When The World Went Cold

Hello all, how was your weekend?  Mine was exhaustingly busy and awesome and crazy...so about the norm.  I promised you all some Halloween style ramblings this week, so let us start of with The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black.  I got this book on a total whim one day.  I was just sitting on my couch and out of the blue I decided that this was a book I need to get and read for the October season (I love ebooks sometimes, really feeds into my impulse buying/reading habit) and so I did.  Was my impulse decision good or bad?  Lets find out, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Tana wakes up in the bathroom after a wild highschool party completely alone and having a hard time remembering what happened.  As she makes her way through the house she realizes that every person at the party is dead, killed in a horrific manner, with all the requisite blood and gore.  The only survivor other then herself is her ex-boyfriend Aidan and a crazy (seriously deranged) vampire that goes by Gavriel.  Yep this is a vampire book...but it's ok...it's a good vampire book.  In flashbacks through out the book we learn that vampires have been around forever, but one by the name of Casper Morales bought into the whole human romanticizing of the undead (see what happens when you make your vampires glitter) and decided to go on a turning rampage.  In this world when you get bitten by a vampire you go Cold, which means you are infected, but not turned.  To turn you need to drink human blood, then you die and come back immortal, pointy toothed and thirsty.  If you don't drink human blood within about 88 days then the infection goes away and you remain human.  Cool beans, you think, if I want to stay human I'll just refrain from drinking blood.  Unfortunately it is not so easy, when you go Cold, you get progressively thirstier and thirstier until you turn into a super strong lunatic who would do anything to get blood.  So the vampire Casper goes around infecting as many people as he can sink his teeth into (previously the old vampires would carefully regulate the turning of new vampires to keep their existence a secret and also to keep the food supply plentiful) and all these new crazy insatiable vampires go around infecting more people...lather, rinse, repeat.  The governments doing what governments do, eventually get a bit of a handle on the situation and quarantine off a bunch of the cities, sending any vampires and infected to them. Back to Tana.  Hmmm if I write this all out the post is going to be 100 pages long...I'll do my best.  Tana takes both boys on a freaky road trip where they meet up with Midnight and Winter, a brother and sister duo with a death wish.  They make it to Coldtown where the infected Aiden and the mad Gavriel must live out the rest of their lives and Tana gets a marker to get out later as long as she remains human.  The twins also head in, hoping to convince on of their coveted undead to bite them...without killing them.  Gavriel leaves the group after a parting gift from Tana and the rest of the group head to a house of Midnights friends.  All kinds of absolute horrific, yet entertaining insaneness ensue with truly tragic results.  Tana gets caught up in an ancient feud between Gavriel and Lucien, the vampire who reigns over Coldtown as it's beautiful, untouchable star.  More madness and mayhem, more death and Tana gets bitten for real.  Tana's little sister Pearl comes looking for her adding even more chaos to the mess.  After approximately 2/3 of the characters die we finally end with Tana determined to defeat the infection and remain human.  Gavriel offers to stay with her, as he can easily over power her even in her infected state and in his madness her pleas mean nothing.  Tana asks why he would do this and he tells her she is the only person to ever try and save him.  We end with the two of them holed up for the fight of Tana's life.

