Summer Reading

“What a thing to go through life without books.”  Truth

What is it about summer?  You think there is nothing to do but be hot and thus lounge by the pool and read, right?  That is what I thought I was in store for this summer, but no… I had to move, and visit family, and socialize.  Not much reading going on, and so I have managed to finish a whooping six books this summer.  Of course, it doesn’t help that the last two were kind of stinkers and so I was left wanting to do anything other than reading.

21.13 Etiquette & Espionage

Great Cover! Great Title! Great Blurb!  Not such a great book. 

This YA should have sucked me in and lasted about two days - a perfect summer read – instead it became a total chore for two weeks.  It reminded me of summer reading for school, at times honestly doing nothing was more entertaining than reading some of that dredge.  The main character is interesting and the school seems wonderful but I felt like I should have cared much more about it all by the end of book one.  We will just have to see how the series progresses.

20.13 Ratlines

This was a dude book disguised as historical fiction.  There was far too little history, and far too many fisticuffs and too much torture and killing.  Blah.  Not good.

As I said, it was a sad summer reading season, but right now I am going to pick up a book based on the Luther series, and on September 3^rd BBC will start showing Series Three.  So summer be damned! Bring on fall, Luther, and, let’s not forget, Alice.  Yippee!!!

On The Fence

“It was time to let go.” Truth.

18.13 Shadow and Bone

So I loved parts of this as I read but after sitting with it a few days there are more and more things I didn’t like – and I hate (as usual) that it is another unfinished trilogy and so lost all of its steam at the end.

Characters –

The Good:

I love that Alina feels a sureness in her power – not like it is natural or outside of herself, but a thing she feels right about.  

It isn’t really clear who is good or bad, and it totally works.

The Bad:

Everyone is far too concerned about how they look.  This is a fantasy for goodness sake, can’t we leave the reality out?  Essentially she gets plastic surgery and this is skeevy for me.

I wanted to know more about the royal family. *To be fair, this may come later.

World Building –

The Good:

Original.

I like that it is allowed to unfold naturally instead of being explained ad nauseam to the reader.

Not a lot of back story.

The Bad:

Not a lot of back story. *Yes, this is both good and bad. 

There are a lot of different places mentioned but I don’t know why I should care about any of them.

I need a bit more about how the Grisha rankings work.

The Plot –

The Good:

The endless travel scenes plugged right along and I didn’t have to hear about every berry they tried to eat or fire they started.

The Shadow Fold seems like a genuinely scary thing and the bad guy is pretty bad and yet a bit logical.  Intriguing.

The Bad:

I read it two days ago and haven’t thought about it since, or thought of picking up the second book.

I finished reading the book and the story isn’t over.  I am honestly so tired of this.

Overall, I will be back, but I may wait until it has all been published.  Curses to the trilogies and my OCD to finish things I have started.  *See, I always bitch about it but also end up buying all the books – damn you capitalism.

Safe Travels

“Just dreaming it is nice… Even if it doesn’t happen. Just dreaming it is nice.” Truth.

11.13 Ask The Passengers

Whenever I am in an airport I can’t help but wonder where all those people are going.  Are the going towards something or leaving something behind?  Is it the end of their journey or the beginning?  And somehow it always feels both happy and sad to me.  In Ask the Passengers, Astrid looks up to those planes and sends her love to the travelers.  She sends it to them because she feels like she doesn’t have anyone else to give it to, so instead of not giving it at all she gives her love to strangers – isn’t that wonderful?  Isn’t it powerful?  Asking teenagers to not give up on it but to give it anyway.  Thank you AS King.  In a brilliant twist, King also shows those passengers receive Astrid’s love, right when they need it, and isn’t that the truth too.  Aren’t there moments when we all just need something from someone, anything: a smile, a hello, just a bit of positive energy, something to help us through.  In the story, Astrid is discovering something about herself and as she puts it out there she is desperate for those around her to give her some love back; some raise to the occasion and some disappoint in heartbreaking ways, but the important thing is that she keeps trying.

