arc Archives - Page 13 of 30

Yzabel / September 1, 2016

Review: Winning

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Who ever said being nice would get you to the top?

Certainly not Alexandra Miles. She isn’t nice, but she’s more than skilled at playing the part. She floats through the halls of Spencer High, effortlessly orchestrating the actions of everyone around her, making people bend to her whim without even noticing they’re doing it. She is the queen of Spencer High—and it’s time to make it official.

Alexandra has a goal, you see—Homecoming Queen. Her ambitions are far grander than her small town will allow, but Homecoming is just the first step to achieving total domination. So when peppy, popular Erin Hewett moves to town and seems to have a real shot at the crown, Alexandra has to take action.

With the help of her trusted friend Sam, she devises her most devious plot yet. She’ll introduce an unexpected third competitor into the mix, one whose meteoric rise—and devastating fall—will destroy Erin’s chances once and for all. Alexandra can run a scheme like this in her sleep. What could possibly go wrong?

Review:

(I got a copy through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.)

I’m usually not much into “high school drama” (it’s often too over the top for me, or perhaps my high school years were just too quiet and boringly normal, who knows), but this novel was quite pleasant to read, and what could’ve been total cliché characters were surprisingly fleshed out and interesting, in spite of fitting tropes.

Alexandra Miles is the expected Queen Bee, the one who’ll no doubt become Homecoming Queen, like she has planned. Everything is planned, for her to get out of Spencer with a bang, not a whimper, become Miss America, and then… What else? What’s more? Lexi doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter too much either that she’s living what used to be her mother’s dream, the latter her having pushed her on the pageants road since she was a toddler. In short: Lexi is a queen, she knows it, she’s smart and cunning on top of being pretty, and she won’t settle down for anything less. And she’s ready to go to quite a few lengths for that.
Enters Erin, the transfer student, Erin the cutie who’s so adorable her mere presence soon starts to turn tables. She’s a viable candidate for Homecoming Queen… a -very- viable candidate. This puts several things into motion, Lexi’s plans not the least.

I liked Alexandra in general. She’s the villain, she’s cold and calculating, and overall all that’s “nice” about her is just on the surface, acting, ploys to get what she wants and twirl people around her finger. She’s good at that, really good, and she has the connections to boot, including her best friend Sam and her brother. She’s despicable, too, the way she uses Sam and Wyatt’s love for her to make them do her bidding. Yet once she comes home, once she has to face her drunken mother who forces her through the motions, you can’t help but wonder if she’s not just a kid who never received enough love—not an excuse, but an explanation. And when she believes in something, she pours her heart in it, for instance the way she stood up for Sam when the latter made her coming out. So, yes, she’s selfish, self-centered, and not a likeable person… yet I still found myself rooting for her sometimes. Not necessarily in a “I want to see her crush the others” way; instead, in a “I don’t want her to win but I also don’t want her to be completely crushed at the end”.

The story in general revolves around the girls. Male characters are present, but they’re not the main focus, they’re not the end to attain. These girls fend for themselves: Lexi aiming to be queen; Sam who sometimes questions her fierce loyalty; Erin the newcomer whose plans are a mystery; Sloane whom Alexandra humiliated and who’s determined to act instead of remaining passive; Ivy who gets dragged along the way yet turns out to be stronger than she thinks. The narrative makes use of four POVs (Lexi, Sam, Sloane and Ivy), and manages to play on their unreliability: is this or that person a real schemer, or do they just seem they are because Lexi perceives them that way?

Bonus points as well for the lesbian characters, and for the subplot that makes them strong people on their own, without going for the “villain / victim / casualty” tropes. They’re not 100% understood, but they’re not complete pariahs either, and stand their ground: no victimisation here. The romantic undertones would work exactly the same if they were about a boy and a girl; it’s all about understanding one’s feelings, deciding who’s the most important person after all, discovering love in an unexpected place, basically being human, with needs and feelings like everybody else.

Where I found the book wanting was in some of the plotting and decisions. Lexi’s plot was a bit… strange and convoluted, and I kept wondering if the scheme she had hatched would be very efficient anyway. It seemed it was more cruel than anything else, and that it rested on a somewhat “naive” vision. Granted, this fits, in that she’s brilliant but still 17, not a mastermind with decades of manipulations behind her; nevertheless, it also reminded me that this was, well, high school drama, and in that, it came too close to the usual clichés (such as “let’s make X drunk so that she looks bad in front of the whole school” — I guess Lexi had made me expect something more sophisticated, all in all). In the end, I suppose the plot was too simple to my liking, without as many twists and devious plans as I would’ve hoped. It would definitely have benefitted from more than the basic Homecoming thing.

