Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

(re)cycler

By Lauren McLaughlin.

I haven't read Cycler, the first book of this duology, as I have not come across it in person yet. I'm pretty sure this book review will spoil the end of the previous book, though, so most of it's going to go below the spoiler cut. I'll just set up the premise here first:

Upon hitting puberty, Jill McTeague developed a freaky problem. Some time before, during, or after her period*, for about 4 days, Jill grows a penis and turns into a guy. I should be more specific about that: Jill does not stay herself, with her own personality that just happens to have a penis now. Oh no. She has an entirely different male personality inhabiting her body, Jack. During their teen years, Jill had to be officially out of school four days a month, and Jack was kept locked up by their parents in a room with nothing to do but read books and watch porn. Jack has not grown up with much socialization, and he's pretty much a spy to boot. He remembers everything Jill does and has fallen in love with her best friend, Ramie. It's mutual. Meanwhile, Jill's interested in a bisexual boy, Tommy, who Jack can't stand. I'm not sure why Jack can't stand him, but it seems implied the bisexuality wigs him out under the circumstances.

And now I'll go below the spoiler cut.
* Not having a copy of this book myself to check, I browsed the Internet trying to get this clarified. Alas, I read different answers to this question all over the place. My best guess is that this takes place before, as some kind of super weird PMS symptom.

The White Glove War

By Katie Crouch and Grady Hendrix.

Previous book here.

When we return to the world of the Magnolia League, things are kinda crazy. Alex is trying to be the World's Best Kissass Magnolia, and sneaking around with Sina behind everyone's backs, plotting to fix the giant wrong she discovered at the end of the last book. Unfortunately for Alex, she appears to be haunted by a murderous "Gray Man" who is trying to kill her--and her friends--and she literally can't get the words out to try to ask anyone for help. This leads to Alex driving everyone she cares about away from her and being a rude bitch, but no one knows why.

This book shares narration duties with Hayes, the "nice" Magnolia. We find out that Hayes has her problems too-- her blonde beauty isn't natural-born by any means. Her boyfriend's losing interest in her once again, but putting a charm on him went so badly last time, what's a girl to do? Her mother, Ellie, is a lush. And her grandmother Sybil is totally bitter and mad about Miss Lee and whatever went down between them when they were teenagers , but either will say what that was. She also constantly insults the hell out of Hayes in front of people. Sybil flat out wants war (a White Glove one, har) on Dorothy Lee and is actively campaigning to get Dorothy thrown out of Magnolia leadership and to get rid of Alex as a rival for such to Hayes. Hayes isn't so down with that, but when one of your friends tries to kill you, dumps your brother cold, is totally rude and insulting to you...well....let's just say Hayes is less averse to that than usual. Unfortunately, Hayes herself becomes a target for the Gray Man as well, leading her to have the same kind of awful thinking that's been going through Alex's brain.

I compared this series to the Vampire Diaries last time, and hoo boy, that continues. Boy, does the plot get upped and the stakes get higher and everything gets scarier. It didn't feel quite as whiplash-ish as the ending of the last book did since everything gets wound up at a more plausible place. There's issues with dead people, freaky hoodoo practicing, betrayals, social wars, and above all else, the breaking of The Three. Specifically, that's the three rules laid down by Doc Buzzard to the Magnolia League: no betraying a sister of the League (especially trying to ah, get one killed. So that's gone well), no trying to foretell the future, and no messing with dead people. In this book, rules are broken amuck, and you know what happens when rules are broken...

I need to give massive props to Madison, the unsung hero of this book. Even though she doesn't get narrative duties in this book (but she will in book 3, right? Has to!), she is the voice of reason, action, and sanity in this one. She figures out what's going wrong and does her best to fix it, and I deeply enjoyed her in this. I look forward to her having a more prominent role in the next book. And probably a cover pic too.

By the end of this book, one character is in mortal danger and the League is a mess but fighting back, and IT'S AWESOME. The ending is a whammy that I quite enjoyed, and I am desperate to find out what happens in book three.

Four stars.

The Magnolia League

By Katie Crouch.    

