The Sparkle Project

“Wildefire”

Author: Karsten Knight.

Publisher: Simon and Schuster.

Pages: 401.

Synopsis (taken from GoodReads): Ashline Wilde is having a rough sophomore year. She’s struggling to find her place as the only Polynesian girl in school, her boyfriend just cheated on her, and now her runaway sister, Eve, has decided to barge back into her life. When Eve’s violent behavior escalates and she does the unthinkable, Ash transfers to a remote private school nestled in California’s redwoods, hoping to put the tragedy behind her. But her fresh start at Blackwood Academy doesn’t go as planned. Just as Ash is beginning to enjoy the perks of her new school—being captain of the tennis team, a steamy romance with a hot, local park ranger—Ash discovers that a group of gods and goddesses have mysteriously enrolled at Blackwood…and she’s one of them. To make matters worse, Eve has resurfaced to haunt Ash, and she’s got some strange abilities of her own. With a war between the gods looming over campus, Ash must master the new fire smoldering within before she clashes with her sister one more time… And when warm and cold fronts collide, there’s guaranteed to be a storm.

Cover impressions: Over the past few years, in the wake of the sparkle madness, we’ve seen a wide variety of paranormal mythologies saturate the YA market to the point where much of it has become derivative, overdone and frankly, a little dull. To find something original in the market is always pleasant, so a novel centred around a reincarnated Polynesian goddess was automatically a must read for me. So far, my GoodReads friends have been mixed in their opinions on the novel, so I will have to be the dull one here and fall right in the middle.

Ashline is a great protagonist. She’s often stubborn and incredibly sarcastic – the banter she shares with her friends is a particular highlight of the book – and makes stupid mistakes, but she also suffers with consequences and has to learn how to mature and figure out what to do with her life and newfound destiny. Her relationship with her friends, family and the culture clash she has known through her whole life made her an often complex but always interesting heroine. This was also an instance where the obligatory romantic element didn’t bother me so much; she and Colt had great chemistry, actually took time to get to know one another and didn’t spend all their time obsessing over one another.

Aside from Ashline, the supporting cast ranges from good to bad in terms of development. Her group of close friends and fellow gods were especially humorous and their interactions made for some of the best parts of the novel. They actually felt like teenagers, not adults in smaller bodies, and their own personal journeys, while handled a little clumsily (the prose is serviceable but nothing particularly groundbreaking), brought further layers to the mythological elements, another high point in the book. However, I had a strong dislike (and not in the way the author intended) to Eve, Ash’s sister. She was a straight up sociopath with nothing beyond her two dimensional destruction and selfishness. I can understand what Knight’s intentions were with the character, and there are hints of bigger repercussions in her relationship with Ash, but they were overwhelmed by her psychotic behaviour. The moments where she is supposed to develop beyond this felt hollow, making her ultimately an underwhelming antagonist to the story. Another possible antagonist is introduced late into the novel who is even more two dimensional than Eve, complete with Bond villain style exposition of her past, but she’s dropped almost immediately.

From the first chapter, the book grabs you and is paced to keep you invested in the mystery, rushed ending aside. However, this opening may also put off many readers because of its violence. There is a lot of violence in the novel (as well as casual use of the term 'bitch', which everyone called almost every girl at some point) and it verged dangerously close to being gratuitous for me. I can understand the inherently violent nature of the gods and goddesses, and their struggles to keep control over their strange, burgeoning powers, but the characters often take a disappointingly flippant view of this violence which I found to be grating as the novel progressed. The opening chapter’s fight was a particularly bad example of this – I don’t care how violent or peaceful your neighbourhood is, there is absolutely no way you’d only get one week’s suspension from school for that sort of fight. The fact that this fight takes place over a boy didn’t please me much either. As well as the violent elements, I felt that the group accepted their fates a little too quickly, and seemed to take control of their powers with the same unrealistic speed.

While I didn’t love “Wildefire” in quite the same way many of my reviewer friends did, it was refreshing to read a paranormal YA with unique mythos, a strong, complex female protagonist and a circle of friends with witty interactions who actually cared about one another and did more than act as plot devices. Now that the first part of the story is told, I hope Karsten Knight can further develop a great story free deserving of that killer cliff-hanger, which will leave you both infuriated and waiting for more.

