The final book (well, that I got) from the Enchanted Inkpot giveaway, this review is so much later partially because I got the book later (later enough that I had to go back and check since otherwise I had no explanation why I suddenly had a book in my mailbox) and then over this summer I checked out so many books that I didn't have time to read the stuff I already owned and get these other books returned on time. Also, this is a book about werewolves, I have read a number of stories involving werewolves and have concluded that they're not my favorite supernatural creature to base an entire book around. But that's only enough to make me delay reading a book, not reject it entirely, and here I am better late than never!
Unleashed by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguie
Summary: Katelyn is moving to the charming backwood town of Wolf Spring Arkansas after the death of her mother and finds that while her grandfather isn't so bad the town and the surrounding area are a bit stranger than she expected. Everything seems fine and normal by daylight but at night her grandfather becomes tight lipped and there are dangerous things going on behind the scenes, some that she might get mixed up in if she's not careful.
The Good: I expected Katelyn to be an annoying lead and for her grandfather to be a stereotype, I was (happily) wrong on both accounts and rather liked the growing relationship between the two of them. I suspect that there is more to her grandfather than this book touched on but even without that he was fleshed out fairly well here. Likewise, I felt like Trick and Cordelia (Katelyn's two closest new friends) also got more fleshed out than I expected, although all of this is balanced out by some rather flat side characters....
The Bad: Right, this is a story about werewolves, the promotional material mentions it and the title of the book even is a reference to it. I know that in a series you'll pace things a bit more slowly than you would in a stand-alone story but this book simply took too long to get to that part of it. As I've said before, there is a delicate line an author has to walk when they know that their audience will have figured out what is going on but their characters won't have, and thankfully Katelyn does realize that something is off almost as soon as she moves in, but it still takes forever. I also find it hard to believe that all of the wolf-related stuff in the setting is (as of this installment anyway) pure coincidence but that might be touched upon in a later book. Which leads me to my biggest problem here, everything feels too unresolved, even for the first book in what I think is a trilogy. There were things that appeared strange to me as a reader that weren't even touched on in this book and that really frustrated me, again it's about knowing how a reader is going to react to a story and dealing with that in order to keep them engaged.
So, not a bad book but not a series I'll continue reading, probably because it is just werewolves which bores me (my issue with stories with just one kind of supernatural being/power is worthy of a post all of it's own, if anyone wants me to I'll put one up on tumblr and just link it here). I give this book three out of five stars and have donated it to my local library in the hopes that someone else will enjoy it more. So I guess now that I'm done with all the Inky books I can say that Mistwood was by far my favorite story and that the others were alright, although some were a bit too young for my taste and others just weren't in genres that I like. Oh well, at least this was a great excuse to read some new things!
The final entry in the Healing Wars series, honestly at the rate I've been reading the books I didn't think I would be able to find a copy of this until next year, and then the first week back at school I saw a copy in the school library and oh-so-causally snatched it up to check out. Not much else I can say to introduce the book so let's see if this series ends well or if it falls and burns.
Darkfall by Janice Hardy
Summary: It's time and past for Nya and her friends to return to Geveg where a rebellion is once again underway and to try to find her sister. Armed with more knowledge of past and too much experience with fighting Nya is willing to help make a final, desperate push against the Duke to help free all three of the kingdoms from his maniacal schemes.
The Good: Well I won't keep people in suspense, yes I think this was a pretty good end to the series. It takes the concept of "healers as fighters/generally dangerous people" a bit farther still and managed to keep a large part of it's cast from the first two books still involved. One thing I did like, and I think it's not too spoilery to mention, is how even by the end Nya is not the overall leader of this growing revolution, recognizes that she wouldn't be a great leader, and doesn't really want to be one either. The epilogue hints that she will become a leader later in life but considering how young she is (no more than 16 by the end of all of this) I'm really glad Hardy chose not to go that route and it felt much more true to Nya's character this way.
The Bad: The book unsurprisingly is not perfect however; there are some character deaths which felt completely out of left field to me and one character ended up feeling a lot like a expy of River from Firefly by the end*. The epilogue felt a little too neat to me but that's more personal preference than an actual failing of the story (especially since you could cut it out and it wouldn't affect the story at all). Nothing too unexpected happened, aside from all of those deaths everything had been well-foreshadowed I thought although some people might disagree with me about the climax (which kind of involved a deus ex machina but honestly it didn't really feel like one to me, more like the characters just got ridiculously lucky which is a bit different).
Overall I was quite happy with how this story ended and rather happy with the series as a whole. As a whole I would give the series four out of five stars and plan to buy copies for myself someday. Darkfall came out in 2011 and I'm not certain if it would have made my top books for the year list (simply since I can't remember what else I read that year off the top of my head) but i thin it would have been a strong contender for my favorite five books of the year.
*and after typing that I now wonder if the author is a Joss Whedon fan....
I forgot exactly how I found this one, I've been discovering a lot of new titles on tumblr lately (which I haven't gotten around to reading) so that's probably where but not really important right now. What is important to note is that this title is completely unlicensed in the US and as far as I can tell the translation project is dead after two volumes (the scanlators say that there are four volumes out in Japan, Japanese wiki doesn't have a page for either the series or the author and the page for the magazine it runs in doesn't list the number of volumes either). By now I don't like reviewing things in a situation like that but goddammit, this series is too adorable for me not to spend a few minutes squeeing over it.
