Book Review: Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)

Release Date: February 27, 2018
Author: Ashley Poston
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Length: 480 pages
Source: OwlCrate Book/Audible Audiobook

Seventeen-year-old Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled crew she now calls family. But D09—one of the last remaining illegal Metals—has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him.

Ana’s desperate effort to save D09 leads her on a quest to steal the coordinates to a lost ship that could offer all the answers. But at the last moment, a spoiled Ironblood boy beats Ana to her prize. He has his own reasons for taking the coordinates, and he doesn’t care what he’ll sacrifice to keep them.

When everything goes wrong, she and the Ironblood end up as fugitives on the run. Now their entire kingdom is after them—and the coordinates—and not everyone wants them captured alive.

What they find in a lost corner of the universe will change all their lives—and unearth dangerous secrets. But when a darkness from Ana’s past returns, she must face an impossible choice: does she protect a kingdom that wants her dead or save the Metal boy she loves?

    

Review:

Protagonists: This story is told from four, third-person, POVs. We have Ana, the orphan girl raised by a crew of outlaws, Robb, the screw-up son of a noble family with a mission, Di, the Metal boy who's Ana's best friend and medic, and Jax, the best pilot in the galaxy with a tragic past, I quickly came to love most of these characters, though I have to say that I felt we didn't get a lot of time to truly know Di, and while I care for him because Ana and the others care for him, I couldn't really get invested in his character all that much. Ana is a fantastic heroine, sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, she's a force to be reckoned with, Robb has a deep sense of loyalty to those who deserve it, and Jax is pretty much the personification of my favorite character trope, the cocky yet damaged character. None of these characters are perfect, they each have their flaws, whether it be poor impulse control or an inability to move on, they're flawed, but each has the potential to grow.

Romances: So, I wasn't a huge fan of one of the biggest romances in this story. See, Ana has feelings for Di, or D09 as he's sometimes referred to as, and whether it was the fact that Ana has these feelings from the beginning of the story, Di's appearance not being very humanoid, the fact that he's a fairly emotionless robot, or some combination of the three, I just couldn't get into their romance. Eventually, it gets to a point where there's hope that I might get invested in their romance, but things happen and the book ends before I can really get invested. The other main romance in this story though, I did really enjoy. Robb, a cocky and rogueish noble, and Jax, the pilot with a dark past, have some really great moments in this story. There's one scene, that kind of reminds me of Star Wars, but their dialogue during that scene was fantastic and I felt there are so many fantastic moments between them in this story, yet not really enough. For what there is, it's fantastic, and it doesn't affect my rating that I want more, I just want more.

World Building: The world building in this story is fantastic, from the history to the mythology of this world everything was captivating. I don't read too much sci-fi, but this is the sci-fi that I love, space battles, outlaws flying through space, lost royalty, mysteries, I love it all. This story also has major Cinder by Marissa Meyer vibes, mixed with a little Star Wars. This is also an Anastasia story after all and while I think this story did a pretty good job in that area, it was how things diverged from the story being retold that really fascinated me. There are some fantasy elements mixed with the sci-fi in some of the best ways I've ever seen and the royal angle of this story and the secrets hidden in Ana's family history are astounding. There's a lot built out in just this one installment, so much that I'm wondering if this might be a duology.

Predictability: This story is on the predictable side of things, not only with it being a retelling but the foreshadowing was pretty obvious as well. Take, for example, there's something in this story that could have been a truly amazing twist, I mean mind-blowing, but I felt like I got all of the pieces to that puzzle quite a while before it was revealed, there are quite a few twists that went that way, though there were a few times, particularly toward the end where things were more shocking.

Ending: The final climax of this story is fantastic, it's intense and chaotic. There's a lot that goes into setting it up and everything leading to this final mix of scenes was fantastic. As I said earlier, there are a lot of shocking, and some not so shocking, moments in the end and I pretty much raced through this story until the ending because I could hardly stop. There is a bit of a breath after the final climax but still as things unravel and even though there wasn't really a cliffhanger, the ending does feel too soon, and I'm excited to see where things go.

Rating:

Even though I had a few problems with one of the characters and one of the romances, I still really love this story and cannot wait to dive into the next (and final?) installment!

Book Review: Defiance (The Courier's Daughter #1)

Release Date: August 28, 2012
Author: C. J. Redwine
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Length: 403 pages
Source: Purchased Book

Defiance by C. J. Redwine is rich postapocalyptic YA fantasy perfect for fans of Graceling and Tamora Pierce.

