amaliehoward.com

One word. WOW!

Six words. HURRAH FOR MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW!

Cassandra Clare is quickly becoming one of my favorite young adult authors, up there with the likes of Kristin Cashore (see my reviews of Graceling and Fire), Holly Black, and Melissa Marr. City of Glass, the third book in the Mortal Instruments series was absolutely fantastic. It was a well-written, character-driven, action-packed journey that I loved every minute of. I finished City of Glass in 4 hours. And yes, my signature “book-affair” after effect – ragged lips indeed. Yes, I know it’s gross but when I don’t even know that I am literally eating myself, you can bet your pants that it is a good book.

My absolute, unequivocal favorite thing about City of Glass was the multiple points of view. I LOVED the fact that we could see into the motivations and thoughts of each of the main characters – Clary, Jace, Simon, Luke and Isabelle. I’m not really going to go into any kind of tirade at this point (ok maybe just a little) but the single point of view phenomenon made popular by a saga that shall remain nameless really drives me nuts. Don’t get me wrong, the single POV can work especially if you really delve into one character, but for urban fantasy when you have multiple characters, it’s a lot more exciting when you get to explore different characters who have different strengths/weakness. Everything is not about 1 main protagonist and his/her view on the world which can get boring and one-dimensional.

Clare does a fabulous job of keeping each of these POVs exciting and bringing them together at the right moment. I especially like the cliffhangers within chapters where the POV switches to someone else. To give further credit to the author, I really don’t know which character was my favorite – I think I connected with each one of them, which of course made me connect more with the book as a whole. On the POV front, I think publishers underestimate the value of teens to appreciate and more importantly, grasp, a multi-layered POV story. In my humble opinion, it just makes the books richer. And of course, anything that addresses social interaction and real relationships (not just one-sided accounts) can only help teens/readers become more cognitive of what drives actual human connections. Ok, tirade finished.

So brief summary of City of Glass. This book takes place in Idris, the Shadowhunter world. Clary, the main protagonist,  goes to Idris to find a warlock who can make a potion to save her mother, who is still in a coma of her own doing. There she meets up with the rest of the gang – Jace (her sort-of brother slash not her brother slash her crush), Simon (best friend turned vampire), Isabelle and Alec (Shadowhunter brother and sister), and Luke (father figure slash ex-Shadowhunter slash werewolf). The gang joins up in a race against time to stop Valentine (corrupt ex-Shadowhunter) who is intent on destroying the world as they know it. Clary continues to develop her runic powers – she can invent new runes and succeeds in getting the Clave to bind Shadowhunters and Downworlders (vamps, weres, fey, etc.) to win the war against Valentines and his demon army. Meanwhile, she’s still in love with Jace, and vice versa. They discover toward the end that Jace is not really Valentine’s son, and therefore not her brother (woohoo on the non-icky kissing!) Jace defeats his brother Sebastian (nee Jonathan). Clary defeats her father, Valentine. Everyone parties in Alicante like it’s 1999. That’s just the main story but there’s so much going on in this book that it’s diffcult to summarize the myriad of things in addition to the above like Alec’s relationship with Magnus, or Simon’s development as a vampire and his relationship with his “kind,” or Jocelyn’s (Clary’s mother) relationship with Valentine, that truly make this book a fantastic YA read. Now this is NYT Bestseller material.

The imagery was wonderful – I felt at times that I was in Alicante! The writing was fast-paced and kept building straight to the end with an oh-so-satisfying fight scene/conclusion. The plot was fascinating and Clare made sure to tie up all loose ends (something I find missing in a lot of books with this much detail and side-stories going on).

I closed this book with a sigh of complete satisfaction, and that’s saying a lot. I give City of Glass a resounding 4.5 out of 5 stars. The 0.5 deduction was really for some of the incestuous undertones which disturbed me a bit, more so in the earlier two books. It made everything ok at the end of the 3rd book to discover that Clary and Jace aren’t in fact related, but reading it while it was happening didn’t really do me any favors. It was just a bit awkward - I really loved Clary and Jace, and totally wanted them to be together but of course, given that they were brother and sister, that made it just a tad difficult. But that’s personal preference and social programming for you.

City of Glass was awesome! Read the trilogy, you won’t be disappointed.

