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Title | Unbreakable
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Author | Kami Garcia
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Little, Brown and Company, 2014
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First Printing | Little, Brown and Company, 2013
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Title | Unmarked
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Author | Kami Garcia
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Little, Brown and Company, 2014
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First Printing | Little, Brown and Company, 2014
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Category | Young Adult
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Kennedy, Jared, Lukas, Alara, Priest, Andras
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Main Elements | Ghosts, demons
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Website | kamigarcia.com
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 Unbreakable
When Kennedy Waters finds her mother dead, she doesn't realize that paranormal forces are responsible - not until mysterious identical twins Jared and Lukas Lockhart break into Kennedy's room and destroy a deadly spirit sent to kill her.
Kennedy learns that her mother's death was no accident, and now she has to take her place in the Legion of the Black Dove - a secret society formed to protext the world from a vengeful demon. A society left in the hands of a misfit group of teens with unique skills: Jared, combat trained, with a temper to match; Lukas, rogue hacker and code breaker; Alara, whose attitude is as pwerful as her voodoo protections; and Priest, an engineer capable of making a weapon out of a soda can.
As the teens use their individula talents to battle paranormal entities, they earn their rightful places in the Legion - except for Kennedy, who is left wondering if she truly is one of them.
Can she stay alive long enough to find out - without losing her heart in the process
Unmarked
Kennedy Waters lives in a world where vengeance spirits kill, ghosts keep secrets, and a demon walks among us - a demon she accidentally set free.
Now Kennedy and the other Legion members - Alara, Priest, Lukas, and Jared - have to hunt him down. As they learn more about the history of the Legion and the Illuminati, Kennedy realizes that the greatest mystery of all belongs not to any secret order but to her own family. With the clock ticking and the life of someone she loves hanging in the balance, Kennedy has to ask the question she fears the most: What is it about her past that has left her Unmarked?
My first reaction was this was very much like the Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare (if you liked that series you'll love this one). Only, it was less believable. I found it to be a bit of a stretch that the Legion wouldn't fall apart the way they had it set up. I mean there are 5 members, each member only being aware of one other. If one were to die before finding an heir, the entire chain of communication would fall apart. And what is this group of people, originally from Europe, all doing in a drivable distanced from each other in the USA? Did the entire Legion decide to immigrate all at the same time? So I gave the first book 3 stars for the premise which seemed a little shaky.
And of course, there's your standard teenage angst. You've got Kennedy thinking she's not worthy of Jared, and Jared thinking he's not worthy of Kennedy...and Lukas feeling left out. And in the meantime the world as we know it is about to be destoyed. If you liked Twilight, then you'll probably like this.
Do teenagers really spend all their time thinking about their opposites hair/eyes/whatevers while in the process of being attacked by vengeance spirits? Oh well, I try to ignore those bits as they seem to be par for the course in most YA books.
Oh right...and there's the Illuminati. You'd think after Dan Brown dragged them up people would leave them alone. I know they are one of the big famous secret societies and really did once exist with some illustrious members, but *exactly* because they actually exist doesn't mean you can go around reinventing them. "The society's goals were to oppose superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life and abuses of state power, and to support women's education and gender equality." Yep, totally evil. Well, maybe if you're the Catholic Church in the 1700's...after all gender equality is just so wrong...
And along the lines of Dan Brown and James Rollins...there are these secrets that have been around for centuries, riddles others have failed to solve, and one after another these kids unravel them. I don't mind the fact that they are kids, but, well, I could see *1* mystery being solved in a few minutes given a new set of eyes, but a whole bunch one right after the other? Nope.
But after I got past my pet peeves, I couldn't deny I was reading 100 pages a day, not just because it's a light easy read with a lot of action to keep things going, but I really was interested to see what would happen next. While I wasn't convinced about the workings of the Legion/Illuminati, the rest of the world building was interesting. Garcia gives us a lot of interesting insight in the various spirits and demons that inhabit our world, and how to go about destroying them. And there are some scenes that are so downright creepy I had to put the book down if I was reading it just before bed.
There are also pictures of various symbols in the books which is really helpful to visualize what the author attempts to describe in words. I'm terrible at visualizing such things.
So while there were bits of the books that really made me roll my eyes, there were other bits of the books that I really enjoyed. I'll probably invest in the third one when it comes out, just to see what happens next.
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