Quintana of Charyn

By: Melina Marchetta

I feel like I've been giving a lot of really really good reviews.  After this book there won't be so many from me because every other book pales in comparison to Quintana of Charyn.  It was simply the most beautiful book I have ever read.  It follows Finnikin of the Rock and Froi of the Exiles in the Lumatere Chronicles.  It was beautifully written and clearly portrayed how painful both hate and love can be as well as how strong forgiveness can be.  It was perfectly paced and extremely thought provoking.  This book intricately ties together all the characters from the first two books.

Basically, you should read this book.  Finnikin of the Rock is the first in the Lumatere Chronicles and is followed by Froi of the Exiles.  Neither of these books are as good as Quintana of Charyn but they are still good.  Froi of the Exiles left off at a cliff hanger which is where Quintana of Charyn picks up.  I was looking forward to this book for a long time and it was better than anything I could've imagined.  If I say anything plot based about this book it ruins Froi of the Exiles so I'm not going to.  Quintana of Charyn is a true 5.  It had absolutely no flaws.  Lumatere, Charyn, and all the characters are beautiful and everyone should experience them.  Quintana of Charyn has many beautiful quotes because of the eloquence Melina Marchetta writes with.  To close up I will leave some quotes to sample the actual beauty of the words Melina Marchetta wrote.

"'You said to me once that you weren't what I dreamed of.  You were right.  You surpass everything I dreamed of.  Even the rot in you that's caused you to do shameful things.  Some men let the rot and guilt fester into something ugly beyond words.  Few men can turn it into worth and substance.  If you're gods' blessed for no other reason, it's for that."

"There it was.  Suddenly the strangeness of Quintana of Charyn's face made sense.  Because it was a face meant for laughing, but it had never been given a chance.  It robbed Phaedra of her breath."

"Take care of the little king...tell him he was made from love and hope....This is your bond to him, Dorcas.  If you're good for nothing else, follow a bond that makes him a good king."

Finally one of my three favorite quotes (I can't find one of them and the other one gives away the ending)

"'Do I have to be here to belong to you?' Froi asked.  'Can't I belong to you wherever I am?'"

There are more quotes here http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/15064476-quintana-of-charyn-lumatere-chronicles-3 but I picked out the best ones and some of these give away the ending.

Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler

Rapture Practice opens with a note from the author, Aaron Hartzler:

"Something you should know up front about my family:
We believe that Jesus is coming back."

This initial detail introduces us to Aaron's family, a family that believes in the rapture, the idea that Jesus is going to come back down to earth and bring good people up to heaven. Aaron has been a part of his family's religious lifestyle for his entire life. He performs in plays of Bible stories with his family. They don't go to movies, don't have a TV, don't listen to many kinds of music. They are focused on living properly so that when Jesus comes back, they will get to go to heaven.

At first glance, Rapture Practice probably seems like one of those sensational stories that we see nowadays, books about someone's abusive childhood or crazy cult. What's so refreshing about this book is that it isn't sensational. The entirety of the book can be summed up in one conversation that Aaron has with his friend Bradley:

"But what happens when the truth inside me feels different from what my parents say is the truth?" I wonder aloud. I don't expect Bradley to have an answer to this question, but he does.

"I think that's called growing up," he says.

This is, at its core, what Rapture Practice is about: growing up. It is the coming-of-age story about a character who goes through the "journey of change and self-discovery" that we have all discussed in English class. And I loved it for that. I love how Aaron describes this universal experience through the lens of his own unique situation, all the while making it clear that his parents do love him and want what's best for him. We can't hate them, even if we don't necessarily agree with what they believe.

I just have a few relatively minor complaints about the book. First off, I felt like it was missing an epilogue. The conclusion of the regular part of the book was perfect, bringing the story full circle to return to the idea of rapture. However, Aaron leaves the reader wondering where he is at now--after all, he's not a teenager anymore. He begins to question his sexuality during his story and I would have liked to know how that played out with his parents. Secondly, the writing wasn't always stellar. It was perfectly functional, but a bit awkward at times, and the simplistic voice used for 4-year-old Aaron doesn't evolve too much as Aaron gets older.
Overall, I'd give Rapture Practice a 3.9. I would read it again, and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good coming-of-age story. I'm not really sure about a food, but perhaps I'll think of one later.

