Review: Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

Dear blog,

I'm sorry I haven't done any posts in over a week.  I was ill last week, and so I was incapable of writing anything vaguely intelligent about the books I had read.

Summary (from Goodreads): For Nick Pardee and Silla Kennicot, the cemetery is the center of everything.

Nick is a city boy angry at being forced to move back to the nowhere town of Yaleylah, Missouri where he grew up. He can’t help remembering his mom and the blood magic she practiced – memories he’s tried for five years to escape. Silla, though, doesn’t want to forget; her parents’ apparent murder-suicide left her numb and needing answers. When a book of magic spells in her dad’s handwriting appears on her doorstep, she sees her chance to unravel the mystery of their deaths.

Together they plunge into the world of dark magic, but when a hundred-year-old blood witch comes hunting for the bones of Silla’s parents and the spell book, Nick and Silla will have to let go of everything they believe about who they are, the nature of life and death, and the deadly secrets that hide in blood.

Review:  I was quite looking forward to reading this book before I started it as I'd read a lot of positive reviews and there was a good deal of hype buzzing around cyberspace about it.  And although when I started the book I did have some reservations about it, once things got going I really enjoyed it.

It was quite a refreshing sort of book, and it seemed quite different from a lot of the paranormal novels that I've read.  It was certainly a lot darker than some of them.  Also, it pleased me that the romance between Silla and Nick wasn't the centre of the story. 

I wasn't so sure about either Nick or Silla at the beginning of the story, just because the way they came together seemed a bit... clichéd.  Girl with a dark, tragic past; mysterious new boy in town with some dark secrets of his own; it seemed a little overdone.  Also, there was very little distinction between their voices. As a general rule I love books with multiple or alternating points of view, but there isn't much point to them if you can't tell who's talking.  The only thing that gave me indication as to who was telling the story was that Nick swore more. Still, they were both pretty cool characters, and aside from their pasts and the way they came together, they weren't really flat or boring.

While I'm talking about Nick and Silla, I had better talk about their relationship. This is one of the things I wasn't so keen on.  It was just so...rushed, like just because fate seemed to have an awful lot to do with how they came together, they didn't really need to take that much time to initially get to know each other.  One week after they met each other they're already together and he's calling her "babe" all the time? Really? Speaking of which, I really didn't like the "babe" thing.  It made me cringe.   But, aside from those things, they were pretty sweet together and got on well.  There was none of that stalking and watching-you-sleep-at-night business. Also, Silla continued to have a life and pursue hobbies (I feel like I read a lot of books where the main character has no other interests except, well, her love interest) and wasn't one of those characters who must spend all day and all night with her loved one.

The writing style is another thing that I'm not so sure about.  The way that the story flowed from one thing to another was fine, but I don't think some of the word choices were the best, especially with some of the similes, for instance "My brain whirred like a toy helicopter" and "...Like I was being flushed down a toilet" and the metaphor "He was Mephistopheles, smiling and tempting me, his Dr. Faustus, to dance."  Comparing breathlessness to a broken air mattress kind of interrupts the flow of the story, and left me pondering the awkwardness of it for a minute.

It's a pretty dark book, and not at all for the faint-hearted.  I didn't have much of a problem with this because I'm not generally a squeamish person, although I do think that the beheading/killing of the rabbit was unnecessary and really added nothing to the story.  Small, fluffy animals should not die for no apparent reason.  Anyway, it was quite toe-curling and deliciously creepy in some places, and totally one of those books to read in the middle of the night with a torch. The whole book drips with  is full of blood, curses and possession.  I also liked the extracts from Josephine's diary; it didn't make much sense in relation to the story at first, but then as the story went on and more secrets about Nick and Silla's pasts were revealed, it seemed to be a lot more involved in the plot.  Speaking of the plot, it has a totally excellent twist, which was way too cool.  Also, the tension throughout the book really built up to the conclusion, which was entirely enthralling. I couldn't put the book down for the last 150 pages.

So, aside from a few things here and there, I really enjoyed Blood Magic.  Tessa Gratton is a promising author and I look forward to reading more from her.

In three words:  exciting, dark, promising.

recommended for: Girls who don't mind blood.

Rating: 3.5

Thank you to Random House UK for sending me a copy to review.

Another Ten Books I Absolutely Can't Wait For

Dear Blog,
I haven't done one of this posts in an insanely long time, it seems. Well, I should.  Because there are a lot of books that I'm looking forward to that are released later on in the year or in 2012.
So. Without further ado.


