Book Review: Untold

Hmm, for the first book in this series I was able to get an ARC and I was able to get an ARC for this one as well, abet I wasn't able to actually get a hold of it until well after the book was released (moving makes directing/picking up mail rather challenging it turns out). And of course my backlog of books to review doesn't make this review anymore timely but, since I haven't yet had to use tumblr savior for the third book in the series (which I had to do for this book about four months before it came out) I think that means I'm not too late to talk about it yet!

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

Book Review: Demon's Surrender

Well this review has been a long time coming, I read the first book in this series sometime in early college and had such a hard time getting a hold of the later two that I even ended up reviewing some of the author's next series in the meantime. Admittedly I had rather mixed feelings on the first book ("but if I like the storytelling in her blog posts why don't I like her ACTUAL books?!") but I found that I enjoyed the second book more than the first and the first book in her new series even better. So I'm glad to finally finish this series, both for completeness sake and to see just where it's ended up.

The Demon's Surrender by Sarah Reese Brennan

Book Review: Team Human

Another book which I had to coax the interlibrary loan system to give me (and then make a special trip to the library to get) which I'll admit I was hesistant about reading when I first heard about it. I was a bit grumpy that this wasn't the 1930s book that Justine has been working on for a while and I still haven't finished SRB's Demon's Lexicon series so I wasn't sure how well I was going to like her contribution. Heck, even though I had read Justine's Magic or Madness trilogy, How to Ditch Your Fairy, and Liar I wasn't the biggest fan of her work either, why was I excited about this? Internet hype and the fact that I really like the blogs of both of them I guess, but the more I heard about this book and the few snippets I read of it made me more interested in it which is always a good sign.

Team Human by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan

Summary: In the town of New Whitby you might have a larger than normal vampire population but life for its human residents is the same that you might find in any town and for Mel is had been rather vampire free. That is until a vampire decides to transfer to their high school (for unexplained reasons), her friend Cathy falls hard for him, and then it's up to Mel to keep her friend from going completely over to the night side and to try and cheer up her friend Anna whose dad has mysterious vanished. So life is a bit busier than usual but nothing she can't handle, or so she thinks until things start getting really weird in New Whitby.

The Good: Hmm, character with parents who are at least semi-active in her life, ditto for siblings, has an actual group of friends which is mixed gender and has to do homework before a lot of her adventures? Ladies and gentlemen I give you one of the most accurate portrayals of the average American teenager in years and it's from an urban fantasy (oi realistic fiction, you're looking a bit bad by comparison). So the setting worked, the characters worked, the plot had enough hints and clues to make it predictable but not in a way that it was so obvious to take all of the fun out of the story. 

The Bad: There were one or two lines by the characters that betrayed the fact that neither author is a native USian (I think someone said like "a dime for your thoughts" or something like that, tiny detail and the fact that that was basically the only time I remembered that is a good thing). I also do wish that the book had had a small line about how exactly someone is turned into a vampire, again a tiny detail in the grand scheme (and perhaps it was in there and merely mentioned so quickly I missed it) but I would have liked it. Other than that, I'm sure Mel comes off as too rude and prejudiced for some but, well, that's pretty typical human behavior (not to mention teenager) in the face of the unknown and potentially dangerous sad to say. Plus, you know a character like that is going to change (if they're the main character) so while I winced a few times I knew it was going to be for a reason in the end.


So four out of five stars and going on my to-buy list for sure. The book is a stand-alone so it's a complete story and it really is nice to read a stand alone after reading a whole bunch of books from various parts of their series, it's rather satisfying to see a beginning, middle, and end all in one place.  

Book Review: Unspoken

Sorry this is late everyone, basically the last week of November has turned into "No Sleep November " (okay there is sleep, just never enough) because of all the projects I have which are more important than this and, sadly, involve less effort/creativity/focus than putting together a review does. So there are likely going to be weird outages/delays over here until around the 14th when I'm done, blaurgh.

SO, this was one of the books I was most looking forward to in 2012 based on the excerpts (and the two short prequels I read, names and places to find them escape at the moment, one of which could actually be considered a spoiler, I hadn't expected something there to have been revealed until much later, clearly SRB gets the idea of  "expect your readers will figure out the plot twists and don't wait until much later to reveal them") and was quite happy that I didn't have to wait months and months to get a hold of it. 

Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan

Summary: While most people consider Sorry-in-the-Vale to be your typical, quiet English hamlet Kami is convinced that there are mysteries that lurk below the surface. After all, the town has an absent, powerful family of whom the rest of the town only speaks of in whispers and there has to be a reason for that. But the Lynburns are about to suddenly return and soon enough Kami will have a chance to find out how right or wrong she is. That is, if anyone can take her seriously, she is the girl after all who runs around telling people about her imaginary friend from America.

The Good: SRB has said that Veronica Mars (the character from the show of the same name) was an inspiration here and I can see it easily. Kami is in no way a copy of Veronica, and different in some ways, but they are cut from the same cloth of adventurous, brash, clever, and all around fun to watch teen sleuths and I really liked her (even though it took a little while to stop wincing at her name). The other characters were great too, one complaint I have about a lot of fiction is how the main character has only one or two close friends (one or both of which will double as love interests) which generally isn't how real life is and here Kami has a whole posse of people who get fleshed out and I really liked reading about them as well and can't wait to read about all of them in the next book.

The Bad: Apparently a good part of the internet raged over the ending, once you get about half way through and know that fact then you can easily guess what happens, and I am frustrated but not for nearly the same reason most people are. I feel like a character made a sudden, 180 degree change in character either to move the plot forward or did it as a ploy to keep other characters safe, even though everyone has been working together up until that point. I imagine that there will be an explanation in the next installment but it still feels rather forced to me. 


There's not much else for me to say except yes, I really enjoyed this book, plan on buying a copy (I got an ARC from Random Buzzers and I entered a number of contests before to try and get a copy) and I may or may not have already shoved this book at one of my step-sisters (along with Book of Blood and Shadows) and am eagerly awaiting her verdict on it....

Spring Anime 2011 Reviews, part one!

And for something a bit different again, going to give my thoughts on all the new anime from this past spring season that I've tried (so, if anyone really wants to know what I'll be reviewing in three or six months, consider this a sneak peek). Since I tried out eight different series this spring I'm going to split this into two parts and I'll put the second part up tomorrow, once I write in anyway.

AnoHana (Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae Boku-tachi wa Mada Shiranai. or We Still Do Not Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day.)

One of the two new noitaminA shows premiering this season, it's an anime original story about a group of friends who grew apart after one of them died when they were kids and are starting to reconnect almost ten years later. The reason they're starting to re-connect is because Jintan, originally the leader of the group and now a hikkimori, has started being visited by Menma (the girl who died) and is trying to grant her wish so she'll leave him alone again, although even Menma isn't sure what her wish is. It's a surprisingly touching show and, while it is paced fast (it's going to be only 11 episodes long so it has to move fast) everything feels like it's progressing at a natural pace, can't wait to see where it goes!

Sadly this one does not have a simulcast and makes it my one fansub of the season, I'd forgotten how annoying it is to wait around for fansubs too.

Blue Exorcist (Ao no Exorcist)

Taking over Star Driver's timeslot this is a shonen series based on the manga by the same name (now being published in the US by Viz) and so far I like it a bit. The premise is that Rin is the son of Satan (while his twin brother Yukio is not) and after the events of a second episode spoiler has sworn to kill Satan by becoming an exorcist. While teenage rebellion isn't a new thing in anime (or any media) this is a different take on it and Rin is a pretty likable protagonist. I'll confess that after the first episode I read ahead in the manga (I didn't mean to! It just sorta-kinda, well, happened!) so if the pacing stays consistent this should be a pretty fun ride.

Blue Exorcist is being simulcast by Aniplex and streaming on crunchyroll.com, hulu.com and animenewsnetwork.com not 100% sure what the restrictions are on it but everyone in the US and Canada should be able to see it. Also, I am torn between laughing or being embarrassed on behalf of the ending sequence (animation and song), keep an eye on the tv screens to see what I mean.  

[C]-CONTROL-The Money and Soul of Possibility
FYI, this is another title that has a lot of alternate spellings, I'm fond of calling it C(ontrol) myself but C-Control seems to be the most widely used one*. The other noitaminA show, also anime original, C deals with a Japan a little in the future where everything seems the same except for a mysterious alternate world called the Financial District where people engage in "deals" (battles) with other people's "assets" (anthropomorphic representation of their futures), putting their own futures on the line for riches. Kimimaro Yoga is a full time college student holding down two part time jobs who just wants a stable, normal government job and wouldn't like to be involved in any of this, no thank you, but he's our protagonist and like it or not he's got to continue in these deals now, and maybe he'll learn something about his family in the process.
C is being streamed for US and Canadian residents on Funimation's website (which, now that they changed their video player, let's Canadians watch the videos now) as well as on hulu and youtube. I think that it's also being streamed on ANN for Australia or the UK but I'm not positive. 

