Waiting on Wednesday: A Darker Shade of Magic, by V.E. Schwab

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine to spotlight upcoming book releases that we're excited about.


This week's pick

Release date: February 24, 2015
Publisher: Tor Books
Format: Hardcover, 400 pages

Goodreads description
From V.E. Schwab, the critically acclaimed author of Vicious, comes a new universe of daring adventure, thrilling power, and parallel Londons, beginning with A Darker Shade of Magic.

Kell is one of the last Travelers—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes—as such, he can choose where he lands.

There’s Grey London, dirty and boring, without any magic, ruled by a mad King George. Then there’s Red London, where life and magic are revered, and the Maresh Dynasty presides over a flourishing empire. White London, ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne—a place where people fight to control magic, and the magic fights back, draining the city to its very bones. And once upon a time, there was Black London...but no one speaks of that now.

Officially, Kell is the Red Traveler, personal ambassador and adopted Prince of Red London, carrying the monthly correspondences between the royals of each London. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see—a dangerous hobby, and one that has set him up for accidental treason. Fleeing into Grey London, Kell runs afoul of Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations, who first robs him, then saves him from a dangerous enemy, and then forces him to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

But perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, Kell and Lila will first need to stay alive—and that is proving trickier than they hoped.

Victoria Schwab doing a parallel universe story with different versions of London? Count me in! I can't wait to see the different versions of London and meet Kell and Delilah. I love reading about girl thieves with a taste for adventure. What do you think of the description?

Waiting on Wednesday: Half Bad, by Sally Green

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine to spotlight upcoming book releases that we're excited about.

This week's pick:

Release date: March 4, 2014
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Format: Hardcover, 416 pages

Goodreads description:
In modern-day England, witches live alongside humans: White witches, who are good; Black witches, who are evil; and fifteen-year-old Nathan, who is both. Nathan’s father is the world’s most powerful and cruel Black witch, and his mother is dead. He is hunted from all sides. Trapped in a cage, beaten and handcuffed, Nathan must escape before his sixteenth birthday, at which point he will receive three gifts from his father and come into his own as a witch—or else he will die. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is tracked, when there is no one safe to trust—not even family, not even the girl he loves?

In the tradition of Patrick Ness and Markus Zusak, Half Bad is a gripping tale of alienation and the indomitable will to survive, a story that will grab hold of you and not let go until the very last page.

What attracts me to this one is mostly the idea of being trapped between two extremes with nowhere to go. What are those gifts Nathan is to receive from his father? How does this society work? Also, I haven't read many books about witches that had male protagonists.
I know this one has been around quite a bit, but what are your thoughts? And what did you pick this week? 
Also, I'm currently giving away 3 swag packs, many items signed! Check the left sidebar ;) Open internationally.

Review: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Relase date: March 27, 2007
Publisher: Gollancz
Format: Paperback, 668 pages

Goodreads description:
Told in Kvothe's own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen. The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature. A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.




The following review is based on a copy I first gave to a friend and which she then read, loved and basically bullied me into borrowing, reading, and loving in return. I thank her for it :)


Review
How do I start this review? There is no way to really bring across the epicness of this story. None. The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece of storytelling and a unique world filled with fantastic magical concepts and memorable characters that will stick with me for the rest of my life. I don’t even want to tell you too much about it because it would just keep you from experiencing it for yourselves. Here's a taste:

"I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the city of Trebon.  I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. My name is Kvothe. You may have heard of me."

The story starts out in a wayside inn, but it’s soon obvious that its owner is no ordinary innkeeper. Kvothe is a multilayered, complex character, and there is a big difference between the older Kvothe of the frame narrative and the younger, more idealistic and passionate Kvothe of the unfolding story – his biography of sorts, if you will. I loved reading about how he grew up with a troupe of travelling folk and how his acting and music remained such a big part of him even after tragedy struck early in his life. His growth and his struggle made me immerse himself completely in the story and after a somewhat slower start, I just couldn’t stop reading anymore.

When I said that this novel is a masterpiece of storytelling, I meant that a large part of this story is made up of other stories. It’s not just one story, it’s a whole web of stories that I think will eventually have a connection to one another. And it’s not just the content of the stories, it’s the way they’re told. The setting, the voice, the feeling that you are given a glimpse of something ancient and amazing. The tension between ‘before’ and ‘after’.