I chalk this one down to passing the time on Metro North. Fairy Tale was a quick-enough story and I finished it in less than a couple hours which was good considering it’s not all that big. The only thing different about this book was that the person who turns into a fairy is a boy (and not a girl as you’d expect from the recent flux of fairy material).

The story is from the point of view of the male fairy’s girlfriend, Morgan. Switched with a human baby at birth, her boyfriend Cam is a sickly changeling who recovers and grows up as a human (with fabulous football skills). Basically, he turns…um…shrinks into a fairy because the fairy people want him back as he is the heir to the fairy throne. On his 16th birthday he has to cross over to the fairy world to take his place as King. In return, the fairy people send back the boy they switched, who in a strange turn of events starts off weird-looking and becomes very handsome, and the protagonist falls for him (giving up the guy she’s convinced she’s meant to be with).

I just didn’t get this story. The worst thing for me was that I didn’t really connect with any of the characters. The only character who made me perk up a bit was Dawn (the fairy sent to retrieve Cam), and the author just did not deliver on how awesome her character could have been. The rest of them, even Morgan, seemed very two-dimensional to me, and consequently, the story itself felt quite flat with not enough development of its plot and relationship between the characters. The writing was young, suitable for a younger audience than your standard fantasy YA fare.

I’d give Fairy Tale 2 out of 5 stars (and that’s pushing it).

So not bad for the final ABC’s V episode for 2009. I did think that it did get a little weird with the whole Anna “bask-in-me” sun thing. That was more than a little strange. But I guess they’re lizards, so they have to bask in something.

I LOVED some of Anna’s evil faces! After she said “skin him,” I think I actually felt a little nauseous. Dianna from the original series would no doubt be proud. I think it would have been way hotter for Anna to make a move on the TV reporter than for him to have some medical anomaly. That was predictable and boring. At least make him come back for some “bliss” with Queen Lizard instead of “I’m dying, put me higher on your donor list.”

The last episode had some good moments, including the hybrid pregnancy of the V/human couple, especially since in the original series, we had two hybrid babies – one lizardy and one more human (although I seem to remember a stinky little lizard tongue with the human-looking one….eww gross). That last scene with the V ships waiting to come to Thanksgiving dinner just didn’t do it for me. Too much, too soon.

Then again, a lot can happen between now and March 2010! Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day… At least we’ll all be nice and fat.

V is back March 2010.

PS – Get vaccinated. The H1N1 vaccine is unrelated to aliens trying to kill us all.

National Novel Writing Month is in its last few days, currently reporting a 1,708,584,120 collective word count on the NaNoWriMo website. Things are really starting to get down to the wire. I am FREAKING out…especially considering that I’ve split up my word count into two novels. Whoa! Yep you read that right – it’s now a split endeavor.

So far, my word count on Novel #1 is 22,253, which means I didn’t do squat on it since my last post on the subject – Update Day 11. Which SUCKS. But my update on Novel #2 is 14,627. So my cumulative total is 36,880. So not entirely horrible.

ONLY 13,120 to go with 5 days, 10 hours, 26 minutes and 34 seconds left!!!

In the rush of all the new modern fantasy novels, television shows, and movies, I wanted to write about a true fantasy classic, The Neverending Story. I’ve seen this movie about twenty times, and each time it just doesn’t get old. It doesn’t have to have the most advanced CGI or special screen effects, it’s all about the story: a boy, a book, a quest to save an empress, and a fantasy world called Fantasia.

When Bastian, a sensitive boy who gets bullied at school, finds a book called The Neverending Story, he starts reading and gets drawn into a fantasy adventure of a boy’s quest to save Fantasia from a terrible thing called the Nothing. Bastian follows Atreyu, the hero in the story, through his quest to find a human child to save Fantasia, fighting his fears and finding courage along the way, until the fantasy world and the book merge into one. Bastian realizes he is the human child Atreyu has been seeking, and is the only one who can save Fantasia from total obliteration.

I still cry when Atreyu’s horse sinks to his death in quicksand. My heart races when Atreyu runs between the statues with the lasers. And that black wolf still scares the pants off me even though it looks little more than a stuffed muppet wolf. And who doesn’t love the coolness of Falcor, the luck dragon?!

The Neverending Story is a rich, fantastic, imaginative adventure that everyone, old and young, will love. If you haven’t seen it, get it. You won’t be disappointed. I give The Neverending Story 5 stars.