While the other girls in the walled city-state of Baalboden learn to sew and dance, Rachel Adams learns to track and hunt. While they bend like reeds to the will of their male Protectors, she uses hers for sparring practice.

When Rachel's father fails to return from a courier mission and is declared dead, the city's brutal Commander assigns Rachel a new Protector: her father's apprentice, Logan—the boy she declared her love to and who turned her down two years before. Left with nothing but fierce belief in her father's survival, Rachel decides to escape and find him herself.

As Rachel and Logan battle their way through the Wasteland, stalked by a monster that can't be killed and an army of assassins out for blood, they discover romance, heartbreak, and a truth that will incite a war decades in the making.

    

Review:

Protagonists: Rachel and Logan are, at their core, fairly by the book protagonists for this genre. Rachel is a fierce and impulsive girl who knows how to hold her own in a fight, while Logan is her foil, he's more of a planner, who takes time to run through variables before charging in guns blazing. At first, I wasn't all that impressed with these characters, that is until I saw how these characters reacted to certain events that transpire in this book. How they react, and how their choices affect them in this story and bring about real consequences, was really interesting to see. As the story goes on these characters' flaws come out and we see them grow into well fleshed out characters with real issues and having to deal with that on top of this post-apocalyptic mess.

Romance: So, I wasn't too taken with this romance. Maybe it's that Ever the Hunted by Erin Summerill has a very similar romantic premise, even though that story came out after this one, but there wasn't anything about that romance that hooked me. I mean, there is chemistry between the two characters, but their emotional connection doesn't feel developed past, they'll die for the other, and I really wish there were flashbacks, things to really drive home the connection between these two characters, also it was a tad annoying to have the male romantic lead not have feelings for our female lead, only to develop them when the plot called for it. Overall, I felt it was underdeveloped as a who and could have been fleshed out more.

World Building: Going into this book I was expecting more of a fantasy than a post-apocalyptic world. There are a couple of fantasy elements to the story, but that doesn't quite come through. It's not that there's anything wrong with post-apocalyptic books, in fact, if I read this around the time it came out I probably would have loved the story and this world but I wasn't a huge fan of the post-apocalyptic setting, that mixed with the extremely sexist city-state our characters lived in, which for the record is meant to be terrible, it just wasn't something I was prepared for, I almost threw the book because of the horrific villain in this book. On the whole, I really enjoyed the premise, but at this point, it's not exactly my cup of tea.

Predictability: Looking over this story, I don't really know if there was anything I was able to predict. I mean, I was able to see where the story was going to go more or less, though there were a few twists I didn't see coming, I had a vague idea how the plot would progress, it just sort of progressed rather slowly, so there wasn't all that much that ultimately happens in this story, I mean I feel like we didn't get to the main meat of story until over halfway through the book. As things got to the end, well there were quite a few things I did not see coming.

Ending: The final climax of this book is intense, although, I was listening to this book on audio from my local library, and I would recommend just actually reading the book because I didn't really feel the urgency in the final climax, but I know I would have if I just read the ending. Anyway, the final climax is really interesting because it's very game-changing and again I was happy to see real consequences for characters' actions, whether that's a protagonist or antagonist I'm talking about you'll just have to read and see. THe cooldown period as the dust settles seems to just wrap up this installment's story and begin setting things up for the sequel.

Rating:

I would say this is a pretty middle of the road book, I didn't hate it, but it just wasn't my cup of tea at the moment. I'm sure I'll continue with this series and maybe by then, I'll be in a more post-apocalyptic mood. Regardless, this is an interesting adventure and if you're looking for a post-apocalyptic tale with a touch of fantasy, give this book a try.

Blog Tour Book Review: Sparked + GIVEAWAY!

Release Date: October 3, 2017
Authors: Helena Echlin & Malena Watrous
Publisher: Geek and Sundry
Length: 310 pages
Source: Review Copy for Tour

Fifteen-year-old Laurel Goodwin wakes up to find her older sister Ivy missing from their Airstream trailer in the Oregon redwoods. A recurring nightmare convinces her that Ivy was abducted, but no one takes her dream seriously, including her mom. Laurel, a loner, has to learn to ask for help, and Jasper Blake, a mysterious new kid who shares her love of old books, quickly becomes her ally. Together they find their quiet town holds a deep secret and is the epicenter of a dark prophecy.

Laurel soon learns that her worst enemies, mean girls Peyton Andersen and Mei Rosen, are developing powers that she needs to find and save Ivy. With time running out, Laurel realizes that power doesn't always take the form that you expect. And once she learns to look beyond her snap judgments, she develops an unexpected gift of her own.

