Dragons | Caroline Andrus

Bad Luck by Pseudonymous Bosch

Series: The Bad Books #2

Read: February 26 – March 1, 2017

Format: ebook ARC

My Book Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Release Date: February 9, 2016

Genre: MG Fantasy

Pages: 288

Reading Challenge(s): 2017 YA, TBR 2017, 2017 Beat The Backlist, Flights of Fantasy 2017

ABOUT THE BOOK

Some people have all the luck.

Unfortunately, Clay isn’t one of them: He’s the only camper at Earth Ranch without a magical talent. As if feeling totally useless isn’t enough, Clay has to figure out what to do about Brett, a castaway boy who has just washed ashore and is determined to keep his presence a secret. Even as Clay helps his new friend hide in the remote volcanic island’s wilderness, another fiery mystery begins to emerge, with all signs pointing to the impossible idea that dragons once roamed the island…and may still. Can Clay and his friends turn their luck around in time to uncover Price Island’s secrets–and save it from a scorching end?

Danger, adventure, mischief, mystery, old foes, new friends, and a delightfully elusive narrator make bestselling author Pseudonymous Bosch’s latest novel completely irresistible.

REVIEW

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I acquired Bad Luck as a READ NOW from NetGalley. Back when I was devouring books one after the other and didn’t need to worry about my score because I was going through them so fast. Then my work situation changed and suddenly I wasn’t going through books so fast. Suddenly I had less time to read, and a pile of books from NetGalley that weren’t really catching my interest.

Shame on me. When I took on the #BeatTheBacklist challenge my goal was to clear out my NetGalley list. Looking at all the little thumbnail covers none of them jumped out at me. I knew I wanted something clean, so I held my breath and dove into this middle grade book.

And then I was kicking myself for not starting sooner. Upon closer inspection of the cover (darn you little thumbnail images that hide details!) there’s a DRAGON! That right there gives a book an automatic star. Probably. Okay, not really, but it certainly is a sign that I will probably enjoy the books contents.

So what’s this book about? Clay is a boy who attends Earth Ranch, a summer camp for misfits who happen to be magicians. Like, the kind of magicians with real magical powers. Earth Ranch also happens to be located on an island in the middle of nowhere. When Clay comes across a boy washed ashore, things get weird. Soon the island is swarming with men in search of the missing boy, but Clay and his friends are sure something else is going on.

This is a solid middle grade read that was enjoyable for this girl who has not been in middle school for… well, a very long time. There were bits of middle grade potty humor, but nothing too over the top, just enough to remind me “oh yeah, this is a middle grade book targeted at boys”. I loved the footnotes the author included, filled with humor. I loved the dragon. I loved the excerpts from the book about taming a dragon scattered through the novel. Though it was nothing too complex, I loved the plot.

This is a book I’ll be giving my 10-year-old daughter to read and, just maybe, purchasing the rest of the books.

Don’t overlook this series. I can’t speak for the first book, as I haven’t read it, but now that I’ve read this one I plan to!

Get the Book here:

Amazon | Nook | iBooks | Kobo

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You can find book 1, Bad Magic, here:

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QUOTES

A sunburned boy pointed at him. “Hey, penguin, wrong cruise—North Pole is the other way.”

“You mean South Pole,” Brett replied automatically. “No penguins in the north. Just… elves.”

And next time, try a higher SPF, he thought. Lobster.

…But at Earth Ranch the campers tended to confuse crime with magic. Both things, after all, involved the breaking of laws—the one the laws of the land, the other the laws of nature.

Clay knelt by the boy’s side and put his hand on the boys cheek. It was cold and clammy. But was it dead clammy? Or just clammy?

Always remember, dear apprentice Dragon Tamer, that you are not and never will be a tamer of dragons. A dragon is not a lion in a circus. A dragon cannot be trained any more than it can be caged. It is foolish to think so—and almost certain death if you try.

Although dragons are infinitely smarter than people, they are also simpler. Push a dragon and it will push back. Treat a dragon gently and it will treat you gently. Try to kill a dragon and it will try to kill you.

No, it will kill you.

This is not justice. Nor is it unjust. It just is.

“There is no need to shout, puny human creature.”

On the other hand, part of being a scientist, as she understood it, was accepting empirical evidence when it was presented to you. You didn’t simply deny the existence of a thing because it didn’t fit your theory of the universe; the existence of the thing meant that your theory of the universe was flawed. And a dragon—a real dragon—what an amazing discovery that would be!

