More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Temping Fate by Esther Friesner, Cute Fantasy, Bridezilla and Summer Jobs

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Ilana needs a summer job.  Now.  If she doesn’t find one her parents will find her all sorts of things to do, starting with music camp.  Of course Ilana must take care that her job will not interfere with endless fittings for her bridesmaid dress so she can be her sister Dyllin’s maid of honor.  Dyllin has transmogrified into Bridezilla, scourge of caterers, florists and sisters everywhere.

Ilana gets a summer job as a temp at the Divine Relief Temp agency, assigned to the three Fates, one of whom is having a severe attack of Mommy-itis.  Ilana isn’t too sure about the work but she sure loves the paycheck!  Plus she meets some cute guys who also temp, albeit with heroes and other assorted demigods.

Temping Fate is light summer reading and most teens would enjoy it as would many adults.  Dylin’s panic attacks (NO!  The wrong color of ribbons!!!  The Horror!) add comedy offset by some real sisterly moments.  Ilana grows up somewhat, but don’t expect a serious coming-of-age novel as this is lighthearted fun.

3 Stars

Once Upon a Dream by Liz Braswell – Sleeping Beauty What If? Fairy Tale Retelling

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I wasn’t expecting much from Once Upon A Dream by Liz Braswell.   I didn’t care for her take off on Aladdin in A Whole New World, and Disney published both books, and they are marked YA.  Still I had a 5th borrow available from Hoopla, was sick and Dream sounded OK, so why not?

Let’s be clear.  Once Upon A Dream is not stellar fiction for adults and it’s not going to go on teachers’ lists of books their students must read.  Once Upon A Dream is basically a fast, easy read that is pretty entertaining.  Don’t pick it up if you are hungry for deep thoughts but do read it if you are in the mood for a light story with some engaging characters and interesting plot lines about reality and dreaming.

Once Upon A Dream retells the original Sleeping Beauty story and Disney movie with a twist.  The princess does not wake up and the prince falls asleep.  In Dream, Maleficent tells Aurora that her parents destroyed the country and everything surrounding it, and that Maleficent protected the people and castle behind the rose briars.  Of course this is not true.

Aurora must struggle to wake up; each time she thinks she is awake she realizes that in fact she is not.  In this book she meets Prince Phillip in the woods who travels with her and works to confound the enchantment.

Characters

Don’t look for depth and you’ll be fine.  Braswell portrays Aurora and Phillip as basically what teens think happens when you fall in love, with plenty of drama and not much common sense.  Both have more screen time in this retelling than in the movie but are still rather flat, 2-dimensional.  Aurora does get one good lick in when she tells off Maleficent for cursing a baby just because she felt slighted.  Note that Aurora complains about what Maleficent did to her, not what she did to the kingdom.

Braawell changes the three good fairies the most.  In her retelling we don’t see much to admire:  They are weak, foolish, manipulative.  I thought the sections with the three fairies were the weakest.

Overall

Once Upon A Dream was a pleasant way to spend a couple days while I recovered from an illness.  I wouldn’t seek out more of Braswell’s books, but if I have a free borrow available again and don’t feel good enough to think, well, why not?

3 Stars

The Wretched of Muirwood – Just OK Fantasy by Jeff Wheeler

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The Wretched of Muirwood has almost 1900 Amazon reviews with a 4.5 star average and it’s the first novel in a fantasy series that also has high scores.  I didn’t care much for the story.  Setting and back story are so-so, characters are so-so, setting and magic system are a quasi-religion where faith will let you do stuff and fear or jealousy will keep you impotent.  Real faith is not utilitarian.

Wretched of Muirwood follows the traditional unknown/poor/underdog person discovers he has magic and an important fate.  In this case the underdog is Lia, an orphan left at the Muirwood abbey where she lives and serves in the kitchen.  Lia tells us from the first chapter that she wants to read, to be a learner more than anything, but it’s forbidden.  After 287 pages we don’t know much more about her, although we trudged through a nasty swamp, rescued a young Earl, fought off the evil sheriff and suffered homesickness.

The novel wasn’t catalogued in our system as YA but it’s obviously meant for younger readers.  It’s short with plenty of white space and big print to fill 287 pages and the characters are youths.  None of the emotional conflicts feel real.

Let’s say 3 stars, not horrible but not recommended.

