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Thursday Next Goes All Timey Wimey: Cassie-la Attempts to Explain “The Woman Who Died a Lot” by Jasper Fforde

3 May

The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper FfordeThe Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, alternate history, science fiction, humor, literary, time travel even confuses fictional characters
Rating: 4.67 out of 5 stars

Summary: Thursday Next’s adventure continues in the seventh book in the series set in an alternate history version of  the UK where literature is taken very seriously. Following her escapade in One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Thursday is injured and unable to travel into the fictional BookWorld and instead takes a job offer to run the Swindon Library where books are protected with lethal force. Featuring God, time travel and synthetic doppelgangers, this is the strangest Thursday Next yet.

If you have yet to read any books in the Thursday Next series, then I highly recommend you start. The franchise takes place in an alternate history version of the world (specifically England) where literature is so well-loved that there is a special police division to protect it, political groups centered around famous authors and if you were to enter the original manuscript of a novel you could change the events within them. Did I mention there’s time travel and extinct animals have been re-engineered as pets? Well there’s all that too.

For your perusing pleasure, the other books in the series include: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays is Missing. (Pssst, The Eyre Affair is all about Jane Eyre and Something Rotten stars the Hamlet.)

This newest incarnation of the series, which features an older Thursday with grown children (Tuesday, Friday and the imaginary Jenny who is really just a mind-worm implanted in Thursday by her nemesis Aornis Hades) is the most confusing and inventive book so far. Bear with me while I explain the plot, because it’s a whole lotta plot.

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How to Wrongly Profit Off the Wonderland Fandom: Cassie-la Hulk Smashes “Alice in Zombieland” by Gena Showalter

25 Mar

Alice in Zombieland - Gena ShowalterAlice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter
Genre: Fiction, young adult, zombies, horror, romance, remind me again what this has to do with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Summary: Alice Bell’s father is terrified of monsters hurting his family. As a result, Alice isn’t allowed out at night, and she’s certainly not allowed to walk near any cemeteries. But when her entire family dies in a horrific accident, she learns the hard way that her father may not be as crazy as she thought he was. Starring: a love interest with a hard muscular chest, a best friend with dialogue straight out of a Diablo Cody script, a cast of peripheral characters with terrible names and Alice, who is so attractive that everyone wants to have sex with her. Not starring: anything to do with Alice in Wonderland except a rabbit shaped cloud.

Once again I have gotten overly excited about an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and yet again I have thrown my money at something that merely seeks to profit off the renewed popularity of the books rather than pay homage to the little girl in a strange new world. It happened with the Tim Burton movie, the YA novel Splintered and it’s happened yet again with Alice in Zombieland. (Not to be confused with the awesome Threadless shirt or the book of the same name by Nickolas Cook of which I couldn’t make it through more than a page of.)

Despite obviously being marketed to fans of Wonderland (see the gorgeous cover if you need a reason why I jumped to this conclusion) there isn’t much of anything to connect the novel to Lewis Carroll’s world except the book title and the chapter names, which aren’t even that good on their own: Down the Zombie Hole, The Pool of Blood and Tears, Eerily Curiouser and Curiouser…, Advice from a Dying Caterpillar, and A Fiendishly Mad Tea Party.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the main character is named Alice and she keeps seeing a cloud in the shape of a white rabbit. Seriously, I would have rather been pandered to than abused for my love of all things Alice.

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Sometimes Sci-Fi Fairy Tales Are the Best Fairy Tales: Cassie-la Frolics Through “Scarlet” By Marissa Meyer

1 Mar

Scarlet - Marissa MeyerScarlet: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, fractured fairy tale, robots, young adult, yes you can frolic through a book because I said so
Rating: 4.53 out of 5 stars

Summary: Cyborg Cinder is on the run after escaping from her prison in New Beijing and one of her only supporters seem to be Scarlet Benoit over in France. But Scarlet is having some troubles of her own, specifically that her grandmother has gone missing and the police think no foul play is involved. With the help of the mysterious street fighter Wolf, Scarlet embarks on a journey to save her grandmother, not even knowing that her path with the wanted Cinder is about to collide thanks to some secrets in her own past.