Alexandria Lee grew up on a pot farm in Mendocino with a bunch of homeschooling hippies, being raised by her super-gardener mother Louisa. Life was good, until Louisa drove off a cliff when Alex was 15. A few months later, her never-met grandmother's lawyer shows up at the pot farm to drag Alex to the family hometown of Savannah, Georgia. It's a whole other world for Alex, and I don't just mean in the "hippie dreadlocks girl moves to the South" sort of way, although that's certainly a factor too.

Alex's grandmother Dorothy  must be called "Miss Lee" rather than "Grandmother," and appears to be in her late 30's. She is the head of the Magnolia League, a non-secret society of the ruling women of Savannah. They're all young, rich, and suspiciously beautiful-looking, even the "Senior Four" who are in their seventies or so.  Plastic surgery? Oh no. Nope, the Magnolias are all hoodoo users. They've got a longstanding contract with the Buzzards (yes, that's their real name), a family of hoodoo practitioners, to get mojo bags and beauty potions and love and money charms and all that jazz. Miss Lee deems herself the one who gets to decide who gets what magical mojo and what doesn't--wouldn't do to push the Buzzards too far on their demands, after all. The main Buzzard running the show these days, Sam (Doc Buzzard, the one who made the deal, seems to mostly reside off stage), seems like a nice and reasonable dude. But his sister Sina --the only Buzzard who actually uses magic on herself, and think about that life choice for awhile--is the one everyone goes to behind Miss Lee's back to get the forbidden shit.

The Magnolias are a generational society, which means that all female descendants are automatically Magnolias, whether they want to be or not. Which means that Alex is a Magnolia, like it or not. She's immediately teamed with the other two Magnolia teenagers of her generation, Hayes and Madison. Hayes is actually pretty sweet and nice under the circumstances, Madison is difficult and cranky and clearly wouldn't touch Alex with a fifty-foot pole were she not forced to. But the two take Alex under their wing and attempt to break her into Savannah society and how Magnolias are supposed to act. This is not as insufferable as it seems, since the stylist they bring her to actually tries to work with Alex's fondness for vintage band T-shirts and doesn't totally turn her into a pod person.

For maybe about 5/8 of the book, Alex resists the siren call of the hoodoo. To be fair, it takes her awhile to find out about it officially, though there's obvious red flags of "seriously, what's going on here?" moments. I will say that even though Alex is the sort of person who might annoy a reader--yes, she does do the preachy "but what about the environment?" stuff, but given her upbringing and the world she's been moved to, that's reasonable--I thought she seemed like a nice person. And while Miss Lee starts out obviously dubious, she has her moments in which I kinda liked her. For example, Miss Lee is totally on the side of gay people and changed churches due to that--and wouldn't have minded if Alex brought home a mild-mannered nice girl. When she wants to buy Alex a car (Alex has a license?!? I seriously wonder about this one) and Alex wants a bike instead, she gets a bike. And when Alex hits her limit and uses her new credit card to fly home to California, her grandmother decides to do it differently than she did with her daughter and just let the kid go and decide for herself if she wants to come back. Since her home has gone full-on pot farm and her boyfriend turned out to be a cheater, Alex goes back...and finds out first hand about the joys of hoodoo.

From that point on, it's a fast, slippery slope into true Magnolia behavior. After getting a magical makeover in which she gets her normal hair back and loses 20 pounds, she gets into the whole thing, as you do. Unfortunately, Alex goes nearly instantly from there into scary behavior. Specifically, she suddenly wants to put a romantic charm on her new boyfriend, even though (a) he's had the romantic charm put on him before and he HATED IT, (b) he swore he'd never date another Magnolia because of that, and (c) she promised she wouldn't. What the fuck, Alex? And as the novel careens toward the end, there's suddenly heavy revelations all over the place, and Alex veers back and forth a bit too much. It gets a little weird and nuts and I admit I had a bit of a hard time following the choices she was making all of a sudden. But I"ll get into that below the spoiler cut.

Overall, I'll give it three and a half stars. It's an intriguing world that the story takes place in--disturbing and fascinating at once. And Alex is a sympathetic character. It'd be four stars except that the ending gets a little Vampire Diaries whiplash crazy and confusing.

Wings

By Aprilynne Pike.

