A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner

I would not stand by and let them be lost to the Mede or to Melenze or to an endless civil war where they would never be free of bloodshed until the whole country was stripped to the bare bones. If I couldn't be Eddis, I would be Attolia.

[Click here to see my review of book 1: The Thief, book 2: The Queen of Attolia, and book 3: The King of Attolia.]

Though finishing a series tends to be a tad bittersweet, one must admit that it brings a lovely feeling of accomplishment when you sit back, happily aware that you've read all there is to read when it comes to this particular storyline and these particular characters.

I deeply enjoyed the entire Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner and I finally brought myself around to reading the conclusion. For all my talk of the greatness of finishing a series, there's also a finality that makes me realize how much I'll miss these characters and these stories. I tend to put as much space between the second to last book and the final one as I can plausibly get away with.

When Sophos, heir to the throne of Sounis, and friend of both the queen of Eddis and the king of Attolia, is attacked in his own village and whisked away to an unknown destination, he manages to weasel his way out of the hands of his captors. However, he soon finds himself a slave on the lands of the very man who ordered his kidnapping. Rendered unrecognizable, he settles into this life, believing it would be best for him to leave the running of Sounis to his uncle. After all, Sophos had never been a very promising heir. He cared too much for his poetry and too little for strategy or battle.

Still, Sophos left much unfinished when he was taken from his home. His sisters and mother may have died in the attack, but there were others who held his heart and a rebellion rising that threatens to overthrow Sounis and leave it vulnerable to the Medes, a country that's been trying to get a foothold in Sounis (along with its neighboring countries) for a time now and is still licking its wounds from being so heartily deterred by Attolia.

When his father comes under attack in the very home that Sophos has been laboring under, Sophos brings himself out of obscurity to save his father and his men. But much has changed since the day that Sophos was taken and he is no longer heir to the throne, but is now king himself. It is his task to save his country and he's going to have to turn to an old friend if he will ever manage to accomplish it. But will the king of Attolia aid him in his quest to save his people, or will Gen prove to be more difficult than he's ever been before?

The most recent installment in what fans of the series are calling "The Queen's Thief" series, A Conspiracy of Kings was (as you can probably see from the summary) told from the perspective of Sophos. It's fun seeing the kid grow up and become and entity and a threat in his own right. Sophos is a fun character and one that the reader can really identify with. While Gen, the subject of the first three books, was always a joy to read, I loved how different Sophos was from him. He was much more afraid, less cunning, but just as clever. I really enjoyed getting to see Megan Whalen Turner write such a different character in this series while still making us love both of our main protagonists.

All of that said, I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I did the first three. Perhaps it was simply the way the tale played out. Most of this book was a sort of "leading up to" the main event, while in Gen's stories, they tended to be lots of little main events that led up to a big main event.

I greatly enjoyed the book, I just didn't enjoy it as much as its predecessors, I suppose. It's just not my favorite book in the series. I greatly look forward to the next book in this series. I want to know what happens to the dear friends we've been introduced to throughout these books. I have no doubts that Turner will blow us out of the water with the fifth installment (though we have no idea when it's coming out yet).

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

"He proved me wrong. Either because he can see what we can't or just because he demands the world conform to his own desires. I am never sure which it is that he does." 

A Word on Censorship

I saw this video a year or two ago and just stumbled upon it a second time. It's definitely worth watching if you're much of a reader at all.

Penguin gathers some well-known Young Adult authors to weigh in on the topic of censorship and why banning books really isn't okay.

Authors showcased in this video:
Jacqueline Woodson,
Lev Grossman,
Carolyn Mackler,
M.T. Anderson,
Sarah Dessen,
Maureen Johnson,
Lauren Myracle,
Heather Brewer,
Ellen Hopkins,
Nina LaCour,
Meg Rosoff,
T.A. Barron,
Chris Crutcher,
Rita Williams-Garcia,
Dave Barry,
Kathy Reichs,
John Green,
Laurie Halse Anderson,
Jay Asher,
and Anthony Horowitz.

Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

Maybe you have to know about your past to look to your future, to make a decision about it.

[Click here to see my review of book 1: Sisters Red and book 2: Sweetly.]

