New to the TBR Pile (23)

Borrowed from the library:

Under a Painted Sky
by Stacey Lee

Missouri, 1849: Samantha dreams of moving back to New York to be a professional musician—not an easy thing if you’re a girl, and harder still if you’re Chinese. But a tragic accident dashes any hopes of fulfilling her dream, and instead, leaves her fearing for her life. With the help of a runaway slave named Annamae, Samantha flees town for the unknown frontier. But life on the Oregon Trail is unsafe for two girls, so they disguise themselves as Sammy and Andy, two boys headed for the California gold rush. Sammy and Andy forge a powerful bond as they each search for a link to their past, and struggle to avoid any unwanted attention. But when they cross paths with a band of cowboys, the light-hearted troupe turn out to be unexpected allies. With the law closing in on them and new setbacks coming each day, the girls quickly learn that there are not many places to hide on the open trail.

This beautifully written debut is an exciting adventure and heart-wrenching survival tale. But above all else, it’s a story about perseverance and trust that will restore your faith in the power of friendship.

Bought from Amazon.ca:

Chasing Ravens
by Jessica E. Paige

Orphaned at a young age, 15-year old Anouk’s punishment for being too outspoken is an arranged marriage worse than any she could imagine. Fleeing on horseback, yet without a sense of where to turn, she stumbles upon an idyllic village where she finds safe haven. Could this be home?

When a curse threatens to kill the villagers she’s come to love, Anouk takes on the dangers of the natural and magical worlds to save them. Her journey takes her deep into the Dark Woods where she must draw on all her strength to survive, but will come to realize that these magic woods hold the key to discovering a gift she never knew she had.

Ultimately, it will lead her to confront the very face of death, yet amidst the danger and darkness, she meets a handsome woodsman and finds a glowing blue flower with power beyond her wildest dreams.

Inspired by Russian fairytales and steeped in ancient folklore, Paige’s novel is ripe with fantasy, love, and courage.

What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Review - The Shadow Society

The Shadow Society
(The Shadow Society #1)
by Marie Rutkoski
Date: 2012
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 416
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon.ca

Darcy Jones doesn’t remember anything before the day she was abandoned as a child outside a Chicago firehouse. She has never really belonged anywhere—but she couldn’t have guessed that she comes from an alternate world where the Great Chicago Fire didn’t happen and deadly creatures called Shades terrorize the human population.

Memories begin to haunt Darcy when a new boy arrives at her high school, and he makes her feel both desire and desired in a way she hadn’t thought possible. But Conn’s interest in her is confusing. It doesn’t line up with the way he first looked at her.

As if she were his enemy.

When Conn betrays Darcy, she realizes that she can’t rely on anything—not herself, not the laws of nature, and certainly not him. Darcy decides to infiltrate the Shadow Society and uncover the Shades’ latest terrorist plot. What she finds out will change her world forever...

In this smart, compulsively readable novel, master storyteller Marie Rutkoski has crafted an utterly original world, characters you won’t soon forget, and a tale full of intrigue and suspense.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This book was a real disappointment for me.  There's been so much buzz about the author's The Winner's Trilogy that I thought for sure this earlier book of hers would be a good read.  Unfortunately, it was predictable, slow, uninteresting, and fell victim to many of the predictable young adult tropes.

Please, dear author, I want some more...

I was intrigued for the first little while, I will admit.  The writing was fairly solid in the beginning, and the premise was interesting.  Parallel worlds?  Supernatural creatures?  Political intrigue?  Sign me up.  If all of these things had been handled well, this might have been an amazing story.

It's all a matter of taste...

But...  Oh, there are so many "buts" with this one.  My main issues with this book were the weak world-building and the many, many plot holes and inconsistencies.  The Chicago where Darcy grew up is our Chicago... the one where the Great Chicago Fire tore through the city in 1871.  The event was so cataclysmic that it spun off a parallel timeline.  That's an interesting starting point for a story of two worlds with many differences... but the author takes it way too far, to the point that it comes across as totally Americo-centric and highly annoying.  I get that there's such a thing as chaos theory, and that a small change can have a large effect, but I find it difficult to believe that a fire in Chicago would disrupt technological development in the whole rest of the world to the point that there's no TV or movies... and yet they've figured out how to make fire-filled glass handcuffs and transportation that seemingly defies the known laws of physics.  (I did a little reading on the Great Chicago Fire and was interested to learn that, although that fire is very famous, it was not the most deadly or destructive one that struck on that same day.  The Peshtigo Fire was the deadliest fire in U.S. history... and yet this book never even mentioned it.  I guess it would have screwed up the mythology of the story.)

