Ballad

Okay, I'm trying something new. Very short summary or possibly just a trailer (if there's one I like) for books and then a review that's too the point. Writing my own summaries is time consuming and somewhat boring, and I always feel cheap stealing the official blurb. So on to the first review...

Ballad
by the amazingly talented Maggie Stiefvater

(I had this beautiful music--which Maggie wrote herself--playing in my head throughout reading the novel because it fits so well)

Ballad brings James from Lament into the spotlight with Dee as a much smaller, almost background character and a new homicidal faerie who is fascinated with humans. And it was amazing!

Maggie Stiefvater's writing walks the line between beautiful and suddenly humorous. If you liked James before, you will absolutely love his narration and his egotistical thoughts and quick comebacks that have you laughing even in intense scenes. And believe me, there are plenty of intense scenes.

I loved Nuala as a character and though at first I wanted to smack her and get her away (*glowers darkly in Nuala's direction*) from James, she became incredibly easy to feel sympathy for. I wish Paul had been given a slightly more important role, but I'm thinking he--and Sullivan, too--will play a bigger part in the next sequel (...there will be one, right?).

On the whole, a thrilling novel that will keep you up into the late hours of the night!

Ballad will be available at indie and chain bookstores near you on October 1st.

Waiting on Wednesday: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

"Waiting on" Wednesday was created by Jill of Breaking the Spine, and is a way for bloggers to share the upcoming books that they're longing for. This week I'm waiting on...

Shiver
by Maggie Stiefvater

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human...until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

Why I'm waiting:
This won't be just another werewolf book.

Waiting on Wednesday: Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

"Waiting on" Wednesday was created by Jill of Breaking the Spine, and is a way for bloggers to share the upcoming books that they're longing for. This week I'm waiting on...

Ice
by Sarah Beth Durst
Published October 6th, 2009

When Cassie was a little girl, her grandmother told her a fairytale about her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and was swept away to the ends of the earth to become a prisoner of the trolls. Now that Cassie is older, she knows that this was a nice way of saying her mother had died. Cassie lives with her father at an Arctic research station, she is determined to become a scientist, and she has no time for make believe.

Then, on her eighteenth birthday, Cassie comes face to face with a polar bear who speaks to her. He tells her that her mother is alive, imprisoned in the troll castle. And that he can bring her back--if Cassie will agree to be his bride.

That is the beginning of Cassie's own real-life fairytale, one that sends her on an unbelievable journey across the brutal Arctic, through the Canadian boreal forest, and on the back of the North Wind to the land east of the sun and west of the moon. Before it is over, the world she knew will be swept away, and everything she holds dear will be taken from her--until she discovers the true meaning of love and family in the magical realm of Ice.

Why I'm waiting:
Sarah Beth Durst's previous novels, Into the Wild and Out of the Wild, were great fun and very imaginative. The cover and summary of Ice makes it look like it will be an equally as well written book, but aimed at an older audience. And while I've already read two retellings of East of the Sun, West of the Moon (Edith Pattou's East and Jessica Day George's Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow), I think Ice will still be original--for one thing it's set in modern times, while the other two were not.

Lament

The Faerie Queen’s Deception
by Maggie Stiefvater

Deidre is used to puking; she does so before every public performance on her harp. But with the appearance of a mysterious man from her dreams, she finds herself calm, and able to add the most breathtaking variations to the melodies as she plays.
When she begins to find four-leafed clovers everywhere, and Luke Dillon and his friends appear at the strangest times, Dee knows something strange is going on. Presently she will discover that she is a Cloverhand; she has an energy that attracts the fey, whether she wants their company or not.

Lament is the first modern-era dark faerie novel I’ve read (and there have been several; Tithe, Ironside, Valiant, Wondrous Strange, Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange) in which I felt connected with the characters and believed the romances. The story, too, drew me in like none of the others, and for once I was completely sure I understood the plot fully—not that it was overly explained or too simple, only that it was explained well.