OMG – Stefan and Elena totally did the deed. Yep, she finally gave it up to the vampire behind Door #1 – Stefan Salvatore. They (the writers, producers, etc.) had me at “I love you” and the first vamp-face scene, and then lost me. How do you go from getting all vamped-out from kissing and then nada. At least have some pillow bite scenes or something! Ok, I get that it’s PG13 but he’s a VAMPIRE for crying out loud – it doesn’t go away when you would think things would heat up some! Ok fine, the gratuitous shots of Stefan’s manilicious abs made up for it. A little.

And seriously does Caroline just have a sign on her forehead that says – “hey vampires, I enjoy long walks at night, candle-lit beat-downs by vampires, come get me!” Wow, she just walks into it every time. First Damon and then Logan…well almost. Nice face-plant on the window. Ouch! On that note, I’m glad that Logan got staked. He sucked. Way too smarmy for me. Boy did I enjoy the part where Stefan gave him the “don’t ever threaten me” smack-down. Nice. Little vampire machismo never hurt anyone…or ratings.

So what’s with the “I’m just cranky lately” Tyler and the slow camera zoom of the moon – werewolf anyone? No stones unturned here. I do have to say that I am a big Jeremy fan. I really hope that they do something cool with him. He’s a cutie.

Questions of the night: How did Logan get turned? What’s with Katherine and her cronies? Aren’t they supposed to be dead/trapped? Or slumbering in the tomb? What’s with Alaric’s ring? Is he a relative of Stefan/Damon’s? There was a lot of “ring” talk in this episode which makes me wonder about the connection between them all.

So here’s what I think about that. Alaric is a vampire vampire-hunter. You read that right. He’s a vampire AND he’s a vampire-hunter. That would be freaking cool.

Let’s just hope the thing Elena runs into is not a maenad. The True Blood fans know…just can’t deal with another one of those…

The Vampire Diaries returns to the CW on January 14th 2010.

New Moon drops tomorrow, Friday November 20th!

Check out my friend Brad Blanks’ (celebrity journalist extraordinaire) interview with every teen girl’s fantasy, Robert Pattinson aka Edward Cullen and his human love muffin, Kristin Stewart aka Bella Swan.

Brad Blanks interview with Robert Pattinson. Surprise, surprise, he interviews way better than he acts!

Brad Blanks interview with Kristen Stewart. This girl has a brain, even though she doesn’t come across this way in the media most of the time. Very interesting.

I finished this book with mixed feelings.

At first, I was reticent to read The Forest of Hands and Teeth because it was written in the first person and present tense, which for some reason seemed awkward to me. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to sink into and enjoy a novel written in present tense. But I was wrong – I really loved reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and for the most part, I completely forgot that I was reading in something other than the past tense. This is a credit to the author for being able to draw me in so completely that I didn’t mind the written tense. Her writing did what it was supposed to do – it transported me completely into her story-world.

So first things first, this novel is a zombie novel. That said, there’s really nothing new here conceptually. 1) Zombies try to get into fence-protected village where non-infected humans try to live a normal life. 2) Zombies get into said villages and kill everyone except main characters. 3) Main characters journey together to find other villages. 4) Zombies attack and kill everyone except main protagonist. 5) Protagonist survives to get to the ocean sans anyone else. Predictable? Sure, just a tad.

From the beginning this novel made me think of M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Village. Similar concept of a small self-sufficient village living outside of life as we know it, except there are real monsters (zombies or the Unconsecrated) instead of the fake monsters from The Village. It was also reminiscent of the Resident Evil films in terms of the descriptions and behavior of the zombies (clanging on fences surrounding any human communities and their overall appearance).

I expected more from the “Fast One” – the zombie that was a girl (Gabrielle) from another village who was faster than the rest. Carrie Ryan had the potential to have a water-tight and truly unique plot but I thought that there were many elements that either weren’t explored or too many loose ends that weren’t tied up.

Who was Gabrielle and why was she different? Why were the Sisterhood notching names of girls into the underground room? Where there others sent out before? What were their experiments? What were they doing when they released victims into the Forest? What made Gabrielle faster and the only different zombie? After all the build up with Mary’s mother, where is she? Why was there a second Village with no God versus Mary’s own village? What happened to Harry and Cass and Jacob?

