I was contacted by the author to see if I was interested in getting a free copy of this book in exchange for a review.  I jumped at the chance as I was really pleased at how much I liked the first book in this series.  And the second installment did not disappoint.

This book is set in Great Britain, it follows a completely different set of lead characters.  The main female is Zephanie Sweetly, her and her family live underground in the Midnight, they work as caretakers keeping the Midnight safe for the people who aren't always accepted up top.  Until one day her family is attacked, family members and clients are killed, while one client is kidnapped.  After narrowly escaping the attack, Zephanie hires Thomas Coyle, a famous missing persons expert to find her client.  Little does Coyle know Zephaine has an agenda all of her own.  Together Zephanie and Coyle team up with some American's to find out what happened to her client, and why after all these years they're being targeted by the creatures that live in the Midnight.

I really enjoyed this book, more then the first one really.  I liked the hero in this book better, I felt that Jack from the first book was a little on the whiny side.  Both Jack and Tom had horrible things happen to them and were both well written, but I enjoyed Tom's character better then Jack's.  Another nice thing about the characters in this book is how the author created all new lead's, while incorporating a few of the minor characters from the first book to make the connection between the two.  

The romance was well done, in my opinion anyway.  It wasn't overpowering, the author did a good job combining a good mix of soft tender moments and thrilling action scenes.  

I felt that the world building was well done, even though it's a second book, the first one was set in NYC, and there were still a lot of differences between the Midnight of Great Britain and the Underground of NYC.  I also liked how the author used a different name for the mole people.  In Britain they are called Rawheads and in the United States they are called Moles.  It makes sense that two different countries would use different terms, it made it feel more real.  Speaking of feeling real, the dialogue was very well done too, using a lot of English slang and terminology.

On a whole this was an enjoyable read, I was more then happy to read and review this one.  I'm glad that I was able to get my hands on this book and as it's the third book I've read by this husband and wife writing team, I would be happy to read any future books they write. 

So I'm doing the review this way because I couldn't find the book available on Booklikes 

Now about this book, I liked it, I really did or at least most of it.  Let me give a little synopsis about the book before I start talking about it.

The book starts out with a married couple scavenging for metal on a frozen battlefield, when they come across a soldier that is still alive.  They take him home and nurse him back to health.  Once the soldier comes around he realizes he can't remember anything, so he stays with the couple and helps them with their little farm.  One day they decide to go and visit the woman's family in the mountains, while staying with her family he looks down to the ocean and see's the creatures that had attacked him the first time preparing for another attack.  Now he must take it upon himself to raise an army and protect these people who saved his life.  

My only real problem was with the romance story line, if felt really rushed.  When he comes to the village he meets the sister of the woman who saved his life, and it's love at first sight.  I can dig love at first sight, but it was two days later and he was purposing to her!  Then it was another 2 or 3 days and she was telling him she was pregnant, she said she used magic to be able to tell, ok I'll buy that, but coupled with everything else it just made that portion of the story unbelievable.

The love story aside I thought it was really well done, the world building was good and the characters were endearing.  Although it lacked a little in the way of descriptiveness for the characters appearances, I don't know if the Hero was ever really fleshed out so that I had a clear picture of what he looked like.  Maybe the author did it on purpose, to let us readers form our own image.

I really enjoyed the fish creatures that were attacking the humans, I thought it was a really good idea for the "bad guys".  They are, at least to my knowledge, completely original.  And I really liked the idea of creatures that terrorizes the very source of life for humans.  

On a whole I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to any fantasy reader as long as they didn't expect too much from the romance story line.

Just finished this one up yesterday, needless to say I liked it.  I wasn't "wowed" by it, but it was good.  It had more depth then most YA novels, with a few parts that were actually quite sad.  One thing though...it had almost nothing to do with the movie!  Not that I'm complaining, I liked the movie, and I liked the book(probably more), it's just I thought there would be more similarities.

The book is written in a first person POV about a teenager named Davy Rice.  He is the product of a drunken and abusive father, and because his father also abused his mother, she ran away from him and left Davy also.  One day Davy is is about to get beat by his father and before he knows it he's jumped himself to the public library.  After that he runs away from home and starts to learn more about his jumping ability.  Soon he finds himself in need of money so he decides to rob a bank, and of course with his ability there's no way for the law to catch him.  He counts the money later and finds out that he has stolen just of a million dollars, so he's set for life.

One thing I wanted to point out, that I mentioned earlier is the fact that that the book was almost nothing like the movie.  Aside from the names of the main characters, and the fact that he can jump from place to place, they are nothing alike.  In the book he meets Millie in a movie theater, their not classmates like in the movie.  Also the whole jumper vs paladin thing the movie had going on doesn't exist, at least not in this book, not sure about the sequel.

I kind of liked the fact that the book is so different from the movie.  Many times I've watched the movie before I knew it was based on a book and it has sort of ruined the book because, even though the book holds 4 times the story the movie does, I still know the ending.  Not so with this one, they are completely different stories, so if you've already watched the movie and are hesitant to read the book don't be.

I had a few reservations about this one, but it ended up being a pretty good book.  Written in a first person format of a young boy named Caleb Hart.  The book starts out with Caleb finding out that he has an "Affinity of The Dead" when he starts hearing the thoughts of the frogs that they're dissecting in biology class.

I'll give you a little back history here, the book is set in the future(year 2025), and scientists have mapped the human genome.  In doing so they found out that most humans are capable of having special "abilities" (empathic, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, that sort of thing).  One such ability is Affinity of the Dead, AFTD for short.  This power allows the person to interact with the dead, such as sense where bodies are buried, or feel what a person felt before they died, some can even raise corpses from the grave.  AFTD is a very rare ability and we eventually find out that Caleb has the potential to be really powerful.  Because powerful AFTD's are so rare the government have a keen interest in them, and now Caleb has to use his powers to protect his friends as well as himself.   

All in all it was a pretty fun read, plenty of exciting scenes with good character dialog.  The characters are well written, and the world building isn't bad.  I did notice that the story arch seemed a little weak, I didn't really feel a build up before the finale, it just sort of happened at the end of the book after watching Caleb deal with one problem after another that goes along with having AFTD.   

Yesterday I came across an article in Google news, that said: "9 foot long Great White Shark Eaten Alive", and of course I read it.

Apparently marine biologists had tagged a female great white shark with a data/tracking probe.  A couple days ago the tag washed up on the beach, the information that was retrieved from it was astounding.  The tag showed that it had been dragged from relatively shallow water down to 1900ft.  Now for the interesting part, the shark's body temperature slowly decreased as it went deeper, but once it reached 1900 feet the sharks's body temperature jumped from 46 degrees to 78 degrees.  So what could have caused the spike in body temperature?  The marine biologist's seem to believe that the shark was eaten....whole.

Killer whales have been known to kill and eat great white sharks, although never whole.  And because the tag was reading the shark's body temperature all the way down to 1900 feet we know the shark was alive when it reached that depth.  It is possible that a killer whale killed the shark at 1900 feet, but the deepest recorded dive for a killer whale is 800 feet, which means if it was a killer whale they just smashed the old deep dive record.

So begs the question, what killed this great white?  Is it just a killer whale and we really have no idea what their capabilities are?  Or is there some other giant sea creature out there that has yet to be discovered?  Remember, live giant squid measuring 16 feet in length were just discovered ten years ago by Japanese researchers.  It's also said that we know more, and have explored more of the moon then that of the ocean floor, so we really have no idea what kinda of creatures could possibly be down there.