Switched by Amanda Hocking

(Cover picture courtesy of Macmillan.)

When Wendy Everly was six years old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her.  Eleven years later, Wendy discovers her mother might have been right.  She’s not the person she’s always believed herself to be, and her whole life begins to unravel—all because of Finn Holmes.

Finn is a mysterious guy who always seems to be watching her.  Every encounter leaves her deeply shaken…though it has more to do with her fierce attraction to him than she’d ever admit.  But it isn’t long before he reveals the truth: Wendy is a changeling who was switched at birth—and he’s come to take her home.

Now Wendy’s about to journey to a magical world she never knew existed, one that’s both beautiful and frightening.  And where she must leave her old life behind to discover who she’s meant to become…

I had never heard of Switched before my best friend read it.  Being my best (and only) friend, we like to share what we’re reading frequently so I soon heard all about the world of Switched.  She lent me the entire trilogy, so I figured I’d give it a try.  I most definitely had my doubts about the whole changeling premise and the love triangle, but they turned out to be unfounded.

Wendy is nothing like your typical YA heroine.  She’s smart and resourceful and uses her head rather than her heart to make decisions, especially near the end of the novel.  I honestly can’t thank Amanda Hocking enough for creating a realistic but strong female narrator who doesn’t fall in love with every single male she sees.  And Wendy is powerful, yes, but she has to work hard to develop her powers, unlike many YA protagonists.  She also catches onto the whole changeling thing fairly fast and accepts it, rather than going through the “magic doesn’t exist” phase until she encounters other magical beings.

This is not a vampire, zombie, werewolf or fairy novel.  It’s a troll, or Trylle, novel.  Trolls, of course, are nothing like the ones found in fairy tales and legends, but Amanda Hocking still stuck to the basics of the species: bad tempers, unruly hair, an unusual hatred of footwear, etc.  The world Wendy is catapulted into is believable and fantastically built with all kinds of wonderful little details.

I would highly recommend Switched to anyone, male or female, who’s sick of weak YA protagonists, old clichés and traditional non-human fantasy beings.

I give this novel 5/5 stars.

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Pandora by Anne Rice

(Cover picture courtesy of Books are a Garden.)

Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead.

The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans. She carries us back to her mortal girlhood in the world of Caesar Augustus, a world chronicled by Ovid and Petronius. This is where Pandora meets and falls in love with the handsome, charismatic, lighthearted, still-mortal Marius. This is the Rome she is forced to flee in fear of assassination by conspirators plotting to take over the city. And we follow her to the exotic port of Antioch, where she is destined to be reunited with Marius, now immortal and haunted by his vampire nature, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift as they set out on the fraught and fantastic adventure of their two turbulent centuries together.

[Summary courtesy of Goodreads.]

Pandora is part of Anne Rice’s New Tales of the Vampires (although they’re not that new anymore) and there is virtually no difference in writing quality or style from her more popular The Vampire Chronicles.  What is different, though, is that we finally see the stories of formerly minor characters who aren’t really connected to Lestat.  Lestat, although he is a very interesting character, does get annoying after a couple of books, so a book from the point of view of Pandora was perfect for me.

Pandora is a woman during Pax Romana, or the golden age of Rome during the later years of Augustus.  Anne Rice paints a picture of a strong-willed woman very much in control of her own life and doted on by a loving father who is far from the average pater familias.  She is a free spirit, a dreamer and when she falls in love with Marius, the logical, cold Roman man, it makes for an interesting relationship.  The dynamics are definitely not that of a traditional one!

As with all of her novels, Anne Rice has done the research and paints a believable picture of ancient Rome in its glory and during its fall.  From the reign of terror of Sejanus to the murderous paranoia and sadism of Tiberius all the way to the spread and eventual acceptance of Christianity, Anne Rice takes readers on an amazing introspective adventure.  Pandora is actually my favourite book about Anne Rice’s vampires not just because I love Roman history, but because Pandora herself is one amazing three dimensional character.

I give this book 4.5/5 stars.

Amazon*    Barnes and Noble

*Unfortunately, Amazon only has Pandora available in a double book with Vittorio the Vampire unless you want to purchase a used novel.

FireSeed One by Catherine Stine

(Cover picture courtesy of Catherine Stine’s blog.)

The year is 2089. Temperate climate has replaced Arctic ice, and much of what is now the United States is a lethal Hotzone, cut off by an insurmountable border from its northern, luckier neighbors, Ocean and Land Dominion. It is rumored that roving Hotzone nomads will kill for a water pellet or a slice of insect loaf, and that the ZWC, a dangerous Hotzone activist group, has infiltrated the border to the northern Dominions.

