World Book Night US - April 23, 2012

I'm thrilled! I got the email yesterday letting me know what book I'll be giving away for World Book Night US this year. You may have heard of it, a little book called The Hunger Games. Squeeee!

If you haven't heard of World Book Night, click on over to their website to learn more!

A Touch Mortal by Leah Clifford

Title: A Touch Mortal
Series: A Touch Mortal, Book 1
Author: Leah Clifford
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 419
ISBN: 9780062004994
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Author Website: leahclifford.com
Twitter: @LeahClifford, @PitchDarkBooks, @HarperTeen
Format: Hardcover
Rating: 4/5 stars

I'm going to be right up front, there are probably going to be spoilers in this review, because I'm fairly sure I can't say a thing about this book without giving something away. Just an FYI.

In a couple of weeks, Leah Clifford will be hosting her InsaniTEA Party at my local bookstore for the release of the second book in her A Touch Mortal series, A Touch Morbid, so I thought I should probably get around to reading the first book. I picked up A Touch Mortal last year when Leah was at Schuler Books promoting the book. I had had every intention of reading it then, but for those following along, a lot happened between then and now, and I didn't, plain and simple. So I picked it up the other night and pretty much read it in two sittings.

It's a fairly quick read, which honestly surprised me. It was also easy to get into. I find that I have a hard time getting into the flow of a story with some books, but Leah seemed to make hers relatively easy, and I found myself reading along, enjoying where the story was going, even when it was becoming apparent what was going to be happening to out heroine, Eden. I feel like I should be up front with about what happens, because if someone is reading this who might have a problem with the subject, maybe this will give them fair warning. Eden commits suicide. She does this fairly early on in the book, after she met the love of her life, Az, an almost Fallen angel. Az is afraid that the Fallen are going to find out about Eden, and torture her to try to get Az to complete his Fall, so he plays a hand in her committing suicide, to protect her. This is where some will need to have a little suspension of disbelief, because that doesn't really sound like a win/win situation for Eden, does it?

Anyway, I was going with the flow of the story up to the point. Eden becomes a Sider. She is more or less alive again, but her entire mortal existence has been erased from the memories of everyone she knew. She'll live forever; and she now has Touch. What is Touch, exactly? I have no idea. I don't know if the characters know what it is. I don't even know if Leah Clifford knows what it is. This is where I started to dislike the book. A lot. This key element, Touch, is never really explained, unless I missed a big chuck of the story. Eden is told she has Touch, needs to pass off Touch to mortals so that it doesn't build up in her system, and she just accepts it and carries on. No explanation. No questioning what it it. She just accepts it at face value, and the readers are forced to accept it at face value because there is never an explanation. By the time I realized how much I was frustrated by this one lacking key explanation to a key plot point, I was well over half way through the book, so I figured at this point, it was a quick read, so maybe Clifford explained it by the end. Just for those keeping track, she doesn't.

However, at some point through the last 1/3 of the book, I discovered that I was really enjoying the story, was engaged with the characters, wanted to see how things were going to end with this book, questions about Touch be damned. I had already figured out some of the twists of the story and was fairly sure I knew why things were happening the way they were. My reservations and questions about the purpose of Touch aside, I really ended up finding that I enjoyed A Touch Mortal. I'm just hoping that these questions are answered in the next book.

Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Title: Fever
Series: The Chemical Garden Trilogy, Book 2
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 341
ISBN: 9781442409071
Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR
Author Website: www.laurendestefano.com
Twitter: @LaurenDeStefano, @SimonTEEN
Format: ARC provided from publisher
Available: 2-21-12
Rating: 5/5 stars

Product Description From Amazon:

Rhine and Gabriel have escaped the mansion, but they’re still in danger. Outside, they find a world even more disquieting than the one they left behind. Determined to get to Manhattan and to find Rhine’s twin brother Rowan, the two press forward, amidst threats of being captured again... or worse.

The road they are on is long and perilous—and in a world where young women only live to age 20 and men die at age 25, time is precious. In this sequel to Lauren DeStefano’s harrowing Wither, Rhine must decide if freedom is worth the price—now that she has more to lose than ever.

