Book Review: Lady Macbeth's Daughter

Title: Lady Macbeth's Daughter
Author: Lisa Klein
Genre: YA Literary Fiction
Rating: A-

140-Character Summary: Retelling of Macbeth from a POV that is not in the play--Macbeth has a daughter who is abandoned and left for dead. Slight twist to ending.

First 140 Characters: "The nameless baby lay on the cold ground, wrapped in a woolen cloth. An owl hovered overhead and seem to hold a shred of cloud in its..."

140-Character Review: Good book. Better pacing than Ophelia. The plot twists enhanced the story, but I'd like to see what she could do when sticking to the play.

Hogwarts Challenge Notes: Defense Against the Dark Arts
Lots of murder (with a "mystery"), Wars, and Self-Defense

Book Review: The Sea of Monsters

Title: The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book Two)
Author: Rick Riordan
Genre: Middle Grade, Sci Fi/Fantasy
Rating: A-

Summary: Percy Jackson gets reunited with old friends, old foes, old fathers as he learns more family secrets and proves that he isn't your average, run-of-the-mill Olympian. [Read my review of Book #1 in the series here.]

First Line: "My nightmare started like this."

Review: I got my wish, well one of my wishes, a little bit. The challenges that Percy (and crew) face in The Sea of Monsters were much more harrowing than in The Lightning Thief. Percy is starting to show that he is the son of Poseidon--and so much of this book takes place in/around water, that his lineage comes in pretty handy.

Also, we find out more about Percy, his family, and the his dad (whom I am quickly forming an opinion of as the coolest Greek god known to man).

There is still a lot to be explored in these books, and they keep getting better--more action, tons of laughs, deepening relationships and bonds. It's enough to keep me reading to the end (barring a huge "tanking" in one of the subsequent three books).

Book Review: Beowulf on the Beach (with Middlemarch)

Title: Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Greatest Hits
Author: Jack Murnighan
Genre: Non-fiction (Literary Criticism and/or Review)
Rating: A-

Summary: Dr. Smarty Pants (aka, the down-to-earth Jack Murnighan) gives you a low-down on 50 of the world's greatest books. He tells you what's sexy, what's skip-able, and why this book will rock your world if you'll just give it a chance. He aims to bring the lofty and esoteric of literature down to the huddled masses of the world so we can enjoy it too.

First Line: "What, you weren't planning on packing Beowulf with your flip-flops and sunscreen? How about Ulysses, Don Quixote, or The Illiad? But you still feel bad about not reading them, right?" (p. 1, Intro).

Review: I do admit that I have a fondness (and maybe a little bit of a crush) on this author. I mean it, let's get real, what guy was born a Hoosier, has a PhD in Medieval Literature from Duke, has read the Bible of his own free will (more than once), and writes insanely interesting and sexy articles for Nerve.com? I'm pretty sure you can't find that combination anywhere else on that planet. (Plus, the guy's an involved donor-dad and not bad looking to boot. Too much.)

But lest you think I gave this guy an above-average grade just because I've got the hots for him, let me clarify: this book is really, really good. (I'm a genius, right?)

Here's why this book is good: it does what it's supposed to do. Accomplishing your objectives goes pretty far in my opinion. Did I agree with everything he said? No way. Do I think at times his irreverence can go a bit far? Sure. Does that make this a bad book? Not too much.

Here's how I approached this book (which I don't think should be read as a cover-to-cover read... let it be your guide):
1. I started out by reading the intro (which is generally a good place to start); this let me get a feel for his style, his writing, and his take on literary things in general. Up to this point, I was with him.
2. Next, I checked out a couple of chapters on books I'd previously read (including, but not limited to, Pride and Prejudice, Beloved, and The Bible--Old and New Testaments--all of which are books that I have loved reading at one time or another); this gave me a frame of reference for his views on literature a little more specifically as I compared and contrasted with my perspective on things.
3. Finally, I read a couple of chapters on books I had wanted (but been reticent) to read (Don Quixote, Wuthering Heights, Paradise Lost, and Middlemarch) and decided to test his opinions in real time.

I picked up a mega-used copy of Middlemarch at my local 1/2-Price Books retailer and set about to read it in a matter of months over the summer. I was persuaded to participate in this little experiment because of the associated B on the B Summer Reading Challenge hosted at Books on the Nightstand (because the idea of challenges with no rewards gets me excited).

