Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr

Posted on December 16, 2008 by janicu

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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Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris

Posted on November 20, 2008 by janicu

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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Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris

Posted on November 15, 2008 by janicu

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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Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky

Posted on October 24, 2008 by janicu

Girl's Guide To Witchcraft (Red Dress Ink)

Mindy Klasky

This is the first book in a series about a librarian who discovers a room full of books on witchcraft, and then learns that she has magical ability.

The Girl's Guide to Witchcraft is from the Red Dress imprint, which is Harlequin's "chick lit" line, so this book has a combination of chick lit along with the urban fantasy/ paranormal elements that you'd expect from the title. Our heroine Jane Madison juggles problems with finding a decent boyfriend (her ex for many years turned out to be a huge jerk who was cheating on her with several people), while trying to figure out her magic. Jane stumbles on her talent when her first spell woke her familiar – a cat statue that turned into a snarky, gay man (Neko). This brings another man to her door – her warder David. Meanwhile, Jane has a crush on an assistant professor named Jason who often researched at her library who she calls her Imaginary Boyfriend.

Overall: It was a pleasant read, but I did find myself putting it down and doing other things before coming back to it later, so it had a sort of sedate pace. I enjoyed it, and I liked Jane so I'll probably read the next book soon. The strength in the writing is really the relationships Jane has with her friends and family, with a couple of magical hijinks Jane gets herself into, her man trouble, and the return of her estranged mother to add interest.

Jane really does seem to have a "good girl" personality – she loves her work at the library and tries to help it with it's financial problems, she has a good relationship with her grandmother who raised her, and she has routine girl's night with her long-time best friend Melissa. She's a typical single woman juggling work and family while also looking for someone to share her life with. The only problem is that Jane isn't always as aware as she thinks she is, especially about relationships with men. Her taste isn't great and I felt that she was rather blind sometimes. I have the feeling that Jane is going to remain oblivious to the fact that David, her warder, is someone who she fits with a lot better than who she goes after for the length of this series. The question as to who Jane will finally get together with (I predict David despite both their denials in this book) will likely not be resolved until the final book, but I'm not sure how many books are in this series.

Excerpt of this book.

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New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Posted on September 19, 2008 by janicu

New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2)

Stephenie Meyer

I have written a haiku:

Liked Twlight but then,
Heard Bella is annoying,
Now that’s all I see.

I read Twilight years ago and remember liking it. I thought it was a sweet high school romance, and I remember being pulled in by wondering what was going to happen next - especially the second half when the action kicked in. I enjoyed it. Since then I think the whole world has read the books, and I haven't gone out of my way to read other people's opinions, but it's kind of hard not to run into them. You know when someone points out something annoying about someone that you never noticed and then after that you do start to notice? I think a whole episode of How I Met Your Mother was centered around this. WELL NOW, the whole time I was reading New Moon I was thinking to myself – wow, Bella really is annoying! Was she like this in Twilight? And Edward really is controlling! I didn't think he was as bad in the first book, was I just completely unaware?

To be honest though, I have an aversion to reading about angsty teenagers. I read Harry Potter until book 5 (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) when Harry suddenly got mood swings and I just couldn't finish it. That's where I stopped the series. Maybe one day I'll pick it up again, but it's not high on my list.

In New Moon, Edward decides for Bella that their relationship is dangerous for her so he removes himself, so almost all of the book is centered around Bella on her own, and we're basically in her head for months. Months and months of completely dramatic depression. The book felt very long despite the simple writing and the larger font. I kept checking to see how much more I had to read. I seen depressed people, but Bella takes the cake – "catatonic" is used to describe her – and I found myself unsympathetic to someone so self indulgent and childish. Maybe it's my own age and experience here that I don't find it very romantic when someone can't pay any attention to the other people in their lives and only center on their own issues. While Edward is gone Bella begins to use Jacob Black as a crutch. He makes her feel better, so while she knows that Jacob likes her romantically, Bella feels that she needs him and when he holds her hand, she tells herself that Jacob knows that she's not interested in him that way, so she lets him. Strangely Jacob still likes her, no idea why – she's depressed half the time and he notices. I couldn't see what she was giving him besides companionship that wasn't male. I felt that Bella was giving herself excuses to do whatever she wants at the expense of others. This is not a nice trait, and this is not just with Jacob. Whenever things did go the way Bella wanted, her reactions made me wonder if she's as grown up as she thinks she is. To top it off, Bella really believes that Edward lost interest and her response is to become a depressed zombie. Not anger at being thrown off like an old plaything. Yay, women's liberation. Speaking of, it ticked me off that Edward decided what was best for her, and keeps at it later. Their relationship is not healthy. I think in book 1, I was seeing this as one of those intense first loves. Edward wanted to protect her yadda yadda, but it wasn't in your face controlling to me, and at the end of the book there was a relatively happy ending and that was it. But, in New Moon, this intense love continues and the seriousness starts to become disturbing. That they think of themselves as having a love like Romeo and Juliet makes me want to slap them. To compare yourselves to star-crossed lovers who killed themselves is ridiculous!!

Speaking of odd relationships - I couldn't remember why Bella called her parents by their first names and had to cook and clean for her dad. There was a point where she was up to her arms in Comet while cleaning the bathroom. Yet her father was supposedly living by himself before her – is he that hopeless? Or does Meyer only know hopeless men who can't cook and clean for themselves? I'm baffled. Also baffled by how even when Bella is grounded she's still allowed to have her boyfriend to come over every day for an hour and a half. In her room. By themselves. My brow furrows.

