Unwholly by Neal Shusterman

Unwholly is the sequel to Unwind. It has been a long time waiting for this sequel. It did not disappoint!

Unwinding is still taking place. Children between the ages of 13-17 can be unwound if their parents sign the paperwork. The age used to be to 18, but has now changed to 17 which has caused a shortage of available parts. This has given rise to black market pirates.

Characters from Unwind are also in Unwholly. Connor, Risa and Lev are still fighting the battle for the right to live. Each one has a different battle that puts them in constant peril.

There are also new characters in Unwholly. One a horrifying creation that has taken unwinding to a whole new level.

I was not disappointed in the excitement of the story. The introduction of new characters kept the story from becoming stale. I'm looking forward to the last book in the trilogy and can only hope that it doesn't take another 4 years to come out.

The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

Nora, her best friend Chris, his girlfriend Adriane and Chris' best friend and roommate Max all  are working on a translation project for a professor. Nora is assigned to translating letters written by Elizabeth Weston over 400 years before. What she discovers is a recipe for a machine that is believed to open up channels to God.

This discovery leads to murder, secret brotherhoods and betrayal. When Chris is found murdered in his home, Adriane catatonic by his side in a pool of blood and Max the last person seen leaving the house, Nora is determined to prove Max's innocence in the murder and to put together the puzzle pieces of where Elizabeth hid the parts of the machine(Lumen Dei).

When Max contacts Nora she and Adriane sneak away from a class trip and head to Prague to meet Max. They are followed by Chris' cousin Eli who has family connections in Prague and also has family secrets he is unwilling to share with Nora. From the time they reach Prague they are faced with those trying to protect the Lumen Dei and others that are trying to find it for their own purposes. Nora soon finds that she doesn't know her friends as well as she thinks she does. Hers and Elizabeth's lives seem to mirror each others and betrayal is around the corner for her just as it was for Elizabeth.

My Thoughts:

I found myself comparing this book to a cross between The DaVinci Code and an Indiana Jones movie. It reminded me of The DaVinci Code with the secret sects protecting a spiritual being/object along with lots of supposedly spiritual connotations. It reminded me of Indiana Jones in the fact that once the object was acquired the greedy person seeking the power suffered a grizzly demise of supernatural dimensions. Not to say that being compared to these is a bad thing, but the fact that this is marketed as a Young Adult book had me scratching my head. The writing was fairly technical and also at times hard for me to slog through. If I had a hard time keeping my attention on the text I cannot imagine a teenager staying with it through to it's ending. I have to say though that I did become invested in the characters and continued to read on just to find out what happened at the end.

Pet Peeve:
Like I said, The Book of Blood and Shadow is marketed for 12 and up. I started seeing very early in the book that the author was peppering the story with words that were not common for most adults not to mention middle school grades or high schoolers. This was frustrating for me, but I began to write down each word that I either didn't know the meaning of or knew from the sentence what the author meant, but wasn't quite sure that a YA student would know the word. I then looked these words up after I finished the book. I probably should have looked them up while reading, but seriously, what Young Adult would stop reading during a story to look up a word? So here is my list of words:

Ameliorated-heard of it, but don't use it!

Iterations-never heard of it

Ensorcelled-huh?

Egalitarian-heard of

Disingenuous-heard of

Caesura-never heard

Karass-couldn't even find it when I looked it up

Vertiginous-heard of

Soporific-heard of

Ethos-heard of

Matrices-plural of matrix!

Defenestration-never heard

Inchoate-never heard

Those are just the words that stood out to me. There were other words such as detritus that I knew the meaning of, but is not really a common word. I understand an author wanting to enlighten and improve our vocabulary, but if I had to stop and look up every word then that to me would detract from the story.  And once again this is a Young Adult book, stick with what they know because the unfamiliar will lose them just as it almost lost me.

I received my copy as an ARC from ALA in January 2012. The Book of Blood and Shadow will be published and available for sale in April 2012.

Water's Edge by Robert Whitlow

Tom Crane is working for a large Atlanta law firm hoping that he will make partner. His hopes are dashed though when he is "consolidated" instead. Finding himself without a job and girlfriendless(his girlfriend breaks up with him in a letter), Tom heads to his hometown to settle the affairs of his father who recently died in a drowning accident.

While Tom closes his father's law firm he stays with his uncle Elias. At first Tom doesn't want to hear anything from Elias about spiritual things. But when Tom has a spiritual encounter of his own in his father's law office he becomes more open and accepting of heavenly things.

Tom soon uncovers what looks to be an embezzlement scheme involving a client of his father's and an employee at the local Pelham company. Considering that he is best friends with Arthur Pelham's son Rick, Tom fully believes that his father's client was involved in the embezzlement. 

When Rick's wife Tiffany starts flirting with Tom he is flattered and tries to rationalize his attraction to her. After all she assures him that their marriage is on the rocks and she is willing to leave it all behind to be with Tom. Tom soon realizes his rationalization as sin and repents of it. He soon becomes attracted to Rose Addington. Rose refuses to believe that her father was involved in any way in the embezzlement scheme. She challenges Tom to do further research into the events that led up to their fathers deaths.

That research soon lands both Tom and Rose in jail and in serious danger. With his life seeming to fall apart before his eyes, Tom has a hard time calling out to the God that he so recently trusted.