Here's Aaron Hartzler's website: http://www.aaronhartzler.com/

Second Impact

This galley, set to be released in August 2013, is by brother and sister David and Perri Klass.

        I was told that two other people (who happen to be athletes) wanted to take out this book before I nabbed it. We were all drawn to it for the same reason: concussions. I myself had a concussion that lasted for months a couple years ago, so this book immediately interested me.
The title is coined after Second Impact Syndrome (SIS) which is where the brain swells after receiving a second trauma when it is still recovering from a previous trauma. It can quickly lead to death, especially without emergency treatment. A frustrating part is that the only emphasis on SIS concerning the plot in the book is literally at the fifteenth-to-last-page. I counted. You have to read 264 pages before you breach the issue as proposed by the title. Grrr.
        This book is told through the perspective of two bloggers, Jerry (high school football megastar) and Carla (a high school  journalist). Together, they alternatively relate key events revolving around Jerry's high school football experience in a typical town in New Jersey. While Carla does have her little side-story about an ACL tear a year back, she doesn't seem contribute anything else to the book except providing convenient ways to add more information about sports injuries. She's not much of a do-er in the book. Essentially, she is the cheerleader. Jerry is the real point of this story. He's the do-er. Carla is the try-er, who tired to do something and ultimately was completely shut down. I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say much. Carla had great points and was a protagonist of the story with a motive and I was disappointed that her cause lead to nowhere and was punished while Jerry, the football star, ultimately had no real issues and was successful overall.
        In the book, the whole universe is centered around Jerry and football. The imaginary town it's set in, Kendall, is of those places that are crazily obsessed with male-dominated high school sports. I didn't like that. One, because I don't like football all that much or the kinds of people associated with it, and two, because in my life such all-encompassing obsession is beyond unrealistic. It boggled my mind, really. Concord is like other small New England towns; you go to the game if you're the parent, sibling, personal friend of a football player, or if you're playing in the band. In this book if you could breathe, walk, and talk you went to every game to scream yourself hoarse. If you couldn't go, you watched it on TV.
        Jelle suggested that this book is geared towards a more football-focused demographic and I was just the wrong person to pick up this book. I agree, I  can imagine that some places among the states can take their football teams very seriously (but I think it's a flaw that not everyone can relate to or at least come to understand a situation in a book; limited audience normally doesn't come to great success). Later, I happened to notice through some research that the Klasses used to live in New Jersey. Coincidence? Maybe. I don't think so. My hunch was confirmed when I found that their hometown of Leonia shares the same team name as the protagonists in the book: the Tigers. It looks like the Klasses were sentimental to their hometown, like many authors are. I decided to find out if there was really something strange going on in New Jersey. As it turns out, it looks pretty normal from my standpoint.
        In a video clip of the Tigers of Leonia football game for the semifinal state championship in 2012, there was a smattering of 50 people in the visitor's stands. This does not correlate at all with the 5,000+ fans that show up for every game in the book. I don't know what setting the Klasses were trying to base the book on, but it's based on nowhere around here. I will continue to think the setting presented in the book is absolutely bonkers until I stand corrected.

That was a pretty long-winded nit picking of just a few problems in the book. I don't want to drag on for too long, so here are my main points about this book in a shorter form.

CONS
The book was written like a web blog; each new post carries on the story, but I saw quite a few problems:
1- Carla and Jerry are too public for it, with awkwardly personal details. You just wouldn't go that far.
2- Their avatars are pictures of models, like you'd see in chic lit. I did not appreciate this. This is not bad chic lit (or at least it shouldn't be). I recognize that cover art and other things like it are not controllable by the authors, but it is certainly controllable by the readers. I am a reader, and I did not like those pictures. Publishers and agents, you better change that (pictures of scenery, abstract shapes, logos, or no avatars at all is acceptable).
3- They are amazingly precise in their blog posts for events that they are recounting from memory.
4- I think writing this book in the typical omnipresent or point-of-view format would have been better than the web blog format. Then we can see personal feelings as they are thinking about what is happening, have a better connection with the characters, and the issue of high detail would have been fixed.
5- There were some 'posted comments' at the end of some of the 'blog posts' to keep the book inside the blog format idea. They were HORRENDOUSLY cheesy. UGH. Just sooooo fake. And whenever a comment was 'deleted' by a moderator, that was even worse.

