The Book Geek

Putting this on hold at 7%--after eight days. I'm really disappointed in the Amish side of this so far, and it's not demanding my attention at all. It might draw me back though, so I'm optimistic that it might not be a terrible book, and rather I'm just not in the mood for it.

I've stopped at 83% and I just can't read anymore. Review to come.

I stopped at 17% and have no intention of picking this back up. There are two main characters named, Ink and Inq. That, and the fact that I'm not feeling the protagonist or s/l, means DNF for me. I don't make myself finish books I'm not liking since there are so many more waiting for me to check out.

It's been a couple of days since I read this, and I still maintain that it deserves my 5 star rating, but...this is not a perfect book. Allow me to elucidate.

To me the synopsis is very misleading, this is not a story about a revolution, it's a story about friendship and love. It reads very much like a typical YA in the ages and actions of our main characters, but the only difference is that instead of 16, we have them at 19 (I think it was). The main girl, Lily, went through commoner, or non-mystical, high school only to go to King Hall and go through more high school. True story. In keeping with the shifter aspect of this story, she'd found her mate already, and therefore, wasn't a virgin which is what I think allowed for the "new adult" classification. Don't let this fool you. There was really no "grown-up" themes here. Not really.

The story is about how Lily goes to the Mys school where her mate is, and after just a few chapters she ends up taking his place as the shifter Prodigy. The Mystics are ruled by a King for each type of mystical ability: shifter, mage, vampire, and elemental. As a forbidden hybrid she feels that should the Kings, or even other prodigies, find out her true nature that they would kill her outright, perhaps even painfully. What happens is that she becomes best friends with these other prodigies, and they stoke an ember of change to come.

Now again, there really isn't much reform that these guy do, and I would say it's fair that they only make it foreseeable that they'll change the status quo once they take the reins from the Kings. The focus of this entire story is the friendship Lily has with the other three. That's it. And I really loved it, but the supposed "revolution" that the synopsis says this story is about was a joke. There was just not enough s/l applied to this aspect, and the end has the big battle (don't be fooled) that I guess shows said revolt, but it ends mid fight scene, and that's the end of book one. Just...pfft, done. It actually made me angry to be left like that. It wasn't smooth, it didn't make any sense, and for Antonio to be the only one who seemed to know WTF was going on, it made even less sense that he wouldn't have shared his intel! Only Ezra's father seemed to have an inkling of what Antonio was saying. The entire strained relations between factions, and mys and comms, was poorly executed. Lily would complain about the shifters need to touch her, and that made no sense since she IS a shifter and wouldn't have thought them annoying for such a thing, and many times she was on the verge of girl hate, oft referring to them negatively when it came to bed partners for her male besties.

With so many things that annoyed me it's odd to feel so much pleasure about this book. I totally understand if someone reading this is confused that I would spend almost the entire review just complaining, but the character story here was just perfect for me. Partly, I know, because I adore shifters/weres, and partly because it was just written with a slow build. I have a major crush on Ezra, and I don't even really like vampires.

Basically I would tell anyone who wanted to read this to definitely check it out, but don't go into it expecting a bunch of fighting and political wrangling. Go into it with the knowledge of it's about a bunch of friends being groomed for their roles as leaders, and you should really enjoy it.

This book was absolutely phenomenal! I loved everything about it, from the chapter format, to the characters, to the storyline itself. I read it one sitting and it's been a while since I've done that.

The story is about Cass and her struggle to find herself, and there are a lot of hard issues brought up as she goes along. Her brother is gay and being tormented, her family is extremely devout and she doesn't believe, her friendship with her best friend is crumbling, and the awkward girl who goes to her youth group attempts suicide after being badly bullied.

For such heavy topics I don't feel that book was too dark or hard to read at all. I related to Cass more than any character I've read in quite some time, and one of my favorite things about her was her love for her brother. Her whole situation was just so authentic that, even though I've never gone through what she did, I feel like I could have been reacting the way she did. I would want to protect my sister too if she was gay and we lived in such a close minded community; I would be just as lost without the one girl I was best friends with during my school years, and I would feel just as torn over having the most unpopular girl want to be close to me. I wasn't a popular kid, far from it actually, though it would be a lie to say I was the least. I was somewhere in the middle and trying hard to just maintain that fragile hold. I wasn't skinny and beautiful like the popular girls, and I wasn't as smart or driven as the ambitious girls, or as funny, or as...anything. I was just there. In this way when I was reading Cass' feelings about what did she have that was just hers, I could have been reading about my younger self.

