Study Series - Maria V. Snyder

                         
So...I am going to have to admit I got lazy earlier this week. I sat down with Poison Study and finished it...and then the next thing I knew I finished Fire Study. I kept putting it off until the next chapter; and if you are an avid reader like me we all know I was just fooling myself. So I figured instead of doing the rapid fire reviews like I did with the Healer Series (since I did those reviews as I finished the books) I would do a full series review for this one...and hopefully do I better job with the Glass Series.

Re-reading this series was amazing, it was where I first started with her books and it was great going back to the beginning and seeing how those books compared to the healer series. And one thing that I have realized is that to me, the Study series was definitely a set of darker books compared to the Healer Series. Yelena had to some pretty messed up things happen to her, and she was fighting through the psychological damage it pretty much caused her. And some of the villains in this series really put Tohon to shame. He would kill people and reanimate their bodies, but the Warpers would torture in a lot of cases and then kill the people and harvest their souls for strength. Yelena definitely had a lot to fight through, and it was amazing seeing how she managed to slowly overcome things as they came to her; especially when she was fighting to understand what her magic was and what she is capable of doing. What was also great was how unique the system of magic is for this series (and by extension the glass series) compared to the Healer series.

Now...I do not know if this is because this is the first series, but so far there has not been a leading male in her other books that has taken the place of Valek for sheer amazingness. He is a complete and utter bad ass and becomes even more so as the series progresses. If for some reason you do not like Yelena, it is still worth it to read the books for Valek, Ari and Janco. I am sure you will develop a character crush one AT LEAST one of them before the end of the books. It would be impossible not to do so. Ari and Janco are the original monkeys (although they are never referred to as such in this book, but this is what the monkeys in the healer series reminded me of).

The only thing I can say is that in comparison to the Healer series, the Study series has more substance to it. It is a little hard to explain and DOES NOT belittle how good the Healer series is. But to me it just seems like there is a lot more character development here, and just a lot more goes on. Although that to me is the only complaint when you compare the newer series to her first one...and really...it is not much of one because all of the characters that she has made are just pure amazing. You can see sort of a pattern between the characters, but it is not cookie cutter. You can see the similarities between Yelena, Avry and Opal but they are definitely far from being the same person. She gives them their own fears, and they have different struggles (however Opal and Yelena are more similar but that is due to the intertwining of their stories which makes sense).

If you started off with any of her other books, I believe you should definitely try out the Study series (especially in order to prepare yourself for the next book which I have the countdown for). You will love it if you love anything else she has written. Although it may be a bit different from if you were to start of with her Inside Out/Outside In duo, but I loved that one too (just not as much as the Study and Glass series).

If you are into the political intrigue that you get from books like The Song of Fire and Ice; the Study series is not on the same level, but it definitely has just enough to make things interesting so do not let that deter you if you are not into that sort of thing. She finds a nice happy medium where you are upset with people in power being corrupted, mean and evil but it is not a complete saturation because there are plenty of people NOT in power who are evil and corrupted...they are more like the figurehead. So pretty please pick this series up and read it, they are definite page turners that you will fall in love with and read more than once.

:) Have a nice end of the week everyone!

Taste of Darkness - Maria V. Snyder

 

I have waited so long to be able to buy and read this book. And I was not disappointed. This book made a wonderful ending to this trilogy, and I honestly do not know where to start. For starters...I was practically living in fear throughout this book that Kerrick would permanently become one with the forest. Especially as winter got closer and closer, and you could tell how drained and how much of a struggle it was for him to do anything. Which brings me to the really interesting concept that she really fleshed out in this book which was the connections that can be made between mages. 

Which definitely gets complicated because first Avry and Kerrick make the connection when she heals Poppa Bear's stomach wound and he needs to help her heal. Then when Tohon decides to imprint on Avry...making Avry almost a battleground for their connections in this book. And then Kerrick bonds with the forest in a more deeper sense. Connections everywhere!

One part that I thought was really interesting was learning more and more about the Peace and Death Lilies, and then Avry eventually coming up with an idea for the cure for the new strain of the plague. And how she came to the conclusion of finally figuring out the reasoning behind the start of the plague, why the other Princes and Princesses of the realms were saved from catching it but not their families.

The romance moments were sweet. It is something that I find very endearing about these books. People have sex, it is going to happen, and Maria V. Snyder does not ignore that part of relationships; she just leaves it to your imagination outside of letting you know they are about to get some lovin' on. Which I think is a good move for these books because it does not take away from the story and the action itself. I thought it especially funny in the second book when they had the funny euphemism for having sex with eating dinner in the tent. And relationship wise, I really wonder how Odd and Avry would have hit it off if Kerrick had eventually died for good. It was very evident in this book Odd's feelings for her, but it also spoke very well for him in that he was 'content' to be her friend and be there for her when she was still set on Kerrick being alive.