Let me say this: I believe with fervent conviction that, had I not read the Middlemarch primer in Beowulf on the Beach, I would have had a ridiculously hard time enjoying this book. But, since I did pre-read the B on the B cheat sheet, I loved (loved, loved, loved) this book. This is earning a spot on my all-time-faves list. Beyond my heart-felt adoration of Ms. George Eliot (for publishing a "woman's book" in a man's world), this book knocked my socks (and shoes) off. I didn't start out loving Dorthea (and the idea that she was going to be a primary protagonist made me put the book down for about a month), but by the end she was gorgeous. She didn't change significantly; rather, the situation around her became more accomodating to her personality and I began to see that her beauty was really beauty and not posturing.

And speaking of personalities, there was plenty to go around. I did put this book down for a month, but when I came back (because the lure of no reward at the end of the challenge pushed me to do it), I picked right back up and the characters were all still vivid. The way that Eliot populated an entire city, letting you peek at the high and the low, was phenomenal. I think that my favorite character was probably Farebrother--his sacrifice for the youthful (and enduring) love of Fred Vincy and Mary Garth actually brought a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat.

But getting back to Murnighan and B on the B, I didn't give my current-author-crush a perfect grade because I didn't think he was perfect. In the example of Middlemarch, I think his assessment of Mr. Casaubon was off (he was being a little too 21st-Century American in his critique, I think). In the example of The Bible, I think his assessment of the book (in general) was off. Sure, The Bible is a piece of literature, but it's also a sacred text, and he didn't treat it as such (the snark got to be a bit much and dumbed down the actual review of the texts, in my opinion).

Now, I'm not so naive as to assume that everyone who comes from Indiana is a Christian of some stripe, but to be more balanced, I'd like to have seen him review texts from other faiths, just to see if his cynacism is directed specifically at Judaisim and Christianity, or if it's more generally applied to all religions. I'm sure that neither The Book of Mormon nor The Qur'an has risen to the level of The Bible (in terms of generally-accepted literary opinion and/or general readership), but his slights of The Bible were something that made me wonder (and put a grain of salt in how blindly I accepted his opinions on other books). And lest you think I'm just a religious nut, check out this quote as evidence that I'm not alone in this opinion.

"Many of Murnighan’s conclusions are off-base (see, for instance, his chapter on Balzac’s Père Goriot). But as with the collected writings of Pauline Kael, disagreeing with the critic can be more fun than turning to the work itself."
--Very Short List (June 1, 2009)

Recommendations: If B on the B seems like something you'd like, check out other great books that help reading the classics become more fun, such as How to Read Literature Like a Professor and 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.

Book Review: Something Wicked

Title Something Wicked
Author Alan Gratz
Genre YA Literary Fiction (disguised as Commercial Fiction)
Category Mystery
Rating A-

Summary High school sophomore super sleuth (aka, observant and cool-headed) Horatio Wilkes is hanging out with his friend Jack Mackenzie (aka, Mac) and Mac's girlfriend Beth at a Scottish Highland Festival when Mac's maternal grandfather, Duncan MacRae, is murdered. [Hint, hint: This is an easy-to-understand retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth, so that's pretty much all the summary you'd really need.]

First Line "History is full of guys who did stupid things for women."

Review I gave the first book in this series, Something Rotten (a re-telling of Hamlet), an A+, but this book only got an A-. Sure, it's still the grading equivalent of five stars, but this one wasn't perfect.

You still got Horatio's snark and wit and great one-liners:

"...Beth had changed into more formal cosplay: a white long-sleeved peasant blouse, white-trimmed blue vest, and a skirt in her family tartan with tall argyle socks to match.
'Waiting tables tonight at the Salty Wench?' I asked Beth.
'Spending the night with your right hand again?' she threw back," (p. 47).

You still got Horatio figuring out the crime and being unflappably cool throughout (even after getting beat up by a bunch of bag pipe players who are far more scary than that description can make them sound), but there were a few things that were off, in my opinion.

First, and this is kind of my big drawback with all murder-mysteries series... why the easy set-up? I remember watching Murder She Wrote with my grandma and saying, "I'd never be friends with that lady--people always end up dead around her." I thought Gratz should have at least given a shout-out to the fact that in what appears to be (chronologically speaking in the life of the narrator) about six months, why he's now found himself in the middle of two huge family killing frenzies. Maybe Horatio needs to pick friends who aren't so messed up. It might just be me, but I feel, with Gratz's strong writing style that comes across as sarcastic and wry, his assumption that his readers are smart and with him during the book, that this topic should have gotten a little play. If nothing else, maybe a quick line about, "Who am I? Jessica Tandy?"

