Tag Archives: YA novels

Quick Review: Tell The Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan

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tell the wind and fire If you have read A Tale of Two Cities then you pretty much know the plot of Tell the Wind and Fire.  The title itself is a quote from the Dicken’s classic.  Instead of it taking place in London and Paris during the French Revolution, it takes place in New York City that has been split in two.  Manhattan is home to the elite, light magicians while Brooklyn (and I assume the other boroughs but it’s not made clear) is home to the lowly Dark magicians.  Lucie Manette is a light magician who as born and bred in the dark city but after her mother has gone missing and her father is falsely imprisoned, she stages a stunt that goes viral and gets her father released and them passes to live in the light city.  She falls in love with Ethan Stryker (our Charles Darney stand-in) the nephew of the powerful Mark Stryker and  head of the light council.  One day after a short getaway, Ethan is accused of treason because he has been positively identified as passing information to the Sans Merci, the rebels in the Dark City.  He is about to be executed when Carwyn steps out.  Carwyn doesn’t just look like Ethan in the way that Sydney Carton does to Charles Darney but he is exact copy of Ethan.  He is an doppelganger.  In this world, Light magicians can hire a dark magician to make a doppelganger when they are sick and it will save their lives.  There are many laws against doing it and even more against doppelgangers themselves.  For instance they have to where a hood.  Well, Ethan can’t be executed now because what if it was Carwyn who committed the crime?  This sets in motion the rest of the story.  As I said before, if you know A Tale of Two Cities, you can guess what’s going to happen and more importantly how it’s going to end but that’s not the point.  Sarah Rees Brennan creates a world that is both familiar and not.  Many landmark will bring up memories but presenting a darker light.  On a personal level, Green-Wood Cemetery, which takes the place of the Bastille, is only a few blocks from where I live.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at the same way again.  Lucie, on the surface seems like a timid girl, who wants nothing more then to everything she can to save the people she loves.  That in itself takes a bit of bravery.  As the story progressives and things start to take shape, she starts to stand up more for herself.  Ethan is your typical hero character, the golden boy and Carwyn, the misunderstood bad boy but of course nothing is at seems.  I think for fans of Dicken’s will like it and fans of Brennan will like it too.

Review: Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

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lady midnight** Spoilers Ahead**

The Clave are dicks.  I mean seriously.  In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Clave is the who rules the Shadowhunters, with the Council that makes the decisions.  They are not the most understanding of people. They are definitely judgemental.  For those who read City of Heavenly Fire know that outcome of the Dark War lead to the Shadowhunters basically cutting ties with Fairies because of their roles in Sebastian Morgenstern’s rebellion.  This meant that the two older Blackthorn siblings, Helen and Mark who are half fairy.  Mark was taken by the Wild Hunt at the beginning of the City of Heavenly Fire and Helen was banished to Siberia by the end.  They both had nothing to do with Sebastian and the fairies who fought with him but since they had fairy blood, the Clave was afraid they were side with them so they banished one and abandoned another.  So basically because of the actions of a few, everyone like them are punished.  (Does that sound familiar to anyone?)  Emma’s parents were found dead with strange markings, blamed on  Sebastian’s rebellion even though their deaths resemble nothing that he or his followers did before or after.  Emma is convinced that their death is not related and their killers are still out there but the Clave have shut the door on in.  That leads five years later when Lady Midnight begins.
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First Listen of The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

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the raven king
As you know we at Stacks are super excited for the release of The Raven King, the final book in her The Raven Cycle.  We are about a month away!  Today, Maggie Stiefvater posted clips of the Prologue and Chapter 1, read by actor Will Patton on her Tumblr.  There isn’t any spoilers since both excerpts have already been released online but Will does reads a mean book.  So go have a listen and come back and post what you think will happen to Blue and the Boys.  Can you believe it’s only a month away?!

 

http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/141617391621/maggie-stiefvater-heres-will-patton-reading

 

Review: Half Lost by Sally Green

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Half Lost

I don’t even know where to begin with this review.  After finishing this book I said this on Twitter.

So yeah.  That ending.  I can’t say what it is because that would be an obvious spoiler but damn.  I’m still in tears thinking about it.  This series has been very surprising.  Sally Green did not hold back in the finally. It was chaotic and tense and painful.  I’m heartbroken for so many characters, Nathan and particular.  He is a boy who his whole life has been told he is bad for because of who he’s father is.  He is not and has never been.  Yes, he has done bad things. Some forgivable and some quite questionable but not a bad person.  He has from a young age been tortured and manipulated.  Used for one groups goals for another.  He had few people who truly cared about him and betrayed by one he truly cared about.  Only to find his true love, his soul mate.  The one person who truly believed in him and that is Gabriel.  I spent most of the first half, hoping that Nathan would look up an see Gabriel for who he really is and see that his love wasn’t just one way.  Gabriel questioned Nathan, he challenged him not because he didn’t believe in him but because he did.  He wanted what was best for Nathan and willing to go along with him no matter what.  It was a beautiful love story.  Nathan is not in a good place at the beginning of book but works his way through.  He may have thrown himself with the Alliance because it was best chance for revenge but by then end he understood that the Alliance was the best way to get his freedom.  As long as Soul and his White Witches continue to rule, he would always be watching his back.  So he does what no one else can.  He leads the fight.  War is hard.  There is always a price and the price Nathan paid may have been too much.  I know it was for me.  I felt a little broken like Nathan was by the end.  The ending was nothing buy heartbreaking and tragic but happy endings don’t always happen in real life either.

