Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the tender attention her grandmother, Maylene, bestowed upon the dead of Claysville. While growing up, Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual at every funeral: three sips from a small silver flask followed by the words, "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."
Now Maylene is gone and Bek must return to the hometown--and the man--she abandoned a decade ago, only to discover that Maylene's death was not natural . . . and there was good reason for her odd traditions. In Claysville, the worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected--and beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D. From this dark place the deceased will return if their graves are not properly minded. And only the Graveminder, a Barrow woman, and the current Undertaker, Byron, can set things to right once the dead begin to walk.
I found Graveminder to be very good. At first it was a bit slow and I had put the book down for a while. But with some persuasion from Sandy; I picked it back up, and couldn't put it back down. The story was very original and exciting, I have never read a story like before, I feel like the story was kind of left unfinished but at the same time I am very happy with the ending.
I have to say they were a few parts that I find kind of scary and annoying, but they were very few and it helps you see the big picture on things! I'm actually hoping there is a second part to this.
The boarding school known as Archangel Academy possesses a legacy of secrets known only to a privileged few. For in this peaceful, charming part of England lives a population of vampires at war with one another--and Michael Howard is caught in the middle of it all. . .
When Michael left his small Nebraska home town to enroll at Archangel Academy, he couldn't have imagined how much the experience would change him. Once mortal, Michael is now a vampire with a destiny that was foretold long ago, and a group of friends with their own mysterious abilities.
But there are enemies too, some of them hiding in plain sight. Being strong enough to defend himself isn't enough. Michael must find a way to protect his entire race of vampires. Dark forces within the school will drive everyone to take sides in the escalating violence. And for all his new powers, Michael will discover that love, jealousy, and vengeance have a danger all their own. . .
I am glad to see that people might actually be happy in this book, rather than ending up dead. The struggles were very different because it is not about Micheal, but about his boyfriend Ronon. He has to fight with a demon he buried deep in his soul for so long. A pain that could destroy everything he has become from that very special day, that he had to lock it away and hid it.
Also Ronon's mother has finally given into love again, and the person she is with may actually turn out to love her back. In the beginning her children find faults with this man, but who could blame them. You actually get to see her show emotion, shedding some of the hardness.
This book i think was just as good as the other two, it always has twists and turns to keep you right where the author wants you...I was not disappointed at all. I am still wondering what will happen from here, if there is to be a 4th book, and what is this really special connection that Micheal has to the well.
I love it so I am hoping there will be another very soon.
Firstly, thank-you to everyone who entered the giveaway, became new followers, left comments, and spread the word about the blog and giveaway. Don't forget about the blog now that the giveaway is over, having followers is great but getting comments and interacting with people is even better ^_^.
Secondly, the winner for the giveaway (who was chosen through random.org) is
Christy Mullins
Congratulations Christy you are the winner of both of the above books. An email will be sent shortly to the winner, if there is no reply in 48 hours a new winner will be chosen. Thanks again everyone for participating.
Sweet Shadows (Medusa Girls #2) by Tera Lynn Childs
I am too lazy this time around to check when all of the above covers were revealed but I know Draykon came out in 2010, Sweet Shadows was revealed back in January (where was the blogosvere mania for that one? Sweet Venom certainly got more attention last year) and will be released in September. As for the others I leave that to google if you're really curious about them and will only say I think they are very pretty.
It took a bit of searching to find this round of covers. Only Water and Willful Impropriety appeared casually in my dashboard.
Grasping at Eternity by Karen Amanda Hooper
Water by Shauna Granger
Willful Impropriety:
13 Tales of Society, Scandal and Romance
(Anthology)
Lonely Souls by Karice Bolton
Quicksilver (Ultraviolet #2)
by R.J. Anderson
I think my two favourite covers here are the ones that found me (Water and Willful). I love the image and style of The Lonely Souls cover but I think it would have benefited from stronger contrasts and better text placement.
What cover is your fav? Are the other newly released covers that have caught your fancy? Share them!
Spoilers in reviews: Do you read them, do you include them? How do you describe (or avoid describing) spoilery parts of a book?
