Review: A Long, Long Sleep

Title: A Long, Long Sleep
Author: Anna Sheehan
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Pages: 352
Release Date: August 9, 2011
Format: ARC from publisher for review

Rosalinda Fitzroy has been asleep for sixty-two years when she is woken by a kiss.
Locked away in the chemically induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten sub-basement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now her parents and her first love are long dead, and Rose— hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire—is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat.
Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes -- or be left without any future at all.—Goodreads


A futuristic take on the tale of Sleeping Beauty, A Long, Long Sleep imagines what would happen if a girl named Rose woke up in a world she no longer recognized, but one that recognized her.

While at the outset it seems like a "That'd be neat!" idea, Sheehan spins the story in the other direction. Instead of being excited she is in the future, Rose, who is the long-lost-and-assumed-dead daughter of the president of a ginormous corporation and will thus inherent the company and be a kajillionaire, is completely shell-shocked. She mourns for her parents and her boyfriend, Xavier, whom she lost when she woke up sixty-two years too late.

The results are devastating. Not only does Rose have to deal with the knowledge that she's in a time that she was never supposed to see, she also has to learn about The Dark Times, when a plague ravaged the human population and killed almost everyone. And Rose is a delicate sort, so this REALLY rocks her. And if that weren't enough, there is a robot trying to kill her.

But that's not all Sheehan does. Oh no. Living in the future and being hunted by a seemingly indestructible robot weren't enough for her. She deftly relates a story of abuse in a way that is subtle, haunting, and heart-wrenching all at the same time.

Though there are a lot of things happening in A Long, Long Sleep, it's not a particularly quick  read. The story unfolds slowly and quietly, but is never boring. And Sheehan does a great job of creating  a world that feels foreign from our own, but is also similar enough that it doesn't take a great deal of suspended belief to, well, believe in it.

Overall, A Long, Long Sleep is a lovely story about how one girl finds herself in the midst of a world she no longer recognizes. It's not intensely funny or happy or snappy, but the prose are sumptuous and the story is compelling. It'll definitely make you think twice before saying, "I just wish I could go to the future."

Review: Angel Burn

Title: Angel Burn
Author: L.A. Weatherly
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Pages: 450
Release Date: May 24, 2011
Format: Review copy from publisher (Thank you!)

Willow knows she’s different from other girls, and not just because she loves tinkering with cars. Willow has a gift. She can look into the future and know people’s dreams and hopes, their sorrows and regrets, just by touching them. She has no idea where this power comes from. But the assassin, Alex, does. Gorgeous, mysterious Alex knows more about Willow than Willow herself does. He knows that her powers link to dark and dangerous forces and that he’s one of the few humans left who can fight them. When Alex finds himself falling in love with his sworn enemy, he discovers that nothing is as it seems, least of all good and evil.—Goodreads


Angel Burn is a lot of things: a paranormal romance, a road trip novel, a coming-of-age story, and, I'd argue, a dystopian satire. It's full of evil angels, power plays, personal agendas, and some very kick ass action scenes. While that sounds like a whole lot of things that could potentially NOT come together, the story is very well-plotted and very cohesive. 


The book centers around Willow Fields, a girl I immediately like solely because of my devotion to all things  related to Buffy, but learn to super like when she starts fixing cars and reading people's minds. After she gives a not-so-happy-ending type psychic reading to a very popular girl in school who has been "blessed" by seeing an angel, Willow finds her life turned upside down. 


You see, in this sort of dystopian world, angels feed off of the auras of humans, depleting them of their health, but the humans believe that they've had a divine experience and find themselves irrevocably devoted to the Church of the Angels, a nation-wide mega-church with maybe the most devout members ever. 


Then there are the Angel Killers, people who know that the angels are actually bad news, and who have devoted their lives to finding and killing the angels before the human race is laid to waste. The other main character of Angel Burn, Alex, is one such person, groomed to kill angels from the sweet age of five. 


So how do the two main characters meet? As it turns out, Alex has been hired to kill Willow. But once he meets her, he realizes there is something very different about her, and can't bring himself to do it. Instead, the two find themselves on the run across the country, being pursued by not only evil angels, but the Church members who have been charged with a fatwa-like duty to kill both Alex and Willow if spotted. 


While I ultimately really enjoyed this book, the first hundred pages or so were really hard for me to get through. I found the story unfolding very slowly and didn't think that the book needed the moody scene-setting and world building that it has. However, in the long run, I was very glad that I had the background information, though I think the page count for it could have been cut in half. 


My other gripe about the book is that it's told from multiple perspectives, and in different points of view. When you're reading from Willow's perspective, everything is first person, but when it shifts to Alex (or another character, Jonah's) perspective, it's suddenly third person. This will happen in the middle of chapters, which is probably the reason for the different points of view, but I found it very distracting and halting. 


However, there are a lot of things to really like about Angel Burn, and I found myself endeared to it not just because of the Willow's name, but because it mentions TWO places I've lived in—Syracuse, NY and Arkansas! I was all kinds of excited about this, because, I mean, it's a little rare to have two places you've lived listed in the same dang book. Then, as it turns out, the author, L.A. Weatherly, is an Arkansas native! *does happy dance* 


So, if you're looking for a book that you can really invest in, and that has a very rich, detailed, inter-woven plot, with a bit of paranormal thrown in, Angel Burn is absolutely the book for you.