Three to Go

Indelible by Dawn Metcalf is a YA fantasy.  

Book Description:   Some things are permanent. Indelible. And they cannot be changed back. 

Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room—right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. 

Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world—a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep and a life that will never be the same.  

Of course, a love story develops between Joy and Indelible Ink, and a friendship of sorts with his sister and others from his world.  As a result of the wound, Joy becomes Indelible Ink's assistant, and a conspiracy is uncovered that could mean the end of the human world.  First in a series that young people should enjoy.

NetGalley/Harlequin Teen.

Fantasy.  July 30, 2013.  Print version:  384 pages.

• ISBN-10: 0373210736

Into the Raging Mountains by Caroline Gill is a fantasy that could have benefited from extensive editing.  Emphasis on extensive.  Nice cover.

Book Description:  When gods intervene in minutiae, even
the jaded take notice. Into the Raging Mountains is an extraordinary tale in which a town baker, a gifted fence, and innocent children are caught up in a secret struggle to control the future of the world.

Characters are thin, the plot(s) a bit confused, and way too long.  

NetGalley/St. Helena Press.

Fantasy.  June 2013.  ebook.




A Clockwork Heart by Liesel Schwarz  is a YA steampunk fantasy.  Steampunk is a difficult genre to pull off. Too many authors spent more time on the accouterments and paraphernalia than on characters or plot.

  A Clockwork Heart is the second in a series, but it stands alone.  If it stands at all.  Actually,  the book stumbles, falls, and fails to draw breath.  DOA.  Elle Chance and Hugh Marsh are cardboard characters and the dialogue fails to make them more human. 

 Cassandra Clare's  Clockwork Angel (the first in her Infernal Devices trilogy) is infinitely better.

NetGalley/Random House, Del Ray Spectra.

Steampunk/Fantasy.  2013.  Print version:  304 pages.

• ISBN-10: 0345545087