The One Millionth and One Book Review

Graceling

2010-12-08T14:03:00.001-06:00

Graceling

Author: Kristin Cashore

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Release Date: September, 2009

Series: 1 of 3 interconnected books, can serve as stand alone

My list of favorite books of all times is short and very unchangeable. One of the titles – The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton – has lived there since I was thirteen. I’m excited to add Graceling to this exclusive party. Yes, I loved this book that much.

Katsa (not to be mistaken for Katniss) is a Graceling, a child born with a special gift called a Grace which makes her, along with all other gracelings, the property of the king who just so happens to be her uncle. And lucky for him that he virtually owns her because Katsa’s particular skill is killing people. An unbeatable fighter, Katsa makes the perfect thug for carrying out her uncle’s brutal form of domination over his subjects. Katsa hates her life and, in an act of rebellion, establishes a secret council of others determined to help those who need it whether the king approves or not.

While on a mission to rescue the kidnapped father of another kingdom’s king, Katsa encounters Prince Po, a fellow graceling who is nearly her equal in fighting skills. Po has tracked down his kidnapped grandfather and is determined to solve the mystery of who did the deed and why. At first reluctant to become involved, Katsa decides to join Po in his journey for answers. The pair discover a dark force at work that, if not stopped, threatens everyone in their world. Along the way Katsa also learns much about the true nature of her Grace and what that means for her future. And even though she fights it with all she has, Katsa can’t ignore the feelings growing between her and Prince Po, feelings that challenge every preconceived notion she’s held about herself.

Katsa is an immensely compelling character. While she’s one of the deadliest forces in her world, Katsa sees herself as a prisoner who has no choices at all. In order to survive the isolation her grace has caused, she’s shut off any of her softer emotions, and she believes herself as truly incapable of loving anyone in a normal sense. As she comes to care for Po and his young cousin, Bitterblue, her resolve to avoid personal attachments begins to melt. She doesn’t change overnight, but her realization that she’s powerful in many ways and can control her own destiny is like a flower that blooms throughout the book.

Po is a swoon-worthy hero, strong enough to hold his own against Katsa but secure enough in himself to admit that, in the end, she is the better fighter. Rather than be put off by Katsa’s outwardly cold demeanor, he persists in breaking down her walls, and the moment when he confesses his true feelings is incredibly moving. At one point, Po has to make a heartbreaking sacrifice and I found myself tearing up, something I rarely do when reading words on a page. The romance between Katsa and Po left me breathless and is one of my favorites in any genre.

In addition to fantastic characters, the driving plot is well drawn. Graceling contains the most blood-chilling villain I’ve read in ages. I can’t discuss much without giving away key plot points, suffice it to say, as I realized how powerful the villain was and how much of a threat this person posed to both Katsa and Po, indeed, their entire universe, I honestly had no idea how they would ever prevail. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire last half of the book, truly terrified for Katsa and Po.

Graceling is a fantasy set in magical kingdoms full of different peoples and places, but Cashore manages to create this entire other world without losing the story in the minutia of world-building details. We learn enough to evoke a sense of time and place but the focus never wavers from the characters or their journey. While I enjoy fantasy for the creativity it displays, I read books for characters and plot, so I appreciated this fine balance between world building and story.

Most of all, I liked that Katsa is a strong YA heroine who is fully capable of saving herself. She comes to learn that she can allow herself to need others and can trust them to get her back without ever subverting her own power or sacrificing what she believes to be the right thing for her. Unlike in so many other uber-popular YA paranormal titles, Katsa’s love isn’t given easily or just because Po is oh-my-god-so-hot but is hard earned and well worth the effort. And this includes her own sense of self-worth, something she struggles to gain throughout the entire book. In the end, Katsa’s ability to love herself is the ultimate victory and the best happily ever after.

I knew this book was a true keeper the second I finished it and, feeling slightly stunned, opened it back up and began reading it all over again. I simply didn’t want to leave the world of Katsa and Po.

Rating: Up All Night

Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys

2010-07-23T09:14:00.009-06:00

Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys

Author: Kate Brian
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Release Date: Sept. 2006

Series: Stand alone title

Megan Meade has had it with the constant moving around that comes with having professional Army parents. When they announce yet another transfer, this time to South Korea!, Megan finally puts her foot down. She determines to stay in the US to finish her last two years of school. Her parents agree, but with a catch. Megan must live with family friends, a family that includes seven boys.

At first Megan looks at the prospect of having seven instant "brothers" as a chance to learn a little something about the male species. But the McGowan boys don't exactly welcome her with open arms. The youngest brothers, Ian and Caleb, feel free to go through her things, vandalize her clothing, and sabotage her bike. Middle twins Miller and Doug come with their own problems, Miller's in the form of Aspergers Syndrome and Doug's with a giant chip on his shoulder and a determination to hate Megan no matter what she does. Older brothers Evan and Finn show some promise. Evan looks like he's stepped off the pages of an Abercrombie catalog and Megan is immediately smitten. Finn offers a steady friendship that becomes a rock Megan finds herself leaning on more and more. And oldest brother Sean barely exists as part of the family.

Things become even more complicated when Megan becomes embroiled in the ongoing drama between Evan and his long time girlfriend - and Megan's soccer team rival - Hailey. Even though Megan feels like she has a home at her new school with new friends and a promising soccer season ahead, her home life is a constant battle as she tries to be accepted by the McGowan boys.

First, while the premise of this book hooked me almost immediately, it nearly became a wall-banger simply because the set-up of the situation contained the biggest plot hole I've ever encountered. Ostensibly, Megan does not want to move to South Korea when her parents are reassigned because she doesn't want to leave her friends, her crush, and her winning soccer team. This makes perfect sense. However, Megan's parents' solution is to ship her from Texas to Boston, Mass. to live with the McGowans. WTF? She didn't want to leave her current school and the life she had made, yet author Kate Brian has her moving across the country where she is the new girl who has to start all over again anyway.

I get that there is a big difference in moving within the US versus to a completely different country, but this incongruity really frustrated me. As the story unfolded, I understood why Brian need the McGowans to be strangers to Megan - something that would not have been the case had the family lived in Texas. And I honestly don't have a better solution to the problem, one that would keep Megan at her own school yet introduce the McGowans as people she's never met or doesn't have any history with. Believe me, as I writer I struggle with these kind of plot/premise problems all the time. Thankfully, the story was good enough that I forgave this beginning hiccup.

The best part of this book by far is that Brian did not do the expected. From simply knowing the premise - teen girl moves into a house with seven brothers - one might expect a lot of Mary Sueing and romance and perfect people all over the place. One thing the McGowan brothers are not is perfect. Yes, Evan is extremely handsome. But as Megan begins to play a role in his relationship with girlfriend Hailey, Evan turns into a very unlikeable character.

Too, middle brother Doug is presented up front to be belligerent and resentful of Megan's presence. He's angry that he's been made to give up his room to accommodate her, but as the story continues it becomes clear that he has deeper issues. Even when Megan goes out on a limb to help him, Doug continues to be nasty to her. He's usually at the center of the boys' efforts to gang up against Megan and freeze her out.

While brother Finn shows a lot of promise, I wish he'd been given more screen time and chance for us - the readers - to get to know him better. An artist, Finn becomes Megan's only ally and the course of their relationship is pretty clear even if it takes Megan a while to open her eyes. However, the ending of the story leaves things a tiny bit ambiguous.

Brother Miller is given some interesting treatment. As a person with Aspergers, Miller is hard to get to know, has compulsions that must be respected, and is at first wary of Megan because she represents change. But Megan persists in finding a way to befriend Miller. Their interactions are very sweet.

The three other brothers - the two youngest and oldest Sean - are only barely sketched and there mostly to cause problems for Megan. I wish Sean, especially, had been given a more significant role. As it was, the story could have been told just as well with only four brothers rather than seven.

Megan herself was an even character. She tended to be a tad bit too self-sacrificing and put up with a lot of crap from the boys with nary a complaint to anyone other than expressing her own internal frustration. In some ways she was too good to be true, forgiving and understanding where I think most teen girls would have been a lot more resentful and vindictive. Many times in the story I wanted her to lose her cool, especially in the face of what Evan did to her, because she certainly didn't deserve the treatment those boys dished out in spades. However, she proved that she could stand up for herself especially on the soccer field.

As for romance, there is a bit of the forbidden injected into the entire situation especially after John and Regina lay down the law that as long as Megan is living with them, she and the boys must treat each other like brothers and sister. It is not said explicitly but any romantic overtures between Megan and the older boys are strictly verbotten. Of course, knowing there are rules against it doesn't mean that feelings can be ignored, and problems do crop up when those feelings are acted upon.

One issue I had was with the McGowan parents, John and Regina. For the most part, they remained in the background. A little too much, actually. When the younger boys were vandalizing Megan's things and Doug was getting into trouble and smarting off to his mother, the parents showed no effort in discipline. However, when first Evan and Megan and then Finn and Megan come home late at night, they are grounded immediately. Too, Regina and John came off as rather clueless in how their sons were treating Megan. If I had boys who acted the way the McGowan brothers did at times, I'd be horrified.

The story is very good, although to talk about it is to risk revealing too much. There are several twists and turns that I did not see coming. Again I commend Kate Brian for taking a unique approach to the situation rather than the more predictable one. Yes, Megan does develop a crush on one of the brothers, and it does seem for a while like he will return her affections. But just like Megan, the reader is both surprised and frustrated by the events that unfold.

Other than the initial issue I had with the story set-up, this is a great book. I didn't want it to end which is the highest compliment I can give.

Rating: Couldn't Put It Down

Perfect Chemistry

2010-01-25T11:48:00.011-06:00

Perfect Chemistry
Author: Simone Elkeles
Publisher: Walker Books for Young Readers
Release Date: Dec. 2008

Series: Stand-alone title

Brittany Ellis has it all. She's the Queen Bee at her school, popular, captain of the pom pom squad, dating the captain of the football team, great grades, and gorgeous to boot. Everyone thinks her life is perfect because she's worked very hard to create that illusion. In truth, her mother is a perfectionist who harps on Brittany constantly. Her father is a workaholic who avoids family problems by staying away from home as much as possible and hiding in his study when he can't. And Brittany's older sister, Shelley, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy, has grown so frustrated and difficult to manage that her parents are talking of sending her off to live in a home for the disabled. As if her home life didn't suck enough, Brittany has just been assigned the lab partner from hell for her senior chemistry project: gangbanger Alex Fuentes.

Alex has reluctantly followed in his dead father's footsteps, joining the violent Latino Blood gang in order to protect his mother and two younger brothers. He's cultivated the image of a tough, menacing guy who isn't afraid of anything or anyone even as he refuses to engage in the more illicit activities of gang life. He serves as the muscle when it comes time to collect debts owed to the gang's leaders, but Alex stands his ground when it comes to dealing drugs. Still, it kills him to know that his future probably includes dying at a very young age and that there is absolutely no way out of the life he's been born into. The future certainly doesn't include college or a relationship with someone like Brittany Ellis, the Snow Queen of Fairfield High. When he's assigned to be her lab partner, he figures he'll have fun baiting the girl to torment her boyfriend and reinforce his rep as someone who doesn't give a damn. And just to ensure that he keeps his distance, he makes a bet with his friends that he can sleep with Brittany before Thanksgiving.

As the weeks pass, though, both Brittany and Alex realize that what everyone around them believes about them is really nothing more than a carefully constructed facade that hides a person riddled with demons and troubles. Brittany fights her growing attraction to Alex, reminded time and again by both her parents and her friends that Alex is not the type of guy she should associate with. Alex's image of Brittany as a spoiled rich girl begins to crumble when he gets a glimpse of her home life. And the two find that the only person they seem to be able to be themselves around is the other.

But the leader of Alex's gang is pushing for him to get more involved in the gang's drug business. Brittany's parents have finally decided to send Shelley away for good. And both must face the disapproval of their friends as they realize that they've fallen in love.

Perfect Chemistry is a perfect example of how good storytelling can make up for poor writing. While I found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit at the clunky dialogue, forced plot points, and out-of-character observations, I couldn't keep from turning the pages to see what would happen.
Brittany and Alex are appealing characters almost despite Elkeles' portrayal of them. While Brittany comes over as a doormat of the worst order - taking the crap her mother dishes out to her with meek acceptance - at least her love for her sister gives us some motivation as to why she might be trying to be so perfect. Brittany honestly believes that she must make up for the fact that her sister is handicapped, and it never occurs to her until near the end of the book how unfair it is for her parents to both place all of their hopes and expectations on her or to project their frustrations and disappointments from having a handicapped child on their youngest daughter. Brittany spends a good portion of the book worrying about what everyone else will think, and while I imagine this is true for most teens, it got a bit tiresome.

For his part, Alex is a decent hero. He's been forced to join a gang, but still he embraces the image of gangbanger whole-heartedly. His desire to keep his younger brothers out of the gang do much in making him admirable. In the beginning of the book I felt Elkeles really struggled to establish Alex's image in school as a bad-ass that the other kids feared by giving him what I think was supposed to be smart-assed dialogue that came across as simply annoying and made him look stupid. In this case, I imagine a guy like Alex to be someone who says as little as possible. But Elkeles would have him actually raise his hand to make an obnoxious comment that didn't sound so much bad-ass as a bad-ass wannabe more likely to be openly ridiculed than respected.

Another cliché Elkeles relied on to establish Alex's street cred was to have him constantly be accused of things he didn't do. As if his reputation at school was so horrible that everyone immediately looked to him when some misbehaviour was discovered. At one point, Alex is brought before the principal when graffiti is found in the school gym and a can of spray paint is found in Alex's locker. Alex didn't do it, and he's able to prove his innocence in such a way as the principal believes it. However, we never discover who framed him or why. It was as if the entire scene was strictly there to demonstrate what a bad rep Alex had that he gets dumped on for everything.

While I never quite saw Alex as a scary badass - the type of guy I'd cross the street to avoid - nor did Brittany ever quite seem the kind of girl who would rule the school given her lack of backbone, at least the relationship between the two was well drawn. The almost forbidden attraction between them grew naturally and built steadily. Even as they fight their feelings for each other, it's undeniable that they are meant to be together. I think this is what kept me turning pages - to find out when and how they would finally give in to their feelings.

