I apologise profusely for loving this book.

City of Bones

By Cassandra Clare

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of “Teya Reviews Another Book She Loves.” I’m sorry, I can’t help it; I just don’t read that many books that I hate.

Fifteen year-old Clary Fray thinks she’s normal until she goes out clubbing and sees three teenagers with weird tattoos murder a boy who then proceeds to vanish into thin air. Oh yeah, and no one else saw anything.  After that, things start to get weird. I don’t know, I guess it’s pretty hard to carry on with your life after something like that. Just to add on to the crazy, Clary’s mother is kidnapped, and her house trashed, and she's swept up into a world of demons, monsters, and shadow hunters. Teamed up with three hard-core and slightly crazy shadow hunters, Clary has to beat the evil villain to the ultimate weapon, rescue her mother, and, you know, save the world

“I don't want tea," said Clary, with muffled force. "I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them."
"Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing.” 

Hmmm… How do I describe it without using the word “awesome?”

City of Bones is really well written, everything is described in incredible detail, and you can imagine what everything and everyone looks like. The fight scenes are all really well described, and man, they have some of the coolest weapons. Also, the characters are really well rounded and believable, and everything they do is consistent to their character, even if it’s a little odd, especially the supporting characters. Clary’s a really good, feisty heroine, and has the mystical and magical power of sarcasm! Although Clary does say that “Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”

Despite what some of the reviews say, the book really does translate well into audiobooks. While the first and the second books have different respective narrators, (yes, I’ve already started the sequel) both are very good and don’t make everyone sound like freaks.

So there you go, not a single “awesome” to be seen. Well except in that one sentence, but that doesn’t really count. I apologise for reviewing another book that I loved beyond measure and promise to review a book next week that I liked at least a little bit less than this one.

Feisty chick-o-meter: 10/10
Age Rating: 15+
Rating: 10/10
Book or audiobook: Audiobook
Stand alone or series: Series
Last word: All

Dan dan DAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Angels And Demons

By Dan Brown

Angels and Demons is about Robert Langdon, a professor of religious symbology, who gets contacted by a major scientific research organization, after one of their top scientists is brutally murdered, and his revolutionary invention – literally a ticking time bomb – is stolen. Teamed up with Vittoria Vetra, a young physicist, Robert is sent on a wild chase across Rome and the Vatican City, along the Path of Illumination, to try and stop a plot to blow up the Vatican. And he has five hours to do it.

Sounds awesome, right?  While Angels and Demons isn’t a deep-and-meaningful-makes-you-think-about-the-meaning-of-life kind of book, it’s an excellent thriller (cue song). It’s written so that the chapters alternate points of view, and it makes you so mad at Dan Brown; you know you’re being manipulated, but you just have to read ONE MORE CHAPTER.

Also, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book so exhaustively researched. Every sculpture, painting and church – and there are a lot – is described in meticulous detail. So meticulous that it makes you desperately want to go to Rome.

Langdon and Vittoria are a lot more interesting in the book than the movie. Now I’m not going to go on about how they look all wrong in the movie, but they’re just more interesting in the book. Vittoria is a much stronger and feistier character, and is ultimately the one who beats the villain, whereas in the movie she’s just there to provide the scientific background. She’s a much cooler heroine too. Langdon is also way more interesting in the book, and you actually care about him as a character.

One other thing: ambigrams.   Sure, they have the same ones in the movie, but man is it awesome to be able look at them on the page. I admit I may have spent hours, just turning the page around, and around, and around, and around…

So if you’re a fan of mysteries, science and art, then this is the book for you!

Feisty chick-o-meter: 8/10
Age Rating: 15+
Rating: 9/10
Stand alone or series: Series... ish
Book or audiobook: Book
Last word: You

Oh look! More dystopian novels!

Divergent and Insurgent
By Veronica Roth

Ta da! Even more dystopian YA novels! All right, fine, maybe I’m a bit of a dystopia fan…

Divergent is set in dystopian (surprise!) Chicago, where everything is divided into five factions:  Candor, the honest, Abnegation, the selfless, Erudite, the intelligent, Dauntless, the brave, and Amity, the peaceful. Each year, every sixteen year-old has to choose which faction they will spend the rest of their lives in. Divergent centres on Beatrice Prior who is – you guessed it – sixteen, and it’s decision making time – she has to choose between staying with her family or actually doing what she wants to do. But that’s just the beginning! She then has to fight her way through the super-competitive initiation process (with a name change to Tris in between) to actually get into the faction and get the “AW YEAH I’M IN A FACTION” badge. Yes I made that last part up.