Look for the sequel, coming October 1st, 2009: Ballad: The Gathering of Faerie.

Rowan of the Wood

by Christine and Ethan Rose

This book begins in Caledonia in 592 A.D., where a priest and priestess are preparing to marry. For many long years they have waited, remaining chaste until they come fully into their powers. Just as the ceremony is completed, raiders appear, pillaging and killing, and the newly weds are separated while fleeing to safety. Fiana is trapped in the Otherworld, while her beloved Rowan, having used all his power to defeat the invaders, is caught in his wand, helpless.
Years later, in the modern world, Cullen Knight runs away from his unhappy foster home and finds, buried deep in the redwood forest, a knotty piece of wood. Being an expert in fantasy, Cullen knows immediately that it’s a magic wand. But he does not know how drastically it will change his life.
Rowan—captured the same as he was on his wedding day—is still in the wand, and now he shares Cullen’s mind and is completely confused about the modern world. Meanwhile Fiana is on her way to California, but the years of suffering without her true love have been harder for her than they have been for Rowan, and she might not be what Cullen or Rowan is expecting once they find her.

The prologue and first chapter drew me in right away, despite my reservations based on the cover (which I think doesn’t fit with the feel of the novel at all). I really liked the magical plot; it was original and unpredictable, and appropriate for younger readers but deep enough to also capture the minds of adults. I can see how the very basic plot of Rowan of the Wood could be compared to Harry Potter, and a couple of the characters resemble each other slightly, but the magic and characters seem a whole lot more real even this early in the series. I thought that Fiana’s personality was the most developed and interesting, seeing her change from hopeful to hopeless, then to cruel and power-hungry for the love of her lost husband.
I’m looking forward to reading Cullen’s next adventures!

The Devouring

by Simon Holt

“They lurk in the cold and dark. Hungry and wicked, they wait for their one chance to devour the weak on Sorry Night. Then the Vours feast on a banquet of fear. Your fear. They steal your soul but your body remains. No one knows the difference.”

Regina Halloway has been an obsessor of horror movies and gruesome comics since she was a little girl. She’s not afraid of any of them -- rather, they give her a delightful chill and help to keep her thoughts away from her mother, who abandoned their family a year ago. Now Reggie has to be one to take care of her eight-year-old brother, Henry, and she finds it an exhausting burden. So when Reggie finds an old journal called The Devouring at the bookshop where she works, it seems like the perfect thing to immerse herself in. But when Reggie reads part of the book to Henry as a bedtime story, she couldn’t imagine the disaster that would follow. “Vours,” dark things that invade your body and devour your soul, are especially active on the Winter Solstice -- and guess on what night Reggie reads the story aloud? Reggie doesn’t know what to do or who to trust, but she does know one thing: she has to defeat the Vour that takes over her little brother…while at the same time keeping herself from being consumed by her own fear.

This was, essentially, a horror novel. I wasn’t expecting that (I think I’d read the summary a while ago and forgotten what exactly it was about), and while it wouldn’t usually be my kind of book, I enjoyed it a lot. The Devouring was a pretty creepy story (if you have a fear of freakish demonic clowns, beware!) with good characters and enough emotional fear to make it seem realistic; it wasn’t all just undead people and stuff like that. I appreciated that Reggie’s best friend Aaron was a boy who, while he could have been gay, it never said either way, and he didn’t secretly like her, either. It was refreshing. The only thing I found strange was that Reggie was the protagonist, but then there would be some random bits (not even whole chapters, usually) where it seemed almost from Aaron’s or Henry’s points of view. Otherwise, nicely done.

I was very glad to find that this is the first in a series -- so far no title or release date for a book #2, but I’ll definitely keep an eye on Simon Holt and hope that he writes fast. Visit www.thedevouring.com for more info.

