Blog Award (1/3) and a Book Trailer

My first award!! Thanks MissAttitude from Reading in Color! =D

The Rules:

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs you've recently discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Er, it's going to take me a while to work up to 15 because I don't actually know that many blogs OTZ... So I'm gonna do a third of it now and I promise to finish awarding blogs within a month (or so, since I suck with deadlines...) from today. Since I'm not done awarding, I won't be putting up the award on the sidebar yet. (I feel cheap if I do so, lol.)

1. ninefly at story on a page
2. Sapphire Pyro/xtine06/pink_fairy10/Ninjovee at Hyper Parfait
3. Lorena at I ♥ Manga
4. Kelly at kelakagandy's ramblings
5. Thundie at thundie's prattle

And a book trailer of Megan Crewe's Give Up the Ghost, to remind myself to get cracking on that review. ^^;

Review: A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliott

Title: A Wish After Midnight
Author(s): Zetta Elliott
Genre: YA Urban Historical Fantasy
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Rosetta Press

Summary: Fifteen-year old Genna Colon believes wishes can come true. Frustrated by the drug dealers of her building, her family's cramped apartment, and her inability to compete with the cute girls at school, Genna finds comfort in her dreams of a better future. Almost every day she visits the garden and tosses coins into the fountain, wishing for a different life, a different home, and a different body. Little does she know that her wish will soon be granted: when Genna flees into the garden late one night, she makes a fateful wish and finds herself instantly transported back in time to Civil War-era Brooklyn.
-Summary from backcover

The Review: To say that I love this novel may perhaps been an understatement. But love it I do, and I will probably end up using the word "love" for basically everything I discuss in this review. Just a heads up to the readers that stumble on this blog review. =D Also, I'm kinda enamored with Judah/Genna couple (OTP FOREVA ♥) and er, while I tried to cut down on the OTP gushing to make this review more readable and less fangirly, I get this feeling I was unsuccessful... *DIES*

Okay, let's begin with the setting of Brooklyn. I absolutely love and adore how strong the sense of setting is in this novel. With Elliott's amazing writing talent, she brings Present Day!Brooklyn and Civil War!Brooklyn to life. The city feels tangible and real, and I wished that all urban fantasy could manage this amount of realism with their respective cities.

I also liked how Elliott spent equal time in the Present as in the Civil War Brooklyn. At first, due to the summary, I kept on waiting for the time-travelling to happen, but then Elliott pulls us into this sweet first love story between Judah and Genna and, for me at least, my investment in this couple is one of the many things that helped make everything that happened in the second half just that much more intense. (It kind of reminds me of The Secret Garden in the sense that it builds up slow, but because of this it just brings everything that much more meaning and punch at the climax. Er, actually I'll just link what Neesha Meminger wrote, for she is so much more eloquent than I. ^^; )

Moving on to my darling GENNA. Oh, sweet, level-headed, practical Genna, I was routing for her dreams and wishes all the way through the whole novel. I love how Elliott took the time to really let us get to know Genna before she gets transported back in time. This way we get the chance to really understand Genna as a whole person, with a life and a family and people she cared for, so that when she does get torn away from home, her sharp homesickness and uncertainty about how she'd return just hits us readers in the heart that much more. I especially appreciate how well-developed Genna's family was and the exploration of family interactions. I love reading stories about siblings and parents and stuff, having more than one sibling myself, and Elliott delivers this factor in spades.