I was lucky to receive a copy of Lauren DeStefano's Fever late last year, and read it in two sittings. If you haven't read Wither yet, the first book in The Chemical Garden Trilogy, quit reading this right now, go out and pick it up, as there may be spoilers ahead in this review. I'm not going to lie, I wasn't sure what to make of Wither when I read it (check out my review here), but Fever totally sucked me in and wouldn't let me go. DeStefano wastes no time in throwing us into the story and never lets us go until, literally, the last word of the book.

Rhine and Gabriel have successfully escaped the mansion and Vaughn, but is their newly won freedom worth the trials to come? It's really hard to write about Fever without giving anything away, but like Wither, I feel there is a lot of nothing going on here, but the difference is there seems to be a purpose to the nothing happening. Don't get me wrong; unlike Wither, where most of the action takes place in and around the mansion for the most part, Fever sends us on a non-stop journey with Rhine and Gabriel in search of Rhine's home and her twin brother, Rowan. OK, so I guess it's not a whole lot of nothing - there's a whole of everything happening in this story, but it's mostly in character and overall story development. We learn so much about both Rhine and Gabriel through their journey, and more about what Vaughn is up to, and even more how little Linden is in the dark about his father. With Fever, DeStefano really builds on every aspect of Wither and takes the story that much further.

In Wither, we get to see how the rich live and prosper in this society, and in Fever we really get to see how the other half lives. We got a taste of what it is like for the less-privileged in Wither, but this time around we are thrown full force into the the lives of those who are living on the outskirts of society, seeing how they get by day to day. It's a dark and gritty world that DeStefano has created, and one that feels very real and tangible.

I feel like I'm doing the book a disservice with this review, but in all honesty, I couldn't put it down. It's hard for me to quantify what it is that I like so much about the book. I think when I received Wither, I was expecting to dislike it. I don't know why that it is, but I think I went into the book thinking it wasn't going to be for me, so was surprised when I did enjoy it. Quite clearly it has something to do with DeStefano's writing. She creates a beautiful sense of imagery with her writing, so that even though her characters are living in a terrible world, we also experience those moments that really shine for them. Pick it up; you won't be sorry. I'm anxiously awaiting book three and seeing how this story ends, even though I'm going to miss it and the characters that inhabit the world.

The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story by Theodora Goss

Title: The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story
Author: Theodora Goss
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 82
ISBN: 9781594745515
Publisher: Quirk Books
Audio Production: www.
Author Website: theodoragoss.com
Twitter: @quirkbooks, @theodoragoss
Format: Hardcover (received from the LibraryThing Early Review program)
Rating: 3.5/5 stars



The Thorn and the Blossom is the story of Brendan and Evelyn, how they met, parted, met again and parted again. Doesn't sound like anything special, right? Well, you'd be wrong. The first thing that you will obviously notice with The Thorn and the Blossom is its unique design. It is printed in a "Unique Accordion-Fold Binding" (that's exactly how it reads on the cover). It book is slip-cased, and you can choose to read either Evelyn's or Brendan's story first, and when you finish with one story, you flip the book over and read the exact same story, only from the other person's point of view. The accordion printing gives it the illusion that the story is printed on one continuous sheet of paper, folded up.

As for the story, it's your typical story of boy meets girl, boy kisses girl, girl runs off screaming into the woods, boy meets girl again 10 year later, girl again runs away screaming. What's all the running away and screaming about? Well, that part's the mystery of this little gem of a book.

Normally, I wouldn't really be impressed at all with this story, as there's really nothing challenging about it in the slightest, but the book and the story itself are presented so cleverly, I totally overlooked that fact. Give it a try. It's cute, a little on the brain candy side, but you'll find yourself flipping the book back and forth, playing with the accordion layout.

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield

Title: Just My Type: A Book About Fonts
Author: Simon Garfield
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 356
ISBN: 9781592406524
Publisher: Gotham Books
Author Website: simongarfield.com
Twitter: @gothambooks, @simongarfield
Format: Hardcover
Rating: 4/5 stars

Being a graphic designer and a typographer first and foremost, I thoroughly enjoyed Just My Type. For a subject that I think most people would find fairly boring (exactly how much can you really say about type, right?), I found the book to be fairly easy to read and I think most people who are not as familiar with type and design but are still interested in the history behind certain fonts and what went into creating certain typefaces will find this book very approachable.

