Sep 26, 2011

Anna Dressed in Blood

Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen
Publish Date: already out
Version: e-book
Series: none
She was sixteen when she died, the daughter of Finnish immigrants.  Her father was dead, he died of some disease or something, and her mom ran a boarding house downtown.  Anna was on her way to a school dance when she was killed.  Someone cut her throat, but that’s an understatement.  Someone nearly cut her head clean off.  They say she was wearing a white party dress, and when they found her, the whole thing was stained red.  That’s why they call her Anna Dressed in Blood.
Theseus Cassio Lowood or Cas, as he likes to be called, has a special talent.  He can “kill” ghosts.  His father had this same talent and died doing it.  He left Cas a knife, or athame.  Cas has been planning to avenge his father’s death and kill the ghost who killed him ever since.  Cas and his mother travel around to kill ghosts who are malevolent and are killing others.  This leads them from North Carolina where he killed the County 12 Hiker to Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.  He first learned of the ghost referred to as Anna Dressed in Blood from Rudy Bristol, a contact from New Orleans, and now he is here to take care of her.  

Cas never expected to find the things he did in Thunder Bay.  First of those, are friends – Carmel Jones and Thomas Sabin.  He only expected to kill the ghost that has been killing people and move on.  On his first day of Sir Winston Churchil Collegiate & Vocational High School, he meets the “Trojan Army” or Mike Andover, Chase Putnam, Simon Parry and Wil Rosenberg.  At this meeting, he finds out about the annual Edge of the World party, which Carmel invites him to.  It is at this party that Cas finally finds out about Anna and is taken to her house by Mike, Chase, Wil and Carmel.  There, the unexpected happens which affects all of them.

Now, Cas, Carmel, Thomas and Wil have to figure out how to get rid of Anna.  They get advice from Thomas’ grandfather, Morfran Starling Sabin and Gideon Palmer, a family friend, on how to proceed as Anna is not like any other ghost that Cas has encountered.

This book kept me entertained from beginning to end.  I never could guess what was coming next and I liked that.  It was refreshing to read a paranormal young adult book that was not main-stream.  I especially like the background stories.  I wanted to know them sooner in the book, but after reading where they were placed, it was understandable.  I loved to hear Cas' view in this book.  He does not entertain the delusion that he is infallible or cannot be killed, yet he continues on in his work.  He doesn't even think about ever stopping killing ghosts, as he is one of the few who can do it. His character and the statements he makes about normal, everyday things that high school students encounter is what makes this a good read.

Anna is also an important character in the book.  Even though you don't really learn about her or her story until the later part of the book, you can see that she is ultimately good.  I love how you can see the effects of what happened to her in her personality and the things she does.  At first glance, you would think that she is all bad since she kills everyone who enters the house, but this is not the case.

This was a difficult book to pen my likes/dislikes because it is hard to say WHY I don't like a character or like them without spoiling the book.
I’ve seen most of what there is to be afraid of in this world, and to tell you the truth, the worst of them are the ones that make you afraid in the light. The things that your eyes see plainly and can’t forget are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination. Imagination has a poor memory; it slinks away and goes blurry. Eyes remember for much longer. 
 Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.
I’m staring at Anna’s house again. The logical part of my brain tells me that it’s just a house. That it’s what’s inside that makes it horrifying, that makes it dangerous, that it can’t possibly be tilting toward me like it’s hunting me through the overgrowth of weeds. It can’t possibly be trying to jerk free of its foundation and swallow me whole. But that’s what it looks like it’s doing.
•The way Thomas, Carmel and Cas stick together and help each other throughout the book.

•Cas.  I explained above some of the things that I liked about Cas.  He has this aura about him.  It is hard to explain without going into much detail.  It seems like he is always pessimistic, but he is really realistic.  His sense of duty in protecting people is what makes him strong.  Even though the things he does has cost him the life of his father, he still proceeds.  In the book, it seems like Cas is wise beyond his years and has seen too much death, but then there are times when it takes him awhile to figure things out, just like you would expect from someone high school aged.

•Anna.  Yet again, I find something that I like/do not like.  Anna is a ghost who kills everyone who enters her house…the house she was killed in.  There is not much I can tell you about why I like Anna without spoiling the book.   Just know that she does have some redeeming qualities.

•Cas's mom.  Even though Cas's father died killing ghosts, she still supports Cas's decision to do it.  Being a “wiccan girl,” she also help Cas out whenever she can.

•Mofran, Thomas' grandfather.   He has this air about him.  He is intelligent, but doesn't flaunt it.

•Maria, the boarder from Spain who helps Anna sew her white dress for the dance.

•Mike, Chase and Wil (you don't hear too much about Simon in the book.)  Yes, they are high-school students and I've had discussions before about high-school-aged characters.   They are on the wrestling team and are nick-named “The Trojan Army” by Thomas.  The trio are not very nice people, from beginning to the end in the book.  At points, it does seem like Wil has changed his tune, but that is short lived.

•The ghost.  I don't know what his name is, but I don't like him.

•The way the community reacts to the killings.  Or rather, the way they do not react.
•Anna's mother, Malvina and her soon-to-be step-father, Elias.
Girl of Nightmares (Anna Dressed in Blood #2).  I haven't found too much about this book expect it is due out in 2012.  Goodreads didn't even have a synopsis of it, but I know that this is a book I will look forward to reading.

Sep 20, 2011

Past Perfect

Leila Sales
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Tentative Publish Date: 04 October 2011
Version: galley grab e-book
Series: none

Chelsea Glaser has worked at Colonial Essex Village since she was a child as this is where both of her parents work.  She now is a reenactor who works in the burying ground under the name of Elizabeth Connelly.  When her best friend, Fiona Warren, and she want to find work together for the summer, the last place she imagined she would be working at is at Essex.   Fiona is a drama kid, and being a reenactor sounds like perfect work to her.  Chelsea finally agrees to work at Essex, the place where she has been every summer for the past ten years.  At Summer Staff Orientation, Chelsea realizes that her ex-boyfriend, Ezra Gorman, is going to be working at Essex this summer as well.  Chelsea still hasn’t gotten over their breakup, which happened in April, and seeing him is going to make this summer more difficult.
Part of being summer staff at Colonial Essex Village is the “war” that is going on between them and Reenactmentland, which is just across the street.  In Essex, Tawny Nelson is the general and Chelsea is voted in at the Lieutenant.  Throughout the book, you read of the tricks that both parties play on each other to “win the war” for that year.  Dan Malkin and his family work at Reenactmentland. He meets Chelsea through one of the pranks that they play on Colonial Essex Village.  This is the story of a forbidden relationship.
 
 
All Chelsea wants to do this summer is hang out with her best friend, hone her talents as an ice cream connoisseur, and finally get over Ezra, the boy who broke her heart. But when Chelsea shows up for her summer job at Essex Historical Colonial Village (yes, really), it turns out Ezra’s working there too. Which makes moving on and forgetting Ezra a lot more complicated…even when Chelsea starts falling for someone new.

Maybe Chelsea should have known better than to think that a historical reenactment village could help her escape her past. But with Ezra all too present, and her new crush seeming all too off limits, all Chelsea knows is that she’s got a lot to figure out about love. Because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it….
▪Dan.  He is described as being attentive, smart, funny, caring, ambitious, really cute…those are only the words that I picked up on throughout the book.  From his actions, I would also add loyal and responsible.

▪The war that is going on between the two establishments.  This is another one of the love/hate relationships.  The part that I like about the war is that they take being reenactors seriously.

▪The history lessons.  It is hard to write about working in two places that do historical reenactments without having some basic knowledge of history.
▪How fickle the characters are.  When reading a story, you sometimes lose perspective of what age group you are reading about, especially when they are portraying reenactments from a different century.  When you remember that you are dealing with high-school students, it makes more sense.

▪Ezra Gorman.  Again – high school student.

▪Chelsea’s dad.  He has all these explanations for things and I can rarely follow them.  He likes to be the one talking.  There is a moment where he says some profound things, but mostly, he is saying stuff to either hear himself talk or to make himself look smarter.

Sep 17, 2011

Author Interview: Farley Katz

Farley Katz, author of Journal of a Schoolyard Bully, has answered some questions that my guest reviewers and I had for him.

Is it hard to transition your comics/drawings between the different genres or age groups? 

I draw a bit differently for every project I work on. For this book, I just tried to remember the kinds of cartoons and drawings I did back in middle school and get into that mode.
Do you base your characters off of real people?

Though all the characters are fictional, the bully does borrow a couple of "pranks" that various real life bullies did to me over the years.


Favorite color

red

Favorite holiday/season

spring/spring break

Word that best describes you and why

"Farley." Because it's my name.

Optimist or pessimist

yes

Favorite author/book/series

Too many great ones to pick just one.

Favorite food/drink

Hot sauce. I require it for most meals.

Favorite place to read/write/draw

Near a window where I can watch for enemies.


 
My guest reviewers came up with two questions:


Where did you learn how to draw?

I started by practicing drawing cartoons from comics books and animated shows that made me laugh. Then I drew my own.

Where do you get your ideas from?

spooky voice: "From inside of my brain!"


Sep 14, 2011

Sacrifice

Laura J. Burns & Melinda Metz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Publish Date: September 20, 2011
Version: galley grab e-book
Series:  Crave

Shay trusted Gabriel when he said that if he brought her to her family compound, that she would be safe.  Ever since finding out that she was Sam’s daughter, half vampire and needing vampire blood to live, she had hoped that she would find acceptance.  She never suspected that his family would treat her like an abomination.  Gabriel never thought about that either.  Here Shay was a prisoner once again.

Gabriel cannot believe how his family is acting.  All his thoughts are on Shay and how he must rescue her.   He tries to convince his family that Shay being Sam’s daughter, she is one of the family.  He tells Ernst, his father, about how Martin locked him up for a blood mule, and Ernst wants to use Shay as bait to lure Martin there so they can get their revenge.  Ernst and the rest of the family are appalled when they learn that Gabriel loves Shay.  This doesn’t bode well for him or for Shay.   In this book, you learn whether or not their love is strong enough to bear the scrutiny of Gabriel’s family and his past.

I thought this book was a good sequel to Crave. I’m not sure if there are going to be any more books in this series, but it will be interesting to read them.  I thought that Sacrifice was well written and the characters have good personalities to them.  I don’t like them all, but that is what makes them unique.  This book has a good assortment of mixed feelings, including the war between family, what is right and the person you love.  I like the balance that Sacrifice and Crave possesses of these emotions.
Gabriel and Shay are convinced that they can make their relationship work. Knowing that Shay is half-vampire, Gabriel thinks that his coven will embrace her as one of their own, but instead they view her as an abomination, a thing that doesn’t belong in either world. And they want her dead. Now Gabriel must make the ultimate decision - watch his love be killed by his coven or defy the people closest to him, the people he has spent centuries with to save her.

The communion the family members have with each other.

The characters.  They all have their own background story and are well-developed.

•The feelings that Gabriel has towards humans as a result of Shay.

Finding out more about the story with Emma and Sam.

Emma.  Shay’s mother.  She does everything for Shay.  That doesn’t stop in this novel.  In the beginning, she has flown to Miami thinking Shay was there.

Ernst.  Again, this book has multiple characters in which you love to hate and hate to love them.  They are both good and bad and Ernst is one of them.  He is the “father” of the family that Gabriel belongs to.

This is another like/dislike.  The prejudices that the characters have: I don’t like them, but I like how they are dealt with in this story.  That is all I’m going to say so that I don’t spoil anything.

•How Gabriel’s family treated Shay.

•Martin.  Again, he has made it onto my lists, this time on the opposite side.  At the end of Crave, you learn that Martin is doing this all for himself, for glory and not for Shay.  That continues on in this story. 

•The Blood rituals.  I don’t know where Ernst came up with or learned these rituals.

•Some of Gabriel’s family.  It is understandable why they think and act the way that they do, but that doesn’t excuse it.