All posts in New Adult

Frequency Resonated with Me

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Frequency CoverI recently read Frequency by Christopher Krovatin.  I absolutely loved it.  It kept me interested from the very first chapter until the very end.  I was fortunate enough to receive a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fiona is an 18 year old girl who lives in a small town and has a secret.  When she was nine years old, she saw her father and a few of the town council members beat a boy half to death.  It changed the way that she felt about her father — and her small town — forever.

When the boy comes back into the town, everybody seems enamored by his music — except Fiona.  It turns out, this boy is enamored with her.  Fiona ends up distancing herself from her friends; in the process, she discovers that her friends — and herself — are in danger.  Can she save her friends?

Frequency is infused with music.  This may be one of the reasons why it struck such a chord with me.  Fiona is always listening to one band or another; I used to be almost a walking encyclopedia of music (if I hadn’t been going into the military after college, my music recording professor would have offered me a job in his recording studio).  We both play instruments.  This book mentions a lot of bands and uses a lot of musical jargon.

While Frequency is primarily a contemporary novel, there is a bit of magic involved in this story.  Music has an ancient magical power here (in reality, doesn’t it actually have some sort of power?).  I love watching those shows where they discuss ancient mysteries like figurines that look like airplanes from ancient Peru or computers from ancient Greece; the ancient power of music in this story reminds me a bit of that.  The magic added to the allure of this story for me.

This story is geared towards young adults, but I would recommend it for the older range of the YA spectrum, probably 15/16+.  Several of Fiona’s friends are into drugs, and there are frequent mentions of sex in this story (although nothing is actually explicitly described on the page).  Most of the characters are 18 or older.  Frequency could also be categorized as NA instead of YA.  It was probably a marketing decision since YA tends to be more popular at the moment.

If you enjoy YA contemporaries and you love music, I highly recommend this book.  I absolutely loved it.

Queen of Shadows Rules

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

Queen of Shadows coverI just finished reading Queen of Shadows, the fourth book in the Throne of Glass series.  Although I loved it, I have to be honest — after several weeks of reading a ton of LONG books (this one is about 650 pages) I want to read something a little shorter for a change.  The next book, Empire of Storms, is almost 700 pages, and I’m not ready to conquer it yet.

Because this is the fourth book in the series, this review may contain spoilers for the first three books.

Celaena (now mostly going by Aelin) returns to Rifthold in this book, and she’s ready to bring justice to the world.  She has a few goals in mind as she comes back into town.  For one thing, she wants to obtain the amulet that her parents gave to her when she was a child.  Arobynn has it, and it also happens to have the third Wyrdkey in it.  Speaking of Arobynn, she wants to have her revenge on him as well.  Then she has a score to settle with the king.  While she’s at it, maybe she’ll bring magic back into the kingdom.

It’s a tall order, but if anybody can do it, the Queen of Shadows can.  This book is full of action and is not without a dull moment.  There are many delicious scenes involving deceit and killing monsters and exacting revenge.  It was a lot of fun.

Rowan comes back in the book, which also brought a lot of amusement to me with it.  I loved how he bickered with Aelin’s cousin Aedion after he returned; the fae can sometimes behave like humanoid animals, and it was quite a bit of fun to watch.

When I read Heir of Fire, I wasn’t that excited about the chapters involving the witches.  I actually enjoyed the chapters with the witches more in this book than in the last one.  Manon shows character growth in Queen of Shadows, and I am beginning to like her some.  I’m looking forward to see how the alliances shake up involving the witches in the next book.

I definitely recommend this book, along with the books before it in this series.

The Titan Strain: A Warning for Our Future?

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

Genetics is a huge topic in the media today. It can potentially contribute to the cure for cancer and other elusive diseases, it might be able to eliminate inherited diseases, and it might even be able to enhance our own abilities. One of my favorite books, Allegiant, deals with what can happen when genetic manipulation can go astray. A new book, which will be out on May 29th, also deals with genetic manipulation gone bad: The Titan Strain. I was fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to receive an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

The Titan Strain is the first book in Virginia Soenksen’s Genetics Chronicles.  It takes place in London in the future — the world has been devastated by World War III, and the politics of London has changed.  It is now ruled by the fascist Libertas party.  The world is laxly policed, and people have started to illegally genetically manipulate themselves to gain superhuman powers to run faster, jump higher, or be stronger.  The people that genetically manipulate themselves are known as “mods”.  Modding often comes with negative side effects; the genetic material that they use comes from animals, and as they manipulate themselves this way, they become more like the animals themselves.

Liane, our heroine, is far stronger and far faster than any of these mods.  Her sole purpose in life is to carry out the wishes of the Agency through her handler, Damian.  She’s not allowed to speak to anybody outside of the Agency, and she has to obey all orders that Damian gives her.  It’s a little creepy, because if, as an example, Damian wants to go to the theater with her, he even tells her what she has to wear.

Over the course of the book, Liane meets Seth, a normal person who is a police officer working on a serial killer case, and she ends up rebelling against Damian.  All of the murder victims are mods, and as she (and Seth) try to figure out what is going on, they end up discovering a new modification that has been developed, known as the Titan Strain.  Over the course of the book, her entire outlook on life changes, and her world will never be the same.

It’s an interesting concept, and the plot is pretty good.  Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I will probably end up reading the next installment of The Genetic Chronicles when it comes out, as I am interested in finding out what happens next.  It’s definitely a book worth checking out.

However —

This is a good book, but it is not a GREAT book.  It’s not a book where I will fall asleep dreaming about the characters, or write hundreds of pages of fanfiction about because I’m in love with these people.  I’m not going to ruminate about this book while I’m at work.  Some of my favorite books do that to me.

There are things that could have made this book better.  Amazon.com describes the world as one where “People frequently go missing in this world, and those who want to survive must close their eyes to the crimes committed on their streets.”  Ooh, dangerous.  For some reason, I really don’t feel the danger of this world, however.  The same holds true for the characters.  They don’t have the life that some of my favorite characters have.  As I thought about this, I thought that maybe it was because it wasn’t written in first person point of view, like some of my favorite authors, like Veronica Roth and Marie Lu, tend to write in; but then I realized that Flame in the Mist, a book that I recently finished and loved, doesn’t have that problem and is written from a third person point of view.

The Titan Strain is currently available for Pre-Order on the Kindle for $4.99, which is a fairly good price, considering that I just pre-ordered Smoke in the Sun (the sequel to Flame in the Mist) for $10.99, and I pre-ordered the hardback edition for Marie Lu’s Wildcard a month ago for $14.63 (although it’s now selling for $17.09). If you’re looking for something interesting to read and are interested in genetics, this is worth checking out.  If you’re looking for the next Divergent, or a book that will invade your dreams and thoughts for months or years, this probably won’t be it.