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Crow Flight Soared

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Crow Flight CoverRecently, I read Crow Flight by Susan Cunningham.  The description looked interesting.  “The curious flight patterns of crows lead a teen computer programmer down a path of mystery and romance.”  Just like earlier this year, when The Kiss Quotient had me at math (LOL), Crow Flight had me at computers.  I majored in computer science in college, and have been programming computers since fifth grade, so I immediately had something in common with the protagonist of this book.

I was fortunate enough to have been given an advanced reader copy of Crow Flight in exchange for an honest review.

Gin is a computer genius who’s starting her senior year of high school.  She loves computers, especially computer modeling.  She’s taking a computer modeling class with a world-class teacher this year, and hopes that excelling in the class will help her get into Harvard.  When she is paired up in her computer modeling class with Felix, the cute new boy, their model on the flights of crows uncovers something unexpected and potentially dangerous.

I loved this story.  Not only could I identify with Gin on the whole computer thing, I could also identify with her and her feelings for Felix.  She likes him, but there couldn’t possibly be any way that he’d like her, right?  He’s rich, popular, and other girls like him.
The does he like me or doesn’t he is only part of this wonderful storyline.  Gin has a friend that she’s always hanging out with, and their friendship is strained when boys get in the way.  There’s also the mystery about the crow model itself.  While a computer model on crow flight patterns might not sound interesting, it is when there’s potentially a crime involved.  While I did guess some of what was going on, it didn’t ruin the story for me.

You’ll just have to read this book if you want to find out what happens between Gin and Felix, or what kind of trouble the crow model gets out heroine into, but you won’t be disappointed if you do.

I can’t really think of anything I didn’t like about this book.  Maybe the only downside about Crow Flight is that it’s not getting the hype that it deserves.  I highly recommend this book, and hope that more people find out about it.

Legendary was Just That

By Brookelorren on 3 Comments

Legendary CoverLegendary finally became available to me at the library, and I was so happy to be able to read it.  It is the second book in Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series.  Finale will be out next year.

After Caraval, Tella and Scarlett end up going to another Caraval.  Usually, there is only one a year, but this year, there is another one in only a few more days, held in honor of Empress Elantine’s seventy-fifth birthday.

Legendary is told from Tella’s perspective.  Tella discovers that her mom is still alive.  With the help of her “friend”, she’s trying to find out where her mom is and to save her.  In order to save her mom, she needs to find out who Legend is, which means she has to participate in and win Caraval.

It’s not all that easy.

A few complications occur along the way.  First, Tella is forced to fake an engagement with the Empress’s heir.  Then, the stakes are raised even higher: if she doesn’t win Caraval, she discovers that both she and her mom will die.  And then she falls in love.  To make matters worse, if she saves her own life and that of her mom’s, she might just hurt the boy she loves.  The decisions seem impossible.

We don’t see a lot of Scarlett in this story.  While Caraval focused a lot on the relationship between siblings, Legendary focused on Tella’s feelings about her mother.  Scarlett is away for much of the time, trying to sort out the things going on in her life (I don’t want to give away spoilers here, so I’m not saying what).

Legendary kept me wanting to read from the beginning until the very end.  Like Caraval, Legendary is full of magic and mystery.  I love how we got to see more of Tella’s character.  She’s much more impressive once you get to know her.  I love the decisions that she makes, and I wish the best for her.  I will definitely be reading Finale once it comes out next year.

Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show

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Jack Jetstark's Intergalactic Freak Show coverCome one, come all, and get your freak on for Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show!

That could have been how this story begins.  This book, by Jennifer Lee Rossman, has a lot of fun moments to it.  Although the writing style was fun, it wasn’t my favorite book of the month.  For me, it was a book that started off strong but finished just okay.

Jack Jetstark is a circus performer who travels throughout the universe with a small band of “freaks.”  Set in the far off future, there is a set of conjoined triplets, a girl with angel wings, and a mutant whose ancestors described the destruction of earth.  Like most circus acts, there’s a catch to the whole thing.  They only become these mutant creatures for a short period of time each day, when a song plays over their speakers.

As the story progresses, we discover that his former lover, Diantha, is the person that has been performing these songs for the past several years.  When she stops performing the song, the circus ends.  Oddly enough, all of these people start turning into their freak show selves.

That was the part that I enjoyed most about the book.

