Reviewed by Lynn Crow for TeensReadToo.com

Olus, the young god of the wind, prefers to live with humans rather than his divine companions, all of whom are hundreds of years older than he is. In his travels he can't help noticing and falling in love with the beautiful and talented Kezi. At first he forces himself to be content merely watching, but then Kezi's father makes a deadly oath, and Kezi has only a month left to live. Unwilling to let her die, Olus reveals himself and offers Kezi a chance More...

I bought this book with great anticipation. I loved the author's previous works, and I was looking forward to a nice enjoyable read. I found something quite different.

First, I found the characters to be flat, one demensional, and simplistic. Perhaps Levine was trying to catch the simplicity of the setting, ancient times, with her tale, but I found it lacking her usual magic.

Second, and most importantly to me, I found her presentation of the female's god hitting too close to home. Though she prob More...

From http://rowijo.void-star.net

The title of this post is my favorite quote from Ever, the new novel by Gail Carson Levine. Y’know, she wrote Ella Enchanted? And then some other books that weren’t as good in my personal opinion? Anyway, this one is amazingly good to the point of being ridiculous. It’s so good, it’s almost like eating chocolate. Unless you don’t like chocolate, in which case you probably aren’t allowed to read in the insane asylum you are in.

The story is told in alternating (shor More...

I love Gail Carson Levine. She has a classic style that I love, which is also easy to read. That being said, this newest novel of hers was nothing like the Gail I knew! I did enjoy this one, quite a bit in fact, but it was definitely not you average princess story!

So, if you are going to read this novel, I have 3 bits of advise. First, just keep moving past the beginning. You are going to read the first two pages and go "hmmmmmmm...." but keep going! Second, get used to having two narrators and More...

I was a bit baffled by this book at first. I couldn’t figure out if I liked it because it is by Gail Carson Levine who I highly admire or because I actually enjoyed the book. I certainly like Fairest and Ella Enchanted more, but Ever is still really good.

Kezi lives with her Mati and Pado under her God, Admat. Her Mati gets sick very suddenly, and her Pado promises to Admat to sacrifice the first person to congratulate him if her Mati gets better. Kezi is already nearly 16, the age at which girls More...

I really wanted to like this book, but I just didn't - at all.

I thought this book had a lot of potential because I'm always interested in cultures that explore other gods. And I liked how the characters are supposed to perform certain tasks and lessons in order to become a champion or heroine.

However, I found that I did not like the characters. Olus was kind of a ridiculous character. We never find out why he wanted to leave other than he was lonely. But he leaves to become a sheep herder, techn More...

I wanted to like this because I like so many other books by this author...but it was utterly impossible. The very first chapter starts out stupid -- strange-and-hard-to-remember-names, odd notions about gods etc., and absurdly short sentences. Why is it that when certain authors are trying to write from the perspective of someone from long ago he/she assume the characters don't speak their language very well? It's almost as if Levine was trying to imitate a weak translation into English. She als More...

All over, I enjoyed this book much more than Ella Enchanted and Fairest (to this day, I still don't really like Ella Enchanted, but Fairest is high on my list of favorites). Olus and Kezi are star-crossed lovers in a desert world, and they meet at a wedding only to fall in love immediately.

Ever is fantasically funny at times, and also heart-wrenchingly sappy. There are indeed its moments of cliche, but it's all-over well done. Imagination takes over, with only a few details to give the setting More...

I wasn't expecting much, and didn't get much out of this book. Gail Carson Levine just hasn't written as good a fairytale since "Ella Enchanted".

Besides the fact that I thought the whole storyline was rather *ahem* stupid, I thought it was weak, the characters were weak...it just lacked the special "something", I thought. I didn't care about the characters, didn't care what dangers they went through, or whether or not they'd make it in the end. It won't be one I'll read again...

Olus is the Akkan god of winds, powerful and lonely. Kezi is a beloved daughter, bright dancer, talented weaver. When a rash oath leaves Kezi counting down the days until her inevitable death, Olus can't help but get involved. Now, Olus and Kezi have to be brave--more than brave--in order to achieve the greatest possible risk. At stake is everything both of them hold dear. The price of failure is high--but the promise of success holds all that their hearts desire.

Sometimes I feel like Gail Carso More...

