Cover VS Cover: Graceling + Fire

Cover VS Cover is a new feature I came up with because I love cover memes and I've recently become fascinated with the differences between US/UK, new/old book covers.  This week we're looking at the many covers of the Seven Kingdoms Trilogy by Kristin Cashore (aka Graceling and Fire since the cover of the third book, Bitterblue, is yet to be released).

US & Canada 

UK & Australia 

German 

And... I think you could guess where this one's from. :)  Yes, it's the Chinese cover for Graceling and I absolutely adore it.  I don't think Fire has been released in China-- too bad. 

So what do you guys think?  Me, I'm a huge fan of the Chinese cover, especially since I'd never seen it before I went cover-hunting, but the UK covers are definitely the coolest I've actually seen around the blogosphere.  The US ones are nice, too-- those are the ones I have, so I'm a little attached. The German ones are decent, but maybe a little too similar. Of course, it's a little difficult to differentiate the two books without being able to read German.  ;)

Pegasus by Robin McKinley

Genre: YA fantasy
Pages: 404 (hardcover)
Published: November 2010 by Putnam Juvenile
Recommended for: fans of Robin McKinley's other books

Synopsis:
Because she was a princess, she had a pegasus.

Because of a thousand-year-old alliance between humans and pagasi, Princess Sylviianel is ceremonially bound to Ebon, her own Pegasus, on her twelfth birthday. The two species coexist peacefully, despite the language barriers separating them. Humans and pegasi both rely on specially-trained Speaker magicians as the only means of real communication.
But it's different for Sylvi and Ebon. They can understand each other. They quickly grow close-- so close that their bond becomes a threat to the status quo- and possibly to the future safety of their two nations.
New York Times bestselling Robin McKinley weaves an unforgettable tale of unbreakable friendship, mythical creatures and courtly drama destined to become a classic.

My Take:

Oh, what potential this book had!  Robin McKinley is an amazingly talented, experienced, beloved fantasy author.  Her books Sunshine and The Hero and the Crown are nothing short of genius, and yet Pegasus falls so short of expections, for me.  The world in which Princess Sylvi and her pegasus Ebon exist is brilliantly, beautfifully realized-- I was entranced with the first 50 pages, by the intricate descriptions of pegasus and palace life and culture, by the foreign names and the history between pegasi and humans. 

By page 60, I realized that that was it.  This book is more like a cultural textbook about a fantasy race than a dynamic novel.  Some of McKinley's other books can occasionally seem slow, but they always pick right back up again.  The beginning of this novel meanders along... by the middle, it's trudging through pretty heavy bush... and by the ending, it's positively stagnant.  There are very few plot twists-- very little plot at all, really.  Pegasus is a tome-- just over 400 pages-- and the story could easily be told in 100 pages, were it not for the admittedly interesting details of pegasi culture.  And then I read the last page and realize that this is the first book of a two-part series.  I can't imagine reading through another book in which so little happens, especially if the endings are all so entirely unsatisfying as this one's.  The villain (Fthoom-- try saying that name aloud)-- was so typical, with his court magician sneers and conspiracies that he really started to grate on my nerves).

I didn't hate this book.  I was tempted to skim pages and tempted to not finish, but it's by no means a terrible novel.  The writing is beautiful, the descriptions of the pegasi are beyond cool, and Ebon is a fantastic character. (The only fantastic character, for me.  Most of them, even Sylvi, are fairly boring and typical fantasy stereotypes.)  I did like Sylvi's mother, the Queen, who was far fonder of riding out with army patrols and slaying monsters than sitting at a court banquet.  That said, Pegasus was overall more than a little disappointing to me.  The reviews I've read from other people are so mixed-- some people are like me, and really miss the lack of action and plot in this book.  Some people seem to right-out hate it.  And hardcore McKinley fans mostly seem to love it.  It's one of those books, I think, that every reader will interpret differently.  Give it a go if you're still interested, or as captivated by that beautiful cover as I was.