I didn’t dislike Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show, but I wasn’t as enchanted about the part where they were trying to sneak onto Diantha’s world in order to save the rest of the “freaks” (who were actually genetic experiments).  There were questions about whether Diantha was good or bad, and I didn’t really find myself caring as much, because we didn’t get to interact with her that much.  Her daughter did have a fairly big part in the book, and I liked her.

The book also had a couple of weak romances in it.  I just didn’t see enough of the love interests together to care all that much.  There was a love triangle in the book as well, but again, I didn’t see enough of the characters interacting to care too much about their relationship.

I did like the message that Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show was trying to convey.  Just because someone is different doesn’t mean that they are lesser people.

Overall, I found this book good, but not amazing.  If you read a lot of science fiction books and need something for your TBR, this book might be for you, but if you’re only going to read ten books this year, I probably wouldn’t make this your highest priority.

Remember Fawkes on the Fifth of November!

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Fawkes coverRemember, remember, the fifth of November!  In 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament with a bunch of gunpowder located underneath the House of Lords.  When he was caught guarding the gunpowder, he ended up becoming associated with treason (and later fighting against the government) forever.  Fawkes is a story based on the Gunpowder Plot, with magic and a bit of romance thrown in.

The story starts with a great line: “I wasn’t ready to turn to stone.”  As a writer, I’ve started to pay attention to the first lines of books, and I love this one.

In the early 17th century, the England of Fawkes is troubled by a plague where people will turn to stone.  Thomas Fawkes has that plague.  His absentee father chooses not to give him his mask (your mask is the source of your color magic).  This effectively kicks him out of school, so he heads off to London to track down his father — and discovers that his father is in a plot to destroy parliament and install a new government.

In the world of Fawkes, the people are divided into two groups: Keepers, who will only listen to one type of color magic, and Igniters, who practice all kinds of color magic.  Both groups blame the other for the plague going on in the city.  It seems a lot like today, where there’s a lot of division (particularly in the United States); it seems like there are two main sides that want to blame the other.

Over the course of this story, Thomas Fawkes needs to figure out where he stands on the whole color magic situation.  It might even mean that he disagrees with his father.  He also reluctantly falls in love with Emma, who has a secret of her own (which I really like).

I agree with some of the other reviews on this book that it starts out slow.  I’m not sure what makes it seem that way.  Perhaps it’s because we’re still getting to know the characters at that point, and Thomas is still indecisive about the direction that he wants his life to head in.  Either way, the story really takes off towards the end.  It makes up for the slowness at the beginning.

There is a lot of actual history in this book, which the history buff in me loves.  Fawkes is a great story in itself though.  If you love both history and magic, I highly recommend it.  It might start slow in the beginning, but the book ends with a bang.  Not exactly literally.  The gunpowder plot was foiled, after all.  But it does end spectacularly.

Blitzball ist Sehr Interressant

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What would happen if Adolf Hitler were cloned?  Blitzball, a new book by Barton Ludwig, attempts to answer that question.  This is the story of Addie, a soccer player for Reichfield High, and his discovery that he was not who he thought he was.  Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Every weekend, Addie plays soccer against North Prep, their rival school.  As our story begins, Addie and his best friend Thomas have debilitated the star player on the other team so he can’t play.  Shaylee, a girl, ends up playing on the team instead.

As a reader, you might notice something strange about their little town.  Reichfield High is nearly all white (with the exception of one Jew).  North Prep is predominantly non-white.  The students at Reichfield High are encouraged to have racist viewpoints.  They refer to themselves as “Aryan” and have a lot of unkind things to say about people of other races.  They also don’t like homosexuals or transgender people.  Reichfield students also learn German.  This is a typical Nazi town, located in a modern neighborhood in a place that looks a lot like the United States.

Addie begins to have feelings for Shaylee, which he fights initially, because she’s not Aryan, and Addie has been taught that you really shouldn’t develop feelings for people that aren’t white.  Together, they discover that Addie was a clone of Adolf Hitler.  Addie doesn’t even know who Hitler is at first; for some reason people that live in Addie’s town don’t have access to the Internet, although Shaylee and her classmates do.  As he discovers the truth about himself, he tries to defy his genetics and upbringing and become his own person.

What I Liked

There were a lot of things that I liked about Blitzball.  Addie was an interesting character.  He behaved a lot like you would expect someone to behave if Adolf Hitler grew up today.  In a way, the story reminds me a lot of Er ist Wieder Da, a really funny movie where Hitler resurrects in a German park and is found by a photographer, who treats the guy like he’s a joke.  Addie grows as a character throughout the book, which is pretty important when you start off a Nazi.  By the end of the book, he becomes an enemy of the Nazis in this story.