I don't really know what to say about this because it spoke to me on such a personal level, and touched me the way only things like that can. This is a story about self discovery, but it's so much more. It's about love, respect, friendship, boundaries, family, and choices. Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always is a very relevant story about the world we live in now, and is very authentic to the dilemmas that becoming your own person brings.

Read this.

On hold at 9%. Great premise, but I'm not liking it much so far, and I feel like it's cliche already. The girl is wrongly accused/jailed, the guard just feels something different about her, and as time goes on she fights her way free and they find love and make babies.

I have no idea if that's how the story turns out, but I'll have to wait and see once I pick this up again.

Well this was a bit unexpected. I don't choose books that I think I won't enjoy, of course, but this genre is so saturated that I can feel like there's nothing new to add to it anymore. Enter one [a:Pierce Brown|6474348|Pierce Brown|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1369209860p2/6474348.jpg], and prepare yourself for his masterfully told debut that will have you crying, raging, laughing, and swooning.

The story is about Darrow, a Helldiver in the deep caves on Mars, whose life has always been about preparing the world for terraforming with the element he mines for. People have been mining Mars' helium-3 for several hundred years now, and the only communication they have of the outside world is from the holoCan, but as Darrow discovers the lies that his life has been built on, he becomes so much more than just Darrow The Helldiver; he becomes the revolution.

Darrow really surprised me because I ended up putting him on the same pedestal that I keep Barrons on, and that's pretty incredible considering that no one else ever gets quite to his level. I love Barrons. I love Darrow just as much now. This might sound odd to those who have not read the Fever series, by [a:Karen Marie Moning|48206|Karen Marie Moning|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1350594088p2/48206.jpg], but Red Rising has claimed a place in my heart equal to, not only that series, but also The Hunger Games. I can give no higher compliment.

With that being said, there was something that picked at me, though not enough to affect my love of the story. The hierarchy is very detailed, and things could get confusing with the slight info-dumping, so eventually I started skimming bits about that.

Mr. Brown has done something here that I think might be a first for me, and that's writing a feminist male lead. I ate this up! In this regard, Darrow has an edge on every single male I've come to love. Darrow loses his wife early on, as the synopsis tells us, and the way he holds onto his love and memory of her made me cry and swoon. He doesn't view women as inferior, and there are just as many female leaders as male that make equally good and bad moves. Beyond the fascinating world that Brown has brought spectacularly to life, this aspect of the novel is my favorite. I wish I could share quotes from the book so you could see what I'm saying, but they have asked to wait on that since it's an early ARC. Just you wait though...just you wait.


