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Friday, January 31, 2014
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fiction-fantasy
Publisher: William Morrow Books
Not much needs to be said about this book.
1. It's a Neil Gaiman. If you like Gaiman, you'll like this. If you don't like Gaiman, you'll probably like this. It's that good. Though be sure to put on your thinking cap and your weird shoes, but after all, as I said-- it's Gaiman.
2. Listen to the audio book. Really. I mean it. LISTEN TO THE AUDIO BOOK. Gaiman narrates. He's amazeballs. His narration has more atmosphere than any of the audio books I've read in the past year combined. If his author gig fails, I think he has a career as a audiobook reader. That voice!
3. The story is simple, poetic and gorgeous. It's also creepy as hell. Gaiman's descriptions and use of language are just...I don't even know...completely captivating.
4. In fact, everything about this short little book is captivating. I'm not even going to tell you what it is about, because honestly it doesn't matter. The story is beautiful and interesting, but it's all about the ATMOSPHERE, like I said.
5. Go, read it.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Review: These Broken Stars
Author: Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Genre: YA/Science Fiction
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Goodreads
Amazon
A very enjoyable read. It didn't have me glued to the page which is why I didn't give it five stars, but it was solid. There was also the teeny tiny over use of the phrase, "he/she couldn't help but wonder," which annoyed the crap out of me. That is a really a really stupid reason to feel annoyed with a book, but I couldn't stop thinking about Carrie Bradshaw and her Sex in the City voice-over narration every time it came up.
Okay...back to the book.
Lilac and Tarver the only survivors of the Icarus after a crash landing on an uninhabited, alien planet. There was a good amount of set up before the crash, which I appreciated because otherwise there was NO way I was buying Lilac not ever even being able to talk to men because her psycho father kept sending them into active war zones if she did. I had to keep reminding myself that this is supposed to be an alternate reality where the social classes are experiencing a truly ridiculous divide-- think French Revolution type differences. Serious problems in this reality. So, we've got a snooty little rich girl and a rags to riches war hero and of course...they fall in love.
I love a good survival/love story. There's the constant tension of keeping themselves alive coupled with a good reason to spend most of the book in each others' company. Lilac is a pain in the a** at the beginning of the book, but soon develops into a fighter. Tarver is the tough, survivor-type, but he gets a chance a role reversal when Lilac has to take care of him.
This book is told in alternating points of view, there are two authors, so the POVs are distinct and believable. There's also some world building, it's not spectacular but it is passable. There definitely could have been more information and building around the different social classes since that was the real conflict for our couple being together.
The best bit is when the reader is unsure what is happening with the life (or lack of life) on the planet. It gets a little creepy, nothing like visions and hearing voices to add a little intrigue.
The pull for this book is really how the characters grow and change and become good for each other and it doesn't hurt that it has a HEA.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Review: The Winner's Curse
Author: Marie Rutoski
Genre: Young adult fantasy
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Click here for the first five chapters on Kindle.
This novel is thought-provoking and deliberate. I enjoyed it and I want to the next book in the series sooner rather than later. I didn't give five stars because I felt like there was purposeful distance between the reader and our two protagonists, Kestrel and Arin. The distance I felt was probably due in part to the fact that both Kestrel and Arin are both very stoic characters, deliberate in their actions and their thoughts, but I still felt I couldn't get close enough to them to really understand everything that they were doing. Sometimes I felt like I was on the outside watching them, inside of right there with them. It was told in the third person, alternating between Kestrel and Arin. Another strange thing was the that when Arin's perspective was first introduced he is referred to as "the slave." This was because the reader hadn't yet been given Arin's name so we only knew that he was a slave and not much else about it, but it was still a bit jarring. I don't think it would have been as confusing if it were a third person narrator telling us about him, but the 3rd person perspective was supposed to be from the Arin and Kestrel's perspectives, respectively.
Another thing that contributed to the distance between reader and the characters is that there is a lot of implied communication between the two of them. While this made the novel feel smart and intriguing, it also didn't allow me to feel a lot of intimacy with the the characters.
Both Arin and Kestrel as intelligent and calculating, excellent at reading other people, both strategists with complicated agendas which are not always clear either to the reader or to each other. These implications make the book both intriguing and sometimes frustrating. Intriguing because you want to keep reading, because you don't really know what Kestrel's ultimate plan is, or who Arin is really. Lots of agendas here. Lots of subtlety from the author.
