Initial Thoughts on Rhys Bowen & C.M. Broyles Dreamwalker

I received Dreamwalker from NetGalley and was beyond thrilled. I have always loved dragons and I'm already a fan of Rhys Bowen thanks to Her Royal Spyness. What would be better than a book about a dragon school of some sort written by Bowen and her daughter? Right?

From the cover: "Seven children. Seven powers. One enemy."

Ooooooh this could be good!

It could be good.

I'm at the 40% mark in the book and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I'm not used to that.

Had this feeling of "meh" happened several months ago, I would have just been all "well, it IS written for children" and called it a day. I can't blame it on being "written for" a younger audience or for having a 12 year old as a main character, though.

According to Amazon:

Dreamwalker -- grades 4-8. The Gates -- grades 5-9. How To Train Your Dragon (reading with John and LOVING it) -- grades 3-7. Flavia de Luce -- 11 year old main character. Sophronia Temminick -- 14 year old main character.

According to a hospital in St. Lawrence County, NY:

Me -- 39 years old

So it definitely doesn't have anything to do with the itty bitty age gap. And it's not a bad book. If it was a bad book I wouldn't have made it all the way to 40%, right? It's just not holding my interest all that much. (I find John's book-crush/fictional-girlfriend Judy Moody more interesting than Addy Walker ... and at 40% she's the only one of the "seven children" mentioned on the cover that we really know anything about!)

If this was a television show -- say, your standard hour long primetime CW program -- and I wasn't hooked 40% in to the first episode I would be probably be turning it off and I think that's what I'll be doing now. (Granted, like your standard CW program I may try again at a later date and love it. It took me several "restarts" before I really got into Arrow, after all. There's still hope for Dreamwalker and an updated review .... some day.)

John Connolly's The Gates - Initial Thoughts

I'm just about to start chapter thirteen of The Gates and it seems like the perfect spot to pause and go

OMIGOODNESS! 

YOU HAVE GOT TO READ THIS BOOK!!!!

Well, you don't have to. I mean, it's not like I'm going to hunt you down and strap you to a chair and force you to read it. Even if I did do such a thing, it's possible (I suppose) that you wouldn't like it. It's possible that you have no sense of humor. You may live a life with no whimsy in it at all. You may be such a sucktastic stick in the mud that it would be entirely wasted on you. (If any of these ring true, please leave now.)

So, let's start at the very beginning -- a very good place to start. (Go ahead ... just ask Maria von Trapp.) 

See? I told you. A very good place to start.

But even BEFORE the first paragraph .... the table of contents!

This is worth picking up just for the chapter titles. 

No. Not just for the chapter titles because that would be awfully silly. Who in their right mind would get a book just because of chapter titles?

[In regards to the title for Chapter II : The "small boy" is the main character, Samuel. He's 11. And awesome. His dog, Boswell, is pretty awesome as well. The people who are up to no good? Well, not so awesome. You know, being up to no good and all.]

Okay, so maybe if I had picked up the book and only glanced at the contents I would have, indeed, taken the book home with me just because of the chapter titles. No one ever said I was in my right mind, though. And, really, the footnotes are even more awesome than the chapter titles.

Yes. Footnotes.

26 of them, in fact.

So far I've encountered the first 20 and they're all hilarious:

 

and, sometimes, even educational:

Nurd? You meet him in Chapter V. For a "bad deity" he, too, is pretty awesome so far. At least he's entertaining.

Basically what we have here is another so-called "children's book" full of awesome. (Amazon lists it as "Age level: 10-14.") To be fair, though, I'm not sure yet that it's full of awesome. According to my handy-dandy ereader it says I'm 34% through. Of course, because of the footnotes and whatnot the book actually ends at 88%.

I'm not about to do the math to figure out how far through the actually story I actually am. So far it's awesome. Just take that and run with it.

Seriously. Run.

Go get this book. Read it. Love it. I'll even wait for you catch up with me so we can discuss it togeth.......

Ah, who the hell am I kidding? I'll have it done in a day or two. 

Less than that if I decide to sleep and feed my child at some point.

Have You Read It?: Amanda Stevens' The Restorer

I love a good ghost story. When I was growing up few things gave me as much joy as watching the old Topper movies or The Ghost & Mrs Muir every time they came on tv.

I also love a good graveyard. My mom and I used to actually plan vacation destinations around cemeteries.

When I found out about Amanda Stevens' series called The Graveyard Queen about a ghost-seeing cemetery restorer named Amelia? Definitely count me in!

The book opens when Amelia was nine years old and she realized that she could see ghosts ... and so could her father (who, at the time, was a graveyard caretaker). He told her the rules of being able to see ghosts:

“For those of us who can, there are certain precautions we must take in order to protect ourselves and those around us. The first and most important is this - never acknowledge the dead. Don't look at them, don't speak to them don't let them sense your fear. Even when they touch you"..."The second thing you must remember is this," Papa said. "Never stray too far from hallowed ground."..."Rule Number Three," he said. "Keep your distance from those who are haunted. If they seek you out, turn away from them, for they constitute a terrible threat and cannot be trusted." ..."Rule Number Four," he said sternly. "Never, ever tempt fate.” 