The other thing that struck me as problematic (and Gratz was kind of hamstringed by the Bard on this one) was that Mac was a tough character to care about, and for the set up of this book, you kind of need to like him. Sure, you're not supposed to like Beth, I get that, so he did a pretty good job of making her rude and condescending to Horatio, but Mac didn't work for me.

The primary problem is that you need to feel (as a reader) that Horatio and Mac are good friends and that's why Horatio wouldn't and shouldn't ever suspect Mac of committing the crimes. That's essential for the "mystery" aspect of this book to work. Unfortunately, Mac comes across as a giant douche bag (he doesn't even play up the "my grandpa died and my uncle's in jail and that's why I'm acting like a jerk" angle like Hamilton did in Something Rotten to explain his behavior), so the friendship seems forced.

I know that Shakespeare created a character who is hen-pecked by Lady Macbeth, so Gratz had to follow in those foot steps and make Mac to be the modern day equivalent (i.e., whipped), but that doesn't deny that he also needs to be a friend of Horatio so that you care about him too. If you also care about Mac as a character then you won't suspect him either, but it was too caricatured, in my opinion, and Mac was such an obvious suspect (apart from the fact that this book follows the plot of Macbeth precisely without any plot twists). But, even if you've never read the play, Mac and Beth are too obvious.

Gratz could have made Mac just slightly more likable and the story would have benefitted. If nothing else, maybe a quick line behind Beth's back where Mac would say, "Who does she think she is? Hillary Clinton?" to create a solidarity, a bromance of sorts, between Mac and Horatio so the relationship was more believable.

Those two things aside, this is still a fantastic addition to Gratz's canon. It's another one that is a great intro to Shakespeare's material. This book is pretty likely to have a tough entry into school curriculum because of some language and generalized underage sordidness, but it's still a good read that should be getting attention.

Book Review: Ordinary Love & Good Will

Title Ordinary Love & Good Will: Two Novellas
Author Jane Smiley
Genre Literary Fiction
Rating A-

Summaries In Ordinary Love, Smiley tells the story of a family who's matriarch was unfaithful and probes around at the long-lasting effects of that family break-up on the mother and her children. In Good Will, Smiley weaves a tale of a family that lives an unconventional "counter-culture" lifestyle and attempts to look at the effect of that choice on the elementary-aged son.

First Lines (Ordinary Love) "I don't want Joe to find me on my knees, buffing the kitchen floor with an old cotton turtleneck, but he does, and he says, 'Mom! What are you doing? Relax!'"
(Good Will) "During the first part of the interview, when we are sitting on the porch looking down the valley, I try for exactitude more than anything--$343.67."

Reviews Neither of those first lines are particularly illustrative--Smiley never tries to start with a big bang, she's very much a "slow wind-up" kind of writer, but she wrote both of these novellas with her trademarks. Let's dig in, shall we?

Characters: In Ordinary Love, Smiley got a little child-happy (five children) and I had a hard time sorting them out and keeping them straight in my head--two are never even in the story, they're merely referenced by other family members. I say, since this is a short story/novella and you won't have time to fully flesh out five children, their parents, a step mother, grand children, and two other men in the mom's life, cut out all unnecessary characters and make the others more rich. She could have easily lost two of the kids and tightened up the story in my mind. In Good Will, she was sparse and beautiful with the characters. Even with using only one narrator, I understood everybody's motivations in the story. Beautifully done.

Plot: Both novellas had literary-heavy plots (i.e., not a lot of "action"), as is Smiley's style, but they did what they were supposed to do. Both got you thinking about how the decisions of the parents affect the children. Which leads us to...

Themes: I've reviewed one other book by Smiley, the Pulitzer-winning Thousand Acres, which I loved because I am a hard-core sucker for literary fiction about family dynamics and these are two more works in Smiley's cannon that tackle that subject matter quite beautifully. The only problem I have with Smiley, and it seems to be common across all of her writing (including the nonfiction that I read) is that she doesn't know when to stop a good thing. The themes of both these stories were great, but she gets heavy-handed with the exposition at the end and tells you what the protagonist is thinking (i.e., what you should be thinking), and nearly always, it's not what I was thinking and kind of ruins it for me. I like it when a book creates a situation, brings up a theme for me to think about, and then lets me do the thinking. Please, dear authors, do not do all of the thinking for me; don't preach at me--that's what I go to church for. If Smiley had trimmed her exposition down a shade (most definitely in Good Will), this could have been an A+ book.

