The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

bwahahahaha I did it, I finally did it. I finished the book! The Chessmen of Mars is the last book in the big John Carter Omnibus that my dad bought for himself last Christmas and immediately handed to me to read. It is now almost Thanksgiving. It took me a year. Me! . . . A Year!

Honestly, they are fun books but they are so formulaic that I just couldn't read them back to back. Hence the long slog. Any way, on to the review!

The Chessmen of Mars is about John Carter's daughter, Tara of Helium. Tara is a brat. She's a real spoiled pain in the butt. So I admit when she got her self blown into a far off land as the result of a temper tantrum, I uttered a small but malicious giggle. In a weird way, The Chessmen of Mars is a twisted little coming of age novel. Tara matures from that spoiled little brat into admirable strong woman.

The main love interest for this one is a Jed from a far off land named Gehan. I liked him way more than Tara for most of the book. This novel also introduces a weird new insectoid species calling themselves the Kaldanes of Bartoom that have an odd symbiotic relationship with a headless humanoid animal they call rykors.

So, all in all good escapist stuff.

The Gemma Doyle Series by Libba Bray

I originally had this pegged as a YA series and I'm not sure why. I think I read an article that mentioned the second book in passing and the title stuck in my brain as such do. I picked up the second book, Rebel Angels, first because of this and had to backtrack the beginning of the series.

The first two books, A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels, were very quick reads. Gemma Doyle finds out at age 16 that her mother has hidden secret magical powers from her and that Gemma has inherited some of them. Gemma is packed up by her family and moved from India back to Victorian England where her family sends her off to boarding school.

At boarding school, Gemma learns how catty and awful girls can be while discovering the use of her powers to enter "The Realms." There are a lot of sinister overtones and I found a lot of the girl drama tedious, if accurate.

The third book was nearly 800 pages long and it dragged on quite a bit. It took me about three weeks of on and off reading to slog through it. The only reason I didn't put it down was that it was the end of the series. Ultimately, I got through it, and it wasn't terrible, just in need of an editor. The wrap up was a solid completion of the story lines but I found several aspects of it irritating. The romantic subplot in particular was particularly unsatisfying.

The first two are well worth the read and it's an interesting world.

1. A Great and Terrible Beauty
2. Rebel Angels
3. The Sweet Far Thing