Release Date: October 13, 2015
Source: BEA
Published by: Katherine Tegen

Newt's Emerald - Garth Nix | Goodreads

Lady Truthful will inherit her family’s most valued heirloom on her eighteenth birthday. Until the Newington Emerald is stolen.

Lady Truthful, nicknamed “Newt” by her boy cousins, discovers that to her horror, the people closest to her have been framed for the theft. But Newt won’t let their reputations be damaged by rumors from a false accusation. Her plan is simple: go to London to recover the missing jewel. Despite her best intentions, a young lady travelling alone is frankly unacceptable behavior. So Newt and her aunt devise another plan…one that entails men’s clothing and a mustache.

While in disguise, Truthful encounters the handsome but shrewd major Harnett, who to her amazement volunteers to help find the missing emerald under the assumption that she is a man, Henri de Vienne. But once she and her unsuspecting ally are caught up in a dangerous adventure, Truthful realizes something else is afoot: the beating of her heart.

Truthful has far more than romantic complications to worry about. The stolen emerald is no ordinary heirloom-it is the source of the family’s luck and has the power to yield vast magic. It would be completely disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands. The fate of England depends on Truthful securing the emerald.

A good comparison title is Illusions of Fate by Kiersten White. Although Illusions of Fate is an alternative historical fantasy -- England is never named; the main countries are Albion and Melei -- it feels inspired by a historical England. A similar combination of wit, magic, adventure, and romance are mixed together in this novel as they are with Illusions of Fate, so if you enjoyed one, you may well enjoy the other. Gail Carriger has also blurbed Newt's Emerald, but I regret that I have yet to read her YA spin-off of the Parasol Protectorate, and don't know whether any differences I've noted from Soulless to Newt's Emerald are due to audience alone.

Lady Truthful is a fierce heroine who will stop at nothing to get back her emerald, the family heirloom, and help reassure her father. People will discourage her, remind her that she's a woman and that her reputation cannot be compromised, and still she will fight harder to recover what's rightfully hers. There's an element of cross-dressing that remains realistic (and true to the world) while providing humor and more plot opportunities, and Truthful's aunt is a particular delight as a side character in helping Truthful with her illusion. If you enjoy hate-turned-love romances, you may also enjoy the encounters between Lady Truthful and her love interest, Charles. This book is light fun and easy to read. If all of the above appeals to you, feel free to enter the giveaway below. It's INT and ends 08/07/15.

RAFFLECOPTER FORM IS AT ORIGINAL LINK; sorry!

Hinweis: zum Zeitpunkt dieser Rezension gibt es das Buch leider nur im englischen Original.

Die Originalität dieses Buches lässt sich nur schwer beschreiben, so außergewöhnlich und herausragend ist es. Ich habe immer wieder gestaunt über die grandiosen Einfälle, die die Autorin in die Geschichte einfließen lässt! Das Genre Fantasy ist inzwischen ein althergebrachtes, und dennoch liest sich "Illusions of Fate" völlig neu und frisch.

Ganz nebenher spricht das Buch neben Magie, Zauber und Illusion noch das Thema Rassismus und Privileg an. Magie ist in dieser Welt etwas, das den Adligen vorbehalten ist. Reiche, privilegierte Länder kolonialisieren ärmere Länder und halten sich dabei noch für die Bringer des Heils...

Ich fand diese Mischung wahnsinnig spannend; ich habe das Buch quasi inhaliert! Die Autorin schafft es tatsächlich, diese Spannung bis zum letzten Kapitel ungebrochen zu halten - und das Ende habe ich dann überhaupt nicht kommen sehen.

Im Mittelpunkt steht die junge Jessamin aus dem Inselstaat Melei. Sie ist wissbegierig und intelligent, lebt aber in einer Gesellschaft, in der sie als dunkelhäutige Frau als minderwertig und primitiv angesehen wird.

...lässt sie sich davon aufhalten? Pfft, nein.

Ich fand großartig, wie sie auf Schwierigkeiten reagiert und hätte ihr oft am lieben laut applaudiert. Sie ist eine starke Frau, die ganz genau weiß, was sie will und was sie nicht will. Sie ist keine Prinzessin, die gerettet werden muss - sie kriegt das schon selber hin, vielen Dank auch!

Dem jungen Lord Finn Ackerly begegnet sie rein zufällig und ist danach sehr irritiert, dass sie ihn scheinbar nicht mehr los wird. Auch er ist sehr intelligent und darüber hinaus gut aussehend und charismatisch. Jede junge Frau im Land würde ihn nur zu gerne als Ehemann gewinnen!

