What's Hot? Anime.

Sword Art Online. 

I haven't watched too many animes, but I've loved those that I have seen. Even though there are often English dubbed episodes available, I still prefer to watch anime with the original Japanese voices because it feels a bit wrong to watch anime with a squeaky American voice over the top. I was looking for a really good anime, with lots of romance but also some sort of other purpose and my friend recommended Sword Art Online to me and I really regret not listening to his advice sooner, because it was awesome! 

Story

SAO is basically about Kirito, a teenage boy, who is really into gaming and was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the one thousand beta testers of a new game: Sword Art Online. This game is like pretty much any other video game (it kinda reminds me of Zelda) except you're plugged into the system via NerveGear which is like a helmet that you put you put on whilst playing and your human body basically turns comatose until you log out of the game. The beta test is really successful so it isn't long before the game is mass produced and there are ten thousand players plugged into the system (think Matrix). The only problem is, this time they can't log out. It turns out this isn't a glitch in the system, but something put in place by the SAO's creator in order to trap these ten thousand people in a virtual reality. To make matters worse, your prolonged existence in the real world, depends on your ability to stay alive in the virtual reality. When your HP reaches zero in SAO, your real body will also die. The only way to escape SAO is to reach level 100, beating the boss at each level. Still thinking this doesn't sound so hard? Well, the boss on each level is pretty much impossible to get past, unless you're Kirito with bags of experience from the beta test. Within a few weeks, thousands of the players have died and those that remain are desperate to reach the top. Instead of partying up with other players, the safer option, Kirito insists on making his way through the game alone, but on his way up he meets Asuna, another pretty damn good player, and from then on their stories are intertwined.

SAO is actually split into two series, there's a part one and a part two. The paragraph above is a very brief summary of the premise of part one but I can't really tell you anything about part two without giving away what happens at the end of part one. There is quite a definite divide in between the two series and although part two continues straight on from the end of part one, the two stories are really different and yet really similar at the same time. I suppose the general structure and set up of part two is the same as part one, but as  the plot is different and the characters have developed a lot.

Personally, I found the story to be really emotional and I mean genuine emotions and not the sort of emotions induced by a whishy-washy rom-com. I think I cried several times whilst watching SAO because  it is really heartbreaking at times. The first half of part one is quite action based and I didn't find this part as interesting as the second half of part one. However, the first few episodes are very good for setting the story up and introducing different characters. I think this first half was needed to establish that this game was no joke and that the subject matter of this series was actually quite serious. I do not mean to say that this series is serious as it's actually quite amusing and heartwarming at times, but I think that the creators were really good at mixing the lighthearted material with the fact that all the characters were trapped in a virtual reality where most of them were doomed to die and the balancing of these two things is what made this series so great.

Characters
I think that character development and character relations can be quite weak in animes, but I think it was very much the opposite in SAO. There are many, many characters that come and go, but the two protagonists are Kirito and Asuna. I found the relationship between the pair of the to be absolutely beautiful and it developed at exactly the right pace (no insta-love to be seen - hooray!). There were a few moments where I thought the relationship between some characters was getting a little weird, but these moments were infrequent and pretty inconsequential. (I also think that what I think is weird, probably didn't seem that weird to Japanese people). Kirito plays a much larger role than Asuna and therefore you can see the relationship between himself and many other characters play out too and those are equally well developed and allow you to see the different sides of Kirito. Unsurprisingly, the characters are all very much affected by their traumatic experiences in SAO and I'm glad the character development reflected this and everything that happened was rather logical, despite the fact that this is a fantasy.

Artwork
I don't think that the graphics in terms of fluidity of movement and all that jazz was particularly outstanding or noteworthy; however, I do feel that the stills that you could gleam from this series (i.e. screenshotting certain moments) were really beautiful. The characters themselves, the costumes, the scenery etc. is all really intricate and just darn cool. If you're not going to watch this series, then at least google 'Sword Art Online' so you can see for yourself the awesome images which are either really bright and colourful or dark and sinister looking. The way that things look is probably one of my favourite things about this series and I'll definitely be  drawing (make that attempting to draw) a couple of the stills.

