Fiction Archives - Page 26 of 32 - Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

Evenfall Fell Short

By Brookelorren on October 11, 20184 Comments

I was recently given the opportunity to read Evenfall by Gaja and Boris Kos (thank you Netgalley for the ARC). While I thought the concept of the book was good, it sadly did not live up to expectations. Evenfall did have to follow some of the most amazing books I read this year; even still, it was just okay.

After I was about 25% of the way through the book and I still wasn’t feeling this book, I tried to figure out why this book just didn’t mesh with me. I think the biggest problem was that there was a lot of infodumping. Ember, our heroine, was confused and was trying to figure out what was going on. Her new friend Ada was trying to help her understand, but there was a lot of explanation and not much action. For a lot of the book, there wasn’t a lot of dialogue either. There were descriptions of them eating breakfast, traveling to Ada’s house, and a little bit of hiding, but there wasn’t a lot going on.

The action did pick up some in the second half, when Ember’s interactions with the “bad guy”, the Crescent Prince, pick up in earnest. The last 20% of the book was actually fairly good. Still, I thought there was a love interest that sparked a little too quickly in the last bit (Ember and another person declared their love to each other after knowing each other for probably less than a week).

Despite all of the explaining that was going on, there were times when the character seemed to know things that she shouldn’t have. I hope that these are fixed before the finished product comes out, but there were two occasions where Ember names a character they were going to meet when we hadn’t been introduced to them previously.

On a positive note, the magic systems and the storyline were interesting and complex. I started to feel like I was getting to know Ember by the end of the book. I could also feel for her and the fact that she didn’t want to be used as somebody else’s pawn. There were a lot of interesting aspects to the world here.

Considering that the action did pick up towards the end of the book, I might think about reading the sequel. It’s not something I’d put at the top of my TBR, but there is a part of me that wants to see this world put back together.

Muse of Nightmares is a Dream

By Brookelorren on October 7, 2018Leave a Comment

Muse of Nightmares was released last Tuesday, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should definitely put it on your TBR. It’s getting to be that time of year where I start thinking about what the best books of the year were, and there’s a good chance that this book is going to make the Top Ten Books I Read for the First Time in 2018 list.

Because this review is the second in a duology, there may be spoilers for the first book.

This book begins where Strange the Dreamer left off. Lazlo discovered that he was godspawn, Sarai was dead, and Minya was trying to get Lazlo to do her bidding to allow her to go down to Weep and let her get her revenge on the humans. What a mess! Of course, Lazlo is this gentle soul who wouldn’t hurt a fly. What is a poor boy who loves his Sarai to do?

In addition to the difficult situation the godspawn were left in, we were left with questions. Where did all the other babies go? Why did Lazlo suddenly turn into godspawn when for twenty years he was just an ordinary boy? What does the bird flying around have to do with anything (and why is the bird on the cover of this book? All of that will be answered in Muse of Nightmares.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Lazlo and Sarai’s relationship continues, the humans down in Weep finally meet the godspawn, and secrets are revealed about the universe that I certainly didn’t expect. The characters that we loved in the first book are back, and most of them grow and become better people.

Just like Strange, Muse is a beautiful book with gorgeous prose. Laini Taylor has such a lovely way of writing. The alluring words made me want to keep reading. The world that she built is imaginative, and the way that she writes it makes it vivid. You grow to love the characters and empathize with them.

Another thing that I loved about reading this book was that it has such a beautiful message to it. Minya wants revenge for what happened to her. The humans who were exploited have reason to hate the godspawn. Another character that we will meet when we read this book has another reason to hate. One of my favorite lines in this book is repeated twice: Let all the ugliness end here.

It’s such a timely message. Let all the ugliness end here. If we could get one thing from reading this book, that would be it. Wouldn’t the world be such a better place if we could all just listen to each other? To try to understand where other people are coming from? There would be so much less anger floating in the air if we could just get that. Just like the humans, godspawn, and the new character we meet in Strange the Dreamer and Muse of Nightmares, almost all of us are trying to do the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is not easy to discern. Maybe if we were all a little more like Lazlo and Sarai, our hearts would heal.

