It’s Monday morning, the alarm clock just went off and everything is rush rush rush to get ready for the work week. Unfortunately there’s limited time for book talk, and even less for blogging, but we still MUST share some book thoughts before we dive into the day. A Monday Mini is a quick little review typed with one hand, while coffee is made, makeup is applied and car keys are found with the other. Have a great Monday morning!

Chime
by Franny Billingsley

Published March 17th 2011 by Dial
More at:
Goodreads
Website

From Goodreads:
Before Briony’s stepmother died, she made sure Briony blamed herself for all the family’s hardships. Now Briony has worn her guilt for so long it’s become a second skin. She often escapes to the swamp, where she tells stories to the Old Ones, the spirits who haunt the marshes. But only witches can see the Old Ones, and in her village, witches are sentenced to death. Briony lives in fear her secret will be found out, even as she believes she deserves the worst kind of punishment.

Then Eldric comes along with his golden lion eyes and mane of tawny hair. He’s as natural as the sun, and treats her as if she’s extraordinary. And everything starts to change. As many secrets as Briony has been holding, there are secrets even she doesn’t know.

Very interesting little read here but ultimately I was a bit underwhelmed.

I loved the language of the story (and I do mean loved), the sing-song way the characters spoke. Everyone spoke that way; humans as well as fae(-ish) and it made the mundane seem just as exciting as the magical. The main character Briony and I never really meshed what with her constant protests of just how wicked she was and yet nothing ever really happening. I wished it hadn’t taken until the last few pages of the book to let on to what was going on. The ending seemed very “And all of a sudden…” to me.

Adorable hero, Eldric- loved him instantly for his great sense of fun and willing to embrace the ridiculous. Briony’s sister Rose, quirky little thing that she was, would have made for a much more interesting story and I was disappointed whenever a scene was without her.

Eh.

Thoughts?

     Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
     Published January 26th 2010 by Dial
     (first published May 3rd 2007)

     More at:
     Goodreads
     Website

     First Line: “Finn had been flung on his face and chained to the      stone slabs of the transitway.”

They said it was paradise. A self-contained, delicately crafted, and thoughtfully detailed Utopia where the misguided degenerates from above were sent to be given a second chance at life, a place of reformation and of transcendence. The finest minds and scholars were called upon to enter the prison and guide it’s inmates on their experimental journey to reclamation. Once inside, scholar’s and inmates alike were forever closed off from the world they knew, leaving only the bright, remarkable, yet undiscovered future that awaits them within Incarceron.

For one hundred and fifty years Incarceron has remained closed, confident that the experiment was successful and those within lead new lives unencumbered by the outside world. For one hundred and fifty years…they have lied.

Incarceron is no mere holding cell, it has morphed into a living, breathing thing, its inhabitants becoming part of its make up, of its very being, their lives changing with each new warped, twisted metamorphosis the prison makes. It is dark. It is evil. It is forever and inescapable. Few of the scholars remain, their hold over the Prison severed long ago, and their understanding of how Incarceron operates, lost.

But there are whispers. Whispers that live within the very walls of the prison itself. Whispers Incarceron knows to be true. Once, someone got out and once…someone new was put in. Outside, people start to to question the truth of Incarceron’s story, and inside, the prisoners…have found a way out.

     The decay was gradual and we were slow to recognize it. Then, one day, I had been talking with the Prison, and as I left the room, I heard it laugh. A low, mocking chuckle.
     The sound turned me cold. I stood in the corridor and the thought came to me of an ancient image I had once seen in a fragmented manuscript, of the enormous mouth of Hell devouring sinners.
     It was then I knew we had created a demon that would destroy us.
     -Lord Calliston’s Diary

Finn is a prisoner who was born and bred within Incarceron, but has memories of another world, and an unexplainable recollection of what the stars look like in the night sky. The inmates know he is different. He knows he is different, but no one would ever believe it possible that he came from the outside. No one enters the prison.

Claudia is the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, the man appointed by the royal family to safeguard the prison and it’s prisoners. It is his duty to preserve the mystery of the prison and conceal it’s only means of entrance. Claudia has been raised and molded to be Queen. Her father’s position and the necessity to keep the prison’s secret have made her into a powerful tool of the kingdom. She is soon to wed the royal family’s second son, a dimwitted, cruel boy who is a distant second to the heir that was lost some years ago. Claudia doesn’t trust her father one bit, and the very idea of being forced to marry the Prince has made her reckless. When she steals an odd crystal key hidden away in her father’s study, she hears Finn’s voice from deep within it, a voice she knows she has heard before.

