City of Bones [Review]

Title: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Series: The Mortal Instruments, #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
What They Say:
When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder - much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing - not even a smear of blood - to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

What I Say:
(sidenote: when I returned to this blog, I found this incomplete gem waiting in the Drafts folder, like a sign that I should start here. Plus, with the Mortal Instruments film coming to theatres this August, it's perfect timing! So some of the information in these first two sections is dated because it's from 2011 haha) Okay, so maybe I've read this book a hundred times over the last two years. Aaand maybe I'm at this point entirely biased when it comes to rating this particular series. But. With exams coming up and all, I won't be able to read a new book for at least a week or so. Solution? This. City of Bones peels back the glamour of the human world, revealing a dark underworld of demons, warlocks, vampires, all that just under our noses. This book is a fast-paced, snark-filled adventure that will shock and amaze and bend your mind just a little. That said...

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Plot: wow

Clary Fray is fifteen and totally normal. Her best friend Simon is also fifteen and totally normal, though more nerdy than not. That is, until the day she sees three teens murder a boy at a nightclub. At least, she thinks that's what they were doing. Except they had odd marks on their bodies, and the killed boy could change his shape and they called him a demon. But that's silly - demons don't exist, right? Clary tries to forget it, but keeps running into one of the killers, Jace. Jace is snarky and arrogant and beautiful and calls himself a Shadowhunter - a trained demon killer. Curious as to why Clary, an average "mundane", can see Downworlders, he keeps tabs on her while becoming an endlessly frustrating pain in Clary's side (though she's a pretty big thorn, too). Then, without warning, Clary's mother begins acting strangely, insisting that she and Clary leave the city immediately. And then her mother disappears. Jace’s vigilance saves her life when she returns home only to be attacked by a demon lurking in her ransacked apartment. And when Jace draws a healing rune on Clary’s arm – runes are deadly to the average person, but I guess Jace just isn’t thinking? – it works on her. Clary, Jace decides, isn’t a mundane at all. She’s a Shadowhunter. And that’s only the half of it.

So I remember way back in 2008 when I first picked up this book at the library. From the summary and thickness of the thing, I wasn't impressed. Buzzwords like Shadowhunter and Nephilim were big turn-offs, because it sounded like try-hard fantasy nonsense. But it wasn't that! Cassandra weaves intrigue through the story like individual threads in gorgeous hipster hoodie. Masterful storyteller that she is, each chapter feeds into the next, presenting new mysteries but considerately solving old ones along the way - so the reader never feels hopelessly lost. The book's equal parts action/mystery and Like Story, easing non-fantasy-fans into the world gently, padding the random new words and monsters with a classic albeit predictable love triangle that - in turn - isn't presented as the Most Important Thing In Clary's World, which I appreciated.

Characters: WHOA
I like Clary well enough. She's artsy and likes to read and fights with her mom and probably mirrors most of the girls reading the book - so she's very relatable, especially as the first-person audience-insert character - but most of the big events in the book seem to happen to her, rather than because of her. Granted, it's the first book in a series, so character development is sure to be a long and dangerous journey (hah).

Jace Wayland is one of the few YA characters I've ever gone really daffy over. At first, his over-inflated ego brought on a few fond eye rolls, but over time you start to realize he thinks he's so great really just is that great. And everyone else begrudgingly knows it, too. Jace's main point of intrigue stems from his attempts to appear flippant and cool in this state of Jerkass Perma-snark, a fact he actually lampshades at one point when he jokes "I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain." And whoa, does he have some inner pain! And serious Daddy Issues! Lastly, I truly appreciate how True Like doesn't dilute his personality into love-soup, as often happens in books where a Good Girl Fixes a Bad Boy. This shows that while some of his snark is just bravado, it's also deeply embedded into his very soul. Jace Wayland is the true Snark King, is what I'm saying.

The things I would do for a best friend like Simon! Brooklyn-born, huge personality, clever and nerdy, and kind of a massive hipster if I'm honest, Simon has got it all going on. He's thrust into this amazing world of magic and intrigue that turns its massive nose down at him because he's a "mundane" human, but does he let that get him down? If his best friend Clary's going to be fighting monsters and getting into trouble, he's going to be right there with her, no matter how little anyone wants him around. He's especially interesting to me because he's the only one who, when things get too weird or dangerous, can walk out and go back to his normal life. Only he chooses not to. Yeah, Simon's the best.

