Review: Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson

Title: Royal Street

Author: Suzanne Johnson

Genre: supernatural fiction

Series: Sentinels of New Orleans #1

Pages: 336 (Nook ARC edition)

Published: expected April 2012

Source: publishers via NetGalley

Rating: 2.5/5

As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco's job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ's boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.
Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans' fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.
While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover.
To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards' Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ's new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo.

I went into this UF/PNR pretty hopeful: spunky heroine, a secret wizard organization, Hurricane Katrina, and an undead sexy pirate. What's not to love, besides the Louisiana location (seriously, hasn't another paranormal series coughSookiecough dominated that locale for the last 7 years?)? Well, if you're an apparently unsatisfied reader like me, three out of those four items did not live up to expectations. DJ failed to impress me throughout her misadventures, and the much-advertised Hurricane Katrina lacked the emotional pull the author was aiming for, and this is no Harry-Potter level of wizardry. Suzanne Johnson has the large  and unenviable task of setting up a series from this introductory book, and based on the "strengths" of Royal Street, I wish her much luck and patience. '

It's never a good sign when you can't even agree with the heroine on the nickname she gives herself. Drusilla Jaco prefers to go by "DJ" but in my head, she was always Dru. As in, "Dru, why are you doing that?", "Really, Dru, really?!" and "Don't you want to maybe think that through before you do it, Dru?" Dru is a deputy sentinel and is oh-so-very aware of the first word in her title. She doesn't believe in herself or her abilities and feels crippled when her mentor goes missing in the aftermath of Katrina. My problems with this novel really began with Dru: despite my chummy nickname, this is not a character I invested in, even marginally. I managed to finish this because I was powered by an interest to see how everything would wrap up, rather than a desire to see Dru grow and change as a person. She's also mind-numbingly slow to put things together - SPOILER - example: when her supposedly dead mentor appears to her and tells her to lie to everyone, especially the authorities, she doesn't take this as a sign of something bad. She just blithely accepts his word and goes along. 

In an ironic twist, it's not DJ, or her partner Sentinel Alexander that is the character with the most life. No that honor goes to Jean Lafitte, a pirate who is technically...dead. He's a bastard alright from the first moment he speaks, but damnit, at least he is an interesting and dynamic one.  In a cast of so few, where I dislike most of the few, Jean was the one character I would root for continually. He didn't add the most to the story, but when I wanted to slap Dru for her wishywashy romantic love triangle BETWEEN COUSINS, Jean was the only tolerable part of the page. The love-triangle isn't as pronounced as some UF/PNR novels, but is fairly shameless and stupid on DJ's part. Within pages, Dru decides she doesn't want Alex, and goes on a date with his cousin Jake, only to be jealous of a girl looking at Alex while she is on the date with Jake. What? Really? At that point, I just thew up my hands and accepted that DJ was not a girl/character to whom I would ever relate.

If it was all just characterization issues with Royal Street, I could've easily seen a 3 or maybe even a 3.5 rating for this novel. However, the twists and turns of the story are sadly predictable and telegraphed to the reader prematurely. I foresaw the resolutions to the main plot as well as most by plots easily and early on - I mostly continued reading to corroborate my correct guesses and see in what capacity Jean LaFitte would sidle into DJ's life. Perhaps best along with Jean, the villains of the piece are worth reading about. Unlike their cliched main character counterparts, Marie Leaveau and Baron Samedi are interesting and unpredictable for the duration of the novel. The murders committed at the heart of the mystery are semi-interesting but tend to get lost in the endlessssss searches for Gerry and the non-ending back-and-forth reporting to the Elders and waiting for a response. So much of this book is research or reporting or waiting that I got bored and would set it aside for several hours before returning to the story.

The world that Johnson has envisioned for her characters to play within is barely sketched out. It seems to be the same world as the one we actually live in (notable appearances: Louis Armstrong, Marie Laveau), but with wizards, vampires, undead, ghosts and other supernatural ilk. The wizards themselves were given a bare framework to illustrate the mechanics of the Sentinels program that was slowly fleshed out as the novel progressed. I liked the separation of talents into different spheres of influence (green congress versus red congress, etc.), though it does severely limit the possible scope of Dru's abilities. SPOILER! I also have to wonder why other European sentinels did not come to help with the influx of supernaturality after Hurricane Katrina. It is mentioned that American sentinels went to Europe in 1976 for the "Wizard War", so why is no help forthcoming in this apparently most drastic of times for New Orleans, with 'pretes' and historical undead just waltzing into the city? Holes like this, in the logic of the main plot of the entire novel, just distract me. I kept wondering why the author would mention a possibility to fix every thing (call them in to help with the pretes AND finding Gerry! Both plotlines wrapped up in thirty pages) and then ignore it for the rest of the book. It was...odd.

