Alexa

A little quirky and funny, but mostly sad and thoughtful. Pearson manifests the things that we're not aware of in the form of monsters, ghosts and shadows that move in and out of our peripheral vision. We don't know our loved ones, ourselves, or our fates nearly as well as we'd like. Nor do we know about the little critters that crawl past without us seeing. It's a strange, haunting little allegory.

It's common in storytelling to end a tale with the death of a man and the birth of his son. A follow-up is rarely considered necessary – the genetics live on, the man lives on. No more you need to know. So it was for that reason that I felt exceptionally foolish when I was, for one, surprised that there was a sequel to The Last Werewolf, and secondly, that the story of the woman who would give birth to Jake Marlowe's children was far more appropriate for a tale of a person who is both a human and a vicious animal.

There's the obvious allegory – the moon cycle. There's the fact that this book opens with introducing us to the brutality of pregnancy and birth, and also the vulnerability of a pregnant woman, even when she can turn into a seven foot monster. She becomes an Other several times over - a woman, a mother, and a nearly extinct werewolf - and the fact that she is attacked from all sides reflects that. It takes the opportunity to look at the basic mammalian instincts of motherhood, and the modern angst of just not knowing what this little thing that looks like you is and what you could possibly offer it, and spins it into a driven and bloodthirsty story of a woman who needs to reunite her newborn twins after her son is taken.

For this reason, Tallulah Rising is far more focused that The Last Werewolf was. Jake Marlowe absently searched for someone or something to give him a reason not to die, whereas Tallulah Demetriou desperately has to live. The story is not nearly as convoluted (though it does get complicated towards the end, perhaps a little unnecessarily) as TLW, and it feels far more sincere. It's a lot nastier too, but also appropriately sentimental. Where Jake was a lone wolf, Tallulah finds family, not just in her children, but in a young pack of happy accidents and a former hunter - “His face was full of life focused on me, the blue-green eyes glimmering, the mouth edging into a less innocent version of its smile” Anyone think Walker was a carbon copy of Dean Winchester? Someone tell Jensen Ackles to keep an eye on the option rights for this one.

The characters in this book – the ones we care the most about, anyway, though I did love Madeline – get the crap beaten out of them. It's not an angry story, exactly, but it is about people crawling their way out from where they were buried in the basement and ripping the guts out of the person who put them there. Over and over Tallulah is taken as merely a means to end to be stripped and left in pieces, and over and over she kicks back with a force hell doesn't know. It's about the relationship between being hurt and dishing out hurt, and I think that this book handles that better than any other I've read (“I learnt two things. One was that no amount of violence you've done to others prepares you for violence done to yourself. The other was that you can't escape the marriage with your body. Divorce isn't an option. Even when you want to stop caring about it you can't”). If there's anything Glen Duncan does well its write sex and violence in the most brutal and beautiful ways. As well as being painfully clever, as usual.

(ARC provided by NetGalley.com)

Look. I like Tahereh Mafi, I think she is an incredibly intelligent, well-spoken, and well-dressed woman. And I appreciate what she was trying to do with this book, and the point of view she provides here is valuable. But I don't think she's a very good writer.

Shirin is a Muslim teenager living in a recently post-9/11 world. How recently is a bit unclear, for however Mafi likes to let us know that it is indeed the 00s, there's never any referential sense of time passed from that event. Along with frequent moves around the country because of her father's high-powered career track, Shirin deals with daily microaggressions from her peers that suddenly turn into straight-up aggression when she begins dating a popular white boy named Ocean James. Also, she joins a break dancing group with her brother. There's a handsome Muslim boy in the mix too for some reason. Its very difficult to draw Mafi's books into a standard conflict-driven arcs, and A Very Large Expanse of Sea is no exception.

I enjoyed anything that involved Shirin's family, details like her brother's feelings on Ramadan and the culture around food. I like that she tells the experience of a young Muslim woman honestly, with humor, anger and affection. I think this story is a great example of how people who have privilege are blind to it, with how Shirin consistently warns Ocean that the two of them dating openly would lead to a lot of prejudice, but he doesn't take her seriously until it actually happens. This book has decent content, which is why its getting two stars rather than one, but its not an artfully crafted story by any means. The prose style reads like the personal essay of a teenager, and a lot of the story is told in summary, with very little narrative build-up or release.

A Very Large Expanse of Sea has a lot of the same problems that other books by Mafi have. Very few to no female characters to support the central one, a whole lot of telling to make up for the lack of organic character and relationship building, and little regard for stuff that a reader might actually find exciting. Those break dancing competitions? Most pass in a hand wave. The town, which is such a massive influence on the events in the story, has zero personality. I mean, yeah, she tells us the people there are racist and obsessed with basketball, but none of that is actually shown. We're only told when it becomes important.

Ocean has no characterization - he's a person with pretty eyes that has the hots for Shirin. Shirin is so oblivious to the world around her, she doesn't even realize he's a star basketball player and popular, its a marvel she noticed that he had attributes she found attractive at all. Whatever those might be. To be fair, their relationship reads like how a lot of teenage relationships actually function - two lost horny souls that awkwardly magnetized to each other for no apparent reason. Which is fine I guess if you're a teenager and its actually your life. But does anyone want to read that? Just sitting in a room with two teenagers saying “Oh” and “Ok” back and forth? It got creepy after a while.

It concerns me that despite all of Mafi's apparent strength and intelligence as a person, she keeps writing narratives about girls who are never friends with other girls, who fall in love with boys who exhibit pushy and violent behavior, and who never seem to really exist in their own worlds. That no matter how impressive she makes her protagonists, the only character that ends up mattering is the boy. It also amazes me that her books keep getting published when they have very little narrative structure. I have read romantic contemporary YA before, and I actually really enjoyed it. Just because you're writing contemporary doesn't mean you translate the insipid conversations of teenagers verbatim. I don't think even teenagers want to see themselves that way. And it doesn't mean you can write about teenagers whispering into their phones at each other and call it a plot. If I'm picking up a book, I want to see an actual, you know, story.

Well. That was unimpressive.

There was so much going on this book and I felt its efforts to be this big thing. There's the post-apocalyptic world with its utopia/dystopian side and its wasteland side, the conspiracy theories, the politics, the militia, the science, the mutiple POVs. There are seeds of epic here. Or maybe Baggott just got carried away. Unfortunately, everything came off as really sloppy to me. She doesn't literally write “and then this happens” but she might as well have. Instead its more like, “Oh and did I mention [insert previously unmentioned piece of world building here]? Well, its going to be relevant in about two pages, so listen up, Bradwell's going to explain it to you.” Occasionally this even is done retroactively, which is so not cool.

The multiple POVs were really not necessary, since the characters were already so close in proximity it just made things feel really cluttered, especially towards the end when the POV would actually switch within a scene. I thought writers only did that in bad fan fiction. I think the story could've benefited a lot if the different POVs were done in large chunks, rather than skipping around from chapter to chapter.

There are some plot aspects that are interesting. Some stuff seemed like it was done for shock value, this book seems to be annoyingly proud of how gritty it is. However, unlike most dystopian novels these days, Pure is stemmed more from real aspects of culture that are developing today (which is why I was a bit thrown when it became more clear that the Before seemed a lot further from present day than originally implied). The Feminine Feminists I thought was a clever reference to the way conservative groups today have been appropriating feminist language to further oppress women and non-binaries, not to mention the book overall handles how sexism would evolve in such a world really well. There are no baby factories, but when a man asks a teenage girl if she is “intact,” well, that's all you need to know.

There are smaller things that I liked. El Capitan and his brother Helmud are disturbingly fascinating. Ingership could've really been something as a villain, but he just didn't feel vivid enough (might've been the weird clash of his perfect little farmhouse and his metallic hinged jaw, it was great in theory, but I never felt like there was a good grip on his character), and his wife's story overpowered him. Overall though, most of the character interactions were really predictable, and I did not care about the romances at all.

So, yeah, its kind of hard coming out of a book that has so much potential but ends up feeling rather amateurish. And there's the whole body horror thing that would normally totally be up my alley, but it never really stacked up. Oh well.

(Galley received from NetGalley.com.)