This book is different from other that I have read by Gail Carson Levine in that it was about gods and goddesses and not about princess and princes and dragons and fairies and wizards and gryphons. But it was a fairy tale about love, so it's similar to her other books in that way.

The two main characters are the 17 year-old male wind god and a slightly younger female mortal. The wind god is kind and the mortal is lovely and weaves rugs and loves to dance. They meet and fall in love, but there is More...

A great fast read, this book had part Norse, part Mesopotamian myth incorporated its story lines. I of course I snatched up this book immediately when I saw Gail Carson Levine had published a new one, but even if she wasn't one of my favorite Juvie/YA authors, the first few lines on the back cover would have captured me:

He is watching me.
He is flawless, without a blemish. Majestic... Muscular.

Our hero, Olus, an Akkan God, is lonely in the heavens; the only child amongst immortals. He decides to More...

Ever by Gail Carson Levine
Review by Emily of Deliciously Clean Reads

Ever is a brand new fairy tale brought to you by the author of Ella Enchanted, Fairest, and many other great stories.Ever is told from both the perspective of Olus, god of winds, and the mortal girl he falls in love with, Kezi.

Olus lives a lonely life. None of the other gods are even close to his age. When he turns 17, he leaves the Akkan gods and seeks a life with the mortals. He becomes a goatherd for Kezi’s father. He watch More...

CIP: “Teenaged Kezi is to be sacrificed to the Hyte god because of a rash promise made by her father, but young Olus, Akkan god of the winds, falls in love with her and together they try to change her fate through a series of quests.”

This story of star-crossed lovers, the human Kezi and the immortal Olus, gains extra interest from its exotic pastoral setting and the unexpected elements of folklore and mythology. While the love story sometimes seems a little too perfect, it also raises bigger que More...

First of all, I have to say…this is NOT a fairy tale retelling. For the first 45 minutes of this audiobook, I thought this was a retelling of Snow White (I think I had it confused with Fairest) and I kept wondering if my discs were mislabeled by the library or something, because surely an adaptation of Snow White wouldn’t be set in an India-like place. But, my denseness aside, I do sort of think of Gail Carson Levine as just a fairy-tale adapter, and the name sounds like a fairy tale, but…nope.

S More...

I love this book!!! It's so creative and amazing. The plot is so well-developed and complex, as are the characters. It's so fast-paced and exciting; the book captivated me from the first page to last, and I literally couldn't put it down- I finished it in a day, and only took breaks when I had to. I love Levine's writing style; it is really unique...it's poetic and musical and feels like a song. And something about it is so mesmerizing; her style has me hypnotized.

This is even better than Faires More...

This book is okay for a no-brainer read, but it really falls short of being a good book in some key ways. The first is that the characters are only presented on the surface and never beyond. The main character does come to some interesting realizations about her belief in God, but it still doesn't amount to real character development.

Since there isn't any character development, this leads to the second major problem, which is that the interactions between the characters are also very surface. T More...

Ok, so I just want to point out that I ADORED Fairest and Ella Enchanted, the Two Princesses of Bamair was not lacking either. However, when reading Ever I found it was extremely disappointing. For one thing there was very little romantic development,contrary to her previous works, as well as a very flat and 2-dimensional character development. But what really stuck was the sheer annoyance I felt, since it had every thing I hated. A rather weak heroine(in comparison to her other heroines who wer More...

Originally posted at A Novel Idea Reviews

Rating: 3/5

What would you do, to save someone you love? To what depths would you descend, to what heights would you climb? Kezi is confronted with this question multiple times, as she finds herself fighting for both her life and her love. In Kezi’s world, the god Admat is all-encompassing and omnipotent, and an oath to him is unbreakable. In an effort to save his dying wife, Kezi’s father swears an oath to Admat, promising a sacrifice in exchange for his More...

A lot of people reviewing this book are complaining about the writing style and seemingly flat characterizations in the story. The writing style used in this book is an intentional imitation of ancient Mesopotamian texts and story telling techniques, which was a quirk that I really enjoyed, perhaps because I knew where it was coming from and what she was doing. However, I can understand why others who don't know where this is coming from are having problems with it. This imitation also impacts h More...