3.5/5.

"Wildefire" will be available in USA on July 26th. I received my e-ARC from Simon and Schuster's Galley Grab.

“Magic Under Glass”

Author: Jaclyn Dolamore

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 225.

Synopsis (taken from GoodReads): Nimira is a music-hall performer forced to dance for pennies to an audience of leering drunks. When wealthy sorcerer Hollin Parry hires her to do a special act - singing accompaniment to an exquisite piano-playing automaton, Nimira believes it is the start of a new life. In Parry's world, however, buried secrets stir.
Unsettling below-stairs rumours abound about ghosts, a mad woman roaming the halls, and of Parry's involvement in a gang of ruthless sorcerers who torture fairies for sport. When Nimira discovers the spirit of a dashing young fairy gentleman is trapped inside the automaton's stiff limbs, waiting for someone to break the curse and set him free, the two fall in love. But it is a love set against a dreadful race against time to save the entire fairy realm, which is in mortal peril.

Cover impressions: I, like many people I imagine, first heard about “Magic Under Glass” after the less than publicity friendly but justifiable outrage over the whitewashing of the heroine on the first cover of the book. Luckily, the publishers listened to the complaints and gave the book a lovely new cover with the appropriate cover model so remember good readers, public pressure does sometimes work! But that unfortunate incident aside, this has been a book on my radar for a while after several excellent reviews and the promise of a book with Steampunk elements that wouldn’t make me want to fall asleep.

Indeed, “Magic Under Glass” is a very sweet read, chock full of charm and imagination. It’s a book that can easily be read in one sitting, which I found to be both a good and bad thing; good because it was well paced and highly readable, and bad because the slightness of the novel left me feeling a little unsatisfied. The story and world Dolamore has created is so jam packed with potential and while the story occasionally lives up to it, I felt like there was definitely room for more. The alternative Victorian-esque universe of forbidden sorcery, fairy-human political strife and clockwork creatures was fascinating but much of it is only hinted at. I understand a sequel is in the works but as a stand-alone novel, which “Magic Under Glass” works well as, there was much opportunity for these elements to be expanded upon. Unfortunately, the ending as a result also feels a little rushed. Larger events are hinted at, ones of political complexity and cultural hostilities, which I was eager to learn more about, but were never given much time to truly develop. Dolamore writes wonderful, very readable prose, and clearly knows how to pace a story, so I firmly believe she could have easily added another 50 or so pages to this novel for such elements, as well as some extra character development, without any change to the structure of the novel.

The novel’s strengths lie mainly in the heroine Nimira, a strong, independent if occasionally stubborn and entitled young woman who has come from a life of privilege and adoration to one of decidedly less importance, where she is looked down upon both for her occupation and ethnicity. I enjoyed Nimira’s voice immensely, especially in the way she fights to be recognised as more than a trouser girl. Her interactions with most of the other characters seem a little one-sided, which is mostly down to the supporting cast being much less developed than she is. The villain is far too one-dimensional and predictable to ever be truly convincing and the potential her early discussions with Erris, the fairy prince trapped inside the automaton, have potential and a tentative charm, it quickly turns to romance with no real depth, which was a great disappointment, especially since Nimira’s interactions with Hollin, a much more complex and developed character, are much more believable as the beginnings of a possible relationship. I never truly believed the evolution of Nimira and Erris’ relationship.

While I thoroughly enjoyed “Magic Under Glass”, I do feel that it could have benefited from further character and plot development, as the potential offered in this book is truly great. The beginnings of wonderfully imaginative and varied world-building, as well as the hints of complex political intrigue, give Dolmore a great head start in creative what I hope to be a rich and enjoyable series. This world would make a wonderful Studio Ghibli movie. It’s a quick, if very slight read but it leaves the reader wanting more.

3.5/5.

“The Iron Fey Trilogy”

Author: Julie Kagawa.

Publisher: Harlequin Teen.

Books: The Iron King, The Iron Princess and The Iron Queen.