Yzabel / August 29, 2016

Review: The Glittering Court

The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

Big and sweeping, spanning from the refined palaces of Osfrid to the gold dust and untamed forests of Adoria, “The Glittering Court” tells the story of Adelaide, an Osfridian countess who poses as her servant to escape an arranged marriage and start a new life in Adoria, the New World. But to do that, she must join the Glittering Court.

Both a school and a business venture, the Glittering Court is designed to transform impoverished girls into upper-class ladies who appear destined for powerful and wealthy marriages in the New World. Adelaide naturally excels in her training, and even makes a few friends: the fiery former laundress Tamsin and the beautiful Sirminican refugee Mira. She manages to keep her true identity hidden from all but one: the intriguing Cedric Thorn, son of the wealthy proprietor of the Glittering Court.

When Adelaide discovers that Cedric is hiding a dangerous secret of his own, together they hatch a scheme to make the best of Adelaide’s deception. Complications soon arise—first as they cross the treacherous seas from Osfrid to Adoria, and then when Adelaide catches the attention of a powerful governor.

But no complication will prove quite as daunting as the potent attraction simmering between Adelaide and Cedric. An attraction that, if acted on, would scandalize the Glittering Court and make them both outcasts in wild, vastly uncharted lands…

Review:

(I got a copy through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.)

This one… Well. Part of the plot was interesting, in that it offered an opening on the stories of three young women who may or may not be able to create a life for themselves… yet other plot points were a bit dumb, to say the least. Or worse.

First, the good: in spite of the whole Glittering Court premise (taking common-born girls and educating them to make them noble-looking wife material), the three main girl characters had motivations of their own to join that “school”. For Mira the refugee, without many prospects in Osfrid, joining the ‘Court is a way to try and make another kind of life for herself: she’s getting an education, she’s leaving for the “New World”, and even though it’s basically to snatch a husband, she hopes she’ll find another opportunity during that time she’s bought for herself. For Tamsin, it’s also an opportunity, one to rise in a world that otherwise will keep her poor at beast, and possibly forced to do darker deeds at worst (it’s never clearly said—I suppose it will be revealed in book 3—but I’m positive she’d under some kind of threat, and being the best student, getting the best husband in the lot, is the only solution for her to, paradoxically, free herself). For “Adelaide”, it’s about reaching for the unknown, because the known is going to be a prison of its own, and she’s so trapped she’s ready to do anything to escape, including something dumb (more about this below).

There’s also a whole Frontier/New World dynamic that goes past the initial, slightly insipid “let’s learn fashion and manners and wear nice dresses” idea. I probably wouldn’t have lasted through 400 pages of seeing the girls learn to act like proper ladies—or if it had been about that, I would’ve needed much more intrigue thrown in the middle to keep myself busy—so the parts where the girls are in the New World

On the downside… Adelaide’s motives were incredibly dumb and made no sense: facing the prospect of an arranged marriage with an insufferable man and his over-controlling grandmother, she uses the Court as an opportunity to run away… yet the whole thing is dumb because the Court is precisely what she tries to avoid, with perhaps a few more potential choices for a future husband, but that’s all. Basically, it’s still about getting married (sold), and going through the motions to attract a man’s (buyer’s) eye, and without much choice in the end, because if she doesn’t fetch enough of a price, or if she refuses to marry, she has to work (in bad conditions) to buy back her contract. I think I would’ve enjoyed her “deciding to create her own fate” idea much, much better if she had joined a band of highwaymen, or whatever else. Like marrying the first guy, taking his money, then arranging for the controlling grandma to fall down the stairs. For instance.

Unsurprisingly, I was also much unfazed when it came to the romance. The love interest is a nice guy all around, and a decent person, and definitely not the worst choice of partner, for sure. However, he remained bland, without much personality—and that’s really too bad, since it enforces the stereotype that “nice guys aren’t interesting”, which may become in turn “the only good romance must be with a bad guy”. (Not necessarily what happens in this novel, it’s just the way I perceived it: if the good guys aren’t made interesting enough, people are going to look to the less savory ones… won’t they?)

