Wicked Lovely - Melissa Marr

Sorry for the delay in posts. Suffice to say that while taking 6 classes wasn’t my best idea, taking six classes including a high level accounting class ONLINE, a high level literature class, and an economics class of any kind, was among the worst I’ve ever had. But I actually had some time to read over spring vacation, and manage to devour a whole three books in my free time, and I wanted to share them with you all!

So Wicked Lovely was prominently placed at the library by my fiance’s house in South Carolina, where I spent my week, and his mother let me use her card to get it. I’ve heard of it a lot, but I’ve never actually had a chance to look at it before. I’m really glad I did pick it up, though, because I kinda fell in love with it. I also hate myself for picking it up, because I can’t read the sequels until after May 16^th, when finals are over!

Wicked Lovely is the story of four interesting individuals and a lot of fairies and magic. Keenan is the summer king of the fairies, but his powers are bound by the winter queen, his mother, until he can find his own queen of summer—a human girl converted by his will into one of the fae, who can withstand the power of winter when she touches the winter queen’s staff. Aislinn is the newest human girl he’s pinning his hopes on—but what he doesn’t know is that Aislinn can see fairies, has always been able to see them, and knows what he is…and she doesn’t want anything to do with it. Seth is her human crush and her safe house, a mortal boy who lives in an old converted train car and provides her a place surrounded in steal and empty of fairies. Donia is the winter girl—the last human girl who took a chance of Keenan, but couldn’t withstand the magic of winter. Thus, she is bound to be in the winter queen’s power until such a day that another girl takes the test and loses, taking the winter magic from her. Her goal is to tell any girl who prepares to try of the dangers of trusting Keenan and taking the test.

First off, I’m biased and I can admit that. I absolutely love books about fairies, even to the point that I was able to get over my initial desire to avoid the book just because of how central the romance is to the plot, something I’ve been more and more uninterested in lately. From the very first chapter, I was so incredibly glad I’d decided to give it a chance. The book starts out with the test of the summer queen, and Donia reaching for the staff and first becoming the winter girl. This is the part where I instantly fell in love with the book, because Donia is truly in love with Keenan when she takes this test….and it doesn’t matter. Love doesn’t cure all, and Donia still becomes the winter girl, and faces the fact that Keenan continues looking for his queen even while she suffers in love for him.

This certainly isn’t an entirely original idea, and I’ve read plenty of books where the main character has an old flame who tries to tell off his current affection, but I’ve never read a book where the old flame had such reason, and had her story told just as much as his. Wicked Lovely completely takes the stereotypes that young adult books have been producing in the past few years, stereotypes about love conquering all, the old jealous flame, and the girl who starts out headstrong and somehow ends up melting into the male lead...and it turns them on their head. I love it for that reason.

There are so many things I could say about this book that I’m honestly afraid I’d ruin it for you if I went on, because I truly, truly love this book. I know I could gush about it for pages, but that wouldn't be as much fun for you! So I’m going to just say that I heartily recommend this book, if you’re one of those people who haven’t yet touched it—although I think I’m a minority in not having done so before this past few weeks, haha. Wicked Lovely is a great book, with a great idea behind it, and I completely devoured it in a few mere hours because I didn’t want to put it down. So if you’re a fan of fairies, especially wicked and cruel fairies, or you just want to read a book that breaks some of the romantic stereotypes of the modern YA genre, definitely look into picking up a copy of Wicked Lovely next time you go book hunting!

Skyrim - A Review

Despite the fact that it's not a book, I'm so obsessed with this game right now that it just wouldn't be right -not- to publish a review about it. So like everyone and their mother, I figured I'd post one up once I felt as thought I'd seen enough to have a valid opinion.

Since I started playing Skyrim, and thus spazzing about it at work, I've been asked several times what it's about. And you know what? I honestly don't know the answer. You are a dragonborn, a mortal with the soul of a dragon. Because this is an Elder Scroll's game, the "You" in the summary is pretty much whatever you want it to be, from a magic wielding elf to a rogue cat-person to a facestomping orc warrior. As a dragonborn, in any case, your ability is to learn the magic language of the dragons by absorbing their souls. To absorb their souls, you have to kill them. This isn't all bad, though, because dragons are kind of dicks. They burn stuff and kill things just because they're dragons and that's what dragons do. By killing them you're doing the world a good deed. Past the whole dragon thing, there is no definite answer. You can be involved in a civil war, you can be a master thief, you can be a mage... Depending on your play style, Skyrim can be a game about a wood elf who really likes to wander woods and collect flowers, it can be a game about an orc who makes swords with a dream of one day creating a master sword, or it can be the story of an evil dark elf whose dream it is to kill everyone and everything. Skyrim is what you make of it.

