Review: Quest for the Golden Arrow by Carrie Jones

Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Fantasy, Middle Grade 8-12, , , ,

Quest for the Golden Arrow by Carrie JonesQuest for the Golden Arrow (Time Stoppers #2)
Carrie Jones
Bloomsbury
Published May 2, 2017

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When the demon Raiff kidnaps Annie’s guardian, Miss Cornelia, the magical village of Aurora, Annie and her friends must journey to the Badlands to rescue her. Annie, a young Time Stopper who can stop time on command, doesn’t make the journey alone. Together with a team of misfits—an elf who may be the last of his kind, a boy who might be a troll, an irritable dwarf, and a stone giant obsessed with quotes—Annie embarks on a quest to find the last dragon and a golden arrow which will help her defeat Raiff and save her guardian and her village from destruction.

Quest for the Golden Arrow took a little getting used to for me. It’s super different than my usual go-to fantasy read in that it’s really quirky and silly and sort of random. I can definitely see how it would appeal to younger readers because of the high adventure elements paired with the fun, offbeat storytelling. Sometimes the characters stand around and tease each other or make jokes or conversation that has nothing to do with anything but is absolutely the kind of thing that kids really do.

While there are some heavier references (at one point the team learns Raiff tortures his captives, for instance), the story refrains from describing any real violence. Annie uses her Time Stop ability to help her friends escape from more than one battle rather than fighting the enemy head-to-head.

All in all, I think The Quest for the Golden Arrow has strong appeal for younger readers, particularly third or fourth graders. Readers interested in fantasy stories but not quite ready for the likes of Percy Jackson may find this a great introduction to the genre.

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Cultural Elements
Quest for the Golden Arrow features characters of different fantasy races, like dwarfs, elves, trolls, brounies, and giants. In one place the text mentions that Jamie’s skin is dark, but there aren’t a lot of cultural details beyond fantasy race.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
No profanity, though one character is said to swear using words about trolls, etc. Some jokes and situations about gas and poop. (A cow passes gas; a bird poops on someone’s head, etc.)

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Annie uses magic to stop time. Also, things she draws become 3D objects. Another character can draw the future, though what he draws isn’t guaranteed to happen. A hag prophesies Annie falling to evil, which haunts not only Annie but her whole team. Jamie may turn into a troll, which prejudices the town against him, and also makes Jamie continually question himself and worry that no matter what he believes and values, he may transform into an evil creature.

Annie’s adversary, Raiff, is a demon and a pretty bad dude. Through the story, Annie learns a secret about Raiff and about herself which forces her to question everything more deeply. See below for spoiler.

Violent Content
References to torture (not shown). Trolls attack Annie’s village and take pixies captive. Annie and her friends battle and attempt to escape from monsters like Snatchers (female monsters with long claws) and a Bugbear. Snake-like creatures bite Annie and her friends.

Drug Content
Brief references to alcohol. In Ireland, the team meets a dwarf who’s fifteen but look much older. He says the Guinness beer ages dwarfs faster. An older man drinks liquor from a flask.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

SPOILER – Spiritual Content
Annie learns that Raiff is her great-grandfather, and therefore, she’s part demon herself. She worries, like Jamie does, that this means she may be destined for evil no matter what she truly wants and values.

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Review: Hit the Ground Running by Mark Burley

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Hit the Ground Running
Mark Burley
Blue Moon Publishing
Published April 25, 2017

Amazon | Goodreads

A terrifying video from his brother leads Eric to think something is terribly wrong. When he learns his parents are missing, and confirms his brother’s disappearance after the video seems to show him captured and possibly shot, Eric vows to help them. He can’t do much from his remote boarding school location, but with the help of the lovely and talented Tess, who agrees to play his girlfriend in an effort to throw off pursuers, and Tess’s friends who possess some pretty amazing online skills, Eric just might have a chance at cracking the mystery and bringing his family home safely.

What Eric finds as he reaches his parents’ lab in California changes the whole game. Secret artifacts point to a dangerous ritual, and deadly assassins close in on Eric’s trail. Eric must outwit those chasing him in time to locate his family and plan their rescue.

This book pretty much had me at parkour. Apparently I’m a total sucker for stories which feature characters with an unusual interest (see my review of Graffiti Moon or Everything, Everything, which happily features another parkour kid!) so this book had me really curious.

I feel like Blue Moon Publishers has been a little hit and miss with me in terms of books I like. Hit the Ground Running was a huge win. The sense of mystery and high stakes yanked me through page after page well past my bedtime. Eric’s concern for his family and his conflicting feelings about Tess won me over superfast. The story isn’t completely from Eric’s point-of-view. Several chapters are from Tess’s point-of-view, and we get a couple of other characters sneaking in from time to time to give us their input.

If you like action-packed stories with high stakes, you will want to have this one on your summer reading list.

Recommended for Ages 13 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters appear to be white. One of Eric’s allies is wheelchair-bound. He and his twin sister still enjoy a lot of active sports like surfing.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
A brief kiss.

