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!

Blog Tour - Jonathan Maberry, Dead of Night and Brain Eaters

I had the pleasure of getting to read Jonathan Maberry's latest, DEAD OF NIGHT, and I have to say, it's pretty freaking awesome. This man writes zombies with such finesse that you'd think they were ballerinas. Dead ballerinas but ballerinas nonetheless. Of course I jumped at the opportunity to do my part in the DEAD OF NIGHT blog tour because, well, awesome. So here is where I turn it over to Jonathan so he can wax poetic about the state of the zombie.

The State of the Zombie.

Zombies have been with us in one form or another for decades (if you go by the Romero calendar), or centuries (if you’re a Voodoo purist), or even millennia (of you track it back to the first mention of the dead eating the living in the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 18t century BC). They’re part of our culture and they’re here to stay.

But something has changed. Zombies are no longer niche market monsters that play to the gore crowd. They’re no longer the monsters you have to stop and explain to people. They’re no longer the get-no-respect also-rans in the world of the mysterious dead.

Zombies have come into their own.

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s happened.

The process started with Romero, sure. (And, yes, we all know that Uncle George did not call them zombies, but the name has stuck, so let’s move on.) Romero made the living dead flesh-eating ghoul into a cinematic phenomenon. There really hadn’t been much like it in film before Night of the Living Dead, but since then this monster has been imitated to one degree or another so many times that it has become its own unique trope. The zombie exists, and it is currently second only to vampires as a money-making monster. In 2012, financial reporters estimated that the zombie pop culture was a $5-billion dollar industry. We’re talking movies, TV shows, games, books, comics, toys, clothes, apps, and more. That figure doesn’t even touch the moneymaking machine that is advertising, where zombies have been used to sell everything from cars to clothing to sporting goods.

It’s refreshing to no longer have to tell my pop culture-impaired friends what a zombie is. Yeah, sure I still have to explain some of the back-story, and name some of the key players, but if you throw out the word ‘zombie’, people have a sense of what you’re talking about.

What most people don’t know is that there are some watershed moments in the development of the zombie trope, and not all of them had to do with Romero’s flicks.

One of the most significant turning points was the publication of Book of the Dead, an anthology of original stories released in 1989 and edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector. The stories were all set in circumstances closely approximating those of NOTLD, and it debuted less than a year after the release of DAWN OF THE DEAD. Three things about that anthology were landmark. The first thing is…that it was the first thing; the first anthology of zombie literature. Prior to this, there had been a few books –namely the novelizations of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and John Russo’s ‘sequel’ to Night called Return of the Living Dead –which was no relation in story or structure to the Dan O’Bannon film of the same name. The second incredible thing was the line-up of writers. These days you almost always see a few heavy hitters in an anthology line-up, but never for a book like this. But Skipp and Specter snagged Stephen King, Richard Laymon, Ramsey Campbell, Douglas E. Winter, Robert R. McCammon, Joe Lansdale, David Schow and a whole bunch more. The absolute A-list of that era's horror writers. And the third thing? The anthology was frigging amazing. Every single one of them.

Nor was this a fluke. Skipp and Specter scored again with Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2, with headliners Dan Simmons, Gahan Wilson, Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy Holder, K. W. Jeter, and others.

What's the upshot? Zombie fiction had suddenly 'arrived'. Or, maybe 'materialized' is a better word. With those books, Skipp and Specter proved that zombie fiction was viable, that it was commercial, that it was acceptable and that it was literature. Yeah, I used the ‘l’ word. Literature.

Without those books, it’s highly doubtful that we would have a shelf-full of zombie fiction today. Max Brooks would probably never have written World War Z, nor would Brian Keene have written The Rising. Not to mention the works of Joe McKinney, Carrie Ryan, Mira Grant, David Wellington, and others. And…me. I would be writing spooky stuff, sure, but I wouldn’t be writing about zombies. Not without the Book of the Dead.