This book is good clean fun. It doesn't bother itself with explaining too much - you're in a world with humanoid DBZ-esque aliens and people with super powers, the rules and technicalities of which are rarely explained. You just gotta go with it. It wasn't anything deep, complex or even that original, but I was never bored. I also liked Jo Tanis quite a bit. She's not some perky teenager, she's experienced and capable and people follow her because of that, not because she has some indeterminable charisma. Everything about this book is very grounded despite the out-there circumstances. There are a lot of characters, but Nantus gives them just enough to care about them, or at the very least, enough understanding as to why Jo cares about them. I thought the ever-present nature of Jo's late mentor and lover, Mike, through flashbacks and occassionally dazed hallucinations was clever.

Everything is quick and straightforward, making the pacing good but the overall emotional effect watered-down, which is why this doesn't have more stars. Not to mention some of the dialogue is friggin' cheesy. But as a simple, pulpy action story, its perfectly enjoyable.

(Won this book through First Reads giveaway)

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

What Blood Zero Sky has going for it is excellent world building. J. Gabriel Gates paints a futuristic world where corporate greed has completely taken over vividly and with disturbing detail. The first couple of pages are suffocating. Not only that, but its clever too, particularly with vernacular (“by the way,” is replaced with “sidebar” which I thought was pretty cute). The fact that the dominant company, N-Corp, based itself out of Nabisco I think is pretty poignant considering that it was quite recent that many conservatives got a wakeup call when they proposed boycotting Nabisco due to its new stance on gay rights, but would've (if they did some research, which honestly I don't know how many did) found that its actually near impossible. The world that's painted here is one of constant entertainment and constant work and constant need for the next big thing when you're already in unimaginable debt. It effectively illustrated what it truly means to be owned and not only never know it, but love it.

The other thing that's done well is rhetoric. Gates would make a fabulous speech writer. Whether its the Protectorate's charismatic general, Ethan Greene, riling up the troops, or the Reverend Jimmy Shaw spewing hate and fear in the form of faith and love, the dialogue in this book is extremely convincing.

That's pretty much what those two stars consist of, because the rest was a whole lot of nothing. The first big problem lies with the main character, May Fields. When the book opened, I got the distinct impression that Gates was trying a bit too hard to create a nihilistic voice, one that is overly aware and trendily apathetic about the world around her. May seems to know that there's a lot wrong with her world, but she benefits from it so she doesn't complain. This overwhelming ennui eventually slacks off, so you'd think I'd feel better about it. But I couldn't, because it runs off into a whole big mess. May Fields was going in so many directions I couldn't even keep track of her. One second she's our nihilist hero, the next she's a God-fearing devotee of the company, the next she's entertaining the thought of rebellion for a pretty face. In short, she lacked conviction, and when you're telling a story about rebellion and dying for a cause, that is a big freaking deal. Her lack of focus kept me from really getting into the story, and all the emotional investment that was needed to carry the second half of the book just wasn't there for me.

Oh and to add salt to the wound, as this was an unedited e-ARC, there were bound to be mistakes. This one sadly had a rather massive continuity error in which a big reveal happened twice. Whoops. And the timing of said reveal has pretty a big impact on May's mindset and development, so yeah, that definitely took me out of the moment.

So. Now that I've gotten all that stuff out of the way Imma take my earrings out and get mad about this cracks knuckles. Because this book made me mad. I'm mad about how a book about insurgency against a totalitarian corporate entity not unlike what we're experiencing today is dominated by white characters. I'm mad that the one adult black character is referred to as “exotic” at one point. I'm mad that rape was used as a plot device for a male character, but otherwise has little bearing on the character development of the female character who was actually raped. I'm mad that one of the ways May is painted as a special little snowflake is by noting how many sets of fake breasts she sees. And it makes me incredibly mad this revolution Gates' portrayed is founded in the voice of institutions like government and the military and even religion. When a child tells the May, as they march to their deaths “God bless you, and god bless America” it took everything in me not to throw my Kindle.



The roots of insurrection do not lay in institutions. It's not something that you can buy, or claim through nationalism, or even learn in school. It's something that grows from being labeled by said establishment as an Other, it is in the markings of being stepped on. There's no glory in that fight because its one that should never have to be fought. Really, May Fields should know this. She may be of privilege (like many protagonists in dystopian settings, effectively creating a kyriarchal white savior), but she's a queer woman who had her first love stolen from her along with her ability to express herself as who she is. She was raped by squadmen who prance around throughout the entire book, flaunting their right to abuse their authority. This stuff isn't strange, it's not reserved for fiction. It happens all the time, though not nearly as often to the daughters of CEOs. These are the kinds of stories that fuel rage, that get molotov cocktails thrown, yet all we get from May is a few twinges of anxiety at the sight of authorities that have abused and used her. It's not until she's effectively given permission – she's absorbed into the Protectorate and has the backing of two male characters (her relationships with the women she meets is much more shaky at first) – that she becomes more passionate.



The fact that May is a lesbian was really exciting for me at first. It seemed like a great opportunity to portray the defiance and rebellion of queerness, as opposed to the heteronormative perspective that dominates media. But ultimately it felt incredibly sanitized. May pined after her love the same way any airheaded YA heroine does after some boy she barely knows, and in May's case hers is in love with a man. As with much else she does, there was disconnect between her emotions and the events in her life because she waffled back and forth so much.

There's even a brief moment where, despite May expressing the satisfaction she feels of being in battle (“Though I can hardly admit it to myself, I am in love with war. The feeling of firing a gun, like holding thunder in my hand, is intoxicating. The power to kill compensates for all I've been deprived in my life”), she speaks of her wish for a nonviolent solution, invoking the name of Martin Luther King Jr. To which I declared “Oh hell no.”

Dr. King was not a gentle lamb who wanted us to hold hands and sing Kumbayah. Back in the day he was an Angry Black Man™ and a communist and a queer and everything else ‘bad' they could lobby at him. He was angry, angry about racism and war and poverty and sexism and homophobia and all the things that are swept under the rug when the same white Republicans who back then would have called him a traitor now mumble a few lines of the “I Have a Dream” speech once a year as if that makes their salty asses not racist.

Dr. King never thought that being a pacifist meant being passive. And now white people want to pass him off as some watered down civil rights leader who made white people realize that, oh, racism is kind of bad. - tumblr user piinboots

(ARC provided by NetGalley.com)

My attraction to this book was not exactly typical of me. Straight up action, even with a sci-fi edge, isn't really my style. Dan Krokos just kind of fascinates me. Believe it or not, even before the whole GR-negative-review-Twitter shenanigans I had an inkling of his, shall we say, word-vomit problem based a couple of blog posts and interviews he had done. There's something slightly trainwrecky about him. I find that kind of attractive, not gonna lie. And yes, there might be something weird about that.

This book was not by any means of a trainwreck though, it was wholly entertaining, exciting and interesting. I think what I found so remarkable about this book is that when I say its full of twists and turns, I really mean it. The is almost no downtime, and no aimless meandering, nor do said twists come blasting out of nowhere with little rhyme or reason. The plot moves smoothly and organically, and it moves constantly. There's always something else going on, always another layer. There's a lot of action, a lot fight scenes that are well-written. Even I, with my poor spatial reasoning skills who can't even tell what's going on when I read a comic book, could tell who was winning a fight (seriously, I'm terrible, it's one of the reasons why I was a hella confused while reading The Bourne Identity). I heard there are talks about this being turned into a TV series, which I think would work really well, not because its episodic exactly, but the complexity of the story would definitely serve a long-form medium better than it would a feature film.

I like Miranda North a lot, which is remarkable considering the fact that she's kind of half a person. No memories, no attachments to the world, but still highly functional, she doesn't think twice and she doesn't look back. I like that. I like how Krokos establishes her sense of identity in the here and now (this is probably the first YA book that I've read where use of the present tense was highly appropriate), rather than relying too much on trying to figure out the past. Even without the amnesia, I think Miranda North is a very much creature of the moment.

Of her friends, Noah is the only one with a really distinct personality – he's snarky but still sweet. Peter and Olive don't have much distinctive about them, but Miranda's chemistry with them and the value she gives her relationships with them make them feel more real. As for the romance/love triangle/quadrangle/hexagon/wtf, it's a little bit ridiculous, sexy and cute all at once. When you have four people who are raised together, how likely is it that they'll fall in love with one another, as opposed to just thinking of each other as siblings and get grossed out at the thought of kissing? Personally, I think it'd be a mixture of both – there'd be a while when its gross and then the hormones kick in and everyone's screwing like bunnies. This is why I don't write YA.

