Feyland: The Bright Court

Feyland: The Bright Court
by Anthea Sharp

Published May 2012
340 pages

This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

INSIDE THE GAME…

Jennet Carter escaped the dark faeries of Feyland once. Now, fey magic is seeping out of the prototype game, beguiling the unwary and threatening everyone she cares about.

MAGIC…

Tam Linn may be a hero in-game, but his real life is severely complicated. Still, he’ll do whatever it takes to stop the creatures of Feyland, even if it means pushing Jennet toward the new guy in school—the one with an inside connection to sim-gaming… and the uncanny ability to charm everyone he meets.

ALWAYS WINS…

Despite the danger, Jennet and Tam must return to Feyland to face the magic of the Bright Court—and a powerful new enemy who won’t stop until the human world is at the mercy of the Realm of Faery.

* * *

Wow. Just---wow.

I loved the first book, and as much as I was looking forward to this one, I was a little concerned that I'd be let down. (It happens a lot with second books. I didn't need to worry. The Bright Court reminded me how much I loved The Dark Realm.


There's no need to say how happy I was to see Tam again. He's one of the best book characters I've ever read.


If there's anything that could have made this book even better, it would have been just a little bit more happening within the Feyland game. I love that place!


Anyone and everyone who enjoys fantasy, gaming, a great story, amazing characters, incredible writing, worlds that are so alive they don't stay within the pages---I could go on and on---MUST read this. If you haven't started this series yet, do not wait another second. You won't regret it!


Now comes the horribly hard, frustrating job of waiting for the next book.


Bravo.


10/5 stars (Yes, I know that doesn't exactly work. Deal with it.)

The Substitute

The Substitute
by Holly Barrington

This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

“The Substitute” is set in an alternate Britain, where Vampires and Mortals co-exist more or less in harmony. However, that may soon be about to change . . .

Emily Brown starts her new job at Pathway Software, and at first everything goes well. She makes new friends there and her bosses are impressed so things are really looking up for Emily. Until her friend is killed. Murdered. The official account said it was a gang hit gone bad, and rumours suggest she had drugs in her possession.

However another, unofficial, report suggests that the bullet wounds were all post-mortem, and the drugs were planted on her in the morgue. It also says that she suffered multiple broken bones, cuts, contusions and…vampire bites. Everything suggests that her friend died a brutal and vicious death at the hands of a number of vampires.

Vampire and Mortal relations are, on the whole, very good. Ever since The Compact, there have been eighty five years of unprecedented peace between the two worlds. But there are some dissenters, the foremost of which are the sinister Circle of Ixiom. And Emily is about to become their bitterest enemy . . .

* * *

This was a really great twist on the vampire theme. I loved the way vampires were able to live "normal" lives, working and living alongside humans.


I think my favorite part of this book was the spy story. Yes, it's a vampire spy book. Where else are you going to get that? I'm a sucker for spy stories.


The characters were well-developed, and interesting. I loved all the Doctor Who references. (Seriously, though, who wouldn't?)


I have to say, though, that there was one drawback to this book for me. Intermixed with the actual story, there were history lessons and flashbacks. While the information was great, I would have loved to see it worked in with the story a bit more instead of being removed from the storyline to be given the information.


Overall, I enjoyed the book. Ms. Barrington has a lot going for her, and I look forward to watching her career develop.


4/5 stars

Friday Feature: Divergent

Friday Feature is where we share books we love that have been out for several years. We don't want these treasures to get lost just because they aren't babies anymore!

Divergent (Divergent, #1)
by Veronica Roth

487 pages
Published May 3, 2011

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

* * *

Okay, I know this book isn't old, by any means, but I had to use it for the Friday Feature. I just liked it that much!

This book has been on my TBR list since before it came out last year, and finally, I've gotten to it. I wish I'd moved it up the list.

I absolutely loved it. Honestly, this is one of the best dystopian books I've read. It might even be better than "Hunger Games."


While I usually try to say something about the book, I don't want to give a single thing away. Just read it. You'll be happy you did!


5/5 stars

The Candle Star (Divided Decade Trilogy, #1)

The Candle Star (Divided Decade Trilogy, #1)
by Michelle Isenhoff


Paperback, 168 pages
Published April 2011 by Candle Star Press


This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.


When Emily was a little girl, her father had taken her outside in each season and pointed out the pictures in the stars, explaining the ancient lore behind them. She wondered if he was looking up at the same stars right now.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?"

Emily started. She hadn't heard Malachi approach.

"Looks like you can just reach up and pluck one down, maybe set it in a ring," he said. "It'd be the most beautiful piece of jewelry you ever laid eyes on."

He pointed to the Big Dipper. "See the last two stars in the bowl of the spoon? They line up just right and point the way to the North Star."

Emily had learned that when she was six.

"When I was little, I remember Mama setting a candle in the window on the nights Daddy would get in late. I slept sound on those nights, confident that beacon was guiding my daddy home."

