I didn’t have a clear goal of how many books I wanted to read in January, but I knew I wanted to be at least a little bit ahead of my Goodreads challenge. That, I accomplished. I surprisingly read a total of 13 books in January, and I hope I manage to keep up with my reading for the rest of the year. (Wishful thinking.)
The Pile
February will be dedicated to reading all the egalleys that I’ve accumulated on my nook in the last month. And just to add a book for fun, I checked out an ebook from my library!
- Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter
- This is Not A Test by Courtney Summers
- The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda
- Look Into My Eyes by Lauren Child
- Where I Belong by Gwendolyn Heasley
GoodReads Challenge
The Vlog
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Memes, TBR Pile - Author: Aimee Carter, Author: Andrew Fukuda, Author: Courtney Summers, Author: Gwendolyn Heasley, Author: Lauren Child, Book: Goddess Interrupted, Book: Look Into My Eyes, Book: The Hunt, Book: This Is Not A Test, Book: Where I Belong | 
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STEEL by Carrie Vaughn Book Review
Publication Date: March 1st 2011 by HarperTeen
Rating: 
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Book Summary: It was a slender length of rusted steel, tapered to a point at one end and jagged at the other, as if it had broken. A thousand people would step over it and think it trash, but not her.
This was the tip of a rapier.
Sixteen-year-old Jill has fought in dozens of fencing tournaments, but she has never held a sharpened blade. When she finds a corroded sword piece on a Caribbean beach, she is instantly intrigued and pockets it as her own personal treasure.
The broken tip holds secrets, though, and it transports Jill through time to the deck of a pirate ship. Stranded in the past and surrounded by strangers, she is forced to sign on as crew. But a pirate’s life is bloody and brief, and as Jill learns about the dark magic that brought her there, she forms a desperate scheme to get home—one that risks everything in a duel to the death with a villainous pirate captain.
Time travel, swordplay, and romance combine in an original high-seas adventure from New York Times bestseller Carrie Vaughn.
Book Review Overview:
- Highlight of the book are definitely the fencing and sword-fighting scenes
- Would have loved more on Captain Cooper and Edmund Blane; felt that Blane was a little flat
- Time travel just happens and is never really explained
Jill stumbles upon a a broken rusted blade that washed upon the shores of the Bahamas. Intrigued by the blade, Jill pockets it and wonders where it came from. During a boat ride with her family, a wave pitches Jill into the ocean and she suddenly finds herself transported back into the early 18th century on a ship full of pirates. STEEL by Carrie Vaughn is a novel full of swordplay and pirates but fails to truly captivate the reader.
As a former high school fencer, I have to admit that I just loved the fencing and sword-fighting scenes in STEEL by Carrie Vaughn. For me, the sword scenes were the main highlight of the book. Vaughn takes sword fighting seriously; it’s not just slashing swords and steel on steel. Vaughn uses fencing terminology and stresses the fact that this is where the sport originated. The terminology is probably a bit hard to get used to for someone who’s never fenced before, so I thought it was handy to have the glossary at the end of STEEL that described terms such as redoublement and passé.
But despite the fact that I enjoyed the fencing scenes, STEEL failed to capture my attention most of the time. STEEL is under 300 pages and told from the third person perspective, with Jill as the single main character viewpoint. I just didn’t enjoy this novel coming from Jill’s perspective. I didn’t really understand her role in STEEL. Yes, she brought back a shard of Blane’s sword by accident – but that’s it. Nothing about Jill is special.
To be honest, I would have loved reading this novel from the perspective of Captain Cooper – or even better, Edmund Blane. The story is really about them and their fierce rivalry. Captain Cooper is such an interesting character since you usually don’t read about revered female pirate captains. I found her back story fascinating and I wished that she had been more central to the story. Furthermore, for a villain, I felt like Blain was such a flat character. You always just heard about how terrible he is, but you never really get to hear it from his point of view.
There’s a smudge of romance in this book and I honestly thought it was quite unnecessary. Why can’t guys and girls just remain friends? The romance didn’t satisfy me in any way, and I just felt a bit irritated that it was in the story at all.
The last detail that bothered me about STEEL is that the time travel aspect is something that just happens. Vaughn unfortunately does very little to explain the phenomena and just relies on the reader’s imagination to believe that Jill can just fall into the ocean and get magically transported back to the 18th century. The device may work on some readers, but it failed to impress me. I feel like Jill just blended in so well into the time period, and no one really questioned her. I’d expect that many of her mannerisms and speech differed from the pirates, but it was never really brought up in the book.
