Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr

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Ink Exchange
Ink Exchange
Melissa Marr

I just finished reading Ink Exchange. I read Wicked Lovely earlier this year and I was told this was a different book, so I decided to try it. Well, it wasn't for me either.  There's nothing wrong with the writing, it has a lovely lyrical quality, but I think that somewhere along the line I stopped being able to suspend my disbelief over a supposed near-immortal (kings and their advisers as that) falling in love with a teenage girl. I think I just got too old.

In Ink Exchange, Leslie, who is a friend of Aislinn, the protagonist of Wicked Lovely, decides to get a tattoo. The tattoo she chooses is the tattoo of the king of the Dark Court, Irial, and it connects her to him in a magical way. In the meantime, Niall, adviser to the Summer King and Queen finds himself drawn to Leslie unlike any mortal before her. Leslie in turn is drawn to both men and seems to seesaw her way back and forth between them.

 Leslie is first in great pain over her home life, a mom who left, a dad who gambles, and a brother who does drugs and uses Leslie to pay off his debts. Then after her tattoo, which leaches out her real feelings, she's so separate from herself and constantly numbed that it was very difficult to feel anything for her when she felt so little herself. At that point I just found it hard to connect with anyone in this book. I was having no trouble imagining their terrible beauty, but besides hearing how good they looked, their individual personalities and connections weren't developed enough for me. For example, whenever Leslie felt good to be with Irial and Niall I just felt like it was the product of what creatures they were, not real. And Niall's feelings of betrayal contrasted with his supposed experience with these people – why is he surprised? He became uncharacteristically more naive in this book compared to the last one.  Despite all this, I was at least satisfied with the ending. I was close to thinking I preferred Wicked Lovely over this second book until I got to the end, but this ending felt more right. And yeah, I did see that Leslie realized something about those feelings that were leeched from her – the fear and hurt, the bad stuff, were needed as much as she needed the happier feelings, in order to feel whole. That growing up on her part, plus the darker aspects of this novel were positive parts of the book. But still, I don't know, it still didn't work overall for me. I was unsatisfied for some reason, but I know that most people who I have seen review this online have reviewed this positively, so I'm probably in the minority. It may be that this novel would have worked better for me if it was packaged in a short story or novella. Maybe then I would have accepted certain things I felt were missing or inferred them more than I have here.

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Burndive by Karin Lowachee

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Burndive
Burndive
Karin Lowachee

Ug, I'm sick and at home feeling like mud, so may as well take the time to catch up with my reviews.

Burndive has been on my TBR pile for about a year and I liked the first book of the series so much (Warchild), that I am not sure why this book was there for so long. Too many books is the likely reason!

Each of the three books of this space opera triology has a different protagonist in the same universe. In this case the story focuses on Ryan Azarcon, a blond, blue eyed celebrity with famous parents. He's very different from Jos Musey, the main character in Warchild – he's more sheltered and protected by his connections, but even those aren't enough for him to stay unaffected by war. While Ryan is on EarthHub, he witnesses a bombing, which affects so deeply the only way Ryan knows how to cope is through self-medication – drugs. And things don't get better when he goes home to Austro, he witnesses more violence in the form of shooting at a nightclub. With his mother the top PR person on Austro and his father an infamous starship captain (who was introduced in Warchild), life is complicated for Ryan, and only seems to get worse. Even the friendship Ryan has with his bodyguard Sid has complications.

This book seemed to start a little before Warchild ended, on a parallel storyline, and then continued where it left off. We meet characters in Warchild like Jos and Warboy, but they are secondary ones. Compared to Jos, I thought that Ryan was 'softer' than him, because he's been lucky enough to be kept apart from the horrors of war by his parents, but Ryan had other skills because of his fame. It was interesting to see Jos and his father through Ryan's eyes though – his upbringing taught him about reading others.

