REVIEW - Firelight by Sophie Jordan

TITLE: Firelight
AUTHOR: Sophie Jordan
GENRE: paranormal romance

PUBLICATION DATE: September 7th 2010

 

BLURB:

A hidden truth.
Mortal enemies.
Doomed love. 

Marked as special at an early age, Jacinda knows her every move is watched. But she longs for freedom to make her own choices. When she breaks the most sacred tenet among her kind, she nearly pays with her life. Until a beautiful stranger saves her. A stranger who was sent to hunt those like her. For Jacinda is a draki—a descendant of dragons whose greatest defense is her secret ability to shift into human form.
Forced to flee into the mortal world with her family, Jacinda struggles to adapt to her new surroundings. The only bright light is Will. Gorgeous, elusive Will who stirs her inner draki to life. Although she is irresistibly drawn to him, Jacinda knows Will's dark secret: He and his family are hunters. She should avoid him at all costs. But her inner draki is slowly slipping away—if it dies she will be left as a human forever. She'll do anything to prevent that. Even if it means getting closer to her most dangerous enemy.
Mythical powers and breathtaking romance ignite in this story of a girl who defies all expectations and whose love crosses an ancient divide.

REVIEW:

I admit that I was lured by the absolutely stunning cover and the promise of a good story about dragons. Dragons! How cool is that? I love dragons, duh. So I was more than happy to see Firelight in my library.

And... the disappointment. It's there.

Let me start with the story. It's not bad, but it's not good either. The main character, Jacinda, lives with her mother an twin sister in a draki community. Drakis are, as explained in the later part of the book, descendants of the dragons. However, after an unfortunate encounter with the hunters, Jacinda has to flee with her family to save not only the community and her family, but also herself. As she struggles to fit in a strange, human world, she meets a guy named Will, who is both a danger and somebody she cannot live without...

The writing is not very bad, although a lot of - presumably poetic - phrases were nothing but awkward. It was also filled with love confessions that were supposed to touch me deeply, but made me laugh.

Alright, so Jacinda. The main character of Firelight is one of the most annoying, indecisive female protagonists I've ever seen. But not only that; she's whiny and blames everyone for everything. She can't even even spark the tiniest bit of remorse - she'd much rather feel sorry for herself. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I had to put the book down, because Jacinda's behavior simply irritated me. She thinks that absolutely everything, the entire world revolves around her. Even when she's confronted about it by her own sister, she can't understand that.

The other characters are just two-dimensional. The mother with dark past, the friend who is an outsider but befriends our main character, bad guys who are... well, bad guys. And the love interest, who is dangerous not only to Jacinda but her family too. Of course, Jacinda ignores that fact.

I found Tamra, Jacinda's twin sister, to be the most interesting character that showed some signs of being something more than just schematic sister in a YA book. But it didn't matter, because the story wasn't about her. I think the whole book would benefit greatly if it were about Tamra instead of Jacinda.

But what we got is a typical YA paranormal romance without any outstanding (or even interesting) characters, dialogues without the wit and plot without creativity.

Overall rating:

1 star out of 5

REVIEW #8 - Matched by Ally Condie

TITLE: Matched

AUTHOR: Ally Condie

GENRE: dystopian

PUBLICATION DATE: Nov 30th 2010

SYNOPSIS:

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.
The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

REVIEW:

Cover

I love it. The whole series' covers are beautiful and match (ha, see what I did there?) the concept of the book. It's simple yet eye-catching.

Plot

Plot. Story. Um.
The idea was just right for a dystopian novel - society that is controlled in every aspect of their lives, so much that everything is predicted for them (their behavior, for example).
And what did the author do with this quite a nice idea?
She took it and threw it out of the window.
Why?
Because the book is plain boring. I was reading further and further, waiting for some action or at least a main event that would resolve everything and make me want to read the sequel - nothing like this happened, though. The characters do what they're supposed to do, there's nothing that pushes the plot forward.

Characters

Funny thing, because I liked the main character's (Cassia) parents the most. I felt that their story was a lot more tragic than Cassia's story. In fact I was a lot more engaged in the subplot revolving around them than the main love triangle, which was forced and left me totally cold.
Moreover, the main character comes to random conclusions that aren't the least bit explained. There's no character development whatsoever, Cassia just kind of "hops" a few steps at a time and leaves us readers rather bewildered.
Then we have the two boys, Xander "the good neighbor" and Ky "the mysterious stranger". Although neither of them is the typical witty bad boy (I think that would be like a frosting on a cake, ugh) and their friendship seems unusual give the circumstances - again, the lac of plot/action/character development destroys everything.

