Siege and Storm / Leigh Bardugo / 435 pgs / Audiobook

"Darkness never dies.

Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land, all while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. But she can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.

The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka. But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal. Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her—or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm."

This is the second book in Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse Series, which is a fresh take on Russian fairytales and mythology! This book continues Alina's fight against The Darkling to save Ravka and the rest of the world. I enjoyed this book just slightly less than I did the first one. Actual star rating is 3.5. Sometimes second books in trilogies have a tendency to drag on without adding much to the overall plot of the series. This one did have some slow parts, but I loved the addition of the new characters, which made up for it. I'm curious to finish this series!

The Prince Who Loved Me / Karen Hawkins / 355 pgs / Historical Fiction

"Prince Alexsey Romanovin enjoys his carefree life, flirting—and more—with every lovely lady who crosses his path. But when the interfering Grand Duchess Natasha decides it's time for her grandson to wed, Alexsey finds himself in Scotland, determined to foil her plans. Brainy, bookish, and bespectacled, Bronwyn Murdoch seems the perfect answer—she isn't at all to the duchess' taste.

Living at the beck and call of her ambitious stepmother and social butterfly stepsisters, Bronwyn has little time for a handsome flirt—no matter how intoxicating his kisses are. After all, no spoiled, arrogant prince would be seriously interested in a firm-minded female like herself. So . . . wouldn't it be fun to turn his "game" upside down and prove that an ordinary woman can bring a prince to his knees?"

I got this sweet, little romance in a swap, and I needed a break from serious reads and thoughts. The best short description of this I can give is Cinderella meets How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days plus your usual romance sexy times and set in Scotland. There were a few times I wanted to slap the prince (as you do), and I always need some suspension of disbelief because romances aren’t really realistic, but overall it was fun!

Cinder / Marissa Meyer / 390 pgs.

For the PopSugar book challenge, I fulfilled the "read a book based on a fairy tale" challenge by listening to the audiobook version of Cinder by Marissa Meyer, the first book in the popular YA series, The Lunar Chronicles. The narrator, Rebecca Soler, does a wonderful job of making all the voices of the characters come alive and sound interesting. The book is a perfect mix of fairy tale and futuristic sci-fi dystopia and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm already listening to the second book of the series, Scarlet.


As you can imagine, Cinder is based loosely on the tale of Cinderella. A cyborg 16-year old girl, Cinder, is a virtual slave to her step-mother and two step-sisters in New Beijing. She works as a mechanic, fixing droids and portscreens when she meets the handsome Prince Kai. Although Earth has enjoyed over 125 years with no wars, it has succumbed in the last decade to a deadly plague. Prince Kai must deal with his ailing father, the Emperor, and an evil queen from the Moon with the ability to "glamour" people into doing exactly what she wants.

Hansel & Gretel (a Toon Graphic)/Neil Gaiman/53 pgs.

Along with illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti, Neil Gaiman retells the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. The ink illustrations add a creepy dimension to an already horrifying version of the story told by Gaiman. Very interesting, but will probably give little children nightmares!

CHARMING / Elliott James / 391 Pages

In CHARMING, the author re-imagines a classic fairy tale character with an  paranormal twist; the first in his 'Pax Arcana' series. James writes a snarky, first person, narrative introducing readers to John Charming. Yes, as in Prince Charming, well ... sort of.

John was trained to be a modern-day Knight Templar, an entire family of Charmings no less, who hunt monsters and defend humans. Unfortunately a curse ended up changing all that, turning him into a fugitive. Now he moves from town to town, job to job, trying to stay off the Knight's radar and deal with what the curse has done to him. Then one day a tall, mysterious blonde AND a vampire walk into his bar ...

For those who like humor in action-packed, paranormal fiction or who enjoy Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, first introduced in Storm Front.

Cinderella: Fables are Forever / Chris Roberson / 152 pgs. / Fairy Tales Challenge!

