As Promised & Things To Come

As promised in my other blog (updated like, five minutes ago), I will be bringing this book review thing back. I've read a few things understatement since I have updated so look for these reviews:

A Game of Thrones
Chicagoland Vampires
Divergent
Hunger Games
Inferno
and more...

Now that I have the internet again...

Infinity -- Sherrilyn Kenyon (Chronicles of Nick)
Nick is a 14-year-old pour but smart Cajun boy who attends a school for rich kids. I say he’s a poor Cajun boy because it’s practically thrown at you throughout the book. His mom is a stripper and the only reason he is able to attend the rich school is because he’s a scholarship kid. He lives in a one bedroom apartment with his mom. Nick’s room consists of a corner in the living area that has blankets hanging from the ceiling for walls. His life changes when his friends ask him to be a lookout so he can earn some cash. His friends end up trying to mug an old woman and Nick stands up to them, earning a bullet to the arm. He gets saved by a guy who takes him to the hospital, then employs him so Nick can pay off the hospital bill. After that things get weird. The jocks at the school start turning into zombies, only none of them have died. Luckily, Nick has some friends who know how to kill zombies - the problem is that not everyone believes they are zombies and none of them want to go to jail for murder.

This was yet another book I didn’t expect to like, and despite that it had a lot to do with zombies, I did like it. Nick is a fairly likeable character, though sometimes you just want to strangle him for being so damn stupid. And this is the scholarship kid… In any case, it’s a fun way to kill some time.

Unraveled -- Gena Showalter (Intertwined Novels)
This is the second book in the series, “Intertwined” being the first. Aden Stone is now the king of vampires, which makes him the king of the werewolves too. He still lives at the ranch, and he’s still in tons of trouble. Aden has “souls” in his head, though they are down one with the release of Eve. Aden’s friends have been put under a death curse that will take effect if Aden doesn’t go to a witch meaning, which he’s completely willing to do, he just doesn’t know where the meeting will be. His friend Mary Ann is finding out that she’s not just someone who can mute abilities, she is also a drainer, someone who lives off of the energy of others. Drainers are supposed to be killed immediately, so this poses a bit of a problem for Aden, Victoria, and Mary Ann’s werewolf boyfriend, Riley.

I had to have the library get this one from another library, which kind of sucked. It probably means that I’ll have to do the same with the third one. But I did like this book. I liked the first one, so that’s not really much of a surprise. I prefer the Aden chapters over the Mary Ann ones though. Mary Ann is a whiny little bitch and I wish Gena would just write her off. I thought she was going to, but it looks as though Riley is going after her. I’m hoping I can get my hands on the third book, which is supposed to be out already.

NUM8ERS - rachel ward

NUM8ERS by Rachel Ward is about a girl named Jem who sees the death dates of anyone she looks at in the eye. She's in the foster care of a woman named Karen because her mom overdosed when she was a little kid. Jem is now a fifteen-year-old girl who tries to stay out of everyone's way, and in return expects them to stay out of hers. But she meets this guy who goes by "Spider" and can't seem to get rid of him. Spider's death date is fast approaching. At one point Jem ends up taking a knife to school because of the tormenting that goes on and gets caught in a situation with a group of bullies. She gets suspended from school. One day she and Spider decide to go into town and Spider starts ranting because they don't have enough money to go up into London's Eye. That's when Jem sees the numbers she's seen her whole life, only these people are all dying on the same day, which is today. She gets Spider out of the way just in time for the London Eye to blow up. From that point on they are running away from the police, who suspect them or at least want to question them. But Jem thinks that if she tells them about the numbers, they will put in in a mental institution.

I really enjoyed this book. You have to get passed all the British slang though. It's not that difficult once you get into it, it's just that, for those of us in the United States, we're not used to seeing some words. Like "mate." I knew that in England and most other parts of the world it means something closed to "friend." But because the U.S. has programmed my mind differently, I kept thinking "lovers."



Sequals:
NUM8ERS 2: The Chaos was published one June 7,2010
NUM8ERS 3: Infinity was should have been published in the UK in June of this year, I'm not sure when it will make it's way to the states.

The link to the website for Rachel Ward is listed at the end of this blog entry.

As always, comments and book recommendations are welcome. I'd love to hear from people who have read this book before or if you've decided to pick it up. Let me know what you thought of NUM8ERS.

Rachel Ward's website

VD - no no no. Vampire Diaries. (LJ SMITH)

Though you'd think, the way these high schoolers talk, that they'd all have VD. The first book sucked major monkey ass. The characters were stupid and the plot was even more so. Rich girl gets everything she wants and that includes totally hot vampire guy. There are no layers to any of the characters and I definitely fell asleep while reading it at least a few times. The only reason I read the second book was because it was packed in the same volume as the first and I figured, hey, why not? Maybe it's better. It was only slightly better. Elana (rich girl) falls from the top of the social ladder and clings to her love for super hot vampire to make it all better.

