Disclosure: I received this book courtesy of Maggie Stiefvater

Ballad (A Gathering of Faerie, book 2)

Book Description: Remember us, so sing the dead, lest we remember you James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And it has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and then feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. James has plenty of reasons to fear the faeries, but as he and Nuala collaborate on an achingly beautiful musical composition, James finds his feelings towards Nuala deepening. But the rest of the fairies are not as harmless. As Halloween—the day of the dead—draws near, James will have to battle the Faerie Queen and the horned king of the dead to save Nuala's life and his soul.

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Review:
Sometimes you fall in love with a book and eagerly seek out the author's other works hoping to find that same feeling. Sadly, disappointment often follows as you discover that those stories fall far short of the book you loved. For me, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater was one of the best books I had ever read. And I tried--I really tried-- not to hold her other books, BALLAD in this case, to an impossible standard. Truth is? I needn't have worried.

BALLAD is the second book in the Gathering of Faerie series (after Lament), but it isn’t a sequel in the traditional sense. Other reviewers have more accurately called it a companion novel. What's the difference? While it helps to have read Lament prior to starting BALLAD , you can absolutely enjoy BALLAD on it's own. Lament was very much Dee's story, whereas BALLAD shifts the focus to Dee's best friend James as the two of them head off to Thornking-Ash Conservatory for musical prodigies. Escaping to a new school, however, doesn't mean that they've escaped from the faeries who had terrorized them. Quite the opposite. Faeries have flocked to Thornking-Ash in unprecedented numbers, including the Horned King of the Dead himself and The Faerie Queen. And James and Dee have both been targeted.

If you've already read Maggie's wonderful Shiver (and you should), then you already know that she excels at capturing the male point of view. James' voice and narration is real enough to be occasionally uncomfortable. I won't be able to adequately express how I felt feel about the character of James. He has a witty and sly humor, and a dryly sarcastic way of observing the world. Maybe this next part is only true of me, but I actually knew James. Of course that wasn't his name, but its like Maggie took my friend and put him in her book. I lost my James a few years ago to cancer, but reading BALLAD was like getting the gift of one more day with him. Bittersweet.

Maggie once again makes use of multiple POV's focusing primarily on James but also including chapters from Nuala's perspective. Nuala is a muse, a leanan sidhe. She is drawn to gifted boys and slowly sucks their lives away while pushing them to creative heights unattainable on their own. When she sees James, she knows she's found her next Human, but as he struggles to resist her offer and charms tailored specifically to him, Nuala enters into a struggle of her own, battling between her ever increasing hunger and a budding reluctance to steal away even a moment of James' life.

If you read my review of Shiver, you already know how I gushed about Maggie's writing ability. There is a lyrical quality to her words and the way she constructs her sentences, and that talent once again sings from every page of BALLAD. She is really on a different plane from anyone else writing within this genre today.

Sexual Content: (YA titles receive a more thorough breakdown) An attempted rape, kissing, a scene of mild sensuality.

My Rating (out of 5):

Click HERE to read an excerpt of Ballad

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Flux; Original edition (October 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738714844
• ISBN-13: 978-0738714844

Disagree with my review?  Email me your review for this or any other book I reviewed and I might use it for 2nd Opinion Review

ScifiGuy shared Sharon Ashwood’s new cover for Unchained (Dark Forgotten, book 3) due out July 6.  I’m really digging this, and I want Ashe’s red bike…and her gun…and her boots…

ISBN-13: 978-0451230737

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Been there, slain that . . .

Ashe Carver, monster-killer, has the scars to prove it. But faced with a custody battle, she's hung up her stakes and taken a job at the public library, determined to show the courts and her ten-year-old daughter that she's as good a mother as she is a hunter.

Easier said than done. There are lovelorn vampires haunting the library, a slime demon in the shopping mall, and her new-mom sister needs a hand with her ghostbusting biz. Then, after centuries guarding a supernatural prison, Captain Reynard strides into her world like a hero from the library's Must Reads. Smokingly gorgeous, passionate and courageous to a fault, he has only weeks to live unless Ashe finds the thief who took his soul.

