Transitive Verve

Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary:  This is the fourth book of the Raven Cycle series. This review will contain spoilers for the earlier books. Here are my reviews for The Raven Boys , The Dream Thieves , and Blue Lily, Lily Blue . One favor. Whoever awakens the Raven King will be granted one favor. And while saving the life of the one among them who was predicted to die sounds like the pretty obvious choice, the arrival of more sinister entities in Henrietta brings with it some complications. Meanwhile, something is causing the trees in Cabeswater to die, and Blue, Gansey, and the rest of the boys need to figure out what to do before they run out of time completely.

Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary: Blue Sargent, daughter of a psychic, has been told all her life that whoever her true love is, he will die. Thus, she has decided that it would probably be in her best interest to avoid boys in any capacity, and most especially, the rich, douchey ones who attend the nearby prep school, Aglionby. But on this particular St. Mark's Eve, watching for the spirits of the soon-to-be-deceased, Blue sees the spirit of one particular Aglionby boy named Gansey. Blue, who has no psychic power herself, has never been able to see any of the spirits before, and the fact that she saw his carries significance, and not just because he's going to die within the next year. Blue suddenly finds herself caught up with (the real, alive) Gansey, and he and his friends' desperate search for proof of ley lines and a long-lost Welsh king of legend. But as their search awakens magical forces beyond their control, old secrets and dangers al...

Soulless is the first book of the series I can't remember if I've ever discussed audiobooks before on this blog, at least in their own separate posts. (I may have mentioned previously how much I LOVE the audiobooks for The Illuminae Files , but they didn't get their own review.) I love audiobooks, but I enjoy them most when I get something extra from the experience that I couldn't get while reading it, you know, traditionally. For me, that "something extra" usually relies really heavily on the narration-- I love different voices and emotion. (Am I weird? I only like to listen to audiobooks for books I've already read. Like watching a movie adaptation.) And that's a big part of what I loved about Emily Gray's narration of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate  series. Without getting into too much detail about the plot (at risk of spoilers), Gray had to distinguish between so many characters and their accents and personalities: the ever-p...

Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary: This is book 2 of the Custard Protocol  series, and it takes place in the same universe as her other series, but much later in time. This review may contain spoilers for the first book, which you can read about here . Rue and her dirigible crew sail the aether again as issues both personal and political force them to head to Egypt. Their trip to India in the first book led to the discovery of new races of supernaturals, and not everyone is happy about this, or about Rue's executive decisions. The odd behavior of her father's wolf pack and their tension with the local vampire hive means that Rue needs to put on her big girl hat and take to the skies once again, this time carrying some unusual cargo. But they keep getting attacked, and as they suddenly find that they need to sail even further away into the uncharted areas of Africa, Rue finds a whole host of new problems to deal with, not the least of which are her f...

Disclaimers: while my blog post itself does not contain any graphic sexual content, this book does. This is a review for a book that is meant for mature audiences, and therefore is unsuitable for minors.  Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary:  This novella takes place in the same universe as Carriger's other works - it doesn't require that you have read the Finishing School  or Parasol Protectorate  series. (But come on, why wouldn't you?) Preshea, one of the characters from The Finishing School  series, is now grown and known Lady Villentia. She is also known as The Mourning Star, having had four husbands who have all died by suspicious means. Of course, no one else knows that Preshea is a trained intelligencer and assassin. Preshea takes an assignment to protect the Duke of Snodgrove from assassination at his own house party. Little does she know that Captain Gavin Ruthven has also been assigned to do the same, by a separate party....

Apparently today is National Siblings Day, and what better way to celebrate (beyond reaching out to my own sibling - Hi Khoa!) than to go over some of my favorite sibling groupings! 

Disclaimers: while my blog post itself does not contain any graphic sexual content, this book does. This is a review for a book that is meant for mature audiences, and therefore is unsuitable for minors.  Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary: This is the seventh and last book in Dannika Dark's Seven  series. I'm linking to my reviews for the first book as well as the rest of the series , which contain information about the universe of the books as well as the individual characters. My review for this book will contain spoilers for previous books. I will copy and paste my summary of the universe here, though, for people who don't want to encounter spoilers: The Seven series is about a family of shapeshifters - specifically, they are wolf shapeshifters, so they live in a pack, in Austin, TX. This universe also contains other types of supernatural beings, like vampires (but they are different from other vampires in other books), beings that can trans...

Thoughts at glance: *** (I liked it) This is the first book of Carriger's new series, The Custard Protocol , and it takes place in the same universe as her other series, but much later in time. Essentially, it has spoilers for the events of The Parasol Protectorate  series, so if you've never read any of those books, you might feel really lost while reading this one, unless you're really good at forming inferences and filling in the blanks. Summary:  Lady Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama is a metanatural. Her biological mother (Lady Alexia Tarabotti) is a preternatural (soulless) while her biological father (Lord Conall Maccon) is a supernatural (werewolf). By the way, her adoptive father (Lord Akeldama) is a vampire. Therefore, it can be said that Rue leads quite a singular existence, between her feisty, irreverent personality and her ability to temporarily steal supernatural abilities through touch. Rue is given her own airship, The Spotted Custard , and along ...

