Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson

Posted on by
5
Suite Scarlett
Suite Scarlett
Maureen Johnson

This is a review for the audiobook of Suite Scarlett provided by Brilliance Audio in the goodie bags at the Book Blogger Convention
The Premise: The Martin family has owned and run the Hopewell, a small, struggling boutique hotel in the Upper East Side since the late 1920s.  The Spencer siblings Scarlett (15), Lola (18), Spencer (19), and Marlene (11), all have their roles in keeping the hotel running, and on her 15th Birthday, Scarlett inherits the Empire Suite and it’s eccentric guest, Amy Amberson.  Mrs. Amberson is a C-list starlet with a penchant for mischievousness and drama, and soon Scarlett’s summer is made very busy by Mrs. Amberson’s schemes. In the meantime, Scarlett’s brother, a struggling actor, has been given a deadline by their parents to find a job or go to culinary school, and he needs Scarlett’s help. Top this all off with a prospective romance and complex sibling dynamics, and you have Scarlett Martin’s crazy summer vacation.

My Thoughts: Things just seem to happen around Scarlett. She doesn’t go looking for trouble, but because of the impetuous plans of people around her (or just pure luck), Scarlett keeps finding herself involved in quirky capers. First there’s Mrs. Amberson. A woman with perhaps too much time on her hands, Mrs Amberson loves a project,  and just sweeps Scarlett into her vortex, ignoring any protests that Scarlett makes. Then there is Spencer. Spencer is Scarlett’s older brother, but he often relies on Scarlett’s ideas to creativity solve problems.  His current one is trying to avoid going to culinary school so he can fulfill his dream of being an actor. Spencer is a very good physical actor with excellent comedic timing, but he just can’t get a job except for a non-paying gig in a parking garage in a student production of Hamlet. Somehow he and Scarlett have to spin this to the Martin parents.  Between these two, Scarlett is very busy, and the charming story is propelled along.

While the story at it’s surface is about Scarlett’s job at the hotel and trying to help her brother fulfill his dream of being an actor instead of being forced into culinary school, it really feels like the book is about the Martin siblings. It’s obvious from the very beginning that Scarlett and her brother Spencer are very close – they hang out together and have a comfortable banter that you only get with prolonged exposure. Lola and Marlene are paired off in a similar way, but have a different dynamic – Lola is the one who has the most patience in the face of Marlene’s brattiness and takes Marlene to all Marlene’s functions. The dynamic between Lola and Spencer, and Marlene, Spencer, and Scarlett, is less clear cut. There’s the usual teasing, bartering, sharing and arguing among siblings, but there’s some history and underlying issues that sometimes surface. That they are all growing up together and things are not always simple and expected between them was something I really liked. I thought it was an accurate portrayal of siblinghood.

The best example of this sibling dynamics is Spencer’s reaction to his sister’s love interests. Spencer never seems to approve of Lola’s boyfriend – a very rich kid who has a chauffeured car, a yacht, and needs Lola to help him with everything. Then when Spencer introduces Eric, a fellow actor in the young college troupe, and he and Scarlett show signs of interest in one another, Spencer reacts oddly. The fallout between siblings because of the romances and the messiness of the romances themselves was well written and they felt real to me. Too often young adult stories simplify the process of liking someone and then being with them. In this book, romantic relationships are as complex and occasionally baffling as real life. As a older (ahem, I mean not a teen myself) reader I admit being concerned about the age difference between Scarlett and Eric (I think he’s 18 or 19 and she’s just turned 15 – when you’re a teen those years count), but I liked the way that their relationship was handled.

Now a couple of comments about the audiobook. I thought that the voice actor did an excellent job with the reading, but I preferred her voice when reading the dialog of female characters over males. There’s a very obvious difference between characters voices and I particularly liked the voice she used as Mrs. Amberson (it has a clear, decisive quality) and Lola (which was quieter and sounded nurturing), but the teen boys – Eric and Spencer sounded strange. Eric is supposed to have a North Carolina accent and I’m still not sure that what I heard was quite it. Spencer sounded very goofy, and I think I would have imagined his voice to be less exuberant and to have a softer wit.

This series continues with Scarlett Fever.

