|
|
 This is the fifth book in the Vampire Academy series. See my review of Vampire Academy if you haven’t yet read the series. This review will contain spoilers for the first four books.
After searching all through Russia for Dimitri and finally escaping still determined to save him, Rose has returned to Vampire Academy to finish her training and finally become a Guardian. Even if she can’t guard her best friend, Lissa, she knows her duty to the Moroi and wants to get where she’s been planning her whole life. Almost as soon as the trials are over, though, Rose is determined to find out how to save Dimitri – even if she does have to release a condemned criminal and ostracize her new boyfriend to do it.
This was the first of the Vampire Academy books that I read completely on its own, so I hope I can do it the justice of a full review. I read this book immediately after a non-fiction book, so my first reaction to it was simply how remarkably teenage it felt to me. YA books are great but I could never only read them; I can only take so much teenage drama, and I kept feeling like the book discussed what Rose was wearing way too much. Some adult fiction has this issue, too, but it stood out in vivid contrast in this instance. Luckily, the adjustment period didn’t last long before I got sucked right into the story and absorbed with what was going to happen next. That’s the other great thing about YA – amazing storytelling, and Richelle Mead definitely knows how to do that.
The major focus of this book is Rose and her relationships. She’s determined to rescue Dimitri. He’s her first love and she clearly still remembers and almost idolizes that time they had together. In the meantime, however, she’s gotten together with Adrian, the queen’s nephew, and is enjoying the time she’s having with him. Naturally, he isn’t thrilled that she’s still so obsessed with returning Dimitri to life, but no one believes she can actually do it. Much of the conflict here is based around her internal battle between them.
Of course, Rose is also off having numerous adventures and usually getting into trouble for them. After she sneaks herself, Lissa, and her friend Eddie out of the royal court, she gets into trouble, and then she just keeps on misbehaving. Her adventures form the plot of the book, which really does feel as though it’s racing along as we get further into the book. Of course, it ends on a massive cliffhanger, and I’m already having trouble waiting for the sixth book to come out so I can finally discover what happens next.
The Vampire Academy series is a wonderful escape, the perfect fall read. I really enjoyed Spirit Bound and can’t wait for the sixth and final installment. If you’re looking for a YA series with a bit of magic, a bit of romance, and a whole lot of adventure, you can’t go wrong here.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Vampires are under siege; the Catholic church has been trying to fight them for centuries. But they don’t have to be the evil villains as which they’re so often portrayed. Peter Octavian, a centuries-old vampire, has trained himself to be impervious to the things which kill other vampires; daylight no longer worries him, and holy water carries no stigma. He gets sustenance from a doctor friend who gives him HIV positive blood from a morgue since it has no effect on him and is purposeless for medical reasons. In the process, he’s lost all of his vampire coven, who still kill for blood. When the church steps up its attack and search for a book to eliminate all vampires, led by a vicious man called Liam Mulkerrin, Peter leaves his comfortable position as detective and begins to try to fight back.
From what I understand, this series by Christopher Golden isn’t new, but has been rereleased thanks to the huge popularity of urban fantasy lately. It fits right in to that genre, and though the protagonist is a male here, there are still plenty of interesting and kickass women around him virtually at all times. It’s set across the entire modern world, with the epic battle for vampire survival – and understanding – stretching across continents and covens.
I liked this book. It perhaps isn’t going to be one of my favorite series, but it was a solid enjoyable book that had an interesting take on vampire mythology. It’s revealed fairly early on, so I won’t spoil anything by telling you that many of the traditional vampire fears are based on intimidation by the church. The book itself is a bit anti-Catholic, but since the book is fictional and the true evil is confined to Mulkerrin, I don’t think it would be considered offensive even for those who are more religious than me.
The beginning of the book felt a bit hard to get hold of, as a lot is happening and a number of characters are introduced right away. After a few chapters, it swiftly settles down and I got much more into the story.
