Captivate by Carrie Jones

****NEWS: Book Three Titled Entice is set to come out December 7th of this year according to Anazon****


Summary:
This book is the second in her Need series. It is narrated by Zara who has been living a fairly normal life since she and her friends locked her pixie father and his followers in the house in the woods. Zara and Nick are in a relationship and they are still in school where they along with Issie and Devyn all take part in things like Amnesty, Track, and French club. However they have also been taking shifts making sure the iron is keeping the pixies in the house and catching new pixies that come to town. Zara is out walking one day and comes across a pixie who begs for his life because he is hurt and chained to a tree and a Valkyrie is trying to take him to Valhalla. Zara saves him and finds out that he is a new pixie king named Astley. She also finds out that she has an unexpected reaction to him. She turns blue and swoons becoming more pixie-like when he is around. It is a reaction that her pixie blood has to kings she can couple with. However we find that all is not well in their little corner of Maine. With the weakness of her father and his court many kings are planning to try to take over his territory. This is why Astley has come he claims to be a good pixie sent by a group of good rulers to take control before someone else can. However, Zara won’t tell him where the house is so he looks for it in vain because eventually a new bad pixie king shows up and massacres the pixie house and wounds Zara’s father. Zara and Nick come to check on the house before the bad king can leave and so they find him and Nick and the new pixie king fight while fighting Nick is mortally wounded and the bad king leaves Zara to watch him die before he comes back to claim Zara as his queen. When both the bad king and Zara’s wounded father have fled Zara tries to call Grandma Betty or Issie and Devyn for help but they are all busy because the pixies that escaped the house stopped a school bus and killed and hurt many people. The Valkyrie comes and takes Nick away and there is nothing Zara can do about it. So she is left alone in the woods consumed by grief when 2 pixies come upon her and she kills them both before being rescued by Astley. While with Astley Zara demands to know what he knows about the Valkyrie and Valhalla. He tells her that the Valkyrie is collecting warriors for a coming battle. This means that Nick will still be alive. But any warrior who enters Valhalla will be kept there and no humans will be able to find it. So Zara plans to let Astley make her his Queen and perform the pixie kiss so that with help from her friends and Astley she will be able to travel to Valhalla and bring back Nick. Before she can plan with Issie, Devyn, Betty and Betty’s friend the Were-bear they are attacked by more pixies. Zara is separated from the group and is saved by Astley who takes her away from the fighting. Zara decides to go ahead with the plan and she kisses Astley. Two days later she wakes up a pixie and goes to talk with Devyn and Issie who have made a new friend in Chelsea who is part elf. At first they are afraid of the new pixie Zara but then they realize she is still the same and is in control of any needs she has. The book ends with them seeing that nick is in fact alive somewhere so Zara didn’t turn into a pixie in vain.


Review:
This was a good book my only complaint is that I felt ripped off by the ending because you are left with all questions and no answers. However it sets it up for the next book so it’s not like those answers won’t ever be answered. That said all I have for this book is praise. I love Nick and Zara but I was getting tired of them together because they didn’t seem to work. They both want to save the world but in very different ways. Nick being so bigoted was getting on my nerves and I loved the introduction of Astley. I was really hoping for a good pixie character because the real world isn’t quite so black and white. That said I think there is something fishy going on with him and his people and I really hope he remains to be a good guy. I liked the introduction of a new race into this book and I think the character of Chelsea is awesome and fits right in even though we didn’t see much of her in this book. I also like that Zara went pixie because not only was that a self sacrificing act which is so Zara but it also allows her to do more than sit and watch her protectors save her from the kings seeking queens. It gave her power to take care of herself and empowerment is a strong thing. I can’t wait to hear more about Valhalla and Astley. And I hope Betty takes the transformation pretty well because it would suck to have Zara estranged from her only family in town.

Undead and Unfinished by Mary Janice Davidson

Previous books:

1.) Undead and Unwed
2.) Undead and Unemployed
3.) Undead and Unappreciated
4.) Undead and Unreturnable
5.) Undead and Unpopular
6.) Undead and Uneasy
7.) Undead and Unworthy
8.) Undead and Unwelcome


