Happy Holidays everyone! I wish you all safe travels and the blessings of the season!
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong
Series and Book #: Darkness Rising #1
Pages: 359
Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Maya is just an ordinary teen in an ordinary town. Sure, she doesn’t know much about her background—the only thing she really has to cling to is an odd paw print birthmark on her hip—but she never really put much thought into who her parents were or how she ended up with her adopted parents in the tiny medical-research community on Vancouver Island.
Until now.
Strange things have been happening in this claustrophobic town—from the mountain lions that have been approaching Maya to her best friend’s hidden talent for “feeling” out people and situations to the sexy new bad boy who makes Maya feel…different. Combine that with a few unexplained deaths and a mystery involving Maya’s biological parents and it’s easy to suspect that this town might have more than its share of skeletons in its closet.
Just like in the Darkest Powers Trilogy, Kelley Armstrong's made another strong trilogy that I'm so excited for! My favorite part of this novel was the inclusion of Native American folklore. Obviously Armstrong did her research, because the myths and the beliefs of Maya's Native background were in depth and descriptive.
Armstrong did an excellent job of making the secluded area of Salmon Creek come alive. The small town idea was well played. Maya described the place as having nothing nearby, and there was literally nothing. A couple small stores and one restaurant with the nearest town one hour away. The wilderness then became a very strong point of the book, and this is where Maya's rising "special talents" were excellently shown.
I thought the cues that Armstrong placed throughout the novel suggesting who Maya was kind of ruined the climax. Maya was smart and she pieced together everything just as I did. So when Rafe (the sexy bad boy described above) tells who she is and what that means, she doesn't freak out and she doesn't doubt it. She totally accepts it and this, I think, made the novel less about what Maya was and more about where she came from. As with the Darkest Powers Trilogy, medical research was a key part of this novel. I would have preferred if it was more supernatural and less of a scientific reason for everything.
Overall, another strong novel with another strong cast of characters. This book came off better than The Summoning. I'm more animated and excited for the next novel, waiting for Maya's upcoming Shift and her sparking romance with Rafe. The Calling's calling me!
The Cover: like the covers of the Darkest Powers, I don't really get the significance of the earring. But the darkness and the model definitely grab my attention.
Friday, December 23, 2011
The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan
Series and Book #: Forest of Hands and Teeth #2
Pages: 404
Synopsis:
Gabry lives a quiet life, secure in her town next to the sea and behind the Barrier. She’s content to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast while she watches from the top of her lighthouse. Home is all she’s ever known, and all she needs for happiness.
But life after the Return is never safe, and there are threats even the Barrier can’t hold back.
Gabry’s mother thought she left her secrets behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, but like the dead in their world, secrets don’t stay buried. And now, Gabry’s world is crumbling.
One night beyond the Barrier…
One boy Gabry’s known forever and one veiled in mystery…
One reckless moment, and half of Gabry’s generation is dead, the other half imprisoned.
Gabry knows only one thing: if she is to have any hope of a future, she must face the forest of her mother’s past.
"Maybe, though, it's time we learned that we don't have to live within the boundaries we set up. Maybe we have to learn to push those barriers. To reclaim some of what was lost. And to build a new world."
-The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan, pg 404
I really liked the extension of Mary's life through her daughter's. Gabry's view of the world is much different than her mother's. It's less cold and less curious. Gabry is perfectly happy to live in Vista with the people and the world she's known forever, whereas Mary still yearns for the adventure and the secrets that she left behind in the Forest. I thought Gabry wasn't quite as strong as her mother, which bugged me. She wasn't as sure and she was more clingy to what was normal. I thought Mary was a better character, too, because I saw a more personal part of her. Ryan let us see Mary though her daughter's eyes, and it was definitely different than who Mary had been in The Forest of Hands and Teeth.
Again, there were two boys who Gabry loved in this novel. But unlike Forest, Gabry had only one love at one time and wasn't switching her feelings on and off like Mary. I liked this better, because I felt it made the romantic moments more meaningful.
