Vanessa Levin-Pompetzki
Vanessa is a guest reviewer who's beginning to make regular contributions here. She began her fantasy reading with the Dragon Slayer's Academy series and moved on to Harry Potter, followed by Ender's Game and many other works. Now, she reads sub genres of fantasy (minus horror because she has an over-active imagination). She also writes in her spare time.
Books reviewed by Vanessa (26)
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![FlamecasterCinda Williams Chima]()
FantasyAdrian sul’Han, known by the nickname Ash, is a powerful healer who wants revenge. After being forced into hiding after a series of murders throws the queendom into chaos, Ash went into training for healing. During his summer’s off, he would exact revenge on the important political figures of Arden,...
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![The Bands of MourningBrandon Sanderson]()
FantasyThe Bands of Mourning, part of the second series of Mistborn books, taking place hundreds of years after the original Mistborn trilogy, follows the adventures of Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris once more. The Bands of Mourning are the mythical metalminds owned by the Lord Ruler, said to grant anyone...
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![Shadows of SelfBrandon Sanderson]()
FantasyShadows of Self, the fifth in the Mistborn series and the sequel to Alloy of Law, shows Mistborn’s society evolving as technology and magic mix, the economy grows, and religion becomes a growing cultural force. The bustling, optimistic, but still shaky society that came out of the first Mistborn tri...
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![The Lemoncholy Life of Annie AsterScott Wilbanks]()
The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster was a rollercoaster ride from start to finish. Though it begins a little bit slow, as more and more threads are strung together for the reader, everything picks up. I love the storyline, I love the characters, and I love the settings. In modern San Francisco, Annab...
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![SplinteredJamie Schultz]()
FantasyIf you like your urban fantasy dark and gruesome with an added touch of horror, Splintered and its predecessor Premonitions are right up your alley. This sequel picks up shortly after the first book, following Anna Ruiz and the rest of the crew. Since the events of the previous novel, Karyn is out o...
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![The Cat's MawBrooke Burgess]()
FantasyIn the small, sleepy town of Appleton, Billy Brahm’s life goes from clumsy to cursed. After following a cat into the road, he’s hit by a car, his leg shattered, and his summer is ruined. A mysterious cat begins to visit him at his bedside, and Billy is haunted by strange dreams. According to the cre...
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![Peripheral PeopleReesa Herbert & Michelle Moore]()
Science FictionCorwin Menivie and Nika Sanitvan are decorated veterans of the Imperial Enforcement Coalition, and they solve cases the old fashioned way. However, when they are paired up with Westley Tavera and Gavin Hale, a powerful Reader/Ground team, things start off awfully rocky. During a routine investigat...
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![The Jack of SoulsStephen C Merlino]()
FantasyThe Jack of Souls starts off slow—almost painfully slow. But as the novel unfolds, I was thrilled to discover that the slowness allowed for really great character development. The novel begins with our hero (of sorts) Harric, a bastard and a trickster, who must break his mother’s curse or die. He wi...
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![Skink No SurrenderCarl Hiaasen]()
FantasyRichard’s cousin Malley has just run off with some guy she met online, and Richard knows that things aren’t as great as she tells him they are. What’s a boy to do but to go after her, along with Skink, a ragged, one-eyed ex-governor of Florida? The unlikely pair find themselves encountering storms,...
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![The Obsidian MirrorKD Keenan]()
FantasyIn The Obsidian Mirror , an ancient evil has hijacked Silicon Valley technology. The result could be disastrous, and stopping it falls to out-of-work PR executive Sierra Carter. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Obsidian Mirror . It was deliciously chock-full of Native American (and some other) mytho...
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![PremonitionsJamie Schultz]()
FantasyIt’s the kind of heist Karyn Ames has dreamed of—enough to set her crew up pretty well and enough to keep her safely stocked on a very rare, very expensive black market drug. Without it, Karyn hallucinates slices of the future overlapped with her present until she’s incapacitated and completely over...
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![ManrootAnne Steinberg]()
FantasyManroot opens in the spring of 1930 with Katherine Sheahan and her father, Jessie, looking for work in the tourist town of Castlewood, Missouri. Jesse gets a job as a handyman and Katherine as a hotel maid. While her father eventually embraces the drink and disappears, Katherine makes a living for h...
