Rage

Author: Jackie Morse Kessler

Publishing Company: Graphia

Blurb:

She brought the razor to her inner thighs again and again and again, but with each sting came no release, no comforting numbness to dull the horror of her life. It wasn’t enough. So she cut again – swiftly, mercilessly.

Missy didn’t mean to cut so deep. But after the party where she was humiliated in front of practically everyone in school, who could blame her for wanting some comfort? Sure, most people don’t find comfort in the touch of a razorblade, but Missy was always…different.

That’s why she was chosen to become one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War. Now Missy wields a new kind of blade – a big, brutal sword that can cut down anyone and anything in her path. But it’s with this weapon in her hand that Missy learns something that could help her triumph over her own pain: control.

The review:

This is the sequel to Hunger, if you haven’t read it, don’t read the review, though the characters don’t actually interact with each other, it is easier to read Hunger first, if you check my April posts, I do have a review of that book there.

This book was amazing to read and get an inside into the characters that we don’t fully know from the first book. We see Melissa, or Missy, who is a really different character from Lisabeth. In the book, you don’t see a lot of other characters on her side, or you don’t know if the characters are on her side. We have utter humiliation that you feel awful for her, we have this habit that makes her different, and you can see the inner turmoil that you expect to see from a character.

What I love about these books is that Jackie Morse Kessler takes a really real and powerful subject, and throws the character with a problem into this supernatural world where her characters can deal with it in a way that we couldn’t imagine. Her characters are amazing, and we see the reality of school, that not everyone is liked, we see the bullying, she doesn’t hold back on any of it, we see the cruelty in the kids that are at the party, we see the pain that Missy is feeling, and you really do get the realness of that pain.

I said one of the things I loved about Hunger was the bluntness of it, the way that you could see the simple and brutal imagery that is the disorder the character had. This is different in Rage. Some of the lines in this book were some of the most brilliant lines I’ve heard from a book. At one point, instead of saying ‘he paused for a few seconds’ she wrote ‘a small slice of forever’ and it just blew me away at how beautiful and perfect that one line was to show us this ever waiting image of Death. And even when we were hearing about the brutal cutting that Missy was doing, we got a lot more colour imagery than anything else. And I think that it sets a different tone to the book. You still get the brutality of it all, but you get the pain she’s feeling in a different way.

Again, Death was just as amazing in this one as he was in the first, if not more because we get to see him more as a lover than just as someone handing out a job. The points where Missy was with him, you felt a lot more drawn to him than you did in the first one. And still he has all of this wisdom and this patience that I found fascinating to read. He knows what will probably happen, and yet, he won’t say anything about it. He understands the balance of everything and he seems a lot more cool and collected, which is hard because he was extremely cool and collected in the first one.

Missy was very dynamic in my opinion, she knew what she was doing was wrong, but couldn’t stop it, and you could see the inner turmoil she was dealing with whenever she tried to deal with what she knew she shouldn’t do. She definitely was a character with a lot more hidden depth than you expect, and it was nice to read. And we saw her opening up to people a bit more, not a lot, but we definitely saw it, which was a lovely thing to see.

The two other Horsemen, Famine and Pestilence aren’t hugely present in the book. We see them from two different angles, one who loves her job and finds it a great thing, and another who has done it for a long time and has seen so much that he maybe doesn’t want to see. The characters are interesting, but we haven’t seen too much of them so I can’t really say an in depth look into what I think of them.

The other characters are people I don’t want to really talk about, most of them are bullies, some of them are nice, but we don’t get much about them we see them as people you’d see but not know much about, which is fine, unfortunately I can’t really talk about them much because of it.

I think what made me enjoy this book the most was the fact that it was so different to what I’m used to. The blend of reality and supernatural is so well mixed that you get this wonderful idea about how close they are and how different things help different people.

My rating:

Setting: 3 out of 5

Characters: 4 out of 5

Plot: 3.5 out of 5

Writing: 4.5 out of 5

If you read the book, I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll talk to you guys later! Bye x

Industrial Magic

NOTE: Before you read this review I would like to say it does have spoilers right from the off. The blurb gives a massive spoiler about the previous book, this is the fourth in the series so if you want to stay away from spoilers, I'd advise you not to read this review.


Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publishing Company: Orbit Books
Blurb:
When Paige Winterbourne is ousted as leader of the American Coven of Witches, all she wants to do is hide under her duvet for a few months. But fate, of course, has other plans. A murderer is on the loose - someone with superhuman skills and a grudge against the supernatural community. When Paige learns that the killer is targeting children, she has to get involved.

Desperate to protect those she loves, Paige is thrown into a world of arrogant sorcerers, drunken necromancers, sulky druid gods and pretentious leather-clad vampires. Not to mention an apparently unstoppable supernatural psychopath hell-bent on revenge...

