Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn

Published April 15, 2009.

Author website.

Four sisters and their mother make their way from a spiritualist town in New York to London, becoming acquainted with journalist W. T. Stead, scientist Nikola Tesla, and industrialist John Jacob Astor. When they all find themselves on the Titanic, one of Tesla's inventions dooms them...and one could save them.  (goodreads.com)

For the first half of DISTANT WAVES I was wondering what the hell this book had to do with the Titanic.  It was mentioned once or twice in off-hand remarks, and not by name, and a couple of the people that were on board made appearances within the story but other than that it was a story that centered around Spiritualism, a mother defrauding people with her mystic "skills" and her daughters' lives as a result of this woman's charade.  The story in and of itself wasn't bad.  I actually found it pretty interesting and I liked Jane but don't give me 'A Novel of the Titanic' and not have the ship make an appearance until halfway through the book.  That's going to make me cranky.  I don't like to be cranky when I read.

Once the Titanic did show up it played its role like it does in any other story about it; you're reading the melodrama occurring on it all the while just holding your breath to see how the main event is going to destroy everything nice that's seemingly going on.  I didn't like how the sisters got onto the boat.  It was just far too contrived for my tastes and I really don't think the people letting on passengers would have let stowaways slip by.  Considering the ship and all the hype it should have been something the White Star Line was prepared for.

The ending pretty much murdered what was otherwise and interesting story.  I'm okay with authors taking liberties with history but to take major events and alter their causes for the sake of the story is really bothersome.  To the point where I was audibly going 'what???"

All sense of immediacy was gone as the iceberg was approaching.  No one seemed to be all that worried about it from those watching it head right towards the ship.  Then Tesla tests his magical mystery machine and supposedly breaks the ship.  It didn't REALLY hit the iceberg.  Excuse me?  And as the ship sank?  Poof, gone.  The major cataclysmic event was literally blinked out of the plot.  Gone.  Ground zero happens, people start running around a little confused, poof Jane is being rescued by the Carpathia.  I'm not even talking about a sentence to say it sank.  An element happened that actually eliminated the sinking from the story and skipped right to the rescue.  Infuriated would be a good word to describe me.  How do you have 'a novel of the Titanic' and just skip the sinking?

The individual elements of DISTANT WAVES were good; I liked the Spiritualism aspect, how historical people were factored into the plot, all of the characters were likable on some level and it even got a hint steampunky.  But I think the Titanic itself ruins this story of the Titanic for me simply because it was so bastardized.  The author actually altered history to serve her plot.  No.  Me no likey.  If that kind of thing doesn't bother you then you might just like DISTANT WAVES.  Like I said it's a pretty good story.  But the Titanic is killer.  No pun intended.  Too much was changed in a story that was only supposed to be historical fiction, not alt history or the like.  It's unfortunate but that's the way it is, I guess.  Titanic in one book and the rest of the plot in another, yes.  Both would have been good.  But they just didn't mix well, like a recipe whose ingredients didn't quite mesh.

Ban Factor: Low - An historical fiction centered around the Titanic.  One can hardly pick a more prudish time in our history.  The Spiritualism might offend but that's assuming they know what the word means.  One mustn't overestimate the banners.

Sleepless by Thomas Fahy

Published August 11, 2009.

Author website.

SOMEONE ELSE WILL DIE SOON she tells herself. 

SOMEONE ELSE WILL DIE AND I WILL BE RESPONSIBLE. 

A few days after the first time you walk in your sleep, you kill someone. That's how the end begins. 

Emma Montgomery has been having gruesome nightmares. Even worse, when she wakes up, she isn't where she was when she fell asleep. And she's not the only one. One by one the students of Saint Opportuna High start having nightmares, and sleepwalking. And the next morning one of their classmates turns up dead. 

Something is making them kill in their sleep. Emma and her friends need to band together, to keep themselves awake until they can figure out what's behind the murders--before anyone else dies.  (goodreads.com)

There's a reason that NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, despite all of it's cheesiness, is, at its very core, frightening: because Freddie attacks people in their dreams, in their sleep, when they're at their most vulnerable.  SLEEPLESS also tapped into that inherent attack method and it's why I think, even despite my ultimate disconnect with the story, it's still scary.  Sleeping is something a person just can't not do.  You have to sleep but that's also where you're being attacked and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.  Anyone that doesn't think that's scary to at least some degree is lying.  Liars!

Don't get me wrong; I liked SLEEPLESS.  But there was something there keeping me from really connecting with the story, most likely the way it was told.  It was third person limited and flipped between Emma and Jake throughout the book but it wasn't necessarily the POV that did it.  I think it had more to do with the mechanical, almost dry execution of the story that kept me at bay.  It kept me interested but I've been interested in newspaper articles too.  It was more of a recounting of events with little effort at trying to make me scared.  For a horror novel that's a pretty big deal.  I WANT to be scared when I read horror.  That's why I read it.  Yeah, it's masochistic but quite frankly I liked being scared.  If horror doesn't scare me then it's failed it's most integral part.  I couldn't even feign frightened.  Yes, the things happening to the kids was scary but I didn't feel it.  I just read the story and carried on.

The New Orleans event laced throughout the book dragged on a bit too long without coming to its useful point.  I get the technique but I don't think it worked to the story's advantage here.  Of course it kept me reading but I was more annoyed with it toying with me than anything else.  I wanted to know HOW it was relevant and it kept teasing me for chapters.  I was irked.  It ultimately wove itself in but it didn't end up being what I thought it could be.  It slid down a more more cliched route that ended up being a bit contrived.  No vengeance or cover-ups or anything like that.  The ending was really ho-hum and a bit of a disappointment.

I liked Emma and Jake as characters.  They were both probably the best parts of the book.  They were just really well-fleshed out characters that I felt came alive on the page.  I believed their actions, their words and how they made everything unfold around them.  It worked.  I think SLEEPLESS could have been an amazing horror story if the rest of the elements around Jake and Emma were as finely tuned as they were, not to mention the story would have been better if it ended up being something BIGGER than what it was.  Again, disappointment, but Jake and Emma were good, with Emma taking the lead despite everything going against her.  She was the glue of the group, making things happen instead of waiting for them to happen.  If I knew I was about to kill someone in my sleep I'd like to think I'd take the same initiative and do something about it instead of just cowering in the corner.  No cowering for Emma.  Always a plus.

I think someone not as attuned to horror would find SLEEPLESS far scarier than I did but seeing how desensitized to it I am it fell kind of flat in the scare department.  I wish it were scarier for me because it would have been amazing!  I liked almost everything I was reading.  All that was missing was me being scared.  But it had just enough elements (like the execution of the voice) going against that amazingness to bring it down to something that was decent to read but didn't instill the horror like it should have.  It will make you think twice about sleeping, and watching slides, I'm sure but the ending didn't lend itself to anything greater than another teen horror cliche.  I liked it but that's about it.

