Book Review: The Mark of the Dragonfly

The Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publication Date:  March 2014
Source: Netgalley

Piper has never seen the Mark of the Dragonfly until she finds the girl amid the wreckage of a caravan in the Meteor Fields.
   The girl doesn't remember a thing about her life, but the intricate tattoo on her arm is proof that she's from the Dragonfly Territories and that she's protected by the king. Which means a reward for Piper if she can get the girl home.
   The one sure way to the Territories is the 401, a great old beauty of a train. But a ticket costs more coin than Piper could make in a year. And stowing away is a difficult prospect--everyone knows that getting past the peculiar green-eyed boy who stands guard is nearly impossible.
   Life for Piper just turned dangerous. A little bit magical. And very exciting, if she can manage to survive the journey.

I'm just not quite sure how to rate this, or even really review it. I think it's aimed at middle grade readers, but I also think they'd find it a bit boring. It definitely reads "young". There were some interesting concepts here, and I thought at the beginning of the book that it was going to be better than it was.

The meteor showers dropping stuff from other worlds seemed really interesting. And then what we got was a chase with a train ride, a bit of a reveal at the end, and that's about it. I kept waiting for more, but it just wasn't delivered.

The world building could have used a lot more work. And I never really connected very much with the characters. A lot of my disappoint could be that I'm reading at the same time Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance. And this just extremely pales in comparison with the richness of his writing. But at the same time, I think I would have been disappointed in this one regardless.

Book Review: The Rithmatist

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Most of this book felt incredibly slow moving to me. In general, I think I prefer Brandon Sanderson's epic fantasy. One thing Sanderson does well is come up with detailed and complex magic systems. But his greatest strength might also be the thing I like least about his writing.

His magic systems are very creative, for sure. But when he starts going so detailed into them in the story, I start to get bored. For me, it's like someone going over a very long and complex math problem step by step. Good for them for being so smart, but I just don't care about all that.

Would that stop me from reading his books? Of course not. He's one of my favorite authors, and even when I'm not super into his detailed explanations, I still mostly enjoy the reading.

So why did I give this book four stars if all I'm doing here is complaining? Because of the end. Seriously, the last 30 pages (or thereabouts) of the book was enough to redeem the whole thing for me. I wish the whole thing had felt as exciting, though.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where things go from here, and will forgive what I felt was a slow set up to the series, because it seems things will definitely be quite interesting from here.

Book Review: Clockwork Princess

The Plot: A net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Mortmain plans to use his Infernal Devices, an army of pitiless automatons, to destroy the Shadowhunters. He needs only one last item to complete his plan: he needs Tessa Gray. 
Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, is desperate to find Mortmain before he strikes. But when Mortmain abducts Tessa, the boys who lay equal claim to her heart, Jem and Will, will do anything to save her. For though Tessa and Jem are now engaged, Will is as much in love with her as ever.
As those who love Tessa rally to rescue her from Mortmain’s clutches, Tessa realizes that the only person who can save her is herself. But can a single girl, even one who can command the power of angels, face down an entire army?
Danger and betrayal, secrets and enchantment, and the tangled threads of love and loss intertwine as the Shadowhunters are pushed to the very brink of destruction in the breathtaking conclusion to the Infernal Devices trilogy.

Why I read it: 3rd in a series
 
The Characters: I don't know if it's just because it's YA, and I'm tired of YA or what, but these characters seemed so, so young. I could tell it was supposed to be all romantic and stuff, but it just seemed overdone. It was like the author wanted to write a romance like the one in Pride and Prejudice or the like, but she does not have the talent for it. It made me not really care for many of the characters, even though this is the last book in a trilogy, and I feel like by now I should care more about the characters.

The Setting: The setting is basically a steampunk England. It was fine, and possibly the best part of the book for me, but still nothing to write home about.

A Sample of the Writing:  
She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin only the cloth of her gloves, and yet it did not matter. You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer.
 
Who Should Read This: Fans of Cassandra Clare, definitely. But only after reading the first two.

Final Thoughts: I think I would have liked this book better if not for the last maybe 100 pages, but even then it wasn't very well written. It just went on and on, and at the end I was bored and heavily skimming. And I guess it was supposed to be romantic, but it was all just a little bit much.

Cover Thoughts: The cover is gorgeous. Definitely in this case the cover is better than the book.

Grade: 2 stars (it was okay)


*I know I've been MIA for quite awhile. Blogging was becoming a chore for me, and I wasn't enjoying it. So I'm going to tentatively start posting again, and just see how it feels.

