Book Review: Branded by Taylor Keary

Branded is the first book in a series on angels, and since Ethereal was about Nephilim, I felt this was a good second book to review.

Branded is nothing like Ethereal. Ethereal has its roots firmly in The Big Three religions--Muslims, Christians and Jews will recognize a good deal of the ideology behind Ethereal, but none of us will really embrace Branded as its depictions of angels and the afterlife do not link in with any of the Big three. Branded follows a more karmic ideology. Angels were once people, and now stand in judgement of people. Judgement weighs your good deeds with your bad deeds. In the end, you are either exalted or condemned. In the Torah and Bible (I'm also assuming in the Koran, but I've never read it, so...) it is clear that angels and humans are different species, and that angels do not judge, but YHWH is the only judge. I only bring this up because there are some things that this godless system leaves out that The Big Three all have in common, such as sanctification, forgiveness of sins, and a righteous judge who does not think like a man. I feel that if an author is writing a mythos that goes directly against thousands of years of religious text that spans across at least three religions, the author is obligated to explain their mythos. I mean, Tolkien did it for crying out loud, you'd think anyone else would have no difficulty. One of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster-Bujold always explains her mythos to the reader, the gods involved, the beliefs of the people. It makes for a well-rounded book that is enjoyable and deep.

That being said, I really enjoyed Branded. It was a page-turner, and it was a very unique book, something that you just don't find everywhere. It was a bit predictable, and it had the obligatory heroine who absolutely cannot live without the guy she falls in love with, and they can't have sex for whatever reason (and this continues in the second book to the frustration of all because it's never explained why they're not having sex. Again, an explanation of the mythos we're following here would really help, because I don't really see premarital sex pinging high on the radar where Karma is involved.), but it also has a lot of other stuff that is very good.

Jessica has dreams whenever she sleeps that she is standing in place of someone about to be judged. No one has ever believed Jessica, despite the fact that there is an X branded on her neck, and she has wings etched into her back. Apparently this started when she was five, so I'm kind of curious as to why her parents never believed her. I know you can get body modifications younger than 18, but I've never heard of a tattoo parlor shady enough to do branding on a five-year-old.

Finally, Jessica meets Alex who is wonderful and beautiful and perfect and everything she'd hoped he'd be, and she tells him about the dreams. He doesn't say if he believes her or not, but he tries to be understanding. Alex is also fabulously wealthy because of course he is. He also has a lot of restraint where his sex organs are concerned and never has sex with Jessica no matter how much they love each other because they're trying to be "good." Good how? Good...in a Karmic way? Good because the religious texts of the Big Three expect you to abstain (if you're a woman)? It doesn't make sense.

There's another guy who wants Jessica, and he has dark hair and dark eyes and looks a whole heck of a lot like the angels who judge Jessica every time she sleeps, only she never puts two-and-two together, and I just have to stop here and remind everyone how much I really dislike the fact that the "good" boyfriend in YA fiction is always the one who is closer to exhibiting all of the proper traits that Hitler expected from his Jungen, whereas the "bad" boyfriend is always dark. What does this say about our society? In the wake of the horrible tweets about Rue and Cinna in The Hunger Games being portrayed by African-American actors even though Rue is supposed to be dark-skinned and all Cinna is ever described as is having hazel eyes (Lenny Kravitz) and close-cropped brown hair (Lenny Kravitz), this is really worrying to me. If anything, in this day and age, YA fiction should be more inclusive to GLBT, and all races, and I feel that they have an obligation to portray these things in a positive light. I'm not saying I think this author is a bad person or that she did a bad job, I'm just saying that like a lot of other people, she is equating good Aryan looks with goodness and dark, un-WASPish looks with violence and negativity. She has a chance as an author to make a difference with these prejudices and preconceived notions, and I do applaud that in the second book, a dark-skinned man falls for a light-skinned woman, but she's been in an abusive relationship that she just skips out of without any last effects, so that's another rant.

Anyway, the other guy is clearly a "condemned" angel (they all get dark eyes, whereas the exalted angels get blue eyes...I mean, it's getting ridiculous here.)

Left: What you think Jesus looked like. Right: What Jesus more than likely actually looked like. Also, Hello Oded Fehr. Where have you been all my blog?

So, you know how it will end, with Alex and Jessica together and Evil!Angel Cole vanquished back to "hell", but the best part of this book is really that it's not what you think it is. You will never guess where it's going...I mean it when I say it was a page-turner.

