Liviania’s review of Twisted (Intertwined, Book 3) by Gena Showalter
Urban fantasy published by Harlequin Teen 30 Aug 11

Gena Showalter’s Intertwined series has never been light and fluffy, but Twisted takes some dark turns.  This isn’t too surprising considering Unraveled ended shortly after Aden, the hero, got stabbed through the heart.

Aden’s survival has serious consequences for both him and his vampire girlfriend Victoria.  Namely, they’ve been swapping both powers and personalities.  Aden’s not prepared to deal with the monster that lives in her head, nor is she suited to coping with the three souls that live in Aden’s.  Aden is becoming colder, which helps him to rule the vampires, but it hurts their relationship as Victoria becomes more insecure.  I particularly enjoyed the passages through Victoria’s POV.  She understands what’s happening, and she’s pretty good at working through her jealousy to pay attention to what’s really at risk.

Things at the homefront kick into gear when Victoria’s brother Sorin arrives to challenge Aden for the throne.  It’s a fight to the death, but Victoria wants both pugilists to survive.  Aden’s old mates at the home for troubled boys are brought back in a clever way but mostly wasted.  How the fight plays out between Sorin and Aden is genuinely thrilling, however.

Elsewhere, Mary Ann, Riley, and Tucker are trying to track down Aden’s parents and the people who knew the souls in his head before they died.  They’re having success, but Tucker’s still on the baddie’s side.  Of course, usually competent Riley does everything he can to alienate Tucker while letting him in on all of their plans.  (Riley also ends the book with some frustratingly dumb moves.)

Mary Ann and Riley’s problems reflect those of Aden and Victoria – down to Riley thinking about how he and Mary Ann have swapped personalities – but it just doesn’t work as well.  Possibly because we get a decent chunk of their story through Tucker’s POV.  Showalter tries valiantly to make him sympathetic, but it never takes.  His little brother is being held hostage, but he did a lot of damage before that development.  And, “I’m sorry I got her killed because I honestly liked her” seems more loathsome to me rather than less.  Tucker puts a lot of lip service toward escaping Vlad’s control, but that’s all it ever amounts to.

I enjoyed Twisted more than Unraveled, although things kind of fell apart at the end.  Until then, there are a number of good action sequences and several intriguing concepts are explored.  I’m loving Aden and Victoria, but it might be time for Riley and Mary Ann to see other people.

Grade: B-

Summary:

SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD ADEN STONE HAS HAD A HELL OF A WEEK. HE’S BEEN:

Tortured by angry witches.
Hypnotized by a vengeful faery.
Spied on by the most powerful vampire in existence.
And, oh, yeah. Killed – twice.

His vampire girlfriend might have brought him back to life, but he’s never felt more out of control. There’s a darkness within him, something taking over . . . changing him. Worse, because he was meant to die, death now stalks him at every turn. Any day could be his last.

Once upon a time, the three souls trapped inside his head could have helped him. He could have protected himself. But as the darkness grows stronger, the souls grow weaker – just like his girlfriend. The more vampire Aden becomes, the more human Victoria becomes, until everything they know and love is threatened.

Life couldn’t get any worse. Could it?

Read an excerpt here.

Other books in the series:

Liviania’s review of Unraveled (Intertwined, Book 2) by Gena Showalter
Young adult urban fantasy released by Harlequin Teen 31 Aug 2010

I like Gena Showalter.  But even an author you really like can write a novel that doesn’t quite work for you. Unraveled falls into that category.  There were parts of it that I enjoyed, but the book felt like it was standing still.

When I reviewed Intertwined, I noted that it had a huge cast of characters and that many of them were underdeveloped – especially those of the voices in Aden Stone’s head.  As Intertwined focused on one of the voices, I expected subsequent novels would do the same.  But Aden’s three remaining voices are mostly shoved to the side in Unraveled.  Poor Caleb gets close to the limelight, but doesn’t get any answers because the other characters don’t have time to figure out anything about his past other than the fact he’s connected to the witches harassing them.

