Welcome to my stop on the GUILE blog tour! Today I'll be sharing my review of the book - and don't forget to enter the awesome giveaway! To follow the rest of the tour, check out the schedule at the end of the post.
Guile
Author: Constance Cooper
Genre: YA Fantasy
Release Date: March 1, 2016
Publisher: Clarion Books
Formats: Hardcover; eBook
384 pages
Find it: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks
Description:
Yonie Watereye lives in the bayou. The water there is full of guile, a power that changes people and objects. Yonie, 16, makes a living investigating objects affected by guile, but in fact it’s her talking cat, LaRue, who has the power to see guile.
Yonie becomes aware that someone is sending harmful guile-changed objects to certain people, including herself. Her investigation becomes entwined with her hunt for the secrets of her mother’s past and leads her to discover dangers hidden within her own family.
In the suspenseful adventure that follows, Yonie and her furry sidekick face challenges that could end their adventuring forever.
Guile is an intriguing YA fantasy novel that blends several genres such as action, adventure, suspense and mystery, together to create an original story that will have readers guessing until the very end. I'm a big fan of thrillers - including mysteries and suspense - so when I read that this book was a blend of those genres along with fantasy elements, I couldn't wait to read it. It lived up to any hopes and expectations I may have had for it, and turned out to be a very quick and enjoyable novel. The aspect of the story that fascinated me the most was the guile. I loved learning as much as I could about it - history, legends, what it can do to objects and living things, and it's mystical qualities too. This part of the book is very unique and really made it stand out from the rest of the genre for me. I loved getting to know both Yonie and LaRue (I absolutely adored her character!) and to watch them get out of sticky situations throughout the story. There's a bit of a mystery in the book about Yonie's family and some dark secrets, which I thought brought the book to new level and was a great addition to the plot itself.
One thing that bothered me a bit was the third person point of view the book is told in. I'm a huge fan of first person POV and I almost always believe that a story should be told from this perspective because of the deep connection that forms between the reader and the narrator. Since this novel is told from the third person POV, I wasn't able to lose myself inside the world the author created (which usually happens with first person POV). The world building was fantastic and I loved getting to know all of the places and people scattered throughout the story. I really wish that I could have slipped deeper inside of Yonie's world, because it was really original and had tons of potential - and I would have loved feeling like I was beside Yonie in this strange land while everything was happening. This is my own opinion (of course) and has nothing to do with the book or the writing itself. I'm sure that other readers will have differing opinions than mine and these things won't be an issue at all. It's just one of my personal quirks as a reader. Overall, this was an interesting book with solid writing, a good blend of genres, great worldbuilding, and a plot with a quick pace. I definitely recommend it to fans of YA fantasy, along with readers who enjoy paranormal, action, adventure, and mysteries.
One thing that bothered me a bit was the third person point of view the book is told in. I'm a huge fan of first person POV and I almost always believe that a story should be told from this perspective because of the deep connection that forms between the reader and the narrator. Since this novel is told from the third person POV, I wasn't able to lose myself inside the world the author created (which usually happens with first person POV). The world building was fantastic and I loved getting to know all of the places and people scattered throughout the story. I really wish that I could have slipped deeper inside of Yonie's world, because it was really original and had tons of potential - and I would have loved feeling like I was beside Yonie in this strange land while everything was happening. This is my own opinion (of course) and has nothing to do with the book or the writing itself. I'm sure that other readers will have differing opinions than mine and these things won't be an issue at all. It's just one of my personal quirks as a reader. Overall, this was an interesting book with solid writing, a good blend of genres, great worldbuilding, and a plot with a quick pace. I definitely recommend it to fans of YA fantasy, along with readers who enjoy paranormal, action, adventure, and mysteries.
Constance's fantasy novel Guile will be published March 1, 2016 by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Guile is set in the Bad Bayous, where the water makes strange and unpredictable changes to things (or animals, or people) that soak too long.
Constance's short stories have appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and various other publications. Her work has been podcast, translated into Swedish and Hebrew, and included in “Best Of” anthologies. She also writes sf poetry, and has twice been nominated for the Rhysling Award.
Constance grew up mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area, with one year spent in Surrey, England and a chunk of another spent in Newfoundland, Canada. She studied journalism at UC Santa Cruz, where she hiked to class through redwood forest, explored secret caves, and helped edit the college newspaper. Later she earned an MA in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, and stayed on in Philadelphia working on a linguistic research project before getting sucked into the brand-new world of website design.
After Constance met her husband, they moved to Edinburgh, Scotland for two years, where she morphed into a software engineer. Just as she'd acclimated to saying “beeta testing” and “proh-cessor,” she and her husband returned to the Bay Area to work for a natural language search company.
Now Constance lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two children, and is enjoying ever-increasing time to write the kind of stories she's always loved. Her published science fiction so far has all been set on alien planets, and often told from alien viewpoints (including reptilian, mammalian, and crustacean analogues.) In writing fantasy, she's attracted to inventive, nonstandard settings, light touches of humor, and just pure adventurous fun. Constance's writing also shows the influence of her love for mysteries.
Constance's short stories have appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and various other publications. Her work has been podcast, translated into Swedish and Hebrew, and included in “Best Of” anthologies. She also writes sf poetry, and has twice been nominated for the Rhysling Award.
Constance grew up mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area, with one year spent in Surrey, England and a chunk of another spent in Newfoundland, Canada. She studied journalism at UC Santa Cruz, where she hiked to class through redwood forest, explored secret caves, and helped edit the college newspaper. Later she earned an MA in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, and stayed on in Philadelphia working on a linguistic research project before getting sucked into the brand-new world of website design.
After Constance met her husband, they moved to Edinburgh, Scotland for two years, where she morphed into a software engineer. Just as she'd acclimated to saying “beeta testing” and “proh-cessor,” she and her husband returned to the Bay Area to work for a natural language search company.
Now Constance lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two children, and is enjoying ever-increasing time to write the kind of stories she's always loved. Her published science fiction so far has all been set on alien planets, and often told from alien viewpoints (including reptilian, mammalian, and crustacean analogues.) In writing fantasy, she's attracted to inventive, nonstandard settings, light touches of humor, and just pure adventurous fun. Constance's writing also shows the influence of her love for mysteries.
Giveaway: (3) Winners will receive a finished copy of GUILE - Open to US only!
Tour Schedule:
Week 1:
2/22/2016- Seeing Double In Neverland- Interview
2/23/2016- Here's to Happy Endings- Review
2/24/2016- Take Me Away To A Great Read- Guest Post
2/25/2016- 5 Girls Book Reviews- Review
2/26/2016- Curling Up With A Good Book- Interview
Week 2:
2/29/2016- A Dream Within A Dream- Review
3/1/2016- Twinning for Books- Guest Post
3/2/2016- Eli to the nth- Review
3/3/2016- Good Choice Reading - Interview
3/4/2016- Wandering Bark Books- Review
Hello Constance Guile sounds like a good read ♡ thank you
ReplyDelete