Overall: A charming young adult novel. It maintains an easy balance between quirkiness and moments of depth – particularly in the sibling dynamics and romantic relationships. Listening to this audiobook was the most pleasant 2 weeks I’ve ever had commuting.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository (PB)
Buy the Audiobook

Other reviews:
The Book Smugglers – 7 (Very Good)
Angieville – positive review
Tempting Persephone – positive review

The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell

Posted on by
3
The Rise of Renegade X
The Rise of Renegade X
Chelsea M. Campbell

This is a book that I picked up at BEA and got signed by the author 🙂 I love this cover!!

The Premise: In this young adult novel, the focus is on Damien Locke, a supervillian-in-training – or so he thought, until his 16th birthday when he discovers that he’s really half-superhero and his dad is one of the most moralistic Do Gooders out there. Disgusted and betrayed, Damien can’t believe that things can get worse – but they do. His father insists that Damien stay with him for six weeks so that Damien can learn about life among the Good Guys. His mom, a supervillian, agrees to the arrangement so that Damien can know the enemy and to get him out of the house while she works on her latest diabolical plan. There’s no way he would become a superhero, right? Except that Damien slowly begins to acclimatize to life with superheroes and when he finds out about a plan that could put his father and his step-family in danger, he’s strangely torn.  Damien’s always wanted to be a villian, but he also wants to protect his friends and family.

Read Chapter 1 of The Rise of Renegade X

My Thoughts: The story is told in the first person viewpoint of Damien and the setting is a fictional city – Golden City, where tourists flock hoping to run into a superhero or a supervillain. It is ultimately about the choices that people make in order to become who they are. In Damien’s case, his choices determine whether he will become a superhero or a supervillain. He has the genes for both, and the “X” that appeared on his thumb as a result can turn into an “H” (for hero) or a “V” (for villain) based on what he does.

This book made me laugh. Damien has a quick wit which he actively uses in surprising ways. He’s never got the lower hand for long, and when he’s annoyed at someone, he uses his smarts to get them. It was pretty funny how he kept needling his parents about their embarrassing hook-up at inopportune moments, or how he dealt with school bullies. I found myself looking forward to reading this book when I had to put it down because of the humor, especially in the first part of the book – Damien’s disbelief and how he handled the change in his life tickled me. Once he was more settled, the shenanigans Damien gets himself into with his sidekick (more about her later), were funny as well but didn’t entertain me as much as the first part of the book.

The humor is irreverent and not exactly a kid’s humor. Damien is less innocent than I was at sixteen (which I suppose isn’t hard). He’s comfortable with sexual situations and there’s a sort of love triangle in this book between Damien and two very different girls. The first is his ex-girlfriend, Kat, who is a supervillain who has the power to shapeshift. They broke up on his last birthday when he found her with another guy, but she seems sorry for that and they both have feelings for each other (they’ve gotten closer over the past year), although Damien can’t bring himself to forgive her. The second girl is Sarah – a strange girl in Damien’s new school who is a master inventor and wants to be his superhero sidekick.  One girl assumes he is a supervillain, one assumes he’s a superhero, and Damien plays the part each expects because he doesn’t want either to know about his half-hero, half-villain status.

These complex relationships with Damien and these girls, along with the relationship he develops with his father’s family (not an easy path), adds depth to the story that I wasn’t expecting but really liked. The sibling rivalry and fights that Damien has with his half-sibling closest to his age (Amelia, who is 15), was particularly endearing. They dislike each other at first sight but work their way through their differences. I thought the “teenage boy versus his younger sister” dynamics were cute and very much like how siblings work.  I also liked Damien’s commentary on how people have preconceptions of villians and heroes and how that influences how people respond to him.

Overall: An enjoyable read that blends humor, comic book tropes, and a teenage boy’s coming of age to produce a story with subtle depths. I liked it.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
The Book Smugglers – 7 (leaning towards an 8) – [I agreed with Ana’s review]
Steph Su Reads – 4 out of 5 (“The gem of this novel is Damien’s voice. A perfect balance of snark, sincerity, and your typical adolescent male stupidity”)
SciFi Chick – “pure fun from beginning to end.”