Overall: Liked book 1 better. This one makes me feel ranty. In the end not too much happens, though we get some information about Jacob's tribe at La Push and we learn a bit more about other vampires in the world. There is a set up for book 3 because there are rising tensions between Jacob's family and Edward's, but besides that there is very little actual action, and even that is only towards the last 100 pages. This was more a book that focused on Bella's inner turmoil, which made me I feel like a lot of what I read could have been condensed. Even with the ease of reading the simple language, teenage angst is tedious reading material. I have Eclipse and Breaking Dawn on my TBR because they were gifts, so I will shoulder on, but not right away. I really hope that I'm less annoyed by the main characters when I do.

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Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs

Posted on August 29, 2008 by janicu

Cry Wolf (Anna and Charles, Book 1)

Patricia Briggs

I've been meaning to review this book and just holding off for no particular reason for a while now. Here goes.

Cry Wolf is the first book in the start of a new urban fantasy series by Patricia Briggs, which is set in the same world as her Mercy Thompson series and runs in parallel with it. Although I say urban fantasy, this series does have a greater focus on romance than the Mercy series, which is something the author points out herself in interviews I've seen online. Fans of Mercy looking into reading this series should expect to see a lot about the relationship developing between Anna and Charles along with any action.

I strongly recommend reading "Alpha and Omega" in the On the Prowl anthology before reading Cry Wolf (reading the Mercy series isn't necessary though). In that short story we learn how our protagonists met – Anna called Bran for help with the Chicago pack, and he sent his enforcer and son, Charles. Charles realizes two things – one is that that Anna is a rare Omega wolf – someone sort of out of the pack structure – who can resist an Alpha's commands and who also soothes Alpha wolves. The other is that his wolf recognizes her as his mate. Cry Wolf takes up the story right after this. Things are still new with them so although they are sort of a pair now, it isn't set in stone. Both feel awkward and unsure of the other, and Cry Wolf tells the story from both their points of view (in the third person) so the reader can understand where each is coming from.

The story starts out with Charles still wounded after Chicago but after returning to Montana, another problem surfaces which needs his attention as his father's trusted right hand. There is evidence of a rogue wolf nearby, which is rare considering that this is the Pack headquarters. Bran has just killed a wolf and friend (his job if he sees madness taking over), and is wary of killing another so soon because of the possible backlash from his pack. So Charles, (and Anna with him) are sent to check it out.

I noticed more worldbuilding in terms of the pack and some of the backstory regarding it in this book. For instance the reader learns a bit more about what happens when two wolves decide to mate and what an Omega wolf can do. We also see some history for certain older wolves, including Bran and Samuel. I don't remember reading about this part of Bran's life from Mercy's series, so I thought that was very interesting and shed more light into why Bran is the Marrok.

My thoughts: I still love the Mercy series more, but it sure doesn't suck to get a book every six months from Briggs as she puts out Anna and Charles books between each Mercy offering. I enjoyed reading this book, and found myself slowly savoring it, not running through it in a day. Well, I was busy getting married too. I like Anna and I like Charles, but I'm not 100% sure about Anna yet. She doesn't seem as strong a character as Mercy. I'm kind of waiting to see about that – Anna seems so fragile and timid sometimes, although she does stand up for herself and does some things that put herself in danger, I am not seeing independence yet. Should be interesting to see how she develops. A good start to a series, looking forward to the rest!

P.S. There is an excerpt of Bone Crossed (book 4 of the Mercy Thompson series) at the end of this book. Ahhh.. salivating.

Other reviews (I see Bs and above pretty much):

The Good, The Bad, and the Unread: One Two

Urban Fantasy

Dear Author

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Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace by MaryJanice Davidson and Anthony Alongi

Posted on March 9, 2008 by janicu

Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace (A Jennifer Scales Novel, Book 1)

MaryJanice Davidson

OK, finished this one a week ago. I liked the first book of the Undead series and this series had good reviews on Amazon so I picked it up through paperbackswap.

It didn't really work for me. The protagonist is a teen girl who discovers that her parents never told her that she's half weredragon. And her race has an ancient feud with were-arachnids and beaststalkers. While I could suspend my disbelief with the paranormal aspects of this story, I had a problem with the characters and their interactions. Jennifer often acted like a brat, lashing out at her parents over everything, for example – her dad not being there because of his job. Jennifer takes out on her mom just because she was there. Okay, teen angst, sure, but more than I have patience for, so when she kept doing it I wasn't enthused. At one point Jennifer said something "insightful" but it backfired, because I thought it was just a backhanded way of telling her mom that she was spineless.

Meanwhile, her parents alternated between saying nothing and just letting Jennifer rant, and snapping back beyond the point I thought an adult should. Her dad got so annoyed, he just dropped Jennifer off at her grandfather's, said something nasty, doesn't let her know what's going on, and leaves. I was thinking: what kind of parenting is this? I also don't understand why they never told her what she was. The "protecting her" excuse seems very flimsy. The communication in this family is disfunctional! Her parents let Jennifer believe what she wanted without setting her straight and then revealed she was very very wrong and should feel bad (is this supposed to teach her something? Becuase I thought it was passive aggressive on her parents part). On top of that some of the other people seemed to act out of character (I couldn't really buy the ending and how forgiving somebody was). And finally; there were people who added nothing to the plot at all - I said to myself - why were they there?

I know. I sound ranty. I think I expected more is why. The writing wasn't bad, the world wasn't bad, but I didn't like the characters. I'm past the young adult audience, but sometimes young adult books transcend age groups. This one is just for teens though, not targeted at practically 30 year old me. So I don't think I'll be looking for the rest of this series. I've been disappointed by quite a few young adult books in the past year – am I maturing? Or maybe I need to stop just trying to read everything willy-nilly and think more about if I'll really want to read books before I get them. TBR is huge anyway. It's at 131..still.

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