Summary: This book picks up where the last one took off. Laura the antichrist went towards the dark side while her sister Betsy the Queen of the Vampires was with the Wyndham Werewolves and now she feels bad about it so she has been keeping a low profile. Betsy is still mourning (or refusing to mourn) the deaths of Garrett and Antonia. Baby Jon has been found to be impervious to supernatural harm. Mark is still dateless and Jessica is still mourning the loss of her relationship with Detective Nick. Tina and Sinclair are still running the undead and making money. Now the thanksgiving holiday is coming up and Laura gets in touch with Betsy to go shopping and tries to make up for her actions. After a trip to the mall and a movie night with Laura, Betsy comes home to Eric Sinclair (her husband) and starts a meaningless fight with him. It is about how thanksgiving is symbolic of the oppression of minorities including women and how Sinclair is a rich white man so he wouldn’t know anything about being oppressed. After the fight Betsy storms out and finds herself in the Library with the book of the dead. The devil shows up and starts stuff when Jessica walks in on her and Betsy. When the Devil starts talking about Jessica’s parents being in hell Betsy bashes a book stand on her. The devil tells Betsy that she is forgiven and when she needs to summon the devil the next day she will know how to get in touch. Then the next day Betsy decides she has been mad at Sinclair long enough so she goes to him but when she tries to talk to him he is mean and cold and tells her to leave him alone he is tired of her selfishness. She then gets a call from Laura asking for help and not wanting to face Sinclair she goes to pick up her sister. She finds that her sister woke up naked in the spoon of the Minneapolis sculpture garden after having bad dreams. Apparently this is not the first time she had had bad dreams and blacked out but she didn’t want to tell anyone. While there some men try to gang rape them so Betsy uses them to feed off of. They go back to Betsy’s house and decide they have to call the devil to see what is going on with Laura. The devil says that Laura needs to tour hell and learn how to use her fallen angel side or else she will go crazy and Betsy needs to go with her. So they decide to take a tour of Hell.


SPOILERS!!! (highlight to read!!)


So they pack for a trip and in Betsy’s room she finds that Sinclair left her a note so she packs that too. However, after bargaining on what the devil will have to give them to come along the devil knocks out Betsy leaving her bag at the house. This is physical contact is apparently the way to get to hell dimension. After a tour of the hell dimension and a conversation where the devil tells them that the reason she had a baby was because she wants Laura to take her job so that she can retire they are told that Laura must learn to time travel and Betsy needs to go along. So Laura knocks Betsy out and when she comes to they are in Salem during the Witch trials. They hear a man named William Putnam charging a woman with witchcraft and the woman gets so angry she accuses him of framing her because she wouldn’t marry him and give him her land. Betsy is intrigued by her courage so she goes to rescue the woman whose name is Caroline. She then proceeds to tell the entire town of Salem off for being bigots and ridiculous people doing the devil’s work in god’s name. Then she and Laura leave. Then they travel in time to a barn where they meet Eric and Erin Sinclair two young twins who are moving to live with their aunt Tina. After the kids are called away Laura and Betsy leave again and are taken to around the 1920’s where a funeral for Eric Sinclair’s parents is being held. Betsy learns that Erin Sinclair went off to college where she was hit on by a vampire and when she didn’t reciprocate he killed her. Then her parents came to find out what happened to her and they were killed. They find out that Tina thinks the vampire was trying to get even with her by killing the closest thing she had to a family. Tina then plans on leaving Sinclair to go get back at the Vampire but Betsy talks Tina into turning Eric. Then she realizes that he rose as a strong Vampire because she needs to bite him first. After biting him and making sure that Tina plans to turn him they leave. Then they travel to the night that Betsy bit detective Nick. She saves Nick from herself at the price of Laura who gets bit instead. Then they travel to the same night that she fights with Sinclair and saves Mark so they find the younger Betsy and Sinclair in the cemetery from the first book. After a fight past Betsy and Sinclair go separate ways. So Future Betsy goes to Sinclair and tells him that he has to go after past her and be charming and annoying because eventually they fall in love and are happy together. Lastly they are taken to the future in 3000 where future Betsy is creepy and inhuman and Baby Jon is still alive and Mark is a creepy insane Vampire. Laura and Betsy don’t find anyone else they know there but the landscape is completely frozen and it’s the in the summer. Betsy and Laura split up to do recon and Betsy finds out that future Betsy uses Zombies as her servants. They don’t learn much more but we learn that Tina somehow betrayed Betsy and Sinclair didn’t stick with Betsy so Betsy made the Book of the Dead out of Sinclair’s Flesh. We also learn that Betsy locked Mark up in a coffin for 50 years which drove him mad. And Future Betsy is working with Future Laura who is the new leader of the hell dimension. When Betsy returns home she finds out that Nick and Jessica are living at their house and are pregnant. Also Nick and Betsy are Great friends. She also finds out that Sinclair’s note to her was telling her that he loved her and he hated picking a fight with her but he knew that she had to go to hell and travel trough time with Laura. She also learns that Caroline was a relative of Tina’s who survived thanks to Betsy and that her family passed down stories of the two beautiful angels who saved Caroline. Lastly Laura decides that she needs to take over the job from her mother so that she and Betsy will have more knowledge and more chance to change the future.