Ashe picks up her weapons to save the day—but not every problem can be solved with a stake. With so much tragedy in her past, Ashe fears the disaster she sees ahead—and prays she doesn't fail everyone. Again.

Memories are the hardest monsters to kill.

Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway for Shade Fright by Sean Cummings.  If you missed Sean’s visit, you can check it out HERE. 

The winner of Shade Fright by Sean Cummings, chosen by Random.org, is… vslavetopassionv who said:

Demi Moore as a zombie would definitely be worth seeing. :D
I'm a follower through google friend connect.
~smooches~
Jase

 

Congratulations Jase! I’ll be emailing you soon. Please respond within 48 hours or a new winner will be drawn.

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Today is the last day to Enter & Win Patricia Briggs books!

Click HERE to enter. 

Today is the last day to enter for your chance to win some amazing Patricia Briggs books. The 400 follower mark came and went awhile ago, so as promised, there will now be two winners!  One for the complete Mercy Thompson series, and one for the complete Alpha & Omega series.  The giveaway is international (anywhere that Book Depository ships). 

One winner gets: Moon Called, Blood Bound, Iron Kissed, and Bone Called.

Another winner gets: Cry Wolf, Hunting Ground, and On The Prowl! 

Click HERE to enter. 

The winners will be announced tomorrow. 

Book Description:

Faerie can't lie . . . or can they?

Much has changed since autumn, when Kelley Winslow learned she was a Faerie princess, fell in love with changeling guard Sonny Flannery, and saved the mortal realm from the ravages of the Wild Hunt. Now Kelley is stuck in New York City, rehearsing Romeo and Juliet and missing Sonny more with every stage kiss, while Sonny has been forced back to the Otherworld and into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the remaining Hunters and Queen Mabh herself.

When a terrifying encounter sends Kelley tumbling into the Otherworld, her reunion with Sonny is joyful but destined to be cut short. An ancient, hidden magick is stirring, and a dangerous new enemy is willing to risk everything to claim that power. Caught in a web of Faerie deception and shifting allegiances, Kelley and Sonny must tread carefully, for each next step could topple a kingdom . . . or tear them apart.

With breathtakingly high stakes, the talented Lesley Livingston delivers soaring romance and vividly magical characters in Darklight, the second novel in the trilogy that began with wondrous strange.

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Review:
Can you imagine what it would be like to discover that the characters from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream were real? That the Faerie realm actually exists and you are a Faerie princess? As the daughter of the Winter King and the Autumn Queen, Kelley Winslow doesn't have to imagine.

Darklight is the second book in the Wondrous Strange trilogy and follows the story of 17-year-old Kelley Winslow. While performing A Midsummer Night's Dream in the previous book, Kelley discovered that the actors in her play were more that figments of Shakespeare's imagination but actually had real life counterparts. Not only that, but she herself was Faerie and a princess at that!  With the aid of her new love Sonny, a changeling charged with guarding one of the four gates to Faerie, Kelley was forced to confront her estranged parents and save both worlds from destruction….or so I’ve been told.  See I didn’t get a chance to read Wondrous Strange first. 

I try not read books out of order, but I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of Darklight for review, and it looked so inviting that I couldn't stop myself from starting it right away. Of course, I then felt like I was playing catch-up through most of this book. In that sense, my review is a bit hampered since both books are really two parts of one big story. So rather than discuss every part of this book, I’m going to mention the highs and lows as I saw them:

The character who made the biggest impression on me was Fennrys Wolf. Like Sonny, he's a Janus Guard, a human who was raised by and imbued with faerie magic from the time he was a baby. He's kind of a jerk sometimes, but not in a malicious way. He enjoys pushing peoples buttons especially the jealousy prone Sonny. I’m hoping he’ll get even more page time in the next book.