The scenes in the Forest were more dragged out with less adventure and less description than in The Forest of Hands and Teeth. It was mostly keeping everyone going, trying to stop the inevitable, searching for Gabry's mother and any surviving villages. There was less description from Gabry's point of view. In The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Ryan described how claustrophobic the moans had been to Mary, and how her senses were full of the undead. But to Gabry, they were just an incessant noise that she wasn't used to.
Overall, though I preferred The Forest of Hands and Teeth, this novel was very thought-provoking. Gabry analyzes herself more than Mary did and through this I got a deeper connection to her thoughts. Gabry has a deeper fear of the Mudo (aka Unconsecrated) than her mother did. She's deeply affected by them because so many of her friends and loved ones have gone to the Mudo. Unlike Mary's selfishness and drive to get to the ocean, Gabry worries about who the Mudo are. Are they still human? Ryan opens more questions, and I can't wait to read more in The Dark and Hollow Places!
The Cover: Just like it's predecessor, very accurate. Love it!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Happy Blogoversary!
On this day one year ago, Life by a Letter was born! Just looking at how much it has changed in the past six months compared to one year is unbelievable, and I can't believe how far its gone. As you can see on top, the blog's dressed up for the occasion!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Release: Deadly Little Voices by Laurie Faria Stolarz
High school junior Camelia thought her powers of psychometry only gave her the ability to sense the future through touch. But now she’s started to hear voices. Mean voices. Berating her, telling her how ugly she is, and that she’d be better off dead. It’s a troubling development that has Camelia terrified for her mental stability, especially since her deranged aunt with a suicidal history has just moved into the family house. More torturing, ex-boyfriend Ben, who has similar psychometric abilities, has been spending more time with their classmate Alejandra. With the line between right and wrong fraying, Camelia turns to pottery to get a grasp on her emotions. She begins sculpting a beautiful figure skater, only to receive frightening premonitions that someone’s in danger. But who is the victim? And how can Camelia help them when she is on the brink of losing her own sanity?
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I've yet to read this series, but from what I've heard, it's pretty good. From what I've read, it seems like one of those books that after the first, the rest just goes downhill. Am I right? Or wrong?
Friday, December 2, 2011
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
Series and Book #: Forest of Hands and Teeth #1
Pages: 308
Synopsis:
In Mary’s world, there are simple truths.
The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated with never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village. The fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.
But slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power. And, when the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.
Now she must choose between her village and her future, between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded by so much death?
Such a dark, hopeful novel. The world Mary lives in is surrounded by so much death that her society is consumed by it. To them, it is only survive and live, never love or hope or fantasize.
Mary is one of my favorite characters. She's so hopeful when the world around her crumbles, and she clings to her one dream of seeing the ocean before she dies. Her friends fuel her need to see life and worlds that are not touched by the gruesome death of her neighbors and loved ones. And so when her village falls, she keeps believing in the ocean and in life and that is what keeps her going even as her friends fall, and her heart is crushed and swelled and crushed again. She's relentless. She's so strong and full of life.
Carrie writes the village and its principles so well. She makes it seem as dismal and uneventful as Mary sees it. She transitions between normal life, to chaos, into Mary's miserable existence in the Cathedral, to the Forest, with so much ease that you barely notice. Her vocabulary also expresses the darkness and disaster and the suffocating death that Mary is surrounded by. Just a wonderfully written novel.
Overall, even though this novel is about a zombie apocalypse, it doesn't feel like one. I almost thought it was a dystopian novel because it's placed in the future after the world as we know it has ended by what seems an infection that has overtaken the world's dead population. The anguish and optimism all melt into a delectable read. Carrie has done a beautiful and creative job of building paradise out of disease and destruction.
The Cover: Reflects the novel wonderfully. Loved this cover, loved the portrayal of Mary, loved the darkness in the woods.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
In My Mailbox (10): November
In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren where we share what books we've bought, received, or borrowed over the last week or, in my case, month. I don't get enough books over the week to cover a weekly IMM but I always do one every month. Here's October's! (Some of these books I've already read, so if you click on the links they should bring you to the review)
Library Finds:
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan
Don't Judge a Girl by her Cover by Ally Carter
Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter
The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong
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