This is a special book. I think it fair to say it will become just as huge as The Hunger Games, and others of it's ilk. That's right; I said it. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to people who like to read dystopian novels, but moreover, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to people who aren't even big fans of the genre. It's that good.

~~~~~This made my day!!!~~~~~

Check this out! July 23, 2013 Pierce wrote: "To my first, my favorite Howlers: Litchick (Ragebeast), Faye (my one and only Social Potato), Andrea J (nickname forthcoming), Brandi (Barrons' Mistress), Melodie (nickname also forthcoming), and JennyJen (SkullFrenzy). You made my Comic Con--and 6,000 people got books with this bookmark sandwiched in the pages. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

When the world of ARCs opened it's doors for me I realized something; I have a weakness for using quotes in my reviews, and really hate being without them.

The story is set in some kind of apocalyptic future, but other than that, I can't give any other background. Not because the publisher asked to keep it quiet, no, it's because there's none there. This bothered me until some 30% into it, and is a pretty big deal to me; I need to know the why of things. It was especially hard not knowing since the main characters had these abilities that made no sense, and weren't really explained (I use that loosely) until roughly 80% (give or take). They can do things like have images projected onto their corneas, and access satellite information with just a thought; they have various drugs for different things, and body modifications abound it seems. No food grows either apparently, but I have no idea why as there was nothing to suggest that the atmosphere itself was altered. This still annoys me that I know so little, but the heart of the story was able to push through the lack of basic information.

Moving on to said heart, this was a really good story. Very intense, and tugged at my heart strings a lot. Mainly because of Wren, but Three and Cass both hurt me a few times too. Cass and Wren are mother and son, and when Three first sees them she's desperate and seems hurt. Tightly controlled and nomadic, Three never helps people in that same situation, but something about these two won't let go of him, and somehow he ends up helping them escape. From what, he has no idea, and often mentions that the choice of taking them on might kill him. But does it?!

Wren and Cass were really, really great. Wren is a young boy who felt very authentic to his age (Three thought he was about five, but much later we learn he's almost seven), and as my own son just barely turned eight, I felt his scenes much more in my marrow than I wanted. He goes through a lot, and I mean, a lot, but he's incredibly brave and strong, and just good. He's special and it's because of this that Cass ran with him trying to save him from Asher. I won't reveal the secret about Asher because I want you all to be as surprised as I was, but it's good. Back to Cass and Wren though, she was just incredible with her will to save him and make it through their terrifying nights, but if not for Three she would have failed. There's a bit of romance for them, but again, I use the term incredibly loose.

The bad guys are really bad, and the Weir freaked me out! Asher was spectacular in his role as scary asshole, and actually, all the bad guys were wonderfully scary. The good guys were also good, though I still have some questions about a few. Like jCharles and Mol. Mol especially since there seemed to be such depth of history with her and Three, but once again, we're not privy to what that was.

The action is never ending, and even at 99% I kept waiting for the relief to know that the good guys triumphed over the bad guys, and that maybe Three and Cass became a family, and, and, and...there is an epilogue.

The prose is both sparse and really lovely (at one point he likens a sound to that of shadows sliding over a roof), and I really enjoyed it. Jay Posey might have driven me CRAZY with the lack of information, but he wrote a really great story, and though it had flaws for me, I know I'm not going to forget anytime soon.

7/29/13 **Edited to add** Well I said I wouldn't forget the story, but I sort of have, except for the many things that worked on my nerves while I read. :/

Curse you Samantha Shannon!!! You go and create this amazingly original book, and then make me wait for the rest?! I'm not going to make it. If you need me to *ahem* check the future books for...something...I'm more than willing. Jus'sayin. Now on to the book review!!

All clairvoyance was prohibited, of course, but the kind that made money was a downright sin. They had a special term for it: mime-crime.

This story is incredibly original (for me), and really intense! Though I really loved it, there are some issues that you should be prepared for. There are a lot of new terms introduced, and very little explanation, but trying to use the word in the sentence doesn't always help, nor does the Kindle provide definitions. If you're reading the print version though, you might have an easier time because there are glossaries (one at the start, and one at the end, so there's plenty of definitions, lol, and they are very needed). This might be my biggest complaint, though as you can tell, it didn't stop me from loving this story at all.

There is also a lot of info-dumping, and it's so fast that it feels pretty awkward at times. For example, when I was only at 11% I had learned so much that I was getting a little confused. This is something I'm sure that as the author gets more experienced will become much better. All this aside, I was still able to become completely engrossed in this book, and still hate that it's over. For me, that will prove that the book is good, because I've been far less forgiving of these kinds of issues in other books. Make sense? I hope so.

The story is set in the future, the year 2056 to be exact, and in this world there has been an "epidemic" of clairvoyance! However, as you have probably guessed by the use of 'epidemic' the people who have these gifts are not embraced by the rest of the public. They are feared and treated like criminals, which funnily enough, leads them to become criminals as part of different syndicates.

