Anna Dressed in Blood
Written by Kendare Blake, Narrated by August Ross
Reason for Reading: I wanted to check off category 12 in Reading Outside the Box
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance / Horror
Review
Cas Lowood has always worked alone on his quest to dispatch murderous ghosts and discover the demon who killed his father. But when he moves to Thunder Bay everything changes - first, he has an explainable fascination with Anna, the ghost he's come to kill; second, he accidentally picks up a team of teenagers who insist on tagging along as he rids the world of Anna's horror. And Cas isn't quite sure he wants to kill Anna anymore...
I picked this book up because of the fascinating cover art. (Yup! I'm one of those people.) I'm glad the cover was so awesome, because I enjoyed the book. Yes, it was sort of a copy of the TV show Supernatural, but that's ok. Every story has its origins in another story, right? This book was fun and quick - I enjoyed the mystery and characters. If you like teen ghost stories, this would be a good book to pick up. But I recommend you pick up the physical book and not the audio book. Ross annoyed me with his too-clear annunciations, his pauses, and his slow reading. It ruined the rhythm of the narrative, and made the dialog fall flat. There were several times I wanted to give up on the book just because the narration was annoying me - and I generally am pretty laid back about audio books.
2012 Book 145: Devil's Pass, by Sigmund Brouwer
Reason for reading: This book was
provided by the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. The
thoughts expressed in this review are mine, and I receive no benefit from
giving a good review.
My Review:
When 17-year-old Webb's grandfather dies, he leaves a list of
seven mysterious tasks to be completed by his seven grandsons. Webb's task is
to hike out into the Northwest Territories on a mission to find a buried
secret. While on this trip, Webb struggles with his own identity, and the
changes he's seen in himself ever since his widowed mother remarried an abusive
husband. On this trip, Webb learns a lot about his well-loved grandfather...and
a lot about himself. This is part of a series of seven books, about the seven
grandsons--each with a task from his deceased grandfather. In order to give
each grandson an entirely unique personality, the series was written by seven
different authors. This is the only book in the series that I have read. Technically, it's the fifth book in the series, but since the story of each
grandson is completely independent of the other books, they can be read in any
order.
I was pleasantly surprised by this little book. Not that I
expected bad things from it, but I didn't expect to be caught up in the action.
Brouwer has worked in some interesting action scenes right at the beginning of
the story, and by the time the action has slowed to a pace more suited for plot
and character development, I was already quite interested in the book. I read
it in only a couple of sittings. This would be an excellent book for boys in
the 5th or 6th grade age range, even though the main character is 17.
Character Thursday:
Fanda at Fanda Classiclit has organized a weekly blog
event in which we can provide a detailed character analysis of a book that
we've been reading. I thought I'd try my first character analysis out on Webb.
I thought he'd be an interesting character to start with because his identity
is developing throughout the story. The following information will contain more
details than I usually provide in my review, but I'll try not to include any
plot-vital spoilers.
When Webb was 5th grade-ish, his widowed mother remarried a man
who was abusive to Webb, but apparently not to Webb's mother. So Webb was
manipulated and threatened into keeping the abuse a secret. Eventually, at
maybe 16 or 17, he ended up living on the streets. This is where he was when
his grandfather died and the adventure begins.
Because of the abuse in Webb's past, he adopted a protective role
for other victims of abuse. At the beginning of the story, he saw a young woman being beaten by her
boyfriend, and in order to defend her, he ended up in a fight with this very
dangerous man.
At first blink, you'd see Webb's behavior as "good." He
was using his own experience to help a woman in trouble. But soon you find out
that as Webb gets angrier and angrier, he loses his logic...he wants to
seriously hurt this man. A rational part of his brain says that seriously
hurting people in self defense isn't necessary, but that rational part of his
brain isn't working once his rage has fired up. So Webb is a protector of the
weak, but he's also teetering on the brink of violent, hateful jerk himself.
The identity crisis that Webb struggles with throughout the book is where to
draw the line between protector and wrathful avenger?
Webb didn't think that his grandfather knew about Webb's troubles.
But his grandfather is more astute than Webb expected. Webb was left with two
Nietzsche quotes to ponder during his hiking trip in the Northwest Territories.
The first was: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. The
second was: He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby
become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you.
Webb had already experienced and accepted the meaning of the first
quote. But he was puzzled by the second quote. It made him question what he was
becoming...whether he needed to become that...and what the alternatives
were.
Webb's identity crisis was, granted, quite straightforward and
clearly-laid-out for the readers. That's because this book was written for 5th
graders, who aren't as attuned to subtlety as they will be as adults. I think
Webb's identity crisis allows someone of the appropriate reading age to learn
something new about how the world affects their personalities...and how their
personalities can affect the world. Thus, Web was a fascinating character, and
I'm happy I met him. :)
Anna Dressed in Blood
