Cassel Sharpe is being wooed.

The mob wants him, the feds want him, Lila wants him (but only because of a curse).

Unfortunately, being wanted isn't everything Cheap Trick made it out to be, and Cassel has to decide which side he's on and how many people he can screw over in the process. He's an antihero with good intentions, and Black does a great job of making him interesting and likable and believable while at the same time making him a tough smartmouth who a sane person wouldn't want to be friends with in real life. This book managed to expand on the universe of the first book with real flair, skipping over the awkward growing pains typical of a sequel in AU stories.

This book felt like a hipster version of Vanity Fair, and while I love Thackeray for his slowly developing story and growth of characters and the world around them, Clarke has too modern a style to handle that effort with any sort of grace. This is a plodding book, and the attempt at witty asides and footnotes served to make me roll my eyes more than appreciate her wit. This book patted itself on the back far too often for my liking and was not well-written enough to justify its length.

If you can forgive it for its shortcomings and unnecessarily long chapters, it is an interesting idea: what happens in the early 1800s if magic has been gone from England for years, and one old crotchety magician begins to bring it back? How will his celebrity change the face of England as admirers flock to his side and he gets involved in the war with France? What happens when his apprentice begins to overshadow and question him?

I would recommend to surly hipsters and lovers of old-style books.

How does one even review a book like this?!

To start off I should be fair and say I have seen every episode of the show. This book would have been slow going if I didn't already know who all of the characters were to start. If you haven't watched the show, you should come to this book with a big imagination for faces and a pen to write down all their names.

Martin does a phenomenal job of building an entire world -- and not just a dystopian "it's a hundred years in the future so everything is the same but the government is more noticeably bad" kind of world building -- he literally creates thousands of years of history, multiple religions, various creeds and accents, and does it all while still creating an array of characters that seem like flesh and blood. This book is long but doesn't waste time on flowery prose; there's a lot to say and Martin does a great job of keeping you engaged even while flinging you all across the world to get every part of the story.

Can't wait to read the next one.

I admit that I rolled my eyes upon seeing this book, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, with zombies. I imagined the same meandering love stories as the original with some cowering in fear at the undead in between balls and carriage rides. What I actually found was a hilarious reinvention of Austen's work where the Bennett sisters are expertly trained warriors, and the addition of zombies made the whole story seem much more logical. Why did Darcy fall for the sassy-mouthed poor girl who hated him? Because she slayed zombies for fun and walked around on her fingertips to prove points is why! I loved that Grahame-Smith kept the same language style as the original (with the exception of a few jokes about balls, anyway).

Kit Bristol is a moderately likeable character who accidentally becomes a highwayman because on various occasions his instincts have led him to do the morally right thing instead of the smart thing. This book is a charming fantasy adventure involving riding horses very fast, discovering the laws of faerie, breaking said laws, starting a traveling performance troupe, and accidentally falling in love without realizing it. It felt a little like Gaiman's Stardust but for children (I believe this may have been marketed at teens but feel it is a little more middle grade). Unfortunately nothing about it was very memorable; it was a cute read that I will probably forget entirely in six months.

The Beginners feels like getting drunk and swimming in the ocean at night: you think shore is that way, but it could also be this way, and the waves themselves might be whispering or it might be your friends, but you're too bubbly-headed to care. It was an interesting journey and Wolff's first-person narrative, while not one iota realistic or true to Ginger's age, is compelling at the least. I hated the main character for being shallow and weak and desperate but I loved hating her so much that I enjoyed watching her slowly be ruined by the Motherwells. I guess I recommend this to cruel people who don't mind ambiguous beginnings, middles, and ends.

I loved this so much as a kid!

The harrowing saga continues as Robb Stark (or as I like to call him, Pouty Lips) embraces the title of King in the North, Stannis continues to sink into the mire of his cult, Daenerys plays with dragons, and Joffrey continues to be a total shitlord. Even beyond the incredible complexity and devotion to detail, Martin's story is so remarkable in that each line has so much weight, and he has so many beautifully crafted sentences that I couldn't take the book anywhere without bringing a highlighter along. The story is well-plotted and fast-paced.

Lawhead has reimagined Robin Hood in the form of Bran, a prince in Wales in 1093AD, as he struggles against the Normans who have taken his land. He does a good job of making you believe in each of the characters of legend as flesh and blood people, and the setting fits the story well. Unfortunately, the character development is nonexistent, his explanations of historical events are lacking, and his pacing is juvenile. I never felt like I had a good sense of the hierarchy of titles or what was going on in the world around the characters, and there was such a large cast that none of them seemed to get enough page space. Would recommend to those who really love the Robin Hood legend.