Undine

by Penni Russon

Grade: Good
Story: Undine has the sea in her, and it calls to her. Kind of. Except it turns out to be quite different, but whatever. There's also all this Tempest stuff, which is cool. Her father is called Prospero, and she has various and sundry love interests.

Yeah, so. I might read the sequels. All the various and sundry love interests were a bit annoying, but not as annoying as they might have been for these reasons: Trout wasn't a real love interest, as she didn't actually love him in a romantic way; Richard was all about her power, and was actually kind of cool in a dark evil way when she was kissing him and draining him; Grunt was unexpected, and thus for me more interesting.

Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex

by Eoin Colfer

Grade: All right
Story: Artemis has a psychological problem, but still has to stop an evil guy from getting out of jail so he can see his beloved wife again.

I loved Artemis's psychological problems. They were quite amusing. And although reviewers I'd read previously said that there was weird romance between Artemis and Holly, I didn't there was really. In fact, it was a lot weirder in the previous book. In this one, it was all his psychological problems that caused it.

The problem I did have with it is the rather boring side stories--the ones that didn't include Artemis. I skipped them. So I ended up not reading a lot of the book. However, I'll definitely still read the next book if/when it comes.

Genius Wars

by Catherine Jinks

Grade: Good
Story: Prosper is seen on a bunch of cameras, so Cadel gets paranoid that he is trying to kill him. That's mostly it.

I think it may have been my least favourite of the three. But it was still Catherine Jinks and still marvellous. Cadel's sense of paranoia was one of the most tense things about the book, and it definitely worked. I liked the ending too. However, there was some characterization that I thought was lacking, especially of Fiona. She was hardly in it at all! Practically a cameo.

Incarceron

by Catherine Fisher

Grade: To Own
Story: Finn and Keiro and Attia are trapped in a living prison. Claudia and Jared are Outside, and Claudia is going to become Queen by marrying the spoiled prince.

WONDERFUL. A very easily read-in-one-day book. The characters were all awesome and individual, and the world was intricately made. The living prison reminded me a lot of the sci-fi short story that we read out in YAG last year.

I was appreciative of the fact that there wasn't an immediate romance between Claudia and Finn. In fact, there might never be. Yay!

And the Warden, Claudia's father, was wonderfully complex.

Stepsister Scheme

by Jim C. Hines

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 40.

I really appreciated the fact that the Cinderella character was still "princess-y", while still being strong. Too often nowadays, to have a strong female character, she needs to be just like the Sleeping Beauty character. Which I still like, but it was nice to have her as a secondary character.

The twists were good too, I just got bored. I'm not sure why.

Wings

by Aprilynne Pike

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To somewhere in the middle.

It started to get too much about the sexy boys she knew, and it was getting annoying. The wings were cool, though, and some of the details of how her physicality worked.