Book Trailer:



Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s One Question Interview Blog Tour!

Posted on by
1

I got the chance to ask  Lauren Baratz-Logsted one question for her One Question Interview Blog Tour, and because I’m always interested in books people recommend to one another, it was this:

Q: I noticed in your bio that you used to work at a bookseller and you had other book related jobs. What are some of your favorite books to recommend people (let’s say top 5 or 10?) and why?

Lauren Baratz-LogstedA: Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s my favorite novel by a living author. (The Great Gatsby is my favorite novel by a dead author.) I once saw someone on the beach reading it and experienced intense book envy that the person had the discovery of much of the book still ahead.


Freeze Frame, by Heidi Ayarbe. This YA novel about a boy who isn’t sure if he intended to kill his friend or not is a perfect example of why adults love YA these days too.


The Memoirs of Cleopatra, by Margaret George. The title tells you exactly what it’s about and this doorstopper has given me more pleasure than any other historical novel.

Breath, by Tim Winton. This Australian novel was my favorite adult novel in 2008. Without the framing device of an adult telling a story about his teenage self this could have been easily published as YA. The story, about a boy’s fascination with surfing and the dark road down which it leads him, is thoroughly gripping.


Forever on the Mountain, by James M. Tabor. A nonfiction account of a real mountain-climbing expedition gone bad, this is so well done that even though the reader knows from the start just exactly who will make it down the mountain and who will not, it’s still edge-of-the-seat suspenseful.


Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns. Back when I was a bookseller a woman came into the store wearing dark glasses. It was obvious she’d been crying. “Just give me something good to read,” she said. After mentally rejecting more serious literary and dark commercial fare for fear those books might send her running for the open windows, I handed her this charming crowd-pleaser. She bought it and came back the following week to thank me. She said I’d saved her life with that book. How can I not love and go on recommending a book that saved a woman’s life???


The Education of Bet
The Education of Bet
Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Baratz-Logsted has a new Young Adult novel, The Education of Bet, coming out on July 12th. The story is about a girl pretending to be a boy in Victorian England. From the blurb on Amazon:

“When Will and Bet were four, tragic circumstances brought them to the same house, to be raised by a wealthy gentleman as brother and sister. Now sixteen, they’ve both enjoyed a privileged upbringing thus far. But not all is well in their household. Because she’s a girl, Bet’s world is contained within the walls of their grand home, her education limited to the rudiments of reading, writing, arithmetic, and sewing. Will’s world is much larger. He is allowed—forced, in his case—to go to school. Neither is happy.

So Bet comes up with a plan and persuades Will to give it a try: They’ll switch places. She’ll go to school as Will. Will can live as he chooses. But once Bet gets to school, she soon realizes living as a boy is going to be much more difficult than she imagined.”

It sounds like it could be cute, especially since she develops a crush on her roommate at the Betterman Academy.

Previous stop (June 22) @ Persephone reads: If you could bring any character – not your own – to life for a day, who would it be and why?

Next stop (June 24) @Wendy Toliver: If an alien offered to give you any position in the world, what would you choose?

Originally posted on janicu.vox.com

Audiobooks and the nook

Posted on by
11

I’ve been listening to the Suite Scarlett audiobook on my rides back and forth to work (review forthcoming).

On Audiobooks:

  • I like listening to audiobooks! This was my first one. I don’t know why I haven’t been listening to audiobooks before (Oh.. .maybe because my car only has a CD player and I have no idea where my Ipod is).
  • I can get into the story pretty well, but  think my concentration on the story isn’t as good when I get it aurally versus visually.  Maybe it’s because I don’t re-listen to a passage the way I reread passages. A problem when you’re driving and can’t rewind.
  • The other problem I have is that the narrator really makes or breaks a story. Their inflections and emphasis can change the interpretation, especially when a character is speaking. I would have imagined how certain characters spoke differently. It also felt odd to have a female narrator do male voices. Why don’t they just bring in a male narrator for those parts? Do they? Since I’ve only listened to the one, I don’t know if what’s normal and what’s not.

