Tag Archives: YA

throne of glass

Book Review: Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas

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Throne of Glass 1I grabbed a copy of Sarah J. Maas‘ Throne of Glass from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin. Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king’s council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she’ll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted Throne of Glass 2her freedom. 

Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilirating. But she’s bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her… but it’s the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best. 

Then one of the other contestants turns up dead… quickly followed by another. 

Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.

Review:

This book was an all-right YA read, but it didn’t live up to its hype or that cool cover—the one with the dangerous-looking hunting knives, not the sweet sixteen (which actually does match the tone of the book, to my disappointment). Do me a favor, open a new tab, and do a quick image search. Find both copies and have a look. They give totally different impressions of what the book will be like.

I like and wanted a gritty, tough assassin-woman, and the first cover promises that. I’m not all that fond of sensitive, if skilled, teenage girls slowly falling in love. The second cover could easily relay that…Of the two, the second cover is far more appropriate for the book.

And you know what? I wouldn’t have picked it up. Just goes to show the importance of a book’s cover. I COMPLETELY read this book because the version I got my hands on has the first one, and the awesome cover pulled me in. I was fooled.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Celaena is said to have been the best and most notorious assassin in all of the kingdom. However, in the course of the book, we NEVER (not once!) see her act as an assassin. The closest she comes is using that skill (which we’re repeatedly told she has but almost never see) to save someone’s life. At ~85%, there is finally a fight scene, but due to extenuating circumstances, she’s not even in peak condition for it. So, her as an assassin really was an existential thing.

As a result, I found Celaena COMPLETELY unbelievable as an assassin. Because, as I said, we almost never see her act like one (you know, killing anyone or even perpetrating violence of any sort). She was involved in a truly imbecilic competition in which almost all of the challenges were individual events like archery, knife throwing (both at targets), or identifying poisons, and the vast majority of them were actually glossed over. So, even though the competition is referred to as “brutal” in the sequel’s blurb, it was actually really tame. She did a lot of reading and flirting and almost no fighting.

But also because she had such a lovely disposition. She had the personality of a nice girl next door most of the time. Yes, she’d let the occasional threat fly and frequently imagined how she might kill someone, but otherwise, she was pleasant as can be. For someone with as much horrible history as she was supposed to have, she was remarkably well-balanced.

I think it’s unfair to the reader and untenable for an author to separate a character’s history from her current manifestation. Celaena was supposed to have been trained in assassination since she was 8. She was referred to as the ‘Queen of the Underworld.’ This is a woman who was supposed to have endured, seen, and perpetrated enough heinous acts to terrify a nation. That is the premise of her character. But the nice girl she actually was in the story, the one who valued life so much and felt so bad about killing or slavery, CANNOT SUPPORT THAT PAST. It just can’t. And if the very structure on which the story is built is compromised by such a yawning hole, I guarantee the rest will collapse for me.

I’m not saying the book is bad. In fact, it’s remarkably well written, with snappy dialogue and a rare heroine who, in one sense, chose her own freedom over some mythical idea of true love. I really, really respect that and was impressed by it. (I imagine it will be undone in future books, but here I got to be pleased.) It’s just that it sets itself up to be this heavy, ponderous, maybe even violent book when it’s actually pretty light and fluffy. It’s not what I expected to read, based on the cover and blurb, and while a lot of people love it (I didn’t actually hate it), I did feel cheated out of the story I was promised.

Hey, by the way, I notice that until June 18 Goodreads has a contest to win a copy. Go here.

Hope’s Daughter

Book Review of Hope’s Daughter (The Ambrosia Sequence #1), by Melanie Cusick-Jones

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Hope's DaughterAuthor, Melanie Cusick-Jones sent me an ecopy of her book Hope’s Daughter.

Description from Goodreads:
Life should be simple for Cassie.

For the small population of Earth survivors who live on the Space Station Hope everything they do is planned and scheduled, down to the cyclical food menus, their roles in the station, even how many children they have.

Despite rigid controls directing her life, Cassie feels more out of synch than ever and worries she won’t find a place for herself within the station community. Perhaps that’s because she’s hearing things inside her head that can’t possibly be real. Or maybe it’s the regular elopements of her peers, heading off to a romantic future in the Married Quarter of the space station, whilst she’s never even been attracted to a boy – no matter how hard her best friend Ami pushes them at her. Then there are the odd questions her work placement partner Balik keeps raising. His questions are just as troubling for her as his distracting smiles and eyes that seem to see inside her.

