Kalinda reviews 5 books in 5 minutes

***** Five stars go to... The Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning

From what Kalinda gathers after first coming across The Fever reviews on Goodreads and then talking to her fellow steam-powered dolls, you ever love or hate The Fever. There is rarely a balanced reviewer who remains neutral or lukewarm. Since these books ignited such passions (even if said passions occupied the extreme ends of the spectrum), Kalinda got intrigued. She approached the series with as near to an open mind state as she could master. The only preconceived idea she admitted to have been secretly harbouring at the time was that this series was supposed to be something different (whatever your definition of different is). 

And different Kalinda got!

MacKayla Lane, the protagonist, starts off as the ultimate Barbie. She’s very pretty, likes to paint her nails, dresses in pink and constantly sings along to 'It’s a Wonderful World' as she soaks up the sun by the pool. Then her sister Alina is killed in horrendous circumstances in a foreign land, so Mac has to Buffy it up if she wants to avenge Alina (naturally, the foreign land’s police is useless...) She goes off to a foreign land where she meets Jericho Barrons, the ultimate brooding mystery man with many tattoos and really bad temper (‘nuff said!), learns things she soon wishes she didn’t learn and ends up one of the major players in an ancient supernatural power struggle (as you do).

Somehow, it all worked for Kalinda. She’s inhaled the give Fever books over a week and wants more! More! She loved Moning’s peculiar story-telling, her way of thinking and analysing things as Mac, and Mac’s telepathic conversations with Barrons. Out of curiosity, Kalinda checked out one of the books from this author’s pre-Fever series (the title of said book is too embarrassing to mention here) and her suspicions have been confirmed – The Fever is a unique phenomenon.

Kalinda highly recommends this… as long as you approach it with an open mind.

**** Four starts go to... Indigo Spell (Bloodlines #3) by Richelle Mead

Kalinda got hooked on Mead about three years ago. Even though the symptoms of this  ‘hook’ appear to be easing off now, Kalinda still keeps reading Richelle Mead’s best (according to Kalinda, anyway) creation – the Bloodlines series, the new incarnation of the Vampire Academy (yes, arguably ridiculous name for a series - a series that also feature some of the most embarrassing cover designs ever, but nonetheless highly entertaining).

In the third instalment of the Bloodlines, Sydney Sage, the Alchemist extraordinaire goes on with her task of babysitting teenage vampires while endeavouring on an unrelated quest to discover more of her own unusual powers and save some innocents. Kalinda likes Sydney as a protagonist more than Rose of the Vampire Academy fame, but that’s really just because Sydney appeals to Kalinda’s nerdy nature and is generally smarter than Rose (ok, Sydney’s more book smart while Rose’s street smart or something like that) even though sometimes Sydney can’t see what’s right before her very eyes.

Before starting on Indigo Spell, Kalinda recommends reading at least the two earlier Bloodlines books (Bloodlines and The Golden Lily), if not all of the Vampire Academy installments. Or you can just wing it.

*** Three stars go to... Shine Light (Finale of Night Creatures)

After a breath-stunning Burn Bright followed by a huge let-down of Angel Arias, the island of ever-night Ixion’s magic was kind of lost on Kalinda. Though Shine Light is a decent book  and the NightCreatures trilogy has a unique concept and solid writing, Kalinda was expecting a lot more from the conclusion to the series (especially after the standard was set so high with Burn Bright – again, what an amazing book that was!) Still, Shine Light did what it had to do - it tidied up most of the loose ends, Naif got some kind of closure and sort of made a choice where a choice had to be made... 

What Kalinda liked the most about Shine Light though was its ending: it was well-crafted and realistic, and because it was realistic it came off as unusual. 

Also, this book had a lot of Lenoir. And it’s always a good thing.  

