What I’ve been reading…

I haven’t read nearly as much as I would’ve liked over the past few months. Sure, I’ve added plenty of books to my bookshelf through trips to Books-a-Million and orders from Barnes & Noble’s website. But the book-buying has far outpaced the reading side of the equation.

Even though I haven’t read as much as I would’ve liked, I’ve still been reading. Plugging along through books. This is what I’ve been reading:

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley
~A collection of feminist essays dealing with writing, the science fiction and fantasy genres, and life itself.
I loved, loved, loved this book. It spoke to me not only as a writer but as someone who writes female characters. I’ll be rereading select essays–if not the whole book–in the near future.

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
~Ginny’s eccentric aunt has given her strict instructions that the 13 blue envelopes are her only road-map during a European adventure.
Despite the premise, this wasn’t as lighthearted of a book as I’d hoped. But it delivered on the reality of being sent through Europe by a family member you haven’t seen in years.

The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead
~A countess escapes her suffocating life in the old aristocracy for a new world in the frontier.
This book covered a lot of time in a short amount of pages. I would’ve liked to have seen more of the Glittering Court itself, but I did like the characters. And I’ll be picking up the sequel when it comes out in April.

Stiff by Mary Roach
~A non-fiction book about human cadavers.
There were chapters that fascinated me, like the ones about car crash tests and grave robbing. Others didn’t hold my attention as well. But overall it struck me as an informative book that provided a few plot ideas.

Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen
~Nettie Lonesome wants nothing more than to be a horse wrangler, but her whole life is turned upside down by a man who can only be killed by a stick to the heart.
This western made me itch to get on horseback and start hunting monsters myself. It has just the right mix of fantastic elements in a realistic setting. I’ll be buying book 2 soon enough.

What have you been reading?

Book Review: Pride’s Spell by Matt Wallace

Sin du Jour goes Hollywood. The elite culinary team that caters events for the supernatural is tasked with preparing an exquisite feast for the ultimate Hollywood event: a movie premiere. Meanwhile an elite squad of assassins is targeting Ritter and his team back in New York City. There’s nothing like agents from hell showing up in your apartment to get the blood pumping.

Pride’s Spell is the third novella in Matt Wallace’s Sin du Jour series. This is my first time reading through a novella series, and it reads to me more of a TV show than a series of books. Each novella is episodic with each one building on the foundation of the one before it. That’s not a bad thing. It just means that when I reread them when all seven have been published, I’ll read them all back-to-back.

The flashbacks took a bit to figure out. Firstly I struggled to realize that they were flashbacks and then how they fit chronologically into the story. (It’s more than likely I had a harder time than normal because I had to put down the book more than a few times for real life.) But once I pieced everything together, I really liked how the flashbacks revealed Bronko’s past while leaving behind just as many questions as they answered.

There’s plenty that could be said about the assassins who go after Ritter and his team along with the culinary team’s adventures in Hollywood. But since I don’t want to spoil anything, I’ll just say that I thoroughly enjoyed everything. Wallace does a fantastic job of creating characters with compelling backstories. He also writes some very funny stuff.

If you haven’t started the Sin du Jour series yet and you’re a fan of urban fantasy, what are you waiting for? Pride’s Spell absolutely shines as a worthy part of the series.

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Pride’s Spell by Matt Wallace is available as an eBook and in paperback from Tor Publishing.

Book Review: Wicked as They Come by Delilah S. Dawson

Tish Everett had no idea what she was getting into when she opened the beautiful locket that she found at an estate sale. She soon found herself in the presence of Criminy Stain, a Bludman (better known as a vampire in Tish’s world). He cast a spell on the locket to bring his perfect partner to the distant land of Sang, and she fit the bill. But before Tish can even understand this new world around her, her locket is stolen. Tish and Criminy must battle sea monsters, ghosts, and the evil Mayor of Manchester to get it back. But does she really want to go home? Or has she fallen in love with the rakish Criminy?

Where do I start with Wicked as They Come? There was just so much in this book that I loved.

Tish Everett had just the right balance of sass and normalcy. She doesn’t have a huge problem standing up to Criminy even though he’s the equivalent of a vampire (minus the dislike for garlic and danger from sunlight). Yet Tish openly shows her despair at the idea that she won’t get her locket back or be able to see her grandmother again. Plus there’s her relationship with Criminy. She’s torn between falling in love with him and returning to her other life. That created fantastic tension.

