Review: Tell the Wind and Fire

Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I've never read A Tale of Two Cities, so any references to that book in this one are all but lost on me.

That said, it's a unique enough book, updating Dickens' classic with magic and modern social commentary in an alternate New York where the Lights live in luxury and the Darks in walled-off ghettos like the Nazis took over the place. Naturally, the Lights hold all the cards, and the Darks are tired of being oppressed, and the tensions between the two halves of the city keep on simmering until it all catches fire.

Yeah, the story doesn't really tread anywhere new, especially not with that love triangle going on. Though I did at least enjoy the interactions between Lucie and Carwyn (especially the part where Carwyn complains that cream cheese doesn't belong on sweet desserts - which is why I tend to avoid red velvet cupcakes.) Those two are my ship for this story.

I only hope that the presence of an alternate-world Light and Dark system doesn't prove a roadblock in the path to publication for my own Dark Ice Chronicles, though my system's different enough, and the primary conflict is between humans and warlocks as opposed to two types of magicians.

All in all, this book is the weakest I've read from Brennan, but it does have some good ideas and commentaries that are going to stick in my head, even if they're infinitely beyond being twice-told already.

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Review: Titans

Titans by Victoria Scott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A nice big thanks to the Wattpad4 for bringing Victoria Scott and Titans to my attention!

Going into this, I noticed that a lot of reviews, not without reason, compared this book to Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races, mostly because of the stories' shared plots involving some kind of genre twist on horses and horse racing. I have to say, though, that I preferred Scott's relatively little-known story over Stiefvater's heavily-hyped one.

For one, her book, because of its use of mechanical horses in a Twenty Minutes Into The Future setting, reminded me a lot of Real Steel. Its Detroit setting also made me think of a couple of indie horror movies I've seen lately, set in the same city, I believe - Only Lovers Left Alive and It Follows, which of course have nothing to do with Titans, but the association helps improve the atmosphere as far as I'm concerned.

What really brought this book ahead of The Scorpio Races for me, though, was its combination of addictive prose and a feeling of hope and lightheartedness even over its darker underbelly. I often have a hard time connecting to Stiefvater's leads and rooting for them (Sam and Grace being an exception, and also Noah and Adam, if we can count them as leads), but with Astrid, I had no such trouble. Astrid is, let's face it, cool.

If ever my sister finishes reading Jurassic Park, I might just recommend this book to her next. I bet she'd see even more of herself in Astrid than I do.

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Review: Into the Dim

Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book, being that it was a YA Outlander with a harder sci-fi twist straight out of Tomorrowland. Sadly, while Into the Dim starts strong, after the long info-dump that explains (to an extent) how the Tesla-based time travel tech works (and I liked how the machine's able to prevent you from arriving at a moment right as you're leaving, to ensure no time paradoxes of any kind), it turns into a real slog to read, plagued with a confusing array of characters with shifting allegiances that become incredibly hard to keep track of.

I have the horrible feeling that, not unlike this book's primary inspiration, it'll soon turn into a series that's seriously bloated with time travel and nearly impossible to follow. I don't think I'll be continuing, I'm sorry to say.

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Review: Shade Me

Shade Me by Jennifer Brown
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The only things this book has going for it are the pretty cover (which, with its combo of black-and-white and neon stripes, reminds me strongly of the ill-fated Arclight series) and its protagonist having synesthesia (a most interesting condition.) Unfortunately, the book, as a side effect of being set in Hollywood, is laden with so many virtually indistinguishable pretty and/or superficial people (and I mean indistinguishable - for a while, I thought Jones was Nikki's brother until I saw some hint about her having dated him at some point, but I could be wrong) that it's extremely hard to get engaged with the story. The comparisons to Veronica Mars aren't that far off, but only in terms of genre (pseudo-neo-noir YA mystery.) Shade Me otherwise feels a ton more 90210 in tone, suffering as it does from a complete lack of Veronica Mars' self-awareness and sense of humor. Not to mention, I'm more than a bit skeeved by the scene where Nikki goes and screws an older guy (come on, Ms. Brown, she's barely legal!) So, after less than 150 pages, I'm DNFing.

