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Chalk it up to weird timing or bad planning. Even before DC Comics makes all their big REBIRTH announcements at Wondercon on Saturday, the publisher didn’t mind holding panels. DC All-Access opened their big weekend. Even with such a fantastic line up of creators one has to wonder why you’d ever let the words “ALL ACCESS” […]

It’s a sign you like a series when you’re willing to try to overlook—albeit to ultimately still be largely infuriated by and not be able to forget—an incredibly annoying error on page one of the latest release. The series? Richelle Mead’s Bloodlines. The new book? The Ruby Circle. The error? Having Adrian (the male protagonist) […]

If you're hooked on Kid President then this month is your month for new release kids books. This month's selection of best new kids books includes Kid President's Guide to Being Awesome and Richelle Mead's conclusion to the Bloodlines series.

Wow! This month is proof of good reads, everything remains the same on our best selling kids series list; including the blast from the past ... the Mr. Men and Little Miss books.

This month we have a blast from the past on top of The Children’s Book Review’s best selling kids series list. Who remembers the Mr. Men and Little Miss books?

You know you’re excited about a book’s impending release when you’ve literally instigated a countdown calculating the time until its release. And you’re emailing a friend and co-fan who happens to be in Europe for four months, telling her if she’s in doubt about returning to Australia, rest assured: the book will help smooth her potentially bumpy I’m-not-in-Europe-anymore arrival.

Silver Shadows, Book Five in Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy* spin-off Bloodlines, has just been released (Still with me? The series and spin-off and book titles can be confusing and I have to admit I still refer to everything as a Vampire Academy book).

It picks up where Book Four left off—if you haven’t read this yet, now’s the time to do the reading equivalent of lalalalala, AKA stop reading this blog post). That is, Alchemist extraordinaire Sydney Sage has been kidnapped and imprisoned by the Alchemists in an underground ‘re-education’ facility. Moroi lover Adrian Ivashkov is losing his mind with grief and frustration as he tries to use mental-health-destabilising spirit find out where she’s being kept.

With Sydney trapped in a seemingly-impossible-to-escape prison, I truly expected Rose and Dimitri to feature heavily in this tale (in truth, I expect that every book). But Mead surprised me and again kept them to cameos—she really does seem to mean what she said about being done with following their stories. That said, the way the book finishes has me convinced that the next one will surely see them come to the fore (in truth, I’ve thought that every book too).

The Silver Shadows contains less sassy repartee than previous books, but that’s both because people are trapped alone in various locations and in their heads, which makes the requirement of having someone to trade repartee with rather troublesome. Besides, the subject matter—torture, prejudice, and mental health and alcohol issues—makes for some reasonably bleak reading. In the most gripping, tale-inhaling manner, of course.

There are a few moments, though, such as when Sydney first encounters her uptight, Type A roommate, AKA ‘the Sydney Sage of re-education’. There’s also some banter about which car Adrian and Marcus should take on a roadtrip to find Sydney: a Mustang or a ‘lame yet highly fuel-efficient’ Prius that would require fewer stops and, therefore, hasten their mission.

The book touches on some more adult themes. And by adult, I mean challenging, life-changing stuff such as battling deteriorating mental health and grappling with feelings-suppressing alcohol addiction.

It handles it in a way that’s respectful, demystifying, and de-stigmatising, which is all you could ask of a young-adult text. (Forgive me for getting my responsible adult hat on, but hopefully the young adults and not-so-young adults reading the series will feel a little less hesitant to ask for help sometime if they ever need it.)

Overall, though, not a lot happens in Silver Shadows. At least, not compared with other Vampire Academy slash Bloodlines books. But the tension around Sydney’s circumstances and whether Adrian, who’s self-destructing, will be able to hold it together, propel the story tensely forward. It’s also setting the scene for a bigger shebang, which Mead cruelly (and by cruelly I mean niftily) drops on us in final words on the final pages.