But in all seriousness, the romance does kind of illuminate some of the things that are wrong with this book. The two major points that the plot hinges on (Miranda's loss of memory, and the “dry run” that the foursome are trying to stop) are kind of nonsensical. Why in the world would Noah think messing with Miranda's memory shots would protect her? Why would he take a girl who is extraordinarily capable of taking care of herself and cripple her? It doesn't make any kind of sense. Somehow, this ceases to matter when it comes to the two of them. Miranda's anger at what he did is palatable and made me feel good about being in her head. And her chemistry with Peter is pretty sexy, actually, though there isn't really any particular reason why they're drawn to each other. It very well could have been Olive she decided to make-out with in a bathroom stall. Which would've been awesome. Just sayin'.

As for the dry run, yeah, I didn't get why it had to go down like that. Is it really necessary to descend an entire city into chaos just to prove the Roses work? But then again, there's still a lot about who Miranda and her friends really are and what their purpose is that has yet to be elaborated on, so I think I can leave that alone for now.

I also really like that despite the crazy complex romances going on there is distinct sense of family in this story. Even when there are new characters introduced to the group very close to the end, they're absorbed rather effortlessly, and the characters are not afraid to be open about their emotional attachments with people are doing or have done some very bad things. The love these characters feel for each other is rather fearless, and I appreciate that. Fun and fearless. There should be more books like this.

I might be experiencing an extremely strong reaction to a rather mediocre book, which is strange. I've never liked the phrase “guilty pleasure.” Why should you feel bad about anything you enjoy? But I enjoyed this book, and I kind of feel like I shouldn't have.

The voice is going to annoy the hell out of a lot of people. It is a product of its setting – Los Angeles, circa late 90s I think, considering the lack of cell phones and the continued unironic relevance of The Cure and James Spader – and as such is horribly vapid and up its own ass. The first twenty pages of ripped leggings, leopard bikini top, bowler hat, smudged multicolor nail polish, straw fedora tipped back, guys in denim shorts (no really, guys in denim shorts), and everyone has too much money and too much time and not enough parents I had to stop myself from facepalming until I had a big red imprint on my cheek. And then I got into it.

As pretentious as it is, as unapologetically hip every single word is, Bloom does in fact know what she's doing. When you tap into the tremulous nature of youth, especially that of lost rich kids whose parents are in Cairo, at galas, don't-forget-to-double-click-the-Lexus notes left on the pillow, you're accessing what's so damn creepy about being a teenager. Something that I always remember said about the movie Brick was that it was so effective because it was made by people young enough to remember how scary high school is. Walking home alone from work half-naked on hot summer night is fun and oh-so-quirky until all of a sudden it's not, and your vulnerability, your mortality becomes profoundly real. That instead of the popular girl's manic pixie best friend you are prey in every sense of the word. It's what Brett Easton Ellis on one end, and Twillight on the other don't have – the unraveled feeling of a lonely summer vacation.

Drain You is a deconstruction of the Twilight template that's been used repeatedly in the YA scene. Or at least that's how I like to think of it. It succeeds in a lot of respects and fails in others. James, the consciously mysterious vampire love interest is actually a pretty likable guy. He's not a porcelain superhero, he's a twenty-two-year-old kid who got drunk at a party and woke up dead. He's just as insecure and socially clumsy as our heroine, Quinn. I like that he's a bit of a coward, the same way I like the fact that Quinn is sincerely selfish. They're both painfully normal – and I mean really painfully, the kind of way that makes you wince because you can understand why they have no idea what to do, and how they're compelled towards stupidity. They're young and much too powerful for their age. As James' sister, Naomi, says of him, “Those parts of him that you love – the weak, nice human parts – are the exact reasons we can't trust him to save us.”

Speaking of James' family, the Sheets, I adore them. They are not an unapproachable brood, they're just like every other teenager on Mulholland Drive in the summer – alone. Naomi is a bit too hysterical at points, but by the end, as she was holding an empty gas can in her flower sundress, she was giving me tingling feelings. And Whit, well, Whit is a gift in tortoise shell glasses. He's James' wittier, more confident, and straight up cooler younger brother. He provides the love triangle aspect that's clearly necessary for this kind of story. Um, actually. Let's take a moment and talk about that.

There's James, who Quinn is in love with, and Whit who Quinn loves. And then there's Morgan. I hate Morgan. With a passion. From the first pages it was obvious Morgan was a Nice Guy. He pined after Quinn even though she had made it clear she wasn't interested. Sure, she loved being around him and moreso she loved his attention (as she says, rather beautifully and sincerely “I never wanted to hear him say he loved me, but I had to believe he felt it,” and I kind of hated myself for relating to that so much), but a hint's a hint. She wouldn't take rides to and from work from him, or a ride to a party that would suggest they were there together. She suggested other girls that he should date. And yet he keeps pushing, ignoring her refusals. Then he tries to kiss her when she's fall-down drunk, and then gets pissed at her when she walks out on him. As if that weren't enough to paint this guy as a Grade-A douchebag, Quinn has a moment of epic weakness when, missing James (yep, this book does the whole vampire-boyfriend-leaves-and-heroine-is-devastated thing too), she starts coming on to Morgan in an attempt to pretend he's James. As if the scene weren't icky enough, he says, “I'm not going to stop this. Even if I'm not sure you want to, I want to, so I'm going to.”

“Even if I'm not sure you want to, I want to, so I'm going to.”“I'm not sure you want to”



Just having to the type that out made me temporarily see red. Morgan, you are a mother fucking creep, get the fuck out. And yet, Quinn keeps on going on about how she's so undeserving of his devotion, that every single time there's an interaction between them its constant guilt tripping.



Quinn, sweetie, this guy doesn't respect you. He blatantly disregards your rejections, he's not even interested if you consent to sex. There's a word for guys like that. They're called rapists.

To make matters worse, Morgan has no value whatsoever to the story, and I'm not really sure what the point to his creepiness was. He is treated like crap throughout most of the book, so that's some consolation, but he's never ever called on his shit. I'm pretty sure that if he had not been in this book, I would've been able to soundly give this four stars, but with him, no fucking way.

Thankfully there's Whit, who doesn't view Quinn as a piece of ass. He's actually, like, her friend, and a pretty good one at that. “He did believe in supernatural stuff - both good and bad - because it was a reality in his life, but he also knew when to be human and let things be quiet. And when it got too quiet, he let me pretend like that was fine.” He is utterly easy. As opposed to Morgan who holds grudges simply for being denied sex, Whit forgives Quinn within the span of a night and a morning after she pulled some serious, non-petty shit on him, not because he was taking the high road or some haughty moral shit, but because she's his friend and it's easier to stand by her than against her out of spite. There are only small hints at possible real feelings for her (she did get temporarily jealous when she sees him with another girl, to which he shrugs off with, “I'm really sexy, it's not your fault”), but generally he's too preoccupied with his family problems for them to really go anywhere. Actually, I got the feeling that even if Quinn decided she loved them both, it would be ok. There's never any real suggestion that she has to choose. When she tells Whit she loves him, he says, “You love too many people.” To which she responds, “That's a stupid thing to say.” And really, how can you love too much? Quinn and Bloom may be on to something.

So I've spent way too much of this talking about boys. There is a bit of a plot here too, though not much. Thanks to the hyperrealistc approach, the story meanders to the point where it almost seems like contemporary YA instead of paranormal. But it suits the voice, and really I think it's down to matter of taste. If you want a page turner, this is not it.

But I liked this. I liked the stark and slightly scattered prose, and I liked the ridiculously honest way people spoke, which is why I did so much quoting here and I still feel like I didn't do it justice. It's the type of speech that you only hear from privileged white hipster kids who never get smacked in the mouth for speaking their mind. As said, its down to taste – if this kind of stuff annoys you, then steer clear. If not, turn on Lana del Rey and just go with it.

This was so not for me, and for that I almost feel guilty for giving it one star, because this was very obviously not geared at my demographic. Then again, I've read plenty of books that supposedly aren't either, and they're brilliant. This isn't a terrible book, but it isn't really much of anything. The prose is bland, the characters are blah, the story is just kind of there. I don't think I've ever read such a nondescript book in my life.

