Clockwork Angel

Lies dieses Review auf Deutsch!

Title: Clockwork Angel
Series: The Infernal Devices
Author: Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry/ Simon & Schuster (USA), Walker Books (GB)
Price: 19.99 $ (USA), 9.99 £ (GB)
Source: bought
Pages: 496 (USA), 476 (GB)
Series: Infernal Devices
Books: 1. Clockwork Angel, 2. Clockwork Prince (September 2011), 3. Clockwork Princess (December 2012)

The book 'Clockwork Angel' takes place in the victorian era in England, following 16-year-old Miss Tessa Gray as she comes from New York City to England to find her brother Nate. She gets inprisoned by the Dark Sisters, Miss Black and Miss Dark, who teach her to "Change", meaning she can change into any human (dead or alive) and touch their minds by holding one of their items. After about six weeks in the Dark House, a handsome guy with black hair and blue eyes, William 'Will' Herondale, frees her. She learns that Will is a so-called 'shadowhunter', fighting demons to protect normal people, the mundanes. He takes her to the Institute (an old church used as shadowhunter base in London) where Tessa makes a deal: she helps the shadowhunters with fighting potential danger (using her talent to Change) and they help her find her brother.
Besides that, she also gets to know Charlotte and Henry Branwell who run the London Institute, Jessamine Lovelace who doesn't want to be a shadowhunter and hates being with the others and James 'Jem' Carstairs who actually has an illness...
Tessa agrees to Change into the vampire Camille to expose London's vampire clan leader de Quincey of breaking the law. During that event she finds her brother and everything seems to end well, but this is only the beginning... (otherwhise there wouldn't be 3 books, duh!?)
Also Tessa develops a little bit of intimacy with one of the guys, you're gonna have to read the book yourself to find out with whom (huge spoiler: it's not Henry!).

Personal Opinion:
I really liked this book, especially that it was set in victorian times, it actually makes me want to live during that time period, obviously as a mundane, I'm too much of a coward to face a demon or vampire. The way Mrs. Clare wrote 'Clockwork Angel' made me think I was actually there with Tessa experiencing what she did, the only thing I couldn't understand was the way Tessa Changed, but that might be a consequence of me being German and not understanding the words properly %D.
I bought the book in September and didn't read it until christmas, so I was pretty spoilered by Twitter and I had thought it was the same concept as the Mortal Instruments: girl misses a family member, tries to search it, finds help with the shadowhunters, a love triangle develops, but this is not entirely the case, considering that I didn't see a love triangle at all - obviously people compare Jace-Clary-Simon to Will-Tessa-Jem, but in my opinion, there was too few Jem-Tessa interaction to judge wether it's team Jem or team Will.
I personally have the feeling that Jem is a part of Will, the good part, like - if you're familiar with classic German literature - Mephistopheles being a part of Faust, with Mephisto being the bodily driving side and Faust the academic side. Transfered to Clockwork Angel Jem would be the 'human' side and Will the one driving everything to its extreme.
Clockwork Angel also provides some historical facts and how the world was back then, even Tessa critizising emancipation.
The only things I don't understand are what these cogs really are and what the carriages really look like, but that's based on my being German.

I recommend Clockwork Angel to everyone who is a fan of fantasy, Cassandra Clare's shadowhunter world and especially everyone who wants to read a book that contains love and action, without too big stress on one of them. Now even though this is a Young Adult book, I also recommend it to historians interested in the victorian era since CA has much information how people behaved back then. I'm sure even my dad would read Clockwork Angel if it were already out in German and he's one to only read enciclopedia an non-fiction books and he seemed pretty interested when I told him about the story.

by Cecile

The Vampire Diaries (Series)

Lies dieses Review auf Deutsch!

Title: The Vampire Diaries
Author: Lisa J. Smith
Publisher: Harper/HarperTeen
Price: 9.99 $ /two-in-one-book
Source: bought
Pages: ca. 500-530
Books: 1. The Awakening, 2. The Struggle, 3. The Fury, 4. Dark Reunion, 5. The Return: Nightfall, 6. The Return: Shadow Souls, 7. The Return: Midnight (March 2011)

Elena is the most popular girl at school and falls in love with Stefan Salvatore. What nobody knows is, that Stefan is a vampire, a vegetarion one (=he only consumes animal blood), but if he lost control, he'd be a huge danger for the humans. He came to Fell's Church to escape his brother Damon, who is a vampire too, drinks human blood, tho. And he loves giving Stefan a hard time.