Review:


This series was always great to me. It was a light and funny read that I could pick up when I had down time or when I needed a pick-me-up. I loved the character of Betsy because to me she was just what a modern woman would be like if she suddenly woke up one day to find out she had died and risen as the queen of people previously thought of as fictional. I loved the situations she was put in and the fact that normally it was her friends who got her out of it. That said somewhere along the line the stories and the characters became less funny and light and more dark and twisty. Betsy was a entertaining shallow blonde of the modern world but lately it has become not a funny shallow but an infantile hurtful shallow that doesn’t notice anything but her own problems and doesn’t try. This pattern of dark and twisty continued on in this book and Betsy’s self absorbed selfishness became an irritation I didn’t think I could get past. However, just as I was going to put the book down about 100 pages in it started to change. Betsy seemed to grow more and more and realize her mistakes and try to straighten up. While Laura was seeming to embrace her devil side. I truly got into the story that was starting to form and was loving the direction it was going in. Alas the book ended with a major cliff hanger and more questions posed than answered. That said I do plan on reading the next one because Betsy’s character seemed to be changing her annoying ways and the story Davidson was setting up is attention getting. I didn’t really like this book but I am hoping that it was a stepping stone setting up the plot points we needed to have before we could continue so I have great hope for the next book and when it comes out I will be reading it.

The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey

Summary:
This is the fifth book in Mercedes Lackey’s series entitled the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. This book is defiantly one of my favorites in the series so far. In this Series Mercedes Lackey retells the classic fairy tales in New and different ways. In the land of the five hundred kingdoms the magical force called “the tradition” is the ruling force of people’s lives. This book follows the same formula that Mercedes Lackey has so beautifully set up in her past works. However this story was a clever mix of several tales with sleeping princesses. The kingdom of Eltaria has just lost its beloved queen and the tradition is building up around Princess Rosamund, the fairest in the land, and King Thurman to set in motion a traditional tale of a wicked stepmother. So Godmother Lilly must act fast and disguises herself as a wicked stepmother and marries the King but when the Huntsman attacks princess Rosamund and she goes missing Godmother Lilly must find her and tell her the truth about who Lilly is so that they can find a way to get around the tradition in one piece. However when two princes, Siegfried and Leopold, are thrown into the story with the tradition on their heels things get more heated. Now Lilly and Rosamund must find a way to satisfy the tradition and keep war from the kingdom so they invite princes from all over the 500 kingdoms to take part in test and trials for Rosamunds hand in marriage. During the trials the princes stay at Rosamunds castle and she begins to fall for Siegfried the Northlander who has some issues with the tradition of his own. Siegfried is running from his destiny because he is meant to wake up the sleeping shield maiden from inside a ring of fire. If he does wake the maiden who is actually Brunnhilde he will set into motion a story that ends in betrayal, tragedy, and the end of the gods. So when he falls in love with Rosamund and befriends Leopold they must all work together to satisfy the tradition and get the kingdom to safety. But a wrench is thrown in their plan when Rosamund is kidnapped and the group must find out who did it and where she is. Can they rescue the princess and stop war from coming to the kingdom of Eltaria in time for a happily ever after?


Review:
This is probably my favorite book in the series. This book was told from the point of view of Rosamund, Godmother Lilly, and Siegfried. This was done well and allowed us to closely bond with these characters and with some of the secondary characters by seeing them from more than one POV. I think that Mercedes Lackey did a wonderful job mixing the different stories of sleeping princesses. She managed to create a bond between all the players and make you enjoy each one. She ended the story with multiple happy endings for the different couples and I didn’t feel like any ends were left unknown but she also created the beginnings of new characters and storylines. This book also had me laughing out loud more than any of the others. My only real complaint is that I wasn’t familiar with the story of Siegfried and Brunnhilde before reading this story so at the end when Brunnhilde is yelling at her father I had no idea what she was talking about. More back ground information put into the story would have been much appreciated. However that said I think she did a wonderful job. There was Good dialogue, great characters, Action, Romance, and more. Over all I felt like this was a major step up from Ice Queen but had more characters that were loveable than The Fairy Godmother.

Spells by Aprilynne Pike

So the Video that is included gives you a quick book preview for spells. Since Spells is book number two from Aprilynne Pike I am going to do a plot summary for Wings and then again for Spells. SPOILERS INCLUDED IN BOTH SUMMARYS.


