Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes

I am late to this party, I know.  But Falling Kingdoms is a great, classic, high fantasy adventure.  It has all the things I enjoy in a high fantasy: tons of characters, a little romance, evil kings, questionable morals, actual deaths, fight scenes, and MAGIC people!!!  There was real magic in this novel (hopefully more in the future installments of this series).    I really enjoyed this book, although at 400+ pages, it was a lot of reading for basically the set-up portion to the rest of the series.  I would definitely recommend this one and think it would be well received by both my male and female students alike.

Final Recommendations:  if you like princesses/princes, magic, adventure, clear-cut bad guys, questionably good guys

The Falconer by Elizabeth May

You had me at Steampunk faeries! Let me preface this review with the fact that I love Shadowhunters. If you can't get with me on this then you may not enjoy this wonderful little fantasy as much as I did. I really enjoyed both the characters and setting of this period novel. The main character, Aleana was both flawed and strong. The action was not overwhelming but fast paced and fun. The mythological beings were fantastical and unique. And the boys were both comical and super-swoony! All in all a very fun read that I would definitely recommend to readers of the genre.

Final Recommendations: if you like shadowhunters (especially the Clockwork Angel type), butt-kicking heroins, hot faeries, humorous pixies, steampunk

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson

This one gets 2 stars for the 1st 300 SLOW pages and 5 stars for the last 200, high-speed, awesome pages.  That evens itself out to a three right?  I would still totally recommend this book and will still most likely read the sequel.  I loved the description of the vagabond camp, the chase across the continent, the development of strength and realization of power from the lead character in the 2nd half of the book.  I did not like the slow, plodding build-up that preceded it however.  The escape at the beginning was just far too convenient, the giggling between the two girls was superfluous, the change from princess to peasant too easy, the love triangle too (hurl).  Laos, while I understand the vague mysteriousness behind the Kaden/Rafe/Lia/Assassin/Prince/Princess love triangle, it was just too much, clever no doubt, but too much.

Also, I'm calling it now.  This book is set in a post-apocolyptic North America (not a completely made-up fantasy world).  If this is the big reveal in book 2 or 3, someone owes me some skittles!

Final Recommendations: if you like high fantasy, love-triangles, baby-mama drama, the development of strong characters over the length of a book, interesting (if not confusing) world set-up