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August 30th, 2010, @ 8:41 pm  Fantasy | Young Adult  Spy Glass
by Maria V. Snyder
After siphoning her own blood magic in the showdown at Hubal, Opal Cowan has lost her powers. She can no longer create glass magic. More, she’s immune to the effects of magic. Opal is now an outsider looking in, spying through the glass on those with the powers she once had, powers that make a difference in the world.
Until spying through the glass becomes her new power. Suddenly, the beautiful pieces she makes flash in the presence of magic. And then she discovers that someone has st olen some of her blood—and that finding it might let her regain her powers. Or learn if they’re lost forever… (goodreads.com)
Here’s the thing: I love Maria V. Snyder’s writing, worlds and story lines. I love her characters and her mysteries and her relationships. What I do not love? Opal Cowan.
This was a very difficult book to get through because I just cannot stand Opal. I don’t care about her one bit. I think she’s selfish and whiny and a brat. With each book in this trilogy I have wrestled with my dislike of the main character but for the most part I was able to ignore it and move on with the story. Not so much with this book.
I didn’t hate the book though, so don’t think that, because I like everything else about it EXCEPT for Opal. Heck, I even liked her mother when her mother gave her the silent treatment for coming home with little time to prepare for her sister’s wedding. There was just something about Opal that rubbed me the wrong way. And how everyone always fawns all over her and everyone loves her and thinks she’s awesome? Gah!
Opal aside (although that’s hard to do since she’s the main character) I do like the way the story unfolded. I thought quite a bit happened for one book, but in the end there is resolution to everything. It’s strange going from a book series where the main character tries to do things alone but accepts the help of her friends to this one where it is Opal against the world and I really think she could learn a thing or to from Nya in The Healing Wars series.
I didn’t really think twice about Opal in the Study series so I was curious as to how a trilogy about her would pan out. I just wish I found her a more likable character than I did.
One part in the last 1/3 of the story sort of confused me though. It’s a scene in the mines and concerns a particular character and I had to go back and reread a few pages to figure out what the heck was just revealed and just happened. Even with the rereads I am still baffled but rather than dwell too much on it I continued on because I really wanted to finish the book and see how Snyder was going to wrap things up.
I am highly anticipating Maria V Snyder’s next book however, it is the sequel to InsideOut and I think it comes out in the Spring. Even though I didn’t quite care for this main character, I love everything this woman writes it seems. She has a brilliant way with creating worlds and stories that you can fill your entire being with.
The Glass Series
- Storm Glass
- Sea Glass
- Spy Glass
 Inside Out
by Maria V. Snyder
I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I’ve got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution. (goodreads.com)
Ok, first? WOW! Holy wow! Brilliantly fantastic book!
Second? A myriad of things that lead up to the review – I think my biggest regret from BEA (and yes, I still have to write my recap posts!) was that I was unable to get the Spy Glass ARC from the Harlequin Teen booth. Why didn’t I? As it was likely one of the books I desperately wanted the most? Well mostly because after waiting in line on the Wednesday to “meet” Maria V. Snyder, I was so unimpressed by the mob and lack of organization for their 4-author signings that the next day I wasn’t about to wait in that mess again and did something else on my schedule. Turns out the Thursday signing wasn’t nearly as messy as the day before and I missed out getting the one book I wanted most. Argh! But I did come away from that trip with a signed copy of this book, so it was all good.
My problem? I didn’t want to read this book. I have been so enchanted by Snyder’s other two fantasy trilogies that the thought of some sort of sci-fi, dystopian, NEW thing terrified me. I didn’t want to read it and hate it. I didn’t want to hate anything by Maria V. Snyder and I was scared that this would be the one thing I did hate. I am not a sci-fi fan. I didn’t know much about this book but the summary didn’t really catch me.
Then I read this post by Rhiannon over the weekend and it made me look twice at the signed book sitting on a table in my hallway. Not only do I think Rhiannon is awesome but I truly love her honest reviews of books and when I read that she had the same trepidation about starting the book as I did I certainly perked up.