There are a number of other landmark moments that, to one degree or another, have either fueled the fire of zombie enthusiasm, expanded the scope of the genre, or made the genre accessible to new audiences. Here are a few, and I invite you to comment with additions to my ‘Key Moments in Modern Zombie History List’. My list is by no means complete.

The Crazies (1971) –George Romero’s often ignored and overlooked classic that created the model for all outbreak flicks. This is the grandfather of flicks like 28 Days Later. The remake was pretty darn good, too.

Return of the Living Dead (1985) –Dan O’Bannon’s unofficial and highly irreverent sort-of sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Subversive and hilarious. The first time we had fast zombies, by the way.

Resident Evil –the first major zombie-themed video game, and one of the first ‘survival horror’ games, which has since become a staple of the industry. The thing about Resident Evil was –not only was it fun to play, it was actually scary. The movies that followed strayed from the storyline quite a lot, but they also invited in a massive new audience. And, hey, Mila Jovovich.

The Rising by Brian Keene. A supernatural, nihilistic, downbeat and uber-violent story about the total destruction of humankind. Brian Keene brought his considerable A-game to this project and established himself as the King of the Living Dead, a title he continued to earn with subsequent books. This was one of the very first zombie bestsellers, and it’s largely responsible for kicking of the modern era of zombie fiction. Thanks, Brian. We all owe you a drink.

The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. The million-copy bestseller that remains as the top-selling zombie nonfiction book of all time. Funny, but actually pretty damn useful and very smart. Go Max.

World War Z by Max Brooks. Get this: a hardcover, mainstream novel about a zombie war, told entirely from the point of view of an historian collection personal accounts from something that ended years ago? And it’s a massive indictment of political game-playing. There is no way this should have worked, and yet it was a hardcover bestseller for over a year, and still hits the bestseller lists in trade and mass market paperback. The audience? The mainstream. Yeah. Wow.

Monster Island by David Wellington: The first of a trilogy of novels that gave zombies a new political spin, a supernatural twist, and the elegance of literary-quality writing.

Marvel Zombies (comic book) –Robert Kirkman brought the living dead to a massive new audience by turning Marvel heroes into flesh-eating ghouls. Introduced first in Marvel’s ‘Ultimates’ alt-verse, then intruding into our universe. I was delighted to play in this sandbox with MARVEL ZOMBIES RETURN.

The Walking Dead (comic book). Come on…really? We need to even discuss how important the ongoing comic and American TVs best horror show in…like…ever?

Shaun of the Dead: The best RomZomCom ever made. Endlessly watchable, always hilarious, and it succeeds while always respecting the source material. That isn’t easy. (Okay, so let’s all meet at the Winchester).

28 Days Later –Danny Boyle’s yeah-they’re-not-zombies-they’re-only-infected-humans pandemic masterpiece did an insane amount of good for the zombie genre. I know there have been fights over whether they’re zombies or not. Who friggin’ cares? If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

Dawn of the Dead (remake): Zack Snyder scored a letter-perfect flick that took the best elements of Romero (the outbreak, the bonding/collision of disparate characters in a confined space, etc.) and amped it up by giving us fast zombies and a killer soundtrack. This is an example of what happens when high production values are assigned to a genre too many people in Hollywood considered to be ‘throwaway’.

Zombieland: the 2009 action-horror-comedy was a massive hit and is currently the top-grossing zombie flick to date.

So…that rolls us up to today. What’s the state of the zombie? It’s healthier than ever. The Walking Dead kicks ass on TV, and the comic is as strong as ever. Brad Pitt is making (a statement that always feels like a punch-line, but isn’t.) Zombies have invaded the young Adult fiction world with best-sellers like Carrie Ryan’s Forest of Hands and Teeth and its sequels; Cherie Priest’s brilliant steampunk fantasy, Boneshaker; my own Rot & Ruin series; and many others. You see zombies in TV ads almost every day. Zombie toys are everywhere. And thousands of people gather for zombie walks or zombie crawls in cities around the world.