I feel that overall, this “dull” side to the main male character also expanded to the story as a whole. There are quite a few things happening, sea storms, rumours of pirates, a scheming noble, adventure/being pioneers in a faraway colony, some revenge plot (that everybody save for the MCs would’ve seen coming through the thickest fog on the darkest night ever), and yet I was never excited by what the girls went through. I still don’t understand how it came that events sometimes piled upon each other too quickly, to the point of being wrapped up a little too neatly at the end through a series of coincidences, making it look like so much was happening… and at the same time remained dull and without much of an actual plot. And hinting all the way at the two other girls’ secrets, and never revealing what they are. Argh.

The setting didn’t help: basically a Regency/Victorian Europe (=Osfrid) vs. a New World (=Adoria) with budding colonies, including “Alanzan heretics” looking for a place to worship in peace (=Protestants/Puritans), only the “natives” aren’t Native Americans but some sort of Celt-looking people. Anyway, it was much too close to our world’s history to be really original, and not very developed, resting on this “closeness”, therefore adding to the feeling of a cardboard backdrop. Moreover, it was problematic when it comes to the whole colonisation/”civilised men vs. savages” aspect, because it doesn’t stray from any colonial vision, first by sort of trying to make the whole Glittering Court look glamorous when it’s not (it’s not slavery, granted, but still a form of indenture with selling oneself to a man the only outcome), then by demeaning the “natives”. I kept hoping that there’d be some different undertones here, something to undermine the racist outlook on this, yet if there was, I couldn’t feel it.

So. Meh. 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 14, 2016

Review: Malus Domestica

Malus Domestica by S.A. Hunt

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Kids are going missing in the tiny hamlet of Blackfield, Georgia, and nobody knows why except for Robin, the homeless young woman that just rolled into town last night.

When she claims she knows who’s responsible, only 4th-grader Wayne Parkin and his schoolmates Pete, Amanda, and Juan believe her…but it takes a terrifying encounter with an interdimensional creature to spur them into action.

Robin proves to be a formidable monster-hunter with strange supernatural powers, but a tragic setback reveals a secret organization and a centuries-old conspiracy.

Can new friends and old enemies band together to save Blackfield from an unspeakable darkness?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

1.5-2 stars. I liked the ideas at this novel’s core, but ultimately I had a hard time getting into it, and had to force myself to go on reading. I guess this was a matter of rhythm, and of some clichés that didn’t sit too well with me.

The premise: young witch hunter Robin Martine has been travelling through the USA, filming her tracking and fighting witches (women who sacrificed their heart to goddess Ereshkigal in exchange for powers and a longer existence). She puts her videos on her YouTube channel, followed by thousands of people who don’t realise this is no special effects, but reality. After years spent training and hunting, Robin comes back to her home town, to get rid of the witches who killed her mother; along the way, she gathers quite a little posse of various characters who’ll help in that quest.

As said, the ideas themselves were fine. The YouTube channel? Why not: surely being anonymous would be a better choice, but there’s a certain appeal to the “hide in plain sight” theory. The various secondary characters formed a pretty diverse cast— a veteran turned artist, a kid and his father, a gay childhood friend and his brother owner of a comics shop… There’s a creepy house, existing on two different levels (I love that kind of atmosphere, those “parallel nightmarish worlds” layered over the normal world). A ruthless killer. Cats who’re more than cats. The stifling surroundings of a small town where just about anyone can be a spy of the witches. And so on.

The problem with the characters, though, were that in spite of their diversity, they were also a bunch of clichés, and not very developed as individuals. Kenway had his own background story and issues, but Leon’s bereavement for instance was just touched upon, and he wasn’t more than “Wayne’s father” in the end. Same with Joel, who felt like a potential sidekick but also like a gay butt-monkey of sorts. These side-stories both took too much room, in a way, while at the same time just being here, instead of being fully exploited (“while we’re here, we might as well…”).

I was hoping to see more of the witches and the killer working for them. While they did create a predicament for the “heroes”, I kept thinking they could and should have done more, been more frightening, brought even more weirdness into the story.

The writing itself was alright (although I found it weird when onomatopoeias were inserted—don’t ask me why I’m sensitive to that). Even though I mentioned having trouble getting back to the book every time I stopped, it wasn’t because of the style.

Really, it’s too bad I didn’t like it more. This book could’ve been right up my alley, but didn’t work for me in the end.

Enregistrer

Yzabel / August 2, 2016

Review: The Body Reader

The Body Reader by Anne Frasier

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept from the outside world. Held in an underground cell, her only contact was with her sadistic captor, and reading his face was her entire existence. Learning his every line, every movement, and every flicker of thought is what kept her alive.