Insurgent, to sum it up in a few sentences:  Tries to stop revolution. Even more fight sequences. Oh yeah, she has a boyfriend now.

I really enjoyed Divergent.  Tris was a strong, witty realistic character, and was the sort of character that made you wish you could play her in a movie. It’s also well written and man, the fight scenes are awesome. And seriously, who doesn’t want to be friends with someone who responds like this:

“It must be because you're so approachable", I say flatly. "You know, like a bed of nails."

And then came the sequel.

Insurgent is still just as well written and maybe funnier than Divergent, this pretty much sets up the tone of the humour:

“Got that gun?” Peter says to Tobias.
 “No,” says Tobias, “I figured I would shoot the bullets out of my nostrils, so I left it upstairs.”  

And Insurgent has even more fight scenes, but I have one problem: Tris.

Okay, so  that’s not entirely true, Tris herself is fine, it’s Tris in relation to her boyfriend, who henceforth shall be called Fred so as not to reveal any semi predictable spoilers. Where was I? Oh, right, Tris begins to go off the rails (which in itself is perfectly respectable, every dystopian hero has the right to spiral), but all of a sudden, Fred the boyfriend starts defining their relationship, and telling her he’ll only be her boyfriend when she’s a specific way, and now you have this feisty strong character, who’s all wimpy and pathetic around her boyfriend. You want to grab her by the shoulders and yell “YOU ARE A STRONG CHARACTER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”  But then you feel bad because the rest of the book is so good and then you get a headache.

Also, the books are in audiobook form, and are narrated by Emma Galvin, who narrated one of my other favourite books and has a really good voice for the character.

I like the book, and I don’t like the book. Gah! I need a panadol.

Feisty chick-o-meter: 9/10 7/10

Age Rating: 16+

Rating: 8/10

Stand alone or series: Series

Book or audiobook: Audiobook

And the "Favourite Books" list gets longer...

The Fault in Our Stars

By John Green

The Fault in Our Stars is about sixteen year-old Hazel, who has thyroid cancer. Now I’m going to stop right there to say that this isn’t a cancer book. Yes, it’s about a girl with cancer, in fact a bunch of people have cancer, but her having cancer doesn’t define the book. Hazel lives her life in a generally dull manner, going to Cancer Kid Support Group, attending a couple of college courses, reading the same book, over and over, and always being defined as the girl with cancer. Then she meets Augustus Waters, a charming, seventeen year-old cancer survivor, who changes Hazel’s perception of herself, helping her not to make her cancer story her story.

I came to this, ready to be depressed. John Green is an amazing writer and I really enjoyed his book An Abundance of Katherines, but seriously, it’s about a girl with cancer. Saying that there’s no chance a book about cancer will be depressing is like saying “Hey, if I stick my face right next to this lion there is noooooo way I’m gonna get mauled.” But I digress. Basically, I was reluctant, but John Green is awesome and I can’t say no to buying books.

As it turned out my worrying was for naught. The Fault in Our Stars manages to keep the tone light without completely trivialising the basic premise. I had no qualms, however, about what the actual writing would be like. An Abundance of Katherines was extremely well written and this one is no different.  It uses very accessible language, and the teenagers actually sound like teenagers. It really felt like the characters were real, and made me wish that they actually were.

Hazel is a very interesting character. She’s strong willed, but also a bit depressed, however over the course of the story she really opens up and evolves as a character. (I would say ‘blossoms’, but I’m not really into flower similes.) She also deals with having cancer in a very light but not flippant manner. This is probably what keeps the book from being depressing. This is pretty much embodied in this line:

“I looked down my blouse at my chest. ‘Keep your s**t together” I whispered to my lungs.”

What’s really interesting is how Hazel’s and Augustus’s roles switch completely halfway through. No spoilers, though, I promise!

Now this is going to sound weird, but it’s one of those books that you finish reading and feel smarter. John Green doesn’t dumb down the language for his “young readers” The dialogue flows well and words like “Hamartia” fit in really naturally. There’s even a grumpy, old Dutch man who uses phrases like “our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity” for goodness sakes.

The Fault in Our Stars is definitely one of my favourite books, and I would have re-read it right after I finished it (yes I have done that before) but I have 200 books, at least 50 of which haven’t been read and I must read! If you need me, I’ll be the one with the books.

Feisty chick-o-meter: 9/10
Age rating:16+
Rating: 10/10
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Book or audiobook: Book
Last word: Do