Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha…and the secrets of her heart.

Hardcover, 358 pages

Published June 5th 2012 by Henry Holt and Co.

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

It took me awhile to get into this book, but I'm glad I kept reading.  I'd heard mixed things and was feeling iffy when I started reading.  Shadow and Bone doesn't really start slowly, I just didn't have that pulled-in feeling until a lot later than usual.  I usually fell “into” the story before page 100, but at that point, I was intrigued enough to keep reading but not foaming at the mouth quite yet.  It was probably page 200-ish that I started to be like O_O.

Epic fantasy is not my normal love, even though it kind of was my first love.  As a little Mome Rath, I loved the fantastical worlds authors could create.  It was a great escape from boring suburban America for me.  However, a little less than twenty years later, it’s not my go-to genre.  That being said, I really liked the world of Shadow and Bone.  It was dark, fantastical, and original, with the author creating her own monsters and evil-ocean-thing.  The Russian influence was interesting and added some flair, though I don’t feel it needs more mention than that.  It did add a different feel, as most fantasy tends to be more Western European inspired with very few exceptions.

The reason I began stray away high fantasy/epic fantasy years ago was because they tend to bore the crap out of me.  I'd rather have someone pull out my teeth than read Lord of the Rings.  No offense to anyone who loves Tolkien, his writing is just not for me.  Shadow and Bone did not bore me; it was everything that made me fall in love with fantasy in the first place.  Excitement, magic, betrayal… prime fantasy goodness at its best.

The one thing that REALLY makes Shadow and Bone stand out to me is that I was truly surprised.  Now maybe other people won’t be, but I really didn’t see one twist coming.  And I loved it.  That pushed Shadow and Bone into the exceptional category for me and makes me hungry for the sequel.  I recommend it to anyone who thinks they may like fantasy or anyone who desires something different. 

Final Thought: 10 out of 12 rushin’ Russian toadstools

PS: I do have to note though to anyone familiar with Slavic names that the main characters name is …well, wrong.  In Russia, last names for women end with an “a.”  So in the book, her last name is Starkov, where it should be Starkova.  There are a few other name issues in there, but I felt it was easy to read past it.  Some may be more sensitive than me to accuracy, though.  I’m just happy that an Eastern European inspired book exists.

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Notes From My Desk: eHatin'

I really feel I need to get this off my chest and plaster it on the internet.  Here goes:

I hate my eReader.

Yeah.  I said it.  I do.  I would rather have real paper tied together with string and ink on the page than just plastic and more plastic and eInk.  I want to be able to smell the faint tree-like smell of the book.  Is it weird that I smell my books?  You know what. I don’t care.  I smell books and I’m proud.

I am saddened that my eReader smells like plastic. 

So why did I get an eReader?  I thought I could save some money, which I have.  There are several great deals for eBooks.  However, I’ve found most books I want to read COST THE SAME AS AN EBOOK.  OR REALLY CLOSE TO THE SAME.  NOT ENOUGH OF A DIFFERENCE FOR IT TO MATTER.  WELL I GUESS IT MATTERS BUT AAAAGGGH I BE CAPS RAGING. 

…

I just kept convincing myself I would get used to it after awhile.  Well I haven’t.  It’s been six months and I still heart the real books more.

There.  Frustration out for the interwebz to see.

Final Thought: eBooks get 10 out of 15 toadstools, as they are kind of cool

                          Real books get ALL OF THE TOADSTOOLS

Save a Word Saturday (#9)

Welcome to Save-a-Word Saturday, a new blog hop hosted by The Feather and the Rose.
The aim is to spread love of old and unusual words by sharing them with other bloggers and thereby saving these precious, wonderful, whirling words from the dusty, lonely corners of the oldest, least visited vaults of the Word Bank. 

The rules run thusly:

1. Create a lovely blog post that links back to this one. The easiest way to do that would be to grab the code under our pretty Save-a-Word Saturday button. Just copy and paste it into the HTML part of your blog. 

2.  Pick an old word you want to save from extinction to feature in your blog post. It really must be an old word, not just a big one. We are trying to save lovely archaisms, not ugly giants (for example, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" is not an acceptable choice).

3. Provide a definition of your word. Use your word in a sentence (or even a short paragraph) vaguely related to the theme we have chosen this week. You may also add visual or musical interpretations of your word or your sentence. In fact, add anything that moves your creative spirit.

4. Add a link to your blog in the linky list below (it's down there somewhere). Then hop to as many other blogs as you can in search of as many wonderful words as possible!

5. Use as many of the words as you can on the people in your life. Do leave us a note or add something to your own post to let us all know what wonderful old word you whipped out to befuddle your friends and relations.

This week's theme is:

Dreams

And the word I have chosen is:

nasicorn
adj. - having horn(s) on nose; n. rhinoceros. nasicornous, adj.

And my ever so wordy sentences are:

After going to the zoo, Lola dreamt in a nasicorn fashion; everyone in her dream had suddenly sprouted a horn right from their nose!  Lola thought about the meaning in the morning, only to find it likely she had spent too long watching the rhinos.

