magikspells

What the hell did I just read? I mean, seriously? I wanted to love this book and if you look at most people's reviews, you'll find that most people wanted to love this book before they started. But I couldn't. I just couldn't love it and after a while I didn't want to.

I have some of the same issues as other people do. The setting is WAY too overdone, I wanted to stop WAY back in the beginning of the book because the story made me want to slam my head on a desk. It went nowhere until a couple hours in when the wreck happened.

The characters are bad. Like I don't believe the relationship between or among any of them, nothing felt sincere. Yukiko is a bitch, her dad is lame, I can't even remember most of the other characters because I just didn't care. They were all boring.

And this whole overarching sl with the lotus killing their land. I get it, I get your overdone social commentary about us destroying our world. But really. I can't believe that any world would have gotten THAT bad and that many people would have survived. The rivers and the sky were polluted? We need these to live, why would there still be so many people alive? Go read a [a:Jared Diamond|256|Jared Diamond|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1355359393p2/256.jpg] book, this is a society that is clearly choosing to destroy itself. I don't believe it for a second, there's no way it's still functional.

I can't make any comments about the language or culture that's referenced, but I recommend you look up some of the lower reviews that have more expertise.

All and all, waste of time. Fancy names and descriptions do not a good book make.

7/8/13
So I just got chapter 1 via NetGalley and its pretty interesting. I'm not a super huge fan of Morpheus, he might be a little too high maintenance for me but there's potential there. I'm looking forward to this book. And omg I just remembered about Jeb's memory from the first book. That's gonna hurt me.

I knew it! I knew you were going to do this to me, book! You evil sadistic piece of fiction. You've toyed with my emotions. And I've allowed you to do this. And you know what, I sort of liked it.

There is really very little that I can say about this book that wouldn't spoil it or the first book. Other than my undying love for Shaun as a character. But seriously the end? What the hell?! I sorta kinda predicted it what with Kelly. Then I thought we were going to veer in a different direction with Portland, then the last 10 minutes were a severe mindfuck from two different directions.

I just can't with this series right now. I need the last book, like yesterday.

So I've gone through a slump of books that were just sort of ok so now I've bounced back to two back to back books I've rated with 5 stars. Lets discuss this book a little.

First of all, I really only got this book or knew anything about it because I'd read [b:The Fault in Our Stars|11870085|The Fault in Our Stars|John Green|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360206420s/11870085.jpg|16827462] earlier this year. The book was so powerful painful that I wanted to try out another John Green book, therefore this book was the first I came across.

This book follows from the perspective of a skinny Florida born loner named Miles and affectionately referred to as Pudge by his new friends at his prep school in mid-Alabama. Pudge meets a whole new group of people who he quickly grows entwined in through a series of pranks, friendships, adventured, and tragedy. The whole book is chaptered in terms of "## of days until" and "## of days after" as the book revolves around the coming and passing of a particular event.

The Setting. I had no idea this book took place in Alabama and as someone who's lived most of their life in such a state, I was particularly skeptical. I'm usually annoyed by southern depictions. For this, please refer to my review of [b:Beautiful Creatures|6304335|Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1)|Kami Garcia|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327873282s/6304335.jpg|6488966]. One of my favorite lines came very early in the book during a description.
"You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can't say that Alabamaians as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers."
After this line, I had no worries, John Green understands the south. His depictions of seasons and characterizations of side and background character further exemplify this.

The Characters. About halfway through this book, I found it hard to differentiate the main 'trio' in this story with that of Charlie, Sam, and Patrick from [b:The Perks of Being a Wallflower|22628|The Perks of Being a Wallflower|Stephen Chbosky|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1363910637s/22628.jpg|2236198]. I quickly abandoned this. In a way, Pudge is like Charlie. He's easily persuaded and prone to being a follower, though not nearly as emotionally problematic as Charlie was. The Colonel (Chip) is one of my favorite characters because his humor and drinking contrast starkly with his intelligence should be decide to actually put forth the effort. In a way he is much like Patrick in his adventurous spirit. Alaska rounds out the trio, and similar to Sam in Perks, she is an outspoken girl who has a boyfriend outside the circle as well as the attention of our main protagonist. I found that I was much more fond of Alaska than I typically am of many characters who serve to trap the men's attention. She has a lot more going for her than that.

