Thursday, December 13, 2012

Book Review: Vessel

TITLE: Vessel
AUTHOR: Sarah Beth Durst
PUBLISHED: September 2012
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Fantasy, adventure
PREMISE: Liyana has trained all her life to be a vessel for her goddess but then when the day comes, the goddess doesn't come.
MY REVIEW: If ever there was a totally underrated and unappreciated author in YA it would be Sarah Beth Durst. Hardly anyone ever talks about her stuff and she continues to write solid and always creative fantasy books every year. You tired of series books? Try this woman out. She always manages to write solid fantasy books and wraps them up in one book. Her books are always different from each other as well. Her last book for instance was a urban fantasy with a vampire female getting stabbed by a unicorn and slowly gaining her humanity. This one is a total fantasy world with a female helping out a god. I don't know many authors who go in different directions like that nowadays.
Durst has lovely writing and is good at pacing. Liyana is a interesting character without becoming cliche and also bonus: this fantasy has diversity in it and actually shows it on the cover. To all you saying so what, try and think about the number of YA books you've read that had a person of color on the cover. You can't think of many can you?
If you are in the mood for something different, I totally recomend this book. Especially to Tamora Pierce fans, who actually is kind of responsible for me finding out about Durst in the first place because she recced Durst's books on her website (and if you ever need a list of fantasy books you should read, you should really check out her lists. They've helped me find so many wonderful books). For those interested Tamora Pierce's website with booklists is www.tamorapierce.com.
WHO SHOULD READ: Sarah Beth Durst fans, Tamora Pierce fans, epic fantasy fans
MY RATING: Four out of Five lost goddesses

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