Tag Archives: YA

Review of Hanna Peach’s Angelfire

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AngelfireI initially downloaded Hanna Peach‘s Angelfire from the Amazon KDP list, but she later also sent me an updated copy.

Description from Goodreads:
An army of angels walks among us. They have kept us safe and ignorant − so far.

Earthbound for centuries and ruled by the Elders, they have established hidden cities, a society and the Code: obey your Elders, kill all demons, eliminate Rogue-angels, protect the mortals, remain hidden. Their warriors are the ungifted Earthborn angels armed with blades and the “borrowed magics” of distilled angel-blood tattoos.

Alyxandria is a young warrior with a fondness for customized knives and illegal night-races. If only she could overcome the taint of her parents, who abandoned her to become Rogues. When Alyx saves Israel, a gifted mortal with a past, she is forbidden to see him again. But she can’t help herself, drawn to him through their Guardian-bond, an ancient and long-forgotten bond; if he dies, she dies.

Alyx begins to dig into the Elders’ secrets − two thousand years of secrets, which begin with the death of the Archangel Raphael. She is not prepared when she uncovers an Elder’s dark plan. Somewhere on Earth is a key to unlock Hell. Somewhere on Earth are pieces of an amulet that control Lucifer and his army. Somehow Israel is the link and now both sides are after him. Who can Alyx trust when Good and Evil are no longer clear?

The war for Earth begins.

Review:
Angelfire is an interesting addition to the angels versus demons collective. Alyx is a strong-willed heroine who has no problem standing up for herself. Though she does seem to float aimlessly from one chaotic near miss to the next, but maybe that’s actually the hand of destiny at work. Israel is imminently likeable and I adored the pirates.

The writing was admittedly pretty choppy in the beginning, jumping from seemingly random event to random event, giving a lot of detailed technical explanations, and introducing a lot of extraneous characters who played no significant role in the book. As a result it took a long time to figure out what exactly was going on, but it evened out eventually and became a pretty good read. I did find the info-breaks really disruptive though. I would have really preferred a glossary at the end to interruptions in the story.

As much as I enjoyed the story, this is not a stand alone book. It is obviously book one of what is going to be a big series. A lot of ground work is set here, but there is no sense of completion, no satisfying conclusion. I look forward to it’s continuation.

On a possibly irrelevant side note, and I don’t think I’m the first to mention this, the book has a really cool cover with a winged angel on it. But the angels in it don’t actually have wings. The only mention of anyone having wings is attributed to a demon. That irks me. It feels wrong.

on the edge of hunamity

Book Review of S.B. Alexander’s On the Edge of Humanity

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On the Edge of Humanity

I grabbed S.B. Alexander‘s Vampire SEAL novel On the Edge of Humanity from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Sixteen-year-old Jo Mason is lost in a world where traipsing from one foster home to another is normal. She hates her life, she hates school and on most days, she hates living. If it weren’t for her twin brother Sam, she may already be dead. 

Her normal world shifts one hundred and eighty degrees when she discovers her own blood tastes like candy and her eyes change colors like a mood ring. On top of that, her eyesight seems to be failing when she spies an otherworldly man sporting bloodstained canines trying to strangle a cop. The developments are shrouded when Sam goes missing between Anger Management class and History class. 

She’s called to the principal’s office to meet Lieutenant Webb London, a Navy SEAL who is part of a secret team of natural-born vampires. His mission is to protect the twins from an evil cartel, but he’s too late. With Jo now under his protection, his team searches for Sam. 

However, finding and rescuing Sam from the evil cartel may be the easy part. Jo learns she carries a dormant vampire gene that, if activated, could save him. As her normal world fades even more, pushing her closer to the edge of humanity, Jo must decide if her human life is more important than her twin brother. 

With time as her enemy, she struggles to make a life-changing decision for both her and Sam.

Review:
I have to be honest. Even though I can’t really fault the writing of this book I didn’t like it. I lost count of how many aspects of it I just personally didn’t like. That’s not to say others wouldn’t, or that it isn’t actually a good book, but I didn’t like it. Lets start and I’ll explain why.

First off, given the series title, Vampire SEALs, I was expecting at least a little vampire/military badassness. I read the description and knew that wasn’t going to be the main focus, but I expected some. There wasn’t any. This is a YA book about one scared little girl’s attempt come to terms with her situation. Major disappointment right there.

