Hunter Blog Tour: Review + Giveaway

HUNTER
Hunter #1
Mercedes Lackey
Young Adult/Fantasy/Dystopian
384 pages
Disney Hyperion
Available Now
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Centuries ago, the barriers between our world and the Otherworld were slashed open allowing hideous fantastical monsters to wreak havoc; destroying entire cities in their wake. Now, people must live in enclosed communities, behind walls that keep them safe from the evil creatures constantly trying to break in. Only the corps of teen Hunters with lightning reflexes and magical abilities can protect the populace from the daily attacks.

Joyeaux Charmand is a mountain girl from a close knit village who comes to the big city to join the Hunters. Joy thinks she is only there to perform her civic duty and protect the capitol Cits, or civilians, but as cameras follow her every move, she soon learns that the more successful she is in her hunts, the more famous she becomes.

With millions of fans watching her on reality TV, Joy begins to realize that Apex is not all it seems. She is forced to question everything she grew up believing about the legendary Hunters and the very world she lives in. Soon she finds that her fame may be part of a deep conspiracy that threatens to upend the protective structure built to keep dark magic out. The monsters are getting in and it is up to Joy to find out why.

MY THOUGHTS
Hunter drops us right into the thick of things, introducing us to this post-apocalyptic paranormal world and our heroine as she faces down one of the beautifully brutal fae on her way to a new life. From there we hit the ground running, learning the ins and outs of the various otherworldly creatures who make everyday life difficult as Joy runs into them on her Hunts, all the while slowly unraveling the politics behind the superstar quality to life as a Hunter.

Joy is a young woman we can't help but love the moment we meet her, the size of her ego inversely proportional to her abilities as a Hunter, ensuring she has us in her corner before she even steps foot off the train. She's quick to share her knowledge with her fellow Hunters instead of keeping it all to herself, and is equally open to learning what they have to teach her so that she can better protect those who cannot protect themselves. Despite being used to Hunting solo, she adapts easily and becomes a team player through and through, unfazed by the celebrity status of some her fellow Hunters and focusing on the job at hand.

The pacing does take a slower turn midway through, the Hunts Joy is sent on feeling a little like empty action as it's not entirely clear where her Hunting is heading in the grand scheme of things. The romance also leaves a little to be desired, emotionally quiet enough that the story would likely be equally successful without it, but it's possible the relationship will increase in importance as the series continues. Those two flaws aren't enough to detract from an altogether thoroughly entertaining story however, with the final one hundred pages flying by as politics and Hunting clash and try to bring Joy to her knees.

Overall, Hunter gives us a unique paranormal world full of little-known creatures who wreak all kinds of havoc, as well as a heroine who is gorgeously strong and quick-thinking; a true badass who doesn't even realize how badass she is. We're left in a satisfying place, a lot of questions as of yet unanswered but it's clear we'll figure things out together with Joy as we go, and I for one look forward to teaming back up with her and her ever-growing pack of hounds.

Rating: 4/5

Find Hunter:

Amazon • B&N • iBooks • Goodreads

• • • • • • • • • • •

MERECEDES LACKEY

Mercedes Lackey is the acclaimed author of over fifty novels and many works of short fiction. In her "spare" time she is also a professional lyricist and a licensed wild bird rehabilitator. Mercedes lives in Oklahoma with her husband and frequent collaborator, artist Larry Dixon, and their flock of parrots.

Find Mercedes:

Website • Twitter • Facebook • Goodreads

• • • • • • • • • • •

GIVEAWAY 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Be sure and check out all the previous stops for more reviews, interviews and guest posts!

WEEK ONE

8/24/2015- Fictitious Delicious- Interview  

8/25/2015- What the Cat Read- Review  

8/26/2015- Tales of the Ravenous Reader- Guest Post  

8/27/2015- The Book Bratz- Review  

8/28/2015- Bewitched Bookworms- Interview

WEEK TWO

8/31/2015- She Dreams in Fiction- Review

9/1/2015- Two Chicks on Books- Guest Post

9/2/2015-The Book Cellar- Review

9/3/2015- Mundie Moms- Interview

9/4/2015- Supernatural Snark- Review

Review: Ares

ARES: BRINGER OF WAR
Olympians #7
George O'Connor
Graphic Novel
80 pages
First Second Books
Available Now
Source: Finished copy from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
The myth continues in the tenth year of the fabled Trojan War where two infamous gods of war go to battle. The spotlight is thrown on Ares, god of war, and primarily focuses on his battle with the clever and powerful Athena. As the battle culminates and the gods try to one-up each other to win, the human death toll mounts. Who will win this epic clash of power? And how many will have to die first?