On Audiobooks & the Nook:

  • It’s very easy to put the audiobook into the nook. This audiobook is an MP3 CD and what I basically did was copy over the files from the CD onto the “my audiobooks” folder in the nook via my computer and the USB cable. I haven’t bought an audiobook from B&N yet so I don’t know how different that would be.
  • The sound is much better in the car when you have headphones on, but it’s illegal to do this while driving. I tried this when my husband was driving and found it pretty good,  as long as someone does not have the radio going at the same time.
  • The sound is pretty good – not tinny like my netbook speakers, and the volume is a decent level. The nook has a good volume when you are indoors, but if you are driving, it should be at the highest level or it will be drowned out by the sound of the road. Even then it’s hard to hear. I also have to have it pretty close to me (like on my lap) to hear it. My husband isn’t a fan of this if I’m driving, so now it’s in the bin between the 2 front seats with the speakers pointed towards me (in other words. the nook is upside down).
  • NEVER turn on the nook or do any adjusting while driving! I always do this parked and then when everything is playing at the volume I want from the point I want, I drive.
  • I would be happier if I had some mini speakers or something that used the headphone jack from the nook and was a louder volume that what I can get from it, just for the car. I’ve been eying these $20 mini passive speakers from Sony, but I’ve been told they probably won’t be louder than the ones on the nook, so I’m looking for some speakers that can plug into the car’s AC socket.
  • If I listen to the nook in the morning, then turn it on later in the day, it has saved my spot in the audiobook. I love this. However, if I am checking something else out in the nook or I wait long enough so the nook is truly powered off, it does NOT save my spot and I have to search for it. This would be a pain if I had a bad memory of what chapter I was on (so far I am pretty good about remembering what around what Chapter I was on).
  • If I listen to audiobooks on the nook, the nook plays them and sort of goes into a standby state. So I have to hit the power button to be able to use it’s touchscreen again and pause the audiobook. This seems to save battery and I’ve listened to the audiobook for 4-5 hour stretches without recharging the nook.

Other nook related news:

Goddess for Hire by Sonia Singh

Posted on by
Reply
Goddess for Hire
Goddess for Hire
Sonia Singh

I picked this up in the last BookCloseouts sale (psst – they’re having another one – a summer fiction sale) because I don’t often see chick lit with Indo American characters. It also looked like had a little bit of a supernatural aspect to it (a heroine who is a reincarnated goddess), so I was sold.  It languished in my TBR until I needed a change in genre after all the fantasy I’ve been reading lately.

The Premise: Maya Mehra just had her 30th Birthday. Her big extended Indian family (all doctors except Maya), want her to settle down and get married, but Maya is in no hurry. She’s a California girl, living with her parents in Newport Beach, and while she’d like to find a man, she doesn’t believe in arranged marriage or a man who would marry her for the green card. Unfortunately for her, Aunt Dimple has been matchmaking and sets Maya up with a man from India (Tahir). Maya dutifully goes to the airport to pick him up (and tell him she’s not interested), and is surprised to find Tahir gorgeous and also not interested in her. And then in a bizarre twist, Maya is told that she’s the incarnation of Kali, a Hindu goddess who is the Dark Mother, the Goddess of Destruction – “the bringer of death so that life my resurrect”, and she’s supposed to save the world.

Read an excerpt of Goddess for Hire (from google books)

My Thoughts: This is very much a breezy chick lit novel which reads very fast. It took me a few hours to read – each chapter is very short, often 2 or 3 pages, and the font is not small. I was in the mood for something mindless and this satisfied that craving.   The problem with this breezy chick lit California thing is that that Maya can come off as extremely superficial. She’s thirty years old, but she has no problem spending her days shopping with her parents money in her big yellow H2 Hummer (and she drops brand names like nobody’s business). And although she makes some off the cuff comments about the difficulty in being Indian and a minority, and brings up childhood bullying because of being Indian, she also says some things about her own ethnicity that feel uncomfortably bratty.  I decided to push past my initial qualms in the first few pages, and although I think that Maya acts more like a twenty year old than a thirty year old, she grew on me. I enjoyed her chemistry with Tahir (they trade insults and sarcasm back and forth), and finding her direction in life enables her to grow.  Although I get the impression Maya considers herself a modern girl and therefore does not like many traditional Indian things on principle, she’s set up with a hero who sees things differently (he likes women in saris, Kathak dances, and his parents blessing), so I think he will be a positive influence her.

