Sci Fi and Fantasy

Two Audio Books — Sort Of

2014, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

We listened to Jodi Picoult’s Leaving Time on our trip to/from Oberlin and finally finished it up a couple of days ago. This book was a hot mess, which you would expect because it’s a Jodi Picoult book. But, it might be the biggest hot mess of all of her hot messes. I figured out the big issue long before it actually happened and… oh boy. The look on TW’s face when it happened. Hahahahaha. She might kill me if I ever force her to listen to another Jodi Picoult novel. hahaha. And that’s all I’m gonna say about this one because I don’t want to ruin it (hahaha) for Picoult fans.

When we headed to Oberlin, I made sure another audiobook was in the car, in case Leaving Time was short and we needed another audio book… TW took one look at that and said, “You’re kidding me. Are you trying to punish me? First Picoult, then this?” I laughed and said “What? It’s a Cybils book. It sounds like fun!” And then she put the first disc in and my head almost exploded. I couldn’t handle more than the intro before I told her to turn it off. I returned it.

I don’t think I’ve ever NOT finished a book from the Cybils shortlist before. So this is a first for me. I feel a little bad about that — but not bad enough to sit through William Shakespear’s Star Wars. I’m sure it’s fabulous, if you like that sort of thing. I absolutely do not and I am NOT even gonna pretend.

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Pantomine

2014, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Queer, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Another Cybils shortlist book, Pantomine was… slow. It’s also trying to do a lot of things (slowly) and not necessarily succeeding with any of them.

I didn’t dislike the characters. The intersex/Kedi idea is interesting. The weird glass things are interesting but we didn’t get enough information about the world they’re living in to really understand why they were interesting, which made Micah/Gene’s connection to them less interesting than it might otherwise be. It’s ok to keep some of the story back, but giving us just a little bit more about why we should care, well, that would have been good.

I’m not sure I’ll read the next book, we’ll see.

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The Summer Prince

2014, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

The Summer Prince is from the Cybils shortlist. If it hadn’t been, I’d have never read it. I am not usually a fan of the summer prince storyline. I just… no. I don’t generally like the characters and I don’t particularly like this particular myth and books that use it tend to leave me cold.

This one… wasn’t bad. It was certainly better than others I’ve read, though I saw the ending coming from about 100 pages away.

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Two Audio Books

2014, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

The second book in the His Fair Assassin series was on the Cybils shortlist but I hadn’t read the first book. So, I grabbed it on audio and we listened to it last month.

We enjoyed Grave Mercy. It’s definitely a YA book — there’s a lot of flowery lovey-dovey stuff that makes me and TW roll our eyes but we definitely liked it.

The second book, Dark Triumph, oh boy. Sybella is a hot mess. Horrible horrible descriptions of horrible horrible acts – killing babies, creepy brother/sister sex stuff. A whole lot of violence. Then, of course, there’s a lot of flowery lovey-dovey stuff which makes me and TW roll our eyes, particularly after we’ve just heard some really disgusting stuff about dead babies and gah. It was good. We liked it. We just needed strong stomachs to get through it.

I need a bit of a break from the series before I can bring myself to listen to the third book. Maybe in the spring? lol

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Shadows

2014, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Oh look, another Cybils book that I wanted to love but couldn’t. Shadows turned out to be perfectly fine but not great. I don’t generally mind made up words or ordinary words turned into slang words but in this case — it was a struggle from beginning to end. Too much of it, not enough context and to make matters worse, there were Japanese words thrown in for fun. The struggle was real. Very real.

We also spent a whole lot of the beginning of the book listening to Maggie rant about her step-father and that took way too much time and used far too many made up/slang/Japanese words.

Once the story got beyond the hatred of Val the step-father, it was better. The author does a fabulous job with animals (the kind we know and the gruaa kind that we didn’t) and the use of origami throughout the book was fantastic. These last two things make the book worth reading. Mostly.

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Sidekicked

2014, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

I felt like I had already read Sidekicked but apparently not. So much of it seemed familiar. Weird, right?

I enjoyed it. I didn’t love love love it. Not sure I’ll read Minion but I might. We’ll see. Maybe.

I liked the sidekicks. I liked the way the Titan storyline developed (and ended.) I also liked the Fox/Silver Lynx story progression, though I would probably have liked it more if the story had been told through Jenna’s point of view. Not that I didn’t like Drew, I did. I just think it would have been a better story if Jenna was telling it.

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Conjured

2014, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Don't Read This, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Gah. If Conjured had not been on the Cybils shortlist, I never would have finished it. I hated this darn book.

The idea of it was good. The ending of it was good. The first half (if not more) was so damn slow and repetitive that I was cursing it pretty much nonstop.

Eve is in a witness protection program. She has memory loss. A lot of memory loss. The agents guarding her want her to tell them… something… what, nobody knows because the author doesn’t tell us and Eve has memory loss. Eve can do magic and when she does, she blacks out. When she wakes up, days (weeks? months?) have passed and she’s apparently been awake and interacting with society but she can’t remember anything that’s happened at all.

Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over for a good 1/2 of the book. That’s pretty much all that happens. And it’s annoying. By the time the story started moving, I was so disgusted that I barely wanted to finish. But I did. It was hard but I did it.

I hate books like this. Move a little more quickly or give us some reason to keep reading the slow mess at the beginning. Do not make a book for kids a struggle to read. Stupid.

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Rose

2014, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

I really liked Rose, the book and the character. She’s an orphan who does not have far-fetched dreams about returning parents or marrying princes. She just wants to leave the orphanage, go into service, work hard, and earn her own way. Even when she’s given chances to be more than a downstairs maid, she turns those chances down. She just wants to be a regular person. I like that.

Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t just be a regular person. You have to step up and into other roles. That’s what happens to Rose. And at the end, it gets very dark — so if you’ve got a middle grader who can’t handle dark, scary, bloody scenes… skip Rose until later.

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Fang Chronicles: Dimitri

2014, Books in Bed, Kindle, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

During #readathon, I always try to go back to some of the series written by BlogHer community members that I haven’t kept up with. This time around, it was Fang Chronicles. Fun to read on my iPhone when I want a break from paper or while I’m sitting at my laptop waiting for spam to delete and stuff.

That Dimitri is… powerful. Sheesh.

I’m starting to have trouble keeping the beasts straight — there are so many now. I might need a cheat sheet when I read the next book. Who’s a vampire? Who’s a cat? Who’s a wolf? Who’s a bear? Gah. All the beastkind!

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