MY THOUGHTS
Ares is the latest addition to George O’Connor’s Olympians series, taking us on a very quick journey through the tail end of the Trojan War as the gods and goddesses of Olympus debate and bicker among themselves as to whether or not they should intervene. Ares is larger than life in his anger and love of blood and chaos–a striking contrast to Athena’s love of strategy and planning–but like so many of the Olympian gods, he’s also in possession of an inflated sense of self and an easily-bruised ego, causing him to sulk one minute and erupt in an all-out rage the next.

The artwork itself is absolutely stunning, the panels beautiful, colorful and easy to understand for the most part (the sheer number of Olympian gods does create some confusion here and there as we try to identify and keep track of each one), allowing us breeze through this piece of the Trojan war in no time. The back of Ares contains a breakdown of–and explanation for–a number of panels, giving us unique insight into the story itself while also bringing to our attention things we may have missed as we read through initially. Quick and fun, Ares provides a different perspective on the final days of the Trojan War and shows how powerful yet vulnerable some of the Olympian gods can be.
 

Find George and the Olympians series:

Website • Facebook • Twitter • Goodreads • Amazon 

 

 Don't forget to check out the other stops on this tour for more reviews of Ares!

All These Lives Blog Tour: Review

ALL THESE LIVES

Sarah Wylie
Contemporary Young Adult
245 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Available June 5th
Received from Books Complete Me for blog tour

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Sixteen-year-old Dani is convinced she has nine lives. As a child she twice walked away from situations where she should have died. But Dani’s twin, Jena, isn’t so lucky.  She has cancer and might not even be able to keep her one life. Dani’s father is in denial. Her mother is trying to hold it together and prove everything’s normal.  And Jena is wasting away.  To cope, Dani sets out to rid herself of all her extra lives.  Maybe they’ll be released into the universe and someone who wants to live more than she does will get one.  Someone like Jena.  But just when Dani finds herself at the breaking point, she’s faced with a startling realization.  Maybe she doesn’t have nine lives after all.  Maybe she really only ever had one.

MY THOUGHTS

All These Lives is one of those stories that presents us with a quick snapshot of a character’s life—no drawing us in with a beginning, complicating matters in the middle, and then dropping our jaws at the end, instead we arrive in the middle, spend some time, and leave still very much in the middle of the characters' timelines. Typically with this type of read emotional attachment is a bit shallower, our time with the protagonists so limited it's hard to feel as though we truly get to know them, finding ourselves at the very best able to sympathize with them before we reach the last page and are left to wonder what will come of them. Such is the case with All These Lives, our snippet of Dani’s life as she struggles to deal with her twin sister’s leukemia a quick and dark one, leaving us with heavy hearts as we watch one young woman self-destruct in an attempt to save another.

Dani is a tricky young heroine, springing from the story in the very first chapter with a rather blunt demeanor to slap us in the face and make us blink at our rather rocky introduction. While it’s clear she uses her attitude and her general disregard for the feelings of others as a coping mechanism for Jena's illness–feeling as though there’s no room in her for anything outside of the overwhelming guilt she feels for being the sister with lives to spare–her snide comments and standoffish personality prove to be armor we lack even the slightest ability to chink. Her misguided belief that she has nine lives (that if given up and released into the universe through death could find their way to someone like her sister who needs them) is challenging to read about, making us extremely uncomfortable and reinforcing Dani’s feelings of helplessness with regard to Jena by forcing us to acknowledge our own helplessness when it comes to saving Dani from herself.