As Cassie draws closer to Balik she finds that everything else in her life begins to shift. He tells her things that call into question the system they live within. She can’t believe he is right, but at the same time she finds it hard to deny the sincerity of his ideas. Could there be a connection between Cassie’s problems and Balik’s questions? The truth will drag them both to a terrifying and deadly conclusion beyond anything they could have imagined.

Review:
I really rather enjoyed Hope’s Daughter. It is a romantic YA sci-fi novel. However, the emphasis should be very strongly placed on romantic. For much of the book it is the primary focus. In fact, the plot doesn’t really travel far from the romantic for a good 50% or so of the book. There are just sci-fi hints dropped in amongst the romance. It’s also a very YA romance—lots of angst and self doubt and then lots of complete dedication to that same love. But it’s still enjoyable.

I adored Balik. He made a marvelous male lead. I vacillated on Cassie. Sometimes I loved her and other times I kind of wanted to slap her, mostly during her internal waffling moments. We spend a lot of time in Cassie’s head, listening to her self-doubts. Most of which are unfounded. Together, however, they made a strong dynamic duo that I was more than happy to follow.

The plot itself is an interesting one. However, I had two personal complaints on that front. One, there were a lot of convenient solutions to problems presenting themselves. It would be hard to go into details without spoilers, but answers seemed to come to Cassie instead of the other way around. Two, I had a hard time believing the twist with her ‘father.’ It required an unexplained and otherwise impossible change in someone that just didn’t feel plausible to me. I get what the author was trying to do here in showcasing the power of love, etc. But it rang pretty false for me. Neither issue really detracted too much from my basic enjoyment of the book though.

It had a fairly slow start and there are a number of info-dumps, but it reads well, keeps you interested, and leaves you open to more. All in all, I’d be more than happy to recommend this book to young sci-fi lovers.

Blood Brothers

Book Review of Blood Brothers, by M.F. Soriano

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Blood Brothers

Author, M.F. Soriano sent me a Smashwords coupon for a copy of his first full-length novel, Blood Brothers. I’ve also seen it on the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:

Ostracized by society because of the birthmark that mars his face, Grillis Bloodborn has lived all of his short life in a cottage in the forest, cutting wood and tending pigs. Upon the death of his grandmother, the only family he has ever known, he sets out on a quest to find favor with the Gods for her soul. Grillis’s travels bring him to a city where a young trash-picker named Athemon has just begun to discover the power to punish the men who have made his life a hell. As fate draws the two youths together, they learn that payback comes with a price of its own. Meanwhile, in the depths of the unconquered wilderness a young mystic named Verlvik begins to experience a series of miracles and visions… and the visions lead toward Athemon.

Review:

This book was a pleasure to read. Soriano’s writing has a beautifully lyrical aspect to it. It occasionally borders on ‘purple prose’, but far more often simply engenders powerful and evocative imagery in the reader (or at least this reader). There are passages in this book that I would have loved even if completely disassociated from the strong story they were encompassed in.

As wonderful as the writing is, it was the characters that really drew me in. Grillis, Athemon and Verlvik are each marvellous in their own way. Each possesses an immense personal strength, while also displaying notable weaknesses. They balance each other in a truly meaningful way, even as they themselves are largely unaware of it. They each also managed to retain a certain childlike innocence even as they were forced to make decisions and act as adults.

Though the characters were human, pictsee and caprine there was a definite ‘we’re all the same, really’ theme to the book that could easily be read as an anti-rascism allegory. This is always nice to see when not so heavy-handed as to overshadow the story. It wasn’t here. It was just pleasant background noise.

Though it worked here, I always have a hard time engaging the flow of a story told from multiple POVs, even when consistently contained within their own chapters. I find it stutters a bit in my mind. (I’m not sure how else to describe it.) I also thought that the enemy to be overcome was a little flat. Sure, it was evil incarnate and all, but there was no sense of grey to give it any depth. While I had no trouble understanding why they needed to be defeated, I was given no real understanding of why they did what they did or how they’d become as evil as they were. They were a fairly cliché opponent. Lastly, the book is really quite violent and fairly gory. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but is worth noting, especially since I think it will work well as an upper YA book.

Be that as it may, I still really quite enjoyed the book and will happily pick up more of Soriano’s work in the future.