So I went to the library...

Today I went to the library as some of the books I requested be put on hold had come in and had a bit of an adventure.

I forgot my book bag which is always a bad thing since I walk in thinking I'll get seven books or so, but I always end up walking with fifteen or so. Today I staggered out with eighteen. It gets better.

As I picked up the books I had on hold and headed to the upstairs section after a quick peruse of the graphic novels, I end up walking up the stairs and spilling the seven books that I had been carrying about the fourth stair from the top. I mutter incoherently to prevent public swearing, and get helped by a fellow patron. I thank them and continue on my way.

Then I peruse the young adult section and by the time I leave, I'm up to 18 books. Alright. Really should have brought that book bag. I do the self checkout, and smartly take the elevator down to avoid all the stairs. I meet two other library patrons who seem to be a young gentleman and a concerned relative or close relation of some sort and they appear to be having a mildly serious conversation. So I politely try not to pay attention when the young gentleman says, "Hey, hey" a lot. I look over and he asks, "Why do you have so many books?"

I shrug and tell him, "I really love reading."
He asks, "You can finish all those in, what, three weeks? Right?"
I nod my head and his concerned relative states, "She's lying. This is a good example of you needing to have more wits about you when you meet people. To stop being so trusting and taking people on their word."

Um, what? Did I suddenly become a life lesson?

Thankfully, the elevator had safely delivered us to the lobby and I make my way out to my car. I manage to get my car door open and my due date receipt slips out and flutters away. I quickly get all the books in my car before I close the door. I start looking around for my receipt to discover that the young gentleman from the elevator was walking towards me, holding my receipt. I thank him profusely and he says, "I think you can read all those in three weeks," with a big smile on his face. I assured him I could and he went back to his awaiting relation.

...it was an unusual experience. So, I have more books to read! Yay!

Huntress

Huntress by Malinda Lo 

*The formatting of this post got all jacked up somehow. I don't know what happened*

So, I have to do a little speech. I get super annoyed with books that when they give the description of the book on the back, or inside cover, or wherever they're decided to hide it; they reveal plot points past a quarter of the way through the book. If the first quarter of the book is not interesting enough to write a summary on with a VERY VAGUE line of what the book could lead you towards, then what the heck. Learn to summarize better. Or the book isn't that good. URGH.

So this is the summary verbatim on my copy of Huntress. "Nature is out of balance in the human world. The sun hasn't shone in years, and crops are failing. Worse yet, strange and hostile creatures have begun to appear. The people's survival hangs in the balance. To solve the crisis, the oracle stones are cast, and Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old-girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. Taisin is a sage, thrumming with magic, and Kaede is of the earth, without a speck of the otherworldly. And yet the two girls' destinies are drawn together during the mission. As members of their party succumb to the unearthly attacks and fairy tricks, the two come to rely on each other and even begin to fall in love. But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever." Citation: Lo, Malinda. Huntress. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2011. Print. Found on the back of the book as a summary for the book.

.........

So, it sounds like this big wind-up like WHOA adventure. Too bad that is essentially the whole book. Except for the last, oh, fifty pages or so. The whole Huntress thing never really comes into play except when one of the characters does the obligatory, "CRAP, WE HAVE TO GET THE BOOK TITLE IN HERE SOMEHOW" move.

Also, the book had a weird way of doing the, "Well, this is something that seems a little odd and has never come up before, but it's incredibly useful. I'll explain it with one line of text and EVERYONE WILL GO ALONG WITH IT. YES."


Also, this whole line of: "But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever." Citation: Lo, Malinda. Huntress. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2011. Print. Found on the back of the book as a summary for the book.
That line never comes into play. EVER. When the ordeal happens, there's no, "OMG I COULD DIE" I mean, not for real. There's no real emotional attachment to the scene except for Kaede and Taisin loving each other. They do the, "I hope I can return to her" as if they're talking about remembering to pick up milk when they go shopping.


I'm also a bit confused by the cover. There's a girl on the cover and she's holding a wooden sword. Um, to my recollection, no one in the entire book ever holds a WOODEN sword. Now, people use bows & arrows, throwing knives, real swords, etc, but never a wooden sword. So why would the girl depicted on the cover be holding a wooden sword?


