Debut Author Challenge

Greta and the Goblin King: Blog Tour Review, Dream Cast and Giveaway

November 9, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 16 Comments

Greta and the Goblin King (Mylena Chronicles #1)
By Chloe Jacobs

Publisher: Entangled Publishing LLC
Publishing Date: November 13, 2012
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Source: Itching for Books Blog Tour

While trying to save her brother from a witch’s fire four years ago, Greta was thrown in herself, falling through a portal to Mylena, a dangerous world where humans are the enemy and every ogre, ghoul, and goblin has a dark side that comes out with the eclipse.

To survive, Greta has hidden her humanity and taken the job of bounty hunter—and she’s good at what she does. So good, she’s caught the attention of Mylena’s young goblin king, the darkly enticing Isaac, who invades her dreams and undermines her will to escape.

But Greta’s not the only one looking to get out of Mylena. An ancient evil knows she’s the key to opening the portal, and with the next eclipse mere days away, every bloodthirsty creature in the realm is after her—including Isaac. If Greta fails, she and the lost boys of Mylena will die. If she succeeds, no world will be safe from what follows her back…

Goodreads Summary

This was an odd book to read because it kept surprising me. From the beginning, when I looked at the cover, then opened the first page and started reading, Greta and the Goblin King never went where I expected a typical author to take it. For the most part, I was enthralled.

When she was a young teen, Greta was drawn to a strange fire and pulled into it by a witch, to emerge on the other side into an alternate world called Mylena, populated by ghouls, goblins, sprites and other creatures. Greta would have died in the freezing wilderness where she’d ended up if she hadn’t been found by Lucius, a wood sprite that took her in and ruthlessly trained her to become fighter and bounty hunter like him. She’s had to hide that she’s human – the unforgiving climate is blamed by everyone on the arrival of humans in Mylena and the consensus is that the two suns won’t warm the land again until the last of them are dead.

None of that information is given in the beginning and part of it doesn’t come out for a bit, even. It’s part of the way that the story’s told that made it feel so different for me. It was the complete opposite of infodump – infoparse? For a while, I even thought that Greta was friendly with the goblins because of some things she was doing.

One of those goblins is the King himself, Isaac. Apparently they’ve come across each other earlier. I say apparently because that’s something that happened before the book even started and while there are some references to it, that’s it. By saying his name, Greta has given him permission to appear in her dreams, something he likes to do, and there’s a little attraction between the two of them. She’s terrified that he’ll find out she’s human, he can’t figure out what’s wrong with her and why she pushes him away all of the time. They really don’t have a lot of page time physically together so their relationship was always hard for me to get a feel for.

When the story opens, Greta is looking for a goblin boy who was kidnapped by a ghoul. Isaac shows up to protect her which drives her nuts. After she’s injured, Isaac finds out what she is and when she reaches home, they find Lucius near death, a victim of an attack. His last words warn her that she’s being hunted, which is no surprise and seems barely troubling to Isaac. He has enough feeling for her to try to stop her when she decides to set off looking for Lucius’ killer, who may also be the one who can fix Mylena’s endless winter. Nothing’s going to stop Greta though, and she embarks on a dangerous, deadly journey through the Woods.

The story is much darker than the cover led me to believe. It wasn’t over the top, but there’s violence, blood, death and serious injury here. I was impressed that Jacobs allowed Greta to be scarred and hurt and emotionally burned out. There wasn’t a miracle healing potion that she could take that would keep her body all pretty and unmarred and I loved that Greta had come to peace with it.

While she may have remorse about it once in a while, make no mistake, Greta is a killer. She was trained by Lucius to be the best fighter, to accept pain and push herself. There’s nothing very girly about her – I got more of a feeling of what she would look like than an actual picture because words about her hair or body wouldn’t be enough to describe Greta. I loved that as the story went on and after she found the group of human boys, she started to lose some of her brittle shell and remembered what it was like to actually have lived someplace else. Having the two Gretas come together was very powerful.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler and I do think it’s important (because it made the story so much better and stronger) to note that the story is nearly halved into sections before Greta leaves and after she finds the lost human boys. Her time with them is moving, amazing, heartbreaking, uplifting, emotional – I’m thinking you get the point. Isaac is still around during her dreams, but this is about their quest to stay alive in a hostile place, find more of their kind and the man who killed Lucius. It’s complex and while there are joking references to Lord of the Flies, I could see it.

