31
Dec
ISBN: 978-0345512093
I requested this book from the author.
Jessie Shimmer is an apprentice wizard who wants nothing more than to spend a pleasant afternoon with her lover and Master, Cooper. Instead their spell to summon rain goes wrong and Cooper vanishes, leaving Jessie alone in a park suddenly torn apart by magic. Despite being sealed off and left to die by the other magic users of the city, Jessie defeats the demon that came through the tear that took Cooper, taking severe damage herself.
When she wakes in the home of Mother Karen, her friend and a healer things only get worse, for the magical ruler of the city wants Jessie silenced and Cooper to remain gone, permanently. With Mr. Jordan trying to crush her will and her desire to see Cooper back safely in her arms Jessie must risk losing it all, suffer the guilt of her past that she didn’t even know about and try to save Cooper from his.
Spellbent is a fast paced, hard to put down novel. Somewhere between Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden and Terry Pratchett’s magical sections of Discworld, Snyder takes readers on a ride through strange creatures, powerful magic, true evil and personalized hell dimensions.
Accompanied by her familiar, a sometimes ferret, sometimes something else altogether, and motivated by family and love Jessie is a lead that gets things done. Many urban fantasy novels have begun to display themes of friendship or defying the odds. Snyder gives her characters a familiar dark past, save that the focus is far more on their modern life and current survival than on a constantly circling cycle of dealing with the trauma of their pasts.
A strong, enticing debut for Snyder in urban fantasy, this one is definitely on my list of must reads for the year.
28
Dec
ISBN: 978-1933293875
I was given this book for consideration for review by the author.
Some books are easy reads, some are emotionally harrowing, and some make you work to take the experience imbued by the author away when you close it at the end. Cursed by Jeremy C. Shipp falls very definitely into this last category.
Nick is an odd, but easy to relate to man who has reason to believe he’s been cursed as strange things start to happen in his life. By chance (or maybe not) he meets Cicely and Abby, who also seem to be cursed, and it all started on the same day. Are they cursed by the same man? And how do they stop it and get their loved ones back when they might just be the playthings of a god?
But that barely touches the surface of the story in this book. Shipp is an excellent writer, there’s no doubt, but this is neither and easy book nor one for everyone. As the story progresses a disturbing sense of complete imbalance surfaces, as the reader realizes they know almost everything about the secondary characters and nothing about Nick himself, coupled with the suspicious that these people are just completely nuts.
The difficulty of the read is in Shipp’s absolute close-mouthed approach, telling the reader what is happening in precise, list like detail, but also never allowing character nor reader a moment to guess why this is all happening, or if, indeed the character are sharing some psychosis or privy to some deeper truth. There is a divide between how the three main characters experience things and how the rest of the story world experiences them, but Shipp seems unwilling to lend “right” to one or the other or both. He chooses instead to push the story on, maintaining a sense of “what the hell” from the reader. We know, as we experience the story (because despite it’s simplistic writing approach it is experiencing it more than reading it) that both sides cannot be correct. Yet Shipp maintains proof that they are, forcing the reader to let go of their preconceived notions of storytelling and trust in him.
I was left with a feeling that in their skewed, possibly psychotic mental workings the three leads were free to somehow confront life itself, in a bodily form, particularly when they finally meet their curser and he has this to say: “I’m interested in your mind, your emotions, the whole enchilada. Your suffering is a valuable asset to me, and I don’t relish the thought of you finding a sort of nihilistic peace in oblivion.”
Shipp has, in my opinion, formed a story of life’s battering of the living, of being a brutal lover who gives and takes away with the same hand. Of kissing and smacking at the simultaneously, and for the same reason.
Cursed is not an easy read on any level (save for that it is written almost entirely as a series of lists, meta lists and listed occurrences, so technically two hundred plus pages of one to two line “paragraphs” might be considered an easy read, word count wise) but the right readers will find it worth the work.
House of Night book 4
ISBN: 9780312379834
I purchased this book.
Do not read this book without having book five ready to dive into immediately after.
By this point the series is literary crack, unputadownable (to use a phrase I hate, but it fits). Zoey Redbird is a chosen of the night goddess Nyx, which means she has powers and will someday become a vampyre. Her friends are all gifted as well, beyond just being marked to become vampyres.
