I adored Sea Hearts. By the end of only the first few pages, I knew it would be one of those books. You know, those books that get you so immediately, that grip you and won’t let go. Those books you know will stay with you forever, those books that touch you and linger in your mind, your heart and soul.

I’ve read a few of Margo Lanagan’s short stories, but Sea Hearts was the first of her novels I’ve been brave enough to dive into. Lanagan’s writing style is unique; it’s strange and unpredictable, her use of language is, quite honestly, kind of weird and blunt in a beautiful way. I’ve never found her work to be ‘easy reading’, and I don’t think the author intends it to be that way either. Sea Hearts literally took my breath away and didn’t return it until I’d sobbed over the very last page.

From multiple points of view, Sea Hearts tells the story of the brides of remote Rollrock Island. The most intriguing voice for me was that of Misskaella Prout, the sea witch. Bullied by the townsfolk and her family for her frumpy looks that hark back to an ancestor her Mam would prefer they forgot, Misskaella discovers she has a magical connection with the seal colony who inhabit the island. An embarrassing problem at first, she later discovers she is able to draw a beautiful woman from the heart of a female seal. For a price, any man on the island is able to buy himself a bride – an irresistible sea-wife. The husbands store the wives’ seal skins away, thus trapping them in a life unnatural state of being.

But what are the consequences for the men, women, children and compliant seal-wives of Rollrock? Can thoseborne of the sea truly be content with a life on land? It seems not, and the wives, though loving of their husbands and sons, mourn their lost lives, wrapped in blankets knitted of seaweed.

Margo Lanagan has taken the Selkie folktale and expanded, enriched and made it her own. Sea Hearts is lush and disturbing in its commentary on society; on the bitterness, love, loss and need for revenge we feel. Rollrock Island itself was, for me, a character of its own, looming over and bewitching all that lived there. As someone who has lived her entire life by the ocean (and a number of seal colonies…), I really felt the author nailed the power and enchantment of the sea. Lanagan’s unique storytelling drips with salt-spray, you can literally taste the ocean and its magic as you glide through this book.

Sea Hearts is technically a Young Adult novel, and I’d recommend it for readers over fourteen to one hundred and fourteen. Many of the themes covered are mature, but that’s not to say younger readers won’t be lost in Lanagan’s magical world as well. Titled as ‘The Brides of Rollrock Island’ overseas, it also has a number of different covers, each of them stunning in their own right.

If you love mythology, fairytales, folklore or the sea, you’ll lose yourself in Sea Hearts. I rate it as one of my top five reads – ever.

Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan

Published by Allen & Unwin

Paperback 343 pages.

ISBN – 978 1 74237 505 2

When you’re moving house or preparing for another book haul, family and supposed ‘friends’ may suggest that donating, trading, selling, or giving away your books would be a great way to make room or lighten your load. Here is a list of completely plausible reasons to keep your books, when NOOOO doesn’t cut it.

#10 You are collecting for the biggest post-apocalyptic library in your hemisphere. When the crap hits the fan, and there are no more romance books left on the black market, where are all the poor, surviving, amnesia suffering, men going to learn how woo a girl again?

#9 You’re preserving the food source and natural habitat for your pet silverfish. Poor old Mr Al Foil, he like to be called Al for short; loves his cozy home. How could anybody deprive him, especially when his son Tin is coming to visit next weekend? PETA may need to be alerted.

#8 You are researching for your memoirs. How on earth are you going to be able to remember the most inspirational books in your life if they aren’t ALL there at your fingertips when you finally get around to writing it?

#7 You don’t get rid of family heirlooms. Each and every work of genius in your book case is to be one day handed down to your children and your grandchildren. What? Twilight IS TO timeless.

#6 It’s financially smart. You’ll only have to replace it when the library hasn’t got it when you want to read it. Not to mention having to pay off the person you bribed to have the book constantly on loan as back up.

#5 Every one of them is on your To Be Read pile. There is an order, and a system. One book missing and the next 6 years are screwed.

#4 Sentimental value. There is a story in every book, and not just the ones written on the pages. Don’t you understand how important these external stories are to me? *Queue sobbing and dramatic music if necessary.*

#3 The pages are all dog eared. Wear and tear really devalues a book. Nobody would want one like that. I only do it when I can’t find a book mark or a random piece of important paper or a coffee mug to mark my place, honest.

#2 Questionable marks on the pages. You know what every single one of them is, and others may think they are something gross. No that is NOT blood, it’s sauce from the brilliant spaghetti Bolognese I made back in 2001. Paul Newman may want a sample of the stain someday so he can extract the recipe. It was that awesome. No; seriously, here do you want a lick?

#1 I read in the toilet. NOBODY wants second hand toilet books. It’s practically illegal to give someone a toilet book. Haven’t you watched Seinfeld?

Title: Sequence
Genre: RPG, Indie
Developer: Iridium Studios
Release Date: 20 Oct 2011
Languages: English

Price: €3,99

In this DDR and RPG hybrid, you are Ky, a young man who finds himself trapped in a tower. With the guidance of Naia, you seek to reach the top level of the tower so you can finally be free. All you have to do is battle your way to the top. The start and basic setting are quite standard, but seeing that this is a rhythm game, one can understand the story isn’t the main focus: gameplay is. So even though the story is somewhat boring, you’ll find yourself playing the game just because it is fun.

