Title: Boneshaker

Author: Cherie Priest

Genre: Steampunk/SF/Horror

Publisher: Tor Books
Publication Date: September 2009
Paperback: 416 pages

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in the Clockwork Century series

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

How did we get this book: We bought our copies

Why did we read this book: It’s Steampunk week and Boneshaker has been praised to the skies by Steampunkers, reviewers and recently even made into Library Journal’s list of “Core” Steampunk titles.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Ana: Boneshaker is another book I had been looking forward to reading for a long time and holding off to until we had our Steampunk Week. Given the amount of praise it received, the fact that very recently it made into Library Journal’s list of core Steampunk titles and the fact that Cherie Priest seems to really know what she is talking about, I had great expectations about the book. And they were sort of met, as overall the book proved to be a solid read. I liked most specially its sympathetic duo of mother-son protagonists, the lovely writing, and the setting (an alternate 19th century Seattle). Plus, Zombies and Pirates = fun! However, upon reflection, the very premise of the book did not hold to close scrutiny and ironically, that includes the very Steampunk nature of the story.

Thea: I have to agree wholeheartedly with Ana on this one. I was ecstatic with Boneshaker’s unique premise – Civil War Era Steampunk Zombies! Hiyo! Sign me up!

And…well, Boneshaker is a bit of a mixed bag. The premise is wonderfully imaginative, but, as Ana says, kind of implodes on itself when subjected to any level of scrutiny. This history is a mess as is the actual source of the zombification of Seattle’s inhabitants – and I’m not exactly sure I’d label this as a true work of Steampunk. That said, I enjoyed the overall story and the horror aspects of the book, and certainly read it eagerly enough, which counts for a lot.

On the Plot:

Ana: It’s the 1880s, and the United States is still plagued by the legacy of the Civil War. In Seattle it has been 16 years since the eccentric scientist Leviticus Blue built his Boneshaker, a tunnelling machine built to drill through the ice fields of Alaska. The machine went berserk in the middle of the town basically destroying it all and in the process hitting the underground reserves of a mysterious gas – the Blight – which, if inhaled, turns people into Zombies. The inhabitants of the town fled, authorities built a huge wall which has been keeping the gas and the zombies (or “rotters”) in.

Briar Wilkes and her son Zeke leave just outside the walls and try to make do with her meagre salary as a worker at the water treatment plant (filtering the effects of the Plight) . Their lives are not easy since Briar is the widow of the infamous Leviticus Blue and no one will let her forget that, including her son. In an attempt to prove that his father was in fact not the criminal that everybody thinks he is, Zeke sneaks into the walled City in search for clues sand a desperate Briar goes after him when his only viable way out collapses after an earthquake and in the process discovers that are people still living inside. She must find him and quick, before the rotters – or someone worse – find them first.

As plots go, Boneshaker’s start off with a lot of potential. The impetus for the story – a mother who admitted not being the most perfect and open of mothers, in search of her son and to try and mend their relationship spoke to me like only a character-driven story can speak. It is also undeniable that Cherie Priest’s prose is lovely and enticing. I have nothing to say against pacing (it is rocketing good fun!) or against the overall plotting: mother searches son in parallel stories, both run from zombies, run into pirates, danger abound, there is a villain who might or might not Leviticus Blue himself. It is all actually pretty good.

It is just when you think about the details that things start to fall through.

For example: there is a lack of real science. It puzzled me for example, that it had been 16 years since the accident happened and yet there were no scientists studying the phenomenon – where did it come from? What was it? How to reverse it? Well, that does not sound Steampunk ish at all. I would expect at least one mad scientist somewhere making a dash to understand it. Furthermore, can a wall really stop the spreading of a gas? For 16 years? Without any leaks? Without it rising above it? Leaking through pipes? Really? Sometimes, I wondered if the gas was not a mere excuse for the use of Goggles and masks – making it a choice for Steampunk Aesthetics than for Steampunk Science – especially when there is barely an appearance of the very Boneshaker of the title.

Another thing that made me wonder (and wonder and wonder): Briar discovers that there were people still living in the inside. Citizens of Seattle, basically living like scavengers , forever having to wear masks and living in fear of the zombies and I asked myself over and again: why? Why would anyone stay if they didn’t have to? Surely there were alternative – better ones, than to live in a place where you can’t go outside where you can’t breathe, where you can’t get any real food because of a mortal Gas that can turn you into a zombie? Surely.

Yes, Steampunk can be fun but Scott Westerfelf has proved with his Leviathan that you can have a Steampunk novel that is both fun and yet rich with Steampunk elements that actually matter.

Having said that: I sustain that I did have a great time reading the novel, despite these misgivings. I find this series has a great potential. Who knows, perhaps the sequels will be more Steampunk heavy?

Thea: What Ana said. When reading Boneshaker, two things immediately jumped out at me:

1. There’s a huge “buyability” problem with the story.

As Ana mentions, the solution to deal with Seattle was to wall it off – literally, with a big wall. And this would protect the rest of the world from zombies, and from the mysterious “Blight.” Which is a gas. I repeat – a gas. How exactly does a stone wall contain a gas? This seems a little silly. THen, given the fact that Seattle is the rainiest city in the continental United States, how in heck can the Blight gas be so prevalent as to completely ensheath the city, impervious to the months and months of rain that should clear the air? Furthermore, how is the Blight still leaking out after 16 years? This must be quite a reservoir indeed – and if the rain isn’t washing it away, and an accumulation of 16 years’ worth of a thick gas is spreading through Seattle, wouldn’t it have been enough to spread a little further (as opposed to being contained by the walls)? And Ana makes a good point – why wouldn’t the government, or some enterprising scientist or company for that matter, be interested in finding out what exactly the Blight is? After 16 years, no one is interested in discovering why the gas turns people into zombies? No one wants to know where the gas came from, what it is, and if it exists anywhere else in the country? Heck, even allowing that US government is so shattered and preoccupied by the legacy of the Civil War (which requires a huge effort to suspend disbelief in and of itself), wouldn’t anyone be interested in weaponizing this gas? I was kind of surprised and disappointed that Ms. Priest didn’t go there, it seems so obvious – the Blight as a biochemical weapon to be harnessed for the American Civil War and perhaps for the inevitable World War?! – but perhaps that’s fodder for a future book.

Beyond the haziness of the Blight (lame pun intended), there’s also a problem in terms of believability of era, and technology. Which brings me to my second point:

2. The technology and science aspects are so vague as to suggest that Boneshaker is much more of an aesthetic work.

And this is totally fine – just like with genres like Science Fiction, you can get the hard Stephen Baxter stuff, or the softer, Gene Roddenberry stuff. But my problem with Boneshakeris that the time period and the steampunk aesthetic are irrelevant to the storyline (yes, the bone-shaking drill unleashed the gas that caused the zombies and the premise of the novel, but this could have been any drill. You don’t even see the drill until the end of the book, and the cataclysmic effect is completely off-stage). This might have been the distant future or present day or even on another earth-like planet. For example, the characters speak in the modern vernacular, so it’s easy to forget the time period altogether. And if you can take away the technology, and if you can take away the time period and are essentially left with the same story, these elements are superfluous.

I should also note that Ms. Priest has an afterward to the book in which she claims that all of the historical inconsistencies (so far as the size, importance, development and specifics of Seattle) are intentional – which explains why certain buildings and landmarks are completed and/or in different areas than they are in real life. But my points still remain – I imagine that Cherie Priest is very connected to Seattle and thus chose to write Boneshaker in this locale, but it seems like too much of a stretch to truly work. If this had been in New York, or Philadelphia for example, I think it would have worked to the book’s credit. Or set it in a totally new city altogether, bypassing all of these other historical/structural/environmental critiques.

In any case, despite all of my reservations, I really did enjoy Boneshaker in its capacity as an SF horror novel and a page-turner. A mother set on finding her son in a zombie infested city? How could I not love this?! The pacing is excellent and although a little too contemporary to work in the time period, Ms. Priest has undeniably strong narrative technique and a gift for storytelling. This alone is more than enough to recommend the novel, even if it’s a little skimpy on the details.

On The Characters:

Ana: I think of the greatest strengths of the novel are its engaging and sympathetic characters. I absolutely loved Briar and Zere both as separate entities and their relationship. Especially because they were so freaking flawed and sometimes even annoying. Zeke behaved like a quintessential teenager – prone to do stupid things, but with the heart in the right place. Same thing goes for Briar – I really liked how she reflected upon her reasons for keeping secrets from her son and the moment she decided to change it all. She is fierce Plus, there is one revelation in the end, which even though I saw coming from a mile away, I still thought was awesome and made all the difference in the world adding an extra layer of complexity of the novel – and every single mention of a certain character from the start.

There are also a plethora of secondary characters that although not really that well-developed, were actually pretty entertaining in their own way. I was quite fond of the air pirates (especially Cly) and the underground refugees Lucy the one-armed barmaid and Jeremiah.

Thea: I have to agree with Ana in that the characters are a great asset to Boneshaker. I loved Briar, in particular, as the flawed mother that loves her son, no matter what. There’s a pivotal scene at the end of the book, a confession, that is so heart-wrenchingly honest and moving, it truly makes the book. Ezekiel, or Zeke, as Briar’s son felt a little less developed as a character to me, however. Yes, he was very much a teenager, and very believable in his quest to exonerate his grandfather’s legacy, and even his father (the creator of the titled Boneshaker) – but other than this desire, he lacks the well-rounded finish that his mother has in abundance.

Other secondary characters pop in and out and are enjoyable additions – in particular I loved Lucy, the one-armed barkeep and, a Native American Princess (who is nothing like the princess you have in mind, I guarantee it), and the gruff, lovable Jeremiah Swakhammer. Of course, there’s also the shadowy, nefarious Dr. Minnericht that runs Seattle’s underground ruins with an iron fist…

Altogether, an enjoyable and connecting cast.

BUT IS IT STEAMPUNK?

Ana: Weeeeell. There are undeniably, elements generally related to Steampunk in this novel. Alternate history. CHECK. Goggles, Dirigibles, some Steam technology, CHECK. A mad scientist. CHECK. However, I think those elements are only skin deep – remove them and they wouldn’t really make a difference to that world (although obviously they do to this story) . Those elements seem too confined to be really Steampunk-ish. But then again, the Steampunk seal has been signed, sealed and delivered by Steampunk luminaries from all over the place so what the hell do I know?

Thea: I’m sorta of the same mind as Ana here. Yes, there are steampunk elements up the wazoo (what with the bone-shaking drill, goggles, a couple of airships, and other strange inventions sprinkled throughout)…but is it really steampunk? I guess it really depends on your definition. For me, the aesthetic elements were strong but somewhat irrelevant, and it’s not the best example of a steampunk novel in my personal opinion. There’s no radical social critique, nor is there a dazzlingly central technological element. But, as Ana says, what the hell do I know? I can understand why this is labeled as steampunk, but I also understand why some folks might not see it as such.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the prologue:

From Unlikely Episodes in Western History

Chapter 7, “Seattle’s Walled and Peculiar State.”
Work in progress, by Hale Quarter.
1880

Unpaved, uneven trails pretended to be roads; they tied the nation’s coasts together like laces holding a boot, binding it with crossed strings and crossed fingers. And over the great river, across the plains, between the mountain passes the settlers pushed from east to west. They trickled over the Rockies in dribs and drabs, in wagons and coaches.

Or this is how it began.

In California there were nuggets the size of walnuts lying on the ground—or so it was said, and truth travels slowly when rumors have wings of gold. The trickle of humanity became a magnificent flow. The glittering western shores swarmed with prospectors, pushing their luck and pushing their pans into the gravelly streams, praying for fortunes.

In time, the earth grew crowded, and claims became more tenuous. Gold came out of the ground in dust so fine that the men who mined it could’ve inhaled it.

In 1850 another rumor, winged and sparkling, came swiftly from the north.

The Klondike, it said. Come and cut your way through the ice you find there. A fortune in gold awaits a determined enough man.

The tide shifted, and looked to the northern latitudes. This meant very, very good things for the last frontier stop before the Canadian border—a backwater mill town on Puget Sound called Seattle after the native chief of the local tribes. The muddy village became a tiny empire nearly overnight as explorers and prospectors paused to trade and stock up on supplies.

While American legislators argued over whether or not to buy the Alaska territory, Russia hedged its bets and considered its asking price. If the land really was pocked with gold deposits, the game would absolutely change; but even if a steady supply of gold could be located, could it be retrieved? A potential vein, spotted intermittently but mostly buried beneath a hundred feet of permanent ice, would make for an ideal testing ground.

In 1860, the Russians announced a contest, offering a 100,000 ruble prize to the inventor who could produce or propose a machine that could mine through ice in search of gold. And in this way, a scientific arms race began despite a budding civil war.

Across the Pacific Northwest big machines and small machines were tinkered into existence. They were tricky affairs designed to withstand bitter cold and tear through turf that was frozen diamond-hard. They were powered by steam and coal, and lubricated with special solutions that protected their mechanisms from the elements. These machines were made for men to drive like stagecoaches, or designed to dig on their own, controlled by clockwork and ingenious guiding devices.

But none of them were rugged enough to tackle the buried vein, and the Russians were on the verge of selling the land to America for a relative pittance… when a Seattle inventor approached them with plans for an amazing machine. It would be the greatest mining vehicle ever constructed: fifty feet long and fully mechanized, powered by compressed steam. It would boast three primary drilling and cutting heads, positioned at the front of the craft; and a system of spiral shoveling devices mounted along the back and sides would scoop the bored-through ice, rocks, or earth back out of the drilling path. Carefully weighted and meticulously reinforced, this machine could drill in an almost perfect vertical or horizontal path, depending on the whims of the man in the driver’s seat. Its precision would be unprecedented, and its power would set the standard for all such devices to come.

But it had not yet been built.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: It is also worth mentioning that Boneshaker comes in a beautiful package. Not only is the cover gorgeous (although irrelevant and misleading), but the book itself is printed on thick paper in this lovely rust brown print, lending even more to the steampunk aesthetic.

Rating:

Ana: 7 – Very Good

Thea: 7 – Very Good (Though it was a close call, bordering a 6)

Reading Next: A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire

Today, we have the proud honor of being the official Book Blog Partner on Harper Teen’s 28 Days of Winter Escapes Tour! First, we give you our joint review of our participating title, The Girl with the Mermaid Hair by Delia Ephron. Then, we bring you an exclusive Q&A with the author and a chance to win a copy of the book (and an iTouch).

Title: The Girl With The Mermaid Hair

Author: Delia Ephron

Genre: YA / Contemporary

Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: January 2010
Hardcover: 320 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand Alone (although one of the secondary characters was the protagonist of the author’s previous book, Frannie in Pieces).

Click. Sukie Jamieson takes a selfie after her tennis lesson. Click. She takes one before she has to give a presentation in class. Click. She takes one to be sure there’s nothing in her teeth after eating pizza at Clementi’s. And if she can’t take a selfie, she checks her reflection in windows, spoons, car chrome—anything available, really. So when her mother gives her an exquisite full-length mirror that once belonged to her grandmother, Sukie is thrilled. So thrilled that she doesn’t listen to her mother’s warning: “This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy.” Because mirrors, as Sukie discovers, show not only the faraway truth but the truth close up. And finding out that close-up truth changes people. Often forever.

How did we get this book: Review Copies from the publisher

Why did we read this book: When we were contacted to be part of the Winter Escapes event hosted by Harper Teen, we were allocated this book and we couldn’t have been happier – it was a perfect fit.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Ana: I started to read The Girl with the Mermaid Hair and my first reaction after reading the first few pages was: this is quite possibly one the weirdest books I have ever read, this girl is barking bonkers and completely unlikable and what in the world is going on. A few pages more and all of that changed – the book was still weird, but a wonderful weird, the character still crazy but with reason and I couldn’t put the book down until I was done and I ended up loving it. It is, hands down one of the best contemporaries YA I have read and a fantastic story about a girl, for girls, about what is like to be a girl.

Thea: The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is a bizarre book, and completely out of the range of YA titles that I usually read.

And I absolutely, out-of-my-mind LOVED it.

