Top Ten Tuesday: REWIND

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Top Ten Favorite Books I've Read During The Lifespan Of My Blog
Believe it or not, but my blog has been around for roughly a year. I have only been blogging consistently (if you want to call it that) since December, and I even used to do the Top Ten Tuesday meme fairly regularly over at Krazy Book Lady (who is fabulous, by the way). Anyways, this is a freebie week, and I thought this would be a great post to get back into the swing of things. (Yes, there will be more reviews, but I just have to type up what I've written on paper and wander away from. I know how awful I am.) So on to my Top Ten in chronological order!

1. Silver-Tongued Devil by Jaye Wells

I LOVE urban fantasy as a genre, and this book is probably one of my all-time favorites in the genre. It is #4 in the series following half-mage/half-vampire, Sabina Kane, and it is the best of the group. The character-building is awesome, and the book never read like it was just a bridge to the end. The last book, Blue-Blooded Vamp is out, but I haven't read it yet because I'm not ready to say goodbye. (Yes, I'm really bad about things like that.)

Fun bit of trivia: I have the entire series signed because I guess I stalk Jaye Wells. She is HILARIOUS and totally worth it. Just don't tell her I said that. (My Review)

Review: Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

Title: Masque of the Red Death 

Author: Bethany Griffin

Publisher: Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins)

Release Date: April 24, 2012

Masque of the Red Death is Bethany Griffin's Gothic horror novel based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Masque of the Red Death. It is classified as Young Adult.

Araby Worth's world has crumbled around her - literally. Not only has she and her family lost her twin brother, Finn, to the Weeping Sickness contagion three years previous to the events in the novel, but the disease is still running rampant in the city. Corpse collectors walk the streets every morning for the infected dead, and those who can afford it wear their masks constantly. Prince Prospero rules over the city with an iron fist, with whispers of revolution blowing through the streets. People are disappearing, churches are burning, and some even say that the world is ending.

I found Griffin's Masque of the Red Death to be a grotesquely beautiful reimagining of Poe's original work. It lost none of the aristocratic fallacy or nail-biting suspense that oozed from Poe's terrifying horror story. If nothing else, Griffin expanded upon it, giving depth to the faceless dancers at the original, damned masque.

As its own body of work, Masque of the Red Death picked up some entirely new themes. The main one that stood out to me was the twin theme. One entity represented light and the other darkness, one embodied joy and the other melancholy, and so on. With the opposing twins, there can only be one, and a choice must be made (or made for you). This most certainly applied to Miss Araby Worth on many levels. 

There were some romantic elements and a bit of a love triangle in the story, but it was all so overshadowed by the decaying city that it was not obnoxious or overwhelming. The romance was never unbelievable (if that is possible in a dystopian, apocalyptic novel), and Griffin does not use it as a crutch. Both boys have many strengths, and Araby herself is such a bewitching character that it makes it plausible for both boys to fall in love with her. However, should Araby choose not to stick with Elliot, he is welcome in my home at any time.

Masque of the Red Death will suck you in, hold you, and dump you breathlessly back into reality, leaving you yelling, "Wait! What the Hell is this?!" at it like a mad woman once you finish. Or maybe that's just me. But I don't think so.

Buy your copy here: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Be sure to add it to your TBR list on Goodreads!

To satisfy FTC guidelines, I am disclosing that I received this book for free from the publisher and Goodreads in exchange for an honest review. It has in no way affected the outcome.

Thenadays (6)

For the sake of trying something different here at Bibliophila, Please, Thursday is now Thenadays.

This has been a completely insane week for me, so this post is going to be a little more lazy than usual. Since my post yesterday was about Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin, I thought I would share the original short story by Edgar Allan Poe with you. (Yes, I am well aware that I linked to it, but who actually clicked on it?) So without further ado:

The Masque of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe

http://www.online-literature.com/poe/36/

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.