Uprooted by Naomi Novik

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Uprooted by Naomi Novik 
N/A
Source: Gifted Hardcover
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication Date: Published May 21st 2015
Age Group: Mature YA

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.
Her people rely on the cold, ambitious wizard, known only as the Dragon, to keep the wood's powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman must be handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as being lost to the wood.
The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia - all the things Agnieszka isn't - and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.
But no one can predict how or why the Dragon chooses a girl. And when he comes, it is not Kasia he will take with him.
From the author of the Temeraire series comes this hugely imaginative, engrossing and vivid fantasy novel, inspired by folk and fairy tales. It is perfect reading for fans of Robin Hobb and Trudi Canavan.

Let me tell you something - this book is huge. It's only 438 pages but the size of this gorgeous hardcover? MASSIVE. So you'll understand just how excited I was for this book that I started it without hesitation the day after I got it, and it only took me that long because I had a prior book to finish.

I wasn't even two pages in when I knew I would adore this book. I was absolutely right.

The main character and narrator is Agnieszka, and even though I'm pretty sure I've never once pronounced her name right, I knew from the second she opened her mouth that I would love her.

She is a Dragon-Born girl, which is the term for a girl born on a Dragon year - every ten years, the valley's wizard the Dragon takes one seventeen year old girl to live with him in his tower. But Agnieszka and her family aren't really worried, because the Dragon always seems to take the best girl, and Agnieszka's best friend Kasia is a the sure choice that year.

But, surprise, Nieshka is chosen and now she has to deal with being uprooted (see what I did there??) and living with a surly, neat-freak, perfectionist wizard who won't try even a little bit to make the transition bearable.  

From that point on, things get real interesting.

First of all, let me say this - the bromance (is there a female term for bromance??) between Nieshka and Kasia is life. I was worried that Uprooted will follow in Cruel Beauty's steps with more hate than friendship, but it totally didn't. Nieshka and Kasia are real, honest to god, best friends. They're practically sisters. It was beautiful, seriously. 

Then there is the Dragon. The Dragon is not an actual Dragon and I was shipping him and Nieshka from pretty much the first time they met. They just clashed so beautifully - she with her spontaneous, outdoorsy, clumsy manner and him with his straight laced, dignified order. It made from some hilarious interactions, and you could see from the get-go that those interaction rattled both of them.

In the best way possible.

I mean, it's sort of a hate to love relationship, and it is executed perfectly. You fall in love together with these two characters, and the best part is that neither of them need to voice their feelings to know they are there. 

Oh, and they are hot. Sometimes in an explicit sort of way--but don't worry, that content is not overboard and it's very tasteful. Novik isn't scared to go past PG-13 and it fits the mood, the story and the characters to a boot. 

Now lets talk a little about the world because it was beautiful and horrifying and magical. Novik did a wonderful job flashing out the world without info-dumping it on you, letting you learn the ins and outs through the characters and their experiences. In this world, some rare people have magic. And the biggest threat to all the kingdom's people is not the war always brewing on the horizon, it is the Wood.

Yes. When was the last time you read a book where a Wood was the main antagonist? And not just any antagonist - a manipulative, cruel, mind controlling one who will do anything in his power to devour all the land and kill everyone in it. 

What, you're scared now? You should be. 

Alongside Nieshka, Dragon and Kasia, there are many side characters, such as the other magicians, the (kind of hateful) prince, the king, and the villagers. They were all, even when they were kind of awful, charming in their own ways. Mostly because no one in this book is really evil. 

Oh, and you should know - this book doesn't pull any punches. There are deaths. From a certain point there is a death almost every page. And some of it is hella gory. But even so, it's still so damn charming.

GAh, I don't know. This book does stuff to me. 

Uprooted is everything. The only reason it's not a full five star is that I just want more of this world and characters so damned much that I can't deal with this being the end.

  Nitzan★

Furious by Jill Wolfson

Furious by Jill Wolfson
Series: N/A
Source: Won
Publisher: Henry Holt & CO.
Publication Date: April 16, 2013

Three high school girls become the avenging Furies of Greek legend.

We were only three angry girls, to begin with. Alix, the hot-tempered surfer chick; Stephanie, the tree-hugging activist; and me, Meg, the quiet foster kid, the one who never quite fit in. We hardly knew each other, but each of us nurtured a burning anger: at the jerks in our class, at our disappointing parents, at the whole flawed, unjust world.

We were only three angry girls, simmering uselessly in our ocean-side California town, until one day a mysterious, beautiful classmate named Ambrosia taught us what else we could be: Powerful. Deadly. Furious.

We are straight out of mythology, goddesses who avenge, retaliate, punish, haunt, hunt, and don't stand around being victims, but make things happen.

