A Temptation of Angels by Michelle Zink

Title: A Temptation of Angels
Author: Michelle Zink
Publisher: Dial Book for Young Readers
Release Date: March 20, 2012
Pages: 435 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.
Purchase/Pre-order: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
Promotional Materials and More: book trailer | author website

Even angels make mistakes in this page-turning epic romance.

When her parents are murdered before her eyes, sixteen-year-old Helen Cartwright finds herself launched into an underground London where a mysterious organization called the Dictata controls the balance of good and evil. Helen learns that she is one of three remaining angelic descendants charged with protecting the world's past, present, and future. Unbeknownst to her, she has been trained her whole life to accept this responsibility. Now, as she finds herself torn between the angelic brothers protecting her and the devastatingly handsome childhood friend who wants to destroy her, she must prepare to be brave, to be hunted, and above all to be strong, because temptation will be hard to resist, even for an angel.

Michelle Zink masterfully weaves historical fantasy with paranormal romance to create a gripping tale of love and betrayal.

Review:

New rule: I will immediately say no to any novels with a mention of a love triangle in the jacket copy from this day forth. The only way I shall reconsider a novel is if trusted friends heap praise upon it (which is what pushed me to read the magnificent Unearthly by Cynthia Hand despite love triangle presence in the jacket copy) or if I've already started the series and may as well finish it. Why am I making this rule now? The misses far outnumber the hits and after coming off one novel with an irritating love triangle, rebounding with A Temptation of Angels was not a good idea. A lack of tension, stock characters, and a heroine whose split affections annoyed me sunk a promising novel.

Zink's writing style has a Dramatic flair to it, one I enjoyed and loved no matter how much the content of the story annoyed me. It was wordier than most prose, but it was just enough to give it a deliciously formal feel. It it had been much more, I would have called it purple and become more irritated than I already was.

The world of Keepers, descendants of the original angels assigned to guard Earth, and the Legion (demons and such; Lucifer leads them) was of great interest to me and I was sad to see it wasn't expanded on very much. The way Keepers were trained as children for their lifelong duty with games like Find the Way Out and other such little things that made sense once they knew the truth impressed me. If I had to pick something out, I'd say that was the best detail of the novel.

For all the good ideas and Dramatic prose A Temptation of Angels has to offer, there isn't much else I like about it. The characters are flat and uninteresting, stock at best; I couldn't have cared less if everyone died during the climactic scene. On that topic, with thirty pages left in the novel and the book entrenched in its climactic scene, I found myself unable to care about anything. I could have put the book down and never picked it up again and I wouldn't have had one problem with leaving it unfinished so close to the end. Uneven pacing had me hooked for the first one-hundred pages of the novel, but the next two-hundred or so bored me before it got back on track.

As I'm sure you figured out if you read my personal rule above, I don't like love triangles. I like them even less when one of the love interests has wronged the heroine pretty badly (like, say, giving the order to have her parents killed by burning to death in their home) and she falls in love with him anyway. I'm sorry, but... You know what? I'm not sorry. That disgusts me on a pretty deep level. "He killed my parents, but I'm going to fall in love with him!" Really? It reminds me of a series by another author where one of the heroine's love interests was a guy who kidnapped and tortured her twice. Ick ick ick!

And on another note, one of my greater pet peeves in a novel? When an author gives a character a Russian last name such as Baranova but does not follow the system that comes with Russian surnames, which makes the spelling change with a person's gender. A male in that family would be a Baranov; a female in that family would be a Baranova. Andrei and Raum Baranova are not female, so their surnames should be Baranov.

So yeah, I'm going to start following my new personal rule. Like, right now. Right? (Oh please, let me follow the rule this time unlike the last time I instituted it! I don't want to keep putting myself through the pain!)

2 stars!

What am I reading next?: When the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen

Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

Title: Masque of the Red Death
Author: Bethany Griffin
Publisher: HarperCollins/Greenwillow Books
Release Date: April 24, 2012
Pages: 320 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: ARC provided by Amazon Vine.
Purchase: Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Book Depository

Everything is in ruins.

A devastating plague has decimated the population. And those who are left live in fear of catching it as the city crumbles to pieces around them.

So what does Araby Worth have to live for?

Nights in the Debauchery Club, beautiful dresses, glittery make-up . . . and tantalizing ways to forget it all.

But in the depths of the club—in the depths of her own despair—Araby will find more than oblivion. She will find Will, the terribly handsome proprietor of the club. And Elliott, the wickedly smart aristocrat. Neither boy is what he seems. Both have secrets. Everyone does.

And Araby may find something not just to live for, but to fight for—no matter what it costs her.

Review:

Thanks to the magic of Goodreads, I can say Masque of the Red Death has been on my radar since August 30, 2011 and as more in-depth descriptions were added, it became one of my most anticipated reads of 2012. Seven months of anticipation, especially after seeing it get consistently positive reviews, make my disappointment in the novel that much more bitter.