After absolutely falling in love with the first two books in Jackson Pearce's Fairytale Retellings series, I was admittedly a little scared to read the third. What if I didn't like it? What if it didn't live up to the greatness of the first two? I had the utmost faith in the fact that she could make this one just as good as her first two, but what if she hadn't?

Well, my fears were totally unfounded. Fathomless turned out to be just as beautifully written and compelling as its counterparts. I'm already itching to get my hands on Cold Spell, the fourth book, which doesn't come out until November of this year. How will I ever manage to wait that long?

Celia, Anne, and Jane Reynolds are a set of triplets with surprising powers. Anne can see the future, Jane can see the present, and Celia sees only the past. The youngest in their family, they were sent off to boarding school after the death of their mother. Since then, they've really only had each other, having lost contact with each of their brothers and the father who no longer remembers them (due to his Alzheimer's). They've always known that they're stronger together, but lately Celia has been feeling more and more like she is the odd one out. It's Jane and Anne who are the identical ones. She's just the one that somehow got thrown into the mix to complete the set. She believes that her power is useless, that her siblings received the ones that they could do something with whiles she only gets memories, but that's before she meets Lo.

Lo is an ocean girl. She used to be human, but now she lives under the water with her sisters, other ocean girls who have forgotten their pasts and bide their time until the day the angels who brought them here pluck them out of the sea and take them away to be with them. When they first arrive, though, many of the girls just want to go back. They want to be human again. According to the legends of the old ones, there's only one way to do that: they must get a human to love them and then drown them, taking the human's soul for their own.

When Jude, a hapless musician falls into the ocean one night, Lo decides that she doesn't want him to drown. She has tried drowning a boy to restore her soul and knows it won't work. Instead, she fights her sisters to save him, bringing him back to the shore with Celia's help. Celia touches Lo and discovers her real name, the one she forgot. This awakens a longing within Lo to remember what she was before she was an ocean girl.

Celia agrees to help her recover her memories and suddenly feels like her power has a purpose--that it can finally help someone. But this tentative friendship she's made is fraught with dangers and Jude may not be the only one in danger of drowning now.

In Fathomless, Pearce once again proves that she has an imagination of gold. And she has certainly struck gold with this series of retellings. I cannot express enough how much I adore this beautiful series and everything in it. Filled to the brim with the same strong bonds I have admired in the beginning, as well as another great dose of the magical and mythical beings we've seen in the first two novels, these books are positively addicting and the kind you'll want to pester everyone you know to read so they can enjoy it just as much as you did.

What are you waiting for? Go get this book immediately! Get the whole series! And pray the Jackson Pearce never ever stops writing.

Rating: ~ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ~

"Because there's nothing there. There's no future between you and the girl--the water girl. Naida. Whatever she is."
"We stop being friends-" 
"You're not listening," Anne snaps, and there's so much worry in her voice that I feel cold. "There's nothing there, Celia. There's no future because there's no 'you and her.' It's blank."
"What does that mean?" 
Anne sighs, shakes her head. "What have you gotten yourself into?" she mutters before looking me in the eye. "It means," she says, voice serious, "either she dies or you do." 

Blaze by Laurie Boyle Crompton

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I'm almost happy to have a target for my misery. "You think girls can't enjoy comics?"
"Fine, then. Who's your favorite superhero?"
"Jean Grey," I counter quickly.
"Okay. So what's your favorite issue?"
I meet his gaze. "The Uncanny X-Men number one-three-eight, from October of 1980."
His forehead jumps, so I go ahead and seal his admiration by quoting, "Hear me X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am FIRE! And LIFE INCARNATE! Now and forever . . . I am PHOENIX!"

There were two reasons I decided to pick up this book. The first was the cover. I mean, look at it! The cover is simply gorgeous. The title includes the word "supervillians," which automatically makes me assume it's something I would like, and the picture features a girl with gorgeous pink hair. (I used to have purple hair and am a huge fan of the dye-your-hairy-crazy-colors philosophy.) I was even more sold when I read the back and saw it was about a girl who loves comic books and is a pretty great artist herself. Blaze (or Love in the Time of Supervillians) by Laurie Boyle Crompton looked like exactly the type of book I would deeply enjoy. Turns out, I was right.