The ugliness does end, at least for the characters here. I won’t say what happens, but I was in tears for the last 50 pages of the book or so, it was so beautiful. The ugliness even ends for some of the characters that you might not even think could change. Not everyone gets a happy ever after, and not everybody’s soul can mend, but the end was perfect.

Or was it? This book opens itself up to fanfiction or further books in the series. Maybe we’ll see some more novellas from here. That would be nice.

Everless was Endearing

By Brookelorren on October 4, 2018September 10, 20186 Comments

I recently read Everless by Sara Holland. Driving my daughter to school takes quite a lot of time, which I can use to listen to audiobooks. This one came available at my library recently.

Jules lives in a humble village with her papa. They barely are able to make ends meet — then again, that’s true of most people in the village. Once again, the rent is due, and they don’t have the money to pay for it.

Everyone in Sempera uses time as a currency. If you can’t pay the rent, then you can take it out of the time you have remaining in your life. Most of the poorer people have shortened lives as a result. In a place like Everless, where the wealthy people live, some people can live for hundreds of years.

Jules used to live in Everless, as a child. A tragedy forced them to flee years ago, however. Now that Jules is 17, she can help Papa pay the rent by using her own time. Papa forbids it, but if he uses some of his time, he might die. In an attempt to save Papa’s life, Jules decides to go back to Everless, where well-paid jobs as servants await, preparing for the wedding of Roan Gerling and the queen’s adopted daughter.

Roan and Jules used to be friends as children. Going back to Everless means that she will see Roan again, although he will be marrying someone else. It also means that she will see his nasty brother, Liam. Everless is not a very safe place to be, and Jules believes that part of that reason is Liam.

As the story progresses, we find out why Everless is such a dangerous place, and we find that there are long-buried secrets held there. We find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem, and the past may come back to haunt everybody.

I enjoyed this book. The imagery was wonderful. I started getting my suspicions about some of the plot points partway through the story, although there were still some surprises, even at the very end. When I was getting towards the end of the story, I would want to sit in my car a little longer, just to find out what was going to happen next.

I’m looking forward to finding out what happens in Evermore, which should be coming out on December 31st. Which is weird, because most book releases come out on Tuesdays and December 31st is a Monday, but who knows? More than likely I’ll read it sometime next year.

September 2018 Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on September 30, 20188 Comments

It’s already the end of September! That means that… in only a few hours… NaNoWriMo will only be a month away! Eeek! I’m actually pretty excited to start writing, but I’m a little scared all at the same time. I’ve never written a novel before that wasn’t fanfiction. But then again, I’ve been writing a lot of things this year that, even though they are in a pre-built universe, are original elements, like kidnapping and accidents and things like that. I’ve also created original characters. So maybe I’ll succeed this year.

Books Read:

This month I read thirteen books. Two of them were audiobooks, and one of them was a reread.

Queen of Shadows – Sarah J. Maas
The Wolf and the Rain – Tanya Lee
Everless – Sara Holland
Ever the Brave – Erin Summerill
Frequency – Christopher Krovatin
War Storm – Victoria Aveyard
Warcross – Marie Lu (reread)
Wildcard – Marie Lu
City of Fallen Angels – Cassandra Clare
Addicted to Outrage – Glenn Beck
Daughter of the Pirate King – Tricia Levenseller
Legendary – Stephanie Garber
Enchantée – Gita Trelease

My favorite books of the month were Wildcard and Enchantée. I’m pretty sure that both books will end up near the top of my annual Best Books I Read for the First Time in 20XX list, that I put out every January 1st.

Blog Stats:

Twitter has been doing really well. I regained a lot of the followers that I lost last month, and am not at over 1575 followers.
My monthly blog users went down, but that’s okay. I haven’t had as much time to visit other people’s blogs.
I have eight scheduled posts at the moment. I need to write a couple more reviews tonight, and probably another Top Ten Tuesday.

