 | Title: Winging It
Sexual Content: Kissing Rating:
Good - A fun read with minor flaws. Maybe read an excerpt before buying. |
Showing posts with label Dragons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dragons. Show all posts
03 December 2011
Posted by
Abigail
at 12:00 PM
Labels: 1st person, 2nd in series, 3 bats, Deborah Cooke, Dragon Diaries, Dragons, Paranormal YA, Review, trilogy
Labels: 1st person, 2nd in series, 3 bats, Deborah Cooke, Dragon Diaries, Dragons, Paranormal YA, Review, trilogy
08 November 2011
 | Title: Shadow Walker Author: Allyson James Series: Stormwalker #3 Cover Art: Tony Mauro Genre: Urban Fantasy Excerpt: No Source: Publisher Reviewed by: Kristina
  Sexual Content: Explicit sex scenes, references to sex Rating:   Excellent - Loved it! Buy it now & put this author on your watch list. |
Posted by
Abigail
at 6:30 AM
Labels: 3rd in series, 4 bats, Allyson James, Dragons, Magic, Review, Stormwalker series, Urban Fantasy
Labels: 3rd in series, 4 bats, Allyson James, Dragons, Magic, Review, Stormwalker series, Urban Fantasy
06 September 2011
 | Title: The Dragon Who Loved Me
Sexual Content: Several sex scenes. Rating:
Good - A fun read with minor flaws. Maybe read an excerpt before buying. |
Posted by
Julia
at 6:30 AM
Labels: 3 bats, 5th in series, Dragon Kin, Dragons, G.A. Aiken, Paranormal Romance, Review
Labels: 3 bats, 5th in series, Dragon Kin, Dragons, G.A. Aiken, Paranormal Romance, Review
24 August 2011
 | Title: Vanish
 Sexual Content: Kissing. References to sex Rating:
Good - A fun read with minor flaws. Maybe read an excerpt before buying. |
Description
An Impossible Romance.
Bitter Rivalries.
Deadly Choices.
To save the life of the boy she loves, Jacinda did the unthinkable: She betrayed the most closely guarded secret of her kind. Now she must return to the protection of her pride knowing she might never see Will again—and worse, that because his mind has been shaded, Will’s memories of that fateful night and why she had to flee are gone.
Back home, Jacinda is greeted with hostility and must work to prove her loyalty for both her sake and her family’s. Among the few who will even talk to her are Cassian, the pride’s heir apparent who has always wanted her, and her sister, Tamra, who has been forever changed by a twist of fate. Jacinda knows that she should forget Will and move on—that if he managed to remember and keep his promise to find her, it would only endanger them both. Yet she clings to the hope that someday they will be together again. When the chance arrives to follow her heart, will she risk everything for love?
In bestselling author Sophie Jordan’s dramatic follow-up to Firelight, forbidden love burns brighter than ever.
Review
Being a teenage girl torn between obligations and dreams is never easy. When you’re a teenage girl who also happens to be a fire breathing draki shifter whose obligations include mating to someone you don’t love and giving up on a star-crossed romance with a human who hunts your kind, things are exponentially more difficult. VANISH picks up immediately after the cliffhanger ending in FIRELIGHT. Jacinda is forced to flee with her mother and sister again, but this time they aren’t escaping pride life, they are fleeing to it.
Much to my delight, the draki mythology that was only touched on in FIRELIGHT is explored in much greater detail in VANISH. Since the majority of the book takes place within the draki pride, we get to see more of the politics, relationships, distinctions, and practices of the draki. How they have remained a secret from the world, how their various abilities are ranked within the pride, and how they view humanity. It was all fascinating. I especially responded to the way the female draki were treated within the pride like possessions, with no choices, and severely punished for any perceived disobedience. I saw red so many times I lost count and can’t wait for Jacinda to finally and fully rise up against the pride.
I only wish that Jacinda had been more consistent in her thoughts. When she was within the pride and forced to submit to the barbaric subjugation of the elders, she rightly longed to escape. But when she was faced with freedom, she only remembered the too few benefits to pride life. I understand that she’s a teenager and therefore prone to conflicting emotions and indecisiveness, but I could not fathom how she could forget about the atrocities that waited for her in the pride just hours after escaping it.
VANISH is a very different story from FIRELIGHT. Jacinda isn’t trying to control her draki and blend in at high school. She isn’t struggling with a heart that keeps leading her to a draki hunter. Instead, she is forced to try and reacclimatize into the draki pride while weathering the animosity of her fellow draki who view her as a traitor, and ward off the attentions of two draki who want to claim her as a mate. Life is fairly miserable for her and promises only to get worse since her pride gives her no choices. So, yes, I missed the impossible romance from FIRELIGHT, and as interesting as pride life was, I preferred watching Jacinda in the human world.
