Second Life Falls Short

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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: [rating=2]

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

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Have Soul, Will Scream

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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: [rating=4]

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

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The Song of the Lioness (Tamora Pierce)

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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 [rating=4]
In the Hand of the Goddess [rating=4]
Woman Who Rides Like a Man [rating=3]
Lioness Rampant [rating=5]

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

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Dark, but not divine

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The Dark Divine by Bree DespainThe Dark Divine by Bree Despain

A prodigal son

A dangerous love

A deadly secret . . .

I stood back and watched his movements. Daniel had that way about him that could shut me down in an instant. . . . I kicked the gravel a couple of times and worked up my courage again. “Tell me . . . I mean . . . why did you come back? Why now, after all this time?”

Grace Divine, daughter of the local pastor, always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared—the night she found her brother Jude collapsed on the porch, covered in blood. But she has no idea what a truly monstrous secret that night really held. And when Daniel returns three years later, Grace can no longer deny her attraction to him, despite promising Jude she’ll stay away.

As Grace gets closer to Daniel, her actions stir the ancient evil Daniel unleashed that horrific night. Grace must discover the truth behind Jude and Daniel’s dark secret . . . and the cure that can save the ones she loves. But she may have to lay down the ultimate sacrifice to do it—her soul.

I was one of the people who loved Twilight at the start of its hype. I’m not really embarrassed to admit it – curiosity got me to check it out after reading a post by a blogger friend raving about the saga. I found it in a bookstore near where I work, bought it, and devoured it over a weekend. I admit to also falling in love with Edward Cullen and the romance, and then falling for Jacob and all his wolfish charms by the second book. I was never a rabid fan, but I liked the saga up until I read the last book. After Breaking Dawn, I turned my back on Stephenie Meyer for making an ending like that.

I won’t go into detail why I stopped liking the saga, but whenever I run into other supernatural romances, I can’t help but compare them to Twilight. Wait, a correction: whenever I come across any supernatural romances with vampires or werewolves, I can’t help but compare them to Twilight, probably because it’s the first book I read on that genre. I also blame it on all the hype the Twilight Saga gets.

So when I came across Bree Despain’s debut work, The Dark Divine, I wondered if it would be another Twilight-like novel…click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating: [rating=2]

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 29 out of 100 for 2010
* Book # 13 out of 20 Fantasy books for 2010

→ Get The Dark Divine by Bree Despain from Amazon.com
→ Bree Despain’s website

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When will you rise?

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Feed by Mira GrantFeed by Mira Grant

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

NOW, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them.

Note: Will you just look at that awesome cover???

It was a normal afternoon at work. My colleagues and I were preparing to attend a required meeting when the boys started discussing their last Left 4 Dead 2 gaming session. I listened to them talk about how hard it was to get through whatever level they were in and how they blasted the zombies in the game, then I interrupted them with a question: “What if a zombie apocalypse actually happens?”

That simple question started a string of discussions about what could happen if zombies actually walk among us, hungry for our brains. We talked about the zombie apocalypse at length and what we would do: where to hide, how to kill zombies effectively, what weapons to use given our location, how to survive, even what to do if one of us were to get infected. Answers drew from sources of zombie wisdom ranging from movies like Zombieland to games like Resident Evil and even Plants vs. Zombies, all discussed with absolute seriousness, as if a zombie invasion was a real possibility.

In Mira Grant’s Feed, the first book in the Newsflesh trilogy, zombies have become a part of the normal everyday existence…click here to read the rest of the review.

Rating: [rating=5]

2010 Challenge Status:
* Book # 28 out of 100 for 2010
* Book # 12 out of 20 Fantasy books for 2010

→ Get Feed by Mira Grant on Amazon.com
→ Mira Grant’s website
→ Newsflesh Trilogy website

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