My experience with the book was very similar to Ana’s – I started it and couldn’t make heads or tails of what the frak was going on. Sukie is, for lack of a better word, deranged. At first glance, she’s narcissistic and irritatingly bland – but she’s not, really. This is a beautiful, unexpected, heartbreaking work of staggering genius (yes, I just ripped off Dave Eggers, but THAT is how good this book is – heck, better than Eggers’ narcissistic memoir, in this reader’s opinion). Against all my cynicism and predisposition against this book, The Girl with the Mermaid Hair blew me away.

On the Plot:

Ana: Sukie Jamieson is perfect: with her perfect blonde hair (like a mermaid’s), her perfect skin and her beautiful body with strong muscles built over her perfectly honed Tennis skills. Living in a perfect, beautiful house, with a perfect family composed of a loving father and a slightly crazy mother, a cute younger brother and the family dog Señor who even has a place at the dining table (first warning signal: his place it is at the head of the table). Sukie is a top student, brags about a quarterback boyfriend, she is beautiful and everybody is jealous of her and she spends hours in self-adoration and constantly takes selfies – pictures of herself with her cell phone.

One day her mother gives her an antique mirror as a present with the warning: “This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy.”

As Sukie becomes more and more enamored with herself little cracks appear in the mirror – and ironically in her life – it becomes clear to the reader that Sukie only believes herself and her life to perfect. The truth is something else altogether.

There is very little in the way of a plot in The Girl with the Mermaid Hair , as this is really a character-driven novel at its core. Nothing really momentous happen in the novel and the story is propelled by Sukie and Sukie alone, as little by little is like the curtain is suspended and she can SEE her life for what it is and so can the reader. The result is sometimes hilarious but often sad too. Sometimes I write: this is so and so’s book but it is not every time that I am completely overcome with the strange sensation that I had when I was reading this book. This is Sukie’s book: I couldn’t tell where the writer or the narrator was, it was like neither existed and all I could see was Sukie. I was inside her head at all times and it felt like it was just me and her. That is also dude to the writing technique – extreme “showing,” no “telling” whatsoever, with the author, having the utmost faith in the reader to “get” what she saying. And I really dig that.

Thea: I have to wholeheartedly agree with Ana in saying that this indeed is Sukie’s book, and it is all the more awesome because of how committed it is. There really isn’t much plot or action, but that doesn’t mean The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is slow or dull – quite the opposite, actually. Rather, this is a wholly immersive reading experience. I have to emphasize again what Ana has said before me; reading The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is an experience unlike any other. It’s not so much a “reading a book” experience as it is a, “Holy Crap, I’m actually seeing Sukie’s mind at work” experience. (But more on that in the next section)

Also, I must say that Ms. Ephron’s writing is just…awesome. Not only is it incredibly clever (for example, one particular passage has Sukie debating what text to send – “WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER BETTER” – and deletes her text, letter by letter before inadvertently sending simply, “WHEN”), but it’s also memorably strange. The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is a trip – we readers are only given Sukie’s word as truth, and it becomes painfully, excruciatingly clear that Sukie’s judgement is not completely sound. She talks about her new “boyfriend” that she met at the mall (popular quarterback of the local highschool, named Bobo), but it soon becomes very apparent that Sukie’s relationship – along with so many other things in her life – is a fantasy. A delusion.

And that’s what I loved the most about this book: how it completely messes with reader perceptions. I found myself thinking, Sukie is a gag-inducing Mary Sue! No wait, she’s a narcissistic snot! I hate Sukie! No wait, she’s completely insane! No wait, I LOVE Sukie! and so on and so forth. How often does a book come along that does this to you? Not often. And, as Ana says, I can totally dig that.

On the Characters:

Ana: As a reader who loves character-driven novels, this book was a perfect fit for me. And I was not expecting it. Yes, I started the book disliking her superficiality and her weirdness but ended up loving and rooting for her once I got to know her better. When the story begins, she is too good to be true – too perfect. The image she has of herself and of her parents for example is a complete illusion and it is as though she doesn’t see those illusions because she does – it her interpretation that is all warped. Because for example this sequence about her father:

Sukie loved to watch her dad operate. That’s what he called it. Once at Cones, when he’d offered to pay for a woman’s sprinkles (a woman they’d never met before), the woman said to Sukie, “Your father makes everything more fun, doesn’t he?” As soon as they’d left the store, she reported the compliment to her dad, and he whispered (so her mom and Mikey couldn’t hear), “I’m a real operator”. Clearly this was information he could entrust only to Sukie

To her, he is a winner. To me, it is clear what he is. Eventually, yes, this is one of the things she comes to realise, one of the realities she has to face. But there is so much more to it. All the pressure she suffers from her mother to be beautiful and perfect; her mother who has a facelift and gets rid of her nose – the nose that was a trait she shared with Sukie – what does that to a girl’s psyche?

The book deals a lot with image and in several levels as well:, in mirrors, in photography; public image, self-image, the image one has in the family life or at school. Sukie is carrying her cell phone at all times and yet it never rings, her quarterback fling is not really interested in her, she is truly and really lonely and alone. She hits rock bottom and has to resurface (which is a cool image because of the mermaid hair) and re-imagine herself and I loved that it was all done alone. There was no hot boyfriend to help. No parents to help. Nothing, nada. It was all Sukie (with a little help from her friends).

When the book closes, she is much more real character than she was in the beginning.

As for the other characters, the mother was a sad example of a mother, someone I pitied more than anything. As for the father, I absolutely loathed the individual – not because he was a sleaze ball but because he used Sukie in the war against his wife. You do not do that with your child. But then again, as my parents often said: parenthood does not come with a manual.

But hands down, best secondary character was Señor, the Dog. The fact that he was the one the family turned to, to ask for advice should give you an idea of how dysfunctional they were.

One final thought: one of Sukie’s main concerns is about being original (or not). Is about striving to being unique without having a clue how to. My heart nearly broke into a million pieces several times during this book – and it may sound as though it is all very angsty and sad but it is not, really.

Thea: Well, The Girl with the Mermaid Hair *is* angsty and sad. But ultimately it’s an uplifting, triumphant book, and that’s ALL because of its protagonist Sukie.

I’m something of a plot junkie, as you may or may not have realized over the past couple of years here. But when a character-study type of book is done well, I will never complain about a shortage of action or parallel storylines or whatever, and such is the beauty of this novel from Delia Ephron. As I said before, I had no idea how to interpret and categorize Sukie as a heroine. At first glance, she’s irritating and vain, admiring herself in her grandmother’s antique mirror, mind-numbingly preoccupied with her appearance (especially with her titled hair, and with what she perceives of as an imperfect nose), constantly snapping “selfies” (that is pictures of herself on her cell phone). I shudder at the thought of this sort of vapid heroine, and found myself agreeing with Sukie’s tennis coach when he remarked that she had a marshmallow for a brain.

But…

Then Ms. Ephron works her magic. Sukie in fact isn’t a vain imbecile – she’s a very lonely, hollow young woman that perceives the world around her so differently than anyone else. She lives in her own fantasies. She takes “selfies” and is so preoccupied with her looks not because she is vain, but because she has nothing else. She throws herself into her school work and extracurricular activities, not because she enjoys any of it, but because she is trying to impress her father, to placate her mother, to be perfect for everyone else. Her perfection is not perfection at all; it is obsessive, and heartbreakingly tragic.

And HERE is what makes The Girl with the Mermaid Hair a damn near perfect book for me – in my opinion, it is a jarring look at gender roles and expectations. It is, as I told Ana in an email, the 21st century, teen female version of Catcher in the Rye. Before you tune out, let me explain – I abhor Holden Caufield with every fiber of my being. I have no patience for the embodiment of overprivileged, adolescent male malaise that Holden represented – but this is something that resonates with a lot of readers, in particular male readers. What I mean by comparing Catcher In the Rye to The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is simply this: Sukie is the female answer to Holden Caufield in the new century. Sukie is the embodiment of pressures put on young adults, especially females, in our own age. She’s the daughter of a very rich and handsome father, a beautiful mother, older sister to a loving younger brother. She’s a perfect student, amazingly smart, and breathtakingly beautiful. But she’s far from perfect. She’s friendless, she thinks she has no personality, and she’s ultimately…hollow. Sukie lives to please everyone else, to play by the rules, and to maintain her appearance. Ms. Ephron takes that beautiful, perfect reflection, and just as with the antique mirror in the novel, she distorts the image bit by bit, ultimately shattering the readers’ perception of Sukie with stark reality.

And, yeah, she shattered this reader’s heart too.

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Ana: A surprisingly moving, funny and sharp character-driven story which I absolutely adored. It is as of now, one of my favorite reads of the year.

Thea: The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is a rare gem of a book, and it completely took me by surprise. Almost against my will, I loved it. I agree once more with Ana – this is the first truly memorable new release I’ve read in 2010. In fact, it’s my favorite book published in 2010 so far. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Notable Quotes/ Parts:

I am so unoriginal. Sukie recorded the dreaded feeling in her journal that night while senor snored next to her, taking up most of the bed.”Do you agree, Senor?”

Senor twitched, indicating that he was dreaming.

Unoriginal. She hoped it wasn’t true but despaired that it was.

She collected stuffed penguins. Was that unoriginal too? Was lining them up in a row on the windowsill a conventional way to display them? They all had names. She’d started with A, Anton, and worked her way down the alphabet to M, Marshmallow, a very small bird with a yellow bow. Sometimes she thought of them as friends, sometimes as audience. Tonight they sat in judgement. Over their furry black heads the moon was bright white, so low in the sky that it might roll off a rooftop, and perfectly round. A storybook moon, she thought. A wishing moon. She wondered if that thought was especially original; probably not. Could she fake being original, or was that something you couldn’t fool anyone about? I wish I knew what everyone thought of me, really, she wrote. No, I take that back.

You can also read the first 64 pages of The Girl with the Mermaid Hair using Harper Teen’s awesome Browse Inside feature, below:

Additional Thoughts: The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is today’s stop on Harper Teen’s 28 Days of Winter Escapes! For a chance to win The Girl with the Mermaid Hair and an iTouch, make sure to go to the official page for today and answer the daily poll!

And make sure to stick around, as later today we have an exclusive Q&A with Delia Ephron!

Rating:

Ana: 8 – Excellent

Thea: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Reading Next: Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep

Title: Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer

Author: Laini Taylor

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Publication Date: June 2007
Paperback: 448 pages

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in two book series called “Faeries of Dreamdark”

Magpie Windwitch is not like other faeries, most of whom live in tranquil seclusion. When she learns that escaped devils are creeping back into the world, she travels all over with her faithful clan of crows, hunting them down. The hunt will take her to the great forest of Dreamdark, where she must unravel the mystery of the worst enemy her folk have ever known. Can one small, determined faerie defeat the forces that threaten to unmake the world?

How did we get this book: Bought

Why did we read this book: We have heard nothing but AMAZING things about Laini Taylor’s writing, and both of us were eager to finally give her books a try! What better place to start with her first novel, Blackbringer?

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: I have heard nothing but singing praise for the books of Laini Taylor, so my expectations were pretty darn high when I started Blackbringer. But holy winged fairies, Batman! This first novel of the Faeries of Dreamdark was totally awesome. I found myself falling in love with Laini Taylor’s descriptions, her characters, the cadence of each character’s speech, and the world she has created with Dreamdark. Yeah, you could say I’ll be back for more.

Ana: I am no newbie to Laini Taylor’s fantastic writing, having read the amazing Lips Touch last year. I can safely say that after reading Blackbringer this author has been cemented as an auto-buy: and how could it not be so? Great plotting, great characters, great prose combine to an altogether solid reading experience that can only make me a happy reader.

On the Plot:

Thea: The overall plot for Blackbringer is a familiar one – a great evil, a darkness, has risen and threatens to not only take over the land, but to destroy the very fabric of the world. Young Magpie Windwitch (granddaughter of an elemental wind, sister to seven crows, nomadic fairy and monster-hunter) comes across an opened bottle, fished out of the sea by men (“mannies”) and it’s magical seal broken – but this is no mere underling monster. Magpie discovers that however unwittingly, these ignorant humans have unleashed a great darkness that threatens to destroy everything. In order to prevent this hungry beast’s advance, Magpie journeys back to Dreamdark to find the oldest and most powerful of the seven Djinn that created the universe, named the Magruwen, and implore his help. Though her task seems impossible, Magpie is no ordinary young sprout – she has a destiny beyond her wildest dreams, and the world rests on her tiny, winged shoulders.

How much did I love the writing in this book? How much did I love the world Ms. Taylor creates with Dreamdark, Issrin Ev, and the Moonlit Gardens? The powers of the long-slumbering Djinn, the ever-destructive force of the Blackbringer, the ignorant Mannies, the serendipitous imps, and the forgetful faeries?

I LOVED IT ALL.

Just as the Djinn weave their magics and create a tapestry of being, so too does Ms. Taylor weave an enchanting world for her readers. I, for one, found myself completely immersed from the first page – from the descriptions to the character mannerisms. The background conflict is familiar (as is the “special” nature of protagonist Magpie), but it’s written in such a whimsical way, in such a beautifully layered and described world, that it made me feel like a little girl again, reading a fairy story for the very first time.

And speaking of fairies – in Blackbringer they are tiny, fierce, magical creatures once more! Faeries are hardly ever tiny anymore (though they certainly are ferocious and cruel) – and I dig that. Blackbringer makes me think of Peter Pan, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, of John Anster Fitzgerald (pictured below in Additional Thoughts) and Brian Froud’s illustrations.

While I loved basically everything, there were a few tiny drawbacks. For one, I think this book was on the protracted side – I found my attention wavering eversoslightly by the last third of the book. In comparison, the final battle comes pretty quickly and is resolved without much ado. Still this is a very minor quibble – I found myself thoroughly enjoying this lovely book.

Ana: Yes, the plot is a familiar one; yes the main character is the special heroine who is destined to save the world and yes, it all seems impossible at first, seeing as how aforementioned heroine is a miniscule sized fairy. Yet, as Thea, I LOVED it and here is why:

For Laini Taylor’s grasp of familiar Fantasy tropes which she infuses with creativity and heart, making them if not necessarily new, at least charming, enchanting and engaging. And that is one the signs of a good writer to me.

And even as familiar as it was (the dark is rising!), I still was very much interested in learning about how it all came to me and the intricacies of the fairies’ and Djinn (that yes, wholly unique to me) mythology. The only drawback was the anticlimactic ending. The entire book was a huge build- up towards the face off against the Greasest!Darkest!Baddest! force of all time and when it came, it was over too easily and too fast. It was like Lord of the Rings all over again. I remember that sentiment of frustration I had when after all they went through after what felt like a millennium of suffering to fight Sauron the only casualty was…..Frodo’s finger. But I digress. My point is, there was enough plot here, enough good things to extend this fight for at least one more book. It just ended too fast.

An aside: Thea cited a few examples of miniscule-yet-fierce fairies and that reminds me of another recent example which I also loved, Knife by R.J. Anderson

On the Characters:

Thea: Just as with the storytelling, the characters of Dreamdark are a pure delight. Magpie Windwitch, our intrepid heroine, is in many ways the typical, gifted-beyond-her-wildest-dreams ragamuffin, but she’s so damn endearing, the use of the trope hardly registers. She’s wild, brave and impossibly gifted with abilities – but that’s all tied into her unique heritage. I loved her relationship with her brother/protector/friend crows, with her old nurse imp, and with her friends Poppy and Talon. ALL of the characters are varied and wonderful, my favorites being Talon (O.M.G. love Talon – as I’m sure Ana will reiterate) the prince whose father and kingdom rejects him because of his stunted wings, Poppy the kind and softspoken faerie that can talk to plants, the formidable Magruwen, and – of course! – the beautiful, legendary faery warrior Bellatrix.

Although, I will have to agree with something that Kristen of the awesome Fantasy Cafe says in her review of the book – the only quibble I have with the characters is how clearly good or evil they are. Not that it’s a bad thing, necessarily, but I love me my ambiguously (im)moral characters.