I keep wondering why I haven’t heard more about King’s work.  This is her fourth book; I have read one other and can’t wait to get my mitts on the rest. She is really great at writing stream of consciousness in a way that rings very true.  I keep wanting to compare her to John Green as their books share a compulsively readability trait, but while many complain that Green’s characters act older than they appear (a la Dawson’s Creek) King’s characters act more true to the reality (a la Friday Night Lights) and I would imagine that fact sends some parents through the roof – these kids cuss, have sex, and think their parents are idiots.  Let’s be real, that is real. I have to think that is what has kept these books off my radar, and that is a real shame because while her characters do those things that parents hate they are also to the core good.   They support their friends, search for who they real are independent of what other people want them to be, and they don’t give up on those idiot parents even though they have every reason to.  As a parent, I hope my son will do this for me and I thank King for showing him how.

War – Huh - Good God Y’all

“Nothing made you feel so useless as another person’s grief.” Truth.

9.13 Days of Blood and Starlight

This is the second in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy and it shows that war truly is good for absolutely noting.  It also shows that the second book in a trilogy can be totally engaging and advance a plot in a totally meaningful way.

In the first book the war between the Chimera and the Seraphim is set up.  We see the history and build up and understand that it will be an all or nothing war – one side will cease to exist.  In Days, we see it actually happen.  And we see it keep happening because the killing never stops, even if you destroy one side another side appears.  This is a harsh book and I kind of loved it for that.  It doesn’t gloss over the hard stuff, or the grey area.  There are characters that we care for on both sides; we are shown that each side is justified and awful at the same time. 

Karou is still torn between sides no longer because of love but because of her constant questioning about what it right, and, because she is from the human world, she knows how much worse it could be.  They could have guns.  And as this story ends and we wait for the next to be written, both warring leaders now know what Karou knows and they are heading for the human world where we make gods of some and monsters of others, and arm them both in unimaginable ways.

I hate guns.  So much.

Strike Two

“Nothing went exactly right. And yet it was perfect.” Truth.

7.13 Tempest

I hate when I read two stinkers in a row, it puts me off for a bit.  Plus, when both have been recommended by friends I have to also worry about gracefully navigating our next meeting.  If only I could go back in time and make a different choice…

Speaking of, Tempest is a YA about a boy who can jump back in time and while there the things he does do not change the present.  Then one day odd men show up and shot his girlfriend.  From there he goes back in time to change her future and figures out a big subplot about his abilities and where he comes from.  It is actually a pretty good and original premise, but so much time is devoted to explaining how the time shifts work (and I won’t claim that this is done very well either) that you never come to care about the characters doing it.  There are some interesting parts sprinkled through but I never felt like anyone truly cared about anyone else and there were so many lies being told I wasn’t sure what to believe in the end.

Of course, it will eventually be part of a trilogy and so it leaves off without a satisfying end.  I am pretty sure I won’t be reading on and rather sure it won’t effect my future in any way.

Please Don’t Ignore Her

“The trick is remembering that change is as easy as you make it.” Truth.

5.13 Please Ignore Vera Dietz

This was a pretty gut-wrenching read.  It just rang so true, and so sad, for me.  It made the faces of many past students flash before my eyes, with the constant reminder that for some kids life will never be fair.  Some kids are failed by the system and by the people around them, by the people who know better.

As the story opens Vera is at the funeral of her best friend Charlie, or ex-best friend as the case may be.  We being at the end, as the rest of the story tells us, through flash backs, about their friendship, how it fell apart, and what really happened to Charlie. Meanwhile it is also a story about two kids, acting very much like teenagers – which I am sure has conservative parents in an absolute fit as the book won a Printz  Honor Award – and just trying to keep their heads down and make it through.  So many kids now a days do that.  It seems like they are literally holding their breath until the something better comes along, but there are also so many more ways to get in trouble than there used to be, and so many more people too bothered to intervene when they see wrongs being committed.  At the core, I think that is what this book is about:  Idly standing by, and how it has become really hard to push back against that new expectation.  I think both kids and adults would learn a lot about acting responsibly from this book.