Argh!  I hate trying to summarize books like this because it is so chock full of awesomeness and things and stuff that directly pertain to all my myriads of feelings on this book, but if I try and get it all in I'll just rewrite the book. I guess you'll just have to trust me on the stuff I didn't get in.  So I started reading this not knowing what to expect and I think that greatly added to my enjoyment of the book.  Like I said before it was a completely out of the blue, random buy and read.  Ok let's start with the good, and I will try and be coherent.  First of all, I love vampires.  They may be my favorite type of monster 'cause they are usually intelligent and can make choices.  I like the idea of immortality playing a role in their decisions and their weird mix of inclusion and aloofness in the human race. The vampires in this book made me happy because of the variety and realisticness of their attitudes.  You have your ancient and elite guys who have remained hidden for thousands of years, keeping tight control.  You have your young guns who want a change, you have your pathetic, your haughty, and your bat sh*t crazy, all with their own unique perspective.  I liked how the author had a fairly well thought out society and progression of history when it came to her vampires and their history with the rest of the world.  Next on the list surprised me.  I loved all the teenagers.  Yep, I usually am not a fan of modern YA books 'cause teenage angst drives me bananas, but in this book you could tell the author remembered what being a teen felt like without the over the topness you get in a lot of books.  The heroine Tana was tough, but not necessary kick-ass.  She had a history that would justify major drama, but she kept it to a mix of pragmaticness and an impulse control issue.  Tana was scared, confused, angry, tired, and a little bit in love...just like any human would be in her situation.  Aidan was a great character because he started out a bit twisted and messed up and getting infected and the way he acted after all seemed in-line with the character.  He is a character that a lot of writers try to include to show how "progressive" and "modern" they are, but it usually feels like a token piece.  Ms. Black however managed to make Aidan a real person, somebody who I swear I've met before, really well written.  Midnight, Winter and Pearl all show a fascination with the "stars" of Coldtown that mirrors our own societies obsession with a lifestyle they can't have, and they show us all facets of it.  A lot of bad stuff happens in this book, I mean a lot, like Game of Thrones style bad, but all of it is necessary and not only furthers the story, but adds consequences to decisions and actions. I love this because while there are some good outcomes in the book, not everything ended happily and wonderfully.  Choices were made, and sometimes it was the wrong choice and people suffered greatly for it.  There is romance in the book, and the main one is between the heroine and the vampire, but it is actually a decent romance.  Tana realizes that her attraction to Gavriel is in part an instinctive reaction to his looks and she tries to temper it.  The author also lets Gavriel be truly crazy, mad as a hatter and that adds an awesome dimension to a YA romance plot.  Really the only things that got to me were sometimes it felt like the vampires, especially Lucien and his cohorts were directly lifted from an Anne Rice novel.  I sometimes would automatically substitute the name Lestat for the various vampires. The author stated that this book was in part a tribute to the various vampire writers...but it felt a tad bit derivative at times (yay I got to use one of my big girl words).  I could probably go on for pages about the subtleties and nuances and social commentary, but I will let you go read it so you can come back here and discuss it with me. I recommend it to all my reading buddies (you know who you are), anybody who wanted Twilight to be better, or just wants a really nuanced YA book with action and awesome.  I give this book 8 out of 10 garnet necklaces and I hope they never try and turn it into a movie 'cause they will just ruin it.   Happy Reading Everybody!

Metawritingreading

Hola!  Guess what?  I finished another book, YAY ME!  Sorry, still a bit sleep deprived and loopy, but very very happy to have gotten a chance to read Afterworlds by one of my favorites Scott Westerfeld.  I actually got this book back around January with one of the gift cards Hubbin got me, but have just now gotten to read it.  Do I love it?  Lets find out, but first as always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

This is a bit of a tricky one to sum up, so I'll just try and quickly get the basic points across.  The premise of the book is unique in that it alternates chapters between an actual story and the fictional author who wrote it...confused yet?  It seems very complicated, but it actually works very smoothly.  I will sum up the two stories separately so that we don't get to mixed up.
 The Story - The story portion of the book (helpfully highlighted in black) is called Afterworlds and is the story of Lizzy a girl who survives a horrific terrorist attack by playing dead.  She plays dead so well that she accidentally finds her way to the Afterworld.  In this strange world of the dead she meets Yama a supernatural hottie who has been the lord of the underworld for a very long time.  He sends Lizzie back to the world of the living where she discovers that she can now see ghosts.  She discovers she is what is commonly referred to as a psychopomp, a living person who can navigate the afterworld and guide the souls of the dead.  Lizzy also meets Mindy, the ghost of her mothers friend who was murdered when she was 11 years old.  Lizzy uses her new powers to try and help Mindy out, all while getting all kissy faced with Yama, and learning some very intresting and disturbing techniques from Mr. Hamlyn, a twisted psychopomp who has taken a liking to our heroine.  Lizzy ends up killing the man who killed Mindy and this causes a rift between her and Yama.  She is sad, but learns to move on with her little ghost friend and carries on with her life on both sides.
The Writer - The other half of the book (helpfully marked in white) is about the author of the above story.  Darcy Patel is an Indian-American 18 year old who wrote the book in her last year of highschool.  She gets a huge signing deal for the first book and it's unwritten sequel which makes it possible for her to move to New York and write.  We follow Darcy as she struggles with becoming an adult and working on her writing career.  We watch her try and balance her writers integrity with the need to please her editors, deal with a brand new relationship with fellow new writer Imogene White, balance her budget, and just survive.

