Early Review - Cinderella Ninja Warrior: Twisted Tales by Maureen McGowen (4/5 stars)

Reading level: Young Adult

Genre: Fantasy/Choose Your Own Adventure
Size: 320 pages
Publisher: Silver Dolphin Books
Release Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1607102557
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: ARC from Netgalley.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

I got an advanced reading copy of this through Netgalley.com.  I was so excited to read this, I grew up on choose your own adventure books, and was excited to see this applied to a fairy tale retelling.  This book was an easy read, lots of fun, and I am happy that I got a chance to read it.

You all know the story.  Cinderella lives with her two wicked stepsisters and her evil stepmother.  During the nights she practices her ninja skills with her faithful cat Max.  Max seems to know more than an average cat...  Cinderella's stepmother is especially interested in finding the magic wand of Cinderella's mother and she thinks Cinderella knows where it is (I forgot to mention CInderella, her mother, and her step-mother are all sorceresses).  Then it's time for the ball of the century, you know with the prince and all.  What will you choose?  Will you tell your evil stepmother you want to go to the ball?  Will you tell her you're not interested and remain faithful to your ninja training? It's up to you to decide.

I really enjoyed this book; it was just some good clean fun.  The tale stays fairly true to the original Cinderella, but there are some changes.  Cinderella and others are all sorceresses that can use magic both with and without a wand.  Things are a bit more complicated because Cinderella's step mother is actually after a wand that she thinks Cinderella has hidden.

The writing style for this story is simple but well-done.  This tale leans a bit more to the Disney end of things than the Grimm brothers end, although at points Cinderella's stepmother is especially wicked.  Cinderella's step-sisters are also pretty mean, but they are touched with a bit of humanity that makes you sympathize with them...at least a little bit.  The prince is wonderful; unknown to Cinderella the boy she is hanging out with is the prince (trust me this isn't a huge spolier because it's pretty easy to figure that out right at the beginning).  While this is totally predictable it was also very sweet.  Ty and Cinderella have time to really get to know each other and forge a bond; gradually falling in love in a way that is sweet and touching.

The choose your own adventure part was well done.  Unlike the old choose your own adventure books you will not end up at a horrible ending...if I remember correctly in the old adventures you often ran into a "YOU ARE DEAD".  There are three sections in the book where all the points converge; no matter which path you take you will read the first part, a middle section, and then the end section.  The parts in between those vary depending on what you decide.  For example at one point you can choose to let a lady-in-waiting help you prepare for the ball or to not attend the ball.  Either way you end up with the same ending you just get there a different way.  At the end of the book McGowen lists all the possible paths through the book if you want to go through and do some rereads.  It is more linear than old school choose your own adventures and not as flexible; but still good fun.

Overall I enjoyed this a lot.  I loved that it was a choose your own adventure.  I loved how the ninja training was added in without warping the main fairy tale too much.  I loved the magic the was woven into the story.  I loved how this was a sweet, simple, fairy tale retelling, with characters that were easy to relate to and good at heart.  Sure it was predictable, sure things were a bit stereotypical at times; but it was still a fun and sweet read.  It's appropriate for all ages and I hope more choose your own adventure tales are planned for the future! I will probably pick up Sleeping Beauty Vampire Slayer (Twisted Tales) by McGowen to read some time soon.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:

- 100+ Reading Challenge
- The Debut Author Challenge
- E-book Reading Challenge 

- Fantasy Reading Challenge

Review - In Darkness, Death (Samurai Mysteries, Book 3) by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler (4/5 stars)

This is the third book in the Samurai Mysteries series; there are six books in this series.  I think this was the best book in this series so far.  There is more adventure and the plot is more complex.

Seikei is helping Judge Ooka to solve the mystery behind the murder of a samurai lord.  In order to cover ground quicker Judge Ooka sends Seikei on an adventure with a ninja Tatsuno to track down the maker of some mysterious paper left at the scene of the crime.  Seikei will learn many things on the journey but mostly he will learn that a samurai's honor is not as black and white as he had believed.

This book was a bit different than the other ones in that Seikei faces some very interesting moral decisions.  He goes on more of an adventure than in the previous books and gets put into more dire situations than ever before.

Each of these books has focused on some aspect of Japanese history and for this book that was the way of the ninja.  Seikie learns how ninja's think, he learns some of their tricks, and he learns what drives them.  Along the way Seikei also learns some hard lessons about samurai.  Not all of the samurai are the noble heroes he expects them to be.

As with the previous books the writing style is nothing special.  This book is definitely aimed at kids, so the syntax and words used are dumbed down some (more than I think they need to be for this age group).  As I have mentioned with previous books in this series I think that the writing could be more complex and then these books would be absolutely wonderful.  In this book the story does get more complex, so that was nice.

Overall I enjoyed the book and the look into historical Japan.  I will definitely be reading the rest of the books of this series because I find them very interesting.

This book goes towards the following challenges:
- The 100+ Book Reading Challenge