Book review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent faced an uphill battle to capture my interest because I’m not usually big on dystopias. The setting of the book didn’t quite grab me, but I liked the main character Beatrice, and decided to see where the story led. In this decayed future, a city of people have divided up into the factions that they see as being most virtuous. This leads to people being factionless too, and already this perfect world is straining with political problems because only one faction governs. Obviously, not everyone is going to be happy with that setup.

When the children from each faction turn sixteen, they are given a “simulation serum” that is supposed to assess which faction they belong with. Beatrice’s results are inconclusive, and she is told she is divergent, and that this is something she must keep secret. She is also told she must decide which faction she will go to, because her test results are inconclusive.

Beatrice chooses to leave her family and join the Dauntless faction, who prize bravery, but Beatrice also remains selfless as she was raised to be in the Abnegation faction. The book mainly follows her initiation into her faction, and Tris has to deal with bullies, and at one point with the betrayal of a friend. As her training progresses, she also begins to learn more about the connections between the Dauntless and Erudite factions, and she finds out why being divergent is so dangerous to the scheming faction leaders.

Beatrice’s story was so intense that I swept through the last 300 pages in one day. I like that she’s gifted but not totally unique. There are others like her, and while she is gifted, she isn’t super special either. I liked the cast around Beatrice, including her romantic interest Tobias, AKA: Four. Dauntless initiation is shown as a grim and terrifying ordeal, with failures becoming factionless. With failure not being an option, every test and rite of passage is tense, and the book hums along at wild pace.

The ending is a bit of a shock, and for once a dystopia doesn’t have my eye twitching over unlikely rescues, because lots of people didn’t get rescued. It’s kind of an ugly ending, but one that fits in with the rest of the story. It does set up well for the next book, and I’ll be looking to pick up Insurgent soon.

I give Divergent 4 stars, and recommend it to fans of dystopia YA. It’s not often that I drop everything to spend a full day and night reading, and while this wasn’t “the best book ever” it certainly kept me guessing to the end. The pages flew by fast, and I kept going, “Okay, just one more chapter.” Definitely qualified as a page-turner, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.

Book review The Family: Liam by K.V. Taylor

The Family: Liam is the second novel I’ve read from KV Taylor, though I’ve also read a few of her short stories and a lot of her paranormal and supernatural romances under the pen name Katey Hawthorne. In this new series, the central monsters are vampires, something like a cross between Anne Rice and John Lindqvist.

The main character Liam is a bi-curious college student who thinks he’s straight until he catches the attention of his dorm roommate Gianni. Gianni is everything Liam isn’t, sophisticated, spoiled, and self-assured, while Liam is an emotionally wounded farmer’s kid who sill isn’t sure what he wants to be. But once Gianni has taken an interest in him, his course is set to become a monster as ruthless as Gianni.

I like all the characters, even the bit characters like James, Madison and Aldo. I very much liked the kind of vampires covered in this story, and the romantic scenes were certainly attention grabbing. Liam’s swift change raises him to delirious happiness, but his positive outlook doesn’t last long before he begins to question what he’s becoming. He rejects Gianni rather harshly and returns to his family, and there he learns that he can’t really go home before Gianni arrives to take him back.

There’s some other stuff that happens after this point, but the story seems to walk away from a major plot point and never comes back to it. I can’t say what without spoiling it, but once this seeming threat is introduced, the story wanders off in a different direction, and there’s only a few fleeting references made to it again.

I know this is a first book in a series, but the ending left me feeling like there should have been another hundred pages or so. There’s a couple of introductions of conflicts, but only one of these gets resolved. The other much bigger conflict is left hanging, and I felt like sputtering, “But…but what about Aldo?” And for that matter, I wonder if book two will get back around to Madison. I rather liked her. But even if it doesn’t, I wanted to know more about this other mysterious faction of vampires that are running a cult in the middle of nowhere.

Overall I liked the characters, but I felt like story was all ramp and no jump. I liked the ride, and I’ll be looking for the next book in the series. It is a small kind of complaint, “I wish there was more to it.” But setting that aside, this is a bloody vampire tale with sometimes sympathetic monsters and lots of rough sex between consenting guys. I give Liam 4 stars, and would recommend it to fans of Anne Rice’s work who wish Lestat could have had a hot romantic relationship with a hotter, prettier clone of himself. So, like 200% more hot sex and maybe two-thirds less existential blues and self-pity. And that’s not a bad combination for me.