[Wait. What? Ghosts aren't all bad! What about Simon de Canterville? Nearly Headless Nick?? George & Marian Kerby??? Captain Gregg???? Hrmph!]

Fast forward almost 20 years and the rules start flying out the window. You know, it happens. Besides, who wants to read a book about a girl who can see ghosts but never acknowledges that fact except for constantly thinking "Hmmmm. There's a ghost over there but I'll ignore it and pretend that this isn't supposed to be a ghost story."

Actually, for the first part of the book at least (I'm currently only about 25% in), that happens far too often. Four specific ignored ghosts mentioned before Chapter 3 -- not including her first when her father explained the rules to her. I get it. You shouldn't play with dead things ... or with others who have dead things attached to them ...

Oh yeah. That's why the rules start flying out the window. You see, a murder takes place in the graveyard she's been working on and the hot detective assigned to the case? Yep. Being followed by ghosts. Two of them so he must be, like, extra special dangerous to be around for her. But, you know, he's hot.

Oh. And the publishing company is an imprint of Harlequin.

I don't have anything against Harlequin. Really. Some of their imprints I quite enjoy.... as long as I can skip over the steamy "sexy" crap and still have a substantial amount of book left to read.

So, now I'm about to start Chapter 10 and wondering if I stick it out all the way to Chapter 41 (plus the Epilogue that everyone seems compelled to add nowadays) .... or cut it short and be glad that it only costs $1.99? I would really hate to end 2014 with a book that I'm not immediately sure of, you know?

Etiquette & Espionage - Initial Thoughts

I have a big bone to pick with the bus driver who drove the second leg of my trip in to work tonight : he didn't have the heat turned on so it was too cold to read. It wouldn't be such a huge offense some nights, but I'm reading Gail Carriger's Etiquette & Espionage and the main character, 14-year-old Sophronia is just beginning to understand that the "finishing school" she has been suddenly enrolled in isn't your normal type of finishing school.

• It flies. Like, in the air flies.
• She's delivered to the school on the back of a werewolf.
• There are mechanical maids like Rosie from The Jetsons -- but in the 1850's. (She has a mechanical butler at home so that part isn't so strange. I suppose.)
• Her flying school gets attacked by flying bandits (and, as a result, she ends up with a mechanical dog).
• One of her new teachers is a vampire.

I've never ventured into the whole "steam punk" thing until now aside from oohing and aahing over different cosplay pictures online, but so far I'm loving it!

Sophronia is a spitfire. It's probably why her family was so eager to send her to finishing school -- to break her of it. However, it also seems to be why the school was so eager to take her -- to cultivate it. I'm all for the cultivation of spitfire in girls.

I'm currently only a third of the way through -- Chapter 8 : "The Teaching Habits of Werewolves."  I'm already recommending it to friends and I'm extremely glad that it was recommended to me!

Now, I'm going to do a little bit of work (I know, right? Actually working while at work? Crazy.) THEN I'm going to get back to reading ....

Leslie Meier's Mistletoe Murder - A Spoiler-ish Partial Review

Every year I start reading nothing but Christmas-themed books as soon as Thanksgiving has come and gone. The next holly-jolly read is another cozy mystery - Leslie Meier's Mistletoe Murder. Rather than try to remember everything I want to touch on ... this time I'm just going to write little bits as I go.
This is the first book in the Lucy Stone series and I really didn't know much about it before starting aside from the cozy Christmas mystery thing.

Lucy Stone is a wife and mom-of-three living in Tinker Cove, Maine, and working at a customer service call center for an LL Bean-ish type store called Country Cousins. The book starts out with Lucy at work one night where she goes outside for a short break and discovers her super-wealthy boss in his car with a hose going from the tailpipe to the window. The boss is dead and the authorities say it's murder. Of course, her husband is all "oh just let the police handle it" ... but it's still only chapter two so we know that's not going to happen.

As if poor Lucy didn't have enough of her mind with all the baking and knitting and sewing she has to get done for the holidays!

Tinker Cove is one of those towns where everyone seems to know everyone else ... and everything about everyone else. I've lived in places like that. I didn't much like it.

HOLY CRAPANDAHALF!

Okay, authors of the world? Know this : some murders in a murder mystery are just NOT okay.

Included in this category are family pets -- cats especially.

Made it into Chapter Six and I'm done.

Maybe at some point in the future I'll revisit the story and find out who actually did in the boss ... but for now I'm going to go snuggle with my cat and carry on with something else to read.

Cats should not be strangled & left lying around in a freaking "cozy."

That's just so so SO not cozy.