|
|
These are books 2, 3, and 4 in the Vampire Academy series. I reviewed the first one here.
I read all these right in a row, so it’s hard for me to differentiate them from each other. And it’s impossible to avoid spoilers. So I’m just mushing them all into one “thoughts” post, to remember what I thought about the series when the next one rolls around. For those who haven’t read them, I’ll just tell you that if you like YA boarding school stories with vampire romance, and don’t mind some diversions outside of the boarding school, this is a good series for you.
  
All of these books are from Rose’s viewpoint, with occasional peeks from her into Lissa’s head. I still liked Rose and I thought her relationship with the older Dimitri was sweet, but I have to admit that I thought her emotions were overwrought at times, especially in the last book, Blood Promise. She has loads of memories that we never saw in the first three books, except for the one time they had sex, and it kind of irritated me that we didn’t experience as much of their love story as I might have liked. If we had, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like she was being constantly dramatic, for all her talent as a master Strigoi killer. Her grief in Frostbite and the beginning of Shadow Kiss was more interesting.
I loved that Rose went to Russia and explored another part of the world that Mead created. I like the world and I felt like it became much more fully fleshed out in these three books. I liked that Rose’s mother showed up, and more than once, so we learn that there’s a reason behind this heroine’s absent-mother syndrome, and that her mother does love her. Rose and Lissa discover more about their shadow-kissed bond, and find other people who have it, too, as well as finding another spirit user. Since that’s been established, the fact that they might need to use spirit, as implied in the cliffhanger, doesn’t feel like a deus ex machina. The roots of all these problems were in the first book. Still, I had cause to wish the plots were tighter, especially in Shadow Kiss and Blood Promise. There is some purposeless rambling, and even more annoying one of the covers has a teaser line that isn’t answered until the last 100 pages of the book. I hate that, but it’s obviously not the author’s fault that the publisher is trying to make the book sound more exciting.
I do have to say that I really enjoyed this series. They were all very fast reads and I generally don’t mind cliffhangers when I have the next book right with me. I’m looking forward to the next one, but I’m not in a rush. I just hope that the series isn’t never-ending and doesn’t get longer and more dramatic with the next installment, but I will be reading it in May when it comes out.
I’m an Amazon Associate, I bought all these books.
 This is a collection of short stories set in Charles de Lint’s urban fantasy city of Newford. This city – I’ve always thought it was in Canada but I don’t recall ever actually reading that – has its fair share of the poor, the needy, and the ones who choose to take advantage of them, but it is also full of magic for those with the ability to embrace it, like artist Sophie who dreams another world into existence. Though these stories have all been published before and can be treated as separate entities, the book also works well as a collection with many of the same characters appearing over and over again.
My previous experience with Charles de Lint has been confined to The Onion Girl, which is set in this same city, and Moonheart, which is set elsewhere but still falls under an urban fantasy heading. I knew that Newford started out with short stories and I always wanted to start from the beginning. The Ivory and the Horn isn’t the beginning, but it was close enough for me when I got tired of waiting to be able to buy the first collection!
This is urban fantasy, but it’s a different kind of urban fantasy than the glut of books about badass heroines falling in love with/killing vampires/werewolves/etc which is currently dominating the market at the moment. Much as I do enjoy those books, I also really enjoy this, because I feel that Newford is very much a real city with a real city’s issues, even if its inhabitants transport themselves to other worlds on occasion. There is poverty here. There is murder that has nothing to do with blood-sucking. To me, this is more like real life with a fantasy edge, not a book that is fantasy with few touches of real life. The fantasy is so subtle in some of the stories that it could be explained away as a dream or delusion, until it’s confirmed by someone else.
De Lint’s fantasy has also always felt very natural to me. It’s bound up in what I imagine are Native American myths. Some of the characters transport themselves to a desert and speak with animal spirits, or perform magic that leaves behind bits of bone and grass. It always feels to me like it touches on what people actually believed was real at one point. It’s difficult to describe the essence of it, but I really like it.
I even liked the characters. Short stories are often a hard sell for me. I find it really hard to relate to anyone when they’re only around for thirty pages or so, and I don’t think the plot always can develop either. But here, because everyone pops up again and again, and similar issues are dealt with, and the city stays the same, I actually really appreciated the short story format. The stories kept my attention and I could get to know the characters as well as find out a new angle about their lives. It’s about a community.
I’m really anxious to read more Newford stories. I’m still not supposed to be buying books, but we’re halfway through February now and it’s almost March, when I can be a little freer with my purchases. So, recommendations – I fully intend to read Dreams Underfoot, but what else is excellent by de Lint? Let me know!
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book, and I’m sorry I waited so long to read it!
