Review: Whisper the Dead by Alyxandra Harvey

After reading the first book a lot quicker than I thought I would, I knew I had to race to get the second book in this series. I wanted to hear more about Emma, Gretchen and Penelope and their place in the witching world after the climax that finished A Breath Of Frost.

Normally I do not like books that switch their focus on characters from one book to the next. As the first mainly focused on Emma, I had grown to like her more than the other cousins and as there was also a romance in the works with her, I wanted to hear more about her. However we did get to see bits from Emma in this book, which I was pleased about because we didn't just let her go, and through the course of the book I got to like Gretchen more and more. She developed a lot and I was glad to be there for that rather than letting my favour of Emma win over.

I have to admit that after the fight with the Sisters and their defeat, I thought that would be an end to that part of the story line, but Harvey brought the story back in a clever and believable way. If the Sisters had come back through means of their own it would lead to a lot of unanswerable questions and would make the story not fit right, but with Sophie carrying out the plan with an accomplice, it meant that their return was feared.

The introduction of Tobias as a love interest for Gretchen was, again, far too obvious. In fact, it was almost a repetition of Emma and Cormac's story. Of course you had the difference in Gretchen's powers from Emma and the fact that Tobias was a shape-shifter made the story have a twist, but it was the same 'hate to love' cliché. I have to say that I was still interested in their romance, but I would have preferred it if it was more different to previous romances in the series.

In the first book I did not, regrettably, focus much on Gretchen and what the witching world had done to her, but this book really gave a different insight to the first. Emma's magic did not have many side effects apart from draining away her energy, but that was nothing compared to what Gretchen had to go through. I really empathised with her because of the lengths she was willing to go to to help stop anything that was going to hurt her friends. Hers is a talent that I'm sure a lot of people would envy when they would first hear about it, the ability to make new spells is simply brilliant, but the prospect of her turning mad and having blood coming out of your ears is not the best thing to have. In the future I hope she is able to maintain her sanity.

Shape-shifting is something that is usually only portrayed as bad. They are seen as evil creatures in most of the books I have read about them, so it was nice to get to witness a different perspective. As well as that, having a female alpha of Tobias' pack was definitely a nice change and a welcome new dynamic for the period that this book is set in. The effects of the wolf were also explored, although not in as much depth as I would have liked, and getting to hear different opinions and back stories made me understand each character a little more. I hope we can revisit the wolves in the final book.

The climax of this book came with no real warning apart from the fact that I was running out of pages. Everything happened in quick succession and it meant that I just had to keep reading through the action so I would know what would happen to my beloved characters. Some things started to click together, but other things left me with lots of questions that I'm hoping will be answered in the final book. The cousins each had their own part to play and I was entirely swept up with each sharp turn that the book sent me on. As a closing to a book goes, that was definitely the most tense I have read in a long time and by leaving me on a cliff-hanger such as that one, I am wanting to camp outside my local bookstore until there is a hint of the third book.

My only other criticism of this book is the length of the chapters. They were much longer than the ones in the first book and I felt that the book could have been split up better than how it was. It made reading feel forced in some places because I always like to finish at the start of the next chapter. I cannot complain about character deaths though because although they impacted me severely, they were just at the right moments to spark on something bigger.

This book was just lacking a little something to make it five out of five stars; maybe that's something that I will be able to give the final book. (If anyone has any news on that it would be greatly appreciated as I can unfortunately find nothing on it.)

(Goodreads parallel) 

Review: A Breath Of Frost by Alyxandra Harvey

Upon seeing the cover of this book in my school's library I was instantly drawn to it and as I am a lover of fantasy, a blurb that had hints of magic was enough for me to take it with full force.

This is the first book by Alyxandra Harvey that I've read and at first I was very concerned with where the book was going. It seemed to me that for the first fifty pages or so nothing was particularly clear and although I could tell that the author had some great ideas, they failed to make it onto the page in a way that suited someone who had only just entered that world. However I can look back, knowing what I know from later on in the book, and say that it could represent how the cousins were feeling, but as an introduction to the trilogy, I was not overly impressed.

As I got further into the story I grew to be very interested in it, so much so that I finished it far earlier than I thought I would. This book is different to others about witchcraft because of how witchcraft was presented (the sides of good and evil and hierarchy within the witching community) and because of the time period it was set in. The early 1800s is actually a time period that I have rarely discovered through books, so this was a nice taster.

Emma, Gretchen and Penelope were characters that I especially liked because of their resilience to conform to what society expected of them. It is something that in today's society wouldn't be frowned upon, but in that time it was very rare and it made me so happy to have main characters who wanted to be different. Although, I am led to question whether any girls at that time did act as they did because of punishments that would have been brought about as a result of their actions.

In a way I did not like the fact that from the start of the novel I, as the reader, knew that Emma and Cormac were going to end up together. Their romance was a sweet forbidden one, but it was so plainly obvious from the first page that I was almost uninterested in it. It felt like it was a doomed relationship rather than a destined one.

I have to commend Harvey on her presentation of Daphne because I believed what Emma, Gretchen and Penelope did about her. I was so caught up in their presumptions that I didn't notice that she could be any different from how they thought her to be. From the beginning of the book she was believed to be a villain in a ball gown, but as the story progressed we got to see more and more of who she truly was. It is character development like that that I try and find in every novel.

On the other side of Emma's high class society was that of Moira and her companions. Her life of living on rooftops and stealing to make her way by is not one that I haven't heard of before, but it was made intriguing by her affinity with magic, the things she had had to suffer through and her connection with the other protagonists. I would really like to look more into her past and see what else lies beneath her surface and what has made her become her.