Er versucht eigentlich nur, Jessamin zu beschützen und ihr zu helfen, aber dabei merkt er gar nicht, dass die Art und Weise, wie er das tut, arrogant und anmaßend ist... Sie sträubt sich dagegen mit Händen und Füßen, denn ihre Unabhängigkeit ist ihr wichtiger als Komfort und Wohlstand!

Würde sie einfach zu allem ja und Amen sagen, würde ich die Geschichte wahrscheinlich hassen, aber so habe ich manche Szenen geradezu gefeiert. Und hinter Finns hübscher Fassade steckt weit mehr, als es den Anschein hat...

Dann gibt es da noch:

Eleanor, die junge Adlige, die sich selber als die ultimative Expertin zum Thema Klatsch und Tratsch betrachtet.

Kelen, Jessamins Kindheitsfreund, der die weißhäutigen Unterdrücker verachtet und hasst und nicht verstehen kann, wie Jessamin auch nur daran denken kann, unter ihnen zu leben.

Der "Alptraum-Mann", ein fieser, grausamer, skrupelloser Bösewicht mit ungeheurem Machthunger und ungeheurer Arroganz.

Sir Bird... Ja, er ist tatsächlich nur ein Vogel, hat sich aber schnell zu meinen Lieblings-Nebencharakter gemausert!

Die Charaktere haben alle starke Emotionen in mir hervorgerufen - gute und schlechte.

Auch die Liebesgeschichte hat mich sehr angenehm angesprochen, sie hatte für mich genau das richtige Gleichgewicht: zarte Romantik ohne triefenden Kitsch.

Auch der Schreibstil ist fantastisch; bildreich und intelligent und voller großartigem Humor.

Fazit:
Die junge Jessamin stammt aus dem Inselstaat Melei. Um studieren zu können, begibt sie sich in das wohlhabende Land Albin mit seinen hervorragenden Schulen, wo sie wegen ihrer dunklen Haut allerdings als primitive "Inselratte" gilt. Dennoch schafft sie es, an einer Schule angenommen zu werden, und fortan besucht sie tagsüber den Unterricht und arbeitet nachts im Hotel, um ihr Studium zu finanzieren. Sie hat mit Armut und Vorurteilen zu kämpfen, aber als sie dem jungen Lord Finn Ackerly begegnet, ist das schnell ihr geringstes Problem...

"Illusions of Fate" ist eine unglaublich kreative, zauberhafte Geschichte, die mich mit ihren lebendigen Charakteren von der ersten Seite an in ihren Bann gezogen hat. Der Schreibstil ist intelligent, die Liebesgeschichte wunderbar kitschfrei und der Humor clever und kein bisschen platt.

I’ve wanted to like White’s books in the past but have never quite managed it. This one I really liked. The premise and characters were really interesting and while I wasn’t 100% sold on the big twist, it also wasn’t so implausible that I wanted to give up on the book. Jessamine is also a main character who’s not white and who is from a colonized country and dealing with the effects of that in her own life and the lives of her family and friends.

As seems custom with me as of late, I've got a bunch of reviews to share with y'all. Still trying to catch up, but these are a batch of really good reads that I hope you get a chance to try for yourself (all their release dates have now passed!). In the Shadows written by Kiersten White and illustrated by Jim Di Bartolo, The Young Elites by Marie Lu, The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas, and Don't Touch by Rachel Wilson are all highly recommended.

Check the link for more! Too much formatting to post here.

No doubt that Mind Games was a highly polarizing novel. Most of my blogger friends disliked it, but it seemed like literary publications generally praised Mind Games (I believe one publication had called it a tour de force), and I personally liked it and was curious as to where White would take the plot. So, when I saw Perfect Lies on Edelweiss, I decided why not.

I nearly cried reading this novel. Me! Maybe in my entire life, I've cried like three times when reading books, and one of them even felt like I was squeezing stuff out just because everyone else had (yes, I'm looking at you, The Fault in Our Stars). But Perfect Lies was sad and built on the emotional intensity of its predecessor. I'm a firm believer that writers who take risks come out with better work, and it's clear that White has taken a lot of risks with this... and yes, they worked.

Ten Likes/Dislikes:

1. (+) Fia, a protagonist - Fia was always my favorite of the two girls mostly because she was off the rocker. I loved how her neurotic perspective, her fragile balance on reality and her "perfect" instinct (and thus ability to physically survive) meshed with something so simple: her love for her sister. She was half a femme fatale, and half a confused teenager who's not entirely sane because people are constantly trying to take advantage of her and her abilities. And she's that way again, except getting much worse in the head as she gets deeper into the Keane school and conspiracy. Also, this is random, but it gets explained why she does that specific number of taps. I don't know if that was in the previous novel, but that made me happy.