This is the first in a series, and one I doubt I will pursue. Though my first impression formed ("I like that dead, dastardly pirate!") was one of the few favorable ones I took away from Royal Street, I believe this is a novel that will find a wide audience. Dru is far from a horrible protagonist, and some will genuinely like her wide-eyed and innocent approach to life - this is just not for me. 2/5 and a "no, thank you" - I will wonder what Jean LaFitte gets up to in his afterlife on Earth, but curiosity won't make me pick up book two when its out.

Review: The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice

Title: The Wolf Gift

Author: Anne Rice

Genre: supernatural fiction

Series: N/A

Pages: 404 (Nook ARC edition)

Published: February 2012

Source: publishers via NetGalley

Rating: 3/5

The time is the present.

The place, the rugged coast of northern California. A bluff high above the Pacific. A grand mansion full of beauty and tantalizing history set against a towering redwood forest.

A young reporter on assignment from the San Francisco Observer. . . an older woman, welcoming him into her magnificent, historic family home that he has been sent to write about and that she must sell with some urgency . . . A chance encounter between two unlikely people . . . an idyllic night—shattered by horrific unimaginable violence. . .The young man inexplicably attacked—bitten—by a beast he cannot see in the rural darkness . . . A violent episode that sets in motion a terrifying yet seductive transformation as the young man, caught between ecstasy and horror, between embracing who he is evolving into and fearing who—what—he will become, soon experiences the thrill of the wolf gift.

As he resists the paradoxical pleasure and enthrallment of his wolfen savagery and delights in the power and (surprising) capacity for good, he is caught up in a strange and dangerous rescue and is desperately hunted as “the Man Wolf,” by authorities, the media and scientists (evidence of DNA threaten to reveal his dual existence). . . As a new and profound love enfolds him, questions emerge that propel him deeper into his mysterious new world: questions of why and how he has been given this gift; of its true nature and the curious but satisfying pull towards goodness; of the profound realization that there are others like him who may be watching—guardian creatures who have existed throughout time and may possess ancient secrets and alchemical knowledge and throughout it all, the search for salvation for a soul tormented by a new realm of temptations, and the fraught, exhilarating journey, still to come, of being and becoming, fully, both wolf and man.

Anne Rice has never been a go-to or auto-buy author for me; I think I missed hitting the crest of her wave of popularity by a few years - when I think of vampires and such, hers aren't the texts that shoot to mind. I've obviously read some of her ubiquitous novels, but never on my own impulse; friends had to coax me into bare interest then bring me their copies or, as in one case, order one from the library for me. I was bored by Interview with a Vampire, almost died of ennui during a mostly-skimming read of The Vampire Lestat and just annoyed at the more religious-in-tone The Songs of the Seraphim series. So I took a chance against my better judgement with this "daring departure from the inspired author" and decided to give a much-maligned author another shot. And while The Wolf Gift didn't inspire the depths of dislike that its predecessors did, it wasn't a complete good read either. I definitely wouldn't stretch the truth so far as to claim this is a daring departure - this is firmly in the vein of what she's produced before.

The first problem I had with this was the narrative style of the book itself. Just like Interview, or the Vampire Lestat, this opens with a naive reporter heading to an unknown place to deal with a supernatural creature. However, unlike in Vampire or Lestat, Rueben, the somewhat naive main character, isn't actually aware that he is running headlong into a foray into life's wilder side. Pursuing a story for The San Francisco Observer, Rueben's trek to the mysterious house in question sets an effective and enveloping ominous feeling for the novel. Rueben works as a main character, and that's perhaps the best that can be said of him. He's not one of the intense protagonists that bursts with life - Rueben is more loosely drawn than that, with the focus of the novel on unraveling the mysteries rather than illuminating his personality. Outside of characterization woes, the tone and feeling of the novel really are done quite well, and with a dab hand - I readily admit that Anne Rice is a good storyteller. I just wish I was more easily enthralled in the stories she chooses to write.

