2012 Young Adult Reading Challenge COMPLETED!

Oh hooray!  Another challenge down!  I'm feeling accomplished this year.  Not to mention I'm super close to finishing my Off the Shelf challenge as well.  The one that I failed to complete last year.  Hooray again.  I'm going to go throw more accomplishment at myself.  In the meantime you can check out my YA challenge list here.  Some of those books feel like I read them so long ago but it's been mere months.  Not to mention it helps to have the memory of a gnat on meth.  Or not.

Beyond by Graham McNamee

Pub date: September 11, 2012.

Author website.

Jane is not your typical teen. She and her best friend Lexi call themselves the Creep Sisters. Only Lexi knows why Jane is different from anyone else: Her own shadow seems to pull her into near-fatal accidents. Jane is determined to find out why these terrifying things happen, and to overcome her shadow enemy. Her sleuthing with Lexi connects her own horrors to the secret history of a serial killer.  (netgalley.com)

Hooray for YA horror!  Love it.

BEYOND taps into an aspect of horror that involves genuine creep factor.  It's not about how much gore the scary thing can create but just how scary it can be in and of itself.  Personally a shadow, YOUR shadow, that tries to kill you is pretty high up there.

Jane has been subject to a slew of horrific "accidents" all of her life, the most recent of which involve her shooting a nail out of a nail gun and into her head.  All because of her shadow.  Death has surrounded her her entire life.  Literally her entire life.  She was a still born that was resuscitated.  And for as long as she's known her shadow has been there trying to get her to kill herself.  I don't want to give too much away because I think the reasons behind all of these incidents are truly creepy and give new meaning to a near-death experience.  It's not all bright white light and happiness for some people.

Jane's a solid character that you can immediately get on board with as a reader.  Despite all of her insane accidents, and despite the rumors attached to her as a result, she leads a relatively normal life in terms of her own views of it.  She's not paranoid or overtly macabre.  She's grown so used to being so close to death that she's developed a nonchalance about it.  Almost a boredom.  She wants it gone already.   She wants to lead a REAL normal life, not just one where she tries to toe around a piece of her that's actually trying to kill her.

Lexi is the objective third party in the equation.  She fills in the gaps with Jane's lack of vision thanks to her sleep deprivation.  She serves a purpose, really.  I didn't like her nor dislike her.  I really didn't feel much either way.

But kudos to no love triangle and really no relationship at all!  Much to Jane's chagrin but that plays too much into the plot so I won't divulge.

BEYOND is another good addition to the YA horror market, adding in a decent ghost story where there's definitely a hell of a lot of room for it.  It'll make you look twice at your shadow and wonder what it's doing behind your back.  The notion of it thinking at all is pretty horrifying if I'm honest.

Ban Factor: High - Horror gets filed automatically high.  In this instance it's thanks to a killer shadow, a nail in a brain and a creep that buggers boys.

After the Snow by SD Crockett

Published March 27, 2012.

Author website.

Fifteen-year-old Willo was out hunting when the trucks came and took his family away. Left alone in the snow, Willo becomes determined to find and rescue his family, and he knows just who to talk with to learn where they are. He plans to head across the mountains and make Farmer Geraint tell him where his family has gone. 

But on the way across the mountain, he finds Mary, a refugee from the city, whose father is lost and who is starving to death. The smart thing to do would be to leave her alone -- he doesn't have enough supplies for two or the time to take care of a girl -- but Willo just can't do it. However, with the world trapped in an ice age, the odds of them surviving on their own are not good. And even if he does manage to keep Mary safe, what about finding his family?  (goodreads.com)

There are very few stylistic things that'll keep me from reading a book.  One is stream of consciousness.  Holy crap, even though we may not thing COMMA our natural thought process still involves pauses and full stops.  Let's use some punctuation.  Another is phonetic voice.  And I'm not talking about a few lines of dialogue; I mean the whole damn book written phonetically.  Personally I think it lends to a very clunky, awkward reading experience that's slow and labored and ultimately has me focusing more on how to say the words I'm reading than the story itself.  This is the only reason why I won't read BLOOD RED ROAD.  I don't care how good it is.  I can't read phonetic voice.  This has been a personal preference for over a decade now and thankfully it's very rare when I come across it.

Imagine my surprise when I open the pages of my ARC for AFTER THE SNOW.  I had zero indication that this could have been phonetic.  Had I known I would have absolutely passed on reading it for review.  It's just not a style I can swallow.  And AFTER THE SNOW is in a very southern voice so after a couple of pages Cletus made his way into my head and wouldn't get out.  I couldn't get past the voice.  In the couple dozen pages I tried to read I can't even tell you what happened.  I don't rightly know.  But the language is so embedded in my brain that I can't get rid of it.

The best example of why I just can't read this -

But he's my dad, like I said, and you got to respect your dad I reckon. My mum got dead when I been a baby still scrieking in my ass rags. That happen a lot up in here when the snow been deep and your breath freeze in the air. But Magda live with Dad now, up in our end of the house. Magda's in charge of the little kids, and I don't envy her that job. If it been me, I'm gonna bash them all.  (ARC page 6)

No.  Just . . . no.  I'm sorry.  No.  Not only is it incredibly stereotypical but it's overwhelming.  I can't read an entire book written like this and be expected to focus on anything other than the pronunciation of the words themselves.

So it's a DNF for stylistic reasons.  It could be the greatest story in the world.  I can't get past the phonetic voice.  Based on how popular BLOOD RED ROAD is I'm guessing a lot of people can.  Have at it, I say.

Ban Factor: Unknown - I could barely get past the words as they were written let along figure out what the hell was going on in the plot.

The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long

Pub date: August 16, 2012.

Author website.

The trees swallowed her brother whole, and Jenny was there to see it. Years later, when she returns to the woods where Tom was taken to say goodbye at last, she finds herself lured into a world where stunning beauty masks the most treacherous of evils, and strange and dangerous creatures await-creatures who seem to consider her the threat. Among them is Jack, mercurial and magnetic, with allegiances that shift as much as his moods. Determined to find her brother, with or without Jack's help, Jenny struggles to navigate a faerie world where nothing is what it seems, no one is who they say, and she's faced with a choice between salvation or sacrifice-and not just her own.  (netgalley.com)

Okay, this must be a joke, right?  This is my second book in just as many weeks that I've loved so much that I need to check myself.  That I need to reign myself in and feebly attempt to keep myself from blathering on like a ridiculous, incoherent fangirl.  Is someone screwing with me?  Because I can barely handle the awesome right now.  Barely.

