A Tale Dark & Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Think you know how fairy tales go?  You're wrong.  Hansel and Gretel run away from home to escape their child-killing parents.  Their journeys lead them though many a violent Grimm fairy tale as they struggle for survival and safety.

This was great.  I can see why the series is so popular.  Adam Gidwitz frankly acknowledges that kids love a little bit of horror.  And he gives it them in spades.  I remember reading the real Grimm fairy tales as a kid.  They are seriously dark.  Nothing like the Disney-fied versions.  Gidwitz uses the characters of Hansel and Gretel to wander through this fairy tale world, becoming part of lesser know Grimm fairy tales such as Faithful Johannes, The Seven Swallows, and A Smile as Red as Blood.

The scary parts are not skipped over.  So that means we have cannibalism, heads being hacked off, souls being ripped out through people's throats, and parent's gambling their children away to the devil and dooming them to hell.  The thread that follows Hansel and Gretel through the story is their sad search for some parents who aren't completely horrible.  Who won't do things like cut their heads off or try to eat them.  A lot harder to find than it should be.

Hansel and Gretel start off as foolish, greedy children, and their trials cause them to grow and change and they are not the same people at the end of the story they were at the beginning.  So not only do we get some great gore, the retelling of classic fairy tales most people have never heard of, but also so great coming-into-their-own story and a steadfast brother-sister relationship.

This series is certainly not for everyone.  Not all kids want to read about scary, gory things.  So fair warning!  This is for kids who like a little bit of horror.

If kids love this (and many will) maybe you can even them to read the original Grimm stories!

Waiting on Wednesday: The Archived by Victoria Schwab

"Waiting On Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine to spotlight an upcoming release that we're excited about. This week I'm waiting on The Archived by Victoria Schwab.

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn't just dangerous-it's a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da's death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption. (Summary from GoodReads)

I know how I keep saying that I hate zombies, or anything really connected with the dead coming and eating brains or whatnot, but I love library themed books! So this is going to happen. Huzzah!

The Archived comes out Jan. 22, 2013.

The Infects by Sean Beaudoin

An unfortunate chicken factory mishap lands Nick (juvenile delinquent nickname, Nero) on an Inward Trek for juvenile delinquents.  Things get bad pretty fast, and it's not because of the lousy food and forced hiking.  People seem to be falling victim to a strange disease.  A disease that seems to make them want to eat other humans...

In full disclosure, I didn't finish this.  I couldn't.  It was too icky.  There was far too much flesh ripping and raw meat eating and brains and things.  Ew.  Not my thing.  I'm sure plenty of people will enjoy this.  Just not me.

As for the story itself, it is much in keeping with Sean Beaudoin's other book I read, You Killed Wesley Payne, which I kind of enjoyed.  It had the same kind of "fuck it all" attitude.  The characters make lots of snappy comebacks, even when they are faced with attacking zombies.  It's all very tongue-in-cheek, pithy, snarky, and other words like that.  Usually I love that.  But somehow, I find it grating the way Beaudoin does it.  I got tired of it in Wesley too.  I was tired of it by the time people started into zombies, which wasn't even half way through.

Nick and his ragtag gang of juvenile delinquents (which keeps getting smaller as people are attacked and zombified) run about the woods, following Nick who's been elected leader.  Nick is torn between getting home to protect his developmentally delayed (but video game genius) sister, or go after his crush, who just so happens to be on the corresponding Inward Trek for female juvenile delinquents for reasons unknown.  At least unknown to be, because I didn't finish the books.  Nick chooses this crush, and off they all race into the mountains.  That's where I stopped.

If you like horror and gross stuff and zombies and don't mind a bit of fun being poked at the horror genre, then I have no doubt you'll enjoy this.

The Infects comes out September 25, 2012.

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick

Alex is hiking the Waucamaw Wilderness alone when it happens. An electromagnetic pulse that sweeps farther than she knows, kills off the elderly, leaves her with an eight year old orphan, and changes people. It's the last element that really concerns Alex, these changed individuals are like zombies but they haven't died. They hunt down anything that moves and then feast like animals on the carcass. With the help of Tom, a young army vet, the three try to survive in this new wilderness. Eventually they hear that there is a refugee camp in the South, but this news doesn't come without casualties. Suddenly Alex finds herself on her own, and this isn't the last surprise in store for her.

I would like to flat out say that I am not a fan of horror. As in I am quite vocal about my distaste. I don't like it, I don't want it near me, and I especially don't want it in any form that relates to zombies. Zombies freak me out hardcore. It could happen man, that shit could happen. Which is why I'm glad to know my friend Matt, who has an entire contingency plan set up in case the apocalypse should take place and zombies overrun the earth. See? My phobia is nurtured and exacerbated by my friends!

OK, now that my rant is over (for now), I would like to state that this was a pretty good book. I really really enjoyed the characters, there was so much back story to each of them. Alex was so wonderful, she has a very distinct world perspective colored by her parents' death and her own fight against cancer. There were a lot of darker themes than just the whole zombie thing, which played really well off each other.

Then there was the whole ambient tension thing going on. It was pretty... stressful. Always thinking that the zombie was just around the corner or some random group of people was going to shoot Alex. Scary.