Zoey’s circle is still recovering from last book’s plot of I’m-lying-to-you-to-protect-you, but after a vision from Aphrodite it’s clear that Zoey needs to start leaning on them again, even if evil High Priestess Neferet’s mind reading powers might risk them all in the process.
Newly thrown into the mix are Stark, a vampire Bullseye, who can hit his target every time, even if he doesn’t know what his target is, and Zoey’s Grandmother, pulled into an active role when she finally puts a name and face to the big mysterious evil they are facing. But Stark dies in Zoey’s arms, much like Stevie Rae died in the second book only to be reborn as a red-marked fledgling. Sure that the same is true of Stark, Zoey hatches a plan to intervene and steal Stark from Neferet’s influence.
But something is watching her from the shadows, something that’s angry and growing power and Zoey must find a way to stop it and stop Neferet while protecting her friends and family as well.
I am absolutely as hooked on this series as I was on Buffy. It’s smart, snarky, dark and absolutely engaging. I made the mistake of not having book five sitting ready when I hit the end and it’s a shame, since the Casts have hit a stride born of past world building and past set up launching the characters into fast, readable whirlwind adventures. The House of Night series is poised to become my favorite YA world out there. In short, I humbly await more.
The Outsider series book 1
ISBN: 9780982175682
I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Readers program.
Warning: I am rating this book DNF.
The premise has potential, Livvie is a Soul Catcher, gifted with the power to magically summon demons via painting them then banishing them by burning the painting. She is also a multi-reincarnated soul who is haunted by a soul mate and a demon who refuses to let them be together.
In execution though the book fails on nearly every level. Livvie is a character straight out of addict recovery show, rambling about relatively unimportant things one minute, setting up scenes the next only to ramble some more and finally update the reader on what they missed while she was rambling. It’s like the author and character have teamed up to avoid actually showing the story. Not to mention Livvie’s horrible drug use is more like Tylenol PMs and wine.
Apparently in the first few scenes Livvie dreams of Pig Face, the demon who has been killing herself and her soul mate for countless lives. Instead of burning the painting the painting flies out of Livvie’s hands in a sudden and fortuitous gust of wind. This of course means Pig Face escapes the painting. However the only way I knew that this is what happened, and that it was a major plot event, is because I read other reviews that explained this. These “major events” are written in a style that makes them seem convoluted, utterly unimportant and routine.
Pig Face apparently possesses the body of a man Livvie shows interest in, gains her trust after a few exchanged lines of dialog and leads her outside where he beats her and rapes her. The actual action (not that I’m eager to read that scene) is all off screen and only explained after a chapter break in brief retrospect, much like all the action in this book so far.
Livvie receives aid from her landlords, who, as Livvie is barely conscious, sum up everything that’s happened so far in the book (apparently they are all-knowing NPCs) in explanation to each other. These two go on to call what happened to Livvie “a downer” and explain that they are some sort of soul friends who know all about her, what she is, and who Pig Face and Ian are too. Rather than taking Livvie to a hospital to, you know check for brain damage and internal injuries, they just stitch her up themselves in their spare bedroom.
The hot mess of a plot continues to ramble on, with more actual on screen scenes, that don’t make much more sense, until about fifty pages in when Pig Face attacks Livvie again (in a police station, with a bunch of cops nearby, where they were accusing her of killing a guy she worked with, who killed himself in public, and who had no other link to her). Only this time Livvie calls to Ian (who I’m assuming is haunting her) for help and Ian ends up possessing the body Pig Face raped Livvie with.
I gave up on this book not much after, when more rambling started. I personally despise rape-as-romance plots. No amount of this style of writing or these flat characters was going to redeem this book for me, especially if it continued to spend the next two hundred pages alternating between “Livvie is crazy”, “Pig Face is brutally and gorily attacking everyone she’s ever known” and “Livvie needs to trust this guy who raped her in the second chapter because they are true loves”.
This book was just too convoluted, with Livvie’s completely unlikable nature, Pig Face’s cruel torturous slaughter for no reason other than he could, and the constant distractions from every ghost, animal, “boon” and spirit talking to Livvie (seriously, two spirits in the form of flies tried to protect her by buzzing around a cop’s head to distract him). The world building is so confusing I never had any solid picture of the characters, the places, or even the rules of the magical world. I cannot recommend this book, because I cannot think of a single avid reader that I know of who would find it an exciting, enjoyable read.
