Lightning Rider by Jen Greyson ~ A Review

Lightning Rider by Jen Greyson

Published: The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House, 31th May 2013

Where Did I Get It? eARC received from NetGalley for review

Summary (from Goodreads):

For Evy Rivera, thunderstorms have always caused her physical pain, but she’s never known why. When a record-setting storm arrives on the same night her father finds ancient ancestral documents, Evy is set aglow with mysterious tiny lightnings she can command.

Even worse, she alerts some people in the universe who’ve been looking for her family for a very long time.

Thrown back into ancient Spain and tasked with killing a Spanish legend, she must train alongside Constantine, a sexy yet obstinate Roman warrior. He teaches her how to wield her lightning as a weapon, through more errors than trials. With a relationship as explosive as their late-night training sessions, Evy and Constantine battle their push-pull relationship while trying to ignore the two-thousand-year difference in their birthdates.

Ilif Rotiart, her quasi-mentor, is appalled at Evy’s skill. He would prefer to train her father and keep Evy on the sidelines—where women belong. Evy has a feeling Ilif is keeping something from them, but she must play nice until she uncovers the truth. And if he’s lying, it will be the worst day of his four-hundred-year life.

Penya Sepadas claims she’s Evy’s rightful trainer, and she has the prophecy to prove it. Penya doesn’t share Ilif’s misogynistic attitude, but she does have her own agenda…and her own secrets.

Evy must sort through the lies and find the truth behind her family’s time-traveling past before the wrong history obliterates the future. She’s spent her whole life fighting for her place. Now, as the first female lightning rider, she’ll dedicate her existence to fighting to save the world.

But will Evy learn to manage her lightning and find the truth before it’s too late?

Opening Line:

A storm is coming.

~

My Review:

A fantastic romp through time with a brilliant main character – I really enjoyed Lightning Rider… once I got into it.

If I had written this review after reading the first 25% of the book, I would have slated it for a multitude of reasons – the main character was irritating, the world seemed a bit flat, I didn’t have the slightest clue what was going on and, quite frankly, I didn’t care. Then all of a sudden it became brilliant. It was like the author suddenly found their feet and the characters, the world, the story all jumped to life and I wanted it all and I wanted it now. I couldn’t put it down in contrast to the start where I had to force myself to keep reading.

Evy is a heroine you could relate to – she doesn’t discover that she has crazy lightning powers and immediately be all cool with it and know how to use it as happens in so many books and films. Instead she reacts how a real person would – she tries to ignore it, she plays with it, she hopes it will go away by itself, she gets angry with it, she gets things wrong. She has to learn about her power and the responsibilities it brings and the danger it can be and in learning her character grows, changes and rounds out without ever losing sense of who she was before. She doesn’t have a personality transplant, she just adapts. Her character development is cleverly handled and smooth and her Spanish temperament shines through with amusing results.

The time travel is well thought out and not confusing in a way that is a detriment to the story – it is mind-bending, obviously, but what time travel isn’t? The deception and intrigue layered through the story is subtle and I didn’t work everything out before the twists were revealed or, in some cases, not revealed – leaving you desperate for the next instalment to find out what happens.

There’s plenty of action and danger, horses, motorbikes, swords and arrows, bloodshed and fear but also a hefty dollop of romance in the form of main love interest Constantine, the Roman warrior. At first I wasn’t convinced by him as a romantic option but as his and Evy’s relationship grew and their characters developed, I was sold. There were plenty of JUST KISS HER ALREADY! moments all building up to the inevtiable racy scenes but it wasn’t forced and added yet another dimension to the book.

Overall I loved it and will be keeping an eye out for book two. It is a little slow to start but worth sticking with for sure.

My Rating: 4/5*

Listography: 5 Things I’d Love This Valentine’s

Like pretty much everyone over the age of fifteen it seems, we don’t really do Valentine’s Day in our house. But still, a girl can dream/wish/hint can’t she

1. Chocolate.

Preferably either a mountain of white chocolate, a box of Milk Tray or Terry Gold Milk selection… or all three. Or any suitable substitute. This is a possibly achievable one, if a certain someone even remembers what day Valentine’s Day is. (Monday 14th – which is next Monday. *cough* isn’t hinting *cough*)

2. A bottle of rosé followed by a couple of fancy cocktails and an All-You-Can-Eat Chinese.

I’m clearly just craving spring rolls or something because I was going to write ‘and a nice meal’ but that didn’t appear on the page in front of me despite thinking it…

(Nine months is a long time without being allowed to consume a decent amount of alcohol. Oh well, not long to go til I can at least have a little cocktail or two – expressing is a wonderful thing when you want a night out.)

3. A baby-trained toddler

I’m sure Tori is going to be just great when BabyBump arrives…but still, if she could be auto-programmed to know all the dos and don’ts before Bumpy arrives I’m sure it would do wonders for all of our sanity…

*dreams*

4. A Day Of Being Size 10 Again

This would be great. No offence to BabyBump (I love you) but I do feel like a stuffed walrus 90% of the time at the moment and 24 hours in my size 10 jeans and a skinny top would be like a beach holiday in the Caribbean.