Set directly after the first novel in the Lunar Chronicles: Cinder, Scarlet picks up right where its predecessor left off, with Cinder learning about her true Anastasia-style identity and being tasked with reclaiming what is rightfully hers: THE MOON! It’s that amazingly dramatic. Inter-twined with this story is the brand new tale of Scarlet, whose back story of woe was inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, complete with her preference for red hoodies and her new friend with a murky past: Wolf. In this case, a (sexy- I assume) fighter whose combatants nicknamed him after a wild canine.

Linking Cinder and Scarlet is the short story The Queen’s Army (The Lunar Chronicles 1.5) which follows Ze’ev, a young boy turned into a brand new breed of wolf to fight for the Lunar Queen, the evil Levana. He features heavily in Scarlet, and if you want absolutely no spoilers about Levana’s big bad wolf plans, you should probably steer clear of it. However, if you don’t care that Snape killed Dumbledore, then I highly recommend giving it a read.

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I Demand a Reboot: Cassie-la Is Torn Over “Dualed” by Elsie Chapman

18 Feb

Dualed - Elsie ChapmanDualed by Elsie Chapman (Galley)
Release Date: February 26, 2013
Genre: Fiction, young adult, dystopia, action, can we get a reboot?
Rating: 2.99 out of 5 stars

Summary: Meet West, a teen who picked the wrong time to have  an identity crisis, because in Kersh there are two versions of you, you and your Alt, but only one is allowed to live. If you don’t eliminate your Alt in the 31-day time span, you both will die. Sure you can hire a Striker to kill your target for you, but that’s against the rules in this modern take on natural selection. Who truly deserves to live if your Alt is the better you, and how can a world survive where the only people who live to adulthood are murderers? Most of these questions will definitely not be answered in Dualed. That’s what sequels are for.

As a reader, I would like to petition the ability to make reboots for books. If the movie industry can do it (again and again and again), I don’t see why I, as a hypothetical millionaire in this situation, shouldn’t be able to purchase the rights of a book series and let a different author give the story justice. Public domain be damned, that nonsense takes far too long and just ends up resulting in a glut of repetitive books in the publishing world. I’m looking at you Pride and Platypus!

After learning about Dualed during a panel at this year’s New York Comic Con, I knew I had to read it. A dystopic society where you must kill an alternate version of yourself before they kill you? “Sign me up!” I recall thinking, even though my brain’s initial response was probably more like, “Cool.” Which is why I immediately jumped on a chance to receive a galley of the inventive novel. Unfortunately, while its premise is strong and the world in which it resides in is a rich one, the good stops there. Due to a lack of relate-able characters and completely ignoring the ramifications of murder, Dualed is one novel that had so much potential, but ended up stabbing itself in the back.

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Taking The Phrase Dead Sexy to a Whole New Level: Cassie-la Races Through Both Versions Of “Warm Bodies”

9 Feb

Warm Bodies Poster 2Book: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
Movie: Warm Bodies
Genre: Fiction, zombies, horror, post-apocalyptic, this ain’t no zombie Twilight
Rating: 4.68 out of 5 stars (book and movie)

Summary: R is not your average zombie. He has coherent thoughts, can speak (sort of), is an avid collector of human memorabilia, and most importantly, has the ability to fall in love. Everything in R’s life is altered one day when he rashly decides to bring a human girl back to live in his 747. Her name is Julie, and she and R have the power to change the post-apocalyptic world forever. The weapon they have is [zombie] love.

Warm Bodies is the modern Romeo and Juliet. And I don’t say that because they have a modern romantic love story, or that as a zombie and a human they are star-crossed, I say that because the novel Warm Bodies is literally inspired by Romeo and Juliet. Main character R is obviously Romeo and love interest Julie is his Juliet. R’s hilarious best friend M stands in for Mercutio and Juliet’s friend Nora (with her aspirations to be a nurse) represents Juliet’s nurse, merely called the Nurse. See? I wasn’t just pumping up the love story aspect.