So, since I have about 5 books going right now, all that have been put aside for the other and have been unable to really focus on a book in the last 2 weeks (I blame the extreme heat wave we’ve been having), I thought, why not try Inside Out and see what I thought?
People, I read this book in a day. It would have been just a span of a few hours had I not put it down a couple of times to go spray myself, my husband and the dogs with the hose and do other things around the house (did I mention the heat?) but I stayed up way past when my body told me I should be asleep to finish this book.
It was fantastic.
I loved Trella from the start. I loved the secondary characters, I loved Cog, I loved Logan and Anne-Jade, I loved Riley and Doctor Lamont. Most of all, I loved Sheepy.
The story reminded me of Incarceron, where people are living in a contained facility where it is all they know and there are rumors and myths about a place Outside this facility. The Upper and Lower classes were distinct and interesting to learn about and learn how ignorant of each other they really are. I want to know why these people are living in this facility, how did it come to that? What’s on the Outside. Who are the Controllers? And I think I’m going to have to wait for the second book to learn more about that! (March 2011 is so far away!)
One thing that Rhiannon commented on in her post was the blasé reaction that the Scrubs had to torture and “recycling” of human life. (Rather than go to jail, people are killed and sent to Chompers where they are chomped up and used as fertilizer. Ick.) Whereas I think the torture parts were slightly breezed over without reaction, I think I understand the lack of reaction to people being killed and executed. If you’ve grown up with this always being the way, the rules, it sort of desensitizes you to the horror we, the reader would feel about it if it happened to us. This is all the Scrubs know. It’s a way of life for them, my guess is as normal as if someone got sent to jail for being bad. Rather than jail, due to lack of space, they are just recycled. Yes it is harsh, but I get the feeling because they don’t know any other reaction to punishment it’s normal to them. They feared it, but were able to continue on with their lives with little grief because their situation doesn’t have time for it.
I don’t know if any of that made sense. I’ve been writing this post all day with a migraine and keep coming back to it. Oops. Forgive me.
Maria V. Snyder did not let me down with this novel. Not only that, there is a minimal focus on romance as I was concerned there would be being a Harlequin novel. I didn’t have much luck with the first one I read (see, The Iron King review). But this was subtle Maria V. Snyder romance mixed in with an enchanting cast of characters that you see grow and relationships form and because of that you form relationships with them as well. Something happened at the climax of the novel that shocked the heck out of me and I am still blinking rapidly because of it. I am still trying to believe that it actually happened and dealing with grief for a character. It took me by surprise it wasn’t anything that I was expecting or contemplating would be the climax. Well done. Mean, but well done!
I shall have my Spy Glass by the fall to complete the Glass trilogy and then have to wait until March 2011 for the sequel to this novel to come out. I can’t wait to see what Maria V. Snyder publishes next. She’s up there with Sarah Addison Allen I think with the creation of characters so likable you want them to be real and your friends forever.
Inside Out series
- Inside Out
- Outside In (March 2011)
December 26th, 2009, @ 9:54 pm Highly Recommended | The Reader  This was originally supposed to be a Books You Should Buy For Christmas Gifts post, but I ran out of free time (filming and editing all those 12 Days of Christmas videos takes up a lot of time) though I always like to keep track of my favourite reads in a year. Having this blog is handy for that sort of thing. I know every book blog out there is writing a similar post, but I still want to let you know which books I found to be my favourites this year. I am not limiting the books to those published in 2009 – I am including books I might have discovered this year even if they’ve been out for a while.
