If you are looking for another fantastical YA Young Adult Sci Fi / Fantasy series like Eragon or Harry Potter, which will take you to a whole new world then this book is for you! I love books that start with a young character and put them through the ringer. In this book, a smart tough teen learns she has abilities she didn’t know she had, not magical talents, but loyalty, courage and strength.
Holly Black has enormous writing talent and her characters jump off the page. I just eat up a book when I feel like I really know what the characters are going through. The main character in this book Kaye starts off a “normal teen” (although tough as nails and head-to-toe in black) and ends up in a very different place. Or maybe some of the same places, but with her eyes opened. Whatever. An entire world opens up to her, and she sees lots of things she doesn’t understand. She runs into challenges and opportunities, and can’t tell the difference. She meets many new friends and foes, and you can’t tell which is which.
One mention, this story is not a fairy tale where cinderella gets a godmother to wisk her away and lives happily ever after. If you are looking for a light-hearted romance then this book is not for you. It’s a bit dark starting with the tough life of a teenage girl (was anyone happy in their teens really?). The main character has to work for it, and she doesn’t always know where she is headed. There are acid trip-like experiences with a grisly Unseelie court. There is love interest, it’s just not the gush-and-gab type, it’s more of the on-razors-edge type, like Twilight. Kaye does meet a great guy, or two. The romance is just a piece of the larger plot unfolding.
Overall, this is a great coming of age story, with several twists of hope and frenzy mixed with whimsical magic and terror.
If you like Dean Koontz the way I do, you’ll like this book.
The thing I like most about Dean Koontz books is the characterization. I can’t always put my finger on it, but there’s usually something about his characters that draws me in immediately so that I get attached to them and can’t put the book down. This book was exceptionally good in that regard. I listened to this book on Audio CD and I remember thinking about just the first 10 minutes that I was already hooked on the characters.
This book reminded me a lot of my favorite Dean Koontz book, Life Expectancy. I think that was the first Dean Koontz I read and the reason I keep reading them is the great characterization I first found in that book. The main characters in Relentless are so much fun that you can’t help but smile even when they’re under mortal threat by seemingly supernatural bad guys. The fun banter and jokes between the family members (and dog) make you wish that you could maintain your humor under stressful situations.
<possible spoilers ahead>
The other Koontz book this reminded me of was Dark Rivers of the Heart. This connection is due to the conspiracy theorist slant of both novels. In each, a government agency has basically unlimited resources and are on a personal mission to kill the main character(s). There is lots of conspiracy theorist goodies in here like the main female character’s parents who have an underground bunker in the desert complete with deadly booby traps by the front door.
But it keeps going back to the characters. Even the weird parents in the bunker have a great sense of humor and joke and play, albeit in a potentially offensive way to vegetarian tree-huggers.
In all, I think this is not on my top five list of favorite Dean Koontz books, along with Life Expectancy and Odd Thomas. Which is really good, because there have been a couple of books of his recently that didn’t grab me and I was almost getting to the point of expending my limited reading time on other authors. But this book has renewed my love for Koontz books and I anxiously await the next.
WereDragons, WereArachnids and Beaststalkers, oh my!
This latest (book four) to the Jennifer Scales books was a great addition to an interesting YA Fantasy Fiction series. It’s an easy read if you can keep all the characters straight! If you haven’t read the first three, I WOULD NOT recommend starting with this one. There is just too much history and you will miss out completely unless you start with book one, “Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace”.
This being book four, they don’t spend much time re-explaining things. In fact, this was a very different take on these characters because they reviewed most of the old scenes from another perspective. Because of this, the whole book has a very different voice and I missed Jennifer.
But I thought it was very interesting, to see inside the heads of the nemises and understand their justifications for their own actions. It tells each person’s life starting about age 15. What a different way to view battle and war, one that allows for perspective from all sides. You can see that most people have a history and reasons for the things that they do.
The tale doesn’t just go over old ground; there is more to cover including a huge confrontation!!
As usual, Jennifer is in the middle of it all but is in control of none of the various factions.
She’s just caught in the struggle for dominance between several bloodied, angry, war-torn sides. This book shares more from those sides and more history allowing you to see the tangled web that Jennifer is stuck inside.
In the next book, I look forward to seeing more about Jennifer and her choices, romances, and growing up….