Synopsis for The Iron King (taken from GoodReads): Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined…

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school… or at home. When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change. But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

Cover impressions: When I was working in Waterstones (I miss that job so much) I noticed an article in the Publishers monthly magazine we were sent about Harlequin moving into the YA market and this was one of the books they were advertising very heavily, along with Rachel K. Vincent’s Soul Screamers series. I’m not really a fairy fan but the Midsummer Night’s Dream comparisons and the fact that I got an e-ARC of the 3^rd book in the trilogy (from NetGalley) convinced me to pick the series up.

The series, and the elements within, are sort of a mixed bag. The characters are archetypal of the paranormal genre but there are a few gems within, the set up is very familiar but often executed with flair and creativity, the love story is deathly dull but the world building and mythology is fascinating. There’s a lot to cover and I’m going to do it spoiler free.

Meghan, our heroine, is your pretty standard paranormal YA heroine; she’s an outcast who thinks she’s plain but is actually gorgeous, she’s got family troubles, is supposed to be smart but often makes incredibly stupid decisions and exhibits bravery when necessary. She’s not the worst YA heroine I’ve come across but there was nothing particularly distinguishable about her either. Ash, the main love interest, was also equal levels of dull and the same old dark, mysterious and faintly jerky sexy hero we’ve become oh so accustomed to in the genre. Puck is more promising but the highly predictable love triangle set up does neuter him somewhat. In general, the love element just dragged everything down. I don’t know how much of this has to do with me just being so worn down by love stories in YA, especially three pronged ones, but it felt very samey and poorly developed. As always, things go from cold indifference to light contempt to undying love with no real exchanges beyond the stock formula. Part of its failing lies in the fact that our young lovers are just so damn boring. The real gems are in the supporting characters and the villains, even if the first book’s baddie did have me thinking a lot about Jareth from Labyrinth (which is never a bad thing!)

Kagawa has picked her inspirations from the best selection possible – you’ve got traditional fairy lore, Shakespearean comedy and some modern day stuff like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, one of my childhood staples. The book really shines with its mythos – the traditional clashing with the modern, knowing full well that they can’t survive together, and the Iron Fey concept is genuinely great stuff. If you’re familiar with other fairy YA – Melissa Marr, Holly Black, etc – it may feel a little too familiar to you but it’s still interesting stuff. While the general set up of the trilogy feels very familiar, Kagawa handles it in an interesting way and keeps the plotting fast and interesting. The vast world is populated with a mish mash of creatures and characters that stop things from getting too dull. It’s a very readable series, even if it never fully steps into greatness.

And that’s how I can sum up this series without spoiling anything. Each book is good and very readable, with some great elements in amongst the overly familiar, and I did enjoy the books despite the view my review may present to you, but the books never ascend to greatness. They’re fun, light reads that won’t take up too much of your time and if you’re a fan of this sort of mythology, it’s definitely worth a read. I’m just finding it difficult to say anything more beyond this. Each book flows well and the series is relatively tightly plotted with some action and violence to keep you going through the plodding, deathly dull romance, and the supporting cast make up for the dishwater-like heroes, but it’s all fluffy, mindless fun.

The Iron King: 3.5/5.

The Iron Daughter: 3/5.

The Iron Queen: 3/5.

Coming next on The Sparkle Project: So... there's a copy of Becca Fitzpatrick's "Crescendo" in my local library... should I?

“Beautiful Darkness”

Authors: Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl.

Publisher: Penguin Razorbill.

Pages: 503.

Synopsis (taken from GoodReads): Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen. Sometimes life-ending.

Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now
that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper
into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.

“The Dead Tossed Waves”

Author: Carrie Ryan.

Publisher: Delacorte Books.

Pages (in ARC): 402.

Synopsis (taken from GoodReads): Gabry lives a quiet life. As safe a life as is possible in a town trapped between a forest and the ocean, in a world teeming with the dead, who constantly hunger for those still living. She’s content on her side of the Barrier, happy to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast while she watches from the top of her lighthouse. But there are threats the Barrier cannot hold back. Threats like the secrets Gabry’s mother thought she left behind when she escaped from the Sisterhood and the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Like the cult of religious
zealots who worship the dead. Like the stranger from the forest who seems to know Gabry. And suddenly, everything is changing. One reckless moment, and half of Gabry’s generation is dead, the other half imprisoned. Now Gabry only knows one thing: she must face the forest of her mother’s past in order to save herself and the one she loves.