Rueben is a mostly rounded-out character, I definitely wouldn't call him a cliche yet: he's smart but feels unfulfilled in his job and coddled as "Sunshine Boy"  by his well-meaning family and the darling of his parents eye. Reuben's situation and attitude toward his parents was the most believable to me. Like Reuben himself of the novel, Reuben the character has a lot of potential that he unfortunately never quite achieves all the way. He does a few things that are personally distasteful to me (I find it hard to like a main character that cheats on their significant other so easily and readily), but at least he is not a stagnant character: he learns, changes, adapts to his new situation.  It's very interesting that a character so ingrained to use technology, one who can't go 10 minutes without his iPhone is the one transformed into a much earthier, natural state. He's decent; he gets the job done and doesn't alienate the reader too much, though his attraction to gray-haired Marchent strains credulity. As the multiple mysteries surrounding older-woman Marchent Nideck, the house and her family evolve more and more, so too does Rueben. I have to say I didn't like any of the romantic entanglements present in The Wolf Gift; neither Reuben and Celeste, nor Reuben and Marchent or Celeste and anyone else, feels like an actual, viable relationship. People are just paired of as convenient or just seems 'sexy' at the time. The sex scenes themselves also just read as cold to me - there was no heat, no chemistry to make them fun to read. The man-wolf/woman sex scenes  in particular crossed from "awkward" to  almost laughable - I probably snickered involuntarily.

The supernatural aspect of this is probably what worked the best and what I liked the most. Marchent's family history was long, complicated and murderous but it only turned truly interesting and compelling when the mysterious Felix was mentioned, or explorations into the "Man Wolf" were written. I wish a bit more thought/time had been given to the exposition of the Man Wolf. Bare bones are present to account for the appearance in Reuben's life, but more forthcoming information would've rounded out the large and important paranormal aspect of The Wolf Gift. The morphenkinder and the history of the "Man Wolf" , besides having an awesome-sounding name, served to balance out the more tedious parts of the novel, especially the beginning. I wish more had been provided.

I think long-time and ardent fans will get the most out of this werewolf offering from the queen of vampire novels. Otherwise, this is rather run-of-the-mill, and there are too many books about just this kind of story for this to warrant more than its three (grudging) stars. This drags on and on a bit towards the end, and feels a bit meandering in pace for several bits in the middle-ish, but the ends are nicely wrapped up and the resolution  for Reuben is satisfactory. Hopefully this is a standalone, not the beginning of a series featuring Reuben because I think I can say with finality: I am done reading Anne Rice novels.

Blog Watch Wednesday

Fun Stuff:

A reader of Time magazine asked (awesome) astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson what the most astounding fact about the universe was. This is his answer.
 

Like my Facebook page! I promise not to do this every BWW, but I could really use the support to get this page off the ground. So please, stop by and hit that little 'Like' button. Feel free to hide me from your feed, but please help me out.

Did you know that all .coms are now subject to US law? This is at least as worrying to me as SOPA/PIPA were a few months back.

The Book Thief is becoming a movie - with a driector already attached to the project. I'm both excited and scared - Liesel's story is so much more than just a girl in Nazi Germany and I hope the moviemakers realize that.

One of my favorite websites, Go Fug Yourself, is celebrating 10,000 posts! Also includes a bit about their pre-fame days, a cover reveal for their next book (Messy, due out June 5th this year) as well as a trip down memory lane with long-time Fug Girls favorites, The Peldons. This is a very funny, very snarky fashion blog so if any of those three are key words for you, don't miss out on the fun of Jessica and Heather.

This post illustrates why I love Meryl Streep and think she's a lady of rare class and talent.

The Cuddlebuggery Book Blog has a very thoughtful post up about woman and romance novels. It's longish, but worth the read.

Elizabeth May is a photographer, a model and now an author. She's behind the forthcoming The Falconer, which not only sounds amazing ("Humans will be the hunted. Love will be tested. Vengeance will be had. ") but wonderfully original. It doesn't hurt that she seems to be made entirely of epic amounts of awesome.

If/when I ever get married, these will come in handy: bookish themes/invitations for your wedding.