It almost felt like the author ran out of steam, like one of those books where you get to the end and you’re in a sort of confused shock that you’ve already finished. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing like The Summoning where you have a huge build up and then nothing. It’s not really a crescendo…because it hasn’t really been building. It’s just been going and going, and then it ends.

Don’t get me wrong. I did enjoy reading this book (I read it in 1 day – if I hated it, it would take me at least 2 days to finish.) The writing in this book is amazing. You will read it and not want to put it down because the imagery is so compelling. But I found that when I was done, I really didn’t feel fulfilled. Instead, I felt a queer sense of disappointment. Sure the heroine survived and made it to the ocean, but it just felt empty to me. I felt the same kind of feeling when I watched that movie “Quarantine.” A sense of blah – she goes through all this stuff and then it gets to the end, and all you have is a strange sense of hmmm, ok.

I really, really wished for more with this book. It does have a really fabulous title, I’ll give it that hands down.

For compelling writing, graphic descriptions/imagery and exciting scenes, I give The Forest of Hands and Teeth 3 stars. But I expected a lot more.

It’s the beginning of the Twilight NEW MOON countdown! And yes, I totally have “The Final Countdown” playing in my head right now.

Below are two awesome interviews with the Twilight cast from my friend, Brad Blanks.

1) My own young wolf hotness (put a leash on that boy!) – Brad Blanks Interview with Taylor Lautner.

2) Edward Cullen’s freaky future-seeing sister Alice – Brad Blanks Interview with Ashley Greene.

“History Repeating” was a fantastic episode. Three words – HOLY ABS STEFAN! Seriously, does that guy work out like 500 hours a week? I normally don’t go for Stefan, I’m more of a Damon girl, but man – those abs…seriously! HOT!!!

Ok, ok. Back to a review of the episode, and not man candy abs. I got more emotion from Damon than I’ve seen in all previous episodes combined. I liked that they kept his sense of humor, “does dead flesh good…” I liked that Stefan got some points in this episode, I saw a lot more of Damon in him which was great. I don’t think it was only because they were switching roles (although that was quite funny) but he lost all of his lame moodiness.

Damon: I could rip your heart out and not think twice about it.

Stefan: Yeah I’ve heard that before.

I really enjoyed the Bonnie/Emily story and the way it just pulled everything together. Loved the ghost effect in the mirror when Emily possesses Bonnie – that was pretty cool. At the end of the episode, I almost expected a dead hand to reach through the ground, zombie-style, and be Katherine. But alas, that would be far too predictable.

My last thoughts – who is Alaric? First of all, love that actor, he is wicked hot. And how in tarnation does Logan come back???

I was finally able to get my hands on Fire by Kristen Cashore, thanks to Amazon. I finished it in two days on a trip to sunny Miami – Part 1 on the way there and Part 2 on the way back. I’m not entirely sure whether reading part 2 was affected after two days of meetings, but I will get to that later.

As always, first the good things. Kristin Cashore is a spectacular writer. I adore reading her books because of the flow, feeling and imagery. And I fall in love with her characters every time – you will recall my review of Graceling in an earlier post. In a similar manner, the characters of Fire just grabbed on to me taking me with them on their journey in the novel. Unlike my review of The Summoning earlier, this book as a bonified beginning, middle, and satisfying (oh, so satisfying) end.

Fire is a companion book to Graceling, which means it is set in the same made-up world, just a different area – specifically on the other side of some really big mountains, and it keeps the link with Graceling by keeping one character, Leck (the bad guy from Graceling). So the brief story-line is that Fire is a girl who is a “monster.” She lives in a fictional place called the Dells that has been torn apart by war, its previous king under the influence of Fire’s power-hungry monster father, Cansrel. These monsters look very much like animals/creatures in our world except they have very bright, beautiful colors and most, if not all, are predatory carnivores. Fire is marked as a monster by her flaming red hair, which she keeps covered to minimize attention (and attacks from other monsters). With their hypnotic colors, they have the ability to lure prey (humans and other monsters) to them using mind control. Fire’s power in this regard is extraordinary, and unlike her father, she tries to use her power for good instead of for evil.

Fighting off devoted attention from literally every single human and even the new King, Fire has to learn how to control her powers, deal with her growing feelings for Brigan, one of the princes, and help save the kingdom from evil plotters.