    

Review:

Protagonist: Laurel wakes up to find her sister Ivy is missing, trying to rationalize it to herself she keeps a pretty level head for most of the day, but with her sister not back by that night, a suspicious note left that explains her sister's absence with a vague explanation and a dream where Ivy is being held in a dark and grim cellar or basement, Laurel suspects her sister has been kidnapped but no one seems to believe her. The only people that might have a chance to help her are the new bay in school that shares her love of older books and the two girls that have made her life hell since elementary school. I liked Laurel a lot as a character, I did feel she fell into the whole self-deprecating protagonist role a bit much sometimes, but overall I really did like her character development. I liked seeing her really begin to come into her own and take control of her life. There was something so indulgent about watching someone figure things out and mature in a week.

Romance: As for the romance I wasn't a huge fan. The romance between Laurel and Jasper felt very cliche and by the numbers. It felt like your typical paranormal romance and there wasn't really anything to set it apart. Honestly, there isn't all that much romance in this book, and ironically I think that's where it suffers. There wasn't enough time to build the romance between these two characters, and while it's understandable why the authors chose not to, it was kind of sad that the chemistry between these two characters, which there wasn't all that much of, never really got to achieve its full potential.

World Building: Going into this book I was expecting a YA paranormal thriller. A girl gets possibly kidnapped and her sister needs to find out what happened to her. However, this story wasn't nearly as dark as I expected it to be, which is fine, but this isn't really a thriller by any means, it reads far more like a standard paranormal book with a bit of a mystery aspect. I really like the paranormal elements to this tale and how the powers of each individual character work. Even though this is told from the first person POV of Laurel we do get a few chapters told from the third person POV of other characters such as Peyton and Mei and we learn more about how they get their powers and how they work which is really interesting. This book takes place in Oregon, which is a reason I decided to give it a try and I really like the woodsy feel this story has, granted I live in a big city in Oregon, but there's so much greenery that it's nearly impossible to not understand what things must look like in this town. The world really came alive as I read the book and everything was very easy to grasp.

Predictability: When it comes to the twists in this book it's pretty easy to see what they are from a fair distance. The thing is that the foreshadowing is just way too obvious. I felt like things should have been a bit more subtle so that the twists could really pack a punch, but every time it felt like the twist was given away far too soon by something that could have been completely avoided. That being said there are a few good twists in this book, but nothing that made it stand out.

Ending: So... is this a standalone or part of a series. On the whole, it feels like a standalone. The final climax felt very final and was quite an interesting showdown. The cooldown period was also really well done answering a few lingering questions and leaving pretty much nothing left to hold onto, but suddenly out of nowhere comes a cliffhanger like ending and I have no idea where things would go from here. I'm not against a sequel, but I wish I knew whether this was an artistic choice the authors made for a standalone, or if there really is a sequel coming.

Rating:

The characters and world building really saved this book for me. I really enjoyed the story, even if it could be a tad predictable at times, and am interested to see what these authors write next because other than one thing, this story seems perfectly wrapped up.

About the Authors:

Hello! We are both novelists, but if you've ever tried to write anything, you know that writing can be a lonely, angst-filled business. So one night over a cocktail or two, we came up with a solution: write our next book together. Malena already had an idea: a girl's sister is kidnapped and she has to rely on mean girls with superpowers to get her sister back. We couldn't resist seeing where that story would take us – a wild ride that includes a loner girl who wants to be a writer and a gorgeous boy who can shoot fire from his eyes but also loves to talk about books. And an ancient Zoroastrian prophecy. And pie shakes. (OK, so maybe we got a little carried away.)

We've both published solo novels (check them out here and here) and had no idea how co-writing would work out, but we pounded out the first draft in a white-hot frenzy of inspiration we called "the Vortex." One of us would write a scene and send it to the other with a note: "My apartment is a pigsty and I haven't eaten all day. #inthevortex." We wrote the book we wanted to read as teenagers: a supernatural thriller with healthy doses of horror and humor. Oh, and of course there's romance. You have to wait a long time for the only kiss in the book, but isn't that the case with all the best kisses in books?

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Book Review: Yellow Brick War (Dorothy Must Die #3)

Release Date: March 15, 2016
Author: Danielle Paige
Publisher: HarperCollins
Length: 270 pages
Source: Purchased Book

Once upon a time, there was a girl from Kansas named Dorothy.

You might know her as the Girl Who Rode the Cyclone. She ended up in Oz, where she became friends with the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. But the temptation of magic was too much for her. She let it change her. Her friends became twisted versions of their former selves.