When Blaze's dad left for New York to pursue his acting career, he didn't just leave his family behind, he left his old-school Marvel comic book stash. In his absence, Blaze found herself drawn to the old comics, poring over them and falling in love with each one. It wasn't long before she began drawing up her own superheroes and giving them origin stories like the ones she had grown so attached to. Her love for the characters and her improvement in her art not only fed her soul, but the ever-present hope that her dad might just return if he saw how much they had in common and how good she was at creating the sort of thing he had once been so attached to as well.

Now at seventeen, Blaze spends most of her free time chauffeuring her brother and his friends to and from soccer games in Superturd (her poop-brown minivan), spending most of the game time drawing and reading her comics. She spends the rest of that time during the games watching Mark, the boys' coach, and daydreaming about what it would be like if she could manage to snag him as a boyfriend.

It's not long before Blaze's wildest dreams seem to come true and Mark is not only giving her the time of day, but even seems to find her tendency to go off on fangirl rants about particular Marvel characters cute. He may not pay too much attention to what she's saying, after all, he's more of a soccer fan, but she knows she can make it work.

Blaze's younger brother sees what's happening between them and immediately tries to convince his sister it's a bad idea to get tangled up with his coach, but she's not listening. He's thirteen. He couldn't possibly understand. Josh knows something about Mark that Blaze doesn't and her refusal to listen to her brother's protests will leave her with humiliating consequences. Then again, Blaze may not be as mild-mannered as everyone seems to think and geek girls are pretty creative when it comes to taking revenge.

I could have read this entire book in one sitting if I didn't have to go to work on a pretty regular basis. It was one of those books where I woke up and read for hours, right up until I was going to be late if I didn't put the book down and speed my way to work. I absolutely adored it. Everything about this book appealed to me and, like I already mentioned, I could hardly persuade myself to put it down.

Blaze is a fun and believable protagonist. She's insecure about the way others perceive her and her inability to catch the attention of the guy she's somehow fallen in love with, but she's also passionate about the comics she adores and the art she creates. She's not afraid to be herself, even if she sometimes hands her heart to the wrong people.

I also have to give a little shout-out to two of my favorite supporting characters in this book: her little brother, Josh, and Quentin, the Comic Book Store Guy. (I shouldn't forget Andrew, one of her brother's friends. What a little gentleman!) They are magnificent and provide such lovely interactions throughout the novel. I found myself begging to see more of them every time they were gone.

I really enjoyed this book and I would especially suggest it to like-minded individuals who also happen to be great comic book fans. Whether you're a Marvel-lover (like Blaze) or a DC junkie (like Quentin), you'll love every bit of this story. And let's not forget the gorgeous artwork peppered throughout, compliments of Anne Cain. Even after finishing, I keep finding myself flipping through the book just to catch a glimpse of those lovely illustrations.

Rating: ~ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ~

"It comes from Greek mythology," she says, "but I've given the symbol my own twist. In my experience, sometimes the only way folks can manage to become the person they're meant, is to have destiny fling them straight into the fire."

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.
The merry-go-round spins again. To get off this thing I think I have to scream. But I can't. My bone corset is laced so tight, I can barely breathe.

I have recently become a pretty big fan of Laurie Halse Anderson. As you may remember (if you've been following this blog of mine), I read her book, Speak, a few months ago and immediately added it to my list of favorite books. It's the most popular of her books and for good reason. It was amazing.

I picked up Wintergirls because she was the author and because it looked like it would be quite interesting. I saw that it was about a girl who was struggling with anorexia and, after watching our society's skinny obsession pick off my friends one by one over the last few years, I knew it would be something I wanted to read. And I was absolutely right.

Cassie had been Lia's best friends since the two of them were in kindergarten. They lived across the street from one another and were practically attached at the hip for most of their lives. In fact, it was with Cassie that Lia made the oath that they would be the thinnest girls in school. Only Cassie and Lia stopped being friends a few months ago, after Lia's second stay in New Seasons: a home for girls battling eating disorder, and her parents had her cut off all communication with Lia. And now Cassie is dead.

Alone and still battling demons of her own, Lia continues to shed weight, refusing to believe she is anything other than huge, refusing to admit that what she's doing to herself may cost her her own life-- and irreparably damage those around her.

