ETERNAL by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Did you read TANTALIZE and love it?  Maybe you haven’t even heard of it.  Either way it doesn’t matter.  ETERNAL is set in the same world as TANTALIZE, but takes place earlier in the timeline.  Completely different characters grace the pages of ETERNAL that you will grow to love.  Reading TANTALIZE first isn’t necessary, so in February when ETERNAL hits the shelves run to the bookstore and get your copy.

Miranda is a quiet and shy typical teenage girl.  

Zachary is her Guardian Angel (GA).

Miranda has no idea Zachary exists.

Over the years of keeping watch over Miranda, Zachary has fallen in love with her.

Their status quo interaction completely changes one night in a creepy cemetery. Miranda’s best friend Lucy drags her to the cemetery to meet some guys for an exciting night out. Miranda doesn’t want to be there in the first place and lags behind until she is lost.  As Zachary watches Miranda stumble through the darkness, he sees she is about to step into an abandoned open grave.  Knowing she’ll probably fall and break her neck, Zachary does the first thing that comes to mind in order to save her – he reveals himself by yelling for her to stop and illuminating himself using his angel light so she can see where she is walking.

Two things happen simultaneously.

1) Michael, the arch angel, appears and strips Zachary of his wings and his ability to become ethereal for breaking the rules and revealing himself to humans.

2) Miranda is attacked by a vampire and taken away to be the current Dracula’s princess heir.

With Zachary stuck wandering the mortal world and Miranda a vampire princess how in the world is he going to protect her now?

ETERNAL was a fast and enjoyable read.  The pages fly by and getting to the end comes too soon.  The third book in this series is called BLESSED and the characters from both TANTALIZE and ETERNAL will cross over and I for one can’t wait to see what happens when they meet.

 

ETERNAL by Cynthia Leitich Smith – REVIEW

 

 

Did you read TANTALIZE and love it?  Maybe you haven’t even heard of it.  Either way it doesn’t matter.  ETERNAL is set in the same world as TANTALIZE, but takes place earlier in the timeline.  Completely different characters grace the pages of ETERNAL that you will grow to love.  Reading TANTALIZE first isn’t necessary, so in February when ETERNAL hits the shelves run to the bookstore and get your copy.

Miranda is a quiet and shy typical teenage girl.  

Zachary is her Guardian Angel (GA).

Miranda has no idea Zachary exists.

Over the years of keeping watch over Miranda, Zachary has fallen in love with her.

Their status quo interaction completely changes one night in a creepy cemetery. Miranda’s best friend Lucy drags her to the cemetery to meet some guys for an exciting night out. Miranda doesn’t want to be there in the first place and lags behind until she is lost.  As Zachary watches Miranda stumble through the darkness, he sees she is about to step into an abandoned open grave.  Knowing she’ll probably fall and break her neck, Zachary does the first thing that comes to mind in order to save her – he reveals himself by yelling for her to stop and illuminating himself using his angel light so she can see where she is walking.

Two things happen simultaneously.

1) Michael, the arch angel, appears and strips Zachary of his wings and his ability to become ethereal for breaking the rules and revealing himself to humans.

2) Miranda is attacked by a vampire and taken away to be the current Dracula’s princess heir.

With Zachary stuck wandering the mortal world and Miranda a vampire princess how in the world is he going to protect her now?

ETERNAL was a fast and enjoyable read.  The pages fly by and getting to the end comes too soon.  The third book in this series is called BLESSED and the characters from both TANTALIZE and ETERNAL will cross over and I for one can’t wait to see what happens when they meet.

 

INK EXCHANGE by Melissa Marr

Welcome back to the world first created by Melissa Marr for Wicked Lovely.  A world where faeries exist and roam among humans without their knowledge.  In this companion novel to Wicked Lovely, we get to know Leslie, one of Ash’s best friends.  Since Ash and Keenan defeated the Winter Queen and gained power, peace has reigned between the Summer and Winter Courts.  Ash doesn’t go anywhere without guards and her closest friends are guarded too.

          Leslie has had a rough home life ever since her mother left.  Her dad is usually drunk and rarely comes home.  Her brother is high all the time on a variety of drugs and brings dangerous people around the house.  Leslie learned that the hard way and has the scars to prove it.  Leslie enjoyed the time she isn’t at home whether that means she is at work or at school.