Cover: 5/5 
Premise: 4/5 
Characters: 2/5 
Plot: 1/5 
Overall: 3/5

*This book qualifies for the following reading challenges: British Books Challenge 2011*

AFK: The Cancun Edition!

Yep, I'm AFK again... but this time it isn't because of exams or even a roadtrip.  My family and I are headed to Cancun, Mexico for the weekend, gente! 

Yes, I can finally use a little of all this high school Spanish, and escape from the snow and hazardous, icy roads which have canceled school for an entire week now.  (Nobody knows quite what to do about snow in the South-- we just cancel everything for about a month and tie sleds to the back of our ATVs.)  I'll be back on Tuesday, and I've managed to schedule a slew of posts over the weekend.  But I won't be participating in Follow Friday or the Book Blogger Hop. 

I hope all of you enjoy your winter wonderlands, or your tropical paradises, as the case may be for those lucky enough to live farther South.  I'll be soaking up a little of the latter by noon today.
Until Monday... hasta luego, mis amigos.  ;)

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Genre: YA dystopia
Pages: 335 (paperback)
Published: 2007 by Simon & Schuster
Recommended for: anyone who likes to read dystopia

Synopsis:
Connor, Risa, and Lev are running for their lives.
The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not considered talented enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

My Take:

Unwind is a book that surprised me again and again, in a lot of different ways.  First, I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying the book, granted that the first 20 or so pages didn't exactly captivate my attention and I don't really love the cover.  Neal Shusterman has a great talent for story-telling-- not writing novels or character-building or even world-building.  It's all brilliant story-telling: the kind of twisty, fast-paced tale that sucks you in, without burdening you with too many or too few details.  He has this talent for catchy monikers and throwing in a little bit of humor to even out the often darker tones and settings of his novels.  The way everything unfolds is pretty genius, though I ended up liking all the characters, too.  There are tons of twists in the plot-- most of them totally unsuspected.  By the 21st page, I was well and truly hooked. 

The thing about the world of Unwind is that it's dystopian, but doesn't seem too far-out a future for society.  The Unwinds-- kids thirteen to eighteen who are sentenced to be surgically divided in a sort of teenage abortion-- all have sympathetic and sometimes disturbing backstories.  Lev goes willingly to be Unwound on his thirteenth birthday-- he's known all his life that this would be his fate, and his uber-religious friends and family assure him that he's going to a better place.  Conner's that 'troubled' kid whose parents just couldn't care less, and poor Risa is the most sympathetic of them all-- she's a talented concert pianoist who makes a few mistakes during a recital, and is sent to a harvest camp to be Unwound after the state decides she's not good enough to make the budget cut for state orphanages.  And then there's CyFi, who received a brain transplant from a former Unwind a long time ago, and is slowly realizing that he wound up with more than just a few of the kid's brain cells from the operation.   

There is one particular scene (yes, this is one of those spoilers where you open a book at the library and see someone's scribbled turn to page 289...oops. Well, yeah, the scene starts on page 289. ;)  which really made me squirm.  It's by no means graphic, in fact, I wish the author hadn't left so much to the imagination.  You won't think I'm crazy if you read it.  Anyway, Unwind is a stand-alone dystopia by a master storyteller which is by turns disturbing and intriguing, funny and oddly realistic for a futuristic thriller.  I definitely recommend it, especially to anyone else as caught up in the YA dystopia craze as I am. 

Cover: 2/5
Premise: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Plot: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

*This book qualifies for the following reading challenges: Dystopia Challenge 2011*

Waiting on Wednesday (13)

"Waiting on" Wednesday is a weekly blogging event hosted at Breaking-The-Spine.com that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.  This week I'm waiting on... 

Luminous by Dawn Metcalf 

To Be Released: July 7th, 2011 

(from Goodreads): 
When sixteen-year-old Consuela discovers she can remove her skin, revealing a lustrous mother-of-pearl skeleton, she slips into a parallel world known as the Flow, a place inhabited by archetypal teens with extraordinary abilities. Crafting skins out of anything – air, water, feathers, fire – she is compelled to save ordinary people from dying before their time. Yet now someone is murdering them, one by one, and Consuela finds herself the focus of an intricate plot to end the Flow forever when all she really wants is to get back home, alive. 


