The Mortal Instruments (Series)

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Title: The Mortal Instruments
Author: Cassandra Clare
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderly
Price: 10.99 $
Source: selfpurchase / gift
Pages: each ca. 500
Books: 1. City of Bones, 2. City of Ashes, 3. City of Glass, 4. City of Fallen Angels (Release: April 2011), 5. City of Lost Souls (Release: May 2012), 6. City of Heavenly Fire (Release: September 2013)

The book series is about fifteen- / sixteen-year-old Clarissa Fray whose mom Jocelyn has been kidnapped. In search of her, Clary meets the muscular, handsome shadowhunter Jace and - of course - falls in love with him. He explains to her, that shadowhunters fight the downworlders (a/k/a vampires, werewolves, faeries, demons etc.) that violate against an accord. Their home is a small country called Idris which is set, invisible for normal people/Mundies, between Germany and France. It turns out that Jocelyn was one of these warrior, too, but she turned her back on the shadow world and escaped to New York.

With Jace's help she finds out that her father is Valentine, the ex-villain of the shadowhunterworld: he tore his folk apart and startet a civil war which everybody lost. People thought for fifteen years that he was dead but really he had only been hiding - and now he kidnapped Jocelyn.
And what is necessary if there's so much trouble? Of course, more trouble! Clary tells her best friend Simon about her "real" home (and about Jace ;D) and he tries to help her, but for the new shadowhunter-friends Alec and Isabella he's only standing in the way. Of course, it appears that Simon is in love with Clary and doesn't like it at all that she likes Jace. Aching for attention he somehow gets turned into a vampire during one of his standing-in-the-way-actions.
Will Clary be able to find her mother? Will she healthily survive a confrontation with Valentine? What will happen to the love-triangle Clary-Jace-Simon - whom will she pick? And of course there's a business between Jace and Clary that won't be witout consequences...

P

Personal Opinion
So far, three books have been released and I read them all - and I'm thrilled! While reading I always had to smile because the story was so fascinating and perfect. There's been many laughs and of course, sentimental me, I had to cry pretty often. I think Cassandra Clare has done a great job! Personally, my favorite part has been... JACE!!! OMG, he's just perfect: he's handsome and knows how to deal with it, pisses people off to keep them on distance and he's so beautifully sarcastic ;D. I'd like to have a boyfriend like him, that would be fun. Hard shell, soft heart applies to him, it's only that the shell... is extremely big and resistant.
Sadly, I don't think you would be able to deal with the story of the books so easily if you accidentally bought them in the wrong order because in the following books the so far passed story isn't lit up well enough. But maybe that's not everybody's wish to endure a long-drawn-out backstory if you're just waiting for Jace to spill one of his witty comments. (the other caracters weren't bad either)

If you're interested in these books, follow @cassieclare on Twitter, she posts monthly excerpts of the next book City of Fallen Angels until it's released.
Here's the July-excerpt:

Clary made a surprised noise, but didn’t protest, even when Jace lifted her up and carried her over to the bed.
They sprawled onto it together, crushing some of the letters, Jace knocking the box itself aside to make room for them. His heart was hammering against the inside of his ribs. They had never been in bed together like this before, not really — there had been that night in her room in Idris, but they had barely touched. Jocelyn was careful never to let either of them spend the night where the other one lived. She didn’t care much for him, Jace suspected, and he could hardly blame her. He doubted her would have liked himself much, in her position.
“I love you,” Clary whispered. She had his shirt off, and her fingertips were tracing the scars on his back, and the star-shaped scar on his shoulder than was the twin of her own, a relic of the angel whose blood they both shared. “I don’t ever want to lose you.”
He slid his hand down her cheek, to her throat, to the top button of her blouse.

 Click here for the original posting!

I received permission by Cassandra Clare to post the excerpt.

The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children)

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 Original Title: The Clan of the Cave Bear
Author: Jean M. Auel
Publisher: Crown Publishers
ISB N: 060961097X / 978-0609610978
Price: 22.95 US-$
Source: My Mom bought it when our currency was still DM
Pages: 480
Preceeded by: /
Followed by: 2. The Valley of Horses, 3. The Mammoth Hunters, 4. The Plains of Passage, 5. The Shelters of Stone, 6. The Land of Painted Caves (To be published March 2011)

The book is set during the Stone Age and is about the small girl Ayla who lost her complete clan during an earthquake. She tries to survive on her own and soon meets the "Clan of the Cave Bear", who is searching a new cave because the earthquake had destroyed their old one. Iza, the clan's healer, accomodates Ayla like an own daughter, much dismayed by some of the other clan members, like Broud, son of the clan headman. Due to the fact that Iza hasn't got any bodily decendants, she teaches Ayla her healing powers and her and Creb, the clan's spritual clerk, teach her the sign and grunt language. Soon after that, Iza gives birth to a child of her husband that (she didn't like and) died during the earthquake. Nonetheless, Iza still treats Ayla the same way.
Due to an offense to the clan's rules Ayla had to spend a moon cycle (=1 Month) in the wilderness which she actually couldn't survive because it was winter, but Iza's daughter regularely brought her food without the other clan members' knowledge. After she served her sentence, she came back to the clan since then has the respect of all clan members, except for Broud.
After that, Ayla experiences many other adventures like going on a tour with a few members to find the rest of their main clan.