I decided to keep close track of the books I read this year for the Goodreads Reading Challenge, which is not something I've done before (and this blog only just began in March!), so this is my first top ten list! These are my favorite books that were released this year. I know there are a GREAT many books that were left off my list (like books from Sabaa Tahir, Rainbow Rowell, Patrick Ness, etc.), and that's because I haven't gotten around to reading them yet! I know, sacrilege! If only there were more hours in the day and more of me to get things done. But these are my top ten that I've read  from this year. Without further ado, here they are, in no particular order: Illuminae  by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff Okay, I know I said "in no particular order," but I'd be lying if I didn't say that this was probably my FAVORITE book from this year. It was clever and unique in terms of its format, but it also just had a fantastic, gripping story. ...

Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) All the Gail Carriger books I've read were read before I started really getting into book blogging, so I don't have any previous reviews for you, but suffice it to say that she is one of my favorite writers. Quick summary of the series (since this is my first time actually writing up one of Gail's books on my blog):  Sophronia Temminnick, who doesn't seem to fit in with proper London society, is enrolled by her frustrated mother in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. Little did Mrs. Temminnick know, this Finishing School also teaches young ladies to FINISH people, in the Mortal Kombat sense of the word - the graduates can not only throw a proper tea party, but they can also maim, poison, seduce, infiltrate, and fight. In short, they are trained to be intelligencers and assassins, and Sophronia takes to her new training like a duck to water. Proving herself to be one of the s...

This morning it was announced that the 10th anniversary edition of Twilight  would include a genderbent version called Life and Death , in which Bella is now Beau, and Edward is now Edythe. As you can probably imagine, a lot of the Internet response has been pretty disdainful, as most discourse has been regarding anything having to do with the series, including Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who have since moved on with their lives to do other awesome film projects. I'm not going to lie - I can be snarky about Twilight  sometimes too. It's very easy to do so - there are a lot of problematic elements within the book series itself, and then add to it the fandom fervor, the gossip headlines, etc., and it's a perfect storm of mockable elements ripe for the picking. There has been a lot written and said about what is bad about Twilight . So I'm going to talk about what I  like about it instead. At the time that I first read Twilight , which was well after t...

Cassie Clare and Holly Black were at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park tonight to talk about their Magisterium series (which I hadn't even heard about, until I heard about this event). The second book just came out, so they were on hand to tell us about the process of co-writing, writing for middle readers (that's the group just younger than YAF, for those of you who don't know), and just anything we wanted to ask. And also to sign books! My dreadful admission is that I've had Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest  on my shelf for quite some time, and I still haven't gotten to it, but now having met her, I think I'm going to have to bump that one to the top of my list, as well as her previous books. Her books sound right up my alley. Both of them were really nice and really funny, and THEY BOTH COMPLIMENTED MY HAIR. (Yessss.) During the Q&A portion, I asked them how they go about researching things like mythology and folklore for their boo...

Disclaimers: while my blog post itself does not contain any graphic sexual content, this book does. This is a review for a book that is meant for mature audiences, and therefore is unsuitable for minors.  Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) This is my review for the remaining currently-available books of Dannika Dark's Seven  series. (It looks like there is one more yet-to-be-announced book, plus one standalone that fits in chronologically between books 6 and 7.) I kind of marathoned through them all, so I decided to review them all together. You can find my writeup for the first book, Seven Years , here . *Spoilers for the first book as well as the rest of the series below*

Disclaimers: while my blog post itself does not contain any graphic sexual content, this book does. This is a review for a book that is meant for mature audiences, and therefore is unsuitable for minors.  Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) This is book 1 of Dannika Dark's Seven  series. Seven years ago, Lexi's brother Wes died, and her life hasn't been the same since. She's unhappy with her life - she's stuck in the town she grew up in, where memories of awful schoolmates (and sometimes even the awful schoolmates themselves) haunt her; her ex, who cheated on her in own car, won't leave her alone; and her father, who never really cared about her anyway, has left their family completely. Wes was the only protector she's ever known, the only person who ever took care of her and looked out for her. Still shaken up by his death, she finds her world rocked yet again when Austin Cole shows up in her life again. Austin was Wes' best friend ...

This copy was provided for free from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thoughts at a glance: *** (I liked it) Allison, along with her twin sister Jade, is a succubus, just like their mother and her  twin sister were as well - it's a family curse. They can't so much as kiss a man (or boy, in Allison and Jade's cases) without draining their life energy and rendering them bedridden, and at worst, as was the case with their parents, intimate contact would bring death. Since their succubus powers make them exceptionally beautiful and attractive to men (as well as "addicted" to life energy the more they take it from others), Allison has decided to squelch her tendencies by dressing "goth" (like, "80's Cure fan" goth), hiding out at the library, and spreading rumors about herself that she summons demons and bites the heads off bats. Jade, on the other hand, has decided to fully embrace who she is, making out with tons of ...

This is my new book blog! How exciting! And what better way to kick off something new than to... dig up old stuff :) Because I want them tagged here, I'm going to link to my book-related reviews and things from my personal blog in this post, just so they can show up in my archives somehow. Because Blogger only lets me have 200 characters' worth of tags at a time, here is part 1 of 2 of my bookish archives, starting with my book reviews: Me effusing about Pride and Prejudice  for its 200th anniversary Thoughts on Vampire Academy  by Richelle Mead Thoughts on Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl  and Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Things I actually enjoyed about the Twilight  series And then a link list of Twilight  snark that I also enjoy :) Thoughts on the mangas based on Gail Carriger's first 3 Parasol Protectorate  books, and the first 4 books of JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood  books Thoughts on Gail Carriger's short st...