Masque of the Red Death had all the ingredients for a great novel. A gloomy mood set by the description and Araby's inner thoughts set the stage for a fabulous post-apocalyptic Gothic novel. Poe's classic short story is creatively twisted into something that is both an original work and a loving homage to Poe's genius. Some scenes of the novel are incredibly powerful--like the one with Will, Araby, and the moonlight flower. I had to go back and reread it a few times because I loved it so much.

What is there not to like, then? The story sounds fantastic in theory, but it is more often lacking in practice.

Araby and Elliott are well-developed characters in all the technical aspects. Elliott has a motivation and is incredibly sympathetic; Araby doesn't have much of a motivation herself, but her despair and loneliness drew me to her and could once again earn a lot of fans out of sympathy for her. My problem is that despite their adequate construction, I couldn't connect with them. They didn't feel alive, so to speak. Their connections with other characters left a lot to be desired too. Why was Araby drawn to Will and Elliott the way she was? The hope they offered? That seems the most likely explanation, but nothing about the characters and their relationships clicked the way they should have.

Two-thirds of the way through the novel, very little had happened and there was almost no forward momentum. I procrastinated on a major paper to read this book and I wanted to at least pretend it was a better use of my time, but I couldn't keep up the illusion when I kept putting it down and watching documentaries about Columbine and OJ Simpson's trial on television.The plot did kick in shortly after--oh wow, did it kick in; I couldn't put it down for those last hundred pages--but saving any sign of plot or action for the last one-hundred pages of the book could lose a lot of readers.

But now I'm done and my Count of Monte Cristo paper is calling my name, motioning me to come closer with a knife in one white, crinkling hand and pen and paper in the other. I think it's best I go see it before I get stabbed--or worse, before one of my books gets stabbed.

As a bonus for readers who want a small insight into how the author chose the names for her characters, look no further than right here. If this is what happens when I express my dislike of a name, I may need to do it more often. Masque left me unimpressed and disappointed, but other readers will doubtlessly enjoy it.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

The Springsweet by Saundra Mitchell

Title: The Springsweet
Author: Saundra Mitchell
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Harcourt
Release Date: April 17, 2012
Pages: 288 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Amazon Vine-provided ARC

It’s a long way from Baltimore to Oklahoma Territory. But Zora Stewart will go any distance to put the tragic events of her sixteenth summer behind her. So this city girl heads to the tiny frontier town of West Glory to help her young widowed aunt keep her homestead going.

When another Baltimorean shows up in West Glory, Zora couldn’t be more surprised. Theo de la Croix made the long trip out west hoping to court Zora, whom he has long admired from afar.
But Zora has developed an attraction to a rather less respectable fellow: Emerson Birch, a rough-mannered young "sooner" whose fertile land is coveted.

As Zora begins to suspect that there may be more than luck behind Emerson’s good land, she discovers an extraordinary, astonishing power of her own: the ability to sense water under the parched earth. When her aunt hires her out as a "springsweet" to advise other settlers where to dig their wells, Zora feels the burden of holding the key to something so essential to survival in this unforgiving land.

Even more, she finds herself longing for love the way the prairie thirsts for water. Maybe, in the wildness of the territories, Zora can finally move beyond simply surviving and start living.

Review:

After the death of her fiance Thomas and her cousin Amelia, Zora Stewart is ready to get away from Baltimore. All it takes is one unexpected kiss at a party and she's off for the Oklahoma Territory to live with her aunt Birdie and younger cousin Louella until she "comes to her senses." While she is there, she discovers she has the power to sense the location of water, a useful power in such dry lands. In addition to her new gift, two men trouble her. Emerson Birch is regarded by West Glory as bad news, but Zora doesn't see what's wrong with him. Meanwhile, Theo de la Croix has made his way out to West Glory to court Zora, but she isn't interested like everyone wants her to be.

I didn't always like the choices Zora made (surely there was another way to convince her mother to let her go elsewhere), but she wasn't bad as far as YA heroines go. At the very least, she didn't make me want to choke her on a regular basis like some other heroines I've encountered did. Zora's easy adaptation to the constant work in the country after growing up in the city of Baltimore was a little strange; she never struck me in this book or its prequel The Vespertine as the type to easily adapt.

The Springsweet is short and sweet at 288 pages (well, it's short for me) and that challenges it to characterize everyone and get the plot moving more quickly than other novels while still making it feel natural. Does this book meet that challenge? It felt a little bit rushed, like it could have used another fifty pages or so to develop everything. Aunt Birdie's quiet characterization was a high point; my inability to understand what Zora sees in Emerson is on the lower end of the spectrum.

Now then, a quick summary of the novel: A girl leaves home, temporarily moving to another city and taking residence with her aunt and cousin. One of her relatives, who isn't much older than herself, causes the heroine to experience some personal growth, but she discovers something: she has a magical power. The people all love her and her gift at first, but they threaten to turn on her when her gift no longer gives them good fortune. Meanwhile, our heroine is trapped in a love triangle. One man is a good, upstanding man proper society is pushing her toward; the other is a bad boy everyone disapproves of, but she can't stay away from him--and he has a power just like she does.

What I just wrote is an adequate summary of both The Vespertine and The Springsweet. It feels like I've read the same book twice with the names and settings changed and I don't like feeling that way. I expected Zora's narrative voice to be unlike Amelia's because they were such different characters, but I can't tell the difference between them.

