Tag Archives: Pinoy Pop

Beware the Killer Unicorns

Posted on by
1

Rampant by Diana Peterfreund

Rampantby Diana Peterfreund

Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns…

The sparkly, innocent creatures of lore are a myth. Real unicorns are venomous, man-eating monsters with huge fangs and razor-sharp horns. And they can only be killed by virgin descendants of Alexander the Great.

Fortunately, unicorns have been extinct for a hundred and fifty years.

Or not.

Astrid Llewelyn has always scoffed ather eccentric mother’s stories about killer unicorns. But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend in the woods – thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to prom – Astrid learns that unicorns are real and dangerous, and she has a family legacy to uphold. Her mother packs her off to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries.

However, at the cloisters, all is not what is seems. Outside, the unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from crumbling, bone-covered walls that vibrate with a terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to – perhaps most dangerously of all – her growing attraction to a handsome art student… and a relationship that could jeopardize everything.

Unicorns: everyone knows about them. This mythical creature is often described as a horse with a single horn protruding from its forehead, often pure white in color. A unicorn is often portrayed as a beautiful, majestic creature that is gentle, yet fierce, and not born out of human fears (Marianna Mayer, The Unicorn and the Lake, quoted from Wikipedia). Their horns are known to neutralize poison, and in Harry Potter, anyone who drinks unicorn blood will gain eternal – albeit cursed – life. Even contemporary, non-speculative, literature uses unicorns as a symbol of goodness: in Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley Twins series, the most popular girls in middle school were all a part of The Unicorn Club.

Unicorns: sweet, cuddly, and totally harmless mythological creatures, right?

Not in Astrid Llewelyn’s world. Diana Peterfreund tells us to forget everything we know about unicorns in the first book of her Killer Unicorns series, Rampant. Sixteen-year-old Astrid grew up believing that unicorns were venomous, man-eating beasts that only virgin descendants of Alexander the Great could hunt and kill, all thanks to her eccentric mother. Astrid tolerates all the unicorn talk just to entertain her mom’s whims, until her boyfriend is attacked by a rogue unicorn and is saved by her mom with a leftover unicorn antidote called The Remedy. Astrid’s life turns upside-down as Lilith, her mother, immediately sends her to Rome, to claim her birthright as a unicorn hunter. Resistance is futile for Astrid, and she arrives at the re-opened Cloisters of Ctesias with almost zero hunting knowledge and a desire to come back home. But as the training goes on, Astrid finds out that she not only has to learn how to kill a unicorn, but also to figure out the agenda of the other hunters and find out why the cloisters’ financial sponsor, Gordian, is acting suspicious, all while dealing with her growing attraction to an art student… and this last might be the most dangerous issue of all.

Because, you know, to hunt a unicorn, one must be a virgin. Click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating: ★★★★★

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 44 out of 100 for 2010

My copy: e-book, $9.99 from Amazon Kindle Store

Cover image: Indiebound
Blurb: Goodreads

→ Diana Peterfreund’s website

Three Wishes

Posted on by
1

As You Wish by Jackson PearceAs You Wish by Jackson Pearce

Ever since Viola’s boyfriend broke up with her, she has spent her days silently wishing—to have someone love her again and, more importantly, to belong again—until one day she inadvertently summons a young genie out of his world and into her own. He will remain until she makes three wishes.

Jinn is anxious to return home, but Viola is terrified of wishing, afraid she will not wish for the right thing, the thing that will make her truly happy. As the two spend time together, the lines between master and servant begin to blur, and soon Jinn can’t deny that he’s falling for Viola. But it’s only after Viola makes her first wish that she realizes she’s in love with Jinn as well . . . and that if she wishes twice more, he will disappear from her life—and her world—forever.

I was one of those kids who believed in wishing on stars. My earliest memory of making a wish was when my brother told me about the North Star, and I wished that I’d dream about Cinderella that night (I was pretty young then). Years later, my friends and I would wait for the first star to appear so we could make a wish before going home, but as time went by, I found it harder and harder to make a simple wish. I’d end up using my wishes (even birthday wishes) for some beauty pageant greater good, you know, like world peace. It’s a part of growing up I guess, or a fear that I’d wish for the wrong thing and then it would come true. I needed to be sure that if my wish did come true, it would be one I wouldn’t regret.