I would find it difficult to talk about this book without telling too much of what happens. But I laughed and I cried and well isn't that how a book should make you feel? Like you give a damn about what happens to these people.

It doesn't even need a title for me to want it. All it needs is the magic words by Julie Kagawa.

I really don't like zombies stories. I never have. But this is the second zombie book I've read and the second that I just couldn't not put on my favorites shelf. I think I loved everything about this book. I loved the characters, I loved the dialogue and the interactions, I loved the world building and the details. I loved that it wasn't a boring love triangle that dominated the story. And I loved that I could not predict what was going to happen. I also loved that one of the narrators, [a:Jesse Bernstein|465708|Jesse Bernstein|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1303963992p2/465708.jpg], is the Percy Jackson narrator. Points for that.

I can't say anything about this book without telling too much. I just want to gush about it. And Shaun. Ugh I just have a lot of feelings right now.

As for people who didn't like this book, I honestly am completely bewildered by that. I can't see how they would dislike this book, especially the details. To be honest, it was along the lines of mystery/suspense like [a:Michael Crichton|5194|Michael Crichton|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1359042651p2/5194.jpg] would write, especially in the scale of detail that brings a fictional/sci-fi story into the realm of believability. This is a very well written, detailed, heartfelt book. I think perhaps people might get confused into thinking this is a YA book. It is definitely not.

For starters, I never got into this book because of some love of Alice in Wonderland. In fact that's not really a story that ever stuck out in my mind from childhood aside from thoughts of how tripped out some of it is. I think most people can agree that the cover attracts a lot of attention but I'm a sucker for a good fantasy adventure. And I went with this one next because it was one of the shorter ones I had in my queue.

My rating seems unfair because I really did like a lot about this book. I liked the characters and most of the interactions. I just found that once I had to shelve it with other books I refer to as those dealing with 'monarch struggles' that I started to lose the fervor I had.

To begin with, Alyssa Gardner is a decedent of the Alice from the Alice in Wonderland story. Her family line is plagued with a series of women who are unfortunately a bit mad (case in point her mom Allison is in an asylum). Alyssa is a very odd girl, she's a punk skater girl who makes artwork out of bugs she catches and kills. She's hopelessly smitten with her nextdoor neighbor and childhood best friend Jeb who sometimes walks the line between white knight and companion. There are a lot of people that don't like Jeb, I really can't see why. He was one of my favorite parts of the story, perhaps because I'm so insanely tired of girl's in stories who drop their best friend's affections for a mysterious stranger. The roles between Alyssa and Jeb are different than the traditional love triangle situation with the best friend in many books. Jeb has a gf and a life, she's the one pining for him. I loved Jeb, I don't care what other people say.

Enter Wonderland and all it's mysteries. And the mysterious stranger, Morpheus who is Alyssa's guide into getting her (and Jeb) into Wonderland. A series of events unfolding correlating to plot points from Alice in Wonderland.

I'm going to be honest. Morpheus is weird. Normally I am all about the mysterious and dangerous stranger because I have a thing for villains. I couldn't like him, not in the way I was supposed to like an alternative love interest. His relationship with Alyssa, while important, felt forced when it came to romance.

Overall I enjoyed this book. I thought it had the right amount of what a good story needed, even if some parts were predictable, there are certainly parts that aren't.

I really really tried with this one, I made it about a quarter of the way through it. But I just couldn't do it. It felt weirdly rushed and like it was in a big hurry to get to something else. For such a short book, I shouldn't feel so rushed. It seems like it needs a lot of work, I had issues with typos in my version as well.

The Waiting Tree is a story about four brothers in small town Louisiana who are trying to cope with holding their family together in the aftermath of their parents' death and their own personal crises. The story is told from the point of view of Simon, who is one of the younger brothers along with his twin brother Jude. Jude is mute and care for him takes up much of Simon's energies.