Maybe because they’re human and have just been forced to live by their wits, the older boys in the group are simple to understand. The leader Wyatt wears the mantle of responsibility for the group and somehow manages to control them. Grumpy Ray suffered a tragedy at the hands of the goblins and is bitter and reckless. The others follow and do their best to fill some sort of role in the group without sticking their necks out too far. It’s a sad little rag tag group, especially when you find that Greta’s the first girl they’ve seen in a long, long time.

It was frustratingly difficult to get a feel for Isaac. I wanted to like him so much. The words were there on the page telling me how much he wanted Greta, but there was something missing. I didn’t understand their dynamic, his past, their past or what his cryptic remarks about their future meant. Because so much else wasn’t what I thought it would be, I didn’t know what to expect their romance to be. This is something closer to an urban fantasy-level coupling than a PNR one, if that makes sense.

My Summary: I’m glad a darker, grittier story was just fine with me when I picked this up, because that’s what I got instead of a fluffy paranormal fantasy with a swoony romance. I’m glad this is going to be a series for a few reasons, one being that this felt a little unfinished – the ending was a little unsatisfying and there were some gaps in what I thought I needed to know about Mylena. I enjoyed this so much – Chloe Jacobs has found a new fan in me and while I hope the next book resolves some issues between Greta and Isaac, there are plenty of other interesting characters to pull out who should have great stories to tell.

My Rating: A-

My Dream Cast

So, I debated about going the route I did with my playlist last week and terrifying you with my knowledge of the 80s, but I decided to actually do a little thoughtful research for this one. I rarely watch network television so I don’t exactly have a list of names at my fingertips to draw from, but I think that was a good thing. I just set about searching for someone who had the face and attitude for the characters. I came up with who I think embodies Greta, Isaac, Wyatt, Ray and Siona (Isaac’s cousin and Greta’s friend) best. You’ll have to use your imagination for a couple of things though – they were almost always covered in dirt and someone’s blood and most of them had scars, scratches, bruises and had tangled and knotted hair. So, without further ado…my dream cast:

About the author
Chloe Jacobs is a native of nowhere and everywhere, having jumped around to practically every Province of Canada before finally settling in Ontario where she has now been living for a respectable number of years. Her husband and son are the two best people in the entire world, but they also make her wish she’d at least gotten a female cat. No such luck. And although the day job keeps her busy, she carves out as much time as possible to write. Bringing new characters to life and finding out what makes them tick and how badly she can make them suffer is one of her greatest pleasures, almost better than chocolate and fuzzy pink bunny slippers.

Official site: http://www.chloejacobs.com
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Jacobs_Chloe

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Filed Under: *A Rating, 2012 Ebook Challenge, Barbara Recommends, Debut Author Challenge, Fantasy, Giveaway, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Chloe Jacobs

Luminosity (Raven Chronicles #1) Blog Tour Stop and Giveaway

November 1, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 16 Comments

By Stephanie Thomas

Publisher: Entangled Teen
Publication Date: November 13, 2012
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Source: Itching for Books Blog Tour

My name is Beatrice. When I was born, I was blessed with the Sight. I was immediately removed from my parents and enrolled in the Institution. At the age of twelve, I had my first true vision, earning my raven’s wings. And when I turned seventeen, one of my visions came true. Things haven’t been the same since.

The Institution depends on me to keep the City safe from our enemy, the Dreamcatchers, but I’m finding it harder to do while keeping a secret from everyone, including my best friend Gabe. It is a secret that could put us all in danger. A secret that could kill me and everyone close to me.

But the enemy has been coming to me in my dreams, and I think I’m falling in love with him. He says they’re coming. He says they’re angry. And I think I’ve already helped them win.