The Faerie world created here is delightfully familiar with famous characters like Puck and Titiana from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but then intriguingly Other with unique additions like the Janus Guard (changelings who guard the four gates to Faerie).  Blending the Faerie and Human worlds is also well done (who knew Central Park was one of the locations of a Faerie Gate?). And I didn’t expect (but quite enjoyed) the high number of action scenes in this book.

For my complaints, the majority of the story takes place in the Faerie realm, so the urban elements are necessarily lite.  I tend to prefer more urban in my urban fantasy.  Also alternating chapters from Kelley and Sonny’s perspective was a little frustrating as it tended to slow down the story progress.  Kelley’s chapter would end with a scene of impending doom and then the next chapter, rather than picking up with Kelley, would jump back to what Sonny had been doing during that time. And since Kelley and Sonny are separated for most of this book, they spend the story pinning for, doubting, and then pinning again for each other again.  I basically had to take it on faith their love had a strong foundation from the first book.

While not a cliffhanger in the traditional sense, the ending of Darklight definitely sets the stage for the last book in the trilogy.  A few plot lines are tied up, but most are left dangling even more tangled than before.  But with any good book, Darklight left me wanting more.

So how did Darklight fare even with my ignorance of the first book?  Pretty well.  Just don't be like me and read Darklight before Wondrous Strange. This book does relies heavily on the events and character development of the first book. Not that Lesley doesn’t do a good job of bringing new readers up to date, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to experience all of that first hand. Me? I’m an impatient idiot.  And even though I now know most of what happened in Wondrous Strange, I'm really looking forward to how it all happened. I want to experience with Kelley what is was like discovering her Faerie heritage, falling in love with and then almost losing Sonny, and embracing her unique position of straddling both worlds.  After that, I’ll get read Darklight again with new eyes and be more than ready for the as yet untitled conclusion to the Wondrous Strange trilogy.

Sexual Content: (YA titles receive a more thorough breakdown) Kissing

Disclosure: I received this book courtesy of Media Masters Publicity

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: HarperTeen (December 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061575402
• ISBN-13: 978-0061575402
• Cover Art: Amber Gray

Disagree with my review?  Email me your review for this or any other book I reviewed and I might use it for 2nd Opinion Review

Long before I fell in love with Urban Fantasy as a genre, I had heard about Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series.  And I mean that in the most disparaging sense possible.   Every time I read something about the series it was sex, sex, and more sex. The word pornography was thrown around very casually.  And as I hate it when the plot of a book serves merely as a pretense for endless sex scenes that add nothing to the story/characters, I avoided this series much in the same way that I avoid blow drying my hair in the shower. 

That is, until I read an interview given by Laurell K. Hamilton in Writer's Digest  that asked her to respond to the too much sex criticism and her response changed my mind:

WD: YOU'VE BEEN CRITICIZED FOR HAVING TOO MUCH SEX IN THE ANITA BLAKE SERIES. HOW MUCH ATTENTION DO YOU PAY TO CRITICISM? DOES IT IN ANY WAY AFFECT HOW YOU WRITE THE NEXT BOOK?

LKH: It's funny. I've never had an American tell me they were bothered by the violence in my books. In Europe they're bothered by the violence and in America they're bothered by the sex. The only downside to the sexual content is losing younger readers. Sex isn't bad; it's a deity-given gift. But I initially never wanted to put sex on paper. There isn't a real sex scene until book five. At book six I finally realized my main character was going to have sex with the man she was dating. I initially wanted to take the 1940s pan to the sky, but the camera hadn't flinched in five books. I didn't want to do it, but I thought, what does this say about me? I don't mind writing violence but flinch at writing sex.  (Click here to read the interview in its entirety).

What?  Not a single sex scene in the first five books?  This was not the Anita Blake I had heard about.   And even then its hardly the ‘sleep with anything that moves’ reputation I’d been hearing about,  so I decided to pick up the first three books in the omnibus Club Vampyre  (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Omnibus: Guilty Pleasures,The Laughing Corpse and Circus of the Damned) and guess what? No sex. There is romance of course, but primarily these are UF mysteries (think hard-boiled), and fun ones at that.  Anita is tough with as-yet unrealized potential, Jean-Claude is alpha, the world is well imagined and realistic in a paranormal sort of way, and there appears to be juicy meta-narrative arc waiting to be told in subsequent books.  Add a touch of romance and its everything I love about urban fantasies. I am prepared to jettison this series if and when they begin to live up to (or should I say down to) their bad press, but in the meantime, Go Anita!

Book Blurb for Guilty Pleasures: Anita Blake may be small and young, but vampires call her the Executioner. Anita is a necromancer and vampire hunter in a time when vampires are protected by law--as long as they don't get too nasty. Now someone's killing innocent vampires and Anita agrees--with a bit of vampiric arm-twisting--to help figure out who and why. Trust is a luxury Anita can't afford when her allies aren't human. The city's most powerful vampire, Nikolaos, is 1,000 years old and looks like a 10-year-old girl. The second most powerful vampire, Jean-Claude, is interested in more than just Anita's professional talents, but the feisty necromancer isn't playing along--yet. This popular series has a wild energy and humor, and some very appealing characters--both dead and alive.

Book Blurb for The Laughing Corpse: Millionaire Harold Gaynor wants to hire Anita Blake to raise a 283 year old corpse. Of course this kind or animation would require a white goat - a human sacrifice. Anita doesn't do human sacrifice, but Harold does not want to take no for an answer. If that wasn't bad enough Dominga Salvador wants Anita to partner with her in the zombie business, but it involves keeping the human soul trapped inside the dead body. Anita wants nothing to do with Dominga or her work, but when the voodoo queen sends something foul and rotting in her window, it is all Anita can do to survive.

Book Blurb for Circus of The Damned: A group of vampires are murdering humans. That's nothing unusual, but they are killing them with multiple bites and draining them of blood. They will rise as vampires, but they will rise as beasts - animalistic vampires that will slaughter everything in their path.
As if that wasn't enough trouble, a master vampire has come to town and wants to make Anita his human servant. New Master of the City, Jean-Claude, wants to mark Anita to keep her safe, but Anita would rather die than become a slave to any vampire. With two master vamps fighting for Anita's soul, an undead war has begun.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Book Blurb:
Rule #3: Don't stare at invisible faeries. Aislinn has always seen faeries. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in mortal world. Aislinn fears their cruelty—especially if they learn of her Sight—and wishes she were as blind to their presence as other teens. Rule #2: Don't speak to invisible faeries. Now faeries are stalking her. One of them, Keenan, who is equal parts terrifying and alluring, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer. Rule #1: Don't ever attract their attention. But it's too late. Keenan is the Summer King who has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost—regardless of her plans or desires. Suddenly none of the rules that have kept Aislinn safe are working anymore, and everything is on the line: her freedom; her best friend, Seth; her life; everything. Faerie intrigue, mortal love, and the clash of ancient rules and modern expectations swirl together in Melissa Marr's stunning 21^st century faery tale.


Review:
Similar in feeling to Twilight. I had read some recommendations for this book from Twilight fans, which is why I picked it up. And while it definitely isn't as good as the Twilight books, the comparison is valid. In both book series, a high school girl, with an ability that differentiates her from her peers becomes a part of a supernatural world and is pursued by a devastatingly handsome nonhuman. The tone of the book and the level of writing elevate it from other wannabe Twilight clones, but there are marked differences that keep this book from feeling redundant. For one, faeries are the supernatural creatures not vampires, and for another *SPOILER*the girl does not return the affections of her faery suitor but rather is in love with her equally handsome best friend. *END OF SPOILER* We also get a lot more information about the world of the fey through various POV's.

Sexual Content:
Unlike Twilight, I wouldn't recommend this one for the kiddies as there is some talk and reference to casual sex and a scene that has a vague reference to a sex act.