Divine By Mistake by P.C. Cast

On the Back of the Book

I get this bizarre mirror world filled with a horse/guy I have the serious hots for, creatures who are terrorising civilisation, deodrant-less armpits that probably stink and no toilet paper. This sucks.

The only excitement Shanon Parker expected while on holiday was a little shopping. Finding herself flung through fire into the world of Partholon (and left with a massive headache, thank you very much.) She's now being treated like a goddess.

Somehow Shannon has stepped into another's role in another world. And while there's an upside - who doesn't love lots of pampering? - it also comes with a ritual marriage to a centaur and threats against her new people. Can Shannon survive this new world and ever find her way home?

My Thoughts

This is a book of two parts for me. The first 300 and something pages are boring and don't really add to the story, they should have been condensed to make a shorter, but better, story. The beginning annoyed me so much I made a list of things I didn't like:

• The chapters were either too long or too short. They needed to be in a middle ground.
• The story is too slow, it takes ages to get to where you want to be in the story.
• Shannon is annoying.
• The author [P.C. Cast] feels like they're trying too hard. Everything feels false.
• Shannon is obsessed with penises and sex in general.
• What's with all the John Wayne? In fact a lot of references were very out of date. I'm 20 years old, I've never seen a John Wayne movie.
• I get that Shannon is/was a(n) English teacher. I don't need to be told every two sentences.
• Rhiannon is a b*tch I get it, lets move along.
• Dragon print was lot #12 not #25. I can't believe that mistake made the final cut.
• Human/horse/person/man/guy - this is annoying he's a centaur, call him a centaur! I'm not freaking out about it.
• Too repetitive... again. I am not stupid, I can hold information inside my head for more than a minute. Unlike you evidently.
• Why are you insulting the Queen? The Queen is not "stiff" she is dignified and even then, in the UK we don't all go around acting like the Queen. Get your stereotypes straight! I'm offended.
• I don't think love should be based on penis size. I'm sorry but for me it's about the person's heart, it's how they treat you.
• The goddess thing is reused in House of Night. Seriously, I'd like to pay money for an original plot and now I feel HoN isn't original. Great job!

As you can see I get sarcastic when I'm annoyed. I was very annoyed at the majority of this book.

Now I didn't really find myself attached to any of the characters. They could have dies and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. I did however dislike Shannon, the main character. I realise I touched on this in my list but allow me to go into detail. She's selfish, she's a nymphomaniac, she's whiny, she's a bit dim and to top it all, she feels fake. When I read of her actions it's as though she's not doing it to be nice but to spite Rhiannon. In my opinion that makes her no better and if she's like that in the next book then my intense dislike may turn into hatred of this fictional excuse of a woman.

I liked the action (once I'd got there) as it developed in the last couple of hundred pages. I would have liked more information on the Fomorians and why they acted like they had. If we can have a book that consists mainly of filler then surely I can have a chapter or two from Nuada's point of view.

My Rating

3 stars - Or more accurately 2 stars for the awful beginning and 4 stars for the awesome end. This book needs some serious editing, especially early on in the book. I was disappointed, the back of the book sounds amazing. I definitely won't be recommending this one.

A Final Note

It's an adult book so there's swearing (which apparently called cussing in the US of A), violence, sex and rape. (I've put rape separately as some people react in different ways.) It's not for the faint hearted, or the impatient.

• Book summary from the back of the book
• Image from Google

Haunted by Kelley Armstrong

On the Back of the Book

Eve Levine - half demon, black witch and devoted mother - has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can't be killed again - which comes in handy when you've made as many enemies as Eve. Yes the afterlife isn't too bad - all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter Savannah and she'll be happy.

But fate - or more exactly, the Fates - have other plans.  Eve owes them a favour, and they've just called it in. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. She feeds on chaos and death, and is very good at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage, but the Nix is a dangerous enemy - previous hunters have been sent mad in the process. As if that's not problem enough, it turns out that the only way to stop her is with an angel's sword. And Eve's no angel...

My Thoughts

This is yet another Kelley Arstrong book where I've been left feeling that the plot itself is superior to the characters. The story has such a strong basis and the idea of it alone had me ready to spend night and day reading it. However in actuality the book just didn't have the characters to pull it off.

If I'm honest I was expecting a lot more from Eve than what I got. What happened to the feisty woman who got herself killed trying to defend Savannah? All I got was a woman hanging on to the past and trying to recapture it. I mean I can understand that she misses her daughter but surely she'd be kicking ghost butt as opposed to mooching around. I really wanted the Eve that we'd been told about. The other characters weren't much to write home about either. At least with the Paige books there were some amazing side characters. In this one we got Kristof the lovesick puppy. I wasn't impressed.

