love triangle Archives

Yzabel / January 26, 2019

Review: The Price Guide to the Occult

The Price Guide to the Occult by Leslye Walton

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Guilt and fear instead led the island’s original eight settlers to burn “the witch” out of her home. So Rona cursed them. Fast-forward one hundred–some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life. She has reason to hope: First, her supernatural powers, if they can be called that, are unexceptional. Second, her love life is nonexistent, which means she might escape the other perverse side effect of the matriarch’s backfiring curse, too. But then a mysterious book comes out, promising to cast any spell for the right price. Nor senses a storm coming and is pretty sure she’ll be smack in the eye of it. In her second novel, Leslye Walton spins a dark, mesmerizing tale of a girl stumbling along the path toward self-acceptance and first love, even as the Price Guide’s malevolent author — Nor’s own mother — looms and threatens to strangle any hope for happiness.

Review:

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

I really liked the beginning—the prologue had a sort of “fairy tale” touch, introducing as it did the “legend” of Rona Blackburn and what happened with the first settlers of Anathema Island. However, while I kept liking the setting of a small island, fairly isolated from the world and losing itself in the fog as the danger approaches, I had more trouble with the story after that. I think I can chalk that to the following points:

– Nor makes such efforts to remain inconspicuous and not be noticed that she’s not a very interesting character in general. We know that she likes running, and that she’s had trouble with self-harm, but the latter was more brushed upon in a way that didn’t make it seem so bad, which in itself is… bad, I guess. She’s mostly passive, doesn’t speak of her fears with other characters, even when she knows something is coming. By the time she woke up, I had lost interest in her. And no other characters jumped to the forefront either. Except for Judd. Judd was cool.

– The villain was just a villain. We’re told that what she did, she did for love, but it’s fairly obvious that she was never really in love and just wanted something she couldn’t have. There’s also no explanation as to how she came upon her powers: the means are known, not the cause. Same with Nor’s ability: is it because she’s the ninth daughter? Does the curse change after a while?

– The romance. How can I put this… Maybe it’s high time to stop putting romantic love in YA just because it’s YA and romance is a trope of YA and everyone expects it, but 99% of the time it’s not handled well? The love interest and the romantic subplot were bland at best, and the -second- love interest just came out of the blue as insta-love, and yet Nor is all about “I’m dangerous so I should put an end to it”, which in the end amounts to much ado about nothing. It’s not like it was essential to the plot, really.

– The writing itself was nothing exceptional. Often a character’s name would be used as sentence subject several times within the same paragraph, when it was obvious this very character was the subject all along. So it felt repetitive.

Conclusion: A very good start for me, that went downhill quickly after that. 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / September 6, 2017

Review: Three Dark Crowns

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.

But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.

If only it was that simple. Katharine is unable to tolerate the weakest poison, and Arsinoe, no matter how hard she tries, can’t make even a weed grow. The two queens have been shamefully faking their powers, taking care to keep each other, the island, and their powerful sister Mirabella none the wiser. But with alliances being formed, betrayals taking shape, and ruthless revenge haunting the queens’ every move, one thing is certain: the last queen standing might not be the strongest…but she may be the darkest.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss.]

This is the story of an island on which, every generation, three potential queens are born: one with the power to poison and resist toxins, the other to command elements, the third to befriend animals and make plants grow. On the 16th birthday, then begins the year during which they have to fight, and only one of them will survive. ‘Fight’ meaning, of course, that the winner can only become so by killing the other queens, a.k.a as her own sisters.

Sounds like a gruesome premise, and obviously this got my attention, especially since two of the queens are complete underdogs, and presented as such from the start (the poisoner isn’t very good at resisting poisons in general, and the naturalist one can’t even make a bud flower, least of all call her own familiar). It’d be too easy for them to just get offed quickly, though, so I expected political manoeuvers and other intrigue moves. Which I got, at least partially, as the poisoners aim at discreetly making their queen look more seducing in order to garner support (get people to like you best, and they’re more likely to try and protect you from the other queens), and the elementalists hatch a plan of their own, with the poisoners in turn trying to divert it…

Too bad the story developed so slowly, and in a way that didn’t even allow to develop the queens’ characters that much. Well, to be fair—it’s not uninteresting, it’s just that, all things considered, the setting was ripe for much, much more intrigue (or to get more quickly to the beginning of the Ascension Year). So 80% of the book read like a prologue. On top of this, a couple of things rubbed me the wrong way; unfortunately, they were things that took up quite some space:

– The style. Sometimes I can do with third person present tense; other times, it just feels weird, and keeps throwing me out of the story. This was one of those times. (I’m really not convinced by that narrative style in anything longer than 20-30 pages, to be honest. Still waiting for a story to fully convince me.)