OST
I think I listened to the SAO OST before I actually began watching it and that was the final push in getting me to start watching. I believe that the OST of any drama/anime is so important as it really sets the tone of the whole series and the SAO OST complemented the action so perfectly. It wasn't just the opening and ending tracks that had me hooked, but also the score from the actual episodes, so the background music during fight scenes, romantic scenes etc. The opening/ending tracks actually change half way through when part two starts and I think that perhaps the OST for part two is slightly better, though, all four tracks are excellent. I think I'm going to download the SAO score and play it in the background as I go about life just to make everything seem more dramatic and important because it really was that awesome. Usually I don't pay much attention to the score as in general the opening and ending theme songs tend to stick out a lot more, but not with SAO. In this case, the score was probably even better than the opening/ending tracks which is quite a rarity.

Conclusion
All in all, this anime has a great plot, great characters, beautiful artwork and an emotional OST - I don't think it's done anything wrong. A perfect balance between romance and action is struck in SAO so I think it will appeal to all anime fans, whether male or female. I am completely in love with the OST, in fact I'm listening to it right now; I've changed my desktop wallpaper to a shot from SAO and if I ever decide to participate in cosplay, I can tell you now that I'll be dressing up as Asuna. This series gripped me for all 25 episodes and my interest never waned. Although each episode is only twenty minutes long and yet so much seems to happen in each episode. I thought that the ending of this series could've been slightly better, but it was by no means disappointing. I honestly cannot recommend this series enough and if you've never watched any anime then SAO would be a great place to start as it mixes a lot of different anime genres together.

Still not convinced? Then check out the trailer for yourself here:

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What's Hot? Books.

Fever by Dee Shulman.

Title: Fever
Author: Dee Shulman
Genre: Young Adult, Time Travel,
Publisher: Puffin
Publication Date: 5th April 2012
Goodreads Summary: A fearless Roman gladiator. A reckless 21st century girl. A mysterious virus unites them . . .

152 AD. Sethos Leontis, a skilled and mesmerising fighter, is unexpectedly wounded and lies dangerously close to death.

2012 AD. Eva is brilliant - but troubled. Starting her new life at a school for the gifted, a single moment in the lab has terrifying results.

An extraordinary link brings Sethos and Eva together, but it could force them apart - because the fever that grips them cannot be cured and falling in love could be lethal . . . Can love survive when worlds collide and threaten time itself?


{ Review }

Fever by Dee Shulman is about Sethos Leontis, a gladiator, and Eva, a modern school girl. Both characters have unfortunate encounters with a mysterious virus in their own timelines that somehow bring the two characters together. I can't really say any more than that without giving a lot of the plot away, though, to be honest, I wouldn't really know where to start because the a good chunk of the plot was unexplained anyways.

I very, very rarely write negative reviews, but I really struggled with Fever. I was initially interested in this book because I liked the idea of modern and classical worlds colliding, though I was slightly dubious about the addition of some sort of virus that connects the two of them - and rightly so. This novel had a pretty promising start, but it wasn't long before it went sourly downhill. A quarter of the way through, nothing had actually happened yet. Half of the way through, the two main characters hadn't even met yet. Three quarters of the way through and I don't think Sethos and Eva have even had a proper conversation yet. In fact, I don't think they ever have a real conversation at any point in the entire book. The time travel aspect of this novel was really downplayed and I don't think it was actually a main theme of the novel. It was just another thing in this book that sort of happened without explanation. Now thinking about it, the idea behind the time travel is actually pretty unique, but it's a shame that I didn't even notice that whilst first reading it because everything else was so awful. I have also just realised that the main mystery of this novel, the virus, goes unexplained for the entire novel, and not in a don't-worry-it's-in-the-next-novel way, but in a it-seems-to-have-been-forgotten way. I'm about to start reading Delirium, book two in this series, but I'm really not expecting much, I just really want to find out if this book gets any better and I'm hoping that the gaping holes left in Fever will be filled in.

I really wasn't feeling the relationship between Eva and Sethos. For starters it was insta-love that had absolutely no basis. Well, I suppose the basis of their love was the fact that they had somehow kinda met before, but even that mysterious meeting led to insta-love - and I hate insta-love. This book had possibly the worst case of insta-love I've ever read about. In most cases, it's love at first sight but as the characters are rather suited for each other you forgive them. In Fever, it was literally love at first sight, as in, no communication whatsoever and suddenly they're so-in-love-with-each-other-they-could-die (I mean that literally too). I saw no connection whatsoever and it was only worsened by the fact that the way the story was written made me think that Sethos was a lot older and more mature than Eva

Initially I really liked Eva. She seemed like a cool girl who was coping fairly well for a teenager with a pretty crap home life. However, as the story progressed, she got more and more pathetic. Technically, this isn't a fault of the character and more a fault in the plot, but as the virus started to affect Eva more and more, I felt like she was losing more of the character that I had liked so much in the beginning. By the end of the novel, she was basically unrecognisable - and not in a good way. Eva wasn't the only character who underwent such a dramatic change in the novel, in fact, pretty much all of the main characters, and a few minor characters do, and it just made no sense to me. It was literally like they had been replaced by completely different characters that bore no resemblance to their original selves and most of the changes were not even provoked.