Our protagonist, Paige, is pretty wonderful. She's tough, likeable, intense, and I love her. The gang that Paige belongs to is widely known to be one of the best, and has some of the best types of voyants to back up this fame. Paige herself is one of the rarest voyants who can actually see people's dreamscapes, and that is how she ends up captured and going through an intense adventure.

There is the very beginnings of a romance here, and one that I thought I would see coming, and then kept changing my mind about because Paige seemed to buck the cliches, but in the end, I'm glad it worked out how it did. [a:Samantha Shannon|5830526|Samantha Shannon|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1363981396p2/5830526.jpg] can write tension like a pro, and even though it was barely more than a kiss, I was over the moon, and crushed at the same time. Well done Ms. Shannon, well done!

I think it unfair to put a comparison to J. K. Rowling on her shoulders, but Ms. Shannon is definitely an author I think will become a name in and of herself. She's one that I have on my radar and will follow this series with rabid fangirl need.

To attempt to surmise my point here, I would say that this is one of the series to watch, and I predict it will be huge! I recommend it to everyone who likes originality, strong heroines, scary villains, swoon-worthy/smexy/surprising love interests, and a story that won't let go.

I feel a little bad putting this my 'can't bear to finish' shelf, but it's not working for me. The writing is too slow, Sarah is too perfect, Kathy wasn't even that bad considering how even her parents didn't like her, Owen is annoying me with his whining, and so on. I don't know if I'm in a slump or what, but I read to 27% over two days, and I have no desire to continue the rest of the story. :/

I can see why this could work for people though, because Sarah says at some point how she wants to work for herself and not be 'taken care of' by a man, so that ticks off the need for feminism, and Owen has a deep love for learning, and reading, so that ticks off the sensitive and learned man need. The writing, though painfully slow and dull for me, had some beautiful descriptive passages, but it wasn't anywhere near able to make up for the rest of it for me.


Here are a few examples of the slow writing:

She was curious, avidly so, but she had resisted the urge to explore. She knew there would be consequences if she broke her parents' rule, and more importantly, they'd be disappointed in her. If nothing else, Sarah was a good girl. As she thought about that, Kathy's words from early came back to haunt her. "Little Miss Priss," she muttered.


"And... and maybe, if that's what he likes, then maybe he's not as special as I thought he was. Let him have his buxom girls. At least I don't look like a milk cow, unlike someone I could name. (I liked that she could move past that boy, but the milk cow reference about Kathy annoyed me.)

She said a prayer for them the whole way. (that's just showing how angelic Sarah is)

Kathy and Randall had moved in when Ira had been diagnosed with cancer and it became apparent that Eliza needed help. Sarah privately thought they'd been so eager to help because Randall had seen a free ride on his horizon, but she keep that thought to herself. (More villainy from her sister, and once more I didn't get the why of it. What kind of free ride would her husband have gotten?! It never said.)

One of the first rules Shirley had explained to her had been to respect the privacy of the patrons who used the library. That included asking them out socially. (I just thought this was stupid)

To her dismay, Sarah was diagnosed with strep throat and wasn't able to return to work until the following Tuesday. When she clocked in that morning, she apologized profusely to Shirley and the library director. Both assured her that she wasn't in trouble, and that they understood.

"At least you didn't get pregnant on purpose so you could quit school early like someone whose name we won't mention." (That was Sarah and Kathy's mom there referring to Kathy. Sarah is an angel and Kathy is the devil)

After the part where Sarah was dismayed about missing work because she was really sick, I skipped ahead and read the end of the story. It didn't make me want to know what I had missed.

This book! It's more than 5 stars.

I go between 'meh, it's ok', to 'I liked it', so I compromised and will give it a 2.5 rating.

This is a fast, easy, and fun read about an American grad student who finds out that she's distantly related to royalty in a foreign country. She is asked to come back and claim her title as Duchess and in the process she finds love. With the Prince of course.

Now, this isn't a bad story at all, but I had a few problems with it. There were a lot of errors that I think should have been corrected before publishing (not super gigantic ones, but ones that I definitely noticed), and I got really sick of Sam as the story went on.

Samantha, our protagonist, was initially really great, and just my type: sarcastic, not a teenager (sometimes I need a break from that age), hard working, modest, and funny. As the book progressed though she wore on my nerves with her constant "Alex has to be with a ROYAL", like she wasn't fully aware that she was a royal! That got supremely annoying after the 2,986,623,876,438th time she whined about it.


There was more that rubbed my nerves, but I think that this book could be great for someone who wanted a light, fluffy, fast read, or who needed a filler book. I think that [a:Nichole Chase|5074162|Nichole Chase|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1321494767p2/5074162.jpg] did a good job with showing how hectic it could be to be in the life Sam found herself in, and she made the characters very relatable.

**Edited to add**Some things I had forgotten to mention were how all the men in this story, except for three, were sleazy. I didn't buy how over the top it was. The three who were not horny assholes were: Alex, the token gay friend/assistant, and her dad. Her assistant was not all that believable to me either, and considering he was Lilarian I didn't buy how he acted around her (not fully).

Also, what was with the book titles/author name dropping?! It was weird. I keep meaning to check and see if they're real books, but even if they aren't it's still odd in my opinion.

