Book Review: “Mind Over Monsters: A F.R.E.A.K.S. Squad Investigation” by Jennifer Harlow

Beatrice Alexander is no ordinary schoolteacher—she can move objects with her mind, an embarrassing skill she hasn’t yet mastered or embraced. After nearly killing her brother by accident, she joins the F.R.E.A.K.S. Squad, the Federal Response to Extra-Sensory and Kindred Supernaturals. This top-secret branch of the FBI combats ghosts, ghouls, and other monsters threatening humanity.

With her teammates—among them a handsome former-detective werewolf and an annoying Don Juan vampire who’s dead-set on seducing her—Beatrice investigates her first case. Disgustingly dismembered bodies have turned up, bearing bite marks of the undead. Someone—or something—is raising a horde of hideous, bloodthirsty zombies. Armed with Bette, her trusty machete, Beatrice takes on the master of the flesh-devouring corpses, who’s guarding a horrifying secret…

Alright, here’s the deal. Sometimes people come up with a great idea for a book. They think up a great plot, some interesting character ideas, a few quality twists and turns that will keep the reader turning the pages, and then they’ll put it all down in print.

One of two things usually happens in this scenario. Either the book is a hit and they go on to fame and glory, or the book is a flop and nobody gets it for some reason and they fall back into obscurity. Well, this time, Jennifer Harlow finds herself right between the two with Mind Over Monsters. She has a great idea for a new, fresh take on the “misunderstood monsters are actually the good guys” concept. She even has a few great twists and turns in her plot, but she fell flat on the viewpoint character. Which, in turn, kept the book from being great.

I really like the idea of a squad of individuals who have some extraordinary powers they themselves can’t really explain. Perhaps some of these squad members don’t really like who they are as a result of these powers, maybe they just want to be left alone, but they realize they can do good in the right circumstances. I even like the idea of this particular story being told from a first-person viewpoint of a newly inducted member of the squad.

What I don’t like is that viewpoint character coming across so loudly as a desperate attempt for the author to live some sort of fantasy they’ve thought up in their mind. Every single time that the main character swoons over the muscles of a squad mate  complains about her messed up hair, or does something based on having little to no common sense it ripped me right out of the story and made me want to stop reading. I kept going because Harlow did have some really good stuff mixed in with all of the distracting things the main character was doing.

There is an absolutely great moment between Beatrice and a young girl, a heart-wrenching moment if I’m honest with myself. Harlow demonstrates some exceptional skill at various places throughout this entire book, but doesn’t maintain that skill all the way through which was disappointing because I wanted to love this book very, very much. There is a lot of depth to the world Harlow has created for these characters to live inside of, but she’s keeping them on the surface of it most of the time instead of really letting them marinate.

From what I can see there is already a follow-up to Mind Over Monsters entitled To Catch a Vampire. I’m not going to pick it up right now, but I’m not going to rule it out entirely like I would a lot of other sequels to books that made me feel this way. I think the author is smart enough from what I saw in her writing that she could fix a lot of the problems I had without too much effort, but will she is what I want to know.

I’d be interested in knowing if anyone else has read Mind Over Monsters recently and has some thoughts on it. It was so close to being what I wanted it to be, so close.

Length: 280 pages

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Book Review: “Breathe” by Sarah Crossan

Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe…

The world is dead. The survivors live under the protection of Breathe, the corporation that found a way to manufacture oxygen–rich air.

Alina has been stealing for a long time. She’s a little jittery, but not terrified. All she knows is that she’s never been caught before. If she’s careful, it’ll be easy. If she’s careful. Quinn should be worried about Alina and a bit afraid for himself, too, but even though this is dangerous, it’s also the most interesting thing to happen to him in ages. It isn’t every day that the girl of your dreams asks you to rescue her. Bea wants to tell him that none of this is fair; they’d planned a trip together, the two of them, and she’d hoped he’d discover her out here, not another girl.

And as they walk into the Outlands with two days worth of oxygen in their tanks, everything they believe will be shattered. Will they be able to make it back? Will they want to?

I picked up Breathe as part of the Kindle Daily Deal program a little while ago because I thought the concept behind the story sounded pretty strong. The idea that somehow the air had been made toxic and only certain areas had breathable air isn’t entirely new, but adding the layer of having that air controlled by some sort of corporate machine made the idea a little bit more unique.

