The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories by Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton and Brenna Yovanoff

Published August 1, 2012.

Three Author Websites.

From acclaimed YA authors Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff comes The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories. 

- A vampire locked in a cage in the basement, for good luck. - Bad guys, clever girls, and the various reasons why the guys have to stop breathing. 

- A world where fires never go out (with references to vanilla ice cream). 

These are but a few of the curiosities collected in this volume of short stories by three acclaimed practitioners of paranormal fiction. But The Curiosities is more than the stories. Since 2008, Maggie, Tessa, and Brenna have posted more than 250 works of short fiction to their website merryfates.com. Their goal was simple: create a space for experimentation and improvisation in their writing—all in public and without a backspace key. In that spirit, The Curiosities includes the stories and each author's comments, critiques, and kudos in the margins. Think of it as a guided tour of the creative processes of three acclaimed authors. 

So, are you curious now?  (goodreads.com)

I LOVE YOU, CAROLRHODA LAB!  DON'T EVER CHANGE!

NetGalley noted the pub date for this book as today but Goodreads is showing back in August.  Considering Goodreads has the bump-up date for Meagon Spooner's SKYLARK I'm going with the Goodreads date for accuracy.

Okay, so book?  Andrew Karre is a publishing genius, never pandering to a wave or reading fad.  He's his own dowsing rod of incredible works, sniffing them out like a nifler and finding precious, precious gold.  Instead of lifting debuts out of the publishing ashes this time he's taken the minds of three already-established authors and exposed their twisted brains in bound book form.

Stiefvater, Gratton and Yovanoff have been experimentally writing as the Merry Fates for years now, stretching their writerly fingers beyond the scope of each of their perceived comfort zones.  The end result in THE CURIOSITIES is a peek behind Oz's curtain, complete with handwritten cliff notes and StiefTonOff (I need to copyright that) doodles to compliment the shorts scattered throughout.  They banter back and forth about each others' writing styles, throw comments about and generally boost each other up as they dip their toes into unfamiliar, and oftentimes murky, water.

The style of each author emerges almost immediately and you get an almost intimate sense of what each is comfortable writing and what was really a stretch into no-man's land.  It got to a point in THE CURIOSITIES that I didn't need to read who the short was written by, they were that distinct from each other.  You get to see some of their prompts and how each author sometimes interprets something as simple as a single name and even when they reach beyond their zone they all cling to something familiar, something stylistic that grounds them in the unknown.  They wax writer-like about drawing blanks, building a story from a single image or a single sentence or even a snippet of some weird dream.  It's a true look into the heads of authors without the classroom lessons of writing.  All you're getting are real world examples and they're so much more poignant.

Maggie is consistent Maggie even when she's trying to be Brenna or Tessa.  I will admit I was not thrilled with her Ballad of Faerie series.  While her writing was beautiful I felt it was more author than character and as a result I stepped away from her Wolves of Mercy Falls series, not wanting to read more of the same.  But what with her story in KISS ME DEADLY and now all of these it's only a matter of time before I pick up another Maggie book.  I just like her shorts far too much.  Her voice is so much more than just her and her range as an author is astounding.  She can flit in and out of genres as if she were skipping despite how taxing some of those stories were to write.  I am coming around again.

Tessa has a thing for grim fairy tales without really broaching into horror.  She plays at the line with her freaky dolls and pokes brownies in their eyes just for shits and giggles.  She takes a fey world and by sheer will of style turns it into something not only eerily dark but captivating and something wholly other, spinning metaphors into pure gold.  I love it when she dredged up barely touched lore and adds her platinum touch to it.  THE SUMMER ENDS IN SLAUGHTER is one such example that blends lore and darkness and Tessa touch into something that's captivating, drawing you in and not letting you look away.

Brenna prances across that horror line and plays with the dead, dressing them up in decaying dresses and stringing them up like marionettes to put on a show.  NEIGHBORS blew me away to the point of speechlessness.  The opening blurbs even warn about the stereotypical twist.  You know what's coming as you read but you don't because Brenna, in all her twisted horror glory, twists the twist and while you may see one you won't see the other.  By god I loved it.  I need more Brenna stories in my demented, horror-loving life.