After her experience with isolation and torture, she is left with a fierce desire for justice—and a heightened ability to interpret the body language of both the living and the dead. Despite colleagues’ doubts about her mental state, she resumes her role at Homicide. Her new partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, doesn’t trust her sanity, and he has a story of his own he’d rather keep hidden. But a killer is on the loose, murdering young women, so the detectives have no choice: they must work together to catch the madman before he strikes again. And no one knows madmen like Jude Fontaine.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept under lock, in the dark, abused and malnourished, at the hands of her unknown abductor. With no contact with any other human being than that man, her survival reflexes made her learn to “read” him, in order to stay alive. After she seizes an opportunity to escape, she realises she has retained this ability to “read” other people, booth the living and the dead: even a frozen corpse will still “talk” to her, in its expression, the way its fists are closed, and so on. As she’s trying to go back to her former career as a cop, Jude understands she can use this newfound skill to make things right.

Excellent idea, but one that I thought wasn’t exploited enough throughout the story: we are made to see June “read” her new partner first, then “read” a corpse, yet nothing much happens in that regard after that, and it’s like the body-reading concept got lost along the way, along a more “traditional” thriller story. This was rather too bad, as I would have enjoyed seeing more of Jude’s ability, things that would truly set her apart from “just yet another very talented cop”.

Another problem I had with the story was the moments when Jude tried to figure out how to go back to a normal life, or even if she could: a new flat, maybe getting back with her boyfriend, her tense relationship with her family… All interesting things, but presented in too descriptive a way, rendered too flat: I didn’t “feel” her predicament, I simply read about it, and it just wasn’t the same. I felt more connected to Uriah, who had his own emotional struggles to contend with, but here too the whole thing was more descriptive, not vibrant enough.

Finally, the ending was too neatly wrapped, too quickly, without the kind of intensity I’d expect from the last chapters of a thriller. I could also sense the places where the story was trying to mislead me, yet at the same time the lack of involvement (or, should I rather say, the sideline involvement) of some characters gave a few things away.

I did like, though, how Jude, even though toughened and emotionally withdrawn, went about getting back control of her life by doing something useful, like picking up cold cases, and how the author didn’t fall into the typical trappings of adding some romantic twist in there. Sure, there’s the boyfriend, but this side plot is never presented as an end in itself, never touted as “Jude’s salvation in the arms of a man”, or whatever similar tripe. In the same vein, Jude and Uriah give off a definite “work partners and perhaps friends someday” vibe, not a “and perhaps lovers someday” one.

2 stars: I quite liked some of the themes here, but this remains an “OK” book and nothing more, because it fell flat for me, and because its ideas weren’t developed enough compared to what the blurb had made me expect.

Yzabel / July 29, 2016

Review: Machinations

Machinations by Hayley Stone

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

The machines have risen, but not out of malice. They were simply following a command: to stop the endless wars that have plagued the world throughout history. Their solution was perfectly logical. To end the fighting, they decided to end the human race.

A potent symbol of the resistance, Rhona Long has served on the front lines of the conflict since the first Machinations began—until she is killed during a rescue mission gone wrong. Now Rhona awakens to find herself transported to a new body, complete with her DNA, her personality, even her memories. She is a clone . . . of herself.

Trapped in the shadow of the life she once knew, the reincarnated Rhona must find her place among old friends and newfound enemies—and quickly. For the machines are inching closer to exterminating humans for good. And only Rhona, whoever she is now, can save them.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

1.5 stars. Not quite an OK story for me. There were several deal-breakers here, including the “bland” narrator, the romance part, and the 1st person POV present tense narration, not to mention the science & technology parts that weren’t detailed enough.

First, present tense: I find it very difficult to make this type of narrative voice work, and often it just doesn’t at all. I can’t exactly pinpoint how exactly, but I know it made me cringe often enough that I stopped counting. It doesn’t bother me so much in short stories, although I suspect that’s because they’re short and I don’t have to trudge through that tense for a whole novel.