Half Lost unexpectedly helping me with my Diverse Lives, Diverse Stacks Reading Challenge by being a book with a Queer Character.  In the previous books, Gabriel’s feelings for Nathan were pretty clear but besides a kiss and some hints in Half Wild I didn’t think that Nathan would return Gabriel’s feelings.  I hope he would.  There was no confusion.  No pronouncement, I am Gay or Bi or Queer.  Just this was the person he wanted to be with and that was it.  I do believe that Nathan did love Annalisse but not in love with her.  She was first person outside his Grandma and siblings that treated him like he could be good or was good and he so desperately wanted but that wasn’t love.  There was nothing fake or forced about his relationship with Gabriel it was true.

Review: Riders by Veronica Rossi

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ridersThis is what I know about the Book of Revelations.  At one point Jesus will come back to usher those of us worthy enough to get into heaven, leaving the rest of us behind to deal with the Apocalypse which I think will have the 666 Beast and the Four Horsemen.  So basically I don’t know much but it is intriguing how the End of Time will play out?  Riders is not about the world ending but it does bring together War, Famine, Death and Conquest together to fight against evil.  Is that what the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse supposed to do? Gideon wants to be an Army Ranger when he dies in a training accident but instead of moving on he comes back as War.  With the help of the Seeker, Daryn, Gideon must find the other three riders to stop the Kindred from finding the key that will open different realms and enslaving mankind in their new kingdom.  If that isn’t hard enough, he has to convince the U.S. Government that he’s not crazy and the biggest threat to national security is a gang of demons.

I really liked this book.  I liked the set up. Gideon is being held by the Government in a secret bunker, trying to explain why he was where he was and convince them that he is not the enemy but it’s still out there.  He’s been drugged so the narrative is almost this stream of conscious.  Anything and everything in his head is just coming out but he’s a soldier so he’s still sizing up his situation.  He’s a likable, funny and smart. He knows the situation he is in not good and the only way to get out is to tell his story, size up his surroundings and use his military training to help him out.  We begin from the day he died and goes through discovery who he is now, finding the other horsemen, falling in love with Daryn and getting over the death of his father the year before.  Because it’s from his point of view, Gideon is the most drawn out character but Daryn is a fully fleshed out girl, who may not a trained fighter but can hold her own.  As for the other horsemen, I would love to know more about them.  Bas aka Famine we get to know a little bit more.  We meet him second so we have more time but we don’t really have that luxury with Marcus (Death) and Jode (Conquest) which is a shame.  All for of them are damaged in one way or another and no more then Marcus.  He’s defensive from the beginning and considering how Gideon basically jumps him as a welcome it’s understandable but there is clearly more to his backstory that Rossi hints at but doesn’t really get into.  I can only hope we learn more in the sequel.  Gideon himself is not perfect, he clearly has anger issues. Daryn I want to learn more about.  She’s brave, smart and clever. As a seeker, her life is not her own.  She goes to where she is needed meaning that she avoids attachments which leads to a lonely existence.  That is why I was happy to find out that the sequel, Seeker, is going to be from her point of view.  Speaking of the sequel, I can’t wait for it to come out because there was one pretty big cliffhanger for one the characters that needs to be answered. Not to repeat myself but I really liked this book.  It was different and kinda strange but completely enjoyable.

What do you do about alleged Plagiarism?

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This Tuesday Cassandra Clare is set to release the next book in her Shadowhunters Novels. Her series is highly popular and is now on it’s third series inside this world.  The previous The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices were highly successful.  The former has already inspired a movie (a really bad one) and a TV show (from what I’m told is actually not bad and is doing well in the ratings but I personally couldn’t get past the first 2 episodes). Unfortunately the release of Lady Midnight, the first book in The Dark Artifices series is under a little bit of a cloud.  Sherrilyn Kenyon, the author of the Dark-Hunters series, is suing Clare for copying her ideas.  Kenyon’s series was first published in 1998 and Clare’s in 2007. They both center around an elite set of supernatural warriors that defend the world against demons and other supernatural beings.  Clare has of course denied it by saying she wasn’t influenced by Kenyon’s work.  I have read all of Clare’s books but I haven’t read any of Kenyon’s Dark-Hunters books.  I’ve read the Chronicles of Nick, which I love.  Seriously, I can’t recommend it enough.  The series is a YA spin-off of the Dark-Hunters series and has overlaps with her original series, with characters appearing in both.  Are there similarities? Sure? Probably?  I don’t think the idea of elite warriors who fight demons is new or original.  So I’m not sure what the outcome is going to be but does it matter?  Should I be concerned that Clare might have taken some ideas from Kenyon?  It hasn’t changed my opinions of her books.  They may have similarities but they are both very different in tone and style that they don’t feel the same.  Actually, until this lawsuit I didn’t even occur to me that they were similar.  Not the same way that drew comparisons between Julie Kagawa’s Talon series to Sophie Jordan’s Firelight series.  I wouldn’t say that one copied another but they definitely pulled from the same ideas. I think this gets a little murkier is the fact that Clare has been accused for plagiarism before.  During her fan fiction days, she was accused of adding quotes from TV shows and whole passages from an out-of-print book. There are whole debates about the ethics of fan-fiction.  Some would argue that fan-fiction itself is a form of plagiarism.  Needless to say this doesn’t help Clare’s cause but I don’t think it necessarily proves anything either because again, I think there is some ethical murkiness when it comes to fan-fiction. From what I’ve read, Fifty Shades of Grey is far closer to Twilight then Clare’s The Draco Trilogy was to Harry Potter but I can’t say for certain.  So where does this leave me?  I had already bought my copy of Lady Midnight before this came out so I will read it but my excitement towards it has lessened.  As readers do we have a responsibility here or not? If so, what exactly is it?  I’m kinda I’m curious to hear what others have think about this.