Goodreads Summary

In a future world ravaged by war, the population has been divided into three groups: Citizens, Seers and Dreamcatchers. Citizens are the “normal” people; Seers are people marked by their purple eyes, removed from their families shortly after birth, who have visions of future events and Dreamcatchers are their polar opposites. They see the past, stealing into minds and sucking the life out of people. The Seers have gathered the Citizens into the City and barricaded themselves in, assigning themselves as their protectors against the Dreamcatchers.

Beatrice may be the most powerful Seer in the City, second only to their leader, The Keeper. Her visions have been proven to come true, most recently resulting in the capture of a Dreamcatcher who was able to infiltrate the City. Being near this particular one is some sort of trigger for Bea and she starts having dreams and more ominous visions of a Dreamcatcher invasion. The entire Institution goes on high alert, starting a chain of disaster that even Bea couldn’t have predicted.

Luminosity is a hit-the-ground-running story that touches on the paranormal, a little science fiction, a dash of fantasy and a bit of the romance genres. There’s probably some dystopian in there if I wanted to be technical about it too. I’m not usually a fan of books that seem…overly ambitious that mix in too many genres and failing at one, bringing the whole story down but my fears were never realized with Luminosity. I knew I had to read it for my review but once I started it, I had to read it because there was no way I was putting it down.

The story is a nice balance between action and Bea’s visions/psychological drama. I really liked that there were so many little pieces of things that would come out in Bea’s visions that later on would be revealed in the story in an unexpected context. The story starts out pretty quickly and I was thrown right into Bea’s head, so the fact that she’s always confused made the story suspenseful from the start. Her position as the “top” Seer pressures her making some dumb choices but in her case, I honestly can see how she would think she was protecting people. She grew a lot just during this story and I really look forward to the next story where it picks up.

One of the people Bea feels most protective of is her best friend Gabe. She’s known him forever and recently she’s been feeling a little…more. I liked Gabe and thought he was cute, then he acted like a jerk and I wanted to bean him. He never seemed to fully trust Bea, which bugged me. The other guy in Bea’s life is a Dreamcatcher named Echo. I think I had a dozen theories about who he might be to her and I still have them, since nothing was revealed that I picked up yet. After having it drilled into her that all Dreamcatchers are evil, it’s difficult for her to accept Echo and see him as a “normal” (as normal as he could be) guy.

The triangle between Echo, Bea and Gabe feels more like a possessiveness/guilt/attraction thing than any kind of love conflict. Maybe in the next book one or all of them will figure out what they want from each other, but for now, Echo has his agenda (possibly), Bea has her guilt and Gabe has his possessiveness. Both boys are attracted to Bea – of course. It was a little frustrating to not really have any particular couple to want to get behind. It wasn’t that either of the guys were perfect, it’s that neither of them is particularly bad either.

I loved the action in the story and there’s quite a bit of it. It’s almost military and feels a bit like a video game, if that doesn’t sound too strange. It was just gripping – there wasn’t a lot of blood and gore, but with just a few poignantly-placed deaths or injuries taking place at perilous times, I was sucked right in.

My Summary: Every so often, I had a strange case of déjà vu during a passage, but Thomas still ended up fascinating me with this story which mostly takes place in Bea’s head. It ended on what I call a soft cliffhanger – enough to make me swear a little bit, not enough to make me toss my Kindle. The story was full of just enough clues that I can speculate my heart away for a while and good enough that re-reading it won’t be painful at all. In August, Stephanie said on her blog that she’d finished the first draft of the next book, Evanescence, and while there’s still not even a rough release date, it’s on my must-have list.

My Rating: A

I cannot lie. The most contemporary piece of music I own (or have listened to) is the new Bond theme by Adele and before that, I bought a song because I heard it used it a commercial and liked it. Give me the music of the 80s, 90s, Harry Connnick Jr., Michael Bublé and yes, Josh Groban, and I’m happy. So when asked to come up with a playlist for Luminosity, a book that is definitely not those things, I’m digging through the cobwebs for you.

