Friday, March 20, 2009

Evernight continues

Stargazer (Evernight #2) Stargazer by Claudia Gray


My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
After reading Evernight last year, I've been impatiently awaiting the arrival of Stargazer. My patience was certainly rewarded.



It's hard to write about this novel in a way that does not spoil the surprises of the first. I won't even try to summarize the plot, because I do really hate spoilers of that magnitude. And those surprises are part of what makes Evernight work so very well.



It's enough, I think, to say that this book complicates the story in several meaningful ways. Bianca has always been too trusting, and the cynics around her have not been afraid to tell her that--unless, of course, they want her to believe their own lies. Throughout this novel, Bianca inches closer and closer to the truth, slowly making connections. The most frustrating part of this book is the speed; I can't help but wish that Bianca were a little bit of a faster thinker. However, so much of her understanding is also a part of her coming of age, of her maturation process. She's becoming an adult, with all that means, and as the levels of lies around her are slowly stripped away, she's left with several unwelcome choices.



I'm not sure that I liked this book quite as well as the first. Whatever happens in the third (and is that the final one?) book will likely decide what I think about the series as a whole. I do know that I will be anxiously awaiting the new one next year.


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Saturday, March 07, 2009

Werewolves, oh my

The Better to Hold You The Better to Hold You by Alisa Sheckley


My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
I saw this book mentioned in Romantic Times, and the fact that Gaiman had blurbed it made me want to check it out.



I was not disappointed.



The cover copy makes the novel seem predictible, even rather standard, but it does not do a good job of actually representing the novel. There's much more here than the cover hints, and the portrait of the marriage between Hunter and Abra is both convincing and suffocating. There's more depth here than one usually finds in mass market romances. I'm rather surprised the publisher didn't put it out as a trade first.


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Monday, January 26, 2009

A Good One!

A Dangerous Affair:  A Novel of Victorian England A Dangerous Affair: A Novel of Victorian England by Caro Peacock


My review


rating: 5 of 5 stars
It has been six months since the events in A Foreign Affair, and Liberty Lane has settled in London with her unusual household. She is starting to feel a financial pinch, however, and understands that her life cannot continue as it has been. Working as a music instructor does not provide the income she needs to care for her horse, herself, and provide lodgings for herself and her roommate. A letter from her brother in India--boldly telling her that she should marry Daniel Suter--combined with a visit from an aquaintance in Parliament sets her on a path to investigate a murder.



A Foreign Affair was a good book (I rated it four stars), but it was not amazing. It set the background for Libby and her friends, and it told a good story, but it suffered from a malady that often afflicts the first book in a series; it had to provide the set-up for the rest. Now that the stage is set, the readers don't really need to know the struggle that Liberty went through to create herself as an independent woman in London. Now we can get to the good stuff: how she lived as an independent woman. And that's what this book is: Good Stuff.



Caro Peacock fills this book with a delightful level of detail. She clearly knows the period, and she knows the side of life that Dickens was only ever willing to hint at with his Fallen Women. Liberty is not a Fallen Woman (not even in the eyes of someone like Dickens), but she is also not an Angel in the House. She is a character that takes risks in order to live life as she feels necessary. Reading only canonical books from the early Victorian period (such as our friend Dickens) may give the impression that Liberty is an anachronism, but she's not. One of Peacock's gifts is to show that a woman like Liberty could have existed. The Victorian period was not so staid and moral as history has made it out to be, and Peacock helps to reveal something closer to reality.


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Monday, January 19, 2009

Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand (Kitty Norville, Book 5) Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn


My review


rating: 2 of 5 stars
I found this book to be a disappointment. Unless I misremember, a "dead man's hand" is a corspe's hand soaked in wax and used as a thief's tool. There was no dead man's hand in this novel.



Since it takes place in Vegas, it could be that the "dead man's hand" refers to a hand of cards, at which point I would have to say that I find that level of punning to be painful.



The book itself was entertaining. Kitty goes to Vegas to get married and runs into all sorts of trouble with hunters and the supernatural community in general. Hmm. That sounds like the other books in this series--except the wedding part. I find it strange that the next book is going to be released in March. Perhaps these two should have been released together as one book? I can't speculate about that too much, except to say this one ends with a cliffhanger, which has not been Vaughn's habit to date.


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Sunday, January 04, 2009

The Stepsister Scheme

The Stepsister Scheme The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines


My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
(I don't know if anyone would consider this a spoilery review, so please be warned . . .)



Danielle is the princess formerly known as Cinderwench. Predictibly, she's having a hard time settling into her new role in life, despite the fact that she genuinely loves her husband. She has a hard time establishing a relationship with her servants, as she finds it difficult to tell them what to do and to allow them to do their own work. She doesn't enjoy learning the protocol she needs to know. However, all that changes when her stepsister, Charlotte, reappears in her life. One assassination attempt later, Danielle finds that she must become assertive if she is to live--and if she is rescue her husband, currently at the mercy of her stepsisters. She has the help of Snow, a witch with mirror magic, and the mysterious Talia, known popularly as Sleeping Beauty.



The Stepsister Scheme is an engaging read, and I've been looking forward to reading it ever since talking to the author, Jim C. Hines, at a conference in Minnesota in 2006. I used to study fairy tales as an academic area of pursuit, and I can say that Hines has clearly done his research. He knows the older, darker, alternate versions of these tales quite well. However, he doesn't bludgeoun (sp?) his readers with that knowledge. Instead, it unspools slowly as their history becomes relevant to the plot. Shrek 3 used many of these same princesses to tell a far different story. In that movie, their passive traits (ex: Sleeping Beauty's ability to fall asleep at will and trip soldiers with her body) are used to save the day. Here, Hines tells the story of women that refuse to be passive and reshape their various curses into strengths.



I liked this book, and I look forward to the sequel, The Mermaid's Madness, promised in October 2009. The cover copy made this book sound like it was going to be much funnier than it was, but once I adapted to Hines' humor, that wasn't an issue for me any longer. The next novel has the potential to be stronger (and maybe funnier?) now that these characters have been established in their roles.


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