Cover impressions: Here at the Sparkle Project we’ve got sequel-itis! The festive period has blessed me with more reading time and my old job blessed me with books to read! I found an old advanced reader copy of the sequel to ‘The Forest of Hands and Teeth’, the one book in the original Sparkle Project I actually gave a positive review, in my old staff room and luckily even Xmas booksellers get to take them home. I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Beautiful Creatures’ when I first read it, finding it to be a well crafted, interesting story with a unique mythos and an atmosphere steeped in the Southern Gothic traditions, one of my favourite things in literature. I’m always weary about committing to a series but since I enjoyed the first book so much I knew I had to give this one a go. As for ‘The Dead Tossed Waves’ it was something I was wary about picking up at first – I liked it but still had problems with it – but the possibility of answers for the plot holes that bugged me was too good to resist.

Starting with ‘Beautiful Darkness’ I am sorry to say it was a disappointment. The first book had moments of pacing difficulties but here they seemed to spiral out of control. There was no real beginning, middle or end to the story; it all just dragged out and felt like it was pushed together out of scraps of story and scenes. This book is over 500 pages long and you feel each of those 500+ pages, especially since the plot seems to have wandered off somewhere. Everything wandered from one scene to another with no real order or point. A strict editor could easily have taken a hundred or so pages from this story. It wouldn’t have been perfect but it would have flowed much easier.

I really liked ‘Beautiful Creatures’ for a number of reasons as I mentioned above, but none of these things were present in this sequel – the mythos remains interesting and well crafted but it’s so clumsily put into the story with giant chunks of show-don’t-tell that it adds yet more speed-bumps to a story that desperately needs an energy boost. Ethan’s narration remains likeable enough but there are more points in this story where he doesn’t feel authentically male than in the previous story. Love stories may not be my favourite element in paranormal YA these days but it’s still important to make me care about the romantic leads and I just didn’t care about Lena in this story. Forget the fact that she’s barely in half of it; when she is there her actions didn’t do much to make me sympathise with her. In the previous book I understood her emotions and while I empathise to an extent here, her moments of ignorance, cruelty and just plain old stupidity drove me nuts. Stupidity should not drive the plot. This also left me wondering why the hell Ethan was so obsessively in love with Lena, especially since there were so many more interesting things about Ethan I wanted to know about, such as the return of his dad into his life after the events of the previous story. There were some small moments between Ethan and his dad where I really wanted to read more instead of that dreaded yet inevitable trope of the YA genre – the love triangle. Or rather a love square if I must be precise.

Let’s talk about love triangles since it’s a relevant topic to both of these books. I cannot for the life of me understand why they are so popular in young adult fiction. A great romance is a hard thing to write well, romance detractors be damned, and a love triangle even harder. I’ve never seen it done well yet in YA, or at least not up to my stupidly high standards of literary romance. The basic idea of making love a competition feels disingenuous to me. When ‘Twilight’ first became popular the publishers started to push the ‘Team Edward’ and ‘Team Jacob’ fan competition as part of the publicity campaign (which I’ve always found odd since there isn’t a more obvious conclusion to a love triangle than the one in Twilight. Be honest, Jacob never had a chance.) I see the team element being pushed a lot with other books, for example ‘The Hunger Games’ (because the idea of a strong, independent female character ending up without an unnecessary romantic lead is unthinkable I guess) and ‘Wings’ (oh dear god, that book was terrible.) The emphasis on romance over plot and character aside, the love triangle competition element bugs me because in a love triangle someone is always going to be disappointed. I often find it harder to make a connection with characters when I’m supposed to be actively rooting for one over another. A lot of the time it’s also lazy writing, like I found with ‘Beautiful Darkness.’