I enjoyed the concept and rules of the magic in this series immensely. The world building was revealed gradually and I loved learning about it alongside Kvothe. There is no info-dumping and you have to piece quite a lot of things together on your own. The depth of it, the languages, the places, the sense of a past, elevated it to the likes of The Lord of the Rings for me. That is not a comparison I make lightly.

The University, where Kvothe eventually goes to study, was an amazing setting of old buildings, quirky characters, friends, enemies, and adventures. And, of course, eventually also some romance. I’m going to let you explore that place when you get there but let’s just say that it was my favorite part of the story. Kvothe has an remarkable mind and while he’s older than his years in some ways, he was very inexperienced in other areas and that made for an interesting balance.

The greatest strength of the novel by far is the writing. It felt very fresh and somehow familiar in at the same time. It reminded me of the stories I used to read in my early teens. Rothfuss really is a gifted wordsmith and that’s what really brought the world and characters to life for me and made me care about what happened to them. He can write beauty and he can write despair in a way that is honest and heartfelt and brought tears to my eyes more than once. When he describes the sound of music, you hear it and it touches your heart. When he weaves a visual description, you see the world with new eyes. When someone hurts, you ache for them.

So, in case you still haven’t realized: if you don’t own this book, run the next book store and buy it immediately. Read it. Let it whisk you away to a different world, go breathe in the magic. The size of The Name of the Wind may seem intimidating, but believe me – you won’t want it to end! I have the sequel,The Wise Man’s Fear, in my room but I’ll have to wait a while before I start it or I will never get anything done for my university classes. Also, it will make the wait for book 3 shorter.

Have you read The Name of the Wind? What did you think? Are you also anxious for book three?

Review: The Nightmare Affair, by Mindee Arnett

Release date: March 5, 2013
Publisher: Tor Teens
Format: Hardcover, 367 pages

Goodreads description:
Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder. The setting is Arkwell.

Then Eli’s dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

Amazon     The Book Depository

The following review is based on a copy provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.


Review:
As soon as I read the description of The Nightmare Affair in someone’s Waiting on Wednesday post a couple months ago, I knew that I had to read it! Boarding school, magic, mystery, and Nightmares – ever since I read Sabine in Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers series, I’ve been interested in that paranormal creature. And let’s face it, it’s rather rare in YA. Dusty is nothing like Sabine, but I didn’t expect her to be and I still really enjoyed the novel and the world Mindee Arnett created!

We meet Dusty when she climbs into her ex-school mate Eli’s room to feed on his dreams, as she must at determined times to keep up her energy level and magic. Who she feeds on, how long, and when is determined by The Will, a complicated spell keeping magickind’s abilities in check so that they don’t wreck havoc on the human world – believe me, with some of the nastier demon types and the vampires, you really don’t want that to happen! However, Dusty’s feeding trip goes horribly wrong when she first witnesses a horrible murder at her new school, Arkwell Academy, and is then noticed by Eli in the dream! He shouldn’t know about the Academy, and he shouldn’t notice her!

It turns out that Dusty is a dream seer and Eli is her connected partner, and the magickind senate now wants to use them to solve the murder. The thing is, with The Will keeping everyone in check, magickind shouldn’t be able to physically harm one another – so how was that girl killed? As Dusty and her friends try to solve the murder, much of what she believes to know about her family and her world is called into question… and she might just have made herself the murderer’s next target.

First off, I have to say something about the voice. The story is told in the first person from Dusty’s point of view, and while she’s plenty snarky and courageous, her voice seemed very young to me at first. More middle grade than YA. I don’t know whether I got used to it or whether it changed later in the novel, but it then felt more YA to me after a while. I liked Dusty, but sometimes I also wanted to yell at her because of some stupid decisions she took and how she thought she had to solve it all on her own. What I enjoyed about her is her resilience – she’s an outsider at Arkwell, first off because she’s the only nightmare and her mum isn’t exactly everyone’s darling, second because she’s half human. Her magic abilities manifested only about a year ago, so she’s way behind in her skills compared to her school mates and they often treat her as if she were disabled or magically deficient. That’s also why it sucks for Eli to be transferred to her school – he’s now the only one without any magic at all, and being transferred in your senior year sucks anyway.

I loved how quirky Dusty and her friends were! Her room mate and best friend is a siren. All sirens are naturally beautiful and alluring, but Selene doesn’t use this like many of her kind do – instead she protests against the sexual objectification of sirens. There’s also fairies, various shifters, demons… the world building and magic were among my favorite things in the novel! It takes a while until the workings of The Will are explained, but once that happens I got a way better understanding of the parallel world Dusty inhabits and how it interweaves with the human world. Her magic classes and some of her teachers were also awesome! And there were a lot of details I thought were really imaginative, as well as a creature that was an allusion to a poem I really like (I asked Mindee if I got it right) and to Arthurian legend.

