Jacqueline Lepore: Descent into Dust

I received my copy of this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. Jacqueline Lepore's Descent into Dust is Victorian with a vampire twist to it. It's written as a gothic novel with all the mystery needed to make it a bit spooky. I loved it.

Main character and widow Emma Andrews is on a trip to visit family. She quickly arrives at Dulwich Manor. There seems to be a plague going on in the neighborhood, and while people are reassured that all is well, it isn't so. Emma begins to see and hear things, causing others to think she's inherited her mother's maddness. Another guest, Valerian Fox, helps Emma discover truth to mysteries lying about, including one about herself: Emma is destined to be a vampire hunter. Something of a vampire hunter himself, they work together to hunt an ancient vampire, Marius.

When I first began reading this book, I was a little nervous. I'd never read anything quite like it. Lepore showed me that sure enough, vampires can be written into a Victorian and gothic novel. It was done very well, I might add. My nervousness had slowed my reading pace toward the beginning of the book, but when I got further along I couldn't set the book down. It's a book that I want to reread, as I will be just before it's sequel is released. Originally titled The Cyprian Queen, just this week Lepore has shared that she wishes to title it Immortal with a Kiss.

I'm very greatful to be chosen to receive this book so thank you, Avon, for donating it to the program, and thank you, Jacqueline Lepore, for writing it. It was enjoyed very much.

Sarah Waters: Fingersmith

It was such a busy weekend I missed posting about a book. I finished this one still in October. This is not a Young Adult book, but an adult novel. I read Young Adult books pretty frequently as anyone can see but reading something more mature and of better vocabulary has made me see how I miss books written for the general or adult audience. With a partial learning disability I always notice how what I read effects the words I use when I speak and write. I was happily buried in beautiful words not so commonly used in modern time for a few days.

With the last book I finished reading, I was still in the mood for Victorian books. A friend from LibraryThing recently reminded me that I had one still unread, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. You always intend to read books and especially when you first purchase or receive them, but it can take a while when you have so very many books. I bought this one in April the day I met another LibraryThinger for the first time. We got in two bookstores, which left me about $80 shorter and buried under about five more books in my TBR pile.

Right away while reading this book, I noticed like last time how very different the main character was to what I was used to reading. The main character, Susan Trinder, is an orphan girl living and growing up amongst thieves. Still, when something stumbles along that changes her future, she isn't at complete ease for the reason that her journey is set out for: to help a friend make his fortune by tricking a girl, Maud Lilly, who is inherit a great sum of money upon her marriage, into marrying him. The plan after this is for Gentleman, also known as Mr. Rivers, to then dump his wife in a mad house, Susan then awarded a small portion of the funds. She is eager to make the woman she considers to be her mother proud and to provide her with a fortune.

Susan learns new life skills such as how to be more of a lady as she prepares to leave home for a place where she will be known as Susan Smith. She is to be a maid for Ms. Lilly with a complete and false history as the maid of Mr. River's aunt. Susan has weeks for Ms. Lilly to adjust to Susan, to gain her trust and even befriend her before Mr. Rivers returns to the Lilly's. She prepares Ms. Lilly for each day, dressing her and attending to her needs, accompanying her and spending time with her whenever Ms. Lilly is not with her uncle to read in the library or in the dining room for meals. When Mr. Rivers appears and begins to make his moves on Ms. Lilly, Ms. Lilly is slow to give her confidence to Susan, but shyly does so.

The story goes on and I wish to not give it away. It is extraordinarily plot twisting and always surprising. It is typical to guess what will come in books as you read and to make correct predictions but this simply seems impossible in this book. As the tale goes on, it only gets better and there were most certainly parts that made me cry. Everything I thought as I read for what would come to be was wrong. I would read this book again. Thank you to my friends from LibraryThing for a wonderful book suggestion!

55 / 70 books. 79% done!

Libba Bray: A Great and Terrible Beauty

I wasn't sure what to expect when I began reading Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty. I knew it was a Young Adult Victorian and Gothic novel. Reading another book that I am now, I ashamingly wonder and feel that I should already know if Victorian and Gothic tales go hand in hand. I would most definitely like to learn more about different times in literature and now want to explore them more.

We first met Gemma Doyle when she has the sort of characteristics one would not want others to see in them. She is a sixteen-year-old girl who is rude and sometimes obnoxious. It is something no one wants to admit to being themselves so because Bray begins the first book in this series with such characteristics for Gemma I was surprised but soon saw where the change would come.

When Gemma is sent to a finishing school for reasons I will not give away, visions of experiences such as within The Little Princess appeared to my mind. Perhaps it was because like the main character in that book, Gemma is also from India. Both girls have lost a parent and there is a touch of seeing what others do not as well as something magical to both their stories. Both characters do not have a completely shared experience in their different books and schools, however. While similarities exist they are also very different stories.

Ever since an event at the start of the book, Gemma has been seeing visions that change the course of her life at Spence, the finishing school in England she is taken to. She forms what would have been an impossible small group of friends. Gemma learns there is a secret hiding about the fire that burned a wing of the school down which connects to there not being a class photograph for the class of 1871. As she enters her visions and leads others in them as well, Gemma learns there is a great connection between her visions, a forgotten diary the visions lead her to, and the fire that killed at least one student from the class of 1871.

There are many more secrets to this book but I wish to not give them away. I really enjoyed this book and am very eager to read book two, Rebel Angels. There are three books in this series to date with none expected after the third. The paperback for book three is not due out until May 12, 2009. Random House has a very nice site for the Gemma Doyle trilogy but beware - spoilers lurk everywhere.

54 / 70 books. 77% done!