The writing remains one of my favorite qualities of the novel. There's something about the way it tosses around metaphors and orders its syntax that makes me have an especially nerdy moment. I wish I had more to say there because of how much I like it, but that suffices and I'm not going to drag it out. Two climactic scenes one after another at the end off the novel ended up having two very different effects on me. One of them had me reading like it would have killed me not to. The other garnered this reaction from me: "Oh. Okay then." Considering that second climax involved someone getting murdered, this is not a good reaction for it to bring out of me.

Fans of The Vespertine will enjoy the return of the lyrical prose and the development of Zora's personal story (not to mention where it looks like the next book might take both her and Amelia), but fans of The Vespertine who do not want to read almost the exact same story with new packaging may not love it as much.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: Beneath My Mother's Feet by Amjed Qamar

The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

Title: The Book of Blood and Shadow
Author: Robin Wasserman
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Pages: 432 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: ARC from the publisher through Edelweiss
Purchase/Pre-order: Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Book Depository

It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up.  When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love.  When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark.

But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead.  His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also—according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone—a murderer.

Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine; it is said that he who controls the Lumen Dei controls the world. Unbeknownst to her, Nora now holds the crucial key to unlocking its secrets. Her night of blood is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

Review:

The power of a good mystery caper through history and literature that takes intrepid investigators around the world and forces them to hide from secret societies that want them dead or otherwise stopped cannot be denied. The Da Vinci Code is evidence enough of this. The Book of Blood and Shadow is easily comparable to the famous novel and will find an audience in the people who love those kinds of stories. Me? Not so much.

It all starts with Nora's night of blood: the night she finds her best friend murdered and his girlfriend practically catatonic next to his body. An exciting novel seems to await the reader, but then the narrative backtracks to a few months before the murders--back when it was Nora, Chris, and Max working with a professor on the mysterious Voynich manuscript.

The hundred or so pages spent just on what happened before the night of blood establish the main players and their personalities, but the effect this backtracking has on the pacing is like dropping a person into a hole two miles deep and telling them to use some kitchen utensils to get out. It takes the novel just as long to get going as it does for the person to climb out of the hole because of the lengthy detour. Is it necessary? I think so. Does that better the pacing of the novel or make the sluggish pacing okay? Not at all.

It's when the plot kicks in and Nora sets off for Prague--which unfortunately takes about half the novel--that Blood and Shadow hits its stride. The intricacies of the Lumen Dei mystery and two societies formed around it, one dedicated to finding it and the other to destroying it, are well-plotted and the novel itself is well-written, if a little bloated. The length was once again necessary for all the ideas and twists going into the novel, but it felt twice as large as it was. Few twists couldn't be seen coming one way or another; fewer still packed the punch that all good twists do. As compelling as Nora found the mystery, I can't say I felt the same way.

I found the story of Elizabeth Weston, the poet whose letters and accounts of her work on the Lumen Dei lead the way for Nora and company, more interesting than Nora's own story. More intelligent, more compelling, more lively despite the whole "being dead" misfortune--she's overall more interesting than Nora was ever able to be. I became impatient for Nora to get back to Elizabeth's letters and reveal more of the original search for the Lumen Dei.

The Book of Blood and Shadow is best suited for adventurous readers with a taste for the mysteries of the past and an endless amount of patience for novels that take a while to get where they're going. A quick read this is not, but a fascinating read it most certainly is.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: Dark Kiss by Michelle Rowen

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

Title: Clockwork Angel
Author: Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Margaret K. McElderry
Release Date: August 31, 2010
Pages: 476 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

Magic is dangerous--but love is more dangerous still.

When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos.

Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organization called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What's more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa's power for his own.

Friendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon finds herself fascinated by--and torn between--two best friends: James, whose fragile beauty hides a deadly secret, and blue-eyed Will, whose caustic wit and volatile moods keep everyone in his life at arm's length...everyone, that is, but Tessa. As their search draws them deep into the heart of an arcane plot that threatens to destroy the Shadowhunters, Tessa realizes that she may need to choose between saving her brother and helping her new friends save the world...and that love may be the most dangerous magic of all.

Review:

Despite my personal feelings on the author, I read Clockwork Angel to answer two questions I posed to myself:

1. Does Cassandra Clare actually have talent?
2. Could possibly enjoy one of her novels if I put my feelings about her aside?

The answer was "no" to both questions for me. I'll explain why.

I detested City of Bones when I read it; Jace was a jerk, Clary was annoying, the book was badly paced, and it was also badly written. I gave it back to the friend who loaned it to me after just half the book and have not read another word of the book in the three years since then. So why, then, would I like reading a novel that takes these characters, gives them a superficial makeover, and drops them in Victorian London?

They may have different names and different descriptions, but these are the same personalities I've already seen and disliked in the other series. The plain-but-actually-pretty girl who delves deeper into the world of the Shadowhunters in order to find her missing relative, falling in love with a Shadowhunter in the meanwhile and discovering she can't be with him the way she wants to--that could be both Tessa and Clary. The jerkish male with an ego the size of a planet, an infinite store of stupid one-liners, a tortured past, and a propensity for treating the people he loves like crap--both Will and Jace fit this.