I really loved the supporting cast in this novel. Even though not all of their back stories are revealed, I definitely got a strong sense that every single one of the side characters had their own story to tell, i.e. they don't feel like plot devices. As for Judah, I'll be straight up and confess that I love this guy to bits. Yes, I realize this is probably a minority opinion from the way things look in the internet, and it is probably due to his controlling demeanor in the second half. I understand all this, but I don't care, TEAM JUDAH ALL THE WAY. Judah's got a big heart, is dorkishly sweet (the HAIKU ♥ and his encyclopedia knowledge of everything), and his relationship with Genna makes my heart melt. The accent helps too. *is bricked* He has strong views about what he wants in life, and they do in fact clash with Genna's, but I think that's what makes this couple interesting. I get this sense that they both want things so deeply and passionately, striving relentlessly forward to carve out their future, and combine that with their love that started as a sweet high school crush to the intense longing in the second half and I'm a goner. ♥

(Um, just to put it out there, I do like Paul just fine. He's sweet, flirty and fun though I could have done with less of the Blue! Eyes! descriptions on his attractiveness but I don't really see him ending up with Genna. He is very sweet though and I am fond of him, and I would love to see more of him in the sequel.)

What I also found interesting was Genna's reaction to Civil War!Brooklyn as a 21st century girl. Genna is very much a present day girl with present day views that are extremely different from the commonly accepted and default views found in the U.S. Civil War Era. The issues of race, ethnicity, gender, morality were explored well and isn't treated stereotypically in both Present Day and Civil War Era parts of the novel. I'll try not to be spoilery and just say that I thought her reactions to Mrs. Brant and how they evolved over time was probably one of the most interesting character interactions in the whole novel. In fact, I in general just really appreciated how Elliott shows us readers how Genna grows and changes as she meets more and more people.

lol, all this raving and I haven't even gotten to Elliott's exquisite writing!! Every time I am reminded of the fact that publishers/editors/agents rejected A Wish After Midnight for five years, I just can't wrap my mind around it. It plain boggles me. I can't understand how people can turn down A Wish After Midnight after just trying one paragraph of this novel. You know what? Since I'm basically incoherent and can't talk about this aspect of the novel properly, I shall just quote a passage. (Gratuitously Judah/Genna because I can't help myself):

"You know what a haiku is, Genna?" Judah presses a small piece of paper into my palm and walks on ahead with Tyjuan. I trail behind, wanting to be alone. I stop in front of the purple irises growing next to the pond and open Judah's note. At first I feel disappointed 'cause there are only a few words written inside. But then I read them and my eyes fill up with water and my heart aches with that sweet kind of pain, and I wonder if I'm always going to feel this way whenever someone does something nice for me. Inside the note is a poem. Judah has given me these words:

my love is the sun
and you are a blue lotus
turning towards me
(pg. 55)

Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh~~~ ♥ Everyone, go and order a copy now. You won't regret this decision. =D

Rating: 5/5
Enjoyment: 100% ♥

Title and Cover Discussion: You know, I actually don't know how to approach this part of my review? I mean, I don't find our Wish title particularly grabbing, but the more I look at it the more it fits? It might not be a title that makes readers go HOMG MUST READ but it just works so incredibly well with the story. I guess it's like those songs you hear on the radio that you didn't really like at first but the more you hear it the more you like it, lol. Same with the cover. (Though I'm biased since I love pink *is bricked*) It's not like the Shiny YA novel covers I'm used to, but the more I see it the more I like it. Hence, I'm going to wuss out on the rating thing since I'm at loss. Instead I'm going to ask: what do you readers think of the cover and title? I'd like to hear and share opinions/thoughts, etc, along with the novel discussion, of course. =D

In My Mailbox (13)

(Idea from The Story Siren)

So ninefly convinced me to do In My Mailbox, with a conversation that went something like this (albeit embellished, because I have a tendency to do so):
ME: But if I do In My Mailbox people are gonna discover my horrendous book shopping sprees and sometimes I don't have much to say about the books I read and what if people expect reviews -
NINEFLY: STOP WHINING AND JUST DO IT. YOU HAVE TOO LITTLE POSTS ON YOUR BLOG ANYWAYS.
ME: ... Fiiine. But I don't have to like it

Anyhow, the novels I bought this week (arranged with ninefly's help, because clearly I can't do anything on my own) er, I don't know how that random sticker got there? *is very messy person*:



Received: 0
Borrowed: 0
Bought: 13

Will be discussing novels in the order of the photo, from top to bottom, left to right. (Top Row: Hardcovers, Middle Row: Mass Market Paperbacks, Bottom Row: Trade Paperbacks)

