Review of A Thousand Perfect Notes by C.G. Drews

Genres: Contemporary

Pages: 300

Publisher: Orchard Books

Release Date: 07/06/2018

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(Received from NetGalley for review)

Beck hates his life. He hates his violent mother. He hates his home. Most of all, he hates the piano that his mother forces him to play hour after hour, day after day. He will never play as she did before illness ended her career and left her bitter and broken. But Beck is too scared to stand up to his mother, and tell her his true passion, which is composing his own music - because the least suggestion of rebellion on his part ends in violence. 

 When Beck meets August, a girl full of life, energy and laughter, love begins to awaken within him and he glimpses a way to escape his painful existence. But dare he reach for it?

I was ridiculously tempted to just review this book via copy and pasting every beautiful, quote-worthy section of it that I highlighted (on my kindle, I'm not a heathen), but that would be over 60% and probably copyright theft so I'll have to resort to banging on the keyboard for several paragraphs instead.

This is one of those beautiful, precious, rare books that is just so perfect in every single way the only thing you considering doing when you close the final page is to open the first one and read it all over again. There were so many heart wrenching moments and every. single. character. felt real, in that imperfect, messy, human way.

The message of this book is obvious - sometimes you have to save yourself. It takes the manic pixie dream girl trope and makes it completely and utterly human, showing that just because the girl you meet is made of smiles, sunshine, and rainbows and draws on her legs in a multitude of coloured Sharpies doesn't mean that she's the one that will save you. She has her own problems to deal with.

"He hates how innocent her face is, how her lips are twisted in a quiet smile, how her breath puffs in globes of cold white. He hates it because she is hope and tomorrow and he is goodbye and the end."

Beck wakes up every morning to the sight of the very thing he hates - the piano that's likely worth more than his entire house and he knows that if he doesn't start playing within minutes he'll bring the wrath of the Maestro down on him - his mother. I never realised this separation from the parental term until writing this review but it really shows just how little of a true relationship they have.

This is a story of piano playing, German and abuse. The abuse is horrific, made stifling by how small Beck's house feels. Beck feels pathetic for not standing up to this towering figure but he wanted to protect his little sister. Every time Beck hit a wrong note on that stupid piano I swear I stopped breathing, waiting for what was coming next.

"She's going to see how bare the house is. How bleak. They don't own much, just useful furniture and filing cabinets of music. No decorations. His family collects bruises and German insults instead of crockery and photo frames."

August is our manic pixie dream girl - except - she isn't. She's a fully rounded character, a hippy girl that kicks boys who harm animals, draws rainbows on her legs and walks home barefoot to her veterinary parents and her home full of dogs, cats and pretty sure I heard rumours of a llama. She has actual, real, parents with fully rounded personalities and lasagne and I really wanted to find their lost table and join for dinner. I both loved her and wanted to be her, absolutely one of my favourite characters.

The ending absolutely stabbed me in the heart because it hits you without warning when you read that final line. I wasn't the only reader desperately hitting "next page" on my Kindle and I'm pretty sure I left a dent. It's almost impossible to believe that this is a debut novel and if the author's books continue to be this good, she's going to dominate the YA market. And rightly so.

Review of The Last Star by Rick Yancey

Series: The 5th Wave (Book #3)

Genres: Sci-Fi, Apocalyptic

Pages: 338

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons Books

Release Date: 24/05/2016

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"The enemy is Other. The enemy is us." 

 They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us. 

 But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves. 

In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human.

Don't believe the hype. This is an incredible final novel but if you're expecting an ending as epic and gut wrenching as Mockingjay, you may find yourself a little disappointed. Following on from The Infinite Sea, this book does continue to feel like filler for the majority of the story and I did have a couple of worrying moments where I thought that we were going to end up with no answers. Rick pulled it off in the end though, ending the series with a bang and a good ending for the characters that left me happy enough to close the final book.

We do have to put up with Cassie's moping about Evan (and his unexplored territory) unfortunately but in this book I could really feel her finally pulling away from him. I was expecting a irritating love triangle between Cassie, Ringer and Ben in The Infinite Sea and my fears were finally put to rest as Rick chose to concentrate on the bigger, giant-spaceship-floating-above-our-heads problem, along with all the bombs that are about to wipe out the last of humanity.