Meiji Hiiro Kitan (A Scarlet Romance of the Meiji Era) by Rikachi
Young Suzu was sold to the red light district and never expected to leave it when she's unexpectedly, and for no reason given, bought by the heir to a dry goods store, Tsugaru, and now lives with him and helps him with the little mysteries he likes to solve all the while trying to unravel how she ended up in this situation.
Right, so I can say one sentence which alone will get some people to check this out; it reminded me a lot of a flipped Croisee in a Foreign Labyrinth in a very good way. Abiet flipped, here the characters are in Japan with western influences beginning to filter in and it's the older male character who is more innocent and cheerful and the younger female character who is more world-weary (and there is a relationship, which judging from the series title will eventually become a romance, in there which has a similar feel to what I always had in Croisee) and I really don't think either series ripped off of each other. The relationship between Suzu and Tsugaru might rub some people the wrong way (I'll admit that large age gaps make me uncomfortable and that was the case both here and in Croisee) but for the moment the relationship is so innocent that I don't think it'll be a problem. There isn't a real overarching plot so far to speak of, other than Suzu's quest to figure out just what happened to have her life turn out this way, and the beginning is a bit rocky but I would buy this in a heartbeat if it was ever licensed in the US (digitally or in print).
Dammit, now I really need to go buy Croisee, led myself into that one though.....
Funny enough I got both this and Clockwork Prince from my library at almost the same time (which, due to the number of copies available for each/the number of holds for each I didn't expect to happen) and I read this one second because, well, I was looking forward to this one less. TMI is a series where I've slowly out-grown it as I've grown up but I keep coming back since I do like a lot of the side characters and I really hate to leave a series unfinished, especially one where I'm already two-thirds of the way done with it. Silly reasons, especially considering how many other books out there I could be reading but oh well.
The City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
Summary: At the end of the previous book Jace (and the previously thought dead Sebastian) ha vanished and Clary discovers just to where, apparently a bond has been forged between them and let's Sebastian control Jace and is using him to help him do what their father could not. Clary charges after them while their friends left behind have their own problems to deal with and once again it seems as if the fate of the world lies partially in their hands.
The Good: The parts that revolved around the side characters (Simon, Magus, etc) I found to be a lot more interesting and there was some nice world-building in the story as well. I really do like the world Clare has created and it's surprisingly detailed, I just wish that the story had more of a chance to explore it. The most interesting side detail in there is that I *think* there was actually a cameo from a rather important character from The Infernal Devices in there (not Tessa although she's mentioned in here again, not by name and I don't consider this a spoiler since she did appear, again unnamed, for a scene way back in City of Glass). I'm mentioning this since I'm rather impressed, if I'm right then it was a very subtle and clever cameo (a quick search on tumblr says that the rest of the fandom thinks it was a cameo but is split over who it was) and I really am curious to see what happens in the next book because of those little details and the side characters.
The Bad: Ehhhhh, as I mentioned earlier, I feel like I've outgrown a these books and a lot of it has to do with the fact that the characters haven't aged much over the years so sure I used to connect to fellow 16 year olds rather easily, these days not so much. I also feel like this book had the opposite problem of Clockwork Prince, while that story didn't have a real climax in it (and I thought needed a bit more tension) this one tried to pull an end-game climax and it was hard to take it seriously since guys, there's one more book, even if the characters succeed with their crazy, evil schemes it's clear they won't completely win. I feel like this one could've used a smaller climax to it (and then sent some of the extra over to CP?) although this is the awkward problem that most trilogies have so I wasn't really expecting otherwise.
So, I'll be reading the last book whenever it comes out and I'll see the first movie when it comes out next August. The first trailer is out and it looks about how I expected it so so far so good. I'm just hoping that next time I won't end up reading the two books back to back, I just prefer not to read works by the same author/same series back to back and didn't have a choice this time around with all the people who had a hold on the book after me.
I'd come across this book before (which geeze, if I remember correctly was at a Borders so that must have been years ago) and even read the first few pages but it just didn't grab me. Honestly I don't remember why I did pick it up from the library this summer, especially given how many other books I already had to read but in retrospect it wasn't a bad decision at all.
Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev
Summary: At the Theatre Illuminate the stage really is the world for all it's players who come from every play imaginable, except for the human Bertie who is neither part of the cast or crew of this theater yet has lived there all her life anyway. She's on the verge of being thrown out while trying to discover her own past but it appears that neither of those things will be easy to do.
The Good: While it did take a little while to hook me this is an enjoyable group and a nice entry in the growing sub-genre of "stories about characters from other stories, name up for discussion". I think what took me a little while to get into the story was Bertie's personality but either I got used to her or she simply wasn't as grating a little way in and she was certainly clever enough to deal with everything thrown her way and I like a smart main character. This volume also neatly covered what it set out to do, have Bertie choose if she wants to remain at the theater or not and learn some about her past but left plenty of things for the future books and I would like to read them to see where else this story goes.
The Bad: I had to suspend my disbeilf for the whole idea of a magical book that contains every play in what seems to be otherwise a non-magical world but one thing that continues to bug is well, how the book didn't seem to have every play in the world in there but rather only the ones it's average young adult reader would know. All the book needs is either a few cameos from plays that aren't from a European writer or even a mention that it only has plays that were originally written in English to satisfy me, something I suspect won't come up in the future volumes but still bugs me none the less.
Not a perfect book, it also felt messy in a few places, but a good one overall and I would like to read the other two books, just not any time soon since I already have too many books to read before the end of the year.