Overall: I recommend these books if you like well written world-building and character driven development. The writing is top-notch, and despite the background in space, it focusses on individuals. I really like the way the characters interacted, especially Ryan and his father and Sid. I wish Lowachee would write a book about how Cairo Azercon was adopted by his parents, I was curious about his background, though some of it was revealed throughout Burndive.

Cagebird is the third and perhaps last of the series. I went to check the author's website and didn't see anything about further books, but I did see news about a new trilogy starting Fall/Winter 2009 which orbit books described as "Victorian era steampunk…in the style of Philip Pullman taking us from the Arctic North to steeped rooftops of civilization and the savages to the east." The first book is The Gaslight Dogs.

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Spiral Hunt by Margaret Ronald

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Spiral Hunt
Spiral Hunt
Margaret Ronald

Eos books sent me this novel to review from debut author Margaret Ronald.

The setting is Boston, where a large Irish migrant population goes hand in hand with this urban fantasy moving away from the usual werewolves and vampires, and takes it's supernatural aspects from celtic mythology. Evie Scelan is a bike messenger with a side business as a Finder. Her nickname is Hound because Evie has an ability to track things with scent. At the start of this book, Evie gets a mysterious phone call from ex-lover Frank. Despite her reservations with who he may be mixed up with, and the warning on the phone, she begins to investigate his disappearance.

"He speaks to you to say farewell. I speak to you to warn you, for I may have damned you with my words"

"Hound, watch for a collar. The hunt comes…"

When I started reading this book the first time, I made the mistake of reading it before going to bed, so I was tired. This book, like most urban fantasies, throws you in midstream and I felt confused about things hinted at in the first few pages. The phone call is the beginning and I didn't understand how Evie related to Frank, and then soon afterwards how she related to other characters she ran into. I ended up putting it down, but bogormen convinced me that things got better, and I picked it up again. This time all the references to the magic in Boston, Evie's past, and her avoidance of showing up on the radar of a shadowy group called The Brotherhood started to make more sense. By around page 100 I had enough to grasp the world and enjoy the story itself.  The city of Boston is a nice backdrop and I'm sure Bostonites would recognize many landmarks in Evie's adventures.

Evie is a relatable heroine who thankfully doesn't do overly idiotic things, she goes into situations with her eyes open, but still gets into trouble despite her best intentions. She is a no nonsense, working class gal, trying to survive on her own who has a hard time letting other's in because of her talent. Her soft spot seems to be kids and older people, which shows itself through the course of the story. Her circle of friends is small – a couple of people she knew in school, a black-market magic associate, and a brief mention of coworkers at her messenger job, but I hope that as the series continues that Evie will start to open herself up to others. I thought I saw a lowering of walls in a couple of instances in this book and the hint of a possible romance. Her character was my favorite part of the book.

I don't know much about celtic myths, but I knew enough to recognize some of the names of the major dieties, so it was a refreshing experience to read an urban fantasy that references that mythology and I wanted to know more about it after finishing the story. While the bad guys in this tale seemed to be shrouded in mystery until the second half of the book, once all the parties involved in the mystery that Evie unravels show up, this becomes an absorbing read. 

I felt that this book had a satisfying ending (I saw this mentioned elsewhere and I agree), even though it is the start of a series. I was happy where it stopped with the promise of more to come. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to Evie and her friends in book 2. I'd recommend this one to urban fantasy fans.

This book comes out on January 27th, 2009. From the author's website I see 3 books planned for now.

Bogormen's review
Mardelwanda's review

My review is for an Advanced Readers Copy so FYI I'm not sure the quotes I posted will exactly the same in the final version.

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I’m back

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Argentina was wonderful, though I'm exhausted by all the excursions we booked. Lots of walking. Highlight would be taking a boatride almost underneath Iguazu falls and getting soaked, and walking on a glacier (very cool photos came of it).

Minitrek on the Perito Moreno glacier
Minitrek on the Perito Moreno glacier

Here is one of the group behind us walking back to the starting/ending point of the 2 hour hike on the glacier. We got to drink water straight from the glacier, and have whiskey with glacier ice!  This is the part where the glacier touched land, so it looks dirty. Once you get in there, the pure white and blue of the ice is amazing.

