Alice in Deadland

What started out promising and interesting quickly turned stupid and ill thought out. The concept is a fun one, Alice in Wonderland but with zombies. That's how the book was sold, it's what the goodreads synopsis says, what's on the back of the novel and what the positive reviews write. It couldn't be more wrong. 

It does start out that way though. It's post apocalyptical, Alice has never known any world but the zombie infested or "biter" world than this. She was born shortly after the world fell apart and has trained since her birth to stay alive and shoot "biters" in the head, only way to kill them. 

One day while on gaurd duty she sees a biter with crazy bunny ears jump into a hole and out of site from her rifle. Ignoring all her training and instincts, she follows the bunny eared biter into the hole. See the forced similarity to the original story? It's basically forcing it down the readers throat! Once she is down the hole. She finds herself surrounded by biters, but rather than kill her they being her to their Queen. 

The Queen has with her a copy of Alice and Wonderland, and tries to convince Alice it is a book of prophesy. The Queen believes that humans and the biters can live I. Harmony, and that Alice is the key to peace on Earth once more. 

If the novel wasn't horrible enough at this point, it gets worse!  Alice and the biters head back to her camp, but Zeus a military camp headed by a mix of old world commanders wants the biters killed. Alice now believes that this whole new world was orchestrated years before her birth by an old Chinese government to rid the world of undesirables and start a more evolved one. 

This novel explains little, leaving plot holes and unanswered questions. No, I will not be reading the rest of the series even though they were purchased in a set with the first. Please save yourself the trouble, time and money and don't read this book. 

Endless Knight: The Arcana Chronicles

While I am not a huge fan of romance, especially the paranormal kind, I can get past it in this series because it is so good! I find myself looking at least once a week to see when the third novel is going to be published. While the first novel in the Arcana Chronicles was great, this sequel Endless Knight is even better.

Evie has accepted her powers and her fate, despite her feelings for the mortal Jack, she starts using her powers to keep herself and her current allies alive. Jack is scared and starts to see her only as a monster, that is until she is kidnapped by Death, aka Eric. While in his stronghold Evie learns more about not just her powers, but her previous selves, and her relationship with Death. He is not all he’s cracked up to be, rather a good guy. And Jackson, he isn’t the good guy that Evie thought he was.

Alliances are shifting, relationships are changing, and everyone that Evie thought was on her side have been lying to her since the beginning. I hate that the ending is a cliffhanger, but I love this series. I think the whole Tarot card exchange is amazing, and I love how complex and muti-layered the characters are.

Poison Princess (Arcana Chronicles #1)

Evangeline “Evie” Green seems to have the perfect life. Entering her junior year of high school
she is on the varsity cheer squad, dating the senior quarterback and hottest guy in the school, her mother owns one of the wealthiest plots of sugar cane land in all of Louisiana, and everybody at school adores her. But things are not as they appear to be, Evie spent her entire summer in a mental institution after months of delusions, dreams, and talking to people who weren’t there. Evie’s grandmother hadn’t been right in the head, eight years before she had been taken away for saying and seeing the same things, and there was no way that Evie’s mother is going to let her go down that path.

            Things seem to be fine for Evie now, except for the dreams. She still dreams of a boy calling for help, an evil red witch, and the earth burning before her. Dreams are easily hidden, and kept secret from her mother. That is, until all the things Evie dreamed and had visions of start to come to pass. In the span of a day, nearly all life is obliterated from earth. Flares scorch the land, plants and animals die, standing water evaporates across the globe, and sickness runs rampant among the survivors.

            Evie is still alive, living on what remains of her southern plantation. Canned goods and underground wells have kept her alive for months, but supplies are running low. There is one thing she has on her side though, the ability to grow plants. Not a single drop of rain has touched earth in over seven months, and not a single plant survived the flares, but a drop of her blood on the earth and things start to bloom.

            When the militia starts combing their way across Louisiana, Evie has no choice but to leave her home with Jack. Jack. Handsome, dangerous and wild Jack who went to school with her. A boy who by all accounts is bad news, but the only person left on the earth who she even slightly knows. He promises to help her as long as she tells him her secret to making plants blossom in the remnants of earth.

            Evie isn’t the only one with powers who still walks. A battle of ancient enemies, reaching back thousands of years is coming to ahead and Evie has to decide what side she will be on. Deny her past selves, side with people she hates, kill the world or save it, every choice she makes leads her down one of two paths.

            I was hooked on this novel from the prologue. I read the entire book in less than a day, and it was a day well spent. I loved the Cajun feel from some of the characters, and how Evie discovered her powers and the paths she had to chose from. This is a series that I am excited to read, in the upcoming years as novels continue to be written.