Well, I'll take back some of it for Will. Honestly, Will is worse than Jace because he sounds like a boy from the twenty-first century, not anyone from Victorian London. They're both jerks who need to go fuck themselves despite their tortured pasts, but at least one of them isn't anachronistic. I'm supposed to think the things Will says about Six-Fingered Nigel and others are funny, but my reaction was more like, "...That was stupid." A lot of things about this book are stupid, really.

The pacing issue I had with City of Bones showed up in Clockwork Angel too. For the first one-hundred fifty pages, I gave it an honest shot and forced myself to read it like I would any other novel. Then I skimmed the next two-hundred seventy pages or so because absolutely nothing was happening. One we got to the last fifty pages, I read again, and then the book was over.

Something Tessa thinks later in the novel concerns me: "Will cared for her, she was sure of it. Yes, he had been rude to her almost since he had met her, but then, that happened in novels all the time (Clockwork Angel, p. 454)." She then goes on to compare her situation to how Mr. Darcy was rude to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice and how Heathcliff was rude to Cathy in Wuthering Heights.

I have not had the opportunity to read either classic yet, but I've heard often that Mr. Darcy had no idea he was being rude and eventually shaped up. Heathcliff and Cathy? Anyone who aspires to have a romance like theirs is off their rocker. Heathcliff and Cathy's "romance" was not healthy. I don't need to read the book to figure that out. Research is all I need.

I felt bad for Tessa just then. She might have been an uninteresting blank slate of a character, but she didn't deserve being under the delusion that anyone who could only be rude to her and treat her horribly was worth her time and romantic attentions. This is something a number of women throughout the real world are under the impression of because of books like this and I feel sorry for all of them too. If someone can't figure out how not to be a jerk to a person they like, they're both better off with someone else and the jerk has some growing up to do.

There was one interesting thing about this book, but it is exclusive to my copy of the novel and has nothing to do with Clockwork Angel itself. My copy came from my favorite used bookstore and the previous owner wrote in parts of the novel. Names, numbers, diary entries, details of how she (the previous owner) lost three people in two weeks,... One of them died with injuries including a fractured skull, internal bleeding, a broken spine, and two broken arms. I resisted the temptation to use this information for evil and was sad to see the notes stop after the seventh chapter or so. Whoever the previous owner is, I wish I could have met her.

And so went my attempt to read a Cassandra Clare novel honestly and with as little bias as possible. If you ever see me try to read another one of her novels, you are hereby given full permission to smack me across the face. Hm? You can't do that because you're across the Internet from me? You also have full permission to break the laws of nature in order to smack me across the face.

0 stars!

What am I reading next?: Darkness Becomes Her by Kelly Keaton

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Title: Scarlet
Author: A.C. Gaughen
Publisher: Bloomsbury/Walker Publishing Company
Release Date: February 14, 2012
Pages: 304 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: from the publishers via NetGalley

Many readers know the tale of Robin Hood, but they will be swept away by this new version full of action, secrets, and romance.

Posing as one of Robin Hood’s thieves to avoid the wrath of the evil Thief Taker Lord Gisbourne, Scarlet has kept her identity secret from all of Nottinghamshire. Only the Hood and his band know the truth: the agile thief posing as a whip of a boy is actually a fearless young woman with a secret past. Helping the people of Nottingham outwit the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham could cost Scarlet her life as Gisbourne closes in. It’s only her fierce loyalty to Robin—whose quick smiles and sharp temper have the rare power to unsettle her—that keeps Scarlet going and makes this fight worth dying for.

Review:

The people at large believe Will Scarlet is a boy, a thief, and a member of Robin Hood's band. Two of those descriptors are right, but one is not like the others: he is really a she, a girl named Scarlet--and she's on the run. As the thief taker Gisbourne is brought to Nottingham to help capture Robin Hood and his band, Scarlet could lose her life if she isn't careful. The truth about Scarlet, daring prison escapes, and more secrets all lead up to a bloody wedding.

Scarlet is a heavily flawed character: angry, caring, a little bit of a martyr,... Characterization of her and of Robin, the earl come home from the Crusades to find he no longer had a home, was fantastic, but their characters were difficult to stand for long stretches of time. For all Robin talks about Scarlet jeopardizing their band, he's the one that needs to take care of his love problems or leave because his transparent feelings for Scarlet were the real problem. Meanwhile, Scarlet's constant habit of using "were" where the average person would use "was" made me twitch a little each time. Is there a good reason for it? Yes, and I respect that. It doesn't make it any less annoying.

The greatest point annoyance had to be the love triangle between John, Scarlet, and Robin. In my opinion, both men were creeps and didn't have what it took to be the man Scarlet needed. The irony when Robin said Scarlet was leading John on was not lost on me; between his "I want you" body language and his "we're just friends, you're with him" spoken words, he was the one leading someone on in the story. John could use a lesson in boundaries.