Now back to book related stuffs.

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Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris

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Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 2)
Grave Surprise (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 2)
Charlaine Harris

After reading Grave Sight last week, I was curious enough about the second book, Grave Surprise that I picked it up this week.

This story continues the life of Harper Connelly and her step-brother Tolliver Lang, this time in Memphis to demonstrate Harper's talents to a Bingham College class. The professor Clyde Nunly fully expects to expose Harper as a big fraud, but when she keeps accurately describing the deaths of people buried at the cemetery within campus, his smirk leaves his face. He really doesn't believe it when another surprise occurs - Harper discovers one grave with two bodies – the original and the body of an eleven year old girl who Harper once tried but failed to find. Soon Harper and Tolliver are again embroiled in a murder mystery, and because the victim was such a young girl, this time Harper really wants to find out who did it.

Overall: It's been a while since I've read something that falls more on the mystery side of things, so I enjoyed reading this. It kept my interest and I read it fairly quickly. I also enjoyed this better than the first book because I was feeling a little less annoyed at some of the other characters involved. There was less of a small minded small town vibe and while people still gave Harper a hard time over her talent, Harper and Tolliver managed to give as much as they got, even getting some apologies in the process. Which made me feel better. I also felt that if you read this book before book 1, you'd be OK, Harris went over Harper and Tolliver's pasts again in this book, so you wouldn't be missing anything. Meanwhile, there was some progress in Harper and Tolliver's relationship with their little sisters and something else which I guessed was coming from the first book. Besides that their characters stayed fairly consistent to what they were like in book 1 – Harper really intriuges me.. again, that half vulnerable, half hard thing. Anyway, if you liked book one, I'd recommend this one.

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Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

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Wicked Lovely
Wicked Lovely
Melissa Marr

I kept hearing only good things about Melissa Marr's debut young adult novel Wicked Lovely, so after visiting copies of the book at the bookstore several times, I finally got hold of one to read.

I'm dense because I didn't notice until I was about halfway through the book that the girl on the cover is holding flowers covered in frost. Which ties in with the story. Doh! It is a lovely cover though even without noticing that!

Aislinn goes to an all girls school and lives with her protective grandmother in a town called Huntsdale. For the most part she's a normal teen, except for a wariness she's developed because she has the ability to see faeries. This isn't the sweet kind of faerie but rather capricious beings who are everywhere, usually invisible, playing cruel games on others. If they knew she could see them, Aislinn knows she would be harmed, she's been taught by her grandmother (who also has this ability), to lay low and pretend she can't see them. She spends her days as a normal kid, going to school, and then hanging out with her best friend Seth, an older kid with tattoos and piercings who lives in a train. The iron keeps out the faeries so Aislinn tries to spend as much time as possible there, while harboring secret feelings for him.

Unfortunately for Aislinn, she does eventually gets noticed by Keenen, the Summer King, who decides she's the next girl who could be the Summer Queen. For years he's been chasing human girls, asking them to pick up the Winter Queen Beria's staff and help him break the hold his mother has on the seasons. Every girl who has picked up the staff could not hold off the chill and thus they have become the Winter girl (the current one is Donia) until another girl relieves them.

Overall: I'd recommend this for fans of Holly Black, but I think I like Holly Black better. It has that same type of young adult in modern times with faeries feel (along with my thoughts of how are the parents letting these kids roam about so much?). There are mild allusions to sex but it will likely go over the heads of the innocent. The story had a fairy tale in modern times vibe, reminding me of stories about the struggles between two deities or royal beings over who rules the season - Summer and Winter. And the writing has a lyrical, lovely fairytale lilt which just goes with the story beautifully. There was some greying of characters – especially that of Keenen – he's not seen as the bad guy, even though he's been callous in the past, but I thought that Seth was a bit perfect, and the Winter Queen was a bit heavy handed. I also thought that every main character in this book was described as being gorgeous, so I was imagining these perfect looking beings (including Seth and Aislinn) in a semi-dramatic fantasy, doing stuff like: yearning for things that they couldn't express and being caught in a tragic game for eternity… I wish I saw less romantic characters, but I'm not sure if I'm just being old and crabby here in thinking that. Another thing – I also didn't understand why there needed to be a Summer Queen when there was no Winter King? I'm still a bit confused about that. Anyway,the ending was satisfying. A fine way to pass the time, and I'm sure it's a keeper for many, but not a keeper for me. I'm interested enough to read the next book Ink Exchange, which deals with the Dark court (I think?), but it's going to come from the library.