The magical land of Oz is now a dark and menacing place.

My name is Amy Gumm. Tornadoes must have a thing about girls from Kansas, because I got swept away on one too. I also landed in Oz, where Good is Wicked, Wicked is Good, and the Wicked Witches clued me in to my true calling:

Assassin.

The only way to stop Dorothy from destroying Oz—and Kansas—is to kill her. And I’m the only one who can do it.

But I failed. Others died for my mistakes. Because of me, the portal between the worlds has been opened and Kansas and Oz are both in danger. And if I don’t find a way to close it?

Dorothy will make sure I never get to go home again.

    

Review:

Protagonist: At the end of The Wicked Will Rise Amy Gumm finds herself and Dorothy transported back to Kansas and a group of witches welcoming her into the fold... or so it all seems. Amy is truly back in Kansas but it's not too long before things get hairy and Amy, Nox, and the witches are all stuck in Kansas and need a very special item to find their way back to Oz, but until then Amy needs to insert herself back into her old life and do her best to help with the search for the way back to Oz. This book gives readers a wonderful opportunity to see that while Dorothy and Amy are similar in where they come from and that they both wind up in Oz, they're very different deep down. Dorothy led a bit of an idyllic life while Amy was an outcast, upon arriving in Oz Dorothy wanted to go home, but Amy wants to stay, and best of all, upon returning home Dorothy saw her idyllic life as stale and wanted to return to the wonder of Oz while Amy sees what her time away from Kansas has changed in her life and she may not be too willing to head back to Oz and leave her new old life behind.

Romance: While this story seems to be the most romantic of the books in this series so far, I have to say the romance never really appealed to me in this book. Honestly, though, I don't think it's because the romance is handled badly, I think it's more because it's been so long since I've read a main installment in this series and I've forgotten most of the romance that's happened between Nox and Amy. It's not that I don't want them together, the romance doesn't seem problematic in any way, but the author introduces a forbidden love aspect to the romance that was extremely unnecessary and just gave me an overall meh feeling in relation to the romance.

World Building: One of the things that always bothered me about the first installment in this series is that we never really got to see a good chunk of Amy's life before Oz, we saw enough to know what she was going through, but I still felt like the book jumped to Oz too quickly. In this book, we get to see more of Amy's world and her day to day life, though it's nowhere near the same as before she left, it's the touch of normalcy and the effect of her disappearance that lead to a very interesting adventure in Kansas before she has to go back to Oz and finish the job assigned to her. I do have to say one thing though, this story has too many villains. I mean, Glinda and Dorothy are one thing, we go into this story knowing that they are villains, but between the Wizard in the previous book and a new "mega" villain introduced in this book things have gone from complex to complicated in the villain department. This world is getting more and more complex in ways that I do enjoy, but there are spin-off feeling aspects that seem to be leaking into the flagship series.

Predictability: So after this book got off to a rip roaring start, I thought I knew exactly where things were going to go. I knew the formula for this type of a book and saw where the end point should have been. Boy, was I wrong though. Not too far into this book, there's a shift and things only get crazier from there. There were a few twists that I was quickly able to pick up on, things that felt way too predictable to be true, but were anyway. There's a lot that goes down in this short book, but much like the fact that there were things I could easily predict there were things that I could have never even dreamed about predicting. This book is a wild ride and crazy twists are to be expected.

Ending: With a few tweaks this could have easily been the final book in this series. I mean, this series doesn't NEED to be more than three books, but things were introduced in this book that extended it by one more book. That being said though the final climax of this book was pretty awesome, and while I do feel that the series is being stretched a bit thin, I am really excited to see where things will go from here and how everything will be tied up by the end of the series. The story does end on a bit of a cliffhanger, but not as crazy a cliffhanger as the previous book did.

Rating:

This book was pretty amazing. Like I said, I do feel like things were stretched a bit thin and things are getting more complicated than complex, but this is still a very addicting and enjoyable series and I can't wait to see how it all wraps up.

Book Review: Stolen Secrets

Release Date: September 19, 2017
Author: L.B. Schulman
Publisher: Boyd Mills Press
Length: 304 pages
Source: ARC from Publisher

When Livvy's mother abruptly moves the family across the country to San Francisco, sixteen-year-old Livvy is shocked to find that she's been lied to. Instead of working for a bakery, her mom is actually taking care of Adelle, Livvy’s grandmother who she thought was long dead. Suffering from Alzheimer’s, Adelle begins to shout strange things, mistake her own name, and relive moments that may have taken place in a concentration camp. When Livvy and her new friend, Franklin D., find journal entries from the Holocaust in Adelle’s home, Livvy begins to suspect that her grandmother may have a shocking link to a notable figure-Anne Frank.