Rutkoski writing is quite brilliant. She leads you through her story and the world that she has created without being heavy-handed. There is a lot to consider in this novel. It is a story about loyally, ownership and slavery. There is a lot that is provocative about its exploration of slavery and what it means for both the owner and the owned. Kestrel struggles with the idea that she owns slaves and more importantly that she owns Arin-- in fact she bought him herself-- she is no bystander to the act of slavery, she actively chooses to participate. But a lot of Kestrel's behavior is dictated by the rigid rules of her society. Her situation is complicated by the fact that she is the daughter of the Empire's top general. There's not a lot of room for her to rebel, or dissent without completely going AWOL. Though she struggles with the idea of slavery as accepted by her society, parts of her don't agree. She is a rebel, but at first a passive one.
Once love enters into the mix and all bets are off. (But don't get too excited, while this is a "romance" there is very little true romancing going on here.) The tables get turned in the middle third of the book and the master becomes the slave. That's where things got a little jumbled for me. Both Arin and Kestrel are fighting so hard against each other, what they want and what they believe, that is becomes a bit trying. I could understand them both, but I also just wanted them to make a decision. But I guess that was really the point of the thing, they are star-crossed lovers.
The ending redeems the book. For me it wrapped it up and made it a four star read and not a three star. This is how a book in a series should finish. The central conflict is resolved and a secondary conflict is left undone making you want to read the next book. I was glad that there wasn't a cliffhanger, or an "ending" that resolves nothing and just stops in the middle of the story-- that seems like has been happening with more and more books recently. Here we get good closure. The kind of closure that makes clear, finally just want the characters mean to each other and they lengths they will go to for one another.
ARC copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This novel is thought-provoking and deliberate. I enjoyed it and I want to the next book in the series sooner rather than later. I didn't give five stars because I felt like there was purposeful distance between the reader and our two protagonists, Kestrel and Arin. The distance I felt was probably due in part to the fact that both Kestrel and Arin are both very stoic characters, deliberate in their actions and their thoughts, but I still felt I couldn't get close enough to them to really understand everything that they were doing. Sometimes I felt like I was on the outside watching them, inside of right there with them. It was told in the third person, alternating between Kestrel and Arin. Another strange thing was the that when Arin's perspective was first introduced he is referred to as "the slave." This was because the reader hadn't yet been given Arin's name so we only knew that he was a slave and not much else about it, but it was still a bit jarring. I don't think it would have been as confusing if it were a third person narrator telling us about him, but the 3rd person perspective was supposed to be from the Arin and Kestrel's perspectives, respectively.
Another thing that contributed to the distance between reader and the characters is that there is a lot of implied communication between the two of them. While this made the novel feel smart and intriguing, it also didn't allow me to feel a lot of intimacy with the the characters.
Both Arin and Kestrel as intelligent and calculating, excellent at reading other people, both strategists with complicated agendas which are not always clear either to the reader or to each other. These implications make the book both intriguing and sometimes frustrating. Intriguing because you want to keep reading, because you don't really know what Kestrel's ultimate plan is, or who Arin is really. Lots of agendas here. Lots of subtlety from the author.
Rutkoski writing is quite brilliant. She leads you through her story and the world that she has created without being heavy-handed. There is a lot to consider in this novel. It is a story about loyally, ownership and slavery. There is a lot that is provocative about its exploration of slavery and what it means for both the owner and the owned. Kestrel struggles with the idea that she owns slaves and more importantly that she owns Arin-- in fact she bought him herself-- she is no bystander to the act of slavery, she actively chooses to participate. But a lot of Kestrel's behavior is dictated by the rigid rules of her society. Her situation is complicated by the fact that she is the daughter of the Empire's top general. There's not a lot of room for her to rebel, or dissent without completely going AWOL. Though she struggles with the idea of slavery as accepted by her society, parts of her don't agree. She is a rebel, but at first a passive one.
Once love enters into the mix and all bets are off. (But don't get too excited, while this is a "romance" there is very little true romancing going on here.) The tables get turned in the middle third of the book and the master becomes the slave. That's where things got a little jumbled for me. Both Arin and Kestrel are fighting so hard against each other, what they want and what they believe, that is becomes a bit trying. I could understand them both, but I also just wanted them to make a decision. But I guess that was really the point of the thing, they are star-crossed lovers.