– The romance: Katharine’s… all right, there was a political edge to her getting lessons in seduction, and once you can seduce, I’m not surprised to see romance ensue with someone at some point. But Jules’s took too much from ‘Arsinoe time’. Not that I didn’t like Jules herself, only the guy takes up screen time instead of letting us see the Jules/Arsinoe relationship, which could’ve really shone as a strong friendship, and… let’s be honest, he’s nothing special, the triangle (of course there’s a triangle) is nothing special, and all the fuss didn’t make much sense to me. Colour me callous. Get out, Joseph. You’re an appalling boor.

This said, I was expecting a twist at the end, and there was one, and for once it wasn’t the one I was expecting. So there’s that, and I still want to read the next book to see how the actual Ascension Year is going to unfold (hopefully with more intrigue and less half-baked romance).

On the positive side:

– The characters weren’t too clever nor developed, but I quite appreciated that they weren’t all black-hearted, and certainly not from the beginning. As much as I bemoan the lack of intrigue-action, this kind of story wouldn’t be interesting at all if the characters supposed to kill each other could do so with a flick of a hand without even arching an eyebrow. Mirabella is sweet, and the one who’s least blinded by hate. Arsinoe is very much no-nonsense, knowing she’s very likely to be the first to die, yet not spending her time woe-is-me’ing herself. Katharine is scrawny and weakened by her training, but she doesn’t cry over it, and keeps doing her best and putting her willpower into it. They’re not perfect, oh no; nevertheless, they each have a likeable side.

– Surprisingly, I liked Billy, too. You’d think ‘obvious love interest’, but he was definitely more the good, loyal friend than the charming suitor, and this worked much, much better for me. Also, his (kind of) ballsy move at the Disembarking.

Conclusion: 2 stars. I really liked the last 20%, but I wish more time had been spent on the actual intrigue, with more blood and twists there, and less on the romance.

Yzabel / June 18, 2017

Review: Bad Girl Gone

Bad Girl Gone by Temple Mathews

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

Sixteen year-old Echo Stone awakens in a cold sweat in a dark room, having no idea where she is or how she got there. But she soon finds out she s in Middle House, an orphanage filled with mysteriously troubled kids.

There s just one problem: she s not an orphan. Her parents are very much alive.

She explains this to everyone, but no one will listen. After befriending a sympathetic (and handsome) boy, Echo is able to escape Middle House and rush home, only to discover it sealed off by crime scene tape and covered in the evidence of a terrible and violent crime. As Echo grapples with this world-shattering information, she spots her parents driving by and rushes to flag them down. Standing in the middle of street, waving her arms to get their attention, her parents car drives right through her.

She was right. Her parents are alive but she s not.

She s a ghost, just like all the other denizens of Middle House. Desperate to somehow get her life back and reconnect with her still-alive boyfriend, Echo embarks on a quest to solve her own murder. As the list of suspects grows, the quest evolves into a journey of self-discovery in which she learns she wasn t quite the girl she thought she was. In a twist of fate, she s presented with one last chance to reclaim her life and must make a decision which will either haunt her or bless her forever.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

This ended up being a very uneventful read for me. The premise felt really cool: a girl finds herself in a creepy orphanage, realises it’s actually a kind of purgatory for murdered kids, and tries to find out who killed her so that she can move on. The beginning was intriguing, especially since, like other ghosts in the orphanage, Echo first has to piece together memories of her death—reliving the trauma at once would be too shocking—, and investigating why you’re in an orphanage when last you knew your parents were definitely alive, well, that’s tricky.

The problem lied mainly in how all this was executed. Not particularly thrilling, for starters. Echo has a couple of culprits in mind, so she and the other kids go to ‘haunt’ them and see if they’re going to wield under pressure, or are actually innocent, but… it wasn’t anything scary or memorable, more like pranks, not like the really creepy kind of haunting you could get when adding children/teenagers to the mix (in general, I find kid ghosts scarier than adult ones). The mystery itself—finding the murdered—wasn’t exciting either, nor were the murderer’s reactions. Perhaps this was partly due to Echo’s power as a ghost: entering living people’s bodies in order to perceive their thoughts. The investigation part, in turn, was more about vaguely picking a maybe-potential culprit, scaring them, popping in their mind, then be gone. Then the story. And then Echo’s past as a ‘bad girl’ was revealed, and it turned out it wasn’t so much bad as introduced without much taste.