Unfortunately, the ending of the book was both a bit forced and a bit trite. Alex does something for reasons I still don't fully buy, and the conflict it created was resolved far too easily. I could have done without the Epilogue altogether.

One issue I had with the book's setting I can't manage to resolve. Elkeles set this story in a suburb of Chicago, and reading the back cover information about Elkeles, it seems she's actually from Chicago and therefore has intimate knowledge of the city and surrounding burbs. Fictional Fairfield High is supposedly located where huge mansions sit on Lake Michigan beachfront property (which would be the Northern Shore communities) but there is also a large population of economically disadvantage Latino families. The high school social structure is divided into the North Side Rich Kids and the South Side Latino kids. It could be that such a place exists and I just don't know it, but I couldn't imagine a school with such an extreme divide in the Chicagoland area. And I'd bet dollars to donuts that no community that contains people as well-off as Brittany and her friends' families are described to be would ever tolerate the presence of Latino gangs who ride around flashing gang symbols and wearing bandannas to indicate gang membership. They'd make sure their tax dollars were being used to keep the "riffraff" far away from their homes and schools.

In the end, I would say that this book is a very intriguing read that kept me turning pages so therefore can be considered a success. You do have to have an accepting attitude when it comes to the writing itself, which I thought fell short of what it could have been. I give it a qualified recommendation.

Rating: Couldn't Put It Down

Dairy Queen

2009-06-13T14:53:00.007-06:00

Dairy Queen
Author: Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Publisher: Graphia
Release Date: June, 2007

Series: Book 1 of 2 to date

D.J. Schwenk is only 15 years old, but she has the work load of three adults. When her father injures his hip, the work of running a small, family dairy farm falls on D.J. Her older brothers, Win and Bill, have left home to play football in college, and even if they could come back, a falling out with their father makes that impossible. So D.J. must sacrifice the things she enjoys in order to spend her days doing the endless chores necessary to keep the farm operating. She quits the sports teams where she is the star player, and she even flunks her English class when her work keeps her from completing assignments.

Non-communicative and un-complaining, D.J. does what's asked of her without a word of refusal. When the quarterback from rival high school Hawley's football team shows up on the farm with instructions to offer a helping hand in exchange for training by D.J., she wants to refuse. But she agrees, and in between milking and haying and maintaining the farm, she spends her time with Brian Nelson coaching him to be a better player. Over the course of the summer, she realizes that the skills she has that allow her to be a trainer to Brian - hours of playing football with her older brothers - would also allow her to play on her own school's football team. The idea of for once doing something she wants to do and chooses to do for herself rather than all of the things people expect her to do is very appealing.

However, she's sure no one in her life would share this enthusiasm. Not her father, who's inability to show any appreciation for the work that D.J. does or the sacrifices she's made don't indicate a willingness to embrace such an unconventional concept as a girl playing on the football team. Certainly not Brian, who would become her competition and might view their time spent together as her way of spying on him rather than an attempt to make him a better player. Maybe not even the school's coach, who admits that he has no idea if a girl can play on the team, and even if so, not one who has flunked her English class.

Meanwhile, D.J. struggles to understand why the relationship with her long-time best friend, Amber, has grown so tense of late. She despairs at the feelings she's developing for Brian, a guy she's certain would never be interested in a stupid farm girl like herself. And she silently rages against her tight-lipped family that never talks about problems but rather shuts each other out so that they resemble a group of strangers living in the same house.

D.J. is a fascinating character. She's so unlike the normal girly-girl protagonists you find in so many young adult novels aimed at girls. Despite her advanced maturity and the adult-like burdens she carries, she's amazingly lacking in confidence. She truly views herself as nothing more than a hick farmer who will never fit in, so stupid she can't pass English despite knowing that it was not her lack of smarts but her lack of time for schoolwork that caused the problem. The idea of someone like Brian ever finding her in any way interesting is completely foreign to D.J., and when he does show interest, she sees it as fleeting at best.
Too, D.J. is unusual in that she does not speak often. While as readers we are fully aware of what she is thinking and feeling at a given moment, Murdock makes it clear that D.J. is unable to articulate these thoughts and feelings. While we want D.J. to scream and shout against the unfairness of her situation, D.J. herself never views things this way. Nor would it occur to her to say anything about it even if she did. She accepts her burdens stoically. Too, her inability to communicate causes rifts with Brian that are very realistic.

While I appreciated the fact that D.J. was not a whiner, I did grow increasingly frustrated with what I viewed was a certain level of child abuse that I thought her parents were engaging in. The idea that parents would allow working on a farm to interfere with their child's grades - to the point that D.J. flunks English despite many written warnings to her parents - is despicable at the best. They take advantage of D.J. to the degree that I would think a call to Child Welfare wouldn't be out of line. The amount of physical labor alone is horrific.

Too, I found it highly reprehensible that D.J. was expected to give up the things she loved to do - play on the basketball team, run track - in order to run the farm virtually alone. That her parents would not consider other options is unbelievable. Granted, I'm sure in such a situation options are very limited, but it was hard for me to read about D.J.'s experience without fuming at the unfairness of it all.

Murdock does an amazing job conveying D.J.'s feelings in such a way as you can believe D.J. is really describing them. She maintains D.J.'s voice throughout, and I wanted very much to know how things would work out for this girl. At times I wanted her to tell everyone around her that they are all jerks - especially D.J.'s father whom I found very hard to like or sympathize with - and at one point, D.J. does allow all of that low-simmering rage to come to the surface in her own way.

As a character, Brian Nelson is very three-dimensional. He's got both faults and virtues that make him real - he's a spoiled boy quarterback who's aware of it and doesn't necessarily like the fact. His feelings for D.J. remain undefined and uncertain, which is in line for what D.J. perceives to be the case. We're never quite sure how he feels about her, because neither is she.

All in all, I really loved this book. I expected something much lighter and more humorous when in truth, this book is rather dark in the way it portrays life on a family farm. There are no easy answers, and people are portrayed complete with some very serious flaws. Even so, I loved D.J. as a character and am anxious to read the next installment in the series.

Rating: Couldn't Put It Down
Status of Series: Outstanding first installment

Plan B

2009-05-25T16:35:00.007-06:00

Plan B
Author: Jenny O'Connell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/MTV
Release Date: March, 2006

Vanessa Carlisle is a planner, and the next year of her life has been plotted to the last second. Finish senior year at private high school Cabot Academy. Get acceptance into Yale. Spend the summer traveling around Europe with her best friend, Taylor. Then head to Yale, where she'll join her boyfriend, Patrick, who already attends as a freshman. She's dotted every i and crossed every T.

What Vanessa doesn't plan for, however, is learning that she has a half-brother who not only is coming to live with them and attend Cabot High, but just so happens to be a bad-boy TV star. Reed Vaughn has gotten into trouble one time too many, and his mother sends him to Chicago to gain some new perspective. Which means Vanessa must go from only child to sharing the spotlight with a Hollywood star.

From the outset, Vanessa resents Reed. She doesn't want him to come, she knows she isn't going to like him, and she determines she's not going to let his presence change one thing about her life. However, she soon finds that her carefully laid plans start to unravel.

The premise of this book - finding out you have a brother who happens to be a famous TV star - really drew me in. I couldn't wait to see how Vanessa handled the sudden fame, dealing with starstruck friends, and maybe even learning that Reed was just a normal teenage guy deep down.
However, Reed remained pretty much a background character throughout the entire story. We never get to know much about him or how he feels about moving to Chicago or what he thinks about being a star. In fact, Reed comes across as a pretty decent guy, and I felt rather sorry for him when nearly every guy at Cabot treats him like a threat and the only friend he seems to make is the one girl at school who doesn't own a television.

Too, Vanessa's immediate and inexplicable hatred toward Reed is never fully explained or justified. From the minute she learns about Reed, she determines that he will be nothing but a problem for her. She treats him rudely at best and is outright disloyal and cruel at other times. However, I never found Reed's behaviour towards Vanessa to be anything deserving of such hostility. In truth, she often comes across as a spoiled brat, far more of a diva than Reed. I can't say that I ever liked Vanessa or felt sorry for her situation because I never fully understood her problems to begin with.

A big part of the story focused on Vanessa's attempts to continue her relationship with boyfriend Patrick, who was attending Yale as a freshman. Unfortunately, every twist and turn this storyline followed was completely predictable.

Vanessa's journey throughout the story involves her ability to accept that sometimes things don't always go according to plan, and sometimes that opens doors for things to be better. While learning to live with an unexpected sibling requires Vanessa to adapt, I'm not sure that Reed was the catalyst to her changes. Over the course of the story, she experiences troubles with Patrick that had nothing to do with Reed. Ultimately, Vanessa fights against accepting Reed as a part of her life, and I would argue that she only barely concedes to this situation. She doesn't change because she's learned anything from Reed. She changes because she realizes she has no other choice. Ultimately, her Grand Plan is only affected slightly.

One question I had after reading the story was why O'Connell chose to make Reed a famous TV star rather than just a normal guy who comes to live with Vanessa and her parents. Reed's fame added nothing to the story. Granted, he was immediately accepted at Cabot High because of his status. But because this aspect of Reed was never fully explored - the situation never examined from his point of view - and it never truly affected Vanessa in any direct way, I still don't know why O'Connell chose this particular direction. It left me feeling as if a great opportunity was missed.

This is the second book written by O'Connell that involved Chicago as a setting, with Boston playing a strong secondary role. (The first was The Book of Luke.) I know from the information given about O'Connell that she currently lives in Boston, thus I can see her focus on that area. While the Chicago portions of the book are written as if O'Connell has done thorough research, I do wonder if she's ever actually lived here. Something about her sense of setting is a bit forced, as if she's relying on guidebooks rather than her own experience. I could be wrong about this.

O'Connell's saving grace is her ability to tell a story cleanly. Her voice is easy to read, and while her characters frustrated me, they were well written. The dialogue is natural and the narrative well paced. I only wish she'd do better in executing these wonderful premises that are promised on the back cover copy. With her books, I always feel like I've ordered a hot fudge sundae only to get served a fruit yogurt cup instead.

Rating: Held My Attention
Status of Series: This is a stand-alone title

The Book of Luke

2009-05-24T13:48:00.006-06:00

The Book of Luke
Author: Jenny O'Connell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/MTV
Release Date: April, 2007

"Nice Girl" Emily Abbott has really gotten handed a raw deal. Half-way through her senior year in high school, her parents decide to move the family from Chicago back to Boston. She's just received a letter from her first choice college, Brown, telling her she's been deferred. And on the morning that the family is scheduled to leave, her first real boyfriend, Sean, breaks up with her. Too add insult to injury, her father announces at the airport that, in fact, he's not moving with the rest of the family but rather staying behind in Chicago, to tie up some loose ends. Code for separation.

But when Emily arrives back at her old school, she finds that not much has changed. Her old best friends, Lucy and Josie, are there to welcome her back into the fold. And come to find out, they've been experiencing their fair share of boy troubles as well. In fact, Josie was just dumped - via e-mail - by hottest guy on campus, Luke Preston.

Fueled by their frustrations, the girls decide to write a guide-book for guys, a how-to-manual describing all the things boys do that drive girls crazy and how they can change for the better. Once this manual is done, the girls plan to put it in the senior class's time capsule so future generations can benefit from their knowledge.

But for some reason, Emily, Josie and Lucy determine that they need to test out their theories on a real live boy. And who better but the jerk Luke Preston? Emily is drafted into becoming Henry Higgins to Luke's Eliza Doolittle. Ostensibly, she will get Luke to fall in love with her, work her magic in changing him into the greatest boyfriend ever, then break up with him in order to add the humiliation cherry to the top of the cake.

As you can predict, this Grand Plan falls apart when Emily finds out that maybe Luke isn't so bad after all. In fact, he's actually kind of wonderful, and before she knows what's happening, Emily feels stuck between what she wants for herself and what she thinks she's supposed to be doing for the sake of her friends and for all girl-kind.
As a heroine, Emily had a great voice. She's easy to relate too, and despite all of the crap she's handed, she doesn't whine excessively. She constantly describes herself as a "nice girl", although other than spewing bits from her mother's etiquette books (her mother is a professional etiquette expert), I didn't find her any nicer or meaner than any other character.

My problem with this book is that the premise of the guide book is very flimsy. As it was described, this how-to manual the girls are writing is a list of observations of the things that boys do that drive girls crazy and suggestions to the boys on what not to do. When the threesome determine that the book needs to be "tested", I was thoroughly confused. The guide-book is not a how-to manual for girls, on things they can do to change the boys in their lives. So how was Emily supposed to "test" it on Luke?

Indeed, I never did see Emily testing Luke in any way. In fact, several times he did things she didn't like (standing her up for a dance, not calling her when he said he would), and she ignored her initial urges to call him out for acting like a jerk. Other than a handful of suggestions - like telling him to keep an umbrella in his car for rainy days and not sharing her french fries when he acted as if it were only natural that she would - it seemed Emily did most of the changing when she accepted Luke exactly as he was. In fact, the real test Emily seemed to engage in was to see if she could act in such a way as to get Luke to fall in love with her.

Too, the conflict in the book is based on a very weak base. Emily supposedly feels conflicted because 1) she's falling for Luke when she's supposed to be re-training him and 2) Luke used to date Josie and hurt Josie's feelings. If the focus of Emily's distress would have been on the fact that she'd developed real feelings for her best friend's ex-boyfriend, I would have been satisfied. As it stood, I never understood why, once she realized Luke was actually a pretty nice guy that she genuinely liked, Emily never put the brakes on and told her friends that it wasn't working.

So as the story continued, Emily's increasing conflict became more and more frustrating.

Additionally, in the end, Emily is left holding 100% of the blame when things spiral out of control. Despite the fact that the idea for the guidebook as well as the desire for Emily to be the one to test it out on Luke belonged to all three girls equally, everyone turns to Emily when it comes time to pass out blame and anger.

While this book kept me turning the pages, wondering how it would all work out, I did so with a lot of frustrations. Only Emily as a character kept me from not finishing it. I like her well enough even though I thought much of what she did towards the end of the book veered awfully close to Too Stupid Too Live behaviour. Add in a healthy dose of Big Mis that drives the conflict and I can't say that this was my favorite book ever.