Finally, Setting: I don't usually go too much into the settings of books, unless it's a big draw-back, but I need to touch on it. Smiley uses the midwest a lot in her books (she's Iowa through and through) and she continues as such in these stories. It wasn't as big of a deal in Ordinary Love--travel is a theme, but not too over-the-top for it to be in your face all the time--but it was critical in Good Will. The Pennsylvania family-run, self-sustaining farm in Good Will was essential, as was it's juxtaposition with the city they lived near, and it was beautiful. She's descriptive and evocative, the farm nearly takes on a life of its own, and she seriously had me considering moving to the country (even though my heart truly yearns for the big city). She did that one very well. Kudos on using setting to enhance the story.

All in all, the over-characterization in the first story and the over-exposition in the second story brought this one down a touch for me, but it won't stop me from reading the four other Smiley novels I have sitting on my TBR book shelf.

Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

Title The Time Traveler's Wife
Author Audrey Niffenegger
Genre Literary Fiction
Author A-

Summary Henry, a "Chronologically-Displaced Person" (aka, Time Traveler), meets his wife, Clare, when she's six (and he's not six) and then he continues to travel around in his time and her time, living life.

First Line "Clare: It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays."

Review I really liked this over-wrought love story (and if anybody tries to tell you it's not just a romance story dressed up as something else, tell them they're a liar). Even though there isn't much more going on than the romance story, it's still interesting because the time travelling aspect is kind of interesting. Niffenegger tries to do more than just write a 518-page opus to her dream guy, she asks some questions about fate and free will (and doesn't necessarily answer them).

My biggest problem with this story came during the climax when there were some inconsistencies in the story and how the crucial "event" in Henry's life occurred. Something occurs during "The Episode of the Monroe Street Parking Garage" that permanently alters Henry, but a climactic moment had already been seen (via time travel) some 370 pages earlier (22 years earlier in Clare's life) differently than when it occurred in real time. Sure, the chronology of this book is, understandably, convoluted, but I think something that was so critical to the climax of the book, an essential detail about how the male protagonist "functions" in that scene, is pretty important.

That, a fact/continuity issue, was the only thing I could come up with. Other than that I was thoroughly pleased with the book. I looked around at GoodReads.com to see what problems other people had, and found that only 8% (of 88,500 readers) rated the book as 1 or 2 stars. The bulk of their complaints was that the book was "boring" and didn't live up to the hype. The author can't necessarily be blamed for the hype--that wasn't her doing--and part of the "boringness" of the book is related to the afore-mentioned hype. As I said in the opening paragraph of this review, if you go in knowing that this is merely a love story/opus to Niffenegger's dream guy (who is surprisingly close to my dream guy), then you're unlikely to be disappointed. [Note: Dream guy is a slim-built, book-loving, poetry-spouting, multilingual librarian with a love of old-school punk.]

Also, her grade took another hit because in Niffenegger's quest to prove how awesome her dream guy is, she gets wordy with descriptions (and you know how I hate that). The laundry lists of groceries, bands, and locations in Chicago (in addition to her long-winded descriptions of the paper-making process--her first true love) get a little grating.

So, all that being said, I recommend this book to anybody who likes a "high brow" love story with a metaphysical twist, bearing in mind that they need to be able to overlook a major plot inconsistency that doesn't necessarily affect the plot, but shows sloppiness none the less.

Book Review: Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie

Title: Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
Author: David Lubar
Genre: YA Literature
Rating: A-

Abbreviated Summary (from the Back Flap): Starting high school is never easy... Could there be a worse time for Scott's mother to announce she's pregnant? Scott decides high school would be a lot less overwhelming if it came with a surival manual, so he begins to write down tips for his new sibling. Meanwhile, he's trying his best to capture the attention of Julia, the freshman goddess. In the process, Scott manages to become involved in nearly everything... While he tried to find his place in the confusing world of high school, win Julia's heart, and keep his sanity, Scott will be recording all the details for his sibling's--and your--enjoyment.

