The Gimmick of Deception

*Warning: Due to the nature of this book, I found it impossible to review it without discussing important plot points that occur late in the story. I have tried my best to mark all major spoilers, but there are still some minor (When plot twist happen) unmarked spoilers in this review. * 

        Some ideas sound amazing on paper, but after it is executed all my expectations fall as flat as the results. The Kiss of Deception revolves around this gimmick. We don’t know who the prince or the assassin is, and that’s really cool. I don’t doubt this was hard to write and I applauded the author for her efforts. However, there are two major problems with this gimmick. The story could’ve been told just fine without it. If the chapters written without the possible prince’s and assassins’ narrations (Which were often very vague and I felt described more of what the character was feeling than an event), their identities would still be a secret. They still would have been two mysterious travelers our heroine, Lia, doesn’t know. 

      Good narration is sacrificed in the name utilizing the gimmick. I’m getting into spoilers so if you haven’t read this book please skip over the next paragraph. *Spoilers* I disliked the part where Lia told Pauline what happened to her lover. Not because of the decision Lia made, but how this scene was executed. It started out strong. Lia doesn’t know what to tell Pauline and is really dealing with a moral dilemma. This was actually a high point as I felt Lia's confusion as she agonized over what to do. The chapter ends with Lia telling Pauline they need to talk. The next chapter shifts to Rafe’s (The prince’s) point of view where he ends up eavesdropping on Lia and Pauline because he cannot leave the barn they are in without them noticing him, and then the next chapter is Rafe helping Lia carry Pauline, who passed out from shock. We didn't get to see how Lia broke the news to Pauline or how she felt as she was telling her friend which I found to be very disappointing because the build up to this point.  *End of Spoilers*

     Another instance of good writing being sacrificed, is the plot and writing becoming tedious as most of the chapters are spent on Lia interacting with the two mysterious men and her rising suspicions about them. 

     The world building is painfully slow. I’m not a fan of info dumps, but this world is revealed to us so slowly some things seem very out of place by the time they are revealed. *Spoilers* After the 70% point it is revealed that there is a prophecy. I am not a prophecy hater and sometimes I enjoy them. However, the only clue something like this existed in this world were the little snippets of poetry at the start of every other chapter. *End of Spoilers* The first part of the book wouldn’t be so long if there wasn’t so much focus on the would-be prince’s or assassin’s true identity. In fact, the pacing may have been better if there wasn’t a chapter from Lia’s point of view and then another from either Rafe’s and/or Kaden’s perspective that was often exactly the same as the first scene only with a different narrator. 

      I suppose it is unfair for me to say how the story would’ve been better without the aforementioned gimmick. After all, I don't know what the book would be like without it, except for one factor: once it is revealed who is the prince and who is the assassin the story becomes ridiculously better. *Spoilers* I would guess this is because the plot doesn’t actually begin until the festival. Here we learn a huge amount about Morrighan’s culture and why the first daughters are so important. We learn what the gift of the first daughters' is like. There are also some consequences for Lia’s actions that do more than only affect her. Some of the more minor characters get moments to shine, like Gretchen and Berdi. We also finally get to know why there were all those cryptic poems at the beginning of every other chapter. 

     However, the latter half of this book isn’t without its faults. When Lia finds out the men she had been traveling with are responsible for her sister-in-law’s death, she has one moment of seething anger and then kind of accepts it when Kaden tells her all innocents die in war. I don’t disagree with what Kaden said, innocents dying is one of the infinite reasons war is bad. However, Lia kind of becomes more sympathetic towards Kaden and thinks he probably doesn’t find it easy to kill, and I don’t recall her ever holding her sister-in-law’s death against him for the rest of the book. If I was traveling with a party who was directly responsible for a relative of mine’s death I would not just go “Oh, innocents die in war, and these guys didn’t exactly like killing the person I love so it’s all good.” This didn’t ruin the story for me, but it was still annoying. *End of Spoilers*

      If you have patience or don’t mind slooow beginnings, I would say it is worth it to get through the first half of the book to find the good stuff. However, this still isn’t my absolute favorite book or the best one ever written so if you aren’t a fan of slow moving plots then I would say this book might not be the best pick for you. 

Maximum Read: The Angel Review

     Another book I read for my book club. Like the last book I read because of the club, Chosen, Maximum Ride was a fairly quick read. I didn’t get through this one as quickly as Chosen both because it is longer and I was working on finals and had to focus more energy on finishing the semester than on reading. 

       

     Before I get to my opinion I have to mention something  I noticed regarding this book: many of my friends love it, but most of the recent reviews I have read panned it. I could say I fall somewhere in the middle, but that would be wrong. This book is good. It isn’t the greatest story ever written, and I don’t see it becoming a classic on the level of Harry Potter or The Hobbit, but I am happy this book exists. 

