Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr

I'm just going to get into this review in a somewhat rambly way because I'm a little frustrated that what I originally wrote was accidentally deleted. Twice. :(

While I am a fan of Marr's Wicked Lovely series, I was not as in love with this book as I was with the first or the third. I suppose I miss Aislinn too much, because I found that Ani was only somewhat interesting, and the same could be said for Leslie in Ink Exchange. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I like Aislinn both as a character and I like her particular circumstances. If I could keep Aislinn as the focus of the story and have Leslie and Ani as prominent side characters, that would be awesome.

Ani's interesting because of her situation. She's got crazy powers but t his isn't really letting her easily choose a side (live with mortals or live wirh faeries) because neither side is really working for her to the fullest. She can hurt mortals too easily, and she's not strong enough to run with The Hunt. She can't have normal relationships with people, but she does, at the very least, have a few people that understand and care for her. I found her interesting, but I didn't feel very attached to her, so it was a slight relief when we got to Devlin's chapters.

Devlin is extremely interesting. The "brother-son" to Bananach and Sorcha, the first two faeries to have come into existence. He's constantly stuck in the middle of the things that the two sisters embody: a thirst for violence and a need for order. He chooses to remain as Sorcha's right-hand-man, or as he puts it, The High Queens Bloodied Hands, but he is still Bananach's brother, and so naturally he keeps secrets from her... which leads to my first real problem with this book.
Rae, formerly known as Katherine Rae O'Flaherty, is a girl from the 1800s who somehow stumbled in to Faerie without her body and ran into Devlin. She's basically like a ghost, except we have no idea how that happened. We don't really know where her body is, except that Devlin knows, and he's been keeping it safe for centuries now. By the end of the book, Rae still hasn't gone back to her body and there is no indication that she ever will. She can take possession of people's bodies, which she's done with Devlin and eventually does with Ani, but no more is mentioned of her body so we're left to assume she has no intentions of finding again. You would think that with Devlin finally becoming a king of his own court at the end, there'd be some resolution to restore Rae to her body, or at least figure out what would happen if they did, but nope. They're just going to deal with the issue that she's a ghost of sorts, and that's all.

Also, why does Rae dreamwalk? Why is it that she can get into people's dreams, link them together, influence events through them, and so on? Where is the explanation for basically all the highly convenient stuff that Rae does in this book? At the end of it all, it felt like she was more of a plot device than a real character. She brought Devlin and Ani together and she made it so that Sorcha could watch Seth in her dreams. Then she also made it so that Devlin knew to come back to Faerie because it was falling apart. We have the understanding that she deeply cares about Devlin, but it's possible she's outright in love with him. Is this going to be an issue in the future, now that Ani and Devlin are a couple? Or are they just going to maintain some weird threesome? That's what it seemed like by the end of the book, so I'm not really sure that I should bother expecting any conflict over this in the next book, Darkest Mercy.

But back to something I do really like. Bananach and Sorcha. First off, when I met these two, I was in love with their individual purposes in this world. Bananach is War embodied, and Sorcha is Logic, Order, and Reason. Bananach sees the threads of the future that could help her create more chaos, and Sorcha sees the same for opportunities to maintain order. They are pure opposites, and yet they are sisters, and it is believe that if one dies, so does the other, and every other faerie in the world goes down with them. I thought this to be generally really cool. I enjoyed the fact that ever since Sorcha chose to make Seth a faerie, she basically started becoming crazily irrational because of her attachment to him.

It was depressing and fascinating to read about the world of Faerie basically disappearing bit by bit because she refused to care about it anymore. It follows a theme in this series, of great and powerful faeries becoming deeply attached to humans, and then destabilizing their courts and their world because of it. Irial had this problem with Leslie, Aislinn had this problem with Seth, and now Sorcha too has this problem with Seth but it in a different form. It goes against the way that some, or most faeries obviously viewed mortals at the beginning of this series. There was this sense that faeries definitely thought themselves superior, yet now all, or almost all of the courts had monarchs deeply attached to a human that they were unwilling to give up on. It's an spin on the way a lot of YA paranormal novels these days have this sense of elitism amongst all the paranormals. Humans suck, and it's better when you're not human anymore. Granted, Seth chooses to become a Faerie, but not for the sake of being one, rather for the sake of staying with the girl he loved (who, by the way, had become a faerie herself against her will).