The second book, Forsaken, was not nearly as good, but it was still riveting. Overall, I give this book a B+.

Book Review: Ethereal by Addison Moore

One of the biggest arguments against YA fiction is that the characters are so very stupid. While reading Ethereal, I realized that they aren't stupid. No. They're teenagers. Case in point, Skyla, the main character in this book, is told by a ghost to stay away from a certain boy that Skyla, at the age of sixteen, has already fallen madly in love with. Skyla decides that the ghost is just jealous because when the ghost was a person, she and this perfect paragon of teenagerhood used to date and the fact that this former girlfriend (Chloe) is dead now is in no way a warning for Skyla. I should also mention that Chloe was murdered. Just so you know.

All right, so the story. Skyla is a Nephilim, or angel-human hybrid. These things exist in the Bible. They are the main reason why Noah's Ark happened. They are not a good thing, except in this story they are. Well, they are except for the fact that they tend to die young. In the Bible, Nephilim were fearsome giants with great capacity to commit evil deeds. Their fathers were fallen angels, mothers willing participants in hubris. In some areas of Jewish mythos (not main-stream Judaism, think more Gnostic), even after the flood, Nephilim continued to populate the earth and do great and terrible deeds. Goliath is purportedly (in some areas) a Nephilim. The lore concludes that the Nephilim were incited to war against each other by Gabriel (God instructed him to start the fire) and were eventually killed off by each other. None of this is mentioned in the book. There is mention of factionalism and that there are certain sorts who are more friendly, and one sort that's like a New Jersey crime syndicate (they may actually be a New Jersey crime syndicate) and they exact revenge, kidnappings, executions, etc. in the name of their faction.

Skyla is naturally of the most rare order, Celestra, and she is somehow pure-blood even though that would mean that both her mother and father were Celestrae, and her mother doesn't appear to be anything other than human. Skyla also has a younger sister who is perfectly normal. I have only read the first book, but I'm wondering if Skyla was maybe the product of her father and someone else? Her mom really does love her, though.

Skyla has a creepy stepfather, a horrid stepbrother (who is actually kind of cool, though I don't know if the author meant for anyone to like him) and a stepsister. She is the same age as her stepbrother, and her younger sister is the same age as the stepsister. The mom thinks it's great, but I think it's odd. Skyla does, too. They all move to a small island in Washington State (how close is it to Forks?) and move into the late-great Chloe's house. Skyla gets her room, her next-door bestie, her boyfriend, her boyfriend's cousin, and pretty much everything else Chloe had. It's at this time that Chloe reaches out to Skyla and tries to warn her to steer clear of Logan, but Skyla's all, "u jus jellus hor." Chloe's all, "Pearls, swine, no thanks." and leaves Skyla alone.

Of course there's a hugely unequal relationship between Skyla and her boyfriend Logan, who is also a Celestra (quelle coincidence). He knows everything there is to know about being an angel-on-earth, but he won't tell everything to Skyla for her own good. I'm sorry, but I've spent a little too long reading YA paranormal fiction, and I know that any time a boy does something for the good of his girlfriend/stalker obsession, it always ends badly. The worst part is that Logan's aunt and uncle (his parents were killed after he was born. For being Celestras.) are both angels, and even though a normal adult would be like, "This girl knows nothing of our ways, let us teach her!" the adults in YA fiction have a curse that forces them to be as completely ineffectual as possible in any given situation.

Skyla's stepfather is also typecast as The Worst Sort Of Stepfather Short Of Being A Pedophile Rapist. He thinks that Skyla is using drugs and having sex even though it's his son who does those things. He thinks Skyla is unhinged and dangerous, and when she thinks she's being attacked by someone and stabs them in the stomach with a pair of scissors while her best friend cowers under the covers during a sleepover, Tad The Stepdad has Skyla put into a mental health facility because stabbing a guy who doesn't answer when you repeatedly ask, "Who's there? Who are you?" isn't a normal reaction to him. To Skyla's credit, she never answers his accusations with cross-accusations about his son, but she does scream and yell at him. In her defense, he's an idiot.

I liked the book all right, though I'm not sure if I want to buy any other books. It really sort of drove me crazy, especially the stuff with the parents. I can kind of see that she's displaying somewhat erratic behavior and that it's worrying to her parents, but there's a huge jump between "erratic" and "we must incarcerate her." At the same time, I am curious to know more. I just don't know if I can slog through another book. I may give it a try, though. All over, I'd give it a C+/B-