Now I’m sure you guys want to know about the romance… Well, there is romance and also some steam-ish scenes, but it doesn’t go overboard. Also I think some people will label the constellation a love triangle, though I’m not so sure about that. No question, Dusty thinks Eli is hot, but that doesn’t mean she’s in love with him. In fact, it’s hard for them at the beginning to even be friends. On the other hand there is Paul, who is super smart, fun, and as I first thought a great match for Dusty and a help in her cause. Paul surprised me several times in the story and was also used to broach an issue I had not expected in the novel but was glad to see included. There’s chemistry with Dusty for both guys, eventually, but I’m not going to say more than that. In any case, if it is a love triangle then it isn’t your typical one, and the romance isn’t the main focus of the novel.

Something I didn’t expect was for Dusty’s mum to be so involved – parents tend to be rather absent in YA and while I liked that it was different here, I also empathized with Dusty’s annoyance at her mum’s meddling after she pretty much left her alone with her dad (they’re divorced) before she showed any Nightmare abilities. Also, her mum’s a trouble maker and at times does very suspicious things… but she’s also pretty badass ;)

Overall, I really enjoyed The Nightmare Affair. I liked the world building and characters, it was something new! The book was fun but also serious because, well… it’s about murder! I never suspected who the bad guy was. Maybe I should have, but I really didn’t see it coming! There were some minor issues with the pacing, it wasn’t as creepy as I had hoped, and I thought some of the minor characters were pretty standard, but the other aspects more than made up for it! The novel is a great debut, and I’ll definitely be reading the next book in the series!

Have you guys read The Nightmare Affair? What did you think of it? I'm especially curious about your perception of the love triangle and voice thing that I mentioned...
If you haven't read it, does it sound like something you'd enjoy? Can you maybe recommend any other books featuring Nightmares to me?

Non-YA review: City of Dark Magic, by Magnus Flyte

Release date: November 27th, 2012
Publisher: Penguin
Format: Paperback, 464 pages


Goodreads description:
Cosmically fast-paced and wildly imaginative, this debut novel is a perfect potion of magic and suspense

Once a city of enormous wealth and culture, Prague was home to emperors, alchemists, astronomers, and, as it’s whispered, hell portals. When music student Sarah Weston lands a summer job at Prague Castle cataloging Beethoven’s manuscripts, she has no idea how dangerous her life is about to become. Prague is a threshold, Sarah is warned, and it is steeped in blood.

Soon after Sarah arrives, strange things begin to happen. She learns that her mentor, who was working at the castle, may not have committed suicide after all. Could his cryptic notes be warnings? As Sarah parses his clues about Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” she manages to get arrested, to have tantric sex in a public fountain, and to discover a time-warping drug. She also catches the attention of a four-hundred-year-old dwarf, the handsome Prince Max, and a powerful U.S. senator with secrets she will do anything to hide.

City of Dark Magic could be called a rom-com paranormal suspense novel—or it could simply be called one of the most entertaining novels of the year.


My review is based on an ARC I got from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is NOT a YA read! (Though I know a book being labeled 'adult' never stopped me in my later teens... I just needed to point that out.)


Review (no spoilers):
Where do I start? This book was a fun, crazy mixture of history, magic, alchemy, science, passion, and mystery. I didn’t really know what I was in for when I started reading it, but I soon found myself sucked into the story, drawn into the web of secrets hidden in the Lobkowicz palace in Prague. My review cannot possibly touch on all the important points but I hope it can provide some more info about what to expect. Honestly, I don’t quite know how to review this book because it wasn’t exactly… normal. And I mean this in a good way!

The novel is written in third person, mostly from Sarah Weston’s point of view. Sarah is a talented musicology student but she’s not your typical academic. She’s quite down-to-earth, partly because she’s not exactly from a wealthy background. She knows what she wants and who she wants and she goes after that without being ashamed. Right along with her mentor, she’s obsessed by Beethoven, so of course she jumps at the chance to spend the summer in Prague to help prepare an exhibition of Beethoven manuscripts in a soon-to-open museum. When she gets the news that her mentor, on whose behalf she was called there, has jumped from a window, she is determined to figure out what really happened because she doesn’t really believe in his suicide.

