The past few books that I've read have all had one thing in common - I've seriously considered giving up on them before I was even a quarter of the way through. Why, you ask? Well, for a variety of reasons: Poor writing, annoying dialogue, iffy concept, and plain old boring, boring, boring. But if I've learned anything after reading over a thousand books, it's that you should never give up too soon, so I stuck with them. Some got better, some stayed pretty much the same, and one, incredibly, got way better and then way worse!
I started off the month by reading An Assassin's Guide to Love & Treason by Virginia Boecker:
When Lady Katherine's father is killed for being an illegally practicing Catholic, she discovers treason wasn't the only secret he's been hiding: he was also involved in a murder plot against the reigning Queen Elizabeth I. With nothing left to lose, Katherine disguises herself as a boy and travels to London to fulfill her father's mission, and to take it one step further--kill the queen herself.
Katherine's opportunity comes in the form of William Shakespeare's newest play, which is to be performed in front of Her Majesty. But what she doesn't know is that the play is not just a play--it's a plot to root out insurrectionists and destroy the rebellion once and for all.
The mastermind behind this ruse is Toby Ellis, a young spy for the queen with secrets of his own. When Toby and Katherine are cast opposite each other as the play's leads, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another. But the closer they grow, the more precarious their positions become. And soon they learn that star-crossed love, mistaken identity, and betrayal are far more dangerous off the stage than on.
When I first started reading this, I was like, meh, this book isn't very good. I even told someone that. Another mother at taekwondo asked me what I was reading, and I said to her, "It's not very good." It seemed to be written in that boring way that so much historical fiction is written in. You know what I mean, right?
Then all of a sudden, about a third of the way through, I was loving it. L.O.V.I.N.G. it. I don't know what it was, exactly. Maybe the story was just a bit slow in getting going - introducing the characters and concept behind the story and all that.
The book is set in Elizabethan England, and it has political plots, and intrigue, and one of Shakespeare's plays, and Shakespeare himself, and boys pretending to be girls, and a girl pretending to be a boy playing the part of a boy pretending to be a girl who pretends to be a boy, and it has falling in love, and mistaken identity, and a generous handful of comic relief (mostly in the form of Shakespeare himself, who is portrayed as completely eccentric and quite possibly somewhat mad).
I especially liked the fact that the characters in the book were performing a play based on the concept of misrule ("normal things reversed...chaos set in motion..."), while at the same time being unwitting players in a real-life version of a similar scenario. Very well done!
I also loved the way Boecker describes the romantic scenes and the character's feelings - so vivid and emotional and profoundly real - just what a great romance novel should be!
I think I just may have to buy a copy!
Rating: 4 Stars
Reading Level: 6.1
Age Appropriate: Upper Grades
Page Count: 374
Genre: Coming of Age, Romance, Historical Fiction
Keywords: England, Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, political intrigue, romance, *
The next book I read was Courting Darkness by Robin LaFevers:
Sybella has always been the darkest of Death’s daughters, trained at the convent of Saint Mortain to serve as his justice. But she has a new mission now. In a desperate bid to keep her two youngest sisters safe from the family that nearly destroyed them all, she agrees to accompany the duchess to France, where they quickly find themselves surrounded by enemies. Their one ray of hope is Sybella’s fellow novitiates, disguised and hidden deep in the French court years ago by the convent—provided Sybella can find them.
Genevieve has been undercover for so many years, she struggles to remember who she is or what she’s supposed to be fighting for. Her only solace is a hidden prisoner who appears all but forgotten by his guards. When tragedy strikes, she has no choice but to take matters into her own hands—even if it means ignoring the long awaited orders from the convent.
As Sybella and Gen’s paths draw ever closer, the fate of everything they hold sacred rests on a knife’s edge. Will they find each other in time, or will their worlds collide, destroying everything they care about?
I chose to read this book for three reasons: it was sitting there on the new releases shelf at the library just waiting to be picked up, it is a companion novel to a series I already read and thoroughly enjoyed, and I'd heard that it was a stand-alone novel, so I could read it right after it came out and not have to worry about waiting for the rest of a trilogy.
The book picks up the story told in the His Fair Assassins Trilogy right after the last one left off. It is told in alternating chapters from the perspective of one of the original heroines, Sybella, and then of a new character, Genevieve. And that is where the problem came in. The first four chapters of the book were told by Sybella, and I found those to be kind of boring. Not just what was happening, but the writing as well. (It also has the sort-of-formal sound that a lot of historic fiction is written in.) And I was like, I don't know if I can do this if something doesn't change. I mean, the book was 498 pages! The next three chapters were told by Genevieve, and they were pretty much just establishing the relationship between herself and another annoying girl at court. Also boring. I was so not into it. A few more boring chapters, and then, theeeeeen two things happened: we started getting some action on the Sybella side (actual action, like in an action movie), and we met the mysterious stranger on the Genevieve side, leading to some action of the romantic variety. And then things were looking way up.
The Sybella chapters for the rest of the book, though not bad, were not nearly as good as the Genevieve ones (well, not until near the end, anyway), because they were just too redundant. The Genevieve chapters, however, were great, and by about halfway through the book I was remembering why I enjoyed LaFever's original trilogy so much.
It's funny, because, while I read, I put little sticky notes on the parts of a book that I really love, whether it is incredible figurative language, a particularly well-written scene, or any of a number of other examples of an author's brilliance, but I didn't put a single sticky note in this one. Why? Well, the only things that really stood out were usually making reference to something that had happened before, so they wouldn't make sense if read all on their own. LaFevers books are just like that - the sum of the whole is greater than the parts.
So there I was, finally, totally enjoying the book, and then - boom! With about fifty pages to go, I realized that there was no way this story was going to be wrapped up by the last page. It turns out that it isn't a stand alone at all - it is the first book in a duology (not to mention the fact that the story really isn't going to make much sense if you haven't already read the original trilogy)!
Ah well, what can you do? This kind of thing happens. But hopefully most of you have now been forewarned and will wait a few more months before picking this one up.
Rating: 4 Stars
Reading Level: (probably 6.something like LaFevers' other novels)
Age Appropriate: Upper Grades
Page Count: 498
Genre: Romance, Historical Fantasy
Keywords: France, Brittany, political intrigue, romance, assassins, Middle Ages
The last book I managed to get through last month was The Lying Woods, by Ashley Elston:
Owen Foster has never wanted for anything. Then his mother shows up at his elite New Orleans boarding school cradling a bombshell: his privileged life has been funded by stolen money. After using the family business, the single largest employer in his small Louisiana town, to embezzle millions and drain the employees' retirement accounts, Owen's father vanished without a trace, leaving Owen and his mother to deal with the fallout.
Owen returns to Lake Cane to finish his senior year, where people he can barely remember despise him for his father's crimes. It's bad enough dealing with muttered insults and glares, but when Owen and his mother receive increasingly frightening threats from someone out for revenge, he knows he must get to the bottom of what really happened at Louisiana Frac--and the cryptic note his father sent him at his boarding school days before disappearing.
Owen's only refuge is the sprawling, isolated pecan orchard he works at after school, owned by a man named Gus who has his own secrets--and in some ways seems to know Owen better than he knows himself. As Owen uncovers a terrible injustice that looms over the same Preacher Woods he's claimed as his own, he must face a shocking truth about his own past--and write a better future.This is another book that I picked up from the new releases shelf at the library. I didn't really read the blurb inside the book jacket (only the first part), so I was mostly going off the picture on the front cover. Do you see that cover? That tree that looks like antlers (made of bone)? Do you see how it says "THE TRUTH WON'T STAY BURIED" up at the top? Doesn't that cover whisper "creepy" to you? This book was not creepy at all. It wasn't even meant to be. Who decided that would make a good cover for this story?!
Not only was the story completely misrepresented by its cover, but it wasn't very well written. Okay, let me take that back. The plot itself was actually quite nicely done. But the actual words that were used to move it along were just NOT. Especially the dialogue. It was like a bland casserole with a lot of cheese. (Did you get that simile?)
Of course, I have read worse, but really the only thing that kept me going was that I somehow got hooked on the whole mystery part and I wanted to find out what really happened. As it turned out, I was completely satisfied by the big reveal, but I just wish I would have had a more enjoyable time getting there.
(Reading Level: 4.8 / MG+)
Remember how I mentioned that one of the books I read had an iffy concept that got way better and then way worse? Well, I didn't actually read that book until May, so I'm going to save it for my next post!