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![PoeJ Lincoln Fenn]()
Horror23-year-old Dimitri Petrov makes a living writing obituaries, but on Halloween he gets a last-minute assignment to cover a séance at the haunted Aspinwall Mansion. There he meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer who works at the local nursing home, and promptly falls for her. But right as he’s trying to wo...
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![The Iron TrialHolly Black]()
FantasyThe Iron Trial focuses on the students of the Magisterium, an academy for those with magic. In this first book, a new student, Callum Hunt comes to the Magisterium against his will—but is it because he is destined to be a powerful magician, or is the truth more twisted than that? Well, let me just a...
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![Storm ThiefChris Wooding]()
FantasyStorm Thief takes place in the fantasy world of Orokos, a city on an island run by a totalitarian government, ravaged by chaos and by the probability storms that re-order the world wherever they strike. It has been this way for so long that history has forgotten it, and its citizens don’t believe th...
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![AllegiantVeronica Roth]()
Science FictionI will be honest—I was not thrilled about the idea of thinking about this book again in order to write a review. I was so bothered by the end of this series that I felt depressed about it for a week after I finished the novel. I loved Divergent. I thought that Insurgent was a pretty strong follow-up...
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![InsurgentVeronica Roth]()
Science FictionIn Insurgent, we rejoin Tris Prior as she and the friends and family she has left run to Amity (the kindness faction). Throughout the novel, she must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. War looms as...
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![DivergentVeronica Roth]()
Science FictionDivergent is the kind of book I stay awake reading until 4am. It gripped me and didn’t let go, staying with me when I closed the book with a rush of adrenaline and a serious hankering for its sequel. The novel takes place in Tris Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, where society is divided into five fa...
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![The Night CircusErin Morgenstern]()
Fantasy“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.” Celia Bow...
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![Wicked LovelyMelissa Mar]()
FantasyAislinn has always seen faeries. They are powerful, cruel, and dangerous. She and her grandmother have avoided them all of their lives—don’t stare, don’t speak, don’t attract their attention. But now, faeries have started to stalk her, including Keenan, the Summer King. Keenan has searched high and...
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![Blood and ChocolateAnnette Curtis Klause]()
FantasyBlood and Chocolate’s protagonist Vivian Gandillon loves the change—the sweetly painful way her body moves from human to wolf. At 16, she’s stunningly beautiful and has all the men in her pack running after her. Her pack family, recently driven away from West Virginia where her father lost his life,...
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![The Ocean at the end of the laneNeil Gaiman]()
FantasyI picked up The Ocean at the End of the Lane having already read a few (spoiler free) reviews on-line, so I was pretty thrilled to have finally bought it for myself (hard-cover and all). I'm a long time fan of Neil Gaiman—I discovered him in high school and remained a loyal reader. I'm assuming that...
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![BlopeSean Benham]()
Science FictionBlope is about segregation, plastic surgery gone wrong, and all sorts of messed up religion. For a little background, it is basically another version of history where the American Southwest becomes part of an extreme Taiwanese empire. Its ruler uses the American Southwest as an experiment & segregat...
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![A Taste of Blood WineFreda Warrington]()
FantasyA Taste of Blood Wine is romantic. It’s chock full of smoldering description, intrigue and mystery, dark love, and all sorts of gossip and twists and turns. The novel follows Charlotte, the daughter and lab partner of a scientist, as she rapidly falls for the vampire Karl. But then the plot thickens...
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![TitheHolly Black]()
FantasyI first read Tithe when I was young, probably the same age as the main character, Kaye—16. I was entranced. It was so dark, so beautifully written, and so enticing. I wanted more of the silver knight, more of the deliciously dark faery world. It isn’t by any means glorious—there’s teen drinking, gru...
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![PoisonChris Wooding]()
FantasyI stumbled across Poison early in high school, and I loved it so much I went on to read whatever other works of Chris Wooding that I could get my hands on. For years I remembered Poison to be this incredible, fascinating novel, so when I picked it up again as an adult I was a little apprehensive. Bu...
