'The New Hunger' (Warm Bodies 0.5) by Isaac Marion

*This review will contain spoilers!*

'This is what you are and why you're here. You are not a person. You are not even a wolf. You are nothing, and no city was ever built for you.'

It's been a couple of years since I read 'Warm Bodies', so I couldn't really remember much about it apart from the relationship between Julie and R, but I knew that I fell in love with Isaac Marion's writing style at the time. I definitely wasn't wrong with this recollection, because I rediscovered that love in this novella, and I really do wish that it could have been longer.

'The New Hunger' is just over one hundred and fifty pages, following R, Julie, and Nora on their individual journeys in the time preceding 'Warm Bodies'. We join R just after he turns into a zombie, Julie as a twelve year old girl travelling across America with her parents looking for safety, and Nora as she attempts to protect her little brother, Addis, after they're abandoned by their parents. Three very different stories, all written with very different voices. 

R was still the strongest character, with such a unique style to his chapters and his thoughts deteriorated further to the basic command of 'Eat'. If you've read 'Warm Bodies' (and if you haven't, why not? It's a stand-out in the world of apocalyptic literature, and is much better than the film adapted from it) you'll know that R has a semblance of feeling and thought left over in his zombie form, making him able to control his actions more than the stereotypical mindless eating machines. This is developed brilliantly throughout 'The New Hunger', as R questions who he is now and why he can no longer recall memories or read road signs. You can't help but feel your heartstrings pulled as R comes to the devastating realisation that he isn't dead, but he's also no longer alive, and begins to contemplate how he's going to be able to deal with this. 

However, where Nora seemed to be quite a minor character in 'Warm Bodies' (or, at least, I can hardly remember her doing anything of consequence) she was almost the main character in 'The New Hunger', with the majority of chapters dedicated to progressing her travels with Addis. The strength of her character was brilliantly developed - her mature ability to deal with whatever obstacles were put in their path, her logical thought processes and her unflinching dedication to keeping Addis safe were realistic and made her a stand out character.

I didn't really think much of Julie's story; on the one hand it was good to see her interactions with her family, but due to her only being twelve years old not much really happened in her chapters. I found it quite creepy when R was watching her through the woods - the fact that they got together a few years later made it seem almost paedophilic, as when he awoke in the woods as a zombie with what I assumed was a girlfriend or a wife, showing that there must have been a substantial age gap between them, and almost seemed worse than the fact that they end up getting together despite him being dead. 

As well as loving the characters (well, the majority), I also adored Isaac's inventive and unique description of the end of the world. As well as the rise of the dead, it's said that there have been a lot of previous disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding) making it a veritable smorgasbord of drastic events topped off perfectly by the return of lost family members. This means that when Nora and Addis are walking through Seattle there is the gorgeous description of the land, decimated by destruction, with the sea level rising and nature taking back the world - it's such an interesting image that you can't help but find it morbidly beautiful. 

The sequel to 'Warm Bodies' is being written at the moment, and I'm so excited about the release - I adore the writing so much and I just want to know what else can happen with these characters. If you enjoy zombies and you haven't read any of these books yet, you're making a big mistake. They're practically flawless, and combined with the anatomical chapter headings there's something here that will appeal to everyone. 

'Origins' (The Summoner #0.5) by Taran Matharu - SPOILER FREE REVIEW

I received the first book in the Summoner series, 'The Novice', from NetGalley, so when I found out that there was a prequel novella available free on the Kindle store, I thought it would be worth dabbling a little before diving into the main novel. 

We follow Arcturus, a orphaned stableboy who decides to run away from the abusive innkeeper who he works for. After gathering together all of his life savings, Arcturus decides to go through the saddlebags of one of the nobles staying in the hotel, hoping to find some jewels or weapons that he can sell on to help him survive on his own. In the bottom of the bag is a scroll wrapped up in some leather, which intrigues Arcturus, and he reads the scroll aloud to himself. The next moment there's a flash of light and a dreadful noise, before something crawls out of the darkness of the stable and... Licks his face? 

It turns out that Arcturus is a summoner - able to summon demons, which shouldn't be possible as this trait is passed down through the noble families and their first born children. The noble whose demon he just stole isn't the happiest about this development, and after Arcturus has been locked up for a few days and interrogated, it's determined that it's time for him to join the Vocans Military Academy, where they will teach him to capture and summon demons and to use the mana that flows through his demon, Sacharissa's, body. 