Rating: Struggled to Finish
Status of Series: This is a stand-alone title

Adiós to My Old Life

2009-03-05T13:51:00.010-06:00

Adiós to My Old Life
Author: Caridad Ferrer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release Date: July, 2006

Alegría Montero is a seventeen year old Latin-American girl, the daughter of a widowed music professor who finds herself the next potential super pop star, courtesy of a reality show competition to discover the hottest Latin music talent. Oye Mi Canto is the name of the show, and when Ali auditions, she never really expects to get through to the actual contest. But Ali's talent is unmistakable, and before she knows what's happening, she's caught up in the world of makeup artists, stylists, choreographers, fame, fansites, and career-destroying jealousy. Amidst the whirlwind of sudden fame, Ali meets Jaime, a production assistant intern who is interested in more than just her musical talents.

Adiós to My Old Life is a Young Adult title, told from Ali's perspective. It is well written, and the behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it might be like to be a contestant on an American Idol-like TV show is very compelling. Ferrer was extremely wise to use an ethnic culture to draw a parallel to the hugely successful talent show. While it would have been hard for me to buy into Ali's journey had Ferrer placed the story in the real AI world, I certainly could believe Ali's involvement on a smaller-scaled Latin version of such a show.
Ali was a very likable protagonist. She was savvy enough not to be a Pollyanna, yet she retained enough niaveté that I really felt sorry for her as the consequences of being on the show began to become problematic. When Ali becomes victim to the show's other female contender, Fabiana, a fame-whore type who will stop at nothing to win the game, I felt so sorry for her. Yet Ali was quite capable of standing up for herself.

If I have any complaints about Ali it is that she is perhaps a bit too perfect as a character. Through the course of the story, Ali turns out to be the most talented singer, the most talented musician, the most adored by her fans, the most professional performer, the most self-confident (despite being the youngest contestant), the best friend to other contestants, etc. She handles all of the obstacles thrown at her with a maturity that most adults would envy. Even at the end, when a terrible revelation is made, Ali's reaction is much less extreme than I would have expected. I wish that Ali had shown a bit more self-doubt about her abilities. Then again, as she is presented, she had no reason to doubt herself because Ali was the most talented.

Too, Ali tended to lapse into teen-speak clichés that got tiresome after awhile. For example, she referred to songs as "charts" and the large mansion where the contestants lived as a "barn". Her guitar was her "ax". Rather than giving Ali a distinct voice, I just found use of such slang in such a repetitive way to be an affectation.

What did work was the way that Ferrer sprinkled Spanish words into the dialog and narrative. I speak no Spanish yet was able to glean the meaning of the words via the context, and the use of Spanish kept me firmly rooted in the culture of the story. Never for one minute did Ali sacrifice who she was.

I was a bit disappointed at the predictable send-up of the show's fashion coordinator being a gay man. Too, a subplot involving Ali's chaperone Elaine, a long time family friend who harbored hidden feelings for Ali's father, left me kind of cold. The end to this subplot was a foregone conclusion so the whole thing seemed a little pointless.

What wasn't as predictable was how the competition played out. Needless to say, Ferrer didn't let Ali come to a happy ending by the normal route, although I did find things wrapped up a little too neatly as far as Ali's future relationship with Jaime went.

I did enjoy this book. I would recommend it for older teens rather than younger ones as Ali and Jaime do become somewhat physically involved. But anyone who has ever dreamed of becoming a reality TV superstar would appreciate Ali's story.

Rating: Held My Attention
Status of Series: This is a stand-alone title.

Dark of Night

2009-03-02T15:50:00.008-06:00

Dark of Night
Author: Suzanne Brockmann
Publisher: Random House Publishing
Release Date: January, 2009

Series: Troubleshooters
Position in Series: 14 out of 14
Main Characters: Lawrence Decker, Tracy Shapiro, Sophia Ghaffari, Dave Malkoff, James Nash, Tess Bailey
Returning Characters: Jules Cassidy, Robyn Chadwick, Sam and Alyssa Starrett, Ken Karmody
Sequel Bait: Jay Lopez
Bad Guys: a shadowy government black ops group gone bad

This book was quite possibly the most polarizing series entry that I've ever encountered as far as its reception by the fans. There was no middle ground on this one - you loved it or you hated it. But more on that in a minute.

A handful of years ago, Lawrence Decker met Sophia Ghaffari under some horrific circumstances. They had a sexual encounter that left both of them emotionally scarred, and Decker has never forgiven himself for what he did. Sophia, however, has harbored feelings for Decker that she finally realizes he will never be able to return. Ready to move on with her life, she turns her attentions towards her best friend, Dave Malkoff, a man who has been quietly waiting in the wings and will take Sophia in any way he can, even if he feels as if he's her second choice.

Meanwhile, Decker has thrown himself into his latest mission, trying to discover who it is exactly who has been trying to kill fellow Troubleshooters operative James Nash. Decker's investigation throws him together with the group's receptionist, Tracy Shapiro, and no one is more surprised than Decker when sparks start to fly between himself and the fiesty girl.

As his friends work desperately to keep him safe, James Nash grinds his teeth with frustration. Recovering from a near fatal gunshot wound, he's forced to remain behind at the safe house while his fiance, Tess, puts herself in danger in order to clear his name once and for all. Too, he's beginning to realize that if he ever hopes to have a future with Tess, he's going to have to reveal his darkest secrets to her, admit his worst sins, and hope that she'll accept him as he is.

The action in Dark of Night is certainly fast-paced. The story takes place over the span of only a few days, and the characters are always on the move. While this action keeps the story moving, it did create a little bit of confusion for the reader. Several times I had to rethink who was doing what where and why. And because more of the characters found themselves in mortal danger as the story progressed, you began to wonder how the problems would ever be solved to satisfaction.
I mentioned above the kerfuffle this book caused with fans when it came out. Thing is, over the past few books in the series, Brockmann has been dropping hints and clues that the predestined couple would be Decker and Sophia. It is no spoiler to reveal that in this installment, Decker finds romance with Tracy Shapiro and Sophia is perfectly happy to spend the rest of her life with Dave. Many long time fans of this series felt betrayed by this turn of events - so betrayed they are planning to boycott any further books in the series.

I did not harbor any major disappointment with the pairings that resulted in this book. My only issues came from other problems I had with the Tracy/Decker romance.

First of all, Tracy and Decker move from some previous minor flirting in one other book to a full-on love for all time romance in the course of only a few days. I always have a problem with books that throw a man and a woman together and have them fall deeply in love in such a short time. I can buy lust and infatuation and even the sparks of something they both know is going to develop into something big and great and longlasting. But this courtship-on-speed makes me doubtful for the couple's longevity.

Too, for many books we have been shown that Decker's sexual encounter with Sophie has left him wracked with guilt. He believes he took advantage of a desperate woman, and his self-loathing is so great he can't manage to overcome the guilt to see that he made a human mistake. This is why he can't allow himself to reciprocate Sophia's love.

But when Decker manages to open up with Tracy and reveal the real truth behind why he has such baggage over that one episode, the reasons completely blindsided me. This is a bit of a spoiler, so you may want to stop reading. Come to find out, Decker actually got a special little thrill out of the danger inherent in his encounter with Sophia. He's horrified that he was sexually aroused by being dominated (and very nearly killed) by Sophia. In short, he feels like a dirty boy for finding pleasure in a non-traditional sexual situation.

I had a bit of a WTF? reaction to this revelation. The whole reason he can't let himself love Sophia is because she turned him on in a way he felt was wrong? I guess I was expecting something much more debilitating than this bit of Freudian upset.

As for the Sophia/Dave pairing, the main conflict rests on Dave's fears - and rightly so - that Sophia has settled for him since Decker won't have her. She struggles to convince him - and herself - that this is not the case, and over the course of the story she does come to realize that the love she feels for him is as real and pure as anything she'd ever felt for Decker.

Dave as a character completely baffles me. Brockmann describes him as schlubby and very un-CIA stereotypical. In my mind I imagine a balding man with a bit of a gut, not very handsome or physically fit. Yet when Dave is put into a life or death situation, he becomes a Power Ranger extraordinaire. This creates a disconnect for me that I can't quite overcome. It's as if Brockmann is unable to let any of her heroes be anything less than super macho warriors. Perhaps Dave's challenge shouldn't have been so much physical as intellectual. Let him be smart and sexy instead of requiring him to be smart and super powered to be sexy.

The other couple featured heavily in this story is James Nash and Tess Bailey. This is another pairing that doesn't quite work for me. In "their" story (that is, the story when Nash and Tess supposedly had their HEA, which turned out to be not so much "ever after"), Nash was portrayed as a black ops assassin-type who barely walked on this side of good. Tess was a sweet, freckle-faced girl next door. I couldn't quite understand the attraction between them. In this story, my reaction to their continuing saga was lukewarm. I didn't really much care. I'm not sure what this means.

I have one other minor complaint. As much as I love Sam Starrett, he's beginning to turn into Dr. Phil. He offers relationship advice to pretty much every guy he encounters, and I'm wondering when he became such an expert. I liked Sam much better when he wasn't so well adjusted.

Despite these problems, I enjoyed this book. It kept me turning the pages pretty steadily. I won't say it was my favorite in the series, but I certainly did not have the negative reaction that so many others did.

Rating: Held My Attention
Status of Series: Has reached a love it/hate it point, where many readers have grown weary of the same characters and situations, while others who love returning to this world are happy to have more. The writing is still top-notch.

The Boys Next Door

2009-03-02T10:34:00.008-06:00

The Boys Next Door
Author: Jennifer Echols
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release Date: June, 2007

This book is not part of a series.

The story described on the back cover blurb held so much promise. Lori has grown up on the shores of a small lake, next door to three brothers whose family owns the local marina. They spend their summers working at the marina and wakeboarding their way back and forth across the lake. As Lori has grown older, her crush on middle brother Sean has grown proportionately. And through the years, her friendship with youngest brother Adam has become rock solid.

Finally, Lori has reached the critical mass of maturity and bodily development that she thinks she has a chance at making Sean see her as dating potential instead of just a tag along tomboy little sister type. Over the course of the summer's first new weeks, she employs all of the standard femme fatale tricks to gain Sean's attention, most of which involve exposing her newly developed body for all and sundry to admire. Too, she believes for some convoluted reason that pretending to have a thing for Adam will make Sean jealous enough that he'll go for her. All the while, she seems oblivious that the attentions Adam is showing her might mean his feelings run deeper than mere friendship.

At this point I'm sure it doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to figure out that Adam is, in fact, the right boy for her in all ways. Why it takes Lori the course of 300 plus pages is beyond me.
I have to confess right here that I did not finish this book. I gave it the old college try - got through seven whole chapters and skimmed the rest of the book before the poor writing overcame any resolve I had and knocked me out once and for all.

Because the writing is just plain bad. Not only were there numerous type-Os that did not get corrected in the copy editing stage, but sentences were so awkwardly worded they actually reminded me of something a fifteen year old might write.

But I should back up. My first problem with this book came in the form of the narrative. The story is told in the first person via protagonist Lori's viewpoint. Her thoughts are so scattered, I felt like I actually was inside the head of a fifteen year old girl. You might think this is a good thing, that the author really captured the narrator's voice. Not so much. It was simply hard to read.

Unfortunately, this scattershot approach extended to the dialog as well. The conversations took such sharp turns away from the original topic that I wondered if some of the text hadn't been dropped during the printing process. It felt much like the writer had an agenda to accomplish during each instance of character interaction, a number of plot points she had to establish, and whether or not they fit into that particular conversation didn't matter.

Too, I had to wonder about the intelligence of Lori as she's portrayed. At one point, Lori, who has lived next door to the Vader brothers her entire life and has supposedly spent a lot of time at their home, shows up to attend a party at the Vader house. She rings the doorbell, and when no one answers the door, she looks for security cameras. Wouldn't she know if the Vaders used a high tech security system? In fact, if she's so comfortable with this family and she knows they are having a huge party, wouldn't she just knock and walk on in and join the festivities?

Lori also had a habit of mistaking the two male leads of the story - brothers Sean and Adam. More than once Lori thought she was dealing with Sean only to realize it was Adam whom she was caressing or admiring. Even if these two boys looked so similar, I still find it hard to believe that a girl who has known these guys since early childhood wouldn't be able to tell them apart fairly easily.

Another issue I had was the animosity between brothers Sean and Adam. Now, I know brothers fight with each other. But these two boys really seem to hate each other. They verbally slam each other and physically pound out their frustrations on each other's faces. Again, this isn't necessarily a problem, per se, if the tone of this book wasn't that of a light-hearted romantic comedy. We are supposed to find this amusing. If that's the case, then I would have expected at the very least an undercurrent implying that the brothers really do care for each other and that most of their animosity is of the teasing variety. The portrayal didn't fit the tone of the story, much like finding a sardine in the middle of your hot fudge sundae.

Perhaps I'm the wrong audience for this book, given that I'm far from my teen years. However, I would argue that this is not the reason for my dislike of this book. The story itself is passable - what a fabulous premise. Who wouldn't love living next door to two gorgeous hotties and appreciate the fantasy of them falling in love with her? I'm there. But the writing was so awful I couldn't ignore it to focus on anything else. Since I know that there are many, many YA romances out there that do not have this problem, I can't simply chalk it up to an issue I have with the genre.

I wanted to like this book. Heck, I bought it.

Rating: Didn't Finish

Eclipse

2007-11-08T20:36:00.004-06:00

Eclipse
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Release Date: August 7, 2007

Series: the Twilight series
Position in Series: Book 3 of 3 to date
Main Characters: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, Jacob Black
Sequel Bait: Children of the Cullen family: Rosalie, Alice, Emmett, Jasper
Bad Guys: newborn vampires and their mistress, Victoria

You know how you feel when you look forward to something so much you know the exact number of days before it’s going to happen? And how you feel all giddy inside as you settle in for what you expect to be a wonderful experience? And how angry you get when you find out you’ve been roundly duped?

Well, that’s pretty much the story of my experience with Eclipse, the third title in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I adored Twilight. Adored it. I enjoyed New Moon, even if I didn’t love it as much as Twilight. I gave it a pass because, really, how could anything be as good as Twilight? But with this installment, my goodwill has run out.