I deeply enjoyed Wintergirls. Though it's one of those books that makes you want to cry through half of the story and keeps your stomach churning through the rest, it's the type of story our generation (and the generations coming after us) sorely needs.

Anderson handled the material extremely itself extremely well, but she also managed to create a novel whose poetic language draws the reader in more deeply than anything else ever could. Wintergirls is deeply beautiful book, even as the story itself plunges into a darkness that feels tangible at times. (Yet it is that tangibility of the emotions and the darkness surrounding Lia that makes this book so very good.)

I honestly didn't think Anderson could match the fabulous job she did with Speak, but it appears that I was wrong. This is just as good and just as relevant. It's definitely written better than the other novel. (Though I'm quite certain Speak will still continue to be my favorite of the two books, it's at least a close competition.) Also, Anderson herself is quickly climbing her way up the list of my favorite authors. She's just too amazing to not be one of my favorites!

I purchased the book immediately after having finished it and will most assuredly be singing its praises to everyone I come in contact with for months to come.

Rating: ~ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ~

We held hands when we walked down the gingerbread path into the forest, blood dripping from our fingers. We danced with witches and kissed monsters. We turned us into winter girls, and when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles

"Here's the deal," I say low and harsh as I grab his shirt and twist it up close to his throat. "You stop bringing up Maggie or jail or the accident. Got it? If you want to keep running your mouth off, that's fine, but next time you do it you'll find my fist in it. Guarunteed." 
"I was just kidding," Drew chokes out, a faint thread of hysteria in his voice. "Jeez, Caleb, lighten up."
I let go of his shirt, but give him one last warning. "Up until two weeks ago I was living with a bunch of gang members. Don't tell me to lighten up."

It's pretty rare that I find myself in between books for more than a few minutes. Usually the moment I finish one book, I write my review and grab the next one. However, work has decided to wedge itself so deeply into my life that my free time comes in weird spurts now, thus the reason I found myself at library yesterday whilst still in-between books.

I was wandering through the YA Lit section when I found this little beauty on one of those stands where it's the only one in the row facing outward. Being a bit of a tattoo fangirl, I immediately focused in on guy's tattoo and picked up the book. After reading the back, I was interested and decided to take it home with me, starting it as soon as I got in the house.

One year ago, a single action changed Maggie and Caleb's lives forever. That action caused Maggie to spend a good portion of the next twelve months in the hospital and battling through physical therapy. It sent Caleb to jail. Now he's out and coming back to the small town of Paradise. Not only that, but he's coming back to being Maggie's next door neighbor again.

Neither have been back to their school since the incident, but now senior year is starting and both must face the stares, the questions, the overall gawking of their fellow students. At the same time, they try to give each other a wide berth, but fate throws them together when Caleb's community service and her job force them unexpectedly together. It isn't long before the two find themselves unable to resist the other. They soon begin to grow closer to one another, even as the people around them try to force them apart. Can a real relationship be formed from the shattered pieces of their lives? And can either of them ever fully trust the other?

This book was surprisingly good. I was a little worried it would end up being awkward or forced, but everything came together seamlessly and left me wanting more. I was surprised and happy, though admittedly skeptical, when I realized there was a sequel. Definitely going to get my hands on that one in the near future.

There were quite a few scenes I went back and read after I finished the book because of how much I enjoyed them. Not to mention, I couldn't help admiring the way Elkeles found a plausible way to thrust the two protagonists together without making it entirely unrealistic.

All in all, I would suggest this book for a good, easy read. It's not anything award-winning, but it's a fun read that will keep the reader happily entertained for a few hours. More of a vacation read, but one I really enjoyed.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

"I wasn't going to kiss you." 
"You weren't?" I look up at him. Well of course he wasn't, stupid. Why would he hook up with me when he can be with someone who actually knew what they were doing, someone who isn't responsible for sending him to jail, my brain tells me.
"Nope. The next time I kiss you, I'm gonna take my time, and you said your mom's coming home any minute."
I check the clock on my nightstand and nod.
He bites his bottom lip, deep in thought. "No, the next time I kiss you it'll last a long, long time. And when we're done you're gonna realize being turned on is not about experience."
While I'm still awestruck, Caleb heads out of the house.