 Laura thought she was destined for spinsterhood until Henry McAllan chose to make her his wife. What she didn’t bargain on was his desire to own land, and their move to a cotton farm a few years later with two small girls. Laura hates the farm, which she and her daughters christen Mudbound, and hates her father-in-law, who has no place to live but with them. When World War II ends, Henry’s brother Jamie comes to stay with the family, and so does Ronsel Jackson, the son of the sharecroppers nearby. Sharing the common bond of fighting men, Ronsel and Jamie become friends of a sort, in a way that no one in the South will tolerate for very long.
It’s hard to say I liked this book, but it was compelling and completely horrifying in parts. This is particularly so because most of the characters in the book are very racist. I know people genuinely thought like this when and where this book is set, but it bothers me and I can’t understand it (which, I suppose, is a good thing). I wanted all the characters to stop being close-minded, to think more like Jamie, who sees Ronsel as a person despite the color of his skin and respects the military achievements that he made.
The book rotates between viewpoints, giving us insight into all of the characters’ heads. We can witness Laura’s unhappiness, Henry’s land-lust, Jamie’s jitters and bad memories. Ronsel’s memories of war in Europe were for me the most affecting. He describes the difference it made in Europe when he was defined as a man, not as a black man; the wonder of having a white woman fall in love with him and everyone make him feel like he was valued. He had to be my favorite character and my heart broke for him over and over again, stuck in a racist town working on a farm where he’d never be appreciated the way he should have been.
Mudbound is a powerful and affecting book, but it won’t leave you happy. It will leave you unsettled and anxious to change the world, correct anyone who might still feel this way. It’s an evocative and moving picture of the American South, but I hope it has changed very much.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Melinda Sordino has a shameful secret that has changed her life. In one stroke, she lost her friends, her interests, and her sense of security. Going back to school after the fateful party when she called the cops is difficult. Melinda hardly speaks to anyone, not even her parents, and everyone in school judges her except a new girl that Melinda doesn’t even like all that much. Telling the truth about that night takes courage, and for that Melinda knows she will eventually have to speak.
This book was so affecting. It’s fairly easy to figure out what happened to Melinda, but that doesn’t make its impact any less heartbreaking. I’m only six years removed from high school and this book brought back just how painfully mean teenagers are to one another. Melinda’s friends disdain her simply because it isn’t cool to be seen with her anymore, not offering even the smallest kindnesses to her as a fellow human being. And her encounters with one person in particular made me very scared for her. Through it all, though, she retains a sardonic humor which made me hope that she would be okay, and see why people were her friends in the first place. I genuinely liked her, so when people reject her over and over I really hurt for her.
Something else I really liked about this YA novel was that Melinda’s parents were present. I didn’t know why they didn’t ask more often about why she didn’t speak to them, but they did at least notice her and had their place in her life. I feel like a lot of YA titles simply skip over parents and it was nice that Melinda’s actually existed.
I also enjoyed Anderson’s writing; I hadn’t read any books by her, but this one has persuaded me that I should get to more of them. The narrative covers an entire school year and since it’s just 200 pages, some time is skipped, but I never felt like I was missing anything. It all flowed naturally. The writing was occasionally choppy but fit well since we were in Melinda’s head.
I thought Speak was a great read. It brings to mind the difficulty many teens – and even older women – have when they are targeted like this. My heart broke for Melinda and I suspect yours will too.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Miss Beatrice Corning has lived a very proper life in the household of her uncle, the Earl of Blanchard. That is until a sick, crazy man bursts into their home, demanding to see his father. This man is Reynaud St. Aubin, the true Earl of Blanchard, long thought dead. Even though he is determined to take his inheritance back from her uncle, who has always loved her, Beatrice can’t help but be attracted to Reynaud, particularly since his youthful portrait has ensnared her imagination every time she walks by it. The man she discovers now is no longer a carefree youth but a hardened man who has suffered through unimaginable atrocities, yet her heart is captured before she even knows it.
I really enjoyed the first book I read by Elizabeth Hoyt, To Beguile a Beast. I liked that it was different, that the hero and heroine weren’t what I expected. Unfortunately I found the opposite in To Desire a Devil, and am left wondering just what happened here.
This quartet of novels centers around a massacre that happened while all four of the heroes were fighting in the Colonies. The one who betrayed them all supposedly had a French mother, and the only man there with a French mother was Reynaud. They know he didn’t do it, but they have to figure out who did. And that’s all wrapped up in this installment, as it’s the last of the quartet. It’s clear that this overarching story is secondary to the romance plot, but they do fit together, so that part worked out well. I also still really liked the fairy tale excerpts at the beginning and how the concept was woven into the rest of the story. And I loved that Beatrice was a bookbinder, even if she seemed a little too bland the rest of the time.