So, I’m grabbing my curling iron, feathering and teasing my bangs and throwing on a dozen black rubber bracelets to bring you (drumroll)…my Luminosity Playlist:

1: Jive Talkin’ by The Bee Gees
2: Would I Lie to You by The Eurythmics
3: Silent Lucidity by Queensryche
4: I Can Dream About You by Dan Hartman
5: Lady in Red by Chris De Burgh (The Keeper’s Song)
6: Another One Bites The Dust by Queen (Training Anthem)
7: Waiting For a Girl Like You by Foreigner
8: Barracuda by Heart (Rachelle’s Theme)
9: If You Don’t Know Me By Now by Simply Red (Echo’s Lament)
10: I’ll Stand by You by The Pretenders (Gabe’s Song)
11: The Final Countdown by Europe (pure cheese!)
12: Don’t Fall in Love With a Dreamer by Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes

About the author:

Stephanie Thomas has been writing ever since she could put letters together to form words. When she was a small child, she would present her mother and father with self-made newspapers filled up with make believe stories and pictures. Her love for writing followed her all throughout her schooling, where she entered and won writing contests of all sorts. Stephanie decided to become an English teacher and completed her B.A. at The Pennsylvania State University. While teaching, she later went on to get her Master’s in writing from The Johns Hopkins University. She completed her very first manuscript during her graduate studies, and by the end of the program, she had completed two more.

Stephanie is quick to tell anyone that she’s a born and raised Philadelphian, and her heart will always belong there. She moved to Baltimore with her husband, and they’ve been living there for the last five years with their doggie, Sailor, and their rabbit, Buns (aka “T Sizzle).

Official site: stephaniethomasbooks.com
Twitter: twitter.com/stephthomasbook

To make the hurt go away after my playlist, Entangled Teen is having a terrific giveaway – just follow the Rafflecopter crumbs! Good luck.

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Filed Under: *A Rating, 2012 Ebook Challenge, Barbara Recommends, Debut Author Challenge, Giveaway, Paranormal, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Stephanie Thomas

Masquerade

October 26, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 3 Comments

By Nicole Flockton

Publisher: Crimson Romance
Publication Date: October 22, 2012
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: SupaGurl Tours

After being humiliated by her fiancée, Sophie Franklyn has decided that getting involved with work colleagues and men in general isn’t for her. Now her focus is going to be on her career and her recent promotion. That is until at a New Year’s Eve masquerade ball, she meets a man that tempts her to question her choices.

Alex Scavoni is extremely dedicated to his job, so dedicated that his first marriage crumbled under the pressure of his dedication. Now he’s happily single, with a new job he’s excited to start. When he meets a masked Sophie at the ball, she fires desires in him he thought long dead. He spends a wonderful night with her, but wakes up alone.

The next time the two meet, it’s in the high pressure world of Emergency Room medicine where they must work side by side. While they deal with the stresses of the Emergency ward, they endeavor to keep their feelings for each other on a professional nature. When the desire that pushed them together that one night flares to life again, can they ignore them or will their one night together have consequences neither of them planned on?

Goodreads Summary

Up until they went and changed the format on me, I used to subscribe to a few different monthly Harlequin collections. I love the little exotic bites of the category romances, not too short, not too long, not too tame or too explicit – Goldilocks would be happy. I recently added some Mills & Boon titles to my collection, discovering the wonderful world of the medical romance. Masquerade is just such a treat, one with the right amount of drama and swoony goodness.

Sophie Franklyn has reason to be conscious of the need for a good reputation. As the daughter of a very rich real estate developer, she’s always on show and expected to act the part of a socialite at events with him. She’s also coming off of a disastrous broken engagement with the outgoing CEO of the hospital where she works. It could have been a potential career-ender, but thankfully it didn’t stand in the way of her promotion to the head of the nursing department. She’s sworn off workplace relationships forever.

The job doesn’t start until the new year though, and before that is the New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball her father signed them up for, then backed himself out of. Rescue from a dull and kiss-less midnight comes in the form of a handsome, charming masked man named Alex Scavoni, who’s seated at her dinner table. The chemistry between Sophie and Alex is immediate and intense enough that both agree to spend one night together – one night only, nothing more between them. Alex has his reasons for not wanting commitment. He had a painful divorce years earlier because his wife couldn’t handle his hours. Alex is a doctor – as a matter of fact, he’s the newly appointed director of the emergency room who’ll be working right alongside Sophie, something neither of them knew when they slept together.