I think I've made it clear that I spent most of the book annoyed and putting it down so I wouldn't scream at it, but it wasn't all bad. Scarlet was a pretty thrilling story. I may have had to put it down many times, but I always picked it back up and devoured more than half the book in a single day. My knowledge/interest in Robin Hood or any tales of him is less than or equal to zero, but this book has me thinking I might need to find out more.

This could have been so much better of a book--it showed plenty of signs it could be great--but irritating characters and too much love triangle drama made this a more difficult book to finish reading than I wanted it to be. This was supposed to be a pick-me-up from two bad books, not another bad book!

2 stars!

What am I reading next?: The Vanishing Game by Kate Kae Myers

The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges

Title: The Gathering Storm
Author: Robin Bridges
Publisher: Random House/Delacorte Press
Release Date: January 10, 2012
Pages: 400 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: From the publisher via NetGalley

St. Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.

An evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines—and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men—George Alexandrovich, the tsar's standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina's help to safeguard Russia, even if he's repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn.

 

The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose—and to whom will she give her heart?

Review:

Duchess Katerina Alexandrovna of Oldenburg has a secret: she's a necromancer, one who can raise the dead. Since discovering her gift as a child, she has refused to use it again out of fear, but a threat to the tsarevich by the Montenegrin princess and sorceress Elena forced Katiya to use her powers once again. This pushes her into a tangled web of intrigue where the Montenegrin royals, now aware of her gift, are trying to win her over, fellow royals use Katiya and tell her only what suits their agendas, and the tsar's middle son accuses her of being a threat to the tsar. The truth is that the greatest threat is yet to come and Katiya's powers are the key to defeating it when it comes.

Katerina--Katiya, from this point on--was a great character and I enjoyed both her and the conflict she had with her powers, but there were time I thought she was ridiculous. For instance, she can believe that faeries, necromancy, sorceresses, and general magic exist because they're all around her, but vampires and prophetic dreams? She calls bull on that. Really? It boggles my mind how she does that. If there's one mythical being out there, it's not a far stretch for there to be more, is it?

I initially had worries about the book due to the mention of an apparent love triangle in the summary, and I was relieved to find that this was not the case. It's a little more complicated than that. Our antagonist (one of about fifty million, really) Danilo, appropriately creeped me out and made me hate him, but I wasn't quite sold on Katiya's love interest George. When a guy spend half the book glaring at her/accusing her of being evil and then spend the other half of the book only starting to warm up, and then does something as dramatic as George does at the end of the book, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel.

Though I am not overly familiar with 1880s Russia, it appears the author has done her research on royal titles, the Russian naming system, and more. Only one or two things please me more than seeing that an author has done their research well and not contradicted themselves in multiple places. So thank you for that, Mrs. Bridges. Thank you. Now, if only some other authors could follow that example...

Several plot lines are going on in the book--the dead soldiers coming back to life, the Montenegrins' plans, strange happenings around St. Petersburg, and what's going on behind the scenes--but the book switches seamlessly between them, timing them just right so the switches happen when the reader begins to tire of one plot line and wonder when advancements will be made on one of the other plots. I can't remember the last time I read a book so well-paced in such a manner!

The Gathering Storm was a worthwhile read I know I'll be getting a copy of once it is released. There was a troubling detail or two towards the end (mainly an element coming in that should forbid George and Katiya from being together, and those forbidden romances are so passe), but I look forward to the sequel in... Wow, it's going to be a while. Reading the ARC of a fantastic novel: a double-edged blade.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Title: Revolution

Author: Jennifer Donnelly

Publisher: Random House/Delacorte Press

Release Date: October 12, 2010

Pages: 472 pages (hardback)

How I Got the Book: Bought it in a used bookstore

BROOKLYN: Andi Alpers is on the edge. She’s angry at her father for leaving, angry at her mother for not being able to cope, and heartbroken by the loss of her younger brother, Truman. Rage and grief are destroying her. And she’s about to be expelled from Brooklyn Heights’ most prestigious private school when her father intervenes. Now Andi must accompany him to Paris for winter break.

PARIS: Alexandrine Paradis lived over two centuries ago. She dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage, but a fateful encounter with a doomed prince of France cast her in a tragic role she didn’t want—and couldn’t escape.

Two girls, two centuries apart. One never knowing the other. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages—until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present.

Jennifer Donnelly, author of the award-winning novel A Northern Light, artfully weaves two girls’ stories into one unforgettable account of life, loss, and enduring love. Revolution spans centuries and vividly depicts the eternal struggles of the human heart.

Review:

I might as well warn you now that I think my review is awful. I've got no clue how to put how I feel about this book into words that make sense and really get across how I feel about it, but I did the best I could. Please don't be afraid to tear me apart for this one. I love contsructive criticism.

Ever since the death of her little brother Truman, Andi has been in a downward spiral. Forced to spend wither break with her father in Paris while he does some work on what's believed to be the heart of Louis-Charles, the lost king of France, Andi has to work on her senior thesis so she doesn't flunk out of school. Upon discovering a diary hidden inside a guitar case, she becomes desperate to learn more about Alexandrine Paradis, the young woman who wrote the diary and lived during the French Revolution. As she reads more of the diary, Andi seems to improve and even make some friends in Paris, but the story begs to be finished, bringing Alexandrine's and Andi's worlds together.