Awkwardly segueing back to the review, with the added possible love interests in the story, I just didn’t care if Ethan or Lena ended up with someone different, although I admit to liking Ethan’s possible future English girlfriend Olivia more than I liked Lena. The moping and wondering just added more padding to a story that really doesn’t need it. But what disappointed me most about ‘Beautiful Darkness’ was something missing from the first book – the atmosphere. Garcia and Stohl did a great job in capturing the claustrophobic feeling of being stuck in a small town where everybody knew everything and gossip could ruin your life. It was like a lighter Southern Gothic but every bit just as effective and it was completely missing in this book. There was no tension, no atmosphere, no foreboding sense of something suspicious in the foreground and the book seriously suffers for it. That’s why this book was such a disappointment. I expected so much more and it just fell flat and didn’t deliver.

On the other hand, ‘The Dead Tossed Waves’ seriously surprised me. While I still had similar problems that I had with the first book, Ryan’s wonderful prose kept me gripped throughout. She has a serious gift for creating fear out of the small moments and that which we find to be so normal, like the ocean (water zombies FTW!) The feeling of claustrophobia, even in the wide open spaces that Gabry lives in, is constant, and Ryan does a fantastic job of crafting a secret filled, constraining society in a situation where one would think such a thing isn’t even possible. We also get answers to questions posed in the first book which is always a good thing. The mythos of the zombies, known here as the Mudo, is fleshed out further, no pun intended, and we get a wider view of how the world has been affected by the epidemic. There are some very interesting twists in this tale that I won’t spoil for you.

But the love triangle problem looms in the distance and I just can’t ignore it. I was seriously bugged by Mary’s love-sick moping in ‘The Forest of Hands and Teeth’ because it seemed like a ridiculous priority to have when one’s life is at stake and it just dragged the plot down and sadly the exact thing happens here. While I like the protagonist in this book more than I did with Mary, it still feels highly unnecessary and uninteresting. Like her mother, Gabry suffers from some real moments of head-desk inducing stupidity. The adult Mary also gets a couple moments to display her unchanging personality from the first book. I’m disappointed that Ryan decided to repeat this plot element from the first book since it was evidently the weakest part of the story and weighed down the rest of it so much. I’d love to see her try this story without the love element in it. She manages to pose some very intriguing philosophical questions – what does it truly mean to be alive? When you are undead are you still you? – in an interesting way that keeps the plot moving, as well as some genuinely eerie moments, mixing together themes of religion, power and responsibility, and they’re all so much more interesting than the teenage romance, although I give credit to Gabry for being so much less selfish than her mother, even if she does spend a lot of time comparing herself to her. I’d love to see a story set in this world around the time of the Return. It would probably be as depressing as hell but Ryan could definitely pull it off.

I end this bout of sequel-itis with one disappointment and one surprise. ‘Beautiful Darkness’ was such a letdown and I’m so disappointed that it didn’t live up to its predecessor. While the prose is still serviceable, the majority of the characters likeable and the mythos unique and interesting, the lack of plot, terrible pacing and lack of anything actually happening vastly outweigh the positives. If I’m completely honest, a lot of the time it felt like Garcia and Stohl were making it up as they went along, and with news that the series will go onto book 4 with more possibly on the horizon, I can’t see that as a good thing. The novel ends on a sort of (lazy contrived) cliff-hanger for book 3 which feels like the story is being dragged out like it’s part of the Saw franchise, and beyond it being uninteresting and thrown together solely for sequel bait, the story can only suffer as a result. I don’t think I’ll be reading the rest of the ‘Beautiful Creatures’ series, I just don’t care enough. On the other hand I will definitely be picking up the final book in Ryan’s trilogy, ‘The Dark and Hollow Places.’ Soap opera moments and unnecessary love triangle aside, I love Ryan’s prose and the world she has created. ‘The Dead Tossed Waves’ builds upon its predecessor and even beats it on several levels and I was highly satisfied with it. Ryan’s a great storyteller and I hope she sticks with the stuff she’s great at and makes the final book in her trilogy everything it deserves to be.

Beautiful Darkness: 2/5.

The Dead Tossed Waves: 3.5/5.

(apologies for the terrible HTML here; I am a technological nightmare.)