The setting of this story was unique.  It reminded me of The Truman Show.  Addie lives in this small “country” where life pretty much revolves around him.  The people at his school are in on it.  Not only was he a genetic clone of Adolf Hitler, he is being raised in similar circumstances to him.

What I Liked Less

While I found Blitzball to be interesting overall, there were parts of this story that I liked less.  The last part of the book seemed to be a little too much, although I liked the epilogue.  We also never find out why someone created a genetic clone of Hitler and went through all the trouble of raising him to be another Hitler.

There are a lot of German words in this book (mostly swear words).  As a German speaker, it didn’t really bother me, but it’s possible that non-German speakers might find that it makes reading the book more difficult.  I’m not a very good judge of this because I am literate in German, but it’s something to be aware of.

Final Notes

I wouldn’t recommend this book to younger YA readers.  There are some situations that aren’t really appropriate for younger readers.  In addition, the characters of Reichfield High have very racist attitudes; someone with less maturity might not realize that these students are supposed to be the bad guys.

Overall, Blitzball was an interesting book that I enjoyed, but I can’t really put it on the same level as some of the more amazing books that I’ve been reading this year.  If you find the premise interesting, I recommend reading it, but it’s not a book that I will rush out and tell everybody that they need this on their TBR right now.

Slasher Girls and Monster Boys… Oh My!

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

slasher girls and monster boys coverThe end of October is upon us.  I’m not into scary stories or spooky things, but I figured that I’d read Slasher Girls & Monster Boys for the season anyway.  I’m not really big into short stories, but thanks to a Top Ten Tuesday topic from earlier this year, I’ve discovered that some of them are pretty cool.

This anthology has stories from several authors that I wasn’t familiar with, as well as some that I’ve heard of but haven’t read yet (like Kendare Blake) and some that I’ve read before (including my favorite author, Marie Lu).  They all have their own styles that they bring to this genre, and some of the stories I liked much better than the others.

Each of the short stories in Slasher Girls & Monster Boys was based on a classic movie or story.  I don’t really think that knowing the original story really gave away anything in the ending.  For example, “In the Forest Dark and Deep” was based on Alice in Wonderland.  Knowing the Alice story didn’t really give away what was going to happen in the story.

I didn’t really find these stories to be scary.  They did seem to have a lot of stories of the supernatural and of revenge, however.  I did like that about these stories.

Some of these stories I was just okay with.  There were a couple with bizarre endings that I would have liked to have been explained more.  I think that it’s normal in an anthology that you won’t like all the stories equally well though.

Here were some of my favorites:

“The Girl Without a Face” ~ Marie Lu.  Well, duh!  I’ve never read anything in the “horror” genre by Marie Lu before, but this story definitely has a lot of Lu-like elements to it.  The voice is familiar, as is the overall message of this story.  Sorry, I can’t give away what that message is, because then I’d pretty much spoil it!

“On the I-5” ~ Kendare Blake.  I bought Three Dark Crowns earlier this year but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.  “On the I-5” is a story of a girl who meets someone at a truck stop on the I-5 (which runs from Washington State to Southern California).  Again, I can’t really tell you much more than that without spoiling the story, but it was pretty good.

“The Birds of Azalea Street” ~ Nova Ren Suma.  I’ve seen the Hitchcock movie The Birds more than once in my lifetime, and although I did have a guess as to what was happening in this one, I thought it was a sweet story about justice.  If sweetness can be a little dark and creepy and involve death.

“In the Forest Dark and Deep” ~ Carrie Ryan.  This was another tale of jerks seeing justice.  I think there’s a theme to my favorite stories here, because all the stories that I’ve pointed out here include some form of justice for somebody.  This story has a tea party/Alice in Wonderland influence to it.

If you’re looking for something to read this year with just a little bit of the creep factor, but you don’t want to commit to a full length novel or two, you might want to check out Slasher Girls & Monster Boys.  Chances are you’ll recognize a few of the authors, and you might find a new author you want to read more of!

I Was Into the Hollow

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Into the Hollow coverLast week, I read Into the Hollow by Lynn Vroman.  I have to thank Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read it.  This is a really sweet story and I enjoyed it a lot.