          Niall is Keenan’s, the Summer King’s, right hand.  He often guards Leslie and feels his desire for her growing each time he sees her.  He doesn’t realize she feels the same way about him.  If he knew, it would only make it harder on him to not be able to have contact with her.  Niall can’t physically touch humans.  His touch is as addictive as a drug.  It leaves humans begging for his constant embrace until they eventually go mad.

          Keeping his distance from Leslie becomes impossible when Irial sets his sites on her.  Irial is the King of the Dark Court and feeds himself and those connected to him by taking the emotions of fear, lust, anger, greed, and jealousy from other fey as well as humans.  Since the peace between the Summer and Winter Courts there hasn’t been enough of the dark emotions to sustain the entire Dark Court. 

          Irial has developed a way to feed through a human.  His blood and the tears from the Dark Court Faeries are mixed with ink used to tattoo the person he’ll use to feed.  Leslie has decided getting a tattoo is a way she can reclaim some control over her life and decides on the symbol that will link her to Irial and eventually lead to her death.  Niall must break his rule about human contact in order to keep Leslie safe and ends up falling in love with her.

The battle between the Dark Court and the Summer Court revolves around Leslie.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t know what is going on since Ash doesn’t want her to know about the Faery world.  Ash thinks if Leslie doesn’t know, she’ll be safe.  Instead, Leslie gets the tattoo and feels the immediate draw to Irial where she is used to feed the Dark Court.

          Niall is willing to do everything he can to ensure Leslie’s safety once she is under Irial’s control even if means breaking his ties to the Summer Court.  Can Niall get Leslie’s life back?  Can he win her love?  Will she be any better with him than with Irial?  Read INK EXCHANGE to find out.  You won’t be disappointed.  INK EXCHANGE is just as captivating as Wicked Lovely.  I can’t wait for the third book.

 

Extras by Scott Westerfeld

 

Well, It is here! The long awaited 4th book in the Uglies series. Author, Scott Westerfeld, made it clear that this book is meant to stand alone since the Uglies, Pretties, and Specials is clearly a trilogy. Extras is set in futuristic Japan three years after the downfall of bubbleheadedness, or as the world refers to it as, the mind rain that Tally Youngblood spread around the world.

The main character of Extras is Aya Fuse. She lives in a society where popularity determines how many perks you have. People that are the most popular get the best places to live, the best clothes, and get invited to the best parties. Everyone has their own feed to the “internet” and have hovercams follow them around in order to get information to put on their feeds in order to boost their popularity. Face rank is what counts and Aya is basically invisible with a face rank hovering around 450,000. She is determined to “kick” a huge story in order to get her face rank in the top 1000 so she can go to the biggest party of the month.

Aya has an idea for a super story. There is a rumor about a group of girls that call themselves the Sly Girls that pull dangerous stunts and try to avoid face ranks. For them, the lower the better. They are afraid if they are noticed the wardens will come and stop them from doing their tricks. Their biggest trick is to ride the top of a mag lev train.

Aya spots one of the Sly Girls at a party she crashes and follows her in order to get some footage for her feed. Of course, she is discovered and forced to get rid of her hovercam, Moggle, by dropping it in a water tank. After allowing her hovercam to sink to the bottom of the water, the Sly Girls invite her to join them on a mag lev train ride. While they are riding something unusal happens. The train stopped midway through the route and unusal “inhuman” looking people started loading huge metal cylinders onto the train from the inside of a mountain. The Sly Girls and mostly Aya decide they need to get to the bottom of this and start to do a little investigation. They are afraid that these people are planning to destroy the world by launching these metal cylinders and aiming them at cities around the world.

Kicking this story leads Aya and her friends to high face ranks, but they soon find out that face ranks might not be so important when your life is in danger. The story also brings Tally Youngblood out of hiding in order to help Aya get to the bottom of everything.

Extras could be read as a stand alone. Scott Westerfeld does a good job of explaining what happened prior to this book. However, I think reading the others in the Uglies series would make the story more enjoyable. I enjoyed Extras but I liked Uglies, Pretties, and Specials better.