The state of the zombie? Yeah, the meat is very fresh and we’re all hungry for another bite.

**********

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestseller and multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author, editor and Marvel Comics writer. He has written pre-apocalypse novels: Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man’s Song, Bad Moon Rising, Patient Zero, and The Dragon Factory; an apocalypse novel, Dead Man’s Song; apocalypse comics: Marvel Universe vs the Punisher and Marvel Universe vs Wolverine; and post-apocalyptic novel, Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, and Flesh & Bone. He hasn’t tackled Dystopian fiction yet…but you can pretty much assume he will. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com and on Twitter, Facebook and GoodReads.

Click here to read bonus content from Jonathan's DEAD OF NIGHT! You won't regret it! Well, except maybe in the sleep department.

Blog Tour Review: The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa + an Excerpt and a Giveaway!

Published October 25, 2011.

To cold, emotionless faery prince Ash, love was a weakness for mortals and fools. His own love had died a horrible death, killing any gentler feelings the Winter prince might have had. Or so he thought.

Then Meghan Chase—a half human, half fey slip of a girl— smashed through his barricades, binding him to her
irrevocably with his oath to be her knight. And when all of Faery nearly fell to the Iron fey, she severed their bond to save his life. Meghan is now the Iron Queen, ruler of a realm where no Winter or Summer fey can survive.

With the (unwelcome) company of his archrival, Summer Court prankster Puck, and the infuriating cait sith Grimalkin, Ash begins a journey he is bound to see through to its end— a quest to find a way to honor his solemn vow to stand by Meghan’s side.

To survive in the Iron realm, Ash must have a soul and a mortal body. But the tests he must face to earn these things are impossible. At least, no one has ever passed to tell the tale.

And then Ash learns something that changes everything. A truth that turns reality upside down, challenges his darkest beliefs and shows him that, sometimes, it takes more than courage to make the ultimate sacrifice. (netgalley.com)

Well, to be honest, this was my least favorite of the series. I didn't hate it. I didn't even not like it. I just wasn't thrilled with it (prepare for the zombie apocalypse as my twin at A Jane of All Reads had opposing feelings and when we don't agree, worlds die). Suffice it to say, I don't think Ash's is the best set of eyes to get behind. Unless you actually like the brooding spawn of Louis Point du Lac, then you'd like it. But the boy pinned far too much for my liking. All of his brooding and internal ponderings in this one book outnumbered Meghan's in all three of her books. She's a chick and even she didn't think in terms of the (heinously) overused irrevocably and End of the World and some such.

But the thing is, Meghan's story was done. Ash's soul-searching, literally, couldn't have been done from anyone else's eyes and Meghan's story, at this point, would have been a little dull if we just sat on her shoulder and watched her rule a kingdom. Except with the story told in Ash's POV, aside from the endless brooding, the surroundings aren't as magnificent as they were in the rest of the books. I think that's because that's Ash's home. That same wonder and awe is lost on him, even as he traveled through areas of the Nevernever that he'd never been to. That wondrous shine that was there for the first three books is dulled, I think simply because the POV switched to the eyes of a local. They're going to see things differently.

And that means seeing other people differently. Grimalkin remained the same, which I loved. But Puck? For the first half of the book I wanted to run him over with a truck. While in Meghan's eyes he's quirky and bouncy and just normal jokster Puck but from Ash's eyes, he's nails on a chalkboard while rubbing a cat backwards and scraping a fork against a plate. I really stopped liking him. It leveled out a bit when the story got a little more serious but holy crap. Kagawa really nailed just how Ash viewed Puck and it made me twitchy.

Ariella added an element that threw a wrench into Ash's spokes but in very odd ways. Ultimately her seer abilities dropped to being the Seer of the Obvious. All of her "real" seeing happened off page, before Ash even came upon her again so anything she "saw" after that, for me anyway, had me going 'duh' a lot. But she ultimately served a greater purpose than just being a hitch in Ash's story and when she does fulfill it I will say it brought tears to my eyes.

