Where Angles Fall (The Great and Terrible #2)

Not as strong and intriguing as Book #1 but still powerful.


The characters have now moved from the pre-existance to their mortal lives.

Evil is lurking and calamity is brewing. The stage is being set for the final showdown.

Luke and Ammon are twin brothers, raised by LDS parents. Their father is the top war administrator for the President. Sam is their foster brother. Raised in an ugly and abusive environment and taken in by the Brightons. He becomes a skilled warrior for the U.S. Army.

Elizbeth is born in Persia. Her mother dies from her birth and she is raised by a single father, struggling in the poor country to eek out a living and love his daughter.

The insight into Satan is creepy and very realistic.



My favorite quote...

"But deomcracies, with all their beauties, are also the most fragile of governments known to man. They are delicate and weak and dependent on good. And when the people turn to darkness, their democracies are doomed, for government cannot exceed the moral worth of the people it rules. And while the economic and moral prosperity that follows freedom can provide fertile ground for the truth, history has proven that prosperity will inevitably sprout the weeds of selfishness, pride, and decay.

When the people become physically comfortable, the truth is ignored. And when they become wealthy, the truth is despised."
 
Rating 4  I LOVED the first one.  This one hardly compares but still good.
Rating  Rating PG 13 violence having to do with war.  Satan and his followers attempt to entice the living, kinda creepy.

Dead Until Dark

Sookie is a small town, southern, cocktail waitress.  She proclaims she is afflicted by a 'disability'...mind reading.  Sookie has been waiting for something to perk up her dull life.  That's when Bill the vampire shows up and Sookie's life goes from dead to deadly.

I adore Bill the vampire. I can get into the mystery. I am not yet totally offended by the graphic nature. The sex was a little explicit. I am totally down with Sookie's 'disability'. But Heaven help her personality. What the heck does Bill want with her? It's okay that she is a little 'old fashion', naive, and unsophisticated....maybe it's the way she speaks. Something about her rubs me the wrong way. I guess I will have to learn to live with it because I plan on continuing the series, at least to the next book.

Rating 3.5 Obviously Sookie drives me to drinking but I did like the rest of the book.
Rating R Graphic violence, graphic sex, murder.

Magic Study

Yelena has moved South, left her job as food taster, and her love, Valek.  She meets her familly and learns about her magical abilities. 

A definite drop in score for Magic Study. Even though I took issue with Poison Study for its simplistic writing style I still had a pretty serious book crush on it. I was leery of book #2 as I usually am.....and I was right.


I personally don't take change easily in my own life or when I come to know a character in a book. I was not excited that Yelena had to leave behind Ixia and travel South. The story ended up not being half bad. I just had to get used to it. But I did miss Valek with a heated passion.

Later things began getting sketchy. I appreciated that even though there was a rape in Poison, it was written with some dignity. But please......Snyder, don't make this a running theme. I don't want to hear about anymore brutality. STOP with the raping. Yelena went from a sharp awesome character to a nut job that forged ahead without thought. When Valek finally shows up later in the book.....after the magic and the characters have taken a nose dive...he is unrecognizeable. I don't know who he is any more. I am glad he loves Yelena...but he is a simpering sissy that says 'my love' all of the time. Once made my heart beat rather quickly....the successive times made vomit come up in my mouth a little bit.

I still think the writing style is very simple...like grade 5. Then Snyder throws in some sex and rape. Choose an audience!

After all of the complaints, I still liked the book and will continue the series to see if Valek ever mans up or Yelena gets control of her teen rebellion.
 
Rating 3 Not enough manly Valek and I don't like that Yelena doesn't think before acting.  The friendships are endearing, including the horse.
Rating PG 13 More rape and brutality, sex.

Poison Study

Up front I have to say that this isn't a clear 4 stars and I have a hard time pinpointing why. I loved the characters. I felt like the author had a great grip on who they were. Exploring the physical and psychological issues was accomplished very well. The fantasy was just enough but not so much that I lost interest (I can only delve so deep into fantasy lit.........shudder). The main character Yelena was extremely smart and strong. I loved her. The whole idea of the book was just smashing.

Here's the problem. Lots of times I felt like I would love to have my 10 year old daughter read this and then there would be a little swearing, eventually a rape (which was written not overly graphically). I believe the reason I kept thinking that it would be a great book for my girl was because it was written in such a rudimentary way. Maybe that sounds harsh. The writing was very simple but involved some adult themes. I questioned whether I was reading a book for 5th graders or young adults. It bothered me.

Still, I was charmed by the main idea (Yelena being saved from the gallows to become a food taster for the Commander and having to learn to identify poison.) This also included how not just the poison in the food but how we can be poisoned by lies, secrets, and abuse.