All These Lives will likely appeal to those readers who enjoy realism without the pleasant safety of a sugar coating, where life is hard and at times brutal, and a miraculous happy ending, however desirable, isn’t necessarily a guarantee. Dani isn’t an easy protagonist on any level, and while we get tiny glimpses of vulnerability here and there, she fights us tooth and nail the entire way, making it crystal clear she would shove us from her life if she knew we were there just as roughly as she does those around her. As mentioned before, there’s no real beginning or end to this story, so we close the back cover without a definite future for Dani and Jena laid before us, but we do get some comfort in knowing Dani has learned from her nine-lives experiment and will perhaps start shedding some of that flawless armor moving forward.

Rating: 3.5/5
 

GIVEAWAY

As part of the All These Lives blog tour, Sarah is generously offering up a fantastic prize pack including:


- 1 SIGNED copy of All These Lives
- 3 All These Lives bookmarks
- Your choice of ANY 3 Apocalypsies books!


To enter, hop over to Sarah's Blog and fill out the form. Giveaway will run through 11pm EST on June 8th after which a winner will be chosen. Good luck everyone!

Review: Lies Beneath

LIES BENEATH (Lies Beneath #1)
Anne Greenwood Brown
Paranormal Young Adult
303 pages
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Available June 12th
Received through Teen Book Scene and NetGalley for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Calder White lives in the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior, the only brother in a family of murderous mermaids. To survive, Calder and his sisters prey on humans, killing them to absorb their energy. 

But this summer the underwater clan targets Jason Hancock out of pure revenge. They blame Hancock for their mother's death and have been waiting a long time for him to return to his family's homestead on the lake. Hancock has a fear of water, so to lure him in, Calder sets out to seduce Hancock's daughter, Lily. Easy enough—especially as Calder has lots of practice using his irresistible good looks and charm on unsuspecting girls. 

Only this time Calder screws everything up: he falls for Lily—just as Lily starts to suspect that there's more to the monsters-in-the-lake legends than she ever imagined. And just as his sisters are losing patience with him.

MY THOUGHTS

With a dark premise–merfolk who feed on the positive emotions of others, pulling every ounce of happiness from them in brightly colored strands to leave nothing but lifeless bodies in their wake–and a rare male first-person point of view, Lies Beneath has the potential to be the type of read that lingers in our memories for an indeterminate amount of time after finishing. Unfortunately, events move forward at a pace that has us wondering when all the intriguing intricacies promised us in the synopsis are going to begin to unfold, and we’re given characters who lack some of the beautifully rich depths found in the very waters they inhabit. We are but spectators in this tale, passive observers who can see the waves of Lake Superior crash against the shore but not feel the spray on our faces, and who understand that a love is blossoming between predator and prey but don't fully experience the tension radiating from their unlikely pairing.

Ms. Greenwood’s mermaid (and merman) mythology is truly fascinating–emotional cannibals who thrive on the stolen feelings of human beings, thus causing a clench in our guts as we realize just how far we’ve come from the beloved fairytale versions of the same creatures. While we are equally horrified and fascinated by their nature, we never truly feel consumed by their desire to kill since Calder has denied his basest urge to take a life for six months when we’re introduced to him. Because he seems to find it relatively easy to overcome the murderous desires his three sisters continually struggle with, the sense of danger is only a light breeze on the back of our necks rather than a great gust that causes our bodies to erupt in chills.

Our relationship with Calder and his sisters is in direct opposition to their relationship with humans in the story: where the prey in this tale are vibrant and overflowing with life only to end up mere husks, we begin reading this tale empty but expectant, waiting to be filled with and enveloped by the emotions of the characters, but instead we’re left much the same at the end as we were when we started. Overall though, Lies Beneath is well-written and has all the makings of a truly enthralling and hypnotic anti-fairytale, we just can’t help but wish the characters would pull a strong emotional reaction from us they way they do their victims so that we would cease being decorative lures bouncing on the surface and would instead find ourselves yanked beneath the waves for a more terrifying and exciting experience.

Rating: 3/5

*Confession: I wrote this review months ago, and as I was editing it last night before it posted I noticed how heavy-handed I was with the water theme. I squeezed a ridiculous number of water references into a short 3 paragraphs. Well done Jenny, well done. O_o