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Friday, September 10, 2010

Books 112 : White Cat

We've all grown up with Holly Black 's Spiderwick Chronicles. And she's made many of us happy with her fairy tales like Valiant : a modern tale of Faerie. She's back with a new series. The Curse Workers Series.

Curse workers -- they can change luck, emotions, dreams and even more just by touching your skin. And since curse work is illegal, they work as con artists or part of mob families.

In Book 1, White Cat, we are introduced to Cassel Sharpe. He's pretty average. Maybe. Except, his mother is in jail and he's been kicked out of boarding school, and he lives in a house full of con artists. If that's not enough, there is this misery he can't quite overcome. He knows he's done something wrong in his past. He knows he killed his best friend Lila. Its just he can't quite remember it or even know why it happened. And then there is that problem of sleepwalking on roofs. Oh, and that mysterious white cat around the house.

Strange things start to happen when he comes back home and has to live with his grandfather and brothers. Little by little, Cassel begins to realize that the cat is Lila -- someone with the rarest kind of power has transformed her into a cat, and to change her back he'll have to find out who it is. But as he tries to figure out who transformed Lila and why, he discovers the secrets that have been painstakingly removed from his own head -- and the elaborate, deadly scheme that he's being forced into.

And I haven't gotten to the part of all the strange things the curse workers can do when they touch you. Lets say it makes me squeamish to think about.

Black's prose is beautifully put to the test, exposing the dark side of the urban world from which Cassel comes from. She can surely draw you in to her stories, and she makes her characters so memorable. And if you listen to this book on audio, you are in for a treat. Its read by Jesse Eisenberg.



More at her site, Holly Black.
The Curse workers.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, never seen a book trailer before. And I do like Jesse's voice.

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  2. Ahhh, books! I try not to get sucked into them. I have 20 piled on my desk ready to be read. But this does look interesting.

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  3. This does look really good. I like Holly Black's fantasy stuff.

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