Karou and Akiva started off as enemies, they very, very quickly put that all aside and, well, fell in love. I know, I know — you are thinking, “Uh, did you not READ the book? There is a reason!” I’m perfectly aware but I think even when Karou and Akiva met originally in Karou’s past life, it was still a lot of, “Wow, he’s so beautiful” and “Wow, she’s so beautiful”, with some “I saved your life” mixed in. I’m afraid I just didn’t feel the same fiery passion that these two character felt whenever they were with one another.

Now, with all that said, I did love reading this book a lot though. It was very fun and I became victim to the “just one more chapter” syndrome that all good books seem to be able to inflict on its readers. I liked Karou’s character a lot — not so much her “alter ego” (or rather, her original form) because that personality seemed way too Mary Sue for my liking. But I liked Karou and how she interacted with her human friends and her monster family. I loved the idea of a monster hidden in a little shop collecting teeth — don’t ask my why, but I’m very attached to that idea and this book did a very good job driving me crazy with wanting to know what the heck Brimstone was using the teeth for! You do get to find out in the end, no worries. The book also did a good job driving me crazy with who Karou was in her other life, but that one became somewhat predictable and therefore, less mysterious once Akiva entered the story and you see how they’re interacting.

I certainly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys YA novels, I do think this is one of the better YA novels I’ve read in the last little while. I eagerly look forward to book two: Days Of Blood & Starlight!

My Rating:

Posted:
Sep 6, 2012
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Soulless

Author: Gail Carriger
First Published: 2009
Publisher: Orbit
Series: Parasol Protectorate #1
365 pages (mass market paperback)

I’ve seen this book appear on a number of Goodreads friends’ pages and was interested in it because 1) it took place in a steampunk Victorian period and 2) it’s a mish-mash of vampires, werewolves and ghosts. Essentially, I was under the impression it was a quirky book that would be fun to read and I’m happy to say, now that I finished reading it, that it is exactly that. Sometimes it’s nice to read something not serious, and Soulless was a great getaway. It was almost like fantasy chick-lit.

Soulless is about 26 year old spinster, Alexia Tarabotti. She is, if you haven’t guessed, soulless, which means she is “immune” to supernatural creatures. She can’t be bitten by them, for example, and they become human when touched by her. She lives in a steampunk Victorian era London, where werewolves, vampires and ghosts are real and integrated into society. Such supernatural creatures are registered with BUR (Bureau of Unnatural Registry) so they are all kept track of. At a ball one day, Alexia is attacked by an unregistered vampire, whom she accidentally kills. Lord Maccon, an alpha werewolf, a BUR worker and ridiculously gorgeous, is sent to investigate the killing. Nobody knows who this vampire is or where he came from. What’s worse is that registered supernaturals are disappearing and more unknown supernaturals are appearing. Even worse, everyone thinks Alexia may have something to do with this, being soulless and all.

The first thing I noticed was the writing style. It’s different from most novels, I think. I don’t really know how to describe it, other than that it’s quirky. I enjoyed the writing a lot and found it suited the humorous Victorian setting of this book. It’s witty, it’s funny and I was never bored at any time when reading this. I imagine this kind of writing style isn’t going to be for everyone, but I personally really liked it.

All the characters are very memorable and I love them all. Because of the type of story it is and the kind of atmosphere the book has, I’m not surprised that all the characters are kind of “cartoon-ish”; in fact, I loved it. Alexia is a bold, intellectual and independent woman who has resigned to the fact that she’ll probably never marry because frankly, no husband wants a wife this assertive in such a time period. That isn’t to say she doesn’t have her feminine moments. Alexia has resigned to being a spinster, but she does kind of wish she has a husband and a family and all that jazz. I loved her relationship with Lord Maccon, who becomes a love interest of her’s very early on in the story. They seem to irritate one another at first, but later it is revealed they both are quite fond of one another. Lord Maccon is so protective of Alexia, it is just adorable! I was a little surprised by how much romance was in this book (namely, all the kissing/making out scenes), but I found myself quite enjoying them bantering with one another. Even the characters that don’t speak much have wonderfully endearing qualities. For example, I really love Alexia’s family butler, Floote. He doesn’t say much, he doesn’t even appear much, but I just imagine him hovering around in the background, worrying over Alexia entertaining her adventurous spirit, and it just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I think this is a delightfully written book that’s fun to read if you’re yearning for something light and fun. I am looking forward to reading more about Alexia in the next books in this series (makes me happy to know there are at least four more books after this first one)!

