Nameless is a bit like billowing, amazing clouds on a warm sunny day.  It’s nice.  Just really nice, you know?  Sure, it doesn’t move fast and clouds aren’t the most gripping things to look at, but it was just really nice.   God I really liked Nameless and I really like clouds.  They’re so magical.

Unless they’re giving you goatse.  Don’t look that up if you don’t know what it is btw.

Nameless wasn’t a perfect novel, but it was an enjoyable novel. I feel like most of the things it set out to do, it accomplished.

Things like creating, nurturing and building the relationship between Nico and Cami.  Book, candle, Nico *cue heart melt* (you’d get it if you read the book).  There felt like a depth of years to their relationship and that’s a hard thing to manufacture in a few hundred pages.

Nameless was a pretty ambitious story, which worked out for me because I’m a pretty ambitious reader, but it’s not going to float everyone’s boats. 

You know a book is powerful when it begins with a strong image of how things are, and is then unafraid to in one quick motion, ruthlessly and thoroughly turn everything you as a reader have begun to accept as fact, on its head.

I unabashedly consider myself a prime plot-twist detector. I will see whats ahead when I’m reading, or I will call it out during movies with my friends, much to their annoyance. So when I heard that there was an obvious twist in this book I was kind of dreading it. Perhaps my internal detector was jammed, because I honestly did not see this one coming, which is really painful to admit because the signs were *there*. Not only there in fact, but everywhere. I’m glad it panned out that way for me though, because when it happened I got to feel the complete shock of reorientation. Regardless, I promise to revoke my self-placed title.

I kind of just stumbled into reading this book. I happened upon it when browsing and found myself hooked by the intro. See, there’s this girl and she’s a mind reader, and her abilities cause her to accidentally discover her stepfather has committed murder.

With this information, both the girl and her mother have to go into hiding. She changes her name to Becca King and her mother, Laurel, sends her off to live temporarily with a close friend while Laurel goes and establishes a new life for them in BC. Their getaway seems to have gone off without a hitch until Becca is forced to make her way to her new destination by herself and upon doing so discovers that Laurel’s friend has just suffered a heart attack without having told anyone about Becca’s arrival.

Becca tries calling her mom, but the call never goes through. So Becca’s caught, parentless, and she might possibly be in danger of being caught by her stepfather.

Here’s the thing: I want to read a book about super powers that exist through ink and come to life in drawings. I want it to be set somewhere beautiful that I have never been before, a place with customs different from where I live. But most of all, I want the main character to be proactive, to struggle with their powers and their background. To try their best to protect those they love and to hurt when they fail and vow to do better. I want them to change and fight to come to terms with who they are. Fortunately, there was a character just like that in Ink.

Unfortunately, the MC turned out to be his girlfriend, Katie Greene, who falls in love with Yuu Tomihoro and from that point on is completely useless. The MC should have depth. To be interesting, the MC should act upon the world around them.

Welcome to In 10 Lines. Ever wanted to know what happens in a book, but couldn’t be assed reading it for yourself? Cuddlebuggery comes to the rescue with In 10 Lines. In 10 Lines we will tell you everything you need to know about the featured book so that you can cheerfully move on with your life, or choose to read it should your attention be piqued. So sit back, relax, and try not to clench as we proceed.

Today we’ll be reworking Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, one of Steph’s favourite and an amazing series. Fun, sexy, flirty and dangerous – this series generally causes people to rave generously in the direction of either Mal or Darling with incessant passion. So without further adieu, we present to you: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo in 10 Lines!

Mal: Hey Alina, it’s been a tough childhood as two orphan bestfriends, But I just want you to know that even though I am super popular, everyone loves me, and you’re a mangy loner, I still care about you.

I was very, very excited when I started Fear.

I know that, for many (if not most) fans, this installment is their favorite.  I’ve known this since the very beginning, before I even started my series marathon with a rereading of Gone.  For the last four books, this little fact has been sitting in the back of my mind, leading me to believe wholeheartedly that I was going to absolutely love this installment.  When I read Lies, the weakest book for many fans, and was blown away by it, my expectations for the fourth and fifth novels skyrocketed.  I was certain that the next two were going to, somehow, be even better, as that’s what most reviews seemed to point towards.  I mean, sure, my opinion of Lies was a bit off from the general consensus, but that was probably a one-time thing, right?

Unfortunately, no.  My expectations for Plague were so high that the end result managed to be a bit of a disappointment. 

The general consensus seems to be that Plague is a superior sequel to Lies, which many fans see as the weakest installment in Michael Grant’s series thus far.  I read both with this in mind, under the assumption that my opinion would end up being similar, if not identical.

And, wouldn’t you know it?  I ended up loving the latter more than the former.  Go figure.

To be honest, I feel that this series may have peaked with Lies.  While Plague is an excellent follow-up, it feels more like a maintainer than an innovator, keeping the quality of the story steady instead of enhancing it.  Rather than significantly improving upon the aspects of its predecessors, as the last two books have done, this installment keeps the status quo.

Now, I’m not saying that Plague is a mediocre book, much less an outright poor one.  It’s a fantastic installment, to be sure, and I enjoyed it immensely. 

I’m not sure how to proceed with this review WITHOUT resorting to a shit ton of gifs. I just really feel like some kind of crazy wild action would better represent how I feel than words ever could.

I mean, I could say that The Eternity Cure is one badass tale that left me desperate for more because this story was fucking awesome.  Or I could just do this:

Which is, no joke, my exact facial expression upon finishing this book.  I think it actually stayed like that for a full two minutes.

I could tell you that Allison Sekemoto was such an unmitigated badass that I am prepared to lay my sword down at her badass feet and swear my fealty to her as the god of badass forever.  Or I could just do this:

See how much easier that is?  I can’t write this bloody review because I’m too busy stalking Julie Kagawa and thinking of ways to beg her to hurry up and give me the next book.

Well hello my fellow book worms.

I have been remiss in my reviewing of late and for that I apologise. I could bury you with excuses but I find that honesty has always been the best policy for this kind of crap.

I lost my passion for it in the latter half of 2012. I didn’t want to write. Yes, most of you can guess the reasons why, but then I realised that I wasn’t changing anything by letting it get on top of me so I retreated into the novel that got me through a lot of my childhood. I hid in the adventures of one Bilbo Baggins. I wandered with Thorin Oakenshield… I became absorbed into The Hobbit.

With the film (Don’t even get me started on Peter Jackson fucking that up) I know it has been a popular re-read but one thing that I feel a lot of people miss out on when they talk about this book is the tone of it.

I approached the third installment in Michael Grant’s series with caution.  From the reviews that I’ve glanced at, it seems that, for many fans, Lies is the weakest book in the series thus far.  Since I tend to agree with the majority opinion when it concerns YA fiction, I was fully prepared to enjoy Lies, but perhaps not to the extent that I did Gone and Hunger.

And, as it was to be expected, I had several issues with this installment.  Certain things that frustrated and annoyed me a great deal.  While I’ve loved this series from the beginning, I’ve had to wrestle with varying degrees of disappointment since my rereading of Gone and beyond.  To put it bluntly, I’ve had to get over the fact that these books aren’t perfect.  They’re flawed in many ways, and after being so eager to read them for so long, this fact came as a fairly significant letdown.