It was really great seeing from start to finish the transformation in all of the characters. And it isn't super noticeable until you get to this book that they have all grown up in the sense, and in the case of the monkey's they still managed to maintain their cute humor. Avry manages to slightly control her urges to save anyone and everyone...for the most part. Kerrick is forced in this book to take a step back in certain circumstances instead of being in charge and leading everything.

 And speaking of humor. I absolutely loved the part where Belen and Flea joke about how almost everyone in their original squad has been presumed dead at one point, and despite all odds have managed to come back from the dead. And speaking of the rising from the dead. I think that in the case of Flea, Avry and Kerrick it made them really realize how mortal they can be and how close they all came to not coming back. And was definitely part of what made them grow in a sense.

This book was definitely not a disappointment and only has me even more excited for Shadow Study to come out (keep your eyes on the countdown clock!). And you REALLY REALLY need to read her books :) trust me.

Scent of Magic - Maria V. Snyder

Scent of Magic is without a doubt just as good as the first in this trilogy. And it is yet again a very fast read because I really did not want to put it down; mainly for two reasons. First reason being that it is well written and there were A LOT of things going on, revelations, people dying, people thought dead coming back, dead people for sure coming back, etc. The second reason is that I am so excited to start on the 3rd book that I have not read before. Especially because of the way that the second book ended.

For starters, Maria V. Snyder put Avry through the ringer in such an emotional roller coaster. She experiences so much loss, betrayal, and sadness in such a short amount of time I am honestly surprised that she kept going. However, it just went and showed how strong of a person she is capable of being; despite all the heartache and everything she is still pushing on. Another thing that I loved was that each chapter had two parts. The first part was from Avry and the second part was from Kerrick. It was so nice to see things from his perspective, and it made him seem like a much better person than he was in the first book.

She also continued with showing how crazy, obsessed and deranged Tohon is. How much he does not care about living souls that he would just kill all of Estrid's army to turn them into the dead soldiers. And his obsession with Avry because he wants to just hurt Kerrick SO much, and then when he thought he was dead; to essentially crap on his memory. And then to round things up, a character betrays Avry and it was one that even reading it the second time I never quite see the warning signs of the imminent betrayal.

I am now very eager to see what this Skeleton King is all about in the 3rd book, and to at least see Avry find SOME happiness for more than a couple days.

Touch of Power - Maria V. Snyder

So one thing that I am probably going to mention so many times through the reviews of me re-reading her books is how quick of a read they are. And I mean that in the good kind of way; since there are books out there that are fast reads because they have no substance and then there are books that are fast reads because you can't stop turning the pages. And for me, her books are of the kind where I really do not want to stop turning the pages. I mean I had to force myself to put this book down so I did not finish it in one day. Same with the second book which I started yesterday and I am already halfway through. She is consistent with all of her protagonists in all of her books where they are really likeable for me. I am able to empathize with them, and probably because I read the Study Series first (LIKE YOU ALL SHOULD! I mean it. Read them!) I love where I can see how the characters are really similar. And not in the sense where it feels like she recycled them, but in the more subtle feel of the characters. I know, that might not make any sense, but it does to me.
heal
Something I have noticed is that Maria V. Snyder is quite good at making the main baddy very nicely unhinged. Where you can definitely tell that the more you learn about them and are exposed to them you can tell there is definitely a little bit of crazy behind them; this is Tohon. And then you have the character that you really really really do not like at all, but that is because they are just bad people, and that would be Jael.

Magic. I am a sucker for books that have magic in them. I am even more of a sucker for books that have magic that does at least one thing unique about them. One of the positive points that I mentioned in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. In the Healer Series there are a couple things that stick out as nicely unique, the kinds of magic that are available and the namesake for the series; the healers. So Healers are capable of healing just about anything...except the plague, but plagues cheat. When a healer heals you they assume the injury or sickness on their body and remove it from yours. The healer then is able to heal from the sickness or injury at a faster rate than you or I which in most cases allows them to survive it. The oddballs are for example the plague, which the healers are just not able to heal from fast enough but live longer with it, and some instances of very series injuries. In the case of the very serious injuries or sicknesses (minus the plague) if another healer is around they can lend their energy so then either they split the healing between them or they help the main healer heal themselves faster. Healers are also able to send lots of pain through an attacker through skin contact.

A couple of the different kinds of magic available are Life, Death, Air, Forest, and Earth. Life magicians are able to take lives and preserve dead bodies, death magicians can tell if you are going to die and are capable of putting a living body in stasis to prolong the inevitable, and air is self explanatory. Forest mages are able to connect with nature and see intruders in nature through the connection, they can also do the awesomeness of camouflaging themselves. Earth mages on the other hand are more along the lines of rocks, so they can do stuff like earthquakes.

