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Book Review of Lyn Lowe’s Burnt

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BurntI won a copy of Lyn Lowe‘s novel, Burnt, from Disincentive Reviews.

Description from Goodreads:
Fate rips Kaie from the life he planned and thrust him into a world of slavery and casual brutality. Faced with the destruction of everything he knew and hiding from a society that turns those born with magic into mindless creatures called Hollows, he’ll have to discover the difference between being a good man and surviving a bad situation. The gods themselves have turned their cruel attention to teaching him the true meaning of sacrifice, in all its horrible forms. He will be forged in fire and death, and everything he loves is up for grabs. For he is the Catalyst… 

“You will see everything you care about ripped away five times. You will lead men into battle five times, three will leave you broken. You will murder five who deserve it and five who do not. You will die five times. You are the phoenix who will father dragons.”

Review:
I won this book some times ago and should probably start off by apologising for taking so very long to read it. Having finished it I can honestly say that it deserves some reader attention. There’s a really good story developing in this book. I imagine as an epic series it will be quite something, but as a stand alone book it seems to be lacking a little something.

It starts out well. The reader meets the main character and his two best friends, there’s a pretty potent prophesy or destiny handed down to him and then almost immediately slavers come to the village and….and everything essentially comes to a screeching halt. Didn’t see that coming? Me either. Right where you think the action is going to really pick up it drops down and dragggggs. I’m not saying that nothing happens, quite a bit happens. If this book was 600+ pages long and written just as it is I would have no complaints. Then this whole slow, adjusting to slavery section would be the middle third instead of the last two thirds of the book. But it’s not, which means that after being tempted with the promise of action and heroics we are then given emotional turmoil and the daily tasks of a slave. Even the introduction of the Hollows mentioned in the description is literally introduced in the last 5 or so pages.

The whole thing also feels very Greek. There is a lot of people sacrificing themselves to save their loved ones only to subsequently destroy them with the same well-intended actions. It was all very heart breaking and tragic. There isn’t a lot of happy time to counter all of the dark moments either.

I found myself wondering at the intended audience. It reads very much like a YA book with one major exception, sex. As a YA book you wouldn’t really expect there to be any and there isn’t any actual sex depicted. The reader just knows that it has occurred. Its use is one of the most interesting aspects of the book. It’s not very often that an author is able to successfully present subtly different uses of sex, sex as a weapon, sex as conciliation, sex as a good-bye. But Lowe manages that here without even seeming to try. I would almost call this a sub-theme of the book. I enjoyed it, but couldn’t really reconcile it with the tone of the rest of the book.

All in all, I found the premise of the book really interesting. I’d like to know what happens as the series progresses, especially with poor Sojun. But once I realised the pace of this one was never going to pick up I had a little trouble maintaining my enthusiasm. The sneak peak of book two did look as if the action was finally on the horizon though.

rainwater

Book Review of Sandra Brown’s Rainwater

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Rainwater

I won a signed copy of Sandra Brown‘s novel Rainwater from a Goodreads Firstreads giveaway.

Description:
The year is 1934. With the country in the stranglehold of drought and economic depression, Ella Barron runs her Texas boardinghouse with an efficiency that ensures her life will be kept in balance. Between chores of cooking and cleaning for her residents, she cares for her ten-year-old son, Solly, a sweet but challenging child whose misunderstood behavior finds Ella on the receiving end of pity, derision, and suspicion. When David Rainwater arrives at the house looking for lodging, he comes recommended by a trusted friend as “a man of impeccable character.” But Ella senses that admitting Mr. Rainwater will bring about unsettling changes.

However, times are hard, and in order to make ends meet, Ella’s house must remain one hundred percent occupied. So Mr. Rainwater moves into her house…and impacts her life in ways Ella could never have foreseen….

Review:
Anyone who reads many of my reviews knows that I read a lot more fantasy/Sci-fi than I do literary fiction, but even I need a little variety every now and then. I won this last year and felt guilt about it still sitting on my shelf, so I decided to finally give it a read. I’m glad to have read it now that I have, even if it is one of those Depression era novels where even the happy endings are heart rending and sad. Having said that I did generally like it. Mostly because Mr. Rainwater was every bit the honourable gentleman of my dreams. He was wonderful. It would be awful hard not to like him. I liked Mrs. Barron, Margaret and the Doctor too, but it was Rainwater who stole the show. Guess that’s why the book’s named after him, huh?