Ana: I believe that the characters Blackbringer are the added flavouring in this story. As much as Magpie (and what a GREAT name!) is wonderful if not especially complex, I completely lost my heart to her clan of Crows and to Talon. The former for their mixture of fierceness in time of need or for their mothering of Pie or for just how much FUN they were. I mean, they used to be a travelling theatre band! Crows. Who put on wigs to perform. How whimsically fun. And with dialogue pearls such as “curiosity killed the eejit”, how could I not love them?

And then there was Talon. The moment he stepped into the story, daydreaming at the top of a tower, part of a clan of warriors of which he could never be truly a part of as he couldn’t fly because of his stunted wings, I knew. I knew that he was the hero, if there was going to be one. And I fell in love with him, and he was awesome. His scenes with his wings (the lack of them) were poignant but also genius.

And the tattoos. I am easy that way.

I loved them all so much that the thought of the lack of ambiguity didn’t even cross my mind…

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Thea: Blackbringer was my first exposure to Laini Taylor, and I am one very happy camper. I loved this fabulous book, and I cannot wait to read more from this very talented author. (And, as I’m told, her books just get better – I cannot freaking wait!)

Ana: I highly recommend this to YA and Fantasy readers alike – Blackbringer is a wonderful book with a vivid characters. And I can’t wait to read the sequel either. Another joint, Thea!

Notable Quotes/Parts: You can read an official excerpt online at Amazon.com via the “Look Inside” feature HERE.

Additional Thoughts: The art! Oh the art! Blackbringer is illustrated by Laini Taylor’s husband, the very talented Jim Di Bartolo. In fact, he’s the artist for all three of Ms. Taylor’s current books. Check out his interior illustration below:

And, as mentioned earlier, Ms. Taylor’s take on fairies is reminiscent of some old favorite works of literature and art. In particular, this picture from John Anster Fitzgerald comes to mind.

Rating:

Thea: 8 – Excellent

Ana:8 – Excellent

Reading Next: Fade by Lisa McMann

Title: Archangel’s Kiss

Author: Nalini Singh

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Berkeley (US) / Gollancz (UK)
Publication Date: February 2010 (US) / March 2010 (UK)
Paperback: 352 pages

Stand Alone or Series: Book 2 in the ongoing Guild Hunter series

How Did We Get This Book: Review copies from author & publisher

Why Did We Read This Book: Both of us loved Angels’ Blood, the first book in the series. Ana is a confessed Nalini Singh-aholic, and Thea is on her way to becoming one too. The question should be, rather, what took us so long to read this book?

Summary: (from NaliniSingh.com)
Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux wakes from a year-long coma to find herself changed—an angel with wings the colors of midnight and dawn—but her fragile body needs time to heal before she can take flight. Her lover, the stunningly dangerous archangel Raphael, is used to being in control—even when it comes to the woman he considers his own. But Elena has never done well with authority…

They’ve barely begun to understand each other when Raphael receives an invitation to a ball from the archangel Lijuan. To refuse would be a sign of fatal weakness, so Raphael must ready Elena for the flight to Beijing—and to the nightmare that awaits them there. Ancient and without conscience, Lijuan holds a power that lies with the dead. And she has organized the most perfect and most vicious of welcomes for Elena…

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: Anyone that reads our reviews knows that I have an aversion to romance novels, especially of the mushy, sexually explicit variety. I’ve read some pretty bad Paranormal Romance in particular that makes my eyes roll up to the back of my head, where they can see my brain, which is pissed off at having to read the offending material in the first place. I can deal with mush and sex, but not when it is at the expense of a cohesive and believable story. Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter books are the clear exception to my PNR-dislike, because, quite frankly, her writing rules. The thing that drew me in with Angels’ Blood was how textured and real her characters felt – how Raphael is actually a terrifying, cruel immortal and has no mortal feelings. How Elena is fragile and insignificant in the grand scope of the supernatural world – and she not only knows this but respects it. The biggest problem I have with a lot of PNR (and a lot of UF to be honest) is how there are these supposed millennia-old immortal/super-sexy/supposedly dangerous dudes – but they act like they are in their twenties or thirties, and they are all big softies with hearts of gold, and even if they committed atrocities that was all in the distant past and they are atoning for it, and they are saved from an eternity of brooding by this fiesty hot little human thang (who of course turns out to be some super powerful fey princess/most powerful/magical creature in the universe) who has a scent and a way of sassing that is IRRESISTIBLE to said leading male. In Angels’ Blood and Archangel’s Kiss, Ms. Sing creates a world where deadly creatures are actually deadly, and her heroine Elena is valued because of her human heart and her frailty – even as an immortal, she is a young one and easy to kill. I LOVED that about this book. I love that the relationship between Raphael and Elena is far from “happily ever after” and that their story is continued here. I loved it all enough that I didn’t even mind all the renegade nipples, running rampant throughout the book. Well, I didn’t mind much.

Ana: I read Archangel’s Kiss a few weeks ago which makes it my first official 2010 book. I came to it in the middle of a serious reading slump after I tried and couldn’t finish about 6 books. Nalini Singh once more saves me from the brink of despair. Her writing is kick-ass as usual, the particular world-building of the Guild Hunter book as interesting as ever and the relationship between Raphael and Elena is not only smoking hot (unlike Thea, I tend to like the sexually explicit content when it is well done and part of the story. And oh boy. Can Nalini Singh deliver on that area) but also fascinating.

On the Plot:

Thea: While Angels’ Blood had more of a death-defying, high stakes plot, Archangel’s Kiss is more subdued. There’s an overarching problem of some cruel angel that siccing his/her vampires on Raphael’s vampires, maiming and sending a taunting message meant to threaten Elena’s safety. There’s also the distant, looming test for Elena on the horizon as Lijuan, the most ancient and powerful of the archangels, has broken her disinterested seclusion in China and has extended an invitation to Raphael and his new “pet” hunter. Lijuan’s age and power, however, have changed her into something beyond immortal. She has evolved and has power over death itself, creating her own amusements in the form of an army of the dead reborn – an army that feeds on the flesh of the living to sustain itself. And Lijuan likes to feed her pets – with Elena in mind. While there are these two conflicts going on, the bulk of the novel involves Elena trying to get back her strength and become accustomed to her strange new body, especially after a year of lying in a coma. The focus in this second book is not so much on another rip-roaring adventure (though there is a fair amount of action and a dramatic conclusion) than it is a character-centric book. The highest points of Archangel’s Kiss are in the growing understanding and relationship between Elena and Raphael, as Elena learns what it means to be “immortal” and yet so incredibly weak.

Again, I found myself in awe of Nalini Singh’s worldbuilding skills. Her hierarchy of humans, vampires, angels and archangels is staggering in its complexity and in how utterly believable it all is. As I said before, these immortals are dangerous, cruel creatures and they act as such. I LOVED that Raphael’s Seven would try to kill Elena if she slipped in her vigilance – not because they hate Elena, but because her very presence weakens their leader. She is a liability, plain and simple, and I liked this aspect of the story (but more on that with characters later!). From a writing perspective, I only had a few minor complaints – there was a high level of repetition (especially regarding Elena’s suppressed memories, resurfacing) that needn’t have been there, and a whole bunch of not-sex/almost-sex scenes that I’m admittedly not a fan of (but, of course, this is personal taste! As Ana would say, it’s “hawt” but I’m an emotionally immature reader). Overall though, Ms. Singh’s writing level is awesome, and I found myself swept away in this wonderful novel.

Ana: As Thea says, plot-wise, there are several threads that run parallel in Archangel’s Kiss. The angels and archangels are scheming as ever and with a seat open in the Cadre of Ten, one is stepping up step up to fill up that place. This is expected and almost all Archangels are ok with it. Thea mentioned that the creatures created by Nalini Singh are cruel and terrifying immortals. This is even clearer in Archangel’s Kiss: as the mystery of who wants to be part of the Cadre builds up what seems to be the problem is not necessarily that people are being killed in a cruel manner. And that is fascinating even if albeit a bit uncomfortable.

The problem stems from the manner which this is being done, the overstepping of the boundaries and the fact that children are being targeted. Similarly when it comes to Lijuan’s age and power – a plotline that one day might be applicable to Raphael – the importance comes from the connection (or lack of) with what is like to an archangel versus being human – hence the relationship between Raphael and Elena being the central theme of the series.

I mentioned that Archangel’s Kiss saved me from a reading slump and it was so. But I did have a couple of problems with it. I actually agree with Thea that there was a high level of repetition -one more “mine” from Raphael and I would explode. Having said that, I absolutely adored the book.

On the Characters:

Thea: Here’s where things really get going. Archangel’s Kiss is very much a character-centric novel, exploring Elena and Raphael even more as characters, and building on their relationship together. Following the dramatic ending of Angels’ Blood, Elena has been Made an Angel and now is immortal. Except…immortality isn’t everything you think it is. She heals more quickly and will never grow old or fall to illness, but Elena is still at the very bottom of the power totem pole. She barely has the strength to walk (as she has been in a coma for a year), and she must learn how to carry and use her new wings. I absolutely loved that Elena isn’t automatically All Better (nor is she SUPER!POWERFUL!) because she’s an Angel – in fact, in many ways she’s even weaker and in a worse position as an immortal than she was as a hunter. As a mortal, Elena knew exactly who she was. She wasn’t a mark for an angelic power play, and she never had to worry about becoming overpowered or a slave to Raphael’s possessive will. But, as an Angel and as Raphael’s mate, she is essentially a walking bullseye for those who want to hurt or take Raphael down – which means even Raphael’s loyal servants want her killed, because she weakens him; she makes him vulnerable. But isn’t that the coolest thing? That’s what love does – it makes one vulnerable to be hurt, but that trust and vulnerability make it all the more special. And THAT is why I love this couple. Elena is strong willed and refuses to be Raphael’s slave, and Raphael – utterly inhuman Raphael – learns and respects this. It’s a beautiful dynamic.

Beyond the leading pair, all of the other characters are textured, diverse, and brilliant in their own ways. In particular, Ilium (one of Raphael’s Seven, the only one to love Elena) and Michaela (another powerful archangel in the Cadre of Ten) are standouts. Michaela’s character is one that you cannot help but despise, especially in her cruel, cold venom towards Elena, but the brilliance of Ms. Singh’s writing is that she shows another, more relatable side to this villain too. And I can dig that.

Ana: I have to agree with Thea again. I think that this is where Archangel’s Kiss truly shines. As Elena awakens from a year- long coma that changed her forever and is faced with a whole new set of challenges. She basically has to learn a new life. Heck she even starts to attend school for Angels. I love how different both Raphael and Elena are from who they used to be and how they both have evolved as characters. And it couldn’t be any different. Not only one year has passed but their love for each other and their personalities have influenced each other. They are BOTH softer people they once were and I think that is a good thing. Not only does Elena make Raphael vulnerable (and how amazing are the last lines of the book- Raphael gets the bests last liners!) but he makes her too. But at the same time, they haven’t completely changed their personalities: Raphael is still cold and ruthless and finds it hard to HAVE to respect Elena’s wishes for independence. It is a working, developing and yes, beautiful dynamics.

I really hope that this hasn’t be the last we see of them. Now that she has become an immortal angel, I want to see what happens with her role as a Hunter and how this dynamics will play when they return to New York.

As for the secondary characters, I am completely fascinated by Michaela who both terrifies and befuddles me. When I think she is completely evil and potty she does something that makes me feel sorry for her. This is the mark of a good villain. And then there is Illium (or Bluebell) and his blue eyelashes and the hint of a sad past AND NALINI SINGH YOU MUST TELL US MORE ABOUT ILLIUM.

I can’t stand Dimitri though – is it just me, dear readers?

Final Thoughts, Observations and Rating:

Thea: I truly enjoyed Archangel’s Kiss – heck, I loved it. It’s not as powerful as Angels’ Blood, but it is a solid, captivating second installment in the ongoing Guild Hunter series. I loved the deeper look at angels, their laws, their powers and their politics, just as I devoured the ongoing romance between two very moving protagonists. I cannot wait for the next book in the series – and the return to the world of mere mortals!

Ana: Although not as refreshingly powerful and original (have I lost that first spark?) as Angels’ Blood, Archangel’s Kiss delivers in every possible ways to make this a great Paranormal Romance series that even the naysayers can safely pick up: a solid world-building, good writing, a great character-driven central arc and an amazing romance.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the official excerpt:

Elena gripped the balcony railing and stared down at the gorge that fell away with jagged promise beneath. From here, the rocks looked like sharp teeth, ready to bite and tear and rip. She tightened her hold as the icy wind threatened to tumble her into their unforgiving jaws. “A year ago,” she murmured, “I didn’t know the Refuge existed, and today, here I stand.”

A sprawling city of marble and glass spread out in every direction, its elegant lines exquisite under the razor-sharp burn of the sun. Dark-leafed trees provided soothing patches of green on both sides of the gorge that cut a massive divide through the city, while snow-capped mountains ruled the sky line. There were no roads, no high-rises, nothing to disturb the otherworldly grace of it.

Yet, for all its beauty, there was something alien about this place, a vague sense that darkness lurked beneath the gilded surface. Drawing in a breath laced with the biting freshness of the mountain winds, she looked up . . . at the angels. So many angels. Their wings filled the skies above this city that seemed to have grown out of the rock itself.

The angelstruck, those mortals who were literally en thralled by the sight of angelic wings, would weep to be in this place filled with the beings they worshipped. But Elena had seen an archangel laugh as he plucked the eyes out of a vampire’s skull, as he pretended to eat, then crush the pulpy mass. This, she thought with a shiver, was not her idea of heaven.

A rustle of wings from behind her, a squeeze from the pow erful hands on her hips. “You’re tiring, Elena. Come inside.”

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Angels are everywhere these days – in books, in films, in video games… For example, last week Legion came out in theaters (which we haven’t seen yet, but Thea is feeling the urge even if it does look silly).

Do you have any favorite portrayals of angels in film or literature?

Rating:

Thea: 7 – Very Good. (But leaning toward an 8 )

Ana:8 Excellent

Reading Next: Blackbringer by Laini Taylor

Title: Need

Author: Carrie Jones

Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance, Young Adult

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA / Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing date: December 2008 / February 2010
Paperback: 320 pages

Stand alone or series: Book 1 of ongoing series

Why did we read the book: We have had our eyes on this book for a while now…

How did we get the book: Review Copies from the respective US & UK publishers

Summary: (from amazon.com)
Zara collects phobias the way other high school girls collect lipsticks. Little wonder, since life’s been pretty rough so far. Her father left, her stepfather just died, and her mother’s pretty much checked out. Now Zara’s living with her grandmother in sleepy, cold Maine so that she stays ’safe.’ Zara doesn’t think she’s in danger; she thinks her mother can’t deal.

Wrong. Turns out that guy she sees everywhere, the one leaving trails of gold glitter, isn’t a figment of her imagination. He’s a pixie – and not the cute, lovable kind with wings. He’s the kind who has dreadful, uncontrollable needs. And he’s trailing Zara.

Review:

First Impressions:

Ana: I will be completely honest and say that I approached Need with caution since “official” reviews (like Publishers Weekly’s) and the promotional material we received from the publisher clearly pointed it to being similar to Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I was a bit concerned that I was embarking on another journey to a paranormal world with a bland heroine, a strong and brooding hero, a love triangle and a not so interesting plotline. I was proved wrong. In fact, I think the comparisons to Twilight, do this novel a disservice as nearly nothing in Need can be compared to Twilight (except if being in the same genre counts). From the very beginning I fell in love with the heroine and her narrative voice. I did have a few mishaps throughout (which Thea and I will refer to later) but despite those, I ended up firmly on the “I love it” team. Firmly. You hear me, Thea?