First, the story. Bella Swan, high school senior, is facing a monumental life change. Not only is she about to graduate, she has grand plans to join her one true love Edward in eternal life as a vampire. For Edward’s part, to say he is conflicted is an understatement. He loves Bella and can’t imagine life without her – so much so that he was ready to kill himself when he believed her dead – but he doesn’t want to be responsible for damning her eternal soul by turning her into one of the undead.

Bella is also struggling with her friendship with Jacob Black, the local Native American-slash-werewolf who became Bella’s lifeline when she sank into a pit of depression after Edward had abandoned her in New Moon. Jacob and Edward hate each other on principle (one being a bloodsucker and the other a mangy animal) and both believes that he is the right guy for Bella. Now that he’s back in town, Edward wants Bella to have nothing to do with Jacob, a fact that he makes loud and clear by some dominating behavior that crosses dangerously over into father-figure territory. Jacob also goes to extremes in trying to convince Bella that she belongs with him.

And because her life isn’t weird enough, Bella is also being stalked by a crazy vampire-ess who’s bent on revenge. Since Edward was responsible for her mate’s death, Victoria has determined that an eye for an eye – or a mate for a mate – is in order and has been working hard on spawning an army of newborn vampires to carry out her orders. Thing is, these newborns don’t really care who they kill, so a lot of innocent bystanders are being killed as Victoria gets closer and closer to Forks, WA. Desperate to save Bella, Edward and Jacob manage to put aside their differences long enough to form a vampire/werewolf coalition.

I had so many problems with this book, I can’t even decide where to begin.
Let’s start with characterization. Or rather, character assassination. Honestly, I kept flipping to the cover of this book to reassure myself that the same author who’d written the amazing Twilight with a heroine I loved and a hero I worshipped had also written Eclipse. Because Bella Swan as I had come to know her was nowhere in sight. In her place was a whiny, self-centered brat. For 640 pages, the only person Bella seemed to care about was…well, Bella.

Bella didn’t want anyone to give her graduation presents and pouted when they did. Bella sulked when Alice Cullen planned a graduation party for her. Bella snuck around behind Edward’s back when she wanted to see Jacob and Edward asked her not to. Bella held Jacob’s hand and broke her boyfriend’s heart just so she could see him, then smacked him and derided him when he got the wrong idea and thought she might be interested in him romantically. Basically, Bella did absolutely nothing heroine-worthy in this entire book. I almost rooted for Victoria’s army of newborns to find Bella all alone in the woods and put an end to my misery.

And where or where did my beautiful Edward go? Apparently, he never really came back from Italy at the end of New Moon and sent his evil twin to Forks. Edward started off as an overprotective, overbearing tyrant when he forbid Bella to have any contact with Jacob. Little did I know that this Edward was actually the more appealing of the two Edwards who appeared in Eclipse. The second Edward was little more than a doormat, stepping aside with a smile as Jacob and Bella explored their “friendship” in ways I don’t imagine many boyfriends would appreciate. He not only forgave Bella far too easily for some serious boyfriend/girlfriend infractions, he downright encouraged her to treat him like crap. What happened to my Edward? The one who was so full of confidence and uber-coolness that I wanted to cry when Twilight came to an end? Edward Cullen has become something worse than an overprotective, over-perfect vampire-without-a-fault. He's become a prudish overprotective, over-perfect vampire-without-a-fault.

I liked Jacob well enough when he was being the shoulder for Bella to cry on in New Moon. Heck, I even felt really sorry for the guy when it became clear he had romantic feelings for Bella, feelings that she would never return given her complete and total love for Edward. But Jacob turned the corner from sweet infatuation to scary stalker. He pushed Bella even after she told him no (although, to his defense, many of Bella’s actions belied her objections, so I can understand some level of confusion on his part). When he used the threat of suicide to manipulate her into kissing him, I lost any remaining respect I had for the guy. He’s a creep.

So, none of the characters I’d come to love in Twilight showed up for Eclipse. Which was just as well, because the story itself was pretty pitiful. In addition to becoming a pouter, Bella has also become a Victim in the purest Damsel In Distress sense. For some reason, everyone wants to kill Bella Swan. The Volturi, vampire royalty, want Bella either dead or vampire-ized because humans aren't supposed to know about their dark world. The newborn vampire army all lust after Bella's particular blood because...well, I never did figure out why on that one. I keep waiting for Meyer to reveal that Bella is something pretty spectacular as far as humans go that make her worthy of such persecution.

And the whole premise of Victoria wanting to kill Bella as revenge on Edward for killing Victoria's mate is a bit to round-about for me. Why wouldn’t she just want to kill Edward? I know, I know. If she kills Bella, Edward would suffer an eternity of torment having lost his true love. Believe me, I think Victoria would have been doing Edward a favor.

Even worse than the Bella-in-peril plot was the love triangle between Edward and Bella and Jacob, which is forced to the point of silliness. We are to believe that Edward and Bella have a love of all time. So introducing Jacob Black as a potential rival for Bella's affections does nothing more than weaken our belief in this Great Love, thus diminishing the story of Twilight a thousandfold. I think Meyer realized this, because never for one minute did Bella mentally waiver in her claims that she loved and wanted Edward most of all. She resented Jacob's attentions, and was quite vocal in her refusals (although I cry foul at Bella and Jacob's hand-holding and clandestine meetings behind Edward's back), yet I always felt that we were supposed to harbor angsty doubt over who Bella might end up with. Not only did this insult me as a reader, it made me think of Jacob as more than a little obtuse when he continued to claim that Bella loved him deep down where she herself didn't even realize it.

What is really sad is that there is plenty of conflict inherent in the situation that Meyers has created that we don't need any of the false melodrama that we get in Eclipse. One of Twilight's most intriguing premises - the fact that Bella's particular blood tempts Edward like no other - offered Meyer an almost unlimited supply of Unresolved Sexual Tension between the couple. The almost perfect Forbidden Fruit. I wanted to watch as Edward continued to struggle with his overwhelming desire to drink Bella's blood while battling his growing physical desires for her as well. They want to, but they just can't because if Edward would lose control...my heart should just ache for these two unfortunate souls. It's Buffy and Angel revisited.

Instead, we get a Bella who is more than ready to jump the Final Intimacy Barrier only to be thwarted not by Edward's fear that he might lose control and drain her dry, but instead by his newly developed Victorian repression. He doesn't only worry that he might hurt her, he fears her immortal soul might be damned if she has The Sex before The Marriage. Too, Edward has developed some kind of Zen-master ability to ignore something so huge in the first book. In fact, Edward's barely controlled lust for Bella's blood has pretty much disappeared.

As for non-Bella-centric stuff, we learn Jasper and Rosalie Cullens' backstories. Why? I'm not sure. Interesting? Moderately.

Eye muscle strain must be a common complaint at the Fork Optometry Clinic because characters are forever engaged in eye-rolling. It's a nitpick, I know, but it's up there with characters constantly calling each other by name in dialogue in that it pulls me out of the story faster than the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven.

What I dismissed off-hand in Twilight because I was so consumed with the initial love story I couldn't ignore in this book. Vampires in Meyer's universe are granite-hard and ice cold. Fair enough for a vampire, until it comes time for some serious physical contact. Time and again Bella describes Edward's cold touch and his literally rock-hard body. She goes so far as to imagine that snuggling with Edward must be a lot like snuggling with Michelangelo's David. Um, okay. Not very appealing, actually. Sure, I can appreciate a cut physique with rock hard muscles. But I need warmth and give in my man. Cuddling up with a slab of frozen granite just sounds uncomfortable, not sexy.

I think one final, fundamental problem sums up my frustration with Eclipse: Bella wants to commit her life for all eternity to Edward by becoming a vampire. But – get this – she doesn’t want to marry him. Her rationale: marrying Edward would make her one of those lame girls who gets married right out high school and has no life. Excuse me? She’s about to become immortal, and she cares what people who will be dead in seven or eight decades think about her? This attitude sums up Bella’s immaturity throughout this book. She’s really all about Bella.

I suspect that Meyer's decision to maintain Bella as the Point of View character for the entire series really locked her in to the detriment of the story. Not only did Bella lose her appeal as a character by the end of New Moon, Meyer had to stoop to some pretty iffy techniques to infodump both backstory and various character emotions. At one point, Meyer handles an intense conversation between romantic rivals Edward and Jacob by having a half-sleeping Bella "dream" their conversation. She doesn't participate or even react for several pages of dialog entirely about her, yet she's lucid enough that we get to hear every word. Perhaps Eclipse would have benefited from a fresh perspective.

After all of this ranting, I do have to give Meyer her proper due in that despite my complete frustration with Eclipse, I did finish the book. I did want to know what happened next. And some sick part of me does want to read the next book. I equate it with rubbernecking past a horrible car crash. You know you should look the other way, but you just can’t help sneaking a peek. Mostly I’m disappointed that the stink that is Eclipse will linger so strongly as to ruin Twilight for me forever, and I resent the hell out of that.

Eclipse serves as a perfect example of what happens when a writer falls in love with her characters and doesn't want to say good-bye to them. Unfortunately, loving them doesn't justify their continued existence. I can see no reason whatsoever for this book to exist. It moved Bella and Edward's story ahead only minimally. They ended up only millimeters from where they began. Because of this, the entire work comes off as self-indulgent.

Yes, I loved the characters of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan from the book Twilight. And yes, I looked forward to spending more time with them as their love story played out. I wanted to find out how they overcame his vampire-ness and her human-ness. I wanted to watch Edward struggle with his temptations. I wanted to take that train ride to Happily Ever After with them. But I didn't want to spend 600 plus pages of what amounted to navel gazing and high melodrama. This book actually damaged my initial love for these characters because they've become annoying.

I get the feeling that Meyer and her publisher figured if three books would be good, four would be even better, but there simply isn’t story enough to fill more than two. So we get New Moon and, sadly, Eclipse. I can only hope that Breaking Dawn washes the bitter taste from my mouth.

Rating: struggled to finish
Status of Series: Critical condition. Worse, if the final book doesn’t offer some major redemption, the other titles will have been irrevocably tainted.

Hail Caesar

2007-06-03T20:16:00.004-06:00

Hail Caesar
Author: Thu-Huong Ha
Publisher: Scholastic/Push
Release Date: February 1, 2007

John "Caesar" Miller is the BMOC at his high school. His prowess in bed is legendary, and he's so irresistible, he can count close to a hundred girls who would know first hand exactly how good he is. He's good-looking, a basketball star, and well-enough off to drive a black Mercedes convertible, a gift from his widowed father for Caesar's seventeenth birthday. Guys - friends and enemies alike - all want to be him. In short, Caesar lives a charmed life.

And best of all, as far as he's concerned, Caesar truly doesn't care. Not about anyone or anything. Well, perhaps he does care about his two younger sisters. And he certainly cares what people think and say about him if it might damage his golden image. But as far as his future or real, meaningful relationships, Caesar can't be bothered.

Until he meets new girl in school, Eva. For some reason, Eva is the first person - male or female - who doesn't immediately fall for the notorious Caesar charm. He's at first angry, then intrigued, and then obsessed by this girl who refuses to fall in line with Caesar's view of himself. But as he gets to know Eva, Caesar is forced to see how very shallow his life actually is. All of the sudden, his ability to not care is stripped away, and Caesar's entire world is shifted out from beneath his feet.

Hail Caesar is a young adult novel told through Caesar's point of view. I had a love/hate relationship with this book that makes it hard to grade.
First and foremost, the protagonist of Hail Caesar is actually not a very likable person. He treats everyone around him like shit. Girls are no more than warm bodies to be conquered and left with as little fuss and muss as possible. He lives only to party, is completely narcissistic and ego-maniacal, and is concerned only with how things can service his needs. His aloofness and hyper-confidence are the very things that have put him on top of the social heap, but he's the kind of guy who seems as empty of genuine feeling as he would have to be to treat people the way he does. He's a first class jerk, and he must be as good-looking as he believes himself to be to actually get as many girls as he does. This guy is pretty much loathsome.

So perhaps the most surprising thing about this book is that I actually liked Caesar. Thu-Huong Ha writes him in such a way as to make me care about this particular asshole. I can't even put my finger on why. His treatment of his two younger sisters, especially his concern and protectiveness for thirteen year old Kelly as she enters his self-destructive world of drinking and drugging and sex, shows us that Caesar at least has the capacity to care if only he's given the right motivation to do so. And learning that his mother died when he was twelve gives us a pass to feel a bit sorry for him and to chalk his abominable treatment of others up to a lack of maternal influence during key formative years.

I've been trying to figure out why I would want to read about a jerky character who has only the slimmest of redeeming qualities. I suppose this is the supreme compliment to Ha's ability to create a compelling character. In the real world, I would stay as far away as possible from a person like Caesar, yet once in his world, I wanted to know what happened to him in the worst way.

Perhaps I kept reading to watch Caesar fall from his lofty tower. Not only does Eva openly tease Caesar and blatantly snub his attempts to charm her, but Caesar experiences for the first time in his life rejection by a girl he'd completely believed would never turn down his attentions. Watching him as he struggles to process this rejection, from trying to convince himself that the girl in question is clearly a bitch and unworthy of him to wanting to skip school so he doesn't have to face the whispers and questions about what happened and even to wondering how the girls will be tearing him apart during their locker room gossip sessions is both heartbreaking and satisfying in a Caesar-gets-his-comeuppance sort of way. As his confidence wavers, I began to wonder if I was reading a story about the toppling of an empire, the end of an era. And I was anxious to read about the fall-out, expecting it to be a hard lesson that in the end proves to be for the better.

Or perhaps I kept reading to watch Caesar come to care about someone, to experience genuine emotion for the first time in his life and see him change his evil ways. After her initial cold shoulder, Eva eventually does warm to Caesar, and the two of them begin the kind of relationship that is a first for him: a relationship with a girl that is not sexual. She challenges him, forcing him to think about things he'd never given thought to before. To question not only his beliefs but his very reasons for acting the way he does. Finally, I believed, Caesar had met a girl that would break through the aloof exterior and awaken the nice-guy that I hoped lived deep inside him. I wanted to watch Caesar really and truly fall in love.

Or, perhaps, I kept reading because Caesar is the guy in my own high school that I could never have, and this story - at long last - allowed me an insider's look at one of the Untouchables. I was getting a glimpse of what made him tick, what secrets he held that made him so darn irresistible. I wanted the mystery to be solved so that the power guys like him held would be diminished. I wanted to see the wizard behind the curtain and to find out that he was actually a lot more like me than I could have imagined.