Uh oh.

There were several things I appreciated about this story that kept me glued to it more than I expected to be. I was fascinated by the scenes in the emergency room and reading the interplay when Alex and Sophie worked on a patient together. I was extremely impressed that when Alex and Sophie had sex New Year’s Eve, they used a condom! It’s sad, but how rare is that? I loved that even when Sophie was determined not to have a romantic relationship with Alex, she still tried hard to be friendly with him – no screaming matches, not answering the phone, etc. Of course, I loved that when Alex decided he wanted more with Sophie, he went about it very calmly and respectfully and Sophie had a hard time resisting the delicious doctor.

Both Sophie and Alex were refreshing to read about. There wasn’t anything particularly over the top about them, they were good people who were very dedicated to their jobs, had complicated pasts and each had different concerns about their relationship. I loved that Alex was trying to soften Sophie up by giving her little kisses here and there when she wasn’t expecting them, or she would smooth his hair because she couldn’t help it.

My Summary: This was a sexy, romantic little book that was a great mood-lifter. It went by rather quickly and didn’t have a huge amount of substance, but there was such great chemistry between Alex and Sophie that I barely noticed. This was a welcome little distraction and a fun read.

My Rating: B+

Filed Under: *B Rating, 2012 Ebook Challenge, Contemporary/Romance, Debut Author Challenge Tagged With: Nicole Flockton

Valkyrie Rising

October 9, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 16 Comments

By Ingrid Paulson

Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: October 9, 2012
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Source: Itching for Books Blog Tour

Nothing ever happens in Norway. But at least Ellie knows what to expect when she visits her grandmother: a tranquil fishing village and long, slow summer days. And maybe she’ll finally get out from under the shadow of her way-too-perfect big brother, Graham, while she’s there.

What Ellie doesn’t anticipate is Graham’s infuriating best friend, Tuck, tagging along for the trip. Nor did she imagine boys going missing amid rumors of impossible kidnappings. Least of all does she expect something powerful and ancient to awaken in her and that strange whispers would urge Ellie to claim her place among mythological warriors. Instead of peace and quiet, there’s suddenly a lot for a girl from L.A. to handle on a summer sojourn in Norway! And when Graham vanishes, it’s up to Ellie—and the ever-sarcastic, if undeniably alluring Tuck—to uncover the truth about all the disappearances and thwart the nefarious plan behind them.

Deadly legends, hidden identities, and tentative romance swirl together in one girl’s unexpectedly-epic coming of age.

Goodreads Summary

Check out under my review – Ingrid is giving away a signed copy of Valkyrie Rising.

Having a nice amount of Norwegian blood running through my veins and participating in yearly ridiculousness for Syttende Mai (May 17th, Norwegian Independence Day), you’d think I’d know more about actual Norwegian mythology than I do. Sadly, what I know about Valkyries is…well, nothing. Ride of the Valkyries plays during that awesome Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon? There have been a lot of mythology-based and twisted books out in the last year or so but Norway hasn’t really been represented much, so Valkyrie Rising caught my attention.

Ellie is a regular sixteen-year-old girl, living a regular life. Normally that’s, well, normal, but she’s not just any girl. She’s the little sister of probably the most perfect guy ever. If Graham is the sun, Ellie is Pluto and somewhere around Earth is Tucker, Graham’s best friend and Ellie’s nemesis. Tuck has been tormenting Ellie for years, flirting then being cutting, being sarcastic and rude and generally just acting like an ass. She’s not happy to hear he’s going to be joining her and Graham in Norway for their trip to see their grandmother.

As soon as she arrives, she starts attracting all sorts of bad attention, dirty looks and even threats. Her grandmother brushes it off but the disappearances of town boys are being blamed on women called Valkyrie and she’s been accused of being one. Despite her grandmother’s denials, Ellie feels a strange power growing inside her that ties her to them.

So, I did a little bit of research before I wrote this so that I’d have some idea if the author fiddled with the mythology much, since there have been a lot of books that absolutely slaughtered it. For the most part, it looks like Paulson stayed true to the basics, taking a little liberty in blending in some Celtic mythology (which didn’t make a lot of sense to me, the way it was worked in, but furthered the story) and giving it all a tiny twist to add the conflict.