Wings (Book 1): In Wings we were introduced to all the main players in the series so far. The main plot goes something like this; Laurel has just moved to a new house and started high school. When a lump on her back blooms into a flower that sort of resembles wings she finds out she is actually a fairy. After much research and experimenting with her friend David she realizes she is a plant. She doesn’t have human cells and she doesn’t bleed or breathe oxygen. She goes to her childhood home with her parents one day to get it ready to sell. While in the forest she meets Tamani a male fairy who seems to know her and she is told that she is a fairy, the flower will fall off until next fall and that she was given to her parents so that she would inherit their family land. The family land holds the gate to Avalon which is where all the fairies live. Trolls are the enemies of fairies and they are trying to get into Avalon by buying the family land. Tamani tells her that it is essential that the trolls not get access to the land or Avalon will be in trouble. She tells him she will try her best but when her father gets sick, her mother decides that to pay the medical bills she must sell the land to Mr. Barnes. Laurel doesn’t trust Mr. Barnes so she and her friend David follow him home. There they find that he is a troll living with other trolls and he poisoned her father to get access to the land. They are discovered and the trolls attempt to kill her and David by drowning them in the river. She and David use each other to breathe underwater and they survive and run to tell Tamani what happened. Tamani then tells them to take him to Barnes house so that he can kill them. After he leaves her she follows him and watches as he kills 3 trolls but when he reached Barnes he gets shot and can’t finish it. So Laurel picks up a gun and points it at Barnes but he doesn’t believe she will shoot him. He lunges for Laurel and she shoots him in the shoulder out of reflex. Barnes then runs away and David and Laurel take the gravely injured Tamani back to the woods by the gate to Avalon. When they get there the Winter Fairy Jamison opens the gate from the inside and while the other spring fairies take Tamani to get healed Jamison talks to Laurel. He tells her that he is proud of her and that the fairies are willing to help her and her family if tell give Laurel the land. He then gives her a huge Diamond and a special elixir of healing for humans. He then tells her to hurry because her father doesn’t have much time left. She and David rush to the hospital and give some of the elixir to her father and then she gives some to David. She then tells her parents the truth about what she is and tells them that the Diamond was given to them in return for putting the land in her name. At the end of this book she still firmly wants to stay in the human world with her loved ones and starts a relationship with David. However she is still drawn to the fairy world and to the bewitching Tamani.


Spells (Book 2): This book starts six months after the events in wings. Laurel’s relationship with David has grown and deepened but her relationship with her parents is still strained due to her being a fairy. When the book opens we find out that over summer break Laurel has been summoned to attend the Academy of Avalon due to her lack of education as a fall fairy. Laurel is at first weary of traveling to the woods much less Avalon because she is worried about her connection to Tamani and the other fairies. However when she arrives at the woods she is instantly comfortable with Tamani and she goes to Avalon. In Avalon she is torn it too, she is mostly uncomfortable because she does not remember anything nor is she used to the strange customs of the world. It doesn’t help that she is doing nothing at school but reading and study about plants and how to make potions. However the world itself feels very comforting to Laurel because it is where she comes from. Tamani comes to visit her a few times while she is at school and he takes her to the markets and to visit his mother. However this makes her uncomfortable as well because she is a fall fairy and therefore she is higher in rank than Tamani the spring fairy. This leads to him acting subservient and she does not like this custom since it is so different from her life at home. She also finds a friend at school named Katya and a fall fairy named Mara who hates Laurel. Tamani comes back and takes Laurel on a trip to the world tree which is where his father became a part of the tree and added his voice to that of other fairies. While there she is told that David bothers Tamani so much because Tamani can’t just proclaim his intentions anything that happens between them has to be started by Laurel because she is fall and he is spring. When her summer break is finished she returns to her home in the human world but before she does Jamison tells her to be weary because something is coming and she should not forget that Barnes is still out there somewhere. Laurel feels bad because she hasn’t been very good at making simple potions and other fall fairy magic so she is still behind and when she gets home she is still having trouble making vials and potions. When home Laurel reunites with David and we find out that although her father is excited about her being a fairy her mother has been distant ever since. This distance is made easy by the fact that her mother opened up a natural medicine store beside the bookstore her father owns. We are also told that Chelsea is dating Ryan. Laurel blossoms after school starts and then David and Laurel go to a party that Ryan and Chelsea are throwing. While there they realize that trolls are outside waiting for them so they run to the car and then try to speed away but they crash and are attacked by several trolls. David injures his leg and a troll rips off some of Laurel’s flower petals. They are saved by a mysterious woman named Klea who takes them to a camp and gives them guns to protect them from Barnes whom Klea is tracking. David trusts Klea but Laurel doesn’t so she hides the fact that she is a fairy and Barnes is a troll. The next day Laurel goes to the old house to see Tamani and to clean and air out the house. She tells him about the incident with the trolls and with Klea then she and he clean the house. The next day David set up a romantic picnic in the woods and they enjoy each other’s company and discus the future even thought Laurel isn’t sure she will be able to have one outside of Avalon. Then Laurel is invited to Avalon for the Samhain festival. She sneaks there without telling David and meets Tamani who escorts her to the summer fairy play which is a loose version of a midsummer night’s dream. Then they have drinks and food and Tamani kisses her. She runs away and Tamani follows her back out if Avalon where David is waiting and he kisses her again telling her that she really does like Avalon and is happy she just won’t let herself realize it. David feels betrayed and leaves her and says not to call him until he is ready to talk to her. When she gets home she finds a note saying that Barnes has Chelsea and Laurel must be at the lighthouse in time or else. Laurel goes out to her back woods to look for the sentries she is supposed to have but they are not there. So she goes to David and tells him Barnes have Chelsea. David grabs the guns that Klea gave him and then Laurel stops by her mother’s shop to get ingredients to make a sleeping potion. Her mother is worried but Laurel doesn’t have time to tell her everything so they both tell each other they love each other and Laurel leaves. When they get to the light house hey find that the tide has come in witch means that the light house is sitting on an island surrounded by the ocean water. Salt water is draining to plants and it will harm Laurel so David carries her across. In the house the trolls take a gun away from David and beat him while Laurel crushes a potion vial in her coat pocket. The potion puts 3 of the lesser trolls out cold but it burns Laurels hand and David is still tied up and hurt and Barnes still has Chelsea. Just when it seems all hope is lost Klea shows up after Barnes hears something and had her toss her gun up the stairs. She then goes to stand beside David and pulls a gun out of his waist band and shoots Barnes before he can shoot them. Klea and her team have a small boat and are able to help the kids across the water to their car. They then get in and start the heat for David and Laurel treats her friends’ wounds with her healing potion. Chelsea says that she knew about Laurel and thinks it is awesome but Laurel says her secret comes with a price, danger and secrets. Laurel asks Chelsea if she wants laurel to use a memory potion on her or can she handle it. Chelsea says she can deal with it. Later that night Laurel tells David that he is the one that she wants and if he wants her to she will try to cut ties with Tamani and Avalon because she loves David and he is the one for her. David forgives her and the book ends with Laurel going to the cabin in the woods to tell Tamani good bye but she instead tells Shar everything that happened. She then says she won’t be around very much and she was saying good bye to Tamani but Shar tells her that Tamani already left because he was reassigned. After Laurel leaves we learn that Tamani didn’t really leave yet but he has been assigned a new mission that he thinks he can handle.


