Monday, November 22, 2010

The Devil's Playground, by Jenna Black


warning: this is the 5th book in the series, so expect references to the earlier books.

From the back cover: The Seven Deadlies, a demon club in Philadelphia, has always catered to the most attractive and desirable hosts. Recently, though, more and more of the lower dregs of society have been showing up with demons of their own - in alarming numbers. Exorcist Morgan Kingsley is sure that Dougal, the demon king's brother, is behind this, but isn't sure why. Is Dougal building an army to snatch the throne of the demons from his brother Lugh? If there's one person who can get to the bottom of this, it's Morgan, but caught between her mortal lover Brian and the demon she lusts for, it's going to take everything she has to keep her head - and heart - in the game.

I've put off buying this book because I didn't want the series to be over - I enjoyed it too much to want to let it go. When I eventually opened it, despite intentions of making it last, savouring this last of the series, I read it the same way I've read all Jenna's books - very fast.
The story starts when Shae, owner of the Seven Deadlies, pays Morgan a visit to tell her about the growing number of hosts visiting the club. Morgan gets Lugh's council involved, and they start investigating. There's also the conflict in her love life to deal with, though. Lugh expressing his interest in Morgan's long suffering boyfriend, Brian, puts more strain on that particular relationship. I felt like the pacing was a little different in this book to the others. It still picked me up and sucked me in just as much, but the characters have to spend a lot more time waiting for events to unfold than they have in previous books. I think I liked this - it sometimes annoys me when the events of a book take place over just a couple of days.

One of the great things about this book was that you could really see how far the characters have come over the series. The relationship between Morgan & Brian is much steadier than it has been. I've had mixed feeling about Brian in previous books - a lot of the time I felt like, if he couldn't put up with the involvement of the demons, and the way Morgan was, then he should shut up and leave. He is much more willing to accept things now, if still a little reluctantly.

This book is where things finally come to a head with Dougal, and the characters really have to come together and use all their alliances to protect the human and demon worlds from Dougal's plans, and deal with him once and for all.

As a final book in the series, I think it works. It ties up the important plot points, although I still have several questions about where things were going in the personal lives of some of the characters. I think my biggest disappointment with this book is that there aren't enough hot Morgan/Lugh times!

I love this book, and am definitely looking forward to whatever Ms Black produces next. 10 out of 10!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

In My Mailbox

IMM is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren

I had wanted to get another review up before this week's IMM, but never mind, it just means you get two posts today!
(Again, sorry for the poor quality! I'm going to try and find camera batteries this week!)

First up, from the library:
Chosen, by PC & Kristen Cast
Kitty Takes A Holiday, by Carrie Vaughn
Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Then, won from Book Chick City:
Cursed & Ravaged, by David Wellington

I've been wanting to read Beautiful Creatures for ages, so glad to find it in the library. I love the amount of recent YA stories they have in the library here, it's excellent, so much more than what they had in my tiny home-town library. I'm also really interested to read Cursed, as it sounds like a slightly different werewolf story than many I've read recently.

What about you? What did you get this week?

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Foresight, by Sherry Ficklin

From the back cover: All Grace Archer wants is to graduate from high school and get on with her life. But the Gods of Fate have other ideas. Attacked at graduation by a mysterious woman with gruesome henchmen, Grace is lucky to excape with her life. Rescued by a Fae warrior named Chris and her Aunt Phoenix, Grace learns that her mother was the Greek Goddess Pandora. Now Grace must protect her mother's urn from the crazed Demi-Goddess Lilith, who is determined to unleash its horrors on an unsuspecting Earth. As if her blood legacy is not bizarre enough, Greace begins to develop frightening powers that threaten to destroy her from the inside out. Can Grace find the strength to defeat Lilith? Can she learn to control her powers before she loses her mind?

The action kicks off straight away, with mysterious people crashing in to Grace's graduation in the opening chapter. Grace is understandably upset by this, and when she wakes up at home after being knocked unconscious, she starts demanding answers. Grace is forced to deal with the idea that her mum was a Greek goddess as Phoenix and Chris whisk her off towards the safety of a fae city. This tension of running away is kept up through the whole book. The characters are constantly aware of being hunted, and gearing up for a confrontation. When Grace begins to have dreams that seem to foretell the future, her fear of the things she's seen coming true adds to the tension - I thought that was done very well. When they eventually reach the safety of the city, Grace hurries to master her new powers in time to help save her friends.