The Review:


This is the fourth book in the series, and it was a brilliant addition to the series. In the books narrated by Paige, we definitely see a lot more of the supernaturals than you did in the ones narrated by Elena. So it's always interesting to see the new characters that are introduced. In this one, I definitely wasn't disappointed with the characters introduced into this one. The plot was good, simple enough but still interesting, but I don't want to go too deeply into this because there might be spoilers, but the plot was definitely good.

The characters are definitely what makes the book for me, you have the reappearance of Elena, Clayton and Cassandra, the introduction of Benicio, Jamie, John. You have, of course, Paige, Lucas and Savannah too. All of the characters combined into this story really make it. I'll talk about two of the main characters, one of the characters that reappeared, and two that are new to the series.

Paige is obviously our narrator, and though when I first read her narration, I didn't like it, I have to admit that I liked it a lot more compared to Dime Store Magic. She's definitely grown up since our first encounter with her in the second book of the series. She's one of those characters that you definitely see grow throughout the book, which is a great thing to see. In this one, you see her growing up as a person, not a guardian or because of who she's looking after like you did in Dime Store Magic. It's really nice to see her now over what she was like in the first book where she seemed reckless.

Then you have Lucas, who is such a different character to the love interests you usually see in books like this. When you think of the type of guy you see in these books, Lucas is extremely different, he's more of the nice guy type, which is so different to what you're used to, but it's still really nice to see. You definitely see why he has problems with his family and you can sympathise with him and you can see him as one of the few nice characters that seems to not have another motive.

Cassandra is one of the most surprising characters in this book. You learn to really dislike her when we first meet her in Stolen, you don't instantly hate her, but it doesn't take you long to realise you don't like her. When she first comes into this boo, you really don't want her to be there because she seems exactly the same as you remember her from before. And she doesn't seem like she'll ever change. But in this book you definitely see a change in her and it's good, very different and refreshing to see. She isn't one of my favourite characters from this series, but she definitely becomes more tolerable.

Jaime is a very interesting character, celebrity necromancer, very funny character who seems to just have this air about her of not caring what she says, or at least not thinking before she says anything. She's a really funny character, who definitely has a lot of layers that we don't see. I think we've only seen a very small part of this character, and it'll be great to see more of her.

And finally, we have Benicio. I don't know what to think of him. He seems to have some strange warped logic that only makes sense to him. He seems like a nice guy most of the time, but some points you question his morals and his judgement. I have mixed feelings about him, I can't say I like him, but at the same time I definitely don't dislike him.

The humour in this book is perfectly matched with the supernatural parts and the suspense. Kelley Armstrong has an amazing balance through this book and all of the previous books too. You see everything throughout the book at exactly the right time. Sometimes you see the humour with the suspense that really does a great mix of the two things.

I know this review isn't great and is rather bare, but I don't want to give too much away about the book or the rest of the series, so I'm going to end it here.

My Rating:


Setting: 3 out of 5
Characters: 5 out of 5
Plot: 3 out of 5
Writing: 4.5 out of 5

If you read the book, I hope you enjoy it, and I'll talk to you guys later! Bye x

Women from the Otherworld (Books 1-3 sum up/review)

This is going to be a kinda review kind of sum up of a series. Warning, I haven’t actually finished this series, but I thought that I may want to review the books later on in the series so I might as well do this so that I don’t feel like I can’t review the newer ones because I haven’t reviewed the first ones.

I would like to warn straight off that these books are adult books and therefore refer to or include sex and all of that stuff that YA books don’t have. Not as much in the third and fourth, but in the first two, you have two werewolves and Kelley Armstrong has got them in touch with their animal instincts shall we say. If you’re uncomfortable with this, I would suggest you skip those passages and continue with the book because they aren’t nearly as bad in the third and fourth book.

Okay so the ‘Women of the Otherworld’ series by Kelley Armstrong is her adult series, focusing on different characters throughout. Her first two books Bitten and Stolen focus on the character Elena Michaels, who is a werewolf (I’m not spoiling anything you can 1 tell by the cover and 2 look on the back to see the word werewolf). Elena is one of my favourite characters from any novel I’ve read before. She’s strong in her own ways, individual in her own ways, and also she has her flaws.

Blurb for Bitten:

Elena Michaels is your regular twenty-first-century girl: self-assured, smart and fighting fit. She also just happens to be the only female werewolf in the world…

It has some good points. When she walks down a dark alleyway, she’s the scary one. But now her Pack – the one she abandoned so that she could live a normal life – are in trouble, and they need her help. Is she willing to risk her life to help the ex-lover who betrayed her by turning her into a werewolf in the first place? And, more to the point, does she have a choice?