I think my least favorite part was probably how uncomfortably graphic the book was. There’s a lot of violence, some of it sexual, which I don’t like to read about. I’m not a big fan of vampire sex anyway – I don’t like paranormal romance very much, for example, unless it’s got something else going on. The whole thing fit in with the darker theme of the book, but these parts were not exactly pleasurable reading experiences. For me, it felt different from what I’d find in another urban fantasy series; for some reason I react differently to such scenes when they’re written by women or men. I don’t know if they’re actually written differently or if it’s a mental thing on my part; so if this doesn’t bother you much, please don’t let this stop you from reading the book.
Overall, I liked Of Saints and Shadows and am quite happy to continue reading the series. I’d recommend it to those who appreciate urban fantasy, however I do think it’s aimed more at a male audience and it might be worth keeping in mind if you’re accustomed solely to the paranormal romance type of urban fantasy (like Sookie) that is currently most popular.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 The world has been more or less overtaken by zombies, groaning swaying creatures who exist mainly to feast on the remaining humans’ flesh. “R” is one such, but he occasionally has dreams about what it’s like to be human, and he thinks about who he was even though he can’t quite figure it out. On a raid one day, R sees a girl, Julie, and instead of eating her, decides to save her. He masks her with zombie blood and brings her back to the airport where the zombies live, somehow changed because of her brightness, vivacity, and humanness. Despite the fact that R is a zombie and Julie is a human, things begin to change between them, and R begins to wonder if there might be more to life than his zombie self realised.
I doubt my summary above conveyed this book properly, and I hope you haven’t clicked away, because I loved this book. I mean well and truly loved it, was completely drawn in by it, found passages in it that I liked and actually marked to remember. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ll probably know by the lack of quotes around here that I simply don’t take note of it very often. I’m rarely struck by a particular passage to such an extent that I’ll specifically mark it out – I see them, but I generally just keep on reading. Not here.
What most struck me about the book was the fact that Marion used death in order to define life. It was somehow funny and profound at the exact same time – I knew that this guy was an arm-waving, moaning zombie, Marion cracks jokes regularly about how they try to recapture certain elements of their humanness – but at the same time he’s reminding his readers, reminding me, how actually amazing it is to be alive. And now I’ll shut up and just quote the book:
Sex, once a law as undisputed as gravity, has been disproved. The equation erased, the backboard broken.
Sometimes it’s a relief. I remember the need, the insatiable hunger that ruled my life and the lives of everyone around me. Sometimes I’m glad to be free of it. There’s less trouble now. But our loss of this, the most basic of all human passions, might sum up our loss of everything else. It’s made things quieter. Simpler. And it’s one of the surest signs that we’re dead. (p 25)
It just struck me as so poignant – life, messy as it is, is something that is precious, and now that R has lost it, he realises this.
Of course, this is also something of a love story, if one of the most unusual ones that I’ve ever read. I was doubtful at first, I’ll be honest, because who can imagine a zombie as a hero? I’m already not the world’s biggest fan of paranormal romances. But, rather astonishingly, it works, and it’s not because we forget R is a zombie, either, as we’re reminded of this very often. Instead, it’s because we can see inside his head, and we see how he changes as Julie enters his life. It’s quite a remarkable book. And despite the author’s intro amusingly citing his lack of qualifications, it’s beautifully written, and I was pulled into this post-apocalyptic world without any effort on my part.
Warm Bodies is an astonishingly beautiful book – a reminder of what it is to be human and a touching romance wrapped up in a zombie novel, of all things. It’s also wildly funny at times and even disgusting at others, which also makes it one of the most peculiar books I’ve ever read, but it’s oh so worth it. You truly won’t be sorry you picked this gem up.
One last quote, on this post-apocalyptic world:
What is left of us? the ghosts moan, drifting back into the shadows of my subconscious. No countries, no cultures, no wars but still no peace. What’s at our core, then? What’s still squirming in our bones when everything else is stripped? (p 148)
I am an Amazon Associate. I won this book from the publisher on Twitter.
