"Waiting On" Wednesday: Tell the Wind and Fire

"Waiting On" Wednesday is hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine.

I enjoy Sarah Rees Brennan's work (see one of my reviews), so I was quite excited when Angie pointed out that the cover had been revealed and an excerpt of the first chapter released over at Entertainment Weekly.

Now, the cover is super boring.  Cityscape, greyscale, title.  It's a very similar treatment to her novel with Justine Larbalestier, TEAM HUMAN.  But that excerpt!

Look, I was already excited about a modern fantasy retelling of A TALE OF TWO CITIES, basically my favorite book by Dickens.  That excerpt just whetted my appetite more.  So do yourself a favor and go read it.

All Amazon says right now:

"From New York Times bestseller Sarah Rees Brennan comes a magic-infused tale of romance and revolution that is lush, dramatic, and poignantly timely."

Review: Unspoken

Book One of the Lynburn Legacy
By Sarah Rees Brennan
Available now from Random House
Review copy
Read my reviews of THE DEMON'S LEXICON and TEAM HUMAN

I don't know if people follow my links to previous reviews of an author's books.  Oh, sometimes I do, if I look at my stats at the right moment, but I'm talking about the general case.  But what I'm getting at is that if you read my review of THE DEMON'S LEXICON, it isn't glowing.  Oh, it's positive, but it's not gushing.  But in the almost three years since I've written that review, I've read THE DEMON'S LEXICON several times and completed the series.  I can't say that for most of the books I've reviewed.  Sarah Rees Brennan created a set of characters that I wanted to spend time with, even if they made bad decisions or hurt each other.  With UNSPOKEN, she's done that again.

Kami Glass is not your average girl reporter.  For one thing, the school paper didn't exist until she made it exist.  And the other reporter is her best friend, the lazy and beautiful Angela, who didn't realize what Kami was doing until it was too late to escape her plans.  Then a couple of juicy stories fall into her lap.  The Lynburns return to Sorry-in-the-Vale and teenage Ash shows up to headquarters asking to be the paper's photographer and thus perfectly placed to be interviewed about his family's secrets.  And fellow student Holly comes to Kami with a tip about a murdered animal on the side of the road.

Then Kami's imaginary friend shows up in the flesh.

The blurb claims that "Sarah Rees Brennan brings the Gothic romance kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century," and I can't disagree with that.  She delivers not one but three awesome heroines who use their variety of talents to get in and out of trouble.  The boys - the Lynburn cousins - are pretty great too.  They aren't perfect characters - even Kami has her faults.  But most of them are pretty good about trying to be better when their faults are addressed.  And there are secrets around every corner.  Even innocuous old ladies have secrets!  There's plenty of that Gothic steaminess to go around too.  There are lots of potential couples, including a lesbian one, but of course it is never just as easy as liking someone.  Especially not when you're in high school and everyone has secrets.

But don't go thinking UNSPOKEN is stuffy.  It is, in fact, hilarious.  Take the following passage:

"We're going to die."  Something else dawned on her.  "And where is your shirt?"

"Let me explain," said Jared.  "I had just gone to bed, like a reasonable person, when you decided to get tossed into a well like a crazy person.  And then it was a matter of some urgency to reach you.  You're lucky I tripped over my jeans on the way out the door."

"You leave your jeans on the floor?" Kami asked, horrified.  "You're messy on top of everything else?  This day just keeps getting worse." - p. 56, ARC

There are very few people in the cast who don't enjoy a good joke, and that includes the adults.  (One major exception is town matriarch Lillian Lynburn, who might deign to raise her eyebrow in contempt when she hears a particularly fine jest.)

The end of UNSPOKEN comes rather abruptly.  The plot does reach a climax and everything - that's my pet peeve and you know I'd be angrily ranting if it didn't.  But the ending does remind you that yes, UNSPOKEN is the first book in the Lynburn Legacy and things are not going to end all tied up with a bow.  But for those who don't deal with long waits well, you might want to wait to read UNSPOKEN until the next book is out.  I haven't had my heart ripped out and stomped on so thoroughly since Holly Black's WHITE CAT.

Either way, I recommend you read UNSPOKEN eventually.  It's a funny tale of derring-do, intrepid reportage, young love, magic, and human sacrifice.  Just like they used to write 'em.

Review: Team Human

By Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan
Available now from HarperTeen (HarperCollins)
Review copy

I was pumped for this release long before I got my hands on it.  A book by Justine Larbalestier and the divinely hilarious Sarah Rees Brennan?  And in a world where taglines exist mostly to be made fun of, "Friends don't let friends date vampires" is a winner.

At first I was totally on board with Mel Kuan.  She thinks the vampires are boring.  Most of them don't have jobs, aside from modeling perhaps.  They just sort of go about being vampires.  And that means never enjoying a sunny day . . . or laughing.  Larbalestier and Brennan's twist on the vampire is an inventive and fitting one.  Their emotions are dulled in order to help them survive the centuries.  That means never ever experiencing the extreme of laughter.  It drives some vamps to suicide.  It certainly wouldn't suit Mel, a jokester who thrives on laughter.

