Battle Lines by Will Hill – 700 pages of excellent.

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first two books in the Department 19 series by Will Hill- Department 19 and The Rising.

I really do love the cover…

Battle Lines is the third book in the Department 19 series by Will Hill, which follows Jamie Carpenter and his fellow operatives in Department 19 (Blacklight) – The department of the British government that hunts vampires. Yeah it doesn’t sound the best. But take my word for it, it’s excellent.

With 52 days until Zero Hour, the time when the newly-awakened Dracula will be back to his full strength, the Department isn’t exactly the strongest it’s ever been. It’s trying to build itself back up after the devastating attack that took place at the hands of Valeri Rusmanov at the end of the previous book, and the kidnapping of the Director, Henry Seward. That means taking on new recruits, and trying to train them as quickly as possible so that they can be ready for action when needed. And that moment comes a lot sooner than anybody was expecting, as the unthinkable happens. Several of the highest security prisons around the world are broken into, the staff massacred, and all the inmates turned. But they aren’t the usual newly-turned vampires. Oh no. For some reason they have strength and speed far surpassing that of a normal vampire.
Meanwhile, Dracula is still building up his strength, and the Department don’t really have any way to stop him…

So all in all, it seems like there’s a lot of doom and gloom. And there is, there’s no denying that Battle Lines is quite a bit darker than either of the previous two books. But the darkness actually makes it an easier read, at least to me. It conveys the sense that if Dracula is allowed to regain his full strength, it will be absolutely horrendous. So in this book, Dracula goes from being a threat in the distance – real, but still quite far away – to a genuine, and rather immediate threat. Which is a very good thing from a reader’s point of view.

We get a very different perspective on the morality of what Blacklight does. Larissa especially seems to be of the mind that they shouldn’t be killing vampires just because they’re vampires. They haven’t done anything wrong, they didn’t choose to be a vampire, so why should they be killed on sight? And while it’s not addressed as much in this book as I presume it will be in the next, it’s certainly a very interesting point to mull over.

Plot wise, there’s really not a slow point throughout the book. It just keeps going for seven hundred pages, and to be honest it’s brilliant. A problem I have with a lot of the books I read is that they’re over too soon, and I definitely don’t have that complaint about Battle Lines.

All in all I’d probably give Battle Lines 4/5 stars, because while it wasn’t exceptional, it was very very good, and I couldn’t put it down.

The Host – A Pleasant Surprise

A few years ago I would never have picked up this book. I would have scoffed, perhaps even mimed vomiting at the mention of the name Stephanie Meyer. But I’ve grown up.

The Host is genuinely brilliant, and I completely loved it. I can’t believe I’m only reading it now, but I was a stubborn eleven year old, and I refused to give it a chance. I was a stupid eleven year old.

A rather lovely cover

The Host follows Wanderer (Wanda) – A Soul.

Souls are a species which inhabit the bodies of humans (or other species on other planets). They’re not evil, they inhabit the bodies to help the world, but in doing so they wipe out their host species.

But not completely.

On Earth, there are humans who have managed to remain free of inhabitation by the Souls. They’re very much in the minority, and there’s only a few of them left, but they’re definitely present. And when Wanda inhabits one of the remaining humans, Melanie, she isn’t prepared for the fight Melanie puts up, a fight that Melanie might just win. Melanie tries to overpower Wanda’s presence in her mind, to get back to her brother Jamie, and Jared, her, for want of a better word, boyfriend or lover. She has vague directions in her head to the home of a group of surviving humans. But if she gets there will she be accepted? Will the humans even believe that Melanie is still alive inside of Wanda? And what if they start to like Wanda? What happens then?

It sounds good, but not brilliant. But it is brilliant. The thing about The Host is that you think you’d be rooting for Melanie – her being the human, and probably the more relatable of the two. But you don’t. You end up wanting Wanda to get her way, but at the same time wanting Melanie to be ok. And that’s really not a good place to be, at least not with what they have to go through in the course of the novel. You get very attached to both Wanda and Melanie, even if you set out not wanting to.

The hard part of reading is that you get to see both sides of the story. You would obviously go into the novel taking the human’s side, wanting rid of the souls, and to get the planet, and those you know and love back. But then you see in all from Wanda’s perspective, and you see what kind beings the Souls are, and how they really are here only to help, and if you don’t end up extremely conflicted, I genuinely don’t know what sort of person you are.