 Thursday has decided to return to Swindon, although she enjoys her job in the book world. When her son Friday starts speaking Lorem Ipsum she knows she has to return to the real world to raise him. Beyond that, she also wants to find a way to uneradicate her husband, Landen, who has never met his son, and she finds herself in charge of protecting Hamlet. There’s also an all-important croquet match to be won, some time travelling of course, and a few discoveries along the way that make this installment a must-read for fans of the series so far.
I’ve always enjoyed this series, but I think I liked this book better than the rest. I found it a little hard to get into – it’s that adjustment period fitting myself back into Fforde’s world – but once I was in I was hooked, and a bit sorry it had taken me so long to actually get to this particular book. Once I remembered where I was, all those emotional connections came back, and I was really wrapped up in the story, particularly Thursday’s quest to get her husband back. Being apart from the one you love is pretty terrible, and even in a fictional world, the fact that no one remembered him was just heartbreaking.
The story for itself was quite a good one, too, and I just love the huge number of literary references scattered throughout. Hamlet was pretty obviously the big one for this book, although there is quite a memorable scene with the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Fforde pulls in some historical references too with Thursday’s time traveling father, which obviously just pulled me in even further; there isn’t much I like better than fantasy AND history in one book! Especially when the book has an ending as wonderful as this one did – I’m almost not sure I want to go to the next one, but I’m also very curious about what happens next.
This is a bit of a short review as I’m never sure where to go with series books that I’ve already reviewed some of, so I’ll just leave you by saying I enjoyed Something Rotten very much. The whole Thursday Next series is wonderful for those who enjoy fantasy or science fiction and, of course, books.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 In the kingdom of Eltaria, the Tradition reigns supreme. So it’s virtually inevitable that young princess Rosamund will lose her lovely kind mother Celeste, and that she’ll have a fairy godmother, and that her father will marry an evil Stepmother to send a Hunter after her. The Tradition will always try to bend fate in the direction of a fairy tale – but it can be subverted. So when Rosa’s father does die, her fairy godmother disguises herself as an evil sorceress and makes a deal with Rosa’s father – but Rosa still flees and is captured by dwarves who are far from the kindly ones described in Snow White. This time, however, there are two princes wandering the forest; which way will the Tradition bend Rosa’s life next?
This was quite a clever and entertaining twist on traditional fairy tales. The author starts off, rather obviously, with Snow White, but also makes space for Sleeping Beauty which can also suit Rosa’s situation. I really liked the idea of a world which tries to obey the dictates of fairy tales – no matter which fairy tale – and each different kingdom in the world draws from different mythologies. Siegfried, who is pretty obviously Rosa’s main love interest as he’s the only male narrator, is haunted by a shield-maiden in a ring of fire straight out of traditional Nordic myths, as he is from the North.
The characters themselves were enchanting in their own ways. Rosa started off a little too whiny; she insists that she’s self-sufficient but requires rescuing from the evil dwarves nonetheless. However, as soon as she’s woken up with a kiss which she decidedly does not want, she gets a bit feistier which makes her easier to relate to. I felt the story was a bit less cohesive after the Snow White part ended, as it doesn’t really imitate any other fairy tales (that I know about) in so much detail, but it was still very much a fun book. People fall in love, fight battles, and solve riddles trying to win the princess’s hand in marriage; it’s all good stuff.
This is the fifth book in a series of similar fairy tale themed stories set in this world. This is the first that I’ve read and I had no trouble following along; I probably wouldn’t even have known it was a series if LibraryThing hadn’t told me so. I liked The Sleeping Beauty enough that I plan to seek out the earlier books in the series. It’s an intriguing world, and since I like fairy tales, I’m looking forward to see which other ones she’s played with so well.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for review for free through Netgalley.
 This review contains spoilers for the entire Chaos Walking series. Don’t read this, read them!