The end is a bit tidy for me, but the core is very messy and very real.  And in many ways, very scary.

A Bitter Pill

“Bacon improved things dramatically.” Truth.

3.13 Bitterblue

This is the follow up to Graceling, taking place eight years later and following the search for truth of the new queen we met as a girl in Graceling.  I honestly was looking forward to it, and while I liked being back in the world, nothing much happened.

At 500-some pages, there is just far too much bloat going on.  New characters are introduced who are all too similar to one another and many unnecessary, story lines that start out interesting but don’t have any structure or follow through, and a mystery that is intriguing until it is wrapped up nicely with very actually little resolved.  In the end, it didn’t even feel like a completed story, just one long tale that meandered nowhere. (But I did love that Bitterblue said, “Balls,” a lot.  It is a favorite of mine.)

This is a big issue for me with the new YA landscape.  Once publishers figured out that kids would take on a long book, scarf it down, and still want more, everyone started to write every little thing they thought of and not edit it well.  And yes, readers love a long book to escape into, but it needs to be worth it in the end.  Not every book needs to be over 500 pages and part of a trilogy.  Sometimes a story is short and tight, sometimes questions are left unanswered, and sometimes it is worth the extra pages, but not always and certainly not as often as the current YA publishers seem to think.

I Can Drive 65

“‘If there’s anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I’ll hit him in the face.’” Truth.

65.12 Graceling

I made it!  For the year I set a goal of reading 80 books, and while I ended up reading 67, I amended the original goal to really wanting to get 65 reviews on the blog.  And by the skin of my teeth…

This is a YA that I needed to read in order to read the sequel for a book meeting this month.  So I went into it knowing nothing and it seems to me that this is a great advantage when reading YA for me. 

Katsa is an awesome character and while she and her actions are a bit predictable, I loved that she felt unsure of things.  She was confident in what should could do but not always sure of why she was doing them.  I love the idea of the Graces, but won’t spoil it here.  The ending was a bit of a let down, but I certainly look forward to reading the next in the series. It was a nice fun way to bring the year to a close, let’s do it again in 2013!

2012 Reading Stats

67 Books Read – Goal was 80

28,996 Pages Read – Goal was 20,000

Average Pages Per Day 79 - Very happy with that!

% Female Writers – 44%

% New to Me Authors – 80% (Wow!)

20% YA books

I paid for 38% of the books I read.  Thank you friends and the Eugene Public Library!

And my favorite read of the year was: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-HourBookstore

Not a perfect book, but a perfect escape (which were in great need this year).

A False Start?

“If you can’t give anyone pain, then you can’t give them joy either.” Truth.

64. The False Prince

This was a pretty good YA, more for middle school readers but I would hesitate because it is kind of violent – and that feels odd right at the moment.  Why are we so squeamish about showing sex or swearing, but young men being killed…  Meh.  I guess that is a fight for another day.

I had heard really great things about this book and was expecting to be swept away by it and in some ways I was. I loved the character of Sage.  He truly seemed like a boy who had to survive on his wits and he seemed very in control.  Mott reminded me of every really great right hand man and I wish he had been used more in the story.  The female characters were used sparingly but they were also a breath of fresh air, fighting in every way they could the societal demands on who they should be and what they should do.

So the characters were great, but my issue was that the beginning of the book and the flow of the plot are so predictable that it overshadowed the real brilliance of the conclusion. The first half dragged, and the second half flew. There are a ton of reveals that are really well done, and many ends tied up, clearly leaving room for a sequel (just checked – and shock of all shocks – it will be a trilogy!). Half of me is dying to get my hands on it while the other half could care less, because it’s plot is predictable without even being written. 

