The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas

Title: The Burning Sky

Author: Sherry Thomas

Type: Young Adult Novel
Genre: Fantasy

Series: Yes book one of The Elemental Trilogy

Pages: 464
Copyright: 2013

Publisher: Balzar + Bray

Rating: 3.5out of 5


Summary: from Goodreads

It all began with a ruined elixir and an accidental bolt of lightning…

Iolanthe Seabourne is the greatest elemental mage of her generation—or so she's being told. The one prophesied for years to be the savior of The Realm. It is her duty and destiny to face and defeat the Bane, the greatest mage tyrant the world has ever known. A suicide task for anyone let alone a sixteen-year-old girl with no training, facing a prophecy that foretells a fiery clash to the death.

Prince Titus of Elberon has sworn to protect Iolanthe at all costs but he's also a powerful mage committed to obliterating the Bane to avenge the death of his family—even if he must sacrifice both Iolanthe and himself to achieve his goal.

But Titus makes the terrifying mistake of falling in love with the girl who should have been only a means to an end. Now, with the servants of the Bane closing in, he must choose between his mission and her life.

Feelings: 
I enjoyed the story but it took me at least two chapters to start liking it. I wasn't sure if it was going to stand up or not but it does. The cover of the book is what really caught my eye when I was browsing books. I know that I should always judge books by their cover. That's why I occasionally read books cover blind. However, having a good cover goes a long way towards helping me pick up the book and read.

This is Sherry Thomas' first young adult fantasy novel. She has written romance novels in the past and I had hoped for a little more romance in here than was present. Yes there is young love but it wasn't exactly what I expected from the description of the book. The story is more about the kingdom and how it has fallen and how it might be saved by Iolanthe and Prince Titus. It is their story but it also focuses on the magic side.

The Burning Sky is the first in a trilogy and there is a good chance one will be waiting a while for the next books to come out so let me say a little bit about the ending without spoilers hopefully. The ending didn't have a cliff hanger that leaves you wanting to scream at the author. There were indications of where the next books would be headed but this one has a relatively satisfying end that I think most people could life with until the next book is released.  

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Title: Beauty Queens

Author: Libba Bray

Type: Novel
Genre: Young Adult

Series: No

Pages: 390
Copyright:  2011

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Rating: 3.5 out of 5


Summary: From Good reads.
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.

What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?

Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.






Feelings: 
This book is hilarious. I wasn't sure I was going to like it since it is beauty queens that are in a plane crash. They crash on a deserted island and to survive they must conquer the jungle and learn to be self sufficient.

The Corporation controls everything and these beauty queens become the exception. Which is just a little troublesome to the corporation.

We at The Corporation would like you to enjoy this story, but please me vigilant while you are reading. If you should happen to notice anything suspicious in the coming pages, do alert the proper authorities. Remember, it could be anything at all -- a subversive phrase, an improper thought or feeling let out of its genie bottle of repression, an idea that challenges the status quo, the suggestion that life may not be what it appears to be and that all you've taken for granted (malls, shopping, the relentless pursuit of a elusive happiness, prescription drugs ads, those annoying perfume samples in magazines that make your eyes water, the way anchormen and women shift easily from the jovial laughter of a story about a dog that hula-hoops to a grave report on a bus crash that has left five teenagers dead) may be of more consequential than the tattered hem of a dream, leaving you with a bottomless, free-fall feeling. (page 1-2)

This is a long quote I know but I think it gives you a good idea what is coming if you read the book. Yes this is the perspective of The Corporation and most of the story is from the Miss Teen Dream Pageant contestants that have survived the plane crash.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good laugh and yes maybe just a little bit of a scar when it comes to how we perceive beauty.

Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown

Title: Cinnamon and Gunpowder
Author: Eli Brown
Type:  Novel
Genre: Fiction
Series: No
Pages: 318
Copyright: 2013
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Rating: 4 out of 5


Summary: from GoodReads.


A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.

To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.

But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.

     Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.

Feelings: 
Let me start by saying I really liked the texture of the cover. I read the hardcover, but hope that the paperback also has a nice texture like the hardcover.

At first I thought I might have trouble reading the book when a fight was described using food analogies. This was not a food fight.

"Mr. Percy, finally realizing his obligation to protect his guests, made a valiant attempt to retrieve an heirloom sword from the mantel, but the massive Mr. Apples brought down his fist and ruined Mr. Percy's face as a child ruins a pie." (page 7) 

I ended up really liking chef Owen Wedgwood, the narrator. The story is told as though it is a journal that Wedgwood is writing. The story was really fun and fast passed. After Wedgwood is taken by Hannah Mabbot, who enters in the middle of a dinner party, the story really gets going. Before that  the story is more of a list of Wedgwood's worries about creating a meal for the wealthy. As Wedgwood becomes more a pirate himself as the novel progresses the story takes some unexpected turns.

When we first meet Hannah Mabbot her men have just broken down the door are subduing the party guests.

"Then entered a pillar of menace, a woman in an olive long-coat. Her red hair hung loose over he shoulders. She sauntered to the middle of the room, her coat opening to reveal jade-handled pistols. Using a chair as a stepping stool, she walked upon the dining table to Lord Ramsey's plate and stood there looking down, as if she had just conquered Kilimanjaro. Her boots added inches to her already long frame. No one dared tell her, apparently, that tall women confuse the eye." (page 6)

This is a very enjoyable, funny, story and I highly recommend it.

