Recent Reviews
List them all by looking under Reviews above.
Review Archive
June 16th, 2010
Rampant
Rating: 
Real unicorns are venomous, man-eating monsters with huge fangs and razor-sharp horns. Fortunately, they’ve been extinct for a hundred and fifty years.
OR NOT.
Astrid has always scoffed at her eccentric mother’s stories about killer unicorns. But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend – thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to the prom – Astrid finds herself headed to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries.
However, at the cloisters all is not what it seems. Outside, the unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from the crumbling, bone-covered walls that vibrate with a terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to – perhaps most dangerously of all – her growing attraction to a handsome art student… an attraction that could jeopardize everything.
I think this book and story line could have a lot of potential as a young adult novel and future fantasy series but I think it ended up being too big and ambitious for one book. It also ended up losing a lot by going for the easy way out in characterization and in trying too hard to cater to a teen audience.
In this story poor Astrid has to switch gears pretty hard to go from a typical teenage girl seriously considering letting a guy sleep with her to get asked to the prom to having him be almost murdered by a renegade unicorn (a being that, until that moment, Astrid had firmly believed was a myth). As a result Astrid, a virgin from a bloodline of unicorn hunters, gets sent abroad to a special cloister for training in becoming a fearsome hunter of these bloodthirsty, semi-intelligent beasts. Unfortunately Astrid does not want to become a unicorn hunter and finds out that the cloisters contain more secrets than answers and that perhaps the world of unicorn hunting is not all that it seems.
May 27th, 2010
Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 4
Rating:
Trapped and injured in a secret alchemical laboratory, Edward Elric is at the mercy of his enemies, Lust and Envy. But they don’t want him dead… they have other plans for him. As the laboratory goes up in flames, the brothers find themselves back at square one, with only an inkling of the massive scale of the Philosopher’s Stone conspiracy. But then, Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes uncovers a shocking secret…
After the horrific events in volume 3 the Elric brothers spend most of volume 4 recovering from their wounds whether physical, mental or emotional. Laboratory 5 is destroyed and in its aftermath Ed is hospitalized with serious wounds and Al is left reeling from the words of doubt planted by Barry the Chopper. Winry also makes another appearance to fix Ed’s auto-mail arm with the missing bolt. Both brothers have time to reflect on their actions both past and present and in some cases are given a bit of a wake call about them.
May 26th, 2010
Charity Girl
Rating:
Miss Charity Steane is running away from the drudgery of her aunt’s household to find her grandfather. Not expecting her visit, the old gentleman is not in London but is away in the country.
A scandal broth in the making.
When Viscount Desford encounters a lovely waif searching for her grandfather, he feels honor bound to assist her; but dashing about the countryside together, the Viscount must prevent his exasperating charge from bringing ruin upon herself… and him.
In the end, his best ides is to bring Charity to his lifelong best friend Henrietta, and that’s when the fun and surprises begin…
While this book may start off slow and shaky, by the end Heyer has her footing again and the plot and characters sparkle. In Charity Girl a Viscount named Desford meets a young woman named Charity, “Cherry” for short, hiding away upstairs at a ball. She was foisted off on these relatives by an absent father and is treated more like glorified help then a poor relation in need. Naturally she ends up running away to London in a search for her grandfather. Desford finds her on the road to London and, after hearing her story, decides she would be better off with her grandfather and so gives her a lift. Unfortunately they arrive in London just to discover that her grandfather is out in the country and no one knows where or when he will be back.
May 25th, 2010
Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 3
Rating:
Accompanied by their bodyguard, Alex Louis Armstrong, our heroes seek their closest childhood friend, mechanic Winry Rockbell, to fix their battered “auto-mail” bodyparts. Soon their quest for the Philosopher’s Stone takes them to the great central library, where the Stone’s formula may be hidden… if the mysterious figure named Lust doesn’t get there first! But the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone may be even more frightening than the beings who guard it…
Volume 3 has the Elric brothers finally arrive in their hometown to visit their mechanic Winry Rockbell. Their bodyguard Alexander Louis Armstrong learns along with us more details about the brothers’ past and how they came to lose their limbs, gain their new metal bodies and decide to join the military and never turn back. It’s nice to finally get some more back story on the main characters and also find out just how committed they are to their present course.
May 24th, 2010
The Chosen One
Rating:
But when the Prophet decrees that she must marry her sixty-year-old uncle – who already has six wives – Kyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family forever.
This book addresses a very powerful and deeply controversial subject and in a surprisingly strong, vivid and heart breaking way for a YA novel. I think this book exemplifies one of YA’s true strengths in that way. Kyra is a young girl growing up in a remote compound belonging to a polygamist sect. She has grown up in a family with one father and three mothers and now has twenty siblings with two more on the way. She has known no other life and in fact finding out about other ways of life is next to impossible and is considered a sin. By chance Kyra discovers a mobile library and that discovery, along with a library card, opens up fresh new horizons for her and she discovers a world beyond the compound’s barbed wire fences and brutal attitudes towards freedom and independent thought.
