Mundie Moms

Friday, October 7, 2016

SACRIFICE by Cindy Pon / Blog Tour: Book Review


Hello and welcome to the next stop in the SACRIFICE blog tour! Today's stop features my review and a giveaway! Before you enter to win, here's a little about the book:

ABOUT THE BOOK 


By: Cindy Pon
Published by: Month9Books
Released on: Serpentine #2
Series: September 27th, 2016
Purchase from: Amazon | B&N
Add it to Goodreads

Sacrifice, the sequel to Serpentine, plunges Skybright into the terrifying underworld where demons are bred and whisks her up to the magnificent Mountain of Heavenly Peace where the gods dwell.


Stone is stripped of his immortal status and told to close hell's breach, which mysteriously remains open, threatening mortals.


Zhen Ni, Skybright's former mistress and friend, has been wed to the strange and brutish Master Bei, and finds herself trapped in an opulent but empty manor. When she discovers half-eaten corpses beneath the estate, she realizes that Master Bei is not all that he seems.


As Skybright works to free Zhen Ni with the aid of Kai Sen and Stone, they begin to understand that what is at risk is more far-reaching then they could ever have fathomed.

Picking up right where Serpentine left off, Pon doesn't waste any time thrusting her readers right back into the all that's happening in Skybright's world. This sequel is rich with diversity, lore, and a vivid setting between both the immortal realm Skybright's former human world. 

Pon is a wonderful storyteller. In Serpentine I loved the way she told Skybright's story. I love the legend, the character development, the diversity, the world building, and everything else that made up the first book in the series. I was hooked. With SACRIFICE, Pon continues to hook me with many of those same elements. She takes readers deeper into Skybright's new world with Stone. Readers not only see more to the under world, we also get to continue to see Skybright's progression and changes. 

I really liked Skybright's journey. Along with hers are the continued journey of both Kai, and Zhen Ni. While I liked Skybright's progression, I had some trouble with Kai and Zhen's. I didn't feel they were as strongly developed as they were in the first book. I won't mention specifics for the sake of spoilers, but I felt like Kai's outcome was predictable, though not so much in the manner of what happens. I definitely wasn't excepting Zhen's outcome, but I missed seeing a side of her I felt like I got as a reader with the first book, vs this one. 

One of the things I enjoyed about this story, is the continuation of the rich Chinese mythology Pon beautifully brought to life in Serpentine. It's something I hadn't read much about until I picked up that book, and I enjoyed being immersed in the vivid history, and world Pon continued to developed in Sacrifice. While I may not have enjoyed each of the character journeys as much in this book as I did in the previous book, I loved the world, and getting a deeper look into the mythology of this series. Over all, this was a good book, and one I'd recommend to those who have read Serpentine. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR



Cindy Pon is the author of Silver Phoenix (Greenwillow, 2009), which was named one of the Top Ten Fantasy and Science Fiction Books for Youth by the American Library Association’s Booklist, and one of 2009′s best Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror by VOYA. Her most recent novel, Serpentine (Month9Books, 2015), is a Junior Library Guild Selection and received starred reviews from School Library Journal and VOYA. The sequel, Sacrifice, releases this September. WANT, a near-future thriller set in Taipei, will be published by Simon Pulse in summer 2017. She is the co-founder of Diversity in YA with Malinda Lo and on the advisory board of We Need Diverse Books. Cindy is also a Chinese brush painting student of over a decade. Learn more about her books and art at http://cindypon.com.
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ENTER TO WIN 

  • One (1) winner will receive a scrabble tile book cover charm (US ONLY)
  • Five (5) winners will receive a digital copy of Serpentine and Sacrifice by Cindy Pon (INT)

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1 comment:

  1. Lovely review Katie :) I'm sorry this book wasn't perfect, but glad it was still interesting :D These books aren't for me, but so pretty. <3

    ReplyDelete

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