I was really expecting to love Furious. And while I liked it, this didn't add up to "love" for me; although I wish it could have. The first seemingly small thing that I couldn't get past was the fact that it's based in America. Normally, this isn't a big deal, as most YA books are based in America. But the fact still remains that this is a GREEK myth come to life. Why isn't it based in Greece?

I realize that this is a small thing... but come on! I never got an explanation for it. And I would have liked to have seen one. The other thing that bothered me was "The Plagues". I could possibly see how someone might come up with a set of nicknames like that, but I really doubt that it would be a group of teenage boys. It just doesn't ring true for me. I can't imagine boys going by nicknames such as "Gnat", "Bubonic" or "Pox". This is also a small thing. The rest of the book was fairly enjoyable!

I liked the character of Stephanie; I believe that she was my favorite. I could relate to her, because in her own way she was trying to change the world. I loved that about her. Even when she could have (or even should have) given up, she kept trying to stand up for what she believed in. As a result, I admired her. Alix and Meg, however, didn't really do it for me. Alix was too tough and hardcore (with no sense of mercy) and Meg was... how do I say this gently? I felt like Meg was way too power-hungry, which threw her sense of justice out of whack.

Meg definitely grew as a character throughout the book, though, which is a bit more than I can say for Alix. Stephanie figured it out too, eventually. I was proud of them for that. I felt bad for Meg's friend Raymond, though. He always seemed like such a happy light-- I wish that he had gotten a bit more character time, you know? I also wish that the romance between Meg & Brendon would have been given more time. They fell "in love" by the second date, which is a big no-no. Thankfully, the romance was such a small part of the book that I easily overlooked it.

My favorite part of this book was the myth of the Furies. I loved it when the girls took out their fury on people; it gave the story so much. It was so easy to see why they did, and I'm positive that the story would have been lacking if they hadn't thought that they were justice itself. As Furies, they were superbly power hungry and mildly insane.

All in all, I would definitely recommend Furious is you're in a mythology mood (like I was), and don't mind a few minor things.

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen
Series: The Compound, #1
Source: Bought
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication Date: April 29, 2008

Eli and his family have lived in the underground Compound for six years. The world they knew is gone, and they've become accustomed to their new life. Accustomed, but not happy.

For Eli, no amount of luxury can stifle the dull routine of living in the same place, with only his two sisters, his father and mother, doing the same thing day after day after day.

As problems with their carefully planned existence threaten to destroy their sanctuary—and their sanity—Eli can't help but wonder if he'd rather take his chances outside.

Eli's father built the Compound to keep them safe. But are they safe—or sorry?

First off, I only picked this up because of the freaking amazingly intriguing description. It was a serious steal. But when I started reading it, well, I realized...the description isn't the best part of the book. *high-five-score* It was well written and interesting-- and above all, really weird.

Sometimes this is a good thing. But other times? Well...ummm. It was almost too weird. Take this: how do you feel about living in an underground bomb shelter for 15 years? Me, well, underground? No. This is going to work out, and on top of that, there's too many flaws to the plan. What if, say, your underground shelter blocks you down there? All manner of things could fall on the exit, trapping you in a whole in the ground forever. It has the same problems as a storm shelter.

Which have you ever been in one of those? Even for a short time, maybe even to just clean it out...it's not pleasant in any manner of the word. I may be a bit claustrophobic.

Moving onto the next problem, which we run into in this book-- food shortage. They start to run out of food early on. Just a simple shortage of flour and it all goes downhill. Their livestock dies underground. So six years in, their flour has gone bad, their livestock has died and on top of that they don't even know for sure that there was a nuclear blast. Does this remind anyone else of that movie...what is it called....Blast from the Past? Is that it? I don't know.

But anyway. They have food sources dwindling. They don't know why they're down there...and well, Eli starts to investigate. Thank God, someone who doesn't believe everything that he's fed. So he investigates. And guess what? Things aren't always what they seem. They're at the mercy of a complete and total mad man.

This is where the SPOILERY part comes in, so if you don't want spoilers don't highlight it. Honestly, Eli's dad is completely fruity. Totally off his rocker, needs meds full time, how does this weirdo have kids crazy. Here's my first issue with him: he's power hungry. How is it that all of the random psycho guys in books have power? He has power and he wants more, so he takes his family, minus one son, into an underground bomb shelter and plans to stay for 15 years. He PURPOSEFULLY makes sure that they run out of food, just so he can see how far his family will go to survive. He starts having as many kids as possible, because when the food runs out, he wants his family to eat them. What kind of a sick bastard has kids and calls them "supplements" and wants to see whether or not his family will eat them? AND THEN. Turns out that he left one son in the real world accidentally-- but nothing has happened in the outside world. He just wanted to prove that his family could do it! They had funerals! O.O 

Freaking A! The entire idea just makes me freak the heck out. So much, like seriously. But I can't discount the fact that for this book to freak me out so much, well, it had to be something special. It was well written and gripping, and although I didn't really care all that much about the characters, I still wanted to know what happened to them. So there is that. If you can get past the downright psycho-ness of the story, it's definitely worth a read.