Bitten is about Elena showing how much she wants to be human, how she longs for a ‘normal life’. The characters we meet in this book are either human or werewolf. The main characters include Elena, Clayton (Clay) Danvers and Jeremy Danvers. There are also other characters in the book including Nick and Antonio, and the bad guys whom I won’t name because it might include spoilers.

The book really has a lot of layers to it which is really nice to see. You have the main problem of the mutts (non pack werewolves), you have the Clay and Elena relationship, Elena continuously trying to come to terms with her werewolf side, and altogether it’s nice to have a mix of different things going on that you can enjoy. And because of this you can feel like it’s real, because you don’t just have a fight about werewolves or something like that. You have these individually layered characters battling with personal and private issues as well as pack issues which gives you the feeling that it is real.

The detail that Kelley Armstrong goes into for this book is amazing, you can believe it every time you read about the change, each individual character has a back story of their own that gets leaked into the book which is interesting and gives us a better perception of them.

If that’s enough for you to start the series and you don’t want any potential spoilers, please don’t continue with this because I’m putting the blurb and talking about the second and third book.

Blurb for Stolen:

Elena Michaels is a wanted woman. She hasn’t done anything wrong. Well, not recently, anyway. But ten years ago her lover turned her into a werewolf: the only female werewolf in the world, in fact.

And now, just as she’s finally coming to terms with it all, a group of scientists learn of her existence. They’re hunting her down, and Elena is about to run straight into their trap. But they haven’t reckoned on Elena’s adoptive family, her Pack, who will stop at nothing to get her back. They haven’t reckoned on Elena herself, either, and that’s a very big mistake…

Stolen is the one that I think people who enjoyed her Darkest Powers series will enjoy. Obviously I can’t go into much detail of this one without spoiling the first one, but as you can see from the blurb, it’s very very different from the first one and has some similarities with The Darkest Powers.

From the books I’ve read Stolen definitely is my favourite of all her books. It’s one of the thickest, and it’s also just really interesting. In this one you find out how vast the world is, there’s the vampires, witches, and other things (I don’t want to give too much away so I don’t want to tell you too much).

Without spoiling anything, you definitely get a different insight to Elena’s life. With the first one, we really just see her past to do with her being bitten and her very early life. You get teased with it, but you don’t see too much, which is good because it’s nice to see that she knows the character’s history but isn’t hitting you with far too much knowledge about it. In this one, you get another taste of her past, we find out about when she was about seven, you find out about her reason for hating then loving Christmas, and you see her character go to a rather dark place where she obviously wants to forget.

We also get some new faces, Cassandra, Paige, Savannah, Leah, all fantastically different and interesting characters. And all of the female characters are different. We have Paige who’s still a strong character, but she’s a different strong, and all of these characters are just interesting to see come together. And then you have Savannah who’s such an interesting character, extremely complex and yet extremely vulnerable and she’s just one of those characters you adore.

And now for Dime Store Magic.

Blurb for Dime Store Magic:

Paige Winterbourne is a witch. Not that you’d notice – no warts, no green skin, no cute little wiggle of the nose whenever she casts a spell. No, most of the time she’s just a normal twenty-three-year-old girl: works too hard, worries about her weight, wonders if she’ll ever find a boyfriend. Okay, so she does have an adopted teenager, Savannah, who wants to raise her black witch of a mother from the dead. And who is being stalked by a telekinetic half-demon and an all powerful cabal of sorcerers. But other than that, Page has a really ordinary life. That is, until the neighbours find out who she is, and all hell breaks loose. Literally…

This is definitely not one of my favourite books from the series, in fact I read 70 pages and stopped reading and only picked it up last week. And I’m very glad I did start rereading it. Though this book seems boring, it isn’t what you expect from reading the first hundred pages. It goes on for a bit, but then once it starts up, it gets really interesting.

Paige isn’t my favourite character, but you get more of an insight to her world and her mind, so instead of how you see her in Stolen, you can imagine her in a different life. By the end of the book, I really started to like her.

You also get to meet some more awesome characters. Okay not like a lot more, but you get one who is a pretty cool character called Cortez. Very interesting to see them all develop together. Of course there are also some characters you don’t like, such as Victoria who was a horrible person in my mind.

There are some of the funniest scenes I’ve ever read in this book, Savannah has become one of the funniest unintentionally funny characters I have ever read. She’s a teenager and you can just see her as one of the girls you knew in school that you find pretty funny. I loved her as a character, found her extremely interesting. And there’s also some extremely terrifying and gruesome scenes in this too. Like for example, one of the scenes had me feeling sick to my stomach because it was so well written.

And that is all of them that I’ve read so far in this series. I will do an in depth review of Industrial Magic which is the one I’m reading now. I would recommend this series to anyone thinking of branching out into adult fiction, it has brilliant writing and the stories are so complex it’s a really good read, but it’s still Kelley Armstrong that you see in her YA series.