Beastly

by Alex Flinn

Kyle Kingsbury is rich, handsome, and friends with the cool people in his exclusive private school. But weird and mysterious Goth classmate Kendra Hilferty sees through his Mr. Popular façade to what he really is; to where he’s mean—anyone who’s not beautiful is ugly, anyone who’s not someone is worthless, to where he’s cruel just for a laugh. To where he’s beastly. Kyle sees her as just another unattractive freak, but there’s more to Kendra than he thinks—like the fact that she’s a witch. On the night if the spring dance, Kyle is especially spiteful and Kendra gives him what he deserves: for the next two years he’ll be in his appropriate form of a beast—unless true love’s kiss breaks the spell.
It doesn’t take long for Kyle to realize he has to change his ways—and fast, or else he might take a turn as an outcast freak...and for the rest of his life.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Beastly, since it was nothing like the author’s previous books, but it didn’t let me down. It’s another easy-to-read, creative novel from “the queen of writing troubled yet multi-dimensional teens,” but with a new twist.
Alex Flinn cleverly weaves events from the original Beauty and the Beast story into the modern era, and gives it real emotions.

The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney

by Suzanne Harper

Sparrow Delaney is perfectly normal—at least on the outside. What she doesn’t want her new high school peers to know is that she lives in a house cluttered with old and bizarre objects with her large family of mediums, and that she herself, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, has been talking to ghosts since she was five. Oh yeah, and she has not one, not two, but three bossy spirit guides who are always meddling with her life.
But Sparrow is hard-pressed to keep her secrets when a new ghost shows up at school and won’t leave her alone, and her cute-but-moody partner, Jack, wants to write about Lily Dale, New York for their history project.
Soon, though, Sparrow begins to think that Jack has his own secrets he’s trying to forget by attending a new school. They might just be more alike than Sparrow first thought.

The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney was a light, enjoyable read that had enough humorous observations, over-the-top characters, and depth to keep the fluff at bay.

Maximum Ride

by James Patterson

No matter how much you read there’s always those books that you’ve heard about from lots of people and that have received rave reviews, but you’ve never read them. The Maximum Ride series was one of those for me. I picked Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment off the shelf on a whim a few weeks ago because the series is supposed to be so good. Well people are right; the story of Max and her Flock is gripping, fast paced, and fun. Even the first paragraph compels you to continue reading:

“Congratulations. The fact that you’re reading this means you’ve taken one giant step closer to surviving till your next birthday. Yes, you, standing there leafing through these pages. Do not put this book down. I’m dead serious—your life could depend on it.”

Fourteen-year-old Max and her friends—Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel—are avian-human hybrids; scientists genetically engineered them to have light bird-like bones, super strength, and wings. Before the book begins, the Flock escaped from the horrible place called “the School,” where they lived in dog crates and were forced to undergo experiments, but now their creators want them back and are hunting them down. Literally, as the scientists command Erasers, a sort of scientifically created werewolf. The sides are constantly changing, and “the bird kids” never know whom they can trust, Max suddenly has a mysterious Voice in her head telling her what to do (how’s saving the world for one?), all of them are looking for their long-lost parents. How do six kids survive against so many odds? Only by using their super powers and sticking together.

After quickly finishing the first novel, I grabbed the next two in the series, Maximum Ride: School’s Out—Forever and Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports. Both are just as high-speed and intense, although I will admit that by the third book all the heart stopping “revelations” (mainly lies made up to scare or test the Flock) became just slightly old. Still, this series is very lively and will entice even a highly reluctant reader in to wanting more. Don’t miss the Flock’s last escapades in The Final Warning: A Maximum Ride Novel, or their adventure when it hits the big screen. Check out Fang’s blog or go to MaximumRide.com for updates.