Laurel's adopted, and she's always been a bit...quirky. She pretty much lives on fruit and Sprite, her parents are hippies who aren't into going to doctors and have homeschooled her, she lived out in the country, and she doesn't really even need to use shampoo, among other things. But when something starts growing out of her back...that looks suspiciously wing-ish....well, a girl's got to wonder what the hell is wrong with her. Thank heavens her super nice and cute biology buddy David's there to help...

Turns out that Laurel is a autumn plant faerie, planted to live with her parents so that she could protect the land that's in their family. (The "wings" are really just blossoms that will show up on her in the fall and then die off. Bit of a misleading title there.) There's a faerie gate located on the property, and a local faerie named Tamani fills her in--and definitely has a crush on her just like David does. Unfortunately, Laurel's parents want to sell the land to a decidedly creepy fellow, and once Laurel's dad comes down with a mysterious illness that will most likely kill him, that forces Laurel's mom's hand entirely.  Laurel's job is to figure out how to keep the land from being sold, even if it risks the lives of her and her potential boyfriends.

It's an interesting story. The construction of how plant faeries work is cool (and reminds me of watching Farscape), and the setup of why things are they way they are works well. Laurel's a pleasant character to read about and deals with her issues well under the circumstances. And David is adorable as her human pretty-much-her-boyfriend. The guy does anything for her and is nice to boot--what's not to love? Tamani, on the other hand...well, he's also a nice dude, clearly besotted by Laurel forever, and let's face it, he's likely to win in a love triangle because he's a faerie too. But he's a little pushy romantically for my tastes, and I can't say I really liked the idea of having a love triangle in this story because it's so obvious as to who's eventually going to win. Or maybe I am just sick of love triangles anyway. (Seriously, who do you know IRL who ever has two great guys going for her and she just can't decide between the two of them for years on end?) So while I appreciate that both dudes are worthy, I felt more sympathetic towards David, and I don't think I'm supposed to. As for the overall plot, it starts out small here, but promises to get bigger.

I'll give it three and a half stars.

The Woman Who Rides Like A Man

By Tamora Pierce.

Previous book here.

Newly knighted Alanna has taken off from home to find adventure! What does she end up doing? She comes across a Bazhir tribe in the desert, gets adopted by them, and becomes their shaman after the previous one, a member of the He-Man Woman-Haters Club, tries to kill her. Since the rule is s/he who kills the shaman has to take over the job--at least until she trains a replacement-- Alanna takes over the job of training the three kids in the tribe who are Gifted--even if two of them are girls. Happily, Alanna brings some much-needed gender equality to the tribe--and actually gets to be friends with girls and learn the occasional girl skill that she didn't do in knight school. She also becomes more accustomed to handling magic and gets over her fears of it.

Prince Jonathan, her boyfriend, comes to visit because he's going to take over the role of ruling the Bazhir as well. It's a happy reunion at first...but Jonathan wants marriage and kids, and Alanna's not feeling ready for that yet. Not to mention that, well, Jonathan unfortunately comes off as more of a budding jerk in this book than other ones, for some reason. (Young adult angst? Rebelling? Needing to make him into more of a jerk so that Alanna doesn't end up with him?) It didn't feel like it really fit with his character to take a turn for the douche, and that annoyed me. I don't really care which of the fellows Alanna ends up with since both of them are nice and worthy dudes, but this felt forced in a way to make her end up with George instead, rather than Alanna just choosing that she doesn't want to be a queen even though she likes the guy. Argh. That sort of annoyed me.

On the other hand, the plot developments that go on later in the book--that have been foreshadowed and presumably will be gotten to in the last book--are intriguing.

Overall I'll give it three and a half stars.

Temping Fate

By Esther Friesner.

Ilana's been having a hard time finding a summer job ever since she uh, accidentally doodled a skull on her face in permanent marker. (...Uh....) Plus she tends to be a punk dresser and smartass and lives in a small conservative town. So her last ditch attempt at employment is to go to D.R. Temps, the place where her perfect older sister Dyllin worked for 4 years. Except for this year, since Dyllin is getting married and has become Bridezilla--Ilana will do anything to get the hell out of the house this summer.

