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Seleste Reviews: Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

January 24, 2012 in Young Adult Reviews

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (January 31, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0062060759
  • ISBN-13: 978-0062060754
  • Price: $17.99
  • Jodi Meadows’s Website

Buy Incarnate at:

NEWSOUL

Ana is new. For thousands of years in Range, a million souls have been reincarnated over and over, keeping their memories and experiences from previous lifetimes. When Ana was born, another soul vanished, and no one knows why.
NOSOUL
Even Ana’s own mother thinks she’s a nosoul, an omen of worse things to come, and has kept her away from society. To escape her seclusion and learn whether she’ll be reincarnated, Ana travels to the city of Heart, but its citizens are suspicious and afraid of what her presence means. When dragons and sylph attack the city, is Ana to blame?
HEART
Sam believes Ana’s new soul is good and worthwhile. When he stands up for her, their relationship blooms. But can he love someone who may live only once, and will Ana’s enemies–human and creature alike–let them be together? Ana needs to uncover the mistake that gave her someone else’s life, but will her quest threaten the peace of Heart and destroy the promise of reincarnation for all?

Much of young adult literature deals with feeling out of place–in high school, a new town, human society as a supernatural, etc. What Incarnate does is takes that trope of the genre and turns it up about as high as it can go. In the world Jodi Meadows created there are a million souls born over and over again into new bodies. They die, they come back, life goes on, and this is the only life they know. Until Ana.

 

When a soul known as Ciana dies, she doesn’t return. In her place is Ana. Newsoul to some. Nosoul to others. She’s an outcast simply by being born. Her mother takes her from the city to raise her in seclusion, her upbringing filled with hatred and abuse. Even once she turns eighteen and is free to leave, her mother sends her into the wilderness with a broken compass–a calculated move that nearly leads to Ana’s death. Instead she finds Sam, a man who sees her as not an abomination, but something rare and precious and wonderful. However, because of how she’s grown up, it takes weeks before she can even begin to trust that he isn’t going to try to kill her too. And once they get to the city, Heart, Ana finds out her mother might have been more right than wrong with her lies–far too many people don’t want her around and make no bones about letting her know.

 

This is the set-up for a tragic story of pain, love, music, hate, and what happens when those in power set their sights on one person. I’m not going to delve into the plot a lot simply because if I did it would be full of spoilers and me squeeing about how fabulous certain things were. As a heads up to people who like simple plots without a lot going on, Incarnate has a LOT of plot elements from supernatural creatures to religion to a lesson in music theory to romance. However, for me, it never felt like there was too much going on. Everything fit and flowed.

 

There have been a lot of dystopian novels in the last few years, with even more slated for 2012. What sets Incarnate apart isn’t just that it takes place in a different world with living buildings and sylph and dragons. It isn’t even really the reincarnation angle. While most dystopians focus on a small group of the government trying to keep the people as a whole docile and (often) ignorant, Incarnate has a large section of society that focuses all that control on Ana. She’s the thing that “ruined” their perfect society. And in that difference lies the book’s true power. It narrows our attention to her, to one victim of hate.

 

In short, it’s brilliant and beautiful and tragic. There are books that sell millions of copies right away and there are books that stick around forever. While the series still has two more books in it, based on the first one, I truly hope the NewSoul Trilogy manages to do both.

 

***Full Disclosure: Seleste read Incarnate in beta-form prior to Jodi Meadows signing with her agent.***
***She has not, however, read book two yet, much less book three. Don’t ask for spoilers–she doesn’t have any.***

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Seleste reviews: Cads and Cadavers by Kelly Lougheed

January 22, 2012 in Young Adult Reviews

  • Paperback: 196 pages
  • Publisher: Mundania Press LLC; Large type edition edition (December 10, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594261458
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594261459
  • Price: $11.95
  • Kelly Lougheed’s Website

Buy Cads and Cadavers at:

When Velma’s dead boyfriend Leroy appears to her in the school biology lab one night, it’s awkward because (a) she happens to be dissecting his body for a science fair project, and (b) she never figured out how to break up with him after her roommate informed her that leaving a Post-It note on his dorm room door suggesting they never see each other again was cold and heartless.

Leroy tells her a sob story about the vampire who drained his blood, and annoyingly demands that Velma, despite the insane amount of math homework she has, avenge his murder.