First off the positive: Water's Edge reminded me of reading one of John Grisham's novels, but add in a more spiritual content. I was engaged in the story and characters from the beginning through to the end. The writing flowed and the story remained fairly consistent.

The negative: For me the spiritual content was a bit too mystical mixed with charasmatic. When Rose talked about Tom's office being a "thin" place(a place where there is less separation between heaven and earth) I was thinking, "WHAT?!" Another time Tom asked his uncle if he was a mystic. He described a mystic as being "someone who withdraws from the world and spends time having weird spiritual experiences." Tom's whole relationship with the Lord was based on emotionalism and when the emotion wasn't there then he easily fell away into despair. At one point when everything seemed to come crashing down on him he contemplated suicide. To the point of getting the gun out and having it under his chin to do the job. I understand that we all have our mountaintop experiences, but to crash so low to want to end it all did not seem consistent with Tom's character.

The Ask And The Answer by Patrick Ness(Kindle)

The book starts out where The Knife of Never Letting Go left off. Todd is being held in New Prentisstown by Mayor(self-declared new President) Prentiss. He won't tell Todd where Viola is or even if she is alive. The Mayor has seemingly walked into Haven and taken over without a fight. He has set himself up as President. He and his army have separated the women from the men.

Viola is in a house of healing. The healers running the place are women. They will not tell her whether Todd is alive or dead. When Mayor Prentiss shows up to question her he too will not tell her about Todd. He wants to know about her ships that are coming to New World.

One of the first things that President Prentiss has done is to take away the cure for Noise. Supposedly as punishment for not following orders. He seems to have no noise of his own though. And he is somehow managing to manipulate people's thoughts and actions.

When some of the women escape New Prentisstown and start an attack on the city calling themselves The Answer, it is the beginning of war. Todd feels that Viola has abandoned him. He is being manipulated by the President. He is sent to work at a monastery using the Spackle as slave labor. Davy Prentiss is in control of the site. It is a nightmare for Todd watching the Spackle being mistreated. Viola is desperate to save Todd but Mistress Coyle refuses to allow her to go on raids to rescue him. Only 8 more weeks remain before the ships are to arrive on New World. She failed to get a message to them to let them know what was happening in the new world.

With two people seemingly manipulating two different sides, war seems inevitable. On which side will Viola and Todd be? Or will they be separated forever by their doubts of each other and the manipulation of people over them?

Wow, there were some scenes in this book that were hard for me to read. The torturing of the Spackle and the women was horrible. For the most part though the book was fast paced and I was very invested in finding out how it turned out. If I hadn't been reading it on my Kindle I would have turned to the end of the book and read the last couple of pages(YES, I am one of those!), just to see how things turned out. As it is I didn't do that and it looks like I will have to get the last book in the series to find out how it all ends. This book had so many different emotions in it.  A son's desire for his father's approval, betrayal, love, loyalty, sadistic behavior, manipulation, power hunger, depression and many more that I am missing I am sure. It made me angry at times, made me want to shake a couple of the characters and say "snap out of it!", made me want to exact revenge(ah, there's another one!), made me nauseous a couple of times. A sign of a good book is when it causes your own emotions to come into play along with the characters in the book.

Twelfth Grade Kills by Heather Brewer

Vlad's dad has returned from hiding which leaves Vlad feeling confused, angry and happy all at once. He is needing answers from his dad but they are slow in coming.

Em has given Vlad until the beginning of the New Year to hand over his dad Tomas to the Vampire Council or Vlad will stand trial and be killed. Joss has been given until the New Year to slay Vlad. If Joss doesn't kill Vlad by that time the Slayer Society will kill everyone in Bathory, humans and vampires.

Vlad is convinced that he is the prophesied Provus. Will his powers be used for good or for evil?

People keep telling me that this is the last book in the series, but I am not convinced. Heather Brewer has left the ending wide open for another sequel. At least that is the way I see it! I am not impressed with the ending of this book. In fact I am really disappointed! That doesn't mean I didn't like the rest of the book. At least Vlad wasn't bawling every other page(see other reviews of the series).

The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod Ninth Grade Slays by Heather Brewer

This series is growing on me. I liked the second one better than the first.

Vlad is starting 9th grade as the story opens up. He has the same two bullies picking on him as when he was in 8th grade. He still has a crush on Meredith and seems to get tongue tied when she is around.

Henry seems to have accepted the fact that he is Vlad's "drudge". Vlad tries not to read his friends mind or to manipulate him to do things, but sometimes he feels that he has to. Henry's cousin comes to stay with him for the year and Vlad and Joss become good friends. It seems that they become closer because Henry has become so popular at school. Still they are not close enough for Vlad to tell Joss his secret.

Otis takes Vlad to Siberia to meet an old friend of his fathers. Vikas tries to teach Vlad how to read minds better and to manipulate people to do what he wants. Vlad also learns about the prophecy of the Pravus. About a half vampire half human that comes to take over the human population. Vikas believes that Vlad is the Pravus. The only problem is that one of the things to prove that it is true is that the vampire/human has to die.

Trailed by a nosy nerd on the school newspaper, and by a vampire slayer Vlad's secret and life are in danger.

I found Ninth Grade Slays to be more exciting than the first book and am looking forward to reading Tenth Grade Bleeds.