Luminous had me at the cover.  But the synopsis has me anticipating the story-- this sounds truly unique, like nothing I've ever read or heard of before.  Still six months to wait until it comes out... but I have a hunch the wait will be well worth it. 


So, what are you waiting on this Wednesday?

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black

Genre: YA fantasy (short story collection)
Pages: 256 (hardcover) 224 (Kindle)
Published: February 2010 by Big Mouth House
Recommended for: Holly Black and urban faerie tales fans

(from Goodreads):  In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match. These stories have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and have been reprinted in many “Best of” anthologies. The Poison Eaters is Holly Black’s much-anticipated first collection of stories, and her ability to stare into the void—and to find humanity and humor there—will speak to young adult and adult readers alike. 

My Take: 

The Poison Eaters is really quite a fantastic collection of stories.  Together they show off every aspect of Holly Black's writing-- the eerie, the wildly imaginative, the funny and utterly original, the lyrical and the sometimes downright disturbing.  That said, a lot of these stories were very familiar to me.  I'm a huge Holly Black fan, and I think I'd read all but four of these stories before, since they were published in other collections featuring many different authors.  But I read most of them at least a year ago, so I'd forgotten all but the very basis of the stories.  The stories are threaded through with eerie illustrations by Theo Black, Holly's husband, and which complement their subjects perfectly.


The stand-out story in this collection is definitely the title-piece: "The Poison Eaters".  It's the story of three sisters who are poisonous to the touch, written in fairy tale-style prose with dreamy, eerie vagueness.  "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown: is a vampire tale-- like no other you've ever read.  It's also the longest story in the book by far-- more like a short novella.  Next up is "A Reversal of Fortune"-- which features an eating contest with the devil in the tradition of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia'. (How many of you non-Southerners know that song, I'm curious?)  Some of the stories-- namely 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "Virgin" were the creepy kind that don't really stick with you (written just for that big shock at the ending).  Another of my favorites was "The Night Market".  Though Holly Black practically started the modern faerie tale trend in YA, she often goes out of the box with a faerie-like creature you don't hear so much about-- here enkantos, elves of Filipino lore who appear as young men and cause the girl they fall in love with to sicken and waste away as their love grows.  That one is truly unique.  

"Paper Cuts Scissors" is the story of a library science student who discovers she can enter the worlds of her favorite books on the library shelves and that they can come out as well.  Every book-lover's dream, right?  And I loved all the Harry Potter references here.  "Going Ironside" is a sort of epilogue to Holly Black's book Ironside (which is the sequel to the better-known Tithe).  I enjoyed it, but people who haven't read Ironside may want to skip this one-- nothing will make sense if you don't know the characters. I also loved "The Dog King" and "A Coat of Stars", but for entirely different reasons. One is set in a fantasy land with an epic-ly creepy werewolf twist, and the other in modern day, a lyrical retelling of an old fairy tale.  All in all, I recommend this anthology 100%-- to anyone who didn't roll their eyes while reading this review. ;)  


It's hard to rate any anthology, given that every collection has its genius and not-so-genius, but here it goes: 

Cover: 5/5 

Premise: 5/5

Characters: 4/5 

Plot: 5/5 

Overall: 5/5

Cover VS Cover: Uglies Trilogy

Cover VS Cover is a new feature I came up with because I love cover memes and I've recently become fascinated with the differences between US/UK, new/old book covers.  This week I'm looking at some old YA favorites which have been repackaged countless times.
*Drumroll*...

The Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld 

               Original US        VS     New UK          VS         New US

So, what do you guys think?  Myself I'm still a little stuck on the old US covers, since those are the books I have and I love them.  The new US ones are cool, too, though-- very edgy and eerie.  Especially the Uglies one.  I''m not such a fan of the new UK covers-- they don't capture the feel of the books at all for me, though they are very unique.  I left out the old UK covers with the weird doll parts and whatnot, but if you'd like to see those as well, check out Scott Westerfeld's blog.  Let me know what you think, guys.  I'm really excited about this new feature.