The thing with THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS is that not only is it a wonderfully honest story but it's filled with glorious WORDS!  Words here, there and everywhere!  Some of the most amazingly wrought words I've found in YA to date and it has revived my hope that YA still strives for quality, that YA readers have a taste for finely written words that read like listening to the most intricately woven concerto you've ever heard.  In reality Long is Irish and let's face it, the people on that side of the pond have a tendency of weaving words of a higher quality as the Brits and Irish have a higher breadth of understanding of the English language than us Americans do.  Don't believe me?  I consider myself above average in the intelligence department.  But nothing made me feel like a dumb effing American like sitting in an English (and I mean in London, English) classroom as the lone Yank and listening to them wax poetic about Derrida and Glas as if they'd been studying it since they were two.  So yes, when it comes to the written word I believe those guys are just inherently more loquacious than us.  I mean, c'mon.  Have you MET Sya?

So reading THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL things has me floored to the point of drooling on myself.  I can haz language?  Here, have some words -

07/25

page 27

7.0%

""She stared at another dart in her hand. She could see it clearly. Too clearly. The end finished in feathers, tiny strands of thread tying them to the shaft in intricate knotwork. She reached out with her other hand - huge and fumbling - and tugged it out. It was topped with a tiny, perfectly formed flint arrowhead. Her own blood glistened on it, and on her skin a red pearl formed around the wound.""

07/26

page 116

30.0%

""It started like a warm summer breeze moving through the trees in late afternoon, a whispering voice in the forest itself. Jack lifted his face to greet it, closed his eyes and inhaled. Sweet summer flowers, all thing in the fullness of life … and beneath it, decay, the moment where everything began to eat itself away.""

07/31

page 203

53.0%

"People, just people, he tried to tell himself. It looked like a sketch done by a child, and yet at the same time, profoundly powerful, as if a great hand had reached down from the sky - or up from the earth - to scour its mark into the land, long brush strokes that glowed with light when the moon spilled over it."

08/02	page 367		96.0%	"A sound came from her, something between a scream and a clogged drain."
08/01	page 270		70.0%	"Every story, all those tales she loved as a child, all her escapes … were they all twisted and changed to something dreadful here? And yet, wasn't that where they came from, all the oldest tales, from blood and pain and misery?"
07/31	page 218		57.0%	"Dreams, some might call them. Lies with a kinder name."

WORDS! GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS WORDS!  These words painted such a stunning visual setting throughout the story that my life lost sound when I was reading.  I was sucked directly into this fairy world and when I put the book down I often had to blink myself back into reality, rub the world out of my eyes and reorient myself with my surroundings.

With that being said the story isn't without it's faults.  Jenny is naive to the point of aggravation, making deliriously stupid decisions for the sake of being nice.  Seeing as how I literally just read Kat Kennedy's review of this title, being on Goodreads to collect the WORDS samples and her review was right on top so of course I HAD to read it and now I can't get it out of my head, dammit, she is very right in saying this is in line with old timey fairy tales that center around a virginal MC with the fairy world standing for hedonism that the maiden must fight against with every ounce of her being.  This is very true of THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS.  Jenny is reminiscent of a Disney princess with virtue flowing out of her ears, throwing self preservation to the wind and ultimately defeating evil with her wiles of love and caring.  It is a sickly sweet story and the pretty chick on the cover in the white tulle dress is actually relevant and it's literally playing out a scene in the story.

With that being said the events that Jenny went through are exceedingly brutal.  There is absolutely no shortage of character screwing going on here.  Jenny does not go in one side of this story and come out the other without some dirt under her fingernails.  Look at the first quote I have above and what page it's on.  Literally from the beginning Jenny is being abused and I love it so.  While she is unabashedly representative of a pure, light-filled queen she gets the high holy crap kicked out of her in the process.  She does suffer from Damsel in Distress Syndrome (DDS) and her requirement of being rescued runs some other characters rather ragged but I was so thrilled with the WORDS and the brutality of the situations that I could easily overlook the fact that I wanted to slap Jenny around for some of the things she did.

The fairy world is true to form in terms of its contradicting beauty and horror.  Couple that with the WORDS and you can only imagine what kind of scene Long is setting.  I was a little less thrilled with the Jack/Jenny relationship simply because it's a deviation from an otherwise seemingly accurate depiction of Fae, especially since Jack didn't have a heart.  Literally.  I found his fascination with Jenny odd.  If it had remained purely business that would have been one thing but I was a little uncomfortable with it's development.

On the adverse side and to completely throw a wrench into my own opinion of the relationship I like where it went.  I like the role reversal Jack and Jenny went through by the end of the book.  While it didn't completely cancel out Jenny's DDS and her unyielding naivety it softened the blow to something more palatable and I was ultimately rooting for them by the end.

If you're looking for a more true-to-form fairy tale that isn't shy about it's own brutality but at the same time really sticks to its own morality path throughout you'll find it in THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS.  But above and beyond that it's so incredibly beautifully written and Long has such an amazing way with words that you'll be mesmerized by the lyrical prose the second you start reading.  Jenny isn't really your kick ass heroine.  She makes some incredibly dumb decisions for the sake of being nice and she needs to be rescued more often than not but when the situation calls for it Jenny stands on her own.  She has more strength than what the story allows her to have and while she's wrapped in this virginal shroud of old fairy tales there's a modern fierceness about her that I think will appeal to someone looking for a story about a girl persevering, setting her mind on something and not backing down until she gets what she wants.  It's a story of ups and downs and you ultimately need to decide how you're going to process it.

That's another great thing about THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS.  It's a story with so many avenues of thought that you don't have to settle on just one.  I absolutely agree with Kat's assessment of it but I personally believe it's so much more and that Jenny is just so much more than merely a bastion for virginity.  She proved herself within the story.  She could have said 'screw you guys, I'm going home' numerous times throughout and Jack would have gladly escorted her back to the Edge but she didn't.  Bringing her brother home was her number one objective and not even Jack could come between her and her brother.  She made some really crappy decisions and her DDS showed A LOT but she made some really good decisions too and I applaud her for them.