So here is the rub, these are mostly new and interesting characters set in a plot that is far too familiar to be intriguing.  So what can be done about it?  No idea.

Ok, off to read like a mad woman, I must make it to 65 books for the year!

Beautiful Conclusion

“Maybe there isn’t a meaning to life. Maybe there’s only a meaning to living.” Truth.

62.12 Beautiful Redemption

I wish the title of the post held true, but I just didn’t like this book as much as the others in the series. It didn’t feel as tightly written as the others, and one of the things that drew me to these books is how successful the team writing is, but parts here seemed mismanaged.  Some parts could have been taken out and I think maybe it needed to be longer to flush out the new characters; I hate to even say that though since it took four books to get here. The main issue is that it felt like more of the same instead of an extension of the story and I am not sure we got anywhere in the end.

This book focused on the main characters almost exclusively and over the course of the series the minor characters were much more impressive than the main and I missed them. The best parts of this book were the new characters as well, and they weren’t given enough attention.  I am glad that the series is over, since it really did start to wander no where, but I wish they had taken a bit more time to make this book a great ending instead of the weakest in the series.

The Truth Will Out

“People are complicated. There is so much more to everyone than you realize.”  Truth.

37.12 Code Name Verity

It took me three days to read the first 70 pages of this book but only one day to read the last 260. The book is written from one point of view and then the other, and really to understand the first you have to read the second and I am not sold that that is a great strategy especially for a YA book. Nonetheless, I liked it but I really thought I would love it.

Two young British women, a spy and a pilot, crash land in France in October of 1943. Each of their stories is recorded as well as the story of how each got to this point. They are strong and confident. Smart and loyal. But this is war time, and war is ugly.

I liked both girls but the disjointed writing of the first half of the book made me feel at arms length from them instead of pulling me in to their story. I never felt emotionally involved with either of them. I think the unraveling, yet connecting, of both stories in the second half is very well done but maybe some of it needed to come sooner.  I did like that the connections were left to the reader to make, doled out a bit at a time, instead of being thrown at you like you aren’t smart enough to figure things out.  It is a very well written and compelling story without being so overtly harsh and devastating that it will probably be perfect for some younger readers who are not as interested in historical fiction. I just hope they stick with it.

Out of The Blue

“I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to look like one of them.  I don’t need to belong.” I wish this were my Truth.

30.12 The Scorpio Races

A friend lent me this a few months ago, along with a stack of probably ten other books, so I was feeling the need to get some of those back to her and decided to pull one that I had no expectations for.  I had never heard of this book, or read the author’s other YA series, but I have certainly seen them around.

Quite honestly, I hated the first half.  The action built very slowly and it was easy to see where it was going.  It is a rewriting of a myth so I guess that is to be expected, but since I didn’t know this I found myself bored.  The setting was a bit disorienting because the myth develops slowly, and there are no geographical or time cues given making it hard to imagine where or when all of this is taking place.  We also have alternating points of view that are totally the same voice.  The title chapter indicates whose voice we are reading, and frankly without that we would have no idea.  So I started to kind of push my way though just to get it over with and suddenly I found myself very deeply entrenched in the story of this girl trying to help her family just by being her.  No magical creature or unaccounted for help, just her and the support of people who love her.  SO GREAT!  I read the last 300 pages in a day, and by the end was sobbing with both happiness and heartbreak.

This is a rough book though.  It is violent and sad.  The bad guys are bad; the good guys are good but rarely rewarded.  It is about people who love horses and you know how that goes.  We readers often end up loving animals much more than the humans and their pain feels much more intense. This is not a happily ever after story in the conventional sense, but I did find it hopeful.  It is a YA book, but I would say you would have to put it in the hands of a pretty mature reader who would stick to it thorough the slow going plot development and be able to handle the harsh realities as the story unfolds.  But in the end it was a pretty successful read for me, and I never thought that would happen.

