Review: Poison Princess

POISON PRINCESS
The Arcana Chronicles #1
Kresley Cole
Paranormal Young Adult
369 pages
Simon & Schuster BFYR
Available now
Received at BEA

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
 She could save the world—or destroy it.

Sixteen year old Evangeline “Evie” Greene leads a charmed life, until she begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations. When an apocalyptic event decimates her Louisiana hometown, Evie realizes her hallucinations were actually visions of the future—and they’re still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate: Jack Deveaux.

But she can’t do either alone.

With his mile-long rap sheet, wicked grin, and bad attitude, Jack is like no boy Evie has ever known. Even though he once scorned her and everything she represented, he agrees to protect Evie on her quest. She knows she can’t totally depend on Jack. If he ever cast that wicked grin her way, could she possibly resist him?

Who can Evie trust?

As Jack and Evie race to find the source of her visions, they meet others who have gotten the same call. An ancient prophesy is being played out, and Evie is not the only one with special powers. A group of twenty-two teens has been chosen to reenact the ultimate battle between good and evil. But it’s not always clear who is on which side….

MY THOUGHTS
Poison Princess is a strangely alluring introduction to the world of the Arcana Chronicles, the picture Ms. Cole paints haunting and brutal, grabbing us by the throat from the first chapter and refusing to release us until we’ve devoured every page. What’s perhaps most fascinating about this first installment is the challenge it presents, protagonists Evie and Jack not an entirely likable pair from the onset as they repeatedly test the limits of our patience with their antagonistic relationship, but like the Poison Princess herself, both characters slowly grow claws, sinking them into our skin centimeter by centimeter until they’re fully embedded and we find ourselves completely ensnared. As with the characters, the world itself presents many of its own challenges, namely the seemingly endless line of questions we have with regard to the Arcana, Evie’s role with them, and their overall purpose, but instead of the frustration we might expect from so many blanks yet to be filled, the story is written in such a way that we are continually reassured answers will be provided even if they’re not granted to us in this first book.

Evie is a bit of a tricky heroine, someone who initially seems willing to succumb to peer pressure in order to please those around her and who repeatedly mouths off to Jackson with little regard to how he might interpret her words. She inadvertently insults him on a variety of occasions, and despite knowing she’s caused offense, she refuses to clarify her statement so that he understands how it came across was not in fact how it was intended. For almost the entire first half connecting to her is a bit of a struggle, her caustic relationship with Jackson keeping us at a distance even though we’re able to sympathize with her situation and find ourselves more than fascinated by her visions. In the last hundred or so pages however, Evie decides to be as honest (in some things) with Jackson as possible, clearing up many of their misunderstandings when they happen and becoming a young woman we want to root for on every possible level.

Jackson, for his part, is as much of a problem in the beginning as Evie, proudly wearing a suit of arrogance and righteous indignation at his lot in life as though such things belong to him exclusively, with no one else in the world having earned the right to an attitude such as his. He’s downright cruel at times, tossing insults back at Evie and somewhat obtusely interpreting every word she says as her looking down on him from her high horse, refusing to take a moment to give her the benefit of the doubt. His reactions to her are more than justifiable in the beginning, but as they go along we want nothing more than to shake the two of them to help break the vicious cycle of miscommunications they seem incapable of remedying. However, like Evie, eventually he comes clean with regard to his true feelings, and we learn to read his actions instead of listening to his words so that suddenly by the end our hearts are torn to ribbons before we even realize the first cut was made.

Overall, Poison Princess is a violent, vicious, and completely addicting start to what will no doubt prove to be an intense series documenting Evie’s journey from normal to paranormal. Those who crave answers to all their questions will most likely reach the end of this book with a twinge of disappointment at how much is left to learn about the Arcana, but Evie’s story is so darkly captivating it’s hard not to smile at what the last page promises for the future.

Rating: 3.5-4 out of 5 (I'm giving a range because there are days when Jackson and Evie's behavior bothered me more than it did on others. All was dependent on my mood.)

Review: Underworld

UNDERWORLD
(Abandon Trilogy #2)

Meg Cabot
Paranormal Young Adult
336 pages
Scholastic Point
Available May 8th
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

Seventeen-year-old Pierce Oliviera isn’t dead.

Not this time.

But she is being held against her will in the dim, twilit world between heaven and hell, where the spirits of the deceased wait before embarking upon their final journey.

Her captor, John Hayden, claims it’s for her own safety. Because not all the departed are dear. Some are so unhappy with where they ended up after leaving the Underworld, they’ve come back as Furies, intent on vengeance…on the one who sent them there and on the one whom he loves.

But while Pierce might be safe from the Furies in the Underworld, far worse dangers could be lurking for her there…and they might have more to do with its ruler than with his enemies.

And unless Pierce is careful, this time there’ll be no escape.

MY THOUGHTS

Where Abandon introduced us to Pierce and catapulted us back and forth in time to help us piece together her relationship with a dark young man we really never got to know, Underworld grants us the extra time with John Hayden we were denied previously, allowing us to see glimpses of the man behind the Death Deity. Those who were slightly put off by the jumps in time in the first book will be pleased by the linear nature of this second installment, our time with John and Pierce spent entirely in the present as they attempt to sort through their feelings for one another as well as their roles in the Underworld. The focus of Underworld feels a bit more internal, the connection between John and Pierce moving to the forefront while the external threat of the Furies remains more static in nature, and as a result we’re given the opportunity to better know each of our protagonists as individuals.

