Finding Angel by Kat Heckenbach

Storyline: Angel doesn't remember her magical heritage...but it remembers her. Magic and science collide when she embarks on a journey to her true home, and to herself.

Angel lives with a loving foster family, but dreams of a land that exists only in the pages of a fantasy novel. Until she meets Gregor, whose magic Talent saves her life and revives lost memories. She follows Gregor to her homeland...a world unlike any she has imagined, where she travels a path of self-discovery that leads directly to her role in an ancient Prophecy...and to the madman who set her fate in motion.

My Thoughts: After reading the sample on Amazon, I simply had to buy this book. Angel is a very fun character, and she's not even the best yet. (My favorite is Kalek. He's an Elven rocker. How cool is that?) I loved the setting. The peaceful island farm, the forest of magical trees, and the town that reminds me of a quieter, more Irish version of Hogsmeade, are such lovely places to visit between the pages of this book. The mystery kept me turning pages, and I finished this book much more quickly than I wanted to.

Angel's prophecy kind of confused me when it entered the story, but some of that was resolved by a re-read. I kept losing track of the words of the prophecy. It might not have been a problem had I been reading a real copy and not the un-flippable Kindle version.

The cover is very pretty, and suits the story in a way you probably won't guess.

Recommendation: Read this if you like magic and fairytales (and especially if you also like science!) Fans of Donita K. Paul's Dragon Keeper Chronicles might especially like it. Yes, there are dragons. :)

Author's site
Finding Angel on Amazon

Tortoiseshell cats are like snowflakes

Kissa is immune to mad science.

How Tortoiseshell Cats Show The Limits Of Cloning.

Conundrums of "Twilight"

I visited Forks, Washington the summer I was sixteen, and adored it - I'd wanted to go to Olympic National Park ever since I knew it existed. It's soo beautiful. A few years later, I decided to read Twilight before I knew much more than the setting, just because I had loved the forest so much. (I found the book disappointing.) I lived in the Olympic Peninsula area for a summer a few years later, so I know a lot about the geography and what the place is like. We ate pizza in the diner in the exact same booth Bella and her dad do in the movie, without even knowing it. . . not sure how I feel about that. :P

Anyhow, I know lots of details in Twilight that are pretty ridiculous, and this one is my favorite.

In the book, as Edward drives Bella home from Port Angeles, he goes way over the speed limit, insanely fast, and says that he can do that because of his superhuman reflexes. (Let's try to ignore the fact that she went there because she wanted books. I mean, come on. UPS delivers in Forks! And the library's pretty decent, actually. They have books about local Native American myths and everything. I know, I know, I'm being too picky.)

source

Highway 101 between Port Angeles and Forks snakes along the shore of Lake Crescent in tight curves. It's narrow, has blind curves and crazy drivers from Seattle, and it's wet and slippery in the winter. There is no way at all any car, not even one driven by the Stig, could go 110 mph around those curves. Cars are heavy and affected by physics. The only way Edward could manage it is if he had a magical car. A special vampire car. One that can go intangible whenever it meets a normal car, so it doesn't crash. If that's actually what it was, that would be cool, but it's just a Volvo!

If Edward tried, he would end up in the lake. He might not mind, but Bella probably would. :P

It's no wonder they didn't try to put that in the movie, because special effects/computer animation would definitely be required. :D

Monster Blood Tattoo, book 1 - Foundling, by D. M. Cornish

The cover. So cool!

Storyline: Set in the world of the Half-Continent—a land of tri-corner hats and flintlock pistols—the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy is a world of predatory monsters, chemical potions and surgically altered people. Foundling begins the journey of Rossamund, a boy with a girl’s name, who is just about to begin a dangerous life in the service of the Emperor. What starts as a simple journey is threatened by encounters with monsters—and people, who may be worse. Learning who to trust and who to fear is neither easy nor without its perils, and Rossamund must choose his path carefully.

My thoughts: I LOVE this book. I first read it in 2010, just before Factotum (the third book) came out, and again just recently. With Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings, it's one of my most favorite series I've ever read. I don't want to compare them, though. This book is just as awesome, but completely different.

I like Rossamünd a lot, he's a wonderful character. He may be "too small and too meek" and have a girl's name, but he handles the things that happen to him with surprising bravery. The book has lots of interesting characters, but he's my favorite.

There are plenty of encounters with monsters, and some mysterious clues to revelations from the next book that are dreadfully curiosity-making. By the end of the book I was desperate to get to the library for the next one and find out what it all meant. (And boy, did it surprise me... but that's another review.)

The world is like steampunk, but really, it's biopunk. The inventions are fascinating and incredibly cool. There are lahzars, people who are surgically altered to have superhuman powers (they must pay for it all their lives). There are ships powered by engines made of muscles. The sea is caustic acid; and it's coldest in the south, because the Half-Continent is in the southern hemisphere of its planet. 

The concept of threwd has to be the single coolest invention I've ever encountered in a fantasy book. Think of that creeping feeling you get when you're outdoors and suddenly feel like you're not alone, like something is watching you, when there's nothing there. In MBT this is pretty significant. (No spoilers. You should read it and find out!)

Cons: To keep this review from being too glowing, I will mention a few things.

The first time I read the book, I was frustrated with Rossamünd for not realizing more quickly that the riverboat captain was lying to him. It drove me crazy. It makes sense to me now, but back then it was exasperating.

The rich language and wonderfully inventive words Cornish created I really like, and I had fun reading it, but some others might have trouble following and keeping track of meanings. There's an explicarium at the back of the book that helps with that, though. I used my dictionary app a lot while I was reading and enjoyed learning the new words. I'm a nerd, LOL. ;)

For parents, since this is a children's book: The author, D. M. Cornish, is a Christian, and while not being overtly religious at all, it feels right, somehow. There's nothing to object to here, unless you don't like the occasional invented curse word or something like that. (On the other hand, if you're not a Christian, you most likely won't notice any difference. It's in the eye of the beholder.)

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