More issues! Yay!
-Huge problem! A lot of the information is worthless. When I got bored, I skipped paragraphs at a time without losing the plot. I just skipped forwards until it looked like it reached the real point.
-Football has more sexism issues than I can shake a stick at and every person in Kendall revolves around it. I protest!
-I really, REALLY dislike what happened to Carla. Her rights were suppressed and nothing was done about it. If I wrote this book, the ACLU would have gotten involved faster than you can read 'freedom of speech.'
-Jerry basically recounted the same story every time he went to play a football game. It became predictable.
-Like I said before, SIS is only addressed at the end.
-Contrary to what a character mentions as fact in this book, people may not know if they blacked out from a head injury. I was knocked unconscious and I didn't realize it until months later. However, I mean no disrespect to Dr. Perri Klass if she found a legitimate source for that information.
-I felt that the message that athletes should not ever play, ever, with a concussion was played down. It's super important that they should sit out. If they don't, their lives are on the line. I was expecting a message like "Don't play sports with a concussion, end of story." Instead the moral seems to be "We shouldn't tell those kids not to play with a concussion because then we won't win the championship... But they can sit out of the game if their friends think they should."
-I have the feeling that while Jerry and Carla are individuals, they aren't very filled out. They seem shallow. Jerry is Jerry and will always act like "Jerry".

To summarize all of those cons: while head injuries are the prime focus of this book, I think the narration was awkwardly split between two viewpoints that were often cheesy, forgettable, inappropriately written for public web space and with an unsatisfactory conclusion.

PROS
-It does provide some good info on concussions and severe head injuries.
-It does consider what an athlete might think or feel when they have concussions or injuries in different situations along with the pressure to keep playing, and (only at the end) stresses the importance of your health over play (though rather short and not as stressed as I would like it to be).

That's not a lot of good stuff to balance out the bad. Thus, my rating is justified: 2 out of 5 stars. If this was a food, it would be cafeteria shepard's pie. I like shepard's pie, so I'd buy it. I'd taste the canned peas, observe questionable quality ground beef flavored only with heat from the not-fresh black pepper, and the dry mashed potatoes. And I would realize that it wasn't that good and I should have spent my three dollars on a salad or soup.

The Testing

by Joelle Charbonneau

      I picked this book up with very high hopes. Most of my Galley amigos agreed that this was a textbook "Jelle" book, so to speak. The cover was intriguing, but not stunning--I even had an ARC with a different cover than the one to the left, a nicer, more edgy black design with a shiny silver incal. The cover fits the book neatly, actually. It's edgy at first, screaming to be picked up, and depressingly shallow, run-of-the-mill mundane after three minutes of scrutiny.
      My reading notes are full of comments like "stilted dialogue" and "plastic and one-dimensional". I guess I can start with the writing, which was banal and ill-fitting. Charbonneau has a very lucid style of writing; she's very good with broad strokes and blanket words that outline her world. But there it stops: at the outline. No room, for example, in the book is described in more detail than:

     1) The rough size of the room, given in such deliciously descriptive words as "large", "small", and "very large".
     2) If you're lucky, the room will have a colour. If you're very lucky, it will be something other than white. Take, for example, this charming little exchange:      "I know this room.
White walls.
White floors.
Black desks."
    3) The rooms are utterly one-dimensional. They sever the main character from her larger surroundings so that Charbonneau can get away with describing even less, but beyond colour and shape they might as well not exist. Part of this is the starkness Charbonneau has infused her world with and part of this is the starkness that is the result of Charbonneau's meager and flat writing style.