 Maria V. Snyder’s Study Series – Poison Study, Magic Study and Fire Study (Fantasy Adult / can be YA). These were a find at the start of the year and it had been a very long time since I had been quite so enchanted by a fantasy series. The main character Yelena captured my heart from the first pages. She’s someone I would love to be friends with. Her romance with Valek wasn’t all mush and gush and I found it had depth to it. The side characters in this series were just as fantastic leaving me wanting more and to try and figure out how I could jump into the pages of the book to join them on their quests. Speaking of quests, am I the only one who gets huge cravings for hunks of bread and cheese and homemade stew while reading fantasy books? Because I do. I have to run out (aka, have my husband run out) to the store get rolls of some sort, maybe paté and a hunk of cheese so I can snack while reading. I am so easily swayed by food in books.
 Michelle Harrison’s The 13 Treasures (MG) – This was a daring purchase on my part as I ordered it directly from the UK after months of waiting for it to show up on a Canadian site. It was possibly one of the best book decisions I have ever made. Thirteen year old Tanya can see faeries, though that can get her into a lot of trouble and she’s not supposed to talk about it. Her grandmother’s house and grounds was so vividly described that I longed to hop in a plane and travel all the way to England to try and find it. Houses in England always seem so much more exciting than here in Canada. They are also all named, which is just cool. I was lucky enough to befriend the author this year and one day I’ll get overseas and meet her! Meanwhile she kindly agreed to participate in a 5 Questions interview which I posted with my review.
The 13 Treasures will be released in April 2010 in North America with a completely different cover – which I know exists somewhere though it’s not on Goodreads yet!.
 Eyes Like Stars -Théâtre Illuminata, Act I by Lisa Mantchev (YA) lived up to all the hype it was getting on the internet. I got it mainly because of the cover and the fact that there were faeries. This book started off a little confusing but you quickly got into the groove of the story and understood the way things work in Bertie’s world – where classic fictional characters come to life. I bought this book in hard cover (since that seems to be the ONLY way Young Adult books are released these days!) and was very happy to find that I did not waste my money and that I didn’t wait a whole year or more for it to have come out in paperback. Buy this book. It is so worth is.
 Yet another book that lived up to it’s hype is Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink (YA). This was a book I hemmed and hawed about buying because it was in hard cover as well and I wasn’t all that certain that I would like it. When I discovered that it was “only” $19 I ended up adding it to my pile on a shopping trip. I devoured this book like it was the last piece of birthday cake that my mum made! Not only was the story gripping, gothic and creepy the actual inside of the book was pretty! I am such a sucker for aesthetics. I was frustrated to learn that this was not a stand-alone story however. So I warn the rest of you now who have not read it – there are two more books on the way! (At least?)
 One of my most exciting surprises of the year was a book by an author that I adore in the Fantasy genre, Kate Forsyth. The Puzzle Ring is not yet available in North America and since I had discovered The Book Depository, I decided to order her two YA/MG novels because I was tired of waiting for them to show up here. I might even go so far as to say that The Puzzle Ring was my most favourite read of the year. I felt like I was in a magical land, like waking up to find you’re a Disney Princess or something. Even the book itself FELT whimsical and I can just stare at the cover for hours. I loved the characters, the setting, the plot. I wanted to live this book. I wanted to be a part of the pages, the story, the paper. I am beyond thrilled that I decided to order it.
 And last but not least is Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (YA). And no, I am not adding any of these books to the list because everyone else has said they were great. I honestly loved this book. I was worried about buying this book, but I had to. I mean, look at that cover! Also, I thought this book was about faeries, and I must own everything faerie. I was surprised to find that it wasn’t – it’s more about witchcraft in a way, which is fine because I am a witch-girl rather than vamp or were-girl. This is a 600+ page book that doesn’t read like it’s a 600+ page book. I read it cover-to-cover in under 5 hours (I’m a fast reader) and I don’t recall any part of the book being slow. I didn’t put it down because I needed to know what was going to happen. I was so curious about the mystery myself and I felt like I was trying to solve it on my own. This is one excellent book – and well written! The writing is even more beautiful than the cover.