2. (+) Annie, a protagonist - YES! This is what I wanted. In Mind Games, Annie frustrated me because she let other people take care of her and wasn't as active a character as Fia was. I wanted her to have more agency, and that's what happened. Mind Games was Fia's novel; Perfect Lies was Annie's. Her stable, loving, accepting perspective balanced out Fia's chaotic one, and Annie learns to fight for what she wants and becomes as fierce and competent and action oriented as her sister. Here's a perfect line for her growth in this novel (p. 74 in the e-ARC; can change in final copy): "I've spent most of my life feeling helpless. Being made to feel helpless. I'm done feeling like that."

3. (+) Plot - Here's where I have a question for you: can you just go with a novel? Mind Games and Perfect Lies rely on alternating perspectives and alternating timelines. As withMind Games, at first, I tried keeping track of the time frame but knew that I would just get myself confused and continued to read without thinking of the time, trusting that White and her editor had chosen these chapters to be aligned in a specific way. And letting go of my attempts to orient myself in the time frame undoubtedly helped with my understanding of what was going on, and allowed me to notice the logical pattern for why things were arranged the way they were. Like if you're shown that Annie has a vision and someone new is here, Kiersten White will explain why that person is there in the next chapter, even if it means jumping to three weeks prior to the climax. The little reminders of the time mostly serve as a good reminder of the fact that the climax is coming; that the tension is building toward that final moment. And oh, the beauty of an unreliable narrator and unreliable paranormal powers (well, in the sense that Annie's visions may or may not change...). Kiersten White takes full advantage of that. This is cleverly plotted and executed, and it's been a long time since a thriller has managed to surprise me with its twists, but White's novel sure did just that.

4. (+) Romance - Down below you'll read about the parallels in this book, and the romance was definitely one of the ways this was showcased. The dark v. light romance was shown in the last novel with regard to Fia and her choices for the future, but in this novel, Annie gets to have her chance at some romance... And it's adorable. I'm a fan of how White developed the romance between the two characters in question, allowing them to get know each other before revealing all, and there's no doubt it makes for great comparison to Fia's romance and to the bloody action of the novel.

5. (+) Parallels - Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of this novel was noting how clearly everything in this novel was paralleled and made perfect for comparison. Annie and Fia - Annie's steadier inner voice, growing stronger as Fia begins to spiral out of control; the friendships and romances each girl has and the way they both neatly and messily align; the fact that Annie is blind and able to see visions of future that she can't change, and the fact that Fia is the only one who can change the future but who doesn't always change things for the better, no matter how much she might believe otherwise, etc. etc.

6. (+/-) Characters - This is where I'd suggest the publisher put these novels into an omnibus. It's been over a year since I read Mind Games, and starting out Perfect Lies, I no longer remembered who all the characters were. Some of them were involved in key plot twists, and though White refers to some of those twists to remind readers of what happened, I still didn't quite remember who certain characters were. These novels are heavily plot-oriented, minus their focus on Fia and Annie, so other characters falling into the background is not entirely surprising, but can be combated by selling the novels together. (PS - if you're going to read this novel, you may want to skim either your copy of Mind Games or your review as a refresher because this novel wastes no time before moving forward with its plot.).

7. (+/-) The Ending - This is my main issue with the book. It felt like I'd just started to accept what had actually happened and then the novel was over. The ending works with the thriller feel and with everything else that happens, especially the fast-paced action, but I just wanted a little more... resolution? Slowing down of the pace just for a bit?

8. (+) The Writing - There were a few moments when I thought eh, that sentence wasn't necessary, but otherwise the writing is kept very tight, sharp and fast-paced. It's not typically beautiful, but it's practical and purposeful, and works really well with the dark thriller vibe. Kiersten White also does a good job differentiating Annie and Fia's voices.

9. (+) Pacing - If you're going to read this novel, clear out a few hours to read the entire thing without stopping. Perfect Lies is short but a perfect length because the pacing is quick and the book entirely taut with tension to keeps things moving.

10. (+) The Cover - Although I am more of a fan of the Mind Games cover, this one is still striking to me, and I like that it gives more of a "thoughtful" feel than the sort of desperation in the previous photograph (interpreting too much? Perhaps. Whatever, they're beautiful covers, and I have no idea how else the publishers would have portrayed the duology).

Action and thriller oriented readers should definitely pick up Perfect Lies. As a fast-paced paranormal thriller, Perfect Lies distinguishes itself from all the others that I've read. If you're a more character oriented reader or get frustrated with sometimes simplistic or repetitive writing (Fia likes to repeat things over and over in her head), you might not like this novel. But if you're looking for something that's got a lot of clever plot twists and manages to make you care about twin sisters who really would do anything for each other...well, give this one a chance, even if you weren't a fan of Mind Games.