THE CURIOSITIES is not only an excellent collection of short stories meant as a glimpse into the legwork of writers but an amazing introduction to the authors StiefTonOff.  See the genius that is Andrew's editing skills in compiling this novel of awesome and then read the expansive minds of three authors with rather set comfort zones shatter their own walls and wander into the wild.

Ban Factor: High - From vampires to fairies to a libido-laden dead teenager there is a veritable smorgasbord of screech-worthy banstuff in here.

YAckers Review: The Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill

Published April 1, 2009.

Author website.

The Icemark is a kingdom in grave danger. Its king has been killed in battle, its enemy lies in wait, and its fate rests on the shoulders of one girl. Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield, a beautiful princess and an intrepid warrior, must find a way to protect her land from a terrible invasion. She will forge an extraordinary alliance of noble Snow Leopards, ancient Vampires, and ferocious Wolf-folk. She will find unexpected strength in her friendship with a young warlock. And she will lead her allies to victory with her fierce battle cry: "Blood! Blast! And Fire!"  (goodreads.com)

Nicole was our Keeper of the Book for this month and she led us woefully astray.  She was the lone brave soul that was capable of venturing to the end of this tome for the rest of us gave up after varying amounts of pages ranging from five to 300.  None of us had too much of an issue with the plot per se but it couldn't seem to get out of its own way and Thirrin just wasn't that likable of a character.  In fact she was a bit of a snatch.  And she's barely fourteen.  Doom on her.

See what we had to say in full on our super awesome website.

Ban Factor: High - Blissfully Christianity free and filled with talking animals, werewolves and vampires, among other woodland creatures.  Not to mention a temperamental teen.  It's all too much!

The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long

Pub date: August 16, 2012.

Author website.

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

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

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

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

07/25

page 27

7.0%

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

07/26

page 116

30.0%

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

07/31

page 203

53.0%

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal

Published January 25th, 2011.

Author website.

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blog Tour: Skylark by Meagan Spooner

Pub date: August 1, 2012.

Author website.

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chrysanthe by Yves Meynard

Published March 13, 2012.

Author website.

Christine, the princess and heir to the real world of Chrysanthe, is kidnapped as a small child by a powerful magician and exiled in a Made World that is a version of our present reality. In exile, supervised by her strict "uncle"(actually a wizard in disguise), she undergoes bogus memory recovery therapy, through which she is forced to remember childhood rape and abuse by her parents and others. She is terribly stunted emotionally by this terrifying plot, but at seventeen discovers it is all a lie. Christine escapes with a rescuer, Sir Quentin, a knight from Chrysanthe, in a thrilling chase across realities.


Once home, the magical standoff caused by her exile is broken, and a war begins, in spite of the best efforts of her father, the king, and his wizard, Melogian. And that war, which takes up nearly the last third of the work, is a marvel of magical invention and terror, a battle between good and evil forces that resounds with echoes of the great battles of fantasy literature.  (goodreads.com)

You know, for such an incredibly long book CHRYSANTHE was so unbelievably forgettable.  Just a note on the sheer length: my copy is roughly 500 pages with microscopic font and margins that are maybe 3/4 of an inch.  Look -

The majority of the books I read are half that, usually creating a longer than required book but it reads quickly.  Except this book wasn't shortened by it's tiny writing.  Extend it out to regular reading font and margins and you're looking at something that could possibly be broaching a 700 page book with no page breaks for chapters.  They start a couple of lines down from the end of the former chapter.  Only "book breaks" are allotted and there are seven "books" within this one.  If CHRYSANTHE were actually parsed out into seven bound books it 1) wouldn't have taken me a month to read because 2) I wouldn't have read past the first book.

As it stands CHRYSANTHE is a strange one for me.  I had neither the desire to stop reading nor continue.  I wasn't engrossed with the story and the characters were wafer thing with Christine barely developing beyond the first few pages.  Forget about Quentin.  That boy's a lost cause.  So I have no idea what compelled me to actually finish this title.  It goes against all of the logic of my prior DNFs as it rightly should have been one.

