Carnival of Souls - Melissa Marr

Carnival of Souls – Melissa Marr

Pages: 306

Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books

Release Date: 4^th September 2012

Edition: UK proof, review copy

Other Titles by this Author: Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange, Fragile Eternity, Radiant Shadows, Darkest Mercy, Graveminder

Enter the carnival

The carnival pulsed in the centre of The City  - a swirl of masked decadence and danger. Music played constantly as the dancers demonstrated their flexibility. At times it was a glamorous cacophony. Jugglers and fire-twirlers showed their skills in time to the music. In this carnival, both pleasure and murder are going up for sale...

Once in a generation, the carnival hosts a deadly competition that allows every daimon a chance to join the ruling elite. Without the competition, Aya and Kaleb would both face bleak futures – if for different reasons. For each of them, fighting to the death is the only way to live.

From the author of the million-copy selling Wicked Lovely series comes this sinister tale of lush secrets, dark love, and the struggle to forge one’s own destiny.

Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely books are one of my favourite series’ so my expectations for Carnival of Souls were astronomical, and while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

One of Marr’s biggest skills is her intricately built worlds and I anticipated to be swallowed up and devoured by the sights, smells, sounds and atmosphere of The City but I didn't quite connect to it in the way I wanted. Maybe it was me. Everything was there: the seductive danger, the bloody violence, a complicated hierarchical system and a sense of constant threat but I...just don't know. I didn’t really click with the novel as a whole until about halfway though actually.

I loved the mediaeval caste system of the daimons in The City and the background of the war between the witches and the daimons that resulted in witches living in the human world and daimons ruling The City. I thought that the idea behind the Carnival of Souls itself was clever and perfectly brutal for a city run by daimons and the terror that the power of the witches that instilled in them.

The only thing about Marr’s world that I didn't like was probably one of the elements that made it realistic and enabled the plot: the rules and restrictions on women. There are rules about breeding, prostitution is the norm and women aren’t allowed to roam the Carnival of Souls alone. Having such strong heroines against such a background make them even better. Aya is strong, ferocious and rather ruthless, but she has integrity and a future to ensure. I loved how she did what she needed to do and broke all of the stereotypes of daimon women and still managed to protect her many secrets...

I didn't connect to Mallory nearly as much as I did Aya. This is possibly because I didn't really expect there to be two sets of characters whose fates, relationships and families intertwined. I just expected Aya and Kaleb. As the story developed I began to realise why I maybe hadn’t got involved in her story in the way that I did with Aya’s: because she wasn’t completely herself. At the end of the novel Mallory really came into her own and I think that in the next books in the series she is going to kick some serious ass and give Aya a run for her money.

Although Carnival of Souls lacked in some places for me, I did enjoy it a lot more from the halfway point and I’m looking forward to see what unfolds in the next book.

Thank you to HarperCollins for sending me a copy of the book to review.

Sophie 

Blog Tour: Creating a Fictional Town by Sarah Rees Brennan

Today I’m honoured to host a stop on the blog tour for the first book in Sarah Rees Brennan’s new series, Unspoken. Sarah has written me a fantastic post about the creation of her fictional town, Sorry-in-the-Vale.

“My aunt lives in a town in the Cotswolds. The Cotswolds, for those not in the cotswoldian know, is a range of hills over several counties in England. There is a famous nature trail called the Cotswold Way.

It’s a beautiful there: golden stone, old buildings, some thatched cottages, some manor houses, churches with horseshoe-shaped entryways, graveyards full of leaning, crumbling stones.

Kind of picturesque, is what I’m trying to get across.

So I was visiting my aunt, and I had wandered off to read my book. I was sitting outside a pub by a river, and I went inside to acquire another beverage and asked the bartender what people did around here for fun.

The bartender, who I swear to God was fourteen, the Cotswolds is a LAWLESS PLACE, said: ‘The pub does this duck race.’

Those duck races have now been immortalised in my prose. You’re welcome, duck races. Fame at last.

It got me thinking, about sleepy English towns, about beauty all around, about secrets running deep. I decided a town in the Cotswolds should be the setting for a place where secrets were kept, still waters ran deep, and when the truth came out there would be murder.

But I didn’t want to steal a town: I figured that what with what I was planning to do with it, the inhabitants would probably sue.

I went to stay in Broadway on a research trip, taking walks through lavender fields to follies. I sat in the gardens at Stanway House and accidentally sat much too close to one of the largest vertical fountains in the world. (Why did nobody tell meeeee, that’s what I want to know. And then I remember, probably because they thought it would be hilarious.)

I went from town to town. Evesham had a haunted river, Stanway had a manor that looked like the manor house of Sorry-in-the-Vale, Aurimere House, in my head, and Broadway had a High Street that looked right, all pretty shop-fronts and frothing flowers over gold stones.

