A Shiver of Light

Level: Adult

Genre: Urban Fantasy> Faeries

Obtained: Public Library

Reviewed By: Maggie W.

Cover:

I dislike everything about this cover. I get that the color chosen is supposed to fit with the fact that Light is in the title but it makes my eyes hurt. It looks like someone is staring at a half naked man through the sweaty mug of beer they're nursing at a strip club. I liked the less eye searing colors of the other books in the series, and this book doesn't match with those in any way. It also bugs me that the letters of the titles aren't uniform. I get that it's a design choice but it took much for my dyslexic brain to handle. I've got a hard enough time with letters drifting, turning and looking all together strange sometimes and this font doesn't help. 

About the Book:

A Shiver of Light is book number 9 in the Merry Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton. Normally I would want to review the other books in a series rather than starting 9 books in but I couldn't bring myself to reading most of the other books in the series over again. I really enjoyed the first 6 or so books in this series, and although I didn't really care for the last book, number 8, I decided I would give this series one last chance since the author hadn't released in this series in around 5 years.

Rating: 2/10

As I was reading this book I had every intention of writing a review afterwards. After finally finishing, blinking into the screen of my ebook reader, I realized that my brain had been reduced to pudding and I couldn't find anything to say. 

Words can't really express how truly terrible this book is. Fans had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Merry's babies and when she finally goes into labor, the birth happens off screen. That probably could have been forgiven except through the whole book Merry shows little to no interest in her children and spends almost no time with them. The majority of the babies' care falls to many of Merry's numerous lovers. The oly time Merry seems to show any type of interest or concern for any of the babies is when one of them shows signs of powerful glamour magic that seems to work on even pure sidhe. 

The vast majority of the book is spent with Merry and assorted other characters standing around in various locations, having mind-numbingly boring conversations in which they repeat the same things that have been said in other books in the series, earlier on in this book, or just repeating what other people have just said. 

When the book finally gets around to any kind of action, 4 chapters from the end of the book, the events happen off screen while Merry and Co. stand around having a conversation about what happened. 

This book was the literary equivalent of watching pain dry. 

Likes:

I enjoyed the fact that Andais seemed to have more motivations that that of a cartoon evil villain. In the past she's only been shown to be a crazy, evil sadist who enjoys hobbies like murder and kicking puppies. In this book she seems more complex when she talks about missing her brother and wanting to have a relationship with her grand nieces and nephew. 

I also liked that finally she added a little realism into the books by killing off one of the many fathers of Merry's babies, Sholto. By the end of the book she didn't pull a, just kidding, we saved him with magic card, but I'm not putting it past Hamilton to do so in the next book.

Dislikes:
The endless descriptions of clothing and people's personal appearances, and along with that, the intense need Hamilton seems to have with constantly insisting that Merry is the prettiest, awesomest, most perfect fae around and everyone else either wants in her pants or is totally jealous and is hiding the fact that they want in her pants. Hamilton doesn't seem to understand the concept that everyone has different types of people that they are attracted to, and that not every person is going to be attracting to you, and that's perfectly fine and doesn't in any way mean there's something wrong with them.
The fact that there was such a huge build up in the series to the importance of Merry getting pregnant and having a child, and when she finally has the babies everything dealing with them seems to be a few throw away pages, and then they're pretty much out of the picture. In the very small bits we get of the babies and Merry interacting with them, they just read terribly like they were written by someone who hated everything about being pregnant and having a baby.
The endless whining about having to wait so long to get to have sex because of Merry first being on bed rest and then because she gave birth to 3 babies. Sex is an important part of most healthy relationships(though you can have a great relationship without it), but with not 1, not 2 but 3 new babies in a house, even with lots of help you'll still be too busy and exhausted trying to adjust to all the babies schedules for sex to be on the table. It seemed like Merry and all the men were bitter that the babies seemed to cut into all the sexy fun times. I just pictured them all stamping their feet at their favorite toy being taken away.
Everyone in the book was stupid. Everything, and I mean everything seemed to be spelled out completely and they still weren't getting it. Not only that, but Doyle seemed to be purposely keeping information from Merry, who is supposed to be their queen, so as not to upset her, but all it was doing was keeping her stupidly uninformed and depended on him.

What I'm Reading Next:

Etiquette & Espionage

Level: Young Adult

Genre: Fantasy> Steam Punk

Obtained: Barnes and Noble

Reviewed by: Maggie W.

Cover:

I'm a bit so-so on the cover for this novel. One the one hand I really love the background color/pattern, and the font design of the title but I really dislike the model on the cover. I think my main irritation is that her one arm is in an extremely uncomfortable looking post while the other seems to have disappeared, and her head seems oddly proportioned to her body. 

About the Book:

After reading and really enjoying my last book, The Clockwork Scarab, I went seeking more Steam Punk novels. This book and it's sequel came up on a lot of lists of go to Steam Punk novel lists. From the summary for the book it seemed to be just the thing I was looking for, Victorian Period- check, Finishing School- check, Girls working as assassins- check. Just from the premise of it being a book all about girls attending a finishing school that's actually a secret training school for female assassins seemed like a brilliant idea for a book. Boy was I wrong. 

Rating: 3/10

Where do I even start with this book? The book begins like a lot YA books I've read, teenage female protagonist is misunderstood/unappreciated by her family, so her family decides to send her away somewhere. Sophronia(literally every time I read that name it made me stumble over it in my head and cringe) is the exact opposite of what her mother would like her to be. She's forever causing trouble, making messes and is all-in-all a bane and embarrassment to her mother. In order to make her less troublesome, her mother decides that she's going to send her off to finishing school so Sophronia can learn all the skills she needs to be a proper, polite, finished young lady of breeding.

What her mother doesn't realize is that instead of sending her to a school where she'll learn how to curtsy and needle point, she's leaning ways to use those types of skills for disguise her skills as a spy and possible assassin. 

So far so good. 

Early on in the book, after arriving at her new finishing school that's apparently located on a series of blimps that are all tied together(how this works, I don't know), Sophronia learns that an important, mysterious item has been stolen from the school and the instructors at the school are desperate to have it back before it gets into the hands of, well, they're never super clear as to who exactly they want to keep it from specifically. 

Likes: 

I absolutely loved the idea of taking the common concept of a Finishing School and turning it on its head. I've always loved the kind of books where girls get to be something besides just something pretty to look at and that have the skills to take care of themselves. 

Bumbersnoot! At one point in the book, Sophronia acquires a mechanimal dog which she names Bumbersnoot. I could have read a book all about Bumbersnoot doing adorable coal-powered robot puppy things. She has to feet him bits of coal every day to keep him powered and he hilariously leaves little piles of robot puppy poop that are piles of coal ash. 

I also enjoyed that the author took time to make the other characters that were in Sophronia's group of classmates all have personalities of their own. 

Dislikes:

I wanted so badly to like this book and just couldn't. It had a great concept idea for the story and the writing was pretty good, but this book was just flat out boring! I couldn't count the number of times I set the book aside to do other things and nearly chucked it into the DNF pile. The only thing that kept me reading til the end was that I kept thinking, the next chapter we're going to get to the main plot, and it just never happened. The book sort of just plunked along for 17 chapters until I was left staring at the last page wondering if I'd somehow missed a large chunk of text with the action of the book happened. 

What I'm Reading Next: