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Chloe Kalna chloekalna — Real rating: 4.5 stars OH. MY. GOSH. LOVE? HELL YEAH! Angelfire was incredible. I did have quite high expectations for it since it was a brand-spanking new YA book and it was paranormal and stuff. I just love paranormal YA. Not to mention this book was HYPED and I have a guilty pleasure for hyped books. Truth be told, the writing itself wasn't the most applaudable part of the book. I mean, some parts were kinda lazy overviews of Ellie's day and stuff. LAZY. I think she should have put in more detail, at least make Ellie LIVE the parts instead of throwing us with a couple of paragraphs of a party. I mean, if you're gonna do that, why put it in in the first place? :S I absolutely do forgive the infodumps and long stories. They were helpful. But bloody unrealistic. But at least she got the point across: I give her props for that. Totesmadotes. It was quite easy to understand which was a good thing. Characters? Ellie just wasn't shelled out ENOUGH, you know. She was a good character, you know, a stable one. I think fleshing her out a bit more would have been better but I mean, golly, there's a second book coming out so we'll have to wait and see, won't we? I just adored her ass-kicking skeelz she was all like BAM BAM I IZ THE PRELIATOR AND I BE COMING FOR YO ASS. It was pretty mcuh really refreshing to actually have her fight. Honestly? Ellie in this book fights more than Clary Fray (for as much as I can rmemeber. Haven't read TMI since last year). Will was pretty 'meh', though. I guess there ARE stoic types out there and his faith towards Ellie is just mind-boggling, but I think he improves as the story goes on. There's a reeeeasonable pace between how they develop for one another and I think it's fine. But Ellie was a bit more realistic than Will, hands-down. The fighting scenes were SUPERB. Amazing detail. Oh my gosh. I could imagine every move she made and hell, it was like a freaking action movie. Best fight scenes I've ever read in a book. You compare it to some other YA paranormal romances with fight scenes and you just wanna claw your eyeballs out. Coz that's how lame it is. It's like comparing a rifle with a pansy. Lame-oh! What I relly, honestly, truly madly deeply loved about this book was the EMOTION. Personally, I didn't find it sappy or what not or unrealistic. I mean, when I read the scenes between Ellie and Will, they touched my heart (CHEESY). But I could feel it, the compassion. She just, I don't know, Moulton has a way with the emotion in the book that makes you feel whats going on and I just really, really loved it. The other think I loved about it was SUSPENSE. Gosh, the fight scenes were pretty long and I don't blame them, it was keeping you at the edge of your seat just to see what's going on. I just kept beggin myself and screaming (WHY DON'T YOU JUST FRIGGIN DIE FOR F***'S SAKE?!) for Ellie to slay those sons of bitches. They were good scenes. They were gooood. This book, well, I'd say it lived up to the hype/standards. Maybe the writing could have improved a bit but I thought that the message, the emotions and the descriptions it contains totally pays off for it. Can't wait for the next book :) AM EAGER TO READ IT!

Kayla Thompson kaylathomp6f00 — I might have gone with four stars if not for the format of three interlocking novellas. I would have preferred one long, fully connected story. The three novels revolve around the LBJ-like Texas governor Arthur Fenstermaker, although he is, oddly, almost a minor character in the first two novels. They focus more on the younger, less influential political players in the governor's orbit. When Fenstermaker does make an appearance, he demonstrates the raw power of the good ol' boy network of politicking. All of the novels follow the self-inflicted downward spiral of the '50s-era Austin-tatious new rich, in all their debauched and vulgar incarnations. These were people who had started out in a highly idealistic, progressive political movement. They dissolved their lofty liberal hopes for the nation in an endless wash of booze and general moral degradation. Billy Brammer was a staffer for Lyndon B. Johnson, so I have no doubt this is an accurate fictionalization of the time and place. Brammer was a fine writer with a special ability to probe the minds and hearts of characters who recognize their own weaknesses but can't seem to detach themselves from the thrill of power and the fun of being one of the beautiful people. I had some difficulty remaining sympathetic toward the characters. Somewhere around the second chapter of the third novel, I was weary of them, and bored with their faux-apologetic drunken fumbling for each other's fleshy protuberances and dangling bits. It's a credit to Brammer that he created them so convincingly, and I'm grateful to have been reminded of why I stepped away from greater involvement in politics after my own experiences with people of this ilk in college.

Nashid Towhid nashidtowhid — This was good, but apparently not good enough for me to remember too well. I know it was compelling, and had something to do with a self-concious, but proud, young Southern black girl who wound up roommates with a self-hating liberal whitey from Pennsylvania. The black girl's own deliberate extracation of herself from the uppity school's largely white, but even black, female community baffles and intrigues her friend, who guiltily takes pride in having a black friend, and uses it as a token to converse with her ACLU-lawyer pops, who never has enough attention for her, what with all the defending of radical protestors and AWOL soliders he's got going on. Tragedy strikes when the black girl dies - well, no spoiler there, it's in the first sentence - and our narrator, the scrawny white girl, realizes when her own family divides up, that she really has no home. The book takes a strange twist though - possibly a metaphorical one that was just beyond me - but it was enough to shake free the tender insights and leave me scratching my head. But despite feeling eft in the dark about this book's greater meaning, some of the repeated themes in the girls' lives rung true enough to give me a lot to digest, in my own somewhat ongoing battle to better understand at the core my own, and the country's historic racism.