If you read them I hope you enjoy them and I’ll talk to you guys later! Bye x

What I Read (May, June, July)

Okay, I apparently suck at posting reviews and stuff, but right now I'm rereading a series to get to the next book, and I don't want to post a review on something I've already read, so the reviews will not be going up very often right now (I'm sorry! I swear soon I will write up a review and post it!)

But until then I thought I'd do a list of books I read in the past few months to post something up here. So I'm gonna do a list of May, June and July, then post one for August after August and do it a monthly thing, possibly in video form. But anyway on with the books! I might write up ten word reviews next to it maybe? I dunno. Anywho!

May!


Sunshine by Robin McKinley - Awesome take on vampires, unique and real page turner.
Virals by Kathy Reichs- Really fantastic book, easier to read than her adult series.
Naked in Death by J.D. Robb- Amazing futuristic crime novel with really rounded characters.
City of Glass by Cassandra Clare- Best from the series so far, loved it!
Black Wings by Christina Henry- Blurb made it look better, but could have been worse.
Feed by Mira Grant- Possibly my favourite read this year.

June!


Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard- Didn't enjoy it, but don't usually read books like this.
Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins- Good book, slightly predictable, but enjoyable read.
Moon Called by Patricia Briggs- Awesome start to the series, excited to read the rest.
White Cat by Holly Black- Not as good as I expected, but enjoyable.
Oceans of Blood by Darren Shan- This series beats the first series.
TimeRiders by Alex Scarrow- Chapters were too long and too jumpy.
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare- Was scared to read it, loved it.
Glory in Death by J.D. Robb- Awesome sequel, love this series.
Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini- Good, not best demi god series, but good.
Storm Front by Jim Butcher- Not my favourite book.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling- Do I have to say anything?
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K Rowling- See above.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling- See above.

July!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K Rowling- See above.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling- See above.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling- See above.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling- See above.
The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney- Nice book to read after mass reading Harry Potter.
Devilish by Maureen Johnson- Cute but creepy, very awesome.

So as you can see I've had a lot of reading...basically I've been off for months and reading is enjoyable right now, so this is a very long list (I honestly don't know how I read so much in June!)

But yeah, if you want a review on any of the books above that I haven't done a review of, please comment and I'll try to get one up asap!

Thanks for reading! x

Divergent

Author: Veronica Roth

Publishing Company: Harper Collins

Blurb:

Once choice decides your friends, defines your beliefs and determines your loyalties…forever.

When sixteen-year-old Tris makes her choice, she cannot foresee how drastically her life will change. Or that the perfect society in which she lives is about to unfold into a dystopian world of electrifying decisions, stunning consequences, heartbreaking betrayals and unexpected romance.

One choice can transform you.

The Review:

I want to say something straight away. When I picked up this book I was worried that the book would be a load of hype that couldn’t be lived up to. The world Veronica Roth made is so well made that you can honestly get lost in the world and think it’s real. The way it works and the flaws and the emotion put into the writing, it’s fascinating to see.

So I’ll first talk about the factions. You have Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Erudite and Dauntless. Each stands for their own point, Abnegation is for Selflessness, Amity is for Peacefulness, Candor is for Sincerity, Erudite is for Knowledge and Dauntless is for Bravery. Each faction don’t interact with the other and they are very much for their own ways and nothing else.

The book follows the main character Tris, who’s actually called Beatrice, but goes by Tris afterwards because Beatrice isn’t the right name for her (won’t say why, but you’ll understand when you read it). And she’s going through this change of a world. And as you see her go through these changes, you realise how strange it must be for these characters to know this. I don’t want to give much away about where she goes and what she chooses, but you feel for her.

We also have a few other characters that we want to see a lot of. Four, Christina, Will, Al and Peter mostly. And then there’s her family who you don’t see much of. The characters are lumped together and you really see them having to deal with each other and whatever they’re going through together. Most of them grow as characters, and I think for who we see this in the most (for good or for bad) is Al. And you feel for the characters in one way for another. I don’t want to say much about the characters because it would give away a massive thing in the start of the book, but they’re extremely well rounded and important.

We expect the book to be about Tris deciding where she wants to go, but in fact it’s about her finding out what is happening in the world around her and how it’s falling apart. You see the strength in her and her friends, and the problems that the world faces, even when they think they have a system that works and keeps everything good and fine.

This is a short review because I really don’t want to give anything away, and if I go in more depth I’ll give away Tris’s choice. The world you see is well thought out, and you see everything for what it is and how it works. It’s sometimes extremely blunt and it shows the flaws and strengths. And all in all, it’s a very good book.

My rating:

Setting: 5 out of 5

Characters: 4.5 out of 5

Plot: 4.5 out of 5

Writing: 5 out of 5

Thanks for reading x