The story is heavily steeped in teenagedom. Nikki Beckwith is not necessarily described as a popular girl, but she was dating the high school quarterback, has to fend off his other cheerleading suitors, and her father's the mayor. It's a universe that is totally alien to me outside of 90's teen dramas. And it's in this rather milquetoast setting that Nikki and Jack's undying love is born, the love that allows her to survive the Feed that should have drained her of her youth and vitality, and brings her back from the Everneath.

I can't claim to know the hearts of young people, cold-hearted android that I am. But as I am reading a book from their point of view, I probably should. And I can't. I don't know what makes Jack special, I don't know what makes Nikki special. While she has glimmers of a personality – she picks up knitting in order to improve her dexterity and taught her brother how to fish – for the most part, she resembles the many self-sacrificing female protagonists in YA that make Stephenie Meyer proud. She claims she came back for her family, but we see very little of her father and brother. Her mind revolves around Jack, as his does around her. At least they're on the same page, even if Nikki takes forever to realize it.

Being away from one's family and life for a hundred years is a big deal. Being taken by an immortal and asked if you want to be queen of the underworld is a big deal. You'd think Nikki would have some perspective at this point. But all the conflicts seem so trivial. Her dad gets mad at her for giving him bad press, Jack doesn't give a shit about her even though he clearly does, also his stupid ex-girlfriend who he might've but probably didn't cheat on Nikki with still exists and breathes air and stuff. Really? Am I supposed to care? These all felt like manufactured conflicts that are supposed to - what? Make Nikki feel guilty about coming back? Ground us more in the real world? Pretend that there's a reason Nikki shouldn't be with Jack for every damn second of her six months before damnation? For a girl with a deadline, she spent a lot of wasted time on stuff that really didn't matter.

The plot twists you could see coming miles and miles away, particularly the ending (ok, I might've read the synopsis to the second book in the series a while back before I planned on reading this, but if the book's good, spoilers shouldn't ruin it). It all felt very by the numbers, and the only eagerness I felt was simply to get it over with. I imagine this book is good for someone, based on the amount of positive reviews this has, it must be. But there are far more sophisticated and compelling YA reads out there.

Leave it to Chuck Wendig to write something sophisticatedly simple, showing his good taste through a reckless and enthusiastic lack thereof. The Blue Blazes is a turbo-charged urban fantasy with fists, guts, goblins and clever one-liners.

The richest part of this book is the setting. From the above ground streets of New York, to the subterranean Underworld filled with not only a plethora of ugly baddies, but a whole ancient culture. Its absurd and over-the-top enough to be thrilling, while still feeling real enough that its as though you could step right into it. Not that you'd want to. The violence in this book is at times at shudder-inducing gross-out levels, and the bad guys are creepy as fuck.

The characters are cut from a simpler mold, and I mean that in the best way possible. Mookie Pearl is a big angry brute, his daughter Nora is an angry teen of a much smaller size. They may be small-minded creatures, but their desires and hopes are far from insignificant, and their relationship is tragically complex. Their mistakes, their pride, and their sheer relentlessness are what drives the plot forward, along with a suave villain and a conspiracy to turn this supernatural NYC upside down.

This is a super fun, kinda crazy, splatterpunk fantasy noir. Going into this, I was looking for something messy and dark that revelled in its own absurdity and rage, and The Blue Blazes totally hit the spot.

A few years ago, if you had asked me what my favorite kinds of horror films and stories were, slashers would probably not even be on the list. I doubt I would have even though of it. But slashers are having a moment right now - one that sociologically was pretty predictable, if you're paying attention - and this past summer when I watched Netflix's Fear Street movies, I found myself reminded of how the paperback slasher-thrillers produced by the likes of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike were what I used to live for when I was a preteen. Before I ever saw my first horror movie.So now, I'm all in. Between Fear Street and Hell Fest and the new Halloween movies, I'm here for it. And when I saw this book listed, I don't think I even read the synopsis. The title is the concept - and this concept, with this author, is gold.The Final Girl Support Group exists in an alternate universe, one where the surviving victims of mass homicides get first dibs on the rights to their story (this is a surprisingly topical idea actually, as the present interest in true crime has raised the question of who gets to profit from who's story, and the fine line between raising awareness and exploitation). As such, this is the world where the mythos of the final girl came first, before the movies. In Grady Hendrix's world, there are alternate versions of the final girls we know of - Laurie from Halloween, Sid from Scream, Sally from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street (how the supernatural elements of that story are incorporated into a world of knife-wielding spree killers is brilliant!). It would come off as cheap if Hendrix wasn't so damn good. Then there's Lynette Tarkington, the final girl who isn't really a final girl - she didn't kill her monster, she merely survived him. Lynette's life revolves around keeping herself safe - there is not an escape route she hasn't thought of, security measure she hasn't taken, a mode of violence that she isn't aware of. And yet, when someone comes for her and the other final girls she's been in therapy with for years, she's caught off guard. Every precaution she's taken suddenly crumbles to dust, and Lynette begins to realize that in order to save anyone - let alone herself - she has to do more than just survive. The Final Girl Support Group is swift. Like [b:My Best Friend's Exorcism 41015038 My Best Friend's Exorcism Grady Hendrix https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533059241l/41015038.SY75.jpg 46065002], it is brilliantly paced. Hendrix is freaking surgical with the way he creates his thrills and beats. But even so, I read this book a lot more slowly then I expected. Because while it feels like being in a slasher movie - it's action-packed and thrilling and funny - it is first and foremost about trauma. Most importantly, what happens after trauma. Hendrix had a mission with this book - it was to imagine who these women really were, who they became after the worst day of their life. Which ones used what they were given to make something greater, or those that are barely hanging on. Which ones have scars and disabilities, which ones have partners and book deals. Lynette may be a paranoid shut-in, but she makes a living writing romance novels. Hendrix was intent on giving each of these women texture, and not just the gritty kind that is given to Laurie Strode and Sarah Connor.That's actually something that this book intentionally tries to subvert - the way the bad ass loner trope has infiltrated female representation in media. It wasn't healthy in men, and certainly isn't any healthier in women. Lynette is so intent on protecting herself, that she isolates herself from everyone and everything - and she's not better off for it. And she's not a bad ass. She's scared, she's clumsy, she's a terrible judge of character. Her trauma didn't turn her into a superhero - it turned her into a wrecking ball barreling through life, lucky if she doesn't destroy everything around her in the process. Lynette is a frustrating and terrifying protagonist to follow, and as the story rounded the corner of its final climax, I felt like I was trying to pump the breaks on a car skidding out of control. This book has its tongue-in-cheek moments, the way all of Hendrix's work does, but overall its pretty damn dark and unflinching. Hendrix's humor is less about cheeky irreverence and more about acknowledging the absurdity of our realities. And this book in particular is very unapologetic about what it wants to say. I daresay some may even find it preachy in how overtly it wants to examine our impulse to watch bad things happening to women, not to mention our need for revenge disguised as justice. That's why Hendrix is so overt about the movies he's referencing - he wants you to be thinking about the victims of Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees when you read this. He wants you to be thinking about what you felt when you watched those movies, and how you feel when you see those characters in this different light. And if even with all that, this book is incredibly entertaining. But it is not always an easy read.