** And two stars go to... Opal (Lux # 3) by Jennifer L. Armentrout

The allure of the Lux series has remained a mystery to Kalinda up until she finished ’Opal’: for some weird reason she was compelled to keep reading book after book without really engaging much with the characters or the story. Kalinda feels that maybe in the beginning, she was interested in The Lux because to her it resembled ‘I Am Number Four’ (at least, the movie – she can’t comment on the book as she hasn’t read it) and she was just curious how Lux’s ideas were different from the ‘I Am #4’ concept of energy-manipulating aliens who can’t help themselves but fall in love with human girls. Turns out Lux isn’t that much different. 

Kalinda is most likely going to drop this series at this stage, she just can’t take any more of the reductive dialogues and characters being erratic and making silly decisions with annoying consequences. Kalinda also did not fancy one bit the cliffhanger ending of Opal. It felt like a cliffhanger of desperation to her. In summary, Kalinda no longer cares what happens to Katy, though she definitely loved the earlier ‘No More Pushover Katy’ rhetoric of these books. 

*One star is for... Crewel by Gennifer Albin

One-word review: CRUEL.

Some more words: don’t do this to yourself. This is the last time Kalinda gives in and buys a book because it is ‘hyped’ about. Now that she thinks about it, who and where exactly was hyping about this book? She can’t even recall! This must be some kind of conspiracy where we are all affected by some alien psychic powers that make us feel interested in something we really don’t care about. This book added absolutely nothing to the contemporary dystopian genre (which Kalinda quite honestly is beginning to despise): it had one-dimensional villains, annoying heroine, awkward writing, characters blatantly serving as plot devices and don’t even get Kalinda started on the  very nature of this dystopian world built around gender segregation and subjugation of women. Kalinda advice: if you feel like a good dystopian YA book, read The Hunger Games. Or, better read 1984.  

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Warning: there may be some minor spoilers but 99% of this review is Kalinda’s perceptions of the book rather than rehashing of the story

The opening paragraph:

There were only two kinds of people in our town. “The stupid and the stuck,” my father had affectionately clarified our numbers. “The ones who are bound to stay or too dumb to go. Everyone else finds a way out.” There was no question which one he was, but I’d never had the courage to ask why.

Setting: Gatlin (fictional town in South Carolina), modern day USA

Key themes: Boy likes Girl (but Girl has a secret), aggressive small-mindedness and (in)tolerance of difference; Good and Evil and the grey spectrum in-between; fate vs free will; superpowered teens; sins of our parents; falling in love with mysterious strangers; aesthetic of the forbidden  

Kalinda’s Review

Protagonist and narration

This is the second book Kalinda’s recently read with a male protagonist – the other one is ‘Anna Dressed in Blood’ by Kendare Blake – and while Cas in ‘Anna…’ somehow manages to sound distinctively non-female to Kalinda’s ears (eyes), Ethan of Beautiful Creatures doesn’t exactly come off any different from a usual to YA female narrator. Should narration differ between female and male protagonists? Kalinda thinks yes, absolutely. How? That’s something for an author to convey and for a reader to judge.

Aside from the gender-related narration issues, the telling of this story was something Kalinda had troubles with throughout the book, and what a long book it was... And it’s not that Ethan was a bad narrator. He wasn’t. Yet, somehow he managed to be overtly descriptive whilst bland and, at times… boring. In the monotony that was Ethan there was no anxiety of (self)-discovery, no drama of falling in love for the first time, not much of an introspective contemplation… It was all too balanced to Kalinda’s liking. Ethan was perfect: he explained everything, dissected every single moment of his life (and the lives of others) to the bone… Maybe a third person’s POV would be better and added a bit of a mystery to the well-explained-world of Gatlin?

The characters

Aside from Ethan’s overbearing narration, the rest of characters weren’t particularly intriguing. Having seen the movie adaption of Beautiful Creatures now, Kalinda found that characters’ quirks and troubles were much better channeled on the big screen. Yes, while watching the movie she could totally see why Lena was going from cautiously excited to passive aggressive to outright aggressive in one agonising moment. She could see the reasons behind all the whining and the brooding. Unlike the movie which was surprisingly well done, the book didn’t really portray the characters’ woes and feelings that well.