Battle works like this: you have three different fields – one for mana, other for defense and other for spells – and you alternate between the three to play. Save for the spell field, which is only active when you cast a spell, arrows are always coming down. So in order to keep your health from decreasing, you have to hit the arrows in the health field and if you want to regain mana, you switch to the mana field and hit the arrows there. Like it was said before, the spell field is only active when you cast a spell and in battle, it’s sometimes impossible to avoid getting hit because you’re in the middle of a spell and you don’t want to break it.

Spells have a cool down and a mana cost, which keeps you from hitting the spell button repeatedly. You have to keep on switching between fields if you want to see the battle through. The duration of the battle is the same as the music you have to play to, and if you don’t bring down your opponent in that given time, you lose the battle.

I found the gameplay to be fun and different from other rhythm games. You have to go back and forth between fields and pay constant attention as a derail could mean a decrease in hit points or a failed spellcast attempt. But what makes the gameplay really work is how well synched the arrows are with the music. In some other rhythm games, listening to the music doesn’t necessarily help, whereas in Sequence, it does. The difficulty is not overwhelming either – and if you find yourself having an easier time, pumping the difficulty up will satisfy you.

Then, for the RPG elements, you have items you can equip and create. Item creation in Sequence is somewhat frustrating. First, you have to get the ingredients which are obtained by battling monsters – and when you do get everything, you have to sacrifice experience points in order to increase the odds your craftsmanship has to succeed. The more experience you sacrifice, the better your odds. I found this annoying, as sometimes I would sacrifice a ton of experience and, as luck would have it, I got nothing and the experience was lost. This is, however, evened out by the fact that gain experience from desynthing items you already have and no longer use.

One other gripe I have with Sequence is that, to learn a spell, you have to sacrifice a certain amount of experience and then go through a song with certain requirements. If you fail, you lose the experience points and to get them back, you either have to desynth items or battle more enemies – which, as the game progresses, ends up being quite repetitive.

Another big problem was the voice acting. It was mostly wooden, trying to be funny and failing miserably. At first, the character of Naia struck me as a poor attempt at a snarky GLaDOS. It didn’t work, especially because the main character could retort to her obvious sarcasm. It also didn’t help that the aforementioned voice acting wasn’t up to par. Also, certain referenced to the real world – 4chan, memes, – seemed to have been put there in a sore attempt to make the game funnier… which they didn’t.

The story, like I said before, is simple, but surprisingly lengthy for a game of this genre. The conflict, introduced halfway around the game, didn’t really stir me. I do have to give the developers credit for indeed introducing some dissent. The ending is also commendable, as it introduces some mystery while leaving the main events of the game explained. It’s a somewhat weak explanation, but it’s there and I had to accept that even though I did not find it very satisfying, it’s there – however much of a deus ex machina it might have been.

The artwork that accompanies the game is quite nice, however. It’s not super realistic and overcomplicated, but it fits the spirit of Sequence quite well. The design of some monsters disappointed me though, as they were nothing but other monsters with a different color palette.

Overall, Sequence is a fun, fast-paced rhythm game with a twist. Fans of the genre will be satisfied with it, while newcomers will have a fun experience as well. It’s a finely developed indie game and it most certainly deserves a try.

The Good:

Tapping the key really matches the rhythm of the music.

Gameplay is quite fun.

Original music brings it a little life.

The Bad:

Crafting items is quite frustrating.

The voice acting is not stellar.

Final Score: 8.0/10

The Hollow? What the heck is The Hollow? Honestly, I only go out to buy books knowing what I want. Occasionally on the spur of the moment, I get something that looks and sounds really good but I usually see books recommended in peoples IMMs or on Youtube.

The day I purchased The Hollow, I was at Barnes and Nobles, strictly for coffee and no books! But my friend wanted to pick up a book for her AP class, so she can practice before the big end of the year test. I wasn’t too interested in that, and didn’t just want to wait in the coffee area all by myself, so I decided to roam around and JUST LOOK at the Young Adult books. My eye caught this book called The Hollow. Never having seen or heard about it before, I picked it up, flipped it over, and read the summary.

It was awesome!

The Hollow is about a girl named Abbey who recently lost her friends, in a mysterious way. She drowned in the river, in the cemetery, which was Abbey and Kristen’s favorite place to hang out and be together. No one knew if Kristen did it on purpose to commit suicide, or if she accidentally fell in.

Get over it! She’s faking it! She’s weird! Are just a few of the mean things Abbey was told. I couldn’t believe how rude some of the cheerleaders were to her! Her best friend just died! How can you treat her like that? She’s going through something.

Even though a lot of the kids at school were mean and rude to her, Abbey ran into a mysterious boy she’d never meet before. His name is Caspian, he has blonde hair with one black streak in it. He’s three years older than Abbey, and he enjoys drawing, reading, and freshly baked snicker doodles. At the end of The Hollow, Caspian is nothing like what you thought he was at the beginning.

He was the sweetest guy ever. Caspian was really good for Abbey, he was the one she could talk to. Seeing him was the one thing Abbey looked forward to everyday when she had nothing else left. I love Caspian and I love what he and Abbey were, whenever they were together.

I wish we could have learned more about was Caspian, and his family and what happened to him. And Kristen and a little about her past. I think the story would have connected a little bit better. But The Hollow, is only the third book in the trilogy, so there’s still plenty time for that! If you haven’t read the book, and are looking for something that makes you feel every emotion possible, you really should pick it up!

• ISBN-13: 9781416978947
• Publisher: Simon Pulse
• Publication date: 8/3/2010
• Pages: 528