City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments #4) ★★★☆☆ The Mortal War is over, and Clary Fray is back home in New York. She’s training to become a Shadowhunter and to use her unique power. Her mother is getting married to the love of her life. Downworlders and Shadowhunters are at peace at last. And she can finally call Jace her boyfriend. But nothing comes without a price. Someone is murdering Shadowhunters, provoking tensions between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that could lead to a second, bloody war. Clary’s best friend, Simon, can’t help her. Everywhere he turns, someone wants him on their side - along with the power of the curse that's wrecking his life. When Jace begins to pull away from her without explaining why, Clary is forced to delve into the heart of a mystery whose solution reveals her worst nightmare: she herself has set in motion a terrible chain of events that could lead to her losing everything she loves. Even Jace. By now, I've read seven of Cassandra Clare's books, and I have no doubt in her talents as an author. City of Fallen Angels doesn't do those talents justice. All the things that made her other books so good were there, but there was a lot I didn't like about City of Fallen Angels, too. One of the best things about Clare's books is her world-building. The world of Shadowhunters, Downworlders, mundanes, and demons Clare has created is intricately detailed and fascinating. No part of it is sloppy, and it draws on just enough reality to allow readers to believe. Clare is also extremely talented at writing action scenes and villains. Her monsters are frightening and usually not just one-sided. So when Clare leads the Shadowhunters into battle, it's thrilling. City of Fallen Angels was missing a lot of that action, though. A few exciting scenes were scattered here and there, but the plot didn't really get going until the last 150 pages or so. Those last hundred pages were action-packed and suspenseful, but the entire book was over 400 pages long. The majority of the book was taken up with either Simon's story or romance scenes. I actually really liked Simon's parts and was glad he played such a central role. The romance scenes weren't nearly as interesting, and there were a lot of them. I admit, I ship Malec and Clary/Jace as much as the next fangirl - but reading about their constant makeout sessions and deep, romantic conversations got a little tedious after a while. If the romance scenes weren't filled with so many cliches, it might have been a little more bearable, but there's still the issue of how much description Clare used for those scenes. Some of the more lovey-dovey scenes between Clary and Jace read more like smutty fanfiction than an actual novel. I wasn't exactly disappointed by City of Fallen Angels as much as frustrated by it. This book definitely isn't Clare's best. I'm still dying to know what happens next, and I won't be abandoning the series anytime soon, but I'm hoping the next one will be better.
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Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, art by Maira Kalman ★★★☆☆ Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box is why they broke up. Two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. Item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped. I really wanted to like this book. The story is bittersweet, the narrator's voice is strong and clear, and it's paired with gorgeous artwork. All major points in its favor - and yet I can't get too excited about Why We Broke Up. My friend tells me I just "don't get it" because I've never been through a breakup (or a relationship, for that matter). But it isn't the love story that bugs me about this book; the romance is pretty well developed and, from what I've heard, fairly true to life. Why We Broke Up is very nostalgic, and it's kind of neat to read about a love story in hindsight. Less with the rush of giddy emotions and more of the why-didn't-I-see-that. I very much liked that aspect of the book. The things about Why We Broke Up that annoyed me were actually pretty trivial, but they added up fast. One, although Min's side of the love story is well developed, Ed's is a little bit lacking. I might be willing to tack that one up to the first-person narration if it weren't for, two, the only reason Ed can come up with for loving Min is that she's "different." The two of them are obviously from opposite social circles, but by God, what a weak adjective. What a crappy declaration of love! Okay, yes, a lot of the other declarations of love were really cute and sweet, but the only reason for Ed's devotion is that Min's "different." Three, there are a lot of run-on sentences and giant blocks of unbroken text. A few runaway sentences is cool, maybe even stylistic, but when they pile up and create two full pages of text with no paragraphs, it's too much. A lot of the run-ons were just listing things, like what's happening in a basketball game, and weren't really necessary. By the end of Min's story, the entire book had started feeling like one of those blocks of text - like it had gone on forever and wasn't going to stop. The intense amount of detail was interesting to begin with, but by the last hundred pages it was just tedious. So although there were a lot of things I liked about Why We Broke Up, I was actually a little relieved to finish it. 172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad ★★★☆☆ It's been decades since anyone set foot on the moon. Now three ordinary teenagers, the winners of NASA's unprecedented, worldwide lottery, are about to become the first young people in space--and change their lives forever. Mia, from Norway, hopes this will be her punk band's ticket to fame and fortune. Midori believes it's her way out of her restrained life in Japan. Antoine, from France, just wants to get as far away from his ex-girlfriend as possible. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, but little do the teenagers know that something sinister is waiting for them on the desolate surface of the moon. And in the black vacuum of space... no one is coming to save them. I wasn't disappointed by 172 Hours on the Moon, but I wasn't stunned by it, either. It loses points because the entire first part of the book is relatively boring. There are creepy foreshadowing bits, and insight into the characters lives, but I felt kind of disconnected from them for most of the first part. I was also a little bit disappointed that the characters glide over the astronaut training, which would have added a bit more interest (and given a bit more insight into why they, specifically, were chosen). 172 Hours on the Moon more than redeemed itself in its second and third parts, though. Once the astronauts landed on the moon, I was completely engrossed in the book. The characters remained unimpressive and the romance was sloppy, but the plot itself was stellar. Growing unease turned to fear, and then to real terror as I read. My heart was pounding by the time I finished the book. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at the moon the same way again. A few pictures and diagrams sprinkled in gave the book a freaky feeling of reality. And that's probably the best - and most frightening - part of this book: it's based on an actual radio signal received from God knows where. Not to say that it was in any way realistic. I'm not talking about the monsters when I say that, I'm talking about NASA sending teenagers - who are not American, which is odd since it's NASA - to space just to see if the moon's still as dangerous as it was the last time they were there. To be honest, that and the fairly disappointing characters bumped this book's rating down to three stars. But I picked up 172 Hours on the Moon because I wanted to be scared. On that end, it definitely delivered. Despite a shaky beginning, 172 Hours on the Moon was everything I expected and more as a horror story. It's not really a sci-fi read; most of the technology dates back to the seventies. It's more of a horror story that happens to take place on the moon. I'm giving 172 Hours on the Moon the rating of three stars because while it's not the pinnacle of literary achievement, I was downright terrified by it. The Lake and the Library by S. M. Beiko ★★★☆☆ Wishing for something more than her adventureless life, 16-year-old Ash eagerly awaits the move she and her mother are taking from their dull, drab life in the prairie town of Treade. But as Ash counts the days, she finds her way into a mysterious, condemned building on the outskirts of town—one that has haunted her entire childhood with secrets and questions. What she finds inside is an untouched library, inhabited by an enchanting mute named Li. Brightened by Li’s charm and his indulgence in her dreams, Ash becomes locked in a world of dusty books and dying memories, with Li becoming the attachment to Treade she never wanted. This book has a four-star plot with a two-star writing style. The plot and conflict of the book were engaging and interesting, if a little convoluted at times. The wonder of the library and Li's world was tangible through the pages, and Li himself was as promised - enchanting. He was the most complex character in the book, with the most thorough back story. The other characters were pretty generic and flat, even Ash. Li and his library were what made the book so interesting. The constant blurring of reality and fantasy throughout the book was marvelously done and, if not exactly believable, captivating. Unfortunately, most of the plot was lost in overly-flowery descriptions and an avalanche of metaphors. Some of the language emphasized the whimsical, dream-like atmosphere of the library, but mostly it got in the way of the story. The overabundance of figurative language and ill-fitting adverbs was at its worst in the first few chapters, but it was just present enough to be annoying in the rest of the book. Despite the awkward, clunky writing style and a few flat characters, reading The Lake and the Library was like falling down the rabbit hole. More Than This by Patrick Ness ★★★☆☆ A boy named Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he here? And where is this place? It looks like the suburban English town where he lived as a child, before an unthinkable tragedy happened and his family moved to America. But the neighborhood around his old house is overgrown, covered in dust, and completely abandoned. What’s going on? And why is it that whenever he closes his eyes, he falls prey to vivid, agonizing memories that seem more real than the world around him? Seth begins a search for answers, hoping that he might not be alone, that this might not be the hell he fears it to be, that there might be more than just this. . . I have absolutely no idea what to write in this review. On one hand, I'm awed by More Than This, but on the other, I'm really disappointed by it. More Than This was a mind game of a book, and I loved that it's so incredibly not a variation on five hundred other books. The book probably didn't need to be 470 pages long, but I was intrigued by Seth's discoveries and there was a good amount of action, so I wasn't bored. Even when nothing much was happening, in the first part of the book, there was enough mystery to be interesting. The setting was fascinating all by itself, and Seth was a great character. All of the characters were truly great. They were believable and interesting and they had developed background stories. I really loved that when Seth tells Regine and Tomazs that he's gay, they don't make a huge deal out of it and just go on trying to survive. I liked the conflict of the story, their efforts to stay alive and figure out what had happened to them. I liked the "villain." I even liked the philosophy behind the book, even though it got pretty confusing at times. I liked the thought that there's more. So why do I feel so let down by this book? The best reason I can come up with is that it's so damn confusing. To a point, I liked that there was an air of mystery around everything