The Witch Hunter » Book Review

Disappointed doesn't even begin to cover my range of emotions upon completion of The Witch Hunter. I wanted to love it! I was completely ready to jump on the bandwagon. But I sadly could only wave as the bandwagon passed me by along its journey to the squealing fandom.

Elizabeth - Our Witch Hunter

The setting of the book isn't anything new, surprising or special. Our main character is Elizabeth and she happens to be a witch hunter. She is pretty damn good at her job but unfortunately gets accused of witchcraft herself. Whoops.

Luckily she gets rescued! Unfortunately it's by a wizard. That isn't going to do her reputation any good.

I really enjoyed the first 100 or so pages of the book. But I quickly started losing interest after that. I can't exactly explain why. Maybe it's because I had left my hotel in Ohio and I could no longer read by the pool. Maybe the first 100 pages were only made interesting by the fact that I had THIS to look at (via bookishpeach @ Instagram).


I genuinely liked Elizabeth. She was strong, hard-working, and loyal. However, most of the characters surrounding her seemed dull and lifeless. Call me crazy, but it got to the point where I felt that book was seeping energy OUT of me.

Romance

We do have a teensy love triangle in the works. It didn't bother me too much because the two love interests were kept separate from each other and there wasn't a whole lot of mooning on Elizabeth's part. Her first love interest is Caleb. He introduced her to Blackwell and the world of witch-hunting but can't seem to see Elizabeth as anything other than a sister or a dear friend. So we do have some pining to deal with. Luckily it wasn't overwhelming and I found it quite relatable (since I do occasionally find myself in the pining stage as well).

Then we have John, the healer. I liked him, he seemed nice and sweet. But I FELT nothing. I wanted a romance that I could really get behind, something I could root for. All I felt was a lot of 'meh'.

Our Crew & Villain

I'm lumping these two categories together because I have the same complaint.

(Just so you guys know, I recited the rest of the lines in my head)

Elizabeth ends up going on a quest with a John, George and some girl whose name I can't remember because of a prophecy. What a wonderful opportunity for me to fall in love with these characters!

Nope. NOTHING. I have NO feelings.

We instead end up at a really bizarre juvenile party that reminded me a terrible YA high school contemporary instead of a fantasy story with real stakes. The change in tone really threw me off and I couldn't make myself recover from that.

Onto our villain, Blackwell. He was SO BORING. Nothing about his character surprised me at all. Apparently, I had guessed the big reveal right after reading the synopsis (which I must say, must be some kind of record for me). He was just a standard villain. There was nothing interesting about him.

There wasn't anything interesting about anyone, really.

I do have the next book, The King Slayer, already checked out from the library. I will probably give it a go in a few days just so I can complete this duology. Maybe it will be a little better than The Witch Hunter.

I know some of my blogger friends out there really enjoyed this one. I'M SORRY GUYS! I really did try, I promise.

PS: There is NO political intrigue. Absolutely none. Don't fall for the Game of Thrones comparison!

Daughter of Smoke and Bone » Review

This book, written by one of my favorite authors, did not make a great impression the first time around.  Although you don't know it at first, this first book in Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy [spoiler]truly starts in medias res.[/spoiler] There is a lot going on, as well, and it's difficult to get a grip on during the first read-through.  The first time I read the book, I made a lot of incorrect assumptions, like [spoiler]that we were dealing with insta-love. We're not.[/spoiler] I also disliked our main character, Karou, thinking she was a tiresome, self-impressed hipster chick, which she kind of was (in the first book), but when you know all of her backstory, Karou becomes immeasurably more likable. Unfortunately, it takes a while for that backstory to come into play.

What made me push through Daughter of Smoke and Bone was the wealth of positive reviews for the book and my enjoyment of Taylor's short story collection, Lips Touch: Three Times.  I decided I wasn't giving the series the good ol' college try and made another attempt.

I am so glad I did.  Because, while I'm hesitant to call the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy something like a 'masterpiece,' it is most definitely an 'achievement.'  Laini Taylor's imagination is just insane.  It's a pleasure to dive into and swim through.  She writes well, treating us to surprising little similes and turns of phrase that are so rarely found in YA these days.

About Laini Taylor's style — it's very distinct.  It's distinct to the point where if I read a piece of hers without her name attributed, I'm very certain I could identify it. That's really remarkable, when you think about it. (Remarkable on Taylor's part, not mine :P) So many authors struggle with finding a distinct voice, and Laini Taylor just nails it. Really, the only author I can think of that Taylor shares similarities with is Holly Black, and even then, there are strong differences between the two.

Taylor's style mixes dreamy elements of fantasy with modern settings — romance and humor sprinkled throughout.  There are, of course, Taylor's signature similes and unusual turns of phrase aplenty, although these are much thicker in her short stories than in her novels.  And then, there is always a dark undercurrent of aggression, greed, and sexual violence. I'll get to those issues more in my review of Days of Blood and Starlight, but for now I'll just say that Taylor most definitely has a strong thematic message throughout her body of work.