Spiritual Content
Eric tells his allies about a strange situation his parents looked into, in which a dead person resurrected to exact revenge. He calls this person a Revenant. He learns his parents may have found an artifact which can be used in a ritual to grant something like resurrection, but without the gory grossness that comes from being Revenant and needing revenge, still decomposing.

Tess’s necklace shows a Makara, a mythical creature from Hindu mythology. There’s a brief description of some Hindu beliefs associated with the Makara and creation and such.

Violent Content
Eric sees video which shows a dark image of his brother getting shot. He discovers the body of a man whose throat has been cut. Bad guys chase him, he tries to escape. Some depictions of kidnapping (bound captive tossed into a trunk).

Brief reference to torture.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

Review: The Rift Uprising by Amy S. Foster

Book Review and Content, Sci-Fi, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

The Rift Uprising (The Rift Uprising Trilogy #1)
Amy S. Foster
Harper Voyager
Published October 4, 2016

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About The Rift Uprising
Seventeen-year-old Ryn Whittaker is a Citadel: an elite, enhanced soldier specially chosen to guard a Rift, a mysterious and dangerous portal to alternate Earths scientists cannot control or close. Trained from the age of fourteen, Ryn can run faster, jump farther, and fight better than a Navy SEAL—which is good when you’re not sure if a laser-wielding Neanderthal or an axe-wielding Viking is trying to make it through the Rift and into her world.

But the teenager’s military conditioning and education have not prepared her for the boy who crosses through—a confused young man, seemingly lost and alone. Because while there’s an immediate physical attraction, it’s his intelligence and curiosity that throws Ryn off balance. The stranger asks disturbing questions about the Rift that Ryn herself has never considered—questions that lead her to wonder if everything about her life and what she’s been told these past six years has been a lie. Are the Rifts as dangerous as her leaders say? Should her people really try to close them . . . or learn how to travel through them?

My Review
One of the things that was too much fun about this book was all the nerdy pop culture references, especially the sci-fi ones. It created an in-on-the-joke feeling, and I laughed out loud at several of them.

Ezra pretty much had me at hello. I liked the way he turned out to be a critical player in figuring out what was going on with the Rifts and the people controlling them. Ryn took a little bit for me to warm up to, but I loved the way each of her teammates had a distinct voice and approach to relationship with her. I want a whole spinoff story about Henry. Tell me that’s happening, someone!

I thought the whole Immigrant village thread made an interesting parallel to some current social issues and fears, but didn’t find it overly preachy. Generally I am a bit of a pansy where it comes to sci-fi, and I like my sci-fi pretty light. I would definitely not call this story light sci-fi, but I found the characters so compelling and the science-y elements easy to follow, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. I feel like I’ve read a couple of indie books that tried to do something like this, and The Rift Uprising is my favorite so far.

If you liked Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray or These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, you should check out The Rift Uprising.

Recommended for Ages 17 up.

Cultural Elements
Ryn and her team appear to be Caucasian. One team member, Henry, is gay. Ryn meets Ezra, an Arab-American non-practicing Muslim.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Ryn and her fellow Citadels experience Blood Lust—intense rage only sated by attacking and physically harming the person they felt attracted to—whenever they feel aroused. This means they’re unable to have sex. Ryn sets out to find a way to undo the programming which makes her this way. (Spoiler about this below.)

At one point, Ryn battles a sexy vampire and things get pretty lustful, which she makes use of as a battle strategy.

A few scenes show intense kissing and nudity/touching between a boy and girl. One scene gets pretty explicit.

Spiritual Content
Ryn believes learning about the Rift would either make someone extremely devout or a complete atheist.

The immigrant camps allow all religions, but no “fundamentalist” practices. Women aren’t allowed to wear a burqa for instance. Ryn states she feels that practice to be misogynistic.

At one point, while waiting at the Rift, the team play a game where someone ranks three people—one to have sex with, one to kill and one to marry. Violet refuses to play because other players sometimes name deities, and she feels it’s disrespectful.

Violent Content
Graphic descriptions of battles against aliens and other humans in multiple scenes.

Drug Content
Teens drink alcohol at a party. Ryn makes an offhand comment about a suspicion her brother may be smoking marijuana.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Spoiler
Ryn learns she and the other Citadels were made to watch explicit videos which aroused them and then beaten. The goal was to form an association between pain and arousal, which was meant to create Blood Lust.

 

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Review: Unblemished by Sara Ella

Book Review and Content, Christian World-View, Clean Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Unblemished
Sara Ella
Thomas Nelson
October 11, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Unblemished
Eliyana has always recoiled from her own reflection in the mirror. But what if that were only one Reflection—one world? What if another world existed where her blemish could become her strength?

Eliyana is used to the shadows. With a hideous birthmark covering half her face, she just hopes to graduate high school unscathed. That is, until Joshua hops a fence and changes her perspective. No one, aside from her mother, has ever treated her as normal. Maybe even beautiful. Because of Joshua, Eliyana finally begins to believe she could be loved.

But one night her mother doesn’t come home, and that’s when everything gets weird.

Now Joshua is her new, and rather reluctant, legal Guardian. Add a hooded stalker and a Central Park battle to the mix and you’ve gone from weird to otherworldly.

