Book Review: Enthralled edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Book Reviews, Reading

EnthralledEnthralled by Melissa Marr

My rat­ing: 3 of 5 stars

Jour­neys, lit­eral or oth­er­wise, are the theme of this young adult anthol­ogy. Appro­pri­ately enough, it was con­ceived as the result of a book tour.

“Giovanni’s Farewell” by Clau­dia Gray is a sweet, coming-​​of-​​age story of sorts. The twist is that it fea­tures a brother and sis­ter, twins, rather than just one per­son. They visit Rome with a school group while deal­ing with major changes in their lives. There was too much back­ground crammed into a short story, but it was interesting.

Car­rie Ryan’s “Scenic Route” is a dis­turb­ing, post-​​apocalyptic story set in the world of The For­est of Hands and Teeth about two young sis­ters try­ing to sur­vive in an iso­lated cabin. The older sis­ter keeps the younger one occu­pied with the plan­ning of a road trip that will never hap­pen, always hop­ing against hope that the girl won’t real­ize what their real­ity is. How long can they stay iso­lated enough to sur­vive? Bloody, fright­en­ing, and visceral.

“Red Run” by Kami Gar­cia is the story of a girl who has lost the only per­son she loves in the world, and the trip she takes to avenge his death. How do you hunt a ghost? Maybe it isn’t fair, com­ing right after Ryan’s story, but I didn’t truly feel the main character’s feelings.

Jack­son Pearce’s “Things About Love” is a sweet story involv­ing a jinn research­ing love. I felt like I’d come into the mid­dle of some­thing, so I checked and found that she’s writ­ten a novel, As You Wish, in the same set­ting. While this story tech­ni­cally stands on its own, it would prob­a­bly be enriched by hav­ing read As You Wish.

“Nieder­wald” by Rachel Vin­cent is the first story I’ve read in her Soul Scream­ers series. Sabine, a macha (night­mare), takes a road trip with a human acquain­tance and detours to Nieder­wald, Texas, home to the harpies. No, there’s no way that could go wrong. Of course you know from the moment they hit the park­ing lot that it will go wrong, but at least it’s an inter­est­ing sort of wrong.

Melissa Marr’s “Merely Mor­tal” feels as though it’s prob­a­bly set in the same world as her Wicked Lovely series.

“Fac­ing Facts” by Kel­ley Arm­strong is set in her Dark­est Pow­ers uni­verse. I read the first of those books, but obvi­ously a lot has passed since then, and there were spoil­ers in this story. It really cen­ters around Chloe and Tori, with a lit­tle Derek tossed in. Tori learns some­thing she doesn’t want to know and reacts badly, run­ning off on her own, which is dan­ger­ous. Chloe goes after her and they get into trou­ble. That seemed rather pre­dictable to me, but at least the type of trou­ble wasn’t what I expected. Tori doesn’t seem to have changed since the first book, but Chloe is com­ing into con­trol of her abilities.

Sarah Rees Bren­nan’s “Let’s Get this Undead Show on the Road” is about a boy band that fea­tures a vam­pire, Chris­t­ian. He’s an unusual vam­pire, all alone with­out a nest or a sire. His jour­ney seems to be about his iden­tity as a vam­pire, although the band is on tour and has another sort of jour­ney to make, as well.

“Bridge” by Jeri Smith-​​Ready is told from a ghost’s point of view, 233 days after death. It’s frus­trat­ing being a ghost, because most peo­ple can’t see or hear you. There are things you have to accom­plish before mov­ing on, though, that require com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the liv­ing. Find­ing a “bridge” and work­ing things out takes a lot of effort. This was a touch­ing story, bit­ter­sweet and well-​​told.

Kim­berly Dert­ing’s “Skin Con­tact” nearly broke me. Rafe is look­ing for his girl­friend. He knows where he needs to go, and he’s guided by dreams. This story nearly broke me. It’s told spar­ingly, and some­thing feels per­fectly right about it, but it hurts. Accord­ing to her author biog­ra­phy, Rafe was intro­duced in her novel Desires of the Dead.

“Leav­ing” by Ally Condie is a very lit­er­ary story, about a girl left behind after her mother dies and her father leaves. She spends the story prepar­ing to go after her father. It’s hard to describe much more than that, or to have much of an opin­ion. It was well-​​written and I think I’ll prob­a­bly remem­ber it for a long time.

Jes­sica Ver­day’s “At The Late Night, Dou­ble Fea­ture, Pic­ture Show” is a darkly funny story about a girl from a fam­ily of mon­ster hunters. She’s usu­ally the bait, but tonight she has decided to be the hunter — with­out backup. I’d like to read more from Verday.

“IV League” by Mar­garet Stohl just didn’t hit me right. It’s the story of a bunch of south­ern vam­pires on a col­lege tour, which could have been funny but wasn’t writ­ten that way. The whole thing just didn’t sit well with me, per­haps because the main char­ac­ter seemed too unre­al­is­ti­cally out of touch for some­one who obvi­ously had access to tele­vi­sion and the internet.

Mary E. Pear­son’s “Gar­gouille” is the most touch­ing love story in the col­lec­tion. Just read it.

“The Third Kind” by Jen­nifer Lynn Barnes is, on the sur­face, about a road trip to San Anto­nio. The real jour­ney is much deeper, one of com­ing to under­stand­ing one’s calling.

Rachel Caine’s Mor­ganville is the set­ting for her “Auto­matic.” I think I’ve read a Mor­ganville novella, but my mem­ory of it is dim. The Mor­ganville Blood Bank intro­duces an auto­mated with­drawal machine, essen­tially a soda can dis­penser. Michael Glass is ordered to try it first, as a demon­stra­tion for the older, more tra­di­tional vam­pires, with unex­pected results. His jour­ney is one of self-​​knowledge. I didn’t really care much about him, his jour­ney, his girl­friend, or any­thing else. The set­ting and char­ac­ters do noth­ing for me, but your mileage may vary.

Alto­gether, the anthol­ogy was worth read­ing. There were some low spots, but that’s true of any col­lec­tion. To be fair, I’m sure some­one who is more enthu­si­as­tic about young adult fic­tion would also be more enthu­si­as­tic about the works here.



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Permalink | August 13th, 2012

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