The Diviners by Libba Bray- Libba Bray= possibly my favourite historical fiction writer.  New York City in the 1920s = possibly one of my favourite eras. The summary on Goodreads tells me it will be "a wild new ride full of dames and dapper dons, jazz babies and Prohibition-defying parties, conspiracy and prophecy—and all manner of things that go bump in the neon-drenched night."  All I can say is oh my God yes.  Bring it on.

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins- companion novel to Impulse, and is released this autumn.  And look at that cover.  It's so delicious, I could eat it. In fact, when I get a copy I may well have to do so.

Smoke by Ellen Hopkins-Another Ellen Hopkins.  This is a sequel/companion novel to Burned, the ending of which was intense  but very vague.  I haven't heard much of a synopsis about Smoke, either, and it doesn't come out for a good while yet, so we'll see.

 A Million Suns by Beth Revis- Goodreads is killing me. Although it shows the cover, which is by the way absolutely gorgeous, all it says as a synopsis is "The plot of this book is a mystery."  Aaaaargh I want to know what happens right now *explodes*. 

The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges- Russia.  1888.  Teenage debutante and member of the nobility who is also a necromancer. Need I say more?  I must have this book.   

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver- Although I dislike the cover (maybe it will tie in with a paperback cover of Delirium?) which is nothing like that of its predecessor, I am totally looking forward to reading this. The ending of Delirium was so intense and dramatic. However. If there's a love triangle of sorts in this book, I may well scream and rip my hair out, because honestly I dislike nothing more in books, especially when couples go together as well as Lena and Alex and then some unnecessary other character is thrown into the equation for drama.

Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe- I've probably said before that although I haven't taken ballet lessons for about seven years, I still absolutely love ballet and I just about died when I went to see Swan Lake in London last year.  So when I heard about this book, I was like, Yes!  Also, apparently it's a novel in verse.   Double yes!  There aren't half as many of these sorts of books as there ought to be.

All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin- Even though I wasn't too into Elsewhere, this book does sound interesting. Among other things that intrigue me about this book, I cannot imagine a world without chocolate, i.e the one this book is set in, and it would be interesting to see how the human race functions without the food of the Gods.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin- So, so, so much excitement for this book. I don't really know much about it, because the synopses  I've read have been rather mysterious.  Which probably just adds to my anticipation.  

 

 The Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon- I was initially interested in reading this book because it was discovered on Harpercollins' YA writing site Inkpop, which I was a member of until I forgot my password various other commitments lead me to stopping being addicted to so many websites.

 Although it's true I don't tend to enjoy a lot of the paranormal romances I read, there's very little YA set in Ireland so I look forward to reading some that is. 

Also, the cover intrigues me.  The girl on the front looks both like she's being dragged up and pulled downwards at the same time.

So, there you go.  Are you looking forward to any particular releases at some point in the future?  Any of these?

That's all for today.  Over and out.

In My Mailbox 22

Dear Blog,
IMM is hosted as ever by Kristi of The Story Siren.

This was another week in which my taste in books led me further afield than the local library.  I went to the Great Big Library in the centre of town, which is full of Exciting Shiny Novels I couldn't dream of finding in the library closer to home. 
Also, I've been reading a lot more recently.  Of late I'd kind of been in something of a reading slump; that doesn't seem to be so much of the case any more.  Maybe it's because I'm finding more books that I truly want to read, or my tastes have changed slightly.
Excuse the random bottle of water in the picture.  My desk is a mess at the moment, but left long enough it will clean itself.

BOUGHT

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

LIBRARY

We by Yegevny Zamyatin [currently reading]
Le Bal by Irène Némirovsky [read; next week's Foreign Language Friday post] 

The Plague by Albert Camus

Junk by Melvin Burgess

So that was my bookish week.  What about yours?

Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Dear blog,
book 2 of my attempt at the 2011 Debut Author Challenge.  Be warned: this will no doubt be a very confusing review in which I'll probably contradict myself a lot.

Summary (from Goodreads): Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.
Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next. 
Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

Review: If you've been stalking me  reading my blog for a little while, you'll know that I've been interested in reading Across the Universe for quite some time. But I guess as I read more and more good reviews, I became kind of curious about whether or not it was really as good as everyone said it was.  Surely, if there are that many good reviews of it, my own opinions couldn't live up to it?     And I do have something of a love-hate relationship with young-adult dystopian novels at the moment.  Nowadays there are so many of them, and often I end up finishing them and pondering on their originality, or a lack thereof.  I'm still wondering whether it falls into the category of sci-fi/dystopic novels I like and those I don't.