As soon as Sarah enters Prague (actually even before), the city is set up as a place of mystery, of blood and secrets. And Prague truly does have violent past – religious controversies, the Thirty Years War, the Nazis, the Communists… take your pick. Also, the city might be threshold to another world. All in all, there are layers upon layers of culture and history. Since I love both of those things and have always been fascinated by alchemy, I really enjoyed this aspect of the novel.

Another thing I really liked was the characters. I think there wasn’t a single person I’d consider ‘normal’ in the whole novel – that doesn’t mean I didn’t empathize and identify with them, though! The other academics at the palace were a crazy bunch and made me laugh out loud all the time. I was also constantly evaluating all they said and did to figure out who is on which side. Because are there ever so many sides… everyone at this palace is looking for something, and they are ready to take a lot of risks to get it.

So who is Sarah up against? Well, one of the most powerful senators of the US, for one. Charlotte Yates was a villain I loved to hate. Manipulative. Hypocritical. Ruthless when it comes to keeping her secrets. And yet also sentimental. You might say she was a bit overdone, but so were all the characters in a way. One of the great things about this book is that it never takes itself too seriously. I mean it doesn’t treat its subject in an off-handed way, but there’s a humorous kind of self-aware, postmodern-ish irony that permeates pretty much everything and that makes certain parts stand out even more by its sudden absence.

Another character I really liked was Prince Max, who didn’t really want to be a prince (he’d rather have stayed in California as the drummer of a rock band) but had to step in after his father’s death. I liked him and Sarah as a team and couple, even though I was aware he wasn’t to be fully trusted, and so was Sarah. I liked how they went with each other’s cup of crazy. Their encounters were often hilarious, as well as passionate. (Yes, there is sex. They’re also arrested because of it at one point. It’s not all too graphic though.)
Speaking of characters, it’s impossible to overlook Nicolas Pertusato, ‘the dwarf’. He’s a very slippery and elusive character. He shows up everywhere and apparently knows everything. I was very mistrustful of him at the beginning but I grew to like him over the course of the book.
Polly, a blind child-prodigy Sarah is in a strange student-teacher relationship with (who takes what role is not quite clear) was another one of my faves. She may not be able to see, but her other senses were superior instead and she was even something of a prophetess in addition to being a pre-teen composer and pianist/violinist. Generally I guess you could also call this a novel about the senses and perception, and about people gifted with an extraordinary amount of that in certain areas.

It’s impossible to discuss City of Dark Magic without speaking of music, and of LVB – Ludwig van Beethoven. He's a red thread connecting everything in the novel, and a perfect example of how the authors (yes, Magnus Flyte is the pseudonym for a collaboration) mix the High with the Low, often for comedic effects but also for realism. We see his letters, and through Sarah we glimpse his passion for music, his persistence to compose despite bad hearing and bad health. Through him, we are also introduced to the strange drug mentioned in the book description. I don’t want to go too much into what exactly it does but I was really fascinated by the parts in the book where it appeared! It’s the link between the music part and the alchemy/science/mystery part of the novel, and I don’t know if the word ‘drug’ is really appropriate. It sounds as if it was about a cheap high, but it’s really not. It’s about altering perception.

If my review seems a bit rambly and all over the place that is in part because the book is very long (over 400 pages) and because it shifts directions quite a lot. The plot expands, unrelated things end up being related and vice versa. Roles shift. What seemed stable actually isn’t. Details become important. The distance between real and imaginary, past and present, is blurred. Suspicions turn out to be misleading. I wasn’t surprised by all the twists in the plot, but most things I didn’t see coming or had pieced together wrongly. I read this spaced out over a week or so (I was reading something else parallelly and I was busy) so I’m not sure I can talk about pace, but I was never bored and usually found it hard to put my phone (I only have a kindle app) aside.

My final verdict? I loved it (it’s among my faves of the year), but I can see that it might not be for everyone. You may dislike the humor/irony, or the big mixture of things all thrown together like this. That isn’t to say the novel is a mess – there was an overall plot arch, in my opinion, and things were resolved in the end. If you dislike history, this might not be for you, even though the novel treats it in a very irreverent kind of way. But if you’re up for something unique and magical without paranormal bits and are ready just go with it, you’re in for one hell of a ride!

Have you read City of Dark Magic or is it on your TBR? Is my review even... comprehensible? I really had trouble getting my thoughts about it into words. Does it sound like something you guys might enjoy?