As did the ending of the story. What can I say? I'm a sap. It is a very poster fairy tale ending but if you didn't expect that going in, then you're obviously not familiar with Kagawa's writing. The overarching plots in her stories wrap up and if you honestly thought Ash would say eff it all and keep being Fey, you need to just go home. But it's not the ending that makes the book. While it got me teary, I'm ultimately not a fan of such cookie cutter endings, simply because they're too neat. Not that Ash didn't earn it, or Meghan didn't deserve it. They just never sit right with me, in any context. In THE IRON KNIGHT's case, it's the story that gets Ash to that standard end that really matters.

And overall, I did like it. I liked seeing all the new parts of the Nevernever (although I probably would have liked them better if I was seeing them through Meghan's eyes) and the Big Bad Wolf is pretty sweet. Although I would have liked to have seen him more threatening. That was another thing. The threats that would have been threats to Meghan weren't to Ash so any big action scene was kind of tampered. You knew going in he'd get out of it relatively unscathed and Puck would barely have a scratch on him. So the underlying expectation was much higher here. You could guess with greater certainly what was going to happen with Ash's story. It's just what he would face next that would remain a mystery.

I was surprised that I ended up liking THE IRON KNIGHT as much as I did because I had two reviewers whose reviews I trust (my twin and Sya at The Mountains of Instead) warn me that I probably wouldn't like it, so I was worried going in. But it really wasn't that bad. Nowhere near the pine factor of TWILIGHT (and I'm kind of insulted that the blurb 'Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series is the next TWILIGHT' is on the cover) but Ash is up there with Louis. If you haven't read INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE by Anne Rice, go do it and you'll see what I mean. Just almost constant brooding and pinning for a life one doesn't have and contemplating one's soul, or lack of one, and being human and blah blah blah. At least in Louis's case I could tell him to get a tan. But with both books, there was more going on than tons of internal mooing that it held me and I actually really liked IWTV. Except I haven't read further in that series. Had THE IRON KNIGHT been the first, I most likely wouldn't have gotten this far. But I did, because the other three books totally rocked and, really, THE IRON KNIGHT isn't so bad either.

Just be warned that Ash is a perpetual brooder, always contemplating something to within an inch of its life. But the writing is just as phenomenal and the book closes out the series nicely. It's not necessary, I don't think, to read THE IRON KNIGHT but it's not necessary to read 'Winter's Passage' or 'Summer's Crossing' either but it's the enrichment that's worth reading. It makes the world that much more dynamic and the story more beautiful for how many eyes you get to see it through. I just won't be glimpsing through Ash's again. I've had enough of his brooding to last me a lifetime.

Just read it. I think you'd like it, if for nothing more than Kagawa's awesome writing. That should be enough.

Ban Factor: High - FAERIES! And death.

And now, for your reading pleasure, a short excerpt from THE IRON KNIGHT -

The cat stood, waving his tail, regarding me with a solemn gold gaze. “I will name no price, not today. But the time will come, prince, when I arrive to collect this debt. And when that day comes, you will pay it in full.”

The words hung in the air between us, shimmering with power. A contract, and a particularly nasty one at that. Grimalkin, for whatever reason, was playing for keeps. A part of me recoiled, hating being bound in such a way. If I agreed to this, the cat could ask anything of me, take anything, and I would be forced to comply.

But, if it meant being human, being with her in the end…

“You sure about this, ice-boy?” Puck caught my gaze, worried as well. “This is your quest, but there’s no backing out if you agree to do this. You can’t just promise him a nice squeaky mouse and be done with it?”

I sighed and faced the cait sith, who waited calmly for my answer. “I will not deliberately harm anyone,” I told him firmly.