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Posted:
Sep 3, 2012
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Imaginary Girls

Author: Nova Ren Suma
First Published: June 2011
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
348 pages (hardcover)

Imaginary Girls is a kind of story you don’t really encounter too often in YA books. Most people label it as a paranormal or supernatural book, but I think it’s closer to surrealism. Surrealism isn’t something YA authors write about very often so if you exclusively read YA, chances are you haven’t come across this type of story, but I really enjoy surreal stories so it was a pleasant surprise to run into it here. Be warned; surrealism isn’t for everyone. If you’ve never read surrealism, you’ll probably think such stories are just “weird” or “doesn’t make sense.” Some people seem to hate it, some seem to love it. Really depends on your cup of tea.

Imaginary Girls is mainly about two sisters named Ruby and Chloe. Chloe is the younger one, by five years, and the narrator of this story. These two sisters are incredibly close and will literally do anything for one another, though the relationship balance is not equal — Ruby thinks she knows what’s best for Chloe and dictates everything, whereas Chloe is in awe of her sister and will listen to everything Ruby says. The girls live in a small town by a reservoir that is out of bounds, but parties are frequently held there anyway by the teenagers of the town.

The story opens up with one such party, where Ruby brags that her little sister is such a great swimmer, she can swim across the reservoir. Chloe, being obedient, attempts the swim but runs into a floating rowboat with the dead body of a girl named London, a girl she knows from her class. Flash forward, Chloe is living with her dad (the girls have different fathers) away from town, but Ruby forces Chloe to come back and live with her, acting like London never died. When Chloe returns to the small town with Ruby, she finds everything very peculiar. London is, indeed, alive, and what’s more, Ruby has some strange way of making everyone in town do exactly as she says.

I quite enjoyed this book. The writing is really great and the dialogue felt real and not cheesy. As I said, I do like surrealism so I had no problem slipping into the story. Like Chloe, I was tossed into a dream-like world where I wasn’t sure if what was happening was REALLY happening or not. I felt a bit haunted while reading this book. You know something is not quite right, it’s almost like there’s an element of creepiness. I wasn’t sure if there really was some super powers happening here, or ghosts or what, but it was about halfway through the book that I decided that this was a surrealistic story. I guess you can say “magical realism” too, which would be another label if you like labels.

Then there’s Chloe and Ruby’s relationship, which is the big focus in this novel. Ruby is someone the entire town practically worships. She gets her way with everything and all the boys want to date her. Chloe, too, looks up to her sister, obsessed with her as much as Ruby is obsessed with herself, but with her return to town, she senses that it’s strange how everyone just does whatever Ruby says. Ruby’s not exactly a kind person. She’s self-centered to the extreme and acts like the entire world was created for her and her sister. Chloe is the only person Ruby cares about. It’s an interesting relationship where Chloe is the only person who has potential to “control” Ruby, but she doesn’t. Ruby has everyone under her spell. Ironically, because  I’m a third party looking into the story from the outside, I didn’t really like Ruby. Brilliantly written characters with great dialogue, but if I met Ruby in real life, I wouldn’t like her one bit, haha. Chloe is a bit of a doormat and doesn’t seem to have much of a personality, which sounds like a bad thing, but works great in this book because she’s always in Ruby’s shadow so it makes perfect sense.

This is a character-driven book so there isn’t a whole lot of plot per se, so some readers may find the book slow moving. But the relationship of Chloe and Ruby, or even just Ruby, is so fascinating to read the pages do seem to fly by. Slowly, you realize Ruby is just a messed up person and super manipulative. Slowly, you realize your narrator isn’t really any better than Ruby, she’s just a less intense version of her. Sometimes I doubted whether Chloe was a reliable narrator or not and it made me question a lot of the events in the book. There are so many times where I thought, “Is this really happening? Or is someone going to wake up and say it was all a dream?”

