Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles #3) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Pages: 528
Series or Stand Alone: Book 3 in the Caster Chronicles series
Summary: Ethan Wate thought he was getting used to the strange, impossible events happening in Gatlin, his small Southern town. But now that Ethan and Lena have returned home, strange and impossible have taken on new meanings. Swarms of locusts, record-breaking heat, and devastating storms ravage Gatlin as Ethan and Lena struggle to understand the impact of Lena's Claiming. Even Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals is affected - and their abilities begin to dangerously misfire. As time passes, one question becomes clear: What - or who - will need to be sacrificed to save Gatlin?
For Ethan, the chaos is a frightening but welcome distraction. He's being haunted in his dreams again, but this time it isn't by Lena - and whatever is haunting him is following him out of his dreams and into his everyday life. Even worse, Ethan is gradually losing pieces of himself - forgetting names, phone numbers, even memories. He doesn't know why, and most days he's too afraid to ask. 
Sometimes there isn't just one answer or one choice. Sometimes there's no going back. And this time there won't be a happy ending.

Review:

I was under the impression that this was the last book in the Caster Chronicles series, mostly through my own fault. I was miiighty annoyed when I realized that there was a fourth one coming out in ten months--especially since I only realized this after this one was complete. I sighed and added the fourth book, entitled Beautiful Redemption, to my to-read list. Rant over.

LOOKS LIKE WE GOT US AN APOCALYPSE! Ethan and Lena come back from battling and deferring on another Claiming to swarms of locusts, scary-ass storms, and deathly heat. Worse, the powers of Lena and the rest of the Duchannes family are going haywire. WORST, Ethan is ceasing to function as a normal human, losing pieces of his memory and being haunted in his dreams. Yikes. They weren't kidding when they titled this one "Chaos."

The end of days going down was excellent. The apocalypse was more of the classic variety, in which nature goes completely haywire. Ethan's character continued to impress me. He's so good because he's believable as a real person. The end of the world is knocking on his door and his life and memory are falling apart. He steps up and always does what he needs to do, but it doesn't mean he's not absolutely terrified. A normal guy that previously lived a normal life two years prior to the event wouldn't necessarily jump in entirely without 

One of the strong points was the side characters (mostly Liv and John Breed) gaining more backstory and storylines for themselves. They were no longer just around for helping Ethan and Lena obtain their goals (Ethan to find Lena, Lena to get away from Ethan and be all emo) but stand alone characters that have their own purposes. Unfortunately, this fleshing out only made me like Liv more and Lena less by comparison.

These books don't get higher ratings from me because I feel like they just don't flow as well as they should. The second one was much better than the first, but I felt like this one pulled back a tiny bit in that department. The action is not very consistent, instead doing a stopping and starting thing that doesn't make them go as quickly as they should. Still, they continue to keep up a great concept and the characters are developing nicely.

Rating: 3.5 - fair/good.

Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles #2) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Pages: 512
Series or Stand Alone: Book 2 in the Caster Chronicles
Summary: Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.
Sometimes life-ending.
Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.

Review:

The second book in the Caster Chronicles opens with a grieving Lena and a distraught Ethan. Lena ends up running away with her bad girl cousin Ridley and a mysterious stranger named John, sending Ethan and his best friend Link on a wild goose chase to find her. With the help of newcomer British librarian-in-training Liv, Ethan and Link track down Lena and Ridley and prevent them from going over the deep end.

I liked this one so much more than I did the first. The characters were more likable, the story was far more organized. In the first one it felt a little all over the place, like events occurred but weren't connected. The story followed a solid quest-kinda plot. And I found out how Lena gets less annoying: she disappears! YES!

The addition of Liv was a welcome one; she was a far less annoying character than Lena and less stereotyped than bad girl Ridley. She was well developed--she was a librarian in training, Marian the Librarian's protege. She missed home and wanted Ethan to introduce her to some points of American culture. Frankly, she had more chemistry with Ethan when they first met than Lena did in the entire first book. The entire time I wanted Ethan to ditch his thing with Lena ("thing," "love," whatever you want to call it) and just be happy with Liv, because they were so much better together.

Even though there's still no love lost between me and Lena's character, I enjoyed her characterization. Her acting out had a purpose and a source. She wasn't being shrew-like, she was grieving a didn't know what to do other than run away. Lena's grief made her far more sympathetic and understandable.

I liked Beautiful Darkness much more than I liked Beautiful Creatures. The characters were more developed and the plot was more complete than it was in the first one. The quest part (Ethan's search for Lena/Link's search for Ridley) had a bunch of action and conflicting emotions. I much preferred that to the exposition packed first book. I know that more exposition is necessary in a book with supernatural elements, but I felt like the exposition ended up taking precedence over the plot.

Rating: 3.75 - fair leaning towards good.

Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Pages: 592
Series or Stand Alone: Book 1 in the Caster Chronicles
Summary: Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. WhenLena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Review:

I've wanted to read this book since it came out, but ended up putting it down because at the time I had just read Rosemary Clement-Moore's The Splendor Falls and didn't want to read two four hundred-plus page paranormal Southern gothic novels that close together. When I saw that the third installment, Beautiful Chaos, came out this past fall, I (mistakenly) assumed that the series was complete and went to work on the first book in the Caster Chronicles.

Beautiful Creatures tells the story of Ethan Wate, a small town Virginia boy whose life is thrown into disarray with the arrival of outcast Lena. Ethan goes against the entire town in order to find out about Lena's mysterious life and help her adjust to their extremely unwelcoming high school. What Ethan doesn't know is that getting close to Lena could be hazardous to his health--in more ways than one.

Dun dun duuunnn.

I really liked the setting in this book. The whole modern Southern gothic thing really appeal to me (see: Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore) so having the creepy magic casters and incubi reside there really worked. The small town mentality may have been exaggerated at points, but it worked for all of the supernatural activity going on.

The greatest aspect of this story was that the usual paranormal romance elements got reversed. This time, the boy is inexplicably drawn (ready? I've decided the new drinking game is that whenever someone is "inexplicably drawn" to someone else, you drink. Drink!) to a supernatural girl. He is the one who has to figure out what is afoot and ends up in danger because of it.

However, I wasn't over the moon for this book. The reason is that I did not like Lena. I understood that she was supposed to be less than friendly from being judged for her weirdness all the time, but instead of making her sympathetic and snarky, it made her seem like a shrew that magicked first and thought second. Often when she used magic it was like she was throwing a tantrum. I liked Ethan way better. There were times, specifically when he was talking about Lena, where it was very obvious that a female was writing his voice (unlike Cassel Sharpe from Holly Black's Curseworkers series). Even so, he was a well-developed, likable character. Often I felt like he was a friend that was dating a girl I couldn't stand but wasn't able to say anything to him about it.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy Beautiful Creatures as much as I wanted to. Still, the book had a great supernatural premise and was a welcome change from a lot of the usual paranormal books. I'm continuing the series with the hope that Lena gets less annoying.

Rating: 2.5 - okay.