Review: Fury by Shirley Marr

Pages: 277 (Paperback)
Author: Shirley Marr
Add It: Goodreads
Publisher: Black Dog Books

Fury was a book I was fully prepared to love. I have high expectations for any book with a badass looking redhead on the cover. I have spent many years lamenting the fact that I am not, in fact, a badass redhead. Any chance I have to live vicariously through a literary character to attain my Ginger dreams is a chance I am eager to take.

Unfortunately, the contents of the book did not live up to the cover for me. Perhaps I am a little burnt out on books that use high-school as a setting, which is why I am gravitating more towards YA set in the Fantasy genre lately. I have been out of high-school for several years now and I tend to relate more to characters in YA that come across as older. The characters in Fury were very immature and catty. Girls vs. Girls. It annoyed me and did not endear me to them. The biggest issue for me in books is not feeling connected to the characters, and unfortunately that was the case here. I couldn’t care about the outcome because I didn’t like any of the characters.

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Review: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Pages: 375
Author: Lauren Oliver
Add It: Goodreads
Series: Delirium (#2)
Publisher: Harper Teen

I have grown into somewhat of a diehard Lauren Oliver fan. I just like everything she does. That is basically my entire review for the novella Hana: I just like everything Lauren Oliver does. Guess what? That was a lie. I didn’t like this that much.

Okay, I liked it. That’s what a three star rating means to me: I liked it but there was something missing or something wrong. I expected better of this book. I spent a great deal of the book bored. It took me awhile to finish this. I felt completely detached from Lena’s story for most of the book. I really didn’t like the choice to split the book into Then and Now. I can see why she chose to tell the story that way, but it was like reading two completely different books, and I just kept finding myself annoyed that when I would finally get into what was happening in one section I had to read about the other.

I enjoyed all of the side characters in the Then story. I enjoyed reading about Lena’s interactions with them and the struggle of living among the Invalids. Oliver certainly knows how to make the feeling of grief tackle you from the pages of her story, dragging you down until you feel it right alongside her heroine. Much of Before was rife with emotion. Raven’s story in particular was especially harrowing and beautiful.

I enjoyed Now’s story much less. It felt too plain to me. It didn’t do anything to stand out from the many other dystopian novels on the shelves. There was just something about it that felt like I’d read it all before, and not even Lauren’s gorgeous prose could save it for me. I also didn’t buy the romance between Lena and Julian. I liked it only because Oliver seemed to be allowing Lena to move on instead of the usual in YA in which One True Love is all our heroine gets, but the relationship between them seemed to only be formed by proximity and chaos, and it didn’t feel entirely genuine to me. It seemed like Lena was falling for him when she wasn’t completely over Alex, instead of giving herself time to properly grieve and move on.

The book ended in a cliffhanger that I found predictable and very disappointing. I also have begun to grow a specific hatred for books that so obviously end in a cliffhanger this way, and it did nothing to improve my feelings toward the book. I really hope that the conclusion to this series is satisfying. If anyone can get it back on track it’s Lauren Oliver.

Review: The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Pages: 409 (Hardcover)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Add It: Goodreads
Publisher: Scholastic

The Scorpio Races is a very slow and subtle story. Maggie Stiefvater has said that she will sacrifice many things in her story to make readers feel something and it shows. Contrary to what the title may imply this is not an action packed racing story, and I feel like that may be why so many of the reviews are all over the place, because readers came into the story expecting something different. It’s not that the negative reviews citing lack of action are wrong, that’s all a matter of personal preference and this book is not something I’d recommend to someone who prefers a lot of action, but I would hate to see people turned away from this story because they think it might be boring. It’s certainly not as action packed as the title implies, true. If a book with very little action that spends most of its time detailing every sight, smell, and minor character is not for you then definitely look elsewhere, because I can see how the pacing would not appeal to every reader. The actual race is a very small part of this book but I wasn’t at all bored by all of the rich character development and world building.

What Maggie excels at here is transporting you to this little Island town. You can feel the tension on the beach, easily picture the beautiful and dangerous water horses, and almost hear the waves as Puck and Sean sit atop the cliffs. Even the minor characters on the island easily come to life; from tough Peg to Finn and his struggles with OCD, to the three quirky Maud sisters who own a shop in town. I think that Maggie is one of the more poetic and evocative YA writers that I’ve come across. While I easily prefer this to the Wolves of Mercy Falls series, both works showcase Maggie’s obvious ability to write a lovely phrase, and pull her readers into a story headfirst. I think that The Scorpio Races rises above the Wolves of Mercy Falls due to the originality of the story and the subtlety of the romance.

