Category Archives: World of Books

Rachel Vincent: My Soul to Take

World of Books February 9, 2010 Leave a comment

I am no longer a young adult but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy books written for them. 🙂 So, in the last year and a half, I ended up starting more than one YA series. The last in line is Soul Screamers by Rachel Vincent and I only read the first book.

I’ve heard of Rachel Vincent before but haven’t read anything up to now, there is a non YA series in her opus but I can’t say the excerpts made me that curious about it. I blame it totally on the person writing them because as much as I can tell, RV writes pretty much the thing I like to read.

I’m a bit busy lately so it took me almost a week to finish this book, even though it’s not even remotely long. Good thing about it is that it is easy enough to read and interesting enough that even though a few days pass, you don’t lose interest (that happens to me a lot) and just start reading something else, but each time I did have time, I took it up.

The idea is interesting enough – not seen before, that’s for sure (in that variant). Bean sidhe (or more familiarly known as banshee) or sidhe characters have been cropping up everywhere. The worlds they inhabit are always different and it seems they might turn out to be the new vampires. There are so many traits that can be attributed to sidhe so they might come handy in the future. We’ll just wait and see.

The only problem I had while reading this is with the main female character. Are all teenagers so, well, stupid when it comes to interpersonal communication? Was I like that? Makes me wish never to have children. This is more general when talking about YA fiction than in particular to this novel, although it appears here as well. I guess that means MS. Vincent did a good job portraying teenagers but it’s a bit annoying reading through it. 🙂

All in all, I’m bound for my bookstore for the next book in series.

R.E. Feist: Rage of a Demon King

World of Books February 5, 2010 Leave a comment

I already talked about Feist in my WoW posts but since this year I’m participating in very interesting book challenges, time has come to focus more on books and less on authors. Not that I’ll stop writing about them either but obviously in much lesser extent since those are mostly authors I read regularly so the new writers of the week are going to be more spaced.

But let me say a few words about the book.

It’s been on my list for a while, it’s number 3 in the Serpent War saga (there is one more left and waiting for me). The problem I have with fantasy books is that they are long. I don’t mind that at all but I have to take into account the amount of free time I have for reading and therefore if I start on a book I cannot let out of my hands and the time is limited, I tend to get upset. So all fantasy usually waits for better days (like when I’m home sick and can read all day long). 🙂

All Feist books were lent to me by my colleague (we all share books at work) and I went back to work really upset with him because he didn’t warn me about some of the bad things happening in book 3. 🙂 Ok, I wasn’t really upset but since we talked about the previous books and had some favorite characters, I was shocked he didn’t warn me because the one I’m talking about and trying not to spoil this too much was his favorite. So, I was a bit shocked but fortunately for me, it doesn’t detract from the book. Quite the opposite. Feist fantasy world is too real in some cases – people die, get killed and war is as messy as it gets.

And I have a confession to make. I started the book some time ago but I got seriously upset by one of the character’s stupidity and I’m sorry to say I doubted Mr. Feist and thought it was going to progress down the wrong way so I didn’t want to read anymore. 🙂 I was wrong. There is no part of this book that feels wrong to me and the characters are true to their character. 🙂

This book finally deals mostly with the problem of the serpent war but there are still some threads that need to be finished in book 4. I have high hopes for that and I know I won’t be disappointed. It feels great when you know you can start reading a book and enjoy it from the beginning because you just know that the writer you are reading is not going to disappoint you (one more time, sorry Mr. Feist for doubting you). 🙂

Charlaine Harris: Grave Sight

World of Books February 1, 2010 Comments: 2

Well, it seems I will be doing more book reviews than just writer features since I’m participating in several reading challenges and I need to post reviews of books for them.

So, to start with my first suspense and thriller review, one of Charlaine Hariss’ books. Honestly, I didn’t know CH had another series besides Sookie Stackhouse. I accidentally stumbled upon them the other day in my favourite bookstore. I ended up going home with one, Grave Sight – love the name. 🙂

Anyway, Harper Connolly has a special gift, she can find dead people. And she goes around when people call her to find their missing/killed loved ones. Of course, since she can do that she is exposed to quite a lot of prejudice and you can find that in the book. I don’t want to talk much about what happens but it’s interesting how much CH has to say about injustice in our world (or the American South world).

I also understand that vampires are much more interesting reading these days so that might be the reason why this series progressed to 3 books, while Sookie is aroung book 12 or 13, I’m not sure. Not that I mind. I can hardly wait for the next one. 🙂

But I alse look forward to reading the following book in Harper’s series. I wonder if that one will be as interestingly provocative and that I won’t be able to find the killer before the end (or get the idea what is happening). 🙂