I loved the main characters, Fire and Brigan, as well as many of the supporting ones, like Brigan’s daughter Hanna or Fire’s father, Cansrel. I found the story to be well-thought out and exciting, keeping me interested. The idea of the monsters is truly a unique one, and I found that Cashore did a wonderful job executing the idea. I do have to note that I read mostly because of the relationship between Fire and Brigan – wanting to get to the point of where they would eventually get together. For me, I found that when they did, too many other things eclipsed the moment, and I felt that their love was overshadowed too much. I wanted MORE of  just them and I didn’t get it. The other thing that I want to note is that there are a lot of “relations” in this novel and quite a few pregnancies – maybe a smidge too much. Although in hindsight, the author probably emphasized this to highlight the fact that Fire took permanent measures to stop herself from ever having any offspring, which is a tragedy in itself.

So back to Part 2 and my earlier comment. I felt that the second half of the book, though filled with a lot more action and war, moved far more slowly. That, combined with less romantic tension or even resolution, between Fire and Brigan, changed the pacing for me. I found myself skipping over pages looking for when she’d find him or he’d find her. That’s probably the romantic sap in me, so someone else may likely not feel the way that I do.

The book, though easily understandable in terms of language, has many complex elements and plot twists which make it hard to follow at times. However to some degree, this complexity does help to make the story richer and broader than just a vanilla love story.

Fire is a romance with enough elements of action, drama, and fantasy to make it appeal to a wide range of readers. Well-written and well-executed concept. I give Fire 4 out of 5 stars.

I continue to be excited by the new series on ABC – V. The second episode was pretty good! It didn’t leave me hanging from the awesomeness of last week, which was a great thing, and it kept the tension going. Big fan of the alien skin special effects – can’t wait to see more of those. I really like the interaction between the two main “goodies” Erica and Father Jack, and I am starting to get into Tyler a little bit more (he was a little annoying in the pilot). Scott Wolf is growing on me – LOVE the part where Anna calls him to say thanks and then hangs up on him. I like the cat and mouse nature of that relationship, maybe the mouse has a few more surprises for the cat in future episodes. So speaking of Anna, the best surprise for me was seeing that look of reptilian coldness she displayed for a few seconds after Chad Decker’s interview – now that was reminiscent of some old-school, Diana-esque ‘you-piss-me-off-and-I’ll-eat-your-guts’ looks from the original series. Me likey.

Looks like things are now going to start to get interesting, nice peek at the next episode’s attention grabber, “there can be no peace.” I am waiting with bated breath for episode 3.

National Novel Writing Month is in full swing, currently reporting a 828,682,775 collective word count on the NaNoWriMo website. Not bad for 11 days of manic writing. Ok, so maybe the “manic” part hasn’t really started – usually that’s when things start getting down to the wire. I’m pretty sure that the thought of penning an average of 1,666.66 words a day will put most people into a tailspin. But as long as you don’t let your daily allocation slide, finding yourself in the last third of the month with a fever-inducing daily 4,000-word quota, you should be fine. Just let your fingers do the talking for the next month.

I’ll be reporting on my word count here, so you can check back to see how things are coming along with the new novel. So far, my word count is 22,252 (about 75 pages), which means I’m tracking an average of just over 2,000 words a day. This is just a per day average – most of my actual typing happens over the weekend or at night as part of a well-thought out “write-until-I-pass-out” approach. It’s not necessarily the most sane approach but it seems to be working at present. I’ll keep you posted on word count and sanity.

Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil.

I was pleasantly surprised by Highway to Hell. I have to admit that my expectations were a bit low when I started this book, not for any other reason than my  disappointment with some of my more recent young adult selections.  But this one sucked me in, made me laugh, and made me chew my cheeks (always a good indication, if not habit). Sorry, I know it’s gross.

So anyway, first the good things. Great writing and dialogue! The language was witty and trendy, and flowed well. Unlike a lot of other main female protagonists, I found that Maggie was an extremely well-developed and well-thought out character with a ton of personality. I saw a lot of myself in her which made me identify more with her and the book. That was the first thing that got me hooked. Secondly, I enjoyed the relationship between the two girls a lot. I liked how they played off of each other. Their interaction and dialogue felt very real which made these two characters come alive on the page. The only one who really didn’t feel whole for me, for some reason, was Justin. I’m not sure why – maybe it was that I just didn’t believe that Maggie had a boyfriend or maybe I didn’t want her to have a boyfriend. Thirdly, I loved the setting. The imagery and scene descriptions were extremely vivid. When the author said that it was hot, I felt hot. Lastly, it was a fast-paced, exciting story that kept me hooked until the end. The chupacabra demon got me the minute the author talked about its “glowing red eyes.” I absolutely loved the last battle showdown with the demon!

