Spirit Bound

Spirit Bound Plot Summary

Another mediocre book I'm sorry to say.  Better than the book before this one but not as good as the first three by a long shot.  We have finally reached the end of the school year after 5 books and numerous chances Rose gets to take her final fight tests, I've been looking forward to this since book one.  She did very well and I'm glad the author actually went into what was required for the test and didn't just breeze over the experience.  After finally becoming a guardian Rose trashes everything once again by ignoring her duties despite her talk of honor and runs off.  This is where Rose's complete selfishness takes over once again, except this time she enlists her friends to help her.  She uses and endangers her friends throughout and ignores any consequences for her or her friends.  I understand why but my lord all that effort and deceit over a man that you're not even sure you can save seems a bit much.  A lot of drama and the story moves along ok I wish there were more fighting and magic and less obsession but we can't always have what we want.  The spelling mistakes continue I was hoping that as the books went on and became more popular that they would have found an editor that would resolve this continuing problem but alas that was not the case.  This book was definitely an improvement  but I'm really hoping the final book will be more like the first ones, otherwise, anything beyond the third book will have been a waste of my time.   

Rating ~ 3

Blood Promise

Blood Promise Plot Summary

NO! No no no... we did so well, we got past that halfway point with the first three books just to be knocked down at four.  The first three books were so good and this one was just meh.  Not necessarily bad but just eh.  Toward the end things improved but overall I was unhappy with this book.  It was very slow and overall boring.  Compulsion makes everything more boring, everyone just rolls over and takes it without a fight so lame.  I understand why this was supposed to be interesting with the hunt for our lost love and bringing him to justice or whatever but ugg.  Watching a strong character (physically not so much morally) turn into a drooling addict just sucks.  She gets past her problems by sheer will power and  a little trickery which is impressive and takes care of business briefly which I totally liked.  Unfortunately, afterwards someone dangled hope in front of her and after that, you just know how the next book is gonna go.  I'm hoping the next will be better, but I forsee issues from here.

Rating ~4

Shadow Kiss

Shadow Kiss Plot Summary

Another good book finished and the action continues to get better.  I really liked this book they are definitely getting better as we go, and I'm glad to see that the series overcame the typical half way terrible book.  Granted, I don't know if the series is done or not but I'm glad to see that the story is progressing well.  We see a lot of the good stuff starting with more fighting and training but between everyone this time, the guardians and their charges.  We see the major development of magic all over campus and the slowly changing perceptions that go with it.  Unfortunately, all the magic seems to make the main character extremely whiney the majority of the book.  She gets pretty dark and full of teen angst but, it gets better toward the end.  There are also some interesting developments with dear Rose, her visions are pretty interesting, turns out not only the moiri have powers after all.  Finally, our star-crossed lover's story comes to a peak while taking a drastic left turn.  It's a rough few month for poor Rose.  The politics follows suit with the rest of the book, I like the way things are turning even if the politics of it all is ridiculous.  I'm not usually one to notice such things but this one I see.  If you can get past that then this book is totally worth the time!

Rating~1

Frostbite

Frostbite Plot Summary

As promised another review is rolling out.  I finished this one a few days ago and I am just now getting to the review.  This book did a much better job keeping me interested than the first book.  Not that the first book wasn't interesting but I liked this one better.

They kicked the action up in this book compared to the previous book, by like a lot, and I think that was why I liked it so much better than the first.  The ending was sad but much more interesting to a lot of magic and beatings and testosterone.  The action is not the only thing that got kicked up a notch.  The forbidden love story from the first book continues to develop in this book as well.  The majority of the time it seems more like a war between the body and the mind between the two characters, sexual tension and forbidden temptation are hard to overcome especially at 17.  I forget how intense first loves are when you are in high school and hormones are raging and everything is ridiculously important to you.  This story is a little different than a normal teen's story considering the circumstances but, not really, all the typical pining and whining is there.  The spelling/grammar mistakes are much improved, it only happened once or twice this book.  A step up from the first book in a lot of ways.

