Book Review - Innocent Darkness

Along with Throne of Glass, another ARC I recieved at BEA, Innocent Darkness, will be released in August, so here is my review of it. You can find a link to Shanella's review at the end of this post. Warning - review can be spoilery.

Release Date: August 8th, 2012

Innocent Darkness tells the story of Magnolia (Noli), Braddock, a girl who finds herself at a harsh reform school after getting into trouble. There, a wish inadvertently takes her into the world of the Fae, where she realizes that she is to be the sacrifice that will save the Fae world from withering. That’s because Noli has the “Spark,” and every seven years a girl with the Spark is bound to the Fae world and killed so that the Fae don’t fade. Unbeknownst to her, her best friend and crush Steven (V) is Fae, a prince, and comes to Noli’s rescue.

I thought the premise of Innocent Darkness was interesting because I had never heard of a novel that combined Steampunk and Fae/magic elements. However, I was disappointed with the execution of the novel. It was very difficult for me to finish, and I don’t think it lived up to its potential.

Noli lives in Los Angeles, during a time period that mimics real life history in that women are not on par with men, a working woman is looked down on, and there are societal expectations for a way a woman is supposed to dress, act, etc. The reform school Noli ends up in is supposed to suppress her personality and turn her into a vapid lady. I can’t say I was drawn into the world though, because I did not feel as though there was enough world building, especially in regards to the Steampunk elements. In the Fae world we don’t see a wide scope of it, but for the space the story encompasses I think it was sufficient.

I did not connect with Noli; she was not an extremely strong character. On one hand she believes that as a lady she should act a certain way in regards to men, yet on the other hand both love interests get pretty far under her clothes with not much protesting from her. Yes, there’s something to be said for getting caught up in the moment, but the amount of back and forth she had made it harder for me to let her get away with her teenage hormones. She struck me as a more passive than active character who just went with the flow while everyone else made the decisions.

As far as the love triangle, I did not buy one angle of it at all, and the other, while more believable, felt a bit forced. One minute V (the more believable love interest), is resolved to be distant to her for her own protection, then a page later they’re making out. Then there’s Kevighn, who is the Queen’s huntsman sent to find human girls with the Spark, seduce them, and trick them into sacrificing themselves. The fact that he so quickly falls for Noli after she ends up with him in the Fae world was extremely unbelievable, and I knew it was only done so that he would have a crisis of conscience when it came to handing her over to the high Queen. Then there’s V’s brother James, who searches for Noli’s friend Charlotte, who also has the Spark, and was taken from the reform school by her abusive uncle. James brings her into the Fae world, and while we don’t read any scenes of James and Charlotte together until they show up to where Noli and V are, they are suddenly in love. Where is the build up to make that believable and make me care about their romance? There was an overall streak of sexuality in the book that I found to be off. I don’t have a problem with sex/sensuality in YA novels, but it has to feel believable, and there has to be a reason for it. In this novel, there was something about the references and scenes regarding sensuality that felt awkward and not believable to the type of story it was.

It was intriguing to have the idea that Noli’s death would save the entire Fae kingdom (including V), and if she didn’t die all the Fae would die, but I think the conclusion was too neat. There weren’t really any huge stakes for Noli, no real action scenes, no real feeling of impending doom, and the high Queen was quite disappointing; she let Noli just run off and hide in another part of the kingdom with V. Why wouldn’t you want to keep the girl with the Spark that will save your people under lock and key?

Something else that I found jarring was the writing style. The amount of repetitive phrases was  definitely noticeable enough to throw the reader off. Kevighn can only seem to say “opium and soft women” in relation to his desire to go to a brothel, and can only call V “that whelp of a prince.” Then there were all the “hoydens” and “fussy old bodgers.” Overall, the writing style was not captivating.

If there are future books, I will not be continuing with the series. Innocent Darkness gets one out of five from me.

Shanella's Review

Book Review - Throne of Glass

I'm part of a small book club where we will be reviewing ARCs we got at BEA. Today I will be posting a review for Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, which is released on August 7th. This ties in nicely with the Buccaneer Blogfest since the last post for this week is to do a book review. I'll just be doing mine a day early since we arranged to post our reviews today. You can find links to everyone else's reviews at the bottom of this post. Warning -- the reviews can be spoilery. 