Apt Title

“Worst is the one who knows better but does nothing.” Truth.

26.12 Monsters of Men

This is the final book in the Chaos Walking trilogy and I whipped through it just like the others. I mean, 608 pages in three days! I know I am reading faster but goodness. After completing the trilogy, I wouldn’t hesitate to whole-heartedly recommend it.

Again, it starts exactly where the last book left off and there is almost zero rehashing of past events.  There is no way to read these books as stand alones.  In the first we had one POV, in the second two, and in the third three.  There are also now three sides to the war, and things don’t get much better.  War makes monsters out of men and we see it all, and understand it all as well.  Everyone thinks they are right, or have been the most wronged; everyone wants power or likes the way it feels. It is how we know war is, and yet it happens. Over and over. Here we are privy to all the sides, and so the reader remains divided and that is a wonderful gateway to some really great discussion. 

There are a few definite good guys, and a few clear bad guys but the majority are in between, as in life.  Todd is really an amazing protagonist because he is so stuck in between he shows us all sides of everything and how easy it is to flip flop and regret your actions, but also to get up and try again.  This book, like the second, is violent, and for me that is bothersome, but who am I kidding?  This is the world we live in, and maybe some people might learn how to do better from Todd.

Two Sides

“We are the choices that we make.” Truth.
 

22.12 The Ask and The Answer

***Spoiler alert!***  I will not spoil this book, but if you have not read the first book there are spoilers ahead!

Book two in the Chaos Walking trilogy starts literally at the end of the previous book.  Its first words are, “The End.”  That book was an adventure story but this is a war story and it is much more violent!  So much so, that my previous delight at having found a book worthy of recommending to young males has fizzled.  In fact, I felt very uncomfortable reading much of this book.  It remind me of the recent trend in movie ratings; when movies like The King’s Speech are rated R for repeating the F-word six times, and a movie like Hanna, where literally everyone dies, is rated PG-13.  What is wrong with us?

Anyway, back to the story… There are two sides to every story, and in this book we are told the story through two points of view.  We hear Todd’s side and we hear Violet’s side.  I thought the shifts were handled well but I found myself missing Todd as his story is now the secondary one.   There are two sides fighting in a war, The Ask and The Answer.  Both sides think they are right and both sides are wrong.  So, while violent, there are some truths conveyed about war and fighting that are important to tell.  Nothing is simple and nothing can be planned out entirely.

Writing wise, Todd’s singular dialect is getting on my nerves. I believe it is supposed to portray his lack of education, and the misspelling are fine when he speaks but I hate it being used in his thoughts. It doesn’t really make sense, they are mostly tion words, i.e.: direkshuns for directions or injeckshuns or injections (and cuz which drives me crazy!), but he uses many other words that are far more advanced.  Even though his thoughts play a different role specific to the plot of the book, since they are sometimes heard, the odd spellings take you totally out of the story.  I wish the author would only use the phonetic misspellings in conversation.

The ending of the book was a complete shock to me, and I look forward to reading the third book and finishing the story, I just wish I was as excited about the second book as I was about the first.

A New Kind of Lady

“It’s amazing what you can see when you just sit quietly and look.” Truth.

21.12 The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

This is a very mild, sweet, and surprisingly poignant story of a girl discovering a changing world, her place in it, and whether or not she wants to fight for something more. Calpurnia is eleven years old, and the only girl among six brothers living in Texas during the last months of 1899.  A new century is coming and she is at the age where she is still left alone enough that she can discover things for herself, but old enough to recognize the signs that she is being molded into something else.  What she discovers is an interest in nature and science; things that also fascinate her reclusive Grandfather.  This shared interest helps them to get to know one another while Calpurnia also recognizes her brothers growing older and how her parents relate to one another.  

