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: White Cat by Holly Black

Cassel comes from a family of Curse Workers - people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn't got magic, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail - he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Cassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to outcon the conmen.

Holly Black has created a gripping tale of mobsters and dark magic, where a single touch can bring love - or death - and your dreams might be more real than your memories.

Cassel's family Is. Messed. Up. Seriously. His mother is in prison, his father is dead, and his brothers are liars. He's the only one without magic in his family so he learned other things so he could feel connected: how to be a con artist. He's a pretty good liar and is absolutely scared to death that somebody will figure him out. But all that's okay because his life has been pretty normal and routine. Until the cat shows up and then everything gets tossed upside down.

I liked Cassel but mostly I just felt sorry for him. He worshiped his oldest brother, Philip, as a kid but could never get his affection and eventually spent most of his time being uberjealous of his other brother, Barron, who Philip noticed and respected. His mother is a sociopath who can manipulate emotions and used Cassel to steal things for her. The only person in his family that seems to genuinely care about his welfare and well-being is his grandfather, who lives not exactly nearby in another town. Put that together and what do you get? A smart seventeen year old who becomes his boarding school's bookie who craves normalcy. 

But that's not his biggest problem - he can't get over how he murdered his best friend, Lila. That's obviously the worst possible thing you could live with, being responsible for the death of your best friend, the girl you loved. See, Cassel's actually a decent person, filled with self-loathing as he is and bookie hobby aside. He feels remorse when he hurts others. He loves his family even though they're pretty much horrible people (except for Grandpa). But he can't get past what he did to Lila. 

Holly Black has yet again created a flawed yet honorable protagonist who can be a hero. Like Kaye and Val from her Faerie series, Cassel learns he is strong enough to stand up on his own and fight. I have to say also that these people that Cassel knows and is related to are particularly horrible. Many of them are mobsters, true, and are probably not nice on their best days, but still. I was appalled at what they did to Cassel and each other and out of all of them, his mother may be the worst. Don't expect much in the way of redemption in this book, folks. It just isn't there. I will be interested in what happens to Cassel in the next book though. Holly's livejournal blog says that the sequel is called Red Glove. I imagine it'll be out this time next year.

New to Me author: Holly Black

Most people have heard of The Spiderwick Chronicles I'm sure since they're making it into a movie but I wasn't familiar with Holly Black's work at all until I picked up Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale from the library a few weeks ago. I have since devoured Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, and Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale and today, after visiting the library again, I brought home with me White Cat and The Poison Eaters, both brand spankin' new books from Ms. Black. I am very excited to have them in my grubby little hands. I would drop the book I'm currently reading to start these babies but I can't do that to Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews. That would just be so wrong.

Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms — a struggle that could very well mean her death.

When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.
But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. Impulsive Lolli talks of monsters in the subway tunnels they call home and shoots up a shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals with creatures that no one else can see. And then there's Luis's brother, timid and sensitive Dave, who makes the mistake of letting Val tag along as he makes a delivery to a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead of feet.
When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into tracking down the hidden lair of the creature for whom Luis and Dave have been dealing, Val finds herself bound into service by a troll named Ravus. He is as hideous as he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.
Bestselling author Holly Black follows her breakout debut, Tithe, with a rich, harrowing, and compulsively readable parable of betrayal, abuse, friendship, and love.

in the realm of faerie...
...the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing—her love for Roiben. But when Kaye drunkenly declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest to find a faerie who can tell a lie.
Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth—that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But when Kaye returns to the faerie courts, a battle of wits and weapons is being waged over Roiben's throne, and she soon finds herself at the center of it all.

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers—people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they’re all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn’t got magic, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail—he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.
           
Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts to crumble when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He’s noticing other disturbing things too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to outcon the conmen.

From the dust jacket:

In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black returns to her Modern Faerie Tale series (Tithe, Ironside, and Valiant) in two darkly exquisite new tales, "Going Ironside" and "The Land of Heart's Desire." In the first story, "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown," a girl is drunk on the street - but for a reason you'd never guess. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market, introduces a girl poisonous to the touch, and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match.

These twelve stories, two of which are published here for the first time and each of which is illustrated by Theo Black, have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and have been reprinted in many "Best of" anthologies. 

The Poison Eaters is Holly Black's much-anticipated first collection of stories, and her ability to stare into the void - and to find humanity and humor there - will speak to young adult and adult readers alike.

See? Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside were all good enough for me to stay up and finish them before I would put them down. Granted, these YA novels only take me a few hours apiece to read but I liked all three nonetheless. All three books about not-so-nice faeries, I enjoyed Tithe and Ironside the best as they both focused on the same set of characters. Fans of the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr would probably enjoy this interpretation of modern faeries. The heroine, Kaye, proves that green chicks are cool. Just ask Captain Kirk :)