Throne of Glass is a YA fantasy novel that follows seventeen year old assassin Celaena Sardothien as she’s plucked from a death camp by the crown prince and chosen to be his champion, to compete against over twenty other murderers and thieves in a quest to become the king’s champion. If she wins the competition she gains her freedom after four years of service to the king, if she loses she’s sent back to the harrowing salt mines she was taken from.

Throne of Glass was listed as perfect for fans of Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games novels, so I had the expectation that there would be a lot of action, mainly involving Celaena fighting her way through her competitors to win. However, I was disappointed by the lack of action, and what we got instead, the competitors going through challenges and being eliminated, was not that engaging or interesting. However, the main character Celaena, definitely has a strong voice and comes across as extremely tough and witty, but not without her softer side, and while I liked her sense of humor and the way she interacted with some of the other characters, I had a hard time buying the fact that she is a ruthless, infamous assassin who doesn’t think twice about killing. Even if she was a trained assassin, I feel like something should have been said that at so young an age she was already such an accomplished murderer. We get hints at her past, involving the death of her parents and the person who trained her to become an assassin, as well as a past love and a betrayal that landed her in the salt mines, but the book ends leaving us only with hints. While I would have liked more of her back story I understand that in a “Book One” you can’t give it all away, so I am sure those hints will be explored in further novels.

Maas definitely has some good prose going, but there were numerous places that I found to be unbelievable or awkward and those things threw me out of the narrative. The novel switches perspectives between at least four characters, and at times I was not sure whose perspective I was following if two of those characters were in the same scene. Also, I was less invested in reading from certain character’s perspective than others, so there were parts of the novel that dragged for me.

As for the romance, as with most YA books there is a love triangle, but I honestly was not extremely invested in either of them. The love triangle involves Celaena, the prince, and the captain of the guard, who is also her trainer. While I like a well paced buildup to romance as opposed to two characters just falling on each other fast, to me the buildup was too long and not believable enough, so when the prince and Celaena finally kiss, I wasn’t moved one way or another. I felt like a more interesting relationship was between her and the captain of the guard, but there wasn’t much development there, and I felt as though there was too much back and forth in how they felt about each other for me to really understand what kind of relationship they had or were trying to have.

There is a murder mystery aspect to the novel as well, and it involves the magical element of the book; the champions start dying in gruesome ways, and no one knows who or what did it. When the magical aspect starts to develop more, it’s interesting, but also a little predictable. I knew who did it long before the characters did, and I felt like with the truly horrific way specific people were dying, there should have been more fear and hysteria going around, and even after three champions died they still couldn’t figure out that it was a pattern. This was one of my biggest issues with the novel; having smart characters not figure out obvious things for the sake of tension or keeping readers in the dark. A lot of times the things characters would say or the way they would act induced an eye roll in me. For example, I didn’t understand why such a ruthless, fearless assassin never tried to escape and only thought about it, even when she found a secret passage in her room (!) that led outside to an area of the castle that wasn’t guarded at all (even though there were over twenty ruthless murderers and thieves staying there). It would have made for great action if she had attempted to escape, even if she failed.

Overall, when the explanation of the magic is revealed, I think it ends up being one of the stronger aspects of the novel. Throne of Glass was not a bad read, but it also did not blow me away. However, I will probably continue reading the series to see where Celaena’s story takes her. The novel gets 3 out of 5 from me.

Shanella's Review
Alexa's Review
Pixie's Review

Buccaneer Blogfest -- Top 5 favorite books

I have a hard time answering when someone asks "What's your favorite..." It's not that I'm so stuck up that I don't have a favorite anything, I just like so many things that's it never easy to say one out of all of them is my favorite. I think the only thing I can definitely say I have a favorite of is song, and even there it's actually two songs tied for first because I can't choose! Anyway, today we are supposed to post our top five favorite books of all time, so let me give it a shot. In no particular order:

1. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima. This one is actually an easy pick for the fave category. I geared a lot of my studies in college around Japanese culture/literature/history etc, thus I read a lot of Japanese works, especially from their post modern period. I fell in love with this novel because of the quiet feel it had, set on a small island it tells the love story of a young fisherman and a girl who comes from a wealthy family. It's a simple story but not without its complexities, and I love it for that. It doesn't stray far from the island it's set on and there's not a huge cast of characters, but it keeps the reader through the story. I'm not really the type to re-read novels, but this one I've read more than once.

