Review - ALL THESE THINGS I'VE DONE

All These Things I've Done (Birthright, #1) - Gabrielle Zevin
Genre: YA Futuristic Contemporary/Dystopian
Publisher: Macmillan
Source: ARC (BEA)
Recommended for: Older Teens & Up

In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.'s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame. Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight--at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family.

All These Things I've Done was quite a roller-coaster book for me, a total whirlwind of emotions. First and foremost, I want to figuratively shoot off spitwads at the above synopsis, because it makes the book sound like an exciting dystopian. This book reads like a futuristic contemporary novel in a quasi-dystopian world. There's nothing really wrong with that, except that it may lead to some disappointed/disengaged readers expecting something else. Just a word of caution, from someone who feels more than a little duped by the enticing synopsis.

My feelings for this book can be seen in my Goodreads status updates:
"Yes, I'm less than 100 pages in, and yes, I am a pretty wary/skeptical reader...those things said, I really think this book is shaping up to be something I can add to the 'Best I've Read' category. Very, very solid start."

"Again, I'm not finished so I don't wanna speak too soon, but...I really think this is going to be one of the BEST books of 2011!!"

and then finally:
"See, THIS is why I don't like to get all excited about books before I'm done with them. In just 1 chapter, this went from extraordinarily good to...kinda crappy, I'm sorry to say."

*Le plummet.*

To be honest, the only reason I was initially engaged in the book is because I liked Anya and her family. The mob elements exist peripherally until the last 50 or so pages, then that whole element came together. If you're going into All These Things I've Done expecting some complex, mafia world akin to the Curse Workers series, you may find yourself underwhelmed.
The worldbuilding is practically nonexistent, and for any book that touts itself as a dystopian, that's not good. Chocolate and caffeine have been outlawed, with little to no explanation as to why. I struggled to suspend my disbelieve that a society would attack caffeine but leave out alcohol. I mean...really? Explain to me how caffeinated coffeehouse, hand-snapping beatniks are more deviant and dangerous than angry drunks, seriously. So I never felt particularly drawn to the plot, because all things considered, there really was none. This is primarily the story of a deceased mob boss's daughter trying to make her way in the world. And that's cool, but this reads more like a futuristic contemporary novel. Dystopians usually need a little more engagement. There were some interesting elements, but mostly the plot didn't come full-swing until the last 50 or so pages. By then, I'd checked out.

So the only thing this book really had going for it was characterization. I loved the main character, Anya, because she seemed so different from the multitude of girls I often encounter in YA lit. She had a maturity that I crave in characters. She seemed grounded, and while she wasn't religious in the personal devotion, private faith sort of way, she had a moral code/set of values that she clung to. And that made me all kinds of happy. But what happens when that's taken away? With me, Zevin quite abruptly withdrew the one major positive I had with this book, the one thing that really had me caring, the one thing that made any sort of personal connection with me. I may lose some readers with the whole religion/values thing (Anya consistently identifies herself as a Catholic), but what I didn't like, that I think may resonate with others, is this picture Zevin drew of a girl who goes from being responsible and a caretaker to her family, to making some boy the center of her world. And I guess that was the last straw (that, and the rather descriptive sexual content that made me, a grownup, pretty uncomfortable).
A basic, forward-moving plot was hardly existent, there wasn't a lot of action, so the whole likability of this book rested on the characters. And for me, Zevin destroyed the main character's credibility. It made Anya's somewhat preachy declarations and internal monologues about her beliefs seem like nothing but talk. And the love interest, Win, had almost no likability with me. He came across as practically manipulative in an emotionally pushy sort of way.

So that's what nagged at me as I struggled to finish this. It's like watching a strong, self-assured character turn codependent. I do want admit that Anya attempts to regain the proactive, strong personality by the end of the novel, but by then, I had just checked out.

What I also realized (I obviously didn't notice this from the synopsis, which was my bad) is that ATTID is really a retelling of 'Romeo and Juliet' with a semi-dystopian backdrop. Since I've already biased up this review, I might as well admit that I think 'Romeo and Juliet' is one of the LEAST ROMANTIC stories of all time, so I am definitely not one to buy into the whole 'starcrossed lovers make the best lovers' idea. And the ending of this book really sets up for more 'Romeo and Juliet'esque drama. Secret relationships. And the whole 'I really love you but I'm going to act like I hate you to protect you!' is just hogwash storytelling, in my opinion. I most likely will not be catching the sequel.