Ban Factor: High - Pagan-ness.  So much Pagan-ness going on.  Fairies and old gods and witchy queens?  Oh noes!

YAckers Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Published September 27, 2011.

Author website.

Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.


When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?  (goodreads.com)

DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE ended up being a mixed bag for us YAcks.  I personally went into it thinking I'd love it so hard I'd slather the book in drool.  I was mistaken.  For many the appearance of Akiva was a total buzzkill and Madrigal is something most of us could have done without.  While the consensus was that the writing was pretty and filled with WORDS there was a bit of distance, to one degree or another, but it was supplemented by lovely world-building and some intriguing characters that require more face time in the sequel.  Lucky for Angie she wasn't the lone downer of this book, as she was totally expecting to be.

Steph (one of Sya's minions) was Keeper of the Book this month but seeing as how the YAcks have spawned their own website, we're all congregating over there now.  LOOK!  And just for visiting you get a bonus YAcked book, inadvertently slaughtered by us.  Sorry, THRONE OF GLASS.  You lose.

Ban Factor: High - Anything that bastardizes Christianity is an automatic fire starter.

Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

Pub date: August 7, 2012.

Author website.

It's been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can't move on.

His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they're right, but in Cas's eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.

Now he's seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he's asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong...these aren't just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.

Cas doesn't know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn't deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it's time for him to return the favor.  (netgalley.com)

Now my main issue with GIRL OF NIGHTMARES is not turning into a blithering fangirl idiot in this review.  But that's going to be really hard because it's horror and YA and unforgiving and AWESOME.  I'll try, though.  I'll try.

This time around Cas, for the first time ever, is trying to be a normal teenager.  He has stayed in the same place for nearly a year and will even renew his tenure at his current high school.  A never for him.  As a result he's attempting to date (thanks to Carmel) and move on from the whole Anna issue.  Except she's not letting him move on.  Cas starts seeing her everywhere and it gets to a point where he starts questioning his sanity.  Lucky for him his marbles are all where they should be and something far deeper, and grander, is going on around him.

Blake doesn't spare punches in GIRL OF NIGHTMARES.  While it doesn't have the feel of "truer" horror (as in the genuine scare factor involved) to me there's still an unyielding, unforgiving horror to her storytelling that'll slot it in with the rest nicely enough.  Blake is unforgiving with her gore, the trials she puts her characters through and the means they need to meet in order to achieve their ends.  And she does it with such well-timed snark that I'm in awe of it.  It's not forced, it never feels like a contrivance and it fits in genuinely with it's surroundings.  Said snark is used sparingly but in just the right moments that it hits perfectly and it left me giggling more than once.

I had an issue with Cas referring to Anna as his girlfriend.  That's just a level of morbid that surpasses even my rather effed up capacities.  And it's also rather sad that the only girl Cas felt he could have a connection with was a murderous dead one.  I felt sorry for him on a few different levels but at least the entire story was realistic about it.  Yes, he referred to Anna as his girlfriend.  Creepy.  But it didn't delude anything.  There was no talk about bringing her back to fleshy life so her and Cas could live happily ever after.  Cas knew she was dead; Anna knew she was dead.  Different planes of existence.  Full stop.  Patrick Swayze got off back in Albuquerque.

I also had problems with Cas's mom and whether I was supposed to think of her as a good mom for letting Cas do his thing or a bad mom for letting him do his thing.  Probably one of the main reasons for them having to move so often was if they stayed in one place Cas's mom would have the Department of Children and Families wedged so far up her ass she wouldn't be able to walk.  At the rate he keeps ending up in the hospital (he tripped and fell into a campfire?  might as well just make him walk into doors too) all signs would start to point to child abuse.  But he's Cas and following in his dad footsteps and this is the family business blah blah blah.  But I really wanted his mom to be a real mom and be like, "EFF THAT.  You're grounded."  She wasn't though.  She made her candles and enabled his behavior and cleaned his wounds.  I don't know how I feel about that.  She fit the story and if there were a contrivance here she'd be it.  Luckily for the story as a whole I was able to suspend my disbelief enough to tuck it back.  She's not very prominent and I was so caught up in the action that I wasn't able to dwell on it long enough anyway.

There were tears at the end so beware.  It was shocking.  I kept trying to guess where it was going to go but, as you know, I kind of suck at that so I was nice and surprised by the ending.  It was unexpected and refreshing in that it didn't pander to the "norm" in YA.  All the more reason to love Blake.  She writes her story and everyone else be damned.  This is it and nothing else.

GIRL OF NIGHTMARES was an excellent continuation of the ANNA series.  Well worth the wait and not at all disappointing.  Just the right amounts horror, gore, fear, tears, snark and sass, GIRL OF NIGHTMARES hits all the right places at all the right times.  YA needs more horror and I'm so incredibly happy that Blake is a contributing factor to even that imbalance out.  It's nominally free of romance (except for Cas's, um, issue, I guess) but it has some hidden angst found in the likes of Thomas and Carmel, the comic reliefs in what is otherwise a pretty dark story.  I have no doubt GIRL OF NIGHTMARES will be a hit and will have people salivating for more ANNA.

Ban Factor: High - We see things getting tortured.  Shit comes back from the dead.  There are swears.  It's all over, folks.

The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal

Published January 25th, 2011.

Author website.

Princess and heir to the throne of Thorvaldor, Nalia's led a privileged life at court. But everything changes when it's revealed, just after her sixteenth birthday, that she is a false princess, a stand-in for the real Nalia, who has been hidden away for her protection. Cast out with little more than the clothes on her back, the girl now called Sinda must leave behind the city of Vivaskari, her best friend, Keirnan, and the only life she's ever known.


Sinda is sent to live with her only surviving relative, an aunt who is a dyer in a distant village. She is a cold, scornful woman with little patience for her newfound niece, and Sinda proves inept at even the simplest tasks. But when Sinda discovers that magic runs through her veins - long-suppressed, dangerous magic that she must learn to control - she realizes that she can never learn to be a simple village girl.


