Medair (Medair #1-2)

THE BLURB:

The complete epic fantasy "Medair" duology, containing the Aurealis Awards finalist "The Silence of Medair" and the heart-rending conclusion "Voice of the Lost".

Time stole Victory.

Medair an Rynstar returned too late to drive back the Ibisian invasion. Centuries too late.

When friend and enemy have become the same thing, what use are the weapons Medair planned to use to protect her Empire? There is no magic, no artefact, no enchanted trinket which can undo the past.

But no matter how Medair wishes to hide from the consequences of her failure, there are those who will not allow her the luxury of denying the present. Her war is already lost, but she carries weapons which could change the course of new battles.

With the skirmishes of war beginning, and hunters in near pursuit, it is her conscience Medair cannot escape. Whose side should she be on? What is she really running from?

From the Aurealis Awards judges' report: "You can read Silence of Medair for its strong, conflicted heroine, its playful subversion of fantasy tropes, or its deep, detailed analysis of the nature of racism. If not, just read it for the beautifully crafted prose."

MY THOUGHTS:

What a gem!

The Medair duology is fantasy that sets its bar high. The story idea as well as the history and politics of the world is tremendously compelling.

In face of the inevitability of labeling an invading group of people as "Other", what happens when your hesitation (stemming from the conflicting feelings you harbor about who is definitively "right" and who must therefore be "wrong") leads to you being transported 500 years into the future? Times have changed, beliefs and borders have changed, people and cultures have intermixed. Who now is the enemy? Can you bring yourself to move past an enmity that no longer has reason to exist, even if it remains so fresh in your mind?

Reading this book reminded me in some ways of playing a fantasy-based video game. This may in part be due to the fact that I had just finished Dragon Age: Inquisition right before reading it, but I could see so many of the settings as clearly as those on the screen. Medair's choices lead to intriguing adventures, and misadventures. She stays true to her own convictions and explains herself with honesty and integrity, thereby currying favor or disapproval from those around her in a realistic manner. She navigates through a colorful world that never gets boring.

There were a couple of things that stood out as imperfections in my mind, such as the writing going on at too much length about information that didn't necessarily drive the story forward. Medair's loop of rhetoric in her head, her struggle with whether she is right or wrong to do what she does, gets repeated too often. It's an important piece of Medair and her story, but I felt like I was rereading the same things over and over again, even though we are also actually told outright that Medair keeps thinking these same things repeatedly. A bit overkill, but nothing that ruined the story for me.

The overall story was wonderful, but I do think I preferred Book 1 by a certain margin. The court intrigue pieces reminded me a bit of Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel duology, in a good way. Avahn, who was such a part of Book 1, gets relegated to the background of the story in Book 2. But still, altogether I loved the whole thing.

And the way the romantic interests were addressed at the end was so magnificent and COMPLETELY PERFECT, I actually let out an "awwww" after reading the last page. Happy happy reader!

I can't wait to read more from Ms. Host, who writes the genres I enjoy while creating original and commendable facets in her stories that make you proud to be a reader of her work. So, well done, and now on to the next! 

MY RATING:

5 booksies!

Author website: http://www.andreakhost.com/

Veiled Intentions

THE BLURB:

When a young Muslim high school student is accused of a crime she didn’t commit, her school counselor gets involved to clear her record in this ripped-from-the-headlines romantic thriller from the author of Vanished in the Night.

When Lily Simon finds cops in the lobby of the high school where she’s a guidance counselor, she’s not surprised: cops and adolescents go together like sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. But when the cops take Jamila, a Muslim student, into custody for a crime she didn’t commit, Lily’s high school becomes a powder keg.

Police think Jamila is responsible for a hit and run, and since she’s not talking, they have no choice but to keep her as the main suspect. And since the victim—a young soldier recently returned from Afghanistan—is lying unconscious in the hospital, the whole town is taking sides on whether or not Jamila’s arrest is religious persecution. Determined to find the truth, Lily teams up with a reporter to uncover what really happened the night of the hit and run. But Lily didn’t expect to find such a tangled web…

MY THOUGHTS:

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain reaction of evil-hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

This Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quote sums up the message of Eileen Carr's novel, Veiled Intentions.

