Ravenous Bookshelf

Rating: 3 / 5 stars.

Warning: Spoilers! Really!

First of all: I wanted to like this book. And there were many things to like! The dusty little town of Cryer's Cross, complete with one intersection and a genuine one-room schoolhouse; the determined Kendall and her relationship with her best friend Nico; the Ominous Overtones.

But the Big Bad just didn't do it for me: a desk.

Granted, an Evil Possessed Desk, but my powers of disbelief suspension only go so far. Also, I am biased due to a torturous stop-motion video assignment in my Digital Media class - in which we had the desks frolicking through the classroom in all their jerky glory. So anytime I heard Evil Desk plotting, I just kept flashing back to that stupid video. (Did I mention it had a cheery 'yatatatata' soundtrack?)

But! My biases are not everyone's, so I'll grant that the Evil Desk may have legitimate menace factor. And it says something for McMann's skill that I kept reading, because yes I did want to know what happened in the end.

On another note, I really enjoyed Kendall's perspective on her OCD - a condition that she deals with in a strong, pragmatic way, without letting it run her life. The character development was also nicely organic, with a believable transition for Jacian from Mysterious Jerk Character to Actually Decent Male Co-lead.

The ending didn't thrill me, but see above: Evil Desk Bias. Plus, I really wanted more backstory/explanation to the whole thing, and instead it's wrapped up very quickly.

Still, this has definitely gotten me interested enough in McMann to pick up some of her other works (Evil Desks Need Not Apply).

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Yet another second-book-in-series review, following Kelley Armstrong's YA debut with The Summoning. Mildly spoilerish below:

We pick up just about exactly where The Summoning left off in the Adventures of Chloe Saunders, a drama/film major in an artsy high school who discovers that a) she can see and talk to ghosts, so b) all her childhood 'nightmares' were actually real and c) this qualifies her as 'crazy teen' in the eyes of society and family alike. So she gets shipped off to Lyle House, a group home for troubled teens...but soon after arriving, Chloe discovers that her fellow housemates aren't so much troubled as -- well, disturbing. There's Liz, who claims to have a poltergeist problem; Tori, with serious anger issues; Rae, who is a bit too fond of pyrotechnics; Simon, who's charming and friendly and doesn't seem to belong there at all; and Derek. Oh, Derek... A hulking mass of a teenaged boy, Derek suffers from a lack of: hygiene, patience, and any social skills whatsoever. As the wonderful Maya sums up in her review, "Puberty has hit him like a meteor!"

Of course, our heroine must get into Dire Straits with the Severely Misunderstood Yet Still Awfully Snappish Derek, as she investigates Lyle House and uncovers its true sinister purposes.

I enjoyed the first installment greatly.

Sadly, The Awakening seemed to suffer from The Empire Strikes Back Syndrome, aka Second Book in a Trilogy -- that perilous section where, if not handled properly, the story arc falters since not much is happening besides a buildup to The Final Showdown in book three. I didn't lose interest, exactly, but I wasn't especially shocked by anything that happened in this book; it didn't help that the characters were on the run for most of the time, and there are only so many times a chase-and-barely-escape routine should play out in one book. You know how The Lord of the Rings could be sarcastically summed up with the phrase, "And then they walked some more..."*
Well, events in The Awakening could be roughly described as, "And then they were chased some more..."

The focus was more on internal and interpersonal development, as Chloe discovers more about the Edison Group's nefarious schemes and her own squirrely necromancing powers...but even the characters seemed to be in a holding pattern at this point, not quite reaching any firm conclusions or goals. I'm fine with Chloe not achieving instant Obi-Wan control over her powers, but she gets the Han Solo end of the stick here -- she's constantly getting chased, snarked at, beat up, and generally pushed around by the plot. While Han Solo would just shoot everyone in the face, Chloe grits her teeth and takes it. Admirable, but also tedious after a while.

It wasn't a bad book by any means -- and it's probably a necessary one for the trilogy -- but it still isn't my favorite. Hopefully the last installment will pick things up again with a satisfying finish, where Chloe masters her mojo and summons an entire army of dead squirrels to crush her enemies and take over the world. Or not.


*Btw, I love The Lord of the Rings, every page, ever since my loooong high school bus ride days. Therefore, I mock with love.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Iris grew up in Ondine, Louisiana, a little one-stoplight town where nothing ever happens, and she begins the sweltering summer by casting spells and raising ghosts in the graveyard with her friend Collette. Just like always -- except this time the ghost talks back.

It's Elijah Landry, the town's only mysterious incident: the story of the seventeen-year-old boy who disappeared one summer night, leaving only a few drops of blood on his pillow. Now Elijah seems to want Iris's attention, leading her on a chase to dig up his story -- but in the process, she stirs up her community too, raising long-buried prejudices and unspoken griefs, and unraveling a mystery that ties back to her own father's childhood secrets.

If you wanted to be snappy, you could call this a cross between To Kill a Mockingbird and The Sixth Sense -- but that only covers the superficial elements of small-town intrigue and dead people. This book feels like a coming-of-age tale, and it is, but it doesn't come near the classics in capturing the confusion, possibility, and bittersweet aching loss of growing up.

A lighter read, it does a good job of drawing sympathetic characters and sketching the scene of a tiny town during a humid, hectic summer. But I was disappointed in the ghost aspect of the story -- Elijah seemed too flat and distant to matter much, even with all the poltergeist-ey hijinks that he pulls. We hear about him only secondhand, through stories and old photographs. That's probably the point because the story is more about the community and how people cope with horror and tragedy, but Elijah just felt too dead to matter much. (Har har). Iris is a solid companion for the trip, at least, and keeps a firm backbone through her own personal haunting.

Good summer read for a lazy, hot afternoon.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Mary lives in a village surrounded by the Forest of Hands and Teeth, and every day she hears the moaning of the Unconsecrated outside the fences. Her life is limited and isolated, hemmed in by the iron rule of the Sisters and the constant reality of death -- and yet Mary dreams of the ocean and other impossible stories that her mother has passed down to her, memories of life before the Return.

Before the dead began to rise up and consume the living, creating the world of survival and fear that is all Mary has ever known. She is safe within the fences -- as safe as anyone can be -- but Mary hungers for more. When her world crumbles, she must fight to survive in the midst of horror, and faces the hardest choice of all: whether to give up her dreams or push forward into the darkness. Into the Forest.

This story has beautiful prose that quietly snakes around you, then winds in tightly and traps you in Mary's world. Understated yet compelling, showing a dark mirrorglass world of death and yes, zombies, but in a way that totally avoids the cheap flatness of a splatterfest horror film.

Because this isn't really a story about zombies (they are important with the killing and Infecting and all, sure) -- it's a story about longing and desire and emptiness and hope. And though Mary, Carrie Ryan actually makes it all interesting and challenging, because her protagonist is complex and believable (even if she tends to overshadow the other characters by comparison -- and btw, love triangles pretty much always suck). Mary is flawed and furious and she wants so much, and even the parallels of zombie living-flesh-hunger and human love-safety-spirit hunger don't feel clunky in this context.

Not an upper by any means, but a gorgeous read that will guarantee you'll never look at zombies the same way again.