Fic Col (Reviewing "W.A.R.P.: the Reluctant Assassin")

Passing the time when taking a LONG car trip with my husband can be difficult. It's never a problem for me to read while he's driving and listening to music, but my husband is a reader who must have absolute silence to enjoy a book and I'm a driver who must have music or conversation to drive. To make it possible for me to get through the two books I brought with me on vacation, I spent two days of driving reading one of my books out loud to my husband. This book was "W.A.R.P.: the Reluctant Assassin" by Eoin Colfer, the author of the Artemis Fowl series.

And what a FABULOUS read aloud. This book was EVERYTHING I hoped an Eoin Colfer book would be. It was high action, packed with British goodness, and had that quirky, beautiful sarcastic sense of humor through out that the Artemis Fowl series had and that Colfer carried through beautifully into this first book in this series.

The book focuses around two main characters, Riley, a 14-year-old orphan living in Victorian London who is the unfortunate apprentice to Albert Garrick, a dark, twisted, illusionist assassin, and Chevron Savano, a seventeen-year-old native american FBI agent. The two meet when Riley's intended first kill turns out to be a time-traveling scientist who developed wormhole travel for the FBI's Witness Anonymous Relocation Program (WARP) who pulls him through the wormhole on his return trip to modern day London. Unfortunately for the two youngsters, Albert Garrick manages to make his way through to the future and is after his wayward apprentice to either collect him or kill him.

This book is DEFINITELY made for a slightly older reader than Colfer's Artemis Fowl series - there is a lot more blood and gore and swearing in this book than in the Artemis Fowl series, but the same intelligent, sarcastic humor is there throughout the novel. This book definitely is for a more advanced reader as well, the syntax and vocab is definitely at a higher level than perhaps the low end of the interest level.

Five Defects

1. This book is always going to be compared to the Artemis Fowl series and I think that comparison is a little unfair. It's a little more sci fi and a little less magic. The two should be viewed separately, but it's hard to do so.

2. The gross-ness of some of the descriptions of blood and gore and Victorian London's ghettos are a little much sometimes. They aren't too much for me (I like Mary Roach's books, for goodness sake), but they might be a little much for some readers.

3. Albert Garrick feels a little schizophrenic sometimes. I love the complexity of the villain in this story, but the complexity sometimes is too much.

4. The cliff hanger at the end and the next book isn't out yet! AHHH! I hate this and yet I do it all the time - reading the first book without another book to follow it.

5. The denouement was a little to short for my tastes - the villain was destroyed quite triumphantly and Colfer offered us only a part chapter and an epilogue to deal with it. I wanted a little more end.

Five Delights

1. The humor! It's dark, it's sarcastic, and it's sometimes punny. It's also very intelligent humor. It's just lovely all around.

2. The development of characters, both his protagonists and his antagonists (perhaps even more so his antagonist in this particular novel). Colfer always crafts well-rounded, well-described characters and he has a wonderful way of working description into the story. I'm in love.

3. NON-STOP ACTION. No, really. There is so much action in among the brain work. I love it. Such a "boy" book in that way (granted, I'm a girl and prefer that kind of book).

4. This is a book of street smarts and quick thinking, not so much straight up intelligence. I love that none of the main characters are geniuses but are living successfully in the world of geniuses. Fantastic stuff, that.

5. This is going to be a series! I'm so excited to see where this series goes - are we going to follow Riley? Chevron? Where is this going to go!?! I can't wait.

Fic Bra (Reviewing "A Great and Terrible Beauty")

I just finished reading Libba Bray's novel "A Great and Terrible Beauty" and I do have to say that it was a difficult read to the finish. While the writing of the novel was solid, this book was a filled with too much teenage female angst for me to really appreciate it.

Set in the Victorian era, the novel is told through the first person view point of Gemma Doyle, a sixteen-year-old Brit living with her family in British occupied India. On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, tragedy strikes Gemma's family and her mother is murdered, but under the most peculiar set of circumstances; Gemma has a supernatural vision of her mother's murder before it happens. After her mother's death, the family returns to England, where Gemma is sent to Spence Academy, a finishing school for girls. Here, Gemma's powers continue to develop and she begins to learn about her mother and her connection to a shadowy group of magic users called the Order. Part fantasy, part horror, part historical fiction, the novel is strongly written and the girls of Spence Academy well developed characters.

My main trouble with his novel is that it has a LOT (I mean A LOT) of teenage female angst - the struggle to fit in, the cattiness of girls, the embarrassment, etc. I felt that a lot of the angst was over wrought and I struggled to make it through chapters that weren't a part of the magic story line. After two action packed novels, this book seemed to move too slowly for me and included too much of the quotidian of British boarding school girls. I will NOT be reading the rest of the series, but I WOULD definitely recommended them to a teenage reader. The book is solid, just not my cup of tea.

Five Defects

1. No, seriously. The angst! Maybe I'm just too old for this book, but the angst felt spectacularly overwrought. <-- Facebook discussion with my fellow librarians leads me to believe that my statement about my age might be true.
2. The magic use felt so underplayed. I wanted something that felt more dangerous or had bigger consequences throughout the novel.
3. What kind of ending was that? I'm not sure I liked the denouement and conclusion of this novel. 
4. Am I missing something about this book that makes it fantastic? I've read the reviews and they seem to be completely positive without any issues besides the cover of the book being a little too girly for boys. 
5. It took far too long for anything interesting to really happen. I felt like the entire beginning of the book was exposition and that the climax didn't happen until much farther along in the novel - somewhere in the last 100 pages or so.

Five Delights

1. The writing is solid. The prose isn't too soppy and character development, setting description, etc. are all done with an obviously skilled hand.
2. The last 100 pages or so of this novel are great. The action picks up and I'm far more involved in what is happening.
3. I love the descriptions of British occupied India that exist in the beginning of this story.
4. Gemma has quite a few marvelous one-liners that zing wonderfully.
5. The book keeps you guessing - I do have that to thank.