Book review: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

In what may start a trend for me, I got this book because someone on Twitter commented, “People who read Cassandra Clare, you deserve everything that happens to you.” I’m actually finding lot of music and books based not on rave reviews, but on the snarling outrage of the haters. In this particular case, that hate isn’t just for the story or for the writer, but for EVERYONE who ever picked up this book and liked it. And I’m like “Dayum, that’s some serious hate going on up in there. What the hell did the writer do to earn this kind of rage?” So I bought City of Bones, and I put it fairly high on my TBR pile. I was totally ready to hate this too, seeing as how someone wished doom and gloom upon anyone who liked it.

Now that I’m done, I have to wonder what’s wrong with that poor woman who would wish bad karma on readers for liking this book, because I can’t really find anything offensive about it. I can’t say it blew my mind or that it was the greatest book ever, and there were some parts of the character development that bugged me. Often the later chapters made me roll my eyes for how contrived the plot became, and for the dialogue becoming strained. But there was never an eyelid twitching scene, nor a “throw the book down” moment.

As far as YA goes, I found it to be a nice change of pace. It had third person perspective, and it had a heroine who wasn’t perfectly pretty. The story centers around Clary Fray, a girl who goes to a nightclub with her best friend and witnesses a murder that no one else can see. When she gets home, her mother is acting very strangely, and after having a fight, Clary leaves and goes to hang out with her friend. She meets one of the killers again, Jace, and he tells her that he has to take her to “The Institute” because she can see him, and “Mundanes” aren’t supposed to be able to see Shadowhunters. Clary gets a call from home just before her mother is kidnapped, and when she looks around, Jace has vanished again. So Clary runs home to a trashed apartment and an ugly monster.

When Clary first encounters a demon in her home, she manages through blind luck to kill it herself, and she doesn’t need Jace to act like the hero to jump in and save the day. Also unique is how there was no instant attraction between the hero and heroine. Jace certainly does all the insulting and self-centered bragging that you’d expect from YA male characters, but Clary doesn’t melt over him, nor does she feel like there’s “just something about him.” At one point, she even slaps him for being a jerk, and I was thinking, “Hey, for once, a YA story might break the mold. How novel!”

Couple of random things…

First, I wanted to mention getting a good review on Rebbie Reviews for The Life and Death of a Sex Doll, and I wanted to thank the reviewer for giving my book a chance. They also bought a copy of Saving Gabriel, so I’ve got my fingers crossed that it works for them too.

I probably shouldn’t, but I want to point out that despite having nothing but glowing reviews, The Life and Death of a Sex Doll still doesn’t move many units. It’s ironic in that I used the term sex doll in the story to convey a certain prejudice against artificial companions, and that people in meat space seem to be opposed to reading this because they see Sex in the title and think “porn.” *Shrug* eh, people are still hung up on sex, I guess.

Moving on, the second thing I want to mention is, Friday, I got a message from a friend on Facebook that my former roommate is now accusing me of stalking someone, and of using their image on one of my book covers. Both of these claims are false. The person he’s talking about, I haven’t looked for or lurked around. I was told to leave them alone roughly ten years ago, and shock of shocks, I did. I do still think of them and miss them sometimes, but I also regret being a bad influence on them, and I don’t long for a reunion. They have their own life to live without my crazy ass making problems for them, and I hope that they’ve since grown up happy and healthy.

I do not have any photos of this person, and all my book covers were made using stock images from Shutterstock, where I have an annual membership to buy five images before I need to pay for a renewal. I would not ever use someone’s image without their permission, and I would NEVER use this person’s image because I respect their privacy.

Book review: Witch Way to Turn by Karen Y. Bynum

When I started Witch Way to Turn, I wanted to like it, and to like the main character, Breena Cross. The story is third-person perspective, something I don’t see often enough in YA, and the main character isn’t a virgin, a truly rare trait in a genre that spends a lot of time equating non-virgin status as solely a route for sluts and/or teen villains.

But very early on, the story began falling into a pattern that turned me off from Breena, and then from all of the characters. Once I’d lost my like of them, nothing else clicked for me.

I should mention that there’s nothing wrong with the writing itself. There’s no mechanical errors, nor did I come across any typos. Were I to judge a book solely on the mechanical writing quality, this is a top notch perfect effort.

BUT the first problem remains the biggest for two thirds of the story. Early on, Bree comes home to find her drunk foster father about to rape her younger sister Jenny. Bree suddenly manifests witch powers that stun Stan, and after a short stay with a vampire, Myles, Bree is kicked out of the house by her foster mother, Norma.

