Tag: book of the month

Series Review: Bring Me Their Hearts

I will be the first to admit that I am 100% a “judge a book by its cover” type of reader. So, when I saw this book in my local bookstore, I couldn’t help myself. It’s honestly the prettiest book I own.

Bring Me Their Hearts by Sara Wolf follows Zera, a young Heartless. Created by a witch when Zera’s parents were killed, her heart is physically separated from her body and binds her by magic to her witch, Nightsinger. Zera’s memory of who she was before she became heartless are no longer her own to remember and she can stray no further than a few miles away from her witch. Though Nightsinger treats Zera well, she is a prisoner all the same.

The witches are locked in an age old battle with the humans who are hunting them down. In an attempt to win the upper hand in the long battle, Nightsinger offers Zera a deal. If she delivers the Crown Prince Lucien d’Malvane’s heart to Nightsinger, she would return Zera’s heart to her. Under the guidance of a noblewoman with ties to the witches, Zera attempts to learn to be of noble blood so she can win over the prince and ultimately take his heart and trade it for her own. But, Zera finds that though all her instincts are screaming for a reunion with her heart, she does not wish to doom Prince Lucien to the fate of being a heartless.

Throughout this story, a long tale of dark magic that governs the world unravels and Zera finds herself dead center in the action. She is torn between protecting those she holds dear and the longing in her to have her heart back. She fights an internal battle against the hunger who wishes to watch the world burn that she comes to know as a heartless.

This story is a three book series that reads fun and fast. However, I did find it to be largely quite predictable. I do have to admit, I really enjoyed Zera’s internal narration, she is sarcastic, sassy and just the right amount of arrogant. But, Wolf still manages to paint the overcast of the hunger on Zera as she moves through the story.

The third book is distinctly written in a more mature writing style, in my opinion. I find that the more the story grows, the more Wolf was able to find her voice as a writer. In the first two books there were several times that the writing style turned me off from the story. Though, I must credit Wolf with a fairly interesting imagination.

Overall, this was a fun read but I don’t think I will find myself ever rereading this series. What did you all think?

Book Review: Project Tau

Project Tau by Jude Austin is a story about a regular boy named Kalin Taylor who gets himself into a ton of trouble by accident. The book starts out with a prologue that is vague to the reader as we do not yet have background to who these characters are. All we can really pull from these pages is that chaos has ensued but are unsure who the protagonists and the antagonists are. Obviously, since the book is called Project Tau we have a hunch whose side we should be on. 

This story is set many years in the future, the year is approximately 3389 when the chapters begin counting. Kalin has just arrived at Sanderson College of Arts and Sciences (SACAS) from his home planet, Trandelia. He is nerdy and has little to no friends. Kalin decides that the best way to rectify this is to join a frat. He approaches the guys of the Phi Mu Alpha frat house about pledging and they, in turn, tell him that he needs to submit a picture of himself with Project Tau as a kind of entrance token. We gather that Project Tau is a government classified project and we have the prologue from which we can identify him. Once Kalin pursues this mission, he is captured by the leaders of the space station which houses Project Tau and held captive. We then follow his story through the following two years of what he is made to face. 

Austin has a unique concept that she is laying out to readers in Project Tau. It is the basic metaphor of man versus government. She tells the story of someone who is powerless to what occurs to him and is finally pushed so far, he starts to push back. This metaphor is not unique or innovative, but the approach is interesting. As I read through this book, I found myself outraged at what happened to Kalin Taylor. I have not come across a book that shows this kind of oppression without first giving a back story. There is no legitimate reason, whether it is justified or not, as to why Kalin has to go through the events laid out in the book. I came face to face with the idea that the government does not need a reason to oppress and usually does not have one. The lies that are spun and sold to Kalin are hard to swallow but they make the reader reflect on how many lies have been fed to us that we willingly accepted. Also, I loved that even though I read the events that led Kalin to his precarious situation, Austin’s writing still left me wondering if he really was a clone the whole time! It was awesome story telling on her part.

What I liked least about Project Tau was that the ending was given away in the prologue. Even though when I first read the prologue I was unaware what was actually happening, as I advanced through the book I was able to piece it together. The story was fun and exciting but it felt like I was safe from really falling off the cliff into the story because I already knew what was going to happen. I can appreciate a book that is written to draw a parallel to current injustices but I wish Austin had made us work for the ending instead of just giving it away. 

I recommend reading this book as it does get the mind rolling about media and government information sharing or lack thereof. However, I would recommend skipping the prologue and jumping back over to it after chapter thirteen if you want a more exciting story that you can be fully invested in.