Ever is a book about a lonely god who seeks companionship within mortals, and a mortal girl whos faith in a faceless god condemed her to her death. Olus the god of wind was not happy among his fellow gods and was told when he was born that he was to be unhappy until he gains what he cant have, from the god of destiny. so he left Enshi Rock the homes of the gods and went out to live with the mortals, his travel led him to Hyte there he found a small valley that was part of the land belonging to p More...

This review originally appeared at www.readinasinglesitting.com.

Faith needs no sign.
Let not the creation
Test the creator.

Fifteen-year-old Kezi lives a simple but fulfilled life, spending her days knotting rugs and participating in the local festivities and religious ceremonies with her families. But when Kezi’s mother falls ill, Kezi’s father pledges to sacrifice a soul to their god Admat in return for his wife’s continued health. The sacrifice is to be the first person who congratulates Kezi’s More...

I read this book in a couple of hours the other evening. I wanted to like this book, but it was so disappointing. Ella Enchanted was one of my absolute favorite books as a child, and this book did not live up to the expectations I had for the author. I felt as though Ever needed to be fully-fleshed out, and that since it was meant to be a YA book, Levine didn't develop the characters or the plot any further than a rough outline. The premise of the story was promising, but it didn't deliver. Perh More...

3 stars
The blurb on the jacket reads:

What if he is invisible to everyone but me? What if he is my guardian sent to watch over me in my last days? I doubt this, but I risk smiling at him. He drops a plate. It plummets. But then, in the instant before it strkes the baked mud street, it hovers in the air and comes down softly, unbroken.

I purchased this quickly, having suddenly run out of reading material. From the blurb above, I though I was going to be reading a young adult love story. Oops! More...

The storyline in a nutshell: Because of an oath her father makes, Kezi is to die as a sacrifice. Olus (the god of the winds) has watched Kezi from afar and has come to care about her. When Olus learns of Kezi's ill fate he comes up with a plan to make Kezi immortal as he is, so they can be together for eternity.

My opinion: It was an interesting and quick read, I finished it in three days. There is some of that trademark Gail Carson Levine charm, yet it's nowhere near as charming as Ella Enchante More...

I've been a huge fan of Gail Carson Levine since picking up Ella Enchanted at a middle school book fair way back in the day. I'm 25 years old now, but that book remains one of my everlasting favorites--I connected with Ella on such a personal level, and Char was such an easy guy to fall in love with.

I picked up Ever last night and read it in a few hours. While the story was interesting enough to hold my attention, I didn't feel the same connection I did with the characters from Ella Enchanted. I More...

Olus and Kezi fall in love and battle a horrible fate by braving separate trials. The premise of the book draws readers in, but the excitement of starting a new fairy tale by the wonderful Gail Carson Levine quickly wanes with the novel’s tedious exposition. There are a lot of prayer rituals and the like, which establish the importance of faith and belief but perhaps at the price of the reader’s interest. These themes are central, as the characters start asking questions about what they believe More...

Ben hikayeyi sevdim. Mitolojik güzel bi hikayeydi.
Rüzgar tanrısı Olus doğumundan beri insanların dünyasında yaşamak istemektedir. Bu sebeple yeryüzünde bi adamın arazisinde çobanlık yapmaya başlıyor. Ve gizli gizli işveren adamı ve ailesini tanrısal güçleriyle izliyor.
Adamın karısı ölümcül bi hastalığa yakalanıyor ama tanrıların iyileştirme gücü yokmuş. Bu insanlarda başka tanrıya inanıyorlar ve adam karım iyileşirse ilk tebrik edeni kurban etcem diyor. Ve baldızı tebrik etmaya çalışınca ona ca More...

Olus, the God of the Winds is a lonely young man earnestly flying across the skies searching for someone who would be his friend and companion instead of revering or fearing him. His parents repeatedly warn him against getting entangled with mortals, whom they allude to as soap-bubbles, due to their evanescent existence. Inevitably, Olus finds himself enraptured and in love with a pretty damsel, Kezi, whom he ardently follows, taking the role of her guardian angel. Due to the twisted mix of a de More...

In this novel Kezi falls in love with Olus, God of the Wind, before even knowing he is a god. Then after she finds out she can't help but trying to worship him until he finally gets it through to her that he doesn't want her to do such things. These two falling in love would be wonderful except that well, Olus is an immortal god and Kezi only has one month to live before she must be sacrificed to Admat the God of All, which none of the Akkan Gods has ever heard of. For a marriage to occur betwee More...