 

The Glittering Court – Review of Sneak Peek – YA Fantasy with Romance

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NetGalley offered a sneak peek of The Glittering Court, a novel of romance and intrigue set in a fantasy world similar to ours of 500 years ago.  This is considered fantasy due to the imaginary world, but there were no magical events or any of the other elements we think of as “fantasy”.

The story is straightforward:  The Countess of Rothford has a title and ancient family name but little money.  She is to marry a distant cousin and quickly decides this man is not for her.  She sends her maid, Adelaide, back to her family and takes Adelaide’s name and her place in the Glittering Court.  The Court is a school to train lower-born girls to act, dress and talk like upper class ladies so they can find rich husbands in the New World.  Adelaide’s only challenge is to not succeed too much because she needs to remain safely anonymous.

Adelaide faces the threat of exposure and forced return while around her society and her country Osfrid are churning with religious strife and the fallout from the civil war in neighboring Sirminica.  She is intrigued with man who recruited her, Cedric, and it’s clear from the sneak peek that they are falling in love.  That’s a problem because Cedric’s family runs the Glittering Court to supply classy wives to the frontier men, not to find a classy wife themselves.  And Cedric adheres to the outlawed religion; discovery could mean he dies.

The Glittering Court is aimed at teens, 7th grade and up.  The writing style – language, scene changes, themes – are sufficiently engaging that many adults will enjoy the book too.  I didn’t find any of the “and a miracle happens” events nor the abrupt switches among viewpoints that make some teen novels so disappointing and hard to read.  Author Mead does a good job presenting the situations, giving us reasonable dialogue and events, then finishing the scene before moving on.

While I was not intrigued enough to seek out the full novel, I do recommend this to older teen girls and adults who enjoy a romance with fantasy elements.

I received a free copy of the sneak peek in the expectation of an honest review.

The War of Words – YA Fantasy Fiction by Amy Neftzger

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The blurb for The War Of Words sounded so intriguing I had to try it despite it being YA fantasy.  An evil sorcerer has enveloped the land in a spell of confusion and unreality, sending mysterious shadows to battle the king’s army.  I love words, how could I not want to read a book about a war on language?

Main character Kelsey, whom the king assigned to the army, discovers a man burning reams of paper, each covered with a single word, during a battle.  She knows this is somehow related to the unreality but not how or how to stop it.

Kelsey works with her friends to find out the sorcerer’s plans and weaknesses, all while battling the never-ending shadows and trying to stay out of trouble with the army general.  Her friends are students at a school behind the castle wall, protected from the confusion spells, and an apprentice wizard Nicholas, his teacher Moss and gargoyle Newton.

Good Points

The scenes with Kelsey and the sorcerer, and the general with the sorcerer and finally the king with the sorcerer were well done.  Amy Neftzger imagined how words would look if we could see them colored as to intent and meaning, a very good way to show the tension among the enemies.

Neftzger did a nice job coming up with a plot that is a true problem:  How do you fight against a creeping sense of unreality, when no one can trust what they see or hear, when one’s words and speech are misheard and lost?  I would like to see her use this same plot idea in an adult book with better characters and interesting back story.

YA Fantasy Problems

The War Of Words jumped around, things seemed to just happen, it felt out of tune.  Characters came and went without introduction nor did we find any time to learn about them as people.  Kids took the lead to find the problem, devise the solution, then lead the fight, just as a kid would imagine things to work.

The book felt like a sequel, although the NetGalley blurb did not say it was.  Author Amy Neftzger’s wrote two prior books, The Orphanage of Miracles and The Orchard of Hope, in The Kingdom Wars series that used the same characters and back story.  Perhaps if I’d read those the characters would have felt real.

On the good side The War of Words did not have the romantic tripe that keeps slithering out of YA fantasy, no 16 year old girls who capture the hearts of immortal demigods, no love triangles, no gonadal driven decision making, no histrionics.  The kids were good kids who want to do what’s right.  That was a huge plus.

Summary

Reading The War of Words as an adult and rating it for adults I’d give it 2 stars. I would not have finished it had I not gotten it from NetGalley, but it wasn’t a bad book, just not a book for adults.

Trying to put myself in the reading chair of a teen longing for challenges and the chance to be heroic, I’d say 4 stars.  I don’t think kids would mind the way it jumps from character to character nor the sense that scenes were unfinished, discarded too quickly.  Kids would enjoy it more if they were familiar with the characters already from the other two books.