The construction of the ship Godspeed, and the way it functioned, seemed pretty well made.  Your first thought might be that there's only so much that you can have happen on a spaceship, but Beth Revis proves the reader wrong. It's all happening on the Godspeed- there are different levels of class, a secret level of the ship, mind control (sort of...), a mating season , and a ton of other interesting secrets to boot. Oh, and there's a different accent/dialect on the Godspeed, which might seem like a small thing but to me is pretty important if it's done well. I am so going to use "Frex" as an alternate curse word.   One thing: for all the intricacies of Godspeed, it would be nice if we had heard a little more about what was happening on Earth that made it quite so awful.  We get a vague impression: greedy multinational corporations are sucking away everyone's money and such, but that's it.    A little more background to that would be good.

Something I can remember finding fault with in Delirium that comes into play in Across the Universe is that there's no one section of the brain for every emotion.  The same goes for this book, in which certain genes can be put into certain people's DNA to modify their intellect, creativity etc.  Though I said before I am no scientist, I'm sure this isn't how it works.  Are there any neurologists/doctors reading my blog?  Can you clarify this for me, please?  Much appreciated.

Aside from her "flaming red hair", which made me roll my eyes, Amy made for a  pretty readable main character.  I guess my only reservations about her are how perfect she is.   At the start of the book, she seemed pretty self-centred a lot of the time. Maybe that's just because of all the crazy stuff that was happening her but by half-way through the book she seemed to have learned how to roll with the punches. From then on she was more likeable. 

As for Elder...hmm.  I'm not sure whether I like Elder or not.  The initial way he and Amy meet is creepy in a perverted sort of way: more I cannot say because I don't really want to give anything away, so I didn't really want to like him for that.  But there were some moments when he seemed particularly witty or sweet in his certain sort of way, that I couldn't help but liking him more.

Across the Universe is a fantastically suspenseful book, and the pacing is flawless the whole way through, so you're never left wondering whether it's worth skipping forward to the next interesting scene. They're all interesting scenes, and not a word is wasted. The setting makes for some pretty claustrophobic and intense moments throughout.  The ending was...crazy, for a lack of a better word.  One villain meets his demise, another appears as if out of nowhere, and  the novel finishes in the sort of satisfying way where things seem sufficiently wrapped up for now, but there's still an element of curiosity to it and some more questions that need to be answered.  I do wonder if you could get a trilogy out of it, but it would certainly be interesting to see how Amy and Elder live out the rest of their lives on the Godspeed.
So, is it what I hoped it would be?  Not really, but I'm still glad I read it. We'll see how things go in book two. 

In three words: inventive, tense, anticlimactic.
Recommended for: girls who love dystopian fiction.
Rating: 3.

Review: The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney

Dear Blog,
I know I've been terrible at reviewing on a regular basis lately.  Sorry.  I've just been so very busy, and still trying to get over my can't-be-within-several-metres-of-intelligent-fiction phase.  Thankfully I think that The Iron Witch is what's pulled me out of it. 

Summary (from Goodreads):  Freak. That's what her classmates call seventeen-year-old Donna Underwood. When she was seven, a horrific fey attack killed her father and drove her mother mad. Donna's own nearly fatal injuries from the assault were fixed by magic—the iron tattoos branding her hands and arms. The child of alchemists, Donna feels cursed by the magical heritage that destroyed her parents and any chance she had for a normal life. The only thing that keeps her sane and grounded is her relationship with her best friend, Navin Sharma.
When the darkest outcasts of Faerie—the vicious wood elves—abduct Navin, Donna finally has to accept her role in the centuries old war between the humans and the fey. Assisted by Xan, a gorgeous half-fey dropout with secrets of his own, Donna races to save her friend—even if it means betraying everything her parents and the alchemist community fought to the death to protect.

Review: Before I say anything else- the cover. Look at it. Observe the pretty patterns on Donna's arms and the matching spirals around her and the beautiful font.
*eats cover*
Ahem.  Moving on.
 This is the first book I've read as part of the 2011 Debut Author Challenge, and I was pretty excited to read it after seeing many other good things going round about it. And it certainly doesn't disappoint. 