Spoilers in reviews...I loathe them, I really do. Actually I hate spoilers on books in any form (you hear that Reeshe? Stop telling 90% of everything that happens in the book when you recommend them to me). She's great with keeping it quiet in a review but when she starts talking, cover your ears! Anyway I try to avoid spoilery reviews whenever I can and thankfully if a review I come across, in the blogs I follow, have spoilers the poster is kind enough to warn me before hand. Which is what we do hear if our reviews stem into discussions. And since I hate reading reviews about spoilers (read one on a book store site the other day that told me a big twist in a book I was considering, I wanted to slit the reviewer's throat) I do not post reviews with spoilers and I'll even warn you if I'm not 100% sure if what I am posting is a spoiler.
Sometimes though there are certain books where you can hardly say anything because big things are revealed early on that you wouldn't know about unless you read the book, which makes it quite hard to discuss the book so my reviews for those tend to be shorter and just comment on writing style and characters (if I can even mention characters without spoiling you.)
I didn't add this onto our Movies We Can't Wait to See in 2012 list last year because there wasn't a trailer yet but now there is one now. Enjoy.
When an evil spirit hatches a plot to take over the world, the immortal Guardians join forces to protect the hopes, beliefs, and imagination of children all over the world.
I think the tooth fairy is adorable and I love the design of the sandman and Santa's tattoos. The movie looks like it's going to be pretty great.
So far I have loved everything I have heard by Snow Patrol and the sad thing is I only own a handful of their songs. This song unlike the other songs I've heard by them didn't have me instantly loving it. It actually took me listening to this on repeat and paying attention to the lyrics before I could truly appreciate it. Discovered on the play-list for Maggie Stiefvater's Linger
Have you discovered any favourite songs lately? Share them with us! Also check out the songs on our music player in the sidebar.
Rules:
1. To enter to win you must be 14 years old or older to enter.
2. All entries must be done through THIS FORM.
3. The 2 books will be for 1 winner.
4. This giveaway is open to the US ONLY.
DEADLINE April 6th 2012
Giveaway Policy:
WildFire Writing and it's contributors are not responsible for items lost or damaged in shipping or items shipped from 3rd party sponsors.
Winners will be chosen randomly by WildFire Writing using Random.org.
You do not have to be a follower or subscriber to participate.
Winners will be contacted by either Sandy, Reeshe or Kitten of WildFire Writing via email.
All books in this giveaway, unless stated otherwise, are paperbacks.
If you are also having a giveaway this week feel free to join I am a Reader, Not a Writer's blog hop below but ONLY for BOOK and BOOK RELATED GIVEAWAYS.
In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet-or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better... Written by Warner Bros. Pictures
Premier Date
11 May 2012
Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, vampires. What else do you need?
Anna can't wait for her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a good job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. So she's not too thrilled when her father unexpectedly ships her off to boarding school in Paris - until she meets Étienne St. Clair, the perfect boy. The only problem? He's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her crush back home. Will a year of romantic near-misses end in the French kiss Anna awaits?
I added Anna and the French Kiss because almost everyone I knew had loved the book and had given it five stars. I was certainly surprised by this because if you read the title, look at the cover and read the synopsis it comes off as a light chick-lit read. Something to put you in a good mood for a bit but not something that would garner the amount of positive response from readers that it had received, so I picked it up.
It didn’t take me long to finish Anna and the French Kiss, it really was a quick read filled with humour, romance and charm. The main character Anna has been shipped off to boarding school in Paris for her senior year without her consent and at first she’s upset about this because she’s being pulled from the only life she knows and being forced to adapt to a new culture and make friends. However, it doesn’t take very long for Anna to find a group of friends to tag along after and soon after that it takes her even less time to become one of them especially when she instantly clicks with the beautiful Étienne St. Clair.
This novel was very much a romance and I knew that going in but I wasn’t really that much invested in it. I certainly think that both Ann and Étienne have great chemistry, the way their dialogue just flows naturally back and forth between them and the way they both just seem to understand each other but I didn’t really care if they got together and only wanted them to be together so that Anna could stop fawning over Étienne. What I really enjoyed was that the story wasn’t just about the romance; it was about Anna coming to terms with herself. Like any other normal teenage girl Anna makes mistakes and she has flaws and dreams and it was great watching her make mistakes and learn from them and grow. It was also fun to read about her new group of friends in Paris, they were all unique individuals that stood out very fresh in mind and who I wouldn’t have mind learning more about.