Definitely cringeworthy was the drama-addled romance. Echo’s living boyfriend, Andy, is all about moping and wanting to kill himself over her death, and… well, call me hard-hearted and callous, but you’re 16 and that kind of relationship is by far NOT the first one you’re going to experience in life, so pegging everything on it always feels contrived to me. Then there’s cute ghost boy Cole, who’s not about murdering the hypotenuse (thanks goodness), yet was strange, considering Andy is not aware of his presence, and so the triangle is… incomplete? (Its attempts at becoming a square later didn’t help either.) Also contains examples of stupid Twue Wuv/The One/soulmate 4evah/Doormat Extraordinaire. Such as Echo being so happy that her corpse was dressed in her favourite dress at her funeral… Favourite because her boyfriend Andy liked it. I still have no idea if Echo herself liked the pattern or colour or whatever. In any case, these are the kind of tropes I dislike in novels in general, and in YA even more. Why always make it look like couple love is the ultimate end, as if nobody (whether girl or boy) couldn’t have a good life in different ways?

In fact, I was more interested in the orphanage’s headmistress (whose back story plays a part for a chapter or so) and other inmates, all with their own murders to solve. These I would’ve liked to see interact more than just as Echo’s sidekicks. But we don’t get to learn much about them, apart from how they died. Too bad.

Conclusion: Nope.

Yzabel / September 12, 2016

Review: Smoke

Smoke by Dan Vyleta

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

England. A century ago, give or take a few years.

An England where people who are wicked in thought or deed are marked by the Smoke that pours forth from their bodies, a sign of their fallen state. The aristocracy do not smoke, proof of their virtue and right to rule, while the lower classes are drenched in sin and soot. An England utterly strange and utterly real.

An elite boarding school where the sons of the wealthy are groomed to take power as their birthright. Teachers with mysterious ties to warring political factions at the highest levels of government. Three young people who learn everything they’ve been taught is a lie – knowledge that could cost them their lives. A grand estate where secrets lurk in attic rooms and hidden laboratories. A love triangle. A desperate chase. Revolutionaries and secret police. Religious fanatics and coldhearted scientists. Murder. A London filled with danger and wonder. A tortured relationship between a mother and a daughter, and a mother and a son. Unexpected villains and unexpected heroes. Cool reason versus passion. Rich versus poor. Right versus wrong, though which is which isn’t clear.

Review:

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

I really liked the premise: sin and violent emotions taking on shape and scent, through a strange smoke people let escape in spite of themselves, in an alternate Victorian setting where, much like in real Victorian England, the “lower classes” are considered as sinful, while the “upper classes” are supposed to be their betters—and what’s best here than -not- displaying the dreadful Smoke, right? However, ultimately I couldn’t care about the story at all, nor about the characters. I partly blame this on the rhythm, and partly on the choice of narrative tense and voices.

The first chapters, albeit a little slow, had the kind of atmosphere I hoped the whole novel would carry throughout, involving a private boarding school, creepy students, and masters entrenched within their stinky moral rectitude. Lovely, isn’t it? There is so much one can do with such a setting (can you tell I like boarding school settings?). There was so much promise to the strained relationship between Julius, the apparently perfect, almost angelic student who submits others to his own rule on top of the teachers’, a monster in elegant disguise, and Thomas, a murderer’s son, openly convinced that he’s a monster and will end up like his father.

Alas, after that, or more specifically about the part where the boys go visit London, things went downhill.

I can definitely say the narrative style didn’t convince me: a blend of a first and third person, but also of present and past tense. Unfortunately, first POV present is difficult to properly achieve, and third POV present is even more difficult… and it just didn’t work here, bringing a constant jarring note to the story. I spent more time being bothered about the tense shifts and sometimes confusing points of view, than really paying attention to what I was reading. Not to mention that some of those narrators weren’t so useful, being brought in for one scene, then never again—in other words, I never got to get a feeling for these characters, not enough to care about what happened to them. This extended to the actual main characters, who could have had an interesting dynamics as a twisted love triangle, united in sin and darkness as they were uncovering a plot that may or may not destroy England as they knew it.

Another really bothering thing was how the Smoke was everywhere, permeating every stratum of society, at the heart of the mystery… yet in the end, there was no clue as to -why- exactly it existed, what brought it out of humans. Something supernatural? Something physiological? Nada. And since there’s no indication whatsoever that there’ll be a second volume, for now it looks like we’ll never know. (Also, because the origins of Smoke, its nature, are involved in the plot our three “heroes” unveil, the absence of revelation and information is all the more annoying.)

It took me weeks to finish this novel, and to be honest, had I not felt like I owned a review for NetGalley, I’d have DNFed it.

Yzabel / August 22, 2016

Review: The Vengeful Half

The Vengeful Half by Jaclyn Dolamore

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

Olivia might look human, but she’s grown up with a heavy secret: her mother is a potion-maker from a parallel world, the Hidden Lands.