This is probably the most negative review that I've ever written, and I'm sorry if it sounds a bit like a rant, but when I got going, I realised I disliked more and more of this book. I've seen a large mix of reviews of Fever, with some giving it high praise and others giving it a mere one star. Unfortunately, I'm with the negative reviewers on this one as I really didn't like this book and I don't really understand what the positive reviewers see in it. I wouldn't recommend this book as large chunks of the plot are unexplained and there are sudden character developments which aren't really in keeping with the events going on in this book.

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What's Hot? Books.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. 

Title: The 5th Wave
Author: Rick Yancey
Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi
Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: 7th May 2013
Goodreads Summary: After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.


{ Review }

There was a lot of hype about The 5th Wave so I was both nervous and excited to read it. A hyped up book is always dangerous because it almost certainly won't live up to your expectations and unfortunately The 5th Wave kinda fell into that category for me. It's not that it wasn't good, in fact, it was great, it's just that it was as good as I expected it to be given all the hype.

The 5th Wave is written from several different perspectives but it's essentially about different people's experiences during an ongoing alien invasion. There are around four main characters, Cassie, Evan, Sam and Ben, around whom most of the action revolves but there are also many other characters who slot into this story. The human race has been wittled down to a very small number following four 'waves' as part of the alien invasion, the first wave cut all electricity, the second brought a worldwide tsunami, the third involved a deadly disease and the fourth turned the humans on each other. Few humans remain, noone knows just how many, and noone knows who is alien and who is human. Cassie and Sam are brother and sister but they get separated when soldiers come to the refugee camp they are staying at with their father. The soldiers take away all the children under the age of 15 and kill everyone else, excluding Cassie, but including her father. Cassie is now on her own and hits the road, trying to stay alive and hoping that she can find her way to her brother. Cassie meets Evan on her lonely travels though she's not sure if she can really trust him, but she doesn't have much of a choice. Meanwhile, Ben has been taken to the military camp along with all the other children, Sam included. Here, they are trained to be brutal and merciless soldiers - but what for? Something isn't right as each character soon discovers.

The 5th Wave has such an intriguing and mysterious plot that I just had to keep reading. As all the characters are shrouded in mist when it comes to knowing what the aliens want and what their plans are, so are we, as readers, and this brings you closer to the characters and draws you further into their world. I was slightly surprised to find that this book wasn't completely centered around Cassie and Evan as the book synopsis would suggest as the other characters all play very large and important roles too. Ordinarily, I avoid 'alien' books, because they tend to be rather ridiculous, but this one was exciting and full of surprises. Just when I thought I'd got everything susses, something new would be discovered that would change everything. This book has so many twists and turns and it is impossible to know how this book will end.

All the different perspectives collide together at the end of the novel, but sometimes the relationships between the characters were a little perplexing. I can't exactly call it insta-love between Evan and Cassie because it wasn't love, but it was insta. The dynamic of their relationship was highly confusing but at the end of the novel you discover the reason for this obscurity. The relationships between the characters gets all the more confusing at the end of the novel when they all come together as some things that I was pretty sure about, turned out to be wrong and some unexpected things happened. I wouldn't really class this as a negative aspect of the book, merely a surprising one, and I'm glad that this book kept me on my toes.

I liked that all the characters in this book seemed very real. Suffice to say that people would not act rationally during an alien invasion and I was glad to see that the characters were experiencing 'human' emotions and that they weren't at all perfect. There is nothing more annoying than reading a book about perfectly good or bad people as they don't really exist in this world and I liked that these characters were flawed as it makes them easier to relate to.

Although this is a young adult book, I would think that this book would appeal to all fans of sci-fi books and the like. Although the characters are young, they are forced to grow up quite quickly and the situations that they are in are most certainly not situations that you would expect children of their age to be in. This book was similar to The Host by Stephanie Meyer in many ways so it would probably appeal to fans of that too.

In my opinion, the thing that let this book down was the change in narrative voice. These changes were largely unexplained and I found them highly confusing and spent the first few pages of each section trying to figure out who was talking  and at what point in the story we were at. Even without one person's narrative, it tended to jump around a lot between the past and the present and sometimes it was a little hard to keep up. This was probably the only thing about the book as in all other respects it was excellent but a clearly structure was needed to guide the reader through.

