Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Review: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
Published: August 20, 2013
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 480 (Paperback)
Series: The Bone Season #1
Source: Publisher
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others' minds. Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city - Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly - as soldiers in their army.

Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine - a young woman learning to harness her powers in a world where everything has been taken from her. It also introduces and extraordinary young writer, with huge ambition and a teeming imagination. Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Review: Pawn by Aimée Carter

Pawn by Aimée Carter
Published: November 26, 2013
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Pages: 343 (Hardcover)
Series: The Blackcoat Rebellion #1
Source: Harelquin Teen Panel
My Rating: 2.5 of 5 stars


YOU CAN BE A VII. IF YOU GIVE UP EVERYTHING.

For Kitty Doe, it seems like an easy choice. She can either spend her life as a III in misery, looked down upon by the higher ranks and forced to leave the people she loves, or she can become a VII and join the most powerful family in the country.

If she says yes, Kitty will be Masked - surgically transformed into Lila Hart, the Prime Minister's niece, who died under mysterious circumstances. As a member of the Hart family, she will be famous. She will be adored. And for the first time, she will matter. 

There's only one catch. She must also stop the rebellion that Lila secretly fostered, the same one that got her killed, and one Kitty believes in. Faced with threats, conspiracies and a life that's not her own, she must decide which path to choose and learn how to become more than a pawn in a twisted game she's only beginning to understand.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Review: Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor
Published: April 8, 2014
Publisher: Little Brown
Pages: 613 (Hardcover)
Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone #3
Source: Bought
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars


By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.  

Common enemy, common cause. 

When Jael's brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.

And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.

But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz ... something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.

What power can bruise the sky? 

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.

At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?