Bookmania!

[rj_anderson]

So I went to my local indie children's bookstore to pick up a special order, and... I may have gone a little nuts. And now I have this pile of stuff, all of which I've heard good things about and thought looked intriguing enough to take a risk on... but I don't know where to begin!

[Poll #1198659]
Endorsements for a book on the list that you particularly loved are welcomed in comments, but if you particularly hated any of these, please refrain. I like to make up my own mind about books, without being prejudiced by somebody else's dislike (even if it turns out they are right).

And speaking of shiny new books I have just read wot are fabulous -- if you have any interest in contemporary YA fantasy and particularly if you're into vampires (which I myself am not, so take that as evidence that this book is a great read), you need to check out claudiagray's Evernight (HarperTeen, May 2008).

I already knew that Claudia was an excellent writer from reading some of her short stories, so I wasn't surprised that I enjoyed her rich and vivid but never overblown narrative style; I also expected the plot would be complex yet readily comprehensible and her main characters believable and sympathetic with flashes of wry humor, which proved true on all counts. But I thought myself very clever for anticipating where the plot was going and what was "really" up with some of the characters -- and I was wrong, wrong, WRONG. There's a twist about halfway through the story that made me literally drop the book and scream right out loud with the delicious shock of it -- and yet it didn't come out of left field, it was perfectly set up. I love books that play (or prey) on my expectations like that, so I have to give Claudia Gray big kudos for this one.

Evernight is the first in a series of four, and I can't wait to see how the next part of the story develops!

I also need to burble excitedly about Elizabeth E. Wein's Telemakos books sometime, but I want to read The Empty Kingdom (which is on back order at my local bookstore, WOE IS ME) first.

Comments

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Why would anyone be bothered by visitors commenting on older threads? I'm happy to receive comments on anything that interests people, even if I wrote the original post five years ago. So no worries. :)

The general consensus on Evernight seems to be that it starts slowly, but picks up considerably later on. (I wasn't bothered by the slow start myself, but a lot of other reviewers have mentioned it.)

As for the prologue, I don't like that kind of thing usually either, but resigned myself to it as probably being an editorial decision to make the book seem more exciting from the get-go. At least the scene in the beginning does actually resemble the one that happens later on, or at least the discrepancies weren't great enough to quibble about.

I haven't heard anybody who's read Evernight say that it's a Twilight knockoff, however, and I definitely wouldn't say so myself -- other than the fact that it happens to teenagers and involves romance and vampires, there really aren't that many similarities in the way it plays out. Certainly the characters involved are very different from the ones in Meyers' book -- in ways that don't even become fully apparent until you hit the twist I mentioned.

Or at least, I didn't think much of Twilight but quite enjoyed this book, which is enough of a dissimilarity for me. :)

[tapinger.livejournal.com]

Well, as I sort-of mentioned, I've only gotten to page 8. I guess I'll have to see how it turns out—books where I yell "What!" in the middle are somewhat few and far between, so it should be fun if it fulfills expectations... :)

[tapinger.livejournal.com]

OK, I finished Evernight last week, I'm just not sure how much I have to say about it. I will probably read the second book after it comes out but it's hard to say without seeing how the series turns out whether this is a keeper. It strikes me as an anti-Twilight in some ways. I like that the vampires aren't invincible and that the characters are more rounded (it isn't a clear Good vs. Evil here) but Bianca's stupidity bugs me: the first time was excusable, the second time was not (but perhaps I am being too harsh).

As far as the twist goes, I think anticipating it and trying to guess what it was ahead of time was more fun than actually finding out (not that it didn't surprise me; although it was one of my (less preferred) guesses, I wasn't expecting it right then). It's interesting how expectations can affect reading—in a lot of cases I am more willing to accept books by authors I'm already familiar with.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I admit to being biased in Claudia's favor because I've been reading and enjoying her fanfic for years, so I was prepared to trust her to tell me a good story from the get-go. It wasn't until I saw other Evernight readers criticizing various aspects of the story that I stopped to say, "Hmm, yes, I can see why they might feel that way..." although obviously, those things didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the story and on the whole still don't.

I didn't think of Bianca being stupid so much as naive, but I guess mileage may vary. I do tend to have a low tolerance of stupid protagonists as a rule, but if a character is portrayed as sheltered and/or young, I'm more willing to give them a pass for a little while.

[tapinger.livejournal.com]

I admit to thinking that "stupid" may not have been the right word after I posted that, but what is? I thought it was a poor choice at the time she was making it (the second time), before any additional consequences were manifest. She certainly seems to be flirting with trouble. (Additional thought: Willingness to risk consequences might be used to indicate "true love", but Bianca as a person doesn't strike me as really having thought it through; she seems more like she's following her emotions.)

She certainly seems naive in some ways, but I wonder if some of it isn't pretended.

The comment about fanfic is interesting; I had forgotten that you mentioned her short stories. I wasn't intending to aim at you with that remark. :)

Additional data points: my (teenaged) brother liked the book except for the ending ("It didn't leave any big questions open"), but he said the twist wasn't really a twist ("It was completely in line with the characters!" "But did you expect it?" "Well...") Teenaged sister was satisfyingly shocked by it.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

No offense taken! And I agree that Bianca is very much led by her emotions rather than stopping to think if this "true love" has any real basis -- which is something I normally find irritating in characters myself, but it is a believably mid-adolescent frame of mind. I admit to being somewhat more disposed toward the idea of Bianca/Balthazar than Bianca/Lucas, though.