Cinderella is more than just a fashionista princess in this mash-up fairytale series.  Here Cinderella is a Master Spy travelling the world to seek out the whereabouts and secret plots of the other still existing Fairy Tale Factions. Of course, every Bond-like spy must have an arch-nemesis and this volume explores the rivalry between "Cindy" and the evil Dorothy Gale (yes, that one from Kansas) who goes by the code name "Silver Slipper". 

Book of Lost Things / John Connolly 342 p. Fiary Tale

12 year-old David turns to books for comfort after his mother dies.  When his father remarries, David is angry at Rose and his half-brother.  With the bombings of WWII, they move to Rose's house.  There the books talk to David.  When he slips through the hole in the sunken garden, he enters a make believe world that is melded with his imagination.  Talking wolves, trolls, harpies, Snow White are encountered as he makes his quest to see the king for the king's Book of Lost Things is thought to help him return home.  Connolly has incorporated many traditional fairy tales with twists into this story of coming-of-age and maturity.

Fables: Homelands (Vol. 6) / Bill Willingham / 190 pgs / Fairy Tales Challenge

The Fables are preparing for war.  They are on edge waiting for the Adversary's next attack.  In the meantime, Little Boy Blue goes undercover and sneaks back into the homelands to look for his long-lost love Red Riding-hood and to find out who is the main power behind the Adversaries.

Fables: The Mean Seasons (Vol. 5) / Bill Willingham / 166 pgs. / Fairy Tales Challenge

The battle is over and the war is on pause, for now, but time and life is moving on.  Fabletown is preparing for a mayoral election; and Bigby (the Big Bad Wolf) and Snow White are awaiting the birth of their babies. 

This volume has a great backstory about Bigby's service during WWII, with lots of action behind enemy lines.  It also focuses more on the characters as fabletown is changing and the birth of the babies are changing the lives of the major players.  Its a nice break from the War storyline, since no matter what awful things happen life still does go on.

Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers (vol. 4) / Bill Willingham / 231 pgs / Fairy Tales Challenge

The evil empire known as "The Adversary" has found Fabletown and has begun their attack.  An army of Pinocchio-like wooden soldiers have descended on Fabletown and it is up to the residents to figure out how to destroy the puppets without destroying their town or letting the human world find out about them and the war.  The Fables are also wondering who made these puppets? and does this mean that Pinocchio's maker Gepetto is still alive? and is he working for the Adversary? 

Great artwork, snarky commentary, lots of action.  My only complaint is the Wooden Soldiers were annoying.  They are single minded so their comments are short and terse and just got on my nerves after awhile because of the repetitiveness of the dialog. 

Fables: Storybook Love (vol. 3) / Bill Willingham / 190 pgs. / Fairy Tales Retold Challenge!

While Snow White is recovering from her head wound, Bigby (The Big Bad Wolf) is left in charge to make sure that Fabletown runs smoothly.  Things have been returning to normal at The Farm, and Fabletown has been quiet, until a Human Reporter shows up and threatens to expose the truth about Fabletown and it's inhabitants.  Bigby and several other fairy tale creatures launch an "Oceans 11" type scheme to break into the reporter's apartment to find out what he really knows about them.

Meanwhile, Goldilocks is still on the loose and is still trying to hunt down Snow White to finish the job that she started when she shot Snow in the head.  Snow White and Bigby are put under a spell and left out in the middle of the woods.  When the two come to, they have no idea how long they have been out, where they are, and what happened during the elapsed time.  As they make their way back to civilization and avoid being killed by Goldilocks the two open up and become closer friends.

Fables, vol. 2: Animal Farm / Bill Willingham / 112 pgs. - Fairy Tales Retold Challenge

Snow White and Rose Red travel to "the Farm" which is located in Upstate New York, to check on the other Fairy Tale Creatures.  The non-human fables (ie talking animals, giants, goblins, etc.) have to live on the farm to keep them hidden from normal humans.  However, after hundreds of years of isolation, the farm animals are restless and are plotting a revolution to take over the Fable government to force all of fable-kind to attack the Adversary and take back their homelands.  Unfortunately, for Snow White and Rose Red they stumble across the revolutionary plans and become political prisoners.