Which means that, having inhaled the book that answered the year-long what’s-going-to-happen-to-Sydney-in-re-education-camp suspense, that suspense has now been replaced with what’s-going-to-happen-with-[I’m not going to issue that spoiler so soon after its release—suffice to say, the plot twist and its ramifications are big] agony.

What I am going to say is that Mead had better been well on her way to writing Book Six. Let the countdown begin.

*As a side note, the covers continue to be terrible. I’m glad someone’s finally shifting the Vampire Academy titles to a more generic VA. They need to do similarly with the Bloodlines series. Pouting generic blondes and brunettes don’t cut it. For starters, Sydney Sage wouldn’t pout lustily at a camera…

The mature thing to do when you both have enormous, suffocatingly impending deadlines as well as knee surgery and an enforced lay-off coming up would be to save up a good book for the latterly mentioned respite.

I, of course, did nothing of the sort, head-in-the-sanding it ostrich style to pretend that I didn’t have deadlines and figuring that I’d find another book to read during my post-operative recovery.

Suffice to say, I raced through Richelle Mead’s latest Bloodlines installment, The Indigo Spell, faster than you can say, ‘Bring back everyone’s favourite dhampir lovers, Rose and Dimitri’.

With the exception of a two-or-so-sentences cameo, Rose and Dimitri didn’t feature in this book. Again. Although these days I’m better able to cope, both because I’m used to the disappointment and because Mead’s fleshing out the Bloodlines plots and characters a little better than before.

Case in point: Sydney the uptight alchemist, who in this book finally loosens up and allows herself to fall in love. Well, sort of, given that she spends the bulk of the book denying and quashing it, but semantics …

The book begins with Sydney being awoken in the middle of the night by her kooky, witchy teacher to cast a spell relating to a ‘life-or-death matter’. Props to Mead for an opening that both throws you in there and, er, garners your attention:

This wasn’t the first time I’d been pulled out of bed for a crucial mission. It was, however, the first time I’d been subjected to such a personal line of questioning.

‘Are you a virgin?’

‘Huh?’ I rubbed my sleepy eyes, just in case this was all some sort of bizarre dream that would disappear …

Mead gets straight into the snappy repartee, too (although out of context this is admittedly not as snappy as I first found it):

[Ms Terwilliger] stepped back and sighed with relief. ‘Yes, of course. Of course you’re a virgin.’

I narrowed my eyes, unsure if I should be offended or not. ‘Of course? What’s that supposed to mean?’

Soon after, Sydney narrates:

I was pretty sure I could hear some large animal scuffling out in the brush and added ‘coyotes’ to my mental list of dangers I faced out here, right below ‘magic use’ and ‘lack of coffee’.

Later, she has this encounter with love interest Adrian Ivashkov:

‘Nothing will get you anywhere with me,’ [Sydney] exclaimed.

‘I don’t know about that.’ He put on an introspective look that was both unexpected and intriguing. ‘You’re not as much of a lost cause as [Rose] was. I mean, with her, I had to overcome her deep, epic love with a Russian warlord. You and I just have to overcome hundreds of years’ worth of deeply ingrained prejudice and taboo between our two races.’

The Indigo Spell continues on chronologically from the previous Bloodlines books. Sydney is still tasked with protecting sister-to-the-queen Jill, whose knocking off could, due to archaic laws not yet changed, topple the entire and tenuously held throne. The two are holed up in the decidedly un-vampire-friendly Palm Springs along with guardian Eddie, wannabe guardian Angeline, and adorable, spirit user and arguable alcoholic Adrian.

The plot hole that so enraged me last book—the fact that, despite books and books worth of rules that a guardian never leaves their guardianee, Jill is left alone and unprotected for vast chunks of time—isn’t entirely plugged in this book, but it is addressed enough that it no longer explodes me.