The ending redeems the book. For me it wrapped it up and made it a four star read and not a three star. This is how a book in a series should finish. The central conflict is resolved and a secondary conflict is left undone making you want to read the next book. I was glad that there wasn't a cliffhanger, or an "ending" that resolves nothing and just stops in the middle of the story-- that seems like has been happening with more and more books recently. Here we get good closure. The kind of closure that makes clear, finally just want the characters mean to each other and they lengths they will go to for one another.
ARC copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Review: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah McLean
Rating: 3 stars
Author: Sarah Maclean
Genre: Historical romance
Publisher: Avon
Amazon
Goodreads
I keep trying with Maclean's books because I love the out of the box premises, troubled heroes and plucky heroines. This was no different. The set up was great, very intriguing: a man framed for a murder he didn't commit and a woman with a forged identify. Also our hero, Temple, is a fighter. He boxes for the gaming hell The Fallen Angel. He's never lost a fight. This was all vey intriguing, right up to the meeting between our heroes, but I got a bit lost in the angst. And boy was there a lot of angst. Rightfully so, there was a lot to cover: Mara's troubled, secret past, Temple's demons over losing his life as a Duke and place in society. And of course, of course the characters can't just come out and say what they feel, so that takes up most of the book. Mara fighting with herself about her feelings for Temple and her reason for coming to him, showing that she's really alive and demanding money in exchange for revealing herself to the world.
In fact the whole conflict is predicated Mara's inability to tell Temple why she needs the money. It is not, as Temple believes, just to save her brother from financial ruin, but rather because her brother frittered away all of her money for the running of her orphanage as well. So really, she could have saved them all a lot of trouble if she would have come out with the "secret" about 40%, naturally. And her rubbish excuse for not doing so and dragging their nonsense out for pages and pages is that Temple upon first discovering her alive says, "nothing you could do would make me forgive." Well that obviously a load of bollocks, Mara knows it and the reader knows after a few more interactions between. The two of them can't keep their hands off each other, they keep finding excuses to see each other and they really like each other, from the get-go. I just got irritated with them running from each other for the whole book.
This makes it seem like the book. I did like it. I think that Maclean writes well and her characters are always dynamic and out of the ordinary. I think the real problem for me is that I enjoyed Nine Rules For Romancing a Rake so much that I just hold all of her other books to that standard. If you like a dark hero, some angst in your historical, this one is for you.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Review: This is What Happy Looks Like
Author: Jennifer E. Smith
Genre: YA Romance
Publisher: Headline
Goodreads
Amazon
More of a 3.5 rating. I really liked the beginning of this book. It started off gangbusters-- I was pulled right into the writing and the characters. I think beginning the book with emails was a great move, different and interesting. Smith does a nice job with the movie star meets and falls in love with-one-of-the-common-folk trope. Graham and Ellie were both very three-dimensional characters. The setting, a small coastal town in Maine was gorgeously done.
In other books where the hero is a famous person, I've never really "gotten" why it was so rough to be in their shoes. I usually think, yes it sucks that they are being chased around by the press and that they have to live under a microscope, but really, wasn't that what they signed up for when they decided to become celebrities? With Graham though I could understand how he was feeling and why he was feeling this way. The fame just sort of snuck up on him all of a sudden. One thing led to another and suddenly, sort of without warning he was famous-- and lonely and isolated. I really felt for him.
Ellie...well I felt for her as well, but not as much as Graham. I understand the "secret" bad idea, and why she felt she had to keep it a secret, but it got old for me pretty quick. After her first angst filled decision to back away from Graham and his fame for personal reasons I was behind her, but when she kept doing it, again and again, it got old.
The reason that this book got demoted from a five-star read to a three point five star was that even though Graham and Ellie came to really understand each other by the end and got their happily ever of a sort, but I didn't really feel it. There was something lacking the whole last half of the book with regard to their connection. After their first encounter and all their emails, I was expecting them not to be so typically teen-angsty, all muddled in their own emotions. In the last half of the book, they kept finding reason after reason why they couldn't see each other and had to keep rushing off to deal with other things in their lives. The things they were dealing with, especially Ellie, were no doubt important, but it seemed to detract rather than add to the central plot which was the story between Ellie and Graham. I guess I got the rationale for why the author included these things, but it wasn't the direction that I thought the story should go in. It stopped being the happy little love story and tried to go in a different direction-- one that I just wasn't feeling.
Just the same it was a pleasant little read and I recommend it.
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