Review: Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

Published: 2010
Pages: 323
Series: Hex Hall #1
Read: 18th September 2011
Challenge: A to Z Title (cheating a little to get X)
Status: Owned book
Reason I Read It: A review by the Story Siren.

Synopsis: When a spell she performs backfires, Sophie Mercer is sent to Hecate Hall, a school for magic users who have risked exposing themselves (and by extension their world) to humans.  While there she discovers things which her non-magical mother has kept hidden from her, and falls foul of a group of three powerful teen witches.

First Line: "Felicia Miller was crying in the bathroom.  Again."

Review: On the surface, this book may seem a bit like 'more of the same': school of magic, bitchy girls, cute boys, weird goings on and a teacher making the protagonist's life hell.  I think if I saw a brief summary of Hex Hall - like the one I just gave - I might overlook it, but I'd really be missing out.  At no point when reading did I find the book unoriginal, which may be because the magic system and the world feels different to anything I've read before.  There's depth and history and a means of combining magic users, fey and shapeshifters within a world that also features werewolves, demons and vampires and doesn't feel overloaded.

A large part of my enjoyment came from Sophie herself, who isn't perfect or beloved by all (blerg to first person protags like that) but is full of snark and faults.  She makes mistakes and has to pay for them, and a lot of why she is how she is comes from the actions of other people, rather than gifts handed down from on high that show up when she needs them.  How things are going to play out in the sequel are beyond me, which is a feeling I like in a book when it's done as it is here: I want to know because I think Rachel Hawkins will surprise me, rather than because I fail to see any logic to what's going on.

My only real problem with this book is that it is a first in a series, so there are threads left hanging at the end which I imagine will be resolved in Raising Demons (see my predictions below) and Spellbound.  Having said that, I enjoyed everything else about the book: the characters, the world, the magic system - although, again, there is a sense that as it's the first in a series there is more to be discovered.  I think this is a book which raises more questions than it answers, but I trust Rachel Hawkins enough to know that there will eventually be answers - and that they won't annoy me the way some 'revelations' in books do.

Rating: 8/10

Do I Want More? Hell, yes.  Good thing I have Raising Demons, though shame I have to wait till next year for Spellbound.

Predictions: For the next book (Raising Demons) and spoilerful for this one, so highlight to read: Archer isn't evil, he just isn't, there'll be a perfectly rational explanation for the whole Eye thing.  I think a lot of the groups who are purported to be Evil will turn out not to be, or will at least not be as one dimensionally bad as the Council would have people believe. 

Challenge Updates: The whole damn lot of them

This year, I signed up for a few challenges: 1st in a Series, 2nd in a Series, Victorian Literature and the A to Z Title challenge.  I've completed 1st and 2nd, done the bare minimum of Victorian reading (5 out of 5-9) and have only Z to go on the title challenge (Dr Zhivago).  So, time for some updates because I have read a lot of books this year and have so far only managed to review 4/113 - that's 3.5% which is rubbish.

I'm not going to list what I've read for each challenge, as that is on the Challenge page, but I am going to make a few plans and hope that by sharing them I actually complete them (seriously, me and Emma Woodhouse have far too much in common when it comes to book related plans).

1) Complete the A to Z challenge.  Dr Zhivago is scaring me a little because a) it's my first ever Russian novel, and b) I've tried to read Anna Karenina and oh good Lord the names.  Why must everyone have so many different names?  It is confusing for the reader.  This is what is worrying me the most, I think, that I'll get so confused I'll give up.  I must not give up.

Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871)
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848)
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes (1857)
Villette by Charlotte Bronte (1853)

There are also libraries I can raid, possibly to find shorter Victorian novels.

3) Review at least half of the books I read for these challenges.  Some of them crossover - so far I have read 55 individual books for these challenges, and have reviewed 3 of them (Ash, Sisters Red and Treasure Island).  I borrowed quite a few of them from the library, or don't have them in my current flat, so I'll be doing those which I actually have with me so I can reread/check facts before reviewing.