This is without a doubt a brilliantly written book and if you enjoy surreal fiction, you definitely want to check out Imaginary Girls.

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Posted:
Aug 28, 2012
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Sweet Evil

Author: Wendy Higgins
Series:  Sweet Evil #1
First Published: May 2012
Publisher: HarperTeen
464 pages (eBook) 

I am kind of in a state of disbelief over this book. I mean that in a, “What did I just read?” kind of way. It started off pretty good but very, very quickly went downhill for me. I just can’t believe over half the things that happened in this book. I’m surprised I actually read every word to the end.

Sweet Evil is about a girl named Anna. She’s super sweet and innocent, incredibly nice, and also, she can literally see people’s emotions, in colours. She’s always known she was kind of different from other people, obviously. When she turns 16, she meets Kaidan, a deliciously handsome teen boy who’s in a famous rock band. He’s the same as her — he can see people’s emotions, but the difference is, he knows why. Anna and Kaidan are Nephilim, the offspring of demons and humans. Born to one of the Dukes of Evil, their jobs is to corrupt humankind and have them destroy one another in sin. However, Anna is even more unique than she realizes — she is not the daughter of a demon and a human, but rather, a demon and an angel.

There are so many things I didn’t like about this book. I’ll start with the story and structure. I really did not like having the story world explained to me via question-answer sessions between characters. I can think of at least three long scenes where Anna is sat down with another characters (Kaidan, her foster mom Patti, or her dad) and they just explain things to her. It was like reading an interview, where Anna would ask a question and the other person would provide an answer. I find this to be a very boring and unimaginative way of revealing a story world.

A lot of events happened in this book that were just super unrealistic, and I don’t mean the demons and spirits and angels. The majority of characters in this book are 15-17. Somehow, every teen is hooked onto drinking and ecstasy and having sex, or so it seems. At age FIFTEEN? Holy cow. Maybe I just wasn’t “hip” when I was 15, but that seems awfully young to be doing these things. Not only that, but it’s incredibly easy for them to enter clubs and bars. I have no idea why. I highly doubt all the bouncers do is slap a bracelet on your hand that says you’re a minor. As the kids in this book showed, even with these magical bracelets, they got their hands on booze very easily. And wow, were they ever knowledgeable about alcohol, they knew so many drinks and mixes, it was mind boggling.

The characters were ridiculous. Anna is supposed to be super innocent, kind and a little naive. Well, she definitely came off naive, and very dumb, and very annoying. She’s stuck in this world where she wants everyone to hold hands and ring around the rosy. She’s also hypocritical. For example, Kaidan, being the son of the Duke of Lust, kept wanting to have sex with her. She kept refusing. Finally, one night, she randomly pounced on Kaidan, totally wanting to have sex with him because — get this — her poetry homework made her mad. Kaidan wasn’t great either. I saw no reason why the two of them fell in love after four days (Anna even admits it’s only been 4 days), but they did. Kaidan had little personality and the only thing he wanted from Anna nearly the entire time was to have sex with her, which Anna kept refusing yet she fell in love … Weird.

Anna’s parents were really aggravating too, especially her mom. Anna’s foster mom, Patti, is your stereotypical helicopter mom. At the same time, she makes dumb parenting decisions. Anna needs to go to California to meet her dad — why not go on a road trip with Kaidan, the boy you met yesterday? Yes, you know he’s the son of a demon, that should be no problem because you’ll just go right up to him and tell him to leave Anna’s virtue intact. He’ll listen to you, right? And then there’s Anna’s dad. She hasn’t seen him in 16 years, yet once they were in each other’s lives, they acted like they’ve always known one another, being super close and everything. It was bizarre. Not to mention how extremely uncomfortable it was to read about her dad bringing TONS of alcohol to her and teaching her how to drink alcohol so she can lure other people to drink and become drunk. She’s SIXTEEN. I don’t care if that’s her job as a demon child, she’s SIXTEEN! It did not inspire any warm and fuzzy father-daughter moments in me at all.