Though it’s easy to like Pierce overall, her ability to take the fairly monumental changes in her life in stride something we can’t help but admire, our relationship with her can be rocky at times. She’s quick to speak her mind before fully thinking things through, often voicing a thought that hurts John by calling into question his life in the Underworld and the choices he’s forced to make as a result of his work, and she therefore spends a great deal of time apologizing to him for saying things she didn’t entirely mean. While anyone in her position would certainly have questions about John, his past, and his role in the Underworld, her continued inadvertent verbal cuts make the romance between the two of them feel extraordinarily one-sided on John's part, planting seeds of doubt in our minds as to whether or not they truly belong together. She says she loves him, but we don’t necessarily feel the intensity of those feelings the way we do with John, and we spend our time reading wishing she would provide proof of that love through gesture instead of word.

John shows a great deal of growth in this tale, finally allowing some personality to show through the brooding façade he’s so beautifully perfected as he charms Pierce and us with sweet teases and a rather dry sense of humor. He of course is still prone to rather volatile displays of temper when Pierce is threatened, but it’s obvious he’s making a concentrated effort to keep it in check as he fights every instinct he has and sends Pierce back to the surface despite the danger that awaits her there. He so badly wants Pierce to be happy with him, and while we can find fault with some of the methods he utilizes to protect her as well as his refusal to share too much about himself, we can understand his action-first talk-later approach given Pierce’s predilection for voicing her doubts about the two of them.
 
Overall, the plotline surrounding Pierce’s life in the Underworld and the battle with the Furies is secondary in this story to John’s history and his love for Pierce, giving us the feeling we’re not simply in the calm before the storm literally as a hurricane continues to make its way to Isla Huelos, but figuratively as well now that we know a little more about John himself.

Rating: 3.5-4/5

(I suffered from a bit of indecision when it came time to assigning a rating to this one. Some days certain things bothered me more than they did on others, so I'm giving a range:)

Review: Lightbringer

LIGHTBRINGER
K.D. McEntire
Paranormal Young Adult
300 Pages
Pyr
Available November 15th
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY
Wendy is a Lightbringer–a reaper of souls able to send spirits of the deceased into the Light–an ability she discovered after the horrible car accident that robbed her best friend Eddie of his father. Turns out she comes from a long line of Lightbringers, and has been training with her mom to learn the ins and outs of such a unique gift.

When her mom mysteriously falls into a coma and Wendy can't find her spirit anywhere near her body, she decides to spend all her free time scouring the city in search of her. On one of her outings Wendy runs into Piotr, a Rider responsible for the protection of several souls of Lost children from dangerous spirits known as Walkers. Thinking he might be able to help her in a way no one else can, Wendy asks him to assist her in her hunt for her mother, a request he accepts in exchange for the return favor of helping him search for some of the Lost who have gone missing.

What Piotr and Wendy learn is that a new spirit known as the White Lady is amassing large numbers of Walkers and sending them out to steal the Lost. Walkers typically feed on the Lost, using all the youths' unlived years to strengthen their own spectral existence, but now they are simply taking them and not feeding, hording them instead for some greater purpose. As Wendy and Piotr struggle to figure out the White Lady's plan for the Lost, things about each of the two of them that have been hiding in the dark up until now finally make their way into the light and change everything.

MY THOUGHTS
Lightbringer illuminates a world that exists parallel to our own, one where life and death coexist simultaneously and where dead in no way means gone. It’s a world we could potentially reach out and touch if we knew it was there, feeling real enough through the paper pages to draw us in and have us itching to explore what exists just beyond the reach of our reality. Because we enter into this story at a point in Wendy’s life when she’s already cognizant of her role as a reaper of ghosts, we are left to play a bit of catch up with regard to the terminology and the distinguishing characteristics that define each type of spirit (Rider, Walker, Lost, Shade). Our resulting detachment from this initial role as an outsider does begin to fade as we slowly learn the the rules that govern the Never and its inhabitants, allowing us to fully engage with our somewhat temperamental heroine, her ghostly love interest, and her steadfast best friend.

Wendy is a character who has a gift for pulling us close and then pushing us away with shocking strength just as she does those around her, at times earning our sympathy for the hand she’s been dealt but then a few pages later knocking us back several steps with her abrasiveness. She often snaps at her family, Eddie, and Piotr, treating them to an attitude they did little to earn, and while we admire the bravado she frequently projects but doesn’t necessarily feel, the negativity that sometimes gets the better of her can be an touch off-putting. Luckily for us though, this tendency and behavior does not go unacknowledged by either Wendy or those on the receiving end of her wrath, and she is quick to remedy her wrongs with sincerity.

One of the more fascinating aspects of this story is Wendy’s role as Lightbringer, her inherited legacy of sending spirits into the Light one that remains difficult to decipher, leaving us to wonder whether or not this gift makes her a savior or monster. Given Piotr’s initial impression of her as well as the seeds of doubt planted by the White Lady, we begin to question, as Wendy does, the certainty that she’s doing the right thing. Wendy slowly begins to realize just how blindly she's been following her mother’s teachings without ever questioning the whys of it, and the more she learns about her ability the more a haze of confusion begins to replace what was once crystal clear to leave us all in an intriguing limbo scrabbling for purchase.

Though Wendy can be problematic at times and our general ignorance in the beginning keeps us at a bit of a distance, the overall story is rather captivating. We are given a little romance, a little heartbreak, a lot of emotional intensity, and a truly horrifying hooded villain even more grotesque once we finally see the face hidden beneath. We’re left with a solid conclusion for the most part with one huge exception, the uncertainty of one character’s fate sure to haunt us as we wait not-so patiently for a second installment.

Rating: 3.5-4/5

(I couldn't really decide between a 3.5 and a 4 - sometimes when I think back on the story Wendy's behavior and attitude bother me more than they do others, so I'm just giving a range:-)