Avalon (Avalon #1) by Mindee Arnett

Title: Avalon
Series: Avalon #1
Author: Mindee Arnett
Publisher: Balzer & Bray
Release Date:  January 21st 2014
Pages: Hardcover, 418 pages
Source: ARC from ALA Mid-winter

Summary from Goodreads:
A ragtag group of teenage mercenaries who crew the spaceship Avalon stumble upon a conspiracy that could threaten the entire galaxy in this fascinating and fast-paced sci-fi adventure from author Mindee Arnett.

Of the various star systems that make up the Confederation, most lie thousands of light-years from First Earth-and out here, no one is free. The agencies that govern the Confederation are as corrupt as the crime bosses who patrol it, and power is held by anyone with enough greed and ruthlessness to claim it. That power is derived from one thing: metatech, the devices that allow people to travel great distances faster than the speed of light.

Jeth Seagrave and his crew of teenage mercenaries have survived in this world by stealing unsecured metatech, and they're damn good at it. Jeth doesn't care about the politics or the law; all he cares about is earning enough money to buy back his parents' ship, Avalon, from his crime-boss employer and getting himself and his sister, Lizzie, the heck out of Dodge. But when Jeth finds himself in possession of information that both the crime bosses and the government are willing to kill for, he is going to have to ask himself how far he'll go to get the freedom he's wanted for so long.

Avalon is the perfect fit for teens new to sci-fi as well as seasoned sci-fi readers looking for more books in the YA space-and a great match for fans of Joss Whedon's cult hit show Firefly.

What I Liked

• The various characters.Jeth's team is composed of various characters with such distinct personalities with an array of talents and skills.  It made it easy to visualize each person and really feel the dynamic between the characters. 
• The narration. It is refreshing to read a book that has a male POV.  The danger and action in the story is seen through a male's eyes giving a different view of things.  Not to mention the backseat romance story is quite entertaining from Jeth's point of view. 
• The ending.  While Avalon is a series, the ending is the perfect amount of resolution.  Arnett satisfied my need for some closure while still leaving open storyline for the next book. 

What I Didn't

• The beginning.  It was rather slow at the beginning, I actually debated a couple times whether I was going to keep going.  The characters were not really capturing my attention and I simply was not invested in the story line.    
• A bit predictable.   Some the the aspects seems un-original, granted I mean that in the nicest way but I felt like I could see traces of other stories within Avalon.  The romance was also easy to predict but then again it typically can be.      

Bottom Line

I can easily see why there is a comparison to Firefly; Avalon is a group of unique young thieves just working to get by in space.  If you can endure the slower beginning, Avalon is a fun, space adventure book worth checking out. 

REVIEW #81: The Nightmare Affair (The Arkwell Academy #1) by Mindee Arnett

Title: The Nightmare Affair
Series: The Arkwell Academy #1
Author: Mindee Arnett
Publisher: Tor Teen
Release Date: March 5th 2013
Pages: Hardcover, 367 pages
Source: Library

Summary from Goodreads:
Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.

Then Eli’s dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

Dusty is a nightmare. My original thoughts… What the heck is a nightmare? A nightmare is someone who feeds of others nightmares by touching or sitting on top of a sleeping person and entering their dream. There are rare kinds of nightmares that when paired with the correct person have a dream-seer ability. Dusty is paired with Eli, (enter cute boy of the story). Eli and Dusty are assigned the task of finding out more on the murder of their classmate. Meanwhile, another person is murdered, their teacher. Dusty and Eli with the help of some others try to figure out why people are being murdered and who the murderer is.

The whole idea of actually being a nightmare was quite interesting. I have read a decent amount of supernatural books but had not encountered nightmares before so I found the concept fresh and unique. I am also a fan of books that are set in boarding schools (Hex Hall, Gallagher Girls, etc). The Arkwell Academy had magickind students with the occasional exceptions of non-magickind students.  The dark setting matched perfectly with the murder mystery plot.  A nice bonus too was that this book, while it is to be a series, does not have a real cliffhanger ending.

While the story was fun and easy to read, the characters were a little dry; not one of the characters really sticks with you. Overall the characters were pretty unmemorable and sometimes a bit predictable. The ending was also predictable; the Eli-Dusty dynamic was easy to guess where it was going. There are also a good number of hints dropped about who were the bad guys.  But my biggest issue was the last couple pages, I just found them a corny and super cliché.

The Nightmare Affair was easily 3.5 stars, I found the story fun, fresh and a quick read. The whole idea of a Nightmare was new to me and I enjoyed reading about it. While I have read some negative reviews of this book, I would still recommend it.  The Nightmare Affair is like the Gallagher Girls and Xmen combined into one school with a mix of Hex Hall.