I'm going to admit that for the majority of this novella I was imagining it as a blended combination of Pokemon and Harry Potter - the cute Canid image on the front cover, with the fact that you get different levels of demons, and you're learning about it all in a magic school. These were not negative aspects, oh no. If there were a school that taught you Pokemon, I would be there. It just meant that 'Origins' didn't seem like the most unique idea to me, more like a fantastic mixture of two ideas I already really enjoyed.

There were some issues with this story. The characters aren't described at all, or at least if they are they're described scantly and are rather forgettable. Other than the image on the front cover, I couldn't really get a fixed picture of Arcturus, which left me feeling unattached to him. I know that he smelt a lot, because of the repeated mentions of him needing a bath (and did he ever get one?) but other than that I couldn't describe him at all. The same can be said of the other characters around him - Charles, the noble whose demon he stole, had a very strong personality, but other than him the other characters weren't really fleshed out. I know that this can sometimes be an issue in a novella, because of how few pages there are to fit everything in, but I think it could have been done better.

It also seemed quite strange that, towards the end of the book, Arcturus could just access Sacharissa's mana without thinking about it. There's a scene where a Wendigo is in the school's summoning room, and Arcturus starts using magic without a second thought, whereas the only other time he used it he was finding it rather difficult. Wyrdlights - the little blue glowy orb next to his hand on the front cover - seem to take a lot of his concentration the first few times he makes them, but in a throwaway comment he describes the wyrdlights as shooting from his hands, which seems a little bit impossible.

However, ignoring those aspects this was a solid attempt at a novella, and it's definitely gotten me more interested in 'The Novice'. I hadn't heard much about the novel, but after seeing inside the ether where the demons originate, and learning a bit about the type of magic that can be used, I'm definitely intrigued. 'Origins' has helped me feel like I already know the world of Hominum, and I feel at home in the Vocans Academy, and I just can't wait to see what happens with the main character of the series and how things change and develop from the novella. It would be great to see Arcturus crop up in trilogy, but if he doesn't it's not that great of a loss. 

'Engage' (Ignite #2.5) by Erica Crouch

First things first, I need to say a massive thank you to Patchwork Press for accepting my request to review this book on NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service that they provide.

*This review will contain spoilers!* 

"Good and evil are absolute, or so we've said. But what if good and evil are not as certain as we believe? What if there are stages in between the two polarities?"

This novella gives us the back story of Kala and Ana, the leaders of rebellion group New Genesis in 'Incite', the second novel in Erica Crouch's Ignite series. If you haven't read the series so far, I'd highly recommend you go and do that first!

This book sits in the events of the first novel, and one of my favourite things about this book was getting to see the events unfolding from an outsiders perspective. In 'Ignite', Penemuel, a fallen angel, falls in love with Michael, the Archangel of Heaven, and one of the best things about this novella was hearing the angels gossiping about Pen and Michael - none of them completely sure of what was going on, but everyone knowing that something was amiss. Personally, I found this rather funny, because for a lot of 'Ignite' Pen thinks they're being super subtle and are keeping their feelings for each other under the radar, and it was great to see this being completely disproved.

Similarly, the ending of the novella overlaps with the ending of 'Ignite', in which Azael assists Lucifer in reclaiming Heaven for the demons, and while this is quite overlooked by Pen and Michael as they are not in Heaven when it occurs, getting to see Heaven torn apart from Kala's perspective definitely anchored what a terrible occurrence it really was. It was one of the only things in the first novel that left me feeling a bit unimpressed, because we didn't get to see any of the action, so getting to experience the fighting breaking out as the demons invaded solidified the events that spring from it in the second novel. 

However, as well as getting to see events from other perspectives, I highly appreciated the fact that we were given the opportunity to see the motivation that both Kala and Ana have in forming the rebellion group. In 'Incite', we didn't really get much back story of New Genesis, so it was a bit concerning that our protagonists were rather blindly joining this group of strangers, and it was very eye-opening to be able to witness what pushed them down the path that they decided to take. 

