Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi Volume 1-Force Storm by John Ostrander

I'm a big Star Wars fan. I'm not cool enough to own my own lightsaber or have all the movies in collector's edition format or even have Star Wars bobbleheads, but I have loved the series ever since I was a little kid. I loved the idea of being a Jedi and bringing intergalactic peace. And you get a lightsaber! When I saw this comic on NetGalley, I jumped at the chance to read it. I devoured it in the course of one night and one morning, and I looooved it.

It was fascinating to get to see the beginning of the entire Jedi Order, occurring thousands of years before the classic Star Wars story began. Force sensitive being were brought by large space ships to a dangerous planet, Tython, where they honed their skills and learned to use the Force and to balance light and dark. They come to be known as the Je'daii. They also had families (GASP), and some of their children were not Force sensitive; eventually these people had to leave Tython because the dangers on the planet were too great for those who could not use the Force. Eventually there is a huge war between the descendants of the Je'daii and the Je'daii, and although the Je'daii win, they take heavy losses. More than a decade later is when the main story of the comic begins. It follows three young Je'daii as they follow a call of the Force to track down a strong source of Darkness, the Force Hound Xesh, after he crashes on the planet.

This comic rocked. I liked all three of the journeyers that the story focused on: Sek'nos Rath (a Sith), Tasha Ryo ( a Twi'lek)and Shae Koda (a Dathomiri human). They were an odd threesome, all with different personalities and skill sets, which turned them into a pretty good team eventually, though they definitely still need some work. I could see them seriously kicking tail in the future, though. I also liked Hawk Ryo and Rori Fenn, and I would really like to know more about the romance that was hinted at between the two of them! Maybe they will get into that more in the next volume of the comic. I felt so bad for Xesh, and I don't like what happened to him at the end of the comic, but it could have been much worse! The illustrations were engaging and drew me into the story.

This is a completely awesome comic book series, and I would love to read more!

Thank you to NetGalley.com, Dark Horse Comics and Diamond Book Distributors for allowing me to read this galley!

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

While I was reading Incarnate, I just kept thinking: "This is a beautiful story." I flipping LOVED it. Incarnate has been chilling in my to-read pile for a while now. I had fallen in love with the synopsis and the cover, but I hadn't had time to read the book due to school or work or other books popping up in the way. I recently picked it up and just decided that it was the day that I was going to start reading Incarnate. I read half the book in one day, shoving homework and house work to the side in my haste to read Incarnate. I had to stop for a few days to catch back up with homework, but the instant I had time again, I was back to powering my way through Incarnate, loving basically every moment of it. The plot is great, the writing style is engaging, and I could just eat this book up, I love it so!

Ana is a newsoul, a new person in a world where the people who live there are reincarnated. Over and over and over again. Before Ana was born, the Temple went dark and one soul was lost; it has never returned and some people think that Ana took that soul's place. To them, she is a nosoul, and her mentally abusive mother Li is ardent believer that Ana is a nosoul; she keeps Ana away from almost all other people for her entire childhood. One of her only respites from Li's hatred is the comfort she finds in music. Ana leaves Li's house, heading for the city of Heart, and quickly finds herself in danger, but she's rescued by Sam, who eventually becomes her guardian. Ana must navigate through her new life, one where she learns to make friends and join society but also one where she must appease the Council who rules her life and decides what's best for her. Not to mention that there may or may not be people out to kill her. There are dragon attacks, music lessons, market days, library ventures (yay!), and a masquerade, all leading up to a major battle and the answer to some huge questions.

Range is a very different world from ours, and Meadows takes her time fleshing out its details, giving the reader bits and pieces of the world as it becomes a whole entity. I liked the combination of fantasy and technology elements, and I didn't really see a clash between the two. For me, it was believable to have dragons flying ahead while people shot at them with lasers and tried to contact each other on devices akin to cell phones. It's another world, one where humans are reincarnated over and over again, so it doesn't have to play by our rules. It almost seems like Range is a playground for Janan, the possible creator entity, where he created certain beings and left them to run their course. It reminds me of the watchmaker scenario, where the creator of a world would create everything in the world, give it life and then leave it alone. I found Range and the city of Heart fascinating, and I would love to learn more about why this world works the way it does in later books.

I'm big on characters, and I seriously enjoyed the ones that populate this book. Ana was a perfect protagonist for this kind of scenario; since she is a newsoul, she's still learning about the world around her, which helps us as readers to be introduced to the world. I felt sympathetic toward Ana as she tried to figure out how to interact with people who had been alive for centuries upon centuries and who all knew each other intimately. Worst small town type of problem EVER. I liked Sam as her gentle and relatively understanding guide through the world, and their joint love of music was a great touch. Oh, and I love the relationship between Sam and Ana. LOVED IT. Granted, for a good chunk of the book, I was gripping the edges and yelling, "Kiss her already, you ancient idiot!" but it was only because the feelings and connection between them were so palpable and real. The scene at the masquerade was awesome (not saying more to avoid spoilers), and I was just so pleased with it, I almost went over in my lunch break because I just wanted to keep reading. The side characters like Stef were also fun to get to know!

