Book one-ninety-six: Poison Study

Poison Study (2005)
Maria V. Snyder

Rating: 3/5

Pretty good. Although I think Yelena was annoyingly trusting for someone in her poison (convicted killer, serving out sentence as food taster).

This is naturally (being fantasy and all) the start of a series.

POISON STUDY: CHOOSE: A QUICK DEATH OR SLOW POISON.

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered a reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace, and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.

And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust, and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and she develops magical powers she can't control. Her life’s at stake again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren’t so clear

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Finished: Saturday 3/11

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Book one-hundred-and-thirty-five: Privilege of the Sword

Privilege of the Sword (2007)
Ellen Kushner

Rating: 4/5
[The 115: 17/115]

I really liked this… but for the first 150 pages, I was just thinking (on constant loop) “where’s Richard? What the hell is Alec doing? Come on, where the hell is Richard???” Seriously, I was so on edge that I stayed up til 4 am just to find out where the hell he was. (Hmm, I probably should have just went to sleep in the first place, instead of starting to read this in the early hours of Sunday morning).

Anyway, its really good, and I loved the parallels between the stories of the two girls and I actually liked Alec by the end of it. I don’t even want to slap him anymore.

Alec, Duke Tremontaine, aka the Mad Duke of Riverside, has sent for his impoverished young niece, Katherine. She and her family hope he'll make a good marriage for her, but the Mad Duke has decided to train her as a sword fighter. She is furious, and besides a swordmaster to train her, her uncle also springs what becomes her fall into society, without warning or training, on her.

She learns the sword perforce out of self-defense and also, bit by bit, the city, the nobility, politics, and her uncle. When Katherine is trained and entered into society with her weapon, she wades hip-deep into plots against her uncle and becomes the champion of a lady in distress, too.

Plot and style hereare in the swashbuckling tradition of Dumas, but the characters are very real beneath their facades, people who bleed when they are cut, even when manners require that they make nothing of it.

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Finished: Sunday 12/8

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Book one-hundred-and-thirty-four: Swordspoint

Swordspoint (2003/1987)
Ellen Kushner

Rating: 3.75/5
[The 115: 16/115]

I found this quite hard to get into at the beginning: it was intriguing, but not much was happening, all these people where sitting around talking about people I didn’t know.

But then all of a sudden it got really good – I knew who everyone was, worked out what the hell was going on and what I didn’t know got ever more interesting… In the end it was very rewarding read.

In the highly stratified world of Kushner's nameless old city, the aristocrats living in fine mansions on the Hill settle their differences by sending to the thieves' den of Riverside for swordsmen who will fight to the death for a point of someone else's honor.

Young Lord Michael Godwin is so taken by these romantic figures that he studies the art himselfuntil challenged by the best of them. Master of the Sword, Richard St. Vier is picky in his contracts and precise in his killing but he nevertheless becomes embroiled in the nobility's political, social and sexual intrigues. When his lover Alec is kidnapped by Lord Horn, St. Vier must take drastic action.

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Finished: Saturday 11/8

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Book thirty-two: Hawksong

Hawksong* (2003)
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Rating: 1.75/5**

This book was frustrating for the complete opposite reason number thirty-one was: it had a good idea for a plot, but was let down by the writing.

Two distinct shape shifter species – the avain’s and the serpiente’s – have been at war for as long as anyone can remember. The future leaders of both species – Danica and Zane are determined to end the conflict no matter what the personal cost.

This book has an interesting premise. It has a kind of star-crossed lovers thing going on, only without the love. Danica and Zane decide that they must marry – or whatever the crazy equivalent words were in this book – against their families wishes to secure peace.

The writing style was overly formal, to the point were sentences seemed to be written backward. A couple of times I actually had to pause, read the sentence a few times, re-order it so I could make sense of it, then move on.

It also suffered from the fact that the hook – them getting married for their cause – did occur until almost three quarters of the way in. The fact is, we know they are going to get married (the back of the book pretty much told me so), so why make me struggle through all that just to get to what I wanted to read about.

Another thing that I found frustrating was the lack of explanation of the world. I mean, I don’t like to sit there and read a thousand words of explanation (or God forbid a glossary) before I can understand enough to start reading, but I did find this very confusing at times. I think this might be because there was an earlier series in the same world? I’m not sure.

Atwater-Rhodes published her first novel at fourteen and this one at nineteen. I do wonder how her writing has changed (and perhaps improved) since the first in the series and the most recent. But if this is an indication of the quality, I don’t think I could be bothered to find out.

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* Finished 20/4

** When I was looking for a picture of the cover, I found a couple of reviews of people who really, really liked it. I mean, I knew before I read it there were people who liked it – I had bought it after I read someone’s recommendation somewhere – I just didn’t realise they liked it that much. One person even wrote something to the effect that this was the best book they’d ever read.