Anyways, about the actual book.  It opens with a blue haired girl, Karou, being attacked by a vampire.  When I first read the book I was all, "NO! Not another vampire book!" But it's a false alarm — Karou's ex-boyfriend is a street performer/tour guide who dresses like a vampire. Karou, her faux-vampire ex-boyfriend, and her close friend, Zusana, all live in Prague — a nicely exotic setting.  Karou and Zusana are art students and I'd now write that Karou lives a pretty normal life... only she doesn't.  She is replete with mystery.  She knows martial arts, keeps a knife in her boot, speaks tons of languages, never seems to dye her perfectly blue hair, and good luck follows her everywhere.

We find out the answers to all of these mysteries soon enough, but I found it overwhelming to take in at first.  Laini Taylor has created an immense story and it's a lot to take in.  This is unquestionably my main complaint with the book, but I couldn't tell you how to fix it.  I'm not sure that Taylor didn't do the best job possible easing us into her huge concept.  It was confusing as all hell at first.

Another weakness of the story lies in the *first read-through* of the romance.  When reading the romance for the first time, there are so many misconceptions because the backstory is just not there.  [spoiler]You don't even know that there IS a backstory.[/spoiler] So, when I first read the book, I thought, this is intolerable!  It isn't, actually — it's just way more palatable and intriguing once you know more about what's going on in the story.

Overall, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a very good beginning to a great series.  There are definitely some issues with how the immensity of information is introduced, but don't ask me how Taylor could have done better.  I give this first book in the trilogy four stars.



 

Court of Fives | Review

Court of Fives started out so, so wonderfully.  For the first third of the book, I was totally and completely enraptured.  So, understandably I think, I was a little miffed when the book took a turn for the worse right before its halfway point.  What Court of Fives did well, it did well.  Which made its mistakes that much more disappointing.

So, what it's about... It's not a close enough interpretation of Little Women to be a retelling, but Court of Fives is definitely inspired by Louisa May Alcott's classic.  Both books feature families with four daughters and a military-enlisted father.  Elliott's daughters have names that correspond closely with Alcott's famous Mary, Beth, Jo, and Amy. The "Jo" character has a passionate hobby. However, that's where the salutation ends.  The connection is a touch random and amounts to nothing but a startling revelation if you went into reading not knowing about it.  Personally, I think the story could have stood up just fine without the matchy-matchy names.

Court of Fives is set in an empire that's a little Egyptian, a little Persian, a touch Venetian, etc.  There is some mechanical fantasy thrown in as well, akin to steampunk, most prominently in the form of the Fives, a competitive obstacle course. Our protagonist, Jo, I mean Jes, secretly trains for the Fives when she can escape from her large family.  Speaking of her family... draaaaama.  Jes and her sisters are racial mixes.  Their father is a lowborn, yet high achieving, son of the empire. The girls' mother is their father's concubine, incapable of being being his wife because her heritage is that of the empire's conquered people.

The whole situation is a tense, awkward mess and it was an utter pleasure to read about.  I'd say the family dynamics were, hands down, the best part of Court of Fives.  I was on the edge of my seat to find out what would happen next with the faux-Marches, especially when the seediness of having a live-in concubine and a mess of illegitimate daughters gets in the way of the father's burgeoning military career.  I'm getting shivers just thinking about it.

As for our protagonist, Jes, I'm going to get real for a second.  Unlike everyone else on planet Earth, Amy is my favorite March sister.  I loathe self-appeciative Jo.  Elliott's Jes is similar enough in personality to Alcott's Jo that my distaste crossed over.  I could tolerate Jes and her spunkiness tolerably well until the character made, in my opinion, a terrible decision that careened the story away from the direction I wanted it to go in.  Depending on whether or not you agree with Jes's decision can make or break Court of Fives for you, I think.

All in all, there were some highly successful elements to Court of Fives that make it worth reading.  However, I'll be curious to see if other readers object as strongly as myself concerning Jes's decisions.

 

The Walled City Review

Desperation practically ekes out of Ryan Graudin's The Walled City.  These are characters gambling with enormous stakes — much more dire than simply staying alive.  Jin, Mei Yee, and Dai are dangling above the precipice of human agony. 

Jin Ling lives in Hak Nam Walled City of her own volition, surviving by stealing food and necessities, and running like hell. She is also searching for her sister, sold, by their father years before, to a drug lord.

Mei Yee, forced into sex work, lives caged in a brothel, under constant threat. Mei Yee has no other option but to sit, stagnant, in her prison, and let waves of horror and misery wash over her.

Dai cannot bring himself to set foot outside of the Walled City.  He is trying desperately to free himself from a cage of his own making, and he must enlist Jin Ling's talents to do so, by compromising the drug lord Longwai.