I know many of you have seen most of these books on other sites and lists as being MUST READS! I promise you that I have included these books here only because I found them fantastic on my own and feel that they are worth promoting to the world. I’m even taking deep breaths and leaving this at 6 books (I hate even numbers. Don’t ask.) because they are the cream of the crop in my mind for 2009. Oh, wait! It’s not really 6 books is it? It’s NINE – because I included all 3 of The Study Series. Well, I feel much better about that. (Shush!)
Other books that I felt should be gifted (and therefore did) are: Dark Visions trilogy by L.J. Smith YA), Lament by Maggie Stiefvater (YA), Blackbringer, Faeries of Dreamdark by Laini Taylor (MG) (ok, not something I read in 2009, but it is still fantastic and the sequel came out this year.)
August 31st, 2009, @ 12:03 am Fantasy | Young Adult  Sea Glass
by Maria V. Snyder
This is how I was going to start this post:
ZOMG! WTH!! THE NEXT BOOK ISN’T COMING OUT UNTIL 2011?!?! ARRGGH!!
That is the reaction I had when I finished reading Sea Glass just after midnight and read that the adventure continued in Fall 2011. I was so sleepy when I finished the book that this shock jolted me awake. The first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was search the net and was happy to find THIS statement on the author’s website:
Don’t freak out at the end of the book. There is a major typo. SPY GLASS is scheduled to come out in 2010 NOT 2011.
Apparently Sea Glass was also published without the acknowledgements (which you can find here) and the maps were not credited (Christopher Phillips). Oopses all around.
Ok, that being said… I started reading Sea Glass and had to stop and think because I had completely forgotten about the whole Ulrick/Develin soul switch thing and I was highly confused at the beginning. But I was also happy that Janco was there because Janco and his buddy Ari are some of my favourite characters from the Study Series.
Poor Opal, I think she spends more time in jail cells than anywhere else and none of it is her fault. No one believes her about the soul switch, saying it’s impossible and that she was tricked and therefore she’s in trouble for trying to fix things. No matter what she says no one thinks she’s telling the truth and even the few who do believe her say it’s best they side with those who don’t and she follows through with her punishments. They are scared of her ability to syphon a magician’s power completely and therefore she’s wrapped in a null shield and has a babysitter guard with her at all times. When she does manage to escape she ends up in someone else’s jail cell or someone attempts to kill her.
All of this is the reason for her attitude change and jaded, bitter sarcasm, but wow. I did NOT like Opal in this story at all. In fact, at one point I thought seriously about walking away from the book and deciding if I wanted to continue reading it. But I ploughed through only because I knew her attitude was a result of what was going on and since Maria V. Snyder is an amazing author I knew she wouldn’t let me down. And I was right. I still don’t think I like Opal very much, she’s no Yelena from the Study series, but you can’t have everything. This story was so full of deceit and trickery that it wasn’t quite enchanting it was more mystery meets frustration because the READER knows that Opal is telling the truth and you want to smack everyone else in the story over the head and say “OH MY GAWD! Can you be so foolish as to fall for this?”
And then of course you get to the end and read that you have to wait TWO YEARS for the next book for proper resolution to things and you want to die and tear out the pages and scream and stomp all over the floor. Or, you know, something akin to that.
*deep breath*
I am so happy that I discovered this author this year. I think she’s probably one of my top finds of 2009. And the whole glass magic thing that this series is written around is fantastically original. I think glass blowing itself is very cool, though I would never try it myself. I don’t do well with heat and things that can burn me. 
EDIT: I forgot to mention that whereas I would classify the Study series as Fantasy for adults (though readable for teens) this series strikes me MUCH more as YA fantasy. The books have a stronger YA feel than Snyder’s other series. Therefore I have posted it under both Fantasy and YA, though it’s not officially YA.
The Glass Series
- Storm Glass
- Sea Glass
- Spy Glass
August 22nd, 2009, @ 2:32 pm Out of My Pocket Due to my book buying addiction I started this feature on my blog where I post about the book(s) I bought that week. Not something I plan on having every week – though it seems to be turning out that way. So here’s what I bought this week!
