Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

Rating: 1 star out of 5

"Even with an army at my back, I am still alone."

The follow-up to Red Queen, this book follows Mare, a rare person with red blood and silver abilities, as she whines endlessly about her life. Among other complaints, she feels it is hard being the chosen one, hard being alone even though all of your loyal friends are with you, and hard to be so special that no one else can understand. Mare spends the book attempting to find others like her, but it proves time consuming-- so time consuming that it takes up all 400 pages.

Sadly, this is the worst book I have every actually finished. I almost gave up on it many times, and having reached the end, I only regret that I didn't.

As a preliminary matter, I greatly enjoyed the first book, and I wanted to love this one, so no one could be more disappointed than I am about my opinions.

In brief: nothing happens. 400 pages should have been condensed to 100, which could have formed the mediocre beginning of a different book. As nothing happens, the book is incredibly boring. I've had heavy academic reading that was more interesting. There never seemed to be a point to the story.

Mare, whose conflict and overall personality I liked in the first book, becomes unlikable and unrelatable here. At times, I would have rejoiced in her death. The other characters in the book are ignored to a point that is almost farcical, except for when Mare is insulting and denigrating them. She gives special attention in this to her best friends. The only character given any real development is Cal, if you are paying very close attention. New characters are given so little time that I couldn't confidently list which ability a single one of them had even seconds after setting down the book.

Love triangles (or one girl with three male love interests as exists here) don't usually bother me. But for there to be a romantic story, there needs to be some kind of romance. Here, all the men just immediately fall for Mare. She then insults them endlessly in her head before, once in a long whole, kissing one of them briefly. I didn't get the impression that Mare has genuine feelings for any of them. I sometimes wondered if she is capable of genuine feelings at all. There is no sense of "Oh! She'd be good with him!" or "Oh! But she really loves him!" because Mare  seems to think they are all beneath her and barely tolerates them. The partial exception to this is Maven-- she is low-key obsessed with Maven, although he's evil and has treated her horribly. Despite her obsession, though, she doesn't seem to like Maven, much less have the capacity to love him.

Finally, Aveyard isn't a very good writer. She uses superfluous words to try to make the most dramatic, poignant, and quotable metaphors and similes possible. This wouldn't merit mentioning if it were done sparingly. It is done in nearly every paragraph-- sometimes more than once in a paragraph, and in a very heavy-handed and painful way. It is distracting, unnecessary, and detracts from the book.

Despite my incredibly negative feelings, I will probably read the third book to see if things turn around at all, but I'm not optimistic. If anyone is reading this who hasn't read the first book, I would advise you not to start the series.

I'd recommend this to no one. If you really liked the first book, skip this one entirely, get someont to spoil the last 10 pages for you, and pick up the third one hoping for the best.

Entwined by Heather Dixon

Entwined by Heather Dixon
Rating: 2 stars out of 5

I don't really remember how this book came onto my radar, but I was super optimistic when I picked it up.  Going in, I knew it combined three of my favorite things: pretty covers, fairy tale adaptations, and a strong female protagonist.

I shouldn't have gotten so excited.  This book was extremely hard to get into.  It took me over a week to read the first half of the book, and I am a quick reader. At times I contemplated just giving up, but then the certain doom of needing to read something serious while preparing for trial overtook me and I decided it was a bad idea.

The basic premise of this book is that Azalea (yes, that is really her name... and her sisters have similarly awful names, including my personal favorite, Bramble) and her 11 sisters (all alphabetically named, coincidentally) need to go into mourning for their mother, the Queen, who dies giving birth to Lily, princess number 12.

As part of the mourning process, horror of horrors, they need to stop dancing until mourning is over. To them, this is a fate far worse than death and hands down the worst thing about their mother dying.  Also, did I mention, they are terribly poor even though their country seems wealthy and it makes zero sense whatsoever why they would be poor. Really that's pretty irrelevant to the overall plot, but so much is made of it by the author that I figured I should mention it too, just for kicks.

They figure out how to dance secretly, but that's not enough for them! Instead, they need to find a secret (and magic- did I forget to mention this book has magic, but only some magic, and only when it is convenient for the author) passageway where a creepy dead spirit named 'Keeper' lives.  Not smart enough to be put off by his obvious shadiness, the girls are all too happy to come dance with him every night so that no one can, God forbid, put a stop to them dancing when they are supposed to be in mourning for their mother.

When this all goes south, it is a total surprise to them, despite the fact that the stupidest five year old child could have seen it coming a mile away.

While this may seem like me giving away the whole plot, this is all basically background information in the context of this 500 page tome that could have probably, now that I think of it, been cut to 300 pages. How the girls get out of their tangled web is where the real fun begins.

I am only giving this book 2 stars because, as we all know, I'm a sucker for a good romance, and the tail end of the book had three of them, with three smashing resolutions and delightful quotes that made my sappy heart sing, like the following:

"He's around the twist," said Azalea.  "Breaking all the windows? He's mad."

"Ah, no," said the King.  "It's only madness if you actually do it.  If you want to break all the windows in the house and drown yourself in a bucket but don't actually do it, well, that's love."

That's love indeed.

Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Everneath by Brodi Ashton
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

I was at the Pubic Library, foolishly judging books by their covers again, when I picked up this gem.  If anyone also knows where I can pick up the dress the model is wearing, that would be greatly appreciated ;)

Everneath tells the story of Nikki Bennett, who six months ago willingly traveled to the underworld as a sacrifice of sorts.  While there, she was used to 'feed' Cole, an immortal, in a ritual called 'the feed' that occurs every 100 years. During each feed, the immortals each feed off of one human's emotions, draining them until nothing is left.  Afterwards, Nikki chooses to return to the surface for 6 months, knowing that after that time has passed she will be forced to return to the underworld- this time forever. During those six months she struggles to make peace with Jack, her ex, and with her family, all the while searching for a way to defeat the inevitable.

I truly enjoyed Brodi Ashton's debut.  She brilliantly incorporates both mythology and flashbacks to Nikki's present day universe.  While I did find some of the flashbacks to be more worthwhile than others, none were disruptive to the flow of the story and I enjoyed Ashton's writing style generally.  While she could stand to offer a bit more description in places, her flow and pacing were impeccable.  I also enjoyed how she played with the myths, giving them subtle and interesting twists for the reader to think about and enjoy.

In Nikki, I found a strong protagonist who has a very real sense of morality and a backbone that is refreshing.  She is also someone who is flawed and makes mistakes, but who also constantly seeks to learn from them and avoid their repetition.  Like most people, I really related to that.  While the romance angle is played heavily, I did feel that Nikki is her own person who is ultimately determined to make her own choices.  While the other characters did not grab me in quite the way she did (possibly due to the fact that the story is told  in the first person) Cole is also fascinating as a character. Jack, while at times slightly generic, is likable and commendably loyal.

The themes in this book are also strong, and if they are not all that unusual, they are still well done and worthwhile.  Ashton's examination of the nature of sacrifice, heroes, and what makes us truly human are all thought-provoking and under her direction never seem stale.  I also appreciated that she did not seem to think it was  necessary to hit the reader over the head to make a point.

So, why four stars out of five? The truth is simply that, while I thoroughly enjoyed the book, there wasn't anything that blew me away.  In keeping with this, there were two major 'twists' in the book that I spotted coming literally a hundred or more pages before they were revealed.

I also felt that there were some unexplained gaps in the story.  Some of these were clearly intentional and came as a natural result of the fact that the story is told in Nikki's voice and there is a lot she doesn't know.  However, I couldn't figure out why there needed to be a 'feed' at all when the immortals like Cole can just feed off anyone's emotions any time. Why totally empty one person? I also never understood what debt was left to be paid and why the girls who were fed off of had to pay it.  Was draining them of their emotions and lives not enough for some reason?

Overall, I do recommend this book to anyone who likes young adult paranormal or romance stories, and to anyone who enjoys mythology.  It is a fun, fast read that will give you a lot to think about.  I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel!

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Rating: 3 stars out of 5

If you want a book that will positively EXPLODE 100 pages from the end before tapering off into the disheartening mess that came before, you need look no further.

For those of you late to the party like me, The Magicians is about Quentin Coldwater, quite possibly the most unlikable character in the history of American literature.  He is accepted into a magic school, graduates, and then finally goes on a wild quest culminating in a particularly jaw-dropping magical fight scene that almost makes the rest of the book worth it and situates this tome safely in the three-star zone.

I have many issues with this book, large and small.  While Grossman's overall writing style is solid, avoiding gaffes of epic proportions, his well-noted overuse of similes is not exaggerated. On one page alone, the following similes occurred: "as if she were floating in a swimming pool;" "like she was blown from Murano glass;" "like a faltering radio signal;" "thin as taffy;" "translucent as cellophane."  I am probably missing one or two due to sheer desensitization.  Grossman also has a knack for putting in details- but not always the details I'd want to know.  I learned more about Quentin's pee than I have ever learned about the pee of another character in any book I've ever read.  We learn when it is acidic.   We learn when it is orange.We learn when he goes to piss against a tree.  It would be one thing if this served a point, but it did not.

Either Grossman or Quentin is sharply misogynistic.  I am not sure which, but will confess I spent most of the book thinking it was Grossman before the last 100 or so pages when I was confronted with the fact that he might know what he's doing  after all.  One woman was, in Quentin's estimation, too pretty to be a paramedic.  Another was described as too pretty to be a magician.  Yet another was described as projecting "both toughness and kindness."  Based on this description ALONE, she is described as "to the best of Quentin's ability to gauge these things, a lesbian."    I won't even touch on the implications of some of the sex in this book.

I was unfortunately left with the vague impression, even at the end, that Grossman wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do.  Is this a legitimate fantasy novel? Is it a satire or parody? Is it a cunning subversion of the genre?  I kind of think maybe it tried to be but Grossman ended up taking himself too seriously for that.

I was not exaggerating when I called Quentin unlikable.  I won't dwell on this overly much, but he is determined to be unhappy, and feels no real remorse for anything whatsoever until the very, very end of the book.  In fact, in life according to Quentin it is the world's fault for not being awesomer and other people's fault for whatever bad things that he himself did.

I did generally enjoy Grossman's writing.  At points, I was taken aback by his way with words, such as when he says "The little girl's hooded eyes expressed a precocious acquaintance with adversity" or during some of his better crafted similes.

Furthermore, in Alice, Quentin's love interest for much of the book, Grossman creates a superb and nuanced character, the moreso because you only figure her out slowly, coming to gradually understand her depths.

I'd recommend this to anyone who doesn't mind a dark book whose characters struggle with morality, anyone who thinks they might be able to read it as a satire, anyone who wants to explore the dark side of the magical, or anyone who loves a good simile ;)