Book Review: Curtsies and Conspiracies

By Cheshire

It’s been a while since I read the first book so I was a little confused by some of the professor’s names when trying to match name with character, especially since this book deals in the overcomplicated steampunk names I love. Keep in mind that this is the sequel to Etiquette and Espionage and may have some unintended spoilers, but if you’re looking for a quick, fun steampunk read, you might want to check out this series.

Summary: Sophronia’s first year at Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality has certainly been rousing! For one thing, finishing school is training her to be a spy–won’t Mumsy be surprised? Furthermore, Sophronia got mixed up in an intrigue over a stolen device and had a cheese pie thrown at her in a most horrid display of poor manners.

Now, as she sneaks around the dirigible school, eavesdropping on the teachers’ quarters and making clandestine climbs to the ship’s boiler room, she learns that there may be more to a field trip to London than is apparent at first. A conspiracy is afoot–one with dire implications for both supernaturals and humans. Sophronia must rely on her training to discover who is behind the dangerous plot-and survive the London Season with a full dance card.

My Rating: THREE STARS

Book Review: Dorothy Must Die

By Cheshire

Has it really only been a week since my last review? Huh. Feels like longer. Either way, I’m pumped and ready for my next book review. Also, Blue should have a review in store for us tomorrow- if all goes as planned- on the ARC she’s been reading for like a month and a half. If she disappoints, I promise to nag her. A lot. But I am, per usual, getting way of topic. Her goes.

Summary: I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask to be some kind of hero.

But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado- taking you with it- you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can’t be trusted, Wicked Witches are the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There’s still the yellow brick road, though- but even that’s crumbling.

What happened? Dorothy.

They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm- I’m the other girl from Kansas.

I’ve been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.

I’ve been trained to fight.

And I have a mission.

My Rating: FOUR STARS (?)

Book Review: Neverwhere

By Cheshire

Okay, so I never even realized when I was starting this book that this awesome cast is on the BBC radio version of Gaiman’s wonderful, dark Alice in Wonderland-type epic:

And not only them, but Anthony Head voices either Mr. Croup or Mr. Vandemar (I couldn’t really tell) and the guy who plays Wilf from Dr. Who is Old Bailey. *squeals of delight* I must now purchase the CDs on Amazon. This makes me so happy. 🙂 Now you are all probably wondering what I am talking about. So here goes.

Summary: Under the streets of London there’s a world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.

My Rating: FIVE STARS

Book Review: The Graveyard Book (Book vs. Graphic Novel)

By Cheshire

As an avid Neil Gaiman fan, it’s time for a special feature! I read The Graveyard Book many years ago, but found the need to read it again to fully appreciate Volume One of its new graphic novel. Exciting, no? Now I just have to reread Good Omens. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are like a writing dream team. Here goes.

Summary: After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack-who has already killed Bod’s family…

My Rating: FIVE STARS (for the book)

FOUR AND A HALF STARS (for the graphic novel)

Book Review: Cruel Beauty

By Cheshire

My apologies in advance, because I am going to be on hiatus until Labor Day-ish. But, on the bright side, we have received two ARCs for review! Yay! But I also wanted to warn all our lovely readers that the reviews will be coming a little less frequently starting early September. So… keep that in mind. Here goes.

Summary: Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom- all because of a reckless bargain her father struck. And since birth, she has been training to kill him.

Betrayed by her family yet bound to obey, Nyx rails against her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, she abandons everything she’s ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, disarm him, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle- a shifting maze of magical rooms- enthralls her. As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex’s secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. But even if she can bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him?

My Rating: FIVE STARS

Book Review: The Name of the Wind

By Blue

I give up on matching the number of Cheshire’s reviews. It’s impossible. I’ll just stick to slowly and steadily cranking out a review once in a while, continuing with The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Here goes.

Summary: My name is Kvothe.

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town 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.

You may have heard of me.

So begins the tale of Kvothe—from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But The Name of the Wind is so much more—for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe’s legend.

My Rating: FIVE STARS

Book Review: Tabula Rasa

By Cheshire

Yet another wonderful advanced reader copy for honest review from Egmont USA on Netgalley! Thank you, Egmont USA, for giving me such a delightful ARC to read! I’m going to start putting reviews on a schedule, one daily if I have too many reviews written at once so I’m not just lighting up your dashboards with book reviews. I really am sorry about that. Just kidding, I’m not sorry; I’m having too much fun spending all day reading, blogging, and eating mango.

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Sarah has a rare chance at a new life. Or so the doctors tell her. She’s been undergoing a cutting-edge procedure that will render her a tabula rasa- a blank slate. Memory by memory her troubled past is being taken away.

But when her final surgery is interrupted and a team of elite soldiers invades the isolated hospital under cover of a massive blizzard, her fresh start could be her end.

Navigating familiar halls that have become a dangerous maze with the help of a teen computer hacker who’s trying to bring the hospital down for his own reasons, Sarah starts to piece together who she is and why someone would want her erased. And she won’t be silenced again.

My Rating: FOUR STARS

Book Review: Queen of Someday

By Cheshire

I read this book as an advanced reader copy for an honest review on Netgalley from Clean Teen Publishing.

Summary: Before she can become the greatest empress in history, fifteen-year-old Sophie will have to survive her social-climbing mother’s quest to put her on the throne of Russia- at any cost.

Imperial Court holds dangers like nothing Sophie has ever faced before. In the heart of St. Petersburg, survival means navigating the political, romantic, and religious demands of the bitter Empress Elizabeth and her handsome, but sadistic nephew, Peter. Determined to save her impoverished family- and herself- Sophie vows to do whatever is necessary to thrive in her surroundings. But an attempt on her life and an unexpected attraction threatens to derail her plans.

Alone in a new and dangerous world, learning who to trust and who to charm may mean the difference between becoming queen and being sent home in shame to marry her lecherous uncle. With traitors and murderers lurking around every corner, her very life hangs in the balance. Betrothed to one man but falling in love with another, Sophie will need to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to become the empress she’s destined to be.

My Rating: TWO STARS

Book Review: A Confusion of Princes

By Cheshire

Hey everyone, I’m back to review yet another Garth Nix book, A Confusion of Princes. I hope you’re not too tired of me yet. 🙂 Here goes.

Summary: You’d think being a Prince in a vast intergalactic empire would be about about as good as it gets. Particularly when Princes are faster, smarter, and stronger than normal humans. Not to mention being mostly immortal.

But it isn’t as great as it sounds. Princes need to be hard to kill- as Khemri learns the minute he becomes one- for they are always in danger. Their greatest threat? Other Princes. Every Prince wants to become Emperor, and the surest way to do so is to kill, dishonor, or sideline any potential competitor. There are rules, but as Khemri discovers, rules can be bent and even broken.

There are also mysteries. Khemri is drawn into the hidden workings of the Empire and is dispatched on a secret mission. In the ruins of space battle he meets a young woman, called Raine, who challenges his view of the Empire, of Princes, and of himself.

But Khemri is a Prince, and even if he wanted to leave the Empire behind, there are forces there that have very definite plans for his future…

My Rating: TWO STARS

Book Review: Etiquette and Espionage

By Cheshire

Okay so I thought I should inform all of our lovely readers that Blue is on hiatus. Which means the only reviews you’re going to be getting for a while are from me… So yay! Brace yourself for some quality Cheshire time (I’m sure we’ll all be grateful for Blue’s return). Here goes.

Summary: Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than in proper manners- and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsey. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, young ladies learn to finish… everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage- in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year’s education.

My Rating: THREE STARS