*wishes*

5. A housemaid

I suck at housekeeping. I hate hoovering and I’m too short to reach the cobwebs in the corners and on the lights. I don’t want her to cook, bake or even really look after Tori (aside from clearing up after her whirlwinding through the front room) – I just want her to put away washing, remember to put the tumble dryer on, get rid of the high-up cobwebs, hoover and at least assist with the never ending war against the washing up…

****

As it is, my Valentine’s Day plans are as follows: ‘Midwife appointment at 2.30pm’ …..aaand that’s about it.

And on a total aside, there is a lack of ‘single red rose’ on the list because, despite it being the whole traditionally romantic thing to do, when the first Valentine’s rose you ever received came from your Geography teacher pretending to be your boyfriend you forever have odd associations with them… (To explain, it was Year 11, I had been with my then-boyfriend for nearly three years and our school did a flower delivery service type thing every Valentine’s. BF and I had agreed not to do it as we’d got other presents, however, aforementioned teacher thought this lack of obvious romance – aka the humiliation of having a flower LOUDLY delivered to you by a smugly beaming Year 7 in front of the rest of your class – was a disgrace and ordered one for me in the BF’s name. Sadly it didn’t take long to get around that a teacher had bought me a rose. Most. Embarrassing. Valentine’s. Day. Ever.)

Aaaanyway…Romance isn’t exactly brimming over with champagne and chocolates in our house, how about yours?? Hop on over to KateTakes5 and check out everyone else’s Valentine’s Day dreams, they vary from sensible to just plain wacky and are brimming with wishful thinking – You never know, maybe we’ll all get a bit of what we wish for, we’ll have to report back next week!!

Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Published By: Scholastic Ltd, 2009 (Paperback)

Length: 434 pages

Summary: When she was eleven years old, Grace was attacked by the wolves that lived in the wood behind her house. Ever since, she has been obsessed, particularly with the wolf with yellow eyes that had protected her from the rest of the pack and has haunted her garden every winter since.

Years later she meets a boy with instantly familiar yellow eyes and knows without a doubt that he is her wolf. But surely that’s impossible.

Sam has led a double life since he was seven. Hot lazy summers spent as a boy, growing up, reading, writing and learning his times tables followed by long, frozen winters running and hunting in the woods with his pack, a wolf.

One day he saved a girl the pack attacked and ever since has watched over her whenever winters grip forced him into his fur.

He’s not supposed to mention the secret of the wolves to anyone but when a local boy is killed by the pack and a wolf hunt begins Sam finds himself face-to-face with his girl and has no choice but to tell her the truth.

What I Liked : Basically everything! I loved Stiefvater’s take on the werewolf legend mostly because, for a pleasant change, the werewolves turned into wolves. Proper wolves that thought wolfy things, acted like wolves and ate wolfy foods with only the faintest memory of the human things that were most important to them in their human lives – people’s faces were familiar but their names forgotten for example. It’s been ages since I read a werewolf book like that, recently they all seem to turn into massive super-wolves, weird human/wolf mixes or have telepathic abilities allowing human speech and communication. I liked that they became truly wolf in Shiver, it made the change somehow more frightening because the human in them was basically lost as soon as they transform.

I also very much enjoyed the world of Shiver. It was a natural, beautiful yet slightly sinister place where wolves and humans naturally came together which was perfect for the story. Having it set in a city with wolves randomly sprouting up would never have worked so well. Also, it was cold. I’m not sure how she did it but as you read the book you felt the same cold that the characters did adding to the tension as you moved through the story.

I found that the shifting viewpoint between Sam and Grace added depth to the story and helped to stop it from becoming one of those romance books where the entire story is just girl meets boy, they randomly fall hopelessly in love, they kiss a lot, fall into bed, have a minor argument, make up, story finished. Instead, the romance between Sam and Grace is just one of they key plot-lines, being carried along by some of the obvious issues you would have if your boyfriend changed species whenever it got cold and a few other, much more sinister ones that came with part of the package of discovering a supernatural world in your back yard.

What I didn’t like: Grace’s semi-permanently absent parents bugged me a little. I could almost buy into the ‘had a child young and then, as soon as it got old enough to take care of itself, went back to their old life and social circle’ story because the rest of the story helped you to just accept it. However, there was always that little bit of me being a bit unconvinced that they would be out quite as much as they were and wouldn’t notice Sam basically living in their house for weeks. For a start, did they not notice that Grace was suddenly using two lots of cutlery and crockery at every meal? As I’m sure she wouldn’t have always managed to do the washing up before they randomly came home.

I have heard a few people saying that it was just a below-par Twilight rip-off, which I think is generally unfair considering it’s much better written and completely different aside from also being a paranormal romance novel for teens and young adults. Plus I think Shiver was actually written before Twilight anyway…ahem…rant over…

Rating: Apart from the above, which is practically nothing, I can’t really think of anything I didn’t like which draws me to the conclusion that this book deserves a rather impressive 5/5 on my brand shiny new rating system that I have decided to use. Can’t wait to get stuck into Linger next!