Another issue Kalinda found with the characters was the lack of romantic chemistry between Ethan and Lena. The question Kalinda couldn’t help asking herself as she read Beautiful Creatures was why drag/force romance if it feels unnatural? Why push it? Perhaps, it would work better if the characters were just friends – wouldn’t it be interesting to explore the dynamics of male/female friendship in YA? It’s so very rare! Actually, come to think of it Kalinda can’t recall a single YA title lately where Girl and Boy are friends and nothing more. If you know of one, can you recommend it?

Major Motifs

The themes explored in Beautiful Creatures are among the best aspects of this book. The Us vs Them dichotomy, old as dirt but nonetheless interesting to ponder, is the backbone of this story and the authors return to it over and over again, sometimes elevating it to all sorts of extremes.

The small town setting in the Deep South where intellectual progress apparently is stunted still comes off fresh and peculiar enough to be intriguing. Although, while the numerous thick descriptions of Gatlin (architecture, atmosphere, small-minded ways of its inhabitants…) were well written and meticulously researched, Ethan’s looking-down gaze at his fellow Gatlinites was rather disconcerting. Such generalizations coming from Ethan made him look snobbish and a bit unlikable. 

Among the themes of this novel were also Palahniuk-esque explorations of one’s motifs for staying versus leaving, contemplating one’s desires to go away, (re)imagining your life and post-home future… It was all poetic and touching, beautifully done.

When The Mysterious Stranger comes to town, the atmosphere thickens with the fears of outsiders woven to shadow the excitement of something (or someone) new that Ethan feels, and deepened with self-discovery thrown into the mix.

Kalinda found this book binary at its core – light vs dark, xenophobia vs acceptance, staying vs leaving – the story kept going from one extreme to another. And then there were isolation and marginalisation of strangers and strangeness: the physical, social and emotional othering. It was all well done but the issue was that only the hero in his uniqueness alone appeared to be immune to the town’s growing hysteria born out of mistrust to strangers, only Ethan stood in between the bullying crowd and The Mysterious New Girl.    

The clichés

There was a haunted house on the hill, at times inhabited by Adams-esque characters; there were a storm-a-brewing and skies-are-churning; there was Birthright and of course there was someone who’s got way too much power for their own good that it would/should definitely blow up in their face (only it doesn’t).

Towards the end of the book Kalinda felt that only an amazingly twisted, earth-shattering ending could bring this book over from the realm of ‘It was Ok’ to stratosphere of ‘Wow’. Did the novel redeem itself with its ending? Unfortunately not. Maybe having just finished reading the first installment of Jenny Pox before starting Beautiful Creatures, Kalinda was expecting the ending a la Jenny (and not completely unfounded so – it certainly felt it was all building up towards something like that). But no, Beautiful Creatures is not that sort of book.

There were constant references to the greater literature and allusions to To Kill a Mockingbird; there was an abundance of tingling skin and brushing hands typical of YA lit but that could certainly be avoided as it has become a rather clichéd way to describe falling in love. In some way Beautiful Creatures felt like a YA ‘write–by-numbers’ with only a minimal tweaking, like gender role reversal. Ridley was the only character that intrigued Kalinda but since Ridley only appeared two or three times through the entire novel (the 500 pages of it), it wasn’t enough to redeem the book completely.  

Kalinda’s Verdict:

3-3.5 stars for decent writing and post-gothic feel. Read the book before watching the movie and compare the different endings.

Part of the reason (aside from all the movie buzz and the amazing Florence + the Machine song in the preview) Kalinda picked up this book was its enticing cover. Though upon reading Beautiful Creatures Kalinda can tell you that (and this is not a spoiler) the cover has nothing to do with the story – the dark and mysterious woods do not figure in it in any important shape or form.

The story attempts at magic realism (the characters take magical and strange things happening around them at its face value and nothing freaks them out. At all) but acquires unnaturally forced feel instead. Is it because we are all so desensitized by the abundance of paranormal in YA and non-YA books and movies that we are just expected to swallow up the characters of Beautiful Creatures behaving like they’ve seen it all when  faced with paranormal in real life? If yes, an author has to show it not tell it.