  

   I’ve heard many complaints about Max, many of them calling her a Mary Sue. Although I can understand why some people felt like she was overpowered, this didn’t feel wrong because the rest of the flock was very powerful to so Max didn’t stand out in this way. I also didn’t find Max to be a Mary-Sue because although she was strong she had many moments of vulnerability. Like *Spoiler* when Max begins to get migraines after Angle is rescued, she worries about the possibility of her dying. We learn Erasers (the other project at The School who managed to survive infancy) don’t live long at all. Max doesn’t know how much longer she or anyone in the flock has left. *end spoiler* 

     The flock is constantly on the run, and it is made very clear this isn't healthy. Max is frustrated she can’t stay in one place for very long, but she doesn’t want the other flock members to know this. Max is the leader and she needs to be the last one to break under pressure. However, she’s still a fourteen-year-old girl. She’d rather be baking chocolate-chip cookies with normal parents than constantly defending herself and the flock from erasers, deadly human-wolf hybrids.  This desire for normalcy is what Max appears to want the most, but she can’t get it. (There is no way her 13 ft. wings are going to just disappear). It is impressive that Mr. Patterson managed to make a character who isn’t exactly human feel so very human. 

     The plot did drive me crazy me at moments. The School, the laboratory where the flock was made, disgusted me, and whenever Max recalled the treatment the flock, and everyone else with the misfortune of being an experiment there, received did more than ruffle my feathers. However, I think it is a positive thing I grew to hate the “bad guys” so much. It was impossible for me to stop rooting for the flock even when I found some of their choices to be unwise. They are still only children after all. 

Top 5 Books I Devoured

*Note* Top 5 Wednesday is a Goodreads group where blogger/vloggers post about a bookish topic every Wednesday. You can check it out here. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/118368-top-5-wednesday
     This is a fun topic because I can rank these books in order of how quickly I finished them. However, I must admit, when I was reading many of the books on this list, the biggest lie I told myself was “one more chapter.” In my defense, once I got to the last chapter of each book I was honest when I told myself “One more chapter.” That is until I ran to my library to borrow the sequel if it existed. 

                                                             5.    Chosen by Ted Decker 

     In book club, it seems for every book we read there is one person who finishes it way faster than everyone else. Almost everyone got through  Chosen relatively quickly, but I was well ahead, and literally finished it in half the time as everyone else. It took everything I had not to spoil what I had read during our meetings. It actually took me about a week to get through this and although that isn’t the quickest I have read a book, this is the fastest I was able to get through a book since I began  college. 

3.    The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

     It actually took me two days to finish this one which again, I have finished books in much less time. However, given the size of this one I have to say, I impressed myself. I was sick during the summer and I didn’t have anything better to do so I just kept reading and reading until the story was over, and then I went into the appendix. I remember my sisters face when I told her I finished Return of the King. She thought I was joking until I started telling her what happened in exact detail.   

1.    The False Prince by Jennifer Neilson

     I don’t remember how long it took me to finish this one, but I recall carrying it with me wherever I went. I also stayed up reading this book by flashlight until eleven pm. (Which was a huge act of rebellion for fifteen-year-old me) The moment I woke up I started reading this book until I finished it, and after that was achieved I begged my mother to let me take the car out so that I could go to the library and borrow the next book in the trilogy. 

1.    Cinder by Marissa Meyer

     The day before I read this book I had gone on a hike, which was very difficult and the trail was about eight hours long. It was a beautiful hike and I had a great time, but the next day my legs were very sore and stiff. I couldn’t go anywhere without my gate resembling that of a penguin. To pass the time, and to keep my mind off the AGONYof my legs, I raided my sister’s most recent library haul and found Cinder. The cover looked cool so I read it. I started reading around seven in the morning and I was done around supper time. This was the first time I have read a novel of that size in one day. I have no clue how I managed though. I tried to get through Cinder just as quickly last summer, but I couldn’t do it. 

1.    A Lady at Willowgrove Hall by Sarah E. Ladd 

     I have the ability to read in a moving car without getting motion sickness. I’m not sure how, but some of my friends have treated this like some kind of superpower. I’m sure there are lots of other people out there who can do this to. Anyway, I finished this book during the course of a nine-hour car trip, not counting stops for food and bathroom breaks. Would I have finished this book quickly if I didn’t have to sit in the same spot for most of the day? Absolutely, but I wouldn’t have don’t so in one sitting because if I were home I couldn’t just read all day. There’s these things called chores and Homework that often get in the way of reading. *sigh*

Review in the Mist

     *note* I apologize for the bad pun for the title. My last final was yesterday and my brain is still recovering.

     Have you ever had a friend who started telling you about something that happened to him/her and he/she spends a little too much time on some details that aren’t relevant to the story? More often than I would have liked, I felt Flames in the Mist was similar to that friend’s story. There were chunks that could’ve been left out and nothing would have changed. It’s not like the book needs the length either; it’s almost 400 pages long. 