Alfred is the blind, charismatic young heir to the illegal potions trade. When Mom is kidnapped by the magic dealers with whom she once made a bad bargain, Olivia has no choice but to trust Alfred’s offer of help. They travel to a strange new world of bootlegged American pop culture, lifelike doll people, and reincarnation. Alfred finds himself putting his position on the line to defend Olivia against his family’s conniving plans. Maybe he has morals…or maybe he’s just falling in love.

When Olivia escapes from an attack by a curiously familiar sorceress, she learns that potion dealers weren’t the only thing Mom was hiding from. Dark secrets lurk in Olivia’s past, and now Olivia must kill or be killed by the girl with whom she once shared everything…

Review:

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

This is one of those overdue reviews, since I’ve had this book on my tablet for quite a while. I remember requesting it partly because of its cover (the paperback one — by comparison, the Kindle cover on Amazon is pretty bland), which seemed quite ominous to me. What can I say, I’m weak when faced with a certain type of cover.

The plot was intriguing, for sure. A hidden world full of family secrets, alliances to be had, strange magic (the doll people and the potions), ancient feuds, revelations aplenty, and a hidden enemy who’s been bidding her time and is now bent on getting what she wants: possibly revenge… or something else? There’s almost too much going on at times. At first I thought it would be more a quest-like story, with Olivia going after her mother and braving danger to save her. It didn’t turn out like that, but that was alright, the kind of plot and intrigue it led to was pretty fine with me as well.

The characters: we have that girl, Olivia, who knows she’s from another world/civilisation, without having been brought up in it, which leaves room for showing this land to the reader, without necessarily having to explain *all* of it, since Olivia already knows part of it and we can dispense with. We have Alfred, rich heir and future boss to a crime family, who’s blind almost since birth and goes his way without whining about this—he’s used to it, he has trouble with some things but has found ways to cope. Alfred also has to constantly remind other people that he can do, not everything but a lot of things: a conundrum close, I think, to quite a few double standards going around disabled people (pitied and treated like children almost, or blamed for “not making enough efforts” by many, instead of being considered as human beings first and foremost…). There’s also Thessia, Alfred’s fiancée, who could have been a nasty bitch and/or a jealous whiner, especially since she fits the too-beautiful-to-be-true girl, and turns out to be an idealist, an activist, and, well, a fairly decent person to be around, even though she has her downside (Atlantean rich society seems to be hell-bent on having its girls marry rich heirs, and gods forbid they want to have a career of their own…).

So, all in all, a lot of interesting things here. Unfortunately, a lot more annoyed me, causing me not to enjoy this story in the end.

From the start, something kept nagging at me, and it took me a while to put my finger on it. At some point, the author mentioned when the story originated (more about that later), back when she was still a child or teenager; I think this was what I “felt” about it, for having gone myself through the same conundrum of taking a story I first created when I was 12 or so, and trying to trim it and make it something worth reading. This was something I found extremely hard to do, because what we perceive as wonderful plot twists and concepts when we’re younger aren’t necessarily good things to leave as is… yet “upgrading” them is easier said than done. And so, I had that strange feeling that I was reading something I might have written when I was younger, and my reaction to it was a little similar. It’s hard to explain. I could sum it up with “this feels like a very early work, and it needs more editing.”

Another thing that bothered me, when it comes to this theme of parallel/hidden worlds, is how close to ours the latter was, when a parallel world could pave the way to so many other things. Let me develop a bit more by giving a personal example: I grew up in France, with a lot of dubbed TV shows originating from the USA, and at the time I had that fascination for the USA. If I wrote a story, I set it in some imaginary US town. Not my home country, no, it wasn’t “good enough”: it had to be like the USA, feel like the USA, whatever. Obviously it didn’t occur to me at the time that Stephen King, for instance, set his stories in his country because that’s what he knew, and that I was under the impression everything was better there only because I hadn’t been exposed to shows from other countries. (Bear with me, I was 12-something.) And somehow, the way Atlantis people lived reminded me of this: their world felt like it hadn’t been so much evolving as trying to mimic Earth’s, and more specifically, well, you guess it. “Everything’s better if it looks like our world.” Kind of like being promised a walk in quaint little streets with exotic market stalls, and finding yourself in a mall instead—Atlanteans driving Ferraris didn’t exactly impress me. I’d stand with Olivia on that one, who was expecting a high fantasy world at first and found a place with chocolate and soda cans instead.

(To be fair, though, all this might still hold more appeal to a teenage audience than it did to me: I also remember thinking “those are plot devices/themes I would’ve used myself, since I loved them, when I was in my teens.” I had that thing going for telepathy and psychic powers in general, and parallel worlds, and “aliens/people with powers coming from those worlds to live hidden on Earth”. I seriously doubt I was the only one.)