Ban Factor: High - Kids are dropping dead all over this novel, not to mention there's some boob grabbing of the unmarried variety as well.  The banners would squeal.

Obsidian & Blood by Aliette de Bodard

Pub date: June 26, 2012.

Author website.

A massive fantasy omnibus containing all three novels in the Obsidian and Blood series:


Servant of the Underworld: Year One-Knife, Tenochtitlan – the capital of the Aztecs. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood. Acatl, high priest, must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead.


Harbinger of the Storm: The year is Two House and the Mexica Empire teeters on the brink of destruction, lying vulnerable to the flesh-eating star-demons – and to the return of their creator, a malevolent goddess only held in check by the Protector God’s power. The council is convening to choose a new emperor, but when a councilman is found dead, only Acatl, High Priest of the Dead, can solve the mystery.


Master of the House of Darts: The year is Three Rabbit, and the storm is coming… The coronation war for the new Emperor has just ended in a failure, the armies retreating with a mere forty prisoners of war – not near enough sacrifices to ensure the favor of the gods. When one of those prisoners of war dies of a magical illness, Acatl, High Priest for the Dead, is summoned to investigate.  (netgalley.com)

OBSIDIAN & BLOOD ended up being one of those books that kept me reading but I wasn't over the moon about.  Don't get me wrong; I liked what I read but I only read through SERVANT OF THE UNDERWORLD.  I just didn't feel compelled to keep reading.

I liked the world that de Bodard created.  It felt effortless, as if it didn't need explanation.  It just was.  It might be because it's Mayan, of which people have a general understanding of.  They may not know the workings of the years (I sure didn't) or which gods to curse to and why (something that nagged at me a lot but I eventually just started ignoring it) but even without explanation the world felt fully fleshed.  It felt like it was something that actually existed.  It was tangible and I believed it in absolutely from the very beginning.  I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know a ton about the Mayans.  I don't but reading de Bodard's world felt genuine to me.

I also liked how she made the gods beings that humans could actually interact with.  They bestowed power to the priests and priestesses directly.  You could visit one of their temples and speak with them as if you would speak to someone in your house (assuming your sacrifices were worthy, of course).  They were a part of the created world as much as the temples and people themselves.  They weren't intangible beings that people worshipped to blindly.  Faith was essentially removed from the equation because the gods had proven themselves in multiple ways.  No one could deny them; it would be like denying a chair.  Or a reed mat.

The effortless blood-letting and sacrifice, while kind of shocking, felt like it fit.  This was a natural occurrence for the Mayans, part of daily life and it was treated as such in the text.  Attention wasn't drawn to it, there was never a big deal around it.  If Acatl had to cut himself to serve a purpose he did it and that was that.  If something had to be sacrificed it was and no one bat an eye.  The author really kept herself out of the story in terms of moralizing and I really liked that.  This was what the Mayans did.  Full stop.

I liked Acatl as a character.  He definitely had some issues to contend with especially when he started getting deeply involved in his brother's murder trial.  But a distance was there.  I just couldn't connect with him on a deeper level than as a character I was reading on the page.  Not necessarily a bad thing but it had me skating through the story, skimming the surface.

The overall story I felt was far more murder mystery than anything fantasy.  As much as I really liked the effortless feel of the world it ultimately played second string to the story as a result.  Personally I like my fantasy worlds being characters in the story itself.  I like them lively and front and center.  So I definitely have a double standard here.  I admit that.  What can I say?  It's just how I feel.  I wished there was more of a balance between the world and the plot, where it didn't feel so much like a crime novel with a different background.  I think that kept me from really connecting as well since I'm not too big on the crime genre overall.  I'm okay with it but I don't actively read it.

If you're a fantasy fan the Mayan world in OBSIDIAN & BLOOD is definitely one to take a look at.  It stands out again your more standard fantasy fare of castles and dragons and Merlin-like magic and whatnot.  Beware of the names as I found them very hard to pronounce and don't expect to get much by the way of explanation for anything.  The book is written as if the reader is already aware of the world they're reading about.  So it might take some acclimating or you might end up like me and feeling a little distanced from it as a result.  Still it's a pretty good read.  I just didn't feel compelled to read beyond the first book.

Ban Factor: High - Total lack of Christianity and total pagan sacrifice and blood-letting.  I love it.  They hate it.

Year of the Beasts by Cecil Castellucci

Pub date: May 22, 2012.

Author website.

Every summer the trucks roll in, bringing the carnival and its infinite possibilities to town. This year Tessa and her younger sister Lulu are un-chaperoned and want to be first in line to experience the rides, the food . . . and the boys. Except this summer, jealousy will invade their relationship for the first time, setting in motion a course of events that can only end in tragedy, putting everyone's love and friendship to the test.   Alternating chapters of prose and comics are interwoven in this extraordinary novel that will break your heart and crack it wide open at the same time.  (netgalley.com)

Now I'm kinda torn on YEAR OF THE BEASTS.  On one hand I liked the voice and the storytelling, along with the set-up of the story itself, how it alternated between prose and comic.  On the other hand I just wasn't all that thrilled with the story and ended up thinking is was a bit melodramatic.

The whole carnival aspect that the blurb emphasized is really minimal.  It happened at the very beginning of the story and while it was the catalyst for the story to move forward the way it did that's the end of its relevance.  Ultimately this story, based on the comic portion, is far more rooted in Greek myth than anything fanciful like a carnival.  Not that there's anything wrong with that but it makes the blurb slightly misleading.

In the prose portion Tessa ends up making herself a rival to her sister, who ends up getting the guy she has a crush on.  And it begins to develop as your standard sibling rivalry except it's a little more one-sided.  Tessa finds herself inferior to Lulu in looks and personality and whatnot.  But Tessa ultimately finds her own boy.  He just turns out to be someone that "isn't acceptable" to the crowd she hangs out with so she hides him.  And he kind of wants to stay hidden, refusing to hang out with her while with her friends.  A bit of a douche.  He redeems his douchiness towards the end of the story but ultimately he's a pretty big dick, saying that he just CAN'T go out with them as a group, blah, blah, emo, blah.

The comic portion runs along side the prose, telling it in a fashion that was so over the top melodramatic that I had a hard time getting over it.  Tessa's Medusa and has to wear a scarf over her hair in order to keep from turning people into stone while Lulu, the beautiful mermaid, gets adored and praised to the point of suffocation.  It was just a little much for me.  Trust me.  I had, and still have, body image issues, but Medusa?  Seriously?  It seemed a little too much for me to swallow.  Great art and everything but it elevated the story to a point just left of ridiculous in my eyes.