Deadman Wonderland
 It used to be that when people in the US thought of "anime" they thought of much darker and gritter cartoons than produced in the US and Deadman would certainly fit that description. Within the first episode our main character Ganta has watched all his classmates be brutally murdered in front of him, been convicted with the murder of them due to some faked footage of him confessing, sent to the only private prison/amusement park in Japan (Deadman Wonderland) which makes all the prisoners put on shows for the customers in order to raise money to re-build Tokyo. Oh, and some of the people there want to kill Ganta before his execution date, if the poison seeping out of his (and everyone else's) collars doesn't kill him first, is that enough action for you yet? I'm a little worried since fans of the manga say that there is no way you can tell the story properly in just 13 episodes and there's a rumor that the series is only planned to be 13 episodes, as long as the story has enough episodes we should be fun.
This one is streaming on crunchyroll.com I can't seem to find out what regions at this time, and it's streaming on Anime on Demand for anyone in the UK. Final note, this one has my favorite opening song of the series so far, the Engrish was so good I had to double check to make sure they hadn't gotten an English speaking band instead.   




Whew, wrote up most of that between exams (gah, I hate double exam Saturdays) and I'll get the other four reviews up tomorrow sometime. Don't have much else to say (except that I have discovered an amusing number of similarities between Blue Exorcist and The Demon's Lexicon^) so see you then!

*actually, when it was first announced it was just announced as "C" prompting a joke or two that AnoHana stole it's other letters. 

^No seriously, in both series we have a set of brothers, one of whom is actually a demon (Rin and Nick) and the other brother (Yukio and Alan) has A) known about this for years and B) is desperate to keep them safe. Add in the fact that both demon's use swords (although sadly Rin does not keep his under a leaky sink in the bathroom) and both of the other brothers use guns, plus even their "allies" would rather use the pairs than help them. So it's not surprising that my mind made that jump, although I am sad that Mae and Jamie (from The Demon's Lexicon) don't have Blue Exorcist compatriots as well, stories need more pink-haired, totally normal yet still awesome girls/boys and more witty gay boys/girls!   

Book Review: The Demon's Covenant

So, one of the earlier posts here was a re-read of The Demon’s Lexicon since I intended to read The Demon’s Covenant and wanted to re-familiarize myself with the first book. Well, turns out that the libraries didn’t have the second book so it was only recently that I actually got a chance to read it (and I only looked around for it after I read a snippet of the third book which had a pretty big spoiler for this one).

The Demon’s Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan

Again, I think I like the UK cover more than the US cover, probably because it features Mae (the narrator of this book) on the cover instead of Sin (who is the narrator of the next book). Not sure why the US publishers did that, anyone who has read the first book would notice, but I suppose graceful, biracial girls sell more books than curvy pink haired girls books.

Summary: Drawing on the revelations of the last book, Mae narrates what happens next in the clashes between magicians and her friends, her brother’s growing (romantic) relationship with one of the magicians, her own love life, and trying to teach Nick how to be human.

The Good: Definitely liked this book better than the last one and I think it’s because of the change in narrators. The last book had Nick narrating and, while snarky, it’s hard to sympathize with him since he is so emotionless and the actions that set him off are very random at times (and this carries over into this book as well). Mae however is a completely normal girl who has willing gotten involved in these affairs and is well aware of the limits of what a non-magical person can do yet still manages to be awesome. It’s hard to define what exactly makes her awesome* but her persistence in doing something useful and doing whatever she can to be useful is a nice change from Nick and I really like normal characters in abnormal situations which sums her up pretty well.

The Bad: Like I said, I liked this book more than the first book but I’m not sure why. It wasn’t any more snarky or action filled, had more romance, and I could even make a good argument for why Mae isn’t really needed in the story at all (many of the things she did could’ve been done by Sin instead, my point being that there wasn’t anything Mae did that had to be done exclusively by her which makes her role feel a bit weaker). Also wondering a bit where the story is headed in the end (it doesn’t sound like they can defeat all the magicians in England and that more will come after them if they defeat this one group that is bothering them so then what? What is our main goal?) and I always get worried when I’m this far through a series and can’t find the central reason for it.

