Friday, July 27, 2007

#47 Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie by Holly Black

My Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

I didn't like this one quite as much as Tithe. Though it seems more of a standalone, there are a few characters from Faery from the first one that are mentioned later on here. Apparently, Ironside, the third book in the series, is more of a direct sequel to Tithe.

When seventeen-year-old Val finds her mom and her boyfriend making out, she runs away from her home in New Jersey to the streets of New York City. She befriends a group of kids who live in the subway tunnels where she encounters some strange substances, and meets some even stranger people, including Ravus the Troll. She agrees to help him with deliveries since he cannot go out in the sun, while he teaches her sword fighting in return. She grows to admire him and when he's accused of poisoning the other exiled faeries, she vows to help him in any way she can and everything ends happily ever after (sorta). Just like a true fairy tale. LOL

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Saturday, July 14, 2007

#46 Thunderbird Falls by C.E. Murphy

My Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Not bad... I can't say I like this series as much as the Retrievers series by Laura Anne Gilman though, which I find similar enough that I get some of the characters mixed up between the two series. :( It's really just the two main characters, Joanne and Wren, that seem pretty similar to me.

In this second installment in the series (3rd if you count the short story appearing in the Winter Moon anthology), we start off with Joanne trying to deny her powers (again!) because of what happened last time in the first novel. Some of the same things that bothered me there bother me here as well, with the main character suppressing her powers rather than embracing them. But since it's a story involving magic, which happens in our world in the here and now, I can't keep away. :P And I've got a lot of hope for this series going forward.

BookCrossing journal page for this book