I'm really annoyed with how the book ended. They spend about 25/100 (I'm making fractions for happy maths, shhhh) of the book setting up the home country, the life of the academy, blah blah backstories. Alright, that's cool.

They spent about 50/100 of the book's content to make their way through the woods. Stuff happened. It was a bit intense sometimes, but other times I kept asking, "Was this necessary? Or are we shooting for pages?" (For the record, my copy is 371 pages in length.) 

Then about 15/100 is spent just making it into the city, and waiting for an audience with the Fairy Queen. (Also, I feel like that's not a spoiler since the back of the book told you about almost all of the book).

So about 10/100, the last part of the book, is where we come across content that we couldn't find on the back of the book. This part is immediately rushed. It seems like the story was a train up until this point, just chugging along the tracks and taking it's sweet time to reach the destination. Then it suddenly became about as frantic to get through everything as the people who shop for Christmas gifts on Christmas morning! The stuff that could have been really cool, interesting, and spent lots of time dwelling on as it was a foreign concept was just kind of a hiccup to the book. I don't know what the heck the book was rushing around for either. It was just like BAM, WE GOT TO GET THIS DONE. NOW.

I'm also lead to believe that this is a prequel book to Ash. Based on my experience with Huntress, I have no intention of picking up Ash. I would also recommend steering clear of this book. It gets slightly cool as they describe the fay, but that's about it. It was also a LBGTQIA book, but it wasn't any sort of particularly special romance. It was interesting that the culture seemed to almost embrace those with non-hetereosexual preferences, but it definitely wasn't something the book dwelled on.

Immortal Beloved

Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan

So Immortal Beloved is about Nastasya (she tells her friends to call her 'Nasty' for short) who is an immortal. Immortal simply means they live a long time. They eventually start to age and can die, but for the most part they live like normal humans. They live with humans, appear human, and besides the very slowly aging thing, they are human. A couple immortal perks I noted were they seemingly can recover from any disease they contract and if they lose a limb/toe/tongue it'll eventually grow back.

Anyways, so Nastasya is about 450 years old (hey, when they say live a long time, they mean a LONG TIME, we meet River in the book who is roughly 1300 years old) and she's having party after party after party with her other immortal friends. They leave a club one night and get a cab to take them to the next club but the cabbie driver is rude as all get out. So Incy (that's his nickname, his real name is Innocencio, ridiculous) gets all pissy and uses magic on the cabbie driver to make his spine break. We later find out from a news report that the dude is paralyzed from the shoulders down. Horrible.

Nastasya is extremely shocked by Incy's actions and kept telling him to fix him but Incy pushes through to the next club. Incy basically seems to have taken some sort of extreme delight in his actions which shakes Nastasya even more since in the about 100 years that she's known him, he's never been downright malicious. In an effort to forget about it, Nastasya drinks herself into a dark place and wakes up at some dude's place. This is has become her routine for when things are ugly, get bad, etc She drinks until she's practically dead, but since she's immortal she just gets a really bad hangover but doesn't die from it. Upon waking up she can't shake the horror she feels towards Incy or the horror she feels towards herself for not having done anything. So she takes up an immortal, River, on an offer to escape from all the partying (they met briefly in 1915 or something) and to figure out what really matters.

Nastasya leaves all her friends behind without telling them where she's going and disappears off the map. She doesn't take much with her and doesn't connect to any other immortals on her way over. Then she enters immortal rehab if you will. The program is designed to get immortals concentrated on their lives, what they want, what matters to them, etc by getting them to do every single task that people now take for granted. Like cooking, making dinner, chores to keep the facility running, etc. It's quite cool.

Nastasya really struggles with it since she hadn't done anything hard in ages. Blah. I think one of the most interesting and favorite parts about the book is Nastasya's running commentary and watch her grow from being this horrible partier doesn't care about a thing to a person who can actually care for other people and watch out for them. It's pretty amazing. Nastasya is funny, quirky, and obnoxious.

The story innately seems to focus on the 'magic' that every immortal has and what they can do with it. I'm looking forward to snatching up the sequel Darkness Falls to see where the author takes it. I think it could be very interesting, or very boring, doom gloom end of the world. But so far, I've liked it a lot and have high hopes for the sequel. I also think it's part of a trilogy, so that should be neat.

But alas, Darkness Falls will not be my next review as I don't have it yet. When I have it, you'll know. For now, happy reading!