Next, Jo simply didn’t DO anything of substance. She asked a lot of ineffectual questions, whined, and vomited a lot. That’s about it. The realm of action was left entirely to the males. Even Ben, the token human, feeble as his attempts might have been, came out fighting. Jo just stood around and waited to be told what to do. This extended even as far as her own feelings. As an example, when she showed any anger toward her father he responded as such: “I lost both of you once and I don’t want to screw this up again. I have a chance to get to know my daughter and possibly my son. So call me selfish if you want to, but don’t ever, ever disrespect me again.” However, when Sam woke up equally as angry with dear old dad he was allowed to have a fist fight with him. People actually stood back and let them hash it out.

Sam was allowed expression and possession of his own emotions. Like a child, Jo was chastised or physically restrained anytime she expressed anything but compliance. This paternalistic infantilization was further enhanced by the constant act of putting a finger under her chin to force her to look up at someone. I think every male character in the book did it to her at least once. Everyone of them apparently has more control over where she looks than she does. I wanted to vomit myself.

I mentioned ineffectual questions. Jo asked questions constantly, good ones too a lot of times. But was almost never answered. Yea, I get it. She was dealing with a top secret organisation so some things would remain secretive, but I got seriously sick of being denied information. Because, of course, as a reader I was left without the information just as often as Jo was. (As a side note, Sam got all of his answers almost without having to ask and Ben seemed to often have things explained to him.) On the flip side, Jo also constantly asked herself questions along the lines of, ‘How did my life get here?’ There were so many of them I wanted to scream. Add the rhetorical questions, which are of course unanswered, to the ones the SEALs didn’t answer and you probably have half the book right there. It didn’t leave me feeling particularly satisfied.

Then there is the fact that the book started with an attempted rape. I wasn’t yet invested enough in the book to sit comfortably through that. I obviously made it through, but barely. It seemed to be a running theme that Jo attracted creeps and that Sam was constantly having to protect her from them. (Notice the continued helpless theme there?) But Jo somehow managed to hang tenaciously to her “I’m ugly” mantra, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

So to conclude, I disliked the book. I didn’t enjoy it, but those things that irked me so badly are almost all personal preference kind of things. I hate seeing female characters patronised. It almost always rubs me the wrong way. That may not be the case for someone else, so I’ll still give the book three stars.

Review of Ripley Patton’s Ghost Hand

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Ghost HandI recently ‘met’ Ripley Patton through Goodreads, over our mutual appreciation of Mary Holland‘s writing. I’ve had her novel Ghost Hand floating around in Kindleland for a while now (she sent it to me some time prior for review), so I thought I’d give it a read. We obviously have similar taste in books after all.

Description:
Olivia Black just discovered that her ghost hand, a rare birth defect, can do more than light up a room. It can reach into people and pull things out. Things from the darkest depths of the human psyche never meant to exist in this world. 

Olivia can pickpocket the soul. 

But she can’t control her ability, or the strange items it extracts, and the only thing between Olivia and the men bent on taking the power of her hand is a boy she barely knows and doesn’t trust.

Review:
Ghost Hand really shouldn’t be a book I enjoyed as much as I did. I’ve had rotten luck with YA novels lately and I generally dislike first person narratives. (I spend too much time wondering why they’re telling their story in the first place.) But I did like it and I’ll tell you what makes it such a good book in my opinion. It’s the fact that even if geared toward young adults and regularly reminding the reader that the characters are in their teens, Olivia and Marcus behave in a mature, rational manner. Yes, their limited by their adolescence. They can’t always assert their will over their parent’s for example, but that doesn’t mean they have to act like children. And they don’t. I liked that about them.

Their characterisations were interesting too. Olivia seemed to fall somewhere between a Goth and an Emo (which I haven’t seen in too many books), without feeling overly dark. She was witty and sarcastic, both in her dialogue and her narrations. Marcus, was your basic militant hero with a wounded past, but he felt approachable and realistic. There was a little of the classic YA distraction between the two of them. Things like Olivia being overly aware of his biceps while in mortal danger, but it is a YA novel after all. Hormones will do that to you I suppose.

My only real complaints are that what PSS actually is was left a little vague. Is it the medical term for people with appendages like Olivia’s, the actual hand, or some sort of energy residing within? This lack of clarity didn’t effect the pleasure of the story, but I was left scratching my head a little. And I would have liked a little more closure in the Olivia/Sophia situation. As this is the first in a series I know there is time for that to happen, but it felt unfinished in that regard. Speaking of series, it’s worth pointing out that Ghost Hand has a satisfying wrap up before ending. It’s also well written and well edited.