This always makes me wonder if I’ve been too harsh. Or was maybe too tired, or too cranky, or too something when I read it. But then again, this is just my opinion right? I shouldn’t doubt it, but I do admit it changes from day to day.

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Book four: Valiant

Valiant (2005)
Holly Black

Rating: 4.25/5

Wow. Okay, she can write real good.

I don’t think there is much more I can say about just how good it is.

I enjoyed this a lot, but not as much as the first. I’m not sure if it was because my expectations were higher, but I think it was mostly because I liked the story in Tithe more.

Part of it though, was the dreaded Blurb Syndrome. You know, when you read the back of the book and it tells you too much about the plot to the point where you’re just like ‘hurry up already.’

Well, the back of this book tells you too many details. I wasn’t so much with the ‘hurry up already,’ because I was enjoying getting there, but I think it would have been more suspenseful if the back didn’t summarise most of what happens in the first half (or in my opinion anyway).

It’s really only the third paragraph that ruins it, too.

Black continues to completely ignore the divide between what ‘should be in a YA book’ and ‘what should be in an adult’s book.’ And I don’t think any of it is just for shock value either, everything that happens in the book feels realistic for the characters and the situation.

I really enjoyed the subtly and complexity of the relationships that develop between the characters, and that is something she did so well previously too. The emotions that develop seem so much more real than reading 200 pages of someone obsessing about whether or not the ‘boy’ likes them.

Although I do have the same complaint I had with Tithe: I want more.

I want to know more about what happens to Val. As with Tithe, Black has set up a really interesting premise at the end of the book. In this case, much more interesting in my opinion, than where they were at the beginning. I want to know what happens next.

I’m not sure if we will hear anything more about Val and her friends, but I can say that now I really, really, really, really, really, really don’t want to wait until May until the next one.

I think I shall have to track down The Spiderwick Chronicles* ASAP.

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* The Spiderwick Chronicles were created with Tony DiTerlizzi (who I believe is the illustrator?). They are: The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda’s Secret, The Ironwood Tree and The Wrath of Mulgarath.

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Book three: Tithe

Tithe (2002)
Holly Black

Rating: 4.5/5

There is no other way of describing it: I want to eat this book.

It was so good.

So, so good that I am almost scared to read the next one. I know that the next book does not follow on from this one, but while Kaye’s story was exciting and suspense filled and all those good things, the writing was the best thing about it.

All books should be this well written. It really should be a rule.

You know when you are reading something, and you can just, I don’t know, feel the words in your head or something? On your tongue, like they should be read out loud? Like the words are in the exact right order, and you don’t even have to concentrate to see the whole thing playing out in your head? It just flows.

I don’t know how to explain it, but this book has it.

I also loved it because it was a YA book, without the YA sugar coating. I hate that. I don’t want the world to be covered with a sickly sweetness, with characters that deal with problems that aren’t really problems and have resolutions that aren’t really interesting. I want it to be realistic.

For example, approximately 97.8 percent of teenagers swear… but not in books. I knew I was going to love this book the moment Corny thought, “She couldn’t understand that the age of guerrilla engineering was at a close, that being a motherfucking genius wasn’t enough. You needed to be a rich motherfucking genius.” (p.16).

Finally, a teenage boy, who sounded like a teenage boy. Gasp!

I did find it funny when I bought it that it had “Advisory Adult Content” on the back. I do remember when I was at school, that a friend of mine’s mother used to read any book she was given as a present and then decide whether or not it was suitable for her to read. Hmmm, ye-as, that was worthwhile, because a fifteen year old girl wouldn’t have known about sex, smoking, drinking, or swearing unless she read about them. No siree!

I do wonder though if this wasn’t a fantasy novel if they could get away with that sort of thing? I mean, how tight are the censorship guidelines on what can and can’t be printed in a YA novel? Or is it just the publishers not wanting to risk scandal?

Either way, I don’t care. This book was brilliant and there should be more like it.

In fact, I may overcome my trepidation and read Valiant tomorrow. Thankfully my sister already read both last year, so it is in the bookshelf waiting.

The next book in the A Modern Tale of Faerie series, Ironside, is to be released in the U.S. in May of this year.

...and it is about Kaye. Okay. I admit it, I lied, I want to know more about her… I was just willing to let go of the hope, if there wasn’t going to be anymore.

Because, the only thing I didn’t like about this book was that it was too short. I just wanted it to go on a little longer… to see a little more of the outcome of what happened. And now I can… only I can’t. I have to wait.

Damn it all. I just read the excerpt on the author's website. Now I really, really, really want to read it.

Impatient, much?

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