My main gripe with The Indigo Spell, which I enjoyed more than its predecessors mostly because Sydney stopped being so Hermione and started having fun, was that the mysterious breakaway-alchemist storyline it featured didn’t exactly come to fruition. The promising plot, frankly, fell a little so-what flat. I could be proven wrong in future books, but for the moment I’m not convinced the storyline contributed to the plot, much less propelled it forward, and I have to wonder why it wasn’t excised in the edit.

Still, it wasn’t enough to make me put the book down (in reality, my deadline issues would have been better served if it had been), and reading The Indigo Spell left me with a feeling that was a cross between the one you get while consuming comfort food and being wrapped in a freshly laundered doona on an autumnal night.

The book was also packed with enough small-moment witticisms to keep me smiling to myself. Say, for example, when Sydney freaked out because her teacher was away sick and left only instructions to work on homework for the substitute teacher.

This seemed to amuse [her friend] immensely. ‘Melbourne, sometimes you’re the only reason I come to class. I saw her sub plan for your independent study, by the way. It said you didn’t even have to stick around. You’re free to run wild.’

Eddie, sitting nearby, overheard and scoffed. ‘To the library?’

Late in the book she calls Adrian with a request that’s rather unusual for her:

‘Can you come over to Amberwood? I need you to help me break curfew and escape my dorm.’

There were a few moments of silence. ‘Sage, I’ve been waiting two months to hear you say those words. You want me to bring a ladder?’

Now, if I can just find another book to read while I’m hopped up on painkillers and propped up on pillows, I’ll be sorted book-wise for at least another few days …

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore
Amy and Phin Goodnight are spending the summer housesitting for their aunt Hyacinth. Both Amy and Phin are witches, as are all Goodnight women, though Amy would much rather have a normal life. But there are times when witchcraft and psychic powers come in handy—like, say, when there’s a ghost supposedly haunting the area.

Texas Gothic reminded me of Highway to Hell, Rosemary Clement-Moore’s third Maggie Quinn book. So if you enjoyed that one, there’s a lot that will appeal here, namely romance, humor, mystery, and the supernatural. Yeah, these were present in Prom Dates from Hell and Hell Week, but what really unites Texas Gothic and Highway to Hell (from what I remember, at least) is how their supernatural elements are rooted in broader historical events or legends. By this I mean the supernatural events are not just a generic “a person was killed here and their vengeful spirit has been haunting it ever since”-type thing that could take place anywhere (even if a particular setting is well-drawn), but are instead tied to a particular place and its own specific history.

Overall, I liked Texas Gothic but didn’t love it. Mostly because I was lot more interested in the Phin-Mark romance than Amy-Ben, which I never completely bought into.

Wildcat Fireflies by Amber Kizer
Speaking of plots centered on local history…

Anyway, so after the events of Meridian, Meridian and Tens are on the road, looking for another Fenestra. They end up in Carmel, Indiana, still unsure of how much they can trust other people. Meanwhile, alternating with Meridian’s narration is that of Juliet, who lives in a group home under horrific conditions, not knowing that she is a Fenestra.

It’s been a couple of years since I read Meridian, and while I didn’t remember much about the story, Kizer provides enough background that I didn’t feel lost. As for the story itself, I’m a bit torn. It’s a long novel, but while I was reading it, it didn’t seem to drag, even though it’s a while before Meridian and Juliet finally connect. After reading it, and without knowing what will happen in the rest of the series, my reaction now is, that was a lot of pages without as much plot as you’d think would be in a 500+ page novel. Oh well, I do plan on at least reading the next book and I wasn’t bothered by the length while reading, so I’ll be generous here.

Oh, and yay, no love triangle! But what happened to [name redacted just to be on the safe side of spoilers] at the end of the story?

Most of all, what really struck me about Wildcat Fireflies is how it contrasts with Angel Burn. I mean, Angel Burn and Wildcat Fireflies share some similarities in their respective angel/protector road romance storylines. However, whereas there’s a notable lack of action (you know, *that* kind of action) during Angel Burn’s idyllic interlude, Kizer tackles this head-on, wit