I highly, highly, HIGHLY, recommend you check out just about any of her books! :) Let me know if you have read any of her books and what you think about them. 

Malazan Book of the Fallen - The End

I finally made it. And I was reminded yet again of how much I enjoy reading that series, with it being the second time I have read through it. It is definitely a bittersweet ending, and I was in tears over the characters that were lost in the final battle, and when Korlat was able to have her final moment with Whiskeyjack. Heck...I was in tears during the time Gesler and Stormy played their final acts. In my mind this series definitely deserves to be described as an epic. The story develops in a way where you are lead to follow one train of thought and then you find out that the picture is even bigger and you had it all wrong. I have never grown attached to SO many characters over the course of a series before. And I think that is because Erikson is quite good at balancing all of these important characters, so you feel as if no one was slighted. It just gives me goosebumps thinking of how strong sheer force of will, stubbornness and determination can achieve so much.

If you have read things like the Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin, or even love The Lord of the Rings; where they both have that feeling of "everything is only getting worse, how can it get better?", and like the idea of light finally, in the very end shining through and some good is able to come of all the suffering then I definitely encourage you to read this series.

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Now next off, I plan on reading the Healer series by Maria V. Snyder. Mainly because I do have the 3rd book FINALLY so I can read it. And in early preparation for her newest book coming out in (insert number from timer on the left here) months and days. Because following that I am re-reading her Study and Glass series. I want to read them now because afterwards I plan on reading Brandon Sanderson's new book and I don't know how soon I will be able to get through it because I plan on tearing into Shadow study because everything will be vaguely fresh in my mind.

So let me know, if you have read the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and what you thought of it, or if you have read any of the books I intend on reading for the first time or re-reading let me know what you think.

Have a nice week!

My Sister's Grave - Robert Dugoni

 

This is the book that I picked out of the four offered for the free kindle book preview thing that is offered by Amazon Prime. And to be honest, I really did not think that the choices were the best in my opinion and that this one would not be all that good. I have been trying to go for books I never really read for these Kindle First picks because they are free and all I would be wasting is phone battery and time. The other three choices were The Fire Seekers by Richard Farr, The Glassblower by Petra Durst-Benning and The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter by Craig Lancaster.

So when it came to picking a book, the two books it came down to were this one and The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter. This book because I generally do not read a lot of mystery because it seems like the mystery ones that I pick are good but unbearably cheesy. The Fallow Season seemed sort of weird in that it is a sports theme mystery? I really did not know what to make of it. But I definitely to not read sport themed books...generally because they never really trip my trigger.

So one thing that I can tell you about this book is that it is a book that pleasantly surprised me, I finished it in just under a day; mainly because I could not put it down when I got to the very end. One of the aspects about it that I loved was the use of flashbacks. They were done very well and reminiscent of the Cold Case Files playbacks that they play throughout the show or at the end when they solve the case. So as you read the book, you are getting this flashbacks that are logically triggered by what is currently happening and you are putting together the pieces of the past as these flashbacks come to you. And you are also getting more information about the characters that are involved.

There is romance, and it is done as an undertone, so it does not take away from the mystery of it all. And the romance moments were sweet, with it steadily increasing a little bit as the climax of the book comes to you. What I absolutely loved at the end was that they did not just immediately start living together and showing the happily ever after. The ending fast forwards to the main character looking for a house with a big enough yard so that when he visits with his two dogs they have room to run around. THAT is a much more realistic ending romance wise.

The age of the main characters, and just about everyone involved makes sense with this being a case that happened 20 years before present events. But I felt like it was a very nice change and a breath of fresh air to have main characters that range from the 35 year range up to 50s and 60s; with the majority being in their 40s. You do not really realize how many main characters are generally from the mid 20s to mid 30s range until you read a book where they are 40. Just on that basis alone I would recommend it, because you do not have so much of the whole "GAH that stupid young woman/man making that stupid mistake!!!" moments that I once in awhile find myself having.

Getting to the meat of the matter...The main character is a woman named Tracy, and 20 years ago her younger sister was abducted and presumably killed. It took 20 years before her body was actually found. Tracy was 20 at the time, and she spent the next 20 years collecting all the information she could find because to her the pieces were not adding up. It appears that the person was framed, and I totally followed along with Tracy because that is really what it looked like. When Tracy's sister is finally found, she goes back to her small town for a funeral and runs into her childhood friend who also happens to be a lawyer, Dan. She asks him to look at all the evidence that she has on the case, along with the new evidence found with the body in order to get it reopened to find who the real killer is.

Dan agrees to do this and it ends up going to a court of appeals and the man, Edmund, who was convicted on the crime is set free that very day. Well...it turns out that despite most of the evidence having been planted...and the man clearly being set up...it DID actually do the crime. It is one of those seemingly rare circumstances where the man they latched on to early in the investigation actually did the crime and because there was no evidence he would have gone free; so they planted the evidence in order to make sure he did not go free. The plot twist that was done was expertly executed, because I was following Tracy's line of thought throughout the whole book up until that moment when you realize she was wrong. 