Third annoying bit: the somewhat sexist, somewhat dismissive way a few characters tended to act. Alfred disappointed me towards the end when it came to Thessia (pretty assholish move to make if you ask me, and then she’s left to go away with the equivalent of “kthxbye see ya later, ah women, they always need some time to calm down huh”). Or what I mentioned above regarding heiresses only good enough to marry—any female character with a position/job of her own seemed to be either a villain or a reject/castaway/fugitive, as if no “proper woman” could hold her own. Although was pointed as backwards thinking, I felt a dichotomy, a certain hypocrisy in how it was mentioned, yet the people mentioning it still kept buying into the patriarchal model nonetheless.

Fourth: so many tropes. So, so many. You’ve got it all: pretty boy with a beautiful fiancée against which the main character feels so plain (but still becomes a love interest fairly quickly); people who were supposed to be dead but aren’t; telepathy/psychic powers being used and thrown in in vague descriptions, solving things a little too easily at times; mandatory love triangle; elite school in which talking to The Wrong Person will turn you into a black sheep, instantly, just add water. It felt like a soap opera at times, and since I’m not particularly keen on those, it didn’t help.

On the fence: the drawings, comic strips and short inserts. I didn’t care about the style, but I can certainly understand the appeal, and who would fault an author for including those and being enthusiastic about it? Not me! However, I think they disrupted the flow of the story in some cases, either by revealing too much about the characters at that specific point or by just being there in the middle (did we really need pictures of the various soda brands?). More annoying though were the written inserts: in between two chapters, we get a bit (twice!) about how the story was born. Not uninteresting, yet… this could and should be put at the end, otherwise it’s either disruptive or meant to be skipped, which would defeat the whole point.

Conclusion: could’ve been for me, but… nope, sorry.

Yzabel / July 13, 2016

Review: The Casquette Girls

The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Seven girls tied by time.
Five powers that bind.
One curse to lock the horror away.
One attic to keep the monsters at bay.

After the storm of the century rips apart New Orleans, sixteen-year-old Adele Le Moyne wants nothing more than her now silent city to return to normal. But with home resembling a war zone, a parish-wide curfew, and mysterious new faces lurking in the abandoned French Quarter, normal needs a new definition.

As the city murder rate soars, Adele finds herself tangled in a web of magic that weaves back to her own ancestors. Caught in a hurricane of myths and monsters, who can she trust when everyone has a secret and keeping them can mean life or death? Unless . . . you’re immortal.

Review:

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

I’m not sure exactly how to rate this novel: I really liked the setting (New Orleans), but some of the characters’ features sometimes made me roll my eyes. To be fair, this may be in part due to my own jaded views on similar works: I’ve probably read one too many YA paranormal romance stories, so the usual love triangle and annoying guy attitudes has become old for me. I regret not liking this book more, at any rate.

The setting was definitely enchanting, in a sort of twisted way—twisted because this New Orleans is one slowly getting back on its feet after one of the most devastating hurricanes it’s ever seen (possibly Katrina, or at the least inspired by it). Infrastructures are in shambles, crime’s on the rise, there’s a curfew the police can barely enforce… And while I have no idea if this is an accurate depiction of a post-hurricane city, whether it would’ve been thus left to fend for itself by the government, I still liked that NOLA, for its blend of “post-ap” and people trying to go back to, and go on with, their lives there, keep smiling, keep the businesses running, and so on. Somehow, I could understand Adele’s desire to stay there, and not be shipped off to Paris or somewhere else, all the more since it’d mean being in a boarding school and not with her family. It was still magic.

I also liked the parts about Adeline: a bit awkward in the way it was introduced, maybe (a journal), but her journey, the people she met, the stifling stay in a ship for weeks, knowing a threat was lurking and nobody could just walk away to escape it, those were interesting.

On the downside, the novel relies on quite a few YA tropes that I couldn’t care less about—love triangles, good boy vs. bad boy love interest, female characters being talked about as if they weren’t there and generally being a bit… passive, Queen Bee and Mean Girls at school, and so on. Granted, Adele was not passive for the whole story so I won’t fault her too much for that, and the school part wasn’t the main part; it just felt like the “mandatory YA dynamics being inserted here”, when the actual plot itself could’ve done without that. Mysterious murders, predators waking up, Adeline’s story shedding light on what happened and hinting at what to be done: all those would’ve been fine, no need for a romance subplot (which didn’t have anything special going for it), that slowed down the pace to a crawl in places: I could do with the “slower” chapters used to describe the city and its atmosphere, I could do less with lulls caused by romantic scenes.