    The author uses an incredible host of words that might have meaning if they were used more skillfully, such as "unruly", "chastising", and "abandoned". These are weak words, words that need to be babysat carefully, fed with meaning and context until they are strong enough to stand for themselves. Instead Charbonneau flings them apathetically into her work, forgoing the beauty of writing for clichéd buzzwords like "handsome" and "tan". Words that seem solid on the surface can collapse utterly when a reader digs back, asking himself what even the main character looks like. There's the obligatory mirror scene on page one, but no reader is able to glean more from that than that she has light brown hair and is wearing a red dress, which leaves the reader with the knowledge that she has light brown hair, unless she would wear the dress for a second day, at which point the reader would know for another day that she has light brown hair and is wearing a red dress, but after the third day her wearing that same dress just tells the reader that she is rather a slob. Which characteristic, incidentally, would stand in my memory as the only characteristic Charbonneau had gifted her with. But she is forced to change into a jumpsuit a page or three later. As that red dress crumples on the ground, so does the reader's hope of learning more about her.
      Now, that's enough about the writing. It's perfunctory and curt, with nary a compound sentence in sight beyond at most twice a chapter.
     What bothers me most about The Testing is that Charbonneau makes the reader invest energy  into its reading. I resent that I am forced to provide my own descriptions and imagination for her; I do half the work in order to make the book the bare minimum of tolerable. I have to put my imagination in high gear to glean anything from her scraps of description, to recreate Charbonneau's world in my mind so I can live in it. Whereas Hogwarts and Veronica Roth's Chicago took root in my mind and are still clenched fast, Charbonneau's Chicago faded out bare minutes after I had dragged it in. Any time I put a lot of myself into a book means that there is too little of the original book in the first place.
    What I do like about the book is the bare bones of its plot and the characters' names. They have beautiful, eerily post-apocalyptic names like Hamin, Zandri, and Malachi. The main character is introduced as Malencia Vale, and her obligatory love interest is Tomas Endress. Hard to dislike the only part of the novel that transports me to Charbonneau's imagined dystopian future.
    The plot starts out promising. Malencia's world, previously ours, has fallen prey to terrorists, international warfare on a scale we can never imagine, and disease. Then, as a desperate and desolate peace seemed within reach, the earth itself struck back. Pushed to the edge and beyond by the ferocity of the Seven Stages War, as Charbonneau dryly styles it, entire continents tear and pull themselves to ruin. The soil dies and life, no longer sustainable, recedes to a bare dozen Colonies that make up the remnants of the world's civilization. They are led by the great and powerful from Tosu City, a glittering metropolis perched over the bones of old Chicago. University-educated scientists are dispersed artificially through the Colonies, leading the struggle for survival with genetic engineering as they slowly take back the lifeless earth. All this would be slightly more plausible if it were at all apparent that Charbonneau knew what genetic engineering is or is not capable of, because she clearly hasn't the foggiest, but the idea is cool. Malencia's brother pops out a potato that beats out her father's previous edition potato. Isn't bioengineering great? Well, it is, but nothing in this book approaches realistic bioengineering. Keep those taters coming.
    Anyway, the problem is that there is only one University (I don't know why. There is no plausible answer for this. At no point in the book is this addressed: if the world just had two more universities, it would have absolutely no problems and the book would have no plot. But that's the plot's problem, not logic's.) that can only take about twenty students. Now, if our modern world can support 151 million students (a fast-growing number), I don't know how an enormous university in the heart of the remaining rich and civilized world can only enroll 20 students. Of course, the point that Charbonneau keeps shoving at the reader is that the government wants strong, independent, ruthless leaders, but the world would be 110,000% better off if it enrolled a lot more of the intelligent students and just trained some as scientists and doctors without the leadership part, which none of the graduates in the book deign to show anyway. One, Malencia's father, is literally just a scientist. (A "bioengineer".)
    Summarizing this book is boring me to tears already. Imagining reading it.
    So because the book is about Malencia, she gets selected to go through the Testing, which will determine if she can go to the University, which is a huge honor. Of course she is selected; she's the main character of a dystopian lit book.
     Then comes the testing, after they zoom across a flat landscape for a day or so. Flat in writing and in topography, in case you were wondering. She gets to the capital, Tosu City, and pretty much immediately starts the Testing. I'll leave most of it out so I won't spoil anything, but mostly because I'm lazy and/or this is painful.
    The first part of the test involves written tests, four hours, twice a day, for a few days. How does Charbonneau make this exciting? She doesn't. Literally they just take their tests for houuuurs a day and the book kind of plugs along. There's a really shameless exposition bit on the history portion of the test (soooo sneaky, Charbonneau...) where the author basically lays out the entire history of the civilization in three easy questions and Malencia's answers. But other than that, this section of the book is literally breakfast, test, lunch, test, uneasy sleep with nightmares for no reason (the dreams are SO cliched...) and then the next day the same thing. Some people disappear. Cute.
    The next stage of the testing is manual puzzles and such stuff, which was maybe a tiny bit interesting but not very. Oh, except that her friends casually keel over and die and she's like "Oh. Bummer. The government's reeeeeeallly evil." and then she continues blithely on.
    The third portion is a disgustingly intricate little brain-twister of a Test which involves a lot of convoluted logic, red herrings, horrible writing to make it all more confusing, and an eventual really flat resolution. More friends kick the bucket, but how, no one knows, because Charbonneau got lost in her own intricacy. Which explains why she doesn't mess with it for the rest of the book at all ever.
     The fourth portion of the book is LITERALLY the Hunger Games. Oh, except spread over 700 miles. Yes, this is a large distance. But other than that, LITERALLY the Hunger Games.
    And then the book ends with some cute little plot twist that leaves the reader in suspense for all of two minutes and a page flip. I'm so done discussing it.
    I'd give this book a 1.5. Interesting names and a premise Veronica Roth might be able to salvage, but Charbonneau is not Veronica Roth yet. As for a food, this is the hard plastic ice cube tray. Clean, functional, but also shallow and NOT A FOOD.

