Books and Sensibility

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Book Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

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  • Release Date: September 18th 2012
  • Pages: 408 pages
  • Publisher: Scholastic Press
  • Genre: Fantasy

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble

Opening with an Edgar Allen Poe epigraph, I immediately connect The Raven Boys with the Southern Gothic literature movement. Characterized by its broken characters, social realism and fantasy elements I’ve always felt this genre fits perfectly within the YA spectrum. In The Raven Boys, New York Times Bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater has cleverly combined the Southern Gothic tradition with vivid characterization and a modern edge to create a novel that is unlike anything I’ve read this year.

The plot develops nicely throughout novel in an observant third-person point of view. There is a level of maturity and complexity in Stiefvater’s writing. Each word is carefully crafted to form a coherent mood and image. 

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Books and Sensibility One Year Blogaversary Gift-a-way

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The book blogging community is a community known for passing along and sharing great books. To celebrate making it one year, we want to have a gift-a-way for all of our followers !  We are giving away three awesome prizes to pass along the love.

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Books and Sensibility One Year Blogaversary

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 ONE YEAR BLOGAVERSARY

 

Sweetapolita’s Bakery Style Vanilla Cupcakes

Let me preface this by saying I remember a moment when I was around 14 years old  in Borders buying a book for a road trip. I remember looking through the YA shelves and thinking about how sad I was going to be when I was an “adult” and couldn’t read YA anymore.

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Book Review : The Unnaturalist by Tiffany Trent

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  • Release Date: August 14th 2012
  • Pages: 305
  • Genre: Fantasy/Steampunk
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Synopsis: Vespa Nyx wants nothing more than to spend the rest of her life cataloging Unnatural creatures in her father’s museum, but as she gets older, the requirement to become a lady and find a husband is looming large. Syrus Reed’s Tinker family has always served and revered the Unnaturals from afar, but when his family is captured to be refinery slaves, he finds that his fate may be bound up with Vespa’s—and with the Unnaturals.As the danger grows, Vespa and Syrus find themselves in a tightening web of deception and intrigue. At stake may be the fate of New London—and the world

I’ve been buzzing about this book since I went to a steampunk event with Tiffany Trent back in April. Naturally, when I saw this book tour on Southern Book Bloggers I couldn’t resist the opportunity to participate.

The Unnaturalist just happens to be the third book I’ve started reading that falls into this genre of  part steampunk part magic. The other two books being The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kitteredge and Skylark by Meagan Spooner. In these novels, possessing magic is considered taboo and evil ; science order are upheld and rule the land. Each of these books handles the genre differently and The Unnaturalists  takes a more historical alternate universe approach.

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Book Review : Origin by Jessica Khoury

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  • Publication Date: September 4th 2012
  • Pages: 393
  • Genre: Science Fiction 
  • Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home—and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.

Going into Origin I was excited for one big reason; this is a stand-alone novel. Since I started blogging the only non-contemporary stand-alone novel I’ve read is Entwined by Heather Dixon and that was a while ago.

When we are first introduced to the Pia, the immortal girl raised and created by scientist, I couldn’t help getting anxious. I was excited to see how this girl’s unusual story could be told in a single book format. It’s a different experience reading a book knowing there is only one chance to meet and grow with the characters and Origin holds up pretty well.

 Pia’s world is confined to Little Cam, a secret research compound hidden deep in the Amazon jungle. Pia is the first of her kind, an immortal race whose origin (title drop !) is found in the secrets and stories of the elysia flower. When an Ai’oan boy, Eio, from the outside, finds a way to free her from her caged in life, Pia learns the truth about her destiny and the life she thought was hers.

The novel does a good job of crafting this stoic and rational world of the Little Cam compound and how it contrasts with the chaotic and energetic lives of the Ai’oa tribe.  Usually, claustrophobic settings don’t work for me but there was so much description and intricacy to this jungle setting that I didn’t notice how little movement there is.

I was mostly drawn to the supporting characters because they have the most stakes in the plot, even more so than Pia. They have immediate sacrifices, hopes, and aspirations that rely on Pia creating the next generation of immortals. Due to the nature of Pia’s condition (being immortal) at times hard to relate to her because there is no immediacy. This concept is explored in the novel by Pia and is one of the reasons a contrast like Eio is necessary to propel her story forward.

It’s also worth noting that this novel is based entirely on the Science Fiction genre. It is based on the question of”what if” you could live forever. It stands out because it doesn’t focus on society or a big brother like in most Speculative and Dystopians

Origin is a refreshing change to the current YA landscape and I certainly hope it starts a trend of more stand-a-lones. This novel is perfect for those suffering from series fatigue and looking for a science fiction novel with a twist of romance.

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Book Review: Carnival of Secrets by Melissa Marr

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  • Release Date: September 4th 2012
  • Pages: 306 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins
  • Genre: Fantasy

Synopsis: In a city of daimons, rigid class lines separate the powerful from the power-hungry. And at the heart of The City is the Carnival of Souls, where both murder and pleasure are offered up for sale. Once in a generation, the carnival hosts a deadly competition that allows every daimon a chance to join the ruling elite. Without the competition, Aya and Kaleb would both face bleak futures–if for different reasons. For each of them, fighting to the death is the only way to try to live.
All Mallory knows of The City is that her father–and every other witch there–fled it for a life in exile in the human world. Instead of a typical teenage life full of friends and maybe even a little romance, Mallory scans quiet streets for threats, hides herself away, and trains to be lethal. She knows it’s only a matter of time until a daimon finds her and her father, so she readies herself for the inevitable. While Mallory possesses little knowledge of The City, every inhabitant of The City knows of her. There are plans for Mallory, and soon she, too, will be drawn into the decadence and danger that is the Carnival of Souls

So, remember those articles where moral guardians condemned some YA novels for being too dark ? Well, this probably would have been one of the books they targeted.

Carnival of Secrets is a gritty,violent, and vaguely sex obsessed fantasy novel from best-selling author Melissa Marr


In The City, daimons live in a strict Caste system ruled by their leader, Marchosias. At the center of The City is the Carnival of Souls, a marketplace where  one goes to trade money for favors from the black masked assassins or red masked prostitutes among other things.

The only way out of the Caste you were born into is to enter Marchosias Competition and compete in a series of fights to the death to earn a spot in the ruling class.

Kaleb is a cur, a member of the lowest caste and winning the competition is his only way at a life of more than assassin or prostitute. He believes his path to victory is clear until he crosses paths with Aya, the first ruling class girl to enter The Competition and Mallory, Marchosia’s only child who lives hidden in the human world unaware of her lineage. 

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