Did you know you can grow a rainbow rose naturally? If I was slightly green-thumbed, I'd try. Gorgeous.

500 NEW fairy tales unearthed in Germany. And in a year, we'll have all-new YA reiminaginings of them.

I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit - awesome mash-up of "Lethal Weapons", "Stripes", more.

The Simpsons have spoofed the Game of Thrones intro and it is a thing of beauty - and I don't even tolerate the Simpsons.

KONY 2012 is sweeping the web right now. And while its both amazing to see how interconnected we are as a planet, I am worried. I think the charity of Invisible Children absolutely has their collective heart in the right place, but the situation in Africa re: Kony is more complicated than a surface article/video can articulate. There are several blogs/posts/websites that point out the errors/miscalculations of IC's campaign, and they should be read, just as the video made by the charity should be watched. Kony should be outseted and arrested, but please read before giving money to a charity that spent only 31% of their budget to their own program.

The first pictures - ever - of a bear using tools. Evolution is fun!

Jimmy Fallon, as Neil Young, sings 'Sexy and I Know It' with the REAL Bruce Springsteen. Awesome, just awesome.

As I just got my copy today, I couldn't resist linking this beautiful review for Gail Carriger's last Parasol Protectorate novel, Timeless. No spoilers, be unafraid of running 5 books of percolation.

And from Cracked:

7 Deadly Things You Won't Believe Most People Survive

The 7 Most Mind-Blowing Places Science Has Discovered Life

5 Ridiculous Cold War Myths You Learned in History Class

4 Famous Pop Culture Moments Everyone Remembers Incorrectly

Review Take Two: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor

Genre: young-adult, fantasy

Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1

Pages: 418 (hardcover edition)

Published: September 2011

Source: from publishers for review

Rating: 5/5

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

The first book in a new series, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is an urban fantasy about a girl, an age old war, and the consequences of love. It starts with the daily routine of Karou, a strange creature with two lives. On one hand, she is a young art student in Prague, with the normal fears and dreams of a young woman. On the other hand, she is an errand-runner for otherworldly Brimstone and his fellow chimera, the only family she has ever known.

Tossed about between these two worlds, Karou only wants to know who she is, and what her real purpose in life is to be. Beyond the strangeness of her life lies a truth Karou wants and needs to know, but it will cost her dearly to learn it. Learn it she does, over an unusually constructed but effectively told story line that gradually sucks in the reader.

The story starts with Karou's point of view and her current life in Prague. Her friend, Zuzana, is the best character in the story, even if she is a secondary one. She provides perfectly timed comic relief at the moments where it seems Karou starts pulling a bit towards the angsty, self-obsessed teen of those middling paranormal stories that seem a dime a dozen nowadays. As the book continues, Zuzana's genuine and relevant sense of humor sticks with the reader, even when the deep substance of Taylor's artistry starts to reveal itself.

The sudden entrance of the love story, a little less than halfway through the book, was a bit jarring. At first it felt contrived or forced, but as the depth of the author's storytelling came to the fore, it seemed more and more a splendidly done thing. The banter of the characters also stuck out as exceptional, if handled in an unusual fashion.

Overall, Laini Taylor shows herself as an author with an honest sense of humor and a gift for better-than-average storytelling and whimsy. Karou's character busts out of her shell in a way that will delight readers of young adult literature, and also faces enough pain and consequence to satisfy readers of a more mature bent. As an urban fantasy, it has enough true character to put itself ahead of the class, and is well worth the read even for fans of predominantly other speculative subgenres. 

Highly recommended.

------------------------------- 


My review for this novel, first published in September of 2011, also gives DoSaB 5/5 stars because I LOVED IT! It was one of my favorite reads for the year, and Laini was my favorite 'new discovery' for an author. Read this book, especially if you feel the PNR/UF genre has gotten a little stale - it's fresh, unique and gorgeously written.

Review: A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

Title: A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

Author: Joshilyn Jackson

Genre: General Fiction & Literature

Series: N/A

Pages: 322 (Nook ARC edition)

Published: January 2012

Source: publishers via NetGalley

Rating: 3.5/5

A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Ginny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women's shared past-and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.