Romance actually plays a very, very tiny part in this story so those who need a lot of romance in their books beware. The romance here is barely there and yet it is probably my favorite pairing in the entire YA genre. It is slow to develop and only beginning once we reach the conclusion of the story. I think a quote from Puck’s (Kate’s) perspective really explains what I love so much about the couple in this story.

“I think every now and then about Sean’s thumb pressed against my wrist and daydream about him touching me again. But mostly I think about the way he looks at me – with respect – and I think that’s probably worth more than anything.”

The friendship and budding romance here is built upon a mutual love of horses and respect. That’s worth much more to me than any overly grand love story of the Romeo and Juliet variety. The main love story here was between horses and their masters. Sean and Corr and Puck and Dove were the true shining pairings of this novel.

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Review: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Pages: 480 (Kindle Edition)
Author: Rachel Hartman
Add It: Goodreads
Series: Untitled? (#1)
Publisher: Random House
Rating: 4/5

I remember being born, in fact, I remember a time before that. There was no light, but there was music: joints creaking, blood rushing, the heart’s staccato lullaby, a rich symphony of indigestion. Sound enfolded me, and I was safe. Then my world split open, and I was thrust into a cold and silent brightness. I tried to fill the emptiness with my screams, but the space was too vast. I raged, but there was no going back.” [ARC]

Rachel Hartman has come into the fantasy genre with a beautiful debut, a book filled with lovely paragraphs such as the one above, and intricate but enjoyable world building. She takes a different approach to dragons; the dragons shift into human form but mostly remain emotionally detached and incredibly intellectual. This idea pays off and creates a very interesting dynamic between humans and dragons that I really enjoyed reading about.

One of the most heartwarming relationships between dragon and someone with human emotions in the novel is between Seraphina and Orma. I really loved watching how they navigated their bond to each other, as Orma struggled with acting more like a human companion, and Seraphina attempted to learn how to accept loving someone who didn’t know how to love her back in ways she could understand. A struggle for Seraphina was to learn to accept that she loved and was bonded to someone who could not legally show affection for her without the threat of having his memories erased.

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Review: The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

Pages: 506 
Author: Cinda Williams Chima
Add It: Goodreads
Series: Seven Realms (#1)
Publisher: Hyperion
Rating: 4/5

The Demon King is, admittedly, a book that might lose your attention in the first two hundred pages. No one wants to be bored for that long. Generally, I give a book a hundred pages to catch my attention, and if nothing is striking me then I put it down. Thankfully, The Demon King was one of those books that I thought had enough interesting elements and characters that it might get better, and on the advice of a friend I ended up diving back in to the book a month or so later. I finished the last 3/5 in two days time and didn’t want to put it down. If we hadn’t gotten off to such a slow start, this book might even have made my favorites list, as I suspect that future books in the series will.

One of the strongest parts of the story is its characters. The cast is varied but Chima does not scrimp on the development of her large ensemble. Nearly every character is fleshed out and we see different sides of supporting characters like Amon Byrne and Micah Bayar. We visit the clans and come to love Willo and Mother Elena and Bird and Dancer and Averill Demonai. The only characters I would say were not sufficiently developed were Raisa’s mother and sister, but that made sense given Raisa’s need to hide from them herself, and there’s always room for that in the later books if necessary. With such a wide and involved cast of characters I think Chima did a great job balancing them all. I also love that there are some POC in the story (including Raisa!) because sometimes authors write as though we’re living in a world filled with people of one color, which obviously isn’t the case. I respect any author who includes diversity in their cast, and even more so one who so clearly gives us a main WOC heroine to root for.

Of course, I can’t mention characters without commenting in more detail on our two main heroes, Hunts Alone and Princess Raisa. I grew to love both perspectives equally. Hunts Alone is a former gang leader who still sometimes thinks as if he is the leader of the gang, making decisions others would see as bad, but are decisions that make sense to him and allow him to protect and provide for his family. I loved that we were given such a gray area character in Hunts Alone. It’s not often that authors give us a character to root for who has murdered and thieved for a good portion of his life. I thought Princess Raisa was a little less unique, she is your typical princess trying to break out of the shell of what everyone expects of her, but at the same time she was also deeply flawed and incredibly selfish, which gave her a more interesting personality and lots of room to grow throughout the series. I really liked Raisa’s bold and oftentimes inconsiderate personality and am looking forward to watching her develop as the story takes her further away from where she needs to be.