So I will be picking up Stephanie Perkins’ next book (Lola and the Boy next Door) which is a companion piece to this novel about a different set of characters, because I did enjoy her story even if I didn’t love it as much as everyone else.
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.
Ender's Game is a story of a six year old boy named Andrew Wiggins, or Ender as he is affectionately known. The youngest of three children, he is know as a Third, in a time when it was forbidden to have more than two children in a family.
He is taken from his family and sent into space to Battle School, to train to protect the earth from a deadly formic race know as the Buggers, which are bug-like creatures who tried to invaded the Earth and cause another world war. They didn’t win, but destroy a lot of people in the process. This is when the government came up with the idea of Battle School.
Ender is among other highly intelligent children from around the world, but he is the youngest ever picked. His older brother Peter and sister Valentine are just as smart but were not chosen. Peter is crazy or so everyone thinks, but I feel like he is misunderstood. He like to see pain and death, and because of this he was not accepted into Battle School. Valentine is too mild mannered, which is why she was not chosen.
Ender has to grow up pretty fast in order to survive this new environment. These kids are super intelligent and some extremely aggressive, but Ender has a big heart and soon finds himself in the role of leader; to a bunch of kids who could use the extra help, when it comes to training. The Teachers see his potential for promotion and add even more pressure.
It is sad to read about the things Ender has to go through, but in the end, he still tried to make it better. His power of forgiveness of still trying to show the world that just because you don't understand something doesn't mean you have to kill it.
I found Ender's Game to be a most unusual book, mainly because it in not my usual area of reading. It is this unusualness that drew me it. The story has totally captured my mind. At first I thought it is going to be a hard luck story but it turns into this story about a boy (Andrew Wiggins A.K.A Ender) and his will to live and over come his fear.
Main Stars
Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson
Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, and Elizabeth Banks
Set in a future where the Capitol selects a boy and girl from the twelve districts to fight to the death on live television, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her younger sister's place for the latest match. Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins.
As a fan of The Hunger Games trilogy I went into this movie, despite my best efforts, with very high hopes. Which of course always worries me because the higher the hope the lower the chances they will be met. This is almost always the case for me with book to movie adaptations despite my understanding that there will be necessary changes in the movie version. Scenes and characters will be changed or completely left out while others will be added to better adapt the story and sometimes I can live with the changes no problem but other times they will jump out and nag at me. To reduce the possibility of this occurring, from my experience, its best to always treat the movie as a separate entity and refrain from comparing it to the book. So the question isn't “was The Hunger Games movie as good as the book?” No, the question is “was the The Hunger Games a good movie?”
Judging from the reactions of the group of nine people I attended the movie with (only two of us actually having read the books) I would say that the majority of people (if not everyone) thought that the movie was very good. Kitten thought it was awesome, Reeshe, judging it as a movie alone, gave it a 4.5/5 and I have to agree with her. My little brother had already said he wanted to get the DVD before the movie was even finished and my little sister kept going over parts of the movie on our way home. Even my co-worker, who just saw it yesterday, said that The Hunger Games was one of the best movies he had seen in a long time.
What I really enjoyed about The Hunger Games is that it did not fail in engaging me. Maybe part of it is because I was already invested in the characters by reading the books but throughout the film, from beginning to end, the movie had me sitting still with tension, gasping in shock, laughing at shots of humour and crying with grief at heart-breaking moments. Even when I knew what was coming, apprehension would take over as I waited for a scene to play out; this I think had a lot to do with use of sound in the film.
Throughout the movie at particularly pivotal scenes there would be no background music at all telling us how to feel - just the characters, their dialogue and their actions. For many parts of the film I thought this technique worked very well to establish the atmosphere but at other times I thought it was overused and left a scene feeling awkward or incomplete. I haven't heard or read anyone else commenting on this particular aspect of the film, however, so this may have just been me seeing this as a problem. Something I have heard more than one person mention though, including myself, is the use of the shaky cam. I don't like this technique very much; it makes it very hard to focus on a scene and if it's over used it can move from irritating to headache inducing. Thankfully the shaky cam in the film did not become that severe of an issue for me and I will admit there were many times where its use made me feel like I was right in the middle of the action. But, like the "lack of sound" technique when overused I did find the shaking camera irritating when it made it difficult for me to tell what was happening in a scene, particularly in a fight.