Review: I love to read YA literature about guys that are written by guys. I find it to be more entertaining, on the whole, than books about guys written by women. This book didn't disappoint in that regard.

The gimmick of chronicling the lessons learned in school was not too over the top so as to get annoying. Also, the author does a good job of making some surprising characters to be really interesting, and the romance resolution wasn't at all what I thought would have expected. It seems like it's going to go against type, and then he throws a wrench, and then it's all up in the air. I liked that.

I also liked that the author got into the characterization of the parents and Scott's older brother--they spiced up the book (and I hate to read a book about teenagers that acts as if they exist in a vacuum and they have no meaningful interactions with adults).

All in all, a decent book that I was able to rip through in a day. If you've got an extra 6 hours or so, you might try and find a copy of this book and get a laugh or two.

Book Review: Prep

Title: Prep
Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: A-

Abbreviated Summary (from BN.com): Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel. As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores.

Review: So when this book first came out in 2005 it kind of blew Curtis Sittenfeld into the collective consciousness of those writers who are biting/satirical/jaded/cynical/etc. (see Jonathan Franzen, et. al.), and paved the way for her new book, American Wife, that's all over the place right now. I put off reading this book for a long time because to me it seemed like YA literature, something I wasn't into reading until recently; what's funny (in an ironic way, not the ha-ha way) is that this book, although abount a prep high school, isn't really YA literature. Sittenfeld's writing style isn't really directed at teens (although I think teens could really learn something from this book) because it's written in the position of a retrospective of the protagonist who is dissecting what happened during her high school experience and the lessons she learned. This is compared to the traditional YA vein of writing about high school experiences while the characters are relatively in the midst of those experiences.

Lee was an off-beat, charming character... somebody that you (or at least I) can totally relate to, someone who's way too in their own head, dissecting everything, worrying about how others perceive her, probably to the extent that she's missing experiences because of all that inner monologue. The only relationship that was hard for me to get was her friendship with her roommate Martha, who was a totally redeeming person, but they were always caught in this kind of subversive classism (because Lee sees herself in that way). It was hard for me to read some of those scenes, especially when they were juxtaposed with scenes where they had a really honest and vulnerable relationship; although that's kind of how life goes sometimes.

The relationship between Lee and Cross Sugarman (really, that's the guy's name) was interesting. I kind of got in to Cross because, in all actuality (and this is going to sound harsh, but Lee's a fictional character, so whatever) he probably was too good for her because she thought he was--she didn't think she deserved him, which is usually a self-fulfilling prophecy. Toward the end of the book Lee is still coming through as needy and desperate (the scenes at senior week after graduation were painful to read) and Cross doesn't want needy and desperate... what guy does? It's not until a good deal later in life that the character of Lee starts to get a little backbone, but she does eventually come around.

I'll be honest, I wanted to cry at the end of the book. I was sad it was over. I had grown to love the characters, especially Martha and Cross. And Aubrey--I had a big thing for Aubrey's earnestness. To me, that's a pretty good indicator that the book was remarkable, if you're sad when it's over. The only reduction came from the character of Lee (see the paragraph above) because she was too slow to learn, which caused the book to drag in parts and brought down other characters unnecessarily. The scene between Lee and Darden on the steps during the Senior balloon release could have been 100% awesome, but Lee was being stupid and she jacked it all up.

I would really highly recommend this book to a lot of people, those people all being people who can stand to read about high schoolers doing things that high schoolers probably have no business doing. If you know what I mean.

Book Review: Burning Bright

Burning Bright
Author: Tracy Chevalier
Genre: Literary Fiction (Historical)
My Rating: A-

Summary From the Book Jacket: In the waning days of eighteenth-century London, poet, artist, and printer William Blake works in obscurity. Next door, country boy Jem Kellaway moves in and strikes up a tentative friendship with street-saavy Maggie Butterfield. While England is rocked by the waves of the French Revolution, the two children navigate the confusing and exhilarating path to adolescence. Their lives intertwine with Blake’s and inspire him in this brilliantly rendered historical tale.

Review: This is not a book that I would typically select for myself; however, it was the September book club selection for my local library’s book club, so I had to stretch my reading horizons. Having that perspective, the book started off a little slow, but (for me) picked up around page 55 when Ann Kellaway, mother of the main family in the book, becomes enamored with the circus.