Debutantes by Cora Harrison

Debutantes by Cora Harrison
Series: N/A
Source: Borrowed
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication Date: August 2, 2012

It’s 1923 and London is a whirl of jazz, dancing and parties. Violet, Daisy, Poppy and Rose Derrington are desperate to be part of it, but stuck in an enormous crumbling house in the country, with no money and no fashionable dresses, the excitement seems a lifetime away.

Luckily the girls each have a plan for escaping their humdrum country life: Rose wants to be a novelist, Poppy a jazz musician and Daisy a famous film director. Violet, however, has only one ambition: to become the perfect Debutante, so that she can go to London and catch the eye of Prince George, the most eligible bachelor in the country.

But a house as big and old as Beech Grove Manor hides many secrets, and Daisy is about to uncover one so huge it could ruin all their plans—ruin everything—forever.

I'm a big fan of historical YA as a genre. That being said, I wasn't a big fan of this book. It was heartbreakingly slow-- to the point that nothing really happened. I may like historical, but I like a little mystery or intrigue. This didn't deliver on that front.

There was a mystery, but I found it trivial. The hints weren't very well done, because I figured out the mystery long before it was time. I'm not a huge fan of that, but in a world where everything has happened before, I feel like it's a given. I don't have to like it, but I understand it.

I don't, however, understand writing in the third person. It took me a long time to figure out what was bothering me about the writing, but when I did it was like I noticed it everywhere. Suddenly it just hit me like a ton of bricks. We have a main character, but the story is never told from her point of view. While it's interesting, it mostly served to confuse me.

Just like the characters. I was confused by the characters, who remained flat until the end of the book, when I realized that it's not necessarily that they're flat, it's mostly that they're dull.

All in all, Debutantes just wasn't for me. I found the characters to be dull and the story boring. I wish that I had liked this more.

Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly

Title: Harmonic Feedback
Author: Tara Kelly
Series: N/A
Source: Payment for hosting Blog Tour
Publisher: Henry Holt & CO.
Publication Date: May 25, 2010

Sixteen-year-old, music- and sound design-obsessed Drea doesn't have friends. She has, as she's often reminded, issues. Drea's mom and a rotating band of psychiatrists have settled on "a touch of Asperger's."

Having just moved to the latest in a string of new towns, Drea meets two other outsiders. And Naomi and Justin seem to actually like Drea. The three of them form a band after an impromptu, Portishead-comparison-worthy jam after school. Justin swiftly challenges not only Drea's preference for Poe over Black Lab but also her perceived inability to connect with another person. Justin, against all odds, may even like like Drea.

It's obvious that Drea can't hide behind her sound equipment anymore. But just when she's found not one but two true friends, can she stand to lose one of them?

I honestly don't know where to start with this one-- I don't really know how I feel about it yet. I liked it, that's for sure, but I didn't really love it. I really liked how it deals with Aspergers syndrome, because I actually know someone with that, and he can be a bit...oblivious. His is a lot more severe than Drea's, though.

Again, I love how that was handled, and you'll totally see that in my quote section-- I chose two quotes, but only one will make it in to my review. They're both talking about Aspergers. I don't think that I can thank the author enough for the way she wrote this-- because on one hand, it was absolutely fantastic.

On another hand, it also had so many things going on at one time that I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I really don't know. I could tell you about how I liked Drea, but a lot of the time, I really DIDN'T. She grated on me, you know? Sometimes I was all like, "you go girl!" and others I was like, "why. Seriously, why would you do that." So I have conflicting feelings about her too.

I also have super conflicting feelings about the other characters-- Justin was alright, but I can't summon a clear picture in my head of him, because he simply wasn't described all the well. I DO like his tattoo, though. ;)

Naomi was really...wild. She was really out there, and she made a lot of weird moves in this book where I was all like, "ew." And then, of course, she does something to make you like her, because she's all cool and such. She was mostly...weird. She was weird, and the author wasn't afraid to show that side of her.

All in all, I enjoyed Harmonic Feedback, but I'm still not ABSOLUTELY sure what I think. o_O Maybe I'm supposed to be confused!

"Don't assume my thoughts by the look on my face. Don't try and read between my words. At least ask me what I'm thinking or feeling first. It might take me some time, but I will answer you." ~ Pg. 217