Thea: I had my eye on Need for a very long time – I think since back last year, when I saw Angie of Angieville’s review of the book. The cover is very pretty, and I like the idea of killer pixies. Yeah, they glitter just like vampires of today, but it’s pixies. That’s pretty interesting stuff. And, for the most part, I found Need to be a solidly enjoyable novel. I actually disagree with Ana – I do think there are a lot of similarities between Need and Twilight, at least in terms of writing style. I actually liked the Twilight books (until Breaking Dawn ruined everything), in a guilty pleasure, I know this isn’t good for me but it’s so damn readable way. Both Stephenie Meyer and Carrie Jones have an ability to keep a reader glued to a book by some strange word-welding/storytelling voodoo. I call it voodoo because despite the fact that Zara commits myriad Too-Stupid-To-Live (“TSTL”) offenses, despite the mediocre writing, despite the ‘don’t-scrutinize-too-hard-or-the-story-falls-apart’ plot holes…I somehow, inexplicably found myself truly enjoying this book. I cannot explain it. It simply is.

On the plot:

Ana: Since the death of her beloved step-father, Zara has been depressed and not feeling like herself. In an attempt to get her out of her shell, her mother sends her to live with her step-grandmother in Maine. She starts school straight away and almost immediately strikes a friendship with quirky-girl Issy and finds a love interest in resident bad boy (although, not really), Nick. If being grief-stricken around the town her father grew up was not enough, a strange man keeps falling her around (and apparently all the way from Charleston) trying to lure her into the woods; and then kids start to disappear. It is clear that there is an element of paranormal happening but just exactly what is not disclosed to Zara or the reader till later on.

First things first: I quite liked the way the story evolved and the mood the author set from the opening lines. The prose was absolutely effective in conveying the grief and the cold that Zara was feeling. Then little by little, Zara starts to realise that not only the town she inhabits is different, the world she lives in is not what she thought it was. I felt the suspense of the story and even though I could certainly guess quite a few things (just what Nick was for example with all the growling and the “alpha” behaviour) but others, I was pleasantly surprised with. The beginning and the ending were fabulous in my opinion. So fabulous, I closed the book and I thought: how awesome.

Then, I started to think about the details. And this is when things went a little bit awry, because there are is a certain amount of details that do not add up (in order to not spoil important plot points, I will go back to this point later on). However, it says a lot that overall, despite any misgivings, I actually think the book is damn good and well worth a read and that is because of not only the atmospheric writing, the unpretentious romance, the presence of Killer Pixies but mostly, because of how cool and awesome, the main protagonist Zara, was.

Thea: I thoroughly enjoyed Need. I found the novelty of killer pixies to be ingenious. I too loved the snowy, otherworldly atmosphere that Ms. Jones gives to her small Maine town (and I also loved the heavy Stephen King name drops throughout). I enjoyed the central conflict to the story (a Pixie King is stalking Zara, young males are disappearing from the town, and Zara and her friends are dedicated to stopping the threat). I thought the use of phobias to introduce chapters was an ingenious touch too, adding to the magic of the book. And yet…how can I properly convey my experience with this book in a spoiler-free way. Hmm. The best comparison I can think of is:

Need is a lot like 28 Days Later.

Not because Need is overrun with humans infected with some deadly, instantly transmuted virus or anything like that (although, wait a second, Pixie-ism is pretty easily transmuted and quickly infectious…). Rather, both have a similarity in manner of plot. It’s easy to get caught up in both of these stories and rush through them, enjoying yourself the whole while. But there’s always that niggling knowledge during and after – the intellectual knowledge that the story just doesn’t add up. Such is Need.

I found myself noticing these holes while I was reading, but in spite of my disbelief, I was still able to finish the book and enjoy it. And that’s sayin’ something. (Although the more I scrutinize the plot, the most unstable the whole thing seems – but that’s fodder for later in the spoiler version of the post)

On the characters:

Ana: Despite committing at least two counts of serious Too Stupid To Live moments and having one or two moments that caused me perhaps want to strangle her, I really did like Zara as a protagonist and a narrator and the reason behind is that Carrie Jones infused her with a thing called A PERSONALITY. She is very keen on helping others (she even opens a chapter of Amnesty International), something she learnt from her step-father and which does not come without a struggle. At one point, she is asked what would she do if someone attacked her friends, she says she thinks she would not react violently but this is something that might change – because nothing is set in stone. I like that she stands up for herself, she fights for what she believes in. And she has this one quirky trait that I loved: she likes to learn about phobias and recites them to herself in times of stress.

Phobophobia
Fear of phobias

Everybody has fears, right?
I’m into that.
I collect fears like other people collect stamps, which makes me sound like more of a freak than I actually am. But I’m into it. The fears thing. Phobias.
There are all the typical, common phobias. Lots of people are afraid of heights and elevators and spiders. Those are boring. I’m a fan of good phobias. Stuff like nelophobia, the fear of glass. Or arachibutyrophobia, the fear that you will have peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
I do not have the fear of peanut butter, of course, but how cool is it that it’s named?

This means that Zara exists outside the sphere of her family, her friends and her love interest.

But going back to the TSTL moments. Yes, she did have quite a few. But you will notice I am not moved to mock or hold it against her. Because I understood the motivations and the reasoning behind them and above all I liked the way she reacted to the eventual repercussions (“OMG I am such an idiot”) .

As for the other characters: there are a mixture of stereotypes (the annoying bad girl at school for example) or the cool grandmother. I quite liked Nick, the love interest. But even though Zara insisted in thinking of him as bad boy I saw zero evidence (in fact all the grandmothers in town TOLD her how much of a good boy he was) of that. As a were, his job was to protect and that came naturally to him and not without some vulnerability as well – he is gruff and big and he never kissed anyone before Zara, endearing him to me almost instantly.

And then there is the Pixie King and the Need. But saying more is to seriously spoil the plot.

Thea: I have a thing against TSTL heroines. By definition, they are stupid, and incredibly annoying. However, in spite of Zara’s MANY (I counted at least 4 TSTL grievances) moments of incredible stupidity, I still, inexplicably, liked her as a character. I think this is because of the reasons Ana lists – because Zara has a personality, she knows that she’s making really bonehead decisions, and she chides herself for them. She doesn’t learn from them, which is incredibly irritating but believable (hey, that’s human nature!). I loved her quirk of reciting phobias; I loved her dedication to Amnesty International; I loved her pacifistic take on life and how naive and believably teenager-ish she is.

What irritated me more than anything with regard to Zara’s character, however, was how sloooooooow she was to put two and two together when all the evidence is clearly in front of her. To be fair, this is a plot device that many authors use (Richelle Mead most notably does this in her Vampire Academy and Georgina books – and I usually let it slide) – the “everyone knows what’s going on except the heroine and this will be protracted as long as humanly possible” technique. Zara is supposed to be an intelligent young woman, and yet she cannot piece together two very elementary clues to solve a puzzle? Come on. It’s belittling to the character, and even worse, it’s annoying to the reader. (Sorry for the mini-rant, it’s just a huge pet peeve of mine)

As for the other characters, there are some stereotypical appearances as Ana has mentioned (hip grannie, hot bitchy blonde popular girl), but I think the secondary cast works to Need’s favor. I loved Zara’s friends, especially Isi and Devyn. Even more importantly, they exist beyond the realm of “being Zara’s friends,” (a common pitfall in the YA genre that Ms. Jones nicely avoids). Nick is a little predictable, but sweet too, and the romance between him and Zara is undeniably fun.

The only deficiency in characters (besides Zara’s TSTL moments) lay in some character motivations, and a lack of explanation especially where Pixies are concerned. But, those are spoilery, and for later.

Final Thoughts, Observations and Ratings:

Ana: You will probably have noticed by now that Need is a novel I enjoyed immensely but it was “in spite of” and not “because of”. I do think this series has a lot of potential (plot-wise and character-wise) and I plan on reading Captivate as soon as possible.

Thea: What Ana said. I really enjoyed Need and eagerly dove into Captivate after finishing the first book. But I can recognize that the book has it’s fair share of issues. I’m willing to overlook them and encourage all readers to do the same (because it is such a fun book to read), but know that they are there…

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the official excerpt:

“So . . . ,” I say. “You guys were going to tell me about the man outside the cafeteria. Have you ever seen him before?”

Devyn swallows. “I’m not sure. He creeped me out, which is not manly, I know.”

“You are totally manly,” Is announces in a way that makes both Devyn and me blush. She stops twitching. “Devyn looked up some stuff. You are probably going to have a hard time believing this.”

I wait. “Uh-huh . . .”

“You want to tell her?” Issie asks.

Devyn sticks the spoon in the ice cream carton. It stands up straight. He toughs out the words, “We think he’s a pixie.”

You can read the full excerpt online, HERE.

Also, you can check out the (disney-abc-family-esque) book trailer out below:

Rating:

Ana: 6 – Good ( I wavered between a 6 and 7 until the last minute)

Thea: 6 – Good. (It would have been a 7 based on pleasure alone, but I cannot justify that rating, given how many problems there were with the story)

Additional Thoughts:

What you saw above is a clean version of our opinions about Need after we settled down and thought about and discussed the book like two adults. But we decided, for the first time ever, to disclose what really goes on behind the curtains when we read a book. For an unabridged version of our conversation by emails, complete with spoilers, silly smilies, swearing words and a glimpse of the true nature of the smugglers’ dynamics, all you have to do is carry on.

(more…)

Title: Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs

Author: Molly Harper

Genre: The spine says “Paranormal Romance” but really, it is Chick Lit and Comedy, with a dash of Romance thrown in.

Publisher: Pocket
Publishing Date: March 2009
Paperback: 384 pages

Stand Alone or series: Book 1 in the Jane Jameson trilogy

Why did we read the book: We’ve seen nothing but great reviews online for these books and many Smugglivus guest mentioned them in their posts. They sounded like fun and we wanted in.

How did we get the book: Review copies from the publisher

Summary: (from amazon.com)
Maybe it was the Shenanigans gift certificate that put her over the edge. When children’s librarian and self-professed nice girl Jane Jameson is fired by her beastly boss and handed twenty-five dollars in potato skins instead of a severance check, she goes on a bender that’s sure to become Half Moon Hollow legend. On her way home, she’s mistaken for a deer, shot, and left for dead. And thanks to the mysterious stranger she met while chugging neon-colored cocktails, she wakes up with a decidedly unladylike thirst for blood.

Jane is now the latest recipient of a gift basket from the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, and her life-after-lifestyle is taking some getting used to. Her recently deceased favorite aunt is now her ghostly roommate. She has to fake breathing and endure daytime hours to avoid coming out of the coffin to her family. She’s forced to forgo her favorite down-home Southern cooking for bags of O negative. Her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold. And if all that wasn’t enough, it looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame her for a series of vampire murders. What’s a nice undead girl to do?

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: Wow. When I first saw the cover (and title) for this book, I wasn’t exactly jumping with joy – my first impression of Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs was one of disinterest. But then I started hearing all these wonderful things about Molly Harper’s Jane Jameson books, and then there’s the unstoppable force of nature that is Ana, and then we got an offer to review the books. I took it as a sign from the universe and jumped in…

And wouldn’t you know it? I really, really liked this book. Heck, I loved it. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s sexy (without being embarrassing), and… well, it’s just so much fun. Sometimes the best reads are the ones that take you completely by surprise, that force you to get off your silly ‘taking-yourself-waaaaay-too-seriously’ high horse, and just fall in with an entertaining, totally engrossing read. Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs did just that.

Ana: Ha. I told you so, Thea! I had been dying to read these books for a while now and the fact that so many people mentioned them in their top reads of 2009 only increased my interest. I couldn’t believe my luck when we were offered the Jane Jameson books and basically jumped up and down with joy when we got that email.

And Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs was everything I was hoping for, meeting all of my expectations, and even surpassing it in some points. I loved the narrative voice of the main protagonist, how downright hilarious it is (comedy can be so difficult to get it right) and the bit of romance was just the cherry on top.

On the Plot:

Thea: As I was telling Ana in an email, Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs reminds me of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse books – except, in my opinion, better. The world that Molly Harper has created has a lot of similarities to Sookie’s Bon Temps – including vampires coming out of the coffin (and local anti-vamp/fang-banger human reactions), and the abundance of were-creatures, witches, etc. in a small town. Vampires themselves are portrayed as sexy (well, some are), superhumanly strong, and deathly allergic to sunlight. So, the world building is familiar, right down to the southern hospitality and synthetic blood. BUT, Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs is what you’d get if Sookie, Bill, Eric and company didn’t take themselves so damn seriously. (No broody-pants/oversexed vampires here, thank goodness.) And that makes ALL the difference in the world.

The tone of the book, the writing, the breezy style and pacing feels so natural and effortless, it’s easy to get caught up in the story and cast aside all cynicism. Yeah, the story itself isn’t really original or a nailbiter, with only a marginal mystery to propel the plot forward (someone, apparently, has it out for heroine Jane, framing her for a murder and pulling increasingly nasty and violent pranks on her). But the joy of Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs lies with the strength of Jane’s awesome, smart narrative as she tries to adjust on multiple levels. First, she’s fired from her job at the library – a job that she loved. Then, she’s gotta adjust to the fact that she’s been shot by a drunk (who mistook her for a deer) and subsequently been turned into a vampire. She’s gotta adjust to her new life as one of the undead, being unable to eat her favorite foods, drinking from humans, being able to read other people’s thoughts, and all the other drama that comes with being a minion of darkness. She’s gotta adjust to how her overbearing family will take to her new lifestyle (it forecasts an awkward coming-out conversation). She’s also gotta adjust to her best friend falling in love and feeling like she’s been left her behind. Finally, she’s gotta adjust to her vampire sire (the omnipresent, sexy 100+ year old Gabriel Nightingale – that’s his real name), being accused of the murder of another of her kind, and the more-than-friendly attentions of yet another vamp (hilariously named Dick Cheney).

Seriously, this is fun stuff. I was never bored with this book, reading it all in basically a single sitting. Molly Harper accomplishes a rare feat here as she manages to take familiar tropes across numerous genres – Gabriel is very much the historical romance alpha hero, there’s the comedic chick lit feel with the many real-life issues Jane has to deal with (unemployment, a family that won’t believe she’s independent and grown up, the nonexistence of a love life), there’s an abundance of humor, and some contemporary urban fantasy what with the supernatural creatures living alongside humans and all – and it all just works.

Ana: Thea is right. I too, was reminded of the Sookie Stackhouse books when I started reading Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs and as much as I love Sookie and her world (perhaps not fair to compare, but impossible not to, the worlds are too similar), I think I ended up enjoying this one even more.

The story is very funny (the scene where Jane wakes up after being turned made me laugh till my sides hurt) and entertaining without being brainless; through all the – seemly – breezy narrative there is a clear character arc. This is Jane’s coming of age – or coming of vampire – story. There is one important moment where she says that she was a human her life was stagnant, she had reached a point where she was satisfied with her career and even sort of ok with her lack of love life. But now as a vampire, she has to adjust a whole new life, new conditions find a new job, deal with her family (which is horrible, by the way), deal with her sire-possible boyfriend Gabriel and a myriad of other threads.

If I had one minor problem with the book was how the ending felt a little bit rushed, both the conclusion to major point and the revelation of something that Gabriel did. I could have done with a little more of meat there. All in all, I really enjoyed the read and I picked up the second straight away.

On the Characters:

Ana: I love Jane and her voice. Smart, funny and with a tendency to burst into trivia-listing when mid conversation, she is a completely interesting character. Although not without her flaws (and which really good character doesn’t have them?) with her penchant for sometimes burying her head in the sand, she is a terribly good protagonist and a sympathetic one too. Her modesty does not mean that she doesn’t know what she is good at and what how deserves to be treated and she absolutely stands up for herself in all circumstances. Well, maybe expect when talking to her mother.

Other than Jane, there is a whole plethora of secondary characters that add so much flavour to the story because they are not only interesting but they are indeed intrinsic part of Jane’s life errr, death. I really like her best friend Zeb and his relationship with werewolf Jolene; the ghost of dear Aunt Jettie, adorable Mr Wainwright, new friend Andrea. And I really, really love Dick Cheney (yeah, seriously) the sleazy sexy vampire. When Jane makes fun of his name, it’s awesome.

One last word. On the subject of Hot Male Vampires (because I can’t seem to control myself), I am not too sure where I stand about Gabriel. He seems to be too shady to me, to be honest. Sometimes, he is too cute for words and seems to be a southern gentleman, sometimes he comes across as a creepy alpha jerk. I sit firmly on Team Dick Cheney. (Although it seems Gabriel is the hero of this trilogy).