D.R. Temps apparently stands for Divine Relief Temps. And their hiring preferences are...weird. Like Ilana gets complimented for the facial skull, but dissed for attempting to dress boringly for an interview. But since Ilana is Dyllin's sister, she's pretty much a shoo-in. But between the total weirdness of Mrs. Atatosk, the weirdness of the New Haven office, and just general "what the hell is going on here?!?"-ness, Ilana's already pondering quitting.

Ilana gets sent to work for the Fates. Yup, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos--only they're using the names Tabby, Dimity, and Georgette for uh, some reason. Georgette's the one with kids and she wants someone to fill in for her doing the death notices while doing kid-related drama. Mostly Ilana is left alone in the office with Arachne--yup, the girl who got turned into a spider--who's way lonely and bored under the circumstances. There's also the weekly meetings with fellow temps, which seem to operate as more of a "yup, I'm not crazy, this is really happening" support group than anything else. Ilana finds herself enjoying those meetings and hanging out with the folks, especially one fellow in particular. And when she gets to share the power of the Fates to some degree--peek at lives with the Scry-O-Tron 9000, mess with the spindles....well, it's an interesting job, eh?

I enjoyed this book, but it's also kind of freaking insane. The concept is high fun, though it's written in a rather fluffy, silly style that kind of reminded me of bad bimbo chick-lit at times. Or at least, certain Kindly Ones sure come off that way. The Fates pretty much do too, just less nastily. And don't even get me started on Dyllin, who has the occasional moment of being a real person and then goes back to being Bridezilla McCrazyPants. (Okay, so there may be ah, reasons for her being this nuts, but you don't find out until the end.) Some folks come off as real personalities--Corey, Arachne, Heather, Max, the other temps--and others are just kind of one note irritating bimbo. And I do kind of wonder at the logic behind things at times though--like Ilana not getting in trouble at all whatsoever for fucking around with the life-thread of a guy she doesn't like, for example. It apparently takes a LOT of bad behavior to get your ass canned from D.R. Temps. I'm not sure why Ilana not returning the waiver in a timely manner is supposed to be such a big deal either, because that doesn't really play into the plot.

And what also doesn't quite work is the Serious Stuff. Namely, Ilana spent 3 years in Africa (Dyllin was in college) when her parents moved there, only her dad didn't bother to get her vaccinated for smallpox. Ilana almost died and her best friend in Africa did die. This is a big awkward underlying tragedy thing going on with her family--parents feel guilty, Dyllin had her own issues that you don't find out until later, Ilana feels guilty for surviving--but compared to the silly fun fluff of the rest of the book, the two sides just don't mesh together. It almost seems out of the blue when Ilana brings this up again as an influence on a big life decision of hers at the end if the book.

On the other hand: some folks are personable to hang out with. I'm happy how Arachne's situation worked out. And when we get to Dyllin's wedding, well, holy cow. I won't go into details there, other than I found the whole thing deeply amusing and enjoyable. And yeah, there's no denying that this is a freaking cool concept to write a story about. I even enjoyed the chapter titles being themed along the lines of a standard employment situation ("office friendships make work fun," "performance reviews are your friend") being snarky commentary on what was going on in each one.

I'm going to give it three and a half stars overall.

Shiver

By Maggie Stiefvater.

When she was a kid, Grace got attacked and bitten by the wolves near her house. She recovered from the experience, but has always been fascinated with one yellow-eyed wolf in particular that rescued her from the others. Every winter they stare at each other.

Those wolves in the woods are werewolves, and Grace's particular wolf is Sam. In human form he's 18 years old and got bitten as a child. In this world, werewolves don't constantly shape-change--it's entirely dependent on the weather. When it gets too cold (around freezing?), they turn wolfy and don't go back to being human again until temperatures warm up. So for the summers, they're human...but it eventually needs to be hotter and hotter for them to turn human, and after awhile they just lose their ability to go human altogether. Sam knows its his last year for humanity, and after he gets shot in the woods, he turns human again one last time even though it's fall. This is when he finally gets to meet Grace, and they fall instantly in love.

At the same time, one of the kids at Grace's school, Jack, got attacked and killed by wolves. And yet, the body's gone and his sister Isabel has seen him in the woods, as has Grace's photographer friend Olivia. The general public is getting very anti-wolf and folks want to go out and start shooting the wolves. Uh-oh. Meanwhile, those involved in the story are wondering how Grace somehow never did become a werewolf. Is there a cure for it? And if there is, can anyone survive the cure?