But the only local vampire Velma knows is the chivalrous, dashing Dennis she ran into in the graveyard one night when she was digging up Leroy’s body. His mere presence makes her hyperventilate and compulsively smooth down her hair, the signs of true amour. In one of their intimate graveyard chats, Dennis assures her that he sucks only the blood of rodents…

But is he just lying to win her heart?

Or does another vampire walk hidden among Velma’s peers?

 

Cads and Cadavers was an interesting read for me. I started out loving Lougheed’s voice. She made Velma highly intelligent (the story is driven by her desire to get into Harvard) and irreverent (she doesn’t care about anyone who gets in the way of that Harvard plan), and kind of an idiot (digging up your ex-boyfriend to dissect is ALWAYS the best plan, right?). It’s a unique and interesting combination in a heroine. I also loved the jump-off point of the story where Velma digs up a hot vampire while trying to dig up her dead ex-boyfriend. It was fun and interesting. I popped some virtual popcorn and dove into the story.

Then things got a little dicier for me with the way the characters spoke and it felt… off. The plot started feeling oddly familiar (even though it wasn’t–I’m not sure how to explain how that worked) with the killer vampire and the roommate secrets and the prince (did I mention there was a prince?).

About halfway through the book (it was in the midst of having my in-laws over for the holidays and I was a little slow on the uptake) it finally hit me that Cads and Cadavers wasn’t a paranormal romance but a satire of paranormal romances. Suddenly all the over-the-top language and descriptions of glistening hair and whatnot made sense. At that point, I started enjoying it again.

I will say that I’ve realized I prefer reading short satire over longer pieces, but this one was fun, filled with teen angst and drama, and still smart. As usual in a satire, the characters were all caricatures, but in this one they struck so close in many ways to those in most young adult para-roms that the sting was more biting than usual. It poked fun at everything from character names with unusual name spellings to strange love triangles to stalking to all the people in the background who don’t know anything unusual is going on. So, from that perspective, it was great on pretty much every level (characters, plot, language use).

Like I mentioned though, most of the satire I read is of the short story variety, and at almost two hundred pages, this was almost too much for me. The humor started becoming less funny for me as I went on (at least until Princess Kristina–with a K–showed her true colors. She was easily my favorite character.)

In the spirit of total disclosure, if you are a die-hard para-rom fan and get angry when people mock the genre, you will probably hate this book. If, however, you know that every genre has its tropes and cliches and you don’t mind seeing them made fun of (aka if you are a fan of spoof movies), you could do far worse than Cads and Cadavers. I’m rather looking forward to checking out Lougheed’s other books as well.

Favorite passage (I’m a science geek, what can I say?):

The ghost eyed his removed rib with disgust. “Could you please not do that in front of me?”

Velma began to hum a tune as she continued prodding his internal organs, her red ponytail hanging over her shoulder as she bent over his corpse, slicing tissue away from the bones.

Leroy ground his teeth. “Fine. I’ll tell my story and then maybe a lump will emerge in your throat and your eyes will fill with tears and virtual rivers will gush down your face because you’ll feel so guilty, and then you’ll avenge me!”

“Sounds good,” agreed Velma. “Whoops, I think I just stabbed your left ventricle.”

 

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Seleste reviews: Zombie Tag by Hannah Moskowitz

January 15, 2012 in Young Adult Reviews

  • Hardcover: 240 pages
  • Price: $15.99
  • Publisher: Roaring Brook Press (December 20, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1596437200
  • ISBN-13: 978-1596437203
  • Hannah Moskowitz’s Website
Buy Zombie Tag at:

 

Thirteen year old Wil Lowenstein can’t help wishing his parents would stop ignoring him and go back to the way they were before. Before, like before his older brother Graham died in a recent accidental fire.

Wil copes with Graham’s death by focusing on Zombie Tag, a mafia/capture the flag hybrid game he created for his friends. He, his best friend Anthony, and their other friends fight off brain-eating zombies with their mother’s spatulas. What Wil doesn’t tell anybody is that if he could bring his dead brother back as a zombie, he would. In a heartbeat.