Andi is a very angry, damaged narrator--no sunshine and flowers here. Slowly, she starts climbing up from rock bottom because of the people she meets in Paris (like Virgil, a Tunisian rapper that wants to get out of his neighborhood and make it big; I loved the development of their relationship), the story in Alex's diary, and what her thesis research leads her to. Her actions at the beginning of the novel are over-the-top, like the drugs and parties, and I felt like it was the same way with her feelings about Truman sometimes (only sometimes). Her growth is subtle and by the end of the book, she's doing much better. Some of the supporting characters in Andi's life get a little bit of the spotlight too, like Virgil and Andi's dad.

On the other hand, Alexandrine feels a little unrealistic. Driven by ambition and using the prince by the age of twelve? That strikes me as strange. It could be excused by some readers due to the setting and the pressure put on her, but that doesn't work for me. Nonetheless, her story as the Green Man setting off fireworks for Louis-Charles and a companion to the young prince is a good one. Her narrative voice has distinctive differences from Andi's and yet they're so similar in being scarred, unhappy narrators with a deep connection to a younger boy.

First-person present is far from my favorite narration style, but it worked well with Andi's narration style. Sometimes, the writing started breaking up. Into fragments. Just like this. To be dramatic. A little irritating, but not too horrible Then the book, specifically Alexandrine, gifted me with this quote, which will surely join the exclusive club of my favorite quotes: ""I had done this--made the sad prince laugh. Made his grieving parents smile. None but me. Think you only kings have power? Stand on a stage and hold the hearts of men in your hands. Make them laugh with a gesture, cry with a word. Make them love you. And you will know what power is (Revolution, p. 144)." Revolution was very well-written, to say the least.

The heavy amount of research done for the novel shows. From music to life during the French Revolution and beyond, you don't need to see the lengthy bibliography at the end of the book to tell that a lot of work went into making Revolution authentic. Sure, I'm not a good judge on whether or not the author is pulling all the talk of music out of her butt or if that was really how it was just before and during the French Revolution, but I didn't spot any glaring inaccuracies. The story of these two girls, so similar and different, was just as addictive to me as Alex's story was to Andi within the book, and she was pretty obsessed with that story. I regret it took me so long to read this book, but other books required immediate attention and got in my way.

I've been dying to get a copy of Revolution since it came out in October 2010 and my stressing over it was worth the wait. I got a book that was equal parts good contemporary and good historical. It's got flaws in being over-the-top and a little unbelievable , and it's not OMFG GOOD, but it's still good and worth the read if the blurb interests you at all.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Clean by Amy Reed

Moonshine by Alaya Johnson

Title: Moonshine
Author: Alaya Johnson
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Release Date: February 16th, 2010
Pages: 288 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Christmas gift.

Zephyr Hollis is an underfed, overzealous social activist who teaches night school to the underprivileged of the Lower East Side. Strapped for cash, Zephyr agrees to help a student, the mysterious Amir, who proposes she use her charity worker cover to bring down a notorious vampire mob boss. What he doesn’t tell her is why. Soon enough she’s tutoring a child criminal with an angelic voice, dodging vampires high on a new blood-based street drug, and trying to determine the real reason behind Amir’s request—not to mention attempting to resist his dark, inhuman charm.

Review:

In 1920s New York, vampires and other such Others are minorities with few to no rights and Zephyr Hollis is the singing vampire suffragette, famous for how much she gives and her never-ending crusade for Other rights. She teaches classes for Others and immigrants so they can learn how to function in American society and it's normal for her to give all the money she has and have trouble paying her rent. Then along comes Amir, who offers her money to help him find Rinaldo, a vampire mobster. In her quest to find Rinaldo and do a few other things, like find the parents of a young, recently turned vampire boy, Zephyr runs into more than a few problems and gets a visit from her past.

I haven't read any books set in the 1920s before, so I don't exactly know whether the minute details of the setting are true or not, but they ring true to me. It feels like Johnson did her research on life back then and applied everything she learned to this novel. Despite how much fantasy is in this novel with all the vampires running around, this New York seems like the kind of New York that would have existed if vampires were real. It's just the right blend of reality and fantasy, something only a few authors can do. Johnson appears to be one of them.

Zephyr as a character has a good background and she is the only character I have ever seen that pulled off the "too giving" flaw without making it seem like a non-flaw. If you give your money away so much to the point that you nearly get kicked out of your apartment multiple times, that's a flaw. Her pre-New York background and her current actions as an Other activist provide a fun contrast and really shows how people can change in a few years. The supporting characters were fun and the plot moved along smoothly, tying itself up well in the end. If there was any sort of mystery, it is solved during the final confrontation. With an ending such as the one in Moonshine, the novel could be left as a stand-alone or be given a sequel. I haven't found any evidence of a future sequel yet, so I'm not sure there will be one. And...

And...