Criminy was also a perfect romantic hero. Hard when he needed to be, and gentle and vulnerable with Tish. For a character whose spell caused Tish to be taken from her world, he was incredibly likable.

I’ve had trouble with books that have settings that are too different than the “real” world. That being said, the world of Sang felt incredibly real. The mythology and terrain wasn’t so different from the “real” world, so I didn’t have much trouble keeping things straight. Plus it combined some of my favorite things: vampires and steampunk.

While I wish that I’d started Wicked as They Come/the Blud series sooner, it’s probably for the best because now the entire series is out. No waiting (except for Barnes & Noble shipping). I will absolutely be ordering the rest of the series once I make it through the unread books on my shelf.

Wicked as They Come by Delilah S. Dawson would be a fantastic choice for someone interested in vampires and steampunk.

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Wicked as They Come by Delilah S. Dawson is available as a paperback and eBook from Pocket Books.

Book Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

The Zombie War invaded the lives of persons across the globe, from its very early days in China to the disastrous battle at Yonkers to the international conference at Hawaii that changed the course of the war. World War Z recounts the stories of survivors, men and women who came face-to-face with the undead enemy.

I read World War Z back when I was in college and enjoyed it immensely back then. It struck me as so real, especially after reading a book of interviews with Vietnam War veterans for a class.

It was still well-written, insightful, and altogether real as when I first read it. Like I could still imagine these accounts coming out in a book after the world suffered through a zombie apocalypse. I still found how people from different cultures reacted differently to the undead to be fascinating.

That being said, this book didn’t affect me the same way that it did when I first read it. My best guess is that I’m simply not in the right place to be enthralled by accounts of the zombie war. It felt like a couple little things added up to just grate on me.

For example, names. I understand that Max Brooks could put names to fictional people in the zombie apocalypse (like the guy who was credited with the plan to handle zombies in South Africa). But then I wanted to know the name of the U.S. President during the war, and he’s never named. Why one person and not another? It’s not a huge deal in terms of the whole book. And it didn’t bother me during my first reading. I just think this wasn’t the right book for me right now.

Overall, World War Z is definitely worth a read for fans of the zombie genre. It just didn’t work for me this read-through.

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World War Z by Max Brooks is published by Three Rivers Press as a paperback, hardcover, and eBook.

Book Review: Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

Sydney is used to her older brother, Peyton, hogging their parents’ attention and worry. But when Peyton is sentenced to jail after a drunk driving accident, he leaves a gaping hole in the family and Sydney struggling to find her place. She changes schools and even tries the pizza at a new-to-her pizza parlor, Seaside. There she meets Layla, Mac, and the rest of the Chathams. Amidst this chaotic family, Sydney discovers what it means to be seen for herself rather than as Peyton’s little sister.

YA hasn’t been my preferred genre for a while, and I typically don’t pick up stories with “normal” problems like Sydney trying to find her place. But I’ve had Saint Anything on my shelf for over a year. I figured it would satisfy my craving for a book with a slower pace. Boy, I’m glad that I picked it up.

Something about Saint Anything struck a cord with me. But I can’t put my finger on exactly what that something happened to be. All the elements of the book converged well: the friendship between Sydney and Layla, Sydney struggling with her place in her family and with friends, the creepy family friend, and even the romance. I’m not typically a fan of romance in YA since it has a habit of taking over the entire story. But the romance felt so natural and unobtrusive in the story that it worked for me.

I also loved how Sydney dealt with problems bigger than just typical high school life. Her brother in jail and the creepy family friend are real issues that could happen to just about anyone. However they’re not typically explored in YA (at least in the books I’ve found). They made for some pretty compelling tension that kept me turning the page. This wasn’t as relaxing of a read as I expected, but it was a fantastic book.

Saint Anything would be perfect for a reader interested in a YA title that makes heavy/difficult issues relatable.

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Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen is published by Viking and is available as a hardcover, a paperback, and an eBook.

Book Review: Garment of Shadows by Laurie R. King

Mary Russell wakes up in a strange room with Morocco with a battered body and no name. Not knowing where she is, why there’s blood on her hands, or what the French soldiers at the door want from her, she bolts for the hive-like streets. As Russell struggles to answer the question “who am I?”, Sherlock Holmes finds himself drawn into a colonial civil war by old friends and a distant cousin. But that takes a backseat when he finds out his wife has gone missing.