Thea: Oh the characters! How fun they are! This is where Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs really shines – and it’s all because of awesome, smart, self-deprecating, funny, trivia-master Jane Jameson. Jane’s voice as she narrates this book in the first person is genuine, unassuming, and, well, fun. She’s the kind of quirky, intelligent heroine that’s easy to fall in love with. She unleashes enough pop-culture quips and is so knowledgeable of useless factoids, she’d make Quentin Tarantino proud (well, minus the f-bombs). Furthermore, despite lacking courage when it comes to her family and job, she’s not exactly a pushover when it comes to her love life, which is SO freaking refreshing. When Gabriel tries to pull his possessive “MINE!” nonsense, she calls him out on it. When he’s done other…questionable vampire acts, she calls him out on it. She doesn’t immediately melt into a pile of sexually aroused hormones. And that’s a good thing.

Besides Jane, I gotta agree with Ana – there is no shortage of awesome characters here. Gabriel, Jane’s sire, is probably my least favorite of the bunch (as her creator, he blurs the line between “daddy” and “lover” and it’s just a little possessive and creepy), but he’s definitely much more tolerable than another small-town, Civil War-era emo vampire *cough*Bill Compton*cough*. I loved Jane’s friend Zeb, Zeb’s new girlfriend Jolene, vampire pet human Andrea, and especially Jane’s spectral Aunt Jettie. Everyone felt varied, real, and alive (even the undead ones)! Jane’s family – her passive-aggressive, manipulative mother, her understanding father, her heinous bitch of a sister – adds a dimension of awesomeness to the book too. Jane’s experiences are something familiar for many twenty-somethings, and the blend of tension overlying genuine love is a potent thing.

And, I gotta side with Ana. My favorite secondary character had to be:

“I like you,” Rich grinned and bowed over my hand in a courtly manner. “Richard Cheney.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand under his nose, making it much more difficult to him to kiss. “Wait, Richard Cheney, as in Dick Cheney? You’re a vampire named Dick Cheney? Somehow, that makes you seem more evil. “

I loved Dick Cheney (now THAT’S a sentence I never thought I’d write). He’s such a Sawyer – down to the nicknames he calls Jane (“Stretch”) and his charming, roguish demeanor. Dick’s just so much fun. I’m gunning for him and Jane at some point.

Final Thoughts, Observations and Ratings:

Thea: Really, really liked it. Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs completely took me by surprise, swept me off my feet, and kept me solidly entertained. I definitely think this is a book worth checking out for any reader looking for a comedic, fun getaway. I cannot wait to jump into the next two books!

Ana: I always say that Comedy is one of the most difficult genres to write. It is difficult to get it right, in tone, in style and it must be in the right measure. I think the Jane Jameson books are Comedy gold, they are just right: for me. I also like that the comedy is not at the expense of character development so it makes it all the better.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

Chapter 1

1

Vampirism: (n) 1. The condition of being a vampire, marked by the need to ingest blood and extreme vulnerability to sunlight. 2. The act of preying upon others for financial or emotional gain. 3. A gigantic pain in the butt.

I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of girl.

The irritated look from Gary, the barrel-chested bartender at Shenanigans, told me that, one, I’d said that out loud, and, two, he just didn’t care. But at that point, I was the only person sitting at the pseudo-sports bar on a Wednesday afternoon, and I didn’t have the cognitive control required to stop talking. So he had no choice but to listen.

I picked up the remnants of my fourth (fifth? sixth?) electric lemonade. It glowed blue against the neon lights of Shenanigans’ insistently cheerful decor, casting a green shadow on Gary’s yellow-and-white-striped polo shirt. “See this glass? This morning, I would have said this glass isn’t half empty. It’s half full. And I was used to that. My whole life has been half full. Half-full family, half-full personal life, half-full career. But I settled for it. I was used to it. Did I already say that I was used to it?”

Gary, a gone-to-seed high-school football player with a gut like a deflated balloon, gave me a stern look over the pilsner he was polishing. “Are you done with that?”

I drained the watered-down vodka and blue liqueur from my glass, wincing as the alcohol hit the potato skins in my belly. Both threatened to make an encore appearance.

I steadied myself on the ring-stained maple bar and squinted through the icy remains of the glass. “And now, my career is gone. Gone, gone, gone. Completely empty. Like this glass.”

Gary replaced said glass with another drink, pretended to wave at someone in the main dining room, and left me to fend for myself. I pressed my forehead to the cool wood of the bar, cringing as I remembered the smug, cat-that-devoured-the-canary tone Mrs. Stubblefield used to say, “Jane, I need to speak to you privately.”

For the rest of my life, those words would echo through my head like something out of Carrie.

With a loud “ahem,” Mrs. Stubblefield motioned for me to leave my display of Amelia Bedelia books and come into her office. Actually, all she did was quirk her eyebrows. But the woman had a phobia about tweezers. When she was surprised/angry/curious, it looked as if a big gray moth was taking flight. Quirking her brows was practically sign language.

My joyless Hun of a supervisor only spoke to people privately when they were in serious trouble. Generally, she enjoyed chastising in public in order to (a) show the staff just how badly she could embarrass us if she wanted to and (b) show the public how put-upon she was by her rotten, incompetent employees.

Mrs. Stubblefield had never been a fan of mine. We got off on the wrong foot when I made fun of the Mother Goose hat she wore for Toddler Story Hour. I was four.

She was the type of librarian who has “Reading is supposed to be educational, not fun” tattooed somewhere. She refused to order DVDs or video games that might attract “the wrong crowd.” (Translation: teenagers.) She allowed the library to stock “questionable” books such as The Catcher in the Rye and the Harry Potter series but tracked who read them. She kept those names in a file marked “Potential Troublemakers.”

“Close the door, Jane,” she said, squeezing into her desk chair. Mrs. Stubblefield was about one cheek too large for it but refused to order another one. A petty part of me enjoyed her discomfort while I prepared for a lecture on appropriate displays for Banned Books Week or why we really don’t need to stock audiobooks on CD.

“As you know, Jane, the county commission cut our operating budget by twenty percent for the next fiscal year,” Mrs. Stubblefield said. “That leaves us with less money for new selections and new programs.”

“I’d be willing to give up Puppet Time Theater on Thursdays,” I offered. I secretly hated Cowboy Bob and his puppets.

I have puppet issues.

You can read more here.

Rating:

Thea: 7 – Very Good

Ana: 7 – Very Good

Reading next: Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh

Title: Beautiful Creatures

Author: Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Genre: Fantasy, Gothic, Romance, Young Adult

Publisher: Little, Brown (Hachette)
Publication Date: December 2009
Hardcover: 576 pages

Stand alone or series: Book 1, with a sequel underway

How did we get this book: Review Copy from the Publisher

Why did we read this book: Even though it was just released this month, Beautiful Creatures is making its way on numerous best-of 2009 lists – and everyone from authors and bloggers alike are singing its praises! And thus, we Book Smugglers had to check it out before the end of the year…

Summary: (from amazon.com)
There were no surprises in Gatlin County.

We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There was a curse.

There was a girl.

And in the end, there was a grave.

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: I’m torn when it comes to Beautiful Creatures. I started the book with high hopes, ready to immerse myself in a southern gothic – and it was a kind of uneven experience. I found myself enthralled at parts of the story, but skeptical and disengaged for large chunks of the novel. I liked the idea of Beautiful Creatures, but the execution was somewhat lacking. Still, the atmospheric nature of the novel and intriguing premise made it a worthwhile – albeit slightly disappointing – read.

Ana: I experienced a wide range of emotions while reading Beautiful Creatures. I started out extremely excited, with high expectations given the amount of universal praise it received ( I even thought it could make my top 10 of 2009) but as soon as I started to read I felt an overwhelming feeling of annoyance which I believe, came from recognition – where did I read this plot before? It didn’t last long though, as the story proved to be quite original. I then proceeded to alternate between being mildly bored and extremely intrigued. I really liked the mystery and the setting but at the same time I did not connect with the characters. Such fluctuation in my reading experience, is I believe, a reflection of an uneven book with both good and …not so good points.

On the Plot:

Ethan Wate has lived in small town Gaitlin for his entire life – and though Gaitlin runs through his veins, he feels a dissatisfaction with his life as it is, and longs for escape. Then, when new girl Lena Deschannes moves to town, everything changes. Lena, a beautiful girl who refuses to try out for cheerleading and defies Gaitlin “cool” classification, is unlike anyone that Ethan’s met before. And it gets even stranger – she also happens to be the girl that has been haunting his dreams and nightmares for weeks. Lena and Ethan are inexplicably linked, and as they grow closer, they must work together to fight jealous classmates, suspicious guardians, and an age-old curse that threatens to destroy them.

Thea: In my opinion, the plotting is the strongest part of this novel. Though the pacing is uneven – far too little time spent on actual action versus far too much time spent on separation angst – the actual mystery surrounding Lena and Ethan is expertly conceived and tantalizingly executed. At face-value, Beautiful Creatures is a normal boy meets supernatural girl story, with a Romeo and Juliet sort of separation sensibility. But there’s also another layer to the story – the nature of the attraction between Ethan and Lena, and the curse that plagues them. I loved the rich history in the book, how the story would jump from present day to supernatural flashbacks, and the family saga of hurt and dark secrets for both the Wates and Duchannes’/Ravenwood families.

So far as worldbuilding is concerned, the novel also shines. Gaitlin is such a flawed yet completely believable small town, steeped in its own core values and quirks, filled to the brim with its own secrets. The Civil War reenactments, the Southern Pride, and the scenes in which the town stands solidly against anything and anyone who poses a threat as “different” are all resonating, powerful images.

Also I loved the idea of “casters” and mortals, and the spin that in this book the supernatural one is the girl, and the underpowered mortal narrator the boy. It may seem insignificant, but there are so many stories on the YA market told from the mortal girl (see Stephenie Myer’s Twilight) or superpowered girl (see Aprilynne Pike’s Wings) perspective – and this choice of narrator allows Beautiful Creatures to stand out in a sea of homogeneity.

But…there were significant problems, especially in terms of pacing and believability. The high points were enough to keep me reading, but the dragging fifty-plus page chunks on teen “does she like me too?” angst really threw a wrench into my reading experience. Then, there’s the problem of narrative voice and some questionable writing choices (in particular, Lena’s lyrics were pretty ham-handed/super-cheesy)…but more on that in the next section.

Ana: The plotting and the setting were definitely the highlights of the novel. The former was gripping and left me guessing and interested to the very end and the latter provided the excellent atmosphere, with a Southern feel that I could almost touch. The small town framing to the novel was very well done and I felt suffocating along with Ethan, a feeling that only grew in a crescendo as he got to know his neighbours better. There is the rich story connected with the Civil War, and which appeared in the book via current day town enactments and flashbacks to the past and I really enjoyed reading that. As for the plotting, it reads a lot like a Mystery novel with the suspense behind the curse that plagues Lena’s family and Lena herself. I liked how Ethan and Lena combined to investigate the reason behind the curse and to find a way out of it.

Another thing that I absolutely adored was the fact that there was not a vampire or fallen angel in sight ( I am honestly burnt out) and I loved the mythology surrounding the Casters and their powers which was definitely original.

My overall impression surrounding the plot and the execution of the story is a very positive one. I was very impressed with the final pages and the conclusion (for now) of the storyline – I particularly liked how things played out in the end with the idea of consequences to one’s actions and decisions being present and with the authors following through with the high stakes as expected. I felt there was no coup out here and for that I am grateful.

It is a shame that for all that there was good about the plot and the setting, I did not connect with any of the characters.

On the Characters:

Thea: This is where I struggled the most with Beautiful Creatures. The most glaring flaw in the novel is the inconsistent narrative voice – that is, Ethan’s voice. This is supposed to be a sixteen year old male, but there is NOTHING about this character that feels or reads like an adolescent boy. He’ll spend hours cuddling and chastely kissing Lena, admiring her ethereal beauty…but never once does pop a stiffy or even think about sex. Which, for anyone that has lived through adolescence, can probably deduce is a load of crap – especially from the male perspective. The level of chastity in the book is eye-roll inducing, and its attempts to completely circumnavigate any level of sexuality are painfully obvious, and even a little insulting to the target audience (read: teens aren’t sexless. They can handle it. Trust me).

Beyond the lack of sex, the other issue I had was how off-kilter all the character reactions seemed. WHY would these families keep such secrets from their children, when clearly keeping them in the dark isn’t helping anyone? Why would Ethan let his best friend date someone that is truly, heinously evil without warning him? Why, why, why!? I found myself increasingly frustrated with how dense and insulated these characters could be, none moreso than Ethan and Lena themselves.

Ana: This is where the novel did not work for me in the end and explains the way I felt reading it. Part of me was really interested in what was happening but at the same time I was feeling strangely unresponsive to Beautiful Creatures – for I did not really care for the characters and what would ultimately happen to them.

When I read a book I want to be able to at least understand the characters’ actions even if I might not agree with them. I want to be able to relate or to like or even dislike a character intensively. But I felt oddly detached and I think it comes from poor characterisation.

Take the narrator for example. The book has such rich descriptions of the town and life in small town however, I cannot tell you what Ethan looks like. I have no idea. I know he has emo hair and wears old t-shirts and is tallish but other than that – he is sort of non-descript.

Furthermore he is a 16 year old boy but I had a hard time believing he was a teenager OR a boy. Thea is spot on on her assessment of the weird chasteness of the book. We are talking about a BOY who is making out with a girl he thinks is the epitome of HOTNESS and there is one scene where they are under the covers kissing ONLY for what seems to be hours and yet there is not a mention of a hard-on or frustration. Am I to believe this? I can believe if he chooses not to act upon these feelings for any number of reasons but I can’t believe that the physical aspect, the physical, normal reaction was not even mentioned. Nada, niente. That just reads wrong to me and unbelievable.

I also had a hard time buying some of the character’s actions. I did several double takes, quite a few times whilst reading the book. I couldn’t believe how Ethan just didn’t do anything when his best friend went away with someone he KNEW was EVIL and possibly conspiring to kill his girlfriend. His reasoning was that Link wouldn’t believe him: yes, because that trumps his best friend possibly being in DANGER by going out with a lunatic! In the beginning, before Ethan knew anything, before he even knew Lena, he has these nightmares and he wakes up with mud in his hands and he doesn’t think much of it? doesn’t talk to anyone? Isn’t that weird? I would be SO FREAKED OUT if I woke up from nightmares with the mud that was in the dream now stuck in my hands.

I also didn’t understand how everybody in this town and in Ethan’s life were so meddlesome and yet, no one, no one was concerned about his father who spent his days in pyjamas, and closed in his study and nothing was done about it until it was too late.

Plus, some things were way too convenient. Like Marian, the librarian being Someone Important who OH NOES, could not really help them.

I don’t feel like I really know any of the characters including Lena and her uncle Macon who were the characters I felt had a lot potential and yet I thought were unfortunately underdeveloped.

And I am not going to mention the way the adults kept the kids in the dark in a LIFE AND DEATH situation because in that way lies madness.

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Thea: Uneven, but not without its high points. Even though there was a problem of believability and off-kilter pacing, Beautiful Creatures still was a compelling read that’s memorable enough to recommend to fans of YA supernatural romance of the Twilight variety.

Ana: Despite my problems with the characters, I felt compelled to read on in order to know more about the history of the families and the overall mystery. I think there were quite a few good ideas in this book although the characterisation needs working. Perhaps in the sequel?