Writing

Too many empty words, too little essence. I mean it. I think what the author was going for was "poetic", but the poetry in this case didn't work. We get random bits of poems, which supposedly make such an impression on both Ky and Cassia that in the end they fall in love with each other. What...?
There were so many useless paragraphs. I almost screamed for some action to happen.
Let me give you an example of such nothing-words.

That word, calm, sounds impossibly beautiful, gloriously uncomplicated. A water-smooth word, a word that can take the edge away from fear, gloss it over, make it shiny. Calm. Gentle.

What...?

Overall

This book left me sad and frustrated. Sad because such a good idea was wasted. Frustrated because I'm a fan of dystopian books and this one left me with a distaste and less hope for good dystopias that could be written in the future (thankfully I'm reading Wither by Lauren DeStefano right now and I'm positively surprised).
The cover plus the fact that it's quite a popular YA book made me pick it up and I guess my expectations were too high.

Rating

1 stars out of 5.

Have you read this book? What do you think?

REVIEW #1 - Everneath by Brodi Ashton

TITLE: Everneath
AUTHOR: Brodi Ashton
PUBLICATION DATE:  Jan 24th 2012



COVER: 

Just look at this beautiful cover! I absolutely love it. Besides good reviews, the cover totally made me pick up this book. it's stunning, the title fits perfectly, and the graphic, whoa!

SYNOPSIS:


Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she's returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being banished back to the underworld... this time forever.
She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can't find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.
Nikki longs to spend these months reconnecting with her boyfriend, Jack, the one person she loves more than anything. But there's a problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who first enticed her to the Everneath, has followed Nikki to the mortal world. And he'll do whatever it takes to bring her back- this time as his queen.
As Nikki's time grows short and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she's forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole's...

REVIEW:
Plot
I seem to be one of the few people who didn't like the book. It's said to be a retelling of a Hades and Persephone myth, but...
The idea seemed cool at first. The execution of it, not so much. It's nothing like the description.
The explanation of the supernatural stuff is sloppy. The myth analogy seems forced down our throats, with Nikki conveniently having to write a paper on it.
The reasoning behind Nikki's agreement to go to Everneath was... well, I have no other word for it other than stupid.

Characters

Our main character. Nikki, Nikki, Nikki. Where to start?
She's a brooding machine. As much as I don't really want to sound harsh, it's the truth. She is. On top of that, she makes decisions that make me cringe every few pages. I thought people already have a brain at her age, but I guess I was wrong. There's no character development whatsoever. For example?
We randomly discover that she's a klutz:
“Whoops.” I unhooked the snag and
pulled my shirt back into place. “Once a klutz . . .”
Whereas for the past 250 pages it hasn't been mentioned (or rather, showed) that she's one. And I don't mean that she should trip on air every time she walks, but showing us just a bit of it?
Her unreasonable behavior when she tries not to act suspiciously... I won't even start.
Oh, and her being rather oblivious about various clues left here and there, what, with Cole being so obvious and Mary's random comments...? I seriously rolled my eyes.



It's hard to really evaluate other characters, since every single character has the same voice, speaks in the same manner and makes the same stupid decisions.
Oh, I'm sorry. The adults have this moralistic aura about them, spewing ~words of wisdom~ every now and then and trying to sound really wise about it, but it comes out like a middle school student writing a paper for his social studies class.

Writing
I am not a fan of first person POV but I tolerate it, mostly because it's widely used by YA authors. But first person POV doesn't mean you can treat a book you're writing like your own diary!
And that's what happens in this book. The wordy descriptions of the main character's feelings, often repetitive, are infuriating. Nikki seems to think it's important to inform us about every~~pain of the Surface~~ she feels or about every redundant action she takes (like, in the middle of thinking about Everneath - "I raised my head" - and then she continues thinking about it some more, the raising of her head having nothing to do with anything).
The suffering that she's so desperate to get rid of - she only *talks* about it, we never really see it. I couldn't really "get into" the mood, because I don't like when things are told rather than shown. Like - "Suddenly, I felt pain/My whole body hurt" yadda yadda yadda. I swear there was one page written like that somewhere in the book!
It needs editing. Lots of it. Some scenes were totally pointless, some phrases overused, dialogues that made me want to plant my face straight into my desk.
Oh, dialogues. Right. In addition to the characters not having their own voices, the dialogues were devoid of any wit, which made me a bit sad - I love when dialogues are just a tiny bit sassy.

Overall
This book is all talk, no essence. Yes, the characters do talk. But they don't do anything beside that. There's no action whatsoever, the romance is rather sloppily executed, the characters are flat, and the lead heroine is just plain annoying.
I was hoping for at least decent paranormal romance, and what I got was huge disappointment.

Rating