In fact, when he finds a bell that can summon all the dead within five miles, he seizes the chance. Graham returns from the dead, but he’s not the same. None of the returned are. At first they’re just emotionless, apathetic — lifeless. But then some of the zombies slowly start to get one emotion back — anger. And Wil is going to have to find a way to fix zombie-Graham and turn him back into the angsty teenager he?s supposed to be before it’s too late. Because some of the zombies are banding together and plotting something. And Wil isn’t sure his mom’s spatulas are really going to do the trick if the zombies really do want to eat his brains.

There aren’t a lot of authors whose work I run to the bookstore in order to buy on release day—especially when release day falls the week before Christmas and the bookstore is in the heart of the shopping district. I did it to get Zombie Tag though, and I don’t regret the time spent in traffic or the two near accidents (might have regretted an actual accident, but near accidents are okay). I’ve read and loved/liked Hannah Moskowitz’s other books, but those were both YA contemporary. Zombie Tag is her first foray into both middle grade and the paranormal.

She needs to write more of it.

Rather than the typical goofy and/or action-adventure middle grade that dominates the market, Zombie Tag takes the family trauma and drama that permeates Moskowitz’s YA work and makes it accessible to a younger audience. Zombie Tag isn’t just about raising the dead or a silly game; it’s about the pain of letting go and one child’s desperation to fix his family when they fall apart after his older brother’s death. It alternates between touching, funny, and heart-wrenching. If you haven’t read any of her work, you might not understand quite how masterfully she weaves those emotions into her work. (And I highly recommend this book to any young person struggling with loss.)

Wil is a pretty typical middle school boy. He likes to play with his friends, has a crush on the one girl in their group, and doesn’t really want to grow up. His emotions jump around, and though that might bother some people, it’s very realistic for a young teen—especially one dealing with the aftermath of losing his brother and best friend.

The story revolves around what it means to die, what that does to the people left behind, and whether or not bringing someone back would be the best thing for anyone. In that regard, it’s a little like The Monkey’s Paw (for those who remember that story), but without the scare factor. Yes, zombie junkies need a warning here: these aren’t your typical zombies.

However, I can tell you that this is the first book I’ve ever brought into the house that my son and my husband are fighting over who gets to read it next (and both tried to take it from me while I was still reading it). The other grownup has to wait though. The Boy gets this one first.

Favorite line:

I guess the broken bell could end up being a problem, but only if I wanted to be some kind of crusader going around the world waking up dead people. And that sounds like a time-suck anyway.

 

I have a special guest today as well. Since this is a middle grade book, I felt it was only right to have a reader of the target audience do a small review as well. So without further ado, I give you my ten-year-old son, known on the internet as The Boy…

Well, the book was pretty short, which is kind of good because I could finish it quick, but kind of bad since sometimes people don’t want the story to end. And it does have a few bad words in it (“oh my God” &, I think, “stupid.” Mom interjection here, these aren’t bad words at home in and of themselves, but apparently they are at school *shrug*), which kind of sets the whole thing off for being a book for my age group.

They did have some funny parts and some cool parts in the book. Like it was funny that the zombies were scared of the kids playing Zombie Tag. (SPOILER ALERT) Also, at first I thought they were going to kill everybody but they were really trying to find a way to kill themselves again. (END SPOILER) 

I’m going to ask him a few questions since this is his first review.

Did you think the family was realistic? Yes, well no. I don’t know actually.

Did you think the book was unique? Yes, because it’s the only book where the main star was a spatula.

How did it make you feel? Pretty scared but happy at the same time.

If you were faced with the possibility of bringing someone back from the dead would you? If it was someone related to me, I would, but if they were trying to eat me, no. 

If Hannah Moskowitz wrote another book for kids, would you read it? Well, yes, because it was pretty much a good book, except for the bad words part. 

(Yeah, I need to have a talk with him about what constitutes bad words.)

The Boy’s Rating (I told him to take the “bad words” thing out of the equation):

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Seleste reviews: Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

January 7, 2012 in Reviews, Young Adult Reviews

  • Paperback: 292 pages
  • Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC (December 6, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1937044238
  • ISBN-13: 978-1937044237
  • Price: $15.99
  • Jennifer L Armentrout’s Website

Buy Obsidian at:

 

Starting over sucks.

When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I’d pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring…. until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.

And then he opened his mouth.

Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something unexpected happens.

The hot alien living next door marks me.

You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon’s touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.

If I don’t kill him first, that is. 