This is going to sound completely ridiculous, but I think the best thing about this book is the love triangle. I know. But hear me out.Mare Barrow is your token quick-witted, feisty street rat living in a dystopian world where the upper class superpowered Silvers dominate the subservient powerless Reds. Mare is simultaneously too aware of her situation and not angry enough about it for a teenager. Even though I wasn't a fan, Chuck Wendig's [b:Under the Empyrean Sky 17817631 Under the Empyrean Sky (The Heartland Trilogy, #1) Chuck Wendig https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1369037255s/17817631.jpg 24922171] I think was one of the best examples of how people in the bottom rungs of an oppressive society behave and think. Pierce Brown's [b:Red Rising 15839976 Red Rising (Red Rising, #1) Pierce Brown https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1461354651s/15839976.jpg 21580644] is another great example, which a lot of people have compared Red Queen too. Most marginilized people don't realize what's happening to them, and the one's that do are extremely active, whether covertly or not, in righting things. With the level of awareness Aveyard gives her Reds, a revolution would have happened ages ago.Likewise, the Silvers aren't particularly believable either. We're told over and over again that Silvers are inherently colder, more rational and practical people, and yet all we ever meet are compassionate and sympathetic Silvers. You know, with the exception of the evil harpy female characters like Evangeline and Elara. I'm serious, the only sympathetic female Silvers are dead or mute, which is fucked up. The implication was supposedly that Silver culture raises its people up just to be more cutthroat, much in the way the Golds are in Red Rising. Except in Red Rising you could see that, you met interesting, beautiful, loving Golds who nonetheless were stone-cold killers, which perpetually keeps you on your toes. In Red Queen, you have either evil bloodthirsty psychopaths with no depth or emotion like Ptolemus and Evangeline, or sympathetic and kind characters like Julian who are very clearly going to get stepped on because they don't possess that killer instinct needed to survive in Silver society. There's no in-between.The only vaguely complex characters are the king and his two sons, Cal and Maven. Cal is the handsome one who accidentally gets Mare entrenched in the world of the Silvers, and Maven the one she is betrothed to in order to hide the secret of her abilities. And believe it or not, these guys are actually really captivating characters. Cal is the born prince, the warrior, the righteous one. I like that he simultaneously cares about people and wants to be a good and compassionate king, but also believes in the value of war and that the Reds cannot and should not ever be liberated. Aveyard goes a little overboard making him seem more relatable and vulnerable, and he and Mare's chemistry feels forced at times, but you can see why she'd be into him. And then there's Maven. You know he's slippery and smart, but he shows so much passion for Mare and her cause. This is what a supportive love interest looks like, this is a character with a soul. Considering what a vulnerable position Mare was in, I'm surprised that she didn't fall head-over-heels for him sooner. Maven's a dream. Or at least, you think he is. Maven's swerve was not a huge surprise for me, neither does it negate what I said about his character. Aveyard still gets a lot of credit from me for writing a character that Mare would believably fall in love with, even if the whole thing was a deception. If he ends up being a much better, more well-thought out version of Warner from the [b:Shatter Me 10429045 Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1) Tahereh Mafi https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1310649047s/10429045.jpg 15333458] series I'll be very pleased.Which brings me to overall plot. Aveyard is not bad at writing action, but not so great at strategy. When Mare joins up with the Red Dawn to help them overthrow the Silvers, they come up with a plan to target specific individuals in the Silver hierarchy, and then break in during a ball and assassinate them each individually. That...that's a terrible plan. It's a horrible horrible plan, and the Red Dawn deserved to get caught for thinking they could pull that off. Of course, there is a reason that all their plans are terrible, but honestly only a child could believe the Red Dawn has a fighting chance at all.And that's the crux of it - in the spectrum of Young Adult, Red Queen is on the youngest end of it. I can see why people would find this enjoyable, and admittedly it got a lot better as it went along. But the writing here is very very blunt and not particularly sophisticated. It has a slog to get through for the most part, I had no real interest in seeing how things ended or what happened to the any of the characters. I would recommend this for a young reader new to YA and dystopias, but for everyone else just read Red Rising.

“To hell with all of you...To hell with monsters and to hell with men. There is no difference to me.”I was wrong. In my review of [b:The Isle of Blood 9955669 The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist, #3) Rick Yancey https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389393836s/9955669.jpg 14849405], I said that Yancey better dial back the introspection for the final installment and give us more monsters instead. However, The Final Descent is far from the tightly woven monster hunts of the first two books, and it is deathly brilliant. But maybe Yancey did give me what I wanted. He gave me monsters. Just not in the shapes I was expecting.Will Henry has fallen off the plate. No longer is the young boy with no other wish than to serve Pellinore Warthrop the best he can. In his place is a swaggering, cruel, manipulative, malicious adolescent, the tasty adjectives could go on for days. Up until this point, Will played Watson to Warthrop's Sherlock. Will may have been the narrator, but Warthrop was undoubtedly the main character. He filled up every page with his blustering bravado and intelligence, while the indispensable Will Henry swept up his messes as he walked. Now, in this book Will Henry swells, he grows tall with age and venom, his reach and influence both catastrophic and careless. And in turn, Warthrop shrivels. The genius monstrumologist so swept up in the creatures he studied – most of all, his greatest find, the xenomorph-esque python, T. cerrejonensis – he's blind to the monster that he's created. And no monster terrifies him more.I think maybe that's where some of the disappointment that others have expressed stems from. When I browse around Tumblr and Goodreads I see a lot of love for Warthrop. I'm not really sure why. He's an awful man. And The Final Descent shows him for what he truly is – genius, perhaps, but ultimately greedy and selfish and horribly abusive. Then again, here I am waxing romantic about his teenage serial killer. But at least Will Henry knows what he is, and never pretends to be anything else. The story told here is a disjointed one. It's not a plot that ramps up like a roller coaster and then falls. It's more like a downward spiral. You can see the point you're heading towards, but you can't stop falling. It's entropy, a world of chaos that inevitably leads to decay. Even the institution of monstrumology doesn't escape, but again, you know that it won't from the beginning of the series. I was a little disappointed that Will didn't become much of anything after Warthrop. With all his terrible skills, he could have been a great villain in someone else's story. But I can't blame Yancey for wanting to tie things together more neatly, even if the book he wrote was remarkably untidy. There aren't a whole lot of true horror novels in the YA world, and definitely none at the level of this series, in terms of quality, sophistication or sheer scariness. I am sad that it's over, but this was a true and fitting finale. Not loud or dramatic, but true to the characters and the story that Yancey meant to tell.

I'm having a hard time sorting how I feel about Inside the Outside. I'm the type of reader that is generally comfortable with putting a book aside for a while (which is why I'm so slow to finish anything), but this one kept me coming back. The writing has great flow to it, and the story and characters pull you in.

However, the prose also keeps you at arms length. The style is simple, clinical even childish, which makes sense when you find out who the narrator is. It works for the first half of the book, when we are entrenched in the Divinity of Feminine Reproach, and we are seeing things almost exclusively through Timber Marlowe's naive and isolated perspective. The cold wording gives an escape route for some of the horrible things Timber goes through, while still conveying the seed of evil that begins to grow inside her.

Once Timber is on the Outside though, and the perspective expands, I felt a little gypped. Timber was going through some serious life changes - having a child, falling in love, making a real life for herself - and its conveyed with not much more intensity than a grocery list. I didn't want to take Timber's feelings for granted, she's a complex and intriguing character, and not every person feels the same way about becoming a mother, especially one to a product of rape. We just have to take the narrator's word for it that most important thing to Timber is the family that came together around her.

We're also asked to sympathize with a lot of morally questionable characters. Billy D Luscious, for example, while a sweet man who genuinely cares for Timber, also facilitated murder and sex slavery (not to mention, Timber's own rape). Early on in the book, we're supposed to feel for a young man who is executed, an event Timber unintentionally caused, as well as his young lover who later commits suicide. But I kept thinking “Isn't this the guy who had sex with a twelve-year-old? Not caring so much.” I like reading about morally questionable characters, and I rather like how this book turns stereotypes on their heads (the whole setting rests in unwholesome worlds, from a cannibalistic cult to the porn industry to organized crime, and yet that's the world where Timber raises a daughter who goes to Disneyland every birthday and loves Cosmic Bowling), but because of the detached prose style it doesn't feel like the story digs deep enough.

Despite all this, I did genuinely enjoy this book, which is partially why its left me so confused. I liked its brutality and straightforward nature, I just wish it took a few moments here and there to show something rather just tell it.

I was pretty enamored with the first book in this series, White Cat, and yet I took my damn time picking up its sequel. It's an oddly anonymous series. The world-building is fascinating, and Holly Black takes on the difficult task of creating an alternate history world that looks exactly like ours but has deep biases and norms that are starkly different from our own. In this book, those elements expand. Unfortunately, the story around Cassel Sharpe doesn't move a whole lot.