Returning to Vivaskari for answers, Sinda finds her purpose as a wizard scribe, rediscovers the boy who saw her all along, and uncovers a secret that could change the course of Thorvaldor's history, forever.  (goodreads.com)

I really liked THE FALSE PRINCESS.  I wasn't blown over by it but it was good.  YA needs more good books like this.  I'm not asking for much; not all books need to have me squealing with joy.  But if I came across more genuinely good books like THE FALSE PRINCESS I'd be a hell of a lot happier reader.

One, it's a stand-alone fantasy.  Let me say that again: STAND-ALONE FANTASY.  These things are about as common as unicorns at bus stops.

Two, the story is great.  Nalia/Sinda gets ousted as the false princess right from the get-go and even while I hardly knew the character I was just as thrown by the whole event as she was.  And I knew it was coming!  But it was the reaction of the king and queen, these two people that raised this false child, effectively casting her out with nothing so they can bring in their own kid.  Nalia/Sinda who was functioning as prophecy bait, a peasant sacrifice JUST IN CASE the prophecy came true to be discarded after she was no longer useful.  It's heart-wrenching.  And it's that single event, right in the first chapter, that pulled me into Sinda's character and kept me hooked on her plight.

Three, Sinda's pretty awesome.  The fact that she fared as well as she did once she was booted out of the castle was amazing.  But even despite her strength she was still naive, at times pig-headed and rash, especially when holes started unraveling and smoke started to lift from the world.  At her irrational moments she had her irrationality thrown back in her face only to make more irrational decisions as a result.  But everything she did, despite what her loved ones said, she did because of a higher order.  This thing was far more important than the saving grace of some peasant girl: her.  Although the disposable notion stuck in her head was likely a result of being thrown out like kitchen trash by people she thought were her parents but it fueled the story.  Hey, I can handle some conveniences if they make sense.

Four, Kiernan is the type of love interest all other YA love interests should aspire to.  He has no desire to see harm come to Sinda but he doesn't do things for her because "it's for her own good."  When things get too insane for him he actually says so and steps away.  He knew better than to try and hold Sinda back.  As if he even could.  Plus he was a life-long friend first and foremost.  No insta-love here!  And no love triangle.  Hooray!

Five, have I mentioned it's a stand-alone?  The ending was a bit of a shock; I certainly didn't see it coming (although I've admitted it before and I'll admit it again, I'm pretty dense when it comes to seeing this stuff in books) but the majority of the loose ends tied themselves up nicely by the end of it all.  It was almost a touch too saccharine but I was okay with it.  Of course there were a couple of threads hanging.  There's so much more of Sinda's magic that could be explored.  Someone could take advantage of the court discord, prompting a new quest for her and Kiernan.  But there was such a high satisfaction level to the ending that I find so incredibly rare in YA that I found myself wholly fulfilled.

The fantasy is a bit low with the use of magic and perhaps the oracles being the extent of it and the world is your standard medieval-type fantasy land but it's a good story with pretty awesome characters. I'm sad that there isn't more to THE FALSE PRINCESS but in the same vein it's so nice to have a stand-alone, let alone a fantasy stand-alone, that I will be incredibly happy with what I get.  It's just plain good.

I'm adding THE FALSE PRINCESS to my Summer Blast Giveaway!  If you want your chance to win it be sure to enter!

Blog Tour: Skylark by Meagan Spooner

Pub date: August 1, 2012.

Author website.

Vis in magia, in vita vi. In magic there is power, and in power, life.

For fifteen years, Lark Ainsley waited for the day when her Resource would be harvested and she would finally be an adult. After the harvest she expected a small role in the regular, orderly operation of the City within the Wall. She expected to do her part to maintain the refuge for the last survivors of the Wars. She expected to be a tiny cog in the larger clockwork of the city.


Lark did not expect to become the City's power supply.


For fifteen years, Lark Ainsley believed in a lie. Now she must escape the only world she's ever known...or face a fate more unimaginable than death.  (Meagan Spooner)

SKYLARK is a bumrush of intensity from the very beginning, throwing Lark Ainsley into the middle of what is rightly a conspiracy theory that few, if any, deign to think about.  Carolrhoda Lab comes through for me again, delivering a story that doesn't let its protagonist get away with a damn thing and makes sure she suffers from beginning to end, forcing her to earn every right she obtains for herself.

The world itself is vaguely familiar, giving hints that it could be our Earth but it might not be, cloaked over with fizzling bubbles of magic that keep people human.  Lark lives in one such bubble artificially generated by what she thought was harvested magic from children but what it turns out to be is a person, or people if the government is lucky enough, thought extinct, regenerating their energy and having it constantly siphoned off of them for the purpose of fueling the city.  And Spooner isn't shy about giving you details so if your stomach lies a little on the weaker side you might want to skim through some of the passages detailing what Lark sees, and what ultimately happens to her.

What I especially loved about SKYLARK was that every time I wanted to slap Lark for being dumb someone else was there to do it for me in the story.  One of my favorite quotes?

"You can't come crashing into the wilderness, half-starved and wholly incompetent, and imply I'm some kind of monster for keeping your skin intact."

 This is Oren and he had me going YES!  Logic makes my brain waves happy.  And when Lark first tumbles out of the city, out from under an artificial sky and under the real one, the depth of her discomfort is so excellently portrayed that I couldn't help feeling her fear of the sky on Lark's part.  There's something to be said for something so simple being so brilliantly portrayed.  It's the sky.  It's something so totally natural but Spooner tapped into aspects of Lark that are otherwise difficult for authors to access.  I believed every second of Lark's fear for the sky as if I were living it myself.  If that's not good writing I don't know what is.

The greater story arc, the one about the city parasiting power where they can, spurning some giant conspiracy theory, isn't a wholly original one and I definitely had moments of comparing it to AVATAR (the blue people movie, not the airbender movie), where a seemingly primitive people are harvested for what they can provide to the more "advanced" people, read: seemingly stronger.  But it's the way it was written that kept me hooked.  The world is an amalgam of steampunk and fairy, melding the two together in this clinking hybrid that was both organized and chaotic, with machines making nature frightening and the absence of magic dementing a person beyond human recognition.  And where the story ends is just the beginning for Lark as she desperately comes to terms with herself before she loses herself entirely.

