Sister Light, Sister Dark

This book has consistent 5-star ratings on Goodreads, so I feel a little bad for not enjoying it as much.

The world is certainly imaginative. The women of Alta hames have the power to call forth their dark sisters from the other side of the mirror, sisters who are them and not them at the same time. Learning the culture of the hame was a large draw of the book for me. I got into it, and I enjoyed being in that world.

What I didn't like is how the book is divided up into sections - Legend, Myth, History, Song, Ballad ... These sections add little, if anything, to the story itself and mostly served to pull me out of the narrative. I didn't care about the historical analysis of the Alta women from 700 years in the future. I didn't care about a song written about the events I had just read. I didn't care about a legend that foretold what I was about to read. I just wanted to read the story without being interrupted by extraneous information. 

After a couple chapters I just skipped over the extra sections, making an already short book (about 200 pages) even shorter, which brings me to the second thing that annoyed me a little. This is the first book in a two-book story that could have easily been combined into one. Not only is the book short, but it has the same issue I felt with Star of the Morning, which is this book by itself does not tell a complete story. The plot really only picks up at the end with what really should be the middle of the book or just before it. 

This first book, really is just set up for the next one, and I just take issues with stories that are published like this. One book, should tell one complete story, in my opinion. It can have lose ends. Questions can be left unanswered. But there needs to be a rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. This book doesn't have that. It's all just rising action. And that bothers me.

So, it gets three stars because I found the book itself to be lacking. But I do plan on continuing on to the next book.

The Summoning

This book took a while to get into its stride. First we have a girl running around while being chased by ghosts, so a supernatural thriller kind of feel. Then we find ourselves in a house full of kids with special powers that gave off a kind of x-men vibe. And then we have the dead rising and werewolves ... which I think finally got the book to match up with the feel the blurb had promised.

Chloe is a 15 year old girl, who one day runs screaming down the halls of her high school while being chases by a ghost. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Chloe is placed in a group home for teens with mental illnesses. Through interactions with the doctors and her housemates, Chloe soon discovers things are not as they seem.

This book has a good pace to it. I read it quickly and was continuously turning the pages, unwilling to put the book down. I enjoyed the story, and I'm looking forward to picking up the last two books in the series.

Fangirl

This is one of those books that's difficult for me to wrap my head around. It doesn't follow the traditional rise and fall of stories I like to read. There's no real building up to the climax and then coming back down for the resolution. It's more like a book of evens that just take place during the novel's time line. Come to to think of it, First Test did the same thing.

Cath is the biggest Simon Snow fan ever. She embarks on her first year of college, dealing with boys, classes, and her family. In many ways, I loved this book. Cath is me in so many ways. My social anxiety is nowhere near as bad, but it's enough that I understood hers. Her experiences as the fandom she loves just breaths through her ... I get it. And her uncertainty with her fiction classes ... is she really cut out to be a writer or does she just want to write fanfic for the rest of her life? I've been there. There's a lot in this book I relate to.

But, taking a step back and looking at this in terms of a story ... For one, the book just kind of ends. There's not much of a resolution to anything other than Cath's boy anxiety. She does finally turn in the fiction story she's been procrastinating about the whole year, but we don't get anything about how she felt writing it or how she felt after. Does she still think fanfic is only for her, or is she more confident in her abilities now? Does she want to keep trying with original work? What about the fanfic she's been working so hard on for the past two years? Did she finally finish it? What are her thoughts and feelings about that? How does she envision Simon and Baz in her life now that the series and her project is final over?

I just feel like Cath had a lot of questions and a lot of struggles during her first year, and I know a lot of them can't be resolved realistically in one year of school. But I also feel like a story has to have some kind of resolution, not just end. And that's how I felt finishing this book, like, "Wait a minute? This is the end of it? What happened to all this stuff?"

I liked the book, it was enjoyable. And I related to a giant chunk of it on a deeply personal level. I just would have liked there to be more a resolution to the story. I prefer it when a book has a more solid story arch. That's just me.

First Test

This is the first book in Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series. This is also the first book of Tamora Pierce's that I have read. Looking at her other series, this is the one that interested me the most, so I picked it up. This series follows the story of Keladry, or Kel for short, who is the first girl admitted to training to become a knight since the King's proclamation that girls could do so. Kel has one year to prove she can keep up with the boys or else she'll be sent home.

I read this book within a day. It's short - about 200 hundred pages. And there's no real overarching plot - the story mostly just goes through Kel's training as the year progresses. What makes it much more interesting than say the training in Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit is it's not just details of the children's chores for the day. We get Kel's thoughts and emotions as she tries and sometimes fails and sometimes succeeds at the tasks. We get the slow progression of friendships Kel forms with her fellow students. We get the back and forth sense of uncertainty from the training master - is he for or against Kel?

For such a simple book, there's a lot of emotion packed into it. You are driven to care about the characters and what happens as the year moves on. I had no desire to put the book until I was through to the end. Kel herself is very likable, befriending animals and protecting her smaller classmates (Kel is tall for her age). She's smart and capable, though at times uncertain. And she has a fear of heights.

I liked this book, and I'll definitely be picking up the rest of the series.