Review: The Red Tent

The Red Tent
Anita Diamant 
Adult historical fiction 

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that tell of her father, Jacob, and his twelve sons.
Told in Dinah's voice, Anita Diamant imagines the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of the mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through childhood, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past.

The concept of this book fascinated me. I am familiar with the stories of Genesis like the story of my life, and have been educated thoroughly in the traditional commentary. Therefore, this book was scary to me - I didn't want it to besmirch the names that are holy to me. However, more than anything I found The Red Tent a beautiful story, and maybe a thought experiment on the people I'm descended from. 

The setting was one of the most incredible I've read - Dinah speaks to all the women of the generations, and tells us her story. She starts with that of her mothers' - with all the facts and all the feelings, and no anachronistic judgements to marr the picture. She describes the house of Jacob in such detail that you feel Cnaan in the late Bronze Age -  feel the heat, see the views, smell the food cooking and the animals. Hear the children, play in the red tent with the women, feel the pain and joy of motherhood along with them. Truly, it was an experience to read.

The climax in this story, the turning point, is also the only incident from which we hear of Dinah in the bible. This is also the place in which our story parts ways with the traditional narrative. It was beautiful, and happy and sad all at once. The dramatic bit itself was rushed - I found it hard to follow what was happening until later. 

The third part of the novel takes place in Egypt. This part was the saddest, but also the slowest and a little... boring. However, I found the existence of this storyline in which Dinah finds herself in Egypt very interesting, because there is a legend saying she did but no explanation was given.

The full circle in which we come to in the end basically made me cry. Like the rest of the book, it was beautiful and tragic. 

Release Celebration - Think Twice!

Think Twice (Don't Even Think About It #2)
Sarah Mlynowski
YA Contemporary

More secrets. More scandals. More ESP. The long-awaited sequel to Don't Even Think About It! We used to be average New York City teenagers. Then, in tenth grade, we got flu shots and developed telepathy. Yes. Telepathy. We could read minds, and it wasn't always pretty. We tried to keep our ESP a secret, but the news spread until everyone knew about our special ability. Our teachers. Our friends. The New York Post. We became C-list celebrities. We even had our own groupies. Now, it's senior year, and with graduation around the corner we have plans--big plans--that involve being telepathic. So when one by one we start to lose our ESP, we have to take action. Fast. With the class brainiac on our side, we should be able to save our telepathy before it's too late. Right? Or will we have to learn how to survive without it once again?

Hey all! You'll remember the post I did about Don't Even Think About It - well guess what? THINK TWICE is here and I'm super excited! 

Take a look at this excerpt !

Totally recommended for fans of Gallagher Girls and Heist Society. You can learn more about it here on Sarah's website. 

ABOUT SARAH MLYNOWSKi:
Sarah is the author of the Magic in Manhattan and Whatever After series, as well as Gimme a Call, Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have), Milkrun, and more.
Her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages and optioned to Hollywood. Sarah was born in Montreal but now lives and writes in New York City. www.sarahm.com

Absolutely loved the Bras and Broomsticks series back in the day, and the Whatever After series gets snatched off the shelves at the bookstore I work at! 

You can get Think Twice at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Click here for the ebook(: 

Thank you so much to Deb Shapiro & Company for the links and excerpt! Enjoy!!

Review: The Five Orange Pips + The Man with the Twisted Lip

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Classics, Mystery 

The Five Ornage Pips:                                           A tale of mystery, scandal and murder that may have been committed by the Ku Klux Klan in London. Who else but Sherlock Holmes can solve these series of deaths?

The Man with the Twisted Lip:                     Holmes discovers Dr. Watson in the black shadows of a smoke-filled opium den in the basement of the very house where Holmes is investigating his latest murder case! But of course the good doctor is only there to hunt down the drug-addicted husband of his wife's dear, but distraught, friend. Sound confusing? For all but The Great Detective, it probably is. And we haven't even talked about the murder yet!

You can read my reviews of other Sherlock Holmes stories here. 

I found The Five Orange Pips fairly predictable and classic for Sherlock Holmes stories - weird sign, death threat by terrorist organization, family member of threatened party contacts good old SH. However I think there were two points of interest for this particular story - the first being some beautiful writing. The vocabulary and the flow of the sentences were enchanting in my opinion. The second was the not-neatly-tied-up-ending which I've found is not usual for these stories. I'll say no more there. 

The Man with the Twisted Lip was overall much more to my fancy. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that in BBC's Sherlock (one of my true loves) they do an almost perfectly loyal adaptation of this story's opening scene. So obviously, I was hooked right off the bat. Truthfully, even if I hadn't seen Sherlock's version I think this chapter in The Adventures of SH is great - it starts off with a bang and a funny surprise, and has some great quotes of Watson deciding to throw in in his lot with that of the detectives'. Also, the end was altogether surprising and amusing, and exactly what you'd look for in a short story. Loved it! 

“...I could not wish anything better than to be associated with my friend in one of those singular adventures which were the normal condition of his existence." 

Happy reading!
Love,
Esty

Review: Champion

Champion (Legend #3)
Marie Lu
dystopia

He is a Legend.
She is a Prodigy.
Who will be Champion?

June and Day have sacrificed so much for the people of the Republic—and each other—and now their country is on the brink of a new existence. June is back in the good graces of the Republic, working within the government’s elite circles as Princeps-Elect, while Day has been assigned a high-level military position.

But neither could have predicted the circumstances that will reunite them: just when a peace treaty is imminent, a plague outbreak causes panic in the Colonies, and war threatens the Republic’s border cities. This new strain of plague is deadlier than ever, and June is the only one who knows the key to her country’s defense. But saving the lives of thousands will mean asking the one she loves to give up everything.