Review: Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

...my schedule is fairly much going down the drain. But hey, this is my first normal review, so yay?! =D




Title: Book of a Thousand Days
Author(s): Shannon Hale
Genre: YA Fantasy Fairy Tale Retelling
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary: When Lady Saren refuses to marry a man she fears, she and her maid, Dashti, are locked in a tower with just a tiny flap open to the outside world. As food runs low and the weather changes from broiling hot to unbearably cold, it is all Dashti can do to make them comfortable in their dark prison.
Not long after their confinement begins, Saren's suitors arrive-one welcom, the other less so-and she orders Dashti to speak to them. Impersonating Lady Saren is a crime punishable by death, but Dashti will have to play the role many times if she is to save them both from the tower and the dangers outisde. As she takes control of their desperate situation, Dashti begins to understand her own astonishing talents and believe that even a low-born maid can find true love.

The Review: First off, this is the first time I ever came across a YA fairy tale novel retelling that wasn't set in Europe. Can I say LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?! And the world was very distinctly Mongolian, from the food they ate to the clothes they wore and just, everything. . ♥ I thought Hale did a very through research, personally. Also helping with the setting is an inclusion of the map in the Bloomsbury USA version, and all the little illustrations inserted all throughout the novel. This novel has a very strong sense of place, a well-grounded setting, and I really appreciate this aspect.

I really enjoyed the diary format of the novel. We get a very strong closed 1st person perspective this way and our narrator Dashti is very sweet and strong-willed and fun to read from. The illustrations drawn in are very effective and flow well with the diary format. In short, no complaints, and very enjoyable writing that flows well and is easy to read.

If I must be critical about this book, it’d be the whole Villainous Evil Characters of Irredeemable Evil. Khasar was evil and even animalistic about his villainy. (Yes, they went there.) Vachir the love rival had no redeeming qualities. Also problematic was how the whole classicism thing was dealt with. I don’t think Hale subverted the princess and the maid dynamic as much as she could have. Saren still, for the most part, held too much commanding power all the way to the end over Dashti for me to really think of their relationship as equals. SPOILERS FOR ENDING (thanks to ninefly for helping me with spoiler tag: [I thought they didn’t challenge the class issue enough with Dashti and Tegus either and the ending really didn’t help matters. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the ending and was really happy that Dashti and Tegus ended up together at the end but on retrospect it was still problematic. I mean, the reason why Dashti was able to be Tegus’ bride was by becoming gentry herself. In other words, she must change her status as mucker, a very essential part of her identity, in order to marry him. That does not send out a particularly positive message nor subvert classicism problems, so. =/]

The romance between our heroine and the requisite prince is adorable and sweet as required out of the fairytale. I will not lie, while reading the book, towards the end I was like “I do not CARE what unrealistic deus ex machina move they pull, TEGUS AND DASHTI MUST END UP TOGETHER AND GET MARRIED, DAMNIT.” I don’t think it’s particularly spoilery on my part to admit that this fairy tale retelling gave us our Happily Ever After in spades.

Anyhow, this is a lush, beautiful fairy tale retelling set in a fantastical Ancient Mongolian universe that will deliver on all the troupes that every fairy tale must have yet exploring the vast and fascinating world and the characters in ways only the length of a novel can allow. Highly recommended for those who love their fairy tales that aren't whitewashed ♥

Rating: 3.5/5
Enjoyment 90%

Title and Cover Discussion: I’m not sure how to feel about the title. I mean, on one hand it’s rather eye-catching, but on the other if we calculate the days it wasn’t exactly a thousand days. (It’s 1110 if we want to be exact.) But hey, in history we often aren’t exact about numbers either, so I don’t begrudge that. (The Hundred Year War wasn’t for a hundred years, the 300 spartans wasn’t exactly 300, etc etc) Also, the cover I received was the Bloomsbury USA paperback one so I got a face on my cover! Which made me really happy, since this may be the only YA fairy tale retelling that had a heroine so blatantly Asian on the cover. So much better than the hardcover, which I noticed it simply showed her hands holding a book. x.x I love the font for the title too and thought it looks really pretty with the cover et all. =D

Title: B
Cover: A++++ (for the paperback. The hardcover version can bite me)

Links Roundup 11/7/2009

... *coughs* Er, yeah, let's all pretend today is still Friday so I can post those Links Roundup? 8D

Book Reviews
Exposure by Mal Peet - Othello gone South American
Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally) by Lisa Yee - MG Novel with POC cast and seems to portray interesting gender relations. Looks cute.
Confetti Girl by Diana Lopez - Socks! Girls! ♥
His Wicked Promise by Samantha James - Reviews trashy novels so that we don't have to read them! =D

Other Non-Review Book Blog Posts of Interest (via Reading in Color)
Seg-Book-Gation: A Letter to Book Lovers
A Gay Fantasy Bookshelf

Also, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in me regularly doing a group link at the end of the week on my NaNoWriMo thoughts on my fandom blog, but you can see my posts here

X-Post of Relevant Stuff
Recounting the Westerfeld/Clare/Black Author Tour @ the TO - In which I give a brief recount of my experience of seeing these authors at their book tour in Toronto.
Fish gotta swim, Haters gotta hate - In which I bash books I didn't enjoy. Please don't kill me if you like the books I hated

Tuesday's Taste: Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan

In which I will quote a passage I find particularly striking in a book I'm reading. (Idea from Taste Life Twice)

Here be opening paragraph to Samarasan's debut novel of epic:

There is, stretching delicate as a bird’s head from the thin neck of the Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its break into the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird’s head is a springless summerless autumnless winterless land. One day might be a drop wetter or a mite drier than the last, but almost all are hot, damp, bright, bursting with lazy tropical life, conducive to endless tea breaks and mad, jostling, honking rushes through town to get home before the afternoon downpour. These are the most familiar rains, the violent silver ropes that flood the playing fields and force office workers to wade to bus stops in shoes that fill like buckets. Blustering and melodramatic, the afternoon rains cause traffic jams at once terrible—choked with the black smoke of lorries and the screeching brakes of schoolbuses—and beautiful: aglow with winding lines of watery yellow headlights that go on forever, with blue streetlamps reflected in burgeoning puddles, with the fluorescent melancholy of empty roadside stalls. Every day appears to begin with a blaze and end with this deluge, so that past and present and future run together in an infinite, steaming river.

I love it, though some may accuse this love as being biased if you know me and no spoilers if you've read this book! I'm still not done yet. xD;;

Feature Book of the Month! Shadow Magic: A Review

lol look how I'm keeping to my schedule!!! *is shot*

Title: Shadow Magic
Author(s): Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 387
Publisher: Ballantine Books

Summary: Led to victory by its magic-fueled Dragon Corps, Volstov has sent a delegation to its conquered neighbors to work out the long-awaited terms of peace. Among those sent are the decorated war hero General Alcibiades and the formerly exiled magician Caius Greylace. But even this mismatched pair can’t help but notice that their defeated enemies aren’t being very cooperative.
The truth is even worse than they know. For the new emperor is harbouring a secret even more treacherous—one that will take every trick in Alcibiades’ and Caius’ extensive arsenal to unveil. And once it is revealed, they may still be powerless to stop it.
With their only ally, an exiled prince, now fleeing his brother’s assassins, the countryside rife with treachery and terror, and Alcibiades and Caius all but prisoners, it will take the most powerful, most dangerous kind of magic to heal the rift between two strife-worn lands and unite two peoples against a common enemy… shadow magic.
- Summary from the bookflap.

The Skinny: A luscious, incredible fantasy world brought to life through the amazingly talented Jones and Bennett team. Our heroes will make you laugh, cry, and just care as they go through the turbulent times in post-war Ke-Han. Highly recommended, especially to those fantasy fans looking for something slightly different.