Month: April 2016

"The Opposite Books" Tag

Published on by Shouni2 Comments

Hello, everyone! This is The Opposite Books tag created by minhaestante over on Youtube. I was tagged by Stellah in The Little Book Nerd’s Life.

The first book in your collection and the last book you bought.

The earliest book I have in my collection right now would be Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. I loved and still love the Ramona books to death. Those books are hilarious and heart-warming and the perfect series to hook a young mind to reading. The last book I bought would be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I found it at Goodwill and jumped in joy. Jane Eyre is fantastic and one of my absolute favorite classics.

A cheap book and an expensive book.

Let’s see… I have bought A LOT of books from used book stores so I don’t know which one the cheapest is. My copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was only $0.25. The most expensive book would be Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan; it was $19.99 dollars of pain and disbelief. I regret buying that book to this day; it was highly disappointing and I refuse to take it as a legitimate conclusion.

A book with a male protagonist and a book with a female protagonist.

For male protagonist, I will choose I Hunt Killers series by Barry Lyga. These books are about Jasper Dent, the son of the most notorious serial killer in the world. Jasper is set on clearing his name when murders, very similar to the works of his imprisoned father, starts again in their area. These books are intelligent, violent and downright scary at times. I see Jasper as almost a teenage version of Sherlock (from the BBC show, not the books). For a book with a female protagonist (which is more than 90 percent of YA books these days)… I’m just going to go with a childhood favorite, Junie B. Jones. I have read every Junie B. Jones book, and if Barbara Parks chose to write more, I would still read them.

A book you read fast and one that took you long to read. 

A book that I read fast… I think that would be the Twilight series which took me roughly a week and a half to read in the sixth grade. A book that took me a long time to read would be Game of Thrones; I love that book but it took me almost two months to get through that whole thing.

A book with a pretty cover and one with an ugly one. 

I love the cover of A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray. It’s a YA Sci-Fi, about Marguerite, whose physicist parents have made a machine that can take you to parallel universes.

 

 

 

Winger by Andrew Smith. I like this book, but the cover is awful. The boy has a bloody napkin stuffed in his nose!

 

 

 

A national book and an international book. 

By national, I’m assuming it means United States (since that’s where I am). I guess I’ll go with Hunger Games since it is supposed to be a future United States. For an international book, I would choose Written in Stars by Aisha Saeed. It’s about a Pakistani-American teen names Naila whose very strict parents takes her back to Pakistan after they find out she has a boyfriend. I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did.

A thin book and a thick book.

Hmm… the thinnest book I have read would be The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. It takes place during the post-Reconstruction era in America, and follows the journey of a biracial man having to choose between being black in a openly racist society or passing as white and betraying his heritage. The thickest book I own (as in the book with the most pages), would be A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin.

A fiction book and a non-fiction book.

Seeing that 98 percent of what I read is fiction, I’ll go with my go to answer and say Harry Potter. One of my favorite non-fiction that I’ve read back in middle school is Chinese Cinderella: The Secret Story of an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah. It’s about her experience growing up in China during WWII, in a family that considers her bad luck because her mother died two weeks after giving birth to her.

A way too romantic book and an action book. 

I think, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi had too much cringe-worthy romance without needing to. Needless to say, I do not like those books. For an action book, I will say The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. It’s sci-fi/Fantasy in a world that has been taken over by aliens who look like humans. It follows Cassie who for a long time believes she is the only human left on the planet.

A book that made you happy and a book that made you sad.

I think a lot of the times, the same book makes me both happy and sad. In the Afterlight, the conclusion to the Darkest Minds series by Alexandra Bracken, made me feel both extremely happy and very sad. It was the perfect conclusion, but as with all my favorite book series, I never wanted it to end.

Want to do this tag? Go right ahead.

Review: "Clockwork Princess" by Cassandra Clare

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~o~Rating~o~
5 tp

Warning: Clockwork Princess is the third book to the Infernal Devices

~o~Goodreads Synopsis~o~

Danger and betrayal, love and loss, secrets and enchantment are woven together in the breathtaking finale to the #1 New York Times bestselling Infernal Devices Trilogy, prequel to the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series.

THE INFERNAL DEVICES WILL NEVER STOP COMING

A net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Mortmain plans to use his Infernal Devices, an army of pitiless automatons, to destroy the Shadowhunters. He needs only one last item to complete his plan: he needs Tessa Gray.

Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, is desperate to find Mortmain before he strikes. But when Mortmain abducts Tessa, the boys who lay equal claim to her heart, Jem and Will, will do anything to save her. For though Tessa and Jem are now engaged, Will is as much in love with her as ever.

As those who love Tessa rally to rescue her from Mortmain’s clutches, Tessa realizes that the only person who can save her is herself. But can a single girl, even one who can command the power of angels, face down an entire army?

Danger and betrayal, secrets and enchantment, and the tangled threads of love and loss intertwine as the Shadowhunters are pushed to the very brink of destruction in the breathtaking conclusion to the Infernal Devices trilogy.

