Series Review: Caster Chronicles by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-2012
Pages: 2,038
Source: Bought/Borrowed
Rating: 4 Stars

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

In short: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl make an excellent team and have written a great series with the Caster Chronicles.

I have been doing my best to finish up all the series that I have on the go at the moment because at some point I realized that I had started and never finished a frightful number of series. I will often enjoy the first book in a series and will have every intention of seeing the series through, but then somehow I never get around to it. It's likely that I'll end up dropping a few of the series that just didn't "wow" me with the first book, but in the case of the Caster Chronicles, I knew I wanted to see it through to the end.

I absolutely adored Beautiful Creatures when I read it in late 2010, back when I was a newbie blogger. I do think my tastes have changed since then though and if I had read Beautiful Creatures now, as I did with the other three books in the series, I can't imagine I would be quite as enamoured with it as I have since fallen a bit out of love with paranormal YA. But it was with some amount of relief that I found that my tastes haven't changed hugely and I was able to delve back into the little world of Gatlin and the big world of the Casters, no problem.

Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl demonstrate with ease their adeptness in writing great characters and in setting the broody Gothic atmosphere of Gatlin. I am just in awe of their skills, particularly because I can't comprehend how anyone could share the authoring of a single POV book with someone else and still have such smooth passages and transitions that you would never think it wasn't written by one person only. My understanding is that they each write their own passages and then trade and edit each other's work as they go. They must work quite well together!

I am happy to report that I enjoyed the rest of the series after Beautiful Creatures, even if I was perhaps not as engaged in the story as I once was. The pacing can be a bit slow at times, but more patient readers will appreciate the attention to detail in the descriptions. The town of Gatlin is as much a character as it is the setting for the series and I absolutely love that about these books. I have also grown quite fond of the characters - particularly the side characters, whom are numerous and yet as richly developed and animated as Ethan and Lena, and whom also provide much needed moments of levity among the dark undertones of the series.

So it is with satisfaction that I can officially cross off a series from my lengthy series-to-be-finished list! And I'm all the more satisfied because this series is one that had a good conclusion, as well as an elaborate and well thought out journey on the route there. I may have fallen a bit out of love with the Caster Chronicles since I read Beautiful Creatures so long ago and I may not have been as engaged with the story as I once was, but I am happy that each subsequent book was a solid read and that I enjoyed them. I am so impressed with the work that Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl do together that I would gladly read more from them again!

Author Links:
Kami Garcia Website
Kami Garcia Twitter
Kami Garcia Goodreads
Margaret Stohl Website
Margaret Stohl Twitter
Margaret Stohl Goodreads

Review: Icons by Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown Book for Young Readers
Published: May 7, 2013
Pages: 428
Source: For Review from Hachette Book Group Canada
Rating: 2 Stars

Your heart beats only with their permission.
Everything changed on The Day. The day the windows shattered. The day the power stopped. The day Dol's family dropped dead. The day Earth lost a war it didn't know it was fighting.
Since then, Dol has lived a simple life in the countryside -- safe from the shadow of the Icon and its terrifying power. Hiding from the one truth she can't avoid.
She's different. She survived. Why?
When Dol and her best friend, Ro, are captured and taken to the Embassy, off the coast of the sprawling metropolis once known as the City of Angels, they find only more questions. While Ro and fellow hostage Tima rage against their captors, Dol finds herself drawn to Lucas, the Ambassador's privileged son. But the four teens are more alike than they might think, and the timing of their meeting isn't a coincidence. It's a conspiracy.
Within the Icon's reach, Dol, Ro, Tima, and Lucas discover that their uncontrollable emotions -- which they've always thought to be their greatest weaknesses -- may actually be their greatest strengths.

In short: Unfortunately, Icons by Margaret Stohl failed to impress me with its standard and slow paced plot, its botched scientific explanation, and its flat characters.

I struggled with Icons, which was frustrating because I could see the potential in the concept. Aliens (or "Lords") invade Earth and teens with special powers (the "Icon children") help protect humanity. It was a premise that I should have found interesting and gripping, but instead I found that I just couldn't get into the story. I can't decide if it was just me and the mood I was in when I read Icons or if my issues with it are legitimate concerns. I kind of think it's a bit of both.

I made the false assumption that we were going to see aliens in this alien invasion novel. But we never see them and we are given such limited information about the Lords that the alien invasion aspect of Icons might as well not have been included at all. As such, without the inclusion of any sci fi interest, Icons was a pretty standard dystopian. Not a bad one certainly, but I've read so many of them at this point that Icons fails to leave an impression in the face of much better dystopian fiction, unfortunately.

Like I said, the Icons' concept has a lot of potential on the surface. There are four Icon children and each of them is the embodiment of one emotion - Sorrow, Rage, Love, and Fear - and they are thought to be the key to destroying the Icons that control humanity, as having these heightened emotions somehow gives them special powers. Now, I like a unique concept as much as anyone, but my problem with this one is that I needed a valid explanation for how it works and I never got one. Margaret Stohl only attempts a vague and nonsensical scientific explanation that did the concept no favours. I would have preferred she had called it what it was - just plain magic - instead of attempting a half-hearted and botched scientific explanation.

With the plot of Icons falling to pieces, one would hope that the characterization would make up for it, but unfortunately, I had just as big a problem with that as I did with the plot and concept. I'm not sure if it was because the Icon children were each the embodiment of one emotion only, but this led to some very flat and static characters. Dol, Icons' protagonist, is likeable enough, but her character was pretty unmemorable and bland, which thus made it hard to relate to her. There is also a love triangle here and it is both unnecessary and lacking in chemistry on both sides.

Overall, Icons failed to impress me with its standard and slow paced plot that couldn't keep my interest, its botched scientific explanation for the concept behind the novel, the flat and static characters, and its unnecessary love triangle. I am quite sad about this because I do quite like Margaret Stohl as a person and author and I love her humour. I still maintain the she has great ideas and is a talented writer as I did enjoy the idea and writing for Icons. But I just couldn't get into it. I do think that some of my issues with Icons were quite personal though, so I feel like lots of people will - and have - like it considerably more than I did.

Other Reviews:
Cozy Up With A Good Read
Maji Bookshelf
Realm of Fiction

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Review: Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: December 1, 2009
Pages: 563
Source: Bought
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars - Super Crazy Awesome!
Description (from Goodreads): Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

In short: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is a well written and intriguing novel with wonderful characters and a perfectly laid out setting.

I loved this book so much but I'm having a hard time putting into words exactly what it is that I liked about it. Why is it that it's easier for me to write at length about a book I didn't like as much but when it comes to the ones I truly loved, I find I'm at a loss for words? Does this happen to anyone else? Well, I'm going to do my best to explain, anyway.

It was very long and drawn out, but the plot never dragged or felt boring, only engaging and near the end, very fast paced.

It throws tons of questions at the reader in the beginning, but it never felt confusing or frustrating, only intriguing and fascinating.

It has a male protagonist written by female authors, but Ethan never seemed inauthentic. Instead he was very well fleshed out and genuine.

The writing was very well done. The setting was perfectly described and laid out. The characters, both main and side, were brilliant and distinct.

I just loved it! What more can I say?

Other Reviews:

i swim for oceans

That's Swell!

The Unread Reader

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