Red Glove is fine. It's fine, really. It suffers greatly from middle-book syndrome in that its primary purpose is to get its characters from one point to the other, neither of which being the beginning or end of their journeys. As such, it feels a little aimless. After Cassel's dangerous and criminal brother finally gets his comeuppance and is killed, Cassel is recruited by two FBI agents to solve his murder as well as number of others that Cassel is fairly certain he committed himself. Meanwhile, he's being courted by mob boss Zacharov, trying to avoid the affections of Zacharov's daughter, Lila, who he loves but has been cursed to love him, and like any senior in high school, trying to figure out what he's going to do with his life, a task that is all the more complicated when who you are is inherently criminal. As you can imagine, he does a lot of fumbling around.

Holly Black's writing is quick and arresting, so this was easy to breeze through. I was never bored. The characters are as well-drawn as ever, and there are a lot great moments. But I kept wondering, “Where is this going?” It does go somewhere, and Cassel makes some significant decisions for himself, his family and his friends, but I don't know how strongly I feel about any of them. The central plot - the murder mystery - is probably the least interesting thing about this book. I much preferred the politics, Cassel's relationships with his friends and his family, and the atmosphere of crime as family. I do have a strong urge to read the last book as soon as possible because this book feels very incomplete. I say that of course, but if my track record is any indication, I probably won't.

I'm tempted to not even bother reviewing this and just tell you to read it. Everyone should read it. I think after listening to nine hours of the deep corruption that has created the world we are currently living in, I feel a modicum of what Sarah Kendzior feels on a daily basis - extraordinary frustration that people just don't see what's right in front of them.

What I like most about this book is that Kendzior pivots the discourse away from focusing on individual citizens. She never talks down about the white Midwestern/Southerners who are often credited for getting Trump in office, she never tries to come up with tired explanations that most political pundits rely on like “economic anxiety” or “lack of education.” Instead, she uses the state of Missouri as an example of how decades of corrupt state government and exploitation of the working class have created a population desperate for security and validation. When you continuously take away from people, they start ripping each other to pieces for the scraps. This knowledge isn't exactly new, but what Kendzior is trying to impress upon us here is that it is very much intentional. This system was built for someone like Trump to eventually lead it.

The portrait that Kendzior draws in this book is all about connections. The same cast of characters - international criminals, oligarchs, and spies - keep showing up again and again in Trump's life. Some of them have been arrested and charged, others still free but their crimes known. But there is a lot that is unknown. We don't know why Ivanka and Donald Jr. were a hair's breadth from being charged with fraud and then abruptly were not. We don't know Trump's exact relationships with Ghislaine Maxwell or various Russian agents. But what is fairly clear is that Donald Trump is so ridiculously compromised. These people have been in his life - his businesses, his friendships, even his family - from the beginning. He is a hollow shell of a human being propped up by a network of opportunists who groomed him for the political stage. This is not an outsider who came in to shake things up. This was on purpose. The chaos that we're experiencing now? The people who made Trump who he is wanted this to happen.

There are so many books coming out about Trump these days, and every time some new dastardly info comes out about him someone inevitably says, “It's not it isn't anything we don't already know.” I'm irritated by this for a number a reasons - for one, you don't know. And two, it's not about him. It's about the people who will use a man like this for their own ends. There's a reason the title of this book is the “Invention of Donald Trump.” Ultimately, the individual at the center has little relevance. He's the right body, raised at the right time by the right sociopath and exploited and groomed by the right people. He gets a lot out of the deal, I'm sure. But the American public as a whole gets nothing. This is a plot to drained our country dry so that a select few can profit.

We are heading down a bad path. As of today, there are two months until the general election and the only reason why I am not completely terrified is because of some very basic mindfulness practices. I've taught myself to loosen my neck and shoulders so that I don't get stabbing pain under my jaw. I've learned to put away things that I can't control so that I can sleep at night. I might end up doing what Kendzior talks about in the last couple of chapters - seeing the national monuments, exploring the country and taking it in as it is today, in the event that it will soon be gone. I implore you to read this book, not because I think it'll change your mind - if you're inclined to read this, then you're probably already quite anti-Trump. But you will have the ammunition you are looking for, and maybe, just maybe you'll be able to hand it to someone who does need their mind changed. Someone who needs to see the artifice around what they thought was a man.

I almost wish I had read this in school. This would have been lovely to read against [b:The Turn of the Screw 12948 The Turn of the Screw Henry James https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327909344s/12948.jpg 990886], with its supposed repressed male homoerotic subtext, in contrast to Shirley Jackson's far more blatant lesbian anguish. I mean, if you didn't raise an eyebrow at the first mention of Theo's “flatmate” then you're missing a good chunk of the book.Much like Hill House, this book won't behave as you might expect. Depending on what you expect. It will scare you, I can tell you that much. It's always impressive indulging in a horror classic that actually gives you chills, despite being exposed to decades worth of material that's come afterward. The way Jackson goes about it is still unique, and the way she paces out a good scare. I think it may be because we are so in Eleanor's head, especially towards the end of the book, that its hard to tell what's real. And at first you're afraid because Eleanor's confused and afraid herself, and then you're afraid because Eleanor is no longer confused, and in fact she feels pretty good about the figure pacing and singing in the corner of the room that no one else can see. That gave me goosebumps just typing that out.But no, The Haunting of Hill House won't straighten out into a story that's more familiar. The characters won't settle down or develop into attractive character arcs that make them seem like better people than they are. You won't even find out what is haunting Hill House, whether something happened there, or if it was just born awful. Or even if it was the house at all.Classic horror, the real classic stuff like the aforementioned Henry Conrad, lives and breathes on subtext. The characters speak in riddles and rhymes because their very characters are part of the mystery. Four people without a home or anywhere to belong, one of which who suffers in this far more than the others, go to a haunted house and try not to go crazy. They huddle so tight to each other in the darkness that they start to bleed into one another. Children trying to escape punishment, trying to be brave, trying to be rational and not only finding that it's not possible, it just doesn't really suit them.

Ever find yourself just not reading a book? Not intentionally, but every time you crack it open your minds goes elsewhere. Or whenever you have free time to sit and read you find something else to do instead. That's what happened to me with Luminarium.

I still think the concept is fascinating - a deadbeat thirty-year-old uses computer technology to accidentally step beyond the veil - but it got bogged down with its less interesting elements. You'd think there would be a point where Fred just threw up his hands and realized he wasn't going to get his old life back, and even if he did it would be meaningless. I suppose that's where the book was heading but it was doing it very slowly. Yet for a book that was so aimless, it managed to be predictable as well. At one point, I said to myself, “Well, I keep reading until he sleeps with this chick, and if nothing interesting is produced from that, I'll stop.” Which is pretty much what went down. The cathartic sexual liaison turned out just to be another way of stripping Fred of the last things he had to hold onto in life. Any spiritual awakening happen then? Does meditating on his parent's roof count?

I think a part of me is still trying to convince myself to try to finish this, because I so rarely DNF books. Which is why I'm writing this review, and trying to get some closure on this. I wish there was a reason to finish other than just habit, but for a book that involves itself with spirituality and faith without ignorance, there is very little to be gained from it.

Ok, I'm just going to say it -the Mother thing is icky. I recognize the Alien reference, but I think it may have been taken too far here.

A salvager with issues ends up on a derelict space craft that has been overtaken by a parasitic sentient fungus that has infected the ship's crew. It sounds exciting - it isn't. I can't really put my finger on why I have zero interest in continuing reading this after getting halfway through. The character's are not really interesting at all. Roslyn is an alcoholic and traumatized and has a Bad Dad, but none of those things end up having any influence on the actual plot. The rest of the cast of characters consists almost entirely of emotionally-stunted men, so unsurprisingly they were particularly vulnerable to a parasitic organism that likes to call itself “Mother” in their heads. They may come from different backgrounds, they all felt like the same flavor of snore.

Things started off ok. Roux does a lot of early work to establish Roslyn's predicament and mental state. I'm not saying as I was necessarily pulled in by Roslyn, but I could see it going in good places. We even establish a few characters from her first crew that I was actually curious about. And then all of sudden she's on a mission on her own with a dude she hates. Cool, conflict between our protagonists as they fight the evil? I like it. Oh wait, nevermind he's dead. And then once on the derelict ship, we switch to crew member's POV, and I knew we were in trouble. Whatever momentum there was completely crashed and burned, and never recovered. The story beats had little thrill and the chemistry between the characters was nonexistent.