This is the first Sandra Brown novel I’ve read and according to the acknowledges is a departure from her normal stories. She can sure write though. The prose of this book is beautiful and evocative. She manages to relate a lot of emotion in relatively few words. Small movements on the part of the characters relay a lot of meaning. Even though I had a fairly good idea of where the plot was going to end up (one way or another) I still hung on every word until I got there. Would be more than happy to read another of Mrs. Brown’s books.

On a totally unrelated point, I read the hardback edition and it is a beautifully put together book. I love the cover image and the addition of the little bit of fancy gold edging around the title and the deckle edging of the pages.

Review of Bella Forrest’s A Shade of Vampire

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 I Won a signed copy of Bella Forrest‘s A Shade of Vampire from Layers of Thought. I included both the new and old cover just to be awkward. 

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Description from Goodreads:

On the evening of Sofia Claremont’s seventeenth birthday, she is sucked into a nightmare from which she cannot wake.

A quiet evening walk along a beach brings her face to face with a dangerous pale creature that craves much more than her blood. 

She is kidnapped to an island where the sun is eternally forbidden to shine.
An island uncharted by any map and ruled by the most powerful vampire coven on the planet. She wakes here as a slave, a captive in chains.

Sofia’s life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn when she is the one selected out of hundreds of girls to join the harem of Derek Novak, the dark royal Prince.

Despite his addiction to power and obsessive thirst for her blood, Sofia soon realizes that the safest place on the island is within his quarters, and she must do all within her power to win him over if she is to survive even one more night.

Will she succeed? …or is she destined to the same fate that all other girls have met at the hands of the Novaks?

Review (with mild spoilers):

If Edward Cullen had ever been forced to rule a hidden enclave of vampires he would definitely be named Derek Novak. No doubt about it. A Shade of Vampire is a quick little YA read that Twilight fans will love. The problem is that I’m really not a Twilight fan. So in order to give this book a fair chance I tried imagining how I would have reacted to it if I was still an angsty teenage girl. Certainly Sofia is described as a smart, slightly quirky, wall flower. I can relate to that. She’s secretly crushing on her popular best friend, who I THINK she lives with. I guess I can relate to that too. (Though the whole living situation was never very clear. Apparently she was abandoned, but I never could grasp the details. Maybe I’m wrong.) I had to wonder a little bit about the whole high school clique thing though. I mean if he’s popular and she isn’t how are they best friends? I don’t really remember cliques being so accepting of such social transgressions. In the end I decided that I can relate to Sofia’s life prior to the vampires, but not after. Once she is taken to the Blood Shade I could do nothing but shake my head.

Derek wakes from a protracted sleep and INSTANTLY falls for little ‘ol Sofia. What does he fall in love with? Well, I don’t want to give anything away, but it isn’t anything the other girls don’t have too. So, really the question still stands. Sofia, in turn, is either exceptionally susceptible to Stockholm Syndrome or has no sense of self-preservation, because she is feeling Derek in return. She is falling in love with his kindness, which, honestly, feels misplaced. Really there is a whole undercurrent of incongruous innocence in this book. It’s in small things, like the keeping of harems and constant references to playing with their beautiful slaves, or the leers Sofia is subjected to but the complete lack of follow through or sex of any kind. Example: the girls are all kidnapped when they are 17 because they mature and taste sweetest when they turn 18. Now, the whole blood letting/sex connection is pretty blatant, so the message is essentially that the girls will be ravished, but not until they conveniently (and coincidentally) come of legal age. Riiighhht. The novel is so sexually charged that this absence is conspicuous. I realise that as a YA novel it shouldn’t really have any, so maybe the suggestion needed to be pulled back a little. 

I have a guess about where the story will go from here and I’d be willing to read a sequel to see if I’m right or not. With the exception of the constant and annoying one sentence paragraphs (I was always told a minimum of 3 BTW) it reads fairly smoothly. (Though to be fair Derek’s dialogue is a little too smooth for someone who’s been asleep for 400 years. But since I wouldn’t really want to slog through the old English I’m more than happy to let that pass.) It was also interesting to be able to see both sides of Sofia and Derek’s interactions. Sometimes their actions held different meanings for the two of them, but were still meaningful to both. I thought that was very cleverly played. All in all I thought it was OK, but I’m well aware that there will be those who love this sort of story and they will, no doubt, really enjoy it.