Simon is the perfect narrator for this story. He is justifiably biased toward Jude and is scornful of his oldest brother Paul and even at times their other brother Luke. Simon has been dealt a pretty bad hand after his parents death when the boy he loves has been sent off by his religious parents to obtain 'treatment' for being gay.
This book has all the makings of being potentially very depressing. And in some lights, perhaps it is. I never felt depressed reading it. I admired Simon for being able to pick himself up everyday and deal with everything that's been thrown at him. I don't think this is a depressing story, I think it's a heavy narrative of the connections we have to the people we love and the lengths that we're willing to go to for those people.

The Waiting Tree isn't a story about gay teenagers facing persecution in the south so much as it's a story about overcoming obstacles life throws at you. Its about learning that life will kick you while your still down, but that it's possible to pick yourself up again. The book ended just in the right place to exemplify this.

I think other people reading from varying genres are going to enjoy this book. It's a quick, emotionally driven work that I had a hard time putting down. It has characters that are realistic a story that's honest. I think my singular complaint would be the halfhearted attempt at southern dialogue. Scattered throughout are frequent uses of 'yer' but no other emphasis on dialogue, so this story could have taken place anywhere. But I don't feel like this took anything away from the story overall, it was merely my observation as a southerner.

I honestly feel bad at the end of this book. I feel bad that I didn't like it more. I think I continually go into Cassandra's books with my expectations set so high that nothing could possibly work. I set myself up for this, but it was my own trust and other rave reviews that clouded my judgement.

I have two main complaints with this book, each of with garnered the removal of a star from my rating.

1. This book was far too long. Once the battle with Mortmain was over and I realized there were still 3 hours left, I couldn't help but to feel something else dramatic was going to happen. But no, nothing happened. It was merely another 2 and half hours of character development that wasn't really necessary (which leads into my second point). The last half hour of the epilogue was the only part I felt like I actually cared about.

2. Predictable. This book ended the exact way everyone knew it would and how all the fans had predicted. And that's part of what made the end drag out. Everyone had predicted what would happen, so then having to live through it felt like pulling teeth. There was no surprise, no shock, nothing. It was a let down and I feel like Clare might have been just too hung up on what the fans wanted to happen. It's ok to kill of a character, it's ok for things NOT to work out. I can't help but to feel like we didn't get the ending that was best for the story, we just got the one that she knew people wanted.

Lots of people are going to love this book, lots of people already do. I loved parts of this book and I do love many of the characters. I wouldn't have cried so much during the epilogue if I didn't. I just expected more than a shining bow on a neatly wrapped up conclusion.

I want to start off by saying that I didn't hate this book. But I didn't feel like I liked it as much as the first. I think this was partly my fault, I spent a long time taking breaks from this one so that I could read others. I got distracted from the SL a lot and when I went back to it I continued to wonder why they were still dragging on in the same settings. Jack is awesome as usual, also in the wrong place at the right time. Holly was irritating and flip floppy. The bad guys were interesting and very complex. I did enjoy this book and I will continue to read them, I just may take a break from the series for a while being that the other books in my queue are starting to accumulate more quickly.

So this book has been lurking in my current reads forever now because of the slow pace of reading it for class. I didn't hate this book, I felt like it went by at a reasonable pace and that the arguments had their validity at times. But as is the case with [b:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies|1842|Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies|Jared Diamond|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1363428619s/1842.jpg|2138852], I think it's important to look at his books from a critical perspective. I think Diamond has a gift for synthesizing facts but at times I feel like it's in attempt to further his argument by use of selective information. In addition to reading this for class we also read [b:Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire|6876113|Questioning Collapse Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire|Patricia A. McAnany|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348391516s/6876113.jpg|7092950] which I think is a nice contrast to many of Diamond's arguments from people who study these areas he relies on for examples. For a required read, I quite enjoyed it.

Enjoyable and very approachable. This book is a collection of essays pertaining to the particular societies that Diamond examines in his works. I think this book is a good compliment to [b:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies|1842|Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies|Jared Diamond|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1363428619s/1842.jpg|2138852] and [b:Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed|475|Collapse How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed|Jared Diamond|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309288319s/475.jpg|1041106] because many of Diamond's arguments are in danger of being taken at face value, which is a skewed way of looking at history in any aspect. Many of the author's do not directly confront many of Diamond's claims because some of them are correct, just incomplete. I also enjoyed the layout of this book which is neatly organized by society, therefore if you were interested in the rebuttal for Diamond's discussion of Easter Island, one chapter is devoted to that, etc.