The characters were all pretty bland, and I found that I really wasn't invested in any of them.  Darcy is supposedly an artist (though when she thinks oil paint can dry in the time it takes to eat a plate of pasta, you have to question how much she actually knows about her hobby).  Unlike so many other young adult heroines with artistic hobbies, she actually does quite a bit of art throughout the story.  She sketches weird Chicago skylines in her notebook.  She builds a sculpture for her English class.  She paints her underground bedroom with oil paints (don't ask how she doesn't asphyxiate from the fumes; she also has a mature oak growing in there, without any sort of sunlight, so I don't think the author was going for plausibility).  The beginning of the story starts out almost like Twilight, with a mysterious, broody, hot (of course) guy who appears at Darcy's school.  This is Conn, who Darcy ends up hating, then loving, then leaving... because she blames herself for something she had absolutely nothing to do with.  She's one of those tiresome heroines who beats herself up throughout the story for very little reason.  Conn is the standard young adult love interest, already an expert in his chosen career at the age of nineteen.  Most of the other minor characters I didn't really care about.  Even the villains were too stereotypical and/or boring to be of much interest.

Let's get technical...

The writing in the first part of this book wasn't too bad.  Actually, I thought it was pretty strong.  Things did eventually go downhill, but not until much later.  I nearly had a conniption at 87% after finding three comma splices in the dialogue within a couple of pages.  I have no idea what happened at that point; it was like the editor threw up his/her red pen and said, "Eh... I'm sure the rest of it's fine."  Before that, there were just the usual (and expected) misused words and homophones.  I can't really recall a young adult book I've read lately that didn't have any of those.

The verdict...

I wanted to like what sounded like an interesting story, but I just didn't, and I can't recommend this one, either.  Even worse, I'm now questioning whether I want to read The Winner's Trilogy at all; if the same problems that were present in this book are present in those ones, I probably won't like them.

Quotable moment:

Conn didn't reply, but there was a rebellious glint in his gaze. Then he stood and headed for the door. For a moment, I couldn't move. I felt rooted in place, like I had truly become part of the tree and would grow with it, like my perception of Conn was growing, changing, putting out tender new twigs, green vines, baby leaves tightly curled.

Premise: 3/5
Plot: 2/5
Characters: 2/5
Pace: 3/5
Writing: 3/5
Editing: 2/5
Originality: 2/5
Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall Rating: 2.38 out of 5 ladybugs

New to the TBR Pile (22)

Bought from Amazon.ca:

The Firebird (Slains #2)
by Susanna Kearsley

Nicola Marter was born with a gift. When she touches an object, she sometimes glimpses those who have owned it before. When a woman arrives with a small wooden carving at the gallery Nicola works at, she can see the object’s history and knows that it was named after the Firebird—the mythical creature from an old Russian fable.

Compelled to know more, Nicola follows a young girl named Anna into the past who leads her on a quest through the glittering backdrops of the Jacobites and Russian courts, unearthing a tale of love, courage, and redemption.

Of Metal and Wishes (Of Metal and Wishes #1)
by Sarah Fine

There are whispers of a ghost in the slaughterhouse where sixteen-year-old Wen assists her father in his medical clinic—a ghost who grants wishes to those who need them most. When one of the Noor, men hired as cheap factory labor, humiliates Wen, she makes an impulsive wish of her own, and the Ghost grants it. Brutally.

Guilt-ridden, Wen befriends the Noor, including their outspoken leader, a young man named Melik. At the same time, she is lured by the mystery of the Ghost and learns he has been watching her... for a very long time.

As deadly accidents fuel tensions within the factory, Wen must confront her growing feelings for Melik, who is enraged at the sadistic factory bosses and the prejudice faced by his people at the hand of Wen’s, and her need to appease the Ghost, who is determined to protect her against any threat—real or imagined. She must decide whom she can trust, because as her heart is torn, the factory is exploding around her... and she might go down with it.

Phoenix Island (Phoenix Island #1)
by John Dixon

The judge told Carl that one day he'd have to decide exactly what kind of person he would become. But on Phoenix Island, the choice will be made for him.

A champion boxer with a sharp hook and a short temper, sixteen-year-old Carl Freeman has been shuffled from foster home to foster home. He can't seem to stay out of trouble, using his fists to defend weaker classmates from bullies. His latest incident sends his opponent to the emergency room, and now the court is sending Carl to the worst place on earth: Phoenix Island.

