Book Review – Midnight Blue-Light Special

Title: Midnight Blue-Light Special

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: Paperback

Year Published: 2013

The sequel to Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-Light Special follows Verity Price as she approaches the end of her time in New York, and the deadline for her decisions about which life she’s going to choose – her dancing career, or the family business. Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing going wrong for her. Her maybe-boyfriend shows up with news: the Covenant is head to New York to “evaluate” him and to “purge” New York of anything non-human.

Not exactly something Verity will stand for. Now not only is it a choice between worlds, it’s a fight for her life and the lives of all those she protects. To make matters worse, one of the Covenant members is a distant cousin, who might be a better match for Verity than anybody else the Covenant could throw her way.

To be honest, I never bought that Verity was going to walk away from the family business. Even though she loved dancing, it never felt as important to her as she thought it was – some of that might have been because the focus of the books is on the cryptid communities and their problems, so we get very little focus on the dancing, but even when we have Verity and dancing, it seems more like we’re told how much she loves it, rather than having it be shown to us in the text. So when she realizes (about mid-way through, give or take) that she’s obviously going to chose her family’s career for her, it didn’t feel like the sudden realization I think the author was going for.

And in a similar vein, I also never bought that Dominic was going to return to his pre-Verity teachings and betray her and her family. Not just because he was in love with her (although that was part of his reasoning), but because his world-view had shifted and there was no way it was shifting back.

Interestingly, although the book is written in first-person, there is a portion written in Verity’s cousin Sarah’s POV – still first-person. It’s necessary for the way the book is told – Verity is captured and knocked unconscious, so for there to be tension for the reader as well as the other characters, we can’t know what is going on with her at first – but I wonder if it could have been told in a way that didn’t necessitate a change in POV. The two girls do have distinct voices and very different world-views, but I pretty much prefer my head-hopping to happen in third-person.

Despite some minor issues I have, the climax of the book makes up for a lot. Verity is tortured and the after-affects of that torture are not just pushed away when she tries to escape. (And the whole escape scene takes place while she is stark-naked, which is also not a thing that really happens.)

All in all, I didn’t think this was the strongest book, but the high points were very fun. 3/5 stars.

Book Review – Dark Witch

Title: Dark Witch

Author: Nora Roberts

Format: Trade paperback

Year Published: 2013

I enjoy romances. The happily-ever-after, the sure-fire knowledge that my heart is not going to be yanked from y chest and stomped on… (and then sometimes I’m WRONG, book-that-I-have-blocked-the-title-from-my-mind-but-am-still-mad-at).

When I was heavy in my romance-reading ways, I devoured Nora Roberts’ books. (Unlike what I first tried to type, I did not devour Nora Roberts.) Going back to them, however, the books are very heavily formulaic. I do enjoy reading them, still – they’re totally brain candy – however, I’ve found that once I’ve read them, I very rarely want to reread them. (And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why the library is my friend.)

This book was the first in a classic Nora Roberts trilogy – girl, who has never really fit in where she was, arrives at a new place and immediately feels like she’s at home. There she meets her cousins – usually a brother/sister combo, but occasionally they’re also cousins to each other), and immediately connects to them. She also meets and falls for a friend of the male cousin. In addition, the female cousin will have a close female friend that will eventually end up linked to the male cousin, and there will be another friend of the male cousin that she once had a torrid affair with that ended badly. There’s some sort of supernatural problem that requires all six involved to resolve. Occasionally one of the women will be a mother, but the father will either be dead or uninterested and the male interested int eh mother will eventually adopt the child/ren as his own.

So obviously I knew what I was getting into with this series. Here’s the specifics: Iona is coming from America, and already knows and can use her magic in small ways (this was a welcome change from other series, as the woman moving into town usually had no idea she was magical). She also knows the story of the Dark Witch, her ancestor, who gave her life and passed her powers on to her three children. (As a side note, the names of the children threw me. They were far too contemporary for 1263.) Iona arrives in Ireland (another big theme) and meets her cousins, Branna and Connor. They immediately make a connection and then the trouble starts – the dark force that their ancestor gave her life to defeat is back, and they’re the three that must stop him.

I enjoyed as Iona learned to control her powers, and I liked that she wasn’t the typical ‘fish-out-pond’ heroine that appears in these trilogies. She’s new to the land, yes, and somewhat new to her power, but she owns in. (I also really enjoyed that when she got nervous she babbled, as that made her seem less like a typical romance heroine and more like an actual human.)

The big fight of the book felt a little bleh. You knew going in that they weren’t going to win (how could this be a trilogy if they did, after all?) but it was missing something.

Still looking forward to the next two (waiting on my couch now), so I’ll give this a 2.5/5 – not going to win any awards, not going to wow anybody, but perfect for when you want to shut your mind off.

Book Review – Hero

Title: Hero

Author: Alethea Kontis

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2013

Hero is the sequel/companion to Enchanted, which I reviewed last week. Hero follows Saturday Woodcutter, the only “ordinary” member of the Woodcutter family, and well-aware of it. Only then she creates an ocean in the backyard.

