Tag Archives: young adult

Blood Brothers

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

2 Replies

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.

Book Review of Susan Ee’s Angelfall

Leave a reply

Angelfall

I picked up a copy go Susan Ee‘s YA novel, Angelfall from the KDP free list.

Description from Goodreads:
It’s been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels’ stronghold in San Francisco where she’ll risk everything to rescue her sister and he’ll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Review:
I thought that this was a pretty good read. There were some really great parts. Such as the paranoid schizophrenic mother who forced her daughter to take numerous self-defence classes, in case the daughter should ever need to defend herself from HER. That does something moving to my insides. I also liked Penryn and Raffie, as well as Obi and his crew.

I did occasionally wonder where all the normal people were. I mean there had to be a few non-homicidal or non-victimised people out there. There just had to be. But Penryn only seemed to meet up with potential murders or completely broken people. That didn’t feel particularly realistic to me. Sure there’d obviously be some, even a lot, but EVERYONE?

That’s a small quibble though. I only have two real complaints. One is that the whole thing had a bit of a ‘we did this, then I did this, and then this happened’ feel to it. This is often hard to avoid with any first person, present tense narrative, but I REALLY felt it here. What’s more, it felt very much like we were JUST getting an accounting of what Penryn was doing, without feeling like it was also leading up to anything. It felt like it just so happened that this minute to minute accounting of her life occurred in the midst of a post-apocalyptic dystopian future, as opposed to this future angelic war zone and her contributions to it being pivotal to it in any way. Interesting, but unimportant to the whole. I’m not saying that was the case, just that it felt that way.

The second is that the question of WHY is never addressed. It’s a bit like reading a novel set during D-Day without anyone knowing or telling the reader what World War II was about or why June 6th, 1944 was important. This lack of understanding stole a bit of the gravity from the story.

On the whole, however, I read it in a day and enjoyed it. I’d even be interested in picking up the sequel at some point.

Silent Symmetry

Book Review of J.B. Dutton’s Silent Symmetry (The Embodied Trilogy #1)

Leave a reply

Silent SymmetryAuthor, J.B. Dutton sent me an ecopy of his novel Silent Symmetry.

Long Description from Goodreads:
The Embodied glide through the busy streets of New York, uttering barely a sound.

Their eerie beauty comes from their perfect symmetry. Are they flawless humans, the epitome of evolution? Are they a genetically modified super-race? Are they extra-terrestrials? Once prep school student Kari Marriner becomes aware of their existence, she is driven to find the answer and finds herself ensnared in a web that reaches further than she could possibly have imagined.

Kari’s earliest memory is her father’s death in a car crash back in small-town Wisconsin. Now, 12 years later, her mother has been hired by a pseudo-religious organization in Manhattan called the Temple of Truth (a.k.a. the ToT). At Chelsea Prep, Kari develops a crush on classmate Cruz. But when she realizes that Noon, another attractive guy at school, is involved with the ToT, her curiosity gets the better of her.

Kari stumbles upon a secret tunnel leading from her apartment to another in the building, where an ancient book holds images she can scarcely believe, and a cavernous room contains… something inexplicable. As Kari pieces together the incredible evidence, she discovers that the ToT is run by other-worldly beings called The Embodied who influence human behavior and have established a global long-term human breeding program. But why? And what is her role in all this?

Just as she starts wondering whether the love she feels for Cruz is genuine or if her emotions are being controlled by The Embodied, her mother is kidnapped and Kari has to figure out who is human, who is Embodied, and who she can count on to help rescue her mother.

Somewhat spoilerish Review:
Silent Symmetry has an interesting premise and I enjoyed that about it. I also enjoyed Mr. Dutton’s writing. However, there were also quite a few aspects of the book that left me baffled.

First and foremost, the clues that Kari followed in order to recognise that there was a mystery to the Emboldened seemed nonexistent. I get that a lot of it was supposed to be gut instinct, the lizard brain so to speak, on Kari’s part. Though that left very little for the reader to follow and go, ‘oh yea, that is weird, I wonder…’ I had the exact same response to her feelings for both Cruz and Noon. They glanced at each other and BAM! Suddenly there were emotions flying all over the place, abrupt kisses, and even the occasional he “cares about me.” Um…how does she know? Again, that lizard brain is whispering to her, but it left me lost. 

The character descriptions seemed a bit on the light side too. I honestly don’t know what a single one of them was supposed to look like, except that Cruz was of Puerto Rican decent and therefore dark complected. As a result, I had a hard time visualising any of them. 

Next, some of the language made me want to scratch my eyes out. Things like Oh. Em. Gee—Not OMG or Oh My God, but Oh. Em. Gee. Yes, it’s teenager speak, but it’s wrong teenager speak (in my opinion, at least). Then there was the whole Eff thing. Eff or Effing was used instead of Fuck or Fuckin’. Every time this came up I found it jarring. Not just because it seemed out of place, or because it was so frequently used, or even because that’s kind of a linguistic habit one person might have, but not multiple characters, but because other curse words were used without alteration. I counted crazy-ass, ass, shit and shitting. So why not Fuck?

Lastly, since this is the first in a series the book ended without me feeling like I had any real resolution. I kind of followed who the Emboldened were, but not really what they wanted with Kari. Is it the same thing that the Rebels wanted with her? If so, what was all the fighting about? And what of poor Cruz? Is his position secure? What of Emily? The book ended on a cliffhanger, not a seriously precipitous one, but still too early for the reader to feel any real sense of conclusion. This never makes me happy. 

Again, the book is well written. I don’t remember any real editorial issues. The plot seems interesting and the cover is eye catching. So even though I have some complaints I’m not really disparaging the book. It’s worth picking up.