The ending had me crying.  Without a doubt it was pretty heart-wrenching.  I did like the way Tessa recovered from it though.  The event at the end changes a lot of people's lives and it opened up their eyes to a greater world.  The ending, really, was spot on.  I couldn't have asked for a better one.  If there was less melodrama leading up to it I probably would have liked it better.

Tessa and Lulu were sort of flowy characters, swirling around each other pretty seamlessly as the story progressed.  They fed off each other, each being strong when the other was weak, providing a homeostasis within the story itself.  But it does get thrown off and people have to adjust.  It's all in how they adjust to that wrench that reinstates that kind of nirvana.  Leading into the ending again it all fit.  Homeostasis was rebalanced, tenuously and for the time being.  But I'll take it.

See what I mean about torn?  I liked it but I kinda didn't like it.  The voice was phenomenal.  I loved how the story was told when it was in prose.  In comic it was a bit much but the art was fantastic.  The plot itself was kind of dull, nothing that hasn't really been done before but the ending blew me away a bit.  Not expected at all.  So can I recommend YEAR OF THE BEASTS?  Probably.  The only way to know if you'll like it is to read it.  I obviously can't tell you one way or another.

Ban Factor: Low - I really don't know what would get banner panties in a twist in this one.  The characters talk about kissing but that's the extent of the sexuality.  Medusa turning people into stone?  Can be horrifying.  Not much by the way of swearing though.  A little bit but you'd need to dig to find it.

family by Micol Ostow

Published April 26, 2011.

Author website.

It is a day like any other when seventeen-year-old Melinda Jensen hits the road for San Francisco, leaving behind her fractured home life and a constant assault on her self-esteem. Henry is the handsome, charismatic man who comes upon her, collapsed on a park bench, and offers love, a bright new consciousness, and—best of all—a family. One that will embrace her and give her love. Because family is what Mel has never really had. And this new family, Henry’s family, shares everything. They share the chores, their bodies, and their beliefs.  And if Mel truly wants to belong, she will share in everything they do. No matter what the family does, or how far they go.  (goodreads.com)

First and foremost, I am NOT sympathetic to the whole hippie subculture.  Not in the slightest.  They need to shower and get jobs, quite frankly.  And develop an opinion that isn't based in LSD highs and commune thought process.  So why did I opt to review a book that is exactly this mentality?  Because it's pretty much a roman a clef of the Manson family and I thought it'd be an interesting fictionalization.  It further solidified my disdain for hippie speak and mentality and it was interesting but I felt the ending was a bit of a cop out.

Told in episodic verse, kind of expanded poetry, it kind of made the whole story a bit hazy to read.  There were times I had trouble figuring out what was going on because the language got a bit purple but I could buy it as the flower child's thought process.  So it wasn't too bad in that regard.  But still it was a bit thick.  Although it did do a good job in its thickness to portray life at the commune/cult.  The flowery-ness flowed in the sexual drug haze that surrounded the MC all the time.  And I really liked the little cracks in the facade, where Mel got bits and pieces of what all of this was really about but after some more magical mystery juice and free love she was sucked right back into it.

You get to see that all of these people in this compound are broken in some way.  They've been wronged by the people they loved in one regard or another and they ultimately come together in that wrongness to try and make it right.  It's really a nice route to recovery.  Too bad their leader was a sociopath that kept them doped so he could manipulate them into doing what he wanted done.  He perverted the message for his own gain.  Not surprising in the slightest but it was interesting to watch the world break down from broken eyes.

The ending . . . I don't believe this to be a spoiler because we all know how the Manson story ended.  If you don't I highly recommend a history textbook.  Well the story culminated with an event much like the Mason family brought to fruition except in FAMILY one of the victims escapes and the MC gets away.  Fail.  Hard.  Yeah, awesome, that she came to a hardcore self-realization at the end there.  Super.  She's also an accessory to murder.  No sympathy from this chick right here.  Sorry.  I don't know what I was supposed to feel or meant to feel but I was wholly expecting her to run into the arms of the cops.  Nope.  She runs off into the night and the story is left hanging.  An exceptionally unsatisfactory ending.  I don't find this artsy or endearing or quintessential to the whole hippie mindset. I needed it to go down like the real event it was modeled after.  I think Mel would have resonated far more as a character if she didn't get to run away from her problems for a second time.

Don't get me wrong; it wasn't a bad book.  I just wasn't thrilled with it.  I liked the character development and the set-up of the story, the cracks in the hippie visage, even though the prose was on the flowery side.  But the ending was a killer for me.  Very anti-climatic and I didn't feel like there was any kind of justice done.  Mel just gets to continue her cycle of running yet again because she's been broken yet again.  It felt empty and the escape unearned.  After a few months of hedonism you get to get away with conspiring to murder a houseful of people because the high wears off and you realize what you're doing.  Um, no.

So yeah.  It was a quick read because of the verse which I'm kinda glad for.  I don't think I could have taken this story if it were denser although I'd tolerate it if the ending were fixed.

Ban Factor: High - Hippies, drugs, free sex and murder.  Enter the banner psychotic episode.

YAckers Review: Legend by Marie Lu

Published November 29, 2011.

Author website.

What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic’s wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic’s highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country’s most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem.


From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths—until the day June’s brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family’s survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias’s death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.  (goodreads.com)

Fellow YAcker Emily was our Keeper of the Book for the month of March and of her choices us ladies  unanimously chose LEGEND by Marie Lu.  We were SOOOOOOOOOOOO excited to read this one!  I mean, how could not be?  All the awesome things that were being said about it, all the rave reviews?  How could we go wrong?

. . .

Well, read on to see some wrongness . . .

Laura: Soooo has anyone started Legend?

Melissa: Yeppers. Am I the only one the colored font is driving batty?

Sya: Started today. I have a uk arc so no coloured ink just different fonts.

Me: I'm waiting until the last possible second. But this shouldn't be any surprise by now.

Sya: I finished it last night. Quite impressed although I have a few unanswered questions.

Melissa: I agree, Sya. Interesting, intriguing, but it kind of leaves you hanging. And I never got over my font dislike.

Me: I've started it. The font thing isn't really bothering me but it is pretty noticeable. I'm not far enough into it to have an opinion yet.

Sya: So are the alternating viewpoints printed in wildly different colours?

Me: The type face is definitely different and the color is a brownish instead of black. You can tell against the standard font the other POV is in. I'm still kind of ambivalent about the story. I have just over 100 pages left. I like June for how she kept to character after the shoe dropped but I need to see where this is going first.

