This is a major shout out to my web design company, Austin Designworks, who have relaunched their own website. You can read my testimonials over there but it pretty obvious how much I LOVE them!

On the surface, Malinda Lo’s debut novel seems like a classic Cinderella tale, and in a way, it is. However, it doesn’t turn out the way you’d expect, and if you’ve read my other reviews, you’ll know that that makes me wildly happy!

Ash is both the name of the novel and of the title character, whose name is Aisling, and Ash for short. This is an obvious play on the Cinderella/Cinders character from the fairytale, and the way Ash progresses from the start is the story we all know from our childhoods.

When Ash’s father remarries and then dies, leaving debts behind, her stepmother demands that Ash becomes the family servant to repay them. Ash longs to run away to join the fairies in the nearby woods – fairies that most people have come to deny the existence of in these modern times.

One in particular bars her passage to Taninli, the fairy realm. His name is Sidhean, and he insists that she isn’t ready… yet. Replacing the fairy godmother you’d expect from a Cinderella story, he grants her favours that come at a price – that one day, she will be his.

Unfortunately, before he spirits her away to Taninli, Ash falls for the King’s Huntress, Kaisa. On her website (http://www.malindalo.com/), Malinda Lo explains, “In the first draft of Ash, the Cinderella character falls for the prince. It wasn’t until my good friend Lesly read it and said, ‘You know, the prince guy is kinda boring,’ that I realized that Cinderella was gay.”

Nice subversion, don’tcha think?

The story is told from an emotional distance a lot of the time – the same way the fairytales I read as a child were. More emphasis is put into the events than how the character feels about them, although Ash is far from devoid of emotion. It’s an interesting approach to take, and one that diminishes the LGBT element of the story a little.

Nothing about Ash is voyeuristic – it’s told on a much more innocent level than most young adult novels, and I’d say it’s aimed toward readers in their early teens rather than their later years. Reference is made toward romantic feelings, but sexual desire is barely mentioned.

The only complaint I’d have about the book is that it only skims the surface of something that could have been a lot deeper. There are references to village greenwitches, and mentions that Ash’s mother knew something about the subject and would have wanted Ash to study it, too. The fairy godmother substitute, Sidhean, is barely in the book, despite his claim to Ash’s future, and he had the potential to be more menacing and possessive, which would have made Ash’s plight that much more interesting.

For the most part, though, I enjoyed the story. It’s definitely worth a read, for its originality and for the authentic fairytale feel. The prequel, Huntress, should also be worth checking out when it’s published in April 2011. Watch this space!

Ash – Malinda Lo

$16.99 – Paperback

Hodder Headline

ISBN:9780340988374

Just a quick shout out to Peace From Pieces for listing this site as Blog-a-licious!

And a big hello to all those GoodReads members who are listing Burn Bright as a ‘to-read’ book. We love you!

Bel Says:

Buying that brand new corset
Those little red numbers counting down to the end of the auction… I swear they’re mocking me.
16 minutes to go…
Now, I know exactly what I want— I’ve bid on it for heaven’s sake. It’s supposed to be in my size and I’ve memorized the sizing charts. It’s going to fit. Now I just have to win the damn thing.
15 minutes to go…
Last time I bid on something like this, I wasn’t home to watch the clock tick down to nothing and was outbid by 3 cents. That’s right— 3 freaking cents. I was unimpressed to say the least.
14 minutes to go…
I’m a very small lady. How big was the ‘person’ who outbid me by 3 freaking cents!?
13 minutes to go…
I was the perfect shade of red and this one is black.
12 minutes to go…
I have my bid in the space provided so that at the 3 second mark I can outbid myself.
11 minutes to go…
Oh for goodness sakes, I don’t like this waiting crap. Just get on with it.
10 minutes to go…
I wonder how long it’ll take to get here if I win it.
I wonder if it’ll be well made, or if it will be a matter of ‘you get what you pay for’.
9 minutes to go…
99 cents is a great price for anything… except a chocolate bar. Those should be less than a dollar. Rip off merchants.
8 minutes to go…
I wonder if I will want to go out and buy a new blouse to go with the new corset?
No—I’ll wait until I have it in my hot little hands before I decide.
7 minutes to go…
The stress is getting to me… I can feel my heart racing…. My hands are sweaty (and my typing is worse than normal!).

6 minutes to go…
Hubby is trying to talk to me and I snap at him to shush until the auction is over. I have to give it my complete attention… (Well, apart from writing this).
5 minutes to go…
¾ of the way there. My eyes are set to no blink mode and are starting to dry out. I hate having dry eyes.
4 minutes to go…
$8.77 postage. Amazing how they can charge us more than they’ll probably pay themselves for postage.
3 minutes to go…
Call of nature… NOOOOOO!!! Not now. Now I wish I was a man so I could just tie a knot in it.
2 minutes to go…
Kiddo is whining for the computer… she has an assignment to write up. Not Now—EBAY!
1 minute to go…
All the blood has rushed to my head and my mouse is over the ‘place bid’ button. I am so nervous I think I’m going to  make a mess. Oh no! The clock is under a minute…

To be continued…

Music: Europe — The Final Countdown

Tara Moss has long been one of my favourite adult crime authors, so when I heard she was moving into Paranormal fiction I let out a little (okay–a big) fan girl squeal. And Pandora English certainly doesn’t disappoint; she is such a delight.

Pandora has always been labelled the weird kid, seeing things and knowing things she really shouldn’t; and, in a small town like Gretchenville, doing stuff that gets you noticed for all the wrong reasons. Pandora sets off to follow her dream of working as a writer at a fashion magazine in fabulous New York, thanks to a generous offer from her Great Aunt Celia to come and stay. The only thing is that there’s something weird going on: for an elderly lady, Celia sure does seem young and spritely– and what’s with the veil she constantly wears? Also, the suburb they live in doesn’t appear on maps and no one has heard of it. Unfortunately, no one has explained the family history to Pandora, let alone the fact that out of a line of gifted women, she’s extra special.

The Blood Countess has a little bit of everything to get your heart pumping: crushes on century old ghosts, vampires with an obsessive need to count, villains guarded by zombies, and the unconfirmed goblin neighbourhood grocer. This is all backdropped by Pandora trying to make it in New York, and the conspiracy surrounding the latest greatest skincare product to hit the market.

I had trouble picking a favourite character from the two mains: both are well developed and very believable. The plot line flows along at just the right speed, leaving you holding your breath from chapter to chapter as the action and mystery unfold. Quite honestly, The Blood Countess has made it into my top 5 across all genres for the year; it’s fun, fresh and gripping, dark without any over-the-top morbidity. It’s a great good-versus-evil tale, and the fact that we are finding out the truth that hides in the darkness of night at the same time as Pandora made it all the more enjoyable.

The next book following Pandora’s adventures, The Spider Countess, is out 2011. All I can say is write fast Tara!

The very mysterious trailer

Tara’s website.

The Blood Countess – Tara Moss

1 November, 2010 by Pan Macmillan

Paperback, 394 Pages

ISBN:
9781405040143