Second, Rhona herself. I couldn’t bring myself to care. Sure, we have that first chapter scene, and it seems intense, and… that’s all? After that, she wakes up as the “new” Rhona, yet it’s difficult to compare her to the one she has supposedly replaced. Perhaps because the novel doesn’t show us enough of the “original Rhona”. Perhaps because the new one is too self-centered and not active enough to stand by herself, watching from the sidelines half the time. Of course there wouldn’t be any point if she immediately found herself again, was the exact same person. I just wish she had been more than a woman who mostly behaved like a somewhat shy teenager—and this brings me to…

…The romance: too much of it, and, as in too many novels, the only real form of validation. The whole quest-for-humanity part, Rhona having to find out whether she IS Rhona or merely a carbon-copy without humanity nor soul, is definitely an interesting theme… but why do such things -always- have to be presented in the light of romance? As if only True Love (whatever that means) could validate one’s existence. Who cares that Sam, her best friend, is with her all story long and doesn’t give a fig about whether she’s Rhona or not (for him, she’s his friend, period)? The really important part is to find out when The One True Love finally acknowledges her. And I feel all these stories completely miss the point: that there is so much more to a person than their so-called significant other, that they’re the sum of so many more factors than just that one restrictive form of love. Meanwhile…

… the machines, the science, the technology: too few and too little of those, considering the blurb that made me request the book at first. This story would’ve benefitted from more explanations when it came to the cloning part, considering how it permeated the whole narrative. Rhona is a physical clone, but her memories (or part of them) were also transplanted. How? A chip to map neural pathways and transfer data is briefly mentioned, yet much more was needed here to satisfy the vague scientist in me (I don’t think I’m asking for too much here). As for the machines, they weren’t present enough in order for the human survivors to be truly pitched against them, as well as for Rhona to be fully confronted to her new “nature” that, in a way, made her a biological machine. They felt more like the threat in the background, over-simplified, although they could’ve been made more “alive” (no pun intended here: I really think there was potential here for a chiasmus between human-Rhona-turned-thing and things/machines-turned-sentient).

This novel should’ve grabbed my interest, for sure, but it turned out it wasn’t for me. Alas.

Yzabel / July 22, 2016

Review: This Savage Song

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

Took me a while to get to this one, I don’t know why, so apologies to the publisher—I’ve had the ARC for a few months.

I guess it didn’t turn out like I thought, although I don’t know what I expected. Something more… intense? Savage, like the title? More action? Or maybe for the “failed assassination” part to happen sooner?

On the one hand, I really liked some of the concepts introduced here. First, the city divided between North and South, each side in the hands of “leaders” with their own ruthless ways—one a mobster-like crime lord who keeps the monsters in check by being a monster, too, and the other a benevolent military type who nevertheless has no qualms to associate with monsters as well. Second, the way those monsters are born: the shadowy Corsai from violence that doesn’t result in death, the Malchai from actual murder, and the Sunai for massacres, which contrasts in a terribly beautiful way with how they feed: born from the ugliest acts of violence, of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people killed in bombings and the likes, yet performing their killings through enchanting music. And let’s not forget the conundrum of the monster who wants to be human, who knows he cannot be, and who risks turning into an even worse monster if he denies his nature (not feeding basically means he’ll turn into a mass-murder predator, then will wake up having lost some bits of his hard-won personality… forever).

Also, no romance. Seriously. Not for one moment is it implied that Kate and August are meant to end up with each other in that way. As reluctant partners-in-crime? As friends at some point? Sure. But no twu wuv for these two, and that’s a breath of fresh air in a category (YA) where you know almost every main lead will meet one, potentially two (or more!) love interests.

Wonderful, wonderful ideas. The boy-monster who desperately wants to be human, even trying to believe in that dream when he gets to attend a school full of human beings, and the girl who’s ready to any length, including threatening her schoolmates and setting fire to a chapel at night, in order for her father to finally acknowledge her—meaning she needs to be as bad as him for that to happen, therefore turning into her own kind of monster.

And yet… Yet I couldn’t feel much of a pulse in the story. Maybe it went too slowly. Maybe it’s the kind of story where the characters need to be thrown in the action first, and then get to meet and to know each other, to discover their respective secrets and accept who they are (and who the other is). The Colton Academy part was perhaps too long, with August and Kate appearing like generic characters rather than real people (they remained a bit bland throughout the novel, in my opinion). And while I tend to like information about the world being given regularly, distilled between two events or two dialogues, instead of being chunked at the reader in huge blocks of info-dumping, in the end I still don’t know what that world is made of. Strangely enough, I may not have minded this if the story had been set in V-City only, with “The City” as a character itself; here, it was too much a “yet another USA turned dystopian for some unknown reason”.

Conclusion: loved the concepts, execution though was too weak compared to what could’ve been (and I know it definitely could’ve been, coming from this author!).

Yzabel / June 11, 2016

Review: Jane Steele

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Like the heroine of the novel she adores, Jane Steele suffers cruelly at the hands of her aunt and schoolmaster. And like Jane Eyre, they call her wicked – but in her case, she fears the accusation is true. When she flees, she leaves behind the corpses of her tormentors.