Notable Quotes/Parts:

The Middle of Nowhere

There were only two kinds of people in out town. “The stupid and the stuck,” my father had affectionately classified our neighbors. “The ones who are bound to stay or too dumb to go. Everyone else find a way out.” There was no question which one he was, but I’d never had the courage to ask why. My father was a writer, and we lived in Gatlin, South Carolina, because the Wates always had, since my great-great-great-great-granddad, Ellis Wate, fought and died on the other side of the Santee Rover during the Civil War.
Only folks down here didn’t call it the Civil War. Everyone under the age of sixty called it the War Between the States, while everyone over sixty called it the War of Northern Aggression, as if somehow the North had baited the South into war over a bad bale of cotton. Everyone, that is, except my family. We called it the Civil War.
Just another reason I couldn’t wait to get out of here.
Gatlin wasn’t like the small towns you saw in the movies, unless it was movie from about fifty years ago. We were too far from Charleston to have a Starbucks or a McDonalds. All we had was a Dar-ee Keen, since the Gentrys were too cheap to buy all new letters when they bought the Dairy King. The library still had a card catalogue, the high school still had chalkboards, and our community pool was Lake Moultrie, warm brown water and all. You could see a movie at the Cineplex about the same time it came out on DVD, but you had to hitch a ride over to Summerville, by the community college. The shops were on Main, the good houses were on River, and everyone else lived south of Route 9, where the pavement disintegrated into chunky concrete stubble – terrible for walking, but perfect for throwing at angry possums, the meanest animals alive. You never saw that in the movies.
Gatlin wasn’t a complicated place; Gatlin was Gatlin.
The neighbors kept watch from their porches in the unbearable heat, sweltering in plain sight. But there was no point. Nothing ever changed. Tomorrow would be the first day of school, my sophomore year at Stonewall Jackson High, and I already knew everything that was going to happen – where I would sit, who would I talk to, the jokes, the girls, who would park where.
There were no surprises in Gatlin County. We were pretty much the epicentre of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what I thought, when I closed my battered copy of Slaughterhouse-five, clicked off my iPod, and turned on the light on the last night of summer.
Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.
I never even saw it coming.

You can read an extended excerpt online HERE, or check out the audio excerpt HERE.

Additional Thoughts: For another, completely different opinion check out Kate Garrabrant’s review.

Rating:

Thea: 6 – Good

Ana: 6 – Good

Reading Next: It’s our Feats of Strength! Ana reads Naamah’s Kiss by Jacqueline Carey, and Thea takes on Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James

Title: Going Bovine

Author: Libba Bray

Genre: Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Literature, Young Adult

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 2009
Hardcover: 496 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did we get this book: Bought

Why did we read this book: We have heard nothing but rave reviews for Libba Bray’s newest novel. And, as Thea was a fan of A Great and Terrible Beauty (and will seriously, honest to god finish reading and reviewing the Gemma Doyle books soon), and Ana was excited to try Ms. Bray’s writing, we eagerly plunged into Going Bovine.

Summary: (from amazon.com)
Can Cameron find what he’s looking for?

All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: As we’ve said above, both Ana and I were *extremely* excited for Going Bovine – it came highly recommended by bloggers, official critics and friends alike. In fact, both Ana and I were SO stoked for Going Bovine that we both began the book with expectations that it would crack our top 10 of 2009 lists! And though this novel didn’t quite make my top reads list, it comes pretty gorram close. I loved Going Bovine – there’s no other way to say it.

Ana: From the get go, I thought the book had Ana-Crack (thanks, Thea) written all over it: unreliable narrator + humour = win. The idea of this book was so promising, I had an allocated slot for it in my top 10 of 2009. Although, just like with Thea, it didn’t quite make it, I still loved it to bits. And I am completely infatuated with Libba Bray’s writing right now.

On the Plot:

Meet Cameron.

He’s an apathetic, modern day impersonation of Holden Caufield. Privileged, intelligent enough, solidly middle class, son of two professor parents and twin brother to a popular cheerleader sister who can do no wrong. Cam really doesn’t care about…well, anything. He goes to classes and does the bare minimum to pass, and smokes a lot of weed. But soon, Cam’s aimless existence takes new direction when he learns that he is sick. Terminally sick. Dying in a couple of weeks sick. Cam has an extremely rare neurological disease – the equivalent of mad cow for humans – which causes heaving spasms, hallucinations, and has him bedridden in the hospital in the very, very faint hope that experimental treatment may cure him.

But then, Cam gets a visit from a strange, beautiful angel with spray painted wings and hot pink hair – Dulcie’s her name. And Dulcie offers Cam the chance of his lifetime: help her and the folks upstairs by finding a dimension hopping physicist named Doctor X and stop the end of the world (which he has unwittingly unleashed via his wormhole-traveling hijinks) – and Dr. X will be able to cure him. Faced with certain death on one hand, and a dim hope for life on the other, Cam agrees and sets off on a cross country mission with a hypochondriac dwarf named Gonzo, encountering cultists, physicists, Norse Gods, and Fire Demons…and finally experiencing life.

Thea: From a plotting standpoint, Going Bovine is a schizophrenic, surrealist comic tragedy – and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s an adventure, a road story across an America that is both familiar and alien, blending everything from bowling, smoothie happiness loonies to theories of relativistic physics. And Disneyworld. And Norse mythology. So, it’s fair to say that Going Bovine covers a whole lot of ground. Some readers might get a little frazzled or bored with the jumping, episodic nature of Cam & Gonzo’s adventures, but for me? Well, I loved it. It’s quirky, weird, and completely winsome. Yes, there were some extraneous encounters on Cam’s long road, and yes, there were some passages that felt as though they were unnecessary and written for the sole purpose of being quirky – but like all road stories, the destination isn’t the important part; the journey is. And Cam (& Gonzo)’s journey was completely worth it.

From a writing standpoint, Going Bovine is an incredibly smart book. I loved how the entire novel is open to interpretation – is Cam simply hallucinating the whole thing in his hospital bed? Or is it something more? For my take, I loved how the whole book was essentially a giant Schroedinger’s Cat – both realities, where Cam is in his hospital bed near death & on the road in an old busted up caddy fighting off an evil snow globe corporation, coexist (just as Schroedinger’s cat is both alive and dead within the box before it is opened). I loved the Don Quixote parallels/inversions too. Very cool stuff, Ms. Bray. Very cool stuff indeed.

Ana: I agree with Thea – if there is one word that captures the feel of this book, “cool” it is. But the very best type of “cool” : the bold, cheeky, smart, quirky, type of cool. The type that combines several ideas – for there is Philosophy, Mythology and Physics , for example, in the book – with a bit of heart and soul (literally and metaphorically) added to it. Plot-wise the novel is surreal and completely trippy and one does need to have an open mind to read this book. I love this passage here – it encapsulates the feel of the book perfectly:

“As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or a rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr X, who would cure me from mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe”.

Thea aptly refers to the Schroedinger’s Cat experiment to describe the book and I think her insight is genius, for the story is exactly like this: both realities may be happening at the same time, it doesn’t have to be one OR the other. But regardless of how cool the idea or the execution are, the book would mean nothing to me, if there wasn’t heart and soul added to this recipe. And those come partly from the lovely writing, partly from the relationships that Cameron starts during his journey. I got a quote that is another perfect embodiment of what exactly I am talking about:

“Cameron, look at me” she whispers.
I Do. I see her. Really see her. And in that moment, I know she sees me.
She smiles, and in her smile is everything I could ever want. Her face looms closer, closing the impossible distance. Her lips are near mine.
And when it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found.”

I get goose-bumps every time I read this sentence. And as much as this book is funny (out-loud funny even) , it is also very sad and I did find myself bawling a couple of times.

I do have to mention something else that really bothered me though (although I am sure, this will not bother 99% of the people that read this book) : Cameron’s favourite musician is a Portuguese guy called the Great Tremolo (quite possibly, worst made-up Portuguese name ever) for his cheesy songs and lyrics. A couple of times, some of his lines are reproduced in the book. Like this one, for example:

“Para Mí He Visto Angeles”

I hate to be the one to break this to you but THIS IS SPANISH AND NOT PORTUGUESE. This was enough to put me off reading the book for a couple of hours. For example this other sentence here:

“Eu considerei a sua cara e sabia a felicidade”.

Which is supposed to mean “ I looked upon your face and knew happiness” but doesn’t really mean anything. The Portuguese line is all wonky and plain wrong – it doesn’t make sense.

Being Brazilian (and Portuguese being my mother tongue) this frustrates me to no end. It is obvious that a lot of effort was put into creating this book: the cover art is amazing, this is a hardcover plus there are beta readers, editors etc who must have read the book, so it sort of infuriates that no one thought of spending half an hour to check that the language is correct and no, online translation softwares or BabelFish are NOT the way to go – as evidenced by the above line – a prime example of a translation gone wrong.

But yeah, a minor quibble for an otherwise great book.

On the Characters:

Thea: This is where things get REALLY interesting. See, Cam is a character that I began the book not liking. Check that, I began the book DESPISING Cam. He’s everything I hate in a character – he’s whiny and apathetic, he’s disinterested and has no reason to be such a…wanker. He’s a modern day Holden Caufield, in other words – and I loathe Holden Caufield. But rather than being some crackshot Catcher in the Rye, male angst rehash, Ms. Bray does the incredible with Going Bovine…she makes me CARE for the characters. This book is the equivalent of what would happen if you took an apathetic asshat like Holden and made him CARE about something – forcing him to live his life. And ultimately, that’s what makes Cam such an endearing character – the fact that he finally, at the end of the day when faced with certain death and hope, he chooses hope. I finished the book loving Cam for all his imperfections, for his bravery and his – if you’ll pardon the pun – ability to seize life by the horns.

The secondary characters are also fantastic – I loved Dulcie, the hot-punk-goth angel with a sense of humor and an appreciation for the small things in life (like microwaveable popcorn). I loved Gonzo, the Eddie Kaspbrak of Going Bovine – a little person with an overbearing mother and a severe case of hypochondria. I loved Balder, the garden gnome that insists he’s the entrapped visage of the Norse God, tricked into gnome form by Loki. I loved them all.

Ana: I too, started the book disliking Cameron and his Holden persona intensely. But at some point in this journey my opinion changed as the story and the character’s arc progressed and I ended up caring for Cameron very much. For all that the book has this extreme cooky story with exaggerated plot points ( like for example their visit to CESSNAB – the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack ‘N’ Bowl); There were quite a few, quiet moments that were extremely poignant and important like Cameron holding his mother’s hand or talking to his father on the phone.

I did wonder about something: if taking the Holden archetype and adding an external influence to it, by making the character realise he needed to change but only because he was at the brink of death, wasn’t a little problematic and perhaps not really organic. But then it hit me: as much as sometimes we would like to see a story explained, compartmentalised, defined, real life is not really any of these things is it? It is chaos and tragedy and that is even truer when the unthinkable happens – when a 16 year old boy is faced with death when he hasn’t had the chance to yet live – he never even got the change to grow beyond his Holden persona on his own time.

This is the beauty of Going Bovine: that it takes chaos and tragedy and makes them more bearable, meaningful and perhaps even a bit amazing.

As for the other characters, I loved all of them from Gonzo and Balder to Dulcie and even the The Wizard of Reckoning – that was a surprise I did not see coming.

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Thea: What more is there for me to say? I loved Going Bovine. I wholeheartedly recommend it to EVERYONE – especially to reluctant dude readers, or literary snobs who think male ennui is the magnificent apex of character development. [snorts]

Ana: Going Bovine was a wonderful , cool reading experience to me: it made me laugh uncontrollably many times and it made me sob quietly when the right time came. I loved it.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the First Chapter:

CHAPTER ONE
In Which I Introduce Myself

The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.

I’m sixteen now, so you can imagine that’s left me with quite a few days of major suckage.

Like Career Day? Really? Do we need to devote an entire six hours out of the high school year to having “life counselors” tell you all the jobs you could potentially blow at? Is there a reason for dodgeball? Pep rallies? Rad soda commercials featuring Parker Day’s smug, fake-tanned face? I ask you.

But back to the best day of my life, Disney, and my near-death experience.

I know what you’re thinking: WTF? Who dies at Disney World? It’s full of spinning teacups and magical princesses and big-assed chipmunks walking around waving like it’s absolutely normal for jumbo-sized stuffed animals to come to life and pose for photo ops. Like, seriously.

I don’t remember a whole lot about it. Like I said, I was five. I do remember that it was hot. Surreal hot. The kind of hot that makes people shell out their life savings for a bottle of water without even bitching about it. Even the stuffed animals started looking less like smiling, playful woodland creatures and more like furry POWs on a forced march through Toonland. That’s how we ended up on the subterranean It’s a Small World ride and how I nearly bit it at the place where America goes for fun.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced the Small World ride. If so, you can skip this next part. Honestly, you won’t hurt my feelings, and I won’t tell the other people reading this what an asshole you are the minute you go into the other room.

Where was I?

Oh, right—so much we share, time aware, small world. After all.

So. Small World ride, brief sum-up: Long-ass wait in incredibly slow-moving line. Then you’re put into this floating barge and set adrift on a river that winds through a smiling underworld of animatronic kids from every country on the planet singing along in their various native tongues to the extremely catchy, upbeat song.

Did I mention it’s about a ten-minute ride?

Of the same song?

In English, Spanish, Swahili, and Japanese?

I’m not going to lie to you; I loved it. Dude, I said to myself, this is the shit. Or something like that in five-year-old speak. I want to live in this new Utopia of singing children of all nations. With luck, the Mexican kids will let me wear their que festivo sombreros. And the smiling Swedes will welcome me into their happy Nordic hoedown. Välkommen, y’all. I will ride the pink fuzzy camel in some vaguely defined Middle Eastern country (but the one with pink fuzzy camels) and shake a leg with the can-can dancers in Gay Paree.

Bonjour.

Bienvenido.

Guten Tag.

Jambo.

I was with the three people who were my world—Mom, Dad, my twin sister, Jenna—and for one crazy moment, we were all laughing and smiling and sharing the same experience, and it was good. Maybe it was too good. Because I started to get scared.

I don’t know exactly how I made the connection, but right around Iceland, apparently, I got the idea that this was the after?life. Sure, I had heatstroke and had eaten enough sugar to induce coma, but really, it makes sense in a weird way. It’s dark. It’s creepy. And suddenly, everybody’s getting along a little too well, singing the same song. Or maybe it had to do with my mom. She used to teach English classics, heavy on the mythology, at the university B.C. (Before Children) and liked to pepper her bedtime stories with occasional bits about Valhalla or Ovid or the River Styx leading to the underworld and other cheery sweet-dreams matter. We’re a fun crew. You should see us on holidays.

Whatever it was, I was convinced that this ride was where you went to die. I would be separated from my family forever and end up in some part of the underworld where smiling kid robots in boater hats sang nonstop in Portuguese. I had to keep that from happening. And then—O Happy Day! Salvation! Right behind the Eskimo igloo (this was before they were the more politically correct but slightly naughty-sounding Inuits), I saw this little door.

“Mommy, where does that door go to?” I asked.

“I don’t know, honey.”

We were headed for certain death on the River Styx. But somehow I knew that if I could just get to that little door, everything would be okay. I could stop the ride and save us all. That was pretty much it for me. My five-year-old freak-out meter totally tripped. I slipped free of the seat and splashed into the fishy-smelling water, away from the doe-eyed, pinafored girl puppet singing, “En värld full av skratt, en värld av tårar” (Swedish, I’m told, for “It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears”).

The thing is, I didn’t know how to swim yet. But apparently, I was pretty good at sinking. You know that warning about how kids can drown in very little water? Quite true if the kid panics and forgets to close his mouth. You can imagine my surprise when the water hit my lungs and I did not immediately start singing, “There’s so much that we share.”

The last thing I remember before I started to lose consciousness was my mom screaming to stop the ride while crushing Jenna to her chest in case she got the urge to jump too. Above me, lights and sound blended into a wavy distortion, everything muted like a carnival heard from a mile away. And then I had the weirdest thought: They’re stopping the ride. I got them to stop the ride.

You can read the full excerpt, and more, HERE.

Rating:

Thea: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Ana: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Title: The Road Home

Author: Ellen Emerson White

Genre: Young Adult, Fiction, Historical

Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: 1995
Paperback: 469 pages

Stand alone or series: Can be read as stand alone but is the 5th book in a series about the Vietnam War (read the Additional Thoughts for more information)

How did we get this book: Bought

Why did we read this book: A month back, we had the lovely Angie of Angieville over here for a Guest Dare – and wouldn’t you know it, she Dared us right back! The Road Home is one of Angie’s all time favorite novels from one of her favorite authors, so naturally, we were very excited to give The Road Home a read. It took us a shameful amount of time to actually read the book (we’re blushing right now), but better late than never, right?