 

I’ve been looking for a book to sweep me off my feet and get me to make time to read it when I should be doing other things. For a while, I thought Obsidian might be that book. (There will be spoilers. I’ve highlighted them in green to match Daemon’s eyes.) And I will say, it has a lot going for it. It’s a quick, fun read. Though it reminded me of Twilight in a lot of ways, the things that made me want to pull my hair out there worked better here (I’ll get to this more in a bit). Katy annoyed me a bit, but in the I-want-to-smack-you-for-your-ridiculous-denial-issues than anything else. Daemon… I’m not ashamed to admit I loved him. He’s an ass, but he’s so good at messing with people that I couldn’t help but like him (he reminded me much more of Sawyer from Lost than Edward. And I <3 Sawyer.)

As for the Twilight thing… Upon occasion, Armentrout acknowledges it within the novel and makes fun of it, such as a scene where Daemon’s sister is watching Katy sleep. Jokes were made, allowing both characters and readers to laugh about it and move on. But there were similarities beyond those places. All the aliens sharing a lunch table and not wanting anyone else to join them… the treks through the woods… Daemon not wanting to spend time with her because it was dangerous. Thankfully, the last one actually made sense without making him a creeper. When he uses his power to save Katy’s life, it makes her visible to the other aliens who want to kill his kind, and will kill Katy if they find her. So, he’s not just being a selfish ass or threatening her with his own needs, he’s actually trying to protect her. That fact alone made me willing to overlook the Twilight similarities and just enjoy the book.

And I was enjoying it–a lot. There were little issues with things like some stilted dialogue and a propensity for repeated words (without it being for artistic effect), but that’s a writer issue and probably wouldn’t bug most readers, so I blew it off. I carried my iPad everywhere so I could read Obsidian in spare moments. And then the author added a scene that did me in.

(Spoilers coming–skip if you have issues with spoilers)

There is a near-rape scene. I was okay with Katy’s decision to be with the guy there, even knowing his reputation 1) because it was realistic and 2) because a reputation as a player doesn’t make someone a rapist… it makes him lousy relationship material. Said guy forces Katy to kiss him, shoving her against a tree and trapping her there. This allows Daemon to come to the rescue again (and leave her all glowy to the bad guys again), but as they’re leaving… Katy’s clothes are ripped. I had to go back and look. There was no mention of tearing fabric during the actual scene. This? Not realistic. And it was made worse in two ways. First, Katy acknowledges that it was a near rape, but kind of blows it off. Girl, if he almost raped you, you can be sure some of the other notches on his bedpost got there in similar fashion.

Then, when Daemon finally kisses Katy, he does much the same thing as the would-be-rapist, confronting her until she backs so far up she’s trapped between him and a wall. When he kisses her–as she’s arguing and telling him she’s not attracted to him–we’re supposed to find it sexy. No. JUST NO. 

I finished reading the book, but at this point, I was so disappointed with that choice of plot device that I kind of didn’t want to. 

(End spoiler)

The ending was fabulous, and I loved that it was both about a show of strength from Katy and a show of love from Daemon. I really liked how Armentrout ended things to feed into the next book. Honestly, if I could cut that scene, that one stupid scene, I would have loved this book, despite its other minor issues. I can’t though and, because of what followed, it ruined what could have been a five star book for me. I went from making time to read the book to dreading finishing it for fear of what else would ruin it for me. Ultimately, it was just that part–and the minor issues and Twilight similarities I mentioned–but that was enough to keep it from being a favorite read.

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CdnMrs and Seleste DeLaney chat up The Pledge by Kimberley Derting

November 5, 2011 in Young Adult Reviews

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • List Price: $16.99
  • Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books (November 15, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1442422017
  • ISBN-13: 978-1442422018
  • Kimberly Derting’s Website
Buy The Pledge at:

In the violent country of Ludania, the language you speak determines what class you are, and there are harsh punishments if you forget your place—looking a member of a higher class in the eye can result in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina (Charlie for short) can understand all languages, a dangerous ability she’s been hiding her whole life.

Her only place of release is the drug-filled underground club scene, where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. There, she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy who speaks a language she’s never heard, and her secret is almost exposed. Through a series of violent upheavals, it becomes clear that Charlie herself is the key to forcing out the oppressive power structure of her kingdom….