4) My final, ongoing challenge is Project Fill in the Gaps.  I've read 16 from the list this year, taking my overall title to 29/100.  I'd like to get to 30.  Some of the books I read for other challenges overlap with this one, and the Victorian novels listed above fit on it, so I should be able to complete this.  Review target: half of the books I've read this year.

So, not too much to be getting on with there.

Review: Ash by Malinda Lo

Published: 2009
Pages: 291
Series: N/A
Read: 4th January 2011
Challenge: A to Z Title Challenge
Status: Owned Book
Reason I Read It: It's a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, and it mixes the fairytale with fey.
Synopsis: With her parents both gone, Ash finds herself a servant in the house of her ruthless stepmother and there seems no hope of finding happiness again.  But Ash is unaware of her mother's legacy, and that it will lead her to a magical place.  A place where love, identity, and belonging are all waiting... (back copy)

First Line: "Aisling's mother died at midsummer."

Review: I first heard about this book here, and I have to admit my initial reaction was "a lesbian retelling of Cinderella?  Awesome, I must read it!".  The Cinderella expectations may have influenced me as I read it, because it doesn't play out as Cinderella - it isn't Princess Charming, for example (God awful as such a phrase sounds in my head) - but borrows elements and plays with them.  I've seen some reviews that dislike that it doesn't follow the pattern of the fairy tale exactly, and I admit that this was something I wasn't especially enamoured by, but this is a retelling: meddling with the format is part of it.  Once I got over that, I enjoyed it.

For prose alone, this book is phenomenal.  The language is so beautiful I was frequently wanting to shake my book in jealous writer fury.  The lyrical dreaminess exactly fits the story, as do all the interludes in which people tell tales (historical and fairy) to flesh out the world and to demonstrate the danger that Ash could fall into. The world feels fully realised, and I'm curious to know how many of the tales are entirely created by Lo, and how many variants of folk tales that we have*.  It all fits together to create an idea that there is a much richer history here, which only makes me very eager to get my hands on Huntress.

Saying all that, there were elements that didn't seem to mesh as well for me.  Again, it might be because of the Cinderella expectations, but there were times when the plot felt a little jarred.  Possibly my biggest issue (potential spoiler) is that there was no real comeuppance for the evil stepmother.  I wasn't expecting her to be made to dance in red hot boots, as in the original tale (thanks for that info, QI), but I would have liked a little vengeance.  I kept expecting it to turn out that she was lying about the debt Ash's father had left her in, and I wanted some sweeping legal retribution or something.  It fits that this doesn't happen - the book is about Ash finding her own identity and power - but I'm vindictive about things like this in fiction.  This is possibly just me, though.

The main love story plays out gently and subtly, though I would say that, even if I hadn't known it going in, I would have realised this was a lesbian story almost as soon as Kaisa appears.  It is perfect for a young, inexperienced 'first' love - I say 'first' like that because it's more about Ash's first experience with it rather than the first of many - with the uncertainty and the lack of realisation on Ash's part as to what she feels.  The ending didn't feel rushed, even if I flagged how it was going to play out before it did.

All in all, I enjoyed Ash but didn't love it.  Beautiful as it was, it didn't grab me in the same way as some books I adore.  Saying all that - which possibly sounds more critical than I intend it, damn lack of tone in the written word - I highly recommend it, and am definitely going to read Huntress.


Rating: 7/10

*Flashback to spending an hour translating a friend's medieval poem/saga/thing of a man going to Fairyland or some such.  There were a lot of descriptions of what the fashion hound fairies were wearing.

Challenge: A to Z Challenge

This took some thinking about before I signed up, because it is signing myself up for 26 books which I'm going to have to read in alphabetical order and that is going to require some thought/discipline.  Just bounding about reading the titles in whatever order I want would be much easier, but it obviously wouldn't be a challenge.

I'm going to take the A to Z Title Challenge, because that seems more flexible to me (I already own 6 books starting with Q, which is one of the tricky letters).  It's being hosted here.