Some of the descriptions (told in 1st person) were a bit odd, too—on the purple prose side, and not very believable coming from a 16-year-old girl. I found this happened mostly in the beginning (darkness being described as “the obsidian”, or “espresso-coloured hair”?), and less afterwards. I’m not sure either about the French words and sentences used here and there; some were alright, others sounded grammatically weird. No idea if this is how people in New Orleans do speak, but as a native French reader, it’s strange.

Finally, I felt some subplots and threads were left somehow dangling. For instance, Adele’s mother was thrown in here a bit at random, too close to the end. And I would’ve liked to know a bit more about Cosette and the native girl; did they have offspring or not, and if not, was it to keep the number of characters down? Sometimes it seemed like things happened by coincidence, as plot devices, and not naturally enough to be really believable.

Conclusion: The main plot (monsters and witchcraft, with events originating in the past) was good, even though not the most original ever—it’s less about “being original” and more about “what you make of it” anyway. Yet I didn’t really care about the main characters, nor about the romance.

Enregistrer

Yzabel / July 7, 2016

Review: And I Darken

And I Darken by Kiersten White

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwyla likes it that way.

Ever since she and her brother were abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman sultan’s courts, Lada has known that ruthlessness is the key to survival. For the lineage that makes her and her brother special also makes them targets.

Lada hones her skills as a warrior as she nurtures plans to wreak revenge on the empire that holds her captive. Then she and Radu meet the sultan’s son, Mehmed, and everything changes. Now Mehmed unwittingly stands between Lada and Radu as they transform from siblings to rivals, and the ties of love and loyalty that bind them together are stretched to breaking point.

The first of an epic new trilogy starring the ultimate anti-princess who does not have a gentle heart. Lada knows how to wield a sword, and she’ll stop at nothing to keep herself and her brother alive.

Review:

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

That was an interesting “retelling”—or perhaps introduction to a retelling?—in that it follows Vlad Dracul, with a “what if he had been a girl?” approach. A princess, in a way, provided the daughter of a voivod without that much power can be considered privileged and powerful. Lada isn’t so much that as decided to make her own life, and prove to her father that she can do just as well as any boy. Perhaps even more. More ruthless, more brutal, more focused on honing her fighting skills. Everything that is unexpected from a woman in that place and time… unexpected, and not really welcomed either.

Wanting nothing more than to earn the love and esteem of her father, Lada is unearthed, along with her younger brother Radu, and sent as hostage to the sultan’s court. Not only does she have to live among the Ottomans she despises, she also has to come to terms with the fact her father basically sold his own children, leaving them at the mercy of his only goodwill: if he doesn’t behave, they are to be killed, plain and simple. What can—and should—a girl do in such circumstances? Thirteen, not fitting with the girls, not considered by the men around her, not even pretty (there are a few “beautiful ladies” in the sultan’s harem who use their looks as a way of gathering their own threads of power: after all, not all wars are fought on a physical battlefield).

This may not be much, but for once, it was good to find a story in which the heroine is presented as “ugly” and it’s all left at that, with only briefs mentions of her tangled hair and such, instead of droning on her eyes and curves and “ugly” features that are actually beautiful when you just pause to think about it. Too many books do that. Well, Lada doesn’t care. She’s not really described, anyway. And even though she’s just as lost as her brother, in a different way hidden behind her fierce attitude, even though she doesn’t know how to raise to her own power, she does come to realise that being a concubine is not how she wants to become powerful. She may have been too fierce at times; however, I didn’t mind that much.

I didn’t care much for Radu in the beginning, as he was quite a crybaby. However, growing up, he evolved into an interesting character when it came to his political shrewdness. While I admit I was a bit tired of his longing after the one person he could never have (because it didn’t seem it’d lead to much anyway), he did realise he also had means at his disposal that could make him useful, and help him find a place among the Ottomans. The reversal of roles between brother and sister, man and woman, “the physically weaker but scheming one” and “the fierce warrior who envisions different ways of doing what needs to be done”, caught in a love-hate relationship with no sibling exactly knowing until the very end who they’re going to choose… that was satisfying.

The romance was… okay-ish. I’m not a fan of love triangles, for starters, so meh. The bond between Lada and Mehmed seemed to be forged more out of friendship and trust than pure lust and swoony “I’ll love you forever” clichés; Lada knows from the beginning she doesn’t want to be part of a harem or even become a queen, as in such a context it would mean her only value is that of an object, like a treaty. However, it did fall into the usual trap of leading the characters to neglect their own goals at some point (staying for the guy, doing everything for the guy…), and this put a hamper on some of their skills: for instance, Radu’s developing ability to play the threads of courtly power gets obfuscated when he thinks and mopes so much about his love interest that he fails to realise who’s in the process of betraying him.

Sometimes I also found the story a bit too slow-paced. This may have been because of the romance and angsting, though: since I don’t care much for that, I naturally tend to find it a bit boring.