Review at Dear Author (they gave it an A-)

Review at The Book Smugglers (they gave it an 8 – Excellent).

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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler

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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Laurie Viera Rigler

I saw this book recommended by Jane Austen fans because the author apparently spent a lot of time researching properly (six years working on the book is what I read). She is also a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA).

With credentials like that I was a little afraid this book was going to be somewhat dry and rely more on facts than plot, but I was quite happy to find that this was not the case. There is quite a bit of humor in here and an enjoyable heroine, and the research is reflected in the descriptions of the surroundings, but doesn't bog down the story.

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is about an L. A. woman, Courtney Stone, who after a bad breakup with her fiance, and a big fight with her best friend, drowns her sorrows in a Jane Austen novel, then wakes up in the Regency era in the body of someone named Jane Mansfield. The writing is in the first person present tense so the reader experiences Courtney/Jane's confusion at the same time she does.

Overall: This is a time travelling story involving Jane Austen, but the author doesn't attempt to put the heroine into one of the original stories to meet Mr. Darcy or any of the other heroes in the Austen novels (like the recent miniseries Lost in Austen). In this case the author Courtney discovers the lack of woman's rights and hygiene, along with the clothes, manners, and customs of the time. The era is not romanticized, and Courtney reacts in a believable way to her situation, sometimes acting anachronistically, but also realizing she has to blend in to survive. Being put into a mental institution in those times would have been a horror, so Courtney/Jane doesn't do supremely idiotic things. Instead, she pretends to be Jane and goes about her days in which Jane would have – meeting her friends and suitor, dealing with her parents, and also remembering the life she left behind. Courtney has no idea what happened to the real Jane, but as time passes she begins to pick up her memories, which sit next to her other memories in L.A. Along with episodes in the courtship of  Mr. Edgeworth, Courtney remembers feelings for her best friend Wes, who she thinks betrayed her. It felt like there were two love stories playing out even though the focus of the book is in England, which I guess is the one problem I had with the book. Courtney is in Jane's life and interacting with Mr. Edgeworth, while also thinking about her past life in California, and I felt sort of torn about where she should be. I wasn't sure she should be in Jane's life, so that was my one quibble with the novel that kept me from enjoying it as much as I could have. It made me a bit sad! However, I just found out that there is a companion book coming out – with Jane taking Courtney's place in modern day L.A – Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict (more info at the author's website here). That book comes out May 2009 according to Amazon.

Links:

Author Interview at Booking Mama

Dear Author Review

The author's website is great – lots of Jane related videos and links, worth spending some time there – http://www.janeaustenaddict.com/ .

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Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris

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Grave Sight (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 1)
Grave Sight (Harper Connelly Mysteries, Book 1)
Charlaine Harris

Grave Sight is the first in the Harper Connelly series by Charlaine Harris.

After being hit by lightening at an early age Harper has a talent at locating a dead body if the general area is known. She can also tell how they died. This doesn't make her very much liked by both sceptics (who think she preys on the weak) and by those who hire her (because they don't always like the truth that comes out).

In Grave Sight Harper and her step-brother Tolliver Lang get involved in a murder mystery in the southern town of Sarne. What starts off as a normal case – finding the body of missing, presumed dead wild-child Teenie Hopkins (whose boyfriend's body was found six months ago), becomes increasingly dangerous as more deaths occur. The people of Sarne immediately begin to blame Harper for all their troubles, and Harper is forced by the police to stay in the area. At that point, Harper feels compelled to investigate what is going on.