Overall this book could have been so much more than it was. Also it was disjointed from the rest of the series. I'm pretty sure you could skip it and go straight to Broken. If I'd paid £7.99 for it that would have annoyed me. Thankfully I found my copy in my local second hand book shop for £1.90 which is a bagain. Other than my complaints of characters and disjointed ness it was really good and I found myself in the weird position of wanting to read it, but not wanting to read it.

My Rating

3 stars - One of my least favourites of the series. Seriously, I'm not sure if I dislike this or Dime Store Magic more. The plot is amazing and with the right characters could have gotten 4 or 5 stars. I just didn't like the characters and that's a shame because the more I read Kelley Armstrong's books, the more I like her as an author.

A Final Note

Once again this book is intended for adults. That means sex, swearing, violence we've been here before and I'm starting to sound like a broken record.

Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong

On the Back of the Book

When Paige Winterbourne is ousted as leader of the American Coven of Witches, all she wants to do is hide under her duvet fpr a few months. But fate, of course, has other plans. A murderer is on the loose - someone with superhuman skills and a grudge against the supernatural community. When Paige learns that the killer is targeting children, she has to get involved.

Desperate to protect those she loves, Paige is thrown nto a world of arrogant sorcerers, drunken necromancers, sulky druid gods and pretentious leather-clad vampires. Not to mention an apparently unstoppable supernatural psychopath hell-bent on revenge...

My Thoughts

The plot in this book is amazing. I found myself being dragged into the story. It was fast and furious and it grabbed me by the throat and it refused to let me go until it was done with me. I still found myself despairing at Paige but she was only a minor annoyance because I refused to let her dampen my enjoyment of the book.

I'm not going to talk about Paige anymore, I've made it clear that I'm not a fan. Lucas is average, he's dependable, this annoyed me at times. It made me want Clay. Actually, speaking of Clay he was back! Which obviously means Elena was. It was a bit of a reunion book because so was Jeremy, Adam (Paige's half demon friend), Cassandra and Aaron (the vampires) and there was even an appearance from Eve Levine. New character Jaime Vegas was pretty good, I love the idea of a TV psychic who is actually a necromancer. How can you not like a book with such a whole host of amazing characters?

This book has a great plot and great characters so you'd think I'd be satisfied. Alas though, I am not. There was nowhere near enough Savannah, she's one of my favourite characters and she wasn't in the book, I was gutted. On the plus side, I got the ending! That's right I wasn't left hopelessly confused, although I did have to concentrate very hard.

My Rating

4 stars - This is better than Dime Store Magic by a long chalk. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I marked it down due to the lack of Savannah and the fact that, in my opinion, Paige is no leading lady. I loved how everyone got involved. I like team work.

A Final Note

This is an adult book, written for adults, so it contains sex, swearing and violence. Definitely not for the squeamish. It does contain the deaths of kids so if you're sensitive to that kind of stuff, step away from the book.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

On the Back of the Book

There are six things very wrong with my life:

1. I have one of those under-the-skin spots that will never come to a head but lurk in a red way for the next two years.

2. It is on my nose

3. I have a three-year-old sister who may have peed somewhere in my room.

4. In fourteen days the summer hols will be over and then it will be back to Stalag 14 and Oberfuhrer Frau Simpson and her bunch of sadistic teachers.

5. I am very ugly and need to go into an ugly home.

6. I went to a party dressed as a stuffed olive.

My Thoughts

I first came across this series as a 12 year old who had read practically every other book in the kids section of the local library. I immediately fell in love with Louise Rennison's amusing but easy to read book. There may not be a massive plot involving vampires and werewolves at war but I am more than satisfied with Georgia's nose troubles.

Georgia is your average 14 year old girl and this book is her diary over a year. In her diary she talks about her worries, which are quite normal, if I had an enormous nose and no breasts I would also be worried. I wouldn't maybe be as dramatic as Georgia though. Saying that, I do so love a heroine with dramatic tendencies. Although she can be annoying at times most of the time I adore her. My favourite character has to be Angus the cat though. I want a cat like Angus.

This book is a hilarious start to a brilliant series. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments. Some of these are so funny that I had to stop reading. The quality of the writing is marvellous. When I was a teenager I could relate to Georgia and I loved the pranks she and her friends played on their teachers.

My Rating

5 stars - Awesome book. It's one of my all time favourites. My love of Georgia may have started with a chance encounter at Denbigh Library but eight years later, I feel a fondness for it that I rarely feel. Top marks!