Relationships: wow
Clary and Jace - I like the Darcy Phase in this book, because at no point do these two necessarily dislike each other. It's more of a drawn out Snark-Off between two people so clever and proud and just waiting for the other to blink. And by blink I mean tumble headfirst into Like, of course. However, because of Rule #3 of YA: Happiness Doesn't Last and OH MAN does it not last in this story. Star-crossed lovers to the max.

Clary and Simon - They should make sad Sarah McLachlan commercials for lovesick best friends like Simon Lewis. Except instead of the SPCA phone number, the screen would flash Rule #2 of YA (Under no circumstances can best friends end up together) and Rule 2 Subsection B (The Girl must be completely oblivious to said best friend's love until the most devastating possible moment). Subsection B is here attributed to Clary's teenage self-absorption and Simon's general selflessness and thing for red-heads. Never had a chance, poor kid.

Special Features: WHOA
This series focuses around the Shadowhunters. Said to be descended from angels, the Shadowhunters were created to protect the human world from demons, who slip between dimensions and do nasty things on earth. Aside from the obviously exciting action aspect of the Shadowhunter world, fighting monsters, completely unknown to humans and being general hardasses, you get hints here and there that the society of Shadowhunters is inherently flawed as they move into the modern age, full of prejudice and a constant attitude of supremacy over humans and Downworlders. It's cool to see the "new generation" (Jace, Alec, and Isabelle) start to challenge some of those old-timey social norms that mirror our own more closely than you 'd think!

Parting Quote:

"Don't touch any of my weapons without my permission."
"Well, there goes my plan for selling them all on eBay," Clary muttered.
"Selling them on what?"
Clary smiled blandly at him. "A mythical place of great magical power."

Ooh a book with an even distribution of snark between male and female characters yes!

Fallen [Review]

Title: Fallen by Lauren Kate
Series: Fallen, #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
What They Say:
There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce–and goes out of his way to make that very clear–she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret . . . even if it kills her.

What I Say:
Wow. Okay. So I read this one right after I finished with Mockingjay, looking for something mildly interesting to get into. Um. This is one of the first books I’ve read that has literally put me to sleep. Multiple times. It started out as a quiet story about an troubled teen at a boarding school; which was boring, but not so bad. Then, in the last few chapters, it became a completely different kind of story, which was boring and bad. That said…

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Plot: ugh
So Lucinda Price is being sent to reform school. Why? Her parents think she's crazy because she sees dark shadows all the time, and oh yeah, her boyfriend mysteriously combusted one night in the woods. Poor Lucinda thinks it's her fault because this is a teeny novel and therefore the protagonist must be entirely self-centered. So. At the new school, Luce makes a smattering of colorful and crazy friends, including one cute guy (Cam) who’s all charming and wants to get to know her better. Then, because there has to be a love triangle shoved in my face right away, there’s another cute guy (Daniel) who hates her and flips her off the first day. Reading from her Bella Swan textbook, Luce decides she’s going to pursue the boy who hates her, because she feels a mysterious connection to him. Mysterious things happen that don’t necessarily have anything to do with Daniel, but Luce decides they do. So for about two hundred pages we read about Luce going to class, being bored, being socially awkward, and obsessing over Daniel Grigori. Then, suddenly! All this supernatural stuff starts happening for no apparent reason! What?

'Ugh' is right. Had this book been just its first two hundred pages, it would have been okay. Boring, a little bland, but okay. Maybe three stars if I was in a good mood. Luce has friends, has an admirer, and is living her life. Maybe a coming-of-age story? But then, suddenly (and I really mean suddenly) the entire story changes course. (We'll call this The Break for future reference). One minute everyone’s human, the next practically no one is human. Not just that, the author decides that we need to have the climax of the story right now even though nothing has been explained and the reader is like Wait, what…? (And even then, it’s boring). I get that this is going to be a series, and so the author needs some loose ends to hold interest into later books, but this was just terrible. An example: every five minutes Luce mentions her boyfriend who mysteriously caught fire and died, and then there’s a fire at the school (so you think Oh, maybe they're connected?) but then you don’t get a single answer about either of them. Not even a little clue to show us that the author has any idea what she’s doing. Why, then, are these things mentioned at all? It was very frustrating. Maybe Lauren Kate needs to take a class on brainstorming and making those little charts before writing a story, because this was just ridiculous. I saw a comment online by a girl who said this was one of her all-time favorite books (like, OMG yeah!). I wanted to find her parents and bludgeon them to death. I didn’t drop the rating to one star, because this book wasn’t so bad that I actually got angry while reading it, but it did come close.