Flashbacks are often a fickle thing, but I think they were handled well. There were not so many that I was overwhelmed by them, yet not so little that I lost interest in the characters that they focused on. The story of Theodora could be written into a book of its own, but at this point I feel it is necessary for Emma to be in the dark about some things. I would definitely like to know more about her life in the books to come though.

As you can easily tell from the blurb, there was death in this book and it think that there were just the right amount of deaths and they were people that I, as the reader, knew well enough to feel sorry about, but not so much that I started to hate the author for killing off one of my favourite characters. That balance was just right in this book.

My only real complaint about this novel, apart from the unclear start, is the grammar. I think I will have to stop writing this in my reviews soon because it seems that no one else cares about the matter, but I will never accept connectives being used as sentence starters in the middle of narration. It is really saddening to see again and again and it seems that everyone has just accepted it to be correct now.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and can't wait to read the next! Luckily no one had taken in from the school's library when I got it out this morning or I would have been a bit vexed.

(Goodreads parallel) 

Review: The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey

 It has been a long time since I've read The 5th Wave and I found it surprisingly easy to slip back into the storyline. The Infinite Sea was an easy pick up from where The 5th Wave left off and with every event in The Infinite Sea reminding me of the events in the first book, I felt like I didn't have to read it again to be able to get the most out of this book.

With the prologue demonstrating the danger of the 5th wave, it gave me as the reader an insight into the power that the aliens hold. It also meant that with later events in the book, I, sadly, knew the dangers that the protagonists were in and it had me on the edge of my seat because I recognised the danger when they didn't.

Having the book told from many different perspectives was something that I really enjoyed from the first book. It meant that I got to see how all of the stories interconnected and also left me on lots of cliff-hangers because just as something major happened the perspective would switch and I would be left wondering if my beloved characters would be okay. It made me want to not put the book down until I had reached the end, but unfortunately life often gets in the way.

I really liked how in this book Cassie became less dependent on Evan. She was still waiting for him, but she grew to realise that she shouldn't let him control what she does and that she shouldn't hold everything out because she's in love with a guy. The thing with a lot of young adult novels is that as soon as the guy and girl meet she gives up everything and loses her personality and it was nice to see in this book that that changed.

Ringer's character development was one that really had my hooked. In the previous book we had seen how her upbringing affected the person she became, but in this book we got to see how it could be used against her and how her emotions could change everything. I grew to like her more as a character because she opened up for the first time and it was a beautiful and sad thing to see.

This book as a whole was simply amazing because we were only allowed to discover things as the protagonists were and so when they did discover those things we felt every emotion that they felt. Many people describe the emotions they feel as a rollercoaster because of the pressure they feel and how it has many ups and downs and I would agree with the first point when talking about his book, but I wouldn't talk about ups and downs. Instead I would talk about sharp turns that throw you so far to the side that you think your body might become implanted in the plastic; that was how this book made me feel.

Obviously no book is perfect and there are two main things that I would think could be improved. Firstly, more sentences than I would have liked started with connectives. It was not as bad as it is in some books these days and I understand why it was used in some place for dramatic impact and in speech, but apart from that it shouldn't have been used and more than anything it annoys me that a big publishing company such as Penguin would pass over such things.

Secondly, I would have loved it if the book was slightly longer. Compared to the first book it is quite a bit shorter and maybe this is just me wanting to read more about this world than I should, but I felt like the length of the book let it down in some ways. I wanted to look more into each scene and character, something which more words on the page would allow.

I am very excited for the final book in the trilogy now and I hope it lives up to the expectations I have from The 5th Wave and The Infinite Sea.

(Goodreads parallel)  

Rearrangements

Over the weekend I felt inspired to have a total rearrangement of how my books are laid out on my shelves. Previously they were just put where any other book by that author happened to be and to be honest, it looked a bit messy.

So, shelf by shelf I took down my books and placed them on my bed and floor depending on how much I had enjoyed them (almost like a star rating) and whether I felt like I had grown out of them slightly. I am never willing to let go of my books so I still have a lot from when I was about ten or eleven years old, which I really appreciated at the time, but I think that if I read them now they wouldn't have the same effect.

I ended up having books spread out over most of my room, piles of various sizes in every available space. After a lot of decision making I had set my book out in five separate areas. The books that I liked most would go on the shelves above my desk, then the next down on the shelf above my bed and so on down until the final set which I had decided to put on the bookshelf at the end of my bed, where they cannot easily be seen.

The idea of all of this was to be reminded of the books I liked most more often than the books that I didn't like as much. I now oddly have a shelf that mainly has black books on it and another that has more colours than the rainbow, but I guess that's just how these things work out.

Once I was done I took a look around and felt really pleased with myself for what I had done. I am someone who finds it hard to accept change and always sticks to a routine so I imagine I will often be reaching for Divergent and end up with The Hobbit now or something similar, but change is important.

Without change we cannot move forward and that links to my reading aim for 2015. This year I want to not only read more, but also share my love of books more, past with my school librarian and sister. This change of how I shelve my books is probably not that important in what I read, but what it symbolises, me changing how I share my love of books, is important.

-E

Everything Has To Start Somewhere

Hello and welcome to my new blog!

Here I aim to post pictures of some of my books and post my reviews, which will be the same as those on my goodreads.

I hope you choose to stick around and like what you find here (when I actually get round to posting something properly).

-E