Garment of Shadows has sat on my bookshelf since it arrived on my doorstep four years ago. If my memory is correct, I put off reading it because I wanted to reread the other eleven Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell novels first. Since that didn’t happen, this book simply didn’t get read.

Picking up another Mary Russell thriller reminded me exactly what I loved about this series: a powerful, smart woman who can hold her own against the legendary (yet human) Sherlock Holmes. I’m still not a fan of the forty-ish year age difference between the husband and wife, but I loved the romantic connection between the pair. That came across beautifully in this book. It showed a human side of Holmes that’s not always brought into fiction about the detective.

Russell’s amnesia also presented a fantastic plot device. I’ve always found amnesia to be an interesting way to create tension, especially when the person doesn’t remember the people in their former life. There’s a great line when Russell comes face to face with her husband and doesn’t know if he can be trusted:

“I pulled my attention away from the angry man at last, and met the other man’s eyes. They were intriguing eyes, grey and calm and sure and very, very intelligent.

“I hoped to God this man actually was a friend. If he was my enemy, I was in grave trouble.”

That’s probably one of my favorite lines in the entire book. Russell doesn’t even vague feelings that she can trust him (even though they’ve known each other almost a decade). It lets me question whether she ever will get her memory back.

I will say that there were huge sections of Garment of Shadows that were info dumps. The book takes place during the Rif Revolt in Morocco, so there’s obviously a whole lot of historical information that the reader needs to know. And a lot of us aren’t probably too familiar with that conflict. But there could’ve been a better way to get that information across than to have characters explain the whole situation to other characters.

Book #12 in the series (Dreaming Spies) is next up on my to-read list, and book #13 (The Murder of Mary Russell) should be arriving any day. So needless to say, the slight problems aren’t going to keep me from reading the next books.

Garment of Shadows would be great for a reader interested in historical thrillers and Sherlock Holmes.

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Garment of Shadows by Laurie R. King is published by Bantam Books and is available in hardcover, paperback, and as an eBook.

Book Review: Duma Key by Stephen King

Edgar Freemantle used be to a contractor in Minnesota before a crane backed over his truck. Now minus an arm, with a bad leg, and still reeling from catastrophic head trauma, he arrives at Duma Key a broken man. There he begins to paint. Edgar barely sketched back in Minnesota, but here on Duma Key he’s producing sketches and paintings that make art critics take notice. However there’s something sinister on Duma Key, something that’s giving Edgar’s paintings a power that he can’t control.

It’s been a very long time since I picked up a Stephen King book, and I pulled Duma Key off my bookshelf on a whim. Though I remembered a few things from the first time I read it, there were still huge chunks of Duma Key that I’d forgotten.

First of all, it’s a long book. My paperback version has about 767 pages, and King uses that length to his advantage when it comes to tension. There’s a sense that things aren’t quite right (though completely rooted in the real world) from the very beginning. Then slowly, subtly, things start to become more out of place before reaching the point of becoming dangerous. It kept hold of my normally short attention span for the hundreds of pages.

The other point I’d like to touch upon is the use of the past tense. Edgar Freemantle tells the events of Duma Key to the reader after they’ve occurred. So he knows how the story ends, and that allows King to foreshadow certain events. It creates tension as I wonder how the heck something bad could happen when everything seemed to turn out okay.

Duma Key would be a perfect choice for a reader looking to fall into a long, methodical horror novel.

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Duma Key by Stephen King is published by Pocket Books in paperback.

Book Review: Hit by Delilah S. Dawson

No one ever reads the fine print. Patsy learns this lesson when a man from Valor National Bank arrives at her front door, revealing her mother is deep in debt. He gives her a choice: let her mother die or become an indentured assassin and work off the debt. That’s not much of a choice. So Patsy is given a gun, a list of ten names, and five days to give each person the same choice she had. Can this teenager, whose only rebellious acts have been yarn-bombing, survive this ordeal?

It took me about fifty pages to really get invested in Hit and Patsy. The book jumps straight into the story with Patsy getting ready for her first kill, and that was pretty jarring for me. I wanted a bit more of a setup before reaching that point. When it comes to storytelling technique, I agree that starting there and showing how things got to there in a flashback is probably the best way to start the story. However it left me out of sorts as a reader since I didn’t have any rapport with Patsy yet and no real reason to care about her.