Ok...so that was probably a super simplistic summation of the book, but that is essentially what it was.  The question is, did this make for a good read?  I think it did for several reasons...want to hear them?  Good.  The book as a whole seemed to be a big commentary of the world of YA writing, which is not really surprising as I feel most of Mr. Westerfeld's books are a commentary of some sort.  What works so well in this book is that he also tells a great story and creates his signature worlds.  The story side of the book was a very typical (if original) YA paranormal romance, it has all the elements of the genre and checks all the boxes.  I have read a few reviews where people were complaining that the story was a very typical YA paranormal romance and that they expected more, but I think that was kind of the point of the story.  The story side was supposed to be written by a 17 year old girl writing her first novel that was to be published by a company looking for its next big money maker, not an established adult male author who is known for writing original stories.  All that being said, I still thought the story idea was pretty original.  On Darcy's side, I thought it was kind of fun to watch her make decisions about her book and then read the changes in the next chapter.  I like watching her try and juggle her new life, her new relationship and her new career all at the same time.  This allowed the author to bring up several different topics and discuss them in different ways.  The topics of cultural appropriation, writer's integrity, money, sellability, customer expectations, deadlines, stealing ideas, sharing idea's, other authors, and other writery things.  There is a bit of a"wow this girl is super lucky" feel to Darcy's journey, but even this is addressed in the book.  It was fun learning a bit about the process of writing and publishing, while reading the "book" that was being written and published.  Overall I give this book 7 out of 10 ramen noodle bowls and would recommend it to any Westerfeld fans, people who are interested in writing or like a typical paranormal romance.
What do you think of the duel story format?  Do you like knowing how the sausage is made?  What kind of book should I write?

Claimed

I have this really weird OCD thing when I go into bookstores, I always have to buy three books, not sure why, but I cannot go into a bookstore without coming out with three new tomes to add to my bookshelf.  Normally this is really no big deal, my book list is pretty long and I love buying books.  Well one week my sweet Hubbin had a lot of studying to do so we ended up at the bookstore three times in a row!  One of the problems with the bookstores now days is they have a much more limited selection.  Many of the books on my list were not available at that particular store so off I went to find some different books to fill out my OCD three.  This is were I got Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.  I had heard of it with the movie version coming out, but had mostly written it off as yet another YA paranormal romance, but I needed one more book, it had a pretty purple cover (no stupid movie cover for me) and it was surprisingly big so into the bag it went.  I had finished another book and this one was the closest one to the bed, and being the lazy bum that I am I picked it up and started reading it.  I enjoyed it more then I thought I would, and finished it fairly quickly.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Ethan Wate can't wait to leave the slow and unchanging Gatlin in South Carolina.  His hometown is small, boring and stuck on following the most archaic of traditions.  Ethan is a 16 year old high school student, with a spot on the basketball team, a dead mother and a reclusive father, he also has dreams, strange haunting dreams about a girl, and a song.  Enter Lena Duchannes (rhymes with rains), the niece of the mysterious and never seen Macon Ravenwood.  Lena starts school with a literal bang (exploding windows) and is immediately cast as the outsider.  In a town like Gatlin anything different is not welcome and Lena is about as different as they come. Ethan notices this and oddly enough takes an intense liking to this dark haired, black wearing, poetry writing new girl.  At first Lena is standoffish, not trusting that Ethan actually wants to be friends, she has had bad experiences before and while she desperately wants the typical teenage experience, isn't sure how to trust someone enough to get it.  You see Lena as we discover quit quickly is not a typical teenager, she is Caster, a person who has powers.  She is approaching her 16th birthday in which every

Caster must choose to go to the Light or the Dark (very Jedi, use the force vibe here).  For Lena this not a choice, she comes from a family of Casters that does not get to choose to Claim the Light or the Dark, but rather the Light or Dark Claims her.  This is all a bit confusing and never really gets fully explained, but more on that later.  Ethan discovers her powers and her fear of being Claimed by the Dark on her sixteenthwho can get people to do what they want,