~o~Review~o~

I finished the conclusion to the Infernal Devices and I’m still not sure how I feel about this book. Reading this book was definitely an emotional roller coaster. All in all, I think Clare did a wonderful job concluding this series. The ending, for me, was unexpected but I liked it

The book starts with Tessa preparing for her wedding with Jem. The threat of Mortmain is still hanging over the Shadowhunters but they haven’t heard of him in a while. I love books where you get to explore the minds of the side characters as well as the main characters because it gives them a certain depth. This is something I really liked in this book and this book series in general.

I am completely in love with this book! And if you haven’t read it yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

~o~SPOILER ALERT~o~

I don’t even know where to start. I think all the characters tied in to the story very nicely. I liked how Clare wrapped up the stories of the side characters. I felt the ending for the side characters were a little “too” perfect with Gideon ending up with Sophie and Gabriel with Cecily, but I didn’t mind it. I like happy endings, however cliche like. I thought Gideon and Sophie were really cute. I am also glad Charlotte was appointed Consul; she would be absolutely perfect!

Alright, *deep breath* to the trio. Like Tessa, I absolutely LOVE both Jem and Will so much! In most love triangles, the guys will do anything for the girl (which is still the case here) but I love how Will and Jem will also do anything for each other. They’re not just best friends, they’re brothers; they’re more than brothers, they’re blood brothers. Their souls are tied together.

I really liked the scene from Charlotte’s point of view when we see how Will and Jem first met when they were twelve. Jem is all Will had for five years, the one person he had allowed himself to show affection for because he was already dying. (Off topic but when I found out Will actually wasn’t cursed in Clockwork Prince, I felt so bad for him! For all these years he thought no one loved him and he pushed everyone away. Seriously, if I was a Shadowhunter the first I’d do is go after that stupid blue demon). Anyway, we get to see just how much Will and Jem mean to each other which was just so… touching (why can’t I think of a better word?).

After the fighting scene with the automatons, Tessa is kidnapped and Jem is very badly injured. Will, instead of going after Tessa immediately (which is no doubt what most other YA “heroes” would do if the love of their life was kidnapped by a psychotic witch), he sits besides Jem for hours because he knows Jem will need his strength from the parabatai rune. Yes he wants to go after Tessa but he couldn’t stand the chance of his best friend dying even though he had years to grasp that idea. Does that not want to make you bawl?!

Jem on his “deathbed” finally finds out Will was also in love with Tessa and tells him to go after her. Will hesitates because he knows Jem will most likely die without him but he goes anyway.

The scene in the stable when Will’s parabatai rune starts hurting and bleeding was so intense! Jem was dead, I couldn’t believe it! Honestly, I actually started admiring Clare at that point for killing off a well-loved main character. I had started grieving for Jem already. But then we find out, no, he’s not dead. He turned into a Silent Brother. Okay, I’m not going to lie, that did sort of make me roll my eyes. But I did get used to the idea pretty quickly.

I think the final battle between the Shadowhunters and Mortmain was short but enough to satisfy me. I liked that in the end, Tessa is the one who kills Mortmain. I think that was ideal. Her turning into her clockwork angel surprised me, I guess I was underestimating her power. Either way, I loved how she crushed Mortmain with “her” hand. Imagining that scene made me unusually cheerful.

Now, to the Epilogue. That Epilogue killed me, resurrected me with the resurrection stone, then killed me again.

As I understand, the epilogue was very controversial. Something I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about was how Tessa was immortal and Will was not. I knew that Will was going to grow old and die while Tessa will remain in her youth but I guess I didn’t really grasp the idea until I read the epilogue. One part of me really disliked Cassandra Clare for writing about Will’s death. I didn’t want to witness Will growing old and dying. But I do understand and I praise her for writing it. I don’t think I’ve ever thought reading about a death was beautiful, but Will’s death scene was BEAUTIFUL.

Jem sat down his bow, and came toward the bed, drawing back his hood, so she  could see his closed eyes and his scarred face. And he had sat down beside them on the bed and taken Will’s hand, the one that Tessa was not holding, and both Will and Tessa had heard Jem’s voice in their mind.

I take your hand, brother, so that you may go in peace.

Will had opened the blue eyes that had never lost their color, over all the passing years, and looked at Jem and Tessa, and smiled, and died, with Tessa’s head on his shoulder and his hand in Jem’s.

Wasn’t that just the sweetest thing?? I also love how Magnus comforts Tessa after Will’s death. He tells her that the first you love who dies is always the hardest. Poor Magnus, did I mention how much I love Magnus?

Jem finally finding a cure and ending his bonds to the Silent Brothers was understandable. He went to the Silent Brothers for Will and Tessa and because he wanted to live for them. If a cure was found, of-course he would use it. Jem and Tessa ending up together was nice. I believe Will would be happier than anyone else to see the two people he loved the most being happy together. I also feel very sorry for Tessa right now; Jem is now a mortal and he is also going to grow old and die. At-least she has Magnus; he’s someone who can understand her.