that happened in the book, but that should have been resolved in the end. I would've been okay with an ambiguous ending, but we should have been offered undeniable proof of what that abandoned, decayed world was. There was a whole lot of evidence suggesting Regine was right, but Ness kept planting seeds of doubt that maybe, just maybe, Seth really was making it all up. (I realize this paragraph is probably confusing for people who haven't read the book, but I don't want to spoil anything). I understand that was sort of the point and whether or not the world was real didn't matter. In the beginning, that was part of what kept the book interesting. But towards the end, those seeds of doubt started to feel a little forced. There was so much evidence against the theory that it wasn't all real, I think I would have liked the book more if Ness had just said, yes, this abandoned world is real and moved on. I have no doubt that more philosophic minds than mine will appreciate the uncertainty, but to me, it felt like Ness was trying too hard to tell us that it didn't matter. Here I am at the end of the review, and I still don't know what to rate it. Ness' writing style was haunting and well done. The characters were great, the plot was interesting. But I didn't like how it was carried out, or how the book ended. I feel like everything wrong with this book is such a matter of opinion, I can't accurately rate it. With that in mind, I'm giving More Than This three stars because, while I don't think it's average, I also didn't like it enough to rate it higher. It was very, very good, but it was missing something. Runner by Carl Deuker ★★★☆☆ The weather-beaten sailboat Chance Taylor and his father call home is thirty years old and hasn’t sailed in years. One step from both homelessness and hunger, Chance worries about things other kids his age never give a thought: Where will the money come for the electricity bill, grocery bill, and moorage fees? So when a new job falls his way, Chance jumps at the opportunity, becoming a runner who picks up strange packages on a daily route and delivers them to a shady man at the marina. He knows how much he will earn; what he doesn’t know is how much he will pay. Runner was an ingeniously plotted book. It starts off innocent enough, as you'd expect, until the sense of imminent danger creeps in and things very quickly turn deadly. At first, it's just a book about a kid who's had to grow up too fast and the relationship between him and his father. After Chance begins smuggling to make ends meet, the suspense builds until the final, epic conclusion. The story was predictable, but there are only so many ways illegal smuggling can end. Even though I expected it, my heart was racing all through the end of the book. The way Chance got tangled up in smuggling and the events after are realistic and frightening, but the resolution of the book is a bit rushed and not as realistic. For all that's beneath the danger - Chance's financial worries, his father's drinking, and their broken family - there's almost no character development. The characters are well thought-out, but Chance is the same at the beginning of the book as he is at the end. As an action story, Runner is superb, but if you're looking for a book with a little more, look elsewhere. Gated by Amy Christine Parker ★★★☆☆ - In the Community, life seems perfect. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Pioneer invited Lyla’s family to join his group and escape the evil in the world. They were happy to be chosen, happy to move away from New York and start over in such an idyllic gated community. Now seventeen, Lyla knows that Pioneer is more than just their charismatic leader, he is their prophet … but his visions have grown dark. Lyla is a loyal member of the Community, but a chance encounter with an outsider boy has her questioning Pioneer, the Community—everything. And if there’s one thing not allowed in the Community, it’s doubt. Her family and friends are certain in their belief. Lyla wishes she could feel the same. As Pioneer begins to manipulate his flock toward disaster, the question remains: Will Lyla follow them over the edge? It’s hard to imagine why anyone would join a cult, especially one of the kind that Lyla’s part of, when you’re not actually in a cult. But Parker tells the story of traumatized people preyed upon by a power-hungry villain. The quotes from Jim Jones and Charles Manson, leaders of real-life cults, add a terrifying element of reality to the book. I liked that the story progresses both from Lyla’s perspective and from an outsider’s. Although it’s told from Lyla’s point of view, Parker throws in enough details for an “outsider” to realize there’s something off. The closer you get to the end of the book, the more dangerous it feels. The ending isn’t really a surprise, though. Although the Community was well-developed and portrayed, Parker never mentioned Pioneer’s motives. Obviously he was a madman, but he still had some sort of reason or logic behind his actions. He was scary and obviously manipulative, but he lacked a bit of depth because of that. I liked the apocalypse-preppers side of the Community, and it added a lot of suspense throughout the book. I could realistically see Pioneer talking a group of people, traumatized by personal and national tragedies, into believing that the world would end to punish the wicked. What didn’t seem so realistic is that he would be able to convince them the world would end when the earth’s rotation was reversed. That isn’t scientifically possible, and if it didn’t ring true with me, I don’t see how Pioneer convinced so many well-educated people of it. Pioneer’s strange new religion was also kind of off to me. Again, it was realistic that he claimed he was a prophet and gained a cult following of his new religion. But Parker took it too far when she added in aliens. Even if some of the Community members had believed in aliens before meeting Pioneer, it seems like when he told them the Brethren were watching them and choosing to save them from the outer reaches of space, they’d have called bullcrap on the whole thing. Other than a few hiccups and overdone plot points, though, Gated was a fascinating and captivating read. The romantic part of the plot had the feel of instalove, but since the story mainly revolved around the Community and Pioneer’s control over it, that didn’t bother me too much. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro ★★★☆☆ As a child, Kathy – now thirty-one years old – lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory. And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed – even comforted – by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now. Never Let Me Go is told in a disconnected sort of way, more a collection of anecdotes than a proper plot. The plot of the book left me sort of underwhelmed; it wasn't too dramatic, and the romance seemed forced. The characters were interesting and they all had their quirks, but they didn't really seem to go together - there wasn't any chemistry for the romance, even though it was a huge part of the plot. The plot, like I said, is rather disjointed and more a collection of short stories. It adds to the effect that Kathy is looking back on her life, but it overlooks a lot of the emotional impact of donations. We don't hear about the history of the donations and the donor children until the very last chapter, although we do get glimpses and a basic understanding throughout the book. The donor children were the most interesting part of the book. Both the children and the "normal" people's reaction to them providing an interesting look at humanity, but again we don't really get the full effect of it until the last chapter. Because of the vague way Ishiguro told the story, I wanted to keep reading and find out more. In some ways, I suppose Ishiguro was telling us about the donations the way Kathy and her friends were told; a little bit at a time so it was never too shocking. Looking back on it, there was a lot I enjoyed about Never Let Me Go, and it's definitely a book that will stay with me. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor ★★★☆☆ Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. My first reaction to Daughter of Smoke and Bone is wow. The intricacy and eccentricity of its characters and back story are truly incredible. Taylor obviously put a lot of thought into her backstory and worldbuilding, and the concept of the teeth and the wishes was very well done. Karou’s story takes place in a range of exotic settings, some outside the human world, all beautifully depicted and mysterious. Taylor’s descriptions definitely made me want to visit Prague. One of my complaints is that a large part of the second half of the book is given over to another character, not Karou (that’s all I’ll say, so I won’t spoil anything). I got really invested in this book, but I thought the second half was almost tedious. I started to miss Karou and I wanted to get back to her. I loved Karou; she was a great protagonist and I liked that she was independent and fought for herself. I’m really torn on the romance aspect of the book; on one hand I thought it was rushed and kind of overdone and points, but on the other it didn’t bore me and was kind of adorable. The thing I liked the most about the book was the fact that both the Chimaera and the Seraphim could be seen as good or evil, and are actually a mix of both. Each character sees it differently, which was really cool and very thought-provoking. I also liked how subtle it was, unlike the “hope is better than wishes” lesson, which was shoved in your face. The first half of the book was, in my opinion, much better than the second half, but I really want to read the sequel, which hopefully won’t be so split. Note: I owe a huge thank you to all the members of the Carpe Librum Book Club for this review. They brought some of this material to my attention and I wouldn’t have been able to write such an in-depth review without their insight. Check the Book Club link for a list of members and a link to the forums! The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley ★★★☆☆ Flavia de Luce is an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. In the summer of 1950, a series of inexplicable events strikes her home, Buckshaw, a decaying English mansion. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. To Flavia, the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. I have read far better murder mysteries than Sweetness. Its rambling, often disjointed writing lends to the childishness of its narrator, eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, but makes the story hard to follow. The biggest problem I had with Sweetness was Flavia herself. She goes from singing and switching topics constantly to scientific lectures on chemistry. For her to be eleven and know and understand as much about such a complex subject as chemistry, she would have to be a genius, and the murder would’ve been solved much faster. I found it difficult to believe that she had been experimenting in her own chemical lab for years, creating poisons, and understands more about chemistry than my entire ninth grade class combined. Flavia also makes quite a few references to 1950s pop culture and famous chemists, which the reader knows nothing about, and which weren’t needed in the story. It got to the point where I’d see song lyrics and just skip over them. The end of Sweetness was actually rather good, though. As the final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, the story got much more interesting and captivating. About the last quarter of the book is excellent, but the rest of it left something to be desired. |
Once Upon a Time...As a longtime lover of stories and a believer in the power and magic of books, I've spent my life seeking out the best reads. This blog is dedicated to reviewing the books I read - good, bad, or magnificent - to help other readers find their next favorite books. Currently ReadingKing Zeno
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