2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I first read this when I was a sophomore in high school. Though I think the prose can be a bit dense at times, what I love most about this novel is the damaging love between Heathcliff and Catherine. It's dark and twisted, Heathcliff is truly a heinous character, and Catherine is hardly likeable a lot of the time, yet you can't help feel for them and want them to be together. I love how Bronte wasn't afraid to go there with her characters, I mean digging up someone's body years after they died just to get some ease of mind? That's something beyond love. I was even inspired to write a poem based on Catherine and Healthcliff. I love trying to write in extremes, especially when I write poetry, so when I'm trying to push the envelope of something dark and romantic and tragic I always think about these characters.

3. The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause. This was one of the first vampire novels I read, and even after years of reading vampire novels it stands out to me because, like The Sound of Waves, I'd describe this novel as quiet. It tells a love story between a girl and a vampire, who is tortured by his existence, not unlike a lot of vampires out there. But the novel stayed in a very small world involving the characters, who each had their own issues, and I liked that there was no big evil to fight or mysteries to unravel, it was mostly about the characters. I think this was one of the first books that brought tears to my eyes since the ending is sad (and probably because I was a young teen and all sensitive lol).

4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This is one from my childhood, but I've re-read it well into my older years. I loved the story of a garden bringing people together and bringing 'magic' back into their lives. There was just something about it that kept me coming back. And I guess I have a thing for books involving big, old houses on the English moors?

5. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Since the other four books are older, I'll go with something more recent. This is one of my favorite books I've read this year. The prose was lovely, the characters extremely interesting, the story complex and mysterious and keeping me turning the page to find out more. Can't wait for the sequel.

I actually made it to five books, yay!

Buccaneer Blogfest - What I'm Reading

This week for the Buccaneer Blogfest is all about reading. Today we have to share the last three books we read and what's on our TBR pile.

I just recently finished an ARC of Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Mass. I got the ARC at Book Expo, and since my cousin decided to start a little book group based on ARCs we got at BEA, I'll be posting a review of Throne of Glass later this week, as well as one for Innocent Darkness by Suzanne Lezar.

Before Throne of Glass I read Eon by Allison Goodman, I really liked it, it was a very interesting story and it was nice to get back to reading high fantasy after reading more urban and paranormal  books. Before Eon I read Die for Me by Amy Plum, which I liked as well, I especially liked her take on zombies, I thought her world building was pretty unique and I definitely hadn't read anything like it before. There could have been a bit more plot development but to me it was a book that's more character driven so I was fine with that.

Now, as for my TBR pile, that just seems to be a list that keeps going! For the BEA book club I have:

Carnival of Souls - Melissa Marr
The Raven Boys - Maggie Stiefvater
The Diviners - Libba Bray
Crewel - Gennifer Albin
Venom - Fiona Paul

And my personal TBR pile, these are the books sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me:

Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor
Until I Die - Amy Plum
Eona - Allison Goodman
City of Lost Souls - Cassandra Clare
Kiss the Dead - Laurell K. Hamilton
Under the Never Sky - Veronica Rossi
Across the Universe/ A Million Suns - Beth Revis
The Immortal Rules - Julie Kagawa

Since I have so many books to read I've been trying to resist buying even more books (so hard!) but I do want to buy more of the adult urban fantasy series I'm reading, I've been on a YA kick so I like to switch off from time to time. But the books aren't going anywhere right? There will be time for them all!

Buccaneer Blogfest - Lightbulb Moment

So today for the Buccaneer Blogfest we're supposed to talk about the inspiration behind our WIPs. For me, I really love the inspiration part of the writing process, because I never know when it's going to hit and I love seeing what my imagination comes up with. What's interesting to me is that I always have a list of book ideas that I keep on the back burner, and I always think my next book will come from that list, but it almost never does. I could be totally excited about an existing idea, then a new idea will pop in and that will be what I end up writing instead.

Affairs of the Dead was one of those new ideas that randomly came to me. I remember what initially came to mind was thoughts about a world where people died but their ghosts stuck around because they had unfinished business that they needed help with. Now I promise you I had never even thought about the T.V. show "Ghost Whisperer" (which I have never watched), until I was in the early stages of planning the book, was all giddy and excited about it, and was telling my cousin about it and she said "Oh like Ghost Whisperer!" Then the brakes squealed and I thought, crap, am I just ripping off that show? So I looked it up and even though the premise is similar -- female MC helping ghosts with unfinished business, ultimately what Affairs grew into was something I feel is unique enough to stand on its own and I regained my excitement about it. After that, my first scene came to mind, and I started writing pretty quickly. It was one of my ten day novels, the first draft flowed out quickly, and now it's in the editing stage.