The Blue Girl

by Charles de Lint

When I first started reading this book I suspected it to be one of those funky-new-girl-meets-the-class-nerd-and-turns-her-into-
a-beauty kind of stories with a fairy or two thrown in. What I found was an interesting, imaginative, if rather weird, book that I could hardly put down!
When Imogene begins her first day at a new school she stands out more than the usual new kid does because of her strange fashion sense, making her a target for the most popular girl and head cheerleader, Valerie Clarke, and her quarterback boyfriend Brent Calder. Imogene is not a wimp, however, and stands up to Brent when he teases her and her new friend Maxine, which causes the school ghost, Adrian, to fall in love with her. When Imogene finally meets Adrian (she’s seeing him out of the corner of her eye for a while), she is not freaked out in the least, and Adrian feels that Imogene is the first true friend he’s had. His other friends (if they can be called that) are the fairies, who also reside in the school. Imogene does not believe Adrian when he tells her about the fairies, so Adrian asks the fairies to come to her in her dreams. The last thing Imogene needs, while trying to balance school, having a boyfriend, and trying to hook her brother Jared up with Maxine, is fairies popping into her dreams. A human girl walking around with fairies and a ghost attracts the attention of the anamithim, the soul-eaters, who almost never give up in their hunt for souls once they’ve latched onto one person. With the help of Maxine, her imaginary childhood friend Pelly (who has come to life again with the fairies), and Adrian, Imogene has to fight for her life against the anamithim. But will she win?
The Blue Girl is an amazing mixture of normality, fantasy, and sci-fi.

The Heir Series

Cinda Williams Chima’s new series grabs your attention from the first page of the prologue and doesn’t let go until the last word. Although the books are about modern day wizards, the story is nothing like Harry Potter.

The Warrior Heir begins in 1870, when a family’s life is ripped apart by wizards, then shifts to a time more than one hundred years later to where Jessamine Longbranch, a wizard and doctor changes the fate of a baby for her own selfish reasons.

Several years later, Jackson Swift wakes up one morning and, in his hurry to get out the door, forgets to take his heart medicine for the first time in sixteen years. Surprisingly, instead of becoming sick, Jack feels better than ever and breezes through his soccer tryouts. He knows something’s up when, after taking his medicine again, he feels anesthetized. Very soon after, his Aunt Linda shows up to take Jack and his friends on a spur-of-the-moment genealogy trip. Along the way they discover more than a few family records; Jack finds a medieval-era sword and learns that he has a destiny: to train as a warrior and fight a duel to the death, but will he fight for the light side or the dark one?

In The Wizard Heir, Seph McCauley is a handsome teenager who leaves a trail of disaster behind him. Unexplained fires, explosions, and other strange occurrences happen wherever he goes. He’s been expelled from four schools in the past three years, and now he’s on his way to a school for troubled boys in Maine. There Seph learns that he is a powerful—although untrained—wizard, but soon he realizes there is a dark side to the magic performed at Havens. Now he must fight to be free against those even more powerful than himself.

Ms. Chima effortlessly blends Jack and Seph’s modern day world with ancient fantasy, making for fast-paced novels with completely engrossing storylines. If you enjoy these two novels, look for The Dragon Heir. I’m sure it will be an amazing finale that includes characters from the first two books and tying the previous stories closer together.

Lady in the Water

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Genre: Fantasy/mystery/thriller
Rated PG-13 for some frightening sequences
Starring: Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard

Cleveland Heep (Giamatti) is the janitor for The Cove, an apartment complex inhabited by quite a few eccentric characters. For the past few nights, Cleveland has been hearing splashing in the pool, but he has never caught anyone, until one night when he sees a young woman. A young woman who is afraid, but one who needs to help the human race before she can leave. Story (Howard) is a narf, a nymph-like creature from the Blue World, an ancient place of magic, and she needs to return there. Led by a fairytale told by old Mrs. Choi, will Cleveland be able to find the members of the guild—the Healer, the Guardian, the Interpreter, and so forth—in time to save Story and the human race? Gradually, each strange apartment dweller—the man who exercises only the right side of his body, the woman who loves animals, the man who seems to live in his bathroom, and more—becomes involved because, as Story says, “every being has a role to play.” But the parts they first fell into might not be the ones they stay with....
Lady in the Water is an amazing blend of aspects anyone can enjoy in a movie—wisdom, humor, sorrow, truth, and suspense—that will keep you enchanted throughout the entire film.