Now I know I started this review rather negatively, but believe me, The 5th Wave is a really great book. The characters are well developed and interesting and the plot is so mysterious. I don't really understand why this book was hyped up any more than another YA book, but nevertheless, it is a really great read and I would highly recommend it.

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What's Hot? Books.

Stripped by Brooklyn Skye.

Title: Stripped
Author: Brooklyn Skye
Genre: New Adult
Publication Date: 14th May 2013
Goodreads Summary: “I like you.” His voice is low and soft, which I don’t deserve. I look away, down the rutted parking lot.
“Don’t... waste those words on me.”
He touches my cheek. “You just need someone to show you.”
“No.” I ease back again. “I don’t. So please, Torrin, stop trying to swoop in and save me. I don’t need saving.”

College freshman Quinn Montgomery will do anything to avoid the mistake her sister made—killing herself over a boy. But when she is forced into nude modeling at a local college to support her family after a bankruptcy, she begins to crack, just enough to let Torrin, the university’s top varsity oarsman, see that the real Quinn is not as feisty and unapproachable as she wants everyone to think. But letting someone in comes at a steep cost and, it turns out, Torrin is connected to Quinn’s family in more ways than she could ever imagine.

{ Review }

Welcome to my stop on the Stripped blog tour hosted by YA Bound.  Click HERE to see the full blog tour schedule!

Stripped is written from the first perspective of Quinn Montgomery, a teenage girl trying to deal with the death of her sister and best friend as well as the tarnishing of her family's name. She continuously bumps into an attractive guy called Torrin and the two of them have a sort of love-hate relationship going on. Quinn, 100%, doesn't want anything from Torrin, she's determined to protect her heart of steel so she doesn't befall the same fate as her sister but Torrin has other ideas.

I'm still fairly new the the new adult genre but the books of this genre that I have already read are very, very similar. There always seems to be a slightly damaged boy who meets a slightly damaged girl and even though there are many obstacles along the way, the biggest one usually being themselves, they somehow end up together. Although the majority of these books are very predictable, I haven't read enough of them yet for this to bother me and I thought that Stripped was absolutely fantastic. I have to say that I did figure out what was going on very early on in the novel but I was still intrigued as to how exactly events were going to unfold.

I quite literally could not put Stripped down once I started reading it. I started it this afternoon whilst at school, then I went to work for two hours, but the minute I finished working, I whipped my Kindle out to continue reading. I've just finished reading it so I'm still on that high that you get after you've read a really fab book and I cannot recommend it enough. Both the characters were three-dimensional with plenty of personality and individuality. The love story wasn't insta-love at all and it didn't play out as predictably as you would imagine and there were several moments where my stomach either dropped or was filled with butterflies. As it's written from the perspective of the main character you really get to know her and how her mind works and it is most fascinating to see her development as the story progresses. I laughed several times whilst reading this despite the fact that there are some serious issues discussed so this isn't one of those uber-depressing stories as there are lots of light hearted moments too. I have quite a deep respect for the other protagonist, Torrin, because he seemed to respect himself and even though Quinn clearly had issues, he wasn't having any of it.

I like the new adult genre because the romances between young adult characters can often seem slightly infantile but you get none of that here. There are some slightly-but-not-too sexual scenes in this novel but they definitely add another dimension to the story as opposed to being random and irrelevent saucy bits tacked on for excitement. Although there is a clear main story line throughout, there are also little snippets on the side that feed into the main plot and add to the general drama which makes this book so much more interesting as it's not just a sappy romance.

This book has everything: drama, romance, well-developed characters and wit which makes for a very good novel. I would highly recommend this to any fans of the new adult genre, and if you haven't read any new adult yet, this is a great place to start!

{ About the Author }
 Brooklyn Skye is just your average awkward girl who's obsessed with words. She grew up in a small California town where she quickly realized writing was an easy escape from small town life.
Website / Twitter / Goodreads

{ Giveaway }
One signed paperback copy of Stripped (US only) or one e-book copy with authorgraph (INT)
 a Rafflecopter giveaway

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What's Hot? Books.

Chantress (Chantress Trilogy #1) by Amy Butler Greenfield.


Title: Chantress (Chantress Trilogy #1)
Author: Amy Butler Greenfield
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal,
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication Date: May 7th 2013
Goodreads Summary: Lucy’s Chantress magic will make her the most powerful — and most hunted — girl in England.