There are no huge plot developments or twists, but I think that there is a bit of a tomboy in ever girl and Calpurnia is nothing if not good.  She simply is who she is and she recognizes that in a short time things which are larger than her, mostly her mother’s and societies expectations, are going to start pressuring her into becoming something she may not want to be. I think any girl, young or old, can identify with how Calpurnia feels, and hope that she ends up with everything she deserves in the end, even if they may not be what a lady should do.

Like I said, there are no big surprises or plot twists; there are some questions left unanswered as we only glimpse her life over six months.  In the end, this is a really lovely book.

The Noise Inside My Head

17.12 The Knife of Never Letting Go

Memories of my past bang around in my head all day long. Some of it makes me happy, but mostly it makes me suffer, over and over. What would it be like if you could hear all of that along with all of everyone else's?  Noise, with a capital N; giving it its own being. Fitting that this book gave it that capital.

In New World, there are only men and all of them can hear every thought of every other man.  Crazy Town, right?  Right.  Things aren’t great there, to say the least, but this is Todd’s home.  Then one day he is told he has to run and leave it all behind, no reason given – Just Run!  This is a straight up adventure book and a book for boys!  Girls will like it too, but boys are so much harder to find things for that this makes me super excited to see.  It is a coming of age story, but also an unraveling mystery.  There are some great ethical discussions to come out of it and two more books in the trilogy that are already written.

The cliffhanger ending is a major whiplash but not enough to make me give up on book two, and as soon as possible!

A Boon or a Farce?

12.12 Wraith

Ever since the Kindle came out there has been a boon in the self-publishing industry.  It started with people taking works from the public domain and “selling” them on Amazon.  So, if you searched for Great Expectations you would find 20 different listings with various prices even though the original is free to all. 

Then we started getting a bunch of free books that were self published originals and were basically just converted Word documents that had no editing or real literary worth.

Then we started to see a push towards getting things cleaned up, and self-published authors finding mainstream success.  Some authors took down the self-published links and replaced them with traditional publishers, while others left their publishers and took on the tasks themselves.

When I first got my Kindle I would try anything for free but have pulled back because there are some real stinkers out there.  Just recently, I found a YA self-published book called Wraith that looked interesting, and was free, so I picked it up.  To be fair it is one of the better free book I have read, but to also be fair it needs some work.  I think the idea of self publishing is very exciting, but there is an over all hint of lazy that I find attached to it.  This book had a pretty good plot, a bit too familiar, but pretty good, and the writing is good.  But there were too many mistakes with easy fixes and that drives me crazy!  You need to use the right word, and you need to have things stay consistent, and you need to use punctuation correctly.  Authors are excited to share their work and that makes me excited but it does need to be done well. 

So this book isn’t great, but I also don’t want to discourage anyone, because the talent is there.  I would just say that readers are fickle so slow down, take time to get it as close to perfect as you can, and invest a bit in your product.

Oh, My Heart...

9.12 The Fault in Our Stars

I loved this book.  How could I love a book about two kids with cancer that made me cry a lot? Because it was beautiful and honoring in its honesty.  Is it also because I am a bit emotional about it? Abso-fucking-lutely.

John Green writes YA books that have the most amazing narrative voices.  They are ridiculously easy to read, very realistic, and usually, on one hand, painfully sad while also amazingly funny. He writes both male and female voices very well and most of his books follow a formula wherein a ridiculously funny and handsome teenage boy meets an equally ridiculously witty and self-confident teenage girl and together they take on some grand adventure that one or the other simply has to do in order to find their meaning.  This is the formula and I have to say I was growing tired of it, but he nailed it in this book.  These kids can pull off the seeming more grown up bit because they have to.  They can pull of the immediately in love bit because they have to.  Their parents give them ridiculous amounts of leeway because they have to. 