So far no problem…except from this moment forward the story runs on an infuriating pattern. Bree thinks, I have to worry about Jenny, who is living with an abusive foster mother and foster sister, and a potential rapist foster father. AND YET, whenever Myles or Orin appear in the story, all she can think is Ooh, hot guy. Maybe I can get some. I only wish I was exaggerating about how often this happens, but seriously, it’s the MAIN CONFLICT for two thirds of the book. The first few times this happened, I had to put the book down for several weeks because I wasn’t sure I could handle this. And having finished the book, I sometimes wish I’d just stopped back around chapter 12 and given up.

Random April updates

So, I know blog posts are slowing down, and you’re all wondering, “Bitch, what are you plotting now?” Well I’ve been kind of busy. Last week I finished a new novel, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. It’s the first book in a spin-off series that will follow up on what happens to Alice Culpepper after the events in the final Peter the Wolf novel, Thicker Than Blood. (Which releases in June, by the way.) I’m working on the edits for Thicker Than Blood, and I’m also writing a non-paranormal romance novel, Third Wheel Romance Blues. Once I finish editing one book, I have to start editing the sequel to A Boy and His Dawg, a much darker story called Fangs, Humans, and Other Perils of Night Life, which will be released in July.

I also got interviewed by Rebecca Scarberry. So if you haven’t seen that yet on Twitter, go ahead and take a look.

I’m taking a two month break from promotions on Twitter, but it’s not done much for my nightmares problem. I’m now going on two straight months with no relief, and nothing I do seems to help get rid of the nightmares. Dropping promotions has helped to reduce my stress levels, and while my sales are kind of suffering for it, they didn’t die off completely. So there is that.

Plus, I sold copies of my flops, Bran of Greenwood and the Scary Fairy Princess, A Bard’s Tale, and Mmmm…Crunchy! And even more shocking, no one asked for refunds…on those titles, that is. Almost everything I sold in the UK Kindle store this month was returned. Which is a little depressing. I haven’t had this many refund requests before, and it’s not even the offensive books being returned. So I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe the straight readers got offended reading about trans and gay main characters. *Shrug*

Anyway, despite the slower sales and there being no improvement with my nightmare problem, I’m still not going to do any promotions for May. I really do need a break, and June will be hard enough on me when I have to start promoting Thicker Than Blood and the rest of the Peter the Wolf series. I just hope to have enough other projects done so I can devote most of my energy to the promotion push instead of dividing my time between writing, editing and selling.

And…I think that’s it for now. Along with everything else I’m doing, I’m also trying to catch up on my reading, and I’m starting my balcony garden again. I want to do another another video game review, but the last 3 Vita games I bought, I hated so bad, I dropped them too early to give a fair assessment of the games. But at least I’ll have some new book reviews relatively soonish.

Oh, right, thank you to everyone who bought books this month and didn’t get a refund. Really appreciate your continued support.

Short story review: Itsy Bitsy by John A. Lindqvist

Itsy Bitsy is a pretty compact short story, but the file I got looked longer because it has preview chapters for Handling the Undead and Harbour, both of which I’ve already read.

The premise is that a paparazzi is waiting for a couple to appear at a private swimming pool so he can take a photo of their romantic rendezvous and make big bucks. Only, the pictures he takes aren’t what he expected.

In some ways, it left me wanting more of everything. Lindqvist’s work is normally full of great visual details, but this is more sparse. There’s not as much creepiness here as in his full novels either, just a hint of something supernatural before the ride is over. It’s like a roller coaster that goes up and down one hill, and then pulls back into the station. It begs the question, “Where’s the rest of the ride?”

I can’t say I disliked it, but I really did wish for more. More detail, more information on the ending, and more of chance to be scared. So I give this 3 stars. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely not Lindqvist’s best writing.

Book review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

I have conflicted feelings about this book, some of them still coming from out of the first book, Shiver, which I enjoyed the first half of, but hated the second half because it felt so sloppy. Linger in some ways addresses my problems with the first book, but it also creates more questions about whether my problems with the first book were genuine flaws, or intentional misinformation due to an unreliable narrator.

To fully address the story here, I need to back up to explain Shiver. In the Wolves of Mercy Falls, the idea is given that the wolves change seasonally, that cold is the trigger for change, and that at a certain age, werewolves stop shifting and just turn into wolves. From there, they live about fifteen years, and then they die from the wolf reaching their natural old age life span. BUT, suddenly for dramatic effect, all the wolves are changing and this will be their final winter as humans. Even Sam, who is a young man, is going to have this happen to him, and to me it felt extremely lazy. It felt like a fake grab at the heartstrings for added tension, and I had a hard time believing it.