The brothers are bound by their love to the vampire Catarina, who, back then, couldn't decide between them and just picked to change them both into vampires. But Damon and Stefan didn't want to share and since then, there's a bitter "war" between them. Catarina may have died soon after the change (because she went into the sun), but that didn't stop the fight between the brothers.
And it doesn't really help that Elena look exactly like Catarina and that Stefan falls in love with her. Damon follows his brother to Fell's Church to terrorize hime there with the help of his powers. He kills a couple of people and makes the evidence looks like Stefan was the murderer in order to get the citizens against him.
Elena looses nearly all her friends because she's the hated Stefan's girlfriend. Only her and her friends Meredith and Bonnie know the truth about Stefan, so they try to proof the guy's innocence. But then they find out that Damon isn't he only one behind all of it...

Personal opinion:
Looking at the plot, "The Vampire Diaries" is a very interesting book series, but especially the first three books are written very cheesy, looking at the worst situation as if there's always something good to it. For example, if I found out my boyfriend were a vampire, I'd first of all break up with him and follow my instinct of self-preservation, but Elena acts in that situation as if she found out that Stefan played Pokémon or something like that, so it's really surreal. The cheesyness fades with the books, but it's still there.
As most of you know, there's also a TV series called "The Vampire Diaries", loosely based on the novels, but it really only has veeery few got to do with the books: some characters behave differently, don't exist, were newly invented or have different names. The unbearably cheesiness doesn't exist there, it's more trimmed on being a thriller/horror. And Elena even behaves reasonable!
If you want to read those books, you sure can, but I'd recommend the series instead of the book due to the lack of reason behind some character's actions. But still, I think the series was good, the plot is original and the characters lovable.

Who is your favourite character? Mine is Damon in the books, especially in book 4 and 5, and Jeremy in the series. Write down your favourite character in the comments!

by Cecile

Fisherman's friend in meiner Koje

Lies dieses Review auf Deutsch!

 Original title: Fisherman's friend in meiner Koje
English title: (not available)
Author: Kerstin Gier
Publisher: Bastei Lübbe (Germany)
Price: 7,00 €
Source? bought it in Italy, but for 9 € due to Italy being a foreign country
Pages: 332

The book is about 28-year-old Judith who attends a sailing training course together with her sister Rebecca and her friend Bille. Judith herself is only there to finde a couple of "handsome men", but she's at the wrong adress for that because there's mainly old crazy married couples at the training course. Finally, she falls madly in love with the sailing teacher Stefan, but she finds out that he's an assumed drug smuggler. She tries to "cleverly" get him back on the right path - for example by plunging his "smuggling goodies" in the sea...
Rebecca has husband and kid and is the perfect houswife, but she wants some excitement and is on the lookout for a nice escapade. And - look at that - there's Dirk whom she really likes.
Bille is actually really doing the sailing training in order to learn how to sail, but only to make her boyfriend jelous, who always brags about his oh-so-endless knowledge about sailing but doesn't have a certificate for it.
At the end of the training course, the participants and Stefan go on a two-week sailing trip during which, while divided in two boats, they can enjoy the sport and (more or less) perfectionate their skills.
Due to the fact that Judith shares a boat with Stefan (and others), it could be so perfect but she ain't the only one with an interest in  him: Angela, another attendant of the training, who is Stefan's new girlfriend. And she even has a boyfriend herself! Plus, how could she stop Stefan smuggling goodies?
And how will the cruise end up for Bille and Rebecca?

Personal opinion:
This book is some good summer reading: it has an attractive plot, but doesn't go too deep, so it's perfect for beach and pool (which I even tested out :D). Kerstin Gier writes with witty comments in first person and even writes down the thoughts I'd have myself if I were in Judith's place, even if they weren't really thematically relevant (a/k/a just the funny, unimportant crap ^^).
I had some good laughs with this book and other pool visitors even looked at me as if I were a loonatic.
You'd hardly believe it, but this book has even some literarily quality - you'd learn plenty of stuff. If you pay attention, you can learn how to produce some knots and get to know parts of the ship, like the scuppers, which are the pipes in the walls of the deck that allow the water (if it's been raining on etc.) to drain off.
To sum it all up, the book was good, even though adressed to women between the ages of 25 and 30, it is suitable for all the other women out there.
Of course I'd recommend it to anybody asking for an easy reading, but it's more suitible for summer than for winter.

by Cecile, sorry for that weird review and for not posting at all for nearly a month >.<