All that being said, I absolutely loved this book. Patsy is such a dynamic character who struggles against what she’s being forced to do. It creates a fascinating conflict, especially when she comes in contact with people from all over the economic spectrum and with different reasons for getting into debt. Plus there’s a connection between Patsy and certain people on her list that kept me intrigued the whole story. Even her romance with Wyatt was fun, and that’s saying something since I’ve struggled to find YA novels with realistic romance.

Dawson also handled the assassinations very well. They were as bloodless as anyone would expect for YA yet they packed all the necessary emotional turmoil for Patsy to be left changed after each one.

Even though Hit has sat on my bookshelf since last April, I’m glad that I waited to read it. Now I only have to wait two and a half months until the sequel.

Hit is a YA novel that would be great for readers interested in dystopias and thrillers.

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Hit by Delilah S. Dawson is published by Simon Pulse as a hardcover, paperback, and eBook.

 

Book Review: Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

With one touch, Miriam Black sees how you die. She’s gotten a front row seat to car accidents, strokes, and even suicides. But when she gets into Louis’s truck and shakes his hand, she sees something that she’s never seen before: Louis dies because of her. Now Miriam can’t save Louis from his fate, but her own life depends on whether or not she tries.

Blackbirds has been in my TBR list for a while, and I finally picked it up in early December. The premise (and NSFW book trailer) hooked me from the get-go. So even though I wasn’t a fan of his Harvest Trilogy, I decided to pick up the book anyway. And damn, I’m glad that I did.

Miriam Black is the female anti-hero I didn’t realize I was missing in my life. She’s not afraid to go toe-to-toe with big, scary guys; she enjoys giving not-so-nice-people commentary on their death as they die; she actively tries to avoid her problems rather than doing the right thing. But perhaps the best thing about Miriam is how she doesn’t come off as a stereotypical female. I can’t recall an instance where she gives thought to how she looks or to a romantic relationship. (It may be that I’m reading the wrong books, but it was a nice change anyway.)

I read Blackbirds in just over a day, mostly in a single sitting. There was simply so much tension that I did not want to put the book down. Even though Miriam barely flinched at the obstacles tossed in her path, I certainly cringed. And the way that the story climbed towards its climax, giving absolutely no hint that the story would end the way I wanted, was absolutely perfect.

Blackbirds is the first of a six book series, though only the first two are out in paperback and the third is coming out at the end of February. Number four isn’t out until 2017. I’m not letting myself buy the next book yet because I don’t want to run through them and be left impatiently waiting for the others. I’ll absolutely be picking them up, though.

Blackbirds would be a great read for anyone who loves anti-heroes and dark thrillers.

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Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig is published by Saga Press as an eBook and in paperback.

Book Review: Endangered by Lamar Giles

Lauren Daniels, or Panda as she’s known at school, has mastered the art of flying under the radar. She has no other choice so long as she wants her identity as the vigilante photoblogger, Gray, to stay a secret. But photographing her teachers and fellow students in compromising positions soon becomes the last thing on her mind. A blackmailer threatens to expose Panda if she refuses to play a game. However when the game turns deadly, Panda may have to expose herself to save her friends and herself.

I read Lamar Giles first YA novel, Fake ID, last year, and I loved it so much that I pre-ordered Endangered two months ahead of its release date. Somehow it ended up stuck in my TBR pile for almost five months before I got a chance to pick it up. While Endangered didn’t live up to the hype in my head, it was a solid book.

Panda has a great voice, and she helped me to understand her actions as a vigilante photoblogger. Her reasons for doing so seemed completely justified, making for an even more dramatic character arc as her life began falling apart.

The best part of Endangered was the way Giles dropped hints throughout the story, but they only became obvious when the bad guy’s identity was revealed. I’ve encountered way too many books where I can spot the bad guy a mile away. Not so with this book. It kept me on my toes and second guessing the identity of Panda’s blackmailer up until the very end.

As for not meeting my expectations, I’m chocking it up to not being in the mood for a high-stakes thriller after finishing another (longer) book with similar high-stakes. That’s not to say Endangered isn’t a fantastic book. It just wasn’t the right book for me to read right now.

Endangered would be a great read for someone interested in a YA thriller that will keep them guessing.

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Endangered by Lamar Giles is available from Harper Teen as a hardcover or an eBook.