Tag Archives: young adult

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.

Book Review of Susan Ee’s Angelfall

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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.