Classified as a terminal facility, it's the end of the line for delinquents who have no home, no family, and no future. Located somewhere far off the coast of the United States and immune to its laws, the island is a grueling Spartan-style boot camp run by sadistic drill sergeants who show no mercy to their young, orphan trainees. Sentenced to stay until his eighteenth birthday, Carl plans to play by the rules, so he makes friends with his wisecracking bunkmate, Ross, and a mysterious gray-eyed girl named Octavia. But he makes enemies, too, and after a few rough scrapes, he earns himself the nickname "Hollywood" as well as a string of punishments, including a brutal night in the sweatbox. But that's nothing compared to what awaits him in the Chop Shop: a secret government lab where Carl is given something he never dreamed of.

A new life...

A new body. A new brain.

Gifts from the fatherly Old Man, who wants to transform Carl into something he's not sure he wants to become.

For this is no ordinary government project. Phoenix Island is ground zero for the future of combat intelligence.

And for Carl, it's just the beginning...

Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles #1)
by Intisar Khanani

The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the powerful and corrupt Arch Mage Wilhelm Blackflame.

When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges, it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.

What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Top Ten Tuesday - Top Ten Characters I'd Like To Check In With

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is Top Ten Characters I'd Like To Check In With.  How do I even make such a list without spoilers?  I guess all I can do is list some names; if you've read the books, you'll probably know why I picked these particular characters.  Sometimes their stories just don't seem finished; in other cases, I'd just like to know what they're up to now.

Top Ten Characters I'd Like To Check In With:

1. Marina from All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill
2. Judith from All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry
3. Birdy from Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
4. Karou from the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy by Laini Taylor
5. Calder from The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb
6. Tom from Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
7. Po from Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver
8. Daniel from My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares
9. Jack from Room by Emma Donoghue
10. Ty from Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher

Which characters would you like to check in with?

Review - Carrie

Carrie
by Stephen King
Date: 1974
Publisher: Doubleday
Reading level: A
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 192
Format: e-book
Source: library

Carrie White may have been unfashionable and unpopular, but she had a gift. Carrie could make things move by concentrating on them. A candle would fall. A door would lock. This was her power and her sin. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offered Carrie a chance to be normal and go to her senior prom. But another act--of ferocious cruelty--turned her gift into a weapon of horror and destruction that her classmates would never forget.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Before I read Carrie, I had yet to read a full-length novel by Stephen King.  I chose this one because it was shorter (and a little less intimidating) than some of his newer books.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect... but I came away pleasantly surprised.  While this might be a short book, it's long on story and holds an important message that, unfortunately, our society has yet to grasp... more than forty years later.

Please, dear author, I want some more...

The story is told in a way that, at first glance, might seem like it kills all the suspense.  The main narrative, which jumps around between various characters, is interspersed with book excerpts and transcripts of the commission that looked into the whole Carrie White affair.  So, almost from the beginning, we know that something terrible happens in the town of Chamberlain.  We know Carrie is responsible for it.  We know that many of the characters we're introduced to will not survive prom night.  And we know all this because the author tells us!  Funnily enough, that doesn't ruin the sense of anticipation or make the reader less interested in the rest of the story.  In fact, I actually grew more curious as the book went on.  What, exactly, happened?  Why did it happen?  And how would it all end?

The way the high school dynamics are portrayed makes it clear that the author was familiar with teenagers.  The teen characters come across as complex and flawed and real.  Some of the adults, on the other hand, are a little bit weaker... but that's not too much of an issue since most of this book focuses on the kids.  There are the decent kids like Sue and Tommy, who are intelligent and introspective.  There are the not-so-decent kids like Chris and Billy, who are irredeemable villains; the latter comes across as a sociopath.  Carrie's mother is deliciously twisted, and provides a number of WTF moments in the narrative.  Carrie herself is a pathetic sort of character, but one you can't help but empathize with.  And that, I think, is sort of the point.

At its heart, underneath the paranormal trappings, this is a story about bullying, and the effects it has on both the bullied and the bully.  While there are some adult situations and language that would keep this from ever being classed as a purely young adult title, the overall theme of the story is an important one, and I wouldn't mind seeing this book on high-school reading lists... or as required reading for kids who are caught bullying others.

It's all a matter of taste...

This book was published in 1974.  It's about events that supposedly happened in 1979, which is an interesting choice; I'd like to know why King chose to set his book a few years in the future.  In any case, the fact that the book was written in the 1970s leads to it seeming a bit dated.  Nobody has cell phones, people still listen to vinyl LPs, making a five-figure salary means you're doing well, racial slurs are acceptable in day-to-day conversation, smoking is allowed in schools, and the accepted way to stop a female from crying is to slap her in the face (unfortunately, I'm not kidding).  Reading such a book in the twenty-first century is a bit of an eye-opening experience, but it's also kind of a neat history lesson.