Whatever the reason, I found myself unable to put the book down. I just had to know what happened to Caesar.

I did have some issues with this book. Some are technical and others regard substance.

First, I really struggled with Ha's dialogue style. Too often she failed to use any dialogue tags for either long stretches or when multiple characters were involved, leaving me completely baffled as to who was saying what. Since all of the key characters are teenagers with very similar, abbreviated speaking styles, the lack of dialogue tags became a huge handicap. Often I had to go back to the beginning and consciously track who was saying what. In some multiple character scenes, I never was able to figure out who was who when they were all conversing. While for the most part this did not frustrate me enough to send the book hurling at the wall, it was more than enough to pull me entirely out of the story.

And far too often the short-hand speech, which might mirror the way real teenagers do talk, caused me genuine confusion about what was happening in the story proper. Not only did it become tiresome to read, but nothing ever actually got said as far as I could tell. Without the body language and/or internal thoughts that might have appeared as diologue tags, I had no context in which to interpret the few words that were spoken and interrupted so often. What was being said made no sense to me, and I was left with a giant "Wha?"

For example, a very important conversation takes place between Eva and Caesar that pretty much has them defining their relationship. But in the end, I had no idea what they had decided, nor the reasons behind their decision because the dialogue was constantly interrupted, I was confused about who was saying what, and it was simply too much work to figure it all out.

Another problem I had with the story was an inordinate focus on the external environment. Caesar was constantly analyzing the darkness or the temperature or the sensations of water hitting his body. While some of this can give the novel a literary feeling, it damaged my ability to get lost in the story because I can't imagine that real teenage boys engage in such internal thoughts to that extreme. I couldn't forget that it was a female writing a boy's point of view, and this kept me always standing just on the edges of the story rather than feeling I truly was inside of Caesar's head. Granted, I'm not a teenage boy. Maybe they really do ruminate a lot on the sound of windshield wipers or the feeling of rain falling on their faces.

My final beef was the story's climax and ending. I can't say much without revealing major plot developments. However, I listed above some of the reasons I kept reading, and I don't know that any single one of these expectations was met. I felt very little closure by the end, like both Caesar and I had been through a lot without having come to any great revelations or changes, leaving us both hanging kind of useless in the breeze. Perhaps that was Ha's intent. Perhaps she was trying to give the reader the same sense of uncertainty that Caesar was experiencing. If that was her goal, she succeeded. But as a reader, I felt somewhat cheated.

In the end, this book proved to be a study in paradoxes. I couldn't put it down, but I was left frustrated. I liked the insider's view I was given, but I found it didn't ring true to what I imagine someone like Caesar would really be thinking. I thought Caesar was a big jerk, but I wanted him to find love and happiness. I liked the book, but I don't want to read it again.

I guess in the end, the Caesar charm wasn't quite enough for me to consider this book an unqualified keeper. To say I was disappointed would be a bit dramatic. Rather, I was left feeling...unfulfilled. Much like Caesar as a person, I found this story to have a lot of flashy bravado on the outside but ultimately not much of substance on the inside.

Rating: a qualified Couldn't put it down

New Moon

2007-04-05T18:44:00.004-06:00

New Moon
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Release Date: September, 2006

Series: the Twilight series
Position in Series: Book 2 of 3 to date
Main Characters: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, Jacob Black
Sequel Bait: Children of the Cullen family: Rosalie, Alice, Emmett, Jasper
Bad Guys: The Volturi, an ancient trio of vampires who rule the vampire world

New Moon picks up a few months after the ending of Twilight, the first book in the Twilight series. Human teen Bella Swan has fallen deeply in love with vampire Edward Cullen, who returns her feelings in full measure. Despite Edward’s overwhelming thirst for Bella’s blood – a thirst that transcends the normal desire for human blood that most vampires possess – the couple has spent every waking moment together, their friendship and love forming a bond that Bella believes nothing can ever break.

When a freak accident at her birthday party illuminates just how fragile the control Edward and his family have over their natural urges to do Bella harm, Bella is blindsided by Edward’s reaction. Claiming that he no longer wants to be with her, Edward leaves Forks, vowing to Bella that she’ll never see him or any of the Cullen family again, ostensibly to speed the healing of the shredded remains of her heart.

And shredded it is. For months, Bella walks around in a near catatonic state, unwilling to feel anything because her pain is so great and deep. When she discovers she can hear Edward speaking to her whenever she puts her life in danger, she sets out to take as many risks as possible just to keep him close. And when she enlists the help of Jacob Black, a young Quileute man living on the nearby reservation, to help her repair the motorcycle she’s purchased to aid her quest for danger, Bella finally begins to live again.

Through most of the book, the relationship between Bella and Jacob moves from friendship to something bordering on more. However, Jacob goes through some inexplicable change and no longer wants to spend time with Bella, once again sending her world into a tailspin. Determined to know why she has once again been abandoned by someone she’s come to care for deeply, Bella learns that Jacob’s fate is intricately entwined with Edward’s world.

When Bella takes one risk too many, Alice Cullen returns to Forks. And through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, Bella learns that she may lose Edward forever if she can’t get to him in time.

I began and finished Twilight after New Moon had been released, so it was sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. Thank heavens! I was so enamored with Bella and Edward’s story, I couldn’t wait to dive right back into their world. While I thoroughly enjoyed New Moon, I found it not quite as compelling as Twilight.
The primary problem I had with NM was one I think any fan of Edward and Bella’s romance would take issue with: Edward is out of the picture for a good portion of the book. By page 73 he’d said his good-byes to Bella, and he didn’t return in true physical form until page 450. In the course of those 377 pages, we watch Bella develop a relationship with another boy. That’s a hard premise to swallow given the depth of the love we were led to believe she felt for Edward.

This is an even harder pill to swallow when you take into account the mastery author Meyer showed in conveying the amount of pain Bella felt upon Edward’s leaving her. I rarely cry when reading a book, but tears flowed freely as I read about the aftermath of Edward’s good-by. My heart broke right alongside of Bella’s. Her grief was palpable, and I hated Edward for doing what he did to her just as I despaired that he was leaving her forever.

Because of these emotions, I was never able to fully embrace the relationship between Jacob and Bella. Jacob wore his heart on his sleeve for her, leaving no doubt that he sought a romantic relationship. Yet I never believed that she would return his feelings, so I was never really engaged by their story. Nor did I doubt that if the time came for her to make a choice between Jacob and Edward exactly who it was Bella would pick. While Bella never treated Jacob like a doormat, she never kept it a secret that she loved and would always love Edward.

Part of my disinterest in this relationship rested on Jacob Black as a hero. Jake is the quintessential beta male. A great friend, nice guy type who would bend over backwards for Bella, he paled in comparison to the uber-perfection that was Edward. Even after Jacob experienced his transformation and gained a dark edge, he didn't hold the same appeal as Edward. To Jacob's defense, I don't imagine any hero could.

Too, I experienced a great deal of confusion over how Bella waffled all over the place in the way that she treated Jacob toward the end of the story. First she’s upset and confused that he won’t see her and is clearly hiding some pretty major stuff from her. (Sidebar to say that I figured out Jacob's situation fairly early on, so by the time Bella caught up, I was wondering what had taken her so long. I don't recall being spoiled for this development, and I'm not that clever, so the clues must have been pretty well spotlighted.) When she corners him and he yet again rebuffs her, Bella is furious and ready to write him off, which I can understand. Naturally, when he explains and apologizes, she’s forgiving and understanding. However, when Alice Cullen shows up in Forks to see how Bella is doing, Bella treats Jacob like an unwelcome intruder. Her loyalties are very clearly drawn, and there was never any genuine sense that making a choice was a difficult thing for Bella to do. For all of the build-up of Jacob and Bella's deep friendship, things are left decidedly unfriendly between them.

In the end, I was left feeling that Bella had somewhat used Jacob, which led mostly to feelings of pity for the boy. I never got over my urge to skip over all of the Jacob interactions just so I could find out what would happen with Edward. If I were to go back for a re-read, I’d be tempted to make the jump from page 73 to around 400 without feeling as if I’d missed anything of interest.

I can’t offer much on my other big issue with this story without giving key plot points away. Suffice it to say, some major story developments revolve around a Big Misunderstanding of the Romeo and Juliet variety, and I hate that kind of stuff. If Edward’s feelings for Bella were such that he’d be driven to take the actions he did, I don’t really understand how he could stay away from her so long. You’ll have to read the book to understand.

And following along with my took-me-out-of-the-story nitpick of the Cullen children attending high school for the umpteenth time, Bella’s chronic accident-proneness really stretched the limits of my suspension of disbelief. Between this book and the first, I've lost track of how many times she's journeyed to the hospital for stitches. If this were reality, I imagine the doctors in the emergency room would be reporting possible suspected child abuse to the authorities. Not to mention how Bella manages to explain away all of her various injuries to her father.

Where this story worked for me is in the expert way Meyer showed Bella’s pain over losing Edward. Throughout the story the hole Edward left in Bella’s heart was obvious. While she came out of her grief and began to live again, you were never in doubt that she would never fully recover from the pain she’d endured.

Reading over this review one would get the impression that I didn’t like this book. But despite the problems I’ve listed above, I really did enjoy the story overall. It kept me turning pages – again, primarily to see if and how Edward would re-enter the story – although I’m not sure that’s the best technique for capturing a reader’s attention. Too, given that Edward and Bella have suffered pretty much the worst experience two lovers can go through short of death, I’m not sure how much further their story can go in subsequent titles. However, Meyer clearly has a good plan. She’s deftly woven in a cliff-hanger at the end of NM that is so intriguing I can’t wait to read the next installment, Eclipse. Can’t ask for more than that.

Rating: Couldn’t Put It Down
Status of Series: Still going strong

Twilight

2007-04-05T13:32:00.004-06:00

Twilight
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Release Date: Hardback – October, 2005/paperback – September, 2006

Series: the Twilight series
Position in Series: Book 1 of 3 to date
Main Characters: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen
Sequel Bait: Jacob Black, Alice Cullen
Bad Guys: vampires who rely on human blood for sustenance

When Bella Swan moves from her mother’s house in Phoenix, AZ to live with her father in Forks, WA, her life changes far more dramatically than she could have ever imagined. Sure, she’s going from one of the sunniest places on earth to one of the rainiest. She’s also moving from a large city to a town where everyone knows everyone else. And she’s got to adjust to living with a father she barely knows while trying to navigate the social landmines pervasive in attending a new high school.

What she never expects when she moves to Forks, however, is to fall deeply in love. At least, not with someone like Edward Cullen.

From the first time Bella and Edward lay eyes on each other, sparks fly between them. Bella cannot understand why Edward, whom she finds too beautiful to be real, seems to despise her so completely when she’s never done so much as say hello to him. For his part, Edward cannot put enough space between himself and Forks High School’s newest student. But when Edward keeps Bella from being crushed in a freak car accident, she’s stunned not only that he bothered to help her at all, but that he somehow possesses the super-human strength that enabled him to stop a ton of speeding metal and glass without being injured himself.

Being tenacious and so completely fascinated by Edward and his equally beautiful sisters and brothers, Rosalie, Alice, Emmett and Jasper, Bella sets out to learn the Cullen family’s secrets. She gets some help from Jacob Black, a young native American, when he shares some of his tribe’s folklore with her about the cold ones, the blood drinkers who once tormented the Quileute people. Putting two and two together, Bella figures out that the Cullen family is actually a pack of vampires, a fact that is confirmed by Edward himself when Bella confronts him with the truth.

Despite his extreme reservations, Edward and Bella begin spending more and more time together. Before she knows what has happened, Bella has fallen madly in love with Edward. From the moment he saw her, Edward had been fighting his own attraction to Bella, an attraction that included more than just romantic interest but an intense form of blood lust rarely experienced by the vampire kind. Even though he long ago swore never to drink human blood again, Edward doubts his abilities to control himself around Bella. Being with her is a constant struggle against every instinct he has, yet he can’t find himself able to stay away.

As Bella becomes more involved with the Cullen family, her safety becomes endangered not only from Edward, but from outside forces beyond his control. Before she knows it, she’s on the run from other vampires who see her simply as a challenging meal, and Edward might not be able to save her.

First, I must stress that although Twilight is labeled a young adult title, is shelved in the young adult section at the bookstore and library, and features a young adult heroine/narrator, the story itself transcends age. I’m many years past being a young adult, yet I enjoyed every word.

Twilight is written in first person, so from the very beginning, the reader feels an immediate closeness to Bella. She’s a very likeable heroine: she doesn’t mope or complain any more than the average teen about having to start again in a new school. She’s resigned to it sucking, so we don’t get pages and pages of self-pity.

Her reaction to Edward’s initial open hostility toward her morphs naturally from dismay and confusion to an almost obsessive need to understand this unusual boy. When she begins to suspect the truth about Edward’s true nature, I didn't find her reaction as nearly shocked enough, as one might expect to be learning that vampires exist right next door. Bella seemed to take it all in stride, accepting the truth without a whole lot of skepticism or denial. Nor does she worry overmuch what it means that she's fallen in love with a non-human being. However, author Meyer has set the pace such that by the time Edward admits that he’s a vampire, Bella has traveled too far down the emotional path to turn back. We as readers like him, so we don't mind if he's a vampire. Why should she?

As a hero, Edward is nearly perfect. He’s beautiful. He’s intelligent (who wouldn’t be after nearly a hundred years of living). He’s sensitive and intuitive yet enough of an alpha-male to keep from looking poncy. I myself fell head over heels for him, so I could hardly blame Bella for the same. If anything, Edward might ring a little too perfect. His main faults are actually not faults at all because they rise out of his wanting to protect Bella from himself. This gives him a pass for any of his initial jerk-like behaviour once Bella learns the facts of Edward’s situation. He often falls into the trap of having seemingly bad habits that actually make him a cool hero: driving too fast, being too protective of Bella, being a mysterious non-bloodsucking creatue of the night. Since, like I said, I fell in love with Edward, I wouldn't change much about him, however. He's a model romance hero, 100% pure fantasy.