The plot itself is also wonderful. I can’t say too much without giving things away. It’s very involved and very intense. The plot moves in all different directions which keeps it fresh and exciting. It reminds me of the Song of Ice and Fire series in that way, but obviously for a younger audience. I can actually say that I have no idea what direction the story is going to go in, which is rare these days when so many books seem to follow a certain formula, and I cannot wait to read on to the other chapters in this story.

Review: Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

Pages: 384
Author: Jodi Meadows
Add It: Goodreads
Series: Newsoul (#1)
Publisher: Katherine Tegen
Rating: 3/5

I am a big fan of the world that Jodi Meadows has crafted in her Newsoul series. With so much dystopia on the shelves I didn’t realize how refreshing it would be to read about a utopia.

In a world where people die only to come back in a different body to different parents there is much opportunity for fascinating relationship dynamics. There is also an opportunity for the exploration of what it is like to have lived life in both a woman’s body and a man’s. The novel also discusses what might happen if two lovers come back as the same gender and that wasn’t their physical preference. I thought that raising these sorts of questions made this a very smart book and let it stand out among other YA books on the shelves today.

My complaint is that I think too much time was spent on the romance and not enough time exploring these very interesting ideas. I did enjoy Sam as a character. I think he may be one of my favorite male leads. I just wish the romance had taken a bit more of a backseat. I also thought it was sweet that their relationship grew with music, but beyond that I didn’t see much between them that would have built a romance, other than the fact that Sam was her first friend and that she was the only new person in the entire world he hadn’t met yet. That made the relationship seem less real to me. In fact, I kind of think it made it sort of unhealthy given Sam’s actual age and power over Ana from the start, even if he didn’t seem to be trying to use that power.

Ana’s personality is very combative and at times irrational. I thought that it was very realistic given the abusive environment she grew up in and I really respect Jodi for not creating another bland and likeable character who is loved by everyone. I know from personal experience that Ana’s behavior after leaving her abusive childhood is realistic. Mental abuse (and physical) leaves its mark. It colors the way you perceive the world and other people. It takes years to recover from that type of abuse, and I’m not sure that you ever completely do. I hope that Ana is able to grow throughout the series and learn to trust people. I am excited to go on that journey with her.

Another wonderful thing about this book is the addition of dragons and sylphs. I love fantasy and am immediately drawn in by books that include magical creatures. I thought they added extra enjoyment to the conclusion of the book. I was a little disappointed with the other answers provided at the end so I was happy the dragons and sylphs were present to keep the ending exciting.

I would recommend this series to others while admitting that it is very much a first book and doesn’t quite reach the potential of the questions it raises. I do think that given time to grow the series can be very worthwhile and I think it should be given a chance. Jodi has created a very original world and I’m eager to see where she goes with it as she continues to build Heart.

Review: The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

Pages: 557 
Author: Rick Riordan
Add It: Goodreads
Series: Heroes of Olympus (#1)
Publisher: Hyperion
Rating: 4/5

Seven half-bloods shall answer the call,

To storm or fire the world must fall.

An oath to keep with a final breath,

And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.

The Lost Hero is the first book in Heroes of Olympus, a companion series to the popular Percy Jackson novels. I was a big fan of the Percy Jackson series. The first books read a bit young since Percy was just a kid when the novels began, but the series was still so much fun to read, and I loved all of the bits of Greek Mythology. The same is true of The Lost Hero. The characters are also older when this series begins and we get to bypass the awkward middle school phase that dragged down the PJ series at the beginning. I do think the characters still tend to come across a bit younger than other YA characters but it didn’t really bother me.

The Lost Hero is told from the perspectives of three different half bloods: Leo, Piper and Jason. I thought that each character had their own unique voice, which I think is so important when it comes to a novel with multiple perspectives. The three half bloods go on many adventures in this novel and all proved to be just as amusing and interesting to read about as the adventures of Percy and Annabeth. The humor is still a little cheesy but it actually grew on me after awhile. It was refreshing after reading so many novels that seem to take themselves too seriously.

A few of our favorite characters from Percy Jackson are back at Camp Half Blood. By far my favorite scenes from both this series and PJ are the scenes that take place at Camp Half Blood. There’s just something about the camp that reminds me of Hogwarts. Perhaps it’s that each half blood is grouped together with their other siblings and they all compete against each other. Just like at Hogwarts each of the students tends to exemplify certain characteristics of their house; each half blood is similar to their God parent in some way. Aphrodite’s children tend to care a lot about beauty. Hephaestus’ children are good at fixing things. Ares’ children are eager to go to war. There is something so fun about trying to guess which God each half blood belongs to before they are claimed by their godly parent.