I found this to be kind of a problematic book. On the one hand, the romance is great and done well. You buy Grace and Sam's insta-attraction to each other, plus they actually do spend a lot of time getting to know each other and well, sleeping over (Grace's parents are generally rather oblivious). So if you're into teen love, it works really well. And to some degree, the mysteries of a werewolf cure, and how Isabel is handling this werewolf revelation, and how Jack is handling it (not well), is pretty compelling. You can probably guess the mystery of where the other werewolves are coming from yourself, but the shock of it also works.

On the other hand, the Our Werewolves Are Different aspect of it just came off weird and kind of inexplicable to me. Nobody seems too clear on how it works, or how people "just know" it's their last year. Or why Sam has only about 10 years of changing while the "human" pack leader Beck has been doing it for 20 before he loses it. I was confused as to whether or not Paul (the wolf pack leader) had lost his humanity entirely by now or not. And why it is that temperature change does it and why moving to Texas doesn't work because if you walk by an air-conditioned door, you'll suddenly go wolfy? The "cure" is an interesting method of handling the situation, I think, but mostly I just found it all awkward and strange. Not to mention how well anyone can live as a human when they are only able to do so about 3 months out of the year. I was surprised that Sam managed to have a driver's license. It sounds like Beck made enough money lawyering before he went wolfy to uh...live on savings and support the entire wolf pack with them every summer? Is he working as a lawyer only 3 months out of the year? How is he getting away with that? It just...didn't sound like it would work too well on a practical level in some ways.

And I also didn't like how the lone female werewolf, Shelby, is just totally crazy and insisting on being alpha female and mating with Sam whether he wants it or not. I felt like she'd wandered out of an Anita Blake novel by mistake. She didn't fit with the other characters and sad abusive backstory aside, I didn't like having such a stereotypical crazy evil female character. Ugh.

Overall, I'll give it three and a half stars. It works on the romance factor, but I found the werewolfiness to be problematic enough for it to bug me.

Wild Magic

By Tamora Pierce.

This is the first book in a second series taking place in the Tortall universe, and takes place maybe 15-20-ish years(?) after the Alanna series--or at least she's all grown up by now. This series features a teenage girl named Daine who moves to Tortall after her entire village was massacred. Daine's an unusual girl-- she doesn't have the traditional Gift that people in the previous series had, but she has "wild magic," which is something different entirely. What it seems to boil down to is that Daine can communicate with and heal animals and her powers work differently from other folks with magic. It's implied that her father wasn't human and neither is Daine uh, somehow. Animals seem to consider her one of their People, anyway. Well, if you've never met your dad, it'd be hard to say.

Daine gets a job helping to take care of the royal horses, and falls in with Alanna, Jonathan, his wife, his wife's soldier trainees, etc. through that. She makes a lot of new insta-friends, including a powerful shapeshifting mage named Numair that she uh, hits it off with on some level.

And then come the Immortals. Well, they don't seem to be immortal, but they ain't from this realm. All those magical creatures you don't normally see hanging about in the world have suddenly flown in. Some don't have evil intent, are just in distress, lost, what have you. Others, on the other hand, are looking to do a takeover of Tortall. Specifically the Stormwings, which seem to be the obvious villain of this story. Especially after Daine kills some, one of them in particular targets her. While everyone else is saddling up to go to war while magically neutralized, Daine has to (a) figure out how to work her powers better, and (b) figure out the ethics of the situation. Once she meets/bonds with an animal, she considers it a friend, and she doesn't feel good about asking/ordering animals to die for her. But her friends are all, "Hey, their home is being attacked too, they might have a vested interest in this themselves." So a war goes on.

I don't feel strongly about this story one way or another. It's okay, I guess. I don't want to say that Daine is a Mary Sue exactly, but she seems a bit too well-liked by everyone immediately for it to seem like she's a real character to me. (Even Alanna has run into problems with the occasional person not liking her.) She fits in immediately like a glove, which also seemed a bit too easy. I dunno...I guess other than her backstory, it doesn't seem like Daine has a ton of personality or plot going on quite yet beyond the animal stuff. Which is almost all of the plot anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. But despite the plot, I guess things seem a little...simple and easy to me here, somehow. I think this might be the whole "this story feels too young for me to be reading at the age" thing again I ran into with the previous series.