In all honesty I do think it was the world.  If nothing else the world was a pretty solid one and I found Quentin's and Christine's travels through the worlds to be fascinating and the concept that they're not even real once you leave them pretty intriguing.  It kind of bodes for the whole "tree falls in the forest" thing.  If no one's there to experience it does it exist after all?  I wasn't too fond of the whole Hero concept in that if there's an incompetent ass on the throne then the Book (read: bible) will spit out a Hero to depose the crappy ruler and not much can be done because the Law (basically an intangible governing entity enforced by some kind of higher power) will kill you dead if you even so much as flick a royal's nose and mean the harm it causes.  For instance Christine, at around 10 years old, got into a fight with a schoolmate in the made world where she was trapped and the girl kicked her in the shin.  Because the Law followed Christine and applied in the made world the girl died a horrible death (which varies from death to death on the method).  Neat concept, kind of crappy attribution.  There are a lot of flaws in the world's logic but it painted a nice picture regardless.

Except for the poop.  There's a lot of it.  Literally.  The author had an unhealthy obsession of demonstrating a character's ability to provide a BM.  I have no idea why.  But there was a lot of gut rumbling and voiding of bowels going on.  Is this an aspect of fantasy I just wasn't aware of?

CHRYSANTHE was one of the few books where I read reviews as I was reading it simply because I wanted to know why it kept getting such low star ratings.  Having read it I can understand.  You're pretty much only going to tolerate it if you're a world whore like I am, and even that's a stretch.  Reading it you're pretty much skating on the surface, reading a text book account of what's going on in these people's lives.  There's very little by the way of character development and I believe only Christine does any developing at all.  Barely.  Having such vicious false memories implanted can have one hell of an effect on a person's psyche and if I said Christine didn't grow at all as a character I'd be lying but she doesn't grow much.  She is rather stunted in the maturity department and she does end up with a lot shoved into her lap and I do believe she reacts accordingly.  But since everything else around her is stagnant and the time elapsed is only a matter of weeks it doesn't help her.  I think she's come a long way in a short amount of time, all things considered, but it's contextual.

I feel like reading something so incredibly dense I should have taken more away from it but it's fluid; it just runs from my mind.  There isn't much that's all that memorable about CHRYSANTHE but it's not inherently bad either.  I think if the author had a bit more focus and honed in on a single character or two instead of resorting to the third person omniscient voice I think more could have been done in terms of character development, especially for Christine.  It's supposed to be mostly her story but once she gets to Chrysanthe she'd abandoned for other corners of the world most of the time.  It's unfortunate.

I think the premise was fantastic and it had potential but the execution was lackluster at best.  I really wanted to like CHRYSANTHE but it just fell flat.

Ban Factor: High - It has a "made" world where everything is fake, including a bastardized version of Christianity which Christine ends up abandoning for the "true" religion of Chrysanthe.  No, no, the banners won't like that.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Pub date: August 7, 2012.

Author website.

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

06/12

page 9

2.0%

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

Except I didn't like where it was going.

06/12

page 11

3.0%

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

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

06/12

page 11

3.0%

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

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

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

06/12

page 11

3.0%

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

06/12

page 12

3.0%

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

06/12

page 12

3.0%

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

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

06/12

page 13

3.0%

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

DAMMIT.

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

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

06/12

page 26

6.0%

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

06/12

page 28

7.0%

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

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

But wait!  There's more Sue!

06/12

page 31

7.0%

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

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

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

06/12

page 33

8.0%

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

06/12

page 38

9.0%

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

06/12

page 39

9.0%

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

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

06/12

page 39

9.0%

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

06/12

page 42

10.0%

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

06/12

page 42

10.0%

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

06/12

page 50

12.0%

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

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

06/12

page 56

13.0%

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

06/12

page 64

15.0%

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

06/12

page 69

17.0%

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

06/12

page 76

18.0%

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

06/12

page 76

18.0%

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

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

06/12

page 79

19.0%

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

06/12

page 82

20.0%

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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