Active Voice

Hello! Happy New Year!

By Frank Beddor [LibraryThing]

The day Princess Alyss Heart turns seven, exiled Queen Redd attacks and takes over Wonderland. Forced to flee for her life, Alyss falls through the Pool of Tears and lands in England in the 1850s. Abandoned and alone, she loses her magic. Meanwhile, Redd rules Wonderland with an iron fist, and only a small band of rebels resists her. Their only hope is that somehow, Alyss can be brought home to take back the country that is rightfully hers.

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By Carolyn Hennesy [LibraryThing - Amazon]

Pandora and her friends have collected Jealousy and Vanity, but now they must travel to the Atlas Mountains to collect Laziness. To make matters worse, Pandora is quickly separated from her friends, all of the heroes are quickly enslaved, and Hera has kidnapped Pandy’s beloved dog. Alone for real now, Pandora must use her wits to free herself and find Laziness, but that’s no easy task when the sky is, quite literally falling.

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Book Seven
Starting time: 4:10 PM
Ending time: 6:25 PM

Title: Nightmare Academy #1: Monster Hunters
Author: Dean Lorey
Genre: Contemporary fantasy
Pages: 310

Summary: Charlie has nightmares… And bad things happen. After a horrible thing comes out of his dreams and tries to kill his family, he’s recruited by the Nightmare Division, to be trained at their Academy, and learn how to control his powers. Because people like Charlie bring monsters into this world — but they can also stop them.

Thoughts: Bleh. This book tries too hard to be wacky and hip, and the two characters who were supposed to be funny were pretty much detestably sexist. (Hint: calling your female coworker “sweetheart” after she’s asked you not to is not funny and charming, it’s demeaning.) The book had a good premise, and once the action picked up the execution was fine, but it did nothing for me (except make me irritated).

Two cupcakes.

(And now a note: because I’ve only got an hour and a half left, and the last book in my TBR pile definitely won’t fit into that time, I’m totally going to cheat and pick up an old favorite to skim… *g*)

Book Two
Time Started: 11:30 pm
Time Finished: 12:40 am

Title: California Diaries: Dawn, Diary 1
Author: Ann M. Martin
Genre: Teen drama llama.
Pages: 180
Summary: As Dawn moves from the middle school to the high school, she finds her world changing as her circle of friends shift to include some and exclude others.
Thoughts: The CA Diaries series was a Baby-sitters Club spinoff that featured Dawn and her California friends in a somewhat more adult setting, with eating disorders and drinking and words like “breast” and “gynecologist.” Shocking! I’ve been reading through all the BSC books, including spinoffs, here, but I’d never read a CA Diaries book before. It didn’t charm me. Dawn is pretty much horrible (and seems to have lost all of her interests and convictions from the BSC proper), all the girls treat each other like crap, and the scene where a 17-year-old ogles a 13-year-old’s bra-less breast through her wet t-shirt is way gross. The brightest spot was Dawn’s brother Jeff being a hilariously sullen little brat. I love that kid.

Two cupcakes.

ETA: I am heading to bed now, because I have to be up for MoCCA Fest tomorrow, but when I return tomorrow afternoon, the reading and blogging shall recommence!

By Michael Buckley [The Sisters Grimm at Librarything - The Sisters Grimm at Amazon]

Jess and I decided that our co-written review for HP7 was so much fun, we wanted to do it again! And since this series was, at least in part, the inspiration to start this site, it seemed like a great series to co-review. So here we go!

Since their parents disappeared a year and a half ago, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm have been shuffled from foster home to foster home. That is, until their grandmother, a woman they thought was dead, comes out of the woodwork to claim them. Granny Relda tells them that they are descended from the famous Brothers Grimm – and what’s more, that all of the characters their ancestors wrote about are real, and living in the girls’ new home of Ferryport Landing. Soon Sabrina and Daphne are running from giants, eating dinner with the Big Bad Wolf, and matching wits with Puck, the Pied Piper, and Prince Charming. Granny Relda is eager to train the girls to follow in her footsteps as fairy tale detectives, but for Sabrina and Daphne there’s one mystery that’s the most important of all: can they rescue their parents from the fairy tale conspirators who kidnapped them – without falling into the bad guys’ clutches themselves?

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Dragonlance: The New Adventures
By Tim Wagoner [Librarything - Amazon]

When Nearra awoke in the woods, she couldn’t remember who she was. After an attack by goblins, nearly being eaten by a dragon, and almost getting run down by a minotaur, she collects a group of friends (a ranger, a warrior, a kinder adventurer, an elfin guide, and the minotaur) who help her on her quest to discover who she is. Her only hope is to find a mystical temple and ask the priests and priestesses there to heal her. But it’s a dangerous trip, and there are all kinds of evil folks chasing them, and one in their own group may be a traitor…

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By Alan Snow [Librarything - Amazon]

Arthur has lived underground with his grandfather his whole life, until one night, while foraging for food, he witnesses a sinister group of men on a cheese hunt – even though hunting wild cheeses has been outlawed for years. Soon Arthur finds himself wrapped up with the cheese hunters and their mysterious plan to destroy the city of Ratbridge. With the help of his fellow underground denizens, the clever boxtrolls and the shy cabbageheads, plus a ragtag crew of piratical humans, rats, and crows, Arthur must stop Snatcher and his fellow Cheese Guild members before they eliminate Ratbridge – and the peaceful creatures living beneath it – forever.

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Before we get started, here, some older reviews I’ve done, relevant to this site:

The City of Ember and The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau. Five cupcakes, and a friggin’ cherry on top. (Genre: Apocalyptic/Dystopian Science Fiction)

Uglies, Pretties and Specials by Scott Westerfeld. Four and a half cupcakes for Uglies, three and a half for the other two. (Genre: Apocalyptic/Dystopian Science Fiction)

Bruce Coville novels, including the My Teacher series, The A.I. Gang, The Dragonslayers, The Nina Tanleven Ghost Series, and The Magic Shop series. I’d say the average rating is about four cupcakes. (Genres: Aliens Among Us, Other, High Fantasy, Contemporary/Urban Fantasy, and Fairy Tale/Mythic)

Pendragon, books one and two, by D.J. MacHale. Two cupcakes. (Genre: Portal Fantasy.)

Meta talk about writing and books:

Fantasy Females (Of the Literary Variety), about the roles female characters play in fantasy.

Seriously, What is Wrong With Cinderella?, about Disney princesses, ideas about how to keep female characters dynamic, and a little bit of repeated review of Pendragon.