I often credit a DNF to stumbling into a book that wasn't really for me. But this? This should be for me. I love sci-fi horror, especially considering that there is so little of it available. But there is little horror here, and the sci-fi stuff is pretty, like, juvenile? Like the future-tech elements are the kinds of things we would have thought were cool and innovative in like, I don't know, the early 90s? It doesn't feel like this was written by someone who is really interested in either genre, and on top of it didn't have the ability to put together an interesting narrative around it either.

Once again I find myself reading a Yovanoff book at the same time of year that the book is set. WEIRD.

Anyway, this is an instance that I wish I had half stars to work with. The Space Between is better than three stars, but only just. It's entertaining, but it misses a lot of beats.

This book was kind of all over the place, not just story-wise but thematically. The use of POV is a big one, bouncing back and forth between Daphne's first person and Truman's third person. It's a really weird choice, and I'm not sure why she did it this way. It would have been much easier to have it all in third person, or alternating first person, because everytime there was a switch I was thrown off for a second. There was a lot of tone switching too, from dry humor (Beelzebub as a compassionate father figure gave me the giggles, not gonna lie, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more of that kind of playfulness), to a fantastical hero's journey, to utter bleak realism. Things felt the most secure when discussing grief, particularly towards the end. It was the first time that I felt the book brought out a strong emotion in me, and I really connected with the characters, despite the fact that I have never felt that kind of grief myself.

The book opens in Hell, or the city of Pandemonium, rather. Yovanoff's minimalist prose, which I enjoyed so much in The Replacement for its haunting quality, does not really work for a full on fantasy setting. It was really difficult to get a feel of what it was like there, aside from the mentions of steel and heat, the combinations of a modern template filled with a fantastical atmosphere. The effect should be very tactile (there was a moment where when Daphne is slashed with a knife and its described as “steel against steel” and I so wish there was more of that kind of description that puts your teeth on edge), but the descriptions were just not very evocative. I was a lot happier when we left Pandemonium for the real world, where Yovanoff seemed more in her element.

Yovanoff writes lost, emotionally vulnerable boys really well. Truman is compelling and tragic, and you can see why Daphne is drawn to him. Their relationship felt very real and sincere, and even though their emotions develop very quickly, it makes sense, it doesn't feel like instalove. I think it's because they both are missing pieces, so it make sense that they feel more complete when they are together and so they cleave to eachother a little irrationally.

Daphne I liked for her strength, her perserverence and her loyalty, and her vulnerable moments were beautiful too. But I kind of wish I had a better idea what demons were about. Daphne, Obie, even Beelzebub have a certain set of values. Daphne thinks nothing of killing someone for a threat, but is uncomfortable with lying. Lucifer, who has a brief but fantastic scene, clearly values loyalty. And then you have Azrael, an angel, who is a total asshole with a pet monster who tears demons to pieces. Again, I'm not sure Yovanoff is great with fantasy, even if its horror/religious/magical realism tinted fantasy. Fantasy requires rules, or else it kind of just seems like you're making it up as you go along.

I'm being really critical of this book, but I actually really enjoyed it. It was fun, sweet and romantic as well as creepy and exciting. The horror elements were some of my favorite parts, and while the demon baby thing was rather cliche, I couldn't help but love the kid. I just think there were a lot of missed opportunities here to make something richer.

I'm gonna try to say as little about this as possible. Genesis is bit like a Twilight Zone episode, both for its brevity and cleverness. As such, I think it's best enjoyed going in pure.

I will say that it is very cerebral, and consists of mostly dialogue discussing the nature of freedom and personhood. There is also robots and artificial intelligence, which I didn't realize going in and was super psyched about. And the cherry on top is a delicious twist ending that I kept thinking about afterward. It was like being punched in the face with awesome.

Freaking read this.

It wasn't when the idea was introduced of a girl who was starved in order to imitate the process of a growing human child. Or even when she met a pedophile who did this to his “wife.”

It wasn't until Amy met Rory (so to speak), the robot who developed her diet plan, and she thought to herself, “Each of Rory's ro-bento pings maintained this same level of cheeriness and delight, as though starving yourself was just the most fun thing in the world and you should be happy to do it for your parents. As though you should enjoy feeling so hungry and hollow all the time.”

At that point, I stopped and thought Oh. I see what you did there, Ms. Ashby.

This past NaNoWriMo, I began a novel about a robot and a girl. I began it with the intention that it would simply be about their relationship, but quickly found that it was impossible to talk about robots without talking about the many implications of their existence and sentience. What does it mean when creatures are made specifically to be in servitude to others? It's one thing to imagine them as so powerful, so intelligent that they fight violently for their freedom. But what does it mean for them to really be free?

Ashby gives you access to the information long before it comes into full form in Amy's mind. When she meets the pedophile, he expresses his gratitude for his prepubescent humanoid robots for if he did not have them, he might hurt “real” children. But his wife and his daughter are real. Amy is real. The fact that her diet starved her to the point that she ate her grandmother is proof of that. Ashby uses the politics of the robot body to reflect what's happening to bodies here and now.

“Sentience is not freedom, Portia said. Real freedom is the ability to say no.”

Ashby's job, her real life job, is to imagine what the future will look like so that companies can anticipate it. So you should know that this is no gimmicky dystopia. You're in good hands here. Ashby factors in not only technological innovations, but the progress of language and culture. There is thought given to fandom behavior, and social justice thinking. Ashby is keyed in to what is going on in the past, present and future. Nonetheless, as natural so the futuristic elements of this book are, there is still a bit of the fantastical, the most of which are the vNs themselves. They grow, they eat, they give birth. I think the only organic thing they don't simulate is shitting. And yet, they are machines, but more than that they are separate species that has their own way of existing, their own values. Even though they are built with a failsafe that makes them inherently love and desire humans, Ashby makes it clear that they are not human. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. A lot books these days are exploring non-human characters, but few are really taking the time to create a new point of view, one that is familiar but decidedly alien at the same time.

The line blurs, of course, with our protagonist, Amy. Her failsafe is broken, and that makes her capable of great and terrible things. I've mentioned before this ongoing trend in books of young girls who are afraid of themselves. In this case though, it's not a controversial supernatural ability, or a bad temper. Amy literally has another person in her, one that could easily take control and wreak an extraordinary amount of havoc. Her fear of the violence she is capable of is real, because even though her programming doesn't automatically endear her to humans, she is a good person who doesn't want to do harm. She's real, even if she's not human.

vN doesn't move in a straight line. There's a lot of action and drama, but Amy meanders as she struggles to find her place in the world, having been driven away from her picture perfect life. I didn't mind, because each page revealed a little bit more about this world and these creatures and I found it all endlessly fascinating. Javier is probably one of my favorite love interests I've read. His casual and sardonic demeanor doesn't present him as such right away. But slowly Amy chips away at his walls and reveals someone who is considerate and faithful. Their best moments are the ones when you remember that by human terms they're still children. They have tickle fights. They play in a sandbox. They keep building, hoping that eventually they'll have a place that'll be their own.

I love this book. I could talk about it for days and the more I think about it the more I want to say.