A fugitive navigating London’s underbelly, Jane rights wrongs on behalf of the have-nots whilst avoiding the noose. Until an advertisement catches her eye. Her aunt has died and the new master at Highgate House, Mr Thornfield, seeks a governess. Anxious to know if she is Highgate’s true heir, Jane takes the position and is soon caught up in the household’s strange spell. When she falls in love with the mysterious Charles Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him – body, soul and secrets – and what if he discovers her murderous past?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I have a weak spot both for retellings and for “Jane Eyre”, so no wonder I’d request this novel. And it turned out to be fairly interesting, although it’s more “inspired by” than an actual “retelling”, and at times my attention waned a little—not sure if it’s because of the book or just me being myself, that is, with the attention span of a dead amoeba. Also, I don’t why, I had forgotten that the novel was set in the 19th century, and was surprised at first that it wasn’t set in some contemporary UK. Dead amoeba, I tell you.

Jane Steele, who incidentally is an avid re-reader of the original “Jane Eyre” story, is, like her heroine, an orphan surrounded with a hostile family that mocks her at best and generally despises her. Her mother being an artist and a laudanum-addict doesn’t exactly help. However, unlike Jane Eyre, Miss Steele early enough takes matters into her own hands by despatching those who are in her way. These aren’t just random murders committed by a psychopath, though, and her victims aren’t exactly goody-two-shoes. Jane is actually trying to protect the people she really loves, not obeying some dark unexplained instincts. And so this brings quite a few questions about whether killing might be seen as “justified” in some cases, or not? After all, so many people kill others in wars, and it’s seen as “justified” and not “murder” because “it’s for your country”… so why wouldn’t “it’s for love” be good enough a reason either?

And there you have it. There are killings in this novel, yet they come second to complex relationships among very different people. Thornfield and his Sikh family. The girls at Lowan School, united in misery through a perverse net of betrayal and friendships disguised as hate (unless it’s the contrary?). Jane and her cousin who could so very well end up raping her. Jane and her mother, and these two and Aunt Patience, because there must be a reason for the latter to despise them so much.

There were a few funny moments, especially when the inspector was concerned—well, I did find them funny, especially with Jane constantly trying to escape him. And I also liked the way assault/rape was handled, as it turns out not so many characters in there blame the lady, and do think instead that, yes, she’s not the one at fault at all.

To be honest, I preferred the first part of the novel, with Jane’s years at school with the other girls. The plot in the second part was nice, but… the pacing and the setting in general were less thrilling (which is too bad, for Sardar and the others provided characters and a setting that screamed “badass”)… not to mention that, in spite of the inclusion of a large cast of Sikh people, in the end what could have broken the typical colonialist/jingoist mould of many Victorian-era stories just didn’t do that. (It’s still about white people finding happiness, and the non-white ones kind of get the shaft.)

As for the romance, of course it was meant to mirror the one in “Jane Eyre”, in a fashion, however I never really felt any chemistry between Jane and Charles: it felt more as if they were destined to end up together because Brontë’s characters did, and not because of their traits as people.

Conclusion: I really liked the beginning, so I’m still giving this book 3 stars. The second half and ending didn’t do much for me, though.

Yzabel / June 7, 2016

Review: Dear Amy

Dear Amy by Helen Callaghan

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

Margot Lewis is the agony aunt for The Cambridge Examiner. Her advice column, Dear Amy, gets all kinds of letters – but none like the one she’s just received:

Dear Amy,
I don’t know where I am. I’ve been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man. I’m afraid he’ll kill me.
Please help me soon,
Bethan Avery

Bethan Avery has been missing for years. This is surely some cruel hoax. But, as more letters arrive, they contain information that was never made public. How is this happening? Answering this question will cost Margot everything . . .

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Entertaining but not much more than that, I’m afraid. I liked reading this novel, only the mystery wasn’t so deep, and I kept wondering why other characters didn’t challenge this or that plot point more.

It started well enough with Margot, our narrator, struggling in her personal life: her ex-husband wants the house, she’s pondering her own anxiety-related issues (not to mention “shouldn’t I go off my meds now that I’m feeling better?), and one of her former students has vanished in strange circumstances. On top of her job in posh St. Hilda’s school in Cambridge, she also manages an agony aunt column, “Dear Amy”, in a local newspaper. So when letters are sent to her mailbox at said newspaper, from a girl who was abducted and probably killed some twenty years ago, this only adds to Margot’s confusion, while nevertheless pricking her curiosity. There could be a life at stake here… and perhaps even more.