Review:
I love this world that Aprilynne has created an awesome world and mythology to go along with her world. I think it is awesome how she has created a cast system based on the rolls they play in society which is dictated by what season you were born. All this shows her creativity even though I don’t agree with the practice in the book. I think this is defiantly a book worth your time if you like character driven books. It defiantly has the classic story line of a love triangle which can sometimes be tedious. However, in this book I understand it more and it doesn’t bother me as much as other series because the love triangle is so closely related to the pull of the two different worlds she is a part of. Both guys are very different and yet great guys I can see why she has such a hard choice. I wish we saw more of Tamani outside of the Submissive role he plays in Avalon but alas that is what the next book is for. The only issue I can find with this book for me is that I wish there was more action going on in the story throughout the book and less day to day life at school and such. I can’t wait to see what happens next and what assignment Tamani was given. I also hope to learn more about the winter queen and Mara and see more of Jameson and Chelsea.

Stephenie Meyer’s Novella The Short Second life of Bree Tanner

Summary:
If you haven’t read and/or watched Eclipse then don’t read this summary because it has SPOILERS. If you have read and/or watched Eclipse then you already know the end and most if this information won’t be new to you.


Bree Tanner was attacked and kidnapped while starving on the streets of Seattle. When Riley, the most gorgeous guy Riley offered her a hamburger her life changed when he took Bree to her who killed her. However Bree’s story didn’t end there, after the worst pain of her existence, she woke up as a vampire. Bree never saw her again but Riley took Bree back to a house with many other newborns. Riley lets them go out on hunting trips at night and only has a few rules: don’t draw attention, and be back to the house before the sun comes up or they would burn to death. Life in the newborn house was rough. There were many different gangs vying for dominance and one wrong move could mean being ripped to pieces. Still, a bright spot comes into her life in the form of Diego another newborn who isn’t consumed by bloodlust and can actually think and communicate. They quickly become attached and it is suggested that they become mates. However things aren’t as they seem. When and unlucky accident causes Bree and Diego to be stuck out side during the day they find out that Riley was wrong about the effects of the sun. Diego who considers Riley a friend decides that they should tell Riley the truth about what happens during the day time. So they follow Riley to a house in the woods where he meets with her while there spying, the Volturi come to talk to Riley and her. The Volturi give her 5 days to get her army together and beat the Cullens or else. Bree and Diego don’t understand this meeting but Diego still want to tell Riley about the ability to walk in the sunlight in hopes that he just didn’t know the truth. Bree heads back to the house so that Diego can tell Riley in a friendly way. Back at the house Bree starts to become friends with Fred who seems to have the ability to make himself invisible and annoying to anyone who bothers him. Since people stay away from freaky Fred she hides near him so that they over look her too. However, Diego never comes back and Riley tells the newborns that this Cullen clan is trying to take their territory from them and that they must go to fight the Cullen’s and Diego has gone with her to scout the area. So training for the fight begins and go on for 3 days at which point Riley tells them that there are 4 days a year that vampires can walk outside during the day and the fourth day is that day so, they are going to attack the Cullen’s during the day for a surprise attack. On the way to Forks they raid a ferry boat for victims before battle. At this point Fred tells Bree that he is running away and wants her to go with him. She wants to but wants to go get Diego first so she says she will be right behind him after getting Diego. She then runs off with the others and into a battle. She shows up late and doesn’t ever really know what happed because it’s over so fast but she realizes that Riley lied and Diego is dead. You then see the scene from eclipse play out from her point of view and she communicates with Edward that the Volturi knew and wanted them to kill the Cullens. She is also greatful that Riley and her (Victoria) were killed. When she realizes the Volturi are going to killer her she hopes that Fred finds the Cullens and that they are nice to him. Then it ends with her closing her eyes before death.