I don't plan on reading the third one until the library again has nothing else for me to read. I've heard the show is better, but who the hell knows?

Halfway to the Grave

Jeaniene Frost's Halfway to the Grave is about a vampire-human hybrid (don't stop reading) who goes around killing normal vampires. Before you say anything, these vampires don't sparkle in the sun. They don't burst into flames, but they are severely weakened and can "get a bad sunburn." They do have fangs and while they aren't harmed by wood or holy symbols, you can kill them aside from just ripping them to pieces and burning them. These vampires have a weakness to silver (seems to be popular lately) and when stabbed through the heart it kills them. It's no surprise that our heroine, Catherine (more commonly known in the book as "Cat" or "Kitten"), falls in love with a certain undead creature. "Bones" also kills vampires, but for another reason. He kills what he calls the "bad ones," or the ones that kill humans. He's also a vampire hit man. So he trains Cat after deciding that it's not a good idea to kill her. Then they fall in love and all Hell breaks loose, yadda yadda yadda.

As to whether or not I liked this book, I'm not entirely sure. Yeah, I plan on reading the series so I guess I enjoyed it enough for that, and I did read it in less than 48 hours. But in all honesty, the half vampire thing threw me off. Funny, because I can deal with fae (Sookie Stackhouse Series) quite well. Actually this sort of reminded me of Charlaine Harris's series. Except more graphic. Not in the gore department, though. There's a sex scene about 170-something pages in that lasts for about four pages and throughout the book there are scenes where Cat grabs Bones in certain places, so be warned if you do read this book. Frost is not afraid to give details.

So, yeah, I guess I liked it. I'm hoping the second one is better, since this one sort of left me going "Well shit."

"Acceleration"

Acceleration is a young adult novel by Graham McNamee. It's a 210 page book about a kid named Duncan who ends up finding a killer's diary where he works, which is the Subway's Lost and Found. Technically, the killer isn't a killer of people yet, but he's planning on it. It's all there in the guy's journal. What it doesn't explain is who this killer is. His identity isn't given away, and for good reason. Who would write a book about how they are planning on killing people and stick their name in it? But he does slip up a little bit.

Duncan has this really smart friend named Vinny who helps him with all these clues and research about killers. He actually reminds me a lot of a friend of mine because he's all about because he doesn't buy into the "consumer society stuff" and at one point goes on a rant: "The keep us out of sight in slums and ghettos. Keep us down with minimum wage and crappy schools. They numb our brains with fast food and five hundred channels. All because they need drones to do their dirty work." They've got this other friend, Wayne, who sort of has a life-of-crime view on things. It's not stealing if it's not owned by anyone yet sort of look on life. He talks Duncan into stealing a toilet at one point and I couldn't stop laughing. Wayne ends up helping Duncan get this killer guy, but he's still sort of a douche.

Anyway, it's a really good book. I didn't really see myself as Duncan, but I connected with him all the same. And there are points in the book that make the killer seem actually human, and it sort of throws you off for a second. It's a good read and it's fast, which I think is great because there's no room to be bored.

Who steals from a library? I mean really!

Yeah, I went to the library today to get the Vampire Academy Series and a few other books. I found only one book that I was looking for and it wasn't the Vampire Academy ones. So after about 45 minutes of looking all over the library in different sections and genres and all that, I finally went to the girl at the desk because the card catalog computer was down. She informed me that she didn't have most of the books I was looking for and that she needed to order them. Then she told me that the Vampire Academy Series should be there and she took me to where they were supposed to be. Then we spent about half an hour looking around the library for these books because they were supposed to be in. Then she said "I'm pretty sure they were stolen." So she's reordering them for me. This means the Auburn library will have acquired some new books because of yours truly.

Some of the series they are ordering for me I never thought I'd want to read, like the Vampire Academy Series. The other one I'm hesitant on is Blue Bloods. I've read the first one and I think I might have written about it here, and I wasn't too thrilled with it. I have heard good things about the rest of the series. They are also ordering for me "Unraveled" By Gena Showalter and they are still in the process of getting "Wolfsbane" by Adrea Cremer for me.

In the meantime, I have picked up "Acceleration" by Graham McNamee which is supposed to be about this guy who has a summer job on a subway and finds the diary of a murderer. Yeah, no vampires or werewolves in that one. It sounds really interesting and hopefully it won't scare the bajeezes out of me.

The other two are vampire novels. I picked up the first two (but in one, so like a volume) of "The Vampire Diaries" by LJ Smith. and "Halfway to the Grave" which is a "Night Huntress Novel" by Jeaniene Frost.

I had started the "Night World" series by LJ Smith, but then I realized that it doesn't follow the same character through the series. The minor characters from the first story turn into the major characters for the next stories. It makes me wonder how I'm going to like "The Vampire Diaries." But I did like the "Dark Visions" trilogy she did, so I'm hoping this is more like that. If that makes sense.