War makes monsters of men, and Todd and Viola are discovering just how true that saying is. Separated once again, Todd has remained with the mayor to keep him calm while Viola has gone with the Answer and her new shipmates to broker a compromise. Into the mix we’re thrown a third character with his own perspective on events, set to radically change both the way Todd and Viola think about their new world and their strategy for the forthcoming war.
Everything about this book is basically awesome. Patrick Ness has taken on enormous issues in this series and executed them perfectly, without a hitch, sending out clear anti-war themes but at the same time showing just how humans are so susceptible to dictatorships and strong personalities.
First of all, what struck me as so eerily true to life is the way that Mayor Prentiss can simply take charge, how he can twist reality to suit himself without ever suffering any flack for it. It reminded me most of the way that the media can twist things as they wish, but most people don’t bother to research (or watch more than one TV channel) so they’ll never know the truth of the way the world works. Even Todd and Viola know vastly more than they’re told, but they still find it easier to settle into the same grooves they’ve known their whole lives. Todd himself finds it easiest to dehumanize the Spackle because they aren’t exactly the same as him even though they are thinking, speaking beings like he is, just because he’s committed atrocities against them and needs a reason to do so. The introduction of the third character throws a wrench into those plans, both for readers and for Todd.
Throughout the book my heart ached most for Todd and I simultaneously feared for him. He gets far too close to the Mayor and is convinced he’s acting for good, but I knew he couldn’t be, that the mayor was a force for dissent and fear. But as we learn by the end, even that’s not entirely true. The worst character in the series is himself multi-faceted with surprising reasons for how he works, which don’t excuse him but help us understand him. Each and every character with page time in this book is a complex human being with believable motives and actions. It’s a genuine work of art.
The entire book is sobering in its depiction of war, especially as Todd is growing up in the midst of it. It’s evident from both his actions and even from the text itself as the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors slow down drastically in this third installment. He’s becoming a man, but how I feared he wasn’t going to live to get all the way there. The constant battles and struggles speedily mature him, so much so that it was easy to forget his true age. Not all that much time has passed since he first discovered Viola, that pocket of silence amidst the Noise. And I keep talking about Todd, but it was Viola who became my favorite character, for her strength and reason and love.
I wish I was talented enough to articulate clearly the many ways Monsters of Men – and the rest of the series – made me think and feel. I borrowed this book from the library but I know it’s one that I’ll need to own and reread in its entirety. It’s incredibly powerful in so many ways and I truly think is literature at its finest; it’s a series with a lot to say about the world, not only Todd’s but our own, and with a fantastic story to go along with it. What more could any reader ask for?
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 This review contains spoilers. Read the books first!
Todd and Fiona have arrived in Haven only to discover that it’s not a haven at all. It’s New Prentisstown and Mayor Prentiss has now declared himself the president of the entire planet. Fiona is seriously wounded and whisked from Todd’s view to heal, used as a threat to get Todd to cooperate. Todd himself is locked up with the old mayor of Haven, forced to spend time with Mayor Prentiss’s son Davy and commit ever more horrible acts against the Spackle during the day. When rebellion begins, Todd and Fiona begin to wonder who the Answer are and what is going to happen to New Prentisstown.
This is going to be a short review because I read this and Monsters of Men right after each other. I have quite a lot to say about the third book, but this one has somewhat blended in with it, so my observations are less clearcut. Still, I thought they each deserved their own post.
While I wasn’t so crazy about The Knife of Never Letting Go, I thought it was worth reading the rest of the series to see what happened with Todd and Fiona. This book was the perfect follow up for me because it took a step back, slowed everything down, and really fleshed out the world and the story. I’m not a huge fan of breakneck, breathless books, and so this was a breath of fresh air as Todd and Fiona stay in one place for the most part. They learn more about what happened in the past and they start to take strides towards changing the future. Their bond still remains very strong even though they’re apart for most of the book.