Me: Just finished it. I'm still ambivalent. It's a topic I've seen plenty of times, a story I've read in plenty of books and it

Me: dammit

Me: it's really not stand-out to me. A few things: 1) Did I miss the part where it's explained how the US ended up fracturing like it did? 2) Did I missed the part where it explains how SoCal all of a sudden is getting massive hurricanes? 3) Why does the Republic have electro-bombs that disable guns when they're the only ones using them? That's not a wise weapon to use in war since you'd screw yourself, the poor people they're constantly fighting aren't armed like that and it appears to have no other discernible use except to come in conveniently at the end. Why have a weapon that would temporarily make themselves impotent? Why don't they all just give themselves charlie horses at the most inopportune moments? This bothers me. 4) Points for no love triangle.

Me: I hate to say it but I can kind of see how this had a hard time selling to publishers. It's pretty well written but it ultimately blends pretty well with the already desolate dystopian landscape. At the end I'm not pressed to read the next book. I kind of don't care enough. I'm a buzz kill, aren't I?

Laura: I'm having a hard time getting into this book. I'm granting it a further 50 page grace period but as the magic eight ball says, "Outlook not so good."

Melissa: ‎1) no. It was never explained. 2) ditto. 3) No effing idea. and 4) I agree. Huh. I liked it when I first finished it (aside from the font thingy), but I'm having a hard time making it sound interesting. Maybe because it really wasn't??

Sya: Yeah, I feel the same Melissa... I've been trying to write up my review and it's coming across as distinctly meh. BUT... I did really like both June and Day and was intrigued by the society that was being portrayed. Sadly, this was tempered by the fact that I didn't know why everything was actually like that. But then, I've been re-reading The Hunger Games and you don't really find out why THAT society is fractured either. However, Legend rather lacks the wow-factor that THG has. Also, I spent a lot of my time reading it trying to figure out how it was inspired by Les Miserables (which, I admit, was probably tougher having only seen the musical - I was all, "that's Eponine... no... THAT's Eponine" and I'm not even entirely sure who Eponine is...).

Sya: Also, Donna - excellent point re. Electro-bombs. They are an entirely stupid idea.

Melissa: I can see the Les Mis thing going on (I think Tess is supposed to be Eponine; or maybe Day? Whatevers...), but I don't think Legend was thought through enough to be really truly inspired by Les Mis. I think I'm getting tired of dystopian novels now.

Melissa: Or officially tired. Whatever.

Me: THG was an amazing novel/series that is untainted by its own followers so it's going to stand out by default. Aside from the fact that it's awesome. It's because of that awesomeness that I didn't NEED to know why the Earth sharted. I had so much else to occupy me that it was inconsequential and I could easily overlook it. Here it's more of the same and especially when world issues keep getting pointed out (the society as a whole, not sure how that would be avoided but anyway, hurricanes in SoCal) my kinda bored brain is going to gravitate there to occupy itself. I'm cranky about dystopias/post-apocalyptic now too because they're starting to get tired. I think that's one of the reasons I'm gravitating more towards adult vamporn now, just for something different. I'm tired of contemporaries with effed up kids because they're so depressing, keep me away from YA vampires lest I stake them, dystopias/post-apoc are starting to blend and PNR isn't a genre I go near anyway. That would expose me to the likes of Hush, Hush and I may explode. So what's left? Not much more than scrapes.

Me: And seriously, those electro-bombs are driving me insane. The more I think about them the fucking stupider they become. It's like a guy punching himself in the dick when he has a hard on. WHY?

Melissa: Because she needed a plot device. :-D

Melissa: That's a good point, Donna, about THG. Hadn't thought about it that way before. (Though you do have to admit that the series fell apart after the first one. Right?) And you're right about the current state of YA fiction: if there's one book that stands out, everyone's bound to copy it. (No pressure for when it's finally my turn to choose a book for this group....) As a side note, I've noticed that for the first time in YEARS, my total YA reading has been down. There's just not much out there that's grabbing my attention anymore.

Sya: I think you're absolutely write about YA at the moment. The last Dystopian book I really enjoyed was Divergent. I recently read Pieces of Us, a contemporary that has put me off contemporaries possibly for life as it was so brutally depressing. On the topic of THG, I arrived at the party rather late and read Mockingjay in a sulk after it had been spoiled for me in a review. Having just re-read the trilogy as a whole I'm feeling a little obsessed with the whole thing. Absolute brilliance.

Me: I don't think the series took a total tank but I wasn't thrilled with Mockingjay (that was the last one, right?). I don't feel Katniss chose properly so it kind of bombed everything from that point on. But I do like it because it was one of the first of it's kind in this new wave of depressing. If I had the time I'd read it again to see if it still lived up. I'm sure it would.

Laura: Yeah so me and Legend aren't going to happen. I hate to skip a book but I can't even get interested in it enough to hate it and rip it a new one. I AM A BAD BOOK CLUB FRIEND.

Me: Between this and WHEN THE SEA IS RISING RED, you should hang your head in shame. Granted I'm about to set the latter on fire but that's okay. I hated Bella less than the pretentious twat in WHEN THE SEA . . .

Emily: I personally loved it. I thought she did a great job of pitting two good characters against each other, and while I feel like the story wasn't new, it was fun. I look forward to the next book.

Emily: well, after reading all of the comments, I must note that I read an arc that had the same color font and style throughout. As I said earlier, the plot wasn't what was interesting to me, it was the characters. I don't know why there were electro-bombs, except that maybe the rebels or whatever they were called also have guns. I dunno. Laura I hate that you couldn't get into it..what was it?

So I think we evened out.  It was OKAY but it had it's issues and ultimately it read like something we've all read before.  Something to file into the "yet another dystopian" category.

This month's participating YAckers -

• Melissa of The Book Nut
• Sya of The Mountains of Instead
• Laura of A Jane of All Reads
• Me
• Emily

Ban Factor: Medium - Some swearing and, of course, children bucking the system and doing things THAT AREN'T GOOD FOR THEM.  We all know how banners hate that.

Damage by Anya Parrish

Published September 8, 2011.

Author website.

There was a time when I prayed for Rachel to be real--it ended the night she tried to kill me.

When Dani was eight, she fell from a building. No one believed her claim that she was pushed by Rachel, her imaginary friend. It took years of therapy to convince Dani that Rachel was a product of her own mind.Now fifteen, Dani wants to make it as a dancer. But a deadly freak accident sends her a terrifying message: Rachel is back, she's real, and she'll stop at nothing to kill Dani. Complicating matters is Jesse, the school bad boy who's being stalked by his own invisible childhood monster. When Dani and Jesse join forces to learn why their tormenters are back, their investigation leads to a horrifying discovery--and the secret that binds them to each other. (goodreads.com)

I was excited for DAMAGE because I was looking forward to a good YA horror read. It sounds like one, right? Except it ended up traveling down a really weird path that I didn't really see coming at all. And it was weird to the point that at times it bordered on being just downright silly. And it's a weird in a kooky but not endearing kind of way either. There were a few too many elements thrown in that really mucked it up, is what I think I'm trying to say.