The novel and the film, while telling the same story, are two completely different beasts. The book is barely a young adult novel, despite the filming marketing the story to the Twilight fandom (shakes fist in anger) and is instead a much more in-depth look at a crumbling post-apocalyptic world and how we as a society while alive are still more dead inside than the zombie scourge. This is all viewed through the lens of R and Julie’s love story. The movie explores how technology makes society into zombies in a much more light-hearted way, but still through the romance of R and Julie. To sum it up, the novel is more zom-rom (zombie romance) with touches of humor and the film is more zom-rom-com (zombie romantic comedy) plus Rob Corddry.

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The Only Thing Better Than Reading Books Is Reading About Them: Cassie-la Delves Into “The Girl Who Was on Fire” from Leah Wilson

25 Jan

The Girl Who Was on Fire - Leah WilsonThe Girl Who Was On Fire (Movie Edition): Your Favorite Authors On Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy [edited] by Leah Wilson (Galley)
Release Date: January 17, 2013
Genre: Non-fiction, literary criticism, dystopia, young adult, let’s geek out with YA authors over other YA books
Rating: 4.26 out of 5 stars

Summary: Sixteen young adult authors discuss the phenomena that is The Hunger Games Trilogy by exploring the fashion, the tropes, the relation to reality television, the characters and anything else that can be analyzed for your nerdy reading pleasure. Because if there’s something that’s better than reading, it’s talking about what you read. Featuring YA fan favorite authors such as Sarah Rees Brennan, Diana Peterfreund and Carrie Ryan, this if the ultimate unofficial, completely unauthorized glimpse into the mechanics of the Hunger Games.

We’ve covered The Hunger Games here on Bibliomantics before, from our thoughts about the upcoming movie (TIM GUNN FOR CINNA!), to the movie itself, ways in which to immerse yourself in the world of Panem and an in-depth review of Mockingjay, but this is the first time we’ve explored other people discussing the literary ramifications of the series. It was super interesting to see their collective thoughts on the trilogy as a whole. Not to be confused with sacred dwarf holes.

According to my research, which is vast and far reaching, this anthology is slightly different from the original collection The Girl Who Was on Fire because it contains three new essays and extra-movie related content. Nothing in particular stuck out at me in terms of movie content, but I can safely say that there are three more essays. Sadly, none of them explore the Sad Gale meme for which I will be forever disappointed.

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Kelly Reviews “Code Name Verity: Friendship is Tragic” by Elizabeth Wein

16 Jan

Code Name Verity - Elizabeth WeinCode Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Young adult, adventure, fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary: (from the back cover) I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team.

So I first heard about Code Name Verity at LeakyCon this past summer. During the panel on gender in YA, the authors and agents were talking about the structures that dominate girl-centered novels. There is usually romance or a badass heroine saving the world or supernaturally-toned werevampangels fighting over a sassy lady. Then someone (whose face escapes me 5 months later because I am getting old, y’all) said we needed to read Code Name Verity, because it did not conform to the de facto rules dominating YA. “Bah, a girl YA novel without werewolves abs? I have never heard of such a thing!” I thought to myself.  And because grad school ruined my life for the past 15 months, I finally got around to picking this book up.

Confirmation: You all need to read Code Name Verity. Right now.

But first – I am going to be slightly spoilery in the review, because I can’t really talk about some things without revealing an interesting bit of plot structure. So, if you want the book to be a complete surprise, stop here. All I will say is: be prepared for a heart-stopping wartime adventure, two truly likable and beautifully developed protagonists, and a tightly twisting plot.

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Insert Alice Cooper Song Here: Cassie-la Schools Adults On “The Slither Sisters” by Charles Gilman

14 Jan

Slither Sisters - Charles GilmanTales from Lovecraft Middle School #2: The Slither Sisters by Charles Gilman (Advanced Reader Copy)
Release Date: January 15, 2013
Genre: Fiction, childrens, horror, you’ll never be attracted to twins ever again
Rating: 3.89 out of 5 stars

Summary: Robert Arthur, Glenn Torkells and Karina Ortiz continue to try and save the students of Lovecraft Middle School from their trans-dimensional enemies who they seem completely unaware of. In this sequel to Professor Gargoyle, the Price sisters have been taken over by a pair of snake monsters who want to overthrow the student government one student body at a time. HAR HAR HAR. With no other option possible, it’s up to Robert to win the student council elections and take them down the only way one can take down a monster: with bureaucracy.