A manor house was very important. Because those manors still exist: those families still exist. But people being the ‘lords of the manor,’ the town bowing down to one family… that doesn’t really happen anymore. Or does it? Are there towns where the old ways persist? What do the lords of the manor do, when times change? A Gothic manor, with an old powerful family, a coat of arms, a crypt: who could resist Secretpalooza Manor? (Note: that is not the house’s name.)

Other Cotswolds towns had names that inspired the name Sorry-in-the-Vale: Moreton-in-Marsh and Bourton-on-the-Water –- names that sound like stories.

Because I wanted to tell a story. Sorry-in-the-Vale’s name means something: you’ll have to read the book to find out what. (My amazing bookselling abilities, let me show you them. Can you HANDLE the SUSPENSE?)

So I built a town out of bits and pieces of other towns, the bits and pieces that inspired me. And I used English history that inspired me, too: the War of the Roses, when two families fought for the throne of England in the 1400s, plays a significant part in Sorry-in-the-Vale’s history.

I made up a creepy skipping song, my commitment to the cause cannot be doubted!

“Forest deep, silent bells

There’s a secret no one tells

Valley quiet, water still

Lynburns watching on the hill

Apples red, corn gold

Almost everyone grows old.”

And I thought about, besides stone and songs and secrets, what a small town is to the people who live there. It all depends on the people you are.

So Kami Glass, a girl who’s lived her whole life in Sorry-in-the-Vale, who’s happy there… but also confined there: she has dreams of bigger things and wider horizons. Only she’s about to find out she doesn’t know some very important things about her town, and once she has one secret, she’ll want them all.

And Jared Lynburn, a boy transplanted from San Francisco to Aurimere House, the sinister but gorgeous manor on the hill above Sorry-in-the-Vale. He doesn’t know a thing about the town, about his own heritage, but he’ll find out.

There’s also Jared’s cousin Ash, who may know far too much, Kami’s best friend Angela, a rich outsider whose parents just wanted a cute country home, and their new friend Holly Prescott, whose family were ruined by the Lynburns twenty years ago.

I wanted the town to be another character, to inform the characters.

I wanted to create a town vivid enough to make people envision the sign: Welcome to Sorry-in-the-Vale. It’s a magical place. (Try not to get murdered.)”

A massive thank you to S&S for offering me a place on the blog tour and to Sarah for writing a fantastic post.

Sophie 

Blog Tour: Sarah J Maas Q&A (Throne of Glass)

Sarah J Maas’s debut, Throne of Glass, is one of my favourite books read this year so I’m delighted to be hosting a Q&A with Sarah and an extract from the novel as part of her blog tour.

1.   What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Read a lot, write a lot, and don’t give up. Also, live your life. Be curious, and be open to anything—good living translates into good writing.

2.   Which of your characters did you most enjoy writing?

Celaena, definitely. Always Celaena. She’s the reason why I stuck with this story for so many years.

3.   Which character from a book would you like to be for a day?

Oooh, tough question. I think I’d want to be Harry Potter (is that weird?), so I could go see all of the marvellous things in his world (Hogwarts! Diagon Alley!), and meet all of the characters that I came to love so dearly (Ron! Hermione!).

4.   If you hadn't been an author, what would you have been?

Well, I really wanted to be a marine biologist so I could study great white sharks, but I nearly flunked out of high school biology, so THAT dream quickly ended. But I like to think that if I hadn’t been too busy daydreaming about the stories in my head during class, I might have paid better attention, and would now be in a shark cage off the coast of South Africa. (Still a dream of mine to swim with sharks.)

5.   When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?  

Watch TV (I watch so much it’s disgusting, actually), see new places (love to travel), go to the ballet, watch movies, listen to music (I’m a big fan of movie scores). And read. I read whenever and wherever I can.

6.   What book, film and album would you take to a desert island?

Book: Oh, dear. Such a hard choice. Maybe The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, because it’s beautiful and heart-breaking and perfect. Or maybe Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels Trilogy (I’m cheating because there’s an omnibus edition of all three books!), because it’s got such amazing characters that have owned a place in my heart since I was thirteen. Or maybe Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series, because those books changed my life.

Film: Ack! Even harder. The original three Star Wars films (if I had to pick one, it’d be The Empire Strikes Back). Or perhaps The Lord of the Rings. Or Howl’s Moving Castle. Too many choices!

Album: Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas). I could listen to that ballet over and over and over again.

7.   What television programmes do you never miss?

Too many. If I told you how many, you’d be embarrassed on my behalf. But off the top of my head: Psych, The Vampire Diaries, Doctor Who, America’s Next Top Model (I know, I know), Fringe, Grimm, Workaholics, Game of Thrones, Ancient Aliens (…it’s my secret shame), The Legend of Korra, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and The Inbetweeners. I also adore Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, have a weakness for Korean dramas (they are the most addictive and charming thing in the world), and wish that Veronica Mars, Firefly, and Friday Night Lights had never been cancelled. (See? I told you I watch far too much television.)

8.   Tell us something about your next project

Well, right now I’m working on Book 2 of the Throne of Glass series. We’re still in the revising stage, so I don’t want to say too much about it until it’s in a more solid/final form! (I also don’t want my editor killing me for giving away any spoilers. Eek.)

And now for a sneak peek at the book itself!

Pages From Throne of Glass Extract (1) (Original Copy)

If that didn’t make you want to buy yourself a copy of Throne of Glass, maybe this will: the stunning trailer.

I’d like to say a big thank you to Emma at Bloomsbury for asking me to be on the tour and conducting the interview with Sarah for me.

Sophie

Unfed - Kirsty McKay

Unfed – Kirsty McKay

Pages: 307

Publisher: Chicken House

Release Date: 2^nd August 2012

Edition: UK paperback, review copy

Other Titles by this Author: Undead

They’re back...and this time they’re hungry.

The good news: Bobby survived her unreal school trip. The bad news: her best bud Smitty is missing. There are undead everywhere and they’re getting hungrier...

It’s a no brainer. Somehow she must find some living friends – and the antidote – before everyone’s toast.

Undead was one of my favourite books from last year so I was really looking forward to the same non-stop action, humour and brilliant characterisation in Unfed. I wasn’t at all disappointed.

There’s an element Unfed that I enjoyed in Undead, loved in the beginning of this and then by the end I was in awe of it: Kirsty McKay’s skill in characterisation. Bobby, Smitty, Alice, Pete and Russ are all so themselves. Each has such a distinct voice that I could tell who was speaking before I was even told and they all had such real idiosyncrasies that they leaped off of the page as fully formed people. A development in Bobby’s character that I wasn’t completely expecting was her connection to the missing Smitty when she got into dangerous situations throughout the novel; it was surprising, but it really worked.

Although there was a distinct lack of Smitty in Unfed, when he was there, I fell in love with him again. Even though he is undoubtedly a nutjob... He had the most madcap, and strangely effective, plans and I loved the way he dealt with newcomer Russ and the tension between him and Bobby. Speaking of Russ, I just couldn’t make my mind up about him. I wanted to trust him, I really did, but he was just so sure of everything. He did surprise me though; that was a twist I definitely wasn’t expecting.

The amazing characters are supported by writing that sparkles with wit, comedy and some seriously tense situations involving decaying Undead. It has life and personality that comes through firmly and strongly in a novel so fast-paced that I couldn’t imagine myself being able keeping up such a style throughout.

Unfed goes back to traditional zombies with a modern cause: a drug that causes people to turn into brain-hungry, slobbering shells of humans with missing limbs and slabs of missing flesh. Brilliantly. There’s a nice dose of the gross and vom-inducing as Bobby and the others are chased through Scotland.

I thoroughly enjoyed Unfed and I really hope there will be another instalment of Bobby’s adventures.

A big thank you to Chicken House for providing me with a review copy.

Sophie 

Ocean of Secrets - Aimee Friedman

Ocean of Secrets – Aimee Friedman

Pages: 335

Publisher: Scholastic

Release Date: 5^th July 2012

Edition: UK paperback, unsolicited review copy

Other Titles by this Author: South Beach, French Kiss, Hollywood Hills, A Novel Idea, Breaking Up, The Year My Sister Got Lucky

Many are drawn to Selkie Island. Few know why.

When Miranda Merchant escapes her lonely, hot summer in New York City, little does she know what awaits her. She steps off the ferry onto an island rife with legend and lore.

She isn’t expecting to feel a connection to this unusual place. And when she meets Leo, a mysterious local boy, she finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about boys, friendship, reality...and love.

But is Leo hiding something she never could have imagined?

My sister read this when it was released in 2009 as Sea Change and has been on at me to read it ever since. And now I know why!

Miranda is a fantastic heroine. It’s not uncommon to have a protagonist of a novel with a supernatural or mythical element being scientifically minded and completely disregarding of anything without a concrete explanation, but Aimee Friedman makes it work. I loved that it took her time to even come around to the possibility that something mythical existed on Selkie Island and even though when the clues started to slot together, she still dismissed it as impossible. It was refreshing to find a rational heroine in such a situation.

Even with a scientific character, sometimes everything that comes along with that is lost, but not with Miranda. Her sharp intelligence and knowledge about science comes through in her narration and the way she speaks and interacts with others. This did bring along with it a few stereotypical traits, however. She had trouble connecting with people her own age and really had no idea how to talk to boys, although she had had a boyfriend before the beginning of the novel which redeems the cliché!

One of my favourite elements of Ocean of Secrets is the atmosphere that Aimee Friedman created surrounding Selkie Island. And island of the coast of Georgia in the US, Selkie is humid, sweaty and exotic and full of luxury and old money. It had a sumptuous old-Southern feel with the lavish mansions, spoilt rich kids, prejudices and scandalous pasts. I loved it.

I thoroughly enjoyed Ocean of Secrets and I hope to read more from Aimee in the future.

Thank you to Scholastic for providing me with a review copy.

Sophie