I did have some mild irritations with this book that were more to do with Rick's writing style if anything else. The first was repetitions. After repeating the words "The Infinite Sea" at least 14 times in the previous book, we get to hear Vincit qui patitur at least 56 here. The overuse of this was particularly jarring coming from teenagers, I barely know latin myself. Rick also has a habit of repeating phrases, so we hear about Sam's ABCs constantly, as well as Dubuque, Mayfly, some head cocking Silencers and Cassie explaining Sam not bear far too many.

This book mostly involves the team running from one place to another and does feel like filler but there is a good amount of action and a crazy cat lady to keep us occupied. I definitely felt the shocking ending coming but it still had a huge impact on me and I had to re-read the page a few times to process what was happening. It gave a good, clean, Mockingjay style ending for the surviving characters too, with a small amount of room left open if Rick wanted to continue the series - which I've heard there is a new one, due 2018.

Many Covers Monday: Caraval by Stephanie Garber

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over. 

 But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner. 

 Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

  

 US/UK

These are so similar but somehow the US one is breathtaking and eye catching, while I'd easily walk past the UK cover, even if I was looking for it. I think this is due to the US's perfect use of reds and blues, while the UK's is just kinda... brown.

  

Dutch/Hebrew

I really love the Dutch cover, it has a whimsical, Narnia, Alice In Wonderland vibe to it but there is A LOT of books featuring women in red dresses. The art of the Hebrew cover is nice but overshadowed by that big heavy frame which makes the cover painful to look at.

  

Japanese/Persian

Covers that make you go "eh, okay".I really really don't understand the Day Of The Dead theme going on with the persian cover and the girl looks about 40.

 

Polish/Romanian

The tones of the Polish cover are nice enough but I'm sick of girls in huge dresses running away from things at this point. Romanian is just bad clip art. Really bad.

 

Russian/Serbian

I know I just criticize a book for having a girl in a big dress running away BUT, this cover is so freaking gorgeous look at all the COLOUR. The cover looks like a carnival! Serbian is equally nice but maybe not for this book, I'm getting historical drama.

Review of The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey

Series: The 5th Wave (Book #2)

Genres: Sci-Fi, Apocalyptic

Pages: 457

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons Books

Release Date: 07/05/2013

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How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

Wait what?! I'm finished? How did that happen? After the upwards hill that was The 5th Wave and reading many reviews of this book that said that it's basically filler, I almost stopped reading the series and that would have been a huge mistake. While the reviews were correct, this is filler, there's something about this story I just couldn't put down.

We have a proper introduction to Ringer in this book. She's one of two characters from the previous book who get their own chapters and while I admired her strength in the first book, I fell completely in love with her character in this. She's very different to Cassie, not content to mope around waiting for Cassie's alien lover. Their personalities really clash which is interesting to see.

Ringer gets the last 30% or so of the book and this is where most of the plot advancement is. If you're stuck around 50%, wanting to quit, keep going. The amount of crap that Ringer goes through this book is astounding and changes the whole story in the process.

The other character is Poundcake and I initially was wondering if Rick decided to do this so that people wouldn't think that Poundcake was just some cardboard background character, filling space. However Rick's reasons for giving Poundcake a voice (ironically) become very clear in the middle of the story.

Is i spoilers to talk about Razor? He does appear later in the book at a point where I wasn't expecting introductions of new major characters so initially dismissed him as a very minor character. What a fool I was. He's honestly the reason that I gave this book a rating as high as four stars, he's funny, smart, sarcastic and quite frankly broke my goddamn heart.

This is filler but good filler. There was a lot of jumping back and forth in the first book that gave me a headache but this is set in just two places and we don't jump to the second continuously as we did the first. The majority of the book is set in the hotel, where all the characters really do is think about rats and yell at each other a lot. Seriously, there's a ridiculous amount of yelling. Somehow though, I read all of this book way faster than the first.

The big questions I was left with was the same as when I started reading the series - what is it that the aliens want? I cannot work out what the hell is going on and The Infinite Wave just left me with more questions rather than answers.

Review of The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Series: The 5th Wave #1

Genres: Sci-Fi, Apocalyptic

Pages: 457

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons Books

Release Date: 07/05/2013

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After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd,

only the lucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother-or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

The problem with reading a book before you watch a movie is that you go in with expectations about the movie, even if you don't mean to. It turns out that the reverse is the same too. I didn't initially remember that I'd seen The 5th Wave movie with Chloe Moretz, as we'd watched it with a multitude of other movies during Christmas but I slowly started the remember the plot as I read the book.