Thankfully though these issues were minor when you look at the movie as a whole and focus on what did work. The casting for the movie, in my opinion, was spot on. Jennifer Lawrence was Katniss Everdeen; the emotions she displayed through just her facial expressions spoke volumes. The games puts their contestants through a lot of torment even before the actual fighting begins and the way Jennifer played in every single scene felt positively genuine. She could be vulnerable and caring while also being strong and determined. Another favourite was Josh Hutcherson, who played the charming and manipulative Peeta Mellark, for me he was another actor who became the character. It's also I think important to mention that although each of these supporting actors only had a handful of scenes - Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, and Elizabeth Banks that each of their roles stood out to me and are not easily forgotten.
Judging as an Adaptation
In the hands of someone else who might not have respected this series I could easily see this movie just be a shallow story about children killing children on reality TV but the core of the book is much more than that and I think that the movie captured it perfectly. There were changes of course, a character was removed, and scenes were added while others were left out but I was fine with all of them. I even think that the movie was better for it. There is one vital aspect from the book however near the end that was left out, and I had not remembered it until Reeshe had mentioned it that may affect how the future movies are made. I think though that the change still has time to be salvaged if they address it in the second movie so we'll see what happens when Catching Fire comes out so I still give the movie as an adaptation a 4.5/5. Reeshe on the other hand was not happy with a few of the changes made, particularly ones that had to do with portrayal of the character personalities and development and rates the movie, as an adaptation, a 3/5.
On April 13th 2012 the contributors of WildFire Writing and my little sister will be attending, for the very first time, an Anime Convention. Because of where we live things like conventions about fandoms is a luxury we aren't privy to because well we live in a tiny place and so although there are fans of anime and manga here we're more of a cult following. The same goes for comics, and other similar things. To prove this, if you ever come down to Grand Cayman, just go into one of our three book stores and look for a volume of manga. The chances of finding more than one are rare, the chances of finding one you're interested in are pretty much nil.
So anyway sad and pathetic story set aside you can say I am pretty ecstatic that I will be going to an anime convention in less than three weeks. I've actually been planning this trip since last year and at the time was even considering the possibility of cosplaying but I couldn't decide what I wanted to be and ran out of time. So my Doctor Who tees will have to do since this convention is also going to be a scifi one.
Advice I've been given on attending any convention
Where comfortable shoes. There will be lots of walking, think of your feet.
Brings snacks and a bottle of water. Food sold in conventions can be pricey, there should be water fountains where you can refill your bottle if you finish it.
Take a backpack with you, you're most likely going to stop by the artist alley and vendor room and you want a place to put your purchases so you can keep your hands free.
Take a camera, to you know, document all those lovely memories not to mention there might be some kick ass cosplaying going on. But you know before taking pictures of strangers get their permission first and ask if you can post the pictures online.
Have cash, chances are no one in the artist alley will have a credit card machine or will be accepting your checks, the same thing might go for the people in the Vendor Room. Cash is quicker and more reliable.
As the days for the convention pass prices might drop but if on the first day you see something you REALLY want and its limited you might not want to risk it being sold to someone else because you're waiting for the price to drop. Grab it now!
Don't spend all of your money on awesome stuff. You're a person and well you need to eat. At the end of the day after all that walking and shopping and people meeting you're probably going to be hungry and want something that didn't come in a plastic bag and you'll most likely need money to get it. Separate your food money from your shopping money.
Hopefully I'll remember all these tips myself when the time comes and I'll make sure my friends and sister read this post too so they aren't scolding at me in my well prepared glory as they suffer hunger pains.
Have you ever been to an anime convention or a convention of any kind? Faerie Con? BEA? A Whovian convention? Maybe even SDCC? How was the experience? Is there any advice you can give me that I haven't mentioned in this post?
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