I'll give it three stars, and say that most people will probably love it more than I did. But at worst, it's a pleasant read.

In The Hand Of The Goddess

By Tamora Pierce.

Previous book in the series here.

This book does a little one, two, skip a few from the end of the last one, fast-forwarding by about a year. I was unthrilled with that, as the events described in the middle--the aftermath of the ending, Alanna's dad dying (convenient, now he can never out the kids!),  Alanna's friends going through their knight's ordeal and freaking her the hell out-- would have been cool to have seen. So I'm a little annoyed at that. Anyway, Alanna starts out around age 15 here, squire to Jonathan and ...well, hormones are kicking in. For her two best guy friends George and Jonathan, at least. Alanna's career goal is to be a knight errant upon hitting age 18 and finishing her training--she figures as a girl-in-disguise, she'll have to get the hell out of Dodge once she comes out of the closet anyway-- and the last thing she wants to do is settle down with a dude. George says he'll wait. Jonathan...is another story. (I will say that if you gotta have a love triangle, it's nice when both guys are worthy fellows and friends.) Anyway, when the story starts out with Alanna meeting with a goddess and getting a token and a magic psychic cat and the goddess says don't swear off love... you get the drift. Alanna's Chosen One-ness is determined, though not so much of a major factor in this book.

Most of the plot revolves around Duke Roger, Jonathan's cousin and Alanna's enemy at first sight. She suspects Roger wants to get the entire royal family killed--and yeah, it's very obvious what he's up to, but he's also very good at covering his tracks. Again and again Alanna thinks this guy is bad news, especially when there's now threats to her own life. But does she overly plot against him? Eh....Well, I'll say that that is annoying from a reader's POV, but it's eventually justified in text. As the book leads up to Alanna's ordeal test, she finally becomes determined to out Roger once and for all, not to mention out herself. That's an...interesting...scene.* (More discussion below the spoiler cut.)

It's still a pretty good series, and if I ever come across the other two in the quartet I'll read them, but I'm still not overwhelmed by it--I know it's for young readers, but it's still rather simple for my tastes and my mind has not been blown yet. So, three and a half stars.

Alanna: The First Adventure

By Tamora Pierce.

I got ahold of the first two books of the series, which I'd never seen IRL but had heard of on TV Tropes. I'm not sure why it's such a big deal. It's a good and pleasant story so far, but I can't say I find it drastically different from any other young fantasy Chosen One-y sort of story.

Anyhoo: Alanna and her twin Thom have no mom and a neglectful dad, who is insisting on sending them away to school at the age of 10. Alanna is off to be a lady at a convent, Thom is off to learn to be a knight. Thom wants to be a sorcerer and has no interest in knighthood. Alanna has zero interest in being a lady (as anyone sensible would) and wants to be a knight. At this point in life they look alike, and Thom can forge his dad's handwriting...so they switch places. Thom can learn sorcery at the convent area (okay, I'm not sure how this works, but okay) and Alanna--now Alan-- goes off to be a knight. Despite being the shortest one of the pages around, s/he learns very well, gets it down how to fight, manages to trounce the bully picking on her, and generally becomes a kickass short page. She also has two good friends--Prince Jonathan and George, King of Thieves. You can pretty much figure these two will be love interests once puberty hits. Well, serious puberty, I mean--the inevitable "what happens when you're hiding as a woman and hit age 13" problem does come up.

It's a very nice story overall, albeit I was ready for the story to go on a little quicker. And the villain of the story might as well start toying with his mustache for all of the subtlety the book gives him. Once he walks on, he's OMG PURE EVIL BUT NOBODY SEES IT BUT ALANNA...but since this is the "the first adventure," the plot doesn't go too far with this other than he gives Alanna the bad vibe.The ending is a good one, though I was sorry it cut off where it did. I would have been interested to see the aftermath of it!

I'll give it three and a half stars. I wasn't as super-wowed as I was expecting to be for the reputation these books seem to have, but it's a pretty good story anyway (albeit not that original yet) and I moved on to book 2 quickly.