The Phoenix Ring – Fantasy Novel by Alexander Brockman

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The Phoenix Ring (The Thunderheart Chronicles Book 1) uses the standard fantasy plot “Boy Discovers He Is a Wizard and Saves the World” and mixes in some fun elements and characters.  Aiden, the hero (who discovers he is a wizard) has help from Timothy, a normal wizard from a normal wizard family, and from Aaliyah, a magic-resistant amogh.  Aiden leaves home for the big city to join the King’s Rangers but gets recruited/forced into the wizards and sent to their school Fort Phoenix to learn wizardry.

Besides the character count and school background The Phoenix Ring is not much like Harry Potter.  Aiden is angry, as in furious, all the time, although we readers don’t see much to be angry about during much of it.  The anger helps fuel his magic and he is powerful.  He masters some elements of magic immediately and takes the Phoenix Ring that had been Marcus Thunderheart’s until Marcus left physical existence 63 years earlier when fighting Macommmer and his renegade wizards and dragons.  We then get a bit of whining, a trip, a few side trips and then conflict with the renegade Edwin.

Good Points

There are some fun plot twists and the book is an easy, extremely fast read (about 2 hours and that includes stopping for tea).

The subplot with Timothy and goblin Grogg is excellent and author Brockman could have done more with it.  The Phoenix Ring would have been richer and more complex and enjoyable had Brockman added more subplots like this one.

Bartemus and the other adult wizards appear sparingly during the novel which is a shame as they are interesting characters.

Not So Good Points

There is almost no transition between points of view and even between physical locations and times and this gets confusing and tiresome.  Even if the author didn’t want to say “meanwhile back at the ranch…” he could indicate a change in viewpoint by typography, a line of asterisks or similar.

Character development is spotty.  We don’t see why Aiden is so angry nor learn much about Timothy.  Aaliyah is a cipher.

The characters live in an interesting world and I’d like to see Brockman do more with the setting, the back story and the magic system.

Summary

As the title shows, The Phoenix Ring is the first book in a fantasy series.  I don’t expect I’ll buy the next books in the series as this was just a bit better than OK, a solid 3 stars.

Amazon lists this as for older teens, which is probably right.  As an adult I found the book a bit too slapdash and lacking in the rich detail and conflicts that make fantasy believable.

Awaken – Fated Saga Fantasy Series – Young Teens YA Fantasy Fiction

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One reason I write this blog is that you cannot rely on reviews on Amazon without knowing something about the reviewer.  A teen might rave about a book that we adults find boring – I know my tastes have changed since I was 15!  Knowing I am an adult female should put my comments into context and help you know whether my opinions are useful guides to what you will like.

YA fantasy fiction today is heavy on vampires, dystopias and zombies, but a perennial favorite is the coming-of-age- and-discovering-you-really-do-have-magic-talents.  Awaken the first novel in the Fated Saga Fantasy Series is a good short novel on theme number four, coming of age and discovering magic talents.

As an adult I found the writing style crisp, fast moving, characters reasonably done. The foreshadowing elements (a locket that pricks the young heroine Meghan, ominous screeches that are not owls, tangling with a moose in a lake, Uncle Arnon’s musings with Kandra) are a bit heavy but probably perfect for teens and tweens. The book is short, 115 pages and takes about 90 minutes to read.

A few of the characters are obviously going to be involved more in future novels in the Fated Saga series, as they are peripheral to this story. Plus many plot threads that are left hanging as Meghan and her twin Colin fall through the pine room into another world at the end. The author Rachel D’aigle clearly aimed this book at the 11 to 14 year old reader who would enjoy this. Even as an adult I enjoyed it enough to read to the end, although I don’t plan to read the sequels.

Overall, it’s a fun, clean, enjoyable book that younger readers will love and adults will like enough to complete.

A Diamond in My Pocket, Lorena Angell, YA Fantasy, First In A Series

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I have been reading a lot but not writing reviews; it’s time to get back into blogging.  One way I find new authors is from the “people who liked this also bought” links at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  Another is from the site BookBub.  They send a daily newsletter with books in your preferred genre that are free or heavily discounted.  Since I like books and don’t want to spend a fortune, this is a good thing.

Today’s book, A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), came from BookBub. It was free and frankly, I am glad I didn’t pay anything for it.

There isn’t anything wrong with A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), it just isn’t very good. It features 16 year old Calli Courtnae who suddenly can run like the wind. She develops even more powers after being entrusted with a magical diamond to carry in secret to deliver to the Death Clan.