I sort of liked Astrid, the villainess Valkyrie. She was a little stereotypical, but in an arrogant, coldly sexy way. She could wipe the floor with Ellie – now I know that’s a horrible thing to admire in a book, that the bad guy could smack around the heroine, but it just looked good on Astrid. I did like Ellie a lot even though she was a little too eager to risk her neck all of the time. She had been in Graham’s shadow her entire life and away from him for just a little while, making her own decisions, she finally found her strength. I loved her conversations with Tuck. They were sweet, funny, a little hot and frustrating. Graham may have been written to be Mr. Perfect, but Tuck wasn’t far behind. I’m sure he’ll be labeled swoon-worthy by a lot of people and I have to admit, while I was buried in the book, I’d have been one of them. He was just as much of the hero as Ellie was the heroine, staying right with her as she chased down Astrid.

The twist Paulson threw into the plot worked well for me for the most part. I loved the bits about the Valkyries gone rogue, Ellie’s grandmother’s history and of course, Ellie and Tuck’s chemistry. I do think there was a little too much running around confronting Astrid during the story; at one point, it just felt like filler and not like it was part of the story. This was very easy to get into though, with the action starting pretty close to the start of the book.

This doesn’t really read like YA, even though Ellie is sixteen and Tuck is seventeen. It’s not because there’s any sex or excessive violence, it’s just that both seemed older to me. I knew from the start that there was going to be something between Ellie and Tuck because the first conversation he had with her in the book was loaded with innuendo and could probably have come from a tamer adult romance. Because of the subject matter, it made the story more readable to me, but in some places where their age was brought up, it also yanked me out of it.

My Summary: Valkyrie Rising is a perfect example of a story whose rating is more than the sum of its parts. I had little issues with the book here and there that I could pick out after the fact, but while I was reading, I couldn’t put it down. I was even a little disappointed to double check the title and see this didn’t look like it was going to be a series. I was looking forward to more Ellie and Tucker.

My Rating: A-

About the Author
Ingrid Paulson lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter and enjoys long-distance running, eavesdropping, and watching science documentaries. She has always loved books and writing short stories, but was surprised one day to discover the story she was working on wasn’t so short any more. VALKYRIE RISING is Ingrid’s first novel.

Ingrid’s grandmother might actually be a Valkyrie; she’s still waiting for her to come clean.

Official links:
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ingridepaulson
Website: http://www.ingridepaulson.com/
Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/IngridPaulson

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Filed Under: *A Rating, 2012 Ebook Challenge, Barbara Recommends, Debut Author Challenge, Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Ingrid Paulson

Incarnation

September 20, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 6 Comments

By Emma Cornwall

Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication Date: September 18, 2012
Genre: Paranormal Steampunk
Source: Edelweiss

In the steampunk world of Victorian London, a beautiful vampire seeks out the author of Dracula–to set the record straight . . . If one is to believe Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire tale, Lucy Weston is Dracula’s most wanton creation, a sexual creature of the night who preys on innocent boys. But the real-life Lucy is nothing like her fictional counterpart—and she demands to know why the Victorian author deliberately lied. With Stoker’s reluctant help, she’s determined to track down the very fiend who transformed her—from the sensual underworld where humans vie to become vampires, to a hidden cell beneath a temple to madness, and finally into the glittering Crystal Palace where death reigns supreme.

Haunted by fragmentary memories of her lost life and love, Lucy must battle her thirst for blood as she struggles to stop a catastrophic war that will doom vampires and humans alike. Ultimately, she must make a choice that illuminates for her—and for us—what it means to be human.

Goodreads Summary

I’ve always loved Dracula movies and books and have read several with alternative views from Lucy in the last couple of years. When I read the synopsis for this, it really grabbed me because it wasn’t so much about Lucy’s relationship with Dracula and it promised an interesting setting. And oh, that gorgeous cover – yeah, that did it too.

