Jessica
The story kept me engaged enough, but docked a star because there really isn't any new territory explored here. The usual debates about are vampires monsters or do they still have some humanity; vamps as celebrities/romanticizing vamps; super ancient maybe-used-to-be-evil vamp redeemed by super good teen girl; yadda yadda yadda.
Also, I think the ending may have set up a sequel, but I can't be quite sure. The second to last paragraph give us a blog entry from someone named “MG,” and I can't recall being introduced to anyone in the book with those initials other than Midnight, but for many reasons this can't be Midnight's entry. The entry talks about filming a transformation that will be posted soon, but then we get no follow up. So what is the point of that chapter if the author isn't setting up a sequel?
An utterly fascinating exploration of one girl's fight against a rare autoimmune disease that almost got her locked in the nuthouse. Makes you realize just how little we still know not only about the brain, but about the brilliant machinations of our entire bodies and all the cells that make it work.
When I first picked up this book, I thought “Awesome! The Passage for werewolves!” So maybe I overhyped this book for myself, or maybe it just didn't live up to its own potential. The characters are very interesting. The premise has a lot of promise. But in the end, I feel like the author relied to heavily on American history for his plot–it was like he did a search and replace for any cultural upheaval and crammed it all into the story. Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War protests, War on Terror, Occupy Wall Street–all there, but replace African Americans, Muslims, hippies, occupiers with lycans.
Also, the ending was a bit of a letdown and left several main characters stranded. About 60 pages from the end, I kept thinking, there's no way he can wrap this up, there must be a sequel planned. But wrap it up he did (though there could still be room for a sequel–I mean, what happens to Miriam? Chase? Augustus? Max?), in a way that made me re-read the last chapter 3 times. The solution just didn't feel right to me. If that was what the Resistance was cooking up all along, why the previous carnage? They could have done that quietly at any time, without any need for a large resistance movement. And what was the Tall Man really after? He seemed to have a bigger agenda than just personal revenge, but we never see it fully played out. And what is the deal with Augustus, anyway?
The more I write about it, the more I'm talking myself down to a 2 or 2.5-star rating. . . .
An excellent dark fairy tale. May be a bit too slow for some teen readers and those not familiar with the tone and pacing of older fairy tales. But if you can be patient enough to get into the rhythm of the tale, I think you will be rewarded with an enchanting read.
Some reviewers have noted that the tale seemed to lack good character development for the secondary and tertiary characters. While this is true, I think it fits in with the fact that the narrator is a 19th-century German ghost. He doesn't know the other characters and their motivations the way he knows the protagonist, Jeremy. Nor is he familiar with modern American life. He even states himself a few times that he didn't understand why a character did something. The reader can easily guess at the motivation behind some of these actions, but these would be completely foreign to someone from the ghost's time and place.
Hmmm. This series is getting worse. I didn't think it was possible for Clary to get more annoying, but this book certainly proved me wrong. And don't even get me started on Jace and Simon (why is he around anyway, other than to create useless drama?). I can't say that anything that happened in this book was at all surprising (or original), and I found myself skimming large portions of text that weren't dialogue.
Currently, about two-thirds of the Western world no longer experiences true night/darkness. It is estimated that 80 percent of children born in America today “will never know night dark enough that they can see the Milky Way.” This book explores why we should care about this, not only for aesthetic reasons, but for physiological and environmental reasons as well. Bogard visits the darkest areas left in the world and interviews astronomers, park rangers, and concerned citizens who are doing their part to take back the night. A sobering look at how far we've yet to go, but also offers some real hope that things can change.
Just as unputdownable as the first one, but this time I did NOT see the big twist coming. Except for the fact that I've been predicting since book 1 that Noah's mysterious bio-chem dad is behind all this somehow, and this book definitely seems to strengthen that theory. Can't for the life of me figure out what the motivation would be, though.
The editor could have taken a heavier hand with this–I feel like not too much happened in this book, and it is a pet peeve of mine when book 2 in trilogies exist only to set up the plot of book 3. Something should happen, at least. Don't just give us a massive cliffhanger with more questions than answers.
Also, is anyone else as stupified as I am that the Dyers didn't replace all their locks when Daniel's key went missing? ZOMGWTFICE. I get it, without this handy convenience, half the book couldn't have happened. But seriously, folks, this almost ruined it for me.
Before I read this, I had no idea about all of the plagiarism controversy surrounding the author. So, that sucks. It was a decent read, and very fast-paced. It kept me turning the pages, even though I guessed all the twists ahead of time and everything felt really familiar. I'm curious to see where the series goes, but I do hope her plotting improves. Or the editing. Many scenes felt like totally unnecessary fluff, unless she plans to use them somehow later.