Summary: (from Amazon.com)
Rebecca, a young nurse stationed in Vietnam during the war, must come to grips with her wartime experiences once she returns home to the United States.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Ana: When Angie dared us to read this book, I admit that I trembled inside. The idea behind the “Dares” is to make people read outside their comfort zones – little did she know that this book fit the idea to a “t” . I HATE war stories. Hate reading them with the force of a thousand hurricanes because every time I read a war story, every time I watch a war movie, I am reminded of the worst, the most stupid thing civilization ever created. Bearing that in mind, it is rather shocking that I LOVED The Road Home. It is a dark, gritty, almost unbearably sad book; it is also a beautiful character-driven book, with a wonderful protagonist and a heart-warming love story.

Thea: I have to agree with Ana – I was a little nervous going into this read. This isn’t the type of book that I’d normally pick up of my own volition (though I have read and loved war novels before – The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien especially comes to mind). In many ways, The Road Home reminds me of my middle/high school required reading – I’d begin the assignments with low expectations, but once I got into the rhythm, I inevitably ended up really enjoying these novels. Regardless of my fears and prejudices going into The Road Home, I knew Angie loved it – and her taste has rarely steered me wrong before! And, of course, I ended up loving The Road Home. It’s a beautiful insight to the Vietnam War and its aftermath through the eyes of a brilliant, layered protagonist.

On the Plot:

Rebecca Philips is close to the end of her Vietnam tour – as a lieutenant nurse she has witnessed the worst of the war: deaths, injuries, the very waste of life. She has done unspeakable things, seen friends die, suffered wounds and is on the brink of collapsing of exhaustion. Only painkillers, beer and Michael’s – the soldier whom she recently met – letters keep her going. Surely when she goes home, things will get better, won’t they?

Ana: The plot of The Road Home is quite straight forward and very, very simple – it is about this nurse Rebecca who is suffering of PTSD which starts during the war itself. It opens:

On Christmas morning, Rebecca lost her moral virginity, her sense of humour – and her two best friends. But, other than that, it was a hell of a holiday.

Rebecca’s struggle to cope with the horrors of war, with what happened to her and her friends and ultimately with The World is what moves the novel making it an essentially character-driven novel. In other words: nothing really HAPPENS in the way of plot.

Divided in two sections, The War and The World, the book is an insight into the life of this one person who went to Vietnam and lived to tell the tale. The first part concentrates in Rebecca’s day to day life at the hospital and it is absolutely, tremendously sad and gritty. It shows the horrible decisions doctors and nurses have to make in a hurry as injured soldier after injured soldier is brought in. It shows the stress and the tiredness of impossibly long shifts under extreme circumstances; the horrible food they have to eat which they invariably ingest with either cold, strong coffee or beer. The amount of alcohol and drugs ingested in an attempt to stay awake/sleep/deal is unbelievable and on top of everything all of the doctors, nurses, soldiers are dealing with some level or another of alcoholism or substance abuse. It is horrible and it made me extremely depressed to read about it – especially when kids were brought in, dying.

In the second part, when Rebecca is released to the World, when you would expect things would be a bit better? It almost broke my heart to see that actually no, getting back to the world, is nowhere near the end of all problems. The PTSD, the injuries, the nightmares, the dependence on alcohol, all is there and no one can really understand. To make things even worse, it is disheartening to see the anti-war sentiments and protests against the SOLDIERS when they come back.

These people have lost friends, have lost limbs, almost lost their mind and they still have to face this when they come back? It is ugly and it is again, unbearably sad because the soldiers, the nurses, etc do what they are told to – it’s the politics and the politicians behind the war that should be the one target. Having said that, the book is not an anti-war plantlet and it never falls into dreaded preachy territory. The story SHOWS , the reader reacts. And this is really, what it is down me, as a reader, reading, experiencing this book: I can’t remember the last time when I read something I did not pay attention to POV, writing, the mechanics of a book. I only felt.

The whole book is absolutely brutal and yet, still hopeful. I wouldn’t have loved if darkness and sadness was all there was to it. The love story between Rebecca and Michael, the small moments of lightness where we could see the shadow of a light hearted Rebecca who loved to sing and tell jokes, the friendships that were possible in the middle of it, it all contributed to making this a fabulous read to me. It helps that I love character-driven books, of course.

I had a most guttural, emotional reaction to this book. I had to read it really slowly, often stopping so that I could examine my reactions and to think about what I was reading. When the ending came, and it was a happy ending, I cried. I will paraphrase Angie here: Michael and Rebecca deserve every scrap of happiness they can get and I am glad I was able to witness that.

Thea: As Ana says, the plot is pretty straightforward. A girl goes to war as a nurse, and she returns home to deal with the trauma of her experiences. As far as reading goes, I finished this book in a day without any problems. It’s a quick read, though it does tackle some heavy issues – the usual horrors of war; the chaos and senselessness of it all; a touch on drug abuse and a passing glance at sexism and gender relations during war. This is pretty standard fare in the war literature canon, and while Ms. White does a solid job of portraying the cruelties of Vietnam, it’s nothing really new or particularly resonating (at times it did feel like The Short-Timers or Paco’s Story – the Lite version). What impressed me much more was the way Ms. White examines the other side of the anti-war sentiments of the 1960s and ’70s. Upon Rebecca’s return home, she is avoided and sneered at by her old friends and sneered at by random people (the scene on the airplane as she flies home to Massachusetts next to a businessman that treats her as though she has the plague because of her uniform). It’s a timely and important message – regardless of politics, regardless of how someone personally feels about a war, it’s not the fault of the young men and women who are dying in the fields or deserts. The anti-war sentiment bleeding into hate and animosity towards veterans is something that continues to happen today, and Ms. Emerson’s portrayal of this misdirected anger is incredibly thought-provoking and resonated with me far more than the familiar, less-inspired themes of the senselessness of war.

At the end of the day, I was moved by the story, and particularly by Rebecca as a character (but more on that later). There wasn’t much that physically happened in terms of plot which is a little disappointing, but as this is more of an introspective, quieter novel, it simply works. Though I do wish there was a larger scope for the story, for its contained nature, it is pretty damn good.

On the Characters:

Ana: Now, this is where this book really and truly, shines. I had a field day with Rebecca as a protagonist. She is complex and oh boy so freaking effed-up. When in Vietnam Rebecca moves about almost like an automaton performing tasks and trying not to think about the Christmas day when she lost friends, and nearly lost her own life. The happenings of that day are only alluded to until it becomes clear that there is something ELSE that happened there, when she was out in the jungle, alone for more than one day before being rescued. It is also pointed out by another character how much she changed after the incident: she used to be the person that lifted everybody’s spirits but she just lost the will to make jokes and to laugh. The memories, the survivor’s guilt are almost too much for Rebecca, nearly as much as the thought that she is down there out of her own accord, based on a stupid decision she made when her childhood sweetheart was killed in the war and her brother disappeared to Canada to avoid going.

For the duration of the book she just….keeps going and it is hard to say what it is exactly that fuels her: there is all sorts of guilt here and also hope. There is so much that is happening to her. There is her own family situation that needs to be addressed: her father who hates that she wanted to be a doctor, her brother who just ….went away. When she goes back to the real world who can possibly understand her? For the second part of the book, Rebecca does little more than to sleep and drink and it is heartbreaking to see someone so strong, so interesting that lost.

And then there is Michael. Even though the only point of view we get is Rebecca’s, I absolutely LOVED Michael. She keeps getting letters from him and they are amazing, I loved waiting to read them as much as Rebecca did.

“Everyone’s talking guy talk, and someone says, okay, Meat, you got the Lieutenant (yeah, that’s you), the Playmate of the Year, and Raquel Welch, and they’re all standing here, smiling at you – which one do you pick? So, of course, I said you. And you know what, I mean it. Because – I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you – but, you are really built, Rebbeca.

Love(!),
Mike

P.S. Are you laughing, or sitting there all pissed off?”

It is interesting how at first, she just keeps herself in check because he is out there, and the possibility that he will end up killed is huge and she needs to protect her heart. But he is so insistent she really can’t help falling in love with him. And every time someone was brought in , I held my breath along with her, until he did eventually come. When he was sent home, and gave her the picture of his beloved dog as a goodbye gift, it was all I could do stop from sobbing.

Another point is how both characters are extremely young – and
Michael is even younger : she is 21 , he is 19. That they are both so fucked-up is so freaking sad. But again, I just loved how Rebecca went after him to see if what they had was real or not. I have no idea if they will ever really work. He is not only younger and injured but also from a different background which in real life may prove their doom but he is also quite possibly the only one who will be there and UNDERSTAND when she wakes up screaming from her nightmares. And then, there is one scene when he gives her flowers – and it is fuelled with meaning and with the sense of humor they both shared and I think: yeah, they will be alright.

Plus, they have Otis, the dog.

Thea: Again, I have to agree with Ana – this is a character-heavy book, and it is in Rebecca’s characterizations that this novel really shines. Frankly, if it wasn’t for Rebecca’s heartfealt, painful narration, The Road Home would not have been half as good because of how skimpy it is in terms of plot – but because Rebecca is such a compelling, strong-yet-broken character, the novel just works. Rebecca is tough, physically pushing herself to the edge of sanity and exhaustion as she dedicates herself to her job, triaging as the never-ending stream of injured men following the Tet flood the base’s hospital. In an attempt to keep herself from thinking too much about any one thing, Rebecca dedicates herself to work. One of my favorite passages from this book is from Rebecca, trying to explain why one particular death at her hands affected her so much more than any of the other atrocities she’s seen – she focuses on the one death, because the others are too overwhelming. As Rebecca tries to cope with her own demons, drinking heavily to take the edge off, she also relies on her friendships with her superior officer, Major Doyle, and a romantic friendship with a drafted grunt named Michael.

I too loved Michael’s letters to Rebecca, and his character (though an aside: I fear I will never understand why Ana creates these emotional bonds to such a minor character in the overall scope of the novel! He’s barely in the book, and this is Rebecca’s story, not really Michael’s! But again, that’s a difference in our reading habits. I digress). The strained romance between these two very damaged characters is a touching one, though in the big picture, the appeal for me is not so much the romantic love between the two as it is about both Rebecca and Michael trying to become whole people again, and supporting each other to find whatever strength and happiness they can.

More interesting to me than Michael and the romance, however, was the character of Major Doyle and the odd friendship she and Rebecca form. Unlike the usual butch or hardass army woman stereotype, Major Doyle is a tough, no-nonsense career nurse, but she’s also a physically beautiful woman. She feels a responsibility for Rebecca much in the way an older sister would, and as Major Doyle’s story is gradually revealed, her friendship with Becky is one of the highest points in this novel. When Rebecca returns to “the World” and meets with her old friends, other well-to-do 22 year olds who are married happily with children and working dutifully as secretaries and wives, the contrast between Rebecca’s old friendships and the tough, soul-searching talks she and Major Doyle had are all the more glaring.

Other characters that bode mentioning are Rebecca’s family – Rebecca’s strained relationship with her father, her worried mother, and her draft-dodging brother. Things are tough all around, and Ms. White tackles these different relationships with gritty realism. Rebecca’s relationships are forever changed just as Rebecca is changed by the war, and Ms. White does not try to talk-down or sugar-coat any of it. There is a lot of darkness and grit to this book – but there’s also hope and the promise of future happiness and healing.

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Ana: This is such a hard book, made so easy to be read; with no easy answers, loads of truly flawed characters, and problems with no simple solution. I LOVED this book. Oh man. I loved this book so much I feel like reading it again. Rebecca and Michael are awesome. Yes, I have resorted to “love” and “awesome” because I am reduced to a puddle of blubbering nonsense. Well done Miss Angie and Thanks.

Thea: The Road Home is a gritty read, full of horror and hope. As a heroine, Rebecca is one of the finest characters I have read in a long time. Though it is a bit light on plot and content in terms of the war itself, the strength of its characters and its dedicated, respectful message to veterans more than compensates for any thematic skimp. Powerful, raw, and emotional, The Road Home is a book that deserves to be read by all.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

The War

“Bodies – some alive, some not – were literally stacked up all over the place, a scene so grisly that even one of her nightmares couldn’t have created it.
By the third day, they were being given amphetamines to stay awake, pausing only long enough to slug them down with cold strong coffee before moving on to the next patient. Rebecca worked on complete medical auto-pilot, starting IVs, stopping bleeding, and cutting off limbs that were only hanging by tendons to save the surgeons time. “

Additional Thoughts: The Road Home is actually a fifth book to complement a series of books about the Vietnam War but the only one with Rebecca as the main character. The first four books were written by the author under the name of Zach Emerson and are known as the Echo Company series. The books follow Michael Jennings – Rebecca’s romantic interest – from the moment he is drafted to go to War until the night before the Tet Offensive. It is in these books that we actually see how they met and how he fell in love with Rebecca.

* Echo Company #1: Welcome to Vietnam (1991)
* Echo Company #2: Hill 568 (1991)
* Echo Company #3: ‘Tis The Season (1991)
* Echo Company #4: Stand Down (1992)

I had a hard time trying to find covers for these and they all seem to be out of print!

Rating:

Ana: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Thea: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Title: The Hero of Ages

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: Tor (US)/Gollancz (UK)
Publication Date: October 2008 (US)/February 2010 (UK)
Paperback: 784 pages

Stand alone or series: Book 3, final volume of the Mistborn trilogy

How did we get this book: Bought

Why did we read this book: We have read, reviewed, and loved the first two books in the Mistborn trilogy. Naturally, we had to finish the story with this bittersweet, final volume.

Summary: (from amazon.com)
Who is the Hero of Ages?

To end the Final Empire and restore freedom, Vin killed the Lord Ruler. But as a result, the Deepness—the lethal form of the ubiquitous mists—is back, along with increasingly heavy ashfalls and ever more powerful earthquakes. Humanity appears to be doomed.

Having escaped death at the climax of The Well of Ascension only by becoming a Mistborn himself, Emperor Elend Venture hopes to find clues left behind by the Lord Ruler that will allow him to save the world. Vin is consumed with guilt at having been tricked into releasing the mystic force known as Ruin from the Well. Ruin wants to end the world, and its near omniscience and ability to warp reality make stopping it seem impossible. She can’t even discuss it with Elend lest Ruin learn their plans!

The conclusion of the Mistborn trilogy fulfills all the promise of the first two books. Revelations abound, connections rooted in early chapters of the series click into place, and surprises, as satisfying as they are stunning, blossom like fireworks to dazzle and delight. It all leads up to a finale unmatched for originality and audacity that will leave readers rubbing their eyes in wonder, as if awaking from an amazing dream.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: I absolutely loved The Final Empire (Mistborn book 1), but was somewhat disappointed with The Well of Ascension (book 2) – so I entered The Hero of Ages with some trepidation. There’s no doubting that Brandon Sanderson possesses a flair for world creation and had planted some tantalizing plot seeds…but would he be able to bring it all together in a brilliant, perfect ending?

The answer is…sort of. The Hero of Ages is certainly much better than its predecessor, and it brings a dramatic, bittersweet, fitting conclusion to a truly fantastic series. It wasn’t without its weaknesses, though, and still doesn’t manage to live up to the initial sparkle of The Final Empire.

Ana: I had a similar frame of mind when I first opened The Hero of Ages. Even though I was not as disappointed with The Well of Ascension, I still thought The Final Empire was a much superior instalment. I did have high hopes for Hero of Ages, expecting it to have the best of both and to close the trilogy with a punch. And you know what? Except for a few caveats, Brandon Sanderson totally delivered. The conclusion of the Mistborn series was both dark and bright, definitely bittersweet but also very, very good.