I would highly recommend this to someone who generally does not read mystery. I don't know if someone who is an avid mystery reader would like it; but you should give it a shot anyways.

Do you read book series in order?

I had just recently read a little article on the bookriot website in which the writer, who normally reads her books in order, ended up reading a large series not in order and completely enjoyed it. If you are interested you can click here to read the article and read some of the series that others have read out of order and thoroughly enjoyed. 

Personally, I almost cannot stand reading books out of order. If I am at the bookstore and a series looks interesting I will either wait for the first book to come in or order it online. And the most likely thing to happen is I will skip a book if I don't like it; and that has only happened once. And this also brings into the mix, should you read the books in order of publication? Or should you read them in order of the chronological events?  For example, the Malazan Book of the Fallen...I doubt I would have loved it as much as I do now if I had read it out of order, just because everything in each book relies a lot on what has happened in the previous book. The only minor exceptions based on technicalities is the beginning couple because they are relatively parallel stories happening at the same time. But even then...I do not recommend skipping things.


The Harry Potter series, I love it to death...except for the second book. For some reason I just absolutely hate the Chamber of Secrets, and after the first 3 or 4 times of reading the series every time after that I just skip the second book. Out of all the books that I own, this is the only one that I will skip. And I really cannot quite understand what it is that I so dislike about it. Am I the only one out there that is this unexplainable dislike for that one book?

Then there is the case with Tamora Pierce in which I had read her lioness quartet, and then I jumped a series ahead to the Protector of the Small and decided to go back to the Immortal Series. But I personally do not count that because each of the series can be read alone and be thoroughly enjoyable. Now other than this, there are three exceptions to my whole "Always read in order" and that is the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey (and in later books her son), The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett, and the other series that Tamora Pierce has.



The second big series that I have portions of by Tamora Pierce is the Circle, and the Circle Opens. I had read one of the books at the library, loved it and went and bought one from that series. Then it dawned on me....I was reading the second series in that batch of books. So I stopped where I was (3/4 books read) then I went and bought some from the first series...and then I was poor because I came to college. And I refuse to read those books until I have all of them so I can truly appreciate them in all their chronological glory. 



The Dragonriders of Pern is one of those series of books that is LONG and it can be quite confusing figuring out which book to go to next. You can either read it in publication order, which would then mean you are bouncing around in the timeline, or you can attempt to read in the order of events that is happening. When I first started getting into the series I read the books as I bought them, which meant out of order. As I started buying more of them I stockpiled the books, looked up a neat little time line and arranged them like that (which is still hard because time wise some of the books overlap each other). It was an interesting experience to read them as the world developed from the writers perspective; but I definitely prefer reading them in the order of events; that is just how I roll. And I guess you can technically read them every which way if you are that kind of person, but I would not recommend it.

http://barnsdale11.deviantart.com/art/Discworld-wallpaper-244884736

Now the Discworld Series....that is a completely different beast. It is literally the only series that I have in my possession that I have really honestly have not gone to the effort of ordering them because you really can read them in any order you want and thoroughly enjoy them; although I guess this stands with the whole idea of if you are good at keeping timelines and events straight in your head to avoid any confusion. It has also  not helped that between me and my older sister we own just about all of those books and have them split in half so if I wanted to read in order I would have to raid her bookshelf. Those Discworld books I love because if I am in the mood to read a certain kind of book, I can generally find one that fits my mood. And I also think a part of me would probably lose that enjoyment if I went out of my way to order them. So right now they are just arranged roughly in the order of being bought.

One a slightly different side note...The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. I had watched the Lord of the Rings before reading either of them. Then my sister loaned me those books, on the first read through I hated the Hobbit and could not finish it, then I read the Lord of the Rings and loved that series. I read it a couple of times, and only because it takes me longer than normal to read them because they are very heavy books in the sense that there is just A LOT to take in. I did not return to the Hobbit book until after I had read the Silmarillion, the Unfinished Tales, and then watching the Hobbit movie. On this second read through, despite movie discrepancies, I loved it the second time I read it. I think it partly had to do with having watched the movies for Lord of the Rings, and it being so dark and a lot of the other books I had been reading at the time being on the darker side that the Hobbit with it's vaguely lighthearted feel to it just was not working for me. And even if I had not seen the movie I would have read it a second time because my boyfriend got me the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings box set on accident not knowing I already owned Lord of the Rings...and I did not want him to feel bad. However, it all worked out in the end.

Do you guys have any book series you enjoy out of order? Or will you always refuse to read them unless you can go from beginning to end with no jumping around?