On a similar note, I do understand that this book centers around these demons that are each in charge of a sin, but I felt like the amount of it in the book was almost at inappropriate levels for a YA/teen novel. There’s SO much drugs and alcohol in this book which the characters drink with no consequences. Kaidan’s job is to have sex with girls, so he’s having one night stands in every other chapter. We have two twin girls whose job is to break up relationships and marriages. One of them describes being gang raped at age 13. Anna herself almost gets date raped. Who thought all this would be okay in a book with characters who are so young?! If this was an adult/general fiction book, that’s different, but this isn’t. I also disliked how this book emphasized virginity = purity. Implying that if you’re not a virgin, you’re a dirty, dirty whore, which is something some of the female characters who are not virgins experienced when the other kids at school found out they had sex with so and so.

I can go on forever about what I didn’t like about this book, but I think you get the point. There’s so many things I dislike about it and the story seemed to make less and less sense as the book went on. It’s really strange because when I first started the book, I actually really enjoyed the first chapter and was looking forward to some YA demon-angel mythology. I am definitely not interested in reading any more from this series :|

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Posted:
Aug 23, 2012
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Everneath

Author: Brodi Ashton
Series: Everneath #1
First Published: January 2012
Publisher: HarperCollins
240 pages (eBook)

The last several times I was attracted to a beautiful YA cover, the book turned out to be disappointing. This time, however, the book turned out to be a very wonderful read! I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book and how much I look forward to the next one in this series.

Everneath is about 17 year old Nikki (nicknamed Becks because of her last name), who has reappeared on the Surface of the world again. Where had she been previously? She was in a “cocoon”, trapped in the Everneath (a mythical underworld of some sort) with an Everliving being named Cole, who fed off her emotions for 100 years so that he will continue to remain immortal. She’s finally out of Everneath and back on the Surface, where she finds only 6 months have passed. She only has another 6 months of freedom before the Everneath tunnels will claim her again.

If there’s one thing Nikki wants to do before being taken again, it’s to see her former boyfriend Jack. They had broken up even before she went missing, but she never stopped thinking about him, for a hundred years. As Nikki tries to mend their relationship so that it at least sort of resembles a friendship again, Nikki and Jack find themselves longing for the past and each other. This is made particularly difficult because of Cole, who keeps appearing before Nikki and offering her another choice — choose to be with Cole and they may become rulers of the Everneath. Why Nikki won’t go for this option, besides the fact that she wants to be with Jack, is because she will have to be like Cole and start feeding off other people’s emotions too, an experience that Nikki has done and does not wish on anyone else.

At first, I found it a little difficult to get into the book. I didn’t really understand the world of the Everneath, and the plot seemed to progress rather slowly. It’s not a plot orientated book, it’s definitely a character orientated book. However, I caught on eventually and with the 6 month deadline hovering over Nikki’s head, there was a real sense of urgency to everything the characters did and the choices they made. What I particularly loved was the way the story was presented. It switched back and forth between the past and the present with each chapter, juxtaposing the awkwardness of Nikki and Jack’s present relationship with the sweet, honeymoon-like relationship of their past. It definitely helped me understand the characters more thoroughly and knowing the ins and outs of their relationship put into perspective the danger the Everneath is to the both of them.

Nikki was a great character, I liked how the book kind of showed her return to the Surface like a person who was recovering from a drug addiction. Because that’s what it’s described as in the book — when you are being fed off, it’s like everything in the world is fine again, no need to feel anything, which Nikki sorely wanted because of her break up and the fact her mother died (and then the culprit didn’t even go to jail). It was like she was numb for 100 years and finally was sober and out in the world again. The other two main characters, the boys Cole and Jack, were a tad disappointing in their characterization. They both felt sort of stereotypical, bad boy and perfect boy, but at least they were two people who were distinctly different from one another (unlike some other YA love triangles, where I don’t understand what the girl’s dilemma is because both boys are exactly the same … but that’s another story). And they were both quite likeable, even the naughty one, haha.

I’m really happy that I read this book! I haven’t enjoyed a YA paranormal book in a long time (or so it feels), and I’m glad Everneath lifted me out of that funk. I’m definitely looking forward to the second book, I’m dying to find out what happens after that ending!

My Rating: