Book Thoughts: The Clockwork Scarab

Title: The Clockwork Scarab
Author: Colleen Gleason
Series: Stoker & Holmes #1

First off, a special thank you to LibraryThing and Chronicle Books for providing my copy of this one!

I loved the premise of this novel -- relatives of Sherlock Holmes and Bram Stoker in a steampunk London, solving mysteries and taking out bad guys together. The world it's set in is super cool, and the allusions to the Sherlock Holmes stories and Stoker's Dracula are really fun to spot. And the characters are brilliant: you can see the logical Holmes tradition shining through Mina and the fierce vampire hunter in Evaline, but they also have emotions and insecurities that make them new, unique characters and not just another reiteration of the same detective or vampire hunter. I'm usually wary of split first-person narratives, too, but I thought Mina and Evaline had very distinct voices. The minor characters -- Dylan, Grayling, Pix, the other girls -- were also pretty great, although I'd have liked a lot more about Irene Adler.

The characters and the world were the strong points, and Gleason's way with words is excellent, but I felt that sometimes there were minor plot holes -- granted, the copy I got was an ARC so it's entirely possible those things have been fixed, but there were just tiny things; someone wearing gloves on one page that suddenly wasn't with no mention of having taken them off on the next. The plot on the whole was very well-organized. My only real complaint was that despite how much I loved all of the individual elements of the novel's world, it felt like a little too much: detectives and vampire hunting and time travel and steampunk and alternate histories and Egyptology... all of it was super cool, but together it was a little overwhelming.

All in all, though, it was a fun, quick read that kept me turning pages. Not one I'd be rushing to shove into all of my friends' hands, but I will definitely be looking for the rest of the series. I want more adventures with these characters!

Book Thoughts: Shades of Earth

Title: Shades of Earth
Author: Beth Revis
Series: Across the Universe #3

*Warning: Spoilers for previous books!*

Elder and Amy have left the spaceship behind and made for Centauri-Earth. Surely whatever danger awaits them is worth being able to see the open sky again -- and they'll be able to wake up Amy's parents and the rest of the frozens.

Life on the planet turns out to be more difficult than they expected, though. Orion's warnings about monsters prove more true than they could ever have imagined, and the mysteries surrounding Godspeed's failure to land on time are far from solved.

I loved this trilogy all the way through. The characters especially made me want to keep reading (although sometimes the first-person narrators were a tiny bit hard to distinguish) -- Amy and Elder of course, but the others as well. I enjoyed the pacing, the plot, the twists and turns, all of it. Without saying too much (I don't want to spoil it for anyone!), I also thought the stylistic choices made in the last few chapters were brilliant; I've loved the use of negative space (line breaks) for emotional effect through the whole series and I think it works especially well in the ending. And content-wise... some of it is not how I wanted the series to end, but I think all of it was exactly how the series needed to end.

A brilliant ending to a brilliant series, and a story all its own too. Two thumbs-up for this trilogy! I can't wait for whatever Beth Revis comes out with next!

SINNER Cover!

EW released the cover of Maggie Stiefvater's SINNER today! I loved the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, so I'm super excited for the companion novel following Cole.

The original trilogy is getting new covers, too -- click through to the article to check them out. I think they're pretty, but I'm still kind of in love with the old covers. I do love how the new ones pay homage to the original design, though! Let me know what you think. :)

Book Thoughts: So Silver Bright

Title: So Silver Bright
Author: Lisa Mantchev
Series: Theatre Illuminata #3

Okay okay so. I've been trying to find this book FOREVER. It's been three years since I read the previous one and my local bookstore didn't have it and my local library didn't have it and the library at my college didn't have it, and then I finally got my hands on it --

And you couldn't tell it had been three years since I'd read the last book, the way I devoured it. The story pulls you right back in and reminds you well enough of what's going on that you're totally not lost. (Of course, it helps that this is such an engaging story that I still remembered most of the details even after three years.)

And I just. This was such a wonderful conclusion to a simply beautiful trilogy. Bertie continues to be awesome, because even though she's totally in the middle of a love triangle, she completely resists the damsel-in-distress trope and gets things done her way. Ariel and Nate are both awesome characters, and the FAIRIES don't even get me started because we'll be here all night with my love for them. I love the way word-magic and Shakespeare are incorporated, and the way this draws on the magic of the theater and of storytelling, and yeah pretty much everything about it.

The ending was bittersweet, as the endings to great series always are, but I think it was just what it needed to be. A truly stunning trilogy that I am so glad I finally got to finish. :) Definitely worth your time!

Book Thoughts: Dreamless

Title: Dreamless
Author: Josephine Angelini
Series: Starcrossed #2

*Beware spoilers for book 1!*

Helen's life kind of sucks. She can't be with the boy she loves, because (to their knowledge) they're cousins, and that's gross. Plus, she's spending every night in the Underworld and getting no sleep in her quest to free the Scions from the wrath of the Furies. And Tantalus still has it out for her, in new and interesting ways.

I continue to adore this series. I love love love the characters, the plot, the way familiar mythology is incorporated into a totally new story. The scenes with Morpheus in this one I found a bit odd, but I love love loved the way everything with the Furies and Cassandra went. Also Automedon. I don't want to say too much else because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but this one was even better than the first book (you can definitely see the author's writing get better from that one to this one, and the writing was not bad in book one) and I can't wait to get my hands on the third one. Finals week, hurry up and go away so I can read GODDESS!