I love playing with type, seeing what can be done when you take words and turn them into strict letterforms and play with the art of the letters and still make something legible out of it. I really enjoyed reading the history and story behind the design of some of my favorite fonts. The one complaint I have with the book is several times Garfield mentions a certain font and what made that font something special for its time or mentions the way a particular letterform is designed, without always giving the reader an example of either the complete typeface or at the very least an example of the particular letterform he's talking about. I think this would have gone a very long way in helping people see what he is talking about. I don't think that it would have been too much to include a larger sized example of the letterform or a page that shows the entire set of glyphs for a particular font.

With that one exception aside, I really enjoyed Just My Type and would recommend it to anyone who is interested by type and its history.

Glitches by Marissa Meyer

Title: Glitches
Series: The Lunar Chronicles Prequel
Author: Marissa Meyer
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 33
Publisher: tor.com
Author Website: marissameyer.livejournal.com
Twitter: @marissa_meyer, @torbooks
Format: ebook
Rating: 3/5 stars

Well, as Cinder is basically the Cinderella story told with a cyborg as Cinderella, it is only fitting that we the story of how Cinder came to live with her stepmother and two stepsisters, and that is exactly what Glitches is. This is a very quick read and gives us a solid introduction to the characters in Cinder's "family", but as everyone knows the Cinderella story, you'll be instantly familiar with how this short story will turn out.

Glitches is an ebook only prequel released from tor.com and is available at most ebook outlets.

Mainspring by Jay Lake

Title: Mainspring
Author: Jay Lake
Copyright: 2007
Pages: 358
ISBN: 9780765356369
Publisher: Tor
Author Website: jlake.com
Twitter: @torbooks, @jay_lake
Format: eBook
Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Mainspring is a hard book to categorize. It's like a theological steampunk/clockpunk adventure amalgamation. In this world, the Earth is actually a large clockwork that travels a cog orbit, the traveling gear spanning the Equatorial Wall that separates the planet into Northern and Southern Earth, with the moon following it's own cog orbit around the Earth. As the story opens, young apprentice Hethor is visited by the Archangel Gabriel and told that he must find the Key Perilous to wind the Mainspring of the world, as it is beginning to run down and slip and if he doesn't accomplish this holy task, the world will end. What follows is an adventure worthy of Robert Louis Stevenson with underlying tones of religion and theology. The basis of the religion of Northern Earth is a Clockwork Christianity (complete with a Brass Christ), but as Hethor journeys farther and farther in his mission and meets more people, he begins to question what he has been taught in his religious upbringing and instead begins to follow his own heart and path, even if these thoughts would normally be seen as heresy where he comes from. There is actually some deep theological thought processes going on in this book, which just added another layer of thought-provoking goodness to the story.

I was pleasantly surprised by the entire story with Mainspring. I wasn't actually sure what to expect (I thought I was actually just getting into a steampunk adventure), but Jay Lake weaves so much into this story concerning religion and what it can actually mean to each person when given the chance to view it away from their upbringing, it actually leaves quite a bit to think about. Don't get me wrong, though. There is plenty of adventure to big had; air ships, African jungles, polar expeditions, winged savages, clockwork statues, magicians. It seems Mainspring may actually have a little bit for everybody!

Recommended!

Traveling Book Box 2.0

My friend Gail at Ticket to Anywhere emailed me recently about a project called the Traveling Book Box, hosted at Moonlight Book Reviews, and I read about it and it sounded like something fun, so I thought I'd sign up. Well, turns out, I was the first on the list to receive the box of books! Instructions from Erika say I'm only allowed to show what books I took out of the box of 14:



And then to show the books that I added in to the box to replace the ones I removed:


As an extra added bonus, both copies of Wings and Vampire Kisses are signed by the authors!

If you'd be interested in signing up for the Traveling Book Box, stop by Moonlight Book Reviews, read up on the project and see if it's something you'd like to participate in.

Happy reading!

The Ivy Gate by A.R. Kahler

Title: The Ivy Gate
Author: A.R. Kahler
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 188
Publisher: Smashwords
Author Website: arkahler.com
Twitter: @ARKahler, @Smashwords
Format: ebook
Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Katherine Townsend has been having visions. Nothing serious, just one minute she's in her life, and in the next blink, she's in a sun-filled meadow, and blink, she's back. They happen about once a week and that's that. She's been having them since her dad died two years ago and she won't tell anyone about them because she's pretty sure they'll think it's because of her dad. She lives in a factory town that is slowly dying at a coffee shop that has almost no customers. Her boyfriend left her. She still lives with her mom. Little does she know that she just has a couple of days to save the world. She is the child of two worlds that have been separated from ours through an ancient magic, and unless she can figure out keep the worlds from crashing back together again, everyone and everything she knows will be destroyed.