I'm just sad at how this book turned out. I was squee-happy when I nabbed a copy at BEA, and when I started out reading this, I loving it so much. I predict that the main issue other readers will have will be with 1) the lack of a truly solid plot, and/or 2) the lack of truly solid dystopian elements. I doubt most readers will share my disappointment regarding characters. And Zevin's prose is absolutely beautiful. I think that if some characterization elements were taken out, and if more attention had been given to the dystopian setting, this book would have been absolutely phenomenal.
(Due to strong language and sexual content, I would recommend this book for older readers only)


And if anyone is interested trading for my copy, please email me at
imaginefocusedreviews@gmail.com

Circle Nine WINNER WINNER

Thank you to the huuuuuuge amount of entries this contest got!
I'm excited to do another one in a week or two :)

The winner of the ARC of Circle Nine by Anne Heltzel is


Jessica A. (Firefly Book Loft)!


Yay!

I'll have another Review Me giveaway up shortly! Thank you to everyone who entered.

my mailbox! [14]

At the end of each week, I do a quick post about any books I've bought, swapped, or received.

I've had several opportunities to make really cool trades in the last month. If anybody's interested, my list of books/ARCs for trade can be found here.
This week I received -
Swapped
traded my copies of Cold Kiss, The Future of Us, and Shut Out for:

Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi
The King of Attolia (Queen's Thief, #3) - Megan Whalen Turner
Poison Study - Maria Snyder
^thank you Lyndsey

I've heard that as far as recent dystopians go, Ship Breaker is a must-read, so I'm really excited to have a copy!

And thanks for all the kind words from the great multitude of you last week who reassured me that there is absolutely nothing weird about adults still watching animated movies <3.

Hope everybody had a good week!

Giveaway reminder!

My ARC giveaway of Circle Nine by Anne Heltzel is still going on for one more week!
If you haven't entered already, now's your chance!
The giveaway will end on August 7th.

Unfinished and Abandoned books [1]

What do you do with books you haven't quite finished yet?
I'd been flip-flopping on that until I saw Enna at Squeaky Books' feature called Unfinished Friday. This post is inspired by that.

Over the last year, I've changed my reading views a bit. Used to be that I was absolutely determined to finish a book, even if I didn't like it (or whatever reason)...just to be finished with it.
Now, too many books and not enough time have resulted in way more DNFs and (temporary) DNFs. And really, I read for fun, pure and simple.
But just because I abandon or set aside a book doesn't necessarily mean I don't like it. It just for whatever reason, that book didn't hold my interest. Other books, though, I definitely did not like.

Matched (Matched, #1) - Ally Condie
Unfinished since: January 2011
Commentary: The number one gripe I have with these "I'm-the-next-Hunger Games!" dystopians is that their storyworld is 1) underdeveloped, 2) implausible, 3) boring.
With Matched, I found the whole setup rather boring. Actually, the society seems to run perfectly fine with everybody getting matched together. Authors, please understand: you cannot have revolution if there's nothing to revolt against. And why is it, after _____ years of running successfully, does it take 1 teen girl for everyone to start 'seeing the light'? That's a bit implausible.
That, and I just found the characters very tepid. There's nothing really wrong with this book, and I do plan on finishing it, since I have the second installment, but it was just hard to keep focused.
Positive: There's nothing really wrong with Matched. In fact, I love Ally Condie's writing and I completely respect her for writing a clean story, one that I can still recommend to friends and young adults.


Firelight (Firelight, #1) - Sophie Jordan
Unfinished since: April, 2011
Commentary: It's been harder and harder for me to get through a paranormal book, and I think it's because the formula is getting old. Somebody's some sort of paranormal creature, but we mere mortals are unaware of said creatures' existence. Somebody is "inexplicably drawn to" somebody else. There's a kissy scene before a fight scene (boo). Somebody is a paranormal creature who has any number of abilities/powers, whatever, and yet they're bested by this fearsome institution known as high school. The main character is supposedly some sort of dragon-shifting princess or whatever, and yet she can't seem to handle prissy teenage girls.
All the love interests are all the same - modern day Adonises who are nice but neeever pushy, because we can't have an attentive guy cramping the heroine's style! Oh, the horror, someone who actually has an opinion and isn't afraid to stand up to you! We can't have that in a love interest. Guys are supposed to stand around, be pretty, and let the heroine save the day. (Where have we seen that formula, roles reversed, before?)
Oh, and there's a love triangle. 'nuff said.
Positive: At least Wesley, the love interest, wasn't one of those 'bad boys.' I feel like an '80s made-for-TV-movie just typing that phrase. :S



Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1) - Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Unfinished since: November 2010
Commentary: It's more than a little intimidating to be unable to finish a book that so many people love, that's for sure. For one thing, this book is just long. I mean, it ambles along and truly fascinating things like magic and spell-casters and curses and so on are bogged down by day-by-day reports made by the narrator, Ethan. A day-by-day commentary of high school is not a good way to write a paranormal book about witches. It's unnecessary. But what I just could not get over was the unreliable voice of the narrator. I've seen many reviews accuse Ethan of sounding like a middle-aged woman. And guess who wrote Beautiful Creatures...?
For example, it's normal for a teen boy to be bored to death living in a small town and want to leave in pursuit of other, more exciting things. But Ethan's constantly whining about how horrible, backwards, and bigoted his South Carolina town is, and I find it hard to believe that any teen boy would be that concerned or aware. And really, as someone who lives in the South, it seemed to me like the authors were trying to make some kind of statement, which I most certainly did not appreciate. This, coupled with the authors' insistence on reminding us how mean everyone is to Lena just because she's different was, to say the very least, over-the-top.
I do not like agendas in the books that I read, and Beautiful Creatures turned out to be one of the most heavy-handed books I've ever read. Screaming about tolerance to the reader is not classy, in my opinion.
Positives: The take on magic in this book is fascinating, when it's actually the focus of the story.
Also, this book is pretty clean, so I could still recommend it.


And last and least -
the first and only BEA book on the list,
All These Things I've Done - Gabrielle Zevin
Abandoned since: July 2011
Commentary: I'm only 100 pages away from the ending, but it's highly likely I will never reach those final pages. If you look this book up on Goodreads, you'll see that there's already a sea of 4-and-5 star reviews. And nestled in there, somewhere, is a 2-star rating from myself.
You see, quite a few books have, over the years, bored me or annoyed me, but only a very few have offended me on a personal level, as this one has. This book is a prime example of why I don't like religion (or religious characters) in young adult novels - because I don't really trust authors to not misrepresent it. The only religious character in this book is also one who simply abandons her previously-held beliefs soon after she starts dating for the first time, because, you know, moral beliefs are just a cramp on a girl's style.
Besides what you may or may not believe about religion specifically, do we as readers really want to get happy-clappy over a girl who just drops her beliefs or principles (whatever they are) because some guy comes along? That it's okay to change who you are and what you believe just because somebody pays attention to you? I certainly don't think so.
So that's my soapbox-problem with this book. But this book started out so well! I absolutely loved the main character in the beginning, as the daughter of a deceased crime boss who tries to live on the outskirts of her family's illegal chocolate trade, because chocolate and caffeine have been banned. There really weren't any major reasons given as to why these substances were banned, which made it hard to really get on board with the futuristic society presented.
This is more of a small-time dystopian, because as of now, the focus is primarily on the girl, Anya Balanchine (*love* that name) and her average life, instead of society as a whole.
It's just a futuristic New York City that's barren and dry (for some reason), with limited electronic technology and a mysterious ban on caffeine products.
Positive: I'm predicting that most people won't have an issue with what I mentioned here, or will overlook it, so that's a positive, I guess.

Review - QUEEN OF ATTOLIA

The Queen of Attolia (Queen's Thief, #2) - Megan Whalen Turner

Genre: YA Fantasy (in a somewhat historical setting)

Publisher: Harper Collins
# of pages: 362 (pb)
Recommended for: EVERYONE

When Eugenides (yoo-JEN-ə-deez), the Thief of Eddis, stole Hamiathes's Gift, the Queen of Attolia lost more than a mythical relic. She lost face. Everyone knew that Eugenides had outwitted and escaped her. To restore her reputation and reassert her power, the Queen of Attolia will go to any length and accept any help that is offered...she will risk her country to execute the perfect revenge.
...but
Eugenides can steal anything. And he taunts the Queen of Attolia, moving through her strongholds seemingly at will. So Attolia waits, secure in the knowledge that the Thief will slip, that he will haunt her palace one too many times.
...at what price?
When Eugenides finds his small mountain country at war with Attolia, he must steal a man, he must steal a queen, he must steal peace. But his greatest triumph, and his greatest loss, comes in capturing something that the Queen of Attolia thought she had sacrificed long ago...

