So much for not being a fan of zombie books. This series is amazing. So well researched, so well written, so compelling, so real.
"That’s what TEETH is about: the impossibility of reality.Because fiction likes to make things simple and real for us. Fiction likes to tell us that our world is manageable and that we have within us the strength to persevere, and that things don’t need to radically change to be okay.Except that’s not true.To make the impossible possible, sometimes people have to break. Sometimes terrible horrible things happen. Sometimes you have to let go of something that is true and beautiful and real in order to allow something equally true, beautiful, and real to survive.On TEETH’s cover it says “Miracles come at a price.” And in fairytales, we see Rumpelstiltskin’s price of the first born child and we see pumpkins at midnight and we see dancing shoes. And there are happily ever afters, even in the original non-Disneyfied versions. Cinderella gets the prince and her stepsisters get their eyes pecked out by ravens.TEETH is not about happy endings. It’s about true endings. It’s about realism and things that hurt to carry and it’s about carrying on because “the hardest thing and the right thing are the same” (as the Fray say in ‘All at Once’)."The rest of the review and SPOILERS are at my blog.
Close third for favorite zombie books (behind World War Z by Max Brooks and Feed by Mira Grant). This was beautiful and heart wrenching and felt real. The dogs know.Sorry about the couch.Get your flu shot. Get ammo.You're freaking me out.Infected.The baby turned.
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE.Here’s what Rossi got right, and here’s what I loved about TTEN!I already had a lot of FEELS about this going into the book. It hit my nook at about 12:23 am and I finished it at 1:44. I read really fast. Also, it was HEART POUNDING GOOD. I couldn’t stop reading it. I was devouring it. I kinda sorta reviewed it here on my blog if you’re interested! (UTNS and TTEN possible spoilers). I’m a poor reviewer. I should have waited until I wrote this post here because I thought things through a little more. http://writingwithcats.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/through-the-ever-night-new-release/From a YA reader perspective, here’s what Veronica Rossi nailed:The sensation of being lost and rootless in the world The value of friendship. More than Aria & Perry’s romance, I absolutely love Aria and Roar’s friendship. It’s so full of platonic friendship, gentleness, understanding, and fierce devotion. It’s really rare to find a friendship without romance like this between a girl and a guy in YA lit. I absolutely appreciated this. The willingness to make hard decisions in a story. It is hard to put a character through the ringer and then when they’re completely smashed of every hope in the world, dump some more crap on their head. But when it moves the story forward, it’s completely necessary and she made hard decisions to make this story as believable and strong and real as it is.Believable romance. Aria and Perry live in absolute chaos. Their worlds are being undermined by outside influences and the weather of all things. They haven’t known each other for that long. They do not make out at every opportunity, even when in private. They rely on their romance to be their anchor and life preserver. They are not desperate in it. My biggest annoyance in another well reviewed YA dystopia sequel was the two main characters seriously seemed to make out at every opportunity, and most of those opportunities were inopportune. Aria and Perry were so much more real in their love and so much more subtle, and by extension of that, much more believable and heart squeezing, in their affection and thoughts about each other.And more importantly, I do want to give Veronica Rossi the kudos she deserves in refusing to bend to a genre’s rules. Is this trilogy science fiction? Fantasy? Dystopia? Post apocalyptic? Is it all four? Can you be all four? DOES IT MATTER? No. She wrote a fantastic book. She wrote a beautiful love story. She wrote an incredibly coming of age story for Aria and an incredible friendship between Roar and Aria and an incredible myth for Perry. She wrote a story. TTEN doesn’t feel like she said, “Well, no one could figure out if the Senses were magic or genetics, so let’s make that clear”. I still don’t know. I still think that the Aether is believable, that people have incredibly sharp senses, and others are jealous of them. I believe that the cities she set up were fantastical, but that I had felt that sense of fantasy before in science fiction. I understand that there was an apocalypse and there’s something about this world that’s very familiar. I understand there was the Unity and there is history there. I also know that it doesn’t matter because this is the world the characters I love live in, and thus whether things are real or not real (point for HG reference? Yes please) doesn’t matter because they have to deal with their world regardless.So thank you, Veronica, for writing two books that refuse to sit nicely in one subgenre and writing a book that basically made my heart melt into a puddle of tears.I’ll see you guys later. I’m going to go find Roar and snuggle him.(stolen from my tumblr ;))
I didn't think I'd like it. I bought it based on a post on the tumbler hellyesliterarykisses and it surprised me. There were some parts there were rough. I think it could have used a little more polishing. But Payton's voice was strong, Sean wasn't the perfect "omg he's like totally hot" guy you can see in a lot of YA books about highschool, and while the moral of the story basically beat you over the head with it, it was an enjoyable read. Sean can come biking with me any day and Payton and I would get along though the state of my room would drive her batty :p
Amazing story of two siblings, one who is transgendered and the other who protects her sister's secret from a world that believes she has a brother. It's a beautiful story of siblinghood, and of gender identity, and it's wonderful. Just read it, okay?