Anyway, onto my second problem with this book: the pacing and the ending. Or rather the pacing in combination with the ending. We start out knowing that Ani might be key to helping the Dark Court nourish itself, and then we're taken into the problem of someone like Bananach taking notice of Ani and deciding to use Ani as a way to kill Sorcha. Devlin steps in, goes on the run with Ani to keep her safe, but eventually they return because Faerie needs Seth back and because Ani's sister has been murdered by Bananach. A fight breaks out between Bananach and her Ly Ergs against the Dark King and the Hounds of Gabriel (the Dark King's right-hand-man). Ani, Devlin, and Seth make another run for it to Faerie in order to fix things there. And they do. Then they try to convince the Dark King to return his court to Faerie so as to balance out Sorcha, but he refuses. Ani and Devlin then create the Shadow Court, a court that will exist to balance Sorcha in Faerie and will keep her from entering the mortal world (as she was now intending to do, though I don't really understand why, and I don't get why it's so bad that she'd do this) and they will also keep Bananach from entering Faerie as well.

I won't go into too much detail, but the way this was all "fixed" seemed far too easy, and it was done very quickly. So many worries and conflicts throughout the book, and BAM! problems solved. Well, sort of? There's still the issue of Bananach, whom we last saw when she was fighting the Hounds. I imagine she will still be the main issue in the last book. One of the things that confuses me is that she stabbed Irial, so for a moment there he was very clearly going to die. But then Bananach mentions he doesn't have more than a fortnight.. but then when Devlin and Ani are talking to Irial later, he and Niall seem very casual about the whole situation. Is he dying, then? Should I be worried about a character I like, or will he be fine? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be feeling here. Oh, and there's also the issue of Keenan having gone missing. Missing like someone kidnapped him? Or he ran off? Is it something to be really worried about, in the sense that he might be in danger? Or simply in the sense that his antics are putting his court at risk? It was mentioned so briefly that I imagine it'll be an issue in the next book, but I feel like Marr should've just waited to mention it at the beginning of Darkest Mercy instead.

At this point, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the series overall. I think the last book will have to be pretty solid in winning me over otherwise I'm going to continue to have conflicting thoughts about this series.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Obvious spoilers follow: I love zombies, so I was interested in this book despite having been told it wasn't good. The zombies thing might be what's saving this from being a 1 star, I'm not sure.

All the characters were boring, I didn't care for a single one of them. (No, I take that back, I cared for the dog, Argos. What? I'm a dog lover.) They didn't even make me angry at any point in time, they irked me at best. I've read other books where the characters at least make me angry enough to care. This book just made me entirely indifferent towards them. Mary brings up small bits of their personalities that used to be, like "I remember when Cass was all smiles and sunshine" or something, but we come into the story when Cass (her best friend) isn't like this, when we meet her she's just as bland as the others. So why should I care about how she used to be? I also don't understand why Mary fell in love with Travis. In fact, I didn't even get that she had fallen in love with him when he was ill, I thought she was telling me she had been in love with him for a while. That wasn't the case though, because at some point she clarifies that she had a crush on him before, and is in love with him now. Regardless of when it happened, there is no chemistry between them, and Mary could hardly ever make up her mind about how she felt about him. She cared, she didn't care, she just wants someone to marry her, no she wants him to marry her, she was in love with him and wanted only him, but he's not enough for her, but he totally is enough for her! And so on.

Mary also mentions how she remembers when she and Cass were once the closest of friends, or when she and Jed were once very close siblings, but we never see any of this we just see her lamenting the loss of a relationship with them that seems to have existed way before the events of this book. How am I supposed to care when she mourns a relationship I've never seen? This is why I didn't even care when her mother died, and all I ever know is that at some point her father died, otherwise we don't hear about him except when speaking of her mother's love for her father. If I don't get the full impact of what she lost, then I don't care that she lost them. Would it really have killed Ryan to have fleshed out some of the relationships a bit?

The "revelations" in this book are so badly written that I feel no impact, no excitement or sadness or anything that the author probably intended for me to feel. They had so little impact that it would take me a few more sentences to realize that Ryan meant for me to react to the event. The Sisterhood is keeping secrets you say? Well, okay then... Oh noes, Gabrielle's been turned into one of the Unconsecrated? Well I- wait, why are you now focusing on Travis and the fact that he's kissing you? Oh I see, it's the greatly desired first kiss, although I- Oh back to Gabrielle? Okay, yeah, that sucks immensely that she was- oh, back to Travis then and the fact that he kissed you. Cool, I guess.

And that's another thing, how is it that this girl still manages to be able to focus on things that relate to Travis, things like jealousy when her entire village is being eaten by zombies. They're right at the beginning of the path where they escaped the breach, she hears Travis call Cass "darling" or something, and she has the time to be jealous over it. Your village is dying, Mary, this is so not the time for this. She does this several times throughout the book in moments where a normal person would be thinking, "OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL DOOMED" yet she manages to focus on, "Woooee my true love likes my bff, woeeee".