The end of Intertwined introduced the witches, who placed a death curse on Aden, Mary Ann, Victoria, and Riley.  The beginning of Unraveled introduces the fairies, who loathe the vampires.  Aden kills the fairy who tries to kill him and then must hide his deed.  Both of these plots need to be dealt with, but there are also lingering issues from Aden becoming the vampire king.  He needs a vampire queen and they won’t let him pick Victoria without considering other girls first.  Plus, he has to wait to be crowned since the old king might not be dead yet.

The vampire plot takes up most of the novel, with the witch and fairy plots periodically showing up before Aden again turns his attention to the vampires.  (He pretty willfully ignores that he should do something about his therapist.)  That is until the witch and fairy plots take over for a big fight scene to finish the novel.  The witch plot does get a bit more attention when the novel focuses on Mary Ann.  She’s finding out that her ability to dampen other’s abilities might not be that innocent.  She’s also trying to hide the extent of her relationship with Riley from her father.

I liked the development in Mary Ann and Riley’s relationship, as Victoria and Aden’s still fills kind of shallow.  They do have some good scenes together as well, however.  That’s the whole problem with Unraveled.  There are good scenes, but it’s all kind of shallow.  There’s too much going on.  Showalter never focuses on one thing long enough for me to feel invested.  Every time she sucked me in she pushed me right back out to moving on to something completely different without offering any resolution.

I may continue this series just because I like Showalter, but I vastly prefer her Lords of the Underworld series.  She does a much better job there of setting up plots that run through multiple books while still developing and resolving a single book plot.

Grade: C-

Summary:

Since coming to Crossroads, Oklahoma, former outcast Aden Stone has been living the good life. Never mind that one of his best friends is a werewolf, his girlfriend is a vampire princess who hungers for his blood, and he’s supposed to be crowned Vampire King—while still a human! Well, kind of.
With four—oops, three now—human souls living inside his head, Aden has always been “different” himself. These souls can time-travel, raise the dead, possess another’s mind and, his least favorite these days, tell the future.

The forecast for Aden? A knife through the heart.

Because a war is brewing between the creatures of the dark, and Aden is somehow at the center of it all. But he isn’t about to lie down and accept his destiny without a fight. Not when his new friends have his back, not when Victoria has risked her own future to be with him, and not when he has a reason to live for the first time in his life….

Read an excerpt here.

Other books in this series:

Liviania’s review of My Soul to Save (Soul Screamers, Book 2) by Rachel Vincent
Young adult urban fantasy released by Harlequin Teen 29 Dec 09

My changing feelings about Rachel Vincent’s novels have been well documented on the internet.  What has been less documented is the fact that sometimes I read other people’s reviews before I write my own.  Sometimes it sharpens my focus, other times it confuses me.  For My Soul to Save, it was the latter situation.

I expected more comments about the dark ending.  I expected remarks about the social satire and thinly veiled barbs aimed at Disney, which are particularly well-timed given the public meltdown of Lindsay Lohan.  I expected comments about the gender politics.  I just didn’t expect all of the comments about the gender politics to be completely opposite of my own observations.

Many reviewers dislike Vincent’s banshees because they are hysterical women who can only be calmed by a man.  I can get behind that being a bad subtext.  Now, I can’t blame Vincent for Kaylee, as a banshee, being a screaming woman.  Bean sidhe means female fairy.  Banshees wail before deaths in the common folklore.  The man part is Vincent’s invention, so that’s what I’ll focus on.

First, Kaylee doesn’t need boyfriend Nash to stop her wailing.  She did in My Soul to Take because she had no clue what she was or how to use her powers.  Now Nash’s mother is teaching her to control her wail, she can let it out a little at a time instead of becoming hysterical.

Second, I see Vincent’s banshees not as an interesting take on gender dynamics, since the females have the most agency.  Kaylee can interfere with a Grim Reaper on her own.  She can cross over into the Netherworld on her own (perhaps unwisely).  The only thing she can’t do on her own is prevent someone’s death.  Nash, and all of the male banshees, have no power without a female banshee.  He can’t direct a soul back into a body without Kaylee’s wail.  He can’t even do that often, since it pisses Reapers off and causes someone else to die.  Males only have power thanks to the females, and even then they rarely get to use it.

