Series Review: The "Spiritwalker Trilogy" by Kate Elliott

Cousins Cat and Bee Barahal are lucky to be alive in an age of invention and change. They are among the first women to be educated alongside men in the academy of Adurnam. But the daughters of Phoenician spies and soldiers weren't born to sit quietly and behave: adventure is in their bones.

To Cat's surprise, so is magic. On her twentieth birthday, cold mages from the powerful Four Moons House come for her, citing an old contract marrying the eldest Barahal girl to the heir of their house.

But Phoenician families like the Barahals are renowned for their sly dealings. The contract that snared Cat was meant for Bee, whose prophetic visions make her a prize to whoever owns her. The thwarted mages of Four Moons House are determined to try again to claim her--over Cat's dead body.

Now both cousins are on the run, revolution and old magic igniting in their footsteps.

***

The Spiritwalker Trilogy by Kate Elliott (2010)

2 out of 5 stars 

Complexity of Writing: 3/5
Quality of Writing: 1/5
Strength of Characterization: 2/5
Logic of Plot Development: 1/5
Evocation of Setting: 3/5
Effectiveness of Pacing: 1/5
Resolution of Conflict: 1/5
Emotional Engagement: 2/5
Mental Engagement: 2/5
Memorability: 2/5
Bechdel Test: pass
Diverse Cast: pass
Content Warning: none that I can recall

Overall Response: What a colossal letdown. I have a headache.

***

More Thoughts: Dear reader, if you took a shot for every Conveniently Overheard Conversation in this series, you'd be dead from alcohol poisoning. And your mourners could still host an open bar at your funeral reception with the booze you didn't get to finish. Yikes.

Review: "Sunshine" by Robin McKinley

Rae "Sunshine" Seddon only went to the lake for some time to reflect. Her need to escape becomes far more literal and urgent when she is kidnapped by a vampire gang and locked in abandoned house, meant to be prey to another of their kind. But within three days, both Sunshine and her fellow prisoner are free in broad daylight, confounding their captors.

Sunshine's attempt to resume her ordinary life as a baker is doomed to fail. Now she has supernatural detectives questioning her survival, a wound that won't heal, and a vampire with a life debt hanging around her house. Not to mention the very old, very angry bloodsucker whose vengeance she unknowingly thwarted.

*** 

1.5 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Wither" by Lauren DeStefano

Sixteen-year-old Rhine lives under a death sentence. By the age of 20, she and every other woman in her generation will die, thanks to the effects of genetic experimentation. But Rhine's life expectancy may be even shorter than that. Like so many other girls, she is kidnapped, sold to wealthy men eager for children before their own lives come to an end.

Imprisoned in Governor Linden's mansion with his three other young "wives," Rhine plots to gain his favor, but also her own freedom. Neither will be easy to achieve. And the horrors of her abduction is nothing compared to the eerie power held by Linden's scientist father. 

*** 

1 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Fangirl" by Rainbow Rowell

 When Cath leaves home for her first year of college, she's not ready for change. She already has everything that she needs: a loving father, a twin to be her guaranteed best friend, and twenty thousand hits on her fanfiction about the popular Simon Snow series.

But Wren doesn't want to be Cath's other half anymore. For the first time in her life, Cath is alone, living among strangers. She doesn't know where the dining hall is. Her new roommate is too loud, too pushy, too attractive. Her professors think fanfiction is plagiarism.

Not to mention the presence of boys--ones made of flesh and blood rather than paper and ink. Boys in her classes, boys in her room, boys she can't control with a few taps on a keyboard.

When will Cath have time to finish her fanfiction with all these changes getting in the way?

***   2.5 out of 5 stars (grump below the cut)

***

Three-For-One Review: The "Symphony of Ages" Trilogy by Elizabeth Haydon

Rhapsody, a gifted singer and Namer, is on the run from the demons of her past. A far more literal demon pursues the two half-monster warriors Grunthor and Achmed. When Rhapsody’s power of Naming Naming frees Achmed from his curse, the monstrous pair drag the singer along on a desperate race to outrun the coming apocalypse.

The escape leads the three on a surreal journey through the fires at the center of the earth. They emerge into a transformed world, separated from the one they knew by hundreds of years. But not all has been destroyed. Amid the wonders and mysteries of their new world, familiar nightmares survive to haunt and to hunt them--as well as sweeter dreams long since given up for lost.

*** Fantasy Adventure: 4 out of 5 stars
Romance: 1 out of 5 stars
(grump below the cut) ***

Review: "Clockwork Heart" by Dru Pagliassotti

That's "clockwork," not "cleckwerk."
Good job, typographers.

High above the streets and smoke plumes of Ondinium, Taya soars on silver wings. In a city driven by the beat of the great engine at its heart, only the icarii couriers move freely among the castes. Taya has been training for years in caste-appropriate protocols, hoping to earn her place in the elite diplomatic corps.

On the eve of her sister's wedding, Taya is in the right place at the right time to save one of the city's Exalted from a sabotaged cable car. She learns it was the wrong time, when the rescue entangles her in a web of intrigue and terrorism.

Across the bounds of caste, the Exalted Alister--a genius programmer--reaches out to Taya for help. But while Alister tries to protect Taya from a string of murders and bombings, his misanthropic brother, an outcast from Exalted society, looks more and more like the culprit. Someone is trying to destroy the computational machines that keep Ondinium alive, and they could use a good pair of wings--even if it means stealing them from a dead icarus.


***   4.5 out of 5 stars (grump below the cut) ***

Review: "Across the Universe" by Beth Revis

Not pictured: The Beatles.

Amy Martin gives up a lot when she agrees to join her parents on their expedition to colonize the newly discovered planet in Alpha Centauri: her friends, her boyfriend, her plans for a normal life. Instead, she will spend the next three hundred years in cryogenic freeze, traveling across the universe in the Godspeed. She is "nonessential cargo" compared to her brilliant scientist parents. But in a terrible accident, Amy wakes fifty years too early--without her parents, lost in the cold black of space.

Elder was set apart from birth to lead the crew of the Godspeed. Yet he is also the youngest and most misfit member of the ship's homogenous and rigidly controlled population, shaped by centuries of space travel. Elder's supposed mentor refuses to teach him anything about the ship. Amy is the first person Elder has ever known his own age; the first person who doesn't take a life of lies and confinement for granted; the first person who has walked on real earth and felt the warmth of a real sun on her skin.

For Elder, just knowing Amy is happiness enough. But Amy, once deemed "nonessential," is now considered a freak. She is disturbed by what humanity has become aboard the Godspeed, and wants to know who woke her, and why. More frozen passengers are found thawing ahead of schedule--and don't survive the process. With mind-altering drugs in the water and a killer on board the ship, only the misfits are asking why.
 
***   2 out of 5 stars (grump below the cut) ***