In the interest of accuracy, let me note that the edition of Minion that I have is the “Special Huntress Edition.” This is a sort of “director’s cut” that contains scenes not in the original edition of the novel. I have not read the first version and do not know which scenes are new.
Minion tells the story of Damali, a young African-American woman, and her friends, who together make up a rap band and, secretly, a vampire-hunting team.
January 21st, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2 | L.A. Banks | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Numbers is a book that’s hard to categorize. It starts out as urban fantasy, then becomes more of an adventure novel, then seems to be a “teaching life lessons” story toward the end.
The heroine, Jem, has a supernatural “gift” that has caused her no end of grief. She sees numbers when she looks at people. As a little girl, she didn’t know what the numbers meant — not until her mother’s number turned out to be the day she overdosed on drugs.
January 18th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2 | Rachel Ward | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey
Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side is a fun piece of brain candy for teen girls. Imagine the “girl finds out she’s a long-lost princess” fantasy combined with the “girl finds out she’s the destined true love of a hot vampire guy” fantasy, and you’ve pretty much got the gist. I enjoyed the novel while reading it, but I think I’d have liked it better when I was in the target audience, and there were some aspects that really troubled me.
January 18th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2.5 | Beth Fantaskey | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Death’s Daughter by Amber Benson
She thought the devil wore Prada… until she met the real one!
Before I begin this review, a confession: I’m a sucker for any novel containing cute hellhounds.
Calliope Reaper-Jones is living the life of a typical New York office flunky, dealing with a diva boss, less-hunky-than-advertised blind dates, and a lust for designer clothes she can’t afford. That is, until her father, who happens to be the Grim Reaper himself, is kidnapped and Calliope is swept back into a dangerous supernatural world she’s spent her entire adult life trying to escape.
January 16th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Amber Benson | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Seven Rays by Jessica Bendinger
Beth Ray is beginning to realize she’s not just your average teenage girl. She’s seeing strange visions, and then there are the letters: shiny gold envelopes containing hints of a great destiny. Her mother tries to keep them from her, but the envelopes manage to find Beth wherever she goes.
And then a big hairy bloke shows up on a flying motorbike and takes her to a wizard school in Scotland… wait, wrong book.
What happens to Beth, instead, is that she undergoes laser eye surgery to try to correct her sight,
January 15th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 1.5 | Jessica Bendinger | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A few short weeks after Skinwalker ends, Jane Yellowrock is in trouble again. Leo Pellissier, the leader of New Orleans’ vampires, is mad with grief after the recent events, and in his madness, he blames Jane for his losses. And this time it’s not just Jane who’s in danger. Her witch best friend, Molly, and Molly’s two children are staying with Jane now, and Leo’s grudge could cost them their lives.
As if this weren’t enough trouble for one girl (and one Beast),
January 12th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Faith Hunter | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Cassie doesn’t believe in fairy tales. Sure, Gram used to tell her that bedtime story about how Cassie’s mother was stolen away by the North Wind and imprisoned by trolls. But Cassie, who lives with her scientist father at a research station in the Arctic, has every intention of following in Dad’s logical, analytical footsteps. She has no time for fantasy. And besides, as she grew older, she realized that “stolen by the North Wind” was just a euphemism for “died.”
Or was it?
On her eighteenth birthday,
January 12th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Sarah Beth Durst | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Persistence of Memory by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
I can’t deny that Persistence of Memory has an interesting premise. The protagonist, Erin, is a teenage girl who has been institutionalized most of her life due to multiple personalities and hallucinations. As the novel begins, Erin’s alternate personality, Shevaun, has been suppressed by drugs for about a year, and Erin is taking the first steps toward going to a regular high school and having a “normal” life. Right at this inopportune time, Shevaun reasserts herself and once again threatens to destroy Erin’s sanity,
January 11th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2 | Amelia Atwater-Rhodes | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Stone of the Stars by Alison Baird
The Stone of the Stars is a fun, if imperfect, high fantasy with gently feminist overtones, a coming-of-age theme, and a slight hint of romance.
The beginning is… well, inauspicious. There’s a Prologue that has the feel of warmed-over Tolkien as seen through the lens of the “back in the good old days, everyone was a peaceful Goddess-worshipper” myth. Then, in chapter one, we meet our heroine, Ailia, in a scene that has “Mary Sue” written all over it,
January 10th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Alison Baird | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Killing with the Edge of the Moon by A.A. Attanasio
At 151 pages, Killing with the Edge of the Moon is an evening’s read, but what an enchanted evening it is!
I think A.A. Attanasio intended Killing with the Edge of the Moon as a young adult novel, though I’m not absolutely certain of that. If you’re a parent, though, there’s nothing in here that’s inappropriate for your teen. Despite the cover copy’s mention of the “erotic Otherworld,” all sexual content is of the briefly-implied sort.
January 10th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | A.A. Attanasio | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…