Overall, VANISH mixes of dragons, danger, and despotism in a well written love story that while not burning quite as bright as FIRELIGHT, does still continue what is currently my favorite dragon paranormal YA series and sets up what promises to be another wild and romantic ride for the next book in the Firelight series.
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Posted by
Abigail
at 6:30 AM
Labels: 1st person, 2nd in series, 3 bats, Dragons, Paranormal YA, Review, Sophie Jordan
Labels: 1st person, 2nd in series, 3 bats, Dragons, Paranormal YA, Review, Sophie Jordan
23 August 2011
 | Title: Down to the Bone
Sexual Content: Several sex scenes, references to threesomes. Rating:
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Description
Lila Black faces her greatest challenge yet as she takes herself, her dead lover, and the AI
in her head into death's realm ...
Lila Black is now a shape-shifting machine plugged into the Signal—the total dataset of all events in the known universe and all potential events: Zal, the elf rock star with a demon soul, is now a shadow form animated and given material actualization by firelight; Teazle the demon has taken up the swords of Death and is on the way to becoming an angel. To say this puts some pressure on their three-way marriage is an understatement.
Meanwhile the human world is seeing an inexplicable influx of the returning dead, and they're not the only ones. Many old evils are returning to haunt the living following three harbingers of destruction created in the ancient past.
What seems epic is revealed as personal to all concerned as events unfold and that which cannot be escaped must be faced. Heroic destinies unravel as greater powers reveal themselves the true masters of the game.
Review
What a long, strange trip it has been... with flashes of humor, convulsing and convoluted mythology, treachery and loyalty twisting back on each other like snakes, and at long last, some measure of peace for a world that has lost none of its strangeness but just a bit of its peril. Robson does a good job bringing readers up to speed at the start of DOWN TO THE BONE (with prophetic, faerie beer, of all things), but even with the bare bones of the conflict laid out, I can't say if new readers would be able to catch up to the complex emotional lives of these characters without starting at the beginning.
So much of what brings Lila, Teazle and Zal and their support crew to this end of days is as slippery and inevitable as a maelstrom, sucking everyone down and together into a cataclysmic confrontation. As changeable as these characters are, there are intimate moments of humor and pathos that completely won me over. Robson does a wonderful job interweaving the trickery of her paranormal creatures into the story without tipping over into "arbitrary”. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book with so much complexity and forgiveness worked in to the plot, in the most interesting and believable way. DOWN TO THE BONE brings all of the surface stories together, creating a satisfying resolution to the adventure portion of the story, even as I know I will still be piecing together the mythology of these worlds in the future.
KEEPING IT REAL and DOWN TO THE BONE have the benefit of bracketing this almost overwhelming series, and I think they would remain my favorites for the clear introduction and resolution each has to offer. Upon finishing the Quantum Gravity series I feel a little dazed and completely wrung out, but definitely glad I followed this roller coaster from start to finish.
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Posted by
Julia
at 2:00 PM
Labels: 4 bats, 5th in series, Angels, Demons, Dragons, elves, faeries, Justina Robson, Quantum Gravity, Review, Urban Fantasy
Labels: 4 bats, 5th in series, Angels, Demons, Dragons, elves, faeries, Justina Robson, Quantum Gravity, Review, Urban Fantasy
13 August 2011
 | Title: City of Fire
Sexual Content: None. Rating:
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Description
Two-time Newbery Honor Award-winning author Laurence Yep kicks off an action-packed new fantasy trilogy
Sure to appeal to fans of Rick Riordan and Eoin Colfer, this action-packed tale takes readers on an unforgettable journey through an alternate version of our world in 1941—a world filled with magical beings such as dragons in human form, tiny “lap griffins,” reincarnations of legendary Chinese warriors, Japanese folk creatures, and goddesses in disguise.
When her older sister dies trying to prevent the theft of one of her people’s great treasures, twelve-year-old Scirye sets out to avenge her and recover the precious item. Helping her are Bayang, a dragon disguised as a Pinkerton agent; Leech, a boy with powers he has not yet discovered; and Leech’s loyal companion Koko, who has a secret of his own. All have a grudge against the thieves who stole the treasure: the evil dragon Badik and the mysterious Mr. Roland.