I've read two other novels by this author, long before I started blogging, and I was less than impressed by what she had to offer in Between, Georgia and Gods in Alabama. Both of these Southern-set novels were just sort of...there. I didn't love them, didn't hate them; I didn't have enough emotion invested to feel either way. Nothing called to me from their pages; the characters weren't favorites or interesting; they simply did what they had to for the story - I felt no connection to the plots, the settings, the people. Happily for me, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty diverges from the path set down by its predecessors.  The unfolding stories and pasts of these three similar but disparate women (Mosey, Liza, Ginny) is engaging from early on and the mystery at the heart of Mosey's life is both compelling and immensely readable. 

Ginny is 45 and the matriarch of her tight-knit, all-female family, and in her short-ish years has experienced a cyclical pattern for three periods of extreme difficulties: her 15th year, her 30th and 45th. Jackson paints Ginny as a strong, Southern woman, one who can readily buy that she and her family are cursed by the number 15, but one that steadfastly hates religion, mostly Baptists. She's just "Big" to both of her girls, and has a big personality to match her sobriquet. Ginny is a complex character: I'd say she's even more dimensional than her wild-child daughter Liza, and reading about this determined Grandma reminded me a bit of my own hard-as-nails grandma. Ginny feels real, as do most of the characters herein, and is humanly flawed. But it is her unceasing sense of humor that keeps her narrative from veering into too pessimistic of territory or from sounding downtrodden ("I'll go straight under any number of ladders if you put the right kind of pie on the other side..." p. 8 ARC) despite the biblical amounts of crap that continually fall her way during A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. While the three rotating POVs of the Slocumb women worked to illuminate each woman separately and uniquely, Ginny's POV was resoundingly my favorite to read for the entire duration of the book.

Mosey is the hinge upon which this whole book turns, and surprisngly, this teenager is able to bear the pressure. While I may haaaate her name, Mosey's story is by turns funny, confusing, and emotional. While my liking for Big was immediate and I was curious about Liza from the start, Mosey was a slow-burn character for me. What really reversed my indifference was her relationship with Roger. I laughed out loud at the two of them ("he was just Roger, fixing my tit for me") when they were physcially present together: their texting drove me up a wall. Prepare oneself for 1337 speak and horribly mangled sentences when reading the interchanges between the mischievous pair. The slang felt very 'Southern' but the abbreviations and such were a bit much for me to handle.

Liza is the most unformed personality among the women, but for obvious, plot-adjacent reasons. Since Liza's situation is so different from her daughter and mother, I appreciated how distinct her "voice"/thoughts were. Though this is the second book in two weeks I've read that features a female main character with a 'brain event' (The Vanishing Game being the other), Liza's story is riveting. Described as a "half girl, half hurricane", Liza was the crazy, uncontrolled member of this family tripod. Even diluted by her injuries, "Little's" narrative is easily identifiable as hers, and almost as much as I wanted to unravel the mystery of Mosey, Liza's story has a great, unpredicted, attention-grabbing twist of its own.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is an easy, but very involving read. I'm not too proud to admit that several of my heartstrings were tugged very effectively, and unexpectedly often. I didn't cry, but my eyes did have tears in them at the resolution that Jackson extends to her readers. A slow beginning eases one into a story of what family really means and how the past does not have to define the future. This is not perfect, but it is very likeable and executed well. These are three very different women, all sympathetic despite any sins they have perpetrated. And for once, the rotating POV frame of storytelling worked very well - the breaks from each's story allowed for percolation of ideas/plots/assumptions. I had way more fun with this than I anticipated. My vote: give it a chance.

Review: Croak by Gina Damico

Title: Croak

Author: Gina Damico

Genre: young-adult, supernatural

Series: Croak #1

Pages: 324 (Nook ARC edition)

Published: expected March 2012

Source: publishers via NetGalley

Rating: 4/5

Sixteen-year-old Lex Bartleby has sucker-punched her last classmate. Fed up with her punkish, wild behavior, her parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape. But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than that of shoveling manure.

He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach her the family business.

Lex quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated entirely by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next. Along with her infuriating yet intriguing partner Driggs and a rockstar crew of fellow Grim apprentices, Lex is soon zapping her Targets like a natural born Killer.