Rating~1

Vampire Academy

Vampire Academy Plot Summary

This is a new series for me suggested by a friend and, it was a good suggestion. If this opinion continues throughout the sequels, there may be several entries in close succession rolling out.

This book was a little slow to start but it did well enough to keep me interested.  It has one of those, start just past the beginning and piece it together as we go, beginnings.  Good tactic because you want the whole story before you veto a book and by the time you get all the information you might as well finish it right?!  Grammatically, there were several misspellings, more than usual.  Now I know my spelling sucks too but I don't get paid to write.  It was annoying when I had to re-read a line over and over again because a "T" was missing or there was an extra letter in the middle of a word that changed the word to something else entirely.  This may have just been a problem at the printer and not with the writer in general so it will in no way change my opinion on the story.

I enjoyed this book more than the majority of the Twilight books, and I liked the twilight books.  This story had better vampires, better fighting, and magic!  Who doesn't love magic mixed with the elements?   The main characters are two teenage girls, which is a refreshing change from the normal YA structure that is inevitably boy+girl.  One of the girls is in training to be a bodyguard so she gets her ass kicked a lot, so the action is somewhat there.  Then there is, of course, the drama that goes with being  a teen girl in high school.   This book like so many others does have some of that YA predictability; like the sole virgin amongst all the sinners, but not nearly as bad as some.  So, we have the typical teen drama for the guilty pleasure and then fighting and magic for the story line. A- but, I would definitely call this a chick book so male readers beware.

Rating ~1

Go Ask Alice

Go Ask Alice Plot Summary

The holidays are officially over and it's back to the grind.  I picked this book up at Target of all places with some Christmas money, mostly because it sounded not boring.  I'm not sure if Target really defines fiction vs. non-fiction so when I picked this book up I did not notice which category this book fell into.  I was going on face value and the cover description.  All I knew is that once again I had chosen teen literature.

This book was portrayed as a teen's private diary detailing her tragic downward spiral into drugs Anne Frank style (the diary part not the drug part).  This image was further encouraged by the lack of an author and the almost complete absence of names and, very generalized locations throughout the book.  As I began to read the book, it seemed to read as more of a cautionary tail rather than a true depiction of events.  I looked at the publication date which was the early 70's the early years of the drug revolution, as  I see it anyway.  I know drugs were big in 60's but still they were becoming more widely publicized in the late 60s early 70s, am I showing my age?  This furthered my doubt about the legitimacy of this "diary."  Turns out the "true" diary part of the story was a fabrication.  The book was written by a pseudo-psychiatrist that published several books using the diary style of writing.  The "true diaries" it seems were mostly the author's elaborations combined with very small amounts of true journal entries from troubled teens.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed the book because as the context would suggest it is not a book you enjoy.  It was a tragic story that I finished within 2 days.  The writer did a good job in building a relationship with the main character, I felt sorry for her, and the terrible web she was thrust into, at first, not of her own choosing.  The authors style of writing made it easier to connect with the character and feel remorse for her; when you compound that with the final sentences of the epilogue (basically somewhere out there very similar things are happening to teens every day and everywhere) it's almost heartbreaking.  That being said, I found that the sequence of events seemed a little hasty.  The entire book took place over a period of about a year and a half and I can't believe that in so short a time an underage girl can become hopelessly addicted to drugs, deal them at school, move out and come back twice, get clean with no withdrawals, and then ending the way it did within such a short time frame.  I have always heard that if you do drugs once that's all it takes and your whole life goes to hell, but such a waterfall of events in such a short time is astounding.  Having no personal experience to verify that this is how the world of no drugs to heavy drug use works I assume it was an accelerated dramatization to help discourage teen drug use.   If I haven't already painted the picture for you the book was a downer but if you don't mind the buzz kill it's a decent quick read.  I don't know how I feel about it for the youth of America but I may be just showing my age again.

Rating ~ 3