At one point Sam is being driven around after some event she attended, and a photog rams their car forcing them to stop so they can get pictures. She's all shaken up after that, but decided to go to a book store, without security, and couldn't understand why her security guard was annoyed with her. It was like she had forgotten what had just happened, or forgotten that she'd been bitching about photographers for the entire novel.

I would recommend checking out Litchick's review to see what she thought, as she loved it, and made a great case for this book.

Stopped at 8%--will be coming back, just got sick of seeing it my currently reading space since I'm not reading it.

I only made it through the first chapter, but trust me, that was plenty. I'll be posting a review once the book releases as per requested.

I only made it through the first chapter. The kid is making a virus that his dad taught him, because he wants to impress him, and he loads it to the school's system, but the whole thing is too improbable for me to give it any chance of my believing it. You don't even have to be well versed in the nature of viruses to not believe how this went down, which I'm not particularly, but my mister is and I verified with him. So, virus planting--fail, and it only ate the letter 'e' not consumed everything, making it more of a pain in the ass and not the end of the world.

Drum asks, a worried look passing over his brown face, dreadlocks hanging in his eyes.

That's his bff not wanting him to use his laptop but ol' boy doesn't want to use his own.

Apparently adults are too dumb to know how to work computers, and don't have any IT support.

"Go to the office!" the teacher snaps, now suspisious Johnny is the hacker. So dumb.

Oh wait, there's this kid who they use for tech support, my bad.

It doesn't hurt that he's good looking too with shiny black hair and smooth tan skin.

"Sorry, I don't know anything." Antoine shrugs. "But," he gives the teacher one of his steady gazes, flicking his hair like a pop star, "maybe I can fix it."

But our MC said he wasn't "brave" enough to unleash a virus. Because that's not stupid, it's brave?!

Our boy also had father son bonding time and reprogrammed his student ID card to read....Steve Jobs, instead of his name. Good thing he's the smartest person in that school! He then runs his "clean up" virus, as it were, to get rid of the one that eats all the letter e's and grumbles to himself that he's the one who should be being thanked, not Antoine.

Then in the beginning of chapter 2, yeah all that nonsense was in one chapter, he meets up with his girlfriend(?) and she's talking about the robot she's building for robot wars, and asks him if he has "IS1U60 IR receivers", and I just refused to go further. It says that there's only some 152 pages in the print book, so it would only take a a few minutes of my time to read, but I just can't. I'm done.

More like 3.5 stars

I'm really conflicted about how to rate this book, and sat in front of the review space for at least 30 minutes thinking about how I wanted to write this. I can see what my friends were saying when they point out this wouldn't be a crowd pleaser, or an easy read, but it wasn't nearly as dark and depraved as I was expecting and hoping (and I don't care to think about what that means about my psyche, lol). It's actually two stories that barely connect, and I was equally intrigued by both, though I think the school should have shocked me more between the two.

Sadima's story is back when magic was gone from the world; where the kings reigned and wars were waged. She was raised by her brother Micah after her mother, and her, were left to die by a "magician" who stole everything of value from them, and resulted in a crippling depression for her father. With their hatred of magicians running as deep as it was, they refused to believe that Sadima was able to understand animals and she ended up hiding her ability until a chance meeting with Franklin, who was seemingly a real magician, and not the usual charlatan. Years go by and Sadima ends up finding him again in another city leaving her only family behind after a heartbreaking fight. Slowly she helps Somiss and Franklin gather old songs so that Somiss can resurrect magic, but she is really a maid and slave to Somiss. I don't understand why Somiss was so obsessed about his father not finding him either, if he would end up walking in the King's Day procession like they were one big happy family.There is a scene where Somiss chases after some boy that he had beat bloody, and it was mentioned that his bed sheets were bloody; was this alluding to rape like I think it was? What nature of relationship did Franklin and he have? It wasn't clear to me after that scene. I would have liked more from the book, even though I can't say it didn't work as it was.

I really, really hate Somiss.

The other story is about Hahp, and a few other boys, who are sent to a wizard school, but like you might expect from the synopsis, this was more like a death camp than school. Centuries have gone between Sadima and Hahp's stories, but they're connected by Franklin and the abhorrent Somiss. In this school the boys are starved, isolated in the extreme, wear robes that chafe them bloody, and not allowed shoes in the stone prison they live in. They're forbidden to help each other and boys die of starvation.

Now, this is where I get frustrated, because I came to understand why Somiss would want to see them fast (that man is crazy and evil), but I really want to know why he wouldn't just let them go instead of killing them?! I can't say I know much of anything about Somiss beyond him being a spoiled rich kid who apparently can't control himself and must always be kept calm. Franklin is devoted to him so completely that I was as angry at him as Hahp was, but don't expect there to be any sort of resolution in this book, because you'll not find it. In fact, there's no climax at all, and it ended awkwardly in my opinion. What the hell was Somiss doing with the cage full of boys in the cave?! I know that one beggar boy ended up being a wizard, but what the hell was that whole thing about?!

I enjoyed this book, and even though I've complained about it, I really did like it, though I wouldn't easily recommend it. It's great for people like me who like the twisted stories, but it's not quite as twisted as I thought it was going to be.