Edward’s fear for Bella’s safety given his almost overwhelming desire for her particular blood fuels the majority of the conflict between the couple. However, I feel it was given the short shrift given how rich in promise such a premise is. In the beginning, Edward doesn’t even try to fight his urges, figuring he’d be best off to simply move away. However, as their relationship grows deeper, he speaks often of the danger she could be in if he lost control. That being said, I found that Edward’s ability to keep his cool ran counter to what he was saying. I think I would have been more convinced of the star-crossed lovers aspect of their relationship had it been harder for Edward to keep his…er...fangs off Bella. There is a scene or two where some innocent kissing leads to things that Edward fears will throw him off his game, but he seems to overcome his issues almost a little too easily. While he does tell her that he's not sure they will ever be able to become intimately familiar, he certainly seems fine with all the touching and closeness they share, with nary a clue that he struggles desperately to keep from taking a big bite.

Meyer does an amazing job evoking the setting of Forks. You can almost smell the rain and envision the dark greens and blues of the wet forests. Forks itself serves as a separate character, and once the reasons behind the Cullen family’s decision to settle in such a place become clear, you can’t imagine the story being set any place else.

Another strength Meyer demonstrates is her ability to put a new spin on the vampire myth. Most of the traditional lore is explained away with unique answers – such as why vampires cannot go out in the sun. Too, she imbues her creatures with the ability to choose whether or not they want to partake of human blood. In effect, vampires are divided into two classes. Those like the Cullens who have alternate means of getting sustenance are firmly in the good-guy camp, although there are very few of this sort. Vamps who still feed on human blood aren’t necessarily portrayed as purely evil, however they do serve as the villains of the story.

While Edward and Bella’s blossoming relationship makes up the bulk of the story, Meyer does throw in an external action plot that doesn’t begin until three-quarters of the way through the book. I found this addition to be wholly un-necessary. While it did serve to magnify the differences between Edward’s type of vampire and all of the other vampires out there, the whole scenario felt tacked on, as if Meyer’s publisher told her she needed more action to liven up the book, or, even worse, some kind of damsel-in-peril scenario to remind us all how much Edward loves Bella. The villain was menacing, to be sure, but his fascination with Bella in particular felt very contrived and forced.

I’d rather Meyer would have beefed up the inherent conflict between Bella and Edward. Given that Edward himself poses the greatest danger to Bella, much more could have been done with his struggle to stay away from her or to learn to manage his urges in such a way so that he could get closer to her.

Actually, Meyer has on her website an exercise she did in which she shows Edward and Bella's first interactions from Edward's point of view. It does much to demonstrate the amount of torment Edward went through, and it almost make me wonder if her choice to stay in Bella's first-person POV for the entirety of Twilight might not have short-changed the readers, denying them the crucial Edward-side of the story. If her website is to be believed, she has tentative plans to explore Edward's side of the story in a full-length book. I'll be first in line to buy it if she follows through.

There is one other nitpick I had with the story. Edward and his brothers and sisters are all students at Forks High School. Meyer's mythology follows the construct that vampires remain eternally stuck at the age they were when converted, thus Edward will always look like a seventeen-ish year old, as do his "siblings". Too, there is a need for the family to establish a cover that allows them to live in Forks without drawing undo attention to themselves, which means the young-looking members would need to be in school. However, I cannot imagine how insanely boring it would be for Edward - a boy who has gone through medical school twice - to sit through high-school level classes. I can't believe that the whole home-schooling option wouldn't be used as a reasonable sham to keep the Cullen kids out of such tedium. Then again, if such was the case, Edward and Bella never would have met. Even so, I couldn't get that overarching problem out of my head every time a scene set at school came up.

In the end, however, Twilight kept me turning pages like nothing else. The love that Bella and Edward share is one of those soul-mate kind of things, where even though she is only a teenager, you can’t imagine her with anyone else for the rest of her life. Thankfully, but the time I got around to reading it, the sequel, New Moon, had already been released, so I didn't have to wait to get more of their world. I'm eagerly tapping my fingers for the third book in the trilogy.

Rating: All Nighter
Series Status: Stellar first installment.

Twilight Series

2007-04-04T13:31:00.003-06:00

Series: The Twilight Series
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers

Series Premise: A young girl moves to Forks, WA where she meets a family of vampires and falls in love with one of them, despite the danger it presents.

Main Recurring Characters: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, Jacob Black, Charlie Swan, members of the Cullen family: Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Rosalie, Emmett and Jasper.

Bad Guys: Vampires who still gain their sustenance from human blood

Number of books in series to date: 4
Twilight, October, 2005 - review
(re-released in paperback September, 2006)
New Moon, August, 2006 - review
Eclipse, August 7, 2007 - review
Breaking Dawn, August, 2008

Next release: Series is finished for the moment, although there is the possibility that Meyer may publish books that are set in the Twilight universe or that tell Bella and Edward's story through different points of view.

Number of books planned: 4
"I have no intention of quitting at three. Firstly, Bella and Edward would never forgive me. Secondly, the next two books would have to be 1000+ pages apiece to get the story to any place that felt like a true resolution. Thirdly, there are other stories to tell here, and, though the narrator might change, the story will continue. I just have way to much fun living in Forks (in my head) to stop anytime soon."...from Stephenie Meyer

Series Appeals to:
Those who like star-crossed lover stories
Those who like vampire stories
Those who like coming of age stories
Those who enjoy young adult characters*
Hardcore Twilight Fans

Level of Violence: ~~Mild, although threat of more extreme violence is present~~ With Breaking Dawn, the level of graphic violence portrayed went through the roof. Not because of any mischief on the part of the vampires but because of the horrific way childbirth is portrayed.

Level of Sex: Sweet - kisses, behind-closed-doors consummation of marriage

Series strengths: ~~Bella as a character and narrator is very appealing and sympathetic,~~ Bella begins as a very appealing and sympathetic character. ~~Edward Cullen is an extremely worthy hero~~ Edward began the story as an extremely worthy hero. The vampire mythology is unique, the pace moves nicely, the love story is extremely well written and the emotions experienced by Bella are almost palpable.**

*Despite its status as a Young Adult novel and the teen-aged narrator, this series easily crosses into adult fiction and can be enjoyed by those out of their teen years.

**After the release of Breaking Dawn, my original assessment of the series changed drastically. While the first book, Twilight stands alone as an excellent installment with the strengths listed above, the series as a whole has very few strengths. Unfortunately.

Series weaknesses: Second title causes some frustration based on the lengthy separation of the hero and heroine. Third title destroys Bella as a likable character and turns hero Edward into a milksap. The addition of a forced love-triangle rings hollow and creates unnecessary drama while diminishing the original love story. Fourth and final story...don't even have the words.

Website: www.stepheniemeyer.com
(This is an excellent website, with an absolutely fascinating story about the unlikely road to publication Stephenie Meyer traveled. It also contains many behind-the-scenes extras as well as links to interviews and fan sites where even more information can be found. An excellent example of an author's website tying into her novels.)

Lover Revealed

2007-03-12T15:21:00.003-06:00

Lover Revealed
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Release Date: March, 2007

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Position in Series: Book 4 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Butch, Marissa
Sequel Bait: Vishous, Rehvenge, John
New Characters: Blaylock, Qhuinn, Xhex
Brief Appearance: Beth, Wrath, Havers
Back Burnered: Phury, Rhage, Mary

J.R. Ward continues to delve into the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, vampire warriors charged with saving their species from extinction. Book 4 - Lover Revealed - picks up a short while after the ending of the previous title, Lover Awakened.

In Dark Lover, Butch O’Neal gained a place of particular importance as the first human ever granted admission into the Black Dagger Brotherhood inner circle. An ex-homicide detective who abandoned his human life completely, Butch is privy to their secrets, shares the same enemies, and counts the brothers even as his own family. However, their reluctance to let him fight side by side with them frustrates him endlessly. Too, his unrequited love for female vampire Marissa is a constant source of pain, leaving him to take solace in bottomless glasses of scotch. The eternal outsider looking in, he’s self-destructing at an alarming rate.

Marissa has spent her entire life feeling rejected. Her first husband, the Vampire King Wrath, cast her aside for his mate, Beth, without having ever truly made her his wife in the physical sense. The vampire aristocracy of which Marissa is a member wants nothing to do with her. And Butch, the human male who seemed so interested in her only months before, turned down her request to come calling on her. Marissa sees her life as meaningless, she fits in nowhere and has no hope for things to change in the future.

One night, Butch finally gets his wish. He finds himself face to face with a band of lessers in process of attacking a vampire civilian. Before reinforcements can arrive, Butch is taken by the lessers and tortured to within an inch of his life. As additional insult, the lesser leader the Omega infects Butch with an unspeakable evil. While Marissa manages to give him reason to live and pulls him through his near-death experience, Butch is left uncertain as to what he has now become: an enemy of his friends in the BDB or an instrument they can use in their fight against the lessers.

As Butch struggles with the changes in his life and navigating his growing romance with Marissa, Vishous is fighting his own demons. Devastated over what has been done to Butch, Vishous tries to understand why the visions that had always haunted him have gone dry. Too, as Butch grows closer to Marissa, Vishous feels that he is losing his best friend. He can’t understand why everyone around him has managed to find a connection that seems to elude him entirely.

The fourth entry in the BDB continues to pull you into the world of these vampire warriors. However, LR focuses less on the BDB as a unit and more on the relationships between a couple of key characters. While they all appear in some brief form or another, the group dynamic from the previous books is missing in LR. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of other characters having found mates and having less time to spend with the guys, but I find it kind of sad. Rhage takes a pretty hefty backseat, as did Mary and Zsadist. Phury was barely mentioned at all. I found that a surprise given how low Phury had sunk by the end of Lover Awakened.
John continues to deal with the murder of Wellsie and the disappearance of Tohrment, trying to channel his grief and rage into his growing skills as a warrior. He watches as his friend (newcomer Blaylock) survives his transition and wonders desperately when he will finally become a true warrior. Lash continues to torment John, and despite warnings from instructor Zsadist to avoid retaliation, John finds it harder and harder to hold back his growing fury. As a concession to the loss of the BDB male-only society as the warriors find mates, John’s new friendships with Blaylock and Qhuinn seem a set-up for a new order of warriors to fill the gap.

In Dark Lover, Marissa is presented as not much more than a cardboard waif, a beautiful yet helpless victim of Wrath’s indifference. Through the next two titles – Lover Eternal and Lover Awakened – she didn’t grow much beyond that image of a virginal princess not sturdy enough to survive a strong gust of wind. I was anxious going into LR that Marissa would remain that way, and I wasn’t sure I could like her. In fact, I blame this wariness about Marissa as a heroine for my lack of excitement about Lover Revealed. I was going to need a lot of convincing to believe that a man as great as Butch would ever love someone as weak-kneed as Marissa.

To her credit, Marissa did grow a backbone. When confronted with choosing between the man that she loved and her brother’s insistence that she was far too good for the mere human Butch, Marissa stood her ground. Her rebelliousness cost her the only home and security she had ever known, but she did not lay down and give up. Rather, she identified her strengths and used them to help other vampires that she recognized were in far worse shape than she herself. Although, I never got the impression that Butch’s obsession with Marissa was based on anything more substantial than her exceptional beauty, purity and ability to deliver a killer kiss. At least she stepped up to equal previous heroines Beth, Mary and Bella as far as compelling females go. I’ve determined that Ward’s strength will always be in her heroes – which are, indeed, to die for – and her weakness in heroines.

A pattern is emerging from all of the romantic relationships presented in the BDB series: it seems that the attraction a male feels for his future mate is based almost entirely on an intangible, soul-mate like instinct he feels upon first meeting her. It’s not that any particular heroine does something worthy of earning the love of one of the warriors. It’s more that he feels an immediate and inexplicable attraction to a particular female as soon as he lays eyes on her and only later begins to learn of her redeeming qualities. The selection of a mate and the subsequent urge to bond seems based on something akin to pheromones rather than personality or deeds. This reinforces the vampire species as more animalistic than human aspect of Ward’s particular type of vampire. However, as a human female, it leaves me a bit frustrated. Because Ward’s heroes are so over the top desirable, I feel they deserve equally fabulous females that must prove their worth before inspiring the men to give themselves so completely, body, heart and soul.

My main issue with Lover Revealed is how the relationship between, oddly enough, Vishous and Butch is handled. By the end of the book, I felt somewhat betrayed because, frankly, the wrong couple got the happily ever after.

The sorrow and despair Vishous feels as he watches his best friend develop a romantic relationship with Marissa is palpable. My heart broke along with Vishous’s, and I would argue that the unexplored romance between Vishous and Butch was far better rendered than the actual one that existed between Marissa and Butch. I felt as if in Ward’s heart, she truly believed that Vishous and Butch belonged together, but her head argued that readers would never buy a homosexual relationship, either within the constructs of the manly-man world of the BDB or even in the bigger picture romance genre as a whole. It’s as if a mandate had been established that all members of the BDB will find love in the form of a female, regardless of how their natures or desires truly lie. Therefore, Vishous’s love for Butch will be left both unexplored and unrequited, explained away as something deeper than friendship but purely asexual. Ward has even gone so far as to offer a mystical connection between the two – a way that one is necessary to the other to become a complete fighting unit – in order to keep them closer than most of the other members of the brotherhood who are not related yet still avoid labeling such a relationship as romantic.

I find this incredibly sad because it is so infrequent that I come across two male characters who can so completely sell me on a romantic relationship between them. I don’t read romance specifically designated as homosexual, but I have no problems at all when same sex relationships develop organically because of the natures of the characters in the story. For example, I find Suzanne Brockmann’s Jules Cassidy a most intriguing character, his sexual orientation secondary to everything else interesting about him. Vishous and Butch are very masculine, tough, kick-ass warriors. Allowing them a relationship with each other would not change that image for me. Their friendship has been shown in such a way that an attraction between them is not only natural, but completely keeping in character. Forcing Butch into a relationship with Marissa that doesn’t move me simply because a homosexual relationship with Vishous is taboo by romance novel standards is tragic because it goes against what I’ve come to believe so far about these two men and what they mean to each other.

I have no idea what Ward’s intentions for these characters really were, or if I’m reading more into the relationship between Butch and Vishous than she ever meant to convey. I’m not sure if it’s a compliment to her writing or a criticism that my take on the feelings Vishous has for Butch are far more than fraternal, but that’s where I land. I can’t quite be happy for Butch and Marissa because I will always feel that he’s with the wrong person.