Review:
Okay so I had to read this book because the twilight saga is what got me to start reading again and when I watched eclipse I decided that I wanted to know more about what was going on in Seattle and the deception of the Volturi. This was defiantly a good read and it only took me 4 hours to finish it. It introduced new characters that were “classic” vampires but also weren’t evil but just living a normal vampire life feeding off “street scum”. I very much enjoyed the main characters in this novella and found myself growing attached even as the end drew near. I didn’t cry because I knew what was coming however it was sad and if it had been a surprise I probably would have. I found my heart breaking with Bree’s when she worried about Diego even though I knew what happened to begin with. I wish that the story would have had more time with Diego and Bree together however since there was no happy ending for those two it might have been a good thing I didn’t get it. I think this was great character development on Stephenie Meyer’s part and I hope we learn more about Fred’s life. If you enjoyed the twilight books you will defiantly love this and will want to read it. If you arnt a twilight person you might still like it even if you don’t have all the back ground and meaning from the original saga. Over all GREAT book and I hope to see more from the twilight universe not involving Bella and Edward.

The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey

Summary:
This is the fourth books in Mercedes Lackey’s series entitled the Tales of the Five Hundred kingdoms. The premise of the Tales of the five hundred kingdoms is that there is this magical force called “the tradition” which causes peoples’ lives to take certain paths that their lives most closely follow. For example Stepmothers are always supposed to be evil, 7th sons are always fools, and damsels in distress are always meant to fall for their rescuers. This causes Cinderella, snow white, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel stories to repeat because the more popular a story becomes the more it becomes “tradition.” With that said this story is a standalone novel and can defiantly be read and enjoyed without reading the first three books. This is somewhat of a retelling of the classic Fairy tale of the Snow Queen. However in this story The Snow Queen is actually a Godmother named Aleksia and in her kingdoms her main role in the tradition is teaching the “be careful what you wish for” lesson. The story starts with Aleksia keeping a boy named Kay in her castle because he has wished that he didn’t have people to bother him so that he could use his genius to work on his projects in peace. However Aleksia is trying to teach him that love is more important and that without being loved and loving someone in return life isn’t worth much. She is also trying to keep an eye on Gerda, the Girl who loves Kay, and make sure she grows a back bone for herself so that she doesn’t let Kay trample all over her just because she loves him. Aleksia needs to make sure that Gerda knows that the hardest thing to do is stand up to the one you love. We see the whole classic story play out from the point of view of the godmother/ Snow Queen. But things start to go wrong when Aleskia hears from another Godmother that someone has taken the identity of the Snow Queen and is kidnapping young men from their homes. So to look into this claim she spies on two warrior mages and their apprentice. When the men, Lemminkal, Ilmari, and Veikko go missing Aleksia must take an active role in the tale to save the men and find out who is impersonating her and why. She meets up with Veikko’s mother Annukka, who is a wise woman, and his fiancé Kaari to form a Questing group to find the men and save Veikko from the Snow Witch. In the end all is well and many characters couple up.


Review:

Let me start by saying that I love this series and I think Mercedes Lackey has amazing talent. This has been proven too me in the past three books of the five hundred kingdoms. That said this book left me unsatisfied. The problem with this book for me was that there were so many characters you never truly got attached to any of them. It was kind of like watching a story play out behind a glass. Aleksia was so cut off from contact that for the first half of the book I couldn’t bond with her because she didn’t seem like a person much less a fairy godmother. She wasn’t just playing a cold and aloof character in front of people but in her own thoughts as well. Annukka was a little easier to feel for but there were times when I didn’t feel like she was real either. It may have just been what the “wise woman” does in the story but she seemed cold at times too. The second half where they are all off questing was the best part in my opinion because you actually had character interaction but it didn’t last long before they were facing the Snow Witch and then the story was over and couples were pairing up. I would have been much happier with a longer book with more character development and interaction or a shorter book with less stuff going on. Like what was going on with all the build up about Kaari and her crystal tears? And when the end came I could see the answer way off there was no surprise or entertainment just an end. Lastly there was little to no romance in this book. I didn’t really expect nor need an explicit scene but there wasn’t even any kissing or butterflies in the stomach. Over all I was not impressed with this story even though I loved the idea of the Snow Queen being the fairy godmother. However I have not given up hope and plan to read many of her future books in this series.