I can easily say the high point of this book for me was Todd’s relationship with Mayor and Davy Prentiss. I loved how the relationships gradually changed and were fleshed out as well as how genuinely true to life they were. Davy strives for his father’s approval but has never had Mayor Prentiss’s extreme, if cruel, strength of character, so he’s always going to be a failure. Todd does have that strength, and as a result Davy is almost naturally drawn towards him even if they’re enemies at first. It’s a fascinating dynamic and all of their emotions rang beautifully true for me.
By the time I finished The Ask and the Answer, I’d become a loyal fan of the series and could not wait to start Monsters of Men. I’m surprised by how much the book turned my feelings around, but I’m very glad, because Patrick Ness is a masterful writer and plotter.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Ivy Lockwell is one of three sisters, living in a fading house with her mother and ailing father. Without her around, it’s likely that her family would fall apart, but it’s also essential that the three girls marry; that’s because when their mother dies, their house will go to an odious cousin. Ivy’s father has been ill for some time now, and everyone but Ivy believes it’s due to his excessive magick use. Ivy is convinced that if she can find the spell to reverse the damage, she can cure her father; the little notes that he left her around the house encourage her in her quest. When she takes a job with the mysterious Mr Quent, Ivy begins to realize that the problem with magick isn’t just confined to her family, and that she might have deadlier enemies than she’d ever supposed.
This was such a charming book in so many ways. Ivy and her family are absolutely wonderful characters. Each of them has his or her own distinctive personality and the viewpoint switches around frequently enough that I could get to know several of them. The entire book is pervaded with a nice feel of fantasy, mystery, and at times romance. The plot is nicely twisty and turny for the most part, and even though I wasn’t entirely kept guessing throughout the book, it completely held my attention. I loved the fantasy world, with its variations on daylight and peculiar version of magick; I was really eager to figure out how it all fit together.
What I really loved about it, though, was the fact that this felt to me like a love letter to two of my favorite authors, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. Sections of both authors’ books are recalled in a variety of ways, and even the prose style feels like it could very well belong in the nineteenth century in particular. I loved reading the echoes of Jane Eyre in the middle section of the novel in particular. It was like reading a few of my favorite novels with magic included, and to be honest, for me you can’t get much better than that. I have read several reviews which complain that it isn’t original enough, but I’d disagree with that. The rest of the book was enchanting in its own right, and such an homage to the classics simply made it better.
Honestly, this was just another of those books that perfectly suited me. A bookish protagonist, echoes of my favorite authors, a lovely subtle romance, and a wonderful fantasy world to back it all up left me a very happy girl. The Magicians and Mrs. Quent may not be for everyone, but it was definitely for me. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, which is releasing next month, and I only hope that it’s as delightful a read as this was.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 When Shen Tai loses his father, he finds himself at loose ends, unable to reconcile himself to the required years of mourning which Kitai society demands. Instead, he goes to the site of his father’s last great battle, where thousands of bodies lay unburied and ghosts cry out for peace. Tai spends two years digging graves and laying bodies to rest. When Tai receives a message from a former princess of Kitai, now married to a Taguran in a bid for peace, granting him two hundred and fifty Sardian horses, he realizes that he’s received an incredible gift and his life is in danger. He discovers this in the worst way when an assassin comes for him, killing one of his closest friends; Tai must now head into the heart of the empire, facing guaranteed danger, to discover what his friend was trying to tell him and to figure out what to do with the horses.
Guy Gavriel Kay is one of my favorite authors, if not at the top of the list. I own and have loved every single one of his novels, and as such I have been anxiously awaiting my chance to read this. I adore his brand of historical fantasy – cultures I recognize instantly, with just a bit of added magic to make them new and his own. I finally decided I couldn’t wait any longer to read his newest release – especially when I was perfectly in the mood for a fantasy world based on the Tang dynasty in China – and I was not disappointed.