Now for the bad things. Ok, well there weren’t really all that much, and I wouldn’t classify them necessarily as “bad.” My biggest peeve was that I did get a little irritated to the constant movie references, and that was despite me being a complete movie-head myself. I LOVE movies, but I found that the constant reference became a little tiresome after a while. Also some of the parts of the story with Dona Isabel didn’t really work. Something about the way she was didn’t add up for me – I wanted her to be more powerful like the vision of her on the horse early on – strong and arrogant, not nochalant and ready to give up. It felt a little contrived considering she was the one who’d entrapped the demon in the first place. Lastly, I would have liked to have seen more of the romance between Lisa and Zeke, but I’m just a sap like that.

Chock full of sarcastic verbal banter and witty rebuttals, Highway to Hell was a fun and edgy teen read from start to finish. All in all, I’d say 3 and a half out of 5 stars.

“About three things I was absolutely certain. First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe. Second, there was a vampire part of him–which I assumed was wildly out of his control–that wanted me dead. And third, I unconditionally, irrevocably, impenetrably, heterogeneously, gynecologically, and disreputably wished he had kissed me.”

Ok I have seriously got the giggles and I can’t stop. Enter Nighlight, a parody. Just looking at the cover made me laugh, and when I read the blurb, I literally had to hold my stomach from laughing so hard.

Keep reading.

“Pale and klutzy, Belle arrives in Switchblade, Oregon looking for adventure, or at least an undead classmate. She soon discovers Edwart, a super-hot computer nerd with zero interest in girls. After witnessing a number of strange events–Edwart leaves his tater tots untouched at lunch! Edwart saves her from a flying snowball!–Belle has a dramatic revelation: Edwart is a vampire. But how can she convince Edwart to bite her and transform her into his eternal bride, especially when he seems to find girls so repulsive?

Complete with romance, danger, insufficient parental guardianship, creepy stalker-like behavior, and a vampire prom, Nightlight is the uproarious tale of a vampire-obsessed girl, looking for love in all the wrong places.”

I am a Twilight fan, no doubt. I enjoyed the books, and am very excited for the New Moon movie to be released in a couple weeks. So why am I writing about this? Well, at the end of the day, spoofing to me is a curious form of flattery. As with most spoofs, you’d have to have read the books to understand the humor parallels and get the actual parody, so it wouldn’t be something that I’d recommend reading in isolation. But if you’ve read the Twilight saga and you’re looking for a good laugh, this book looks like it will hit the spot. I cannot wait for the movie version of this – I know it’s coming, just don’t know when yet.

If you want to buy Nightlight, it’s available today at Amazon. You can also read a copy of the first chapter at Entertainment Weekly just to see what’s hilariously in store.

I just did, and I think I just peed my pants! Hilarious!

I cannot remember the last time I wanted to throw a book across the room in absolute, unequivocal disgust. Calm down, believe it or not, this is a good review. Well, sort of. I totally wanted to toss this book through a closed window, just not for the reasons you’d expect. The Summoning was AMAZING. I literally could not stop reading it, turning page after page, and chewing the insides of my cheek like I had some kind of obsessive/compulsive disorder (they’re pretty ratty right now to be honest – I may need to go find some mediocre books just to let them heal).

So as usual, good things first. From the first page, I was sucked in. By the end of the first chapter, I was gone, hook, line and sinker. Captivated. I loved the story. It wasn’t necessarily original, but the author weaved and twisted it enough to make it different.

Chloe Saunders can see ghosts, but she defines it as necromancy, which gives it some added dimension. It’s not just about Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense or Jennifer Love-Hewitt in Ghost Whisperer. This is more of a power that doesn’t just talk to the dead, it can raise the dead. Add in a superhero twist along the line of the popular series Heroes, a fake home for mentally-distressed kids, power-hungry doctors trying to control these so-called supernaturals, and you’ve got a recipe for something really interesting, not to mention gripping. When you take all of those plot and character elements and mix in Armstrong’s incisive imagery, effortless dialogue, and non-stop pacing, you get absolute book magic. I was in book heaven…until I got kicked in the teeth.