Lucy Weston is enjoying the opera, or at least she thinks she is, when a handsome stranger beckons and the opera house falls away. When consciousness returns, she’s buried in a box with a stake in her chest and the knowledge that she’s something else, something that needs blood. Living in her family’s abandoned country home while her memories gradually return, Lucy comes across a novel written by Bram Stoker called Dracula. She’s shocked to read a read a sensationalized, false version of what happened to her in it and vows to go to London to find Stoker and set him straight. She’s hoping she can find the stranger who made her there as well – she has a lot of questions for him.

What she uncovers when she meets Bram is so much more than she expects. There are layers to vampire and human society she never knew about, secret societies and pacts with the government. She uncovers part of the vampire world at a deceptively glittery, dangerous club where she’s searching for the one who made her – a surprising vampire ally, someone purely evil, intent on taking control of the vampire society and an unexpected human she had a past with. She doesn’t remember the details but Marco is familiar to her. When he hears she wants to find her maker, he surprisingly offers to help.

There’s something very unusual about Lucy, something that put this story into the “what the..?” category. It was completely unexpected, original and no, I’m not going to spoil it. But who her maker turns out to be is a shocker and why Lucy is so important that Bram made up the story about her becomes clear. I really loved how inventive the storyline was, even though parts of the explanation were so dense that I thought I might need to take notes for a little bit. Once I had all the various groups, bloodlines and political positions down, it was easy to sit back and just enjoy where the story took me.

The Victorian London setting really came alive for me, the descriptions so lush and picturesque that sometimes they masked the action taking place and things felt a little slow when they really weren’t. There was a nice sense of danger for the entire book and a little bit of bloody gore that I’d have been disappointed without. While this is advertised as steampunk, it’s on the light side, with the gadgetry just appearing as background elements that aren’t particularly remarked upon by the characters. I thought it was perfect, the rest of the story was busy enough, but it still added some fun contrast.

I loved Lucy with all of her vulnerabilities, questions and convictions. She wasn’t any typical super-confident kick-butt vampire heroine. Having never been taught anything, she had no idea what she could do, how to feed or even if this was the life she wanted to keep. She missed people, missed her memories yet she really wasn’t sure life would be better if she went back. Behind all of it though was her dedication to doing the right thing even if it was scary. Her relationship with Marco was nice and very slow to develop romantically, even if I could see where it was going. Their past was muddled and their current situation was definitely messy. I wouldn’t call this a romance, per se. You can see that they have affection building and that he’s protective of her but there are problems for them beyond the human/vampire issue.

My Summary: This is beautifully written and a few times, the abundance of words gets in the way of the action for a moment or two. It doesn’t make the story less imaginative, the characters less interesting or the setting less inviting though and if there’s a sequel (crossing my fingers), I’ll be right there.

My Rating: A-

Filed Under: *A Rating, 2012 Ebook Challenge, Barbara Recommends, Debut Author Challenge, Paranormal, Steampunk Tagged With: Emma Cornwall

The Dark Unwinding

August 29, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 4 Comments

By Sharon Cameron

Publisher: Scholastic Press
Publication Date: September 1, 2012
Genre: Young Adult Steampunk
Source: Publisher

A spine-tingling tale of steampunk and spies, intrigue and heart-racing romance!

When Katharine Tulman’s inheritance is called into question by the rumor that her eccentric uncle is squandering away the family fortune, she is sent to his estate to have him committed to an asylum. But instead of a lunatic, Katharine discovers a genius inventor with his own set of rules, who employs a village of nine hundred people rescued from the workhouses of London.

Katharine is now torn between protecting her own inheritance and preserving the peculiar community she grows to care for deeply. And her choices are made even more complicated by a handsome apprentice, a secretive student, and fears for her own sanity.

As the mysteries of the estate begin to unravel, it is clear that not only is her uncle’s world at stake, but also the state of England as Katharine knows it. With twists and turns at every corner, this heart-racing adventure will captivate readers with its intrigue, thrills, and romance.

Goodreads Summary

I pretty much begged Scholastic to send me The Dark Unwinding because I loved the synopsis and I want to read more steampunk. I’m getting a little burned out on contemporary, I admit, and steampunk is mostly my unexplored frontier. This? Is not steampunk. It’s light young adult Regency gothic suspense if there can be such a thing. I’m glad certain elements were explained as natural occurrences or I’d have to add “paranormal” to the list, causing my tag system to explode. It was a fairly good read, whatever it was, and considering my month in review, I was happy to take it.