Also the ending was pretty silly too: So she steps into the forest, gets attacked by zombies and her brother then runs after her. She reaches the ocean, we assume her brother died somewhere in the struggle, and Cass, Jacob, Harry and the dog (omg Argos!) are left to starve to death back where the fences were. That's if the fences even hold long enough for them to die of starvation instead of being eaten alive once the Unconsecrated get through. So congratulations, Mary! You got to the ocean, and everyone's dead! Wooo!

The world, at least, was interesting enough for me to want to see more of that. I just like zombies that much. I just never want to see Mary again (I want to see Argos though) and I'll be hoping that Ryan will be better at making me care about her characters. I know there's a sequel, so I may read it. Eventually.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Incarceron: Set in the future where a prison has been built in an unknown location to hold all the uh, "undesirables" of society. It was meant to become a paradise for those who lived there, except that that experiment failed more than a hundred years ago, and it's now become nothing less than hell. Outside Incarceron everyone's lives follow what they call "Protocol", despite having advanced very far in technology everyone is now stuck in the past due to a decree made by a king many years ago. Nothing progresses, everything stays the same, and from the look of it only the royalty likes is this way.
Finn is inside Incarceron, Claudia is out. Claudia believes Finn could have an immense impact on the world outside of Incarceron, problem is that since the beginning of the experiment no one has gotten inside of Incarceron, and no one has ever come out. I've given it a five star rating, and I don't do that easily.



Spoilers ahead: I absolutely fell in love with this book, it was the kind of book that forced me to ignore the fact that it was four in the morning and I still hadn't gone to bed. First of all, I really loved the Prison in all it's scary, insane ways. I love the fact that it speaks and that it's developed the desire to basically get outside of itself. It almost makes me pity it despite the fact that it's been extremely cruel to its inmates over the past century or so.
Claudia was wonderful to read. I've read so many books over time where I detest our female protagonists, there have been so many times I've wanted to reach in there and slap some sense into her (Bella Swan, I'm looking at you). This was never the case with Claudia. If she did something, it was with good reason, if people thought of her a certain way, it was also with good reason. People thought her a spoiled brat at times, and that's because she certainly was. At other times people thought her to be brave, and that's also because she certainly was. She was a whole character that wasn't Oh So Awesome You Automatically Wish You Were Her. I also loved her bond with Jared, and I loved that others around her had their little assumptions about them despite their being no evidence for any of it.
As for Finn.. eh, I didn't care for him so much, but I found it really interesting to see how his "friends" treated him, and how he called them out on it. I constantly wanted to smack both Keiro and Gildas for their asshattery, but I'm glad in the end Finn did it for me. Well- he did it more on Keiro than Gildas, but still.
As for the other, minor characters, there's so much more I want to know about so many of them. Sapphique, for example, Queen Sia (what is up with that crazy woman?), and the Prison itself, actually. How was created? When did things start to go wrong?... and why do I hear a female voice in my head when it talks?
My only complaint is that some parts of Incarceron were really strangely described, so much so that it was hard for me to picture those parts. I'm particularly thinking of the part where Finn finally meets the Prison. I kept developing an image in my head and suddenly Fisher would throw in a sentence there that would tell me the image in my head was totally wrong. This happened rarely though, so it wasn't that big of a deal. I'm just really big on description.
The book ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger, but a satisfying one at the least. I guarantee you I'll be at the local bookstore on December 28th for Sapphique (even though it's already out in the UK, I want to wait for the cover that matches my copy of Incarceron). I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys dystopias, strong female protagonists, complex characters, and a very well done plot. If not, then er, I also have a list of really bad books I could recommend?

Gone by Lisa McMann

Ye be warned, there be spoilers here: It took me much longer than it should have, but I finally finished Gone by Lisa McMann. I'll start by saying that I did not enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed Fade, the second book in the series, which now stands as my favorite overall. While I really enjoyed that Janie met her father, and that he turned out to be exactly what I thought he was, I think it sucks that the rest of the book was greatly lacking in any action, real resolutions, or real answers. I get that lots of books can be great while leaving things up in the air, but I was really hoping for more here. To me this felt more like an epilogue more than anything else. I think I might have just ended up expecting more considering how much I enjoyed Fade's action and some of the answers that were provided in there. I would in fact like to know what happens to Janie and Cabe, not just that they're going to end up playing it by ear, but I already from the signing I attended in La Verne, CA that Lisa McMann doesn't intend to go back to the Dream Catcher world. I also wish we could know more about the reason Henry died. We know it was something in his brain, we're guessing that it was because of the isolation, but how did it begin? Were there symptoms that were starting to tell him something was up? If so, couldn't Janie make some compromise between the two choices? Spend some time in isolation, and then some time being a dream catcher? Hmm, I guess that wouldn't be too practical, but that would all depend on how much it all meant ot her, and from what we've learned, that's a lot.