This intriguing book has gut-wrenching plot twists and a strong heroine, making this a compulsively readable mystery.

    

Review:

Protagonist: Livvy Newman has always been the "responsible" one in her household. With her mother having been an alcoholic for as long as Livvy can remember, she's taken up the more parental role, however, when her mother moves them across the country with the promise of a great job, Livvy can't do much about it. Upon arriving in San Fransisco, Livvy notices her mom acting a bit off and soon discovers one family secret after another. On the whole, I liked Livvy, she's a fairly complex character, someone who prefers fact to fiction and needs order to her life. She's a bit flawed though not in a totally off putting way. She can be selfish and distant to people, but those are the things that get worked on over the course of the story.

Romance: I'm going to just level with you, I didn't care one bit about this romance. It wasn't that it was an offensive or aggravating romance, I just didn't care for it. I never felt romantic chemistry between Franklin D. and Livvy, and yes I said Franklin D. because manic pixie dream boy that he is he needs his middle initial acknowledged every time you speak his name. The thing is, he really grated on me in the beginning of this book, he was way too over the top quirky, he came on way too strong, acted kind of stalkerish towards Livvy, all while feeling like the manic pixie trope without the air of mystery that makes it so compelling. To tell you the truth he grew on me, but only as a platonic friend to Livvy. I felt the romance was forced and completely unnecessary.

World Building: The main plot of this story is fantastic! I mean, it's a multigenerational story of three women and their struggles with each other, mixed in with deeply kept family secrets relating to World War II and the Holocaust, that tells a compelling narrative of how one woman's attempt to hide who she really is affected not only her daughter but her granddaughter as well. I was a bit apprehensive of the author writing fiction that would incorporate as historic and important a figure as Anne Frank, but I had faith that she would provide a well and a sensitively crafted piece of historical fiction and I'm happy to say that she definitely delivered. On the whole, I loved the main plot of this book and how everything ran together. We get flashbacks that help provide context and flesh out who Adelle is, or was, and what led her to make certain decisions. All of that was fantastic but was dragged down by a multitude of superfluous subplots. The romance was only one subplot that I felt was unnecessary, but there were quite a few others. Subplots that would either be dropped only to appear at some random time late in the story and almost instantly resolved, or subplots that would be written away for a while so there would be time to focus on the main plot. Everything felt like a big chaotic mess. Ironically, when it came to Livvy's school everything felt very empty. Sure there would be references to teachers and other students, but literally, the only student we see Livvy have any semblance of a conversation with is Franklin D. We hear how she's friends with his friends, which I think are the only other students mentioned by name and it took Livvy a long time to meet them, and how she does interact with them, but we never really see it.

Predictability: This book could be very predictable, well almost all of the time. I don't think there was a single big twist in this book that I didn't call. There were a couple of small ones I didn't, but the author was quite a bit generous with the foreshadowing, in fact, I was rather surprised when I predicted probably the biggest twist in the story because the author put in one too many pieces of foreshadowing early in the book. Interestingly enough I guessed a smaller "twist" that came near the end of the book after having only been a couple of pages in. I did like how the story unfolded even if I did guess what would happen, and it doesn't really take away from the enjoyment of the book.

Ending: Something I found rather odd about this story was that what would typically be the final climax of this story happened much too soon for it to actually be considered the final climax. The scene was an interesting one, but while it did add a bit to the main storyline of the book, in the end, it was the climax another subplot that just felt superfluous, I understand why the author added it, and I do think it sends an important message, but in the end this subplot, as well as most of the subplots in this story, feel more pinned on than incorporated. After what could have been the final climax comes the answers. The answers to every reader's questions. I felt the author handled this section particularly well. The characters' emotions and reactions felt very genuine and well crafted. The ending can be a bit too idyllic at certain moments, but I still greatly enjoyed it.

Rating:

Overall, I really liked this book and found the main plot of the story to be stunning and entrancing, however, the subplots really detracted from my enjoyment and that coupled with a romance I really didn't care about and felt unnecessary, led to my decision to knock off a star, it was almost two but after finishing the book quite a few things that I dismissed as subplots I was able to connect with the overall plot and gain an even greater appreciation for it.