On the Plot: The final empire has fallen, the Lord Ruler is dead, and Vin has discovered the Well of Ascension and has taken and released the power there, as the prophesied Hero of Ages. But everything has gone desperately wrong – an ancient, primordial force called Ruin has tricked them all, and Vin’s selfless gesture of relinquishing the indescribable power at the Well of Ascension has freed this old, destructive god from his prison, and now the end of the world looms closer and closer. The ashmounts, created by the Lord Ruler, to cool down the land enough to sustain human life, are spewing black ash and lava; earthquakes rack the land, devouring whole cities; the mists, ever-repelled by Vin now, appear with increasing frequency, attacking and sickening more people each day. Crops and animals wither, and the land itself is dying under Ruin’s destructive malevolence. All the while, Elend, Vin and the crew travel from city to city, trying to soothe rebellion and unrest in two very important principalities, while they desperately look for the Lord Ruler’s hidden cache of atium – which Vin knows must be essential to saving the world.

Thea: It’s no secret that Brandon Sanderson has a gift for storytelling – his world creation skills are amongst the finest I’ve ever beheld, and his ability to write action scenes is unparalleled. And, with The Hero of Ages, he proves himself to be pretty damn good at plotting too, tying up loose ends with some well-conceived and well-executed ideas. The final volume of a series is a monumental task – it’s easier to create an intriguing opener with tantalizing questions and mysteries to hook readers, but trying to make all those mysteries come together in a cohesive, mind-blowing conclusion? That’s something much, much harder to accomplish. And, for the most part, Mr. Sanderson pulls it off. All the questions and suspicions I had from the first two books – the secret of the Inquisitors’ (and Zane’s) spikes, the hidden religion and past of the Kandra, the origin of the mists, the garbled legend of The Hero of Ages, the Lord Ruler’s motivations – all these things become clear in this final novel with a conceivable explanation for everything that has been happening in this mist and ash-shrouded landscape. And, basically, the explanations hold together pretty well.

Well, there are some things that left me a little skeptical on further observation. Certain resolutions didn’t quite work – in particular the explanation of the mists and the Hero of Ages myth. I appreciated the way the book ended and the overall explanation for this epic close, but…I can’t help but feel that this explanation didn’t really fit quite right with the earlier books. By accepting the final explanation, the whole impetus for the series – the Lord Ruler’s rise to power and the first journey to the Well of Ascension – doesn’t make any sense (well, I suppose it makes sense, but it’s silly). The ability of Ruin to change written word (except those words written in metal), to overhear every conversation omnisciently, to plot and scheme for eons…it all feels a bit boogeyman-ish and contrived. For all that Ruin isn’t supposed to be “evil” and Preservation “good,” it certainly felt like a polarized villainy. The idea of these two opposing forces is a good idea, but I didn’t particularly buy it, especially in terms of execution.

My other main complaint concerned the effectiveness of the length and multilayered plotlines. A lot of things happened over the course of the book as the narrative jumps to different characters and their separate stories, but some of these plotlines ultimately amount to naught in terms of the overall conclusion. These different parts allow the reader to understand what has happened and why, but these explanations and plot points are virtually useless otherwise – they don’t play any real part in the overall arc. In particular, Spook’s entire storyline in the city of Urteau and his discoveries and actions there doesn’t really affect anything, upon reflection. What Spook learns, Vin and a certain other character are able to figure out on their own. Similarly, TenSoon’s singleminded dedication to reach Vin doesn’t really amount to anything directly either. Even the siege at Fadrex and all the drama with King Yeomen ultimately amounts to nothing in terms of overall significance! I loved reading about these different threads of the story, I loved seeing more of two favorite characters, but from a critical standpoint these lengthy and entertaining storylines are the literary equivalent of empty calories.

Now, it may sound like I didn’t like the story – and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I really liked this book. Heck, I loved it. I loved the different types of magic and their explanations, in depth here (Allomancy versus Feruchemy versus Hemalurgy). But these flaws in the story and the almost deus ex machina type ending kept me from loving it with the reckless abandon that I had for The Final Empire.

Ana:

“I am unfortunately, the Hero of Ages”

With this tantalising bit Brandon Sanderson opens his final volume in his amazing trilogy. The line is, even in its shortness everything that is right about the series. It points to both plot (Who is the Hero of Ages is a central question of the trilogy) and character (the “unfortunately” shows that being the Hero of Ages does not come without sacrifices) . It is also part of something I really liked throughout the trilogy: the quotes that open each chapter. In this particular one, the quotes are very revelatory, finally answering those questions I had been waiting for: like the truth behind the Lord Ruler’s actions and what exactly are Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. It is also very clear who is writing these from the start which only ads and extra layer of mystery to the plot because how exactly did THIS person become the Hero of Ages?

Speaking of which: if The Well of Ascension was mostly a character piece, The Hero of Ages is definitely a plot-centric instalment. It is with this book that it becomes very clear to me what an amazing plotter Brandon Sanderson is. EVERYTHING comes together perfectly and even small, deceptively irrelevant pieces of information from BOOK 1, prove to be essential to the overall story. I was completely awed by some of it and I had quite a few moments where I went “WHOA” .

In this point I have to disagree with Thea. I thought everything fit beautifully with the previous books and I was left completely satisfied with the entire overreaching arc – the historical one between Ruin and Preservation and the localised one that dealt with these particular characters. (Although I have to agree that the two forces did seem polarised between Evil X Good despite the attempt of making it not so.) . This (apparent) division between two storylines – the one that began a long time ago and which have Forces of Nature fighting and the one that has Elend and crew trying to survive it, was extremely well done.

BUT there is a lot of it. And here I have to agree with Thea 100%: some of the plotlines were completely useless even if they were interesting. I have to admit to loving Spook and TenSoon as characters but the amount of time spent with them only hindered the overall experience, delaying the progress of the story. In my not so humble opinion, this is another example of a book that needed heavy editing, cutting back pages and pages of useless storylines. To the point where I believe this trilogy would have worked far better as a two-book series. As it stands, the trilogy is an uneven ride: slow in points, fast paced in others. Remove some of these storylines from both book 2 and 3, unite the two into one book and ergo: you have a fantastic rollercoaster packing a much more effective punch.

Not that the series doesn’t go out with a BANG! Quite the opposite, the final 150 pages of the book, once all the irrelevant secondary stuff was taken care of, and we reach the resolution (which includes the demise of VIPs), were absolutely, undoubtedly brilliant. Had the book been more focused and more centralised, I have no question in mind that instead of “brilliant” I would be using the word “spectacular”.

Ultimately though, despite its flaws, I loved this series.

On the Characters:

Thea: I have come to an important conclusion whist reading The Hero of the Ages. Brandon Sanderson’s characters only have two speeds: Badass and Emo. There is no in between. Characters will oscillate from self-pitying emo whiner to deadly, awesome decisive badassness, without any middle gradation. This is something I find incredibly infuriating – I like characters to be vulnerable and to question their decisions, but when it goes on for the entire 700-plus pages, it’s a tad ridiculous. You will have seen this phenomenon in The Well of Ascension with Elend’s whiney introspectiveness, Vin’s self-doubting (How could Elend love someone like ME! *dramatic hand over face*), heck, even Breeze’s posturing about Cett’s daughter. In The Hero of Ages, it’s poor Sazed, torn up and faithless after the death of Tindwyl. Emo!Sazed is a character that had ME wanting to drive hemalurgic spikes into my eyes because of how ridiculously mopey he was for the. enitre. book.

That said, there were characters I was thrilled to see again, and in depth. Since The Final Empire, one of my favorite side-characters was Spook, the tineye member of Kelsier’s original crew. In The Hero of Ages, Spook plays a much larger, pivotal role in the story. Also returning to a major plotline is TenSoon, the kandra that killed and usurped OreSur’s place in The Well of Ascension.

As for our intrepid heroes, Vin and Elend? I was not cool with Elend being a badass all of a sudden – yes, I know it’s a full year after the events at the Well of Ascension, but it felt a bit easy to have Elend all of a sudden gain strength and allomantic prowess after all his struggles in the second book (especially his insecurities concerning Vin and her incredible power). And yet, I was more than happy to see a departure from Emo!Elend and his constant self-doubts and questions. Vin, once again, is the true hero of this novel – she’s back in top badass form, and fights long and hard. She’s not infallible, and she gets into her share of tough scrapes – but even without allomancy to help her, she’s a fighter and proves her mettle once more as a heroine worth everything.

Ana: First of all, I do need to give Thea the kudos for summarising brilliantly the two speeds of the characters (and for me making me laugh so hard). This is unfortunately very true for most part. It is also true that thankfully, the worst of internal monologue was left behind in the Well of Ascension. I mean, there is still a lot of self-doubt in this book (if I had to hear one more time Elend thinking about the distinction between being King x being a Scholar, I would have gladly stood in line behind Thea to get those spikes into my eyes too ). Sazed got the blunt of it this time around – the mopping about the religions and loss of faith was incredibly…well, boring to be honest. But of course it all came back to bite me in the behind when the connection between his religious knowledge and how exactly it fit in the overall story was revealed (for your information, that was a “WHOA” moment). Gotta give Brandon Sanderson the props for playing this card. Damn him, and I say that in a most reverent manner.

Despite the moodiness and the Emo moments though, I am a sucker for the badass mode specially Elend’s. PLEASE, give me Badass!Elend any time over Emo!Elend. When he became a Mistborn at the end of Well of Ascension I had my concerns and I was afraid he would steal Vin’s thunder but I am pleased to say that this does not happen. They both have their strengths and they play according to it even if they spent most of the book apart. That fit really well with who these characters were: Elend, the new Emperor dealing with the political side of the situation and Vin going on her own to deal with the metaphysical aspects. I liked to read these two characters’ evolution from book 1 to the final book.

Finally, I need to mention the Lord Ruler, the tyrant who was killed at the end of The Final Empire. Even though he is dead and gone, and is not a physical presence anymore, I absolutely loved to learn more about him. From the end of The Final Empire it was very clear that he was more than an eeeeevil villain but just how much more was really cool to learn in this book.

Vin remains my favourite in the entire trilogy and the most memorable character.

Final Thoughts, Observations and Rating:

Thea: Though not without its weak points, The Hero of Ages is a fitting, bittersweet end to a wonderful trilogy. I loved this powerful conclusion, and I absolutely cannot wait to read more from Brandon Sanderson.

Ana: The Hero of Ages is a great, final book in an extremely well-plotted and very (VERY) original Fantasy series which I highly recommend. After reading both this and Warbreaker this year, I am fully aware of the author’s strengths and weaknesses and the former far surpasses the latter. I am reading Elantris ASAP.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

Fatren squinted up at the red sun, which hid behind its perpetual screen of dark haze. Black ash fell lightly from the sky, as it did most days lately. The thick flakes fell straight, the air stagnant and hot, without even a hint of a breeze to lighten Fatren’s mood. He sighed, leaning back against the earthen bulwark, looking over Vetitan. His town.

“How long?” he asked.

Druffel scratched his nose. His face was stained black with ash. He hadn’t given much thought to hygiene lately. Of course, considering the stress of the last few months, Fatren knew that he himself wasn’t much to look at either.

“An hour, maybe,” Druffel said, spitting into the dirt of the bulwark.

Fatren sighed, staring up at the falling ash. “Do you think it’s true, Druffel? What people are saying?”

“What?” Druffel asked. “That the world is ending?”

Fatren nodded.

“Don’t know,” Druffel said. “Don’t really care.”

“How can you say that?”

Druffel shrugged, scratching himself. “Soon as those koloss arrive, I’ll be dead. That’s pretty much the end of the world for me.”

Fatren fell silent. He didn’t like to voice his doubts; he was supposed to be the strong one. When the lords had left the town—a farming community, slightly more urban than a northern plantation—Fatren had been the one who had convinced the skaa to go ahead with their planting. Fatren had been the one to keep the press gangs away. In a time when most villages and plantations had lost every able- bodied man to one army or another, Vetitan still had a working population. It had cost much of their crops in bribes, but Fatren had kept the people safe.

Mostly.

“The mists didn’t leave until noon today,” Fatren said quietly. “They’re staying later and later. You’ve seen the crops, Druff. They’re not doing well—not enough sunlight, I’d guess. We won’t have food to eat this winter.”

“We won’t last ’til winter,” Druffel said. “Won’t last ’til nightfall.”

The sad thing—the thing that was really disheartening—was that Druffel had once been the optimist. Fatren hadn’t heard his brother laugh in months. That laughter had been Fatren’s favorite sound.
Even the Lord Ruler’s mills weren’t able to grind Druff’s laughter out of him, Fatren thought. But these last two years have.

“Fats!” a voice called. “Fats!”

Fatren looked up as a young boy scrambled along the side of the bulwark. They’d barely finished the fortification—it had been Druffel’s idea, back before he’d really given up. Their town contained some seven thousand people, which made it fairly large. It had taken a great deal of work to surround the entire thing with a defensive mound.

Fatren had barely a thousand real soldiers—it had been very hard to gather that many from such a small population—with maybe another thousand men who were too young, too old, or too unskilled to fight well. He didn’t really know how big the koloss army was, but it was bound to be larger than two thousand. A bulwark was going to be of very little use.

The boy—Sev—finally puffed up to Fatren. “Fats!” Sev said. “Someone’s coming!”

“Already?” Fatren asked. “Druff said the koloss were still a while away!”

“Not a koloss, Fats,” the boy said. “A man. Come see!”

Fatren turned to Druff, who wiped his nose and shrugged. They followed Sev around the inside of the bulwark, toward the front gate. Ash and dust swirled on the packed earth, piling in corners, drifting. There hadn’t been much time for cleaning lately. The women had to work the fields while the men trained and made war preparations.

War preparations. Fatren told himself that he had a force of two thousand “soldiers,” but what he really had were a thousand skaa peasants with swords. They’d had two years of training, true, but they had very little real fighting experience.

A group of men clustered around the front gates, standing on the bulwark or leaning against its side. Maybe I was wrong to spend so much of our resources training soldiers, Fatren thought. If those thousand men had worked the mines instead, we’d have some ore for bribes.

Except, koloss didn’t take bribes. They just killed. Fatren shuddered, thinking of Garthwood. That city had been bigger than his own, but fewer than a hundred survivors had made their way to Vetitan. That had been three months ago. He’d hoped, irrationally, that the koloss would be satisfied with destroying that city.

He should have known better. Koloss were never satisfied.

Fatren climbed up to the top of the bulwark, and soldiers in patched clothing and bits of leather made way for him. He peered through the falling ash across a dark landscape that looked as if it were blanketed in deep black snow.

A lone rider approached, wearing a dark, hooded cloak.

“What do you think, Fats?” one of the soldiers asked.

“Koloss scout?”

Fatren snorted. “Koloss wouldn’t send a scout, especially not a human one.”

“He has a horse,” Druffel said with a grunt. “We could use another of those.” The city only had five. All were suffering from malnutrition.

“Merchant,” one of the soldiers said.

“No wares,” Fatren said. “And it would take a brave merchant to travel these parts alone.”

“I’ve never seen a refugee with a horse,” one of the men said. He raised a bow, looking at Fatren.
Fatren shook his head. Nobody fired as the stranger rode up, moving at an unhurried pace. He stopped his mount directly before the city gates. Fatren was proud of those. Real, true wooden gates mounted in the earthen bulwark. He’d gotten both wood and fine stone from the lord’s manor at the city center.

Very little of the stranger was visible beneath the thick, dark cloak he wore to protect himself from the ash. Fatren looked over the top of the bulwark, studying the stranger, and then he glanced up at his brother, shrugging. The ash fell silently.

The stranger leaped from his horse.

He shot straight upward, as if propelled from beneath, cloak whipping free as he soared. Underneath it, he wore a uniform of brilliant white.

Fatren cursed, jumping backward as the stranger crested the top of the bulwark and landed on the top of the wooden gate itself. The man was an Allomancer. A nobleman. Fatren had hoped those would all stick to their squabbles in the North and leave his people in peace.

Or, at least, their peaceful deaths.

You can read the full chapter online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Brandon Sanderson, in addition to penning the popular Mistborn, Elantris books and Warbreaker is also the author who was chosen to pen the conclusion of the late Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. You may have heard of it.

The Gathering Storm, the first of the three final novels started by Robert Jordan before his death in 2007, is now out in bookstores and has DISPLACED the formidable Dan Brown with his The Lost Symbol atop the New York Times Bestseller List. Huzzah!

Rating:

Thea: 8 – Excellent

Ana: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White