Alyson Noel's Shadowland

Shadowland is the 3rd book in Alyson Noel’s Immortal series. So I am going to start this summary and review by talking about the first two books as well.

Evermore (book 1)

We meet Ever Bloom who is a sixteen year old girl whose life was recently changed when her family’s car swerved to miss a deer coming home from a camping trip. The accident killed her parents, her sister Riley, her dog, even Ever died for a little while. When she wakes up in the hospital she finds that she can now hear people’s thoughts and see their auras. She moves to a new school with her aunt Sabine now her legal guardian. She becomes friends with Haven and Miles and struggles to deal with her new abilities. However her world is turned upside down again when the mysterious new Damen shows an interest in Ever.

SPOILER INFORMATION!!! (Highlight to read if you want)

We find out that Damen is an immortal and he is the reason that Ever did not die with her family in the car accident. Damen has lived for over 600 years and he has a history of falling in love with Ever in her past lives only to lose her when she is killed early in life before they can be together so when she was going to die Damen gave ever some immortal elixir to save her. The elixir began to make her immortal and caused her onset of powers. The two fall in love but trouble comes in the form for Damen’s long separated Immortal wife Drina who still pines for Damen so she has been killing Ever’s reincarnations for hundreds of years hoping that Damen will finally forget Ever and come back to her. She was the one who caused the car accident to kill Ever and her family but Damen’s interference messed up her plan so she continues to try and hurt Ever using her friends and family. Drina nearly kills Haven but with Damen’s help they are able to save her. But when Drina then resorts to kidnapping Ever only one of them can walk away from the final battle and that one ends up being Ever. So with Ever now an immortal and her friends safe again Damen and Ever start an eternity together.

Blue Moon (book 2)

Ever and Damen are together and happy and Immortal. They are also practicing using their immortal powers, while mixing in some make out sessions. One of the things they are practicing is how to get to Summerland. But when a new boy named Roman shows up at school Ever gets a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. It doesn’t help that he is showing interest in Ever despite Damen. But everyone at school thinks she is over reacting to his attention. But when Damen starts to lose his immortal power and begins to show an aura Ever gets worried. But she ignores it, that is until he ditches her at the opening night of Miles role in “hairspray”. Then when he shows up at school ignoring Ever and starts a relationship with Stacia she knows that her instinct was right and that Roman is up to something but can she figure it out before it’s too late because along with his change in personality Damen Grows weaker every day. But where do you look for a cure when your teacher is the one in trouble and the whole school is against you?

SPOILER INFORMATION!!! (Highlight to read if you want)


Desperate to find a way to save Damen, Ever turns Ava, a psychic. Ava has been attempting to get to Summerland for years. Together they are able to get to Summerland and search for answers to her quest in the Great Halls of Learning. However the hall doesn’t give you an answer that easily and it shows Ever all the Damen’s past. His father was an alchemist who was attempting to create an elixir for everlasting life. But Damen’s family was killed by a group of men in an attempt to steal the elixir. Damen was able to use his knowledge to complete the elixir but couldn’t bring his parents back so he was sent to an orphanage where he met and fell in love with Drina. But when the Bubonic plague spreads through Europe she and other children from the orphanage catch it and begin to fall ill. So to save Drina he makes the Elixir and they, along with the other orphans drink it and become immortal. Damen and Drina stay together for a century but they become greedy due to their immortality and seek wealth and power destroying lives in the process. While working with Ava ever is taught how to shield herself from people’s memories. The next day at school ever places Roman’s face and finds out that he is a rogue immortal and he is one if the orphans that Damen saves from the Bubonic plague. But he was in love with Drina so he is getting revenge and Damen and Ever for taking her attention from him and then for killing her. He swapped Damen’s Elixir with a poisoned form. Roman believes that immortals are better than humans and that they should be able to make any one immortal they want to. Ever returns to Summerland in search for an antidote while searching she discovers a way to reset time and make it so the accident never happened and her family never died. So she has to choose her family or Damen. She gives the antidote for Damen to Ava who promises to help Damen. Then Ever goes back and chooses her family. However she soon finds out that she doesn’t like life without Damen and going back to her small town life with her old friends isn’t good enough. So she returns to the present and she finds that Damen is still sick and Ava has fled with the antidote. So she is forced to listen to Roman to save his life but Roman’s antidote makes it so that if Ever’s DNA ever touches Damen then he will die.


Shadowland (Book 3) Summary is from Alyson Noel's Website

"Ever and Damen have traveled through countless past lives—and fought off the world's darkest enemies—so they could be together forever. But just as their long-awaited destiny is finally within reach, a powerful curse falls upon Damen...one that could destroy everything. Now a single touch of their hands or a soft brush of their lips could mean sudden death—plunging Damen into a bleak afterlife in the Shadowland, an eternal abyss for lost souls. Desperate to break the curse and save Damen, Ever immerses herself in magick—and gets help from an unexpected source...Jude Knight.