A high-achieving Muslim high school student gets accused of a hit-and-run accident involving a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Jamila is stunned, and heartbroken, to see how quick all the people she has grown up with and known her whole life are to suddenly label her as "Other", even though she denies any involvement in the accident. She, along with other Muslim families in the community, become targets for bullying and hate crimes. They are alienated in their own hometown. Jamila is no longer a seventeen year old high school student active in community projects who also practices Islam; now the view of her is limited to simply to her religion. In her distress, she turns more toward the only aspect of herself that society will allow her to be defined by.

Veiled Intentions looks not only at Jamila and how she feels about and reacts to everything that ensues, but also all of the other various members of the community. We see all the different viewpoints involved in such a situation-the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is not a "feel good" book. However, it takes a necessary look at issues that are prevalent in the world today. It does an admirable job of surveying all of the different thoughts and opinions found in society today about issues of religious or cultural differences and how they should be 'dealt with'. It does so using simple and straightforward writing.

In addition to representing all of the views that crop up about such matters in a smart fashion, this book drives home the lesson Dr. King was attempting to teach decades ago: Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. This is a call for the world to find a way to stop the cycle of discrimination and violence.

MY RATING:

3.5 booksies

 

Author website: http://www.eileenrendahl.com/index.html

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Author Website: veronicasalt.blogspot.com/

Thrall

Thrall is the first title in the YA paranormal trilogy, The Daughters of Lilith

THE BLURB:

Braedyn is a normal girl just trying to survive high school with her two devoted friends, Royal and Cassie. Together they’re doing a pretty good job of shrugging off the slings and arrows cast their way by the popular crowd when a new boy, Lucas, moves into the house next door. Suddenly Braedyn finds herself falling in love for the first time.

But as her sixteenth birthday approaches, Braedyn discovers humankind is at war with the Lilitu, an ancient race of enticing demons that prey on human souls. Her father is a member of the Guard fighting against the Lilitu - and so are the new neighbors, including her crush, Lucas. 

As her world starts to unravel at the seams, Braedyn learns the right answers aren’t always clear or easy. And as for “good” and “evil” – it all depends on how we choose to act.

Inspired by the ancient Mesopotamian myths of Lilith and her offspring, Thrall explores first love, strong friendships, and taking on adult responsibilities against the backdrop of powerful supernatural forces and life-and-death stakes

MY THOUGHTS:

• This was pretty good! An enjoyable young adult paranormal novel that managed to avoid many of the pitfalls I see in others of its type these days.
  
  Braedyn was a likable main character, and didn't make any of the illogical or silly decisions other protags sometimes do in the current YA fantasy fare. I liked her two besties, and only wish they weren't shunted to the periphery of the story so much when Braedyn learns about who she is and the part she must play with the Guard. Perhaps they feature more in the following installments of the series? I liked Lucas, too, although he sort of fizzled out after a while in the story. You still like him, but it's hard to remember why we're supposed to be in love with him.
  
  The story was fun, exciting, and fairly original. The enemy are succubae (is that the plural of succubus??), descendants of Lilith. They seek to regain their rightful place in the world, as Lilith was shunned for not being satisfied to stay Adam's biddable doormat of a partner in the Garden of Eden. This includes revenge on the sons of Adam. The archangels attempt to keep things in order, but they also have other business they must attend to, and so much of the work is left in the hands of the humans who know of the demons' existence and seek to stop them. But are the Lilitu truly evil, or just jilted and jaded? I suspect we'll delve into this question some more in the next books.
  
  I definitely plan on picking up the sequel some time!

MY RATING:

4.5 booksies!

Author's Website: http://jenniferquintenz.com/

Fire in the Blood (Last Moon Rising #1)

THE BLURB:

Global warming is playing havoc on Earth, and when 17 year-old Haley tumbles to a parallel world, she discovers that Earth's issues stem from a war between the Eyids, the gods of nature. Because her necklace is a stone that holds the power of the Air Eyid, Haley is called upon to help stop the war. But Haley has a problem. Actually, two problems. One named Tuggin, and one named Ian. Both lie to her. Both have secrets. And neither are who they say they are. With her stone of power, Haley's forced to make a choice that will decide the fate of all the worlds. But who should she trust, who should she fight, and who is the one with fire in his blood bent on betraying them all?

