Review: Let It Bleed by Jeri Smith-Ready

WVMP Radio, Book 3.5
Book 1: Wicked Game review
Book 2: Bad to the Bone review
Book 3: Bring on the Night review

Tags: urban fantasy, vampires

Summary

Ciara’s attempts to deal with her new life as a vampire aren’t easy, especially when her fiancé Shane’s unstable vampire DJ coworker Jim “accidentally” kills two humans who turn out to be Ciara’s cousins. Things get more complicated—and intriguing—when several more members of Ciara’s Traveler family come to town to look into their relatives’ disappearance…and bring some shocking revelations about Ciara’s anti-holy blood.

Review

In an unprecedented move, Jeri Smith-Ready publishes an essential piece of her WVMP Radio series in an e-book novella format. Longtime fans of this urban fantasy series, including me, have been eagerly awaiting LET IT BLEED. The verdict? While a refreshing dip back into the WVMP Radio world, LET IT BLEED’s novella length does make it feel a bit rushed and incomplete.

As ever, Ciara’s witty narration carries readers’ enjoyment of the story, but—and this may just be me—I wonder if the series may be suffering from the literary equivalent of the “Moonlighting” curse—that is, now that the main characters have gotten together and are getting married and all that, some of the tension that drew me through earlier installments of this series is gone. LET IT BLEED expands Ciara’s story to include more troubling conflicts and revelations, but it feels a little bare in some places, as if the story is trying to juggle too many of these conflicts, revelations, and sideplots, with the result that the pacing is uneven and the resolution abrupt. I would’ve liked LET IT BLEED to be longer, so as to give space for the plots involving Jim and Ciara’s family to be given more space to develop.

LET IT BLEED was a complete story structurally, but I didn’t have the same emotional investment in it as I had with earlier installments. Still, I am no less a fan of the series, and excitedly look forward to the final book, Lust for Life. There are, in my opinion, few protagonists who can compare to Ciara for paranormal resourcefulness and wit, and I’d follow her through anything to the ends of the earth…or the end of the series, since that seems more likely.

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Let It Bleed is currently available as a free download on Jeri Smith-Ready's website. It's an essential part of the series, so don't miss out!

Review: The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker, Book 2

Tags: YA, dystopian, war

Summary

War has ravaged what was previously the United States of America. Two friends and orphaned victims of the war, Mahlia and Mouse, struggle to be safe and to get out of the terrifying hands of the different political/military factions that are all too willing to pressure young "war maggots" to sign up for their cause, lives be damned. With the help of a scary half-man named Tool, a genetically modified superfighter, do Mahlia and Mouse stand a chance to escape to freedom?

Review

This is very clearly one of those “it’s not you, it’s me” situations. Bacigalupi is a great writer. He can come up with a unique dystopian premise, lay it out in all its entirety, and still proceed to shock readers with the depth of emotions he can conjure up for the characters and their predicaments. A less squeamish reader would probably appreciate the brilliance and magnitude of this impressive story. But I squirm over stories about featuring war, violence, and heartless characters.

It is an intriguing feature of Ship Breaker, and now THE DROWNED CITIES, that I don't think readers are ever supposed to like the main characters very much. They're not lovable: a hard childhood has taught Mahlia to be humorless and untrusting, while Mouse, in comparison, is scrawny and cowardly. I guess we're supposed to empathize with the characters and their predicament: they are once-innocent victims of a depraved, dangerous, and corrupt society turned not-so-innocent from the hardships of life. But, as much as I admire Bacigalupi for what he's done, not yielding to literary conventions of having sympathetic main characters, well... that is a literary convention that I like in my books.

THE DROWNED CITIES moves at a slow pace, but is mesmerizing in terms of how it imagines the future. Unlike the majority of YA dystopias published these days, Bacigalupi's vision of the future unsettles and upsets me precisely because it forces us to admit that there are a lot of things wrong in our current world that could very well make the future what Bacigalupi imagines.

Is THE DROWNED CITIES amazing? Yes. Should people read it as an example of what a dystopian should be like, as well as to reflect on the many things we should address in our world in order to prevent such a future from happening? Yes. Did I like it? Not quite. But it's one of those cases where that's okay.

Cover discussion: Hmm. Not bad. I like the dystopian vision of a future Washington, DC--although I admit that when I was reading the book, I had no idea it was set in DC until more than halfway through the book. I'm a little confused about whether those eyes are supposed to belong to Mahlia, though. Do they...well, do they look Asian to you?

Little, Brown / May 1, 2012 / Hardcover / 448pp. / $17.99

e-galley received for review from publisher and NetGalley.

Fun Book News!

Meg Cabot is celebrating the release of Size 12 and Ready to Rock, the latest book in her Heather Wells mystery series, by giving us an--OH MY GOD, is that an '80s-style pop music video?!?!?!



(It is.)

See Meg Cabot on tour in the US this summer!

July 10: Des Moines, Iowa – Des Moines Public Library (7 pm)
July 12: Cincinnati, Ohio – Joseph Beth Booksellers (7 pm)
July 13: Dayton, Ohio – Books & Co (7 pm)
July 14: Cleveland, Ohio – Cuyahoga Public Library at the Independence High School auditorium (2 pm)
July 15: Pittsburgh, PA – Barnes & Noble, Homestead (2 pm)
July 17: Lansing, MI – Schuler Books & Music (6 pm)
July 19: Indianapolis, IN – Barnes & Noble, Carmel (7 pm)

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In other news, the first book in Cassandra Clare's bestselling Mortal Instruments series, City of Bones, is now on e-book sale for $0.99! I already own the series in p-book form, but have been wanting the chance to buy the e-book for my Kindle for a cheap price. It's not litt-ruh-chur, but it's guilty-pleasure fun nevertheless.

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Finally, if you've been following Jeri Smith-Ready's WVMP Radio series, an vampire series of the highest caliber (and if you haven't read it yet, you should get on it), you should know that Jeri has recently released an e-book called Let It Bleed, which is essential reading between the third book, Bring on the Night, and the fourth and final book, Lust for Life, which will be released in both p- and e-formats this fall. Jeri has generously made the e-book free on her website, but you can be just as generous back and donate something for her time and effort in appeasing fans and the characters. Go check it out!

Review: A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger

Tags: YA, contemporary, family, romance

Summary

Whitley Johnson’s post-high-school-graduation summer with her dad takes a turn for the much worse when he drops the shocker that he is getting married…to a woman with two teenage children. On top of that, her future stepbrother was the guy she hooked up with at a graduation party, believing that it could be someone she would never see again. How was she supposed to know that three days later he’d be living right across the hall from her?
There is no way Whitley will have a good time this summer. Unless the good new people of her life manage to break through her front and show her the good things she has… 


Review


After a (subjective) stumble with Shut Out, Kody Keplinger and her relatable, snappy, and thoroughly odern characters are back on track with the impressive A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE, a short but fulfilling book full of the swift pace and dialogue, realistic emotions, and charged moments that made readers fans of her writing in the first place.


A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE has a premise that could be the stuff of soap operas: hooking up with your soon-to-be stepbrother?? Gasp!! But Kody Keplinger pulls off the story without a hitch, without it rolling into the land of melodrama. While perhaps not everyone is like Whitley, we can certainly relate to her frustration over surprises being sprung on her, the deep hurt she carries over her changing relationships with people in her life. Though Whitley might be brasher, sexier, and sassier than we’ll ever be, she never becomes a caricature, and I was firmly rooting for Whitley the whole time.


If you liked The Duff (never mind what you felt about Shut Out), then do for your enjoyment pick up A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE and bask in the post-reading glow of having immersed yourself in a smart contemporary YA drama.


Similar Authors
Miranda Kenneally
Ann Brashares
Kate Brian


Cover discussion: I'm keeping my mouth shut. Next.


Poppy / June 5, 2012 / Hardcover / 305pp. / $17.99


e-galley received from publisher and NetGalley. Thank you!