More so than the last review of Professor Gargoyle, this book is being reviewed for an adult audience from an adult perspective. The series can be enjoyed by children in a completely different way and I highly recommend it for middle grade kids looking for something scary but are put-off by the overabundance of the 90′s in the Goosebumps series. What do you mean no one says radical and tubular anymore?

The book opens up with a whole bunch of back story because this is a book for kids and kids have horrible memories (or so I assume, I can’t remember my childhood). The same device is used throughout other children’s series (see: Harry Potter) and is much appreciated when one doesn’t recall any important plot events to the point where they forget it was Barty Crouch Jr. THE WHOLE TIME! This is helpful for young readers, but also for people me like me who can’t even seem to remember what they ate for breakfast much less be expected to remember what happened in a book they read four months ago.

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for the first book in the Lovecraft Middle School series, Professor Gargoyle.

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My Year in Reading: Cassie-la’s 2012 Best of Reading List

4 Jan

2012 Reading ListHappy 2013!!! It’s a new year already, which means a blank slate in which to read new books, enjoy new worlds and start a brand new list of books read in 365 days. This is the 5th year in a row (since I started keeping a book log) that I made my reading goal and I’ve definitely come a long way from my 50 book goal in 2008 to the 150 I aimed to read in 2012. Yay for meeting goals!

Although to be fair, I was unemployed (yet again) January through part of October, so that might be why I was able to read so much. Here’s hoping I can still hit at least 150 for 2013 since it’s already set in stone on GoodReads, which apparently counts the number of books and the page count. Social media never made being a bibliophile so easy.

In 2012 I read a grand total of 156 books (see full list HERE), hitting my goal and landing on a nice even number. YAY EVEN NUMBERS! 39 of those were novels, 3 were anthologies, 16 were non-fiction, 45 of them were young adult novels, 36 were graphic novels and trades, 16 were children’s books and 1 was a poetry collection.

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Not All Takes on Wonderland Are Good Takes on Wonderland: Cassie-la is Nonplussed by “Splintered” by A.G. Howard

30 Dec

Splintered - A.G. HowardSplintered by A.G. Howard (Galley)
Release Date: January 1, 2013
Genre: Fiction, young adult, fractured fairy tale, fantasy, Wonderland, even worse than the Tim Burton one
Rating: 2.76 out of 5 stars

Summary: Alyssa Gardner is a descendent of Wonderland’s real life Alice, Alice Liddell, a fact which makes her the brunt of the jokes at her school. It also means her poor mother is locked in a mental institution, another victim of the Liddell curse. Alyssa doesn’t believe in such things, that is until she starts hearing bugs and flowers talk to her and she finds herself in a much different Wonderland determined to save her family once and for all. Will she escape? Assuredly. Will her one true love finally notice her? Most likely. Will you cringe the entire time at the plodding, complicated plot and painful writing? Definitely.

It’s been said in this blog before and I will say it a thousand more times just to get it through your skull, I LOVE ALL THINGS ALICE! I even wrote a post about it, expressing my love for the little blonde in the blue dress, but that’s doesn’t mean that all Alice adaptations hit the mark for me. And unfortunately – despite the amazingly atmospheric book cover that had me drooling in excitement – this take on Wonderland missed all the marks. Definitely do not judge this book by its cover, the outside far exceeds the inside. But oh how I wish it didn’t.

Splintered suffers from many problems, the first of which is the ridiculous portrayal of its heroine, Alyssa Gardner. Alyssa is desperately struggling to separate herself from her insane mother Alison who claims to be under the Wonderland curse which causes the sufferer to only eat things from a tea cup and to wear blue dresses, white aprons and headbands. You would think a family who believes in and fears said curse wouldn’t name all their female children after the Lewis Carroll heroine. Just saying.

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