Mini Review: Twilight: The Graphic Novel by Stephenie Meyer

Title: Twilight: The Graphic Novel
Series: Volume 1
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Illustrator: Young Kim
Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
Pub. Date: March 16th 2010
Source: Goodwill


Book Description:

When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable. Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidden, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret...

Review:

★★★★

I was a pretty okay fan of the Twilight books. I didn't think they were the best books ever made, nor were they my introduction to vampires. I also didn't hate them as much as so many people seemed to. For me, they were pretty middle of the road. Enjoyable, but not something I need to read over and over again. I read the series, and I saw the films. And when I came across the graphic novel version, I picked that up too.

I wasn't at all disappointed. The artwork in this book is absolutely gorgeous. It's done in an Japanese/manga style of illustration that makes everything a little bit softer and more pleasant to look at.

Because the whole story is condensed, I actually kind of liked the characters better this way. Bella is less annoying and whiny. Edward is less creepy and stalker-y. It's paced better and still gets the same basic gist of the story and plot across.

It was a quick read that I enjoyed. If you were a fan of the original Twilight series, this is a good supplement to enjoy alongside it.

Review: The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dinah Bucholz

Title: The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Knickerbocker Glory--More Than 150 Magical Recipes for Wizards and Non-Wizards Alike

Author: Dinah Bucholz

Format: Hardcover, 239 pages

Pub. Date: September 18th 2010

Source: Gifted from Emily & Lisa



Book Description via Goodreads:

Bangers and mash with Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the Hogwarts dining hall.
A proper cuppa tea and rock cakes in Hagrid's hut.

Cauldron cakes and pumpkin juice on the Hogwarts Express.

With this cookbook, dining a la Hogwarts is as easy as Banoffi Pie! With more than 150 easy-to-make recipes, tips, and techniques, you can indulge in spellbindingly delicious meals drawn straight from the pages of your favorite Potter stories, such as:

Treacle Tart--Harry's favorite dessert, Molly's Meat Pies--Mrs. Weasley's classic dish, Kreacher's French Onion Soup, Pumpkin Pasties--a staple on the Hogwarts Express cart

With a dash of magic and a drop of creativity, you'll conjure up the entries, desserts, snacks, and drinks you need to transform ordinary Muggle meals into magickal culinary masterpieces, sure make even Mrs. Weasley proud!

Review:

★★

I love Harry Potter. I love food. I love the food from Harry Potter. Reading about treats like butterbeer and treacle tarts used to make me want to be a witch just so I could enjoy them. I thought this book and I would get along great. Unfortunately, this cookbook is mediocre at best.

I will first make the same complaint everyone else is making: there's no pictures. Not one. There's 150 recipes of delicious sounding things, and not a picture among them. It was pretty disappointing.

It starts with a nice introduction and has some helpful hints. I did like the way it was divided, which was by location. That way you could look specifically for food from Hogwarts or at the Weasleys'. The steps are numbered, and the recipes are peppered with hints and fun historical facts, as well as guides for making substitutions, which I appreciated. I also liked that each recipe came with a paragraph explaining which book and chapter the recipe was from, along with some context.

One thing that bugged me about this is that there's a stress on having both kid and adult versions of recipes like fruitcake. I don't understand why this is. The alcohol cooks out.... It isn't necessary to remove alcohol before serving it to minors. It's for flavor, not to get drunk. It's a cake.

I also really didn't appreciate that some of these recipes haven't even been tested by the author: and she admits it in the text. If you didn't want to make it, why the hell would I want to? In a similar vein, some of these recipes were kind of lazy. Bacon and eggs is two separate recipes in this book; one for bacon, and one for eggs.... Really? Also, one of the recipes point blank says that candied orange peel is impossible to find, so she just omitted it and used marmalade. First, this is a cookbook- make them yourself. Second, why would you admit that? Just don't put that note in at all, and no one would think twice about it.

And yet another thing that I have seen in a lot of reviews: there's no butterbeer. Not even a butterbeer inspired cake or anything. It's just gone. How can you overlook the most popular treat in the HP universe? No firewhiskey either, but that's splitting hairs.

Despite the copious amount of issues I had with this, there are still some dishes that I would really like to try. Some of them include Christmas Pudding Ice Cream, No Bake Chocolate-Bottom Pumpkin Tart, and Almond-Ginger-Peach Treacle Tart.

All in all, I'd recommend this for really, really new cooks and maybe kids. But as an adult, I don't really need recipes for a lot of these things. I'll hang on to it purely for the Harry Potter theme, but probably won't use it much.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Title: The Forest of Hands and Teeth (The Forest of Hands and Teeth #1)
Author: Carrie Ryan
Format: Paperback, 308 pages
Pub. Date: February 9th 2010
Source: Libby Blog

★★★

2.5 Stars, Rounded up.

For as long as Mary has remembered, there has only been The Forest of Hands and Teeth. There is only their village, only the Sisterhood, and the Guardians. They are all that remains since the Return. Their village is gated in, keeping the Unconsecrated in the forest. The Unconsecrated were once friends and family, but no longer. Once the bite sinks in, and the infection takes hold, it's only a matter of time before you're one of them- a zombie. But Mary's mother has told her stories, stories of a large body of water called an ocean, and men who have walked on the moon. After she learns of a few secrets that the Sisterhood is keeping from the village, she has to wonder if her mom wasn't so crazy after all. She must decide how much she's ready to risk- her love, her family, herself- in order to find out what lays beyond the forest.

