Midwinter Blood by Marcus Sedgwick YP FIC SEDGWICK

A reporter in 2073 investigates a remote island said to have discovered the secret to immortality, an archeologist in 2011 tries to dig the island's secrets from the ground, a downed pilot in WW II trying to go home, further back a painter, further back a ghost, further still a vampire, and last or first a Viking king.  Throughout it all a love that lives and dies again and again.  Seven stories that all make on tale of Midwinter Blood.

I can see very easily why this won the prestigious Printz Award. It is dark, lyrical, haunting, and stays with you every time you put the book down. It is a sad, beautiful, and frightening look at lives interconnected by love, loss, and violence. This isn't a ghastly and gory look-out-it's-right-behind-you!!! kind of book, it's a much creepier slow building tension. The feeling of inevitable and inescapable doom. The very first chapters introduce you to a strange, seemingly perfect island. Since, we've all seen the movies and read the books about perfect small towns, that alone puts the reader on edge. Sedgwick ratchets up the tension quickly but vaguely. You know something is very wrong, but not what. This will be a recurring theme!  

Sedgwick jumps each story further back in time repeating images, phrases, and similar characters. This can be maddening at first, because you get so little to go on to solve the ever weirder mystery. Even when you finish the book entirely you may feel like you have more questions than answers. I'd like to go on record as calling that a good thing. It's so refreshing to read a book that respects teen readers enough to let them come up with their own answers.

What's so great about this book, is that it's deep and simple.  Sedgwick relies on as few words as necessary making it a stark and spare style that fits his story and themes perfectly. It also makes it so much easier to be swept quickly again and again on the currents of time. This is a rare and unique novel that should be read by anyone that loves a good story, especially a dark and haunting one

You can find Midwinter Blood in our catalog here.

 

Josie Griffin is Not a Vampire by Heather Swain YP FIC SWAIN

Josie Griffin isn't sorry. Her scumbag ex-boyfriend totally deserved to have his windshield bashed in (he's just lucky it wasn't his cheating-on-her-with-her-best-friend-face!). Now she has to have mandatory community service AND anger management classes.  Like being angry at all her back stabbing ex-friends isn't normal?  Besides her group is about as far from normal you can get.  Avis thinks he's a were-something-or-other, Johan vants to suck her blooood, Tarren believes she has magic powers, and Helios thinks he's a Greek god (at least he looks it-swoon).  It isn't long before the crazy starts rubbing off on Josie and she starts wondering if maybe they aren't crazy and she's just joined a Supernatural Support Group. And worse yet Josie is about to find out that some creatures of the night are darker than others and one out there is preying on defenseless girls.

This is a fun and silly trifle that could be some great beach reading.  Josie has a seriously tart tongue and attitude to spare, but it never gets to be whiny or annoying.  Swain's look at the paranormal world that lives just under our nose isn't terribly original, but her witty take and flair for clever (if woefully dated. i mean do Kids These Days really know The Lost Boys?) pop culture references make the book very fun reading.  As much as I liked Heather and her Nancy Drew with bite attempt to solve mysteries, save the day, and get to the truth I'd say most the books supporting characters are a little flat.  The support group provides lots of humor but no real depth. Also, the central mystery isn't very hard to solve and the books eventual Big Bad doesn't have much of a character or menace.  You'd think that would make this a bad review, but for some reason I read this book in a single go.  It was just that perfect mix of humor and frothy fun with the perfect length.

Check our catalog for Josie Griffin is Not a Vampire here.

The Rising: A Department 19 novel by Will Hill YP FIC HILL

Jamie is now an official member of Department 19, the secret monster hunting wing of the government, and is starting to settle into the non-stop grind of hunting monsters.  Paired with his vampire-turned-vampire-hunter girlfriend Larissa and friend Kate, they’ve been given the toughest assignment imaginable: find and destroy the resurrected Dracula before he regains his strength and takes over the world.

This is one of my favorite action series on the shelves.  Will Hill is a maestro of hard hitting action scenes.  He does a great job of making his purer than pure evil villains fun to hate and root against and is great at switching POV and timelines.  We get chapters form the viewpoint of Dracula, Kate, Larissa (she's my favorite because she's tormented), our hero Jamie, and a couple of others thrown in.  This keeps twists and turns coming aplenty and the book moving relatively briskly (parts of the middle section gets a tad slow, but picks up again with a vengeance).  It’s crazy how fast I tore through this brick of a book.  It’s nearly 600 pages but reads so quickly with a just-one-more-chapter-and-then-I’ll-sleep appeal that’s hard to resist.  My only gripe is that the characters aren’t all that interesting when they aren’t killing bad guys and that our hero is way too perfect. When the bullets and stakes start flying and the blood is pouring I oddly seem to forget all about it.  A must read for any fan of action, fast paced horror thrillers, or action horror.  Darren Shan fans might even have a new favorite author. I would read the first book before grabbing this one though, but that's just TWO awesome books you get to read.

You can check our catalog for The Rising here.