Yet her innate ability morphs into an unchecked desire for justice—or is it vengeance?—whenever she’s forced to Kill a murder victim, craving to stop the attackers before they can strike again. So when people start to die—that is, people who aren’t supposed to be dying, people who have committed grievous crimes against the innocent—Lex’s curiosity is piqued. Her obsession grows as the bodies pile up, and a troubling question begins to swirl through her mind: if she succeeds in tracking down the murderer, will she stop the carnage—or will she ditch Croak and join in?

Lex is the hard-edged and foul-mouthed teenage main character of Croak, and if you don't like Lex, chances are that this is not the book for you. Lex takes the stage early and that made Croak's beginning one of the weakest I have come across - I nearly set it down when "retard" came out to play as an insult early on. The reader's immediate, first impression within two pages of starting this is that this 17-year-old hellion is violent, volatile, impolite and frequently out-of-bounds. With a name like Lexington (plus twin sister Concord -- how cruel is that?! I'm a huge history nerd/double major and even I wouldn't do that to my kids!) and the attitude of a bear with four sore teeth, this is a highly individual character, but ultimately, never one I truly loved. Lex battled her way into my esteem, slowly creeping up in my estimations, but she is easily and obviously the weakest link in this morbid YA novel.

Lex will never top, or even appear of any list of mine for favorite/memorable heroines, except for one. This is a funny girl with her own sarcastic, rough type of humor, and while I didn't love every single bon mot that fell from her lips, I absolutely, and more than once, literally laughed out loud several times at what she has to say. Even her name, taken from a battle that kick-started the American Revolution, unkind as her parents were to stick her with it, is a subtle reminder about how much this novel revolves around death. I also liked the symmetry present in the name: the battle of Lexington that began off a years-long war, and Lex's personal arrival in the town of Croak sets of a series of deadly events. Be warned, Lex is is rough shape at the beginning/middle: she's offensive, unrelentingly childish and overdone teenage cliches abound. What bothered me most, outside of the 'retard' comment, was Lex's double standards with her fellow Croakers. She constantly accuses everyone else of being cryptic and elusive with details, but sees no hypocrisy in shielding her own secrets and knowledge. But eventually, she evolved into a character that if I couldn't like, I could at least understand.

I really enjoyed the lore and mythology the author created for her world, especially since I wasn't particularly invested in Lex or her life. What got me truly involved in Croak was...well, the town of Croak itself and the Afterlife.  I thought the Killing/Culling pairs were a bit unwieldy and unlikely, but the structure reinforces the friendships between the teams so I can't complain too vociferously. The organization of the Grims is highly regimented, and seems like a viable plan for the tasks they must undertake (Ha! Death pun!). Croak itself is fun to read: from Slain Lane, Pushing Daisies flower shop (now I want to watch the tv show. I heart Ned!)  to Dead Weight (a gym), death puns and wordplay appear and add and element of fun to an understandably less-than-teeming city. Let's talk about the Afterlife - very visually striking in the narration, very tactile in description. But what I liked best, out of the whole damn book, was the version of Edgar Allan Poe that Damico has crafted. He's morose, moody and just plain hilarious. I would read a book about his adventures in the Afterlife anyday. His rivalry with Teddy Roosevelt ("where's your big stick now, Teddy?!") was one of the aspects of Croak that kept me vastly amused and coming back for more. In fact, this whole book is "lol-worthy" - so much so that it inspired me to make a shelf named just that for future novels in the series/other books.

Like Lex's, the uncle she lives with has a name that is a harbinger of death, though not nearly as subtle: his name is Mort. Mort and most of the other GRIMs (Gamma Removal & Immigration Managers - a bit of a reach for that acronym, no?) lacked the wholly rounded personality of Lex, but weren't total cartoon caricatures either. What I liked best about Mort was his repeatedly demonstrated ability to put Lex in her place, often and firmly. With a character like Lex, so full of heedless anger and self-righteousness, Mort's calmer, steady personality balanced out her high emotions. Despite a blip of character continuity, Mort is the responsible, smart member of the group, but his control over Lex is tenuous, which leads to their fractious, though loving, relationship. I could have done without the whole romance element, slight as it was, because it just seems superfluous. With Lex's tude, the whiteeye deaths, navigating being a Grim Reaper, couldn't the two just be friends? Is it that unheard of for two teens of opposing sexes to just be friends for a while? Damn - also, the picture "reveal"? I found it creepy, not adorable. And SPOILER: shouldn't Lex recognize a picture of herself when she sees it several times?