-sigh- I'm sorry, but I have nothing to say. I lacked any emotional involvement in this novel, so I'm just pulling stuff and trying to put my thoughts in order about them. I didn't care who lived or died, who turned Judah, what was wrong with Amir, where Faust was coming from--absolutely nothing caught my interest. I had a full PDF of this book before I started doing book reviews and got bored halfway through it, then closed the document and decided to get a print copy one day. Back then, I never thought on what was going on in the book and I didn't this time around either. It was neither bad nor good and in certain cases, this is worse than being bad. At least you care enough about a bad book to dislike it.

I wish I could give it a better rating than this. I really do. Sadly, a rule is a rule and if a book cannot earn my emotional investment, then it automatically gets this rating. Unless it's a special case, I make no exceptions. For anyone that's looking for a good book about the 20s and doesn't mind the large helping of fantasy mixed in, I recommend Moonshine. Maybe you'll get invested in it the way I couldn't.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell

Title: The Vespertine
Author: Saundra Mitchell
Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books
Release Date: March 7th, 2011
Pages: 293 pages (hardback)

How I Got the Book: Won it in a Goodreads Firstreads giveaway.

The summer of 1889 is the one between childhood and womanhood for Amelia van den Broek--and thankfully, she's not spending it at home in rural Maine. She's been sent to Baltimore to stay with her stylish cousin, Zora, who will show her all the pleasures of city life and help her find a suitable man to marry.

With diversions ranging from archery in the park to dazzling balls and hints of forbidden romance, Victorian Baltimore is more exciting than Amelia imagined. But her gaiety is interrupted by disturbing, dreamlike visions she has only at sunset--visions that offer glimpses of the future. Soon, friends and strangers alike call on Amelia to hear her prophecies. Newly dubbed "Maine's Own Mystic," Amelia is suddenly quite in demand.

However, her attraction to Nathaniel, an artist who is decidedly outside of Zora's circle, threatens the new life Amelia is building in Baltimore. This enigmatic young man is keeping secrets of his own--still, Amelia finds herself irrepressible drawn to him. And while she has no trouble seeing the futures of others, she cannot predict whether Nathaniel will remain in hers.

When one of her darkest visions comes to pass, Amelia's world is thrown into chaos. And those around her begin to wonder if she's not the seer of dark portents, but the cause of them.

Review:

Thrown into 1889 Baltimore for the summer, Amelia van den Broek's given purpose is to find a husband to marry and learn how to be a proper wife and young lady. While staying with her relatives, the Stewart family and their teenage daughter Zora, Amelia is fascinated by all Baltimore has to offer, including an artist named Nathaniel who seems interested in her too. When the sun starts to set, strange visions strike Amelia and eventually, some of them come true. Amelia and Zora's friends, all interested in the realm of the unknown, clamor to have Amelia over so she can have a vision of their future. But these visions may not bode well for Amelia in the end. She doesn't always see happiness in the future and when her bad visions come true, the blame may fall on her.

I loved the prose in this book. Fresh and flowery as a piece of writing might have been in the 1880s, the narrative voice Amelia provides matched her time and entertained me. Some of the turns of phrase are absolutely lovely. I wish I could name one off the top of my head, but I'm pulling a blank right now. Modern language gets a little boring sometimes, especially with narrators who aren't the least bit interesting. Having an itneresting heroine like Amelia with such beautiful language in her head was a good change from my usual reads. The other characters, left with little development, don't hold a candle to Amelia, the free-thinking girl who still worries about her reputation as any girl of her age would. Realistic heroines? Finally!

If you ask me, Amelia isn't in love with Nathaniel. It's a mere infatuation. Think about it: Amelia comes from the small town of Broken Tooth, Maine and she was probably somewhat sheltered or restricted. She's sent to the big city of Baltimore, a place very different from her small town, to find a husband. She's out from under her brother's watchful eye and hanging with her fun-loving cousin Zora. Then Amelia meets Nathaniel, a city man who is "free" from society's strict demands and traditions. Compared to the men in Zora's circle that follow society's rules, this man is more interesting and unlike anyone she's ever met. She is a small town girl infatuated with the mystery and idea of"freedom" from society that Nathaniel represents. Crush? Yes. Infatuation? Yes again. Love? Heavens no.

In addition, that "vision coming true" thing mentioned in the blurb? That doesn't happen until about page 250 of 293. Before then, where was the conflict? I suppose it could be Amelia's decision whether to be a good rule-following girl or a girl who thinks for herself and does as she pleases, but that conflict couldn't keep me reading. What other conflict was there to keep me reading, then? Nathaniel and Amelia's forbidden romance? That didn't cut it, either. Conflicts are beautiful. A good one makes a great book. This book had no conflict until the very end. Until then, the book crawls by as the adventures of Amelia and Zora are detailed. To be frank, I was reminded of Gossip Girl in how it's less about the plot and more about this person's misadventures and love life. There is a good reason I only read one Gossip Girl book.

Once the big thing happens, the plot jumps out from behind the curtain, does a strange dance for the audience, then takes a bow with all the other players. Then it's over, just like that. The climax and the action both happen so quickly that the events at the end of the novel--two characters die, for Pete's sake!--have little time to sink and and take effect on the reader. It's no use killing people if the reaction it's supposed to get out of readers doesn't have time to happen. If given some more page time and had the plot been more present throughout the novel, this would have been a good ending. A little explanation as to why Amelia and Nathaniel had their powers and why Amelia's visions didn't start until she got to Baltimore would have been nice too.