Book Review: The Sin Eater's Daughter (The Sin Eater’s Daughter #1)

Release Date: February 24, 2015
Author: Melinda Salisbury
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Length: 320 pages
Source: Purchased Book/Library Audio Book

A startling, seductive, deliciously dark debut that will shatter your definition of YA fantasy.

Seventeen-year-old Twylla lives in the castle. But although she's engaged to the prince, no one speaks to her. No one even looks at her. Because Twylla isn't a member of the court.

She's the executioner.

As the goddess-embodied, Twylla kills with a single touch. So each week, she's taken to the prison and forced to lay her hands on those accused of treason. No one will ever love her. Who could care for a girl with murder in her veins? Even the prince, whose royal blood supposedly makes him immune to her touch, avoids her.

But then a new guard arrives, a boy whose playful smile belies his deadly swordsmanship. And unlike the others, he's able to look past Twylla's executioner robes and see the girl, not the goddess.

Yet a treasonous romance is the least of Twylla's problems. The queen has a plan to destroy her enemies-a plan that requires an unthinkable sacrifice. Will Twylla do what it takes to protect her kingdom? Or will she abandon her duty in favor of a doomed love?

    

Review:

Protagonist: Ever since Twylla was young she's known that she is Daunen Embodied. Her destiny is to take a poison monthly that will seep through her skin and kill anyone she touches, and use that gift to kill traitors to her kingdom. However, being capable of killing with a single touch has made Twylla lonely, she's ostracized and seen as a monster for her gift. That is until a new guard sees past her monstrous gift, to the beauty underneath. Honestly, while I liked Twylla at the start of the book, and her character development isn't all that bad, some of the choices she makes in the end honestly rubbed me the wrong way. She's not a bad character on the whole and honestly, I do like a majority of her characterization, it's just that I felt she made some less than wise decisions near the end of the book.

Romance: So, much like Twylla, I really enjoyed the romance at the beginning of this book. It's a romance that stems from friendship and at first, it starts off rather slow and I was sort of getting into it. Heck, even when the dreaded "L" word pops up I almost believe that the two characters deserve to use that word to describe their romance. However, there's a shift when their romance is portrayed as this end all be all, soulmate type of romance, though the word soulmate was never brought up. I have a problem with "soulmate" types of romance, not really because I don't believe in soulmates, but more because it just feels like a lazy way to say that two people are meant to be together, and while the author didn't officially go into soulmate territory, with the way she was describing the love between these two characters, she might as well have.

World Building: So, I have a problem with the world building. The worst part of this problem is that I cannot describe it to you without spoiling a fairly large twist in the story, so I'll say this and hope that you won't be able to understand specifically what I'm talking about. So the world building for a fair bit of the story is really interesting, but then there's this game changing shift in the story that honestly kind of pissed me off. Don't get me wrong, had the author set it up a different way this would have been an amazing twist, but for some reason, it just rubbed me the wrong way and dragged down my feelings of this book's world building.

Predictability: So, for the most part, this story was really unpredictable, I mean, I had assumptions, going into this book, that were shattered, things happened with a bit of randomness, but there were still a few things I was able to grasp before they were revealed. One thing, in particular, was foreshadowed so much that I understood what was going to happen like a hundred pages before it was revealed. Okay, so maybe not that much, I'm not sure I mostly listened on audiobook at x1.25 speed, but it was quite a while before the reveal, and honestly there was another twist, that wasn't foreshadowed to death, that I figured out around the same time, but I digress, it's that first twist that I took issue with since there was just so much foreshadowing and it wasn't really that well-disguised foreshadowing which is probably what hurt the most.

Ending: There's a great deal of this ending that made me uncomfortable, but unfortunately, I cannot describe quite why just know that I felt as though I was supposed to have more emotional attachment to certain things and I just didn't care. As for the final climax though, that had me very excited. I won't spoil it, but it's really good and made me not really care that much about the uncomfortableness I felt earlier and was nearly worth it for the final climax alone. The story ends with an epilogue, but honestly, as much as I love epilogues I just felt like this one was tacked on in case this was never a series.

Rating:

So, I did really enjoy this story, but the romance, and the shift in the world building, put a huge damper on my overall enjoyment for the book. I'm still excited to read the next book in the series, though that may have more to do with it being more of a companion novel than a direct sequel.

Book Review: Camelot Burning (Metal and Lace #1)

Release Date: May 8, 2014
Author: Kathryn Rose
Publisher: Flux
Length: 408 pages
Source: eGalley from NetGalley

By day, Vivienne is Guinevere's lady-in-waiting. By night, she's Merlin's secret apprentice, indulging in the new mechanical arts and science of alchemy. It's a preferred distraction from Camelot’s gossipy nobility, roguish knights, and Lancelot’s athletic new squire, Marcus, who will follow in all knights’ footsteps by taking a rather inconvenient vow of chastity.

