Friday, November 18, 2011

First Impressions Friday (17)


First Impressions is a meme hosted here at Within Pages where we take a look at all things, mostly booky, and reflect on our initial thoughts. Non-bloggers, non-book bloggers, and everyone alike can participate on any topic you'd like. Feel free to drop your links or thoughts in the comments!
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The Hunger Games Official Trailer


This movie looks phenomenally fantastic. Some of it is considerably different than how I was envisioning it; for example, I was imagining a much more dingy situation for District 12, like the "dystopian" green tint to life as if the sun never shone. But just because something is different doesn't mean it can't be good. This movie looks like it will be packed just like the book and I can't wait for March 2012!

What are your thoughts? Have you read The Hunger Games? If not, are you waiting until you watch the movie?

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Cover Lover: Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

Welcome to my first cover comparisonI was recently sitting down to do the review of this book when I was plundering Goodreads, I noticed something of sheer beauty. The cover! Why yes, the US cover is beautiful and graceful, but it doesn't stop there.

Most of the times there is a difference in covers between the countries they are published in. US and the UK are some of the most stark differences and usually convey different aspects or interpretations of the story held within the pages. This book is special. Take a look at the beautiful craftsmanship through all the country editions. Swoon and be vain and do judge this book by its cover!


The Australian Edition (My Favorite)


US Edition - UK Edition - Portuguese Edition

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Shatter Me Release & Trailer

Releasing today is the new dystopian debut, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi is hitting the shelves today, November 15 from HarperTeen. This book has already had flooded the blog world with amazing reviews and I am lucky enough to have the ARC! Be on the lookout for the review here at Within Pages and be sure to check out the synopsis and official book trailer!

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.



In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a world as riveting as The Hunger Games and a superhero story as thrilling as The X-Men. Full of pulse-pounding romance, intoxicating villainy, and high-stakes choices, Shatter Me is a fresh and original dystopian novel—with a paranormal twist—that will leave readers anxiously awaiting its sequel.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Review: Flame of Surrender by Rhiannon Paille

Flame of Surrender by Rhiannon Paille

Publisher: Coscom Entertainment (November 1, 2011)
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages (ebook): 280
Series: The Ferryman & The Flame (Book 1)
Source: Author
ISBN-13: 9781927339022
Genre: Fantasy
Author: Website

Bloom the weed of temptation and expire the great garden of life. Bloom the flower of sacrifice and sustain the great garden in strife.

The boy who follows death meets the girl who could cause the apocalypse.

Krishani thinks he’s doomed until he meets Kaliel, the one girl on the island of Avristar who isn’t afraid of him. She’s unlike the other girls, she swims with merfolk, talks to trees and blooms flowers with her touch. What he doesn’t know is that she’s a flame, one of nine individually hand crafted weapons, hidden in the body of a seemingly harmless girl.
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Rhiannon Paille has created a wonderful and solid world of fantasy in her debut Young Adult novel Flame of Surrender. This book features two established characters Krishani and Kaliel as they are coming of age and facing the prophecies they are predisposed to fulfill.

It is easy to find yourself immersed in this tale of triumph, sacrifice, and love. At the moment, I regrettably have had to abandon our heroes in their journey for this book requires full attention and isn't meant to be read in simplicity. It is in the author's description and introduction to the world, that exist a lot of high intensity vocabulary worlds, as with any self created world, and a lot of concepts to absorb. This type of reading is akin to the same intensity that can be found wtih reading epic fantasies from authors like Tolkien or George R. R. Martin.

This book is not for the faint of heart or the light reader. Immediately, you are thrown into the lives of established characters in an established world and you should expect to have to catch up on your own. If you have the opportunity to tackle this selection, it could open up a world of fantastic wonder for you, but for some others, you may find yourself irrevocably lost which is where I found myself.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

In My Mailbox (21)

In My Mailbox is a meme hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren; here we share with you, the lovely readers, what books came to us this week whether it be in the mail, from the library, purchased or borrowed.
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It seems that I have a lot of catching up to do. I haven't been doing an In My Mailbox for the times I get a book every couple of weeks but it seems as if the books have now piled up on me (not that I am complaining)! So let's take a look at a recap of the last month or so, shall we?

Won


Dark Parties by Sara Grant
Under the Never Sky (ARC) by Veronica Rossi

Thank you Kari @ A Good Addiction & HarperTEEN!!

Bought


The Iron Knight** by Julie Kagawa

**Plus lots of swag from the Launch event!**
Thank you Julie Kagawa for signing my book!

Borrowed



From the Library


I'm Not Her by Janet Gurtler

Review: Summer and the City by Candace Bushnell

Summer and the City by Candace Bushnell

Publisher: HarperCollins (April 26, 2010)
Age Group: Young Adult (17+)
Pages (Hardback): 409
Series: Carrie Diaries (Book 2)
Source: Goodreads First Reads
ISBN-13: 9780061728938
Genre: Chick Lit
Summer is a magical time in New York City and Carrie is in love with all of it—the crazy characters in her neighborhood, the vintage-clothing boutiques, the wild parties, and the glamorous man who has swept her off her feet. Best of all, she's finally in a real writing class, taking her first steps toward fulfilling her dream.