Although she and Jude have only just met, he feels startlingly familiar. Despite her fierce loyalty to Damen, Ever is drawn to Jude, a green-eyed golden boy with magical talents and a mysterious past. She's always believed Damen to be her soul mate and one true love—and she still believes it to be true. But as Damen pulls away to save them from the darkness inhabiting his soul, Ever's connection with Jude grows stronger—and tests her love for Damen like never before..."

SPOILER INFORMATION!!! (Highlight to read if you want)


The whole problem in this book is mainly that Ever and Damen can’t physically touch so in theory they cannot hold hands, kiss, or “be together”. Ever is bothered by this because she is jealous and hurt due to the way that he acted when he was under Romans control and what he may have done with Stacia. Haven becomes suspicious of Ever’s constant communications with Damen using mind reading. We find out that Roman is still in town and planning a test for Ever to see if she can “give the people what they want” and only if she passes his test the right way will he give Ever the antidote to Damen’s bad antidote. To Ever’s dismay she learns that Romy and Rayne have lost their powers and are stuck outside of Summerland. So they move in with Damen who is going through a change of his own because the few seconds that he was dead before Ever brought him back in Blue Moon he went to the Shadowland instead of Summerland. He thinks that this is a product of him being an immortal and that any and every immortal that dies will be stuck in the Shadowland forever. This makes him feel guilty for all the things he has done in his life, including making Drina, the Orphans, and Ever immortal. Because of his guilt and life altering vision he begins to give all his stuff away and change his attitude. It doesn’t help when Ever gets a Job and Damen realizes that her boss Jude is the reincarnation of loves from her past lives. Ever doesn’t remember them but Damen does and he decides that he is going to step out of her life and let her live the life she was supposed to have without him even though he already made her immortal. At the end of the book Ever throws a going away party for her friend Miles who is going to Europe for the summer. Before the party she casts a dark magic spell without her protective amulet and it turns out wrong. At the party Roman and Haven show up with 3 other immortals, and Jude shows up and is a huge help to her during the party. After the party they are in the hot tub bonding and about to kiss when Ava calls. She is at Romans house with Haven and Haven is dying. Ever notices an Ouroboros tattoo on Jude’s back and she thinks that he is a rouge immortal so she yells at him to leave and not be there when she gets home. Ever gets to Romans house at the same time as Damen does and Roman explains that the test is that she must pick between her friend and her love because the only way Roman will give her the antidote for being with Damen is if she lets Haven die. Ever can’t stand to lose her friend even if it means sentencing her to the Shadowland so she feeds Haven the Elixir. The book ends with her back with Damen but still unable to physically touch. They wonder what to tell Haven how to deal with Roman, How to help the twins and what the Ouroboros tattoo on Jude’s back meant.


Review

I read this book because I really enjoyed the first two. The characters seemed believable and the concept was a new version of old stories. It was closely related to Vampires without being a Vampire story like all the others. The addition of new characters both human and immortal is fun and captivating. At the same time the story is told in a way that is believable because she still has to deal with school and adults and jobs. So good job Alyson Noel with Evermore and with Blue Moon!

That said, I didn’t enjoy this book as much. I had a hard time connecting with Ever in this book because her thoughts were always so limited with Petty things. She was full of unbelievable angst and it made me dislike her which made it hard to stay into the story. The Story itself flowed and was easy to read but since the whole book was from Ever’s perspective her irritating attitude made it hard to connect. I was annoyed because Ever was not learning from her mistake in Blue Moon and she never thought about anyone else only herself. The whole issue of the book was the fact that Ever and Damen could not touch which I understood on a level. However, they used their powers to control energy and they ended up kissing and holding hands throughout the book and they even had a heavy make out session once. So without the physical separation I found it hard to sympathize. I mean if they can’t touch but can use magic that feels like touch what is the difference. At least she had that limited ability. So I found it hard to miss the physical action when it was essentially there thanks to magic. It made it feel like the problem wasn’t really a problem. I guess technically all the thoughts that Ever was feeling would be possible but I don’t think anyone who complained as much as she did would be someone I would want to know. Ever also complained about the twins living with Damen and him taking care of them which I would understand if she wasn’t the reason they were stuck on earth, and the one who brought them to Damen in the first place. I did love Jude as a character and want to learn much more about him. I didn’t feel like we heard from him as much as we heard about him so I hope to see more of him in the future. However I did love the teacher that Sabine is dating. But again I thought Ever’s irritation at their relationship was ridiculous when she was the one who made it happen in the first place. And all that complaining about other people didn’t make Ever learn anything because she chose wrong again when the big decisions came. I just wonder is Haven will forgive Ever because I don’t see that situation turning out well. Over all I felt like this book was just passing time and dragging out the story line. Ever was selfish from cover to cover and I am hoping that Dark Flame will be much better to make up for this story.