I enjoyed reading this book mostly for all the Indian cultural references. Indian terms pepper the story but are explained in English (sometimes it felt unnecessarily explained but I suppose not everyone knows what Dharma or Roghan Josh are).  There was an element of nostalgia for me because I grew up close to India and I can relate to her big noisy family when my Asian half has something similar. I think that this made me enjoy the book a little bit more – a vague Southeast Asian homesickness which I know not everyone shares, but maybe people will enjoy it’s different cultural viewpoint.

The reincarnated goddess storyline was pure fluff. Maya feels malevolent energy and runs towards it to ward off  some evil – usually in the form of someone about to commit a crime, and then bungles her way through preventing a disaster.  Her interactions with a swami named Ram who teaches her how to use her powers are hilarious though.  I really liked Ram, and he has the best lines in the book (although I also like the interactions Maya and Tahir have). The Kali story overall just felt silly, but this book isn’t trying to be serious. It dovetailed very nicely with Maya’s problems with her family (they want her to get serious – get a husband, get a job), and with her romance with Tahir (Maya keeps disappearing because of it, often right after Tahir says something particularly rude, which delighted me).

Overall: Chick lit with an Indo American flavor. This was a very breezy, very quick read with a cute I-Act-Like-I-Don’t-Like-You-But-Really-I-Do romance and a heroine who is superficial and spoiled, but she grew on me.  I don’t think I’d recommend this to everyone but overall I’d say I enjoyed it because I was in the mood for something light and mindless and that’s what this was.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
I couldn’t find any – please let me know if you have reviewed it and I’ll link to it.

A couple of things I’m looking forward to…

Posted on by
1

Aisha.

Meet Delhi's Emma
Meet Delhi’s Emma


This is a Bollywood movie which is a modern day remake of Emma by Jane Austen. So it’s like an Indian Clueless (and if you follow this blog, you know that modern-day Jane Austen remakes = my weakness). The part of Emma, now Aisha Kapoor, is played by Sonam Kapoor, and Mr Knightley is now Arjun Barman, played by Abhay Deol. Aisha is an upper class Delhi girl who wears trendy, girly clothes and meddles in other people’s love lives. This is the synopsis from Wikipedia:

“Aisha is a girl with a simple dikat(problem) – everyone’s business is her business. Arjun is a boy with even a simpler set of beliefs – Aisha should mind her own business. Caught in the Delhi upper class world with its own set of social rules, Aisha navigates her world with a great sense of style and even greater optimism. Caught in her web are her best friend Pinky, the small town girl Shefali, the west Delhi boy Randhir and the hunk Dhruv. Aisha will make sure everyone dances to her tune. And all Arjun wants to do is disentangle that web and get Aisha out of an impending sticky mess. Who will succeed and who will succumb? Welcome to Aisha’s fabulous world where playing cupid is as easy as 123…if only that Arjun would stay out of her way!”

This movie comes out August 6th. I NEED to see this! It looks very girly and I’m ok with that. The only problem is that it’s not in English, but I will find a way.

——————————————————————————-

Masques and Wolfsbane.

I’m so happy that Masques is being reissued. I believe it’s Patricia Briggs’ first published novel (originally published in 1993), but it’s out of print and hard to find. People are selling it for over $140! Now, I like Briggs, but I won’t pay $140… Luckily, Briggs has become so popular that it makes sense to republish her backlist – Masques comes out this September 28th:

After an upbringing of proper behavior and oppressive expectations, Aralorn fled her noble birthright for a life of adventure as a mercenary spy. Her latest mission involves spying on the increasingly powerful sorcerer Geoffrey ae’Magi. But in a war against an enemy armed with the powers of illusion, how do you know who the true enemy is-or where he will strike next?

What’s even better is that I discovered through the lovely Angieville, that the sequel to Masques, Wolfsbane, is being published this year as well (November 2nd)! YESSS. I’m vibrating with glee right now.