This sequel to The Carrie Diaries brings surprising revelations as Carrie learns to navigate her way around the Big Apple, going from being a country "sparrow"—as Samantha Jones dubs her—to the person she always wanted to be. But as it becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile her past with her future, Carrie realizes that making it in New York is much more complicated than she ever imagined.
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If you are a fan of Sex and the City (the show this series prequels) then I feel that you would absolutely love this book; if you are a big fan of Chick Lit, you could enjoy this book. I however, am not a particular fan of either of those two and abandoned this book half-way through the book.

I chose not to give this book a rating because it doesn't deserve a low rating but I didn't enjoy it either. This book has been on the bestseller list for three weeks and is written very well; the content is what I found not gripping.

In the beginning, I thought I had taken an appropriate risk because it started being about Carrie Bradshaw and about her struggling beginning as a writer...then we were introduced to boys. And drinking. And boys. I am not against sex in YA literature, but this book was over-the-top in sex and underage drinking and it quickly became the only focus and it was very distracting.

As I mentioned, this could be your cup of tea, it is very inline with the voice and style of the favorited show, but it doesn't shed an appeal to me and I had been so excited to read it.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Guest Post: Flame of Surrender

Flame of Surrender by Rhiannon Paille

Author Rhiannon Paille is stopping by with a guest post in the spirit of release day for her new book Flame of Surrender, Book 1 in the Flame and the Ferryman series. Be on the lookout for the review of this wild fantasy ride!

About Rhi:

Rhi was never a normal girl. She tried, but she couldn’t get rid of the visions, the voices in her head, and the hallucinations. When she was on the edge of crazy someone pulled her back and explained it all. She wasn’t insane. She was psychic, really psychic, too psychic. Her life was an urban fantasy wrapped in a paranormal romance and served with a side of horror. To escape her everyday weirdness she began writing fantasy. She frequents twitter and facebook, and can be found at www.rhiannonpaille.com
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Flame of Surrender Deleted Scenes

There were A LOT of things that got deleted in FoS, so let me try to sum them up and then tell you roughly why.

1) The Villains POV 

There were about 20,000 words from the Villain’s POV that went away. Salvaged from the wreckage was that crazy disturbing torture scene. I loved it, but my BETA readers kept saying the same thing, “I was getting into it and then I hit the Villain POV and it went blah on me.” So I had to take them out because they didn’t work with the flow. We’re not living in the 90’s where Epic Fantasy Authors write 1100 page books and simultaneously follow three or four different storylines at once. We’re in the digital, technology age and we like our books to be one story at a time because there are so many of them out there to read. It’s much friendlier to the reader to divide up all those subplots and do spin offs and separate stories than to build this entirely huge network of a book right off the bat. Plus, agents and editors will go cross eyed if you send them something that’s 250k words and it’s your first book. So I axed this entire thread because it didn’t keep the book flowing.
2) The Tower Scene
This was a scene that originally I hadn’t planned for and then it just happened and then when I was reading the book through and checking all my p’s and q’s I felt like it was just too much. The characters are in turmoil, having this sexy moment between all the stuff on their mind is nice and all, but it’s two pages in the midst of close to four hundred and I didn’t see the point of it being there when there’s all the other kissing scenes and making love scenes already in the book. Plainly, it seemed like overkill, but that doesn’t mean it can’t exist somewhere else right?
3) Krishani destroying things in Amersil
This was crafty of me because in the beginning chapters I talk about five different instances of Krishani destroying things, but I don’t go into vivid detail of these things. That was an earlier version of the book that had the scenes where Krishani destroyed things in the present instead of having flashbacks of destroying things. The reason this was removed was because it didn’t fit into the timeline of the book, and I didn’t want to do any flipping back and forth in the time line. It’s confusing enough chronicling three years of Kaliel andKrishani’s lives without me taking liberties with my author prowess and heading back in time as well as forwards. I always hated it when books would jump around and I had to pay attention to figure out if this scene is from the past, present, or future. The way the book is now, it’s always the present, and time only moves forward, signified by me talking about the seasons, the festivals or straight up saying it’s been six moons. (moons being months)

And that was all the major cuts to the book, I tried to keep my cutting light because the book is 105,00 words now, the first draft was 170,000 words, and then my second draft was 135,000 words. A lot of that was grammar, spelling and sentence structure stuff. I got rid of A LOT of fluff stuff that made no sense and sounded funny.