I'm also not sure if I've just been affected by some of the ultra-violent movies, TV shows, and books that are around today... but I didn't find this book to be all that scary.  Not Carrie and what she did, anyway.  What's really scary is that the events that led to her rampage are just as plausible and possible today; bullying hasn't gone away.  If anything, it's gotten worse.  If Carrie lived in 2015, the shower-room incident would've been plastered all over social media before the incident itself had even ended.

Let's get technical...

There were a few typos, but no more than I've seen in some more recent books.  I wasn't sure what to expect from King's writing, either; some say it's simplistic, others say it's just not that great.  I found it to be perfectly acceptable, and in some places it was actually kind of beautiful.  Carrie is not literary fiction... but it's a heck of a lot better in quality than some of my other recent reads.

The verdict...

This is a short, entertaining novel with a good underlying message.  I really enjoyed it, and I would recommend it to older teen readers and adults (especially those who might be curious about Stephen King's books but who are too intimidated by his thousand-page titles).

Quotable moment:

"Girls can be cat-mean about that sort of thing, and boys don't really understand. The boys would tease Carrie for a little while and then forget, but the girls... it went on and on and on and I can't even remember where it started any more. If I were Carrie, I couldn't even face showing myself to the world. I'd just find a big rock and hide under it."

"You were kids," he said. "Kids don't know what they're doing. Kids don't even know their reactions really, actually, hurt other people. They have no, uh, empathy. Dig?"

Premise: 4/5
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 4/5
Pace: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Editing: 4/5
Originality: 4/5
Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall Rating: 4.13 out of 5 ladybugs

New to the TBR Pile (21)

Freebie from Amazon.ca:

Auraria
by Tim Westover

Water spirits, moon maidens, haunted pianos, headless revenants, and an invincible terrapin that lives under the mountains. None of these distract James Holtzclaw from his employer's mission: to turn the fading gold-rush town of Auraria, GA, into a first-class resort and drown its fortunes below a man-made lake. But when Auraria's peculiar people and problematic ghosts collide with his own rival ambitions, Holtzclaw must decide what he will save and what will be washed away. Taking its inspiration from a real Georgia ghost town, Auraria is steeped in the folklore of the Southern Appalachians, where the tensions of natural, supernatural and artificial are still alive.

Blood and Snow (Blood and Snow #1-4)
by RaShelle Workman

"Lips red as rubies, hair dark as night. Drink your true love's blood, become the Vampire, Snow White."

EVERY THOUSAND YEARS THE VAMPIRE QUEEN SELECTS A NEW BODY, ALWAYS THE FAIREST IN THE LAND, AND THIS TIME SHE'S CHOSEN SNOW WHITE.

BLOOD AND SNOW: Snow White isn't an ordinary girl. She doesn't know that yet.

REVENANT IN TRAINING: Snow has become something not quite human. She must discover how to live with the changes, hopefully without killing anyone.

THE VAMPIRE CHRISTOPHER: Snow White craves blood. Especially the blood of her Hunter. But will drinking from him save or enslave her?

BLOOD SOAKED PROMISES: Snow White must come to terms with her bloodlust. It's one thing to drink the blood of her Hunter, something else entirely to drink the blood of a human.

Rippler (Ripple #1)
by Cidney Swanson

Samantha Ruiz has a freak gene that lets her turn invisible, or ripple. She can't control it, and it's getting worse. Afraid of becoming a lab-rat, Sam hides her ability, until her crush Will Baker sees her vanish. Will promises secrecy and together the two discover someone's killing people who ripple, possibly in connection to a neo-Nazi faction. The more Sam is with Will, the less she can imagine life without him, but the time is coming when she must choose between keeping Will in her life or keeping Will safe.

What's new to your TBR pile this week?  Let me know in the comments!

Review - Listen, Slowly

Listen, Slowly
by Thanhha Lai
Date: 2015
Publisher: HarperCollins
Reading level: MG
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 272
Format: e-book
Source: library

This remarkable novel from Thanhha Lại, New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning and Newbery Honor Book Inside Out & Back Again, follows a young girl as she learns the true meaning of family.

A California girl born and raised, Mai can't wait to spend her vacation at the beach. Instead, though, she has to travel to Vietnam with her grandmother, who is going back to find out what really happened to her husband during the Vietnam War. Mai's parents think this trip will be a great opportunity for their out-of-touch daughter to learn more about her culture. But to Mai, those are their roots, not her own. Vietnam is hot, smelly, and the last place she wants to be. Besides barely speaking the language, she doesn't know the geography, the local customs, or even her distant relatives. To survive her trip, Mai must find a balance between her two completely different worlds.