Is it a cancer book? Yes.  Is it a love story? Yes.  Is it sad? Yes.  Are those all reasons that some people won’t want to read it?  Yes.  Are they good reasons?  Maybe; but I hope people read it just to see that behind all the pink ribbons, Live Strong bracelets, and the “fighting cancer,” there are kids, parents, brothers, sisters, and friends simply putting one foot in front of the other just like everyone else and they aren’t looking for heroics.  Life is quite unfair, but it is all we have; and Augustus and Hazel are amazing examples of how to simply be good.

Ivy is Evil

5.12 Wildwood

Anyone who lives in Oregon will tell you that ivy is evil.  It is impossible to get rid of, it sticks to everything, and it pricks you when you try to pull at it.  It is awful, and it is fucking everywhere.  So how great that someone has written a story about the wilds of Oregon where ivy is the ultimate evil.  I loved that aspect of this story and thought it worked very well, some others not as much. 

The story is not a new formula and is clearly an homage to The Chronicles of Narnia.  A young girl is told never to go near the Impenetrable Forest until her brother is taken there and she must go in to try to bring him home. Within is a world of animals and humans living in a time of turmoil while an evil queen plans to destroy everything and everyone.  Prue, and her friend (?) Curtis, end up playing major roles in the drama.  I know that this is a planned trilogy but am happy to report that there is a complete story here with no cliff hanger ending.  YEA!

Prue is rather too cool for school, which I guess is now the norm for Portland.  Her parents, she always knitting and he always reading, are lax to an extreme and when details are revealed about their past I had a hard time understanding how they could possibly act the way that they did.  Curtis and Prue clearly know one another before the story starts but I have no idea how.  My main issue with the book is that I needed to know more about Prue, Curtis, and their families before the Wildwood part of the story began.  I never got attached to them or understood their attachment to one another, and I felt I needed a bit more background knowledge to understand their actions.

 

The most successful part of the text were the amazing black and white illustrations.  I loved them and thought that they really added to the story.  However, the colored illustrations were a bit distracting.  Because they were in color, they were placed based on the printing instead of on the story, and so they came out of sequence and that took me out of the reading.  They were also well done but I didn’t think that they were necessary.

Suck it Twilight!

2.12 – Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Two friends, independent of one another, likened this to The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo and I would amend that to likening the heroine to Lisbeth Salander, as the overall plots couldn’t be more different.  This is not a murder mystery but a war mystery; a war between the Chimera and the Seraphim that will only end when one race is completely destroyed.  Karou is much like Lisbeth in the fact that she feels lonely and lost, yet has a wonderful network of support around her. She also can certainly take care of herself; and, the fact is, you root for her.

I loved the set up of the story and the setting of Prague, seeing the art and culture.  I loved that the author didn’t define everything as it was introduced, like Chimera and Seraphim, she showed us what they were instead of telling and so it all felt more real.  I love that the secondary characters were developed just as much as the mains.  I loved Brimstone (he is by far the most complex and honorable character I have found in YA since Macon Ravenwood burst through the doors of that cafeteria.) I loved that about half way through the book we got to go back and get the back-story that readers so often crave, we got to see and understand how things got to this point.  I loved the changes in time and point of view and found them pretty seamless to read.  I loved that even though the last words were literally, “To be continued…” I didn’t want to throw the book at the wall.  I felt excited to see what comes next yet also satisfied that anything that comes will be a continuation instead of a completion.  This may be a start of a new trilogy but it felt like a complete story and that is not easy to achieve

My one issue is that I have a huge concern that girls are going to start to really believe that you just walk down the street, look at someone, and suddenly realize your reason for being.  That love is an instant thing will make sense, and you will suddenly do anything for someone and they will do anything for you without any work or sacrifice. Sound familiar?

At least Karou stood up for herself and didn’t take the easy way out, and she loved her family as much as she did the boy.  But still… Really do we need to keep doing this?  I do think that the plot faltered here and became a bit tedious but then a huge time shift came and I was back on board. The soul mate thing is bothersome, but the fact is I would actually tell readers to check out this book while that other one… I still can’t do it.