So, that's basically my lightbulb moment for Affairs of the Dead.

Hookers and Hangers Blogfest -- Hangers

My entry for the Buccaneer Blogfest can be found here. And before I get to my Hangers, I'd like to say thanks for all the comments on my Hookers, I'm glad people enjoyed my first line. So now here are my hangers:

• I knew my best bet for getting her laid would be in a strip club where money came first and dignity was a distant second.

• She smiled at my sarcasm and bid me goodbye as I left her office and went back to the tenth floor and the folder of tasks I had to get cracking on.

• One, that I was among the small population of necromancers who carried the very illegal ability to reanimate the dead, and two that Micah was the only person who knew that.

• “My body is alive,” he said, blue eyes fixed on me as though he was willing me to believe him. “I’m just not the one walking around in it.”

• “Just don’t stand there and watch me sleep. It’s creepy…”

• Andrew just laughed, pulled me into his lap, and got me out of my underwear.

• Some girls had all the fun.

• But, you know, running around the city with Ethan in pursuit of his stolen body could be fun too.

• “I guess that’s a no.”

• It was Athena.

• Our relationship had changed yet again, but I had absolutely no idea what it had changed into.

• He held me for a little while longer and when we let go, he gently touched my cheek, then headed to his car.

• Imagine that.

• It was a beautiful moment among the chaos that had suddenly descended into my life.

• I pounded my fist against the closed elevator door and screamed, feeling angry and frustrated and devastated.

• Ghost Ethan was fighting his body jacker.

• He kissed me again, and we fell asleep with our arms tight around each other.

• He sighed and started up the car.

• “We need to head to the office. Now.”

• I would have laughed at her attempt to side with me under the fear that I’d do what Larry did, but this was one situation even I couldn’t find the humor in.

• Right now it seemed like all the roads only led to dark places.

• “Show me how you play this game, Ethan,” I said. “Yelling and cursing at it seems to have helped you these last few days. I want in.”

Buccaneer Blogfest - Character Interview

Another double post today, first up is a character interview for the Buccaneer Blogfest. I actually did a character interview last month for the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun blogfest, so I'm gonna cheat and re-use it =) Here goes:

1. How would you describe your hero?

A royal pain in my ass! At least in the beginning. Micah was hostile towards me for no reason, but it's not like I cared too much about what crawled up his butt. Though alright, he's gorgeous, but he's plowed through half the women in the office, including me, one drunken night. He actually turned hateful after that night, and I always figured it was because he thought I'd be so enamored with him afterwards I'd throw myself at him and beg to be his girlfriend. And that definitely didn't happen.  But recently things have been changing, Micah and I had a heart to heart about a lot of things, including the true reason for his hostility, and I have to say waking up in a hospital room and seeing him there changed a lot for me...

2. What's your biggest date horror story?

HA, only one? Well suffice to say I get around a lot, oh, that really makes me sound like a big tramp doesn't it? Okay, I get around...periodically, how's that? One time a guy took me out and his idea of a date was pizza then drinking at a seedy bar in the West Village; which I was okay with don't get me wrong, any night that can combine pizza and liquor for me is a good night. But when prince charming got so hammered he ended up throwing up on me but still wanted to get into my pants, I'd have to say that date belongs in the sucky pile.

3. What turns you off from a guy the most?

Throwing up on me is a pretty big turn off, but since I'm an aggressive sorta girl I have to say someone who can't match me on that isn't someone whose gonna get the goods if you know what I mean. 

4. What's the best date you ever had? 

I'll get back to you on that one, see I'm only now realizing my hitting and quitting ways aren't quite working for me any more...Micah seems to be interested in me for more than a good time between the sheets, but I'm terrified of messing this up. Because let's face it, making a mess of things is sorta my MO.

5. Kiss on the first date?

Sure, we can start with a kiss... 

6. What gets a guy a second date?

Again, I'll get back to you on this.

7. Boxers or briefs on your guy?

Boxers for sure, you can't get me hot and bothered if you're coming at me in tightie whities.

8. What is one thing you believe can tell a lot about a person?

What they will do for you when it really matters. If you end up in the hospital, will they drop everyone and come even if it's not life threatening? Or will they leave you an expensive necklace on your desk at work then expect you to come and thank them for it? Because I've experienced both, and the behavior of the person who did the latter taught me a lesson almost too late.

9. What attracts you to a guy the most?

Scenario A from above. And nice biceps. And abs. And Micah's gray eyes...