MY THOUGHTS:

This book, the first in a young adult fantasy series, is based on a relatively original idea. A girl travels to another world in which the deities of Earth, Water, Air and Fire and their descendants are in a power struggle. The resulting disharmony affects the climate in all worlds.

Unfortunately, I didn't much like any other aspect of the book. The writing needs quite a bit of work. Dialogue is stilted and at times silly. The protagonist swoons over boys who treat her like garbage, which is not only hard to believe, but makes it difficult to like her very much. No one ever bothers to explain to her what is going on, ever, which leads to a whole lot of unnecessary trouble for everyone, even with the fate of all the worlds hanging in the balance. When introducing tension into the story, you have to do it in a way that readers will buy and won't have them banging their heads against the wall. And if I had to read the phrase "hall god" one more time...!

The author has decent ideas for YA fantasy, but needs further improvement with her writing and novel-crafting abilities. Perhaps she already has gotten better since putting this book out, but at this time I do not plan on reading any further in this series.

MY RATING:

2 booksies

  

Author Website: http://authordaleibitz.weebly.com/

The Shining Girls

This is not a self-published novel by an indie author

THE BLURB:

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST.

The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own."

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He's the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth . . .

THE SHINING GIRLS is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal.

MY THOUGHTS:

The writing in this book was very good, and it tells a pretty exciting story that keeps you reading, but there were a couple things I found bothersome that kept me from giving it 5 stars.

The story is good, creepy, unsettling. Kirby is a protagonist that is easy to root for. The main thing that prevented me from loving it more than I did is the graphic violence and gore. There may have been a time in the past when a book containing these things didn't bother me so much; it's just a book, right? But at this point in my life I can't help but think about the fact that there really are screwed up people like the book's serial killer in this world, and these F'd up things actually happen to people, and it's terrible, and do we really need to turn it into entertainment?

Other than that, I mostly enjoyed the book, except that the ending left me a tad bit disappointed. I really liked the connection between Kirby and Dan, and was saddened to see that we never actually get to witness it going anywhere. We are left with the promise that it will happen ("If you want to kiss me again, then shut the fuck up and stop bleeding to death"), but I would have actually liked to see more of it myself. That, and I want to know more about the little tidbit dropped about the nature of the House at the end. The tie-in in the postscript was really smart, though.

MY RATING:

4 booksies

 

Author's Website: http://laurenbeukes.com/

Wool (The Silo Series Book 1)

Wool is comprised of five short stories, and is also the first book in a sci-fi series

THE BLURB:  

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

MY THOUGHTS: 

Howey writes pretty well, but I did not like this book. I can speculate that the reason might hinge on the fact that he began by writing a single short story, then tacked others onto it, leading to something that just did not cut it for me as an overall novel. Perhaps in the very beginning he did not know just how far he would be taking the story, and once he realized there was a demand for more, didn't know quite how to navigate to turn it into a full length novel. 

There are some interesting ideas mixed in the story, but nothing that gets fleshed out; it's more just an interesting premise that never gets fully realized in this story. And the way it was put together just did not do it for me. There were some exciting scenes here and there, but for the most part I was very, very bored. I abhor not finishing a book once I start it, so I pushed on with this one, but it was a chore to force myself to read more. It wasn't until about halfway through that any plot advancement at all took place. This might be where the book's inception as separate short stories comes into play; the scenes seemed to just plod along haphazardly, without much in the way of cohesiveness. It didn't build up like a novel should, in my opinion.

I found myself questioning things about the world we are shown here, the explanations we are given. Many times the characters' reactions didn't make sense to me. Some characterization didn't seem all that consistent, either. I failed to develop an investment in any of the characters, and as a result didn't much care what happened to any of them.

I'd like to reiterate that the writing was good, though, and some of the ideas held promise. The author could potentially impress me more with a different story, one crafted more smartly than this one, perhaps planned initially as a mapped out novel rather than a meandering tale of filler scenes all thrown together into something I couldn't make myself care about. 

MY RATING:

2 booksies

Author Website: http://www.hughhowey.com/