I did like the two characters, Dani and Jesse, as the story alternated between their two viewpoints. But their relationship just made me heinously uncomfortable. It seemed so inappropriate considering everything that was going on. In a matter of hours they were totally in love with each other. Seriously. But that wasn't really the awkward part. Being in their respective heads I was privy to their thoughts, obviously, so when they're thinking about kissing each other when they're running from some fake FBI dudes it really threw me. Just the whole relationship seemed immensely forced. It was far too much, way too soon and insanely inappropriate for the circumstances. They didn't have any cooling off periods to dwell on anything. They were constantly moving from the turning point of the story, which was in like chapter 2. It really did not sit right with me.

Removing the relationship aspect their characters were pretty good if not a little stock-ish. Dani is the quiet yet secretly strong character while Jesse is the outwardly bad boy who's merely a product of his environment. Not bad, just not all that original. I still liked reading about them. I cared enough about them to see what happened to them. I was rooting for them the whole time and I wanted them to be okay. I just didn't like their relationship. But I already said that. They were rather smart together. They fed off each other well and not in a synergistic corruption type of situation either. They were each others' idea machines when it came to trying to get out of their problems and they really worked well together. Dani and Jesse were serious compliments to each other and I did like that.

The weirdness? I can't really say much without spoiling the entire plot. I'll just say it went really far off course of where I thought it was going to be. Bad guys are everywhere and can be anyone and horrible, horrible things happened to the characters when they were younger that they weren't aware of. Rachel would have been a phenomenal entity in a purer horror setting but in DAMAGE she's a bit subdued. Although I will give Parrish credit for not skimping on the carnage. Loved it. As demented as that sounds. She wasn't afraid to do what needed to be done with her tools. But this isn't a horror story. Not really. It's kind of more science fiction/conspiracy theory stuff and it kind of ruined the juju for me a little when it started to reveal itself. Again it wasn't bad it was just really off course for me.

Overall it's not terrible. It's entertaining and the characters are likable enough that I think you'd enjoy reading about them. They really do act like kids stuck in a terrible situation and I believed most of their actions. Dani and Jesse worked really well together although I felt Dani got over the death of her seemingly best friend far too quickly (chapter 1/2 element). Made her look a bit callous. But she's still endearing to an extent. I liked watching her come out of the shell that she made for herself. I don't think Jesse changed all that much from beginning to end although he kept saying Dani was the first person he really loved aside from his sister in his entire life. But other than that he was pretty static. It's an entertaining read. Just don't go into it thinking it's horror. It's not and I think that's one of the major reasons that I didn't think more of DAMAGE. Stupid expectations. Or perhaps just off-point blurbing.

Ban Factor: High - Super scary creatures and kids being murdered? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would rile the storms.

Hothouse by Chris Lynch

Published August 24, 2010.

Author website.

If you do it right, it can be a life. The hothouse, the guys, the glory. But just like that, it can all go up in smoke.

In the beginning it was strange, ya know, because of all that we had lost. But there was something about it that felt so good and so right, too: "I'm so proud of you, Russ." "We'll always be here for you, man." "Heroes don't pay for nothin' in this town." It was nonstop. The mayor shook my hand. Ladies sent food. I've never eaten so much baked ham in my life.

And now? Now the phone won't stop ringing from the crazies ready to blame me. My mom has to cry herself to sleep. They take a firefighter, a man, and they pump him up so big. . . . But once they start taking it away from you, they don't stop until they leave nothing on the bones.

First they needed heroes, then they needed blood. (goodreads.com)

I feel kind of bad that I didn't love HOTHOUSE because it's supposed to be this deep read about kids getting over the deaths of their firefighter dads. It's supposed to be touching and endearing and I think it was supposed to make me cry but overall I didn't feel all that much.

I liked the topic of essentially canonizing the dead and then realizing, after the fact, that they might not have been perfect. That was probably my favorite part of the book because it elicited the strongest emotion from me. The way the town just turned on these two innocent boys was quite frankly disgusting. They elevated the two dead firefighters to god-like levels. They set up their own expectations. But these guys ended up not meeting those expectations and instead of looking in on themselves for blame the town projected it onto innocent people, as if it were them that did all the saint-claiming. That was kind of hard to read, especially when it got to reading how poorly Russ was treated. It even got physical and that was pretty disgusting. It shows the whole mob mentality all raw and front and center. I liked that for how horrifying it was.

But the rest of it, I felt like there was this distance to the MC that I just couldn't close. I got him talking about how his dad's death was affecting him and all of that but it seemed to gloss over the really important parts, like the actual death, the inquiry, the newspaper articles, things like that. All of that was skimmed by and you kind of got this afterthought reaction from Russ about everything that was going on. He's essentially gone through his life naive and not willing to see what was right in front of his face and I felt the narrative was that kind of distant. It kind of came crumbling down at the end and that gap closed a little but not that much and it was really too little too late.

The voice was kind of irksome too. Hanging out on the edge of trying to be a little too hip and teenage-ish. It rubbed me the wrong way a bit right from the beginning. I'm sure that played into how closely I didn't get to the text but nothing I can really do about that.

Ultimately it wasn't a bad read and I did enjoy reading HOTHOUSE but I didn't really connect with it. The elements that Russ was reacting to were kept in the background, thus eliminating weight from his reactions, I thought. They weren't grounded out at all. I was in Russ's head the whole time but I still felt a distance, like you could see him lying to himself, which he really was with all of those flashback memories he kept having. But I think those ended up doing the story a disservice because it kept him too far away from the present. It's a bit subdued in terms of recent contemporaries but not bad. It's different so it has that going for it, especially since it's a male POV. I've read better but it's still okay.

Ban Factor: Medium - For swearing. But that would require the banners to actually read. Probably not going to happen.

A Temptation of Angels by Michelle Zink

Pub date: March 20, 2012.

Author website.

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

I have to say I'm less than impressed. My instant knee-jerk reaction was that I hated the voice. It read just far too stilted and contrived for my tastes and I initially wondered if I'd make it through the book based on that. I did. The roar of the tone leveled out for me and ended up being a dull throb right behind the eyes: not painful but manageable despite it being annoying. That same voice also lent itself to quite a few baited questions that seemed to scream at me from the pages. A lot of "whatever do you mean?"s going on. That type of thing. It stood out to me.

And really, for a story about angels, it's pretty lacking in, well, angels. You have the people that watch the angels who are human, the demon/wraiths that are, at most, glimpsed at and then you have the angels. The only way you can tell they're angels is because they can travel by light and you're told they're angels about eleven and a half million times. Other than that they show no defining characteristics of anything paranormal. Remove the word 'angel' and just leave them as human and it wouldn't have made a difference.