More than anything, Vivienne longs to escape Camelot for a future that wouldn't include needlework or marriage to a boorish lord or dandy. But when King Arthur's sorceress sister, Morgan le Fay, threatens Camelot, Vivienne must stay to help Merlin build a steam-powered weapon to defeat the dark magic machine Morgan will set upon the castle. Because if Camelot falls, Morgan would be that much closer to finding the elusive Holy Grail. Time is running out and Morgan draws near, and if Vivienne doesn't have Merlin's weapon ready soon, lives would pay the price, including that of Marcus, the only one fast enough to activate it on the battlefield.

    

Review:

Protagonist: Vivienne is the queen's lady-in-waiting by day, but by night she secretly studies the mechanical arts and alchemy from Merlin himself. As a woman in Camelot, it's not appropriate for a woman to be learning anything other than maintaining a household and how to catch the attention of a suitable husband, but Vivienne dreams of more than a life at court and a loveless marriage to some noble or dandy. She wants to learn new things and build mechanical feats of brilliance. While I did enjoy the character of Vivienne, I also found her to be a bit too much of a cookie cutter "strong and inquisitive heroine." most of the time she has a fairly logical mindset, but when her emotions come into play she can be impulsive and charge headfirst into danger. She is a great character, but I feel she lacks something to set her apart from the archetype she embodies.

Romance: This book did get off to a great start in terms of the romance. Vivienne is intrigued by Marcus, Lancelot's new squire, and that curiosity eventually blooms into attraction, though she knows nothing could come of that attraction since knights are required to be celibate, a requirement that it seems everyone knows isn't actually kept, but any sort of marriage with Marcus is still off the table. However, while this romance starts off at a slower, but very enjoyable pace, at a certain moment I feel as though there's a skip in the romantic development, and before I could fully get on board with these two characters' romance they suddenly were sharing their intensely strong feelings toward one another. Now, I'm not opposed to these characters being together, in fact, I think they work really well together, but the abrupt jump in their devotion to one another is extremely jarring. My hope is that in the next installment we'll see more chemistry between these two characters so that I don't feel as though I missed a bunch of romantic development between these two characters.

World Building: A Steampunk Camelot? Sign me up! I was really excited to read this book on the Arthurian Legend aspect alone, but a steampunk element really amped up my excitement to read this story. (Although it did take me nearly three years to get around to, please don't judge me!) One of the elements to this story I found the most compelling was that the author didn' romanticize the famous characters from Arthurian legend. They all have flaws, some more than others, and it helped to bring a nice element of realism to this magical and mechanical world. Now as for the settings that we get to see, I was a bit bummed that Camelot felt sort of generic, much like our heroine, in that while we hear about Camelot as this wonderful utopia-esque place, there's nothing that really separates it from other kingdoms and since we don't get to see much of the world outside of Camelot, there wasn't all that much to this world, at least from a setting standpoint that stood out to me. As for the steampunk and alchemical elements to this story, I sort of felt underwhelmed by them, I mean there were definitely a few really cool steampunk scenes, but I felt as though the alchemy wasn't explained the best it could be and while I'm sure we'll get a greater understanding of it in later installments, I wish it was explained better in this book.

Predictability: As far as predictability goes, I was also similarly underwhelmed. I mean, there were quite a few surprising twists in this book. There were things I had no way I could see coming just pop right up, but in most of these cases, I never got the shock factor that I usually get when a surprising twist is revealed. One of the twists, I'm not going to go into specifics because I don't want to spoil anything, but one of the twists was actually a trope I've seen a lot of times before, but since there was no real foreshadowing for it, there was no way I could have seen it coming, and yet when it happened I sort of just brushed it off. Now, that's not to say that I was never shocked, nor was there never a time that I was able to predict something and get super excited that I got it right, but they were very few and far between.

Ending: Honestly, as this story started to wrap up I had a lot of theories about what was going to happen next, but I was surprised and even shocked, to learn where all of the characters end up by the time this story is over. The ending of this book actually had the majority of shocking moments for me in this book, and most of them happened during an epic final climax. There's a lot of tension as this book ramps up toward the ending and there are a few "blink and you'll miss it" moments. As the story winds down we get to see where the story will be going and how Vivienne and those she cares about factor into it.