I honestly wanted to like STEEL more than I did. I had pretty good expectations for this one because I generally love time travel and pirate books. However, the combination of the two just didn’t work out for me in STEEL by Carrie Vaughn. I would still recommend readers who are interested in this novel to give it a shot and to Borrow It from your public library. But for those who want a little more romance and minus the time travel, there’s always TO CATCH A PIRATE by Jade Parker (you can read my book review here).
Other Book Reviews:
Good Books and Good Wine
Into the Book
Novel Thoughts
About the Author
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Find the Author
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Vaughn was born into a military family and has lived all over the U.S. She received a BA from Occidental College, after which she went on to work too many jobs to count until she went back to school to receive her MA from University of Colorado at Boulder. She currently lives in Boulder, CO.
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Book Review, Two Stars - Audience: Young Adult, Author: Carrie Vaughn, Book: Steel, Borrow It, Genre: Historical, Genre: Time Travel, Publisher: HarperTeen | 1238 words
Hey, what’s this? A new feature? Yep. This is just some of the highlights I’ve encountered while digging through my Google reader feed, YouTube, Goodreads, and Twitter.
Reviews Worth Reading
Convincing, entertaining, well-written or all of the above, these reviews are worth your time.
I haven’t seen a lot of reviews for Ilsa J Bick’s Drowning Instinct, despite the fact that her other book, Ashes was all over the blogosphere. I finally came across a review written by The Elliott Review. I am convinced that I need to have this book now.
I’ve seen Cross My Heart by Katie Klein around the web, but I never really thought about picking it up. This review at Confessions of a Bookaholic made me change my mind.
Read All About It: Articles & Discussion
Helpful tips and tricks & interesting bookish debates, articles, and discussion on the blogosphere.
For those who need a bit of HTML help, the Authoress explains how to code your button code.
On one-star reviews at Write About Now. Great insight on what one-star reviews really mean.
Small Review discusses the Dark Side of Blogging: from misbehaving authors to plagiarism.
Ebook Deals on Nook! – $5 or Less
I love a good deal – especially on ebooks. All the Harper Collins 0.99 cents ebooks are still on sale. Grab them while you can. Here are some deals that I came across while scouring the Barnes and Noble website! (Last checked on Wednesday, January 25th):
Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz
Bumped by Megan McCafferty
Camille by Tess Oliver
Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally
Cross My Heart by Katie Klein
Entwined by Heather Dixon
Evermore by Alyson Noel
Forget Me Not by Colleen Murtagh Paratore
The Girl Who Was on Fire Anthology
The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Half-Blood by Jennifer L Armentrout
Hereafter by Tara Hudson
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa
Kiss of Frost by Jennifer Estep
Living Violet by Jamie Reed
Marked by PC Cast
Once a Witch by Carolyn MacCullough
Ophelia by Lisa Klein
Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn’t Have) by Sarah Mylonowski
Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep
Vesper by Jeff Sampson
Added on GoodReads
What caught my eye on GoodReads and was added to the pile. After all the award buzz about this book, I just have to pick it up! … Eventually.
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
Just when seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter thinks he understands everything about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town, it all disappears. . . .
In the summer before Cullen’s senior year, a nominally-depressed birdwatcher named John Barling thinks he spots a species of woodpecker thought to be extinct since the 1940s in Lily, Arkansas. His rediscovery of the so-called Lazarus Woodpecker sparks a flurry of press and woodpecker-mania. Soon all the kids are getting woodpecker haircuts and everyone’s eating “Lazarus burgers.” But as absurd as the town’s carnival atmosphere has become, nothing is more startling than the realization that Cullen’s sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother Gabriel has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared.
While Cullen navigates his way through a summer of finding and losing love, holding his fragile family together, and muddling his way into adulthood, a young missionary in Africa, who has lost his faith, is searching for any semblance of meaning wherever he can find it. As distant as the two stories seem at the start, they are thoughtfully woven ever closer together and through masterful plotting, brought face to face in a surprising and harrowing climax.
Complex but truly extraordinary, tinged with melancholy and regret, comedy and absurdity, this novel finds wonder in the ordinary and emerges as ultimately hopeful. It’s about a lot more than what Cullen calls, “that damn bird.” It’s about the dream of second chances.
Terrific Trailers
This trailer convinced me to add the book to my TBR pile!
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Digging Through the Shelves, Memes - Author: Elizabeth Wein, Author: John Corey Whaley, Book: Code Name Verity, Book: Where Things Come Back | 1105 words
- Action Packed
- Hahaha Funny
- Keeps You Guessing
- Heartwarmer
- Makes You Think
- Masterful World-Building
- Must Buy
- Page-Turner
- Poetic Prose
- Romantic Read
- Tear-Jerker