8/1/13
Can we talk about how excited I am for this book?? Especially now that it has a cover!!

I would have to put this book at about 4.5, only because I wish it was a little bit longer. Also, this review will be devoid of any spoilers for this or the previous book.

I wasn't sure what made me put off this book, I've had it on my Ipod for a while now. But I think I just forgot how much I loved [b:Cinder|11235712|Cinder (Lunar Chronicles, #1)|Marissa Meyer|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1317794278s/11235712.jpg|15545385] and therefore it fell by the wayside in the wake of other books.

The book begins right after the events of Cinder, I believe the next day if I recall correctly. Whereas the previous chronicle was told from Cinder's and Kai's point of view, this shifted between these two as well as our new addition of Scarlet. Admittedly, Kai's perspective is much less prominent and more of a supporting role in this go around as he's pretty much left alone to deal with the aftermath of Levana and Cinder.

Scarlet is of course little red riding hood, as if the cover wasn't a giveaway. She's a farmer who is introduced in the story as being severely frustrated at the lack of information over her missing grandmother. Scarlet is a little overbearing in her stubborness and I have a feeling if she was a real person, I probably wouldn't be her friend. She meets a mysterious and dangerous (aren't these adjectives always applicable to a new male character?) man named Wolfe who offers to help her find her grandmother. Wolfe is generally calm and plays well off Scarlet's sometimes outlandish behavior. I liked the two of them together, I guess. I just wasn't convinced by Scarlet. One minute she's got a gun on him, the next she's on a train with him to Paris because he says so. Scarlet's so back and forth, then again Wolfe is as well, but he has a reason for it.

Our other new main character is Captain Thorne. I adored Thorne and his interactions with Cinder. He assists her by providing an airship he stole from the American Federation (and proceeded to paint a naked woman on the side, because he's a badass). Thorne provides much needed humor in the story and Cinder's life. Plus I was glad to see a male character that wasn't instantly pining over the lead girl, though I guess that might change later. I hope not, I like the Thorne/Cinder bromance.

The perspective changes frequently among perspectives. In the beginning it's difficult to see how Scarlet and Cinder's perspectives will come together until more information is provided. It's nicely done, fast paced, attention getting, and most of all continually chocked full of more mysteries I found myself eager to solve. I think that my complaint that I wanted the book to be longer could simply be fueled by the fact that I didn't want to let these characters go, I thought the book was an appropriate length for the story. But it leaves me chomping at the bit for the next volume, it's going to be a long wait.

This book was one of those that I didn't love but I didn't hate either. I think it was just right for what it set out to be. Being that it takes place in Russia and shakes up a lot of overused YA cliches gave it a few more notches in the like column.

Lets talk a little about the characters. Alina is actually really likable, despite her oblivious-ness and obstinacy. I think that people who are irritated with her are just looking for something to nit pick about because god forbid the main female character who is important to the whole overall storyline be in love with a boy who might not notice her. Isn't this the same trait that makes our hearts hurt for the reliable good boy when they're girl goes for someone else (Simon? Puck? etc.) How dare she be so connected to Mal, who she spent most of her life with.

Our two male leads are Mal and the Darkling. It's sounds like a terrible band name. Mal begins our story as the orphan friend who Alina has been following since they were kids. She loves him, but knows he doesn't feel the same for her. The Darkling is the most powerful Grisha or practitioner of the small science. He wisks her away at the discovery of her abilities and charms her into working with him.

I liked this book because for starters Alina is powerful, but she's not perfect. She's not great with her abilities and she's not great at getting along with people. She's flawed. She starts to see that the Darkling might not be so evil until Mal re-enters the picture.

Lots happens, most of which I wasn't expecting, which is good, I like a little unpredictability. I just tend to feel like it's a good story, just one that might not necessarily stick with me as well as other stories.