MasquesWolfsbane

Giveaway: an ARC of The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron

Posted on by
2

Time for a giveaway (and I have another book from BEA, Married with Zombies, which I’ll be giving away soon, probably next week). I had to pick The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron up at BEA because of the impish fellow on the cover, but the blurb sold me:

“Eli Monpress is talented. He’s charming. And he’s a thief.

But not just any thief. He’s the greatest thief of the age – and he’s also a wizard. And with the help of his partners – a swordsman with the most powerful magic sword in the world but no magical ability of his own, and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls- he’s going to put his plan into effect.

The first step is to increase the size of the bounty on his head, so he’ll need to steal some big things. But he’ll start small for now. He’ll just steal something that no one will miss – at least for a while.

Something like a king.”

I love the blurb! Doesn’t it sound gooood? This book comes out from Orbit October this year (it’s the first in a trilogy and the second and third book look like they’re coming out soon after this one), but you can get it in your hot little hands even earlier than that (and perhaps get a couple of extra BEA goodies with it.. *wiggles eyebrows*), by entering here:

1. Email janicu[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject THE SPIRIT THIEF GIVEAWAY, and say “please enter me” or something like that, and that should be it. I try not to make there be too many hoops.
2. One entry per person please
3. This giveaway is INTERNATIONAL. I’ll mail it anywhere that the USPS delivers to.
4. This contest ends midnight EST June 25th

Naamah’s Curse by Jacqueline Carey

Posted on by
2
Naamah's Curse
Naamah’s Curse
Jacqueline Carey

I was sent an ARC of this book to review from Hachette Books.

******

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST BOOK, Naamah’s Kiss

(My review: https://i0.wp.com/i58.photobucket.com/albums/g254/jayamei2/livejournal_com.gifhttps://i0.wp.com/i58.photobucket.com/albums/g254/jayamei2/wordpress.jpghttps://i0.wp.com/i58.photobucket.com/albums/g254/jayamei2/vox.png)

******

The Premise: This is the continuing story of Moirin mac Fainche, and her adventures away from home. Moirin is of the Maghuin Dhonn (a clan in Alba that honors a Great Bear) but also a descendant of Alais de la Courcel (from Terre de Ange, across the sea) and so to find herself, she sets into the world, at first to find her father, then to help the Ch’in. At the end of book 1, Naamah’s Kiss, Moirin is in the land of the Ch’in, but her lover Bao has left because he’s still coming to grips with his second life and with the diadh-anam that he and Moirin now share as a result. Moirin lets him go, but after some time has past, she can’t wait for him anymore. She sets off after him, following the second half of the spark they share. This leads her out of Ch’in to Tartar territory, and then to Bao. Of course, things are never simple, and because of Bao’s rash decisions which anger the Great Khan Naram, Moirin and Bao are forced apart once more.

My Thoughts: As with the first book, Carey’s writing has a simplicity that allows you to read without really feeling bogged down. At 567 pages, I was a little daunted by the length of Naamah’s Curse, and it certainly isn’t a book I could read in one sitting, but it wasn’t one that I felt I had to slog through. Like in Naamah’s Kiss, Moirin, covers many miles, through an amazing world that is of course familiar, since it’s a fantastic version of our own. The encounters with the Ch’in, Tartars and the Bhodistani made me want to see many of the places and people that Moirin describes. I particularly liked the families that took Moirin in. The cheerfulness of being surrounded by a large family who took their host duties seriously was comforting to read.

I would divide this book into three major parts: Moirin’s search for Bao through Ch’in and in the Tartar lands, her time separated from Bao in Vralia, and looking for him again in the mountainous Bhodistan.

Moirin is of mixed heritage and because of this heritage, she is a follower of more than one god, the Maghuin Dhonn from her mother’s clan in Alba, and Naamah, who she is connected to through her D’Angeline blood on her father’s side. Both of these deities favor her but also push her to do their will which they convey through visions and Moirin’s diadh-anam, which flares up inside her to steer her towards her Destiny. This is an unusual combination but it means that Moirin is very open to other people’s beliefs. I noticed this spirituality in Naamah’s Kiss, and Moirin stays true to character in Naamah’s Curse, but she discovers that she’s still an innocent when it comes to what other people believe. In Ch’in she sees  that people have different ideas of modesty than she may, but I don’t think she really knows how far some people would go when they think their beliefs are correct and hers are wrong.

