Bloody Jack

Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer is about a girl who dresses as a boy to join His Majesty's Navy to take down pirates. Coming off of the streets with nothing but the clothes she took from a dead friend, she starts her new life as a Sailor Boy who assists those who are actually in the Navy. She can't let her secret of actually being a girl get out, otherwise who knows where they will drop her off and leave her. She has dreams of being a sailor and seeing far off places and going on adventures, so she hides herself in plain sight as a small boy on a big ship.

This was okay though I was hoping for more. There are a whole bunch of books in this series full of all kinds of adventures so I'm assuming it gets better. It starts out with her turning maybe 12 (faking 10 year old boy) and supposedly two or three years passes. It didn't feel like that too me. There was no mention of time until almost the end of the story and the rest of it felt glossed over. It was written in a past tense, which is normal, but as if written by someone much older while at the same time the accent that is used in the writing shows that it should be more present tense or at least closer to the actual time it occurred. I guess what I'm saying is that the narration is very distant from what is going on in the story.

At the times of high intensity, fighting the pirates and whatnot, I was never scared for her--this possibly had to do with the narration style, maybe something else which I can't put my finger on.

Half way through the novel, when one of the boys finds out that she is a girl, the story turns to them necking the whole time. Every moment they could get they held hands or kissed or touched each other or something. I felt like I might as well have put them in a hallway of a high school or something. That was all it was about for the longest time and I got bored. It was a good thing she got in fights with her other crewmen and pirates, otherwise I would have put it down.

I did enjoy the some of "Jacky's" quirks and the fact that she doesn't see herself as brave. She becomes Blood Jack because she kills a pirate to save a friend. She survives being on an island on her own for a while. I even liked the reality of when she is finally discovered that these gentlemen sailors treat her like a girl of privilege even though she was a beggar off the street at the beginning. Of course to keep her "safe" they put her in the brig (as there is really no other place they could put her, so they say) and have guards on her 24/7, which is excessive in my opinion. If there was a lady that they had saved from pirates, they wouldn't have put her in the brig. So why Jacky? The whole ending was weird. And the awkwardness of suddenly realizing she is female was never really mentioned. Sure they treat her different, but none of them mention any awkwardness or weird looks. I'm sure that would have happened.

The setting was kept simple but we were given enough information to make a guess as to what was going on. Though I kind of wish there had been a tad more where we could have learned more about ships.

Aside from Jaimy and Jacky, most of the characters were kind of flat to me. We weren't give backstories to many of the others. Super brief glimpses maybe, but not enough to give them more than a stereotype.

I think the story has a lot of potential, but right now I'm kind of disappointed. I'll read the next one, but if it doesn't pick things up greatly, I won't read more of the series than that.

Deep Blue

Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly was dripping in cheese. I am actually fairly surprised that there isn't a copy in the children's section when the childishness would be appreciated. For a children's book, like sixth grade, no higher than eighth grade, would be okay. They would enjoy it. I did not. I even read another review, hoping that it would get better, but she had the same complaints I did and said it didn't get better.

Donnelly used cliches which weren't actually cliches. Such as: Money = currensea, girlfriend - merlfriend, a family tree = coral tree, and candies are weird things like "cillawondas, bing-bangs, janteeshaptas, and zee-zees." It also has paragraphs like "the others set off and she followed at a little bit of a distance, watching Neela, swim with Ling, and Ava with Becca. ... But as she watched her oldest friend, and her three new ones, swim ahead of her, she felt surer and stronger about facing what was to come." (Two lines of brief dialog followed by a new chapter. I wrote like that when I was in high school--I was alright, but not good enough to get published, at all. I remember having filler words like "at a little bit of distance." Why not say "behind" or even "at a distance"? The book is very wordy and takes a long time to get anywhere. 

It takes a while because most of the book is an info dumb. I get that there needs to be explanations, and exploring this world, which isn't a cliche fantasy world, is important. She needed to set the environment, but I could easily skip paragraphs, almost whole pages, and not be hindered. The world was well thought out, but poorly executed on the page. 

By page 77 I was bored and I only got to 150 before I gave up. The inciting incident finally happened, but not until page 95. 95!! There was too much set up in her perfect palace life with minor dramas between her and a cliched cheerleader like figure. Again I had one in my high school stories. My character Daisy served the same purpose as this one did, filler of possible backstory. But then suddenly everyone in the capital city is dead or being held hostage by the bad guy--somehow that happened. She and her friend run, er swim, but then get captured and talk to the villain of the story. He's charismatic and condescending and threatens to kill everyone if he doesn't get his way (like another one of my characters from high school, they are really good at throwing tantrums). They escape, find the rebels and are suppsoed to save the sea from the bad guy and his evil plan.

The characters didn't develop at all throughout the first half of the book. Neela is SUPER childish at 16 years old and is always gorging herself on candies. All the relationships seem... fake? They are weird. I felt nothing for any of the characters when they died--maybe their are dead, we don't know for sure because nothing was definite about many of the ones who died. I should have felt something, especially if you are going to spend 150 pages of info dumping.

The plot was extremely cliche. You have a strange dream because you're the chosen one. You don't want to marry the guy you re betrothed too--because you're a princess. You are on your own, because what YA novel has your parents as being a big role during your adventure? Because you're the chosen one you must stop the bad guy and releasing doom and destruction on the world. There are magical objects you need to find. Oh and those mythical creatures you thought were mythical, they aren't. Moral you learn is probably friendship, because boys are dumb in this book. P.S. Girls rule and save the seas.

The only thing I think this book had going for it was the mermaid thing, but the cliches killed it for me. There are three or four other books, but I'm not going to be finishing this one let alone the others. Jennifer Donnelly, you disappointed me.

Shadows of Self

Can I just say "Poor Wax, can't the guy get a break?" The things writers put their characters through--I'm guilty as well in this.

Shadows of Self is the sequel to Alloy of Law. In the Mistborn: Era II series by Brandon Sanderson, we follow Wax and Wayne, constables in the large city of Elendal as they hunt down a mysterious figure who killed many more than a handful of corrupt Lords and Ladies. But as they continue on in this investigation then kandra make their debut and change things dramatically in their hunt, though Wax feels more like the prey because their villain is always three steps ahead of them.

I loved this book. The characters are so well developed and Sanderson takes us back, in reference, to other characters that have long since died but were part of the first Mistborn series. Harmony is funny and I'm glad he's been able to stick around from the first series because I always enjoyed seeming him progress. If he can progress as Harmony too, I'd be really interested to see that. They are all so human. They have their quirks; they have their ticks; they have their faults. And I love them all. Well maybe not Steris at this point, but I've been told that I will love her. So we will happily go to book three as soon as I can get my hands on one. :D

It is so hard to go from reading a Brandon Sanderson novel to anything else. It all seems to so childish and unfinished, not quite as polished--even those authors who have written many books and have the experience.