Though it begins with a rather weak introduction, Croak happily gathers steam midway and eventually makes a more-than-favorable impression with its strong, complete ending. Besides Lex's overdone teenage tude, and a cliched villain monologue at the end (seriously, I swear it was Syndrome making a cameo) detailing every last element of the grand evil plan, this is enjoyable to read. And, BONUS!, this fun little death-centric book is only $7.87 for Nook. The next book and direct sequel, Scorch, is due out later this year in September, but is already available for pre-order now.

Monthly Planned Reads for March

In March, among others, this is what I plan to read:

Vaclav and Lena by Haley Tanner (major coverlove for the first, and some for the second)

Vaclav and Lena seem destined for each other. They meet as children in an ESL class in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Vaclav is precocious and verbal. Lena, struggling with English, takes comfort in the safety of his adoration, his noisy, loving home, and the care of Rasia, his big-hearted mother. Vaclav imagines their story unfolding like a fairy tale, or the perfect illusion from his treasured Magician’s Almanac, but among the many truths to be discovered in Haley Tanner’s wondrous debut is that happily ever after is never a foregone conclusion.

One day, Lena does not show up for school. She has disappeared from Vaclav and his family’s lives as if by a cruel magic trick. For the next seven years, Vaclav says goodnight to Lena without fail, wondering if she is doing the same somewhere. On the eve of Lena’s seventeenth birthday he finds out.

Haley Tanner has the originality and verve of a born storyteller, and the boldness to imagine a world in which love can overcome the most difficult circumstances. In Vaclav & Lena she has created two unforgettable young protagonists who evoke the joy, the confusion, and the passion of having a profound, everlasting connection with someone else.

The other cover: 

Grave Mervcy by R.L.LaFevers

Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae's most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough

In an exquisitely chilling debut novel, four children unravel the mystery of a family curse - and a ghostly creature known in folklore as Long Lankin.

When Cora and her younger sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with their elderly aunt in the isolated village of Byers Guerdon, they receive a less-than-warm welcome. Auntie Ida is eccentric and rigid, and the girls are desperate to go back to London. But what they don't know is that their aunt's life was devastated the last time two young sisters were at Guerdon Hall, and she is determined to protect her nieces from an evil that has lain hidden for years. Along with Roger and Peter, two village boys, Cora must uncover the horrifying truth that has held Bryers Guerdon in its dark grip for centuries - before it's too late for little Mimi. Riveting and intensely atmospheric, this stunning debut will hold readers in its spell long after the last page is turned.

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley 

The body you are wearing used to be mine.

So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined. 

Darkest Knight by Karen Duvall

“Betray your sisters or your lover. You choose.”

After the warrior she loves saved her from a murderous gargoyle, Chalice watched helplessly as Aydin turned into a gargoyle himself. Now, free from the curse that enslaved her, Chalice pledges to join her sister knights in The Order of the Hatchet—and do whatever it takes to regain Aydin’s humanity…and his love. What she encounters within their hallowed sanctuary is pure intrigue.

Someone—or something—is murdering her sisters in their sleep, provoking fear and suspicion among the order. Meanwhile, Aydin, unable to stay away, starts haunting Chalice’s dreams, urging her onward. Ultimately, Chalice will be faced with an agonizing choice—one that will tear away at her newfound identity and force her to choose between duty and desire.

Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland (I love both covers, but the first is my favorite)

Against the unforgettable backdrop of New York near the turn of the twentieth century, from the Gilded Age world of formal balls and opera to the immigrant poverty of the Lower East Side, bestselling author Susan Vreeland again breathes life into a work of art in this extraordinary novel, which brings a woman once lost in the shadows into vivid color.

It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows, which he hopes will honor his family business and earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women’s division. Publicly unrecognized by Tiffany, Clara conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which he is long remembered.

Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman, which ultimately force her to protest against the company she has worked so hard to cultivate. She also yearns for love and companionship, and is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who enforces to a strict policy: he does not hire married women, and any who do marry while under his employ must resign immediately. Eventually, like many women, Clara must decide what makes her happiest—the professional world of her hands or the personal world of her heart.

Cover #2:

I should have several reviews up this week, and maybe a giveaway? I'll think on it. Any reading plans to share?