What I can say now after having read the book is that the concept is still incredibly strong, but this attempt at using the concept came up incredibly short. There is so much potential for an author to tap on this sort of idea even if they try to follow the traditional young adult fiction tropes. The corporate overseer of air, the potential love interests between the characters, the rebellion, all of it. I was really getting into what the possibilities were in the first 50 pages or so and then it all fell flat very quickly.

The characters of Quinn, Alina, and Bea all start out strong in their first appearances. Then they quickly unravel. Part of the problem seemed to be that the entire book was written in first person narrative, but from the viewpoint of three different characters, each character being the viewpoint for a specific chapter. First person narrative is strongest with one viewpoint character. Sometimes an author can get away with a second viewpoint if their writing skill is top-notch, but in my personal experience that is a rare feat. Going beyond two viewpoints is just an exercise in silliness if you ask me and it absolutely caused problems for this book. It was always fairly apparent when I was reading from Quinn’s eyes, but the chapters for Alina and Bea started to blur together horribly and it took me several pages of each chapter to figure out which character I was seeing things as. Especially when all three of the characters were in the same location, experiencing the same things, at the same time, and it was taking several chapters to depict what was going on.

On top of the confusion brought on by the viewpoints, I found that I just didn’t care what happened to the characters. I would have been entirely fine if one or two, maybe even all of them had died in one of the battles. I felt very little for them, they were just stick figures on the page for me. They showed little emotional growth, no maturity, and a whole lot of bad decision-making. It was all very flat.

In short, all that wasted potential made me sad. Very, very sad.

Breathe is the first in a series, I’m guessing a trilogy most likely and perhaps as the author gets a few more books under their belt things will smooth out, but I don’t think I’ll be getting the follow-up to this one unless I can get it for free and I really don’t have anything else to read at the time. I just don’t think I can take the time after having the concept put to the page so badly this time around.

I mentioned in a previous post about the books I read last month that this was one of the books that would have been served far better if it had been the fourth or fifth book the author had written rather than the first. The polish would have been there, some lessons would have been learned, etc.

Length: 389 pages

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Book Review: “The Seafort Saga: Midshipman’s Hope” by David Feintuch

In the year 2194, seventeen-year-old Nicholas Seafort is assigned to the Hibernia as a lowly midshipman. Destination: the thriving colony of Hope Nation. But when a rescue attempt goes devastatingly wrong, Seafort is thrust into a leadership role he never anticipated. The other officers resent him, but Seafort must handle more dangerous problems, from a corrupted navigation computer to a deadly epidemic. Even Hope Nation has a nasty surprise in store. Seafort might be the crew’s only hope…

For the past few days I’ve been trying to remember why I put Midshipman’s Hope on my Kindle to read. I want to say it had something to do with a daily deal, but it might also have been because the publishing house that sent me a free copy of another author’s book also had this one and I read a catchy synopsis. Regardless, now that I’ve finally taken the time to read the book I’m extremely glad I made that decision.

As the first in a series of seven books, Midshipman’s Hope has to go through a fair amount of world-building and setup for the reader. The author relies heavily on the naval rules of obedience, punishment, and reward, as well as chain of command to get the reader to a place where they can understand the importance of what’s going on. To be honest, the change in pace was refreshing. Usually an author keeps trying to out-do themselves as the plot progresses to keep a reader entertained. Feintuch has one very big twist (right at the end, mind you) that turns everything on its head, but leading up to that point he focuses very much on the impact events are having on the very young protagonist, Nick Seafort.

The very idea of a seventeen-year-old taking over command of a naval vessel is absurd in this day and age, but in the days of wooden navies it was very much a possibility due to sickness, accident, or even death. Feintuch takes us back to those days but does it while wrapping the entire story in a space navy outer shell. Rules must be followed, orders are absolute, and even if you’ve been friends with the new captain yesterday, you are now his whipping boy today once a change of command happens.

Nick Seafort is one of the most amazing characters I’ve read in a long time. The stress of what’s happening to him threatens to break him on several occasions  He has to make split second decisions, some of which cost people their lives, sometimes people he holds very, very dear. Even more, he often finds himself expecting to be let off the hook as the new commanding officer only to find that the strict naval rules simply won’t let him. His sense of duty and honor is rock solid so he does what is required of him, but it changes him. Both for better and for worse.

I imagine as I find the time to read the following books in The Seafort Saga that some of the repetitive reminders about naval rules will taper off and new things will take their place. At least, I’m hoping that’s how it goes. The twist in the final pages of the book really turns things upside down and the danger felt very real to me as a reader. I bought in completely on the small ship-board world that Feintuch created in this book and when he pulled the rug out from under me, he got me good.