The steampunk is exceptionally light but I do think steampunk fans would be won over by its use and the same goes for the fairy/magic aspect.  But combine the two and they're a thundering driving force throughout the story, neither existing without the other in some fashion.  Lark is a strong yet at times nonsensical heroine that's trying to get by on her own strength but recognizes her weaknesses.  She admits to her faults, begrudgingly, and at times lets her heart lead instead of her brain.  If you start reading SKYLARK for any kind of romance stop now.  You won't really find it here and what is there shatters to infinite pieces the definition of romance.  Really if you're looking for something inherently familiar and grounded in a reality that's both within reach and fantastical with a character made strong by her situation and forced to stand on her own (most of the time) then you'll find it in SKYLARK.  Let me tell you how refreshing it is not to have a YA novel of some kind of fantastical type NOT focused on romance.  Like being able to breath after being bound in a corset, let me tell you.

Ban Factor: High - Magic in a maybe-not-earth with no hint of a religion other than the magic that is the source of a city's power?  Ha!  Banned!

Meagan Spooner grew up reading and writing every spare moment of the day, while dreaming about life as an archaeologist, a marine biologist, an astronaut. She graduated from Hamilton College in New York with a degree in playwriting, and has spent several years since then living in Australia. She's traveled with her family all over the world to places like Egypt, South Africa, the Arctic, Greece, Antarctica, and the Galapagos, and there's a bit of every trip in every story she writes. She currently lives and writes in Northern Virginia, but the siren call of travel is hard to resist, and there's no telling how long she'll stay there. In her spare time she plays guitar, plays video games, plays with her cat, and reads. She is the author of SKYLARK, coming out August 1 from Carolrhoda Lab/Lerner Books. She is also the co-author of THESE BROKEN STARS, forthcoming from Disney-Hyperion in Fall 2013. (author blurb)

Stay tuned for an interview with Meagan herself and a nifty swag giveaway coming up later today!

Faking Faith by Josie Bloss

November 8, 2011.

Author website.

Dylan Mahoney is living one big unholy lie.


Thanks to a humiliating and painfully public sexting incident, Dylan has become the social pariah at her suburban Chicago high school. She's ignored by everyone--when she's not being taunted--and estranged from her two best friends. So when Dylan discovers the blogs of homeschooled fundamentalist Christian girls, she's immediately drawn into their fascinating world of hope chests, chaperoned courtships, and wifely submission.


Blogging as Faith, her devout and wholesome alter ego, Dylan befriends Abigail, the online group's queen bee. After staying with Abigail and her family for a few days, Dylan begins to grow closer to Abigail (and her intriguingly complicated older brother). Soon, Dylan is forced to choose: keep living a lie . . . or come clean and face the consequences.  (goodreads.com)

ALBATROSS set the bar pretty high when it came to Josie Bloss books so when I had the opportunity to review FAKING FAITH I jumped at it.  While it definitely didn't disappoint it didn't have the same impact for me as ALBATROSS did.  The latter had excellent timing (I'd just read TWILIGHT and it's anti really spoke to me) plus I connected with it on a deeply personal level.  FAKING FAITH was good; it was eye-opening but it took a pretty big suspension of disbelief to really get into the plot.  A teen faking her way into a fundamentalist Christian home?  I'm pretty sure they would have been able to sniff her out almost immediately.

Dylan screwed up royally, against the advice of her friends and her little inner Jiminy Cricket screaming at her that her uber-hot douche boyfriend was all wrong.  She ends up being a social pariah in a way I thought was a bit forced: in a drunken stupor she blows off her friends for this boy.  Instead of recognizing the act as just that, a drunken idiocy, her friends take it to heart and things escalate from there.  Blowing off happens, shunning occurs and then Dylan's relationship blows up in her face and she's all alone.

For some insane reason she retreats to the world of fundamentalist Christian girl bloggers and their seemingly far simpler way of living.  I can half understand something like that.  They live such an isolated life, free of cell phones and high school and all the other machinations of the modern age.  What Dylan doesn't really comprehend until she takes on the persona of Faith and visits her online friend's farm is that that kind of living comes at a price and she effectively shatters pieces of a family with her ignorance of their world and her insistence of hers.

It's very Lifetime movie-esque and your standard friend make-ups happen at the end.  Dylan realizes her life isn't terrible and sometimes simpler isn't better.  But what kind of bothered me, and I'm going to play devil's advocate here, is how the fundamentalist life is portrayed as ultimately wrong.  Yes, Abigail's father was a controlling dick that reveled in being the master of his domain.  Beau, Abigail's intended, is a creeper that needs to have his junk cut off and the women are 100% subservient to the men, subject to doing only womanly duties and being married to someone her father chooses only.  Yeah, those things suck.  But this is a belief system.  In this world we live in now we view it as wrong.  Women are strong, independent beings that can make our own choices in life.  I mean the Crusades were fought because one set of people felt another set believed the wrong thing.  Bam!  War.  What happens if this kind of structure is what's holding these people together?  What if releasing them into the greater world is what unravels them?  Is their belief system still wrong?  Yes, Abigail was clearly not looking forward to her life with Beau but she stood by her convictions.  This was what was right FOR HER.  Dylan didn't understand that.  Hell, I don't understand it.  But it's HER choice.  She is actively making it even with Dylan sitting there offering her help on a silver platter.

The book painted really good juxtapositions between Dylan's and Abigail's family.  Yes, the fundamentalist Christians are extremes (arranged marriage?  really?  NOW?) but they are a cohesive family unit.  The children were far better behaved than many "normal" children, they ate meals together, the survived together.  They functioned as a unit.  Dylan's family had every freedom of the modern world but they barely knew each other.  Family time?  Right.  Sure they sat at the same table to eat cereal but there were always laptops and smartphones involved.  Dylan even points these polarities out and it's something she came to really love about Abigail's family despite their faults.  As a result Bloss really begs the question: which is the correct life?  Or is it something in between?

FAKING FAITH is a novel that will definitely make you think.  It paints the extremes as very extreme but neither are without their pros or cons.  You see the happiness of both and you see the pitfalls of both.  There is a slant, of course, but I'd think it'd be hard to write something like this without swaying at least a little.  It's a good contemporary with it's crux centering around the pervasive notion of the internet and how is can ruin people.  How running and hiding from your problems only manifests all new ones.  How the only way to fix things is to confront them head on.