Again, I just have to say how beautiful I thought this story was. I loved every inch of it, and I hated to see it end. I just want more! LOTS MORE. I cannot WAIT until Asunder comes out. Until then, I'll just attempt to be patient...

Story Time: A is for Awesome apples advancing against angry aardvarks and attacking alligators

On September 28th, we started the Alphabet Initiative during story time. Like I said in the previous story time post, we're going to be going through the entire alphabet over the next 26 weeks. The first story time was, predictably, all about the letter A. We read three books that had the letter 'A' featured in the title, sang a song about an Alligator named Alfred and made little alligators out of clothespins. It was A-wesome. ;)

The Armadillo from Amarillo by Lynne Cherry
ISBN: 9780152003593

This is the tale of an armadillo who goes off on a journey and discovers exactly where he is in the scheme of the universe, making a new friend along the way. I used this to start my "A" themed story time since the title is very A-oriented. The long poem in this one was quite enjoyable, and for the most part, it held the kids attention. It's a little above the level of preschoolers, and I noticed that it didn't keep them captivated like a shorter book probably would. But the older children in story time, ages 5-7, seemed to like this one a lot. The illustrations are entertaining, and the story is fun and fanciful; the armadillo and his friend the eagle end up catching a rocket into outer space at one point. Overall, it's a cute book, and kindergarten-2nd graders will probably enjoy it the most.


What Aunts Do Best; What Uncles Do Best by Laura Numeroff; Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger
ISBN: 9780689848254

I only read the What Aunts Do Best half of the book to my story time kids, but I did read the whole book on my own. The Aunt part of the book was what I focused on in story time, and it seemed to go over really well with everyone. I think the parents liked the focus on the aunts and family fun, while the story time kids liked the neat things that aunts did with the kids. This book is one of those nifty reads where one half of the book is one story and if you flip it over and turn it around, the other half is another story. Mind-blowing to kids, fun for adults. :) But the interesting thing about this book was that the stories were basically the same except for the word Aunt/Uncle, which were switched respectively. The drawings (which are adorable!) were different, but the words (except the Uncle/Aunt switch) matched up in both stories. I think it might have been better if what aunts and uncles do with the kids were different for each half of the book. Since there isn't an endless supply of books about aunts and uncles, I can overlook this issue and say that it's a decent little book about the fun things aunts and uncles can do with their nieces and nephews.

Applebet by Clyde Watson; Illustrated by Wendy Watson
ISBN: 9780374404277

A great intro to the alphabet book, Applebet follows along the story of an apple and a girl and a woman as they travel from their farm to the market and enjoy a day in the village where there are all sorts of small-town adventures to be had. Each letter of the alphabet finds it's way into the book, as well as a few letter sounds. When I read it for story time, the kids stayed engaged for the most part. However, since it is a little longer than some kids books, their attention waned toward the end. Luckily, there was a robbery in the story and that caught their attention again. This is a neat little book, and the illustrations are warm and sweet.
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During the stories, we sang "Have You Ever Been Down a Water Spout," which is actually all about a lost alligator named Alfred. Unfortunately I forgot the second verse of the song and had to resort to the paper to able to finish out the song properly a second time. Lesson learned: never assume you've got the storytime song memorized unless you've sung it 1,001 times before! Even then, always have the lyrics handy, just in case you have a brain lapse. After story time was finished, we made little alligator crafts out of pipe cleaners and clothespins for everyone to take home. They're a little, how should I put it, derpy, but they're still pretty darn cute.

Teens' Top Ten

Check it out, the Teens' Top Ten List is available for your perusal and reading enjoyment!

CLICK ME I AM AN AWESOME LINK

Three of my most favorite books EVER have hit the list: Divergent by Veronica Roth, Across the Universe by Beth Revis and Scorpio Race by Maggie Stiefvater. These are amazing reads, and if you haven't picked read them yet, go grab one! Read it! Review it!

I'm certain the rest of the Top Ten List are just as good. Please go to your local book store or library and find one of these titles today, especially the three I listed. They are sooo good, you'll be missing out if you don't read them!

Erebos by Ursula Poznanski

While I was reading this book, I made a decision: NO MMORPGS. I can totally see after reading this book how someone could be sucked into an alternate reality world like Erebos. Of course, Erebos is no ordinary RPG, but still any MMORPG gives you the ability to basically recreate yourself. In Erebos, you can become a new species, choose a new name, get a new skill set and turn yourself into the best warrior out there. That is, you can do all these things if you obey the messenger's orders, and the messenger wants you to do things in the real world. Outside of the game. And the game is always watching...