Something I didn't really like was the romance between Chris and Grace. I thought it happened too fast, and just didn't seem too realistic at first. The rest of Grace's character is better - she definitely acts like the 18 year old girl she is supposed to be. Grace won't put up with being treated as unimportant or unworthy just because she's young and new to her powers. I especially liked her verbal confrontation at the very end of the book with one of the other gods.
I also liked the combination of Greek gods with the fae - I haven't seen that before, and it was an interesting mixture.

I'd recommend this book for the YA audience, and fans of new twists on old myths. I'm giving it 6 stars.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

In My Mailbox

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren.

I got some lovely books on Friday:

(Apologies for the quality - my camera ran out of batteries again, so I had to use my phone)

I didn't mean to buy any more books for a while, because there are so many cool YA books at my local library that I can't wait to read, but one of my friends wanted to go to a bookshop, and lo and behold, Waterstone's had 3-for-2 on all fiction... how could I leave without buying anything?

From left to right:
The Mage in Black, by Jaye Wells
The Poison Throne, by Celine Kiernan
Infinite Days, by Rebecca Maizel (won from My Favourite Books, thank you Liz!)
The Devil's Playground, by Jenna Black

Devil's Playground and Mage in Black have been on my 'to buy' list since they came out, so I'm so glad to finally have them. I read a review for The Poison Throne a couple of days ago, and was thinking I wanted to read more fantasy & politics stories. And Infinite Days was won, it turned up in the post the other day, and has such a cool cover! I'm looking forward to reading it.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think?
What books did you get this week?

Friday, October 22, 2010

Follow Friday!



Welcome to follow friday, a weekly meme started by the wonderful Parajunkee

Here are the rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host { Parajunkee.com } and any one else you want to follow on the list
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers - What Book is That?
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If your new to the follow friday hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!


Todays Question:

What are you currently reading? And what do you think? Anything to add to my TBR pile?

Currently I'm reading Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black. The jury is still out. It's been a slow read, but still good. Although Hilary Mantel is an award winning author I find her writing style difficult to interpet and read. . . review will come eventually :)

Anyway, WELCOME to any new followers, it's great to have yeh.

Drop us a comment so we can return the favour :)

Thursday, October 14, 2010

A Spot of Bother


A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon was described by The Times as a 'humane novel' and I think that is perfect description for this book.

A Spot of Bother tells the story of retired 57 year old George, who just happens to be slowly losing his mind. But this isn't a bleak story, like Haddon's previous work, he mixes sadness with humour in a heart warming and entertaining way. This isn't just the story of George though, it is also story of his wife Jean and her having an affair, of her daughter Katie and her wedding crisis and of Jamie who can't seem to invite his lover Tony to the wedding.

Haddon does a remarkable job of changing perspectives with each chapter and portraying each characters unique story and insight. The writing is simple but magnificent with meaning, which draws you in and keeps you reading. I enjoyed reading this book, but also could appreciate the complexity and work that went into writing it. Of all the stories, I found Jamie's to be the most enjoyable to read, and I absolutely loved him, with Ray as a close second.

My only fault with the story was the handling of Katie & Ray's relationship and Jean's affair. Not going into specifics because I don't want to spoil, but I felt that the end/resolving of both the issues surrounding these relationships seemed to just be resolved. Compared to the indepth and understanding shown earlier, I felt a little disappointed on how these worked out. Perhaps the resolutions were down to the actually characters and their final understanding but I don't know if that was set up were properly done for the reader?I agree with the outcomes, but I felt that the workings of the characters' decisions might have been more indepth?

Despite this very small fault, I give this book 9 out of ten. The writing was really remarkable, and totally drew me in and put me in George's and the other characters' mindsets and over all did wonderful job of showing the dynamics of a dysfunctional (i.e. normal) family.

Highly recommend it!

Friday, October 1, 2010

Some reviews ahead. . .


Just bought myself the Simon & Schuster 'Dark Desires' Box set!

So, don't be surprised in the coming weeks if these books get reviewed by moi!

Yay for paydays and box sets (that actually cost the equiv to one of these books separately :)