My next problem was how the resolution to Grace not changing after being bitten was that she got locked in a hot car by her father, with a fever, on the hottest day of the year. This is child abuse, and when it happens in the real world, parents get arrested and lose custody of their kids. There’s no punishment of Grace’s father, and even Grace just treats this revelation as a eureka moment for helping Sam. It doesn’t really bug her that her absentee parents are vile shits. Everyone else knows this, but Grace comes across as oblivious that she’s a victim of abuse.

There were other little gripes I had, but these were the two BIG problems that left me so very dissatisfied with the first book. Yet, I’d already bought Linger, so I knew at some point I’d have to sit down and read it. And almost a year after I read the first book, I finally did read the second volume.

Why I’m still reading Maggie Stiefvater…

So, last year I read Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, and it drove me bonkers. Or, more so than normal. I loved the intro, the characters, and the basic premise. I loved that the book didn’t need a huge conflict to resolve. It was a non-formula story, and it was pushing all my happy buttons until one event was revealed near the middle of the book.

In the story, it comes out that the main character Grace was once locked in a car on the hottest day of the year, with a fever. This is a non-event in the book, and in the series so far. It’s a non-event to Grace, to her parents, and to everyone else who knows about it. This revelation was the first clunk of the story, and it drives me nuts because almost every other month, there’s a similar real life story in the news about kids locked in cars, and the parents who do this get arrested and lose custody of their kids.

Let me repeat that: the parents who do this get arrested and lose custody of their kids. In Shiver, it’s not even acknowledged as an act of abuse.

I’m sure to any reader who’s never been abused, this is no big deal. But to me, this one point has stuck in my throat, and it made me hate a lot of other moments where the writing went for an easy answer. The writing at times becomes so lazy that it made me want to throw the book. But I finished the story, and I still had Linger on my TBR shelf. Why? Because after reading 10 chapters of Shiver, I was absolutely certain I had to read the rest of the series.

So, I’m reading Linger, and I’m halfway through. I’ve got plans to get the last book in the series, Forever, and I have a copy of a new series starter, Raven Boys. While searching for Forever on Amazon, I saw Maggie has another series about faeries, and I groaned but made a note of it so I could pick it up later.

Book review: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read anything by Steinbeck. During middle school I’d read Grapes of Wrath, and in my mid-teens, I’d read The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, his retelling of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Ever since then, I’ve always meant to get back around to reading his work, but there was always something shinier and easier to read in the meantime.

But at last, I decided to sit down and read Of Mice and Men, and I’m glad I did, as it reminded me again why Steinbeck is a true artist. It’s because his work reflects the grim people of his times with no polish or attempt to hide the warts. His narration is objective and doesn’t cast judgments on people. They’re ugly on their own without him having to tell the reader “this is a bad person.” He shows the wickedness through the actions of his characters.

So it is with George and Lennie, two men traveling together because neither has anyone else they can depend upon. Lennie needs George to protect him, and George needs Lennie to keep him from becoming just another bitter bindle bum. George knows life could be better without Lennie and his constant simple-minded mistakes, but he watches out for Lennie because of a promise he made to Clara, Lennie’s deceased aunt.

After fleeing a bad situation in Weed created by Lennie, George has arranged for work on a farm, where both men will be buckers and earn enough stake to finally buy a place of their own. But right from the start, it’s clear that this farm has plenty of trouble brewing, and Lennie’s too simple not to help stir the pot of shit until it all boils over and blows up in his face.

If I have any complaints about the story, it’s the character known only as Curley’s wife. This is a minor complaint, but I feel like the narrator was too impersonal about her. Everyone else in the story has a name and a story. While Curley’s wife does get a chance to explain her side of things, it’s her lack of a name that bugs me. It’s like all the men are real people, and Curley’s wife is just a plot device that Steinbeck couldn’t assign a name to, only a role.

Setting that aside, this is strong writing with vivid descriptions and an unflinching look at hard, prejudiced people. Reading this puts me in the mood to reread Grapes of Wrath, and to also pick up East of Eden. After all, it’s not often that you see this level of ugly honesty in fiction without some attempt to excuse what’s happening. With Steinbeck, there no excuse or apology. The story is what it is. That’s why I give Of Mice and Men 4 stars, and would recommend it to anyone willing to read fiction looking at the darker side of life.