The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams

Title: The War of the Flowers
Author: Tad Williams
Type: Novel
Genre: Fantasy
Series: No

Pages: 686
Copyright: 2003
Publisher: Daw Books, Inc 
Rating: 3 out of 5

This is the first book that I will be reading where I have someone cover the cover for me and read the book. Books that are read in such a way will be labeled "Cover Blind". I will not be seeing the cover of these books until after I have rated the book and created a rough design of what I think the cover might look like. My cover will be included in the post as will the real cover. I'm hiding mine down at the bottom because my artistic skills don't seem to extend to cover design.

Cover Rating: 1 out of 5
It should be noted the the entirety of the review was written without having seen the cover. This is the only section that was written after having seen the above cover image.

I would not have read this book if I had seen the cover first. The above image is the cover on the edition of the book that I read. I looked at a few of the other cover images, such as the one included to the left which I would have been more likely to pick up and read, but none of them really made me want to pick up and read the book. The one of the left is for the paperback edition of the book and it is by far the best cover of all that I saw. So if we go by this one book I defiantly need to stop judging books by their cover because I did enjoy this book.

Before I reveled the cover!

Summary: from GoodReads.
Returning to the fantasy genre that made him a coast-to-coast best-selling phenomenon, Tad Williams has written a new stand-alone contemporary novel set in Northern California-and also in the strange parallel world that coexists in the farthest reaches of the imagination.

Theo Vilmos is a thirty-year-old lead singer in a not terribly successful rock band. Once, he had enormous, almost magical, charisma both onstage and off-but now, life has taken its toll on Theo. Hitting an all-time low, he seeks refuge in a isolated cabin in the woods-and reads an odd memoir written by a dead relative who believed he had visited the magical world of Faerie. And before Theo can disregard the account as the writings of a madman, he, too, is drawn to a place beyond his wildest dreams...a place filled with be, and has always been, his destiny. 

Feelings:
At first I found this book hard to read. I thought Theo the main character was a little bit whiny. He isn't the most fun to spend time with. But I give a book as long as this one at least 100 pages to get good before I say no and move on to the next one. I ended up needing all 100 pages to get really into the story. I wondering if seeing the cover would have made it easier for me to read the book. I think it could easily have helped make me more interested in the story, it could also pushed me more into the why am I reading this category as well. I did really like the story in the end.

The War of the Flowers is in many ways a fairytale with a bit of a twist. What you have is two coexisting worlds that seem to, maybe, inhabit the same planet. I'm a little bit iffy on the exactness of the relationship between the mortal world and Fearie mostly because no one seems to understand it. In Fearie there are seven flower families, six when Theo arrives, and they disagree as to what to do about the power problems they are having. Something in the mortal world seems to be affecting it thous you have some that think it is best to get rid of the mortal problem and others think that there should be some kind of coexistence between them. A political drama that is confusing. I do see one problem which wasn't address which is, is it really coexistence if one side doesn't know the other exists? I'm drifting from the book, however, because this question is not addressed.

Because of it's political aspects the story is at times hard to follow. I did figure somethings out about  characters before they happened but it didn't take away from the book. At times I found some of the longer sections with lengthy explanations a bit hard to get through. This is already a long book and at times I thought maybe it was just a bit to dull in places. That doesn't sound very nice. It can't be all action all the time. Sometimes we have to slow down and get a better understanding of what is happening. While these slow downs were necessary for the story I found myself wanting to skip ahead. Applecore made the book readable in the slow sections because she was an entertaining character. I think if the book had followed Theo and not had Applecore and later Poppy as major supporting characters it would have been less appealing to me.

Back to the fairytale part; it follows a similar arc to most fairytales yet there is some question of happily ever after at the end which I appreciated. The ending of the book was the hardest part for me to swallow of the entire story, thus the 3.5 rating. I thought maybe there were a few to may bows and a few epiphanies that seemed a little late in the coming. The story was a good one and I really did enjoy reading it even without seeing the cover.

I would recommend this book to those that want an adult fairytale and like fantasy.

Cover Blind: 
This is just a rough sketch of what I think the cover might look like. I really home the actually cover is much better than what I came up with because if it isn't I guess I'm glad I read the book without a cover.

So if I was going to make this a little less rough of course I wouldn't have a colougue of images. Once I created what I was thinking it didn't actually seem as appealing as when I was imagining it. I wanted to include images of all seven of the flower houses, Hellebore, Daffodil, Foxglove, Thornapple, Primrose, and Violet. However, once I got the images around Theo and Applecore it didn't end up looking as good as I hoped it wold. Since this is a fairytale I think I would try and have a more fairytale feeling. The image below has some of the appeal of what I think of as a fairytale. I use one of the fairies from this image but the style of this image seems a bit more what I think of when I think of a typical image you might see on the cover of a book of fairytales.

There is only one problem with using this style, The war of the Flowers is a darker story. And thus this is a bit to light hearted for the actual story. I also thought about the possibility of having an image that was a little more interesting at least in my opinion of just a fairy, however, Theo is the main character and that seemed to have little to do with him or the war between the two worlds mortal and Faerie. I did find the image of the fairy by herself to be much more interesting. But it has little to do with the story so you have to incorporate other things into the cover as well. I don't think a cover should miss lead it's reader.

So while I like the image of just the fairy alone I don't think it is appropriate which is why in the end I created a cover that had Theo, I know Theo has longer hair I couldn't find an image I liked, and Applecore in the center and each of the flowers incorporated around the edges.

Four fairy panel credited to: http://www.layoutsparks.com/pictures/fairy-63

Fairy sitting Image credited to: www.hiresimg.com