Kill Me Softly/Sarah Cross/331 pgs/Fairy Tale Retelling

This is a YA title and is the story of Mirabelle.  She has been raised by her two godmothers and told that her parents had died while she was a child.  She runs away days before her 16th birthday and goes to the town where she was born - Beau Rivage.  She finds that most of the teens in this town are cursed and discovers that she is also cursed.  She also meets 2 brothers, whose curse is deadly.  She falls in love with one of the brothers even after she finds out what their curse is.  The typical girl too stupid to live but it does get somewhat better towards the end of the story.

Enchanted / Alethea Kontis / 308 pgs / Fairy Tale Challenge

Sunday Woodcutter is the youngest sibling of six sisters who are all named after a day of the week.  She lives in a world where magic and fairy tales are common place and she has the power to make her written stories come true.  Sunday meets an enchanted frog who becomes her friend and eventually they fall in love breaking the spell.  However, the frog prince comes from the royal family that is in a feud against Sunday's family.   

Full of magic and tales; I got the feeling that the author had some kind of bar bet to see how many fairy tales she could incorporate into one story. 

This is a 2013 YALSA Best of the Best Pick!

Fables: Legends in Exile (vol. 1) / Bill Willingham / 144 pgs.

Fairy Tale characters are living among us normal people in New York City.  They have been pushed out of their homelands by invaders called "the Adversary" and are trying to keep their identities a secret and patiently wait for the day they can return home.

In this first volume, Rose Red disappears and her apartment is torn up and covered in her blood.  It is up to the Big Bad Wolf, the towns detective and Snow White (Rose's sister & Deputy Director) to solve the case.  and figure out what happened and why.

Great illustrations  I love it when the characters are detailed and their bodies are proportional.  The character's personalities are quirky

Whoo-Hoo Double Points!! A New Series AND a Fairy Tale!!! (It's almost like I planned this or something :")

Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Audiobook read by Rebecca Soler. 8 Disks.

 
 A young 16 year old girl named Cinder is the best mechanic in the city of New Beijing. She is an outcast because she is a cyborg due to an horrific accident in her childhood. Because of her reputation, the Prince comes to see if Cinder can fix the royal android. Her stepmother interferes and when Cinder's younger sister is infected with the plague which is decimating most of Earth's population, Cinder is sent to the plague testing facility as punishment. What is found there may change the world as everyone knows it.
  As the story unfolds there are glimpses of the conventional Grimms' fairy tale. Cinder is a wonderful heroine. Facing some of the toughest obstacles of growing up, being different and 'adults' just don't understand anything, Cinder comes through with shining colors. There are hilarious one-liners, a burgeoning romance with the Royal Prince, lots of skillful world building (Did you know there are people living on the moon?) and a good mystery about what exactly did happen to the Lunar princess all those years ago.
   I cannot wait to listen to the sequel. What will happen with Cinder and the Prince?  Is Cinder the answer to the plague as the doctors think? And where is the princess? This is a great book for people looking for a not so grim dystopian world. Enjoyable for adults young and old.
  6 Degrees of Reading: Splintered by A.G. Howard, The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip and Tam Lin by Debra Dean.

Cloaked/Flinn/341 pages

Alex Flinn is a master of retelling fairy tales and Cloaked is like a fairy tale "mash up"!  The Frog Prince, The Six Swans and The Elves and the Shoemaker, just to name a few. Johnny is just an average guy working at a hotel shoe repair counter when a famous party princess comes to town. Add a talking fox, hungry giants, six enchanted swans and a magical best friend that has loved him forever and you have a  fun "once upon a time" novel.  This is a 2013-2014 Truman Award nominee and would highly recommend to young readers that like fairy tales with a little humor and adventure thrown into the mix.