It is quite a long book, over 600 pages, and the start is a little slow, but it does pick up a lot, and apart from the beginning there’s never really a dull moment.

The characters are very well written, the fact that there’s no clear choice, or clear winner, or whatever you want to call it, in any of the situations that arise, is a tribute to how three-dimensional the characters all are. Even the characters that I thought I hated (of which there were two) ended up having a lot more to them than what I first thought.

Overall The Host genuinely moved me, it was absolutely brilliant. I strongly recommend it, and even if you’re not sure, even if you’ve read the terrible blurb and decided it wouldn’t be a good read, give it a go, you might be surprised – I know I was. So much so that I’m giving the Host 4.5 stars out of 5.

Level Two – too much love, not enough story

Not a cover I would usually pick up, but I’m glad I did…

Level Two, by Lenore Appelhans, is the story of Felicia Ward, who died a while back. She’s currently in “Level Two” where you go to confront your past, before you can move on to Heaven or Hell. Or at least that was the original purpose of Level Two. Now it’s purpose is gone. You can now rent out your memories for other dead souls to watch, so they can live your experiences, and in turn you can rent other soul’s memories. This completely defeats the purpose of Level Two, as you’re not confronting your death, and so cannot move on to Heaven or Hell.

So Felicia is doing just that – Not moving on, perpetually looking back over memories of her life, especially memories of Neil, her boyfriend. Until one day that is, when Julian – a boy who was in her life for all of a few weeks, tore her life apart then left forever – shows up at her memory pod, and forces her to leave with him. He brings her to a group of rebellious angels, who are plotting against the Morati, the angels who run Level Two, because the Morati are stopping the souls from moving on, so that they can use their energy as fuel. The rebels want to return Level Two to its original purpose of helping souls to move on.

I kind of have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it has quite a good plot, and is actually very well written, especially for a flashback novel, which as we all know are often extremely confusing. However, even as love triangles go, this one was blown way out of proportion, and to be honest the actual plot was overshadowed by it. I’m of the opinion that the story itself would be a lot better if the love triangle was played down a bit, because the story actually is brilliant.

I felt certain scenes were very rushed. I wouldn’t have minded if the book was another hundred pages long, if it meant the author could have gone into more detail in certain scenes, or certain aspects of the story.

Overall, apart from the over-emphasised love triangle, I don’t have anything to complain about. I’d put Level Two at 3.5 stars.

Review: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

The cover actually put me off it. The blurb on my copy is also dreadful…

I decided to read City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare, on a whim. I had seen a few shots of the cast – the movie is currently filming – and a friend had told me they were excellent, so when I saw a box set of the first three books in The Mortal Instruments series, I decided to buy it.

I’m not sure if this is the official poster, but it conveys the point…

I’ve just finished it, and it’s good. I wouldn’t call it the best book I’ve ever read, but it’s worth a read.

City of Bones follows the story of Clary Fray, a fifteen year old girl living in New York. One day at a club, she sees a demon being killed. Over the next few days her life gets thrown into chaos, as she realises that there’s a whole other side of the world that she hasn’t been able to see. Shadowhunters roam the streets, killing demons and keeping “the Accords” (a peace agreement). After her mother is abducted, she is taken to the Institute, a sort of headquarters for Shadowhunters in New York.

She then hears about the Uprising, a time when a Shadowhunter called Valentine attempted to rid the world of all Downworlders (demons, vampires, werewolves etc.). He is thought to be dead, along with his wife, and the Mortal Cup – a cup that can turn people into Shadowhunters.

But Clary soon discovers that Valentine’s death was not what it seemed, and that she is involved in this new world. And what part did her mother play?

It can be a little slow in places, and it certainly left me with more questions than answers, but I’m sure they’ll all be answered in the sequels. The characters are great, even if Clary is a bit of a Mary Sue, and the plot leaves nothing to be desired. There was not one, but two Star Wars moments, in about as many chapters, but that was fine – quite a big plot twist, but not completely unexpected.

All in all, City of Bones is quite a good book. It’s not amazing, but it’s certainly worth a read, and I’m a bit biased, as this sort of genre isn’t always my cup of tea. . I give it three and a half out of five.

On a different note, I recently attended the book launch of Derek Landy’s new book “Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked.” I haven’t started reading it yet, but from the blurb, and the way Derek talked about it on the day, it seems very good.