Freedom (she goes by Free) hasn’t had the easiest life.  After her mother died, her dad took her to Needles, California, where he met another lady and had another child, Little.  Little’s mom had postpartum depression, and they left to go back to Appalachia, where they were originally from.  When our story begins, Free is a doting sister who adores her half-brother.  She works at a grocery store to try to make ends meet.  Her daddy digs up ginseng to try to bring in some extra cash.  It’s a hard life.  They live in a small house without electricity or water, and sometimes there isn’t enough to eat.

Cole is her next door neighbor, but they’ve never spoken.  His life isn’t much to brag about either.  He has a father and brother in prison for dealing drugs.  His sister is a teenage mom and is a former drug addict; her mother still is addicted to drugs.  Cole’s sole goal in life is to graduate from high school and save enough to rent a crappy apartment someday.

Sometimes they see each other when Free drives by in her beat up Buick, but they’ve never spoken.  Still, they seem to be drawn to each other (although Free would never admit that).

When Cole starts working at the grocery store with her, she tries to keep her distance.  He wants to get to know her, but she doesn’t want him to find out her secrets.  Then something happens, and her world is turned upside down.  She turns to Cole for help.  In turn, she seems to help him in a way.

I absolutely loved this story.  Both Cole and Free are responsible teens just trying to survive in a world where the adults in their lives haven’t made it easy for them.  You want them to make it.  And you want them to be together.

The setting of Into the Hollow is fairly unique.  I haven’t read a lot of books set in Appalachia.  As I read the book, I can visualize the forest, and the run-down houses, and the things that make this area what it is.

Into the Hollow was a book that I didn’t want to put down.  I’m not sure how much publicity it’s going to get, but it probably won’t be enough.  It’s one of those books that might end up in a “hidden gems” type of Top Ten Tuesday post, because I enjoyed it so much, but I’m afraid not many people are going to hear about it.  It won’t be released until November 6th, but you can pre-order it now.

Gosnell was Better Than Expected

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GosnellMy husband and I just got back from seeing the Gosnell movie.  It was better than I expected it to be.  We had the theater all to ourselves, which (although bad for movie sales) was kind of nice because we didn’t have to worry about talking when we had a comment to make.

In the interest of full disclosure, I made a contribution to Indigogo in May 2014 to help fund this movie, in exchange for a DVD.

For people who don’t know, Kermit Gosnell ran an abortion clinic in Philadelphia for decades.  He went to trial in 2013 after a raid on his facility, which was meant to find drug trafficking (writing scripts for things like Oxycontin and percocet), discovered a dirty, dangerous facility with the bodies of dead fetuses lying in refrigerators and on the floor.

What I found most interesting about this movie was that it wasn’t necessarily a pro-life or pro-choice movie.  It stuck to the facts of the case and didn’t seem to make a judgement either way.  I would like to think that very few people would be on Mr. Gosnell’s side.  If you’re pro-life, then you wouldn’t really want him practicing, but if you’re pro-choice, then do you really want women going to an unsafe facility which spread STDs and killed at least one patient?

I really liked how they showed the condition of the facility.  This is the first part where I was really glad that my husband and I were the only people in the theater.  There were cats roaming the facility (one agent serving the warrant stepped on cat feces).  Trash was all over the place.  When they opened the fridge, there were biohazard bags in there along with milk cartons.  This movie is not for the squeamish.

Later, the police serve a warrant in Gosnell’s house.  His personal home was really bad as well (minus the cat feces and blood).  When investigators went into his basement, there was a dead cat on the floor covered with bugs.  They had to run out of the place.  This part was like watching a horror movie (perfect for October viewing).  Gosnell isn’t a horror movie, and there is a lot of courtroom stuff that goes on later in the movie, but this part did feel like one.

After watching this movie, I feel a little sorry for the guy, even though he did some evil things.  I think he’s slightly insane.  There were many times when he’d admit to something without realizing the wrongness of it.  One example: he mentioned that the cats in his facility got over 100 dead mice for him.  He expressed concern for his turtles, which he admitted (in court) were endangered species.  As they raided his home, he played the piano like nothing was going on.  He thought he was doing the women in his community a favor because he would take on riskier abortion procedures (even though they were illegal).

I thought Gosnell was well-done and I’m glad I went to go see it.  I think they tried to make the story as true-to-life as possible.  During the credits, they showed actual footage of the filthy clinic, Gosnell playing piano while his home was being raided, the refrigerator, the jars of baby feet that were kept in a cupboard and other actual pictures from the case.  It’s too bad that more people aren’t seeing the movie, and might see it as controversial.  There shouldn’t be anything controversial about wanting people to have access to safe, clean medical facilities.

