Reviews!

Okay, I'm going to try something new: I'm going to post a whole bunch of short reviews at once (I haven't had time to write long ones lately).

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge: 2/5
 It was okay until the end. Then things...um... I don't even know. I don't get it. At all.

Half Bad by Sally Green: 2/5
This one I actually plan to write a longer review for at some point.
2.6 (-.4 for the unexplained magic system and the "Black VS White" setup).

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: 2/5
Rather fun (Cinderelle as a cyborg? Awesome!). The annoying "plot twist" got on my nerves, though. Also... it kind of wasn't a retelling. More based on.

Of Beast And Beauty by Stacey Jay: 1/5
This one actually has a long sad story in which I wrote a really long, awesome review and it got deleted. I will post it here once I've rewritten it.



#16thingsithoughtweretrue by Janet Gurtler: 2/5
It reminded me strongly of Twilight for some reason...

This book was weird. It switched plots so quickly it was a bit hard to keep up. The editor also didn't do his/her job at all- there were a lot of sentences that either didn't make sense in context or simply didn't make sense at all. The blurb was wrong. There's nothing else to say about it. It talked about things that never happened, and overemphasized things that didn't matter (as did the book- what's with the hitchhiker? The random lady with the dog?). The blurb also ruined several plot points.
I didn't like Morgan. She was moody, she was unfriendly, and her response to public humiliation is to act completely innapropriately in public gatherings.
Her mom's heart disease served no actual purpose in the plot at the end, except to make me hate Morgan even more for abusing her mom like that when she was at high risk for a heart attack.
Adam was weird. He was also such an uninteresting character that I don't even remember whether he went on the road trip with them or not.
Amy... where do I start? Inconsistent, strange, and a tragedy that I would have cared about had her cancer not felt like a contrived plot device to end it thought up thirty pages away from the end.

This book and I just did not get along. With a lot more editing and foreshadowing it could have been good.


Also, there was seventeen #thingsithoughtweretrue.

I apologize for any spoilers; I try to remove them all because the HTML spoiler hiding thing won't work, but sometimes I miss some.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness: 3/5
Allow me to make clear that I wasn't actually all that fond of this book. I will not be continuing the series. But objectively, it was a good book, and I'm all about fairness.
I fully expected to hate this book. I read a few lines and nearly returned it without reading it.
And then... it was a good book. Ending left something to be desired, but... wow. It was weak in parts, of course. I'm more rounding it to 3 (2.65, maybe?) than giving it one wholeheartedly, because of the ending, the attempts at shocking the reader that failed utterly, and the irritating misspellings.
But other than that, it was a good book.
I still can't believe it.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson: 2/5
I really wanted to love this book. The premise sounded interesting, I like the author, and I'd been told it was his best.
It even had its tagline by Orson Scott Card- what's not to like?
The beginning was weak, but the book really did get stronger (although there were a few instances where Moshe Feder was just not doing his job- "his heart was as unclear as a room filled with smoke"?). An appearance by Hoid had me all set to give it three stars.
But the ending.
If Brandon Sanderson has one weakness, it's endings. If he has a second, it's being Brandon Sanderson.

The 3 Cardinal Rules of a Brandon Sanderson Book (Elantris Edition):
1) If there is an arranged marriage, it MUST go through. Nothing must happen that would be a violation of it. The engaged parties must be in love before the marriage is consummated.
2) Main characters must not differ between books.
3) The ending must be rushed with not enough build-up, including a magical solution which is only revealed to us after it's already worked.

Our main characters (POV):
We have Sarene, our tall, thin, blond (but really people, she's not at all attractive), and smart princess. Due to her high ideals of female empowerment and years of diplomatic experience, she's gone to an arranged marriage in order to solidify a treaty for a reason that is never properly explained. While there, she'll proceed to give fencing lessons, change her mind so many times that even I couldn't follow it, and feel sickened by the sight of happy couples. Her lack of sensitivity toward's others' feelings will also reach never before seen heights. Her connection to the beggars is of unknown origin, although Hoid is highly suspected to be the culprit.
Raoden. When not assuming disguises for his own amusement, he enjoys being stabbed by his wife and obsessively drawing symbols in the air. Almost immediately incapacitated by a stubbed toe, we get to watch the crown prince struggle with his non-healing injuries while carelessly slapping, squeezing, or punching other people with the same condition. Don't worry, Sarene- I'd have stabbed him too. And besides, it's an important experiment- it's about 50-50 odds whether the wound will ooze "dark Elantrian blood" or refuse to bleed at all (just like all the other wounds... ignore the dark blood behind the curtain).
Hrathen is an initially interesting character who eventually fell to the aforementioned horrible "smoky room" line. In between mass conversions, praying, and ordering mysterious poisons, Hrathen walks around in bright red armor and fights with moves seen before only in partiularly bad TV shows. Doomed to love never returned, Hrathen mopes around on walls when not engaged in the highest form of serving his god- personal ambition.

Our Plot:
So, there was this city, full of these awesome glowing people.
Then they all turned into ancient David Tennants.
This happened to the crown prince.
Meanwhile some people try to conquer them.
Sarene organizes some conspiracies.
Stuff is found out.
The end.

Okay, it wasn't that bad. The interesting findings were all at the end of the book, and rushed so that they weren't even all that cool. The ending was a disappointment.

It's a 2.5. My plot summary is completley unfair; I shouldn't write these things when I'm tired. Imagine a non-sarcastic version of it designed to make the book sound good.

I enjoyed it, but it wasn't awesome.

I'm sure there are more reviews I've failed to post on here, but this will do for now. The ones that deserve their own posts will hopefully be getting them just as soon as I have this fabled thing called free time.