OK, I really wanted to like this book. I had a hard time deciding how to review The Ivy Gate, only because I did enjoy reading it, I just felt there was a lot of room for growth. Kahler's writing is really beautiful and quite vivid and he has some great imagery, but... Well, too many times he tries to use unique sentence breaks and structures to create a sense of break in Katherine's thinking and time due to the visions that in some cases it became hard to follow what he was trying to convey. Add that to the number of typos in the book and I kept finding myself pulled out of the story.

SPOILERS AHEAD

There is also the basis of the story that I found very confusing. Katherine has a blue eye and a green eye, and this is because once upon a time there were two races on Earth before humans, the blue-eyed Erenfell and the green-eyed Til'Dara. The Til'dara were magical and the Erenfell were more scientific. Each race has a different history and mythology, but basically they were at war with each other and the Erenfell separated the planes of existence to keep the Til'Dara from destroying everything. This is where I became confused; it was never made abundantly clear how many planes of existence were made. I had the initial impression that there were two, but later it was mentioned that there were three, which made more sense with the story. It all seemed very vague. Maybe it was supposed to be, but it felt too vague for me. Or maybe I just missed something in the reading, but needless to say, I found myself more confused than not during my reading.

END SPOILERS

The book is perhaps too short, as well. By the time I was halfway through, I was already hoping that this was book one of two, if not a series, as there seemed far too much going on to wrap up everything before the of the book. Kahler did wrap everything up, and did it in a reasonable manner, but I think the book would benefit greatly if it was longer. It just seemed to me that Katherine, who started out the book with no prior knowledge of the existence of the other races and then found out she had mere days to save the world with no information from either side on how to do it, gained far too much knowledge far too quickly. I know there is a need for the suspension of disbelief in a fantasy novel, even one I would consider urban fantasy, but this just seemed to require too much of a suspension. I would like to see Kahler revisit this story someday, later in his writing career, and expand on this idea. It's a great idea, don't get me wrong, but I think it would be even better if he took time to nurture it and let it grow a little, along with his writing technique. I'll definitely be looking for more from Kahler in the future.

Sunday Salon 1 - 15 I 2012

Good morning, fellow Salon Members! Huzzah to a new year and fresh starts! After what proved my most challenging year in so many respects in 2011, I'm looking afresh to 2012 and feeling good about it. I just squeaked by in 2011 with 75 books, only because I chose to re-read several favorites at the end of the year, just so I wouldn't have to think about them too hard. I have also moved this year into a new place, and in packing and putting my hands on each of my 1500+ books, I've realized how many great books I own and haven't read yet, so to that end I'm going to attempt to read more than I purchase this year. I know I say the same thing each and every year, but in truth, I'm spending more on my new place, so my disposable income for books is a little less than it has been in years past, so this is going to work in my favor. I'll simply have to read what I've got on my shelf, as I won't be able to buy as usual. Of course, the same exceptions as always hold: graphic novels, my Oz books and books picked up at book signings.



The only "challenge" that I'm participating in this year is one of my own making. 2012 marks the 100th birthday of one of my favorite authors, May Sarton, and I have decided to do a Sarton Centennial Reading Celebration. By my count, I have 56 books to read. I'm going to skip the collected books of poetry as they will already have been in other volumes and I'm skipping an anthology of previously released works. I figure if I read one volume per week, and some are slim so I can double up in a couple of weeks, there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to finish them all by the end of the year, in addition to any other reading I want to do.



As for my reading so far this year, I've finished 5 books and will hopefully finish the sixth today, but I may end up unpacking all day, so I'll see how that goes. I have high hopes for my reading this year and have set my reading goal a little higher than I ever have at 120 books. I may just be setting myself up for failure, but I want to give it a try.

Well, that's all for this week from my little corner of the blogosphere. I hope everyone is staying warm on this chilly winter morning and as always, happy reading!