I am glad, however, that Janie took a step towards coping with what her mother is like by the end of the book. Not altogether getting out of the situation and being free, but at least it was obvious she was beginning to rise above it, because it's obvious that this is aimed at those kids who have to deal with the same problems Janie did, and I like that message. I haven't seen that much myself when it comes to paranormal stories, and I'm sure there are lots of people who don't want to read about that kind of problem in the first place, so I think that makes me appreciate the fact that it's tucked in there as a secondary issue as opposed to it being the focus. It eases the unsuspecting reader into that topic rather than forcing it on them.

Why do you lie, liar?

From the jacket because I've yet to master the art of brief descriptions: "Micah will freely admit she’s a compulsive liar, but that may be the one honest thing she’ll ever tell you. Over the years she’s fooled everyone: her classmates, her teachers, even her parents. And she’s always managed to stay one step ahead of her lies. That is, until her boyfriend dies under brutal circumstances and her dishonesty begins to catch up with her. But is it possible to tell the truth when lying comes as easily as breathing?

Taking listeners deep into the psyche of a young woman who will say just about anything to convince them — and herself — that she’s finally come clean, Liar is a bone-chilling thriller that will have listeners seesawing between truths and lies right up to the end. Honestly."

I should develop a personalized rating system, for now we'll just go with what I put on Goodreads.com, which was a 4 out of 5 star rating.

My first thought as soon as I finished the book (as soon as I finished several parts of the book, actually) was "What?"

Just that, just "what?" Because I have no idea what to say about this book. It was good, I'll say that, it kept me reading even when I just wanted to pass out on my bed or when I was hungry and needed to put the book down to get something to eat. Not many books do that, in my opinion, although it still didn't reach the point where I was so stuck on the book I wish it was waterproof so I could read it while I showered, but it got close.

Actually, I lied (see what I did there?) another word that kept coming to mind throughout the book was, "Liar!" Which makes me wonder about the exact way the author decided to title the book. Was it just a natural choice considering the topic, or did she read it through and find that it was the first word that came to her mind whenever Micah made any kind of statement? Regardless of which way she chose the title, I enjoyed that I kept saying that word in my head, because it was obvious to me that I was personally offended by Micah's lies, which in turn shows she's a well-written character since I kept wanting to yell at her to stop offending me with her heinous ways.

My only complaint might be that I felt that the ending was done a little too quickly. I wish certain details had been a little more fleshed out, but I can't tell if that's because the author did a bad job in the end or because she was intentionally trying to mess with the reader. My point would probably make a lot more sense if you read the book, since I'm trying not to be spoilerific here. I think this book is best read when you know others are reading it with you or nearly around the same time as you, because it's a book that makes you want to discuss it with other people. I personally can't wait for my next book club meeting because this is the first time I'm having trouble forming solid opinions on the events that transpired within a fictional book. For now it all comes down to those two words in my head, "What?" and "Liar!"

Obligatory Introduction Post

I figure the best way to start out a new blog is to make an introduction post, a brief one, hopefully.

I love to read, but I don't feel that I read nearly as much as I should. I love to give my opinions on books, but they usually get pretty scattered, and I do it best in conversation, which why I enjoy my book club meetings so much. So this is sort of my attempt at working on the way I review books.

I don't read really fast or anything, or really slow, I'd say it's at a moderate level. I'm also oddly picky on how I start off a book. I can't just jump into a book at any moment at any time, and I haven't even fully figured out which time I can jump into a book (I guess I have to be comfortable?). It's weird and kinda silly.

So what am I currently reading? I'm currently on The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I'm only about 30 pages in, but I'm enjoying it so far. It's one of those books that starts out with a world that the narrator understands but you don't, and I've read many books that can pull this off and many that can't, this one is thankfully one of those that can. So far it's pulling at my curiosity rather than annoying me, because as I've said, I've read other books that attempt the same thing, but they throw so much at you in one go that they end up annoying you with their new and complicated world. Definitely looking forward to reading this one.

And that's it for now because I'm hungry.