A note on the book's setting... Based off of Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, Graudin's Hak Nam Walled City is a gritty, compelling backdrop.   Like its real world inspiration, Hak Nam is a re-purposed fort adjacent to a larger metropolis, turned into an over-packed mess of people stacked up on top of each other. It's a cluster of anarchy — full of gang activity, drug running, and human trafficking.  In regards to time and place — it was a little confusing.  It's my deduction that The Walled City is set an indeterminate Asian country, during an indeterminate period of modernity.

At this point, after detailing the characters and setting, it might seem like I'm going to make a glowing recommendation. But, this is not the case.  In fact, I believe that this book was more promising than successful.  There were definitely some admirable aspects to it, but I would strongly hesitate in recommending the book to other readers.

One reason for this concerns the book's style. On one hand, Graudin's voice utilizes effective dirty realism.  The setting of the walled city — its grime, its poverty, its depravity — sprung to life on the page. On the other hand, there was an extraordinary amount of purple prose. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of similes and and conceits.  At best, I felt some appreciation for the imagination of Graudin's writing. At worst, the prose was so clogged with stylistic elements that I was jarred out of the story completely.

Then, there was the pacing.  This is a story that could have benefited from a break-neck pace.  Instead, the plot was structured around an 18-day countdown.  A mistake, in my opinion.  I slogged through the story. My attention struggled to find a grasp.  Instead of propelling the plot forward, the narration got bogged down in reminisces and extraneous tangents.  

Another complaint — Graudin falls into the tired trope of instantaneous attraction. (AKA — insta-love)  As if I wasn't rolling my eyes enough over the melodramatic prose, all of the hot flashes and abdominal tingling of the love-struck characters sent me over the edge.  What made this nascent relationship extra questionable is that it involved a horribly abused girl who had been forced into sex work.  Giving her such a shallow plot-line really diminished the utter gravity of her situation.  I could not switch over emotionally from descriptions of horrific, sexual abuse to scenes of giddy young love.  It caused me to withdraw emotionally from the story.

It's a shame that this book had such fatal flaws.  If the style had been plainer, the plot brisker, the relationships more thoughtful, I could see myself enjoying this book for its resonant setting and high-stakes storyline.  As it is, I give The Walled City two north stars out of five.

The Diviners Review

I've been thinking...  I've started recording and posting video reviews, but have come up against some problems.  First, I never get to say everything I want about a book in the video.  Under the harsh red recording eyeball I lose my train of thought more often than not.  I'm still figuring out how to prepare for speaking out loud to my computer in an empty room about books.  Second, I don't want to post a bunch of videos to the blog without offering some meatier content.

So, I decided that with each video review, I'm going to write a review to go along with it.  That way, I'll produce a more thorough review and have fuller posts! Perfect!

So, The Diviners. It was published in late 2012,  and its critical reception was largely favorable.  This book was written by Libba Bray, who enjoyed commercial success with her A Great and Terrible Beauty series, and critical acclaim with her novel Going Bovine.  The book follows a young woman, Evie O'Neil, during 1926.

Like Bray's protagonist of Terrible Beauty, Gemma Doyle, Evie O'Neil is a girl with special powers.  She can psychically read objects.  She has trouble keeping what she learns from this power a secret, however, and soon lands in hot water when she makes an accusation against a prominent citizen in the Ohio town where she resides.  She's bustled off to live with her uncle in New York City.  Her uncle, it so happens, owns and operates an occult museum.

“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.” Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. “This, and these”—he gestured to the library’s teeming shelves—“they’re a testament to the country’s rich supernatural history.”

Despite her own gifts, Evie is skeptical of the museum and her uncle at first.  But when her uncle is called as a specialist during a murder investigation, she winds up falling down a supernatural rabbit hole.

“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.”

I give the book three and a half stars.  While it had fantastic elements, there were some strong weaknesses as well.  In regards to the well done aspects, the book's setting is overwhelmingly the best part of the book.  You can tell that Bray put in an enormous amount of research to get the right 20's atmosphere down.  A lot of times, when reading historical fiction, the modern language and voice pull me out of the period.  But, with The Diviners, every detail helps add to the jazz age allure.

The book also has a strong protagonist.  Evie is a great character — a flapper, smart, sassy, and vivacious.  She is always ready with a wisecrack.

“Your mother and I do not approve of drinking. Have you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?”

“Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.”

Evangeline — a hilarious name for this skeptic character — dazzles brightly off the page, while still retaining emotional depth.

“She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn’t. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real.”

Now, onto the stuff I didn't like so much.  I think the book needs huge amounts of editing.  The story follows two other characters, Memphis Campbell and Theta Knight.  Three points of view were largely extraneous, I thought.  The book would have been stronger with a good deal of extraneous storyline shaved off, and extra narrative perspectives don't make the cut.

Second, I thought the romance was bland! This isn't a critical failure on the book's part, or anything, but a compelling romance makes a golden story, in my opinion.  I'm waiting to see how things unfold in the sequel in this regard.

So, that's that.  I don't go into greater depth in my video, but there is the added bonus of facial expressions!