Erebos by Ursula Poznanski

Nick is a normal, basketball-playing, completely-average student when he begins to notice strange things happening to his best friend. His buddy isn't coming to basketball practice anymore, he won't answer Nick's calls, and he's actually talking to some of the kids that he and Nick consider nerds. Other people in the school are acting weird, too, and Nick is eventually invited to join the thing that's sucked them all in: Erebos, an extremely addictive computer game that seems better than real life. Soon the game is all that matters, and as it pushes Nick to do things in the real world, he begins to question just how far he'll go for a level up. Running errands? Taking pictures? Spying? Or something more sinister?

The difference between the bland, boring real world versus the vibrant, tantalizing unreality of the world of Erebos is highlighted in the novel. Even as a reader, I wanted to get through the parts in the real world and back to the parts about Erebos. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing about the book since I wasn't fully engaged with the whole story, but maybe it's a good thing since it did make me more sympathetic toward Nick.

Nick was a decent protagonist; I wouldn't say that he was particularly memorable but he was solid and had a very male voice. Sometimes a male protagonist can sound sort of not very guyish, but Poznanski does a great job with Nick. Victor rocked as a character, and I loved his little quirks, his obsessions and his mannerisms. He was fantastic, and ultimately my favorite character in the book. The other characters were somewhat flat and a little forgettable, even the main love interest.

The ending was a bit of a let-down and a somewhat predictable, but overall, this is a pretty enjoyable book. Gamers especially might like it since a lot of gaming goes in in the novel, and you could also consider giving it to a gamer who gets a little too entranced by the game world!

I would like to thank NetGalley.com and Annick Press for letting me read the galley for this book!

Revealing Eden: Save the Pearls Part One by Victoria Foyt

I don't know where to start with this one. To be blunt, I disliked it. A lot. For many reasons.

The whole premise of the book intrigued me at first, but I thought it was handled very poorly by the author. She reinforced negative racial stereotypes with her characters that are black; almost all of the "Coal" characters are bad guys or have very bad traits while the lighter-skinned characters are most often the nice people. The "Coal" male love interest in the book literally gets turned in a cat-man, and he is promptly referred to by Eden, the main white female protagonist, as the "beast" or in terms that highlight his animal features. Oh, but she's attracted to him more when he's partly animal, far more than when she was slightly attracted to him when he was fully human. It just...It didn't sit well with me.

Foyt also uses blackface for her white characters; although she apparently claims it was for protection for the white characters, there's also definitely an appearance quality to it. On top of all of this, there's the FFP, which is like this world's version of the KKK since the Coals want to get rid of the Pearls. It just seemed wrong to mirror history in that way, as if Foyt didn't grasp the seriousness of the situation and just thought it would be a good twist in her story. Treated correctly, I could see this theme being truly thought-provoking and deep, but I don't think Foyt handled her subject matter very well. Some of the book just seemed so inappropriate that I wanted to put the it down, but I ended up continuing to read because I couldn't imagine where she was going with the story. I found out...but I sort of wish I hadn't. The storyline felt chaotic, rushed and frenetic.

Eden is possibly the most frustrating, insipid, impulsive, selfish, erratic, wishy-washy characters I have ever come across. She hates Bramford! She loves Bramford! She hatesloveshatesloveshatesloves Bramford. She flip-flops so many times that I expected that she was legitimately crazy by the end of the book. I like a complex main character and I sometimes even like to read about protagonists that I'm not particularly fond of, but I'm not a big fan of a main character that do dumb, selfish things with barely any logic behind their actions. And Eden is FULL of stupid, self-centered actions. She flings them out willy-nilly and scatters them around the place for other people to "enjoy" the consequences. Out of all the characters, even the ones that were the villains, I disliked her the most. And she's the main character.

On a better note, the writing was tolerable and some of Foyt's metaphors and setting descriptions are nice. I also liked the twist with Bramford's family, though I'm still a little fuzzy on the details. Maybe more will be explained in the second book, though I highly doubt I will be reading that one. I didn't really enjoy this book, so I'm pretty sure I won't like the next one either.

I would like to thank NetGalley.com and Sand Dollar Press Inc for allowing me to read the galley for this book.

Story Time: Reading

(Sorry this is extremely late, I've been very busy with some family/friend situations. But I'm back now!)

I've decided to start something new at story time. Each week, we'll be tackling a letter of the alphabet until we conquer the entire alphabet! Although each story time may not be specifically focused on the letter, the letter of the week will feature in at least one of the stories read, and we'll learn how to write each letter. Each week, the story time friend gets to take a work sheet home with them, and if they fill it out completely and bring it back, they get to go in prize box. As a kick-off, I did a story time focused on reading and how fun it can be.