Honestly, it was the romance that bugged me about this book. This is, for me, a classic case of the lust = love problem. I can’t figure out anything that the hero and heroine have really in common and I didn’t believe in them. Maybe men fall in love with their nurses, but most of their interaction in the book seemed to consist of Beatrice asking Reynaud to tell her about how he was tortured, and the intimate parts. There were too many intimate parts for my liking, let me just say that. Outside of those, there wasn’t really any chemistry in their conversation and nothing to indicate that they were going to last. I just felt disappointed, which is sad, because there was a lot of potential here.
I have another book in this series and I do intend to read and review it, but let’s just say my expectations are very, very lowered.
I am an Amazon Associate. This book was sent to me for free by the publisher for review.
 As a young girl, Jane Maxwell was in love with Thomas Fraser, and they go so far as to declare their engagement. But Thomas goes to war and is reported dead, to Jane’s dismay and her mother’s glee. In his absence, encouraged by family and friends, she marries Alexander, Duke of Gordon, and goes on to become a famous patroness of the arts and a political activist. Thomas, however, is not dead, and Jane spends her life torn between the man she has always loved and the man with whom she has a family.
This is quite an ambitious work of historical fiction. I so appreciated the depth and complexity of it and the historical picture that Ciji Ware creates here. Jane travels between England and Scotland and I really got a feel for both of them in the late eighteenth century. Jane herself is a powerful woman and I really liked her. For all that she had trouble choosing between men, she was a figure to be reckoned with in politics and consistently knew her own mind in many respects. The book is long, but I was sucked in after fifty pages and really enjoyed it. It has a nice sweeping, epic feel to it, like these characters are important and usually doing important things.
I similarly appreciated the author’s research. I liked knowing that she’d read Jane’s letters and tried to find the mysterious man that she references as her childhood love. She filled in the missing pieces, but it’s nice to know that the real life Jane struggled with the same issues that the fictional Jane did. I also appreciated the variety of historical characters that poke their heads into the story, like Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire and Robert Burns, the Scottish poet.
It’s not a perfect read, though. It is very bawdy; it seems like all the characters are featured in at least one sex scene with a variety of different people. Some of it furthers the plot, but a lot of it feels unnecessary, and leaves me wondering if this sort of explicit writing was in favor in historical fiction when the book was originally published. I was often frustrated with the misunderstandings that the characters had, but I could recognize where their difficulties came from even if I wanted Alex to open up and Jane to stop mooning constantly over Thomas.
In the end, I really enjoyed Island of the Swans. It has its faults, but there is a great story here with well-developed characters and dilemmas. I would definitely recommend it to other historical fiction lovers.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Matilda’s small island of Bougainville is at war. The redskins are invaders and many of the young men from her village are engaged in fighting them; she lives her life constantly tense and alert, deprived of many of the privileges she experienced in her youth. There is no electricity, no running water, no schools, and the villagers must live off the land. There is just one white man left in the village, and eventually he takes initiative and starts a school. His teaching consists mainly of reading Great Expectations aloud to the class, and Matilda for the first time discovers the power of literature.
For the most part, I really enjoyed this book. I absolutely loved when the teacher, Mr Watts, began reading Great Expectations. It was just magical to see Matilda learn about stepping outside of her life for the first time, and she remarks that she feels like she knows Pip and is completely bound up in his story. She felt like a kindred spirit after that. The book started out so charming. The war parts, however, made me distinctly uncomfortable and sad, as one might expect, so the book was certainly not all a joy, and it’s hard to say I enjoy people being hacked into pieces. It all seems to happen very abruptly, especially when I realized that the author was trying to convey a message about morality. He asks us to consider what a good person is and what a good person does, and the result was quite shocking and upsetting.
I much preferred the parts on the island to the end of the book, but I appreciated that too. I can understand why Mister Pip was shortlisted for the Booker prize. It’s such a compelling tale about the power of story and really looks at the consequences of our actions, the horror of war, and simple goodness. I was really surprised by what I got out of this slim volume, and I definitely recommend it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Lady Penelope Staines is the subject of Eloise’s research this time. Penelope and her husband Frederick, unwillingly married due to a compromising situation, head to India where the political situation is very unsteady. On their way to Frederick’s posting, the couple meet Captain Alex Reid, a British man born and raised in India, convinced that these inexperienced aristocrats are going to be ineffectual. In Penelope, however, Alex finds a courageous woman who has been damaged by years of criticism, far from his expectations.