The story is one of my favourite types, the post apocalyptic style where out characters are trecking across America and camping out in creepy forests. I have no idea why I love that trope so much but I do. In this story there's been an alien invasion, everything has gone to hell and Cassie, our main character is trying desperately to find her little brother who was taken (sadly not by David Bowie in very tight pants).

This is a multiple POV book featuring four different characters, Cassie, Ben, Evan and Sam. I felt like this could have been cut down to just two POVs, Cassie and Ben as the others were nearly always around with these two main characters.

Cassie and Ben, apart from being the obvious main characters, were also great characters overall. I loved being in the conflict with them, following their struggles to do the hard thing, battling their way through a war that they never expected to happen. Cassie knows how to look after herself and isn't shy to use a gun if she has to, I always appreciate a badass, while Ben finds himself training for war under brutal conditions.

I felt that Evan was a seriously problematic character. He comes across as creepy, a little controlling and I don't think his actions should be forgiven just because he has a nice ass and brown eyes. I didn't really get his whole explanation for what he'd been doing either, it seemed like a forced Romeo scenario. I'm sensing one hell of a love triangle for the next book and I sure as hell will not be rooting for this guy.

This is listed on Goodreads as having 457 pages and boy does it feel like it has 700. I think it could have easily been cut down 100 pages without any missing plot, a lot of scenes did wear on me and it felt like a hard slog to the finish line. When the action starts, it's really, really gripping but the inbetween is just boring.

I'm going to be honest here, I thought that the movie handled a lot of the story better. I felt that the pacing was better and last three quarters weren't such a garbled mess, as the book wasn't only messy but quite unbelievable. Without spoilers (hopefully), I'll just say that these are supposed to be our evil alien overlords that have taken over the world. It's not meant to be that easy.

Weekly Update (24/02/2018)

While everyone else is doing Stacking The Shelves I've decided that NOT buying physical books would be a great idea, so here's everything else I'm doing!

Books Read This Week

  

  

I was so pleased to have started and finished the Chemical Garden series, only to be then told by a major publisher on NetGalley that they were declining my request simply because I'd read dystopia recently and the book I requested was Contemporary. I'm not going to lie, I'm annoyed. I feel like bloggers shouldn't be influenced certain ways. If I read exclusively adult fantasy and requested YA, fine. However all my recent reviews have been YA books.

Overall it's been an okay week for reading but I'm still waiting on a book that will blow my mind. The Chemical Garden series is incredibly disappointing, I've already forgotten about The Truth About Alice and The 5th Wave is so........... slow..........
 

 

Happy Anniversary!

I've been with this fellow idiot for 9 years now and at some point we should really get married and get a lot of cats. Mainly the cats part.

 

Quick Book Plug!

A girlfriend of Bear's (the hairy one above) friend wrote a whole book but it doesn't have many views or reviews, care to check it out?

Goodreads

Review of Sever by Lauren DeStefano

Series: The Chemical Garden #3

Genres: Dystopia, Romance 

Pages: 371

Publisher: Simon Schuster

Release Date: 21/02/2012

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With the clock ticking until the virus takes its toll, Rhine is desperate for answers. After enduring Vaughn’s worst, Rhine finds an unlikely ally in his brother, an eccentric inventor named Reed. She takes refuge in his dilapidated house, though the people she left behind refuse to stay in the past. While Gabriel haunts Rhine’s memories, Cecily is determined to be at Rhine’s side, even if Linden’s feelings are still caught between them.

Meanwhile, Rowan’s growing involvement in an underground resistance compels Rhine to reach him before he does something that cannot be undone. But what she discovers along the way has alarming implications for her future—and about the past her parents never had the chance to explain.

Will contain spoilers for the previous books in the series, Fever and Wither.

When we last left Rhine, she had just been rescued from Housemaster Vaughn by his son, who takes her to his Uncle's home in this book. She recovers there while making plans to (finally) go and find her brother, not knowing that in her absence her brother has started a rebellion against the very labs their parents worked for.