Scirye and her companions pursue the thieves to Houlani, a new Hawaiian island being created by magic. There, they befriend Pele, the volatile and mercurial goddess of volcanoes. But even with Pele on their side, they may not be able to stop Mr. Roland from gaining what he seeks: the Five Lost Treasures of Emperor Yu. Together, the treasures will give him the power to alter the very fabric of the universe.
Review
It has been a very long time since I've read a young adult novel with this breadth of creativity and world-building. CITY OF FIRE gathers an unlikely band of confederates together and sends them whizzing out into an incredibly imagined world of adventure and wonder. From the broad political landscape to the delightful little details about daily life, I was enchanted through it all.
Reading CITY OF FIRE reminded me of the all the discovery of reading the first Harry Potter combined with the written equivalent of DINOTOPIA’s intricacy and delight. Yep lays out a fascinating magical and political structure for his world, all the while sprinkling the story with visual tidbits like a six-foot tall lizard pushing a broom in the background. The plot swept forward with an amazing amount of information without ever bogging down, due in part to the way Yep balances the lush depth of his scenery with fast paced action and dialog. While CITY OF FIRE was a fantastic entry into this world, I wouldn’t recommend skipping straight to later books in the series, if only because you would miss the way each member of Scirye’s motley group changes and comes together over the course of book one.
The characters in CITY OF FIRE are around twelve-years-old and are definitely pre-pubescent. Given that CITY OF FIRE takes place in the span of a day, I would imagine that we're not going to watch Scirye and Leech grow up in any physical sense over the course of the trilogy, despite the emotional maturity they gain. Packed with adventure, admirable character growth and an inventive world, CITY OF FIRE will be a hit for readers at any age looking for adventure and wonder, but not a hint of romance.
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Posted by
Julia
at 6:30 AM
Labels: 1st in series, 1st person, 4 bats, City Trilogy, Dragons, Fantasy, Lawrence Yep, Middle Grade, trilogy
Labels: 1st in series, 1st person, 4 bats, City Trilogy, Dragons, Fantasy, Lawrence Yep, Middle Grade, trilogy
09 August 2011
 | Title: City of Ice
Sexual Content: None. Rating:
Good - A fun read with minor flaws. Maybe read an excerpt before buying. |
Description
Two-time Newbery Honor Award-winning author Laurence Yep returns with the action-packed sequel to the critically-acclaimed City of Fire
From the islands of Hawaii, Scirye and her loyal companions pursue the villainous Mr. Roland and evil dragon Badik all the way to the city of Nova Hafnia in the Arctic Circle. With the help of a trader, Prince Tarkhun, and his daughter Roxanna, the companions chase their enemies into the vast and desolate Wastes. Scirye and her friends are determined to stop Mr. Roland from getting his hands on the second of the Five Lost Treasures of Emperor Yü, which will give him the power to alter the very fabric of the universe. But few who enter the Wastes ever return, and Scirye has no choice but to call on the spirit of the North for help. As wild and unpredictable as the Arctic itself, will the spirit turn out to be friend or foe?
Review
CITY OF ICE has the creativity and fantastic world-building that I came to love in CITY OF FIRE, but suffers a little bit from "mid-trilogy" malaise. Scirye and her companions struggle through the morality play of working together, deal with magical forces beyond their comprehension, and chase villains that threaten the world as they know it, and this middle book doesn’t offer much by way of resolution on any of these fronts.
Don’t think that my disappointment with a lack of forward momentum is the sum of my reaction to CITY OF ICE, however. This book contains my favorite setting for the series thus far. As fascinating as Auntie Pele and her Hawaiian volcanoes were in CITY OF FIRE, I found the snowy reaches of the Arctic Circle even more interesting. The interaction of myth and magic on the tundra was more than enough to hold my attention, and helped carry the story when I became impatient with the insecurities of Scirye and her friends. Snoring otters, ice palaces, and Inuit mythology combine to create some of my favorite scenes yet.
From a world-building perspective, CITY OF ICE is as lush and interesting as any in this series, but the character development languishes as Yep sets up conflicts for book three. Even with that criticism, however, I know that the beautifully written concepts and landscapes in this book will stay with me long after I finish it. Certainly long enough for me to remember to pick up the last book of the City Trilogy as soon as it's available.
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Posted by
Julia
at 3:19 PM
Labels: 2nd in series, 3 bats, City Trilogy, Dragons, Fantasy, Lawrence Yep, middle grade, Review
Labels: 2nd in series, 3 bats, City Trilogy, Dragons, Fantasy, Lawrence Yep, middle grade, Review
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