Book Rec: The Book of Lost Souls by Michelle Muto

When I was a teenager, I was into the whole vampires/werewolves thing. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of my favorite shows. I never really grew out of this phase. This is why I decided to download The Book of Lost Souls by Michelle Muto. I did it partly for research and partly because it was described in several places as "like" Buffy, and the author is pretty fun on Twitter. Plus, it was only $0.99, so it seemed like I couldn't lose.

What I liked about The Book of Lost Souls:

• The characters. Ivy is immensely likable, as are her best friends, Raven and Shayde. Don't let the names put you off, this is not some Mary-Sue filled author wankfest. Ivy's and Shayde's names are plot points, and really good ones at that. (No, I'm not going to spoil it.) The supporting characters are great, too. Raven's brother, Gareth, and Shayde's brother, Bane; Gareth's pet, Spike; the demon, Nick; and Ivy's pet Beezlepup, Devlin. 
• Vlad the Impaler and Bloody Elizabeth. If you heard a fangirl squeal, that was me. I will confess to always wondering what would happen if the two of them got together, and they really didn't disappoint. 
• Treating magic and monsters like they were special, but not unusual. Does that make sense? A lot of times, an author makes too big a deal out of magic and magical abilities when it wouldn't make any sense for the characters to make a big deal about it because it's just normal to them. Ivy and her friends all have specific talents, but if those magical talents were removed and replaced with more mundane skills, the story would have worked just as well. I really like that. The characters felt real and relatable to me. 
• The story. It was a really good balance of self-absorbed adolescent concerns and more selfless adult concerns. Ivy is worried about boys, but she's worried about her mother, the Regulars (people in town without magical abilities), and her friends. It progressed well, there were plenty of twists (more than once I kept reading when I shouldn't have, just because I wanted to know what happened next), and the ending was satisfying. Everything made sense and there weren't any holes that I noticed.
• The relationships. Ivy's relationship with each of her friends, her relationship with her mother, and the relationships between the other characters felt real and believable. I really liked that. I also liked that not everything was Ivy-centric. My favorite relationship revelation came near the end. I won't spoil it, but I had been rooting for it and suspecting it all along, and when it was revealed, I couldn't stop grinning.  
• The tone. This might be the best part. The author at no point talks down to her reader. It's a young adult novel featuring sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, which means a younger audience is going to read it, and at no point did it seem like the author was trying to talk down to her readers. It also wasn't too old, either. It was very age appropriate. That brings me to the one thing I dislike. 

What I disliked:

• As far as I can tell, it isn't available in paperback. This bums me out because I've already started my daughter's book collection, and this is a book I really want for her. Ivy is an excellent role model.

I definitely recommend this book. It would be a perfect beach or poolside read. It would also be a perfect cemetery-in-October read. 

It's also available on Nook if you have one of those instead of a Kindle. 

Monday Miscellany

I am one scene away from finishing the rewrite of chapter one of Strawberry Moon. This is incredibly exciting for me. My characters have clearer voices, my dialogue is much less awkward, I've eliminated most of the information dumps, and I've managed to (mostly) control my adjectives. This is definitely not the final draft, but it's getting there!

Over the weekend, I did a lot of thinking, and I have decided to take a page from Kristine Kathryn Rusch's book and use separate pennames for my young adult work and for my adult work. The problem I'm having now is coming up with a new one. I have a handful of lovely options, so I'm just trying to make a decision.

The reason that is important is because I finally have a collective working title for the erotica shorts I'm plotting. I am pretty sure I've mentioned that I had the action draft of a smut story done and that I was working on the draft of it. I've been calling the short "Galena" and intend to write one to three more shorts featuring the same female character in a series of sexual situations. A chat with a friend the other day led to some development of her character, so the series has gotten a bit more involved than I had originally planned, but I'm not unhappy with where I think it's going. Anyway, the collective working title is Cass Gets Her Kicks. Now, I just have to finish writing it.

The funny site I mentioned in this blog post is now defunct. I'm bummed about this because it was really funny, but I think we can all agree that copyrights are a pretty big deal.

Chuck Wendig is trying to push more copies of his writing advice book Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey, so he's whoring himself out to do it offering some incentives. They're pretty good incentives.

I am still reading Michelle Muto's The Book of Lost Souls, and I am still loving it to pieces. I keep catching myself wishing it was last summer and I had a ton of free time on my hands to do nothing but read. I would have finished it by now, I would know how things end with Nick and Ivy, and I could be pestering her to finish the next one already. (She said she's working on it.) Of course, the book wasn't out last summer, so those wishes don't really do me any good.

And with that, I'm going to end this blog entry.