Notes from Ghost Town

By Kate Ellison

I really don't like romances.  I never have.  I also don't like mysteries.  I especially don't like murder mysteries.  This is exactly what Notes from Ghost Town is.  It is a romantic murder mystery.  A girl, Liv (Olivia),  falls in love with Stern, her best friend.  Stern kisses her, says its a mistake, and leaves.  Liv goes colorblind and then goes back to art school.  She decides she is going to call Stern in two weeks.  But, he is dead in one week and her schizophrenic mom is in jail for it.  Her mom is planning on pleading insanity.  That is how that book starts.  Then it goes into her teenage life.  The normal 'no one understands' and 'I pity myself' goes on for a while.  Until finally, something happens.  There is about one week left before Liv's mom's final sentencing when Stern comes to Liv as a Ghost and says her mom is innocent.  That's when it picks up.  The story goes on from there and Liv works to solve Stern's murder.  Once she started actually doing things in relation to Stern's murder it ended up quite good.

I found that this book was actually really good.  I was impressed, because I don't generally like mysteries or romances.  I went into the book hating it and came out pleased.  Although one regret was that the murderer was predictable.  Even though Liv did a lot of stupid stuff in the book she didn't miss a lot.  The murderer wasn't staring her in the face even though it was predictable from outside the book.  The cover was also horrible.  I found the cover to be revolting.  I hoped that I would understand why there was a dead girl on the cover when I finished reading it but I still don't know why.  I have said quite a lot of bad stuff about this book even though I think it is quite good.  The best part of the book was the plot.  The time restraint made it better because you knew that it wouldn't go on forever and it put pressure on Liv.  I also thought it was well paced.  I also enjoyed her color blindness.  I think this added to her despair in a more real way than the pain that she tries to describe.  I'm not sure was food this is but what I would do if you want a food is to think of a food you hate.  Absolutely hate.  Then once you start eating it the texture is awful and you don't think you can take another bite when surprisingly it starts to taste good.  It gets an interesting flavor until finally you start liking it.  Another unfortunate problem with the book was the ending.  It ended too fast.  The whole book was drawn out at a good pace and then BAM, it was over.  I would give this book a 3.5.  It was surprisingly good but did have shortcomings.