And, of course, the giveaway! One lucky winner will win a copy of THE IRON KNIGHT by Julie Kagawa! But it doesn't end here. Be sure to check out the next left of the tour over at Review from Here!

• Open to US and Canadian residents 13 years of age and older only.
• One entry per person per email address.
• Duplicate entries will be deleted.
• Being a follower of my blog via Google Friends Connect is required for entry.
• Giveaway ends December 5th at midnight, EST.

Blog Tour - Merlin's Harp by Anne Eliot Crompton

First published in 1995, re-published March, 2010 by Sourcebooks.

Nivienne never thought she'd be in direct contact with barbaric Humans - let alone help them. She's only heard stories of the evil that occurs outside the forest. But her dear friend Merlin has brought word that Arthur's kingdom - where Humans dwell - is threatened by the Saxons. If Nivienne doesn't help it, it could be the end for her own peaceful home. Nivienne must now learn to trust the Humans and her heart. Even more difficult than going to war alongside your enemies is discovering you are falling in love with them. (book back blurb)

Well this was, um . . . not good. Really, at all. I don't think it's ever taken me so long to read a book so short. Like wading through snow up to my hips. It's so overwrought and drowning in such flowery language that it's hard to connect to anything that's going on in the story. I often found myself having read a page without really reading it and only skimming it when I went back over it.

To Crompton's credit, she stuck very closely to faerie lore which is to her benefit but even greater to her disadvantage. Because she stuck so closely to the lore, I felt nothing for Nivienne. Faeries are traditionally heartless and don't emote as humans do. That certainly came through in the reading but at the same time it also made me not give a crap about Nivienne. And so help me if she said, "I, Nivienne," one more time, I was going to put my hand through the pages and slap her. I get it goes with the tone of the writing but it's overwritten so, to me, it was just annoying.

Plus Nivienne constantly refers to herself as brown. Maybe my eyes aren't working correctly but fish lips on the cover is a white girl. And can I say how much I hate it when people purposely push out their lips in a vain attempt to make them look fuller? The Olsen twins do it all the time. Makes me want to throw things at them and see if I can get them to stick.

But more to the story, the whole Saxon war I felt was glazed over. I was three quarters of the way through the book before I realized that we'd already moved beyond that. For me, the focus of the story wasn't quite right and what was being talked about was secondary to the greater problem going on in the background. The characters just kind of glided through their surroundings as if they were inconsequential and didn't matter to their greater scope of things. The urgency of the Saxon threat in the blurb is unfounded in the story and barely appears to make a dent in the consciousness of the characters.

It didn't help that the text was, within chapters, non-linear. Nivienne kept having these sort of flashbacks where she'd go off on tangents about what happened in her past because something in the present reminded her of it. It started to ebb towards the end but it was really prevalent in the beginning. I often found myself having to read back a few paragraphs because I'd realize that I had missed a time jump. Very jarring and interrupting. That's one of the motivating issues I had with getting into the story aside from not connecting with Nivienne.

The best part was the last few chapters where Arthur and Mordred got into it. It's really the only part that's not completely glossed over with insubstantial nothing. I think if that part of the story was more played up, not only would Nivenne have become a more well-rounded character, it would have made the story stronger. I got to see facets of Nivenne in those few scenes that were absent the entire story (presumably because of her Fey nature) that I really liked. But too little too late, really.

Overall, I really appreciate that Crompton kept so close to the lore even though it was detrimental to the success of the main character. I liked how she played with the King Arthur legend and made it her own. Other than that, I think the writing style is trying too hard and what story is there is drowned by it. The MC isn't human and thus I couldn't connect with her for 95% of the story because, for all intents and purposes, she remained emotionless. I think if the writing weren't so flowery and the story were told from someone else's perspective, or Nivienne was allowed to emote a little more, it could have been much better. As it stands, I couldn't rightly recommend this one. Read Le Morte d'Arthur. Much better.

My apologies to Paul at Sourcebooks.