If I had to rate Skyrim, which I usually don't do, I'd give it an absolute perfect score. Obviously there are glitches here and there--consider the people who made it--but I don't feel they detract from the game, and even if they do, they'll probably be patched. And some things, which may or may not be glitches, are so awesome I'm pretty okay with them.

Skyrim starts off with you sitting on a cart, riding off to your doom. As your head lays on the chopping block, blood pressed against your face from the guy you just saw die, a dragon is like 'sup' and burns everything. Then you're released into the world to do whatever. Personally, I went the way of the mage, because the magic system is amazing. The duel wielding spell thing is awesome, and at a certain perk in the destruction tree, you literally turn into a human flamethrower with something as simple as the basic fireball spell. That's without going into the awesome summons, the illusion spells, the manipulation! There's a cool rune system, too, which basically creates magical land mines. Oh! And did I mention that, since the Mage's Guild is demolished by the timeline of Skyrim, that necromancy isn't evil anymore? The game's version of the Mage's Guild has a guy who will just flat out sell you a necromancy spell or two as soon as you're in.

As far as magic goes, my favorite spells at the moment are the ice spike, which is exactly what it sounds like, the simple flamethrower fireball you start with, and a summoning spell for a flame atronach that is so completely pretty that I kind if just stared at it for a while and watched it flip around and float. It's also pretty boss when it comes time to take out Giants, but we'll get to that in a little bit.

I personally haven't explored the melee or rogue type characters to the fullest yet, although I've experimented with a cat long enough to know that the night eye power doesn't make everything blue, but I can definitely say that magic is pretty amazing. The only thing I really dislike is the enchanting system, which requires you to already have enchanted items before you can enchant something else. They're not very rare, but the specific types are hard to get. On the bright side, I've heard that the Azura's Star is in this game, so at least the soul gems are here. Haven't heard anything about black soul gems yet, but here's hoping.

Graphically, I honestly can't say anything bad about Skyrim besides the few glitches that show up. Everything is gorgeous, from the rivers to the trees. There are times where I just stop and kind of admire the scenery, from the moons to the colorful lights, to the water. A lot of the scenes look just like paintings, and I love it.

Speaking of water, the little things in this game are what really make it. Stuff like the water pulling you along, and dropping you over rivers. The fact that enemies will fight each other as well as you, if they happen to meet up. The dragons that will just randomly show up. The fact that people you've killed will have families which will hunt you down with thugs. It's all these tiny aspects that make me love Skyrim so much.

The enemies in the game are amazingly fun. From dragons which can show up out of nowhere to the giants which..kind of just win, I don't think I've found an enemy that wasn't neat so far. There are zombies which can use magic, the typical skeletons, giant mammoths which will charge you, wolves, giants... it's an amazing world. And what makes the world even better is the AI that populates some of these creatures. The wolves will attack you in packs at will, but the stronger creatures will...not. They'll warn you off before they attack. Go near a giant's camp, and you'll see one roar and shake his hands at you. I've seen a polar bear that just roared, then went back to its business after I was sufficiently far away. You know what would happen in any other RPG ever? That stupid polar bear would attack and that would be it. I love this system.

As far as Skyrim goes, my favorite moment so far has to have been shortly after I enraged two mammoths into chasing me with a fireball. As they followed me, I stumbled upon a bandit camp. I wish I knew what would have happened had that been it, but shortly upon finding the camp, I noticed that I was being roasted by fire. In searching for a mage of some sort to take out...I noticed the dragon that just landed a few feet away. I ran to a hunt for cover, and happily watched as my three types of enemies tore each other apart until only a wounded mammoth remained.

My least favorite moment so far was killing my first giant. See, the first time I came upon a giant, I had no idea how strong they were. I was quickly backhanded with a club, killed instantly, and the load screen was up before I landed from the launching. Thus, I made it my goal to kill one just because I could. Took me an hour, more summons that I can remember, and a lot of waiting for him to come in range of my perch above him, but I finally killed a giant. And upon close inspection... I kind of felt terrible. They're so peaceful, and just want to live with their mammoths, and I'm a terrible person. ...of course, then I saw how much loot he gave me, and ended up killing three others, but still.

Overall, Skyrim is just an amazing game. I honestly can't find any real major flaws. If you're anything like me, though, Skyrim will take up your entire life for a good few weeks. And if you're anything like me, by which I mean having a job and school, you'll be pining for this game every moment you're not playing. That being said, it is completely and utterly worth it, and I'd definitely suggest picking it up as soon as you can afford it. You will fall in love with this game.