Characters: meh
So despite being as interesting as a box of rocks (though sometimes a box of rocks can be interesting, if they’re shiny), Luce wasn’t such a bad main character. She fulfilled all the absolutely necessary jobs of a protagonist, including but not limited to: being present in the story, sometimes having an opinion about what’s going on, and speaking on occasion. Other than that, I just wanted to throw a box of rocks at her.

Arriane is my favorite character of the bunch, or she had the potential to be. The first time we see her, she reveals that she wears a tracking bracelet because she’s one of the crazier, more dangerous students at Sword and Cross. I thought, Ooh, she’s gonna do crazy things. Yeah, no. After that scene, Lauren Kate apparently felt she had adequately characterized Arriane and she needed no further substance. She’s the “fun one”, I guess, but she’s just as mild-mannered as the rest of them. Don’t even get me started on after The Break, when everyone decides to just drop their personalities and adopt new ones…

Cam also started out interesting as the Cool New Guy, but once we’ve determined that he wants to woo Luce, he’s just boring and predictable until he’s not (that stupid Break again…)

Was Daniel supposed to be attractive? Or romantic? Or interesting? He was none of those things. Or better yet, he was a little bit of all of those things, but not enough. I mean, he’s supposed to be the main event and yet he doesn’t have a single line of worth for about two hundred pages. At least I can say that his personality doesn’t change with The Break, because he didn’t have much of one to begin with.

Relationships: meh
Luce and Cam - While I noted that this book would have been okay without the Breaky supernatural parts, these two would not have been. Cam may be good-looking, but their “relationship” gets annoying. Cam buys Luce shiny things and almost desperately tries to get her attention, and Luce notices but doesn’t care because she’s obsessed with Daniel who doesn’t even like her (pre-Break). What’s the point of a love triangle when it bores you to tears?

Luce and Daniel - This book is the gold standard of Fast-Forward Romance. These two go from being outwardly indifferent to each other (if you discount Luce stalking him on the internet and dreaming about him all the time, and Daniel hating her stupid guts) to suddenly in love. They don’t even have a full normal conversation before professing this undying love. What the hell?

Special Features: meh
I was impressed when Hush, Hush did fallen angels (not a spoiler: the book’s called Fallen, what do you expect?), not because they’re crazy-amazing or anything, but because it fit the story and added a unique supplement to the average teenage relationship. In this book, it’s like Lauren Kate got writers’ block after her forbidden love story got boring and decided Hey, let’s throw all this other angel-y shit in there and see what happens! Word of advice to writers: just because the formula doesn’t blow up and singe your face when you add your crazy new plot device to it, doesn’t mean it isn’t a bad idea. Shame on you, Miss Kate (if that is your real name).

Parting Quote:

The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment.

Oh, gag me with a spoon. I beg you. I need to go wash my hands and read an awesome book to wipe my memory of the likes of this.

Hush, Hush [Review]

Title: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Series: Hush, Hush #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
What They Say:

For Nora Grey, romance was not part of the plan. She's never been particularly attracted to the boys at her school, no matter how much her best friend, Vee, pushes them at her...until Patch comes along.
With his easy smile and eyes that seem to see inside her, Nora is drawn to him against her better judgment, but after a series of terrifying encounters, Nora's not sure whom to trust. Patch seems to be everywhere she is, and to know more about her than her closest friends. She can't decide whether she should fall into his arms or run and hide. And when she tries to seek some answers, she finds herself near a truth that is far more unsettling than anything Patch makes her feel.
For Nora is right in the middle of an ancient battle between the immortal and those that have fallen - and when it comes to choosing sides, the wrong choice will cost her life.

What I Say:
Because of its ALA Teens’ Top Ten nomination, its sequel coming this October, and the fact that I’m waiting by the mailbox for Mockingjay to get here, I though I’d review this one today. People like to compare this book to Twilight, and I admit there are some weird similarities (Biology Partner of Death, anyone?), but this book brings fantasy and reality together in a way than Stephenie Meyer just couldn’t figure out. You know, like a protagonist who didn’t just step out of an Austen novel? That said…

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Plot: wow
So Nora Grey and also-conveniently-short-named Vee Sky are best friends. When their seats get moved (horror of horrors) in biology, Nora gets a new partner: mysterious new badass Patch. Nora is deeply offended by Patch’s impressive handle on sarcasm and suggestiveness (that’s a word?), so she hates him. Meanwhile, there’s another mysterious new guy (two in one book? This is a first!) Elliot with his mysterious best friend Jules. Charismatic and cute, Elliot is much better match for Nora, or is he? Mean-meanwhile, Nora’s being terrorized (sort of) by a dangerous hooded stalker who’s making her think she’s crazy. As Nora tries to solve Patch’s mystery and Elliot’s mystery and the stalker mystery (so much mystery!), she has to bring all the facts together before she finds herself in grave danger. (Spoiler: she finds herself in grave danger anyway.)

Once this story broke away from its Twilight similarities, I really got into it. If Fitzpatrick does anything, it's keep you interested by adding more and more story elements, not lingering too long on any of them. If you're trying to figure out what's what, you can't really get bored, can you? I'm not sure how the story lends to a sequel, though there is one character left unaccounted for at the end...

Characters: ooh
While I applaud Fitzpatrick for giving us a female protagonist who isn’t a starry-eyed waif or age-inappropriately-poetic, we sometimes fall to the other end of the spectrum with Nora. She’s smart and determined, but she gets all fired up about petty things (like getting her seat changed in biology. Like, calm down!) and acts all superior around Patch without even knowing him (in that preppy-snob way, ehh). However, once we pass that I-hate-you-Darcy! stage (does every little romance have to start like this?), I really like her. She doesn’t whine, she can handle herself, and she’s a pretty genuine teenager. Being a believable protagonist made it easier for me to believe the fantastic parts. Much appreciated.

So I love Patch. Why? First off, he’s a fallen angel (this is only a spoiler if you ignore the front and back cover of this book, my friends). He is the Snark King. Archduke of Snarkland. Head of the mon-snarky. Just because Nora can’t appreciate that doesn’t mean I can’t. And finally a stalker who is actually a stalker. Not just in that Are-you-following-me? way, but in that How-were-those-two-cups-of-OJ-I-saw-you-drinking-this-morning-while-hiding-in-your-bushes? way. I am impressed. Also, finally a guy who calls himself a bad person and is actually a bad person! It’s great! Only thing: I get that Patch is a nickname, but really? It’s kind of terrible. I have yet to meet a Patch that I like (that isn’t, like, a teddy bear with a missing eye).

Vee is our cliché boy-crazy, clothing-obsessed, going-to-have-to-save-her-from-danger-at-some-point sidekick. That said, I like her. She wasn’t exactly comic relief - because she wasn’t exactly funny - but she brought a lightness to the story, which it needed from time to time. And what’s the point of having Supernatural Secrets and Lies if there’s no painfully human best friend to lie to?

Relationships: ooh
Nora and Patch - After the Darcy phase, Nora and Patch are pretty good together. I won’t spoil anything, but when he tells her about the actual events leading up to their almost-first kiss, ohh boy. That's a dark romance, right there. I found it extremely refreshing that, while they have a relationship, they don’t fall in love on fast-forward. In fact, they don’t fall in love at all! It’s great! I didn’t roll my eyes even once; that must be a record!

Special Features: wow
Angels? Awesome. I mean, obviously we’ve all heard about angels before, but I’ve never read a novel with an angel as a main character. At least, not a badass angel. We only get a peek into the whole system in this book, but I’m hoping we’ll see more in the sequel. One thing that bothered me: what the hell does the title “Hush Hush” have to do with this story? I spent maybe an hour thinking about this. It makes absolutely no sense. Is it because she’s keeping a secret?

Parting Quotes:

"You possess other people's...bodies."
He accepted that statement with a nod.
"Do you want to possess my body?"
"I want to do a lot of things to your body, but that's not one of them."

Sometimes these quotes have meanings. Sometimes they just make me laugh, haha.