It didn't live up to all of my expectations, but The Vespertine wasn't horrible. It could have been much worse (though never Angel Star bad), but it also could have been much better. I've heard about another book the author wrote called Shadowed Summer and I'll seek that out sometime soon. There will also be a companion to The Vespertine called The Springsweet, which will come out next year. I'll probably buy it. Give The Vespertine a try if you think you'll like it, but be wary if any of the issues I talked about above bother you too.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: Moonshine by Alaya Johnson

Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Title: Wildthorn
Author: Jane Eagland
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Release Date: February 9th, 2009
Pages: 350 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it in a bookstore

Louisa Cosgrove is Louisa Cosgrove--not Lucy Childs. Or is she?

A horse-drawn carriage takes her to the wrong place: Wildthorn Hall, an asylum for the insane.

This must be a great misunderstanding. They strip her naked, of everything--undo her whalebone corset hook by hook. They take her identity. But she is still seventeen--still Louisa Cosgrove--isn't she?

To untangle the mysterious, wretched present, she remembers the past.

I wished I were a boy.

Locked away in the dingy bowels of the hall, she feels a fire burn inside her. She remembers her cousin. She remembers Papa.

I want to be a doctor.

She is determined to escape--and only love will set her free.

Review:

Louisa Cosgrove wants nothing more than to become a doctor like her father. Being that she lives in 1800s England, this is difficult because women still have their entire lives decided by the men in their lives and no medical school will take in women because they should be learning the womanly arts instead. She is on her way to the house of someone she will be acting as a companion and she is instead taken to Wildthorn Hall, an insane asylum. Treated as just another lunatic, Louisa struggles to keep sane and make someone believe that this is all a mistake and that she does not belong here while with the way she is acting, it only seems more and more like she does need a place among the residents and hellish halls of Wildthorn Hall.

I bought this book because someone I practically worship because of her literary critic skills and our similar reading tastes was gushing over this book. When I got it, I had no idea of the adult content in this novel except for one detail about Louisa that later emerges as a plot twist (and that was only because someone spoiled it for me a day after I bought the book). This novel is outside of my reading tastes in multiple ways and if I had not bought it blind, I would have passed this over for another novel. Thank God for going in blind because this novel was worth it!

I loved Louisa as a character. She was layered, had her flaws (impulsive to the extreme), and had her screwups. I felt for her when she tried to convince her doctor and the attendants that she wasn't crazy, she didn't belong there, and that her name was Louisa, not Lucy, but each time she did so, it made her seem more and more like a lunatic. That was quite the trap she was caught in and quite realistic. I can't begin to imagine how many other women were caught in the same hellish trap back then. Her plights were entirely sympathetic because none of them were truly her fault. She wanted to be who she wanted to be, not who everyone else wanted her to be.

What makes this story so terrifying is the reality of it. Men could easily have the women in their life locked up in the insane asylum for reasons such as not wanting them around the house or because the woman wants to become studious when women are not supposed to do that. Women had very little control over their lives and if a man decided to send a sane woman to an asylum for whatever reason, the woman was trapped. They had little to no hope of being freed. This was not just a fictional, dramatized account of a rare case; this was a fictional account of something completely nonfictional and even halfway normal.

A lot of adult subject matter gets brought into this novel that is a dark shadow in society that everyone knows about now, but was practically taboo to even think about back then. For example? Homosexuality, child pornography, rape, and teenage pregnancy. And that is only the beginning of it. I'm not sure why this is categorized as a young adult book because such subject matter exactly the things popular young adult lit is made of (at least within one novel). I'm fine with that because we need something different in the young adult world every now and then, but yeah. Not your average young adult novel. I wouldn't hand this to a fourteen-year-old kid or anyone younger than that. I might not even give it to a fifteen-year-old unless I felt they were mature enough!

I thought of this novel as predictable when I got to the three-hundredth page and in the course of those next fifty pages, what I thought I knew got revealed as being something completely unexpected. Isn't it wonderful when books do that and make sense while doing so? I do, and that is just what Wildthorn did.
I found it a bit sad that the thought was never explored that maybe Louisa actually was Lucy Childs and was ill enough to think she was someone else. The reader and Louisa are always certain that she is Louisa and not someone else. Even if it was just a quick bout of such an identity crisis, that little touch would have made a great book even greater.

Normally I wouldn't notice this, but it happened so many times throughout the novel that it stuck out like a sore thumb: if someone wronged Louisa at some point, they are screwed at a later point, like her older brother Tom and the attendant Weeks. This made me giggle because I remember seeing an item on a Mary Sue litmus test one that went just like that. Louisa certainly isn't a Sue, but the thought of that item came to mind and refused to leave. it didn't count against the book either; it was just fun to keep count of how many times it happened.

5 stars!

What am I reading next?: Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead (but if I cannot finish the novel by the afternoon of December 7th, the next book I review will be Last Sacrifice by the same author because that is the day I get it and when it comes out. I fangirl Richelle's books like you have no idea.)