CdnMrs: The Pledge had a lot of potential. I was really intrigued by the idea of the classes being separated by language. In the book, the classes are further separated by the school their children attend, what the children learn in school, by dress and by the neighbourhood they live in. Many times throughout the book I was reminded of similarly oppressive regimes, Apartheid era South Africa was one that frequently came to mind, as did regimes in the former USSR and other Eastern European nations in the years following WWII. The Pledge could have easily come across as a knock off of Orwell’s 1984 for teens, but the world building was original enough that Derting didn’t fall into this trap. In fact, if there was one thing that I really liked in The Pledge it was the world building.

I lied,there were two things I liked. I was really happy there was no love triangle for Charlie to be caught between. For a while I was nervous about this, but thankfully there was none. Yay!

Seleste: I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect when reading this. A dystopian for sure, but the language thing was what really intrigued me. I went in expecting it to be a world much like ours where you get one language and have to actively avoid learning others, and Charlie just happened to be a girl who “knew” them all. To find out only the latter part of that expectation was true really threw me (more on this in a bit).

Like you though, I was expecting a love triangle and was very happy to see it not happen. I don’t mind love triangles as a general rule, but I completely wasn’t seeing the friend-romance. It was nice that it wasn’t forced in there anyway. I also liked that most of the characters were truly interconnected via the main plot line. Even those that weren’t served a purpose that was logical within the confines of the story. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good.

CndMrs: On the not so positive side, I found a lot of the book was spent explaining how bad things were, explaining the differences between characters and describing characters and there motivations, but very little was spent getting down to any actual action and conflict resolution. I don’t know if this was Kimberly Derting’s way of upping the mystery and suspense of the novel, but it just made most of the book a redundant regurgitation of things the reader already knew. Had Derting delved deeper into actual important plot points (ex. the story of the queen, the rebels, the queen’s favourite grandkid, Xander, the baby sister’s gift, the history of Ludania royal family, etc) perhaps the book would have seemed better balanced. Instead, I felt like I’d been introduced to a bunch of characters who were having a hard time and eventually rose up against it, but by the time they did so it was so minor that if I had blinked I would have missed it.

Unfortunately this kind of imbalance, for me anyway, makes the book rather forgettable.

Seleste: My problem was a little different in that I never really managed to get past the downside of the language thing. I tried to get on board with the magic thing (though I hadn’t expected it from the blurb) from the beginning, but of all the things that were explained (as you mentioned over and over again) the language barrier wasn’t given a magical explanation. Actually, the fact that it was general knowledge that the queen even had magic didn’t come out until about halfway through the book. So I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief regarding people’s ability to learn other languages. It was “lost”? No. That just didn’t work for me as a reader. Maybe had people never spoken anything but the common language when they intermingled–if that had been against the law–then I would have bought into the language thing easier. But I just never could believe that it wasn’t acknowledged as being a magical thing because naturally that didn’t work.

That disconnect for me was what made the book less than it could have been.

CdnMrs: Another thing that stuck out in this book was the constant references to Brooklyn, a side character’s, promiscuity. This character is defined by her ability to flirt, her sensuality and her promiscuity. There is ultimately more to this character, but until that’s revealed, in the last third of the book, she is pretty much just Charlie’s slutty friend. I think it is imperative for YA authors to trend carefully around issues of sexuality. It’s too easy to demonize a character for being confident and/or exploratory in their sexuality and unfortunately because of the focus on Brooklyn’s promiscuity throughout the majority of the book, that’s what, in my opinion, has been done to this character.

Seleste: I agree on the whole slutty-friend-until-she’s-just-not thing with Brooklyn. Plus, the drugs at the club really bugged me. Alcohol, I was fine with because the girls–or at least Brooklyn (surprise)–went in search of that. But the drugged stamps felt like such a contrived plot device that it really stood out. Had it served some other purpose besides getting Charlie upstairs to meet Xander, I would have liked it better, but that seemed the only point.

CdnMrs: The Pledge wasn’t an awful read, it was just…meh. Thanks to the information to action imbalance it was, unfortunately, forgettable. The Pledge had potential and I really wanted to like it, but it got hung up on the details and left me bored.

Seleste: Again, I agree, it wasn’t awful, but I really felt like it could have been so much more than it was. It wasn’t a story I could lose myself in, and for me that’s really necessary for dystopian. If the world isn’t believable, the story isn’t as meaningful as it should be. Sadly, The Pledge just fell flat for me in that regard and ended up just being an okay read.

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