I'm not sure what the point of all that was.Of course, one of the sticking points of this series is that there is no point. Except when there is. It can be a fun narrative trick, in [b:The Last Werewolf 9532302 The Last Werewolf (The Last Werewolf, #1) Glen Duncan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1287572224s/9532302.jpg 14418429] it certainly was, toying with a plot point for a few pages, and then tossing it out the window. Duncan never wants you to know what kind of book you're reading until its right on top of you. The issue here was whatever kind of book I just read I did not enjoy.Because By Blood We Live is actually about fate and destiny and strings that tie its characters together, even though it doesn't want to admit, or won't admit it until the very end. Vampires, it appears, are much better entities for talking about destiny than werewolves, especially Remshi, in his old age of twenty-fucking-thousand years. His appearances in [b:Talulla Rising 12981174 Talulla Rising (The Last Werewolf, #2) Glen Duncan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1339696875s/12981174.jpg 18140283] made him seem cocky, like a rugged aimless rock star. Here, he's more like a sweet old man. A sweet old man who just saw the prehistoric love of his life reincarnated in an angry, self-deprecating werewolf mother of two. His perspective did get more interesting as the story went on, as the picture became clearer for him, however his point of view was incredibly static, as old men have a tendency to be. He's less of an active force in the story, and more a creature being swept up by the last tides of his life. I missed Talulla's drive and unbridled passion. She doesn't adapt to peacetime well. She feels unsatisfied in her relationship with Walker, she's nervous about her ability to raise her children through everything they've been through and everything they have ahead of them. If there's anything she does well at all in this book its hating herself. Which frustrates me because there was so much set up in the last book for the extraordinary thing she was becoming. It's called Talulla RISING for fuck's sake, she was being primed to be a pack leader, a mother of monsters. Instead, she's the reincarnation of an old ass vampire's love interest? The pawn of the Vatican's hunter faction, the Militi Christi? The fickle bitch who broke some poor former hunter's heart? This is what I was waiting for? Not that a female character can't have self-doubt, or can't be put in a compromising position. TR had plenty of that, but it also had plenty of Talulla kicking ass and getting shit done, even when she was scared out of her mind. Here, Talulla wasn't so much scared, but bored and tired. She wants to give up her relationship with Walker, her status as a mother, her pack, even her lycanthropy. I did not fall in love with a character whose first inclinication is to give up. Nevermind the relationships that were teased in the second book, especially the one that was developing between her and Maddy. I was all about Talulla and Maddy. But instead of the two of them getting together, Talulla spends the whole time trying to push Maddy and Walker together so she doesn't have to feel bad about leaving him. Which, like, whyyyy? Why was that necessary at all? In fact, there was so much female goodness in TR (maybe its just me, but was it not implied that the reason why the wolves were bonding and working together better than they did in Jake Marlowe's day was because there were more female wolves?), that I was confused as to why we even needed the perspectives of Walker and even Remshi. I mean, when you get down to it, what did they even add to the story? Justine, Remshi's young companion, could have just as easily told Remshi's story, and then her own story would not have felt like an awkward side plot. Now I'm just confused. This whole trilogy could not have been leading up to this kind of non-conclusion. Nothing at all is resolved, there's all this set up for a new phase of the story, Talulla even gets new abilities, and this is supposed to be the end? I feel like I just read a rambling interlude rather than a climax. That said, if there is more to this series, as much as I loved the first two books, I'm not sure if I would want to read it.

A couple years ago I was having a conversation with my cousin about our favorite TV shows. I can't remember which show in particular we were discussing, but he responded to it with a shrug and said, “I like it, but it doesn't ruin my life.” Meaning to say, it didn't hold a candle to his love for shows like Lost. “Like, I need to know what happens to John Locke,” he said. “It messes up my whole week waiting to find out.”Like TV shows, and probably movies and comic books and every entertainment medium under the sun, there is a wide spectrum of greatness in books. I enjoy reading so much I don't always notice the difference right away. There are books that are passively enjoyable, there are page turners that take you from one adrenaline high to the next. And then there are life ruiners. The first book in the Dreamblood series was excellent. This book, however, is a life ruiner.N.K. Jemisin has an extraordinary gift for making big epic stories feel incredibly intimate. [b:The Killing Moon 11774272 The Killing Moon (Dreamblood, #1) N.K. Jemisin http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1335835254s/11774272.jpg 14757893] was much more insular than The Shadowed Sun, as it revolved almost entirely around Nijiri and Ehiru's relationship, so that most of the political and military schemes going on felt like a distraction. The Shadowed Sun also revolves around the love between two people, but because they come from such different worlds, their relationship is more significant to the overall plot, not to mention a little bit crazy. Ehiru and Nijiri's bond was about finding peace, Hanani and Wana's was kind of about saying to hell with it.The Killing Moon was about a man's quest for immortality, and all the lives he planned on destroying to achieve that. Its resolution was maudlin, for in their efforts to save the city of Gujaareh, Ehiru and Nijiri revealed much of the corruption it was built upon and were forced to invite a foreign nation to occupy its walls. Ten years later, The Shadowed Sun is about how Gujaareh, a once highly spiritual and peaceful city, must embrace war to regain sovereignty. Wanahomen is the displaced Sunset Prince, living among desert barbarians, looking to regain his throne. Hanani is the sole female Sharer-Apprentice, given the daunting task of helping him do it in order to prove herself. Nijiri is still around too, now a practiced Gatherer, and generally a total bad ass, fulfilling the role of creepy mentor. So is Sunandi, who I didn't particularly care for the first time around, though this time she has less page time and a little more significance.At the beginning of the book, I found myself thinking Hanani would not be out of place in a slice-of-life shoujo anime. She is a very typical, sheltered female character, stammering and insecure, and totally bewildered by womanliness (her own, and that of others). Goddamn, does she grow. Jemisin manages to give this girl a level of ferocity and conviction, but still keeps that humility that's a part of who she is. I just read recently about how the common difference between a hero and a heroine is the hero is tested by how much he can win, the heroine by how much she can lose. Hanani loses a lot, to the point where it shakes her down to her core. But she also gains so much, and there's a lesson in there about grief and sadness, and how suffering in that way doesn't necessarily negate that bonds that are created in the process.Humility has nothing to do with who Wanahomen is. In many ways, he is on the opposite trajectory of Hanani, which makes them so well-suited for each other. Wana is proud, arrogant and rather manipulative at the beginning, and there is a point where their relationship seems impossible. He does a bad thing. Real bad. And it leaves Hanani pretty messed up. But, after being magnificently chewed out for his misdeeds, he starts making an effort to actually listen to the many (amazing!) women in his life. He makes himself available, even vulnerable to Hanani and stops trying to pretend he knows what she wants and lets her ask him. And that, as it turns out, is sexy as hell.And as for what she does ask of him.Go on with your bad self, Hanani. That's all I got to say about that.There's a conflict of interest between their relationship and the plot that I've got to admit gave me crazy amounts of anxiety. If Wana achieves his goal of regaining his throne, that puts him in the position of not just taking one wife, but hundreds, the first of which are expected to be nobles. And if Hanani achieves hers, that should put her back in good standing with the Hetawa and her role as Sharer, which also involves a vow of celibacy. You want them both to succeed, but you also want them so badly to be together, especially after how hard they fight for each other. What will happen to them remains a question up until the very end. That's how you create real tension in a romance, not that watered-down Romeo and Juliet shit that I keep seeing over and over. Speaking of the many great female characters in this novel, I've got to talk about Yanassa for just a sec. That woman spoke pure gold.“My role in the Hetawa is a man's role. In Gujaareh, when a man takes a woman's path, or a woman a man's, that person must take on an appearance to suit.”Yanassa rolled her eyes. “Do they plan to give a clay penis too, and big bronze balls? Mind you, Wanahomen will be very cross if yours are bigger. And he will compare, trust me.”I love the fact that Jemisin clearly makes an effort to create different cultures that have their pros and cons, their progressive and conservative sides. Nonetheless, I felt like Yanassa was a bit of a mouthpiece for Jemisin. Hendet, Wanahomen's mother, a little bit too. But I'm not complaining at all.Another point of view we frequently see from is Tiaanet, a beautiful noblewoman whose father has intentions of seeking control of Gujaareh for his own caste. Technically, Tiaanet effects and does very little. Many of the main characters pass her by without really seeing her, only her beauty and her status. Which is entirely the point. Her story is gut wrenching, and it's her pain that feeds a disease that plagues Gujaareh even when it's on the brink of triumph.Sexual violence is an ongoing theme in this novel, which was hard to stomach, especially since it seems like I can't pick up a book anymore the doesn't have a female character being threatened with or having a history of rape. However, this book is about occupation and oppression, when the powerful take advantage of the weak, and how all come to pay for it. That's what Jemisin did well, she wrote a story that expressed how when women are abused, it's not just women who suffer for it. It is a corruption of an entire system, and everyone who is a part of it suffers for it. Of course, this story uses magic to manifest this, but I think that just goes to show what a great tool fantasy is for showing us the brutal realities of our own world.This book rocked my world. Quite literally, I do not know up from down anymore. The couple days it took to finish I existed in a heightened state of constant adrenaline. And you know, I was not planning on doing that for a while. I had consciously decided to read books that were super fast and fun and didn't involve a lot of emotional investment. And I saw this on my to-read list and I thought “Oh well, it's high fantasy, I'll be fiiiiine.” Clearly, I am not. Also, I have a new found respect for the genre, so I might be more open to it in the future. Or I may just snatch up Jemisin's next series and ignore the rest.