That being said, the teaser excerpt for Vishous’s story, Lover Unbound, that appears in the back of LR has me quite excited to see what happens to him, and I fully admit that I might change my mind after reading LU.

Ward continues to offer one of the best series out there. I literally mark my calendar in anticipation for the next book, and I’m glad to read that she has no intention of stopping any time soon.

I will add one bit of advice for Ward, if she cares to hear it. Please - please - enough with the label name dropping. I found it pertinent to world building in the first book, slightly annoying in the second and third, and downright irritating in LR. I get the picture - that some of the characters dress well - and I have no idea what the various name brands mean, so they are meaningless to me. All they do is bring me out of the story when I'm reading. Too, I would imagine that such specifics will date these books fairly quickly, which would be a great shame.

Rating: Held My Attention
Series Status: Still strong, hoping for better heroines and a new plot structure

Lover Awakened

2007-03-12T14:54:00.003-06:00

Lover Awakened
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Release Date: September, 2006

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Place in Series: Book 3 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Zsadist, Bella
Sequel Bait: Butch O’Neal, Phury, John
New Characters: Rehvenge, Sarelle, Lash
Back Burnered: Marissa, Mary, Beth, Rhage

I confess to having had an almost obsessive need to get my hands on Lover Awakened as soon as it hit store shelves. Zsadist has emerged as the Black Dagger Brotherhood warrior who most intrigues me, his damaged soul and seemingly irredeemable nature making him my favorite kind of hero. I was not disappointed, and I find Lover Awakened the best title in the series to date.

LA picks up about six weeks after the ending of Lover Eternal. Aristocratic vampire Bella has been kidnapped by a lesser who sees her as the exact image of his dead wife. The sadistic David keeps her trapped in a 3-foot diameter pipe buried deep in the ground, allowing her to come up only so he can watch her shower and mentally and emotionally torture her. She’s slowly going mad, nearly certain that all efforts to find her have been abandoned and she’s destined to spend all eternity in this hell.

Zsadist, the most tortured member of the BDB, is driving himself crazy trying to learn the fate of Bella and rescue her if there is any chance at all that she still lives. He had spurned her interest in him when they first met, convinced that no normal female would ever find him attractive or want him in any loving way. He views himself as ruined, destroyed by the first hundred years of his life he spent as a blood slave, subject to the sadistic needs of a mistress who used him both for nourishment and sexual amusement. But something about Bella touched him deeper than he can explain, and the idea that she's come to harm at the hands of the lessers is driving him even more insane than normal.

Through a series of lucky coincidences, the BDB learn that Bella is alive and where she is being held. Zsadist and the other brothers rush to her rescue, but not before she suffers horrible physical abuse at the hands of her captor. Unwilling to let anyone else care for her although unable to understand why, Zsadist insists that Bella stay with him until she is better.

Bella is grateful that Zsadist has rescued her, but as she gets to know the depth of suffering Zsadist had endured as a blood slave and how deeply his psyche has been damaged, she fears that even her love won’t be enough to heal him. Zsadist cannot accept that such a beautiful female of worth should have anything to do with him, and he does everything in his power to push her away. However, Bella soon develops needs that only Zsadist can meet, and he’s forced to face his own fears in order to help her.

Meanwhile, Zsadist’s twin brother Phury is struggling with his own attraction to Bella. After rescuing Zsadist from his bondage as a blood slave, Phury had taken a vow of celibacy. (An aside here to say I’m still not quite sure why, exactly, Phury is determined to remain celibate. I get that he feels guilty that it was Zsadist rather than himself that was kidnapped as an infant, but I will need some more to really accept such an extreme sacrifice.) As Phury spends more time with Bella, he begins to doubt his ability to keep his vow of celibacy, and when it becomes clear that Bella has chosen Zsadist above all others, Phury’s love for her becomes a torture he can barely stand.

John, whom we met in LE, has settled in with Wellsie and Tohrment. For the first time in his life, he has finally found happiness, a sense of belonging, and the love of a family. He throws himself into his training even though most of the other trainees are bent on making his life a living hell. He meets the sweet Sarelle, and everything finally begins to go his way. When tragedy strikes, he's one of the ones hit hardest of all.

Flat out the best part of this book is Zsadist’s journey. And Ward deserves much kudos because she never takes the easy way out. Most books starring tortured heroes allow for the hero to spurn the heroine to a point, then with not much more than a kiss or a hot night of sex or even an I love you, his damaged heart is healed. Not so with Zsadist. From page one through the last page in the book, you can sense Zsadist’s inner turmoil. Even after he comes to accept that he loves Bella and she him, he is not made whole. He continues to do everything in his power to deny and destroy their budding relationship.
Ward invokes the use of flashbacks to show us Zsadist’s horrific past rather than simply tell us about it, and I think the technique is key. Getting inside of his head as he becomes the blood slave of a mistress so twisted and sadistic – and knowing as we do that he has to suffer a century of her mental, physical and emotional abuse – does a great deal to aid our understanding about why Zsadist has the hang-ups he does. Why he cannot bear to be touched. Why he refuses to drink from another vampire and gets all of his sustenance from humans. Why he truly believes he is not nearly good enough for the pure and good-hearted Bella. He shows true signs of his psychological damage: Zsadist’s reaction the first time Bella asks to feed from him was a heartbreaking scene. This isn’t just a cardboard tortured hero who is “damaged” simply because the writer says so. We as readers learn why and we understand.

Bella is my favorite Ward heroine so far. While she fits the BDB female mold in that she doesn’t do a whole lot more than recover and be protected, this girl knows what she wants – Zsadist – and she doesn’t take no for an answer. Time and again Zsadist tries to redirect Bella’s affections toward Phury, whom he feels is far more worthy of her, yet Bella holds her ground. For whatever reason, Zsadist is the one she wants and she won’t accept any substitutes. I also enjoyed watching Bella stand up to Zsadist. From the first two books, we get the definite impression that Zsadist is someone no-one, not even the other brothers, wants to piss off. Yet Bella isn’t afraid of doing so.

As I remarked in my review of LE, I would say that Ward spends a little bit too much time in the head of the lessers, although the obsession the lesser David has with Bella is important to the plot and has ramifications that effect all of the brother, so is worthy, therefore, of exploration.

In LA, we meet Rehvenge, Bella’s autocratic and domineering brother. Through him we are introduced the concept of sehclusion (yes, there’s that off spelling that I find somewhat bothersome), in which an unmated female can be forced by the will of an older, male relative, to basically become not much more than chattel, unable to leave her home or do pretty much anything without specific permission. In theory such an action is meant to protect females, however anyone born within the past two hundred years would agree that it reeks of anti-feminism. I understand that this sehclusion, which Rehvenge plans to inflict upon Bella for her own protection, is necessary for certain time-sensitive plot developments. However, I was kind of disappointed in it. In the first two BDB titles, I never got the impression that this particular vampire society was so backward. Females were honored and protected, but never treated as property. I admit to my weakness for alpha-males, but I do draw the line at this sort of caveman-think. I hope it's not indicative of things to come.

Lover Awakened ups the ante significantly for Ward, as I can't imagine how she plans to top it. Next on deck is Butch's story, and his set-up hasn't proven nearly intriguing as Zsadist's was, so I'm not as excited about it. Too, I'm hoping that Ward doesn't shelf Zsadist now that his story has been told. He's become my favorite BDB brother, and I'd hate to have seen the last of him.

Rating: All Nighter
Status of Series: The best so far. Afraid the only way it can go is downhill

Lover Eternal

2007-03-10T14:00:00.003-06:00

Lover Eternal
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Release Date: March, 2006

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Position in Series: Book 2 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Rhage, Mary Luce
Sequel Bait: Bella, John, Butch, Zsadist
New Characters: Bella, John
Back-Burnered: Phury, Vishous, Beth, Marissa

Lover Eternal picks up almost immediately after the conclusion of the first book in the series, Dark Lover. Wrath has assumed his role as the Vampire King with his mate, Beth, as his queen. The Black Dagger Brotherhood has moved into new headquarters, and the war against the Lessening Society continues as more and more civilian vampires are targeted for extinction. Butch O’Neal has joined the team as the first human ever allowed entrée into the exclusive vampire society, although he’s limited by his human-ness in how far the brotherhood will allow him to go in fighting the lessers.

Rhage steps up as the hero of Lover Eternal. Nicknamed Hollywood, Rhage possesses breath-taking good looks which turn the heads of females both human and vampire. This gift is a necessity for Rhage, whose sexual appetites are legendary and nearly unquenchable. He spends his nights alternately killing lessers and nailing anything in a skirt. Always quick with a joke and a smile, the life of every party, Rhage seems to have not a care in the world.

However, Rhage’s life of sinful excess is simply a sham to cover up the darkness that lurks inside. Long ago he was cursed after he offended the goddess of the vampires. She placed a beast inside him, a dragon-like monster who appears whenever Rhage loses control of his emotions. No one is safe when the beast comes out, and Rhage lives in constant fear that he will inadvertently kill one of his brothers or innocent bystanders. Only in releasing his pent up energies by fighting and endless sex can he maintain his thread-thin control. His constant need for physical release has left him emotionally bereft, and he longs to find something meaningful, someone to care for and who cares for him.

On the other side of town, Mary Luce (pronounced LOOSE) is fighting her own inner darkness. The leukemia she had thought she had beaten a few years earlier has come out of remission, dimming all her prospects for a happy future. Mary has tried to fill her empty life with altruistic efforts, and it is through her volunteering at a suicide hotline that she meets John, a mute, orphaned boy who seeks her out as a source of comfort. When Mary’s neighbor, Bella, sees in John a pre-transition vampire who has no idea what he is going to become (Bella herself is a female vampire), Mary agrees to act as translator for the speechless boy when Bella brings him to the BDB. It is at the BDB compound where Rhage literally bumps into Mary as he is recovering from his latest encounter with the beast.

Rhage finds something in Mary’s voice that soothes him and the beast within, and he determines to spend as much time with her as possible despite the rules forbidding vampires to interact with humans. Mary is stunned that the gorgeous Rhage wants anything to do with her given that she considers herself average at best. Too, she refuses to expose an outsider to the hell that her life is soon to become as she fights her cancer.

When Rhage’s insistence on being with Mary puts her in the lessers' sights, his romantic interest quickly turns to a protective one. He moves her into the BDB headquaters, determined to protect her at all cost even though bringing a human into the BDB world costs him dearly. As the attraction between the two of them grows, Rhage’s fear grows as well, not only that Mary will be found by the lessers but that his beast could be released if he loses control of his passions, hurting or even killing her. He struggles to maintain his physical distance even as Mary continues to push him away emotionally, unwilling to take the comfort he offers in her time of need.

While I did not find this title as strong as Dark Lover, I thoroughly enjoyed this second foray into the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The characters remain as intriguing as ever. Beth and Wrath – heroine and hero of the first book – make enough of an appearance as continuity would expect without becoming cloying examples of the last happily ever after. We learn more about the other members of the BDB as well as meeting new characters Bella and John who look to be key players in upcoming books.
The pacing continues to be excellent and the dialogue realistic and fresh. The strengths I found in Dark Lover continue in Lover Eternal. The interaction between the warriors continues to offer an almost voyeuristic sensation, their dialogue so realistic. The world of the vampires gains more depth as we get more history on how they came to be and we watch Wrath make changes to bring the species back to a healthy status.

However, the main weakness I had with DL increases exponentially in LE. While the male characters leap off the page, I found that Ward’s heroine fell a bit short. Once Mary meets Rhage, she becomes something of a prop, serving more as an element to bring out certain aspects of Rhage rather than as a viable person in her own right. Like Beth before her, Mary spends a lot of time hanging out in Rhage’s bedroom, being protected and not a whole lot else. I would argue that the plot structure of both books is very similar except that Mary remains human while Beth became a vampire.

I also found Mary’s cancer to be less of a conflict than the potential it provides. Other than her reluctance to let Rhage share her suffering, which is odd considering Rhage has caused her to leave everything in her former life behind and is clearly a much stronger being than any human, Mary’s cancer is largely ignored as an issue. Physically, it affected her very little; she was quite capable of many rounds of gymnastic sex with Rhage. Not until the end did her cancer play a critical role in the story, and how it was handled bordered precariously close to a deus ex machina solution for my taste.

Ward is a master at juggling multiple character points of view, and there is never any confusion about whose perspective you are in at any given moment. However, I felt that in LE, too much time was spent in the point of view of the lessers. I tended to skim those parts, and I found if you don’t read carefully, the machinations of who is in charge and who is back-stabbing whom becomes confusing. I’m not really sure that we need to know such intricacies of the evil beings and their political maneuverings because they are pretty two-dimensional, serving mostly as a force for the BDB to fight against. That being said, one particular lesser emerges by the end of the book in such a way that it is clear he is key in the next book.

Unlike the first book, Ward is openly guilty of sequel baiting in Lover Eternal. But she is immediately forgiven because she has written characters so intriguing and offered us a set up for the next story so utterly irresistible, one can’t begin to resent the need to buy another of her books. As a running subplot in LE, aristocratic vampiress Bella finds herself entranced by the damaged and terrifying Zsadist, drawn to him even as he disdains her very touch. When Bella is kidnapped by lessers, Zsadist determines to find her, leaving us with a cliffhanger and an overwhelming anticipation for the next book.

Nothing in the first book is critical to understanding where the story picks up in the second, so LE could be read before DL without difficulty. However, I wouldn’t recommend it because the interaction between the brothers is such a delicious part of the story, and it builds upon itself from book to book. The glossary appears again at the front of the book, with a few new entries, so any new readers can easily catch up with the vampire mythology.

Rating: Couldn't Put It Down
Status of the Series: A very strong follow up to an excellent beginning. Set up for the third book in the series is well accomplished, and Lover Awakened looks to be possibly the best book yet.

Dark Lover

2007-03-09T19:07:00.003-06:00

Dark Lover
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Released: September, 2005

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Position in Series: Book 1 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Wrath, Beth Randall
Sequel Bait: Rhage, Phury, Vishous, Zsadist, Torhment, Butch, Marissa
Bad Guys: The Lessers
Minor Characters: Havers, Wellsie

Wrath is a member and the de facto leader of a warrior class of vampires known as the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The BDB is charged with protecting the vampire race against soul-less ex-humans known as the Lessening Society, a group hell-bent on eradicating the entire species from the planet. The last pure-blood vampire left, Wrath is blindingly loyal to his fellow BDB brothers but remains separate much of the time, preferring to keep to himself and denying his destiny to become the Vampire King.