I was actually pretty disappointed by this. I went out of my comfort zone with A TEMPTATION OF ANGELS and while it didn't come close to the lulz category it was definitely flat compared to what I was expecting: in a story about angels, ANGELS. No wings, no ethereal glow, no halos, no crazy supernatural powers (aside from the light thing, which is kind of like Meg growing nails in a super hero family), nothing. I honestly don't know why they were pegged as angels other than to draw on the already dominant angel wave in YA. It just seemed really pointless and every time I finished a chapter without anything even remotely angelic going down I couldn't help but get disappointed.

Helen is a nice strong character that makes it to the end of the book pretty much on her own two feet and sticking it to the likes of Darius. Who is super awesome and with whom I sided from the beginning. We share non-existent patience levels. Darius's brother, whose name escapes me and for which I'm too lazy to look up was a puss (Griffin?). He was the "sensitive" one so it was only natural that Helen gravitated towards him. A TEMPTATION OF ANGELS gets points for its lack of love triangle though. It's insinuated that there is one but that's not really true. So kudos there.

The ending was a bit of flash bang, not too much going on throughout most of the story until the culmination of information and events at the end. FINALLY we get to see some semblance of the paranormal but it's over before it begins and don't expect to see any angels.

The whole alternate world kind of bothered me for its lack of presence. It's set in Victorian London but there's supposed to be this alternate side of wraiths and angels and funky globe things. But aside from that weird globe and some seemingly crazy stories, there isn't much going on in terms of other world. I feel shafted in that regard. I was looking for something more substantial but instead what I got was an historical fiction revised to fit a more popular supernatural angle. Seriously, remove all aspects of the paranormal and the story really wouldn't change.

It's not that I didn't like it. I found it entertaining enough to keep reading but it felt like ice cream without milk: missing something. The historical aspect of A TEMPTATION OF ANGELS is more of a driving force than anything paranormal so that should appeal to a lot of people. Just don't go in expecting a lot of supernatural stuff. You're not going to find it.

Ban Factor: Medium - Because of its actual low level of paranormal influence I can see this skating under the banner radar. At the same time playing with angels like this, even though they're not really angels (unless you count being told they're angels), still has the potential to ruffle banner feathers.

Exploring the Magic World of Harry Potter by Karen Farrington & Lewis Constable + Giveaway!

Published October 1, 2010.

Author websites.

In this little book fans will find a surprisingly large variety of random thoughts, about Harry's magic universe, about the woman who created him, the books, the movies, and the actors in the films. (goodreads.com)

I can tell you right now this is going to be a short review. I mean, how does one review what's really nothing more than a pile of tidbits about the first five books of the HARRY POTTER series?

At the end of the day it is nothing more than a disorganized smattering of "facts" about HARRY POTTER; the characters, the world, the actors, pretty much everything. Even real world events that parallel the HARRY POTTER world. There's a small glossary in the back defining some of the terms in the series, characters, creatures, places. Its compilings only go up to the fifth book so it is short on a couple of stories and I definitely wouldn't call it comprehensive but it is a neat little coffee table book of random HARRY POTTER knowledge.

I did notice at least one factual error while reading: there was mention of Jensen Ackles being one of the stars of Smallville. Negative. He's one of the stars of Supernatural. While he was on one season of Smallville, on a show that ran for 10 years I wouldn't exactly call that starring in. Being in every episode of a show that's currently in its seventh season, star. So yeah, in a fact book where some of the facts aren't checked, it does leave me to doubt, however little bit, what I'm reading. Call it a nit pick or whatever. But it did make me perk up my ears.

But from quotes from the actors to the whole slew of random information that can be found in EXPLORING THE MAGIC WORLD OF HARRY POTTER it's definitely something a Potter nut would want to add to their collection simply because it's HARRY POTTER. It's not comprehensive and it does read like someone on the outside looking in but it's neat. I'll give the authors credit for being able to compile all of that information into one little book and for the real world historical aspects that matched the magical world. That was probably my favorite out of it all.

Ban Factor: High - Simply for the HARRY POTTER connection. Inside it could be crayon-drawn pictures of the sun but the cover says HARRY POTTER. We all know how the banners feel about that magical boy.

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The Invitation by Diane Hoh

Re-publish date: March 27, 2012.

Author website.

For the high schoolers of Greenhaven, Cass Rockham’s fall party is the social event of the year. Each October, students wait by their mailboxes, praying for the gilt-edged invitation that grants entry into theinner circle of the most popular crowd. And now Cass has planned her finestparty yet, with a new sauna, a hot band, and no parents for miles. But to make this party really killer, Cass tops it all off with a sinister twist.

Nerdy Sarah Drew is shocked when she and her friends receive invitations to Cass’s affair. For years she’s steered clear of the popular kids, and now they want her to come to their party? Sarah is wary, but her friends talk her into coming with them. But she regrets it quickly, for at Cass Rockham’s mansion, the only party favor is death. (netgalley.com)

I’m all for the re-emergence of cheese and Open Road Media has a market for that. They’ve been re-releasing older YA titles as of late and, knowing me, I’m pretty quick to gobble them up. They usually end up being short reads, concise and to the point without much depth to them. Lead-up to mystery, solve it, story ends and that’s pretty much it. THE INVITATION didn’t let me down in this regard.

The issues that I generally have with these titles is that the characters are a bit too stereotypical and they’re written so that they portray teens to how adults feel they are. The mean girls fit nicely into a little box and a character’s brattiness is usually running a bit higher than what it probably should be. What makes that last part worse is that the story doesn’t delve too deeply into the character’s head so the personality isn’t explained away or as a reader you do know what’s going on but it’s usually pretty petty. The antagonists in THE INVITATION fit this moniker. They’re one dimensional and stereotypical, one being the mean girl to an extreme and the other being a straight up crazy bitch. If this were in any other recent YA horror I’d scoff at it. But cheese gets a pass. Because it’s cheese.

The cast of protagonist characters is pretty large but they fit their own molds just like the villains with a couple that probably could have been removed entirely and the story would have been none the wiser. The characters with the most emphasis, Ellie, Sarah and Shane were of course the stand-out characters, except Ellie ended up fading into the background towards the end. I would have liked to have seen her stand up a little more, break out of her self-deprecating shell a little more but it is what it is. Riley, Sarah’s love interest, played a bit part and love was had at the end. Because it needed to end on an up note.