Now I am going to make another confession. I didn't finish this book. We've covered the fact that I don't like zombies, and especially don't like the horror genre. It just got to be too much to handle. Too much stress and creepiness. I did skim the last half of it though, and let me say that there is a HUGE cliffhanger at the end. So good thing it's a series, this one comes out tomorrow. So if you love horror pick it up, if you're like me and can't stand zombies and horror I would skip it.

Ghost Projekt by Joe Harris

Will Haley, an American weapons inspector and Anya Romanova, a Russian detective are called in to examine an abandon Siberian research facility where something, possibly a weapon of mass destruction, has been stolen.  After the weapon disappears, people who once worked on the project during the Cold War start turning up dead.  There's nothing to show how they died, aside from a strange red rash.  Will and Anya must figure out what's going on as fast as they can, and what was really happening behind the Dosvidanya Projekt.

This was a bit dark, and definitely for an older, more mature audience.  The weapon that is unleashed goes around killing lots of people, which are graphically depicted.  There's also disturbing images because of what happened to a little girl named Natalia.  I found that more upsetting then the people dying.

This is the first in the series, and it mostly felt like a set-up for the rest of the series.  It gets the story moving, but not a whole lot happens in terms of plot, and I'm still not totally clear what exactly Natalia is, and how it seems she can both kill and heal people.  I'm interested to see where this goes though.

I would recommend this for grade 11 and up.

Lenore: Noogies by Roman Dirge

As a child Lenore was quite adorable. Unfortunately she grew quite ill and died. Fortunately she rose from the dead, but was quite changed by the experience. It seems that whatever crosses her path meets an unfortunate demise - intentional or not.

Noogies is a compilation of the first four issues of this series, which was written seventeen years ago. It starts out as a 'series of short character gag stories' and progressed into a fully developed storyline. (I'm essentially spitting out exactly what I've read in Roman Dirge's introduction)

I have to give warning that this is not for the faint of heart, or at least a heart that doesn't have a bit of a twisted sense of humor. If you're into dead baby jokes you'll find this quite hilarious (and I know of a few people that do so don't scoff). But honestly this is a very funny book, dark twists on nursery rhymes and funny random vignettes. This is pretty awesome.

Bayou by Jeremy Love

Lee, a young black girl has always played with Lily, who is white.  When a creature from the swamp swallows Lily, Lee's father is accused of kidnapping her.  Lee must save her father from being lynched, but to do this she must enter a strange world of monsters, and she doesn't have much time.

This was seriously creepy.  When I finished reading the first volume, I sat for a minute and then said, "What?"  Horror is not my favorite, and I didn't really enjoy reading Bayou, but I read the second volume anyway in the hopes that things would start to make more sense.  They did, but it was still pretty horrifying and upsetting.

Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

So I'm 0-2 for the being judgy on the last books I've read and then been totally wrong. Isn't it so nice to be wrong? To think something's going to suck and then it doesn't suck at all? Delightful!

Benny Imura lives in a "safe" town. As safe as can be, since First Night, when the dead rose. Benny doesn't really remember a time before the zoms, although he does have a memory of First Night. That was when Benny's brother Tom grabbed him and ran away, leaving their mother to die. Benny resents Tom, and they've never gotten along since. Tom kills zombies for a living, and now that Benny is 15, he needs to find a job too. Tom offers to take Benny on as his apprentice, and eventually Benny agrees. Benny discovers that Tom isn't like the rest of the bounty hunters, and that his perception of the zoms isn't completely true. Benny also realizes that the zoms aren't the only monsters out there.

The Toymaker by Jeremy de Quidt

Mathias does not know that soon he is going to be running for his life after being tortured and beaten. Mathias has not met the only two people that he can trust in the world. Mathias does not realize that he is going to have the capability of taking down an empire. All Mathias knows is that his grandfather had a secret, and that secret is now his whether he wants it or not.

First off I would like to say that the cover that I have posted is not the one I had. This book was originally published in the UK in 2008, and is finally making its way to America with a different cover. I found the cover that I had a better representation of the book, but I couldn't find a free-standing image. But here's a link to it in case you want to see what it's going to look like for its Aug. 10 release.

On with the actual review:

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

After Will Henry’s parents die in a fire, he, like his father before him, becomes the assistant to Monstrumologist Pellinore Warthrop. Will Henry has to do horrifying things in the assistance of Dr. Warthrop, dealing with creatures he had no idea were even real. When a grave robber brings to Dr. Warthrop attention a particularly deadly species of monster, the horror really begins.

So…I don’t know what to tell you. The book flap describes this book as a “gothic tour de force,” but this is not a Gothic horror book. Gothic horror is like Dracula. Everything is done in the shadows, there’s no real blood and gore. This was full out, detailed, blood and gore. For example, after the monster has attacked and killed a family of six, we get a detailed description of the scene, down to the scooped out brains and flesh and bone scattered around the room.

I do not like horror. So I did not enjoy this book. I was too grossed out the whole time. Because of this, I don’t feel like I can accurately judge whether this was a good book or not. I just don’t know. I did like what Yancey was doing with the “when does a man become a monster?” psychological aspect.

What I am sure of is that my theory that the committee in charge of the Printz Awards this year was trying to be hip and edgy is holding true. I will continue to make my way through the Printz winners I haven't read (and had never heard of until they won).

In conclusion. Ew. If you don’t like horror, DON’T READ THIS BOOK. If you do like horror, well, have I ever got a book for you!