All of this changes, however, when Darius, a fellow BDB warrior, asks Wrath for a special favor. Darius has fathered a half-breed girl who is nearing her time of transition – the time when a vampire reaches full maturity and undergoes extreme physical changes in a very short amount of time. Darius fears that without a pure-blooded male vampire to help his daughter, Beth, through her transition, the girl will die. Wrath is horrified at the though of performing such an act and declines Darius’s request. However, when Darius is killed soon afterwards, Wrath feels he has no choice but to seek out Beth and give her whatever help he can. Problem is, Beth has never met her father, has no idea that vampires even exist, and certainly would never believe herself to be one.

Wrath does find Beth, and despite his reluctance to get involved, finds himself attracted to her in ways he’s never before experienced. For her part, Beth feels an immediate attraction for the dark and scary Wrath, although swallowing the fact that she’s about to become a vampire herself proves a little more challenging. The two of them navigate the rough terrain of Beth’s acceptance of who she is and her change into a fully mature vampire, constant attacks by the lessers, and Wrath’s coming to terms with his dark past and his need to embrace his role if the vampire race has any hope of survival.

In addition to meeting Wrath and Beth, we are also introduced to the other members of the BDB. There’s Rhage, the vampire with the face of an angel and the sexual appetites of the Sixth Fleet after eighteen months at sea. Tohrment fills the role of the settled vampire, his wife, Wellsie, pregnant with their first young. Vishous is mysterious, with tattoos covering his face and a glove-covered hand that seems to contain unspeakable power. Phury is the metrosexual of the bunch, a sharp dresser with a head of amazing hair, a false leg, and a vow of celibacy. His twin brother, Zsadist, is perhaps the most intriguing of the whole bunch. A former blood slave who spent the first 100 years of his life serving a mistress in needs too dark to discuss, Zsadist is a shell filled with nothing but rage and hatred.
Too, there is homicide detective Butch O’Neal, who enters the story as a potential love interest for Beth. However, as Beth becomes part of the BDB world, Butch’s role becomes much more complicated when he tries to protect her from forces he can’t begin to understand.

The story takes place in fictional Caldwell, NY, amidst the clubs and back alleys and sprawling countryside just beyond the city’s borders. This setting allows for a menacing darkness, one never certain what might lurk down a dark alley or around the next corner either in the form of a lesser, a vampire or even an unsavory human.

The first thing that strikes the reader about Ward’s world is that these vampires are not your traditional European-born, pasty-skinned seducers who creep about in the night. You won’t find a single puffy-shirt in any of the closets of the BDB, although you would find a lot of Armani, Gucci and Ferragamo in Phury’s wardrobe. Ward’s vampire males are modern day warriors more in common with street gangs than Count Dracula. They drive monster SUVs, listen to rap music at ear-splitting decibles, play pool, follow the Boston Red Sox on plasma screen TVs, drink beer and spend the time they aren’t hunting lessers giving each other a hard time. They’re computer savvy, sport tattoos in a variety of places, and leather is their uniform of choice. In short, these brothers are cooler than cool.

Gone, also, is the traditional vampire desire for human blood. Ward’s vampire race gain their sustenance and power via the blood of a vampire of the opposite sex. While human blood offers a tiny boost, it is viewed as inferior to vampire blood, leaving the human inhabitants of Caldwell free from fear. Ward turns the vampires’ need for blood of the opposite sex into a direct correlation to sex: sharing blood is considered an extremely intimate act and quite often leads to other physical expressions of desire. A vampire male would as soon let his mate share her blood or take the blood of another male as he would sit by and watch her have sex with him. Bloodlust is on par with pure lust, and rather than being disgusting as one might expect, scenes depicting blood drinking are highly erotic.

Ward has chosen to follow traditional vampire lore by making sunlight lethal to her particular species. They also possess extraordinary strength, the ability to dematerialize (as long as they are not in a steel-lined room), and nearly immortal constitutions affording them very long lives. The structure of vampire society is multi-layered, with the BDB warrior class, the civilian population, and even an aristocracy, making it easy to believe that an entire other world exists once the sun goes down.

The story’s heroine, Beth Randall, begins as a smart, self-reliant woman who seems to have a lot of good common sense without being unbelievably kick-ass. When she’s attacked by some street thugs, she fights back, but it’s a struggle. When she learns about her half-vampire heritage, her reaction rings true, a mixture of disbelief, fear, and dawning understanding about why so many parts of herself had never seemed normal. She’s attracted to Wrath from the beginning even as she fears him. However, she never resorts to playing the game of coy maiden, taking what she wants from him without apology or self-flagellation.

However, Beth does spend a good amount of time in Wrath’s bed, waiting for him to return from his job as fighter-extraordinaire. Too, one can’t help but wonder how easy it was for Beth to give up everything in her human life to join the vampire world. We are asked to believe that no-one would notice her sudden disappearance off the face of the planet. Nor does she show much regret in the life she must leave behind, especially as the picture we are given of the future she faces is not full of much other than sex with Wrath and hanging around the Black Dagger Brotherhood headquarters.

It becomes easy to overlook the flaws in Beth because the dynamics between the members of the BDB are so amazing. Alpha-males without apology, these guys are dangerous to the nth degree and utterly fascinating. Their interactions with each other are spot on, supportive and unflinchingly loyal, with the perfect amount of friendly adversity to ring true. You feel like an insider at the hottest frat party in town. The dialogue is authentic, and reading this book it is easy to see that Ward loves these guys and enjoys spending time with them.

As a hero, Wrath easily fits the mold of brooding, tortured soul/reluctant leader. Painful experiences in his past have made him unwilling to embrace his role as the leader of the vampires. His neglect has led to the near destruction of the vampire race, and its only with Beth’s help that he’s able to face his demons. Their romance is white-hot and intense, with very little foreplay and nearly zero guilt. Wrath’s reaction to Beth and his subsequent obsession with her perfectly exemplifies the nature of the vampire race, which they themselves consider as more animalistic than human. Instincts are the driving force behind the possessiveness vampire mates feel for each other, and Wrath’s struggle with his mental unwillingness to bond with Beth even as his body and soul betray him provides the majority of the conflict between the two.

The pacing of the story keeps the action moving at a nice clip. Despite the high number of characters introduced, you never become confused about who is who, nor do you feel that any one character gets short shrift. While Ward provides enough action with the BDB fighting the lessers, the story remains character-driven. By the end of the book, you feel vested in more than just the hero and heroine, however no single character has emerged as blatant sequel bait. Each character introduced plays an important role in the story and is interesting in his or her own right.

While the villains of the story – the lessers of the Lessening Society and their leader, The Omega – were certainly creepy and menacing, I was left a little fuzzy about their motivation for wanting to eradicate the vampire race. There is explanation about the creation of vampires leading to some resentment among the vampire gods that is supposed to explain the animosity, but I found it a bit of a flimsy motivation to explain the lengths to which the lessers go to kill vamps.

This review would not be complete without addressing Ward’s creative spelling and unusual character names. It took me a while to get used to the names of the BDB warriors, and I puzzled over why Ward added so many un-necessary letters for what seemed like nothing more than effect. However, by the end of the book I couldn’t imagine any other names for Rhage, Vishous, Phury, Zsadist, Wrath and Tohrment. I found the glossary at the beginning of the book useful. I liked having that bit of foreknowledge before I began reading and much prefer getting such information in a straightforward manner rather than in some contrived exposition in the middle of the story.

Overall, I found Dark Lover an excellent introduction into the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

Rating: Couldn’t Put It Down
Status of Series: Outstanding introduction, can’t wait for the next installment

The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series

2007-03-09T18:48:00.000-06:00

Series: The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse

Series Premise: A band of warrior vampires fights to keep their species safe from those determined to destroy the race.

Main Recurring Characters: Wrath, Phury, Rhage, Zsadist, Vishous, Tohrment, Butch O’Neal

Bad Guys: The Lessening Society – called the lessers

Number of books in series to date: 4
Dark Lover (September, 2005) - review
Lover Eternal (March, 2006) - review
Lover Awakened (September, 2006) - review
Lover Revealed (March, 2007)

Number of books planned: Open

Next release: Lover Unbound, October 2, 2007

Series Appeals to:
Those who like extremely Alpha males
Those who like urban paranormal romance
Those who like vampire stories

Level of Violence: High

Level of Sex: Hot

Series strengths: Heroes are to-die-for, relationship between the members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood is well expressed, world-building is thorough and well-developed, dialogue is natural and realistic.

Series weaknesses: Heroines tend to serve more as props for heroes than viable characters in their own right, basic plot very similar between the first three books, creative spelling of character names and vampire terminology can be off-putting.

Website: www.jrward.com

Series

2007-03-09T18:37:00.000-06:00

Series books. Seems people either love them or hate them.

I’m in the former group. If a writer has pulled me into his or her world successfully, I want to stick around for a while. If I’ve fallen in love with the characters, I want to spend more time with them. I look forward to the next installment with an anticipation I used to reserve for Christmas. And I’m devastated when it seems the series is in process of jumping the shark. I become invested.

In order to set this review site apart from the other million or so out there, I'm going to focus my reviews on books that are part of a series. Along the way I may toss a single title review to fill in some gaps and because not everything I read is part of a series. But since many of the books on my keeper shelves are series titles, that's where I will keep my focus.

I consider series books to fit into one of the following descriptions:

* Books that contains stories set in a single universe, where characters appear in more than one book. As the series continues, time moves forward. People change, and the focus of each book usually shifts to a different set of characters. Home of the dreaded sequel bait.

* Books that occur in a single universe but focus only on one or two key characters. Time may or may not move forward significantly, and the main characters may or may not change throughout the course of the series. Think the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich or J.D. Robb’s In Death series.

* Series written with an explicit end in mind after a certain number of books. Trilogies fall into this category, as do the Harry Potter books.

In my reviews, I'm going to offer a series summary. Too, each individual book review will include a Status of the Series, a snapshot of where the series seems to be heading since many series seem to run out of steam way too soon. I'll include all titles in the series, and I'll try to review each one in order that they were published. Reviews of individual books will assume that the previous titles have been read, so there might be spoilers for those earlier titles.

Intro and Manifesto

2007-03-07T14:07:00.000-06:00

The title of this blog says it all. There are probably book review sites on the web numbering in the six and seven digits, easily. This is yet another. It may be nothing more than a public way for me to keep track of my thoughts about the books that I read. And that’s okay.

But I have 184 books on my To Be Read bookshelf. I’m making it my mission to work my way through them. Might as well share.

A couple of promises:

I promise I won’t be snarky.

Sure, I can laugh when I read those razor-sharp barbs aimed at the silly and trite things we all come across if we are voracious readers, and I can even throw down a few. But that’s not what I want to do when I’m seriously discussing what I think about a book and why. If I don’t like something, I’ll say why without the sarcasm.

Besides, I don’t blame lousy books on lousy writers. I blame lousy books on poor decisions on the parts of publishers. I know how many manuscripts get rejected every day by the publishing houses, so when a clunker actually makes it through the gauntlet to find its way on bookstore shelves, I have to wonder who fell down on the job. These professionals have no problem turning down stuff they see as dribble, so it couldn’t be a sudden decision to be nice guys.

Plus, it’s no great exercise of genius to know that not all books will appeal to all people. I have tastes, and there are stories out there that will not appeal to them. Doesn’t mean the book is bad. It means the book is bad for me.

I promise that I’ll be as unbiased as my personal tastes will allow.

I’m a normal person. I don’t get ARCs from writers or publishers. I get everything I read the way 99% of all readers do: via purchase with my own, hard cash or through my local public library. I buy books anywhere it’s possible to do so. Brick and mortar bookstores, WalMart, Costco, via Amazon and on-line booksellers. The used book store. The remainder bins at the grocery store. Even, when desperate, at the airport.

So I owe allegiance to no one but myself. I’ll be honest. Sure, what I write here is only my opinion, but I can hold my head high and say that I told it true.

I promise not to give away major plot points or surprise twists or endings.

This one comes with a caveat. I will discuss the story, and it might include spoilers. But Sometimes a review can’t be offered if certain facts aren’t divulged, especially if those facts or the way those facts are presented lend to problems I’ve had with the book. However, I will do everything in my power to keep the big stuff under wraps. Nothing worse than reading a review that gives the best parts away.

I’ve given some thoughts on the ranking systems so many review sights use to assign final, one-stop summaries of their reviews. I have some problems with those most commonly used.

With the grading system – A, B, C, etc. – and even the star ranking system, you have the problem of the gap between levels. What, exactly, moves something from a B+ to an A-, or from four stars to four and a half stars? What happens if your grades don’t fall into a neat little bell curve? Does it mean you are awarding too many As, or not enough?

I could go with the keeper/wallbanger descriptives. They certainly apply, as the books I absolutely adore do become keepers and ones I hate do warrant tossing against the nearest wall. But others use this, and at the very least, I could try to be original.

Instead, I think I will go with my own system. Since I’m a normal person with limited amount of reading time, I judge the success of a book by how obsessed I become with finishing it. Books seem to fall into the following categories for me:

All-nighter: This is a book that kept me up all night reading. One I adored enough to sacrifice sleep. It’s one I know I’ll reread again and again. It’s my version of an A book, a five star ranking, a Desert Isle Keeper.

Couldn’t Put It Down: I slept, but I rearranged my life so that every free waking second could be devoted to reading. I finished the book within a day or two of starting it. Will most likely reread it again. Perhaps one or two flaws, but otherwise nearly perfect.

Held My Attention: Read it when I could. I liked the characters and story overall. May or may not reread it. Think a solid B, four star, highly recommended read.

Take It Or Leave It: I put it down a lot. I wanted to finish it because something in it appealed to me. But I wasn’t inspired to take it with me everywhere. Maybe I even cheated a bit and read other things at the same time. I’d call this a C.

Struggled to Finish: Perhaps weeks would go by between reading sessions. Perhaps it went back on the shelf for months. Perhaps I nearly gave up on it…definitely won’t ever reread it. A D.

Didn’t Finish: Enough said.

So, this is my manifesto.