The biggest issue I had with THE INVITATION was the sex of the major antagonist. Once that person was introduced I went whole chapters without knowing what the sex of the villain was, despite the character actually being present on the page. Initially it was male just with a feminine name, Leslie (right up there with Shannon and Kim as male names, ugh). Even in the flashback Leslie was still androgynous. I couldn’t place the sex. I got so confused that I had to flip back earlier to see if I missed something, some tell-tale sign that this person was male or female. Nope. It started off male and ended female. I know it’s an uncorrected proof but that’s pretty major. It was halfway explained by a confusion of people but even after that it still didn’t make sense, especially with how the story was unfolding. I’d have to call that sloppy.

Overall it wasn’t as big of a fright as I would have liked. Cass was far creepier doing what she did to the outcast group of kids she invited than the real antagonist was simply because she was so heartless. I would have liked that route better than the crazy person at the end. Not my favorite cheese read but it sits nicely in the cockles. I’ll take it.


Ban Factor: Medium - It really could go either way. The violence is pretty minimal, there's nothing paranormal about it and the bad guys get their comeuppance in the end. I can see this one scraping by the censors.

A Jane Bites the Pile Review: Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

This review is the demented brain child of Laura at A Jane of All Reads and yours truly, Donna at Bites.

Originally published 1965.

Author website.

On holiday in Cornwall, the three Drew children discover an ancient map in the attic of the house that they are staying in. They know immediately that it is special. It is even more than that -- the key to finding a grail, a source of power to fight the forces of evil known as the Dark. And in searching for it themselves, the Drews put their very lives in peril. (goodreads.com)

So Laura and I have some books in common in our TBR closets so we decided to wear this particular outfit on the same day like a couple of besties from 1964.

So after we snorted our malts and tried to take out eyes with our bumper bullets, we got down to the business of reading, cat eye glasses and all. Like the good little demon child clones we are, we felt pretty much the same about OVER SEA, UNDER STONE, a quaint little ditty, fit for the middle graders, about a sibling team racing against the adults to find clues to save the world from the ever-encroaching Dark. Although for us old farts it can get a bit boring.

Now, it's never made all that clear just what the Dark is, what it can do, what the fate of the world is, what either side is striving for. It's all kept in the dark . . . where in the dark I don't want to know. But it's there. Squishing. We know there's a connection to King Arthur, we know there's a grail hidden somewhere and we know we have baddies dressed in black a la Spy vs. Spy chasing after them trying to get the elusive "it." Really, I think it's the chase that matters.

If it were a little more interesting. There's a lot of silly idealized 60s English children blathering on about Gumerry and whatever shall we do's and generally speaking as if they were 35 and sitting for a spot of tea, or living in a bubble filled with pink sparkles and daisies. One must remember that we're reading 1965 words so there's a lot of "shoulds" going on as opposed to "for reals." The language could have been checked at the door of The Queen's Head Pub with Hugh Laurie doling out proper British bitter. But once you get past that, and the absurd image of a 10 year old speaking like his grandfather, it's a flight of fancy book that offers much in the way of child shenanigans and adult bumbling, as with any other children's book of this age bracket. So it fits there at least.

Of course I couldn't help but running some wind sprints parallel to the NARNIA series by CS Lewis. It was inevitable. Laura, being the NARNIA virgin, hasn't had the thrill of being exposed to the likes of Jesus Aslan and his painted whore-hating ways but I enlightened her. Don't get me wrong; I loved the Narnia series but I think I was baptized by the end of it. While NARNIA left me burping up angel wing feathers, OVER SEA, UNDER STONE had a significant "Evil East" aftertaste for me. The Dark is always mentioned as coming from the east. Always. Now I don't know what the overall political climate was in England in the early 60s but this seemed reminiscent of rather medieval times. I kept expecting a wayward morning star or joust to pop up. Of course, Evil East carries with it many connotations and could be a number of things but, you know, instead of puffing up Christianity like Lewis, it seemed to elevate the evils emanating from the east more than anything, be it religions, cultures, whatever. Maybe it's just my brain going there and I'm pulling something out that isn't really there. Or maybe it's because I made the NARNIA connection so it's making its own dots to string together. I'm just saying, there's a lot of Eastern Evil going on here.

But it's ultimately very similar to NARNIA with children as the protags striving to save the day, a generally slower, introductory start to the series and the world, a whimsical feel. It's a good "classic" story. Maybe the floofy language adds to that. Maybe it's the children overcoming dark, evil odds. Whatever it is, they're similar in my eyes. And I think Laura needs to get herself baptized by Deacon Lewis.

Laura ultimately enjoyed OVER SEA, UNDER STONE more than I did. I'm chalking it up to the fact that I've already read THE DARK IS RISING and I totally heart that one so it's difficult to live up to those standards. Laura felt the ending "quite nice" and "cute" that "all those scholarly old gentleman chasing around children to steal a map." I'm hoping she'll be blown away Maxell-style by book two. Forget whimsy. That's nice in small doses. Those kids weren't in enough danger to me. They need to fight harder and stop relying on their ever so brilliant verbiage to get them out of scuffles. Have fist will punch.

Ban Factor: Low - What with ragging on the Evil East and good little children not talking in slang, this one would be on many a banner's shelves.

Gift by Andrea J. Buchanan

Pub date: March 27, 2012.

Author website.

High school sophomore Daisy Jones is just trying to get by unnoticed. It doesn't help that she's the new girl at school, lives in a trailer park, and doesn't even own a cell phone. But there's a good reason for all that: Daisy has a secret, unpredictable power-one only her best friend, Danielle, knows about. Despite her "gift" (or is it a curse?), Daisy's doing a good job of fitting in-and a cute senior named Kevin even seems interested in her! But when Daisy tries to help Vivi, a mysterious classmate in a crisis, she soon discovers that her new friend has a secret of her own. Now Daisy and her friends must deal with chilling dreams and messages from the beyond. Can Daisy channel the power she's always tried to hide-before it's too late? (netgalley.com)

Daisy's got an issue that I can somewhat, nominally, empathize with: she kills technology. She doesn't have a TV, computer, cell phone, nothing too technologically current because she'd just drive it crazy. I feel that. With the trail of computer deaths in my wake, and the shrapnel of other miscellaneous freakazoid technological malfunctions I've had to deal with, I immediately connected with Daisy. I understood her. Of course she's an extreme but such is the way of books. A boring blue screen of death on a PC is nothing compared to spastic fire alarms or igniting a computer lab.

I didn't really love GIFT but I didn't not like it either. It was okay. I was entertained enough but at various points in the story I felt a little put out by it, like it was a chore to read. It dragged a bit with the dreams the girls were having, what Vivi's deal was, Daisy trying to deal with her issue (considering she'd been dealing with it her entire life her "dealing with it" now seemed kind of forced). But it was interesting nonetheless and I kept reading until the end so I could see what would happen. The pieces laid themselves out for the ending pretty early on but there is a twist in there that I kind of didn't see coming so I enjoyed that. It's always nice to be at least a little bit surprised by a story.