Perfect for fans of Rita Williams-Garcia and Linda Sue Park, Listen, Slowly is an irresistibly charming and emotionally poignant tale about a girl who discovers that home and culture, family and friends, can all mean different things.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

When I saw that Thanhha Lai was writing a new book, I was excited.  I really enjoyed Inside Out & Back Again, her middle-grade verse novel.  I was expecting the same sort of thing here, so I was a bit disappointed when I started to read Listen, Slowly and realized that it was not a verse novel.  That disappointment was short-lived, however, because Mai's story is a good one... and I may have enjoyed it even more than the story in Inside Out & Back Again.

Please, dear author, I want some more...

The plot of this story is fairly simple: a twelve-year-old girl accompanies her grandmother on a trip to Vietnam so that the latter can get some closure on the disappearance of her husband during the war.  The strength of the novel is not in its plot, however: it's in the characters and the vivid descriptions of life in present-day Vietnam.  Mai is very much a fish out of water at the beginning of the book.  She doesn't want to be there.  She'd rather be back at home in Laguna Beach, hanging out with her best friend and flirting with her crush (whom she refers to throughout most of the book as HIM).  Even though she's the offspring of two Vietnamese parents, she barely speaks the language and she's not that familiar with the customs of her ancestral home.  Nor is she prepared for the sights, sounds, smells, and temperature of the country.  These are all described in vivid detail, bringing the reader on a journey to a part of the world that's not often depicted in books for younger readers.

Some of the episodes in the story are poignant, some are interesting, and some are downright amusing.  When Mai convinces the other village girls that everyone in America wears thong underwear, it leads to a couple of pretty funny scenes.  Likewise, after Mai falls into a local pond and catches a parasite, the descriptions of her relatives' intense interest in her diarrhea are both mortifying and amusing.  "I never have a second alone," she says at one point, which underscores the intense community surroundings that might seem foreign to those not familiar with the culture.

The secondary characters are good, too.  Bà, Mai's grandmother, is a sweet old lady, and Mai obviously cares for her very deeply (despite all the complaining she does about having to participate in the trip).  Anh Minh, whom Mai calls her "personal translator", is a boy who's just a bit older, who studies in America, and who speaks English with a Texas twang that's spelled out on the pages.  Út is one of Mai's cousins (I think... she refers to many of these folks as her "maybe-relatives", as she assumes she's somehow related to them all).  She has a pet frog, a buzz cut, and an attitude, but despite being Mai's opposite she somehow ends up being her friend.  The weakest characters in the book are probably Mai's parents, and that's because they're barely in the story: her father is a doctor helping patients in remote parts of the country and her mother is a lawyer back in California.

It's all a matter of taste...

There wasn't really a lot I didn't like about this book.  While it wasn't the sort of story I'm usually drawn to, I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Let's get technical...

In a verse novel, you can get away with a lot more, grammar-wise, than you can if you're writing in straight prose.  There were a few instances of tense slip-ups and some misplaced words that didn't seem to make a lot of sense in context.  There were also a number of comma splices, and I wasn't sure if they were intentional or not.  However, Mai was supposedly the type of kid who dutifully memorized all the SAT words her mom drilled at her, so I would've expected her grammar to be a little bit better than it was.

The other issue I had with this book was no fault of the author, but it was still annoying.  The Vietnamese language is full of diacritical marks... and the EPUB format handled these terribly, inserting a question mark in place of most of these characters.  It was pretty distracting.

Finally, I just have to mention the cover.  It's so pretty!  Thanhha Lai has really lucked out in the cover department.  Both this book and Inside Out & Back Again have such lovely covers.

The verdict...

Overall, this is a really strong middle-grade book with a nice story, strong characters, and amazing descriptions that are sure to transport the reader to another place.  I'd definitely recommend this one.

Quotable moment:

I pick up my chopsticks and deliver a bamboo shoot to my mouth. Everyone stops eating. Someone says, "Look, look at her using chopsticks. Just like a Vietnamese girl!"

What does she think I do at home? Eat rice with my fist?

Someone else asks, "Are you obedient?"

It's so annoying when people ask questions with preconceived answers. The man should just come out and say, "I expect you to listen to your parents or you'll shame every ancestor going back four thousand years of Vietnamese history." No pressure. Like any kid is going to admit out loud, "I just pretend to listen."

Premise: 5/5
Plot: 4/5
Characters: 5/5
Pace: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Editing: 3/5
Originality: 4/5
Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall Rating: 4.13 out of 5 ladybugs