Up in Ocean Dominion, all eighteen year-old Varik Teitur wants is to party on SnowAngel Island with his friend Audun and flirt with college girls he dreams of joining next year in his quest to become a doctor. Instead, he inherits a vast sea farm, following the death of his father, famous marine biologist Professor Teitur. Five weeks later, ZWC member Marisa Baron breaks into the farm’s secret seed vault and a fellow activist poisons the farm’s agar crops, the world’s food source. In order to save the last agar seedlings Varik is forced to journey to the Hotzone in search of Fireseed, a plant his father supposedly developed with magical hybridization properties.

Varik takes Marisa along. Aside from being a terrorist, she’s the beautiful daughter of Melvyn Baron, the biggest real estate mogul in Land Dominion, and the professor’s old rival. Oddly, she knows lots about Fireseed, and what Hotzone land Professor Teitur bought to test the crop, before becoming embittered and trashing the project. No one except Varik knows whether Fireseed once existed off the drawing board. Might the refugees in Vegas-by-the-Sea have answers, or the bizarre Fireseed cult in the Chihuahua desert? Varik, the reluctant hero, must risk burning in the Hotzone, as his mother did, to save the ailing agar, and the world.
(Summary courtesy of Amazon.)

[Full disclosure: Catherine Stine mailed me a copy of FireSeed One in exchange for an honest review.]

Despite the fact that FireSeed One takes place in a highly creative, well-built possible future, I have mixed feelings about it.

For whatever reason, I could not connect with any of the characters.  Not a single one piqued my interest and I really didn’t care about what happened to any of them, even the main characters.  I’m not sure why this was, but it felt like there wasn’t enough emotion in the writing; I didn’t truly feel the stress Varik was under, his growing love for Marisa, his worry about the augur seeds, etc.

This could be because the world of FireSeed One is so strange and takes a lot of getting used to your first time around, meaning that after a couple read-throughs, my opinion could change.  Varik and Marisa are decent enough characters with highly believable backstories, so there is definitely a lot of potential here.  It could also be because I am far from the age group Catherine Stine has targeted, as it is a ‘middle years’ novel.  Who knows?

Despite my problems with the characters, I had no problems whatsoever with the world of FireSeed One.  Catherine Stine has written about a future that’s both exciting and frightening, depending on where you live in said future.  It won’t win any awards for including hardcore science, but the scenario she describes is very plausible, depending on whether you think climate change is real or not—a controversy I’m not going to get into.  The abandonment of people in the Hotzone is also, sadly, plausible because I have very little faith in humanity if there are dwindling resources in a rapidly changing world.

FireSeed One is a great novel for older tweens and young teens and I suspect most people will connect with the characters much better than I did.  So if you’re looking for a novel with decent characters, excellent world-building and a fast-paced plot, you’ll enjoy FireSeed One.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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Books that Should be Taught in School: Feed by Mira Grant

You’re probably thinking I’ve gone insane right now, aren’t you?  At least, literary snobs, those of you that have read Feed and those of you that have seen my review are.  I mean, a zombie novel in school.  How crazy can you get?  Well, it’s actually not that crazy.  So please hear me out before you pass judgment:
1.  It will engage high school students.

Yes, Feed has violence and coarse language.  Yes, it’s a zombie novel.  But I know for a fact that ‘worse’ books (content-wise) have been studied in school.  Does anyone here remember reading Catch-22 in high school English?  When I first read it, I was shocked that anyone ever studied this in school, yet it was still studied because it was a good novel.  Feed is an excellent novel and in my honest opinion, it’s no worse than Joseph Heller’s classic novel.  In some aspects, it is less ‘offensive’.

In most people’s minds zombies=awesome.  By high school, most people (especially boys in my experience) hate reading passionately.  Educators are always asking themselves how to improve reading scores and get kids interested in reading again.

Do you see where I’m going here?

Feed has all of the themes, messages and three dimensional characters that educators love to analyze to death while having all of the zombies, weapons and gross science that teenagers love.  It has bad language and violence (obviously), but for kids in grade 11 and 12…they’re going to see and hear a lot worse on television on an ordinary day. Continue reading →

My First 20four12 Guest Post

Today I’m posting over at 20four12 and this time I’m reviewing a zombie book that isn’t really a zombie book.  What to know what I mean?  Go on over and check out Autumn by David Moody.  You won’t regret it, I can promise you that.