I really enjoy this series and The Betrayal of the Blood Lily was no exception. The series’s change of location, even if temporary, is totally refreshing and brings in a new political atmosphere. I’ve read a few books set in India lately and this was a different time period, so I appreciated more history. I also felt like, even though this one restores the sex scene to the romance, this is more historical fiction than romance. The romance is certainly present, and very sweet, but there is also quite a bit of intrigue in the Indian court as well as Penelope’s painful relationship with her reluctant husband. It takes a little bit to get used to the different setting, but it’s worth it.
As usual, the modern day storyline with Eloise and Colin is somewhat less interesting. Not much happens, except that they’re still together. It’s hard not to feel for Eloise because she’s a charming character, and I too can imagine very little better than having the ability to delve through historical letters and documents for a day. She finds out some disturbing facts about Colin’s family but not much changes in her own personal or academic life.
I’m left wondering when this series is going to end, but as long as Willig keeps producing stories that are alternately fun and emotional, I’m going to keep reading them.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Newly married Viktor and Liesel Landauer want to build a house for themselves, but not just any house. Viktor is the head of a huge car company in their newly created Czechoslovakia of the 1920’s, and they want a completely modern, free building, sparing them from the confines of heavy castles and palaces. In that house, the centerpiece is the Glass Room, a space filled with windows, light, and purity. Those windows, however, cannot restore light to the souls of the people who live and eventually work within the house, setting their darkness of spirit in sharp contrast with the beauty of the room itself.
Everything fits perfectly together in this book. The language is beautiful, the plot is interesting and ends perfectly, and the characters are multi-faceted and interesting. It highlights an obviously important period in history but from the slightly different viewpoint of the various ethnic groups in Czechoslovakia, living in a country constructed by a treaty and consistently struck with severe issues. There’s a lot of fiction (and, obviously, non-fiction) about World War II and its aftermath out there and I think this book took another angle to distinguish itself, and it worked.
It was interesting that eventually, while their house is occupied by others, Viktor and Liesel lead the strange life of exiles from Nazi Germany and the countries they’ve taken over. I can’t recall if I ever read a book about where the rich went when they fled, but it was interesting, especially when they tried to move again to a more permanent home and had to deal with other countries’ stupid prejudice. As we know in the beginning, they make it through. It isn’t all sunshine and roses for the characters, though, as those left behind endure the incredibly difficult experiences forced upon them by Nazi occupation and imprisonment in concentration camps.
I also really liked that the house itself was almost a character in the book. It’s used for different purposes throughout, but everyone has their own relationship with it. It makes them feel certain ways, reminds them of their lives – in certain ways, the house’s open spaces tempt them to do what they might not do otherwise. It’s an interesting dynamic.
I can definitely see why The Glass Room was nominated for the Booker Prize. It exposes the darkness and the light within people, while exploring an interesting and slightly different aspect of a war that impacted so much of our culture. Very worth reading.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from a publicist for review.
 Daniel Rooke’s childhood is miserable; as a smart boy born to poor parents in eighteenth century England, doors eventually open for him but he constantly struggles to fit in. In 1788 he seizes the chance to go on a mission to New South Wales as an astronomer, hoping to finally break out of his position in the lowly marines and become a scientist. That doesn’t quite happen; instead, in his solitary makeshift observatory, Rooke forges a friendship with the Aborigines, one in particular, that has an astonishing effect on his worldview and brings into sharp focus the issues with British imperialism.
The Lieutenant is a short, quick read, but no less affecting for all that. The book is written in third person and the beginning went very quickly, which made me feel somewhat detached and a bit frustrated, but as soon as Rooke is in the war, I was immensely wrapped up in his story. His journey to Australia was outright fascinating. More than anything, it showed the arrogance of the British soldiers, convinced that the natives would immediately like what they had to bring, want to hang around them, and be grateful for their company even after they were forcibly captured! I was astonished. I knew this sort of thing happened in the Americas but it still made me so angry.
Luckily, Rooke shared my feelings, and I loved the friendship he shared with the native girl and his diligent attempts to learn their language for the sake of speaking to them, not to become famous like one of the other crew members. I really felt that he was trying to understand them and he treated them like the people that they were. He was just a really admirable, clever man, and even though I couldn’t entirely get inside his head, I got enough of his intentions to really like him, and his actions were above reproach as long as he knew what he was doing.
I did think the beginning and the end were brief and sort of disappointing and detached, but in my opinion the entire book was worth it for that great middle section when Rooke tries to learn about another culture without imposing his own Britishness on it. He’s clearly rebuked when he does. I was happy to learn that it was based on a true story and a soldier did attempt to learn the language from a young native girl, although the author says clearly it’s fiction and should not be taken as history. Even so, knowing that at least one man attempted to understand, rather than oppress and change, makes for a great story and reminds us that some people do buck the trend of history.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publishers for review.
|
|
Recent Comments