I made myself sick reading this book. I mean that in the best way possible, in that I didn’t eat, move, answer the phone, sleep, or remember to breathe. I love the mad rush that comes with not being able to focus on anything else until you KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Suspenseful and disturbingly imaginative, I didn’t dare stop reading for fear that this ever changing story would continue to evolve without me.

Claudia lives in a world so under the control of the Queen and the Warden that it is just as oppressive as any prison. The late king had commanded that the people maintain a sort of theme, act out a past era and they live in a make believe world of castles and poofy skirts and deceit. All the technology and intelligence their civilization has uncovered must be carefully masked under the king’s ordered facade, where as in contrast the prison is a jumble of mutation and robotics. It made it impossible to comfortably place the story in any set time period. I could have been reading historical fantasy or science fiction or neither. When first introduced to Incarceron I immediately pictured the prison as being something underground, inescapable yes but just under foot and very real. I was just a bit, dead wrong.

The story is told both within and out of the prison, each existence unfathomable to the other and both not knowing just how close they really are. Incarceron is a horrible place, but I’m not so sure the world that Fisher has created outside is any better. I don’t know what I want to happen! Finn is our hero (or so we think), but these are prisoners, most of them were locked up for a reason. Do I want there to be a way out of Incarceron?

Sapphique, the sequel was released December 28, 2010 and a book fairy was kind enough to lend it to me. Holiday goings on have limited reading time and I know I want to have a clear schedule before I pick it up and get book lost. Have you read this? What do you want to happen?

Reading Level:: Young Adult/Fantasy
Pages: 352
Publisher: October 6th 2009 by Dial

In the Dells there live monsters of breathtaking beauty. With scales and fur of every hue, the country side at times is itself a rainbow. The monsters are lovely, and their magnificence lulls you, drawing you in, entranced by the visions before you, making you long to possess or touch them.

And then they kill you.

The monsters of the Dells are creatures to fear for even the most harmless ones are still monsters. And there aren’t only monster animals, with their flashing beaks and talons itching for blood. There are human monsters too, of unsurpassed resplendence who are so beautiful it hurts to look at them and who’s beauty, just as with other monsters, can draw you in to your death.

Fire is a human monster with the power to alter the minds and thoughts of humans and monsters alike. In a kingdom riddled with unrest, on the brink of war, a monster with the ability to detect a liar, redirect an assassin or even, more importantly, influence a king could be a great asset or she could be a greater danger to the kingdom then it’s sworn enemies ever could.

Even Fire, with all her beauty and power has enemies. Men and women seek to control her, or possess her, both out of love and loathing and she has learned to steel her mind and body against them- but there are things that not even Fire can protect herself from.

The Dells know nothing of the seven kingdoms beyond the mountains and they are unaware of the existence of the Graced. They would never think twice about a young boy with one eye gray and the other red, even if they watched him engage in acts of cruelty or control. They would believe him kind, and good- if he told them to.

________________

I type this book-drunk. My head is spinning and I’m not quite sure how I got here and the last thing I can remember is being on a horse, riding towards an enemy army and then the rest is a blur. How it comes to pass that I am sitting on a couch in the safety of my own home I guess I’ll never figure out because as far as I know, I haven’t been here and I don’t even live here anymore.

Cashore writes of Gracelings and monsters- creatures with powers we could never comprehend existing in our mundane lives. She writes fantasy fiction, straight forward and true to form but where she differs, and far excels others in her genre is in her uncanny ability to completely remove her reader from reality- mind, body and soul and plant them quite fixedly in the world of her creation where she doesn’t even have to compel them to stay because they truly don’t want to leave. In her world, it is her characters who have the power, but I think Cashore’s Grace far surpasses those of her heroes and heroines.

Fire is a superb creation. Imaginative, vivid and at times disturbing. She creates a past already severe on its own and then meticulously adds details to it that pull at all the threads of your heart. I feel so awful for what Fire has suffered and suffers but I never once pitied her, for she’s far too strong for that. And oh the romance in this book! I’ve never wanted to see two people together more!

I’m enamoured of these books and their world. An instant favorite, just like it’s predecessor. I -loved- this book and I feel lost outside of it. You can read this without having read Graceling but the impact of one particular character’s involvement will be lost on you. He’s there to scare you and he’s much scarier if you already know who he is.

If you’ve read both books:

Has Cashore ever addressed the childlessness and aversion to marriage that drives her ladies in her books in relationship to her own life, in perhaps an interview? I’d be interested to read it if so. Her female leads are very strong willed people who possess none of the traits in female leads in a lot of fiction today. They never lose their heads over a guy, they never fall in love with the wrong one, they don’t want to be loved in the traditional sense and even actively try to dissuade it. It’s very, very refreshing. I accept most books at face value and concern myself only with the story but she’s so adamant about her character’s traits that I wonder how they connect to her own life. Thoughts?