Like I said, very Lifetime but still a good story if you can tuck back the notion that Dylan can lie her way into someone's home like that to begin with.  Another extreme but I don't think it was handled too absurdly.  Her obsession with the online culture was portrayed far better, I think, but the plot needed Dylan to immerse herself in it wholly. And she did.  At least it worked out in the end.

Ban Factor: High - This book basically destroys the ideal life of the religious right, read: banners.  No likey.

I'm adding FAKING FAITH to my Summer Blast Giveaway so if you want a chance to win it be sure to enter!

What We Keep is Not Always What Will Stay by Amanda Cockrell

Published June 8, 2011.

Author website.

Fifteen-year-old Angie never used to think much about God--until things started getting weird. Then Angie falls for Jesse Francis, a disabled war veteran who's a lot deeper than most high school guys. But Jesse is battling major demons. As his rages grows more frequent and unpredictable, Angie finds herself losing control of the situation.  (goodreads.com)

Well, Soldier Boy has completely invalidated this entire book.  Look, it's not 1941 and you have sixteen-year-olds bluffing their way into the military so they can go fight the good fight.  The reality is no one without a high school degree or its equivalent is getting deployed.  It just doesn't happen that way.  So considering the entire basis of this story centers around Jessie going back to high school at nineteen to get his degree AFTER a deployment, it's pretty much screwed.  Now this was either one of two things on the part of the author: laziness a la SMeyer in not doing the research or willful omission to serve the plot.  Neither, in my eyes, are good.  Yes, you can enlist while still in high school.  You can even go to boot camp between your junior and senior year.  But once you graduate . . . let me say that again: ONCE YOU GRADUATE, your ass isn't going anywhere until you get the required training and THEN you get deployed.  See, the military is a regular job.  If it were listed in the classifieds it'd require a high school diploma or equivalent.  They're not going to get anyone without some kind of degree into any kind of potential leadership position.  I'd like to think they wouldn't let them around such heavy artillery either.

On top of that I'm not a fan of how PTSD was portrayed either.  Just a little of my background, I'm the daughter of a Special Forces Vietnam veteran, the girlfriend of a twice deployed Army officer Afghanistan veteran and I have a slew of friends and family that fall into the category of Veterans of Foreign Wars.  And I can assure you I have never once, ever, witnessed someone drop under a table because of a loud noise or flip the fuck out on someone because THEY JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND.  You see, people have a tendency of canonizing soldiers because of what they do.  The thing is, soldiers are culled from regular people.  What's mixed in with regular people?  Douchebags.  Thusly there are also douchebags in the military.  The uniform or what war they fought in doesn't exonerate their douchiness.

So we have Jessie that's the Hollywood textbook example of PTSD (*shakes fist at Hollywood*) (when in reality PTSD is mostly more subtle but things like insomnia just don't drive enough drama) when it comes to flashbacks but he also spouts off random shit at Angie when she gives opinions on more political things.  But he's been through a lot.  He's a bit bi-polar too and towards the end of the book hints are dropped that he may have some kind of head trauma but it's never fully realized.  And he's a bit of a would-be rapist as he tried to rip Angie's pants off of her while she fought him off.  But she can't possibly call the cops because HE'S BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH ALREADY.  *headdesk*

Jessie is a douche.  Dick.  Jerk.  Fuckface.  But every single character in this book excuses his actions because he's a vet and HE'S BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH.  Even Angie as she had to kung pow her way away from a future rape kit in an emergency room excuses his actions because HE'S BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH.  And this line of thinking is never remedied.  The moral of the book is basically vets can get away with anything because THEY'VE BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH.  Want to become a rapist?  Then join the military and people will excuse you for it.  NO.  NO NO NO NO NO.  Jessie is a dickbag.  Period.  I don't give a flying monkey's fart what he's been through.  It doesn't give him the right to be a total dick to people.  It doesn't give him the right to force himself on women.  Oh . . . but . . . he might have had brain damage . . . MIGHT.  Never realized.  Never proven.

And the thing is as the reader you have NO IDEA what Jessie was like pre-war.  No clue.  He could have been a total nut job.  His pre-war life is never discussed in detail except when Angie's mother mentions how nice of a guy he was.  Yeah.  People said the same thing about Ted Bundy.  Next?

So even before Soldier Boy invalidated the entire premise, I wanted to light the book on fire for it's message.  What's even worse, at the end Angie keeps a memento of Jessie to remember him by.  DID YOU FORGET HE TRIED TO RAPE YOU?  But he's been through so much . . . ^%%^(&$(^@@!

Bad message.  Bad, bad, bad.  People can have severe PTSD.  Soldiers have come home and murdered their spoused because they found out they were being cheated on while they were deployed.  That's why adultery is a felony in the military.  It's a trigger for total shit lost.  So yeah, some people can have pretty bad PTSD but thanks to Hollywood, this kind of dickbaggery is looked at as normal.  It's not.  Jessie is just a dick hiding behind PTSD as an excuse to act how he pleases.  That's pretty much it.  And people let him do it.  Because he's been through so much.

Look, I don't care what uniform a person wears.  If they're a dick, they're a dick.  A uniform isn't going to absolve them of that.  A soldier doesn't deserve to be canonized simply because they're a soldier.  Because then you start canonizing douchebags like Jessie and it just gets ugly.  Soldier Boy HATES people like this simply because they're usually faking it to mooch off the government.  In his experience.

As for the rest of the book, I felt like I was reading a twelve-year-old's diary.  It proved for a quick read but the language was scant, leaving nothing to the imagination.  Angie kept wandering off into little tidbits of random information like the Jerry Maguire kid.  I kept expecting her to spout off about the weight of a human head at some point.  Most of her inane ramblings were irrelevant to the plot and more about her day to day life, hence the diary.  It was pretty real in that it was as boring as a teenager's day-to-day life probably normally is but that doesn't really prove for good reading.  A lot of the time she was a whiny brat nagging about getting her mom and step-dad back together or being schizophrenic about Jessie and her feelings for him.  But I will give her credit: when he starts railing on her in public she does stand up to him.  She tells him he's embarrassing her and won't speak to him because of his actions.  But ultimately she gets suckered back in because he NEEDS someone and she's just that person to mend his broken self.  Even after he tries to rape her.