I'm actually shocked to be giving a Neil Gaiman book anything other than 5 stars. I can't tell if it's too much anticipation for the first “adult” book by my favorite author in about 8 years, that I just don't fully “get” it, or a combination of these.
In part, I know I was expecting this to be somewhat of a companion to American Gods. I read (erroneously, I realize now) somewhere that's what this was, but it isn't. That's yet to come. . . . So I was definitely expecting something else. Sure, this has elements of myth, but what Neil Gaiman story doesn't? In the end, as many reviewers have already stated, this book feels more similar to the Graveyard Book than any of his books for adults.
I think, also, that this was a very personal book for Gaiman to write. It's not much of a stretch to imagine Gaiman as the lonely boy who trusted books more than people. And of course,there's the image of himself on the back cover as a young man doing something the unnamed protagonist does in the book. Some have said that reading his wife's review of the book helped the puzzle pieces fit together (http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130618/). Maybe you have to be an Amanda Palmer fan for that to work, but for me it didn't really offer any other clues.
All that said, this is a decent story. At turns so deliciously creepy and so very melancholy. It's worth a read. But if you are new to Neil Gaiman, don't start here.
Less memoir and more recipe book/how-to than I was expecting. However, I appreciated the simple staple recipes included, and how they are arranged seasonally. I especially liked her practical approach to making do each week and month, and how it didn't ever mean the quality of her meals suffered. Indeed, the quality and meaning seems to increase exponentially as she gets closer to her sources and builds community. The tips she offers are very actionable, and I hope to slowly begin incorporating many of them into my own life.
A really fun twist to the Alice in Wonderland tale. It's not a retelling, but a dark “here's what really happened” take that focuses on the real-life inspiration for the tale. The writing was very lovely, though I did find the love triangle extremely tiresome (as I find most love triangles) and the protagonist just a little too slow on the uptake sometimes.
Fascinating, disturbing–downright scary, even. We've all heard the wackadoodle things Scientology teaches and the rumors of abuse that go on within it, but this book magnifies all that by about a million. It appears very well-researched, though at times it could have used some better organization. If everything in here is true, I don't understand how the “religion” is not only still allowed to operate under a tax-exempt status and be constitutionally protected, but how aren't half the leaders in jail? I also fear for Wright's safety, given the great lengths the cult has gone to in the past to subvert investigative journalists.
And while I understand how some people can be drawn into Scientology by the flashy celebrities, the promise of solving all your problems, etc., I don't understand how any sane, rational person manages to stick around and think “yeah, this is definitely true for me. This makes sense.”
The book didn't really click for me until about a third of the way through, when the “small-town violence” alluded to in the cover copy happens and the mystery surrounding it deepens. That is the heart of this book for me, not the love story between Sam and Jolie. The book didn't even really need that. This is a book about how people and communities carry the past with them, how it shapes them, how they try to bury it or escape it or protect it or atone for it. The author portrays the South and racial tensions very well, but some of the characters' actions don't always ring true.
The overall concept of this book was very intriguing. However, the execution was a bit off. This was an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of novel. Shapeshifters, dragons, Native American AND Norse AND Babylonian mythology, post-apocalyptic city, paranormal romance, steampunk, urban fantasy, ghosts, missing heir, immortals, lone wolf with checkered past is redeemed by love, frightened virgin learns she has awesome powers and fights to save world. . . . And the romance? Please. Too bodice-ripper for me, aka totally unbelievable and horribly sexist. Why must romance writers persist in perpetuating the notion that women want to be owned?
I read this in one sitting, without quite meaning to. At first, I wanted it to be a stronger indictment against farming with chemicals. But I came to appreciate the quiet subtlety of her protest and how she shows restraint and compassion toward even the most unsympathetic people in her life. I also appreciated the moment when she realizes how good people go so wrong–it humanized the issue for me. I like to think of organic vs. chemicals as a completely black and white issue, and sometimes forget the real people struggling with the weight of these decisions, on top of tradition and family legacies.
Delightful and charming. The banter between Beth and Jennifer alone is worth reading, but the love story is sweet too, even if it has a somewhat hurried and less-than-believable ending (but I really WANT to believe it). Perhaps I'm only saying this because of a major continuity error toward the end, when Beth says she first heard the Sundays' “Here's Where the Story Ends” in 8th grade. But if she's supposed to be 28 in 1999, that just can't be, as that song was released in 1990. A small quibble, I know, but it's getting to me a lot more than it should. It broke the spell for me, I guess.
That aside, this really was a very enjoyable read. Even though you only get to know Beth and Jennifer mostly through their email communication to each other, they felt very real and their dialogue was hilarious as well as believable. I want to take both of them out for drinks (but not martinis). Especially Beth, who shares my love of October:
“October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins.”