       There is this one chapter written from the Emperor’s (who are heroine, Mariko, has yet to meet) point of view and all the information I learned in that chapter was explained again in another chapter where Mariko was the focus. I honestly feel this story could’ve been told better if we don’t know what is happening outside of Mariko’s world. Several other chapters are written from the point of view of even more characters Mariko hasn’t met yet either and something Mariko doesn’t know about happens, but then a few chapters later Mariko learns about what happened to the other character and it doesn’t feel we needed the other point of view in the first place. 

       However, despite me thinking some chapters only dragged the plot on longer than necessary, I still really liked this book. It’s not one of my favorites, but it is worth a re-read and I do like Mariko as a character. I don’t think she’s super original fitting an archetype of a rebellious princess and all (I know her father is a samurai, but a character doesn’t exactly need to be a princess to be a rebellious princess). Mariko has a history as a character and she does think about events that happened to her before the story took place and I think this did good to flesh her out. I also enjoyed how the black clan felt like Robin Hood and the Merry Men in Japan, they even have a camp set up in the woods. 

      Spoiler Warning Major Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read Flames in the Mist yet I recommend skipping the next paragraph. 

       The romance. Oh boy, …where do I begin? The synopsis of this book says that Mariko “finds herself falling in love – a love that will force her to question everything she’s ever known about her family, her purpose, and her deepest desires.” I went into the story knowing Mariko would fall in love at some point. However, I didn’t get a hint of sexual tension until more than halfway through the book, but Mariko met the object of her affection, Okami, at the beginning of the story. I didn’t think Mariko was going to fall for him until a while after he was introduced. A very good thing in my opinion, but I still think their romance developed a little too quickly, and a few more scenes with the two of them alone may have been nice.  

      As much as I feel Mariko and Okami didn’t make the best decisions, and maybe some aspects of their relationship happened too quickly, I can’t help, but want them to be together. Maybe it was because the two didn’t instantly decide to spend the rest of their lives together, or maybe it was because they developed a sense of respect for each other before they fell in love. I think a huge factor was how Okami was a character first and a love interest second. As I stated before, when the character Okami was introduced I didn’t think Mariko was going to fall for him. 

Top 5 Wednesday Rewind: Book Mothers

  

  Because Mother’s Day is this Sunday I decided now was the perfect time to do a Top 5 Wednesday topic from April 2016, Top 5 Mothers/Maternal Figures in Books. I decided that I would only include mothers or mother figures who are present for much of the character’s life and who appear in the story so I’m not including any deceased mothers or at least mothers who are dead when/before the story begins. 

5. Sally Jackson from Percy Jackson and the Olympians

       I wish I could place her higher on the list, but there is one problem I have with Sally. That being she isn’t there in the plot as much as I would have liked. Her son does have a good reason not to be at home being a demi-god and all. However, even if she isn’t always in the story, we can learn from how Percy talks about her that Sally is an awesome mother. Every year she makes her son a blue (his favorite color) birthday cake, and when she came home from the candy shop where she worked she would bring Percy home blue candy. 

4. Michelle Benoit from Scarlet

      Like Sally, Michelle is alive in the story but doesn’t appear in it very often. However, Michelle is a very important character (Her disappearance is what kicks off the plot) Even if she isn’t physically there, like Percy with his mother, Scarlet holds Michelle , who had raised Scarlet since her mother left her father who had fallen off the wagon, in high esteem. The reader can learn what kind of person Michelle is by looking at the independent and logical granddaughter she raised. 

3.    Razo’s and Rina’s mother from The Books of Bayern

     After her husband abandoned her and her many children, this woman had to take matters into her own hands to keep them all alive. Rina remembers her mother having a contest to see which child could collect the most supplies for the first winter after their father left. She never actually gave out the prize though, but the family did survive the winter. Razo’s and Rina’s mother isn’t exactly the most active character in the story, but like with Michelle, we can see what a good person she was through the children she raised, Razo and Rina, who are both heroes in their own right.

2.    Nadine Merrick from Angel Sister 

   

  Nadine wasn’t in an easy situation. He father-in-law hates her, her relationship with her own father is very strained, her husband is drinking much more often than he used to, she has three daughters to raise during The Great Depression, and her middle child has just brought home an abandoned little girl.  Nadine continued to take care of her daughters and takes in the lost little girl as if she were her own so Nadine is both a mother and a maternal figure at the same time and she is amazing.  

1.    Aunt Ba Ba from Chinese Cinderella 

     This woman is at the very top of my list for many reasons, but one of them is the fact that she was real. The things she did for her nieces and nephews actually happened and I am amazed. This woman never married and ended up raising the children of her brother who took care of their physical needs, but that was about it, leaving Ba Ba to look after the children. 

*Note* Top 5 Wednesdayis a Goodreads group where blogger/vloggers post about a bookish topic every Wednesday. You can check it out  here. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/118368-top-5-wednesday