Rating:

I do sort of feel like I've trashed this book more than I meant to because it is a really enjoyable book, but there were a lot of things that just felt underwhelming or didn't pop in the way I wanted them to. I will be continuing this series, but probably not for a little while.

Book Review: Storm Siren (The Storm Siren Trilogy #1)

Release Date: August 19, 2014
Author: Mary Weber
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Length: 320 pages
Source: Library Audio Book

“I raise my chin as the buyers stare. Yes. Look. You don’t want me. Because, eventually, accidentally, I will destroy you.”

In a world at war, a slave girl’s lethal curse could become one kingdom’s weapon of salvation. If the curse—and the girl—can be controlled.

As a slave in the war-weary kingdom of Faelen, seventeen-year-old Nym isn’t merely devoid of rights, her Elemental kind are only born male and always killed at birth — meaning, she shouldn’t even exist.

Standing on the auction block beneath smoke-drenched mountains, Nym faces her fifteenth sell. But when her hood is removed and her storm-summoning killing curse revealed, Nym is snatched up by a court advisor and given a choice: be trained as the weapon Faelen needs to win the war, or be killed.

Choosing the former, Nym is unleashed into a world of politics, bizarre parties, and rumors of an evil more sinister than she’s being prepared to fight . . . not to mention the handsome trainer whose dark secrets lie behind a mysterious ability to calm every lightning strike she summons.

But what if she doesn’t want to be the weapon they’ve all been waiting for?

Set in a beautifully eclectic world of suspicion, super abilities, and monsters, Storm Siren is a story of power. And whoever controls that power will win.

    

Review:

Protagonist: Nym is a female Elemental, someone that shouldn't even be alive, let alone something that shouldn't even exist. She's been bought and sold so many times due to her uncontrollable powers. She blames herself for every accident and feels as though she is cursed. If you haven't figured it out yet, Nym is an extremely caring person, and very sensitive to the events that transpire around her. She's self-deprecating, and doesn't feel she deserves any kindness she gets. While her guilt and self-deprecation may seem like huge flaws, and in some ways they are, they help her keep some perspective in her new surroundings. Luckily though she's able to keep that perspective while she grows and develops over the course of this story.

Romance: Okay, so I really wanted to care about this couple. I mean, they started off okay, everything was going well, there was an aspect of forbidden love tied to their romance, plus a bit of a love triangle, though nothing to ever take seriously, but it was entertaining. Then it just moved too fast. I mean. I like a compelling romance, but that, for me, includes characters that don't rush through their feelings and race to get far with the romance in as little time as possible. Then there's a bunch of romantic drama, but by that time I just didn't care about what happened between them. The secrets that came out and the shocking twists associated with the romance just seemed to fizzle, and I just couldn't bring myself to care, even though I really wanted to.

World-Building: If you're going to read this book I'd highly recommend staying away from the audio book. Not only was the narration kind of boring, but, at least for me, I just couldn't hang on the relevant details. I'm not sure if it was the narration, the speed it was read, or the actual story itself, but if I spaced out for even a second anytime during the story, not only would I feel lost, but I would sort of forget what was happening. Again, this could totally just be me, but yeah I'd stay away from the audio book and sit down and read it instead. Why I'm putting these thoughts in the world building section is that like I said, I had a hard time sealing in a lot of the world building, and while there is some stellar things in this book, I either missed out on some good exposition that would make it even better, or the much less likely chance, it wasn't in there to begin with. This story has a really intriguing that definitely holds up, and before I start book two I think I'm going to do a reread of this book to center myself in the story better this time.

Predictability: This story actually has some fantastic twists in it. The foreshadowing is pulled of really well, teasing bits and pieces that never quite come together to reveal the actual twist until it's too late. I have to say I'm either really impressed with all the things this author was able to pull over my eyes or really pissed off at some of the things that were kept hidden until it was time to be revealed. I mean, seriously, I don't want to spoil anything but I can definitely see some people that will need a box of tissues with this book.

Ending: The ending of this book was pretty epic. I think most of the twists came at the end, or as the book was heading into the end. There are a lot of things revealed and a lot that goes down. Let's just say I had a few ideas I thought were good only for things to be far more complicated than I imagined. As for an ending to a first installment, well the author did a good job there. There's a good cooldown period before the final moments and well, I'm actually going to leave the nature of the ending a mystery for once. Just for fun.

Rating:

I hate giving this book this rating. The thing is, this could still be better or worse than a more accurate rating, but my experience with this story, at least this first time around was a bit of a bummer. There are fantastic elements to this story and wonderful characters, hopefully whenever I do get around to rereading this book that I'll have a much better experience with it.