Overall: New spin on murder mysteries and worth a read. The murderer was someone I guessed at but it wasn't that obvious I think. The writing was absorbing – no troubles where I wanted to put the book down and go do something else, and interesting main characters. Really it's Harper's unusual talent and her life with it, that makes the book so interesting. I couldn't really pinpoint the genre here, it seems to cross a couple of them. There also seems to be a mystery in Harper's past (the abduction of her sister Cameron) which I hope gets more exposure in later books.

Harper was an intriguing character. Sometimes she seems very hard because of her upbringing in a broken home (her mother was a drug addict, as was Tolliver's dad), but also sometimes very vulnerable (with her great fear of lightening, and ailments caused by the lightening strike). She is also very reliant on her step-brother, and their relationship was really strange to read. I have a brother so their relationship didn't seem quite brother/sister, and staying together when they were in their twenties, working together, spending that much time together without their own separate lives - kind of weirded me out. I suspect that their relationship is going to become something more, if I'm reading the subtext right. I am not sure how to feel about that. I have a brother so… eck, I don't know.

The other thing I spent a lot of time thinking about with this book was how almost everyone in Sarne treated Harper and Tolliver badly. It seemed like this small-town, small-minded cliche, and I felt bothered by it. I had a hard time believing that so many people (including the police and city officials) could be so suspicious and rude, and I felt like it gives southerner's a bad name. The whole situation gave me a bad taste, and I was aggravated by the attitudes throughout the book.

Other than those two big issues I had, I did enjoy this book.

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Persuading Annie by Melissa Nathan

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Persuading Annie
Persuading Annie
Melissa Nathan

Persuading Annie is the second Melissa Nathan book based on a Jane Austen novel. I reviewed Pride, Prejudice and Jasmine Field here. This time it's Persuasion which is getting a modern-day retelling.

This book starts off with Annie Markham, an heiress to the Markham fortune, going through a pregnancy scare in college with her boyfriend Jake Mead. Because of some well-meaning but overbearing relatives (her godmother Susannah and Susannah's daughter Cass), Annie is persuaded that Jake isn't the right guy for her, and they break up.

Seven years later, Annie's father, George Markham, CEO of Markham PR is in trouble, and the whole family is on the brink of financial ruin. With Susannah's advice, they hire an expensive consulting firm to save the company – a firm run by Jake Mead, the very same Jake that left Annie years ago. Annie's sisters Katherine and Victoria fawn over their expected savior, but Annie cringes at having to see Jake again. On top of that, she'll be seeing a lot of him, not only in board meetings, because in an effort to cut costs, Jake's people are staying on the first floor of the Markham mansion.

Overall: It's pretty easy to see the parallels between the original Jane Austen novel and this book, but I think this one didn't work as well for me as Nathan's other retelling. The problem I had was I never really fully bought into Annie and Jake, because at the beginning of the novel, when we see them as young and scared, I guess I didn't see much chemistry between them or reasons why they were together. Later when the two reconnected, I was haunted by the earlier impression.  On top of that, Annie's personality was a quiet one. Despite being the main heroine, and having her own life apart from her family (with art and the Samaritians), and some quiet backbone, I thought that she mostly looked good standing next to her obnoxious relatives, especially her selfish sisters. This didn't make me really dislike the book, more like bought down the book from being a really good read. As usual the writing is well done - I had no trouble feeling bored or wanting to put the book down, and the ensemble of other characters also helped the story a lot. I liked the side story of Victoria and Charles – they went from annoying to human over the course of the book. There were a few sweet scenes with Annie and Jake, but as I mentioned – didn't completely work for me. Anyway, I have no trouble imagining this book as a romantic comedy, complete with the typical ending that comes with those movies, and I'm not sure if it's just me that didn't fully believe the romance (it may be). It's a good book to read now, at the start of the holiday season – the timeline for this book ends in Christmas and the New Year.

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