Tir Alainn trilogy book 2
ISBN: 9780451458506
I bought this book.
Shadows and Light brings readers back to a world of witches, magic and fae, and a growing evil that threatens them all.
By this book in the series readers know that the witches are really the descendants of the House of Gaian and that when a witch dies, slaughtered by the evil minions of jealousy and twisted magic, the tether to the magical fae land of Tir Alainn is broken and that part of the fae realm is lost.
This book strays from following the witch Ari as a primary character and instead travels with Aiden, The Bard, and Lyrra, The Muse, both exiled from the fae by Dianna and Lucian’s rage, as they try to convince the rest of the fae to save the witches to save their world. This volume also introduces new characters; Brianna and Liam, half siblings struggle to deal with each other as well as the evil creeping into their land; Ashke and Padrick, fae, and human world baron and baroness as well; and a collection of humans, fae, witches and other who are finding themselves forced to choose sides. Each character is compelling and interesting and likely could carry the story on their own. Combined it leads to an epic, large scale feel as readers form a solid picture of Bishop’s world.
Most interesting is Morag, the Gather, Death’s Mistress, the one fae with the power of life and death which sets her apart even from the other fae. It also puts her in the position of being the only one who can stop the rotten core of the Black Coats’ evil.
This volume also introduces the western fae, who never forgot their roots like Lucian and Dianna have and whole towns where fae and witch are synonymous with neighbor and friend.
Lyrra and Aiden are trying to make the adjustment from the eastern fae and their exile, to the western fae, who are guarded not because of the Bard and Muse’s intent but because of the reputation of the eastern fae. They set out on a search for the mysterious Hunter. He may be the only one with enough command and power to counter the damage Dianna and Lucian are doing that threatens to split the fae into their own civil war.
Again Bishop spins a fantastic world, rife with beauty, humor and danger, and populated by fleshy characters struggling to do what’s right. The heroism aspect in this volume is its only potential flaw. Despite the glory of Bishop’s world there is a very clear cut line between good and evil and characters fall on one side or the other, though some don’t realize the full extent of their actions.
The Tir Alainn trilogy remains one of my all-time favorite reads and has, several years after its release, stood up to repeated reads and still delivered a highly enjoyable reading experience.
Tir Alainn trilogy book 1
ISBN: 9780451458506
I bought this book.
Anne Bishop is a master world builder, bringing epic fantasy lands to life with a deft hand. In this trilogy the world is one of elemental magic, where fae and witches come to life and both are threatened by a sinister evil force.
In this first book in the trilogy a witch with the gifts of fire and earth gets trapped by a bit of hedge love magic and, trying to avoid being abused, swears to give herself to a mysterious stallion who shares a summer holiday with her. The stallion turns out to be Lucian, the fae Lord of Fire in his animal form. Curious about this woman who sought him as a friend rather than as a breeder, Lucian begins an affair with Ari.
In Tir Alainn, the fae are facing their own, much larger crisis. Whole sections of their enchanted land are vanishing, cut off by a mysterious misty nothingness. When Dianna, Lucian’s twin and The Huntress, discovers Ari is a witch, whom some of the stories and songs of the land blame for the growing evil in the world, she also begins to foster an interest in Ari, determined to save her home at any costs.
The truth of the lost places of Tir Alainn and a foul evil that’s spreading through the land, is far more complicated than Lucian, Dianna and Ari know. In this first book three sides are drawn, those for good, those for evil, and those whose egos drive their actions rather than their heads.
This is absolutely one of my favorite books. Bishop’s world is so thick and sensory that even though I read this for the first time when it was first published around 2002 I continue to read the triology over and over, nearly every year and have yet to tire of it.
Bishop’s only flaw is a skew toward “Women are beautiful and wonderful and men are wicked and cruel” themes, and of all her work this series balances it out the best. Despite great or little power, Bishop’s characters are real people, often gifted with a sense of humor which balances out the darker elements of the stories.
Here you will find neither damsels in distress nor super powered Janeways. The balance between male and female, good and evil are maintained delicately, but clearly, making this whole trilogy a pleasure to read and reread.
ISBN: 9780375814242
I bought this book.
Dahl’s name on a book, to me, is synonymous with a wild ride. James and the Giant Peach is quite possibly his craziest book (that I’ve read) so far.
Dahl’s penchant for abused children facing down a cruel world sets the scene, with James Henry Trotter (whose parents were gobbled up by a rhinoceros) living a lonely, miserable life in the cruel care of his aunts Spiker and Sponge (who are, of course, truly horrible people, even for Dahl’s worlds). Then one day a strange man appears and gives James magical green things, telling him to brew them into a tea and drink them and marvelous things will happen.
Parents will be close to screaming at this point, both because of the blatant abuse of the lead character and the danger of eating things strangers (and this man is indeed VERY strange) offer. Consider it an opportunity to have a talk or two about the serious subjects with your kids.
James accidentally trips and loses the green magical things, which burrow into the ground and instead work their magic on the few occupants of the horrible aunts’ pitiful garden. The strange man was right, though, and the peach tree somehow surviving in such a horrible place, grows a gigantic peach that serves as boat, meal and almost a secondary character in James’ voyage to freedom.
James and the Giant Peach is quite “out there”. In fact between giant bugs, sheer strangeness and outlandish extremism (and cloud people) James and the Giant Peach could fit into the bizarro genre, if it was commonly aimed at children readers.
There is some issue with language (“ass” is used several times) and the level of abuse James suffers that makes this book not for all families. But the underlying theme is one of taking your life into your own hands and choosing your own actions rather than letting the actions of others force you into things.
Dahl’s books might be of particular value to families and children struggling to cope with real life abuse and pain, as every story I’ve read so far has pit a mostly helpless child against forces entirely out of their control, and yet through thoughtfulness and great-heartedness wonderful things come to those who choose to live beyond the harshness of the world. Like many children found solace in the Harry Potter series after the death of a parent, some might also find solace and aid in coping from Dahl’s dark, but triumphant tales of recovery.
House of Night book 3
ISBN: 9780312360304
I purchased this book.
Chosen is the Empire Strikes Back of the Casts’ vampire finishing school series. Previously, Zoe Redbird was marked to become a vampyre, a favored person of the night goddess Nyx. Upon entering the House of Night she discovered an imbalance in the workings of the vampires and realized Nyx had charged her with fixing it. In book one Zoey takes on class queen and total meanie, Aphrodite. In book two Zoe learns that Aphrodite was not even close to the big bad of the series and something worse is going on, claiming fledgelings from the House of Night and turning them into something else.
In this third book Zoe now knows that the high priestess of the House of Night, and Zoe’s personal mentor, Neferet, is somehow behind her best friend’s transformation from an ordinary fledgeling into a full realized–something–with a red crescent mark instead of Nyx’s sapphire mark. But no matter how gifted she is, she is still a fledgeling and she’s facing a fully trained, intelligent and malicious adult whose hands are firmly wrapped around other people and other powers.
In addition, Zoey still is finding herself unable to let her human high school boyfriend go, unsure if it’s because she doesn’t want to let go of her human life, or because he’s the only source she has of fresh blood. When vampyre hottie and school poetry teacher Loren Blake starts making some serious moves on her, Zoey finds herself unable to even think or resist against his charms, despite her already complicated love life.
But she has to keep Loren, the red fledgelings and Stevie Rae secret from her best friends, risking their rage, because Neferet’s mind reading powers (which don’t work on Zoey) could put them all in danger. The only person Zoey has to talk to, the only other person immune to Neferet’s mind reading, is Aphrodite, who has been publicly humiliated and abandoned Nyx—according to Neferet. Zoey’s sudden trust of Aphrodite sits just as badly with her friends, prepping the House of Night crew for a show down that’s less magic and fighting and more tempers and ill-will.
Despite the amount of emotional turmoil in this book it manages to avoid being needless high drama. Also missing is the borderline preachiness some readers have found in previous installments of the series. The Casts keep a balance between the elements introduced previously in the series; Zoey’s family troubles, the mystery of the red fledglings, Neferet’s bipolar influences, Zoey’s struggles with her love life, and the battles of high school themselves; and still manage to move the overall plot forward..
If you haven’t read the series before, don’t start here because by this book readers should be well entrenched in the series to understand the importance of the climax and ending. It also helps, since book four is already available if you grab that one as well for a continuous flow of the overall storyline. Again, this is a fabulous dark urban fantasy series for readers who want dangerous and complex, but aren’t ready for the sexual and violent content of more adult series on shelves today.