Saint Felix, or the homeless guy that plays him, is somewhat the voice of reason in the whole story, dropping tidbits of advice throughout.  He integrates himself in with Angie's family rather easily and personally I'd be a bit creeped out by it but okay.  There are a few things that don't make sense here so what's one more?  But even when Jessie goes completely bonkers he maintains his placid stoned hippie motif and just spits out veiled comments that merely allude to Jessie's overall troubles, like he's broken.  No shit.

WHAT WE KEEP is an easy read but I found it more infuriating than not.  I hated the message it portrayed and considering none of it could have actually happened my suspension of disbelief is blown.  It's a contemporary.  I'm supposed to be able to believe the major elements of the plot.  If you want to make stuff up write a fantasy.  Otherwise keep it real.  Really.

Ban Factor: Medium - Banners tend towards the far right.  Those people like the military.  So the fact that this book canonized military personnel might be in its favor.  But the insinuation at underage sex, even if it's forceful, might be too pornographic for them.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Pub date: August 7, 2012.

Author website.

Looking for the teen girl version of Game of Thrones? Find it in this sweeping fantasy debut—that already has thousands of loyal online fans.

After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.


Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king's council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she'll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom.


Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilirating. But she's bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her... but it's the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.


Then one of the other contestants turns up dead... quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.  (netgalley.com)

For help with this review I'm going to shamelessly employ the use of Tom Hiddleston's face.  It's come to my attention that he emotes rather well and his Loki faces will greatly enhance my feelings about this book.  Shall we begin?

"Teen girl version of GAME OF THRONES?"  Um, yes please.  How excited was I for THRONE OF GLASS?  I'm at a point in my life where I'm feigning some serious fantasy.  Like GOOD fantasy that gives me writer envy and encourages me to write my own work.  So of course I snapped this one up.  Why wouldn't I?

I began reading and I was a little touchy.  The character seemed a bit much but of course I'm going to keep reading.  I'm only a handful of pages in.

06/12

page 9

2.0%

"I'm definitely interested but I'm pretty much over the super awesome heroine with fantasmagorical skills of death. We'll see where this goes."

Except I didn't like where it was going.

06/12

page 11

3.0%

"Okay, okay, authors? Can we please stop with the "this guy's a total douche but he's sooooooooo hot" bullshit? PLEASE? If a guy chains me in shakles and makes me a slave I'm not going to think him "achingly handsome." I'd want to chew his pretty boy face off. Gah! These forceful hints at romance are contrived and unnecessary."

Within a span of two pages I've already become enraged.  I am not a romance reader.  I've said that many, MANY times.  But if you're going to insist on giving me romance in books that I am willing to read, at least make it make sense.  At this point I'm starting to twitch.

06/12

page 11

3.0%

"Wait…what?? Two pages ago you weren't going to feel embarrassed by being dirty because that's WEAK and now, under the eyes of supreme royal hotness, you are ashamed of yourself and bemoan your "miserable state for a girl of former beauty"??? Head, meet brick wall."

And we are ALREADY deviating from character. Eleven pages in.  Super strong raging assassin bitch I DON'T CARE IF I'M DIRTY I HATE YOU ALL to OMG DON'T LOOK AT ME I'M HIDEOUS!

Apparently Celaena is unintentionally bipolar.  So we have some character issues  I can handle that.  She's not too Sueish so far.  I've read far worse . . .

06/12

page 11

3.0%

"OMG OMG OMG I can't do it. Not only is she a super awesome, highly trained assassin but we get a paragraph about the gloriousness of her beauty? Excuse me. I'm going to go stab my expectations to death followed by a hunt of PNR for DARING to bleed into fantasy."

06/12

page 12

3.0%

"And she was rich. Anything else? I don't want to give up after 12 pages. I WON'T give up after 12 pages."

06/12

page 12

3.0%

"She single-handedly killed 24 people in her escape attempt? O_o *facepalm*"

I just . . . is this for real?  Is this pompous little tart really for real?  From the 100 pages that I've read Celaena's only flaw is hubris except 99% of the time it's only validated.  Twelves pages.  I'm TWELVE pages in.  But no!  I'm going to keep trying!  I must!  Because surely they're going to keep treating her like the prisoner that she is!  Because anything else would just be contrivance and we can't possibly have MORE of that, right?  RIGHT?

06/12

page 13

3.0%

"Okay. If this girl is so insanely sooper speshul deadly, and they all know it, why isn't she bound up like Hannibal Ledger instead of being able to move in shackles, giving her the opportunity to "kill the prince in a second?" More importantly, if she's so sure of her skills why doesn't she actually take the opportunity instead of just running her brain about it?"

DAMMIT.

WHY is she being given her own rooms when they're so super afraid she's going to murder everyone?  (And that's supposed to be Lecter, by the way, stupid autocorrect).  WHY is she being given a mirror?  Oh wait . . . obviously that CAN'T BE SHATTERED AND USED TO GO STABBY ON PEOPLE.  WHY does she get a fork but not a knife?  BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW FORK TINES ARE HARMLESS.  In reality if this chick were so phantasmagorically awesome at killing she'd be treated as such.  She wouldn't be put in shackles that she can move around in, because obviously she can do a lot with just an inch.  She doesn't need the whole mile.  And she certainly wouldn't be getting a pretty room.  She's end up stuck next to that dude that Yahtzee's on everyone walking by.

On top of all of this Celaena apparently has the mental capacity of a twelve-year-old, asking inane questions and then name-calling when she's not pandered to.

06/12

page 26

6.0%

"The Captain of the Royal Guard is unkind for not wanting to humor and arrogant 18-year-old as she talks endlessly about her awesomeness? How horrible he is, truly."

06/12

page 28

7.0%

"Punch her, Chaol. She deserves it. Nice to know she's an arrogant ass and a petulant child. How can one be the supreme pizza topping assassin and have the mentality of someone five years younger than her? I guess maturity and assassinry are mutually exclusive."