War Storm was Electrifying

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War Storm CoverI recently finished reading War Storm by Victoria Aveyard.  It was an amazing end to this series.  This is a huge book (672 pages), but I read it in three days because I couldn’t put it down.  Although the ending was quite fitting, I was sad to see the series end.

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

As the book begins, Mare and Cal have decided to part ways.  Despite the fact that they obviously love each other, there are things that they can’t agree upon.  Mare is dedicated to her cause of equality for reds and silvers, while Cal feels that becoming king is the best for both him and his country — even if it requires that he marry Evangeline.

Almost nobody wants Cal and Evangeline to get married.  They don’t want to marry each other.  Mare doesn’t want them to get married.  Although Mare and Cal’s friends tend to be indifferent about the subject, they’re still a little annoyed with having to watch Mare and Cal moon over each other all the time.  The only people that really want them to get married are Cal’s grandmother and Evangeline’s father, as a way to strengthen their alliance.  That seems to be a recurring theme in real history as well though.

War Storm‘s extension of the world of the Red Queen series is outstanding.  As the whole continent is at war now, we’re now dealing with characters from all over the place.  We get to see more of Montfort in this book (whose allowance for same-sex marriage is tempting to Evangeline) as well as characters from the Lakelands.

This book seems to have a theme of what our destiny is, and whether we can make the choice to change things.  Evangeline and Cal don’t seem to think that they have a choice in their futures, or even in the future of their nations.  As the series comes to a close, they begin to realize that maybe they do have a choice after all.

The book’s ending was fitting.  I thought it rang true to how the characters were behaving, especially in this last book.  I finally didn’t mentally yell at the characters about how foolish their choices were.  It may not be the ending that I would have chosen, but I thought it was the right ending.  And I didn’t end up crying or throwing the book in frustration (yes, I’m still talking about Allegiant chapter 50).

I definitely recommend War Storm and the entire Red Queen series if you like fantasy, stories about equality, or just really good books in general.  I was happy to find out how this series ended, yet sad to see it end at the same time.

The Wren Hunt Sings

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The Wren Hunt coverI recently read The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson (thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury YA for an Advanced Review Copy in exchange for an honest review).  It is a magical book in a fairly unique setting that made me want to keep reading.

The Wren Hunt is set in modern-day Ireland.  The story starts out with some excitement: every year after Christmas, some boys chase Wren (our heroine) until they catch her, and demand some sort of trinket for her.  Wren doesn’t find this chase amusing, but for some reason, they continue to bully her year after year.

Soon, we find out that the boys that chase her are part of a group of people that her family has been feuding with for generations.  Like in Romeo and Juliet or The Weight of Feathers, Wren’s family is part of the augurs, and the boys that bully her are the judges.  Both judges and augurs have a sort of druidic magic to them.  Wren’s gift allows her to have visions of the future, although sometimes it is difficult to interpret what they mean.

The augur’s magic appears to be fading, and they blame the judges for it.  Wren is sent to take an internship at a business run by the judges, in order to spy on them.  The judges there don’t know that she’s an augur, and if she is found out, it wouldn’t do well for her.

Over the course of this book, she falls in love, finds out some shocking truths about herself, and has to make difficult decisions about her life.  There’s betrayal, and twists, and things aren’t always exactly as they seem.  It all makes for a great story.

Setting

I love how Ireland was used as the setting for this book.  It makes an excellent backdrop for the druidic magic.  The Wren Hunt transports you to a small village in this country.  The town has this small-town feel of a place that kids grow up in and don’t really escape from.  It’s unlike a lot of fantasy book settings, which made it interesting.

Characters

I really liked the characters and relationships portrayed in this book as well.  Although she lost her parents when she was young, Wren is close to the family members she lives with, as well as her childhood friend.  In this book, Wren is growing apart from her family, and I love how Ms. Watson tackles this.  There are also enemies, a growing but sometimes awkward attraction to a boy, and coworkers.

Overall

Will The Wren Hunt make my list of Top Ten Books I Read in 2018?  No, but I’ve read a lot of books this year, and a lot of good books aren’t going to make it onto the list.  This book is a unique book that kept my attention from the beginning until the end.  I definitely recommend it.

The Wren Hunt won’t be available until November 6th, but you can pre-order it now.