It’s time for a double celebration — Winter Solstice and Zoey’s birthday. If only she wasn’t dealing with three men after her body, friends who are beginning to doubt her, Neferet and Loren scheming, and a best friend who remains undead.
What I Liked
I liked the scenes near the start where her friends and parentals have no clue how to help her celebrate her birthday, with only her ex-bf Heath and grandma really “getting” her preferences.
What I Didn’t Like
The story isn’t as solid this time, with most of it leading up to a plan to save Stevie Rae while distancing Zoey from her friends. The various near-sex scenes are ridiculous as the virtuous and virginal Z claims she’s just overcome by her emotions but getting closer and closer to sex with three different guys throughout the story. And after three books, it rings really false at this point. The romantic confusion is mixed with the sexual confusion, but the sexual side really isn’t that confusing.
A young recruit enters a war college for dragon riders, compelled to enrol by her mother, a high-ranking military officer.
What I Liked
I had seen this book in a bookstore in Maine when I was travelling over the summer, and it seemed like a fairly normal YA fantasy novel. It had some “legs”, and sounded good for the description, so I snapped a pic of the cover and downloaded it to my TBR pile when I got home. I assumed Jacob would likely read it first; we have similar tastes in those types of books, and I knew nothing about the author Rebecca Yarros or her other books. About a week ago, a woman I follow in video clips described the book as a cross between Divergent, Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings. But she also talked about spicy scenes, her lingo for sexual interactions ranging from kissing to full-on sex scenes. I thought maybe I should read it before giving it to Jacob.
Holy crap. Yeah, he’s not reading it. While I hate to spoil anything, the sex scenes read more like Penthouse Forum than YA. Graphic references to insertion of fingers, slippery genitalia, etc. It apparently reflects more of Yarros’ erotica in previous romance novels.
But going back to the story itself, I found the plot solid and see why someone would see it as a cross of fantasy with Divergent. Violet may be there against her will, preferring to have become a scribe instead, and despite her own fragile physical condition, she is definitely Dauntless-class. The training is good, and you even get to see an American Ninja Warrior course built into the training, although it isn’t labelled as such, obviously, even if it is clearly a Warped Wall obstacle. I don’t know if it’s a trilogy or not, maybe ongoing, but I’ll read the next ones.
What I Didn’t Like
I found the book a bit long and slow in parts, and the constant “I love John, but I also love the bad boy Zach” angst that is common to YA romances was a bit tedious in places. I am way too old to care about that crap. The reader has no delusions about who will be the “winner” of her heart.
I also would have liked a LOT more info about the other wings, other factions (like scribes and healers), and even more so for information about the dragons themselves. They’re super cool, yet the book drops info about them like reciting a Wikipedia page.
Finally, the ending has a two-part twist for what’s really going on (easily seen) and who’s involved, and I had pretty much figured out what was coming, just not sure which “choose your own adventure” ending it would be amongst three.
FYI, the sex scenes were way over the top and more yawn-inspiring or silly than erotic.
Within the school, Zoey has ascended to lead the Dark Daughters in place of Aphrodite, but outside the school, humans are going missing and then turning up dead.
What I Liked
In the first book, the newness of the premise was enough to overcome fairly cliché writing. None of the characters had much depth to them, they were either good or bad, and the teen angst was overwhelming at times with little nuance. In this one, Zoey’s struggling with balancing her new responsibilities, some weird stuff she keeps seeing, romantic entanglements with multiple males (three at last count) and a changing power dynamic between her, Aphrodite and Neferet. As Nyx has told her, not all darkness is bad and not all lightness is good, and the changes for Aphrodite and Neferet are great.
What I Didn’t Like
The stuff with Loren, a poet and professor, seems completely out of left field, and while future books explain it, it really seems odd here. The giant plot twist isn’t hard to see coming, but what it means and the level of complication keeps it fresh. However, the ending relationship with Neferet changes too dramatically.
A young girl’s body starts the change to become a vampire, so she has to go to a vampire finishing school, leaving behind her friends and family.
What I Liked
This school is not Hogwart’s for vampires. First of all, the characters are mid-teens, dealing with romantic angst, sexual desires, and confusion about relationships and their future. In the first big scene with vampires, the main character, Zoey Redbird, accidentally sees two young vamps having oral sex in the darkened corridors at the school. I suppose there’s a joke in there about magic wands, but mostly, the scene sets the age and content of the series squarely in the more mature part of the YA world. Zoey quickly demonstrates that she has special powers for a young vampire, and ends up antagonizing the cool clique while befriending the nerd herd. The newness of all of it overcomes some of the teenage angsty parts.
What I Didn’t Like
The teenage angst. The first book isn’t completely horrible; it’s the age the books are meant for, but at some point, even her friends were ready to move on to more important topics than her budding interest in boys.
A robbery crew is planning to rip off an entire small apartment building of tenants in one night.
What I Liked
I had read a lot of Sanders’ novels before I got to this one, out of order. While it is the first of the Edward X. Delaney series, he is a relatively small part of the book near the end. Instead, it reads like the same structure of the movie, the Usual Suspects (which drew inspiration from the book). There are scenes in the present day, after the day of the robbery, with people being interviewed about what happened. But in addition to their witness statements, there are also numerous electronic surveillance tapes of the various criminals being surveilled by a bunch of different police groups, none of which are talking to each other.
What I Didn’t Like
I was on the fence for the rating between four stars or five. While the book is awesome, there is a niggling detail in the plot that bothers me. The “premise” of all the surveillance is that all of these crooks were being surveilled by separate law enforcement units (different precincts, different federal agencies, and so on), and so none of them had the “big picture” to prevent it. Which is fine, it’s a tale as old as time as they say, and a popular theme for crime sprees like serial killers. No one was looking at the cases as connected. Which is fine as a premise, except in each of the fictional tapes referred to as the premise for the book, it is very clear not only that a crime is about to happen, but in many of them, the actual day of the crime, at least one of the major players, and in some cases, the address of the building. Yet NONE of the law enforcement agencies portrayed as running the wiretaps bother to warn the precinct where it will happen, or when, or how? It’s not very realistic in plotting, as the tapes are made several months in advance, according to the text. If it was all in the week ahead, potentially the transcripts weren’t ready or nobody had listened to the tapes yet, sure. But months ahead, someone would have warned someone so the cops could be ready. In the end, I decided it wasn’t a big enough plot device to knock it down a full star.