Review: Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

The city of Ludlow is gripped by the hottest July on record. The asphalt is melting, the birds are dying, petty crime is on the rise, and someone in Hannah Wagnor’s peaceful suburban community is killing girls.

For Hannah, the summer is a complicated one. Her best friend Lillian died six months ago, and Hannah just wants her life to go back to normal. But how can things be normal when Lillian’s ghost is haunting her bedroom, pushing her to investigate the mysterious string of murders? Hannah’s just trying to understand why her friend self-destructed, and where she fits now that Lillian isn’t there to save her a place among the social elite. And she must stop thinking about Finny Boone, the big, enigmatic delinquent whose main hobbies seem to include petty larceny and surprising acts of kindness.

With the entire city in a panic, Hannah soon finds herself drawn into a world of ghost girls and horrifying secrets. She realizes that only by confronting the Valentine Killer will she be able move on with her life—and it’s up to her to put together the pieces before he strikes again.

Hardcover, 306 pages

Published January 8th 2013 by Razorbill 

(info grabbed from GoodReads)

 I was really expecting to love Brenna Yovanoff’s writing and the blurb for Paper Valentine made it one of my most anticipated releases for 2013.  So with a heavy heart I admit that this book was a complete let down.  I was expecting creepiness, great atmosphere, but what I got was boring high school melodrama and just …drabness -- as if the whole world was painted gray.  I kept reading out of stubbornness and it didn’t ever pay off. 

My biggest issue was that the mystery (which from the blurb and title is supposedly what this book is about) didn’t really even begin until after page 200.  I mean, the book is called Paper Valentine, and the serial killer in the book is called the Valentine Killer because he leaves hand crafted paper valentines with his victims.  So how is that not what the book is about?  Until Hannah starts looking in the deaths in her community, I was bored out of my mind and almost put the book down.  There were all these details and attempts at character building that made me think: “Okay, maybe it will all be tied in at the end.”

But no.  Just no.  These irrelevant details stayed irrelevant.

There are so many things going on within the story that aren’t really ever explained or explored.  For example, it is the hottest July on record, but what does that have to do with anything?  Nothing ever comes about from that; it’s never even mentioned if the bodies of the victims started smelling quicker than normal because of the heat.  It didn’t add to anything.  The birds are dying and The End.  The birds have nothing to do with anything.  What is sad is these are the two most extreme examples and are on the blurb on the back of the book, but there are even more issues like this throughout. 

Looking back now, I feel that the book was kind of a hot mess that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.  The first third was high school contemporary, filled with details that were not important and not even interesting.  The second third was romance, which seemed to have a lot of unnecessary back story and not enough romantic development.  The last third is where all the mystery happened.  It finally starts to pick up, but still fell flat for me.  I felt that there should have been more.  More intrigue, more excitement, more everything!  Even the plot twist at the end was just not enough.

I think Paper Valentine suffers from trying to do too many things at once and not succeeding in any of them.  The characters were not incredibly interesting, the mystery was blah, and just too much was going on in relation to nothing.  I feel bad writing such a negative review.  Really.  But I honestly think this book is not up to the same quality as other books in the same genre.  I do plan on reading Brenna Yovanoff’s other novels, as I have heard great things, but I cannot recommend Paper Valentine to anyone.  

On the bright side, it has a gorgeous cover.

Final Thought: 12 out of 36 toadstools

This review is also posted on GoodReads

Classic Challenge (#1)

French naturalist Dr. Aronnax embarks on an expedition to hunt down a sea monster, only to discover instead the Nautilus, a remarkable submarine built by the enigmatic Captain Nemo. Together Nemo and Aronnax explore the underwater marvels, undergo a transcendent experience amongst the ruins of Atlantis, and plant a black flag at the South Pole. But Nemo's mission is one of revenge-and his methods coldly efficient.

eBook, first published 1870 

(info grabbed from GoodReads) 

The first thing I want to say about this book is that it reads like a textbook with pieces of plot strewn throughout.  It is more a speculative biology lesson than a fictional story.  Even though I fought falling asleep more than the book fought under the sea creatures, I still think it is an important book to read.

Jules Verne is often seen one of the fathers of science fiction, and that is because of his exploratory mind.  He wrote a book about submarines and what we could find there before we had the means to find out.  Older science fiction usually addresses mechanisms that the author has thought up as a possible solution to a problem in the book, and sometimes, they work.  For example, there is a lever system in the Nautilus that was eventually developed and used in the real world.  Reading something dreamt up before its time reminds me of the amazing bounds the human mind is capable of.

Also it is important that back in the time of Jules Verne, reading was not supposed to be enjoyable; reading was not an activity of the masses.  Scholars read, people went to plays.  Reading was not meant to be enjoyable because writing was a duty of the privileged and educated for the privileged and educated.  Now that things have changed and the masses can read, I think it is important that we remember that it was not always the case.

So maybe that wasn’t what I expected to get out of reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (I was expecting some excitement, of which there is …mmm…none).  But what I did get out of it was surprising and makes me appreciate reading more.  Especially reading for enjoyment.  I think many of us forget that it is a relatively new concept.

Final Thought: the fact that books are no longer written like this gets 100 out of 100 toadstools