When Moirin meets the Vralian Patriarch of Riva, Moirin sees how man may interpret the word of their gods for their own ends, and it’s a lesson bitterly learned. The Patriarch (a “Father” of the Church of the Yeshua), blames Moirin’s Alban ancestor for a schism in the current church, and declares Terre d’Ange a “bastion of depravity”. Moirin is a way for him to further his ambitions and he forces her to convert to his faith. His character with his shiver-inducing “creamy smile” and his absolute views made me wonder where the author was going because the book seemed to be condemning just Christianity as a religion of close-mindedness.  Just when I thought that this was going to be anti-Yeshuite/anti-Christian book, the story is saved by characters that are followers of Yeshua but who take a gentler, broader, view. Moirin also imagines a gentle god – Yeshua who forgives, not an harsh god who promotes suffering, but she can’t bring herself to fully convert and lose her connection to her own gods. I thought this part of the book was the strongest. It brings up a lot of interesting ideas about religion and I think it stirred up the most emotion in me, reading this section and worrying over Moirin. The lessons about men and the words of gods are also used later on in the story when Moirin sees a similar case where men have interpreted god’s words in a way that benefits them.

It’s a little telling that enjoyed the sections where Moirin was alone and traveling the most, rather than when she is with Bao, which was in the first and last thirds of the book. If I take them at face value, they have cute moments together and they’re well matched in terms of both being impulsive, sharing a diadh-anam, and liking one another. However, if I think about it beyond that – and I mean by looking at their actions, it feels like Moirin is with Bao by default, and this book does not make me warm to him. She had other lovers, but they were either in previously established relationships that they didn’t want to leave, or they were friends sharing a bed out of curiosity rather than romance. The latter group often also seemed like a stretch – like inserting sex just to reinforce Moirin’s role as a child of Naamah rather than to show the reader something more profound. Anyway, back to Bao. He truly acted like an idiot in this book, and it seemed contrary to his matter-of-factness and streetsmarts in the first book. The only explanation I can think of is that there needed to be a reason for why Moirin was traveling from Ch’in to Tartar lands and beyond, so following Bao, and having him run away and be an idiot was the reason. Sadly, it undermined my belief in their relationship.

As with Naamah’s Kiss, Naamah’s Curse ends in a satisfying place with just enough of  a hint of more adventures to come to continue the series.

Overall: This was a strong second book, which continues it’s epic tale of a wild Beauty traveling the world and changing it as she does. Naamah’s Curse has particularly engrossing elements on religion, which I think will make it linger long in my mind. The only issue I had was with the primary relationship, and I hope to find it more convincing in the third book, Naamah’s Blessing.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Fantasy Book Critic – “Overall Naamah’s Curse (Strong A) is an excellent follow-up to the brilliant Naamah’s Kiss”
The Book Smugglers – 8 Excellent, again, leaning towards a 9 (one of her favorite reads of 2010)
Fantasy Literature –  “a “ripping good yarn” and kept me enthralled for days”

Everything Austen 2

Posted on by
5
Everything Austen Challenge
Everything Austen Challenge

I didn’t do so well with last year’s Everything Austen Challenge (I somehow forgot it was only 6 months long, so I managed 5 Austen-related books and movies not 6, although I did watch more Austen movies than I had posted about). I am trying again!!

Here are the details: “The Everything Austen Challenge will run for six months (July 1, 2010 – January 1, 2011)! All you need to do is pick out six Austen-themed things you want to finish to complete the challenge. You have until Thursday, July 15th 2010 to officially sign up.” More over at Stephanie’s Written Word

The books/movies I’m thinking about reading/watching:
1. Such a Girl by Karen Siplin (modern day Persuasion)
2. Love, Lies and Lizzie (Jane Austen in the 21st Century) by Rosie Rushton
3. Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler (had this on my list last year but didn’t get to it)
4. Jane Austen in Boca by Paula Marantz Cohen
5. Becoming Jane movie
6. TBD BBC Jane Austen miniseries –  (I’ve watched them all but rewatch them periodically. Of course)

These choices are subject to change

Possible alternatives are books I didn’t get into last year: