Active Voice

By Cinda Williams Chima [Chima at LibraryThing]

Underlying the world we know is a world of magic users – a handful of lesser guilds, ruled over by the powerful and ruthless wizards. For centuries, the wizards have been forcing magical warriors into deadly tournaments to avoid confronting each other directly and starting an all-out wizard war. That all changes in The Warrior Heir, when Jack Swift, an ordinary high school student, discovers that he may be the last warrior alive – and every wizard in the world wants to use him or kill him. Jack is thrust into the wizard tournament, and wizard society is subsequently turned in its head. In The Wizard Heir, the immensely powerful young wizard Seph McCauley finds himself a pawn in the growing wizard war, thanks to a magical lineage he doesn’t even know about. And in The Dragon Heir, the fate of everything may just rest in the hands of the seemingly-unmagical Madison Moss, who is trying to fight both her growing attraction to Seph and the destructive power she holds over him. If the magical world is to be saved, Madison must figure out her place in the ancient legends before the other side gets their hands on her.

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By Karen Healey [LibraryThing - Goodreads]

High school student Ellie’s life is fairly normal, until she agrees to help out with a play at the local university, thanks to the urging of her best friend, Kevin. But someone else in the play has her sights set on Kevin – someone not quite human – and suddenly Ellie finds herself navigating the world of the New Zealand supernatural armed only with a magic mask and the help of the mysterious Mark (on whom Ellie just happens to have an enormous crush). As Ellie discovers that the mythology of her homeland is all too real, she finds that that selfsame mythology is threatening to destroy New Zealand – and that she may be the only person left who can stop it.

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By Keith Giffen, John Rogers, Cully Hamner, Rafael Albuquerque, et al [Blue Beetle on LibraryThing]

Jaime Reyes was an ordinary kid, until a piece of advanced alien tech shaped like a scarab attached itself to his spine, giving him superpowers, and the Justice League dragged him into space to fight an evil satellite. Now he’s back in El Paso, trying to put his life back together after being missing for a year – and trying to learn how to control the scarab in his back, which wants to turn him into a killing machine. Oh, and the scarab’s creators, the Reach, have arrived on Earth, and Jaime’s the only one who knows they’re here to take over. Can the new Blue Beetle stop an alien invasion, protect his family and his city, and survive a legacy that’s already killed both his predecessors?

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By Sarah Rees Brennan [LibraryThing]

Nick has spent his life on the run from magicians and the demons they call up, with only his brother Alan and his crazy mother. But when a couple of kids come to him and Alan for help and Alan gets marked by a demon, Nick discovers that Alan has been lying to him for his whole life and nothing — not Alan or even Nick himself — is what it seems.

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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 Ten
Starting Time: 1:30 pm
Ending Time: 3:22 pm

Title: The Pharaoh’s Secret
Author: Marissa Moss
Genre: Contemporary/urban / fairy tale/mythic / historical fantasy
Pages: 307
Summary: Talibah finds herself trying to unravel ancient Egyptian intrigue in order to put the souls that are haunting her to rest.
Thoughts: I liked the entirely non-white cast, the pluckiness of the little brother, and the solid grounding in history and Egyptology, but otherwise this book wasn’t very good. The prose was weak, and the resolution of the mystery – the explanation of how the modern characters were connected to the historical ones – was incoherent.

Two and a half cupcakes

Book One
Time Started: 8:30 pm
Time Finished: 11:20 pm

Title: Magic or Madness
Author: Justine Larbalestier
Genre: Contemporary/urban fantasy.
Pages: 290
Summary: Reason has spent her whole life on the run from her grandmother Esmerelda, but when Reason’s mother goes crazy, Reason finds herself trapped in Esmerelda’s world, with two new friends and the terrifying knowledge that magic is real – and dangerous.
Thoughts: Really, really excellent. Very exciting and creepy, and the characters are great. The world-building is also phenomenal. I want to know more, but alas, I will have to wait until this weekend is over to get my hands on the other two books in the trilogy.

Four cupcakes.

By Nina Malkin [Amazon]

When Dice’s cousin Pen has a near-fatal fall from a tree, she winds up possessed by one Sinclair Youngblood Powers, a ghost who was hanged in that very tree 250 years ago. Sin is determined to get revenge on the town that killed him, but Dice is just as determined to stop him. However, after an exorcism gone wrong, Sin finds himself in a body all his own – and Dice finds herself forced to try to stop the boy she’s already fallen in love with.

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By Holly Black and Ted Naifeh [LibraryThing - Amazon]

When Rue’s mother disappears, Rue starts seeing…things. Faeries, to be precise. And as if that weren’t enough for any high school girl to have to deal with, her father gets arrested. Did Rue’s father really kill her mother? What was her mother, exactly? And can Rue stop the war between humans and faeries that is brewing in the wings?

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By Francis Hardinge [LibraryThing - Amazon]

Ryan, Josh, and Chelle don’t think much of it when they steal a few coins from a wishing well for bus fare back home. But to steal the coins from a well spirit is to take on her obligation of granting wishes, and soon the kids find themselves developing the powers to do just that – from the eyes on Ryan’s knuckles that see things they shouldn’t, to Chelle’s newfound ability to speak the thoughts of strangers, to Josh’s sudden affinity with electromagnetism. It’s then that they find that the wishes people make in their hearts are infinitely darker and more dangerous than the ones they speak aloud, and that the changes the well witch has wrought in them go deeper than they think.

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