Cover Watch!

See Meljean's post about it HERE. Nothing on amazon yet.

October, baby!

Review: Fallen by Lauren Kate

There's something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price's attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at Sword & Cross boarding school in Savannah. He's the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are screwups, and security cameras watch every move. 

Except Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce - he goes out of his way to make that very clear. But she can't let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, Luce has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret...even if it kills her.

Dangerously exciting and darkly romantic, Fallen is a page-turning thriller and the ultimate love story.

I think it's time for me to take a break from YA pararoms. Not all of them, just the ones that can't distinguish themselves from their peers. Fallen is one of these; it's an amalgamation of Twilight and Hush, Hush. With a female main character who can pine with the best of them, Luce wants Daniel as much as Bella wanted Edward only this time, the beautiful boy isn't a vampire, he's an angel. An angel that runs as hot and cold as the faucet in my bathroom. How irritating.

Actually, the most irritating aspect of this book wasn't Daniel or even Luce - it was the total lack of answers that you get by the end. I get that the publishers want us suckers readers to come back for more but c'mon! Help a girl out! Throw me a frickin' bone here! I dislike series like this where the reader is kept mostly in the dark and I quit watching Lost during the second season for just this reason. Just so I don't come off as a complete wretch, I will admit that I did like some of the secondary characters like Penn and Arriane. Cam and Miss Sophia were pretty predictable. Also, I happen to like stories with angels and their mythos and this one was just intriguing enough to compel me to crack open book two. Maybe.

Fallen turned out to be one book in a crowd of okay but unimpressive YA.The sequel, Torment, comes out on September 28, 2010.

Review Roundup

While I take a break from laughing at Tumbling Through Time by Gwyn Cready, I thought I'd go ahead and jot down a few things about some of the books I've read lately but haven't reviewed. I'm trying to be a good girl these days. *snort*

Archangel by Sharon Shinn was a provoking read. Definitely a different take on gods and angels and their interactions with humans. It also had one of the most stubborn women I've ever encountered in a book. Not that she didn't have some reasons to be but I thought to myself as I read Archangel that she could give a mule or jackass a run for their money! I do love those novels where the story comes full circle and so I loved the ending. I liked this book, as you can see since I have it an A-, but I'm not sure if I'll read the other two in the trilogy. Reading a blurb inside the front cover that I managed to avoid before I read Archangel, I got the idea that I'll probably not like what happens. As with Outlander, I'm thinking that continuing on with the series will make me like the first book less than I do now. We'll see.

The Poison Eaters by Holly Black is a collection of short stories. Some of them are a decent length seeing how there are twelve stories in a book that is 212 pages long. My main interest lied with anything related to her Modern Faery Tale books and I was curious if she would revisit Kaye and company. She does in "The Land of Heart's Desire," where we get to see the coffee shop that Kaye talks about opening in the end of Ironside. It focuses on Corny and Roiben surprisingly enough, and is good for a snicker or two. I also read "Going Ironside," a four-page ramble of the inner monologue of a faery who is jonesing for her next hit of what sounded like heroin. Cautionary tale perhaps? It didn't make much sense, that much I know for sure. The first story in the book, "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown," is about vampires and is rather sad. Once I read it (I started with it as it starts the book), I decided to skip through to the faery parts. 

Hero at Large by Janet Evanovich was surprising to me because it was a little more serious than her romances tend to be. A single mother's car breaks down one morning while on her way to work and the unsurprisngly handsome man that stops to help her insinuates himself into her life and her heart. However, he is not what he seems and has a lot to answer for. Can she forgive him and hopefully not break any more of his bones? It has the patented Janet Evanovich humor but wasn't as light as her other reprinted romances and not as entertaining either.

Lady of Light and Shadow by C. L. Wilson is the second chapter of her five-part series about the Tairen Soul. Faeries seem to be my thing these days and so I very much enjoyed this one. It takes a while for it to wind up and therefore drags a little for the first half of the book but it's a good continuation with a satisfying ending and so I can forgive the dragging. It ties up a few things and sets up the third chapter. Rain and Ellie finally marry and head back to Faerie for King of Sword and Sky. The last book, Crown of Crystal Flame, comes out October 26.

That's it people! I am now caught up. I will be doing the review for The Iron King by Julie Kagawa in the next few days and am now going to return to Tumbling Through Time. Thanks for reading!

Review: Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

A thrilling epic about an ancient clash reignited in our time- between a hidden society and heaven's darkest creatures
 
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.
Genesis 6:5

Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

Rich in history, full of mesmerizing characters, and wondrously conceived, Angelology blends biblical lore, the myth of Orpheus and the Miltonic visions of Paradise Lost into a riveting tale of ordinary people engaged in a battle that will determine the fate of the world.

Here's a great way to start this review: I HATED the ending. So much so that this book was almost a wallbanger. Yeah, it was that frustrating. And it wasn't an ending like Atonement where the author yanks the rug out from under you but it pissed me off just the same. But. Once I finished the book, I went on Trussoni's website and saw that there will be a sequel called Angelopolis. Ooh. Then I calmed down. Actually, she's writing a series of these books and the rights to Angelology has already been bought by a major movie studio. That is definitely a no-brainer since angels are all the rage these days.

So, I HATED the ending for a little while but now just have some issues with it. I thought that the ending was a bit rushed; there was a ton of explanation, inspection, and action leading up to the conclusion, barreling towards it actually, and then BAM! Bad things happen and that was that. I felt so cheated! The conclusion was predictable too and while that's not really a good thing, knowing that there will be a sequel makes what happened pretty necessary. 

I may as well mention too that I found Evangeline to be even more frustrating than the ending. I've been trying to think of another character I've read that was more clueless than she but I'm coming up empty. Evangeline had been witness to much of the backstory and she still couldn't piece things together without lots of help. I was a little bit proud of her at the end but just a little. After all, she did let her father put her in a convent without protest. I'm sorry, but I would not be a good nun. And not just because of the obvious reason :) Neither was Evangeline - she falls for the first man she meets outside her family or the convent that catches her attention.

Speaking of the backstory, a big chunk of the middle of this book is a flashback covering about four years during WWII but the actual progression of the plot speeds through only two days. When I finished Angelology, I felt that the book did indeed stretch two days into years but conversely, the flashback seemed much shorter even though it covered four years. It took me a while to get absorbed in the story - and I did, halfway through the flashback - and by two-thirds of the way through Angelology, the plot really gets rolling. Unfortunately, it gets rolling into its ending. 

I haven't read many reviews of Angelology but I'm sure it's been compared to The Da Vinci Code. Possibly The Historian too and those are both legitimate comparisons because Trussoni definitely did her homework for Angelology; as with The Da Vinci Code and The Historian, there's just enough factual and true history to make the reader wonder how much of what she writes about is true. Using Abigail Rockefeller as a central figure without ever presenting her directly was a clever idea and it worked - I looked her up. I bet the MoMA is loving this book.

I will definitely be reading Angelopolis whenever it comes out since I have to know what happens. She better pick up the story right after Angelology ends or I might be throwing a book that day. I originally gave Angelology a B- but have since changed it to a C. I was intrigued yet disappointed with this book and that little part of my brain that HAS TO KNOW what's going to happen isn't going to let go anytime soon. That has to count for something, right?