Oh hey, you're still talking?  You need to shut up now.  Although I will say Chaol was a pretty good guy from what I read.  He really didn't put up with Celaena's crap and her ensuing pissy fits as a result amused me.  She actually called him mean for not responding to her.  Meanie McWeenie!  Nyah!

But wait!  There's more Sue!

06/12

page 31

7.0%

"And she's magic too? This wasn't forshadowing WHATSOEVER."

At this point I'm filled with so much chagrin I don't even know what to do with myself.

From the super Sue to the plot devices of epic proportions to situational contrivances that are so blatantly obvious Helen Keller can see them I just couldn't go much further.

06/12

page 33

8.0%

"You are a piece of baggage to him, you dumbass. You are a slave serving a purpose. Did you expect high fives all around?"

06/12

page 38

9.0%

"Of course. What would the story be without the douchebag love interest POV as he softens and sees her as something more than a thing to use? Sigh."

06/12

page 39

9.0%

"Of course she totally empathizes with the slaves' pain. She feels SO BAD. And she totally ditched them to he the king's pawn, live in luxury and go back to killing. But she feels you, dog."

She gets you, man.  *giggle*  She's going to go weasel her way into someone's bed now.  At this point it's not very clear whose she'd like to end up in.  Chaol is obviously helping her out and we all know how indebted characters are to those that help them.  But then you have your I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE HIM BUT HE'S SO EVILLY HOT character that'll probably be the wrong choice for her and she'll realize it somewhere down the line when she realizes he can't really read after all.

06/12

page 39

9.0%

"1) Oh look, a blooming love triangle. 2) The palace is really made of glass? Is there no hail in this world? Or are we talking safety glass? I can only imagine the amount of birds flying into it."

06/12

page 42

10.0%

"This makes zero sense. They're anal about her escaping and going on a murdering spree so instead of putting her in a bare room they give her loads of opportunities in not one furnished room but five. Holy contrivance, Batman! Of course we can't have the pretty girl in a dirty cell anymore."

06/12

page 42

10.0%

"Of course she has a mirror. Because it can't be broken and the shards used for a stabbing spree. Urg."

06/12

page 50

12.0%

"Of course. What better way to ensure the young assassin doesn't get the mind to plot her escape than to give her a tour of the castle? NOTHING CAN COME OF THAT. How the Captain and the rest of his entourage haven't tripped and impaled themselves on their own swords is beyond me. Although I will say TSTL secondaries is refreshing. Usually that's reserved for the protagonist."

Damn right it's madness.  A gas station is less self-serving than this.  I'm not a fan of worlds bending to characters.  If you have a character they need to exist within the confines of that world, be it fantasy or otherwise.  When your plot starts serving your character I start getting cranky.  If she's some crazy bitch assassin THEN TREAT HER LIKE A CRAZY BITCH ASSASSIN.  At the tournament she gets a plain room/cell with ZERO opportunity to get all assassin-like.  But when you get self-serving like this, the entire thing, from the world to the characters, gets inconsistent and you end up reading a story of hypocrites that say one thing and do another.

06/12

page 56

13.0%

"Oh no. Mean girl competition. Couldn't see that coming."

06/12

page 64

15.0%

"Okay, so NOW she grows a conscience about being a hired murderer? She who's so proud if her Assassin title doesn't want to kill at the beck and call of the king? Is the the wielder or words or is this a step away from people realizing Celaena is not saintlier a murderer than she'd try to convince herself?"

06/12

page 69

17.0%

"Of course there are no knives. And everyone knows no one can do damage with a fork. That's just silly talk."

06/12

page 76

18.0%

"Stop making excuses, little girl. You're not as magnificent and you thought yourself to be."

06/12

page 76

18.0%

""She knew better than anyone not to underestimate opponents based on their appearance." WTF? She just did that to all of her competitors."

Case in point.  Literally, from one page to the next Celaena is passing judgment on everyone in the room with her, belittling men three times her size to nothing and then she says she knows better than to underestimate her opponents based on looks.  How am I to trust a damn thing in this story if it's that inconsistent?  From her looks to her actions her opinions are as substantial as a tissue in the rain.

06/12

page 79

19.0%

"I find it hard to believe that Celaena lives as ling as she did being as arrogant as she is."

06/12

page 82

20.0%

"At Celaena's fine humbling moment I'm tapping out. I'm far too disappointed in the character to keep reading."

Arrogance is a crap chute.  And it usually gets people their comeuppance.    Apparently hers was just being thrown in jail and living far longer than anyone else.  Oh right.  Forgot that part.  She lived for a year in the mines, with an escape attempt, when people normally average about a month or three.  OF COURSE!

Obviously I DNF'd this one.  I just couldn't do it.  But the thing is I do wonder if I'm some kind of defective.

Is my current reading funk grossly coloring my ability to read anything?  Have I really turned into Stan Marsh and am now seeing everything as crap?  I mean Publisher's Weekly gave THRONE OF GLASS a starred review.  And even people whose opinions I trust love this title.  Is something wrong with me?  I'm definitely having a frownie face moment.  But the thing is I'm definitely seeing Suethor fic here, coloring or not.  Would I have been able to overlook it a little more had I not been in such a funk?  Maybe.  But inconsistencies are inconsistencies.  I can't NOT overlook them because everyone else loves it and so should I.  I could be wrong but, that's not my thing.  Going with the flow, not not being wrong.

I don't go into books hating them.  I was SO EXCITED to read THRONE OF GLASS I can't even tell you.  I was talking it up at BEA.  SO EXCITED.  And this is what I get.  GAME OF THRONES for the teenage girl?

Ooooo I don't think so.  I think that's aiming a bit too high.  SEVEN REALMS?  Yes, teen GAME OF THRONES equivalent.  THRONE OF GLASS?  Guys, don't feed me chuck and expect me to rave as if it were filet.  Not going to happen.  I'm not going to love something because it already had a super awesome fan base built in before it was published.  I love me my strong heroines but not at the sacrifice of logic.  Celaena is so overblown even for her world I can't take her seriously.  And the fact that her world caves to her makes me pull away from the writing as a whole.

I tried.  I really did.  But all I wanted to do was smash the thing.  I had to stop before I actually did.

Ban Factor: High - Fantasy world with no Christian influence.  'Nuff said.  The teenage assassin thing probably doesn't hurt either.