Kala was a guardian angel, and when her charge took mercy on a dying cancer patient and gave her a morphine overdose, the angels on the council charged with deciding her fate thought she should have stopped him - that he was now a murderer, and it was Kala's fault. Understandably, Kala was pissed - if you've read 'Incite' I'm sure you can imagine the profanities pouring from her mouth - and she argued her point that he committed an act of mercy, only for her to be stripped of all guardian angel powers. Only one of the angels on the council fights against the decision - Ana, who is as exasperated as Kala is with their inability to defy the rules they've been following for years. Instead of blindly rushing into a rebellion that could have gotten them both killed, they took their time and planned exactly what they needed to do, subtly feeling out the amount of support they could manage to gather, and New Genesis is that much stronger for their careful contemplation.

I absolutely loved Kala's character from the moment I encountered her in 'Incite' - seeing a guardian angel cursing like a sailor was a unique juxtaposition that really refreshed the series and definitely made it stand out from the crowd. I didn't really get any feelings for Ana, because she seemed to be an aloof and logical character that didn't get involved emotionally, so I was pleased to come out of 'Engage' feeling just as enamoured with her as I was with Kala. Their personalities are both well-rounded and developed, and even though they seem like complete opposites of each other it just means that their partnership is a complete whole, just like Pen and Michael's. 

I cannot wait for the third and final book in the Ignite series, 'Infinite' to be released later on this year, because I'm already foaming at the mouth for more adventures from Kala and Ana, and to see exactly what happens between Pen and Azael when they have their final face off. This novella has definitely sparked my interest in the series again, and despite the fact that nothing exciting happened that we didn't already know about, it definitely feels as though it's given more depth and development to the plot line and the characters. Another brilliant release from Erica Crouch. 

'Entice' (Ignite #1.5) by Erica Crouch

*This review will contain spoilers!*

First things first, I need to say a huge thank you to Patchwork Press, for allowing me to review this book from NetGalley, and to NetGalley for the service that they provide.

'I think I'll be walking the line between Heaven and Hell forever--swaying towards the darkness but always reaching to the light.'

Despite the fact that I only finished the first book in the Ignite series this morning, I couldn't resist diving straight into 'Entice', the novella that sits between the first and second novels. The novella is set in the past, right back during the battle between Heaven and Hell that resulted in Michael's death, and I love any books that give more back story for characters so I adored this.

Straight away we're thrown into the action, with Pen counting the amount of angels she's slaughtered during the battle. She can't find Azael anywhere and, as anyone who has read the first book already knows, she then spots him climbing up a mountain towards Lucifer and Michael who are viciously battling with each other. Pen freaks out, screaming for Azael to get down from the mountain, and when Michael looks over his shoulder to see who is causing such a ruckus, Lucifer strikes him through the heart.

However, as well as getting a much more detailed description of the action that surrounded Michael's death, this novel then goes on to develop another event from Pen and Azael's past that was referenced in the first novel: the Garden of Eden. In the first book we discover that Pen and Az were involved in the scheme to corrupt Adam, the first member of mankind, but they failed due to being subtle. This novella expands upon that knowledge a lot further, letting us ride along with Pen and Azael as they go to the Garden of Eden and do everything in their power to corrupt Adam before the team that they are battling against. 

Despite the fact that we already know how both stories end, they were both extremely interesting and written in a very captivating manner. I enjoyed Erica Crouch's writing in the first novel, but at times it seemed to drag, so a shorter book managed to contain everything that I liked about her writing style while wringing out some of the things that I thought were a bit unnecessary. 

Another great thing about this novel was the use of foreshadowing. We know that at the end of the first novel Azael is commanded to go and kill Pen, so by getting Gus's point of view in the epilogue and learning that "They fell together; they will die together", well that just makes me even more eager to delve into the second volume of this series. The fact that Azael's fate seems completely set in stone is brilliant; it will be very tricky to find a way around their battle so that there can be happily ever after for all involved, and I'm a bit of a masochist in the way that I love deaths that seem completely unavoidable. The more you care for the characters, the more you want the story to be able to change, so I think the next book could evoke a lot more emotion in me than the first book. 

If you read the first novel and you're not sure whether it's worth reading the novella, I would say that it 100% is. This had a much faster pace and rhythm throughout the story and I absolutely flew through it, making me wish that it was longer. Gus's character gets a bit of back story too, which I loved because I thought he was really underused in the first novel, and we get a lot more dialogue and knowledge about Lucifer, which can never be a bad thing.