----

Sometimes it happens. Sometimes I read a series out of order. Sometimes, like in the case of the Twilight series (where, for reasons that are still unknown, I dove into Breaking Dawn first and got to about page 100 before admitting that I was as confused and lost as Admiral Stockdale in that VP debate). Thankfully, no such confusion occurred due to opting out of reading The Thief, the first book in the series, first.

The gist of the story is easy to figure out. Eugenides is an infamous thief wanted in three separate countries. Luckily for him, his status as a cousin to the Queen has been enough to keep him safe, until a botched mission early in the novel results in a shocking and devastating punishment. The rest of the story, in large part, deals with Eugenides picking up the pieces of his life and attempting to recover from that event. Against the strong character-driven emotionality if the story is an elaborate backdrop of political intrigue, treacherous double-crossers, and war.
Megan Whalen Turner's fantasy geography is stunning and equally intricate. She creates a world reminiscent of Greek city-states (the fictional kingdoms of Sounis, Attolia, and Eddis supposedly based on the geography of ancient Greece), with a more Byzantine-era style, and featuring such early-modern technology as gunpowder, clockwork objects, and printed books.

I have to admit that some of Turner's storylines didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Most of the events in the novel revolve around this three-party war, which started out easy to understand, but soon seemed to delve into murky political motives with a lot of loose ends.

I love military tactics, perhaps more than the average reader, but I was thoroughly confused by a lot of the goings-on. And I think that all the attention given to the politics of the countries detracted from the most enjoyable part of the story, the characters.

Honestly, I think the thief Eugenides is now one of my all-time favorite characters. This is what I consider a successful, lovable, cheer-worthy character: someone who is both highly intelligent and extremely witty, physically capable (without being the brawniest dude in the room), and someone who undergoes some sort of emotional maturity over the course of the story. I definitely noticed a different character at the novel's end than at the beginning, and I like that. And I liked that Eugenides had to pull himself out of a depressing and practically insurmountable ordeal. It's okay for characters to get into a funk, but they need to be able to pull themselves out of it. :) The two rival queens of Eddis and Attolia are the other characters of great importance, and I liked how Turner portrayed the familial interactions between Eugenides and his cousin, Eddis. But since the Queen of Attolia is also the title character, I expected her to be a little more rounded and to play a bigger role in the story. But we don't see her except occasionally, until the last 100 or so pages. In that time, I didn't buy into the character transformation that Turner says she went through.

And really, the main reason this book is 4 stars instead of 5 is because of Megan's writing style. On one hand, I love her creativity and I love how brilliant she obviously is. She had a seemless ability to make three fictional countries come alive with extensive histories and geographic elements. But I feel like most of the book was told to me, not shown. Her characters are obviously meant to be highly rounded and with a lot of depth, but because of the fact that her narrative was more of a "telling narrative," I didn't feel much of a connection to what was going on. Even a 3rd person narrative can have some emotional exploration and insight, and I found that lacking here. I wish she would have just kept the 1st person narrative that she started in The Thief...

But I'm saying all this as a 20something reader. I have no doubt that kids/teens will be fascinated by the detail of this series and the literal nonstop action (I'm serious. This is one of those books that is just flat EXCITING to read). And it's definitely a series that I wholeheartedly recommend, especially to young readers and boys.

Final Rating

My Mailbox [13]

Traded
Don't Expect Magic - Kathy McCullough
Thank you to the Flashlight Reader!

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

Ordered
The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature - Jeff VanderMeer, et al

&
Special Edition 2 Disc of Aladdin!
Heck yeah! For $10 you bet I ordered this! Pooh on Disney and their whole 'Disney vault' thing!
When I was a kid, I had the hugest collection of animated movies, but curse it, they were all video, and with the rise of DVDs, well, you know. I don't even think we have a VCR anymore (sad day, I loved those big ol' videos and the big boxes they came in, *sigh*)

Very productive couple of weeks! What did everybody else get?
& do you find yourself watching the occasional animated movie or two every once in awhile? Because if you ask me, they just can't lose their value.