Tortall and Other Lands

Tortall and Other Lands by Tamora Pierce

So, I'm quite sure that I've stated before that I'm a big fan of Tamora Pierce (barring her Beka Cooper series as diary books disagree with the logic in me) and Tortall and Other Lands definitely didn't disappoint.

The book is a collection of short stories about folks we've encountered before in her books (such as Nawat and Aly, Numair and Daine, and even a Darking adventure of sorts). It also adds a few characters that I would love to see more of (namely Qioum, Fadal, and Kylaia). I enjoyed the book of short stories as the stories seemed to have a vein of YAY WOMAN POWER! in them but was kind of directly spelled out in two of stories. Most of the stories take places in the world of Tortall, but what I found interesting was that in the end there were three stories that were not in the world of Tortall. One was in a remote desert (it still had an air of fantasy to it, although come to think of it that might have been a remote part of Tortall), and the other two were in our time. One of them that was in current day is set in New York City and had fantasy elements to it, and another was about a home for young girls. Girls that were too old to truly be in foster care but too young to be a legal adult.

I wouldn't recommend this book as your first read by Tamora Pierce, I would much rather recommend the The Lioness Quartet or even The Protector of the Small series. Heck, you could even start with the Magic Circle or the Wild Magic series. But, if you've read all of these and Trickster's Choice & Trickster's Queen, this book gives a nice epilogue to a few characters that I thought needed them. I mean, I love how most of the series end, some of them just left me with a hankering curiosity to know where they ended up.

So if you've read Tamora Pierce before, I highly doubt that you'll be disappointed with Tortall and Other Lands. It's quite good.

Daughter of Xanadu

Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang

I'm pretty sure that this is historical fiction, but as I'm not familiar with Mongol history, I'm going to assume it's creative historical fiction. Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I'm mildly cranky from a very persistent headache.

So our story centers around Emmajin Beki who is the eldest granddaughter of the Great Kahn Khubilai. And to avoid spelling errors this time, I'm frequently referencing the book. In retrospect, should have been doing that all along, but now I will for sure. Pardon past blunders. ANYWHO.

So Emmajin Beki is not your typical royal girl. She grew up with her cousin Serun (the eldest grandson) and Temur (the second eldest grandson, Serun's younger brother). By growing up with them, she pursued "men's passions" such as archery, and wrestling; normal women of the court pursue embroidery, gossip, and fine clothes. Emmajin has no use for 'silly' past times. Emmajin declares in the first chapter that she wants to join the Great Kahn's army. No woman has ever joined the Kahn's army before.

Now this is definitely a RAH RAH WOMAN POWERRRR book as Emmajin is hurtled through the prejudice's of men and also has to carefully balance between honoring her cousin Serun, and not crossing the Kahn Khubilai. To test her abilities and to prove her determination to join the army, the Kahn tasks Emmajin with the task of learning about the foreigner, Marco Polo. On a sidenote, I couldn't help it but as I was reading the book and every time I read 'Marco' I had to shout POLO! I startled the folks around me quite a few times. Whoops. Worth it. Now as Emmajin tries to learn the art of communication, she is also unsure if Marco Polo is flirting with her at first. Nevertheless, she tries to discretely persuade him to teach her about his culture, his military, and his country's ambitions.

I'm not sure at what point is halfway through the story, so I'm going to stop there just to be safe. I think Emmajin was a great narrator as her voice was never annoying or whining when her path became difficult. She kind of had 'oh crap' moments when she was shocked, but she still went on. I thought the metal of Emmajin's character was proven very soundly and repeatedly and I was pleased with how the book was paced and how it was ended.

I think there is a potential for a sequel, but I would be very happy if it was left as simply a stand alone book.

I also would like to clarify that I got suckered into this book by the praise that was printed on the front; the praise was from Tamora Pierce (damn it Tamora!). I clearly need to stop picking up books just because another author I liked praised the book. Although this one was worth the read. I guess it'll remain a trial and error process.

So if you like historical fiction (it could be creative, it might not be, I need a history buff to chime in on this one) then I'd recommend The Daughter of Xanadu. Or if you want a life learning, woman power book; I'd recommend this. Emmajin was brave, courageous, and had youthful naive that brought about interesting situations. Also, Marco (POLO!) was quite charming.