I liked reading Daisy's humanity, especially towards the end. She is a very strong-willed character but she has flaws and I loved seeing them. It grounded out what is rightly a fantastical story into something a bit more realistic, considering. She rationalizes, she reasons, at times she caves to temptation. I really liked that. I felt like I could relate to that, unlike some other YA heroines that seemingly stand strong the entire time. I need humanness.

Vivi and Danielle I felt were a little underdeveloped. They were just kind of there floating along in Daisy's plot while things kept happening. Not that they weren't involved but as characters I just felt their existence was to serve Daisy. Kevin was the same way except his entire being I felt was a contrivance. He just felt like he was shoved into the plot because that might have been what was "supposed" to have happen. Daisy needed a love interest and someone else to connect to. Kevin served that purpose and that was pretty much it. He provided information when it was required, he supported Daisy when she needed it and he was the perfect level of weirdness to complement hers. It just felt too easy. Their personalities were okay. I didn't dislike them. They were just really plot-serving.

The story itself was okay. The whole reincarnation/past lives things interests me by default and I liked the way the past was brought into the present in this one. It used people and manipulated them and it really took the wind out of its implied sails but again, it made it more real, for what that's worth in a paranormal story. I didn't find the set-up or execution floofy but I did think, in the end, Daisy's powers were pretty irrelevant to it all. It was a means to be used but I don't think it deserved the emphasis that it did. I felt the past life issue was so much more relevant and should have been brought to the surface more than Daisy's electrical abilities. It wasn't bad but I wasn't crazy about it either.

Like I said overall it was okay. I wasn't thrilled with it but it wasn't terrible. A decent read if you don't have much else to do. It does stand out a bit from the rest just because of Daisy's ability and the past life thing which I did really like. And the plot isn't crazy centric on the love interest, another plus. And there's only one, love interest that is. Even bigger plus. Ultimately this one didn't leave much of a mark with me but I'm sure others will find the awesomeness that dwells within and give it the love it deserves. There's nothing all that wrong with it. It just ultimately wasn't for me.

The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima

Published April 1, 2007.

Before he knew about the Roses, 16-year-old Jack lived an unremarkable life in the small Ohio town of Trinity. Only the medicine he has to take daily and the thick scar above his heart set him apart from the other high-schoolers. Then one day Jack skips his medicine. Suddenly, he is stronger, fiercer, and more confident than ever before. And it feels great until he loses control of his own strength and nearly kills another player during soccer team tryouts.

Soon, Jack learns the startling truth about himself: He is Weirlind; part of an underground society of magical people who live among us. At the head of this magical society sit the feuding houses of the Red Rose and the White Rose, whose power is determined by playing The Game. A magical tournament in which each house sponsors a warrior to fight to the death, the winning house ruling the Weir. As if his bizarre magical heritage isn't enough, Jack finds out that he's not just another member of Weirlind, he's one of the last of the warriors at a time when both houses are scouting for a player. Jack's performance on the soccer field has alerted the entire magical community to the fact that he's in Trinity. And until one of the houses is declared Jack's official sponsor, they'll stop at nothing to get Jack to fight for them. (goodreads.com)

You know, with how big of a fan of THE SEVEN REALMS series I am, it really pains me to say that I wasn't too big of a fan of THE WARRIOR HEIR. I mean it really does. I tried. I really did. But I didn't love it like I do THE SEVEN REALMS. Considering THE SEVEN REALMS was written later, giving Chima time to hone her craft, and considering how effing awesome it is, maybe my expectations were too high. It's not often I start out with books that came out later in an author's career. But in this case I'm glad I did because I honestly don't know if I'd keep reading this series, let alone more of Chima's work, if I had started with THE WARRIOR HEIR.

It's not the writing. Not really. I found the same type of prose in THE WARRIOR HEIR as I did in THE SEVEN REALMS but the former was missing something. Heart, maybe? The story was decent enough but it felt like it was skimming the surface of what Chima is truly capable of. Again, something else that could be chalked up to higher expectations. It just felt kind of done before. There were some good original elements in there, like the sleeping dragon stone and the portrayal of the underground magical society and the whole battle between the Roses and the lengths they go to in order to sabotage each other. But I wasn't really into it. I found it kind of difficult to pick up the book again once I put it down. It was hard for me to get into.

Maybe it had to do with Jack. I think I felt him more like a pawn than an actual character. I felt the plot move him more than he moved the plot, like he was just coasting along and going with the flow. He wasn't a stand-out character to me. I found him blending into the background too easily, getting pushed out of the way for the big kids to handle it, getting a somewhat easy way out. I wasn't too big of a fan.

I was far more interested in Ellen, for all her standoffishness. And I was hoping there would be more going on with Will and Fitch. I will avoid spoilers but I think shifting into their POVs, in some cases more often, would have benefited the story, given it a little more depth. I did like Longbranch. She played her role well and came off as quite a likable villain. A bit cookie-cutter but I liked her attitude. And Linda was pretty cool too but I felt she was shunted to the side a little too easily. I would have liked to have seen her be more prominent in the story than what she was. She would have provided a good balance for female strength in the story.

Don't get me wrong; it's not a bad story. There's an excerpt of THE WIZARD HEIR at the end and that looked pretty interesting. Just the excerpt made me feel like I'd connect with it just a little more than I did with THE WARRIOR HEIR. But it's not THE SEVEN REALMS. I don't want to say skip the first series and go to the second because this one definitely has its merits. As opposed to what it's not, what it is is a really good fantasy story. If Chima does nothing else, she builds her worlds marvelously and even though I think we're cheated out of some of that world here, what bits and pieces you do get are exceptionally vibrant and stand out on their own. Plus I don't want what happened to me to happen to you: you read one of the most awesome series ever and then go backwards to the author's debut work which, while still good, still provides a pretty big gap.

I think it'd be neat to see Chima's writing improve through the series. I still don't think I'd continue with this particular series because I wasn't thrilled with it but it's not lacking in writing. That's for sure. THE WARRIOR HEIR is very well written and deserves applause for that. So if you, like me, weren't thrilled with THE WARRIOR HEIR, hang in there. I can't vouch for the rest of this series, although I do want to read it at some point, but I can vouch for THE SEVEN REALMS, which is amazing and so totally worth it.

But, you might like this one just as much. They're two different types of fantasy, this one being more urban while THE SEVEN REALMS is more high so you need to take those genre differences into account when reading them because if you lean to one or the other, it's obviously going to color which one you'll like more. But give THE WARRIOR HEIR a try. It definitely deserves it. Not my favorite but it could be yours.

Ban Factor: High - A fantasy world with no Christian godly influence. Big banner fail.