The original abductee, Bethan Avery, was never found, and it’s clearly weird for her to be writing letters, all the more because, from their tone, it seems she’s still captive! So is she a victim, or an accomplice? I thought this was quite a challenging premise. I still think it is. However, two issues arose while I was reading:

1/ I found it easy enough to guess the outcome of the mystery around Bethan.
2/ This part of the novel led to several plot holes that were never filled. For instance, it was never made clear whether the police tested the letters for fingerprints, and too many people either dismissed them as a prank, or didn’t wonder enough about how Bethan-the-captive-girl could’ve sent them. As a result, it diminished their importance, made the whole thing seem far-fetched, and I think that’s part of what allowed me to sense what was wrong here, and take an eductaed guess (turned out I was right).

My other gripes in general concerned:
– How the characters weren’t so much fleshed out as placed there like “token psychological thriller chars” (the psychologist, the potential love interest who helps the narrator…);
– The handling of mental disorders, both through the narrative and through other chars (that Greta psychologist was rather inept);
– Some cliché plot devices, like the culprit’s actions (creepy but could’ve been handled better), or both landline AND mobile phone cut at the same time (is GSM cover so bad around Cambridge, and do all batteries die so quickly? I never kill mine like that, and that’s after spending commuting time playing games on it…);
– And, to be honest, I didn’t really connect with Margot or anyone else in the novel. Mostly they were too infuriating, in one way or another, and didn’t redeem themselves much through other actions or personality traits.

That said, I liked parts of the second main arc (the abducted girl one). It highlighted the plight of all the murdered girls, as well as Bethan’s. It allowed for a thrilling intruder-in-the-hope scene. Its ending was sort of predictable, but somehow that didn’t matter too much, because it’s kind of what I wanted to read anyway.

On the side of writing: I don’t know if this was because I read an ARC—maybe this was changed in the published version—but often present and past tense mixed in a scene or even a paragraph without the narrative justifying it, and I found this jarring.

1.5 stars? I can’t say I hated this book, but it’s a mix between “OK” and “slight dislike”—I really wish the idea at its root had been handled better…

Yzabel / June 5, 2016

Review: HEX

HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s beds for nights on end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often forget she’s there. Or what a threat she poses. Because if the stitches are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.

The curse must not be allowed to spread. The elders of Black Spring have used high-tech surveillance to quarantine the town. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break the strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into a dark nightmare.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I do love stories set in little towns with secrets, and especially when said secrets are quite “normal” there, and only outsiders would get really shocked about them because the locals have gone… numb and used to them? It’s definitely creepy, and keeps making me wonder when the crap’s going to hit the fan, when the normalcy of horror will become actual horror, when the mask will be thrown away and it’s showtime. Something like that.

Well, at some point it’s showtime in “HEX”, clearly. The only question is “when”.

It starts with a very normal day in the lives of the Normal McNormal family, in Normal Town, USA. Except for the woman who gets crushed by an organ right at the beginning (and that’s when you do a double-take and think “wait, what? I’d better pay more attention to what I’m reading.”). That’s what got me from the start: the feeling that something troubling was was presented as normal, and everybody but me just went about their day without blinking an eye. Soon enough more information surfaces, through other everyday scenes: the Grant family having dinner while a mysterious “Gramma” sits in the next room with a napkin on her head… The council/local organisation policing the town keeping an eye on a couple of newcomers, desperately trying to dissuade them from buying a house in Black Spring. These first chapters were really intriguing and I couldn’t wait to read more.

I didn’t like this novel more, though, because I think at some point, the horror became a little too… close? As in, when you KNOW what’s going to happen, when you KNOW things are going to get very wrong and you suspect how they’re going to unfold, when you start foreseeing such events, there’s always a risk, at least in my case, of distanciating myself from the story in advance. I guess that’s what happened here, and when all the bad things befell various characters, it didn’t creep me out so much anymore. Perhaps that’s just my personal problem with horror stories, and I unconsciously distance myself from their events. Perhaps I don’t do that all the time. It takes a very, very fine and fragile balance to take me where I’d like to be (caring about the characters, feeling invested to the point that every setback for them will be a blow for me).