Finding the time to read the remaining books will be difficult in the next few months, but when I do nothing will be interrupting me from reading them all in sequence with no distractions. If you like quality science fiction that doesn’t let itself get too wild with its premise, you might want to give Midshipman’s Hope a try.

Length: 403 pages

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Up Next: “Beautiful Creatures” by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Truth be told I’ve already read the first quarter of this book about three weeks ago but then sort of fell off the blogging/reading bandwagon for a bit so I never got this post up and obviously took a bit of a break from reading. However, now that I’m back on the horse I’ll be diving back in. Although, I’m not sure how excited I am about that. The first part of the book has not been very impressive.

But, there are still 400 or so pages to go for me so maybe things will pick up a little bit. I grabbed this book because I knew that a movie had been made about it and as far as I can tell the movie was either a flop or hasn’t been released yet so reading the book to see what might have prompted people to make a movie should be interesting.

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Book Review: “The Rithmatist” by Brandon Sanderson

More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Chosen by the Master in a mysterious inception ceremony, Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity’s only defense against the Wild Chalklings—merciless creatures that leave mangled corpses in their wake. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles.

As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students study the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing—kidnapped from their rooms at night, leaving trails of blood. Assigned to help the professor who is investigating the crimes, Joel and his friend Melody find themselves on the trail of an unexpected discovery—one that will change Rithmatics—and their world—forever.

First things first. Isn’t it great that Brandon Sanderson decided to release his newest book on my birthday two days ago? I thought that was awfully thoughtful of him. It also gave me something to look forward to on my birthday while sitting at the office with what turned out to be very little to do, which was awesome.

The Rithmatist is Sanderson’s first real YA offering. His previous books all fall very squarely into the epic fantasy genre and are written in a manner that makes them fairly dense, so most teenagers tend to shy away from them. This book is the exact opposite. Weighing in at 384 pages in length, The Rithmatist is definitely one of Sanderson’s shorter works to date, and as you read you’ll discover that he really pulled back on the reigns of his usual style of prose. Everything from plot to characters is fleshed out just enough that you don’t feel like anything is really missing, but at the same time the detail is much less impressive than his work with Mistborn and The Way of Kings as a comparison. Given that The Rithmatist is a YA novel this makes a lot of sense. Most YA fans that I know personally don’t care much about the environment detail, they care about the tropes that they love so much and whether or not they are being followed to their satisfaction.

In Joel (the main protagonist) and Melody the reader finds a fairly typical YA relationship. At the start Joel simply doesn’t understand Melody. What she’s about, how she acts, why she is the way she is. He simply doesn’t get it. As one would expect, amusing friction develops between the two of them until the start to grow on each other and eventually transition to a mutual respect and tolerance. There are a few tiny glimpses of a potential romance between the two of them, but Sanderson takes great care not to let that become an actual plot device; something for which I am extremely grateful. By the time the book is finished Joel and Melody have grown their relationship past the immature beginnings they started with into a meaningful friendship where they can complement each others’ skill sets.

As in all YA fiction there are a multitude of misdirects, plot twists, unexpected reveals about villains and heroes, and hints of a much deeper world behind the scenes. It felt very much to me like Sanderson had a pretty good grasp of what readers are looking for in a YA novel and tried to meet their expectations as well as he could while still maintaining some of his own trademark flair.

Unfortunately for me personally, The Rithmatist is actually the first book in a two or three book series. For whatever reason as I was waiting for release day I was under the impression that it was a standalone novel that wasn’t going to need follow-up pieces. As a result, when I reached the end of the book and saw the “to be continued…,” I was fairly let down. I don’t really mind that there will be more books, I quite enjoyed this one, I was just hoping for something that wasn’t going to need further work to finish the story because so much of Sanderson’s work is already part of huge multi-book arcs. I think I was hoping for another Elantris or Warbreaker type novel.

All in all, The Rithmatist was a pleasure to read. The new chalk-based magic system mixed with some religious undertones was a bit of a departure from Sanderson’s usual fare which was nice, but it did seem to lack a bit of his usual punch. The chalklings never felt all that terrifying to me as a reader so I’m not entirely sure where he wants to go with them in the future. Though I’m confident that if anyone can bring them to life the right way it would be Sanderson.

If you’re looking for a new kind of YA novel that won’t eat up weeks of you time and features some things you don’t normally see give The Rithmatist a try. Let me know what you think if you do.

Length: 384 pages

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