Also, ten extra points to this book for including a flying mechanical dragon and making him into a loveable character all his own. Maybe I just like dragons.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a light read. I think people who are interested in Greek Mythology will get more out of this series than others.

Review: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Pages: 170
Author: Elizabeth Scott
Add It: Goodreads
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Rating: 3/5

Living Dead Girl is an extremely hard novel to read and rate. No one could call this book enjoyable. The subject matter is extremely rough and there is no easy or comfortable way to approach it. Kidnapping, rape, and child abuse are things that crawl under the skin and a book written about them has to unnerve you. It has to make you cringe and ache, because we live in a world where these things really happen, and that is impossible to stomach. This novel is very short but it felt like it took forever to read. I wanted it to be over. I recommend reading it in one sitting so that you do not have to think about going back to it, because you won’t want to.

I’ve watched a lot of Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit and all of those episodes combined didn’t affect me as badly as this one little book did. That just speaks to the power and possibilities of literature as a storytelling medium, I think, because it placed us inside the head of the victim herself, and that is a very terrifying and ugly place to be. Years of abuse will change and reshape the brain of anyone and make the victim’s actions seem almost incomprehensible to outsiders because they haven’t been in that situation. They haven’t been forced to do things to survive. I thought this book did a very good job of showing what it is like to be inside the head of someone who has been through these sorts of horrific things.

In the end, I wished there had been more hope, but we live in a world where sometimes there is no happy ending or resolution, and that’s just the sad truth. I’d recommend this book with a great many trigger warnings.

Review: When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

Pages: 352
Author: Hillary Jordan
Add It: Goodreads
Publisher: Algonquin
Rating: 2/5

How absolutely cool is the premise of this book? People’s skin is genetically mutated a certain color to paint them as certain shades of criminal. Red skin means murderer. In this society, red skin also means someone who has had an abortion, a procedure that has been deemed illegal now that Roe V. Wade has been overturned. This novel had the potential to be as frightening as Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel that didn’t seem entirely far fetched, and still does not in a world where women still have to fight for their right to have complete control over their bodies. I think books of this nature are especially important given the current fight over birth control that has cropped up as candidates fight to challenge Obama in this year’s election. People like Rush Limbaugh really exist. There are groups of people out there who want a world like this one to be the one we live in. Books like this one are almost realistic fiction when you think about it like that. Terrifying.

The novel starts out strong. Hannah Payne has recently been transformed to become a Chrome, her skin mutated Red, to represent her crime of abortion. She must live her days on camera inside of jail, where her every move is being broadcasted to people at home for their entertainment. Experiencing with Hannah her first moments as a Chrome, alone in solitary, is deeply intimate. Because of her perceived crime Hannah is subjected to humiliation and psychological torture. It was very interesting and painful to be inside of Hannah’s head as she dealt with this experience.

Hannah is soon released and dropped off in a religious facility aimed at “curing” women chromes and bringing them back to the light of Jesus or whatever. This section of the book actually wasn’t half bad. There were some definitely great points made using Hannah’s experiences in that facility; even if perhaps Jordan should not have been so heavy handed with the message and allowed the “evil” characters to be humanized a bit. A particularly frightening thing about this facility was that Hannah and others were forced to create and carry around dolls that represented the “child” they aborted.

Once Hannah leaves the facility things get a little far fetched. She joins a sort of underground program put in place by those that oppose the new government and after that it is one unbelievable situation after another. Hannah’s narrative is also a little weird. She still considers herself a murderer even if she doesn’t believe she deserves all of the ways she’s been treated, and that is never resolved. I also didn’t buy her loyalty to the father of her baby, or why she would put entire groups of people at risk just to see him one last time. Also, there is a brief segue into lesbianism that would have had more meaning if it had, well, meant anything at all and didn’t seem to be just a convenient plot point to represent Hannah’s supposed awakening.

I think this book would have been far better served if it had focused on Hannah being made an outcast by society as a whole, and the treatment she would have received trying to live a normal life as a Red. I’m mixed on whether or not I’d recommend this one. It was a fairly enjoyable read, the idea of chromes was fantastic, the feminist themes were important, but in the end it fell short of everything it was trying to accomplish. I’d much rather recommend The Handmaid’s Tale instead.