Reading Fever and Sever was both a bit like trying to ride an old rusted bicycle up a very long hill. I was desperate for Rhine to just go and find her brother already, especially as we'd waited THREE BOOKS for this moment. I don't believe she did head off to find him until about 40% into the story, which was pretty frustrating.

Wither, as I will always say, is one of my favourite books but it was like it was written by a different author. The rest of the series is bogged down by cliches, characters killed off for shock value and the inevitable pretty ending where every loose end is tied up in a neat bow. Well, apart from not learning the fate of one character which really annoyed me.

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to YA heroines is the ones that do nothing, waiting for the next part of the plot to roll round as if they're at a sushi buffet. Rhine is the archetype of this, I don't think there was a single piece of major plot that wasn't handed to her and she seemed to need help from literally everyone, including bloody Vaughn.

I did really start to get frustrated with Rhine during this book. She'd learn something new, something really vital to the whole plot and then just keep it to herself. At no point during the story did she think that telling people what was actually going on would be a good idea, she just... sat there. It must have happened several times and by the end of the book I wanted to chuck her in the sea.

A major death in the book is never really explained. Like I watch 24 Hours In A&E and I know for a bloody fact that that's not science, where on earth did you pull that one from? Then I was like, okay, they're gonna live and we'll all laugh in the morning about how ridiculous it was to nearly die that way but NOPE.

Honestly I couldn't be less impressed. Adding to my frustrations was the literal throw in of Gabriel at some point during the book who continues to lack any semblance of personality and you just get a big giant pile of disappointment. I do think Lauren is an incredibly talented writer but has a lot of growth to do.

Review of Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Series: The Chemical Garden #2

Genres: Dystopia, Romance 

Pages: 341

Publisher: Simon Schuster

Release Date: 21/02/2012

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Running away brings Rhine and Gabriel right into a trap, in the form of a twisted carnival whose ring mistress keeps watch over a menagerie of girls. Just as Rhine uncovers what plans await her, her fortune turns again. With Gabriel at her side, Rhine travels through an environment as grim as the one she left a year ago - surroundings that mirror her own feelings of fear and hopelessness.

The two are determined to get to Manhattan, to relative safety with Rhine’s twin brother, Rowan. But the road there is long and perilous - and in a world where young women only live to age twenty and young men die at twenty-five, time is precious. Worse still, they can’t seem to elude Rhine’s father-in-law, Vaughn, who is determined to bring Rhine back to the mansion...by any means necessary.

Warning: there will be spoilers for Wither, the previous book in this series.

Over-hype is a truly terrible thing, we see it all the time, there's always the most popular book out and everyone is raving and you pick it up expecting Great Things, only to be bitterly disappointed. I think I had an idea in my head when I started reading Fever, of where I wanted it to go and I was definitely disappointed when I didn't get the story that I was hoping for.

We left Wither on a true high note, Rhine and Gabriel had escaped the shackles of her husband's mansion and she planned to find her brother. What I was expecting was for the story to turn post-apocalyptic, with the whole walking from destroyed town to destroyed town thing. What we got was... I'm not really sure. Compared the gorgeous writing and pacing of the first book this was undeniably a mess.

We start of where Rhine and Gabriel are captured by a Carnival which is actually a brothel featuring some sort of French woman who's batsh-... completely batty and Rhine keeps her virginity very much in tact due to a combination of voodoo magic and sheer bloody determination from the author I guess. The rest of the story is trippy mess as Rhine slowly descends into a Fever that doesn't break.

Speaking of the carnival scenes, I really felt that this was added at different point than the rest of the book, possibly later. The whole thing is written quite rushed and choppy, completely different to writing style in the rest of the book which made the whole thing more confusing.

Old characters are reintroduced but don't have quite the same impact as Wither. Gabriel becomes somewhat cardboard unfortunately, as I loved him in the first book. Rhine can't seem to make up her mind what she wants and the discovery of what happened to one of Rhine's friends was a bit too much even for me.

Weekly Update (17/02/2018)

While everyone else is doing Stacking The Shelves I've decided that NOT buying books would be a great idea, so here's everything else I'm doing!

Books Read This Week

  

Not one but two five star reads this week and both reviews are on my blog. I've read Wither three times now and it's an old favourite, while The Cruel Prince was so good that when I saw a copy in WHSmiths that I went to look for, I had to buy it.
 