Review: Camera Obscura

CAN’T FIND A RATIONAL EXPLANATION TO A MYSTERY? CALL IN THE QUIET COUNCIL!

The mysterious and glamorous Milady De Winter is one of their most valuable agents. A despicable murder inside a locked and bolted room on the Rue Morgue in Paris is just the start. This whirlwind adventure will take Milady to the highest and lowest parts of that great city, and beyond – and cause her to question the very nature of reality itself.

I keep trying to read steampunk, and I keep finding that it's really not for me. There's something about it that just doesn't click or connect with me, and I have a hard time following the story or even caring. Unfortunately, Camera Obscura didn't change my mind about the genre.

That being said, I found the story quite interesting. Usually steampunk confuses me because I can't picture what the author is talking about and it's all weird, but Lavie Tidhar is very descriptive in his writing, and that really helped. But only for the first half or so of the book. After that I started getting more and more confused about what was going on. Even with a bit less than 100 pages left, if you were to ask me what the book was about I'd be hard pressed to tell you.

Milady was a great strong female character, but while the author was quite descriptive about some things, I felt he was very vague with others. We would get little hints about things here and there, but for the most part the reader is left to speculate about a lot with the characters in the book.

I'm not sure if, when writing steampunk, worldbuilding would be easier or harder. There didn't seem to be any rules about the way the world worked here, and the author could do and include pretty much whatever he wanted. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because then you get lots of cool and different things, but it can also make things harder to follow when the rules of the world aren't clear.

I would compare my reading of this book to those times when you're half asleep and you can hear a conversation happening, but it's hard to follow, because you only get bits and pieces. There were times when the narrative even interrupted itself. For example:

They used to make garments there--one of the first places to use the Daguerre looms, machines that automated production . . . it had been a natural step for the factory to--
The elevator doors opened. They all filed out. Another white clean corridor. They walked down it and came to a door. The door opened into an antechamber.

This kind of thing was all throughout the book, which made for a writing style that felt like I was hearing a story from someone with attention problems. But for all that, there were some really neat concepts here, and I was drawn to keep reading because I wanted to find out what happened, so it definitely wasn't all bad. I think fans of steampunk may really enjoy this one.

Book Details

Title: Camera Obscura (Angry Robot)

Author: Lavie Tidhar

Genre: Steampunk

Page Count: 416

Publishing Info: Angry Robot, April 2011

Why I Read It: ARC from the publisher

Grade: C

Cover Thoughts: I've always said the cover on a steampunk is usually my favorite thing about the book, and this time is no different. This is a beautiful cover that actually goes along with the story.

Review: The Mysterious Lady Law

Book Details

Title:
The Mysterious Lady Law

Author: 
Robert Appleton

Genre:
Steampunk

Page Count:
108 on my reader

Publishing Info:
January 31, 2011 by Carina Press

Why I Read It:
review copy from Netgalley

Grade:
C- (not really my thing)

Cover Thoughts:
The cover is quite possibly the best thing about the book.  I've always been drawn to steampunk covers, and that's probably why I keep trying steampunk, despite my bad luck with it. 

My Review

After her sister is mysteriously murdered, Julia accepts an offer from Lady Law to solve the case.  Lady Law has successfully solved every case she takes on.  No one knows how she does it, and therefore a lot of people are very suspicious of her.

This book was so short that I really couldn't get a feel for any of the characters, which makes it hard to care what happens to them.  There was a bit of a romance between Julia and a constable named Al, but I wasn't really feeling that either.

The Mysterious Lady Law is a steampunk set in Victorian London.  There were a whole lot of things that were described that I couldn't quite picture, which may be usual in the steampunk genre, but I think this story just needed to be fleshed out more.

A Sample of the Writing:
By five o'clock the gas lighter was already making his rounds, lighting the streetlamps with surgical precision.  Steam-powered cranes billowed white clouds as they raised workmen to dismantle scaffolding from the new submarine factory.  Tired shopkeepers dragged their advertisement stands inside, paid the window cleaners and errand boys, and then set about tidying their storefronts.  Men with faces blackened by oil and coal lumbered home from the factories.  As dusk descended, London wound down for the day.

I think the fact that I didn't care for this book may be chalked up to the fact that steampunk isn't really a genre (or sub-genre) that I enjoy.  I like the idea of it much more than the delivery, for the most part.  Fans of steampunk may very well enjoy this one, but I do think it suffers quite a bit because of it's length.  It's more of a novella, so if you're looking for a fleshed out story, this isn't it.  Still, I think there's definitely an audience for this book, it's just not me.