Conclusion: While it’s more a 3 to 3.5 stars for me, mostly owing to the love triangle, I still enjoyed the ending and where it seems to lead, and I wouldn’t mind reading the next volume—and see how this part of Lada’s life is going to play out.

Yzabel / December 10, 2015

Review: Nirvana

Nirvana by J.R. Stewart

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

When the real world is emptied of all that you love, how can you keep yourself from dependence on the virtual?

Larissa Kenders lives in a world where the real and the virtual intermingle daily. After the supposed death of her soulmate, Andrew, Larissa is able to find solace by escaping to Nirvana, a virtual world where anything is possible – even visits with Andrew. Although Larissa is told that these meetings are not real, she cannot shake her suspicion that Andrew is indeed alive. When she begins an investigation of Hexagon, the very institution that she has been taught to trust, Larissa uncovers much more than she ever expected and places herself in serious danger. Her biggest challenge, however, remains determining what is real – and what is virtual.

Nirvana is the first instalment in the three-part “Nirvana” series, a fast-paced, page-turning young adult trilogy that combines elements of the romance, mystery, and science fiction genres. This first novel introduces readers to a heroine who refuses to give up on the man she loves, even if it means taking on an entire government to do so.

Review:

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

I can’t remember how I got approved. I think I received an invitation, months ago, but didn’t get to reading the book until now. And then, halfway through, I realised what I had was the first ARC, and that I needed to download it again, because the author had rewritten a lot after the first batch of reviews. Or something to that extent? Anyway, I got the second version, and I’m glad I did. I still didn’t like “Nirvana” in the end, but I can commend the effort, as there was quite some improvement compared to the first version. (On the other hand, it gets to show that when a book’s in a first draft state, or close to it, it’s really best not to publish it… Reviewers aren’t beta-readers.)

The premise was definitely interesting: future dystopia, post-apocalyptic world after a series of environmental disasters, people living under tight control from corporations (mainly Hexagon), and blowing their hard-earned money on a virtual world named Nirvana—even as little as one quarter of an hour a week, as it’s the only escape from daily drudgery in bunkers. In typical dystopian fashion, our heroine, Larissa (prefers to be called Kenders) discovers dark secrets while investigating into the death of her boyfriend Andrew. Also in typical dystopian fashion, there’s a clear cut between the elite, the rich and famous, who can afford housing in “the Bubble”, whereas the others are left to survive however they can: as Nirvana operators if they’re lucky, as slaves in the Farms if they’re not.

To be honest, it’s pretty difficult for me to review only the second version, without thinking about the first one. The second version felt, all in all, smoother: where the first one threw me in a world where Kenders patrolled the wastelands as a soldier, without much sense of direction, here she felt much more integrated in her world, being a Nirvana operator. The technology seemed more real, too, better thought and described, and the narrative more logical: moving fast, but clearly not as over the place as the first version’s was. I could tell where the story was improved, and in a way, I’m glad I got to read both versions (at least partially).

I didn’t like it, though. A shame, but, well, it happens.

– The character’s age, first. In the original story, Kenders was 24, Andrew and Serge a couple of years older… And this was good. Now Kenders is 17, the guys are 19-20, and this felt just so weird. I could believe in a 24-year-old now-soldier, ex-punk rocker/university student. But the same character aged 17, reflecting on all that stuff she had done “years ago”? Not believable, especially not when surrounded with people of the same type (so many “gifted kids” in one place, when nothing highlighted that fact = strange). Moreover, it cast a shadow on the Kenders-Andrew relationship: I always have a hard time with those “old couple-slash-soulmates forever” tropes when the characters are so young.

– The environmental disaster(s). They felt like they happened in 1-2 years, even if they were nothing new for the characters, and the world-building here was kind of lazy, too. The bees disappeared, OK, but they’re not the only way plants can reproduce. Other species play a part as well. I wasn’t sold on that one reason.

– The explanation heavy-handed “corporations are evulz” message.

– The beginning of the novel was smoother (the parts with Serge and in the Bubble made much more sense!), but the last chapters went so fast! One moment, this or that character was alive… then they were dead, and it happened in such a quick and dispassionate way that I was all “Wait, what… Oh… Am I supposed to feel sad, now?” I couldn’t get invested in their lives, their emotions, in what was at stake for them. Kenders being in a punk rock band didn’t add much to her personality, and the part with her father… didn’t lead to much either?

– Some very, very stupid decisions. Of the too-stupid-to-live kind. Literally. Why did so-and-so have to engineer such a situation where they would end up dying along with the enemy, when there were likely other solutions? Why didn’t they anticipate that the “bad guys” wouldn’t come alone / wouldn’t be fooled by the diversion? *That* kind of decisions. And Kenders wasn’t especially clever.