Their other twist comes in the transformation to a vampire.  Prospective vamps have an eight in ten chance of it going right.  One in ten flat out dies; another one in ten turns into a zombie.  It's definitely something to consider before crossing over.  If you're average, you get eternity.  If you're unlucky, it's death or worse.  Even more than in other novels, becoming a vampire is not a move one should undertake lightly.  Because TEAM HUMAN has good worldbuilding, there's an entire system devoted to transitioning.  Prospective vamps have to undergo counseling and tour a zombie facility.

Mel's world is shaken when vampiric Francis enrolls in her high school.  Pretty soon he's dating  her best friend Cathy, a dreamer who loves poetry and history.  Francis knows quite a bit about both.  After all, he's had plenty of time to study poetry and he's lived history.  Mel's objections to Francis work best when she focuses on how old he is and that vampires still drink human blood even if they don't swan about murdering people.  It's weird and kind of gross.  Not to mention Cathy has her whole life ahead of her.  As many people say in YA romance reviews, you don't want to be stuck with your first boyfriend for eternity.

But Mel goes too far in expressing her dislike of vamps.  She uses loaded language in order to make Francis uncomfortable.  When she meets Kit, who was raised by vampires, she talks about his family in an uncomplimentary way to his face.  Eventually, Kit does call her out on her behavior.  It was a moment that made me cheer.  And I would wholeheartedly embrace that moment, but the book is TEAM HUMAN.  Why am I cheering for Team Vampire?  Surely Team Human can mount a better defense than this.

But TEAM HUMAN isn't entirely about Mel and Cathy's romantic woes.  Their friend Anna's father ran away with a vampire over summer and her mother is acting extra strange.  She asks Mel to look into the situation.  Cue Mel snooping whenever she isn't trying to drive Francis off.

TEAM HUMAN had me in stitches.  I enjoyed both of the central relationships.  I loved how firm the characters were about who they were and how resistant they were to peer pressure.  I feared for Mel as her investigation took a turn for the sinister.  But Team Vampire still seems pretty darn spiffy.

Halloween Reviews

I would call this set one, but the way things will be going, who knows whether I'll get to the others?

Secret Society by Tom Dolby
Review copy provided by HarperCollins



You may wonder why I choose to include this book in a series of "Halloween" reviews. But I think what makes it stand out from the other rich kids behaving badly books is the horror element: bad things happen to people who cross the Society. For those who like this genre, SECRET SOCIETY is probably fast-paced and interesting. For me, I really only liked Patch, who becomes an outsider when his best friend is tapped and he isn't. Then he makes a series of dumb mistakes and at the end I completely did not understand his motivation. (That is, aside from not wanting to die.) SECRET SOCIETY wasn't terrible, but I found it blah.

The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
Released by Simon & Schuster



Two brothers, a parent killed, fighting against demons. No, this isn't Supernatural. (But if anyone wants to lend me the third and/or fourth seasons, that'd be awesome.) I really enjoyed Nick's POV. It makes some of the twists obvious if you're paying attention, but it's an interesting headspace to get into and Sarah Rees Brennan does a very good job with it. Plus, she nearly broke my heart at the end. There's humor, action, sexiness, and humanity. While sometimes predictable, THE DEMON'S LEXICON never forgets to be diverting.

The Hollow by Jessica Verday
Review copy provided by Simon & Schuster



I've really been looking forward to THE HOLLOW, since Jessica Verday began promoting a year before it came out. It was not what I expected, which was a paranormal romance. There are no supernatural elements until the very end; instead, THE HOLLOW is like a standard teen story. As Abbey deals with her grief over the death of her best friend Kristen, she meets Caspian, who is the perfect guy except for his mysteriousness. That could have been a good story, but it feels like the only point of THE HOLLOW is to reach the end so that the fun stuff can be set up for the next book in the series. It moved slowly. I still want to read the next book, to see how Verday handles it when the supernatural elements are actually in play, but THE HOLLOW was disappointing.

Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters
Released by Disney-Hyperion
Daniel Waters will be at the Austin Teen Book Festival this Saturday.



GENERATION DEAD was a polarizing book - some liked it, some didn't. KISS OF LIFE is more of the same, which means I liked it. I enjoy how Daniel Water's develops the zombies search for rights, while not making it exactly parallel to any real group. I did feel the villain, Pete, was less understandable in this book. (It's what makes the first book really get to me. His rationale made sense, as crazy as it was.) In this one, my emotional connection was to Adam, who is now having trouble expressing his since he can't control his body. I liked the almost poetic quality of his thoughts when he'd first returned from the dead. The books really strike true to me, despite being about zombies.