----

This book was very difficult for me to rate. I am not a fan of the zombie genre, as a whole, and was hoping that this would be the book that would finally satiate me. Sadly, it wasn't. The book wasn't badly written, nor was it amazing. I found it to be average, and I hope to explain why that is below.

-From the beginning, I felt a major disconnect to the main character. For this reason, I felt disjointed throughout the rest of the novel. I often disagreed with her decisions, and was more often than not indifferent to her as a whole. I found myself agreeing more often with the friends/family that told her to grow up and get real. Maybe I'm just a cynical adult these days.

+That being said, I appreciate that Mary turns into a bad ass when she needs to. When people that she know become infected, she doesn't hesitate to turn into the killer that her village trained her to be.

-I felt like this book was a prequel, not a series-starter. The first two-thirds or so passed by really slow for me, and I was bored for a long time. But in the last third, it kicked into gear, and it seemed like the story actually began.

+The story is very descriptive. I was able to picture the scenes, especially the Forest, very well, and it did help to make me commit to finishing this book. If not for the well written details, I probably would have abandoned it.

-One problem I did have with the writing was the time lapses between chapters. Sometimes it was just over night, sometimes it was a month or a week. It was easy enough to catch up on once the author explained how much time had elapsed, but the inconsistencies did bug me a bit.

Upon finishing this book, I am primarily indifferent. I won't be adding it to my list of favorite books, that's for sure. But, it wasn't a waste of time reading it either. So, my opinion is this: If this book comes into your possession, read it. If it does it, I don't think you're missing out on much. If you like zombies, you may like this book a hell of a lot more than I did. If you're a fan of dystopian books, you may be a bit disappointed. As it stands now, I'm unsure if I would like to continue the series. I think it may be better than the first one, since all of the back story appears to be out of the way.

Thank you to Libby Blog for my copy.

Masquerade by Sheri Whitefeather

Title: Masquerade
Author: Sheri Whitefeather
Format: Paperback, 304 pages
Pub. Date: April 6th 2010
Source: Ramblings From This Chick blog

★

One star.

Amber is a fashion heiress and socialite. She shared a night a while back with two lovers, Jay and Luke, and she can't get either of them out of her mind. She agrees to live with the steamy roommates for a month, and the boys are all too happy to complete the threesome. That is, until Luke uncovers Amber's family tree, which involves a scandalous love affair and murder. The past comes to light and starts to repeat itself, leaving Amber to decide who she should be with, and the risks of falling in love.

----

This is going to be a short review, to make it as painless as possible.

-I didn't connect to Amber. It's the typical spoiled brat who has too much of a good thing but can't part with anything. First world problems much. Two gorgeous guys want you. Shut up and be happy.

-The sex scenes felt awkward to me. There's a fine line between steamy romance and awkward third wheels. I felt that this book was largely the latter, and I didn't want to continue to read them.

-The book flips between the past royal scandal and the current life of Amber. You can tell because the past is in italics. Pages of it. It bothered me to read that much italics. I don't think it was necessary, a chapter titled with the perspective would have sufficed just fine.

-On that note, I think the scandal is what made this book so hard to read. Make a book in the past or make a book in the present. Stop flipping back and forth. It helped the disconnect from the characters that I felt.

+- The cover is pretty, but it makes the book look a lot more intimate than I personally felt while reading.

Maybe I'm just picky, but this is yet another adult themed book that just left me sighing and disappointed. I say skip it. If you're a superfan of threesomes, maybe you'll enjoy it. But my advice is to simply pass.

Thank you to Ramblings From This Chick blog for my copy.

The Ninth Avatar by Todd Newton

Title: The Ninth Avatar
Author: Todd Newton
Format: Paperback, 380 pages
Pub. Date: February 26th 2010
Source: Goodreads First Reads

★★★

Three stars.

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads.

The Ninth Avatar is a fantasy novel that follows a cast of odd characters in the timeless battle of good versus evil. Carrion soldiers- soldiers of other cities with horns & disfigurements forced to fight- far outnumber the other armies & destroy whatever they pass through. Starka is a priestess who's been outcast, that is until she receives a vision that shows her helping to stop the progression of this dark leader. Magic, dragons, jails, pirates, & a sprinkling of incest guide this saga, making it quite the adventure.

For a debut novel, I have to say this was pretty good. The plot is fairly classic, but good versus evil is always a plot that needs to be told. The writing was solid, the characters unique. It was very easy for me to visualize what was happening within the story. A huge plus with this work is the map included in the front. When I was unsure about something, I could just look there.

The cover is really cool looking & dark, & would have gotten my attention on a shelf. That being said, the font choice bothered me, & it was larger or smaller in random spots.

What I didn't like was the constant change in point of view. Two characters? Fine. Three? Okay. But I lost count of the perspectives that were shown. It gave the book a choppy, confusing edge to what would have been a great debut. Unfortunately, this was enough for me to mark it down.

All in all, I think there are a LOT of people who will like this book more than me. It overall just wasn't my type of story, but I can't stress enough that Todd Newton's writing was solid. If you like fantasy & magic, GIVE THIS A TRY. But if a large amount of characters & enough locations to fill a map will frustrate you, perhaps choose another.