My favourite thing about the book is, undoubtedly, Donna herself.  From the opening I was like "She's home-educated!  Score!  But, wait- she wears mysterious gloves, and has a dark past, resulting in her being home-educated. She's at a party, yet everyone thinks that she's a freak.  Why is this?  And did I mention that she's home-educated?"  
Relatively normal people probably don't find the whole home-education thing incredibly exciting, but as I've mentioned a few times I've only read novels about home-educated teenagers [re-]entering formal education, not the other way round. 
Not once did I think there was anything vaguely Mary-Sue-ish about Donna.  She is the ideal female protagonist; she's capable and utterly kick-ass, but at the same time she's not afraid to admit she needs help. I mean, at times she needs it.  She's incredibly well-written.

And while I'm on the subject of the writing style.  The third person intimate can often end up being, well, not very intimate, and actually sounding kind of boring.  However, Karen Mahoney executes it perfectly, as if the only thing stopping the narration being directly from Donna's point of view was the fact that the words Donna/her/she  replaced I/me. 

I suppose one thing that I'm not sure I was so keen on was the way that Karen Mahoney opens the story. Donna knows about her life, natch, and the Orders and alchemy and her past; but the reader doesn't. We- id est, the reader- seems almost thrown into the deep end, then having things revealed little by little as Donna explains the mysterious marks on her arms and her past to Navin and Xan; it's clearly explaining things for the readers' sake, and for the most part I frown on that because it tells instead of shows.
That said- and I know I'm totally about to contradict myself here- it made a nice change from the worn-out plot line where the girl meets the mysterious brooding amorous material who reveals to her all her magical powers/past lives/insert other plot line here. Instead she was telling the mysterious brooding amorous material and her best friend about her past and her family.

Speaking of the two boys in the book, Navin and Xan. I both thought they were great, for various reasons.  I've heard a bit of debate about who is ultimately better, à la Peeta/Gale, Ash/Puck, etc. To which my response is How could you compare the two?
Navin is her best friend, and indeed suitable sidekick material, with a lot of jokes to hand for comic relief and amusing banter. And, of course, he's always there for Donna.   Oh, and yay for Asian/Indian characters, too.  Kudos to Karen Mahoney for including diversity (diversity other than elves and faeries, obviously, which is certainly, um...diverse ).  No no, I mean actual human diversity. In general there was something so very refreshing about Navin, and that was that he wasn't in love with her. That role fell to Xan.
Xan was also a breath of fresh air.  It seems like YA novels these days is incomplete without aforementioned brooding love interest.  I had my reservations about him at first, but his generally friendly characteristics became more and more obvious as the novel went on.  He made Donna happy- I suppose then that that made me happy for her, too. 

As for the plot and pacing, there's really nothing bad I could say about it, once Donna got a couple of things straight with the reader. You get the impression that even though at the conclusion everything seems  (sort of) resolved, it's definitely  not over.  And for that I'll definitely be reading the next two books, The Wood Queen and the Stone Demon.

Oh, and one thing; I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that Karen Mahoney's actually English, despite the fact that The Iron Witch is set in the States. I totally didn't realise this.  Transatlantic surprise.  In a good way.
In three words: refreshing, intriguing, page-turning.
Recommended for: girls who like urban fantasy.
Rating: 5

Big thank you to Random House UK for sending me a copy for review.

my 2011 Debut Author Challenge List

Dear Blog,
well, it's that time of year again when the 2011 Debut Author Challenge is hosted by The Story Siren.  So I thought I'd better make a list of all the books I plan to read next year.

Before I start, I had better mention that so far my attempt at the 2010 Debut Author Challenge has been something of an epic fail.  Mostly because I didn't join until April, and to be frank it's been ridiculously hard to get hold of most of the books I've been wanting to read for the challenge, they've all been in hardback and the postage is extortionate.  That said, I have three books on my shelf I'm yet to read and I've just bought two more from Amazon, so I haven't entirely given up.

Anyway. I haven't been put off by this, and next year with those extra four months (and hopefully some more money) then I'm up for partaking again.  Hence,  so far my list is:

• Across the Universe by Beth Revis
• Awaken by Katie Kacvinsky
• Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetis
• Clarity by Kim Harrington
• Entangled by Cat Clarke
• Exposed by Kimberley Marcus
• Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard
• Other Words for Love by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
• Posession by Elana Johnson
• Rival by Sarah Bennet Wealer
• So Shelly by Ty Roth
• What Can't Wait by Ashley Hope Perez
• XVI by Julia Karr
• The Iron King by Julie Kagawa (this, while already out in the States, hasn't yet been released in the UK, so it can count towards my attempt at the Challenge)

I suppose that I'll add more if I find out about any more awesome-sounding books.  And when I read the books I'll edit the post by marking ones I've read with italics or some such.

Well, until then I had better start saving.  I'll have a lot of postage to cover.