Eliyana soon finds herself in a world much larger and more complicated than she’s ever known. A world enslaved by a powerful and vile man. And Eliyana holds the answer to defeating him. How can an ordinary girl, a blemished girl, become a savior when she can’t even save herself?

My Review
I feel like I went into this book with a grudge. I think I’ve read too many Christian novels where Joshua is basically a Jesus character and too perfect and somehow I always find the romance in those stories to be hard to buy into.

But actually, that was a huge misconception about this book on my part. Joshua is a relatively average guy (even if he does seem pretty perfect to El). I think the best part about this book is easily the voice. It’s different than a lot of other books in that you’re in El’s point-of-view so deep that it’s like her reactions are immediate. At first I had to get used to this, but once I did, I found I really enjoyed her sort of oddball girlishness, and she’s so easy to like that even if I’d struggled with the way the writing is, I probably would have stuck with the story to the end.

I liked how the fantasy story world and the real world intersect in the book with the portals to different places and the way they connect. All of Eliyana’s life, others have protected her, and suddenly, she must make decisions for herself and find her own strength.

The romance between characters definitely took some directions I didn’t expect. I liked that Joshua isn’t perfect and that there’s way more going on there than he lets on. In some ways I’m not a huge series reader, but I’ve already got the sequel to Unblemished on stand-by and I can’t wait to find out what happens next. If you liked The Storm Siren Trilogy by Mary Weber or Tandem by Anna Jarzab, you want to add Unblemished to your reading list!

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
The characters seem pretty homogeneous culturally.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing. El learns that her mom had her when she was sixteen.

Spiritual Content
Two forces shape the world El lives in. The Verity—a force for good, which inhabits the Vessel who’s supposed to rule. The Void, a force for evil, which can inhabit someone and make them soulless, sort of bad zombie soldiers.

Each person can possess one in a series of gifts, like the ability to heal, transform, paralyze others, etc.

Violent Content
Battles between El’s team and the cruel king’s soldiers. Not a lot of gory description, but some characters die or get injured.

Drug Content
El attends a party where she sees several teens drinking.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

April AVA Reading Challenge Update Part 2

Lists, News and Fun, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , ,

This month I’m participating in the AVA Readathon Challenge with Bookshelves and Paperbacks. I listed the ARCs (advance release copies) of books I’m planning to read this month in an earlier post, and last week, I posted an update on what I’d read so far. This week I read a few more from the list, so I’m posting another quick update.

Here’s an updated list from the one I posted at the beginning of the challenge:

Note: I originally included Between the Lies by Cathy MacPhail by mistake, since it doesn’t come out until September 2017. I’ve replaced it with Shadow and Thorn by Kenley Davidson which came out in March and I haven’t managed to read yet. Also, you can see I’ve greyed out the covers of the books I read and talked about at my last update. Here are my reviews for Defy the Stars and Letters to the Lost.

What I Read This Week

Unblemished by Sara Ella
I wasn’t at all sure what to expect from this story. Thomas Nelson books have been hit or miss with me lately. The voice in this novel totally rocks. It’s different– much more immediate-felling than typical first-person narrative, but it gives El’s character a real punch and made the story a lot of fun to read.

The Lovely Reckless by Kami Garcia
I had put this one off because I worried it’d play too much to the typical good-girl-meets-bad-boy romance. Right from the beginning, though, I found Frankie to be deep and fascinating and love the stuff about street racing and the play between the two communities of the Heights and the Downs. All in all, I’m super glad I finally got this one read!

Up Next: The Falconer by Elizabeth May, which I’m super excited about, since Krysti at YA and Wine said she really liked it!

What about you?

Have you read a book lately from someone’s recommendation? How was it? Have you recommended a book to a friend recently? How did that work out?

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Review: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Memoir, Middle Grade 8-12, Nonfiction, Poetry, , , , , , , ,

Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
Nancy Paulsen Books
Published August 28, 2014

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

From Goodreads
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.

My Review
After reading her novel-in-verse Locomotion, I knew I had to read Brown Girl Dreaming. I loved the descriptions of character and emotions in each poem. It’s easy to feel the family connections and the love of places, especially her grandmother’s home in South Carolina.

It’s funny—I think there’s this idea that reading and writing always come easily to people who grow up to be writers. Sometimes that’s really not the case. As a little girl, Jacqueline’s relationship with story far exceeds her ability to read or write, something that I think gives a lot of hope to young readers who struggle. There’s a strong element of courage that runs through the whole story. I loved feeling the connections between family members and the strength each one carried and how those relationships affected Jacqueline in her life and her quest to understand her place in the world.

Brown Girl Dreaming would be a great pick for a child struggling with reading, both because of the way it’s told and the struggle in the story itself. It’s also a great place to begin introducing the Civil Rights movement to younger readers.

Recommended for Ages 8 up.

Cultural Elements
Jacqueline Woodson writes about growing up as a young African American girl in South Carolina and later in Brooklyn in the 1960s.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Jacqueline’s grandmother brings her and her siblings to services to learn about being a Jehova’s Witness. They attend classes and go door to door to spread their faith.

Violent Content
She learns about a woman who fell down stairs and died.

Drug Content
Her grandfather smokes cigarettes.