Saturday is then off on an adventure, from her sister’s Pirate ship to being kidnapped by a witch and taken to the Top of the World. Once there, she meets Peregrine – the Earl of Starburn, who had run afoul of the witch’s daughter and cursed to take her place. Together, they must defeat the witch and save the world (and in the process, fall in love).

Hero is a solid book that does not fall prey to the problems of Enchanted. The story scales back the number of fairy-tales-though there are still all there-to focus on the core stories, which makes the book much easier to follow. There are also no “what just happened?” moments, such as occurred in the previous novel.

I enjoyed Saturday a lot – she’s this universe’s crotchety character that I love. She is much more proactive than her sister, as well, determined to find her own way, and determined to do it on her own terms. Peregrine is a bit more weak – he’s a very passive character for the most part, willing to allow others to impose their will on him. In some cases, this fits in with how he grew up, but in others, it’s frustrating – he has the opportunity to leave, but chooses not to? WHY? (Also, it never once occurs to him that a lot of time has passed? Really? When that was the first thing I thought of?) Betwixt, the chimera that has befriended Peregrine, was awesome.

A solid story, with good action sequences and characters. 4/5 stars

Book Review – Enchanted

Title: Enchanted

Author: Alethea Kontis

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2013

Sunday Woodcutter is the seventh daughter (of a seventh daughter and a seventh son). Often overlooked in her loud and bustling family, Sunday finds solace in the Woods and in writing down the past – because what she writes down has a tendency to come true. In the Woods, Sunday meets an enchanted frog, and falls in love.

One night, her goodbye kiss turns her beloved frog back into a Prince – unfortunately, the Prince her whole family despises for his connection to the death of the oldest Woodcutter son (Jack). Now the Prince must win the heart of Sunday as a human and must unravel the dark secrets of his family at the same time.

This story pretty much hit my sweet spot when it comes to stories – third-person (yay!), quirky but loveable characters, and fairy-tale retellings. (The only thing it was missing was the crotchety character with a heart of gold, but you can’t win everything.)

Reading the author’s notes after indicate that she took a challenge to incorporate as many fairy-tales into her novel as possible, and unfortunately they don’t mesh as well as could be hoped. Several times the scenes jump from one to another without a bridge, and they never get fully resolved, and other times they’re just mentioned for no reason other than to put the fairy-tale in. The book would have been better served with a tighter focus on a smaller group of them.

Sunday’s story is the core of the book, as each of the other fairy-tales relate or come up in a way that relates to her story, and while I’m not a fan of falling in love over three days (and actually, upon first-read of the book I thought that she and the frog had spent *far* more time than that), the love story is sweet.

The story has its pacing problems, but for the most part flows evenly, and I loved all of Sunday’s family. Easily read, and easily enjoyed.

3.5/5 stars

Book Review: Battle Magic

Title: Battle Magic

Author: Tamora Pierce

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2013

Battle Magic is set in Tamora Pierce’s Emelan world, set after The Circle Opens quartet, but before The Circle Reforged. Though it was written after The Will of the Empress and Melting Stones, fans of the series will lose nothing by reading the book in the chronological order that it occurs in (i.e., sometime after Street Magic and before The Will of the Empress) and might, in fact, enjoy it more, as there are some minor spoilers in the later books.

The book follows Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn as they continue on their travels through foreign lands. The three are invited to visit the famed gardens of the Yanjing, and accept. While they are there, they see what the Emperor’s true personality is – hint: cruelty. The scene with the gardeners will probably stick in my head for a while. Then they discover that the Emperor plans to march on his neighbors, including those that shelter the Temples that Rosethorn has sworn her life to.

While the three of them go on this journey to warn the Temples together, they soon split into their own separate stories. While the original Circle of Magic books had rotating POVs between the four mages, the later books (except for The Will of the Empress, as that has the four of them back together again) have maintained one or two POVs, typically leaving the teachers out. Battle Magic adds Rosethorn in, and while I did enjoy reading her POV, I also missed some of the mystery that surrounded her prior to getting into her head.

(This might be a good time to mention that Evvy is probably my least-favorite character in the Emelan books. I did not enjoy Melting Stones very much, and not all of that can be laid at the feet of the first-person POV [my views of which are well-known to my friends]. In many ways, she is the least-relatable of the characters for me, and I find her attitude grating. That said, by the end of this book, she’d definitely grown on me, and I plan to go back and re-read Melting Stones.)

Battle Magic is much darker in tone and material than any of the previous Circle books, up to and including very graphic descriptions of battle and torture. Despite that, it caught and held my attention very well. While I knew that (SPOILER!) all three survived, because I had read The Will of the Empress and Melting Stones, you can never be sure about other characters. The bad guys were fleshed out – we were shown their human sides first, and then shown the evil – and the good guys dipped into some darker parts of their nature. And while not an actual part of the book, the later books in the series show that the three did not escape this without lasting damage.

On the whole, a solid addition to the Emelan world. 3/5 stars

***Crossposted to Book in the Bag