Review: The Shadow Throne

Book three of the Ascendance trilogy
By Jennifer A. Nielsen
Available now from Scholastic
Review copy
Read my review of The Runaway King

THE SHADOW THRONE brings Jennifer A. Nielsen's popular Ascendance trilogy to a close.  It is firmly in the upper middle grade category.  It's a bit to simple to be young adult, but the violence is too intense for lower middle grade.

Jaron can't avoid it any longer: his country is going to war.  He and his loved ones are all at risk of capture, torture, and death.  Jaron might have a head for clever plans and infiltration, but he's used to working on a small level.  A multi-front war is something else entirely.

I thought that it was a wonderful opportunity for Jaron to stretch himself and really show some new qualities.  I don't think that really happened, but as the story went on THE SHADOW THRONE fell into a groove and really moved along to the thrilling conclusion.  THE FALSE PRINCE remains my favorite book in the trilogy, but THE SHADOW THRONE is a truly fitting end.

It's hard to talk about the third book in a series without giving too much away!  I would say that THE SHADOW THRONE can stand on its own, but I can't see it being half as much fun without the first two books.  This is one of the best middle grade series of the past few years, and I highly recommend it.  The trilogy is full of delightful twists, intrigue, and action.  It also pairs quite well with Megan Whalen Turner's fabulous Queen's Thief series.

Review: Night Owls

First in a series
By Lauren M. Roy
Available now from Ace (Penguin Random House)
Review copy

I didn't get very far through the blurb for NIGHT OWLS before I knew I had to read it.  Vampire bookstore owner?  Yes, please.  (I was ultimately a little disappointed that there wasn't more bookstore-ing.)

NIGHT OWLS has a fairly expansive cast.  There's Valerie, the vampire bookstore owner, and her Renfield and another bookstore employee.  There's Elly, a Creep-hunter out to avenge her mentor, and her estranged brother.  (And a few allies.)  You see, in the world of NIGHT OWLS there's more than one kind of human-eating monster.  The Creeps are dying off, but they might've found a way to reproduce.  It's up to the five good guys and their friends to stop them.

The large cast kept me from falling entirely in love.  They were appealing character types, but there were so many main characters to be sold on at once.  (Especially when almost all of them have at least a little mysterious past to be revealed.)  I would've preferred a tighter focus in NIGHT OWLS, perhaps just on Valerie and Elly, to be expanded in the future books of the series.

NIGHT OWLS does introduce an appealing world.  The Creeps are being led by a new, mysterious smart Creep.  Valerie is being sucked by into vampire politics - and Elly might be getting sucked in too.  There wasn't anything that particularly struck me in NIGHT OWLS; it's fairly standard urban fantasy fare.  At the same time, it's not a string of bad cliches.

NIGHT OWLS doesn't reinvent the genre, but if you want a book about a vampire bookstore owner, it's the only one I know.

Review: Tin Star

By Cecil Castellucci
Available now from Roaring Brook Books (Macmillan)
Review copy

In the future of TIN STAR, humans are not the dominant species.  In fact, they're pretty low on the totem pole and mistrusted.  Tula is part of a group of colonists, heading out to start human planets and raise the interstellar power of the species.  Then she's abandoned and left for dead on a remote space station.

I loved TIN STAR from beginning to end.  The science fiction setting is used wonderfully.  The station is isolated and subject to mechanical and other problems.  It's populated by a variety of alien species, each with their own culture.  As Tula explores the station and encounters more people, she starts to realize everything she never knew.  TIN STAR is a glimpse at an expansive universe with complicated politics.  The status of humans is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Tula's used to sticking with humans and has to find a way to fit in and make money if she wants to survive.  The other inhabitants of the station are sympathetic to her abandonment, but they aren't just going to let her freeload.  Tula starts off simply wanting to escape the station and revenge herself on the man who beat her half to death.  But things start becoming more complicated as she forms bonds with others on the station - and when another group of humans becomes stranded.  Tula must decide on her priorities. 

There is romance in TIN STAR, though it is rarely a focus.  I did, however, truly love the romance and wish that there was more time for it to be explored.  I understand that it wasn't the focus of TIN STAR, but I would adore a sequel.  I know I've been clamoring for more standalones, and now that I've got them, I keep falling in love and wanting sequels.  TIN STAR tells one heck of a story about a teen girl stranded in space.

Review: Bright Before Sunrise

By Tiffany Schmidt
Available now from Walker Childrens (Bloomsbury)
Review copy

Kelly Jensen of Stacked's glowing preview of BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE convinced me that I had to read this book.  She was right, so she gets to keep her blogger librarian street cred.  BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE is a story of a day in which reserved Brighton and surly Jonah collide.

Brighton has lived in Cross Pointe all her life.  She's got her place there - she's the nice one, the one always getting people to volunteer, the one everybody is nice to in return.  Beneath her purposefully polished surface, she's still figuring out who she is in the wake of her father's death four years ago and dreading his memorial in 36 hours.  Jonah recently moved to Cross Pointe as a senior, after his parents divorced and his mother remarried to a rich man.  He doesn't want to fit into the school and doesn't get along with his stepfather.  His biological father completely left him behind in the divorce.  He's left defining himself by what his life used to be, back in Hamilton, and counting down to the end of high school.

It's a classic odd-couple setup, but Tiffany Schmidt doesn't push things toward romance quickly.  In fact, by the end, there's no true love or together forever soulmates.  But there are possibilities.

The time constraints of the setting give BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE a heightened sense of reality, but as intense as Brighton and Jonah's night is, it never crosses the line into unbelievability.  The clashes between Jonah and Brighton's outlooks and personalities feels real, as does their journey to stepping outside of their (personally imposed) boxes and giving new experiences a chance.  It's believable that two teens would find themselves attracted to each other after sharing a such a night.

BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE is a real treat.  It's got all the strengths of a good contemporary, particularly three-dimensional characters and emotional authenticity.  The gimmick of everything happening within 24 hours ensures that BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE doesn't overstay its welcome.  It was a charming novel that entertained me for a couple of lunch breaks.

Waiting on Wednesday: Promise of Shadows

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine.

I've been excited about PROMISE OF SHADOWS since Cecelia mentioned it in her post about upcoming 2014 books.  Her reasons for wanting it - "Mythology, young adult and the promise of funny, smart writing.  Well, yes!" - sounded pretty awesome to me.

Below is the blurb for Justina Ireland's PROMISE OF SHADOWS:

A teen who is half-god, half-human must own her power whether she likes it or not in this snappy, snarky novel with a serving of smoldering romance.

Zephyr Mourning has never been very good at being a Harpy. She’d rather watch reality TV than learn forty-seven ways to kill a man, and she pretty much sucks at wielding magic. Zephyr was ready for a future pretending to be a normal human instead of a half-god assassin. But all that changed when her sister was murdered—and Zephyr used a forbidden dark power to save herself from the same fate.

On the run from a punishment worse than death, an unexpected reunion with a childhood friend upends Zephyr’s world—and not only because her old friend has grown surprisingly, extremely hot. It seems that Zephyr might just be the Nyx, a dark goddess that is prophesied to shift the power balance: for hundreds of years the half-gods have lived in fear, and Zephyr is supposed to change that.

But how is she supposed to save everyone else when she can barely take care of herself?

Doesn't that sound awesome?  Plus, the typographic cover would look so pretty on my shelves.  PROMISE OF SHADOWS will be released March 11, 2014.