So there. I leave it at a 4 and hope that the writing for the next books becomes more intricate and developed.

 

Rating 4

Rating PG 13  language, rape, alluding to sex

Kiss Of Life (Generation Dead #2)

*Spoilers......and overall uninteresting if you haven't read Generation Dead*
After Adam is killed by Pete, a zombie hater, he returns to life.  Phoebe  feels love and guilt that Adam died saving her.  Since Adam is techincally still walking around, Pete was not convicted of murder.  Phoebe spends a lot of time with Adam since she was told that love brings the undead back faster.  Adam struggles with simple movement and speech.  The rights of the undead are being tried.  Groups are out to see the zombies returned to complete death or to do scientific research on them.

I could go on and on but the book really wasn't as good as the first one.  I was excited to pick this book up to see what happened with the zombie love triangle between Phoebe and Adam and Tommy.  I wish I had only checked it out from the library instead of purchasing it.  It took forever for the book to go anywhere.  Not until the very end is there very much action but it felt unfinished.  I hate second books that are merely a bridge to book three.

I will definitely read the next book in the series, "Passing Strange", because it has one of the better characters, Karen, a zombie sometimes passing as human.  By the end of the book we are unsure what has happened to her.  I have the feeling that there will be loose ends even as the series wraps up.  I also have suspicions about what will happen next and will be glad to have everything explained.

Rating 3 Meh.......
Rating PG 13 Death, zombies, murder, torture, language.

1001 Things You Didn't Know You Wanted To Know

I love facts.  I do.  I love finding out little tidbits of information.  This book was read during a party.  If you know me at all......you know this is pretty probable.  The book was laying about when picked up by another guest.  She started in on all of the fact telling.  It got to be a bad habit.  By the end of the party we had read the whole book.  It was like a sick compulsion to share every fact we read.  When you read this book make sure there is at least one other person with you.  You will be so compelled to tell someone what you just read that you will not be able to contain the urge.  If you are alone I swear to you......you will be speaking aloud to thin air.

There were some things that we already knew (ex.  A female gives only X chromosomes and it's up to the male to give an X or Y......determining the gender of the offspring.  Please......if you are in any way sexually active....please, please tell me you know this.)  There were some things that were too boring to mention.  But most of them were interesting and fun.

Rating 4  Fun book to read with other people.  Great introvert tool for conversing with the enemy (anyone else you don't know).
Rating PG 13 There is a section on sex, which my little party friend tried to skip........but I went right for it as soon as she let go of the book.

Life As We Knew It (Last Survivors #1)

If you have ever needed external motivation to beef up your food storage......here it is.  It heightened my naturally high anxiety level to 'frantic'.  I plan to begin stock piling wood, asprin, batteries, fuel, canned fruit and veggies, and canned chicken, like nobody's business.  And I am beginning to think that my vaulted ceiling was a mistake.  It won't hold in enough heat when the ash comes.  I'm getting ahead of myself.....

Teenager Miranda is your run of the mill girl.  She worries about blog stalking her Olympic crush. She's a little shallow. She wants less homework and worries about her changing friendships.  Then a once a life time meteor collision with the moon goes from block party atmosphere to apocalyptic.  The moon is pushed closer to the Earth causing it's gravitation to spur one natural disaster after another.  No longer is Miranda worried about which sport to play or the fact that she is growing apart from her childhood friends.  Survival is at the forefront.  Sacrifice, starvation, desolation, and death quickly take the place of free spirited American life.  Miranda captures it all in journal entries.

This is a superb work of post-apocalyptic fiction.  It is so believeable that you can't decide whether to keep reading or start hoarding.  It is very simply written and a tad slow at the beginning.  The simplicity makes it scarier on one hand.  The sense of desperation and grueling day to day survival is vivid.  And then sometimes I felt like the simplicity also took away.  I didn't get the sense of urgency that I think would exist during a crisis.  That took it down a point for me.  Also, I am now realizing......hello! Where was your weapon stock pile? How were they going to defend their wood, asprin, and canned chicken for Pete's sake. That part is so unrealistic I can't believe I forgot it was one of the point deductors. And I just have to put in my 2 cents....I realize the author can write any old thing she wants and if I were to author a book I could splatter my opinions everywhere....but I didn't like the Conservative slamming, from President bashing (which granted I would do if the President in the book I wrote were a so Liberal he was suffocating) to making Christians look like Kool-Aid sipping nut jobs. I think I may have been more forgiving if this book wasn't aimed at a younger audience. Just my opinion.



Rating 4
Rating PG 13  Crisis situations, death, destruction, scarey situations, talk of promiscuity.