Katherine Tulman’s odious Aunt Alice has sent her to Stranwyne Keep to perform a most unpleasant task: she’s to take a perfunctory glance at her Uncle Tully and have him declared a lunatic to be committed. Alice’s concern for her brother-in-law’s health coincidentally appeared when she started having concerns that Uncle Tully was squandering the estate that’s to pass to her dim-witted son after his death. Since Katherine is under her thumb and dependent on her, she gets to do Alice’s dirty work. The residents of Stranwyne know perfectly well why she’s there and plan on making her stay as uncomfortable as possible and Uncle Tully as hard to find as they can. This isn’t going to be any perfunctory – or pleasant – visit.

Very reluctantly, most likely hoping Katherine has a mental disease of her own, Uncle Tully’s assistant of sort Lane takes her to his workshop where they live. It’s full of fantastical inventions – and a muttering, oblivious Uncle Tully who’s calm one moment, raging the next. Tossed out of the workshop, Katherine goes exploring what she thought was the town, only to find it’s actually part of Stranwyne. What was originally a little issue of estate-squandering has become questionable spending of epic proportions. Uncle Tully is underwriting an entire village rescued from the workhouses.

Katherine’s motives for going to Stranwyne aren’t simply for her cousin. She has her own future to secure and while it felt like a great reason for some of her arguments in the beginning, it seemed like a plot gimmick later in the book and turned me off when it was used. To be truthful, I had a hard time fully liking Katherine. Sure, she was sweet with her Uncle. I loved their interactions, how she was able to find ways to connect with him and spend time with him. It was great that she wanted to get to know the town, to spend time with Lane and try to make other friends. But Katherine wasn’t honest about her plans for her uncle and Stranwyne Keep. I think for some readers this isn’t going to be an issue – she’s an interesting character for the Regency period, happy to explore things, bright and stubborn. For me though, it cast a pall over the story and was hard to forget sometimes.

As Katherine goes about learning the town and spending time with her uncle, she draws the attention of two men. Lane, her Uncle Tully’s assistant, is close to her age and even if he’s a jerk and pretty moody at first, he’s more sincere and playful when he opens up. Ben, a student interested in Uncle Tully’s inventions is very smooth and nice from the beginning. So, you know. Most likely trouble. There’s no insta-love between anyone. None. Not even insta-semi-lust or anything. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I might have fallen over and hit my head. I loved that. Everyone’s feelings were allowed to develop gradually throughout the book – no one automatically liked or loved anyone, no relationship was automatically fine. It was a lovely thing to read, especially when it came to Uncle Tully, because I wondered if the urge was strong to make him instantly respond to Katherine and get “better.”

I’ll backtrack on that a little. Uncle Tully does respond a little bit to Katherine, more than anyone expects. But he’s still what he is. I’m no expert on autism, but I’m going to climb into Coleman’s head and think that she was attempting to portray a man with Asperger’s Syndrome. He seems to fit most of what I know of the signs, including social problems, repetitive behaviors and obsessive interests. He’s very child-like and I think it did a disservice to the book that he was rarely lucid, anything approaching normal or able to appear much in the story. He felt tacked on, like a plot device rather than an actual character.

As I said at the beginning, this feels like gothic Regency-lite. The house at Stranwyne Keep fits the bill, a dusty, musty labyrinth full of secrets and mysterious laughter. There were some plot oddities that I never quite figured out – I wondered if I’d missed something, but when I paged back to look, I think they were just poorly worded passages, not something the rest of the book suffered from. Cameron has an easy style, suitable for even young teen readers.

My Summary: My search for steampunk goes on, but this was a nice interlude anyway. The plot was nicely executed, I liked the way the relationships between Katherine, Lane and Ben played out and I was delighted to see the inclusion of a character with Asperger’s. So I didn’t get all of Uncle Tully that I wanted and Katherine didn’t turn out to be a character that I completely loved – it was still enjoyable and I’ll check out Cameron’s next book.

My Rating: B+