This book is clearly a study in opposites:

“‘What lies between two opposites is us.’
…‘The tension between two contraries is what makes us ourselves. We have not just one, but the other too, mixing and clashing and sparking inside us. Not just light, but dark. Not just peace, but at war. Not just innocent, but experienced.’ His eyes rested for a moment on the daisy Maisey still held. ‘It is a lesson we could all do well to learn, to see all the world in a flower…” (p. 177).

The book asks whether innocence and experience are truly opposites—some characters appear “innocent,” but handle situations with considerable aplomb, while other seemingly “experienced” characters are truly children at heart. The book is rife with situations that make you consider how you define experience and innocence (or other such arbitrary definitions of character, such as loyalty versus traitor).

The story-telling is effortless in this book; what seem to be happenstance or innocuous events turn out to be life-changing (again, a contrast of opposites). Small instances of a random fire and an off-hand comment change the life of the Kellaway’s. A change in the weather precipitates a meeting between two characters that results in an unplanned pregnancy (forever changing the girl’s life).

The other striking element of Chevalier’s writing is the characterization—even characters that seem secondary are intimately drawn and played out, taking on a significance of their own. One such “background” character, Rosie Wightman, is a girl from the country who, after an accident that ruins her family’s life, has to flee to London and try to make her own way in the world. This is written regarding her:

“While the Kellaways discussed what to do, Rosie stood docile, licking her fingers for stray ginger crumbs. It might be expected that she would take some interest in what happens to her, but she did not. Since arriving in London the year before, she had been raped, robbed, and beaten; she owned nothing but what she wore, and was constantly hungry; and though she didn’t know it yet, she had the clap. Rosie no longer expected to have any say over her life, and so she did not say anything,” (p. 170).

One would think that Rosie, a character that is a chance encounter when the three adolescents are skirting around in London, would not have an effect on the story. However, she resurfaces toward the end of the story, in a horrible state, and joins Maisey and Maggie on a journey to return Maisey to the place of her youth.

This book causes one to think about innocence and youth. In a time when many people say that children are growing up too quickly, one needs only look at their life and consider how they can make difference in the life of a developing child. You may not have children of your own, but a simple recommendation of this book to a parent may make all the difference in the world. If we’ve learned anything from reading Burning Bright it is that small gestures affect lives.

Book Review: City of Ashes

City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments Series, Book 2)
Author: Cassandra Clare
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Urban Paranormal Series
My Rating: A-

Abbreviated Summary From the Book Jacket): Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what's normal when you're a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go--especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary's only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil--and also her father. To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings--and if he is, what is he trying to do?

Review: This book was equally as good as City of Bones; however, Clare doesn't give an over-abundance of back-story (the way that some authors do in sequels), so I would recommend reading City of Bones first... that will help you in reading this and picking up on the complexity of the interpersonal relationships.

I thought the storyline of the Soul-Sword (and needing the blood of the Downworlder children) was convincing--it helped to propel the underlying tale of unity and acceptance. Clare is teaching readers a lesson (rather deftly without being too heavy-handed) that it's not what is on the outside that matters, all humans share the same blood.

Clare does continue to struggle slightly with her pacing--awkwardly switching from high-tension scenes to more expository diaglogue-intense scenes. I think that she might be attempting to pace her novels like that purposefully; however, it creates seemingly "slow" periods of the story that sometimes make it easy to put the book down (a dreaded scenario for action writers). The expository scenes are necessary, they create the backdrop that adds the tension to the action scenes because they force you to care about the relationships of the characters; however, the weaving between the scenes needs to be done a little more seamlessly, in my opinion.

In regard to the relationships, some are written incredibly well, while others don't get the attention they deserve. I honestly felt the tension between the siblings (the scene about whether their feelings were "sickening" was fraught with emotion), and I'm a little sad to say that I was looking forward to the third leg of that triangle dying (on more than one occasion) but did like how Clare put a bow on that story line. However, the blossoming relationship between Alec and Magnus was really going somewhere and never got there--I thought we'd at least get that pushed forward a little further in the Epilogue, but to no avail. I speculate that Clare is creating some storylines that will be resolved in the final installment of this series, City of Glass, which is due out in March 2009. I'll be looking forward to having resolution (I don't require it to necessarily be happy, but I expect some degree of finality) to the relationships between the siblings, Alec and Magnus, Luke and Jocelyn, and Valentine and the rest of the world.

Check out today's Quote of the Day over at "What Was I Watching?" with a little bit of info on all the great movies that premiere today.