Previous OoMP posts can be found here!
I finally got some vacation approved at work and had this week off. Because of that, and my having Fridays off in the summer, it had been over NINE days since I had been in a bookstore. NINE! That is so wrong. So today, I looked through my Amazon wish list and then looked stuff up on the Chapigo website to see what might be in stock. Then, I made my husband drive me to the bookstore. Heh. Yes, I still do not drive. Shush, now. I was thrilled to learn that 3 books I had been desperately waiting for were IN STOCK! Armed with my sticky note of book titles, I was off in search of my treasure!
To my disappointment, even though the store’s computer SAID they had 20 copies of L.J. Smith’s Dark Visions, they were nowhere to be found. So I asked a potentially helpful employee who looked at my paper and said “We’re not getting that yet. It’ll ship in September.” Um, ok? But what about your in-store computer that says you have 20 copies? She sighed! “It says September 8. We don’t have it yet.” You know, I worked in bookstores, I know that some books have hard sale dates, but you don’t have to be RUDE to the customers who are asking when their own computer is listing it as in stock. I was very unimpressed. Had she been one of my employees I would have had a stern talking-to with her. Argh. So rather than get the L.J. Smith book I was lusting after, I FINALLY broke down and bought Alyson Noël’s evermore. I have always been curious about it and thought I would just bite the bullet and buy it!
Sea Glass
by Maria V. Snyder
Like the colorful pieces of sea glass washed up on shore, Opal has weathered rough waters and twisting currents. But instead of finding a tranquil eddy, Opal is caught in a riptide. Her unique glass messengers which allow instant communication over vast distances have become a vital part of Sitian society. Once used solely by the Councilors and magicians, other powerful factions are now vying for control. Control of the messengers equals control of Sitia. Unfortunately that also means control of Opal. If that isn’t enough of a problem, Opal’s determination to prove blood magic is still being used is met with strong resistance. The Council doubts her, her mentor doubts her, and even her family is concerned. When her world is turned upside down, she begins to doubt herself. In the end, Opal must decide who to believe, who to trust, and who has control—otherwise she will shatter into a million pieces and be swept out by the tide.
YAY! I was so happy that this was in stock! I simply adore Maria V. Snyder’s books!
Walking Dead
by C.E. Murphy
The undead have just crashed Joanne Walker’s Halloween party, and she has to figure out how to break the spell that lets ghosts and zombies roam the earth. Unfortunately, there’s no shamanic handbook explaining how to deal with the walking dead….
It’s been ages since a new Walker Papers novel has come out – I am so happy to have this one!!
 Evermore: The Immortals
by Alyson Noël
Since a horrible accident claimed the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever can see auras, hear people’s thoughts, and know a person’s life story by touch. Going out of her way to shield herself from human contact to suppress her abilities has branded her as a freak at her new high school-but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste…Ever sees Damen and feels an instant recognition. He is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy, and he holds many secrets. Damen is able to make things appear and disappear, he always seems to know what she’s thinking-and he’s the only one who can silence the noise and the random energy in her head. She doesn’t know who he really is-or what he is. Damen equal parts light and darkness, and he belongs to an enchanted new world where no one ever dies.
I am pretty sure I have seen only positive reviews of this book on my blog travels. Please let me know if you have any thoughts about the book. I love the cover and it sounds like it’ll be good and I love the covers of the next one and the newly announced cover – but I am still nervous about this purchase!
And yes! I only ended up with 3 books – but boy were they pricey! And you know what? Michelle Zink’s Prophecy of the Sisters is ONLY $19.99 even though it’s in hard cover and I almost got it since both Sea Glass and Walking Dead were about $17 each. I thought, well, what’s the difference really? So I will be picking up that book after my next payday (or, you know, this week when I go to the bookstore to see if the L.J. Smith book is in a downtown store. After all I can’t leave a book store empty handed, now can I?)
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