(From the footnotes)

According to DC Comics and some Greek pottery, Themyscira was the home of the Amazons, the all-female warrior tribe of ancient Greece. Not to be confused with The Amazon River, which derives its name from the same source. Nor with the giant, bookselling website, which, though seemingly invincible, may yet someday fall prey to a vengeful tribe of warrior women out to reclaim their rightful name.

Heir to the Sky by Amanda Sun

Read: April 18-29, 2016

Format: ARC Print Book (Goodreads First Reads)

My Book Rating: 3 Stars

Genre: YA Fantasy

BLURB FROM GOODREADS:

As heir to a kingdom of floating continents, Kali has spent her life bound by limits—by her duties as a member of the royal family; by a forced betrothal to the son of a nobleman; and by the edge of the only world she’s ever known—a small island hovering above a monster-ridden earth, long since uninhabited by humans. She is the Eternal Flame of Hope for what’s left of mankind, the wick and the wax burning in service for her people, and for their revered Phoenix, whose magic keeps them aloft.

When Kali falls off the edge of her kingdom and miraculously survives, she is shocked to discover there are still humans on the earth. Determined to get home, Kali entrusts a rugged monster-hunter named Griffin to guide her across a world overrun by chimera, storm dragons, basilisks, and other terrifying beasts. But the more time she spends on earth, the more dark truths she begins to uncover about her home in the sky, and the more resolute she is to start burning for herself.

MY REVIEW: 

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via the Goodreads First Reads program.

This is my first Amanda Sun book, and I really wanted to love it. There are so many wonderful things about it.

Floating continents in the sky.
Monsters
Monster Hunters
Dragons
Royalty

And yet….. Something fell flat. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the book, I did enjoy the story, I just couldn’t get completely engrossed in it.

The story starts slowly, with Kali, the heir to Ashra—the floating world—alone in her favorite isolated place on her continent. We’re introduced to her BFF. We learn she is betrothed to a nobleman she feels nothing for. We learn that her people worship the Phoenix, who brought Ashra and the other islands to the sky. She sneaks off to the library and overhears talk from the elders that sounds bad. Blah blah blah.

Then she falls to the earth, and even that felt rushed. We know she’s going to survive, there couldn’t be a whole book told in first person if she didn’t survive. So then I thought, yeah! Here come the monsters! And we do see a couple monsters right away, but it was sort of anticlimactic. Then we meet Griffin, the monster hunter on earth, and… again, I waited for something big to happen, and though they did meet monsters, everything seemed so easy. (Yes, I know, Griffin has been hunting monsters all his life, but still! They’re killer monsters!) There was one particular monster scene (it’s in the water, I won’t say more) that was really awesome. Kali had a chance to really prove her worth there, and it was exciting and dangerous and I was eagerly flipping pages to see what happens. Then more stuff happens, then we get to the big finish.

I think what most prevent this book from being a WOW book for me was twofold.

This book is in present tense. In most cases, I despise present tense. It feels so awkward to read in the present tense, I’m sure some authors use it to give a sense of urgency to the reader, but for me it feels forced. It took me a really long time to look past that in this book.

And…

Most fantasy / dystopian / etc. YA books of today are not stand alone novels. In most cases they’re trilogies, giving time for a lot of world building and plot development. I really did like the world building in Heir to the Sky. In fact, I could easily picture what was happening, it was just enough detail for me. However, I think the plot could have been fleshed out more. There could have been more death defying challenges. The entire last section of the book, with the rebellion stuff, could have taken an entire book to really pull the reader into it and make us care about Ashra. Even when all was said and done, I think there’s room for another book with the aftermath, but maybe not.

This is still a good book, it’s just not a great book for me. I think younger teens would really enjoy it. Parents don’t need to worry about sex or language, there’s a kiss or two, but that’s it. And the violence is basically all monsters, and nothing graphic. So, I will hang onto this book for my daughter to read in a couple of years when she’s about 12 or 13.

MEMORABLE QUOTES

“I don’t have a chance to survive, but I refuse to die.”

“He looks the way I used to think of myself—invisible—before my fall and pathetic attempt at survival.”

“I am the wick and the wax. My life isn’t my own.”

“I was ready to let myself burn for you. But now I burn for myself.”

GET THE BOOK

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