While this probably isn’t my favorite of his works (I don’t think he’ll ever match The Lions of al-Rassan with me), it was nevertheless a beautiful, engaging read that pulled at all of my heartstrings and really captivated me in a way few books manage these days. The book is narrated mainly by Tai, with a few sections featuring his sister Li-Mei and the prostitute he loved before his father died, Spring Rain. I found Tai’s straightforwardness and modesty in a world of political subtlety to be very endearing, while Li-Mei was a strong woman put through things I don’t think many women of the period would have been able to endure. As for Spring Rain, I didn’t quite connect with her as much as the other two, and I think overall she was meant to have more emotional impact on me than she did. I was a bit more in favor of another direction for Tai, one that he eventually chose, and I think that limited her influence on the story. The secondary characters were also well done, particularly Wei Song, Tai’s Kanlin warrior. I loved her alternating fierceness and timidity; she was overall just perfect.
The plot is a bit complex, full of court intrigue and carefully planned interactions, but I thought was done quite well. I loved the political turmoil that Kitai was thrust into over the course of this book and its eventual consequences. For me, everything held together really well, and had me very interested in the actual history that took place over this time. I wondered how closely Kay stuck to known history and I’m really looking forward to reading some of the suggestions he gives in his author’s note to find out a bit more about the facts of the time.
Kay’s writing as always is gorgeous and lyrical. I regularly wish I could write like him every time I read one of his books. He’s truly masterful at getting across emotion and making scenes of carnage and death seem both beautiful and tragic at the same time. This one didn’t quite have the effect that some of his other books have had in the past, but it’s impossible not to get swept away by the stories that Kay tells.
While Under Heaven doesn’t quite rank as my favorite by Kay, he is an amazingly gifted writer and this is a historical fantasy well worth reading.
I am an Amazon Associate. Nymeth sent me this book when my blogger secret santa didn’t come through. Thanks again!
 The Radleys live on a perfectly normal street in the perfectly normal town of Bishopthorpe in Yorkshire. In fact, they do everything in order to be normal; they go to school, they go to book clubs, they even sometimes attend church. But the secret is that the Radleys aren’t normal, but it’s such a secret that their children don’t even know. They won’t be without that knowledge soon, though, and when they find out what they really are, they’ll struggle to keep it a secret for long.
The Radleys has been moderately hyped over here in the UK, so I was a little concerned as to how I was going to react to it when I finally got to read it for myself. Luckily I really enjoyed it, and I found it both an interesting fantasy novel and a critique of modern middle-class British life. The Radleys are vampires from a famous vampire family, but they choose to be abstainers. Peter, the father, has been a vampire his whole life, whereas his wife Helen was only converted after she fell in love with him. The two children, Clara and Rowan, start the novel with no idea that they’re vampires. They don’t know why they’re excessively pale and always wear sunscreen, are always tired during the day, or suffer from migraines on a regular basis. Then, Clara is attacked, and everything changes.
I liked that this book was an urban fantasy which is completely different from the rest – the world is the same except for vampires, but the story doesn’t center on a pretty girl. Instead, we have this middle class family who really struggle to have normal lives, except for a wayward relative who comes along to mess everything up every now and again. The beginning almost reminded me of Harry Potter, with the family trying desperately to be normal and even the children trying to pretend that they’re not something out of the ordinary. Of course, the stories are nowhere near the same in terms of plot, but that’s the closest comparison I could think of.
I not only appreciated the story for itself, but I thought it was a very British, very humorous take on middle class life over here. By being so very typical, the Radleys made me wonder what other “typical” middle class families might be hiding, and why we really need to put up that front of normalcy when we might all be just a little bit weird (though we’re clearly not vampires). It’s quite a clever book and undoubtedly I didn’t catch all the little jokes that Haig made, but I enjoyed it a lot when I did find them.
Overall, I would definitely recommend The Radleys and I’m glad it’s been picked up for a film version – I think it would make a great one. For more information and sample chapters, check out the Facebook page.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from a publicist for review.
|
|
Recent Comments