Click here to read my reviews of Legend and Prodigy. 

I totally FLEW through this book. Everything was just so fascinating, the stakes were so high.. there were politics, negotiations, love, loss, sad times and fun times. 

Day continues to be awesome. You just can't help but love him, and admire his loyalty despite everything he'd been through, and his determination to never give up. June is alright- she's very real, and that unfortunately means she's very flawed. Naturally, this made me want to read about Day all the time. However, she displayed really remarkable emotional intelligence in Champion, and was constantly there for everyone. 

Like I said about Prodigy, all the usual literary cliches for last-books-in-the-series were here, something that greatly pissed me off. I WAS NOT HAPPY WITH THIS ENDING. I won't spoil it, but it just wasn't probable, overally disappointing and unnecessary. I also felt that I wanted more information about the Republic for closure- we were told what we needed to know but I like Anden as a leader and wanted to experience within the story the happy ending for the country. 

What can I say? I loved it and was practically in tears to finish such a wonderful series but I can't not dock off a star for that ending. 

Review: Bloody Jack

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy

L.A. Meyer

YA historical fiction

Life as a ship's boy aboard HMS Dolphin is a dream come true for Jacky Faber. Gone are the days of scavenging for food and fighting for survival on the streets of eighteenth-century London. Instead, Jacky is becoming a skilled and respected sailor as the crew pursues pirates on the high seas.There's only one problem: Jacky is a girl. And she will have to use every bit of her spirit, wit, and courage to keep the crew from discovering her secret. This could be the adventure of her life--if only she doesn't get caught. . . .

I had this book on my shelf for the loooongest time. My friend had shoved it into my hands forever ago. At first it looked to me like a cute middle grade adventure, the kind I would've liked when I was younger, and therefore didn't strike my fancy during the period in which I was reading Fifty Shades of Grey, for example. However, a few weekends ago (yes I'm so behind in my reviews) I opened the first page to see what it would be like and I was hooked.

Let's start with the setting. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON. DOES IT GET MORE PERFECT THAN THAT?? Notice my blog design and you get all you need to know about my favorite time and place to read about. Except this time it's not a grand Institute, no balls or seasons or corsets and carriages. No, in Bloody Jack we visited London as the regular people experienced it - dirty, people dying of diseases left and right and not even getting a proper burial as their bodies are getting picked up by experimenters. Starving orphans on the streets scavenging to survive- that is where we meet or protagonist, Mary.

We learn that Mary actually come from a semi-ok financial situation, and that she was even taught to read. But no money or education can stop the death of your parents by plague and being cast out onto the streets. There Mary is picked up by a gang of smart and tough kids led by the lovable Charlie.

I loved this first part of the book. The way it's written, in Mary's garbled street-speech, the fast pace, the childish way in which Mary understands things - it all sucked you right in to the tragedy that was those kids' lives, but also their fun and adventure and family that they built together.

Throughout the novel, we grow up with Mary. How she gets herself on that boat, cleverly hides her identity as a girl, and takes on the name and role of Jacky. It was incredible how a story about a child became a tale of a ship's boy, but then slowly to that of a woman. Despite the book's blurb, I didn't expect the book to dive that deeply into femininity and what it means to be a woman. The whole theme of it made the story so much more realistic - if you were a growing girl among boys who hasn't seen any grown women in years, it would also be a subject that kept you up at night. In this respect, Bloody Jack was very different from other stories where girls pass as boys, like Leviathan or Alanna.

So, behold:

Review: The Sword of Summer

The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #1)

Rick Riordan
middle grade, Norse mythology

Magnus Chase has always been a troubled kid. Since his mother’s mysterious death, he’s lived alone on the streets of Boston, surviving by his wits, keeping one step ahead of the police and the truant officers.
One day, he’s tracked down by a man he’s never met—a man his mother claimed was dangerous. The man tells him an impossible secret: Magnus is the son of a Norse god.
The Viking myths are true. The gods of Asgard are preparing for war. Trolls, giants and worse monsters are stirring for doomsday. To prevent Ragnarok, Magnus must search the Nine Worlds for a weapon that has been lost for thousands of years.
When an attack by fire giants forces him to choose between his own safety and the lives of hundreds of innocents, Magnus makes a fatal decision.
Sometimes, the only way to start a new life is to die . . . 

Behold, the book I basically started reading in November and finished a week ago.  Round of applause, please.

No matter what, come hell or high water, Rick Riordan's books will be good. However, I realize now that the appeal will lessen the older you get. 

Unlike the Percy Jackson books, and like Heroes of Olympus, The Sword of Summer was a massive, almost 500-page book. Let's be honest - Heroes was not as good as PJ, but we loved it and read it anyway, partially because we loved the familiar characters and world. In the case of Magnus Chase, I found the size a bit of a problem. The Norse world and it's rules are not as familiar to the average reader as the Greek Gods and stories are (at least to me) and I found all the character arcs and backgrounds and subplots rather confusing. 

Also, I found the supporting characters rather dull and not as relatable as Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson always were. Blitz and Hearth were not young kids, and Samirah, while having cool and useful abilities, didn't usually add much to the scene. 

Truthfully though, all of the above is really just one flaw, and that is that the book was not Percy Jackson. If you can read it without expecting it to be what it cannot be, you should enjoy it(:

On to the things I loved: humor as spot on as usual, THE CHAPTER TITLES, the cover, the fact that it's a trilogy, pure originality, pop culture references, the dedication, Rick Riordan fandom inside jokes (passes out even more than Jason Grace), the talking goats, the talking sword.