And that brings me to the bad thing. Yes, I wrote “thing”, as in singular. And it’s bad, really BAD…as in administer a beat-down bad. WHO ENDS A BOOK THIS WAY?! Seriously. The supernaturals escape the house, are chased by doctors, get split up, are betrayed by the protagonist’s aunt, tell a ghost it’s dead, and then you END? I am so dissatisfied that instead of going out and buying part 2 of this series, I will not, purely on principle. The principle of cheeks that I will never get back – and now, there’s no excuse whatsoever, no fantastic climactic rush of “that was wicked!” commonly found at the end of a great book, to have made the pain of self-chewing worth it.

You read me right. People read to get to a climax, to get some sort of closure, a let-down after a huge emotional build-up. And that was so NOT the case with this book. I got to the end and thought to myself – there must be a mistake, maybe some pages are missing? I read them again and checked again. Nope, that was it. It really just ended. I have never felt so completely cheated in my life (I guess I should thank my lucky stars that it was just by a book).

For this reason, I rate this book 3 stars out of 5, instead of 5 stars. That’s right – two whole stars for making me feel like an un-paid Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Would I recommend The Summoning? Yes, absolutely. It was a gripping, well-written page-turner. But be forewarned. You will probably get as mad as I did, and no doubt, be walking around with a raging case of literary blue balls. You read that right too. I’m about to give mine pet-names.

Episode of the chipmunk vampire. Ok, just kidding, I actually liked Lexi – she was quite spunky and sassy in her own way. And I LOVED how she was with Damon. Thought it sucked that they staked her.

Damon, Damon, Damon – what shall we do with you? Just when I was falling for your sexiness, it gets undermined by your callous deviousness. I do have to admit though, that that show of power by Stefan made him shoot up a ton in my hotometer.

Damon (after Stefan stakes him just shy of his heart): “You missed.”

Stefan: “No, you saved my life, I’m sparing yours. We’re even. And now we’re done.”

Yowzer! We definitely need more man-vamp Stefan! He was just getting way too broody so I’m really glad that the CW ramped it up a bit. I totally loved him taking control for once, and not getting the beat-down from Damon (even though Damon should have technically been stronger from drinking human blood).

I also predicted after the last episode (Haunted) that I thought Damon did a little more to Jeremy than just erase his memories about Vicky. And now even Elena suspects that he has done something more. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Damon has his own agenda, and he’s only out for Damon. Even his own brother confirmed it, “You never do anything for anyone but yourself.” I’m sure there’s much more to come…

Ok, I know this is more or less a fantasy site, but seriously, how could I not post something about V, the new ABC series based on the 1980′s mini-series of alien encounters, and mass human deception and manipulation! Not only was I a child of the 80′s, but I absolutely loved V, and loved it to completely unhealthy levels. Originally airing in 1983 and 1984, the V miniseries was a television sci-fi event that went beyond “regular” TV for me. It was shocking and scary and totally addicting.

So first of all, let’s compare cast members. I must admit that Joel Gretsch as Father Jack Landry bore a pretty solid resemblance to Marc Singer as Mark Donovan in the original series. I liked the bridge that that created between the old series and this 2009 version. The connection is important to me because it’s a remake of the old series, just with way better special effect and cinematography tools (cool alien ships, gross reptilian skin, fancy alien weaponry).

I’m not really sure that Morena Baccarin as Anna can really top Jane Badler as Diana though. First of all, Diana is a bad-ass name – I really wish they hadn’t changed it. On the hotness scale, I’d say they were neck and neck. I need to see some deep-seated primal, reptilian evil to see if Anna can truly compete with Diana. Only because I think I wanted to be a 10 year old version of Diana. Scary, I know. I’ll weigh in on the other characters once the series gets going. I do have to say though that I like the cast so far. Love Scott Wolf and Morris Chestnut!!

All in all, great start for the pilot episode.The action was fast-paced. The aliens were hot. The special effects were cool.  With this kind of acting, writing, and special effect features – it’s going to be a great season for this series. Can’t wait to see how the alien babies come out!

V airs on ABC Tuesdays 8/7c