Cross Stitch

I'm currently cross stitching Frederick The Literate from Dimensions and it's going well, I've been distracted the last couple of days stitching a mother's day card so I'm going to try and get more progress in soon.

Wizard101

I'm currently level 38 with my character Valdus Mistfist (a truly classy name) and he's just unlocked the third world, Mooshu. I'm currently working on a side world, Wysteria, first. It's free fishing all weekend though so I'm traipsing around looking for chests that might have pets or mounts in them!

Thanks for stopping by, don't forget to leave a comment with a link to your blog!

Review of Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Series: The Chemical Garden #1

Genres: Dystopia, Romance

Pages: 358

Publisher: Simon Schuster

Release Date: 22/03/2011

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By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can't bring herself to hate him as much as she'd like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband's strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

Clearly, I must love this book because I keep going back to it. I first read it just after it was released back in 2011, then again a couple of years later before going back to it in 2018. It's pretty incredible to think that I first read this book 7 years ago, it feels like yesterday. It's a bleak and depressing dystopian story, and just my cup of tea.

The world of Wither is very simple, some readers might argue, too simple. In a bid to cure cancer the world discovered that they can no longer conceive children than live longer than 20 years, 25 for males. America descended into a culture of glittering, lavish parties for the rich, with child brides on the arm of every young bachelor, the country desperately trying to keep it's population stable.

Rhine answers an ad asking for lab rats and unwittingly finds herself thrown into a van with multiple other girls, before being chosen as one of Linden Ashby's new brides. The whole book from start to finish is just raw, undiluted emotion as Rhine comes to terms with entrapment, death and the hope of finally escaping to find her twin brother.

The world building isn't perfect but I never care for that. What is much, much more important is how well written every character is and DeStefano really excels at this. Every character had their own nuances, their own backstory and their own struggles, it was hard to pick a favourite. Linden was a wonderful addition, his naivety of the situation made him impossible not to care for and it made perfect sense when Rhine was conflicted about running away.

I love that the ending gave me hope for what will happen in the next book (which I don't remember as well as this book), while not resorting to a frustrating cliff-hanger. I can't wait to go back to old characters as well as meet some new ones, too.

Review of The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Genres: Fantasy, Faeries 

Pages: 384 

Publisher: Little, Brown Books

Release Date: 01/02/2018 

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Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. 

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself. 

 

The last book I read reminded me of why I stopped reading and reviewing Young Adult books. This book reminded me of why I came back. It's everything I could want from a YA book and more, while being tied to a book that started off my love of YA. The story also reminded me of another early favourite, Poison Study (which I must dig out and re-read this year). 

Jude is wild, unpredictable and everything I could want from a YA heroine. I tire of simpering heriones that require everyone else to do the work for them. Or the ones that won't do The Hard Thing because they have all these morals and can never, ever, break them. No worries with Jude, while she's not completely lawless, she does whatever is necessary for things to do the way she wants them to, without coming across as arrogant. 

The boys. Can we have a shoutout for the boys? And another for Vivi and her girlfriend? Honestly while this book is crammed to the brim with beautiful boys I did really want to spend a day with Vivi and her girlfriend, as Vivi quickly became my favourite character. After finding out her father is fae and she too, she never disconnects from the human world but stays, I presume, for her sisters. Despite her anger and her disappointment with Jude and Taryn for embracing the faerie world, she never cuts them off. 

Of the boys, Prince Carden is easily my favourite. It's hard to work out which one of the boys is The Cruel Prince, as quite frankly, they all are. I really had a soft spot for Carden though and heavily shipped him and Jude, even if all logic says that this is impossible due to their hatred of each other. 

While this is a world of faerie, it's a harsh and cruel world of bloodshed, politics and partying - so basically it's like Charles the First's reign combined with Charles the Second's. I guess that makes Madoc Oliver Cromwell to be honest. I was stuck between whether to like or hate Madoc, a problem Jude also shared. I liked his wife though, as much as she nit-picked I think she did care about the girls. 

It's worth noting if you haven't read any of Holly's books before that this book is definitely set in the same world as her previous book, Tithe and may also be connected to The Darkest Part Of The Forest, however I haven't read the latter. In fact readers of Tithe may well get a welcome surprise later in this book! The story stands by itself though, so if you don't wish to read the previous books you won't miss out on anything.