Sixteen-year-old Viola faces the same problem in Jackson Pearce’s novel, As You Wish. Viola has been feeling invisible ever since her best friend and boyfriend, Lawrence, broke up with her after confessing he was gay. His coming out of the closet catapulted him to popularity, and Viola’s heartbreak pushed her to the sidelines. For the next seven months, she spends most of her days observing the people around her, trying to figure out how they belong to their own groups and wishing that she could simply belong, like they did. Viola’s desperate wish summons a young and handsome genie with no name, bearing (what else?) three wishes. The genie is anxious to return to his home world (he ages in the human world) but the only way for him to go back is for his master to use up her wishes. However, Viola is terrified of making the wrong wish, so she asks for time, much to the genie’s chagrin. Refusing to treat the genie as a slave, Viola gives him a name, Jinn, and forces him to call her by her name instead of Master. And that’s when things get complicated…Click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating: ★★★★★

My copy: Kindle edition

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 42 out of 100 for 2010

→ Jackson Pearce’s website

Chicklit or Horror?

Posted on by
Reply

Gravity vs. The Girl by Riley NoehrenGravity vs. the Girl by Riley Noehren

Samantha Green has just spent an entire year in her pajamas, and she is beginning to regret it. What’s more, she is haunted by four ghosts that are former versions of herself. First up is the overachieving and materialistic attorney, who is furious with Samantha for throwing away the career she worked so hard to build. Second is the lackadaisical college student who is high on life but low on responsibility. Next is the melodramatic teenager, who is consumed with her social standing, teal eyeliner and teased bangs. Finally, there is the scrappy six-year old, whose only objective is to overcome gravity so that she can fly. Samantha’s ghosts alternate between fighting with each other, rallying around Samantha’s budding sanity and falling in love with a string of good-for-nothing drummers. Despite her reluctance to do so, Samantha must rely on these spirits from the past to repair the present and ensure her future.

Inbetween Sundays, one of the weekly podcasts I subscribe to, has this little fun little segment called Chick Flick or Horror Movie, where one of the hosts would say the title of a movie and its synopsis, and the other would have to guess if it’s a horror movie or a chick flick. Easy enough? Not for the hosts, both male, which is part of the fun: I find it hilarious to hear them think that Britney Spears’ first movie Crossroads is a horror movie. The thing that struck me about the game is the fact that there are few grey areas, since genres in Hollywood seem to be mutually exclusive. Most commercial movies are typically classified only under one specific genre: a comedy movie may be able to teach life lessons and bring some tears to but it won’t be classified as a drama, just like a horror movie cannot be a romantic comedy.

Books, however, are a different story. In literature more so than in cinema, genres evolve as more and more books are written and published. Nowadays, many books are a mixture of two or more genres. Of course, it’s not always easy to classify books into their respective mixed genres, especially if you’re rather broad and loose with classifications, as I am: I only really divide books into two genres, fantasy and non-fantasy. Anything that falls out of the ordinary is fantasy for me.

Which brings me to my conundrum with Riley Noehren’s Gravity vs. the Girl. This Whitney Award winner for Best Novel by a New Author in 2009 reads like standard non-fantasy chick lit right from the opening pages…click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating: ★★★★★

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 37 out of 100 for 2010

→ Get Gravity vs. the Girl by Riley Noehren from Amazon.com
→ Riley Noehren’s website

Second Life Falls Short

Posted on by
Reply

The Short Second Life of Bree TannerThe Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer

Fans of The Twilight Saga will be enthralled by this riveting story of Bree Tanner, a character first introduced in Eclipse, and the darker side of the newborn vampire world she inhabits.

In another irresistible combination of danger, mystery, and romance, Stephenie Meyer tells the devastating story of Bree and the newborn army as they prepare to close in on Bella Swan and the Cullens, following their encounter to its unforgettable conclusion.

Bree Tanner can barely remember life before she had uncannily powerful senses, superhuman reflexes and unstoppable physical strength. Life before she had a relentless thirst for blood… life before she became a vampire.

All Bree knows is that living with her fellow newborns has few certainties and even fewer rules: watch your back, don’t draw attention to yourself and, above all, make it home by sunrise or die. What she doesn’t know: her time as an immortal is quickly running out.

Then Bree finds an unexpected friend in Diego, a newborn just as curious as Bree about their mysterious creator, whom they know only as “her”. As they come to realize that the newborns are pawns in a game larger than anything they could have imagined, Bree and Diego must choose sides and decide whom to trus. But when everything you know about vampires is based on a lie, how do you find the truth?