Hoping that one of my many libraries gets the third book closer to the release date this time but in the meantime I will track down that short story narrated by Jamie (apparently I wasn't the only one who was sad he didn’t get a book to narrate, the third one is done by Sin, by the way) and hope that I remember everything important in the meantime!

*I think the pink hair has something to do with it but clearly I’m biased towards pink-haired heroines.

Book Review: The Demon's Lexicon (re-read)

Moving right along with the reviews here is a re-read of The Demon's Lexicon (originally I had hoped to review the second book soon afterwards but it's been a few months and I still haven't been able to get a copy, oops). Since the sequel The Demon's Covenant is comging out soon (erm, came out apparently and now that I think about it I have seen it in bookstores, like I've said before, my libraries are a bit slow) I decided to do a re-read since I apparently missed two important things the first time around, namely that Nick was some sort of super hottie and that Mae was kickass. But, before that, covers!

 Honestly I really don't like this own, it just looks like a bad mass-up of clip art, although I'm not that fond of orange color schemes to start with. But hang on, I know I've seen the paperback cover somewhere...

 Ah, more to my taste, still not the best cover ever but I like it. But what, hang on just a minute, since this looks rather similar to the sequel cover...

 GAAAHHHHH. Aside from the fact that this person is the narrator of book three, not two (soooo, whose going to be on that cover?), personal pet peeve here: I LOATHE it when they change about book cover styles in a series so the second and third books look like the first paperback book but not the first hardcover book. Drives me absolutely bonkers and leads to some, creative compromises so that my bookshelf looks uniform.
And as a final note, I like the UK covers better than all of them (probably because I like the illustrated covers better but most American's don't, odd) and the Japanese cover is quite awesome:

As a brief summary, Nick and Alan are brothers, on the run, and keep a crazy mother in the attic (or as far from Nick as their various houses afford). The story gets kicked off when Mae and her brother Jamie show up asking for help in removing a mark set by a demon on Jamie, a mark that would allow demonic possession with some side effects before that. Alan's happy to help, Nick not so much,

The Good: I probably missed it in my first read since this novel is told from Nick's POV, but Mae is a rather good Arthur Dent character and that's a fairly unusual character to find. Really glad to see that the next book is from her POV since I liked her and Jamie much better than Nick and Alan. There were also a great number of clever lines (mostly by Jamie, some by Nick and Mae and the opening line is classic) throughout the book that kept me snickering but sometimes they came off as very out of character.
The Bad: Hooooo boy did I have issues with Nick, lots and lots of issues which all boil down to one thing, he was portrayed in a manner which made me convinced he had several personalities since his actions all seemed to contradict each other. Over and over the book says that he's emotionless, he doesn't get emotion, doesn't get the other characters, ect. Then in other places it seems he gets emotion and just has a hard time expressing it, fair enough. In yet more places he does so emotion, namely rage and revenge (which I always thought was a more complicated emotion since it's willful destruction for someone's past deeds on a third party which requires you to connect both past events and how others will react, that's tough if you don't get emotions). And then other times he was flirting by being sarcastic and I will say that sarcasm is not only tricky for everyday people to pick up but for those people who do have social issues (and some people have pointed out that Nick unintentionally resembles someone with Aspergers or Autism) it's really hard. So for Nick to have trouble understanding emotion, let own show it, and then be able to give off the correct body/facial singles and verbal cues to flirt with tons of girls? I'm more than a little puzzled, he could've at least known how to fake sympathy when he couldn't muster up the real thing.
Plus Alan, even through Nick's POV it's clear that Alan has a serious martydom complex and I'm not quite sure why. Yes he had to raise his little, not-so-normal, brother on his own and take care of a crazy mother but I don't understand how that gives you a manipulative and self-sacrificing personality to be honest. Again I found this much more noticeable in the re-read and I'm afraid I'll start groaning when these two have major roles in the next book.

So, I found the book much more interesting when it focused on the side characters rather than the lead and I'm looking forward to the next book because of the change in POV (because you know, switching POVs in each book is totally crazy ) which is a shame since it is a trick that I like to read (and now I know why it almost never comes up).