“Sing, and the darkness will find you.” This warning has haunted fifteen-year-old Lucy ever since she was eight and shipwrecked on a lonely island. Lucy’s guardian, Norrie, has lots of rules, but the most important is that Lucy must never sing. Not ever. Now it is 1667, Lucy is fifteen, and on All Hallows’ Eve, Lucy hears a tantalizing melody on the wind. She can’t help but sing — and she is swept into darkness.

When she awakes in England, Lucy hears powerful men discussing Chantresses — women who can sing magic into the world. They are hunting her, but she escapes and finds sanctuary with the Invisible College, an organization plotting to overthrow the nefarious Lord Protector. The only person powerful enough to bring about his downfall is a Chantress. And Lucy is the last one in England.

Lucy struggles to master the song-spells and harness her power, but the Lord Protector is moving quickly. And her feelings for Nat, an Invisible College apprentice and scientist who deeply distrusts her magic, only add to her confusion…

Time is running out, and the fate of England hangs in the balance in this entrancing novel that is atmospheric and lyrical, dangerous and romantic.

{ Review }
I was immediately interested in Chantress because of it's beautiful cover and the story did not disappoint either. Chantress is about Lucy, who lives on a deserted island with her guardian Norrie. Singing is strictly prohibited so when Lucy hears the faint sound of a song on All Hallows Eve she is terribly curious. Unable to control herself, Lucy gives herself over to the song and starts to sing aloud causing devastating consequences. It turns out that Lucy is actually a Chantress and has the power to weave magic with her voice. As soon as she starts singing, Norrie and herself are transported off the island, back to London, Lucy's birthplace. This should be a good thing, but London is ridden with Shadowgrims, magic crows that have the power read all your thoughts and instill fear if you get too close. Shadowgrims are a particular threat to Chantresses as they are drawn to their magic and can feed off it. When Lucy arrives in London she finds that she has been separated from Norrie and has absolutely no idea where to go or who to turn to. She sort of accidentally ends up at the residence of Nat and his guardian who are part of an organisation called the Invisible College. The IC is trying to fight against the Lord Protector's regime and rid the world of Shadowgrims for good, but the only way they can do this is with a Chantress' magic. Lucky for them, Lucy is a Chantress, and probably the last of her kind; unlucky for them, Lucy has no idea how to use her powers. The IC and Lucy have to work together quickly to free London from the Lord Protector's tyranny but there are many obstacles in their way.

Chantress is written from the first person perspective which gives us an interesting insight into Lucy's mind. In a story where not a lot of the characters trust each other, this was most helpful as it meant that I could actually understand what was going on and Lucy wasn't a predictable character so it wasn't at all boring. I don't really think that many of the other characters were developed as fully as they could've been and many of them are in the story for very, very short snippets, but then, the main focus is on Lucy and her development so I guess this wasn't a bother.

I have to admit I didn't really understand Nat and Lucy's relationship. It wasn't exactly instalove, but I still didn't feel that it was developed as well as it could've been. Nat hates Lucy at the beginning of the story and, in my opinion, there isn't any sort of real indication that this changes. I think this was mainly because we, as a reader, don't see them spend that much time together, nevertheless, it was still rather cute.

I found the plot synopsis above particularly difficult to write for some reason which goes to show just how intricate a world the author has created. However, I didn't feel that a lot of things actually happened in this novel. There's a lot of description and back story but there isn't much action until the very end of the story and even then, it is very brief. Given that this is just the first book in a trilogy, I'm hoping that in the subsequent two novels a lot more things will happen as now the background to the story has been set up. That said, this novel could actually work as a standalone story as it didn't really give any indication at the end that there was more coming, in fact, I was quite comfortable with the ending, which is something that I rarely feel.

All in all, I'd highly recommend Chantress as it presents a beautifully intricate and interesting world. It's set in 17th century London and a lot of the facts are historically accurate, though these are really subtle things and they don't particularly contribute to the plot in any way. This was a really good novel for setting up the story and the background to the character's plight, but I'm looking forward to the next two books for a bit more action.

{ Book Trailer }


{ About the author } 

Amy Butler Greenfield was a grad student in history when she gave into temptation and became a writer. Since then, she has become an award-winning author. 

Born in Philadelphia, Amy grew up in the Adirondack Mountains and later studied history at Williams College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Oxford. She now lives with her family in England, where she writes, bakes double-dark-chocolate cake, and plots mischief.

Official links: www.amybutlergreenfield.com | twitter.com/ab_greenfield

{ Giveaway } 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

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