The normalcy factor and many characters being a bit cliché may also have “helped” in not making me care too much : trying too much killed the effort, so to speak. The Grants look like a too perfect family (the mother doesn’t do much except being the Good Wife, to be honest), the teenagers’ exactions on the witch ended up being more of the sensational-seeking kind than really creepy, the HEX people were forgettable, the new couple settling in town were, in the end, just an excuse to hand out a block of information (they never did anything noteworthy after that)…

Finally, I also felt Katherine’s involvement wasn’t too clear : she’s dangerous but she also was a victim ; there’s a curse but you never know how exactly it started and/or manifests through the witch (“touching her” and “living in Black Spring” are a bit vague); so developments towards the end didn’t make as much sense as would’ve been needed to drive the horror through. As if the plot here kept sitting on the fence, not knowing whether to go the way of humans or monsters. Which is too bad, because there’s that whole theme of “the curse we inflict upon ourselves by forgetting we’re humans and by turning against each other as if we had never learnt anything”.

There were “good” horror moments (the search for the dog at night…) but in the end it was an “OK” book for me, nothing more. 2 to 2.5 stars.

Yzabel / May 29, 2016

Review: White Sand (Volume 1)

White Sand, Volume 1 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating:[rating=2]

Blurb:

A brand new saga of magic and adventure by #1 New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson. On the planet of Taldain, the legendary Sand Masters harness arcane powers to manipulate sand in spectacular ways. But when they are slaughtered in a sinister conspiracy, the weakest of their number, Kenton, believes himself to be the only survivor. With enemies closing in on all sides, Kenton forges an unlikely partnership with Khriss — a mysterious Darksider who hides secrets of her own. White Sand brings to life a crucial, unpublished part of Brandon Sanderson’s sprawling Cosmere universe. The story has been adapted by Rik Hoskin (Mercy Thompson), with art by Julius Gopez and colors by Ross Campbell. Employing powerful imagery and Sanderson’s celebrated approach to magical systems, White Sand is a spectacular new saga for lovers of fantasy and adventure.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

First things first, I’ve never read anything by Brandon Sanderson (not yet, at least), so I have no idea if this compares to his novels.

As a comics, it was OK, but I wasn’t awed. Possibly because the PDF version I got was kind of blurry, more certainly because the style was a bit too rough to my liking and because of some things that didn’t make a lot of sense (or were missing) in hindsight when it came to world-building. On one hand, some panels contain a lot of text and explanations, which doesn’t always work too well in a graphic novel; on the other, in spite of those walls of text, little was actually *explained* when it came to all the questions raised.

For instance:
– All the Sandmasters we see are men. I don’t recall any women. Why? Kenton’s mother is mentioned as having come from Darkside, and there’s a point where he wonders about whether he has any brothers “or sisters” left, but where are these sisters? I don’t recall any women anywhere, either among the Sand Masters themselves or back at their enclave, and this just seems… weird. It’s never explained, there isn’t any line, not even one, about women living somewhere else, or not developing powers over sand and thus not studying with the men, etc.
– Re: Darkside and Dayside, the whole dichotomy doesn’t make a lot of sense. The people living under the blazing sun all year long are light-skinned, and the ones living on the presumably “dark side” (no sunlight there, ever? Or are they living in caves?) are dark-skinned. So, sure, I like it when we don’t go with the usual clichés, yet biologically-speaking, and in a science fiction story, it’s not really believable. I could buy, for instance, “drows have dark skin and white hair” in the Forgotten Realms ‘verse Because It’s Magic or their dark goddess making them like that or anything; here, I’d need an actual scientific explanation to be satisfied.

All this to say that, as is often the case when such a problem arises in a world where a scientific basis is expected, things that don’t make sense tend to keep me unfocused on the actual story: as soon as anything new pops up, I always find myself wondering why it is like that, and how it’s supposed to be justified.

The Darksiders have a sort of “19th century British empire” flavour, with their way of seeing the Daysiders as uncouth and not very civilised, and this is a bit problematic (that theme always is): had they been light-skinned people, it would’ve been too close to events that happened in history, but turning the tables here didn’t work too well for me. What I mean by this is that it felt like the author wanted such a civilisation in his story but didn’t want them to be “the civilised white people vs. the dark-skinned savages”, yet at the same time making them dark-skinned clashes with what you’d expect from people living on that “dark side of the planet” all the time. This was weird, and, I don’t know, I guess another option would’ve been more believable?

(This said, I liked them graphically-speaking. The Duchess was stylish and quite amiable, and the items they carry hint at mechanical inventions I wouldn’t mind seeing more.)

Mostly this story was an easy read, with some good fight-and-magic scenes. However, I’m likely to forget about it quickly, to be honest. 2.5 stars.