The Betrayal of Maggie Blair by Elizabeth Laird

Genre: YA historical fiction
Pages: 360 (hardcover)
To Be Published: April 18th 2011 by Harper Teen
(Originally published in the UK as The Witching Hour)
*Received e-book from NetGalley in exchange for honest review*

My Synopsis:

Sixteen year old Maggie Blair lives in poverty with her grandmother Elspeth in seventeenth-century Scotland.  Her grandmother is a harsh if well-meaning woman, deeply superstituous and disliked by the people of their small village near Scalpsie Bay.  When her grandmother is accused of witchcraft, Maggie is locked away with her and sentenced to hang.  She manages to escape, even after another girl testifies against her (in a scenario reminscient of the Salem Witch Trials), and runs away to live with her uncle Blair and his family. 

There's no peace for her there, either-- Annie, the girl who testified against Maggie and got her arrested as a witch, soon arrives in the household and immediately causes strife among the once-happy family.  Maggie's uncle Blair is a Presbyterian Covenanter-- one of many Scots in that time who were against the King's reform of the Christian Church.  When he is arrested for treason, Maggie pursues her uncle's captors on her own terms-- all the while struggling with her own ideas about loyalty and religion and whether her future will be brighter than her troubled and difficult past. 

My Take:

I have mixed feelings towards The Betrayal of Maggie Blair.  It's certainly a captivating read, and Maggie's is a powerful voice.  I liked the honest way Elizabeth Laird portrays seventeenth century Scotland-- beautiful, proud, and brutal at once.  The religious tones were a little heavy for me, but that is characteristic of that time period, too.  This isn't a story about religion, though, or a story about witches (as the UK title suggests), but the story of one brave girl and how she manages to survive and then goes on to make her own way in a harsh world.  Maggie and her grandmother are by far the most impressionable characters-- especially her grandmother.  At first, I was convinced she really was a mean old woman and maybe a witch as well, because she did seem to know a lot of good herbal remedies and chants.  But then later it becomes clear that Elspeth Blair wanted the best for Maggie in her own way, and that she's so tough because, heck, she's had to be that way her whole life.  I even liked Annie, the servant girl who betrays Maggie, in a kind of like-hate way.  She was wicked as can be, sure, but so realistic in her own specific brand of badness that I totally believed in her character.

This is by no means a book that would one would describe as 'too short', judging from page number alone.  But in the end, yeah, I'm convinced there was a lot more to tell.  The ending wasn't a bad one, exactly, but we never really find out what happens to Maggie beyond the fact that she's definitely going to be making her own choices from now on.  I really liked Maggie as a protagonist, and wanted a happily-ever-after kind of ending for her, but readers are kind of left wanting for a more conclusive ending.  Another thing was that, despite Maggie's conviction that she and her grandmother are not witches (in the sense of seventeenth century Christians' witch hunts), there are several instances where one of them says or works a simple, charm against evil and it ends up successful.  I wondered whether Elspeth Blair didn't have some kind of natural power, and if Maggie hadn't inherited it.

Two things I found really cool about this novel: Number One, the cover.  I think it is absolutely perfect, and I love the texture of the sea, the sand of Scalpie Bay, and the dark clouds parting in the background.  I also think it's very cool how many of the characters' lives are based on real people, several of whom are ancestors of Elizabeth Laird, the author.  Hugh Blair, for example, is based off a Scottish Covenanter who was arrested for treason against the church and pretty much lived out the same story as his character in the book.  And Maggie was loosely based off another of her ancestors, Margaret Blair, who was thought to be a witch because she had fainting spells and fits (epilepsy?), but she was never actually accused of witchcraft or sentenced to hang.  For me, the history behind the book made it that much more real, and the world Elizabeth Laird has created is very realistic and profound to begin with.  I definitely recommend this one.

Cover: 5/5

Premise: 5/5

Characters: 5/5

Plot: 4/5

Overall: 5/5 

*This book qualifies for the following reading challenges: YA Historical Fiction Challenge 2011; British Books Challenge 2011.*