birthday, turning her into a heartless, soulless creature who uses her power only for her own pleasure.  Her cousin Ridley (who used to be her best friend) was claimed by the dark on her 16th birthday and is now banished from the Light and Unclaimed side of the family (again the reasons never being fully explained) and this has Lena scared that she too will be claimed by the Dark.  Ethan decides that he is going to help Lena find a way to have some sort of choice in the matter.  Along the way they find a locket that shows them the past, and her we see what caused Lena's family to give up their right to choose Light or Dark.  One of Lena's ancestors used The Book of Moons to attempt to bring her Mortal lover back to life, the cost being that all her descendants would loose the chance to Claim the Light or Dark and instead be Claimed by the Dark or Light. We learn that there are many different types of casters,  Sirens,  Palimpsests who can see a place through all layers of time and so forth.  A Caster does not entirely know what type of power they have until they are Claimed, but with some you get an idea beforehand.  In the family it is thought that Lena is most likely a Natural, a Caster with a massive amount of power and one that is rare.  While attempting to help Lena (who he has fallen hopelessly in love with), Ethan discovers that his mother knew about the Casters and was in fact one of the Keepers of the Caster Library, a job that got passed down to her best friend after her death.  Ethan's Amma (his nanny/housekeeper/surrogate mother) also is shown to have certain powers as a Seer (somebody who has the Sight and can call on her ancestors for certain types of help).  Through out all of this discovery of magic, ancestors, and secrets Ethan and Lena attempt to have as normal a life as they can.  They are hampered in this effort by the close minded attitude of the towns folk.  They do everything in their power to get Lena to leave the school and the town.  Ethan also gets shunned for his association with Lena.  Finally the day of Lena's 16th birthday arrives and as one can guess chaos ensues.  We discover that Lena's mother (who was previously thought dead) is actually on of the most powerful Dark casters in existence.  She tells Lena that she has a choice, that she is a Natural Caster and that she is the second one born into the family.  Her mother tells her that according to some random prophecy or spell or instruction or something that the first Natural born into the family will be claimed by the Dark and become the Cataclyst, (which is what Lena's mother has become), but the second Natural born into the family, Lena, can actually choose to go Light or Dark.  The big secret everybody has been keeping is that if Lena chooses to Dark, every Light Caster will die, and if she chooses the Light, every Dark caster, including her beloved Uncle Macon will die.  Her mother also ups the ante by telling Lena she has a way that her and Ethan, a Mortal can be together forever.  A big confusing battle ensues and Lena finds a way out of Claiming either the Light or the Dark.  Ethan is mortally wounded, but is saved when in a recreation of earlier events, Lena uses the Book of Moons to bring him back to life, inadvertently causing the death of her Uncle Macon in payment.  The book ends with Lena being neither Dark or Light and an opening for all the sequels to follow.

This book comes in at a whopping 563 pages so the above synopsis is about as bare bones as you can get.  The funny this is I actually liked the in between parts of this book the most, the ones that are not necessarily essential to the overall EPIC plot.  I liked the moments where the characters just lived their lives, the times when no matter what else was happening, life still carried on. It was these moments that made this book so enjoyable. Considering that this is written in first person narrative, but two female writers writing from a male perspective I surprisingly enjoyed most of the tone and pacing of the book. Overall the Caster/Claimed/Light vs Dark plot had a weird vibe of overdone, yet incoherent at the same time.  There were things that I never got, like what actually happened when you went Dark or Light? Why were you banished when you went Dark?  Why did Lena get to choose and not anybody else?  Why if the manor was so thoroughly protected against Dark Casters was Larkin able to hang out there for so many years? Does Ethan have power, if so what is it and where did it come from? What makes a person more susceptible to be Claimed by the Dark or Light?  And so many more questions that just did not seem to add up.  That part was frustrating, on the other hand they did a decent job showing the different types of powers you could have, not everybody was the same strength or had the same talents, and the various ways one could learn to use such talents was pretty cool.  Most of the characters were pretty much one dimensional stock characters.  You had your pretty, popular girls and her followers, the goofy best friend, the spiritual wise woman, the pinched faced ultra-conservative groups, so on so forth. The only characters that had any real depth to them were Ethan and Lena, and of these two Lena seemed to have the most range.  The authors did a great job showing a teenage girl in the middle of this horrible and strange perdiciment, who's biggest desire was to just be normal.  I liked how at times Lena
could find her inner strength and kick ass, and other times it was all to overwhelming and she melted into an emotional puddle that just needed somebody to hold her.  This seems to be a fairly accurate representation of what it is like to be a sixteen year old girl, not all kick-ass, not all helpless, not all powerful, not all kind and sweet and not all bitchy, but a mix of all these, as most people are.  Ethan was a little bland, most of his personality came from being around different people.  However I loved it when the authors explored his life after his mother was killed, how the town treated him differently, how his father withdrew completely, how he is living this surreal life of fragile normalcy, again a fairly accurate portrayal of attempting to move on from a massive loss. Overall I enjoyed the book, I got through it in a couple days, and I only found myself rolling my eyes on occasion.  It is not a work of epic astoundingness, there is a lot of things that feel like they were taken from previous works (seriously there is a scene that is almost exactly like the prom scene from Carrie), but the pacing was good and it kept my interest for most of the book.  The ending was a bit chaotic and confusing for my taste, but other then that I would recommend it to anybody who likes YA paranormal romances and isn't offended by a bit of witch craft.  I give it 7 out of 10 Civil War Re-enactments.
What do you think of the double author debut novel?  Does it feel like they threw in everything and the kitchen sink, or do they have a plan for the future novels?  What is your readers OCD?