I think you can see the problem right there. “Powers”, “magic diamonds”, “Death Clan”. I don’t have a problem with ideas like this – after all fantasy is my favorite genre and we know fantasy novels are full of nutty sounding stuff. But the constant repetition about “powers” got tiresome. Couple that with a typical 16 year old girl’s normal worries about cute guys and you have a book that teens will love and we adults, sadly, not so much.

A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered) has over 4 1/2 stars on Amazon and is #3000 in the Free Kindle section. I’m not sure quite why it is so popular. It’s reasonably well written, without terrible grammar that plagues so many free E books. The plot is interesting and the characters are so-so. I read it to the end and was reasonably entertained, but it left too many strings hanging and is obviously set up for a sequel.

Mostly I just got tired of the “powers” stuff and how Courtney could peek in someone’s head and see their future. Courtney tried different decisions in her head until she found an outcome she liked. Gee, that’s handy. Yoda said it best: “Difficult to see is the future, always in motion.” Courtney had no problem at all. Not only could she see the future but she could play around with it, make a different decision in her head, and see a different future. That got silly.

I’d give it 3 stars for the dangling strings and over-the-top “powers”.

Two to Avoid: Greyson’s Grove and Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle YA Fantasy Novels

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I read two YA fantasy novels this week that just did not work for me.

Greyson’s Grove

In fact, let’s be accurate.  I gave up on the first one, Greyson’s Grove, after 200 pages.  I only got that far because I got fascinated with how obtuse the heroine was.  I had a small bet with myself as to how long it would take  her to realize her crush / secret boyfriend was really another elf.   She was surrounded by clues but unable to put together that basic fact?

Greyson’s Grove’s biggest problem was the umpteen bazillion pages spent being a teenager.  About the only cliche Greyson didn’t hit was worrying about her weight.

Most of the online reviews are favorable, and if you are a teen or tween girl you’ll probably love it.

I bought Greyson’s Grove after reading a short sample on Barnes and Noble.  The sample was interesting, with a might-be-fun premise, intriguing setting and characters.  Plus (honesty time) I had just gotten two B&N gift cards for my birthday and wanted to buy something. This was a waste of $2.99.

Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle

The other book would be fun if you were 10 or so. The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle is written in the first person with cute characters and what might be a fun plot. The illustrations are interesting and I especially liked the feisty-looking young lady on the cover.

Alas. I’m not 10, or even under 20 and this was terminally cute. I stopped reading it after about 15 pages. If I were in a different mood I might like it as a light diversion but I’m not feeling that mindless today.

 

What Came from the Stars, Gary Schmidt, YA Fantasy, Wince Heroically

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About half of What Came from the Stars was good, a story of a family wracked with grief for their mom, threatened with having their beachfront land consumed by condominiums, having to fight a terrible evil. The other half? Boring. Boring in a way that you wanted to throw the book across the room.

The Good Part

Tommy and Patty’s mom died in a car accident a few months before the story begins. Tommy blames himself because his mom, usually a careful driver, and he got into a small fight when she dropped him off at school, just before she spun out of control on the icy road. His sister Patty has not spoken since.

Their father is an artist who has barely touched his paints since the accident. They live in an old, beat up house on the ocean near Plymouth, Massachusetts. The local Realtor, conveniently married to the lieutenant governor, greedily plans to get an easement through their property to build condominiums. The scenes in the local zoning board are excellent; we see that the other land owners all feel it is unfair but they are all only too glad it is not their land she covets. No one speaks for Tommy’s family and the town grants the easement.

Tommy has friends and enemies. The Realtor’s daughter is a total pain in the neck and a loud-voiced bully. Tommy’s teacher suddenly takes ill and is replaced by a mysterious sub. Tommy can tell that the sub is linked to the mysterious vandalism in the town.

I’ve not read Gary Schmidt’s books before but will look for them now. He has a gift to take a simple story and make it compelling, readable, the characters real people that you care about.

The Bad Part

Maybe if you are twelve and just finished reading every book J. R. R. Tolkein ever wrote you might like the ponderous, dull parts with the heroic wording. I did not. It was incredibly difficult to wade through and I didn’t feel like Mr. Schmidt really got the right voice. It was not campy silly nor was it inspiring good. It was just plain ponderous and overwrought. I winced every time I turned the page and saw we were back to the heroic tale of the Valorim.

Overall

I have to give this book 4 stars despite the way too heavy dose of bad heroic fantasy prose.  The characters and story of Tommy and his family, their friends and the nasty Realtor were too good to not rate this high.  But oh, the bad parts.  If I could rate them separately they would get a 1.