• Book summary from Goodreads
• Image from Google

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

On the Back of the Book

Lissa Dragomir is a mortal vampire.

She must be protected at all times from the fiercest and most dangerous vampires of all - the ones who will never die.

Rose Hathaway is Lissa's best friend - and her bodyguard.

Now, after two years of illicit freedom, they've been dragged back inside the iron gates of St. Vladimir's Academy. The girls must survive a world of forbidden romances, a ruthless social scene and terrifying night time rituals -

But above all, they must never let their guard down lest the immortal vampires take Lissa - forever

My Thoughts

I actually don't know where to start with this book, so I think I'll be blunt: I didn't like it. The main problem is the lack of plot, I mean is it too much to ask that something happens, I did just pay £6.99 for it. For me 332 pages of Rose being horrible to anyone and everyone is just too much for me to take. The story dragged as there were chapters were events didn't go forward, this made the chapters seem impossibly long. I mean with YA books, the chapters either have to be short, or feel short, it's meant to be something you can easily read. Pages of the book didn't make sense, I found myself going back, trying to figure out what I'd missed only to find the author hadn't been clear in the first place.

Now on to Rose: I detested her. She is one of the worst female leads that I've ever come across. She's rude, she's a bully, she's a bit of a slapper, she's inconsiderate, she's selfish, she's shallow and sahe's a whole host of other things that I'm too tired to put. At points I didn't feel like her relationship with Lissa was real and she was just using her to get in with the royals. Also her actions when it came to Lissa and Christian were unacceptable. What kind of friend chases away the only person who makes them happy? A bad one.

Do I think this book would be better from Lissa's POV? In all honesty, no I don't. However I think I like her more than I like Rose so the book would have been less irritating. In a perfect world though this book would have had alternating POV's of Lissa and Rose.

Overall, I really wasn't impressed. The characters that were good were overshadowed by my hatred of Rose. The plot didn't really go anywhere until the last couple of chapters. I would have liked the back story in italics so then I knew what was past and what was present. It got confusing at points. I did like Dimitri and Christian though. They were much more interesting than the girls.

My Rating

2.5 stars - Believe it or not, that's me being generous. I can see the potential of the initial idea. I don't think I will like the end result though, I never do. There were way too many cons for me to give it a 3. The story made me annoyed though. It evoked something and that means it can't all be bad.

A Final Note

There's some violence and a bit of swearing. There are also a couple of scenes where Rose gets it on. Not recommended for under 14s.

• Book summary from the back of the book


• Image from Google

Doctor Who: The Darksmith Legacy: An Overall Review

Overall

Okay, so since I read the whole Darksmith Legacy, I thought I'd do a mini overall post so I can give a general opinion on the series as a whole.



I feel that the series is a bit hit and miss in places, this may be due to the fact that there's more than one author involved. However, I did enjoy the majority of the books and would definitely read them again.




Best book: The Pictures of Emptiness




Worst book: The Game of Death

My Rating

3.5 stars - It's an above average series. Although some books were weaker than others there were a couple of particularly strong stories that made up for it. I would have liked the page counts to be longer as with more development this series could of been truly awesome. Saying that though, it's a series for young children and as that it's really good.

• Images from Google
• Collage made by me

Doctor Who: The Darksmith Legacy: The End of Time by Justin Richards

On the Back of the Book

The Krashoks commissioned the Darksmith Collective to to fashion a device that creates life. The Krashoks, after waiting for centuries, have finally had their contract fulfilled. They intend to detonate the Eternity Crystal unless the Doctor can stop them. To make matters worse, Gisella is trapped on boardthe Krashoks' ship. Can the Doctor save Gisella and destroy the Eternity Crystal once and for all?

My Thoughts

This book is a fitting end to the Darksmith Legacy, and as endings go, this one was pretty good. In a way though, I can't help but feel that too much was happening in the short page count. I will admit that the climax had me very confused.

The characters were good, even the ones that were added just for this book. I'm really happy with Gisella's ending, in fact I think that the Doctor Who authors could create a spin off series for her and her friends. The Doctor was brilliant, there's no two ways about it. I have to be honest and say that I wasn't too sure of the Krashoks portrayal. though.

Overall I think this book is marvellous. Forget kids, I'm 20 and I adored the series. I think as long as you're a Doctor Who fan and in particular a Tenth Doctor fan you'll love the whole Legacy.

My Rating

4 stars - A good end to a good series. I loved the plot and the characters but because I got confused I had to mark it down. I mean it is a kids book after all.

• Book summary from the back of the book


• Image from Google