But really, subtext is subtext.  What about the text?  My Soul to Save is an interesting and well-presented story.  When Nash’s deceased brother Tod’s girlfriend Addison sold her soul, she had no idea what she was getting into.  Now Nash, Tod, and Kaylee are trying to save her – unfortunately, Addison was destined to die young.  And not even Kaylee’s wail can prevent her death since she has no soul.  There are clever plans in abundance, selflessness, and a nice sense of urgency.  But hoo-boy is the ending dark.

Maybe I’m deluding myself about the gender issues, but I like my interpretation.  If I thought the series was down on women I would not be nearly as excited as I am for book three.

Grade: B

Summary:
When Kaylee Cavanaugh screams, someone dies.
So when teen pop star Eden croaks onstage and Kaylee doesn’t wail, she knows something is dead wrong. She can’t cry for someone who has no soul.

The last thing Kaylee needs right now is to be skipping school, breaking her dad’s ironclad curfew and putting her too-hot-to-be-real boyfriend’s loyalty to the test. But starry-eyed teens are trading their souls: a flickering lifetime of fame and fortune in exchange for eternity in the Netherworld—a consequence they can’t possibly understand.

Kaylee can’t let that happen, even if trying to save their souls means putting her own at risk….

Read an excerpt here.

Liviania’s review of Intertwined by Gena Showalter
Young adult urban fantasy released by Harlequin Teen 1 Sept 09

I like Gena Showalter’s adult books.  I like young adult books.  It stands to reason that I’d enjoy Gena Showalter’s young adult fiction.  (Yes, I know that is not a logically sound argument.)  For the most part, I did.  Intertwined shares many characteristics with her adult fiction.    It’s fast-moving, with a large cast of characters and multiple plots.

Now, a large cast of characters works well in a romance series where you know each of the heroes and heroines will eventually get their day in the limelight.  It’s a little different when the character development left for later books is that of the voices in the protagonist’s head.  They are separate from him, but it feels like a large piece of Aden Stone is missing since most of the people who commentate on his actions and helped shaped his life are two-dimensional.

The other main storyline belongs to Mary Ann, a girl who can quiet the voices in Aden’s head.  Showalter does pull off a nice trick by making them only friends – their real love interests quickly come to light.  (Of course, by giving them each a romance, Showalter gives herself two more characters to deal with.)  That’s eight leading characters.   It’s ambitious, and Showalter does as well as she can, but sometimes it’s overwhelming.

At this point, the love interests feel somewhat obligatory.  They played into the plot, but I’m not entirely sure I buy the chemistry.  (Mary Ann and her guy work more for me, since they do get in some bonding time that doesn’t seem entirely hormonally fueled.)  However, I do have hope for them and the rest of this series.

Shortly before Showalter begins tying up some of the plot questions raised in Intertwined, she brings completely new ones into play.  I definitely want to read the next book to find even more answers.  Intertwined can be confusing, but it does promise that much of that confusion will be resolved.  With most romance novelists I feel character is their strong suit, but with Showalter I find her plots the most attractive.  They’re labyrinthine, but she knows how to resolve enough to be satisfying while leaving some mystery.  (One note on her characters: Showalter is one of the best writing paranormals to convince you that her characters’ powers do have truly awful downsides.)  Overall, I thought Intertwined was flawed, but worth reading for fans of urban fantasy.

Grade: B-

Summary:
Most sixteen-year-olds have friends. Aden Stone has four human souls living inside him:

One can time-travel.

One can raise the dead.

One can tell the future.

And one can possess another human.

With no other family and a life spent in and out of institutions, Aden and the souls have become friends. But now they’re causing him all kinds of trouble. Like, he’ll blink and suddenly he’s a younger Aden, reliving the past. One wrong move, and he’ll change the future. Or he’ll walk past a total stranger and know how and when she’s going to die.