Own opinion:
(sry that the story part ends so suddenly), I personally only read the first installment of the Earth's Children cycle, honestly I didn't even know there were more books than that until an hour ago, but I'm gonna read those fow shouw!
"The Clan of the Cave Bear" is a phenomenal book, even though I read it when I was 11 or 12 and it is more of an adult book. Since then, it has been my unchallenged favourite book. It's written very emotional, it was even  the first book where I cried while reading (if I had seen the movie hat would probably have been the first movie for me to cry).
To me, it seems as if the book is divided in smaller substories like the first meeting with the clan, her first punishment, the meeting with the main clan etc.
The book shows the different progress of that past time (about 30 000 years ago), because the members of the clan were still Neanderthal , but - quite obviously - Ayla's brain was already more progressed than theirs.
I'd especially recommend this book to emotional stable people because it does get very very sad at some points and makes you wanna put some characters in a bag and hit them with a stick. And maybe you should be kinda older than 16 because it has some adult content (rape, but I don't remember how much that was described because it's so long ago when I read it).

by Cecile

Was? Wäre? Wenn?

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Original title: Was? Wäre? Wenn?
Author: Wiebke Lorenz
Publisher: Piper Boulevard (Germany)
ISB N: 3-492-23843-2 / 978-3-492-23843-4 (Germany)
Price: 8.95 €
Source: Christmas gift 2008
Pages: 284 (Germany)

Charly's life is a mess. She dropped out of university and now works as a waitress in her best friend Tim's pub. When one day her school flame Moritz comes into the pub and carries her on a date, she redevelops feelings for him. Soon after that the 10-year-school reunion of her graduation class is due and Moritz asks her for a dance, so Charly thinks he has feelings for her, too - ya think!
She finds out that Moritz only used her to make his fiancée Isa jealous, who went to the same school.  Charly leaves the party red-arsed.
A few days later she finds a business card for a recruitment consultant in Tim's jacket, so she thinks he wants to close the pub down, which is why she goes to the named adress to get to know more. There she finds out that this "consultant" offers her for free to take memories out of her life to make them undone. Of corse, Charly takes the offer and "deletes" memories of her one-night stands, her first time (with Moritz that went so horribly wrong) and many more.
When she comes home after that procedure, she finds out that due to her deleted memories her and Moritz are a couple since school and planned to marry on that same day.
In fact, they doy marry, even though Charly is kind of confused, and life couldn't be more perfect. But Isa happens to be in love with Moritz also in this univers, so she tries everything to break their luck. She actually manages that, so Charly has nobody to offer her a shoulder to cry on, because Tim  never opened the pub and so isn't her friend but Moritz' boss.
Will everything turn out good for Charly? What will happen to Isa and Moritz? Will she be able to convince Tim who he "really" is? And most importantly, will she be able to get back into her former world?

Personal opinion
I really liked this book, it was written enjoyably and so it was easy to read - I did it within one to two weeks. At the end I wasn't even able to put it away anymore and read into the night because it was so thrilling. I got the book as a gift and hadn't heard about it yet, but if I did I would definately have bought it myself.
I think this book is perfect for those people who would have liked to make some things undone in their life, because after reading this novel they realize it might turn out a lot worse!
I recommend this book to everyone who can sacrifice one or two hours to read.

by Cecile

Welcome!

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Hello everybody ^^

This blog's name is "Kick their butt while reading" and available over the URL kicktheirbutt.blogspot.com. (The enlish posts have the matching URL kicktheirbutt-en.blogspot.com, but the posts will be linked directly on the review-blogposts.) Here I will post one to two book reviews per week which you can use to inform yourself about Young Adult literature.

Of course these books are subjectively rated by my own reading experience, so it might be possible that other readers will rate books differently than I do, but I'll try my best to emblaze the books from all sides.

The revies will tell you the story of the books up to a certain point so you will still be interested in reading the book yourself. Plus, I will also state price and publisher of the copy I read and will try to find a good price and publisher for the english reviews. After that, I will post my opinion and personal reading experience on the book.

As you can  see, I will try to also translate the reviews into english in a different blog post so the possible english followers of this blog will have joy reading as well.

Have fun and look forward to a couple of interesting posts ^^

Cecile.