Blood Ninja III: The Betrayal of the Living by Nick Lake YP FIC LAKE

The evil Lord Oda is dead (after already being dead, then undead, and now totally dead), but Taro’s greatest challenge is still ahead.  He must vanquish a dragon in order to get permission to marry the girl he loves.  Wait fighting dragons to win the heart of a fair lady is supposed to be for knights, nit vampire ninjas!?  Taro is doomed!  As if that wasn’t enough to worry about the dead are rising.  No, not vampires, ZOMBIES!  The super, evil and very creepy Kenji has crawled back from the dead and is raising an army of corpses to destroy all he sees.  OH!  Also, Taro’s very own flesh and blood family plans to betray him!  Being a vampire ninja in feudal Japan is ROUGH!

Vampire ninjas VS Dragons and Zombies!  What’s not to love!? This is a great finale to a wonderful action series.  This book, like the two before it (read my reviews here and here), have loads of fast paced action and ultra-violence, perfectly evil villains to root for, and enough plot twists to keep things interesting.  Also, Nick Lake does a nice amount of research to make the Japanese setting feel real and authentic.  Basically the Blood Ninja series is like a super awesome manga series without the pictures.  It doesn’t have the most realistic characters, but they aren’t boring or entirely one note either.  The heroes are almost always outmatched and that makes for tense and exciting action sequences.  The romantic plot does get a little sparkly when Taro learns that he can’t be with Hana without turning her into a vampire, but that never drags the plot down to a soap opera.  This is a must read for fans of action, manga, or historical-fiction-fantasy-horror.

You can check our catalog for Blood Ninja III here.

Department 19 by Will Hill YP FIC HILL

Jamie Carpenter’s life changed forever the night he saw the dark shapes in the trees and his father gunned down by a squad of police. He believed what everyone else in the country believed: that his father was a traitor to the nation, killed before he could aid terrorists carry out a terrorist attack. His life changes even foreverer when he is attacked by a hot vampire girl and his mother is kidnapped by an ancient evil vampire master and he is only saved at the last second by the Frankenstein monster! Frankenstein (he’s taken his ‘father’s’ name) takes him to a secret government organization started in the 1800s by the Van Helsing family to police supernatural evil: Department 19. Now Jamie must learn to hunt the creatures of the night, kill the most powerful vampire on Earth, and save his mom all while watching out for his own neck in the first bloody adventure in a brand new series.

This book is just totally awesome. It is filled with all sorts of vampire killing action. These vampires don’t glitter or pledge their eternal love, they’re throat ripping killing machines that have to be destroyed. And destroyed they are in explosions of blood! Hill writes action very well keeping the plot racing at a super fast clip even when devoting occasional chapters to past exploits of Department 19. The characters are likeable and you’ll find yourself rooting for them. Even though most of the supporting cast is mainly stock characters the action and skill with descriptive language make this one of the finest new supernatural thriller series in a long time. Fans of Darren Shan novels (YP FIC SHAN), The Enemy by Charles Higson YP FIC HIGSON, and the Blood Ninja series by Nick Lake (YP FIC LAKE) will LOVE Department 19 and vice versa!

Blood Ninja 2: The Revenge of Lord Oda by Nick Lake YP FIC LAKE

After Taro killed the evil Lord Oda Nobunaga he thought he was safe, but unfortunately Lord Oda is alive, er undead, because he has risen as a vampire! This is bad timing as Taro and his friends are off to find Taro’s missing mother. When they fall into a trap a tragedy occurs that drives Taro to find the Bhudda Ball, a weapon of ultimate power and meet Lord Oda on the battlefield to get Bloody Revenge!!!

Blood Ninja 2 is even bloodier and ninja-ier then the first! It has a great flow of action, awesome swordplay and magic, really evil villains, and exciting plot twists. It is one of the coolest horror-action series in a long while. Fans of the first book or of Darren Shan’s novels should LOVE this book. I love that Lake includes lots of accurate historical detail so it takes you to another place and time. I also think that manga fans will really love the Blood Ninja series, because it totally reads like a really awesome manga. Basically if you like action packed books you should (BAD PUN ALERT) sink your teeth into Blood Ninja 2!

Kisses from Hell YP FIC KISSES

Some of the biggest names in young adult paranormal romance all come together in this short story collection about the passions and perils of vampire love. Kristin Cast co-writer of the House of Night series, Alyson Noël author of the The Immortals series, Richelle Mead author of the Vampire Academy books, Francesca Lia Block author of Pretty Dead, and Kelley Armstrong author of the Women of the Underworld series each pen a tale about love that will never die (I mean unless it gets exposed to sunlight or staked through the heart).

This is the perfect book for all those Twilight fans thinking “Now what do I read?” Kisses introduces readers to five different authors and I think everyone that reads this will find at LEAST one new favorite. My favorite story was Mead’s Sunshine. It gives an interesting piece of backstory to her excellent Vampire Academy series. I also liked the super dark and moody Lillith by Fracesca Lia block. It’s a reimagining of the biblical story of Adam’s evil first wife and it stands out as being the most serious of the stories. All in all this is a total must read for any vampire romance fan.