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Review: A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So apparently The Knife of Never Letting Go wasn't my first Patrick Ness book after all. Turns out I read this one...three years ago? And I wasn't impressed at first, for whatever reason, and managed to forget I ever read it to begin with.

But now that I've picked the book up again in anticipation of the forthcoming movie, I know what I was clearly missing.

Like Knife, this book is shelved in the YA section at the library despite containing a protagonist of MG age - though unlike Knife, the YA placement doesn't come from tons of violence and other adult content. Instead, it's probably there because of the heavy content involved. It wouldn't be a Patrick Ness book without death, would it? In this case, the death being the imminent one of young Conor's cancer-stricken mother. And then there's the titular monster, a peculiar blend of traditional English giant and a golem, who forces Conor to confront his demons by actually manifesting as one.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to catch the movie in theaters, but even if I don't, I at least hope that it doesn't bomb at the box office the way The BFG did. Especially since Ness himself is writing the screenplay, a pretty rare privilege in the world of book adaptations.

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Review: The Death Code

The Death Code by Lindsay Cummings
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hard to believe it's been about a year since I read the first book in this series - and now I've just finished the last. (Yep, it's a duology, like so many other series coming out these days.) Just like its predecessor, The Death Code (not to be confused with James Dashner's Maze Runner books, The Death Cure - can't wait till 2018 for the movie! - or The Fever Code - can't wait till that book hits shelves this fall!) is packed with wall-to-wall dystopian action, propelled by its insanely fast-paced, super-short James Patterson-esque chapters. And death. Lots and lots of death. But it wouldn't be a good YA book without lots and lots of death, would it?

I'm a little bit bummed that this is the end of the series, but hey, at least we can expect more great things from Lindsay Cummings in the future, yeah? :)

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Review: A Court of Mist and Fury

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I went into this book, I was happy with the way it was going, with Feyre and Tamlin trying to stick to a happy life in the Spring Court while Rhys remained far away and out of sight, though not out of mind. Unlike the vast majority of fans, I loathed Rhys. I thought, after the end of the first book, he would be little more than another Loki-copycat pretty-boy bad-boy, a viciously power-hungry creep in the vein of the Darkling (whose hype harmed the Grisha Trilogy for me) or Maven. (Don't get me wrong, I loved Glass Sword, but that ending still infuriates me after all these months.)

So, when I got 200 pages into this book and found myself surrounded by so many tons of scenes involving the bargain between Rhys and Feyre, and the former being in-your-face obnoxious as all get-out, I was angry as hell. It certainly didn't help that Tamlin was receiving so much negative character development as well (like the early scene where he and Feyre are in bed and she's musing about being his High Lady, and he says there are no High Ladies, and when she questions that, his reaction basically amounts to "shut up and let me eat you out.")



Now I at least understood better why Tamlin had become so virulently despised by the fans, but at the same time, as a Book 1 Feylin shipper, I felt betrayed. I felt that Maas had completely reversed Rhys' and Tamlin's respective character developments to pander to the shippers, heedless of sense, the way I'm still reasonably sure Maggie Stiefvater did with Pynch in The Raven King.

I was on the point of giving up on this book entirely, but for Feyre's sake, I stuck around.

And good thing I did. Over the course of this brick-sized book, the character-development reversal actually winds up making sense. By devoting 600 pages to slowly but surely peeling away the layers on Rhys, it becomes clear that as despicable as he became in Book 1, that's not all there is to him. He's better than that, particularly since he goes out of his way to treat Feyre as an equal (not for nothing are the fans cheering him as a feminist), and loses a lot of his obnoxious side over time when it becomes clear that, like Feyre, he's damaged, suffering from what can only be described as fantasy PTSD.

Then, of course, there's the ever-looming threat of war with the shadowy King of Hybern, who basically wants to enslave everyone, human and Fae alike. Challenging him will require considerable sacrifice on our heroes' part. Said sacrifices ultimately set the stage for a diabolical cliffhanger leading into Book 3.

As of the end of this book, I've gladly switched ships. The Feysand legion can now count me as a member. And when Book 3 comes along, I'll be waiting - and hoping that my library doesn't take so bloody long to order that book like they did for this one.

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