It was a success story that began with a dream – literally. In 2003, a housewife and law school aspirant who had never written a short story in her entire life woke up from a vivid dream about a vampire who was in love with a human girl, but who also thirsted for her blood. The woman felt compelled to write the dream down, just for herself, until her sister urged her to send the manuscript for publication. Fifteen letters and nine rejections later, Stephenie Meyer found a deal that catapulted her to literary fame (and sometimes infamy) with her Twilight saga.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years: Twilight is the story of an ordinary human girl named Bella Swan and her romance with a 107-year-old vampire Edward Cullen. The saga is composed of four books – Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn – that chronicle their romance and attendant complications (werewolf Jacob Black, and the Volturi, who enforce vampire law). Midnight Sun, the companion novel to the saga that tells the story from Edward’s point of view, was delayed indefinitely after the chapters were leaked online, and Meyer allegedly decided to focus her energy on non-Twilight books.

Or so we thought. Yet now we have Bree Tanner, a new novella in the same universe as the Twilight Saga. Click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating: ★★★★★

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 38 out of 100 for 2010
* Book # 20 out of 20 Fantasy books for 2010

Have Soul, Will Scream

Posted on by
Reply

My Soul to Take by Rachel VincentMy Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent

She doesn’t see dead people, but…

She senses when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about her need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only Kaylee knows who’ll be next…

What would you do if you knew the exact date and time of your death? What would do as you approached your last few minutes of being alive?

A morbid question, right? A premonition of death is something that scares most people, myself included. They say one shouldn’t be afraid of death since everyone will eventually leave this earth, but that’s tough advice to take when you feel like you still have so much unfinished businesses in this life, and when you think of all the people you will be leaving behind. I once tried to imagine that it was my last day alive, and while theoretically that should help you “seize the day”,  I just ended up becoming depressed. What’s terrifying about death is that we are absolutely powerless against it: it comes, and when it does, we can’t stop it.

But what if you had advance warning–but for someone else? Let’s push it further: what if you could see and feel if a person was nearing his or her death, but you couldn’t warn them about it? What if all you could do was scream?

Kaylee Cavanaugh deals with this dilemma in Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers series. Click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating: ★★★★★

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 35 out of 100 for 2010
* Book # 18 out of 20 Fantasy books for 2010

→ Get My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent from Amazon.com
→ Rachel Vincent’s website

The Song of the Lioness (Tamora Pierce)

Posted on by
3
The Song of the Lioness

The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce

I wasn’t much of a fantasy reader when I was young. My love affair with reading started with one of the Sweet Valley Kids books. Early on, I never strayed from the Sweet Valley, Nancy Drew and Babysitters Club shelves during bookstore visits, ignoring all the other books and genres in the process. When I grew up, I was more likely to pick up “fluffy” books than fantasy or scifi. I can answer a question about high school cliques in a heartbeat, but anything about magic or supernatural creatures or lands that only exist in the imagination, and my brain shuts down. It wasn’t until last year, when I set a personal goal to read more fantasy books, that I wandered over to other shelves. However, given the great variety of fantasy titles, it’s easy for a fantasy newbie like me to be overwhelmed.

Enter Tamora Pierce and The Song of the Lioness series. Spoiler Warning from here on out.

Published from 1983 to 1988, The Song of the Lioness was originally written as a single book for adults, but was rejected by the publisher. Pierce cut up the manuscript and revised it into four books for teenagers. These four books feature Alanna of Trebond, and chronicle her journey into knighthood and her adventures as a knight. In Alanna: The First Adventure, we meet Alanna and her twin brother Thom, who switches places with her to go to the City of the Gods so Alanna could fulfill her dream to be a lady knight. She disguises herself as a boy, names herself Alan, and starts her knight training at the royal court.  Alanna makes friends along the way like Crown Prince Jonathan, King of Thieves George Cooper, and her teacher, Sir Myles of Olau, as well as enemies like Ralon of Malven and the man who becomes Alanna’s nemesis, Duke Roger of Conte. In the next book, In the Hands of the Goddess, Alanna continues her training, now as Jonathan’s squire and good friend, and adopts a strange purple-eyed cat she named Faithful. She joins her first war and tries to find proof that Roger is responsible for the mess that the kingdom finds itself in. Alanna becomes known as The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, which is also the title of the third book, where she leaves Tortall after revealing her identity, killing Roger and becoming a knight. She finds herself joining a Bahzir tribe where she becomes a shaman, and learns how to use and be less afraid of her power. The quartet ends with Lioness Rampant, where Alanna searches for the legendary Dominion Jewel, and returns home to help her friends to fight a war and protect both the soon-to-be-crowned King Jonathan and all of Tortall. Click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating:
Alanna: The First Adventure ★★★★★
In the Hand of the Goddess ★★★★★
Woman Who Rides Like a Man ★★★★★
Lioness Rampant ★★★★★

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 30-33 out of 100 for 2010
* Book # 14-17 out of 20 Fantasy books for 2010

→ Tamora Piece’s website

Related Posts with Thumbnails