Fearless

By Cornelia Funke

Jacob Reckless has less than a year to live.  He already wasted some of it looking for magical objects that were supposed to get rid of his curse but none of them worked.  Throughout the story Jacob forgets a letter of the dark fairy's name in a violent attack from the moth sitting on top of his heart.  6.  With each bite, part of his heart is hurt.  He hasn't told his brother, Will, or his best friend, Fox.  He realizes that there is only one object that might be able to cure him of his curse -- the Witch-Slayer's Crossbow.  If shot at a leader it would not only kill the leader but the leader's entire army.  The crossbow's reputation makes many people scared of it -- people are less willing to help Jacob because they think he will sell it which could kill thousands.  But legend says that if shot with love through the heart then the person shot will be healed.  When he goes to Guismond's, the witch-slayer's, tomb he finds out that in order to get the crossbow he has to first find his heart, his head, and his hand.  But Nerron, a Goyl treasure hunter, also wants to find the bow. As Jacob hunts for these three items his life ticks away.  5.  With very little time left, Fox is captured by a blue beard, a man who captures girls and kills them by drinking their fear.  Jacob has to sacrifice some of his little time left to save her and then return to his quest.  As he continues on the moth's bites get closer together and worse.  After this detour he may not get the crossbow in time, if at all.

Fearless was very fast paced and exciting.  It was an amazing sequel to Reckless.  4.  It matched Reckless in every aspect even exceeding it in the introduction (which was actually good this time).  The characters were realistic and entertaining.  Jacob's personality (very proud, doesn't like to admit weakness) adds more to the book.  Narration from Nerron also adds to the story because Jacob's flaws are highlighted by Nerron's dislike of him.  On top of this, sympathy is created for Nerron which creates an even more complex plot.  3.  The mirror world the book takes place in is interesting.  Its twist and turns allow the plot to become more extreme and exciting.  With such limited time and constant reminders that Jacob's time is running out the tension quickly and intensely.  2.  This book was like a rich chocolate cake.  Tons of rich details were packed into one book.  Even though you can't stop eating your piece you are devastated once its gone.  1.  This book was a 4.8 because the main characters, plot, setting, antagonists, and writing style all helped create an enticing book.

The Girl Who Was Supposed To Die

Here's another book by April Henry. You can see my brief review on her other book Girl, Stolen here.

I can't mention the character's name and the plot changes direction every chapter, so I can't say much without giving away at least half the book. Maybe I can describe the first four pages: She (the main character) wakes up, dazed and confused. A disembodied voice above says "Take her out back and finish her off." That's where this story starts. She wakes up with no idea what's happening to her or how she got there. She has amnesia, and someone is trying to kill her. Dun, dun, duuuuuunnnnnnn.

If I were to describe this book as a whole, I would call it an action movie. Unfortunately, this is a problem. The book is interesting, but the whole thing isn't... realistic. In all seriousness, if this book were an action movie it would be pretty good if not run-of-the-mill. We'd see martial-arts style fighting, secret agents, guns, a corporation looking for power, an explosion or two, convenient happenstances, and even cheap romance. A character with a mysterious past and unknown skills and people trying snub her out? It all fits on the silver screen. So does her family and all other characters she interacts with, with one or two exceptions; they're wax dolls in the book. You don't really see them and their actions are just a bit too cookie-cutter. I wish I could write a better review about this book, but this is the hard truth of it. I even feel sorry for writing this. I don't want to make it sound bad because it isn't a bad book; I could feel the same emotion and tension as the main character as she learned more about herself and her situation. There's still writing to be commended here. Hmm, I guess I'm saying that it should be edited a bit.

I'll have to give this book three stars. Many people will probably enjoy it without second thought, but in my eyes is has potential to be better.
If this book were a food, it would be spaghetti and orange juice. They're both good separately, but together they're not at their best.