– Nirvana itself. Mostly it was Kenders meeting Andrew in their 2-3 favourite online places. In the end, I didn’t get the effect I was expecting (i.e. “lost in a virtual world / confusing virtual world with reality and vice versa”). Both worlds were always very clearly delimited in my opinion.

– The Red Door program. It gets lumped on us in the beginning and at the end, but there was no real central thread regarding this. I was under the impression it was here just because any dystopian world needs its oppressive, gets-rid-of-“dissenters” program.

– Info dumps. Lots of them. This didn’t change much between the first and second versions.

– The love triangle. Not even worth mentioning. Uh.

Conclusion: An improved version, but one that would still need lots of work for me to enjoy it.

Yzabel / July 12, 2015

Review: Darkness Brutal

Darkness Brutal by Rachel A. Marks

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Aidan O’Linn’s childhood ended the night he saw a demon kill his mother and mark his sister, Ava, with Darkness. Since then, every three years the demons have returned to try to claim her. Living in the gritty, forgotten corners of Los Angeles, Aidan has managed to protect his sister, but he knows that even his powers to fight demons and speak dead languages won’t keep her safe for much longer.

In desperation, Aidan seeks out the help of Sid, the enigmatic leader of a group of teens who run LA Paranormal, an Internet reality show that fights demons and ghosts. In their company, Aidan believes he’s finally found a haven for Ava. But when he meets Kara, a broken girl who can spin a hypnotic web of passionate energy, he awakens powers he didn’t know he had―and unleashes a new era of war between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness.

With the fate of humanity in his hands, can Aidan keep the Darkness at bay and accept his brilliant, terrifying destiny?

Review:

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

The beginning of this novel was interesting and full of promises, combining Aidan and his sister Ava being targetted by demons to a mysterious man, Sid, gathering gifted youth with abilities to see and/or touch the supernatural. Yet a few things definitely rubbed me the wrong way after a while.

Aidan as a character was fairly enjoyable. He’s had a hard life, but doesn’t spend his time whining about it, instead doing what he can to ensure his little sister, at least, gets something better (not just a foster family: also avoiding the death of said family). He’s a decent person all around, the kind of guy who’ll help a girl in danger and not take advantage of her in any way, or who’ll recognise that someone alluring and sexy may not necessarily mean “I want to have sex with you”. He perceived the frailty within Rebecca and Kara, that what they were doing was not necessarily their choice or to their liking, and openly stated that he didn’t want Kara to do something she wasn’t convinced of, all the more after what she had been through.

Kara had a somewhat annoying, twitchy side—going from one reaction to the complete opposite. On the other hand, she also used what she had been dealt in order to try and make things better. Scarred and tough at the same time, in the spirit of survival and of refusing to let her former life crush her.

I still don’t know what to think about the “romance”. There was attraction and manipulation, and I didn’t really feel much chemistry, considering that one girl was basically attracted because of supernatural reasons, and the other… as well?

A more prominent issue for me was how the story suffered of regular cases of ain’t-telling-you-nothing-itis. It’s not the first nor the last time I notice that in novels. Sure, some information needs to be kept hidden, because disclosing everything at once is a) overwhelming and b) not really interesting. However, I don’t like it when it feels that the revealing of said information is artificially pushed back as far as possible in order to create confusion as a plot device. The “I’m not telling you in order to protect you” and “I’m keeping this secret, surely it won’t cause trouble for everyone later” kind. Aidan demanded information, while withdrawing important info of his own. Ava kept to herself and did things behind her brother’s back, instead of talking to him and maybe, just maybe, trying to find a third way to solve their issues. Sid was annoying as well in that regard, as he knew or at least suspected a lot of important stuff about Aidan, yet postponed its revealing, only to act later along the lines of “you have to listen to me because it’s absolutely crucial you act accordingly, wait, why don’t you want to listen to me now, is it maybe because you’ve become fed up with waiting?”

Granted, Aidan not wanting to tell the truth about Ava, nor about his reasons to bring her with him, was understandable. But other happenings could’ve been avoided if only the characters in general had been more open about some things. All those hidden agendas didn’t make for a good ground for budding trust, and in turn, it made things go the wrong way. A wrong way which was easy to foresee as a device.

I wasn’t sold either on the biblical/Babylonian/seers stuff. It seemed to pop out of nowhere, and not to be very well integrated within the general “mythology” of the urban fantasy world developed here. While reading, I had a feeling that its purpose was to make the usual angels/demons backdrop different, without really succeeding.

2.5 stars. Overall, there were good ideas in here, but all the beating around the bush was a little too much for me to stomach.