He’s so over it. All he wants is peace.

And then he meets a girl who quiets the voices. Well, as long as he’s near her. Why? Mary Ann Gray is his total opposite. He’s a loner; she has friends. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks; she tries to make everyone happy. And while he attracts the paranormal, she repels it. For her sake, he should stay away. But it’s too late….

Somehow, they share an inexplicable bond of friendship. A bond about to be tested by a werewolf shape-shifter who wants Mary Ann for his own, and a vampire princess Aden can’t resist.

Two romances, both forbidden. Still, the four will enter a dark underworld of intrigue and danger but not everyone will come out alive….
Read an excerpt here.

Liviania’s review of My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers, Book 1) by Rachel Vincent
Young adult urban fantasy released by Harlequin Teen 1 Aug 09

My changing position of Rachel Vincent’s adult series has been well-documented on both this site and my own blog. As I wanted to like it from the start and am thoroughly enjoying it now, I wanted to see what her young adult series was like. Plus, the ladies of TGTBTU got me reading Harlequins, and I wanted to see what the publisher would do with its new YA line. The verdict? My Soul to Take is a good start.

Kaylee has panic attacks. That is if, by panic attacks, you mean beginning to scream uncontrollably when encountering certain people. She’d like to keep this on the down-low . . . but now one of those people she was sure would die is dead, and no one knows what killed the girl. I’ll forgive quite a bit more in a teenage protagonist than I would in an adult, but Kaylee plays things pretty smart. She reaches out to people who seem like they could help, being cautious but realistic about being in over her head.

One of those people is uber-hot and cool Nash, who can calm her down when she’s panicking. He might know what’s going on, but Kaylee’s reluctant to trust him due to his playboy reputation. Seriously, I love how sensible Kaylee can be. She doesn’t instantly trust him, but nor does she instantly push him away. She works to get to know him. Watching them get closer together is fun. Yeah, they’re drawn to each other, but they don’t just rely on the magnetism. They talk. I do love them as a couple. (The ending does have interesting implications for the possible love triangle. Usually I love triangles, but I just think Nash and Kaylee are so cute together.)

As for the world-building, Vincent does a good job of combining her own mythology with the old Irish tales of bean sidhe. My Soul to Take focuses on the banshees and reapers, and I look forward to learning about even more powerful and dangerous creatures. I find it refreshing that Kaylee doesn’t rank that high on the abilities scale. What she can do is impressive, but rather specific and with numerous drawbacks. Vincent definitely doesn’t shy away from the potential consequences.

Kaylee and Nash don’t forget that they’re trying to catch a murderer. Things fall apart some, logically, once the culprit is revealed, but I still enjoyed the story. I could let the logic go some when I was enjoying the action and last minute reveals. I am eager to read the next Soul Screamers book, not just for the romance, but to see what happens to Kaylee’s family. I’d also like to see more of the world’s politics. Who knows what consequences Kaylee and Nash’s actions will have on interspecies relations? (Rachel Vincent, that’s who. And possibly anyone who has read her early drafts.)

Unlike the Werecats, Vincent has me hooked from the first book with this series. I also recommend reading the prologue, My Soul to Lose. It’s longer than many Nocturne Bites, giving ample opportunity to sample the writing style and decide whether you like the main character.

Grade: A-

Summary:
.
SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH KAYLEE CAVANAUGH
.
She doesn’t see dead people, but…
.
She senses when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.
.
Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about the need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only Kaylee knows who’ll be next…
.
SOUL SCREAMERS
.
The last thing you hear before you die…
.
Read the prequel here.
.
Read an excerpt here.

This just in…

HarlequinTeen is giving away a prequel to Rachel Vincent’s Soul Screamers series.

~ My Soul to Lose is the prequel to the first book in the series, My Soul to Take, which will be released July 28.

~ Click here or the book title above for your free .pdf copy.

~ The third book in the series is My Soul to Save and will be out January 1, 2010.

Consider yourself flashed.