He paused as he contemplated the night sky. "The North Star is kind of like a candle God hung up special to guide His lost children home. Lot of black folks looking up at it right now, directing themselves home to freedom." Ages 10+

***

The Candle Star, a work of historical fiction, is the story of a girl who, after being thrown into a completely different world, comes to see the flaws in her long-held beliefs.  Growing up on a plantation in the South, Emily had never questioned slavery.  When her parents sent her up North, she found herself in a world where slavery was not only nonexistent, but was considered morally and ethically wrong.  As she tried to cling to her beliefs she saw the suffering in the lives of those around her and came to see that she had been wrong.  I love the character Malachi.  Instead of just arguing and preaching to Emily, he shows her little by little how people can live equally regardless of their race.  This book is great for late elementary grades and up.  It's appropriate and very enjoyable!


4/5 stars

Indian Maidens Bust Loose

Indian Maidens Bust Loose
by Vidya Samson

Published April 21, 2012
313 pages

This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

East and West may meet, but sometimes they shouldn't. That's what Nisha Desai's conservative Hindu family thinks when a black-sheep American aunt and her trouble-magnet teenage daughters come to visit them in India. The guests are seen as an invading force, equipped with weapons of mass corruption.

But to Nisha, the rich aunt looks like a one-woman foreign aid program and a way to escape the horrible suitors her father keeps foisting on her. She makes every effort to charm the visitors. This is not an easy task, for the aunt is a New Age space case, and the cousins’ appetite for disasters threatens to level the city of Ahmedabad. In short order, the demented cousins instigate an elopement, a public protest, and a riot that gets Nisha thrown in jail.

It's only when Nisha's father adopts a pet cow and convinces half the city it's the reincarnation of a Hindu deity that the two families are united in a common goal: to bilk thousands. The result is Madison Avenue's idea of a religious experience, which is not a controllable situation.

Indian Maidens Bust Loose is a hilarious romp in the land of cows, curry, and the Kama Sutra.

* * *

This book starts with two sisters, Nisha and Vinita, are doing everything they can to avoid having to marry the horrible prospective husbands their father keeps picking out. And they are horrible.

When the American cousins come to visit, Nisha is hoping to convince them to take her home with them and let her study journalism. She's determined to make a good impression, while everyone else---with the exception of the grandmother---are determined to make the aunt and cousins miserable.

This book is hilarious, and a very quick read (I read it in a day). There were only a few times where I wished things would speed up a little.

I have to admit, I kept forgetting the girls were as old as they were. They'd finished college, and several times I had to remind myself they weren't high school girls. It's just a cultural thing.


4/5 stars

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
by Charles C Mann
537 pages
pub. Aug 9, 2011

From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet.

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

***

Wow, the summary on Goodreads is like a review in and of itself. Nevertheless, here are my thoughts as well :)

This is all about how Columbus coming to the Americas was one of the biggest pushes towards our current globalization and how that actually changed societies, economies, agriculture, and religion.

Did you know that...

Potatoes orginated in South America (most likely Brazil) and there were hundreds of varieties.

American Indians would plant small amounts of a variety of food within the forests in whatever soil was open. No plowing or fields for them.

Rice did not originate in any of the Asian countries.

Rubber trees are considered "forest" in China, but strip the soil of all its nutrients and make it unusable for years. But, because they're cheap to plant and can yield profit, acres and acres and acres of land are being planted with them.

Early European settlers weren't racist against SKIN COLOR and in fact, had many interracial marriages and children. So many, in fact, that they they tried to classify the different combinations and had dozens of different classes. (They did discriminate though! They just thought the "evil" was in the blood, not the color of skin. Not much of a distinction overall, but still interesting. That's why interracial was okay in their eyes though, because if the children had one European parent, it was thought to override the bad blood from the other parent)

This is just a handful of interesting things that were new to me. The book is well documented, thoroughly researched, and he lets you know when what he is saying is an opinion or conjecture. He's not making a case for whether globalization was bad or good (why would he? There's really no way to reverse it), but very skillfully points out the pros and cons. And that sometimes the pros are the very thing that lead to the cons.
A fascinating read! Well written and thankfully devoid of pompous, boring jargon!

10/10 stars!

Friday Feature: Keeper of Dreams

Friday Feature is where we share books we love that have been out for several years. We don't want these treasures to get lost just because they aren't babies anymore!

Keeper of Dreams
by Orson Scott Card

656 pages
published 2008

This huge new collection of the short stories of one of Science Fiction’s most beloved and popular writers is sure to please his millions of fans. The volume contains 24 stories, Card’s new introductions for each story, and commentary on his life and work.


Like the earlier Maps in A Mirror, this collection is a definitive retrospective of the short fiction career of the writer that The Houston Post called “the best writer science fiction has to offer.”

***

Over 600 pages worth of short stories and jam-packed with fascinating and diverse, but almost always moving, tales. (Sci-fi, fantasy, "mormon", and realistic) One of the best things about a collection of short stories (if they're good, that is) is it's easier to put the book down at night (because if you're like me, "just one more chapter" usually ends at 4am as the book slips from my exhausted hand).

 My favorites are "Inventing Lovers on the Phone", "Feed the Baby of Love", "Dust", "50 WPM", "The Yazoo Queen", "Angles", and "Worthy to be one of Us". I would recommend this book to everyone just to read "Feed the Baby of Love" though. A very very powerful story!

Easily 10/10 stars!