Writing:

My goal this month was to finish the first draft of Hero, and I’m one chapter away from finishing that. It might take me a day longer than I had originally planned.
I’m up to 18 pages of notes for Brightness of Shadow, my NaNoWriMo novel for this year. I can’t wait to actually be able to start writing it. I’ve had a couple quotes come to me, but I’m trying to not write anything yet. Today I had another scene come to me. More details are emerging about the book, which I’m pretty happy about. I added my novel to my NaNoWriMo page.
My goal for this month is to go through Hero and finish the second draft, and to do NaNoWriMo prep. I may write in some of my unfinished projects, like Saving Adelinetta, that I don’t plan on finishing until 2019.

Life:

More of the same. My dd spent another week and a half in the hospital. Sigh. She’s on another medicine that I hope works. Everything else is going to work, getting up, taking dd to school, writing, reading, and going to bed. Nothing exciting.

So that’s September. I pretty much have the books I’m reading planned out for October already. Lots of good books coming up to read.

King’s Cage Will Keep You Trapped (Until You Finish Reading)

By Brookelorren on September 29, 2018August 19, 2018Leave a Comment

King’s Cage, by Victoria Aveyard, finally became available at the library, shortly after Glass Sword did. In this book, we get to continue on our journey with Mare and Cal and their friends (and enemies). This review may contain spoilers for the first two books in the Red Queen series.

When we first meet up with Mare in this story, she has voluntarily submitted herself to imprisonment in exchange for her friends’ freedom. Although she expects to be put to death, Maven is still obsessed with her, and won’t let that happen. Instead, she is left to rot in a nice room with a few books… and is slowly suffocating due to the effects of the silencing of her powers that occurs continuously.

Maven is engaged to Evangeline, who is looking forward to becoming queen, although neither Maven nor Evangeline are crazy about each other.

On the other side of the story, where Cal and the Scarlet Guard are, we see the story through Cameron’s eyes. She’s not a huge fan of Cal and Mare, but she provides an interesting perspective to what is going on with the Scarlet Guard, which is continuing to gain followers. Cameron still is trying to save her brother, and Cal is trying to get Mare back.

In order to avoid giving away spoilers, I’ll be vague about what happens next. There are some plot twists and political intrigue, and by the end of the story, instead of wondering why Mare is acting like an idiot, I’m left wondering “Why are you so stupid, Cal?”

So far, this is my favorite story of the series. I love how we are able to see more of the characters and of the world. We are already familiar with Maven’s court from previous books, but in King’s Cage, we get to see more from countries outside of Norta. As in previous books, the characters are crafty and have political motives that can’t be trusted. In this book, the whole world seems to be at war, and people are choosing sides. I may have to read this series a second time some day to be able to understand all of the details of this story. It is outstanding.

As far as characters go, I love seeing the world through Cameron’s perspective. Cal and Mare do get together again during this book (I don’t think that should be too much of a spoiler… that’s a fairly logical thing to happen) and I love seeing their relationship develop. Again, with the caveat that I’m saying “Cal, why are you so stupid!?” at the end of the book.

If you enjoyed the Red Queen series so far, then I definitely think that you should continue to read King’s Cage. It is a great book, and although I had to put it down to go to work and sleep and things like that, I was excited to find out what was going to happen next.

The Glass Sword Gleams

By Brookelorren on September 28, 2018August 13, 2018Leave a Comment

I recently was able to read Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard. There was a really long wait at the library, and it was finally my turn (since I was waiting for King’s Cage at the same time, I get to read that next. I thought it was a great book. Since this a continuation of the Red Queen tetralogy, there may be spoilers for Red Queen in this review.

When this book begins, Mare and Cal have just escaped from the Bowl of Bones. They are with the Scarlet Guard, but there is still a distance between them and everybody else because of their different abilities, and because of what they did in the first book.

Mare becomes more of a leader in this book, and she sets out to go find all of the other people like her: reds that have the genetic mutation that gives them abilities (called newbloods). This is a dangerous mission, and some people end up getting hurt. Mare takes some of this burden upon herself in the form of guilt. At times, it separates herself emotionally from some of her friends, like Kilorn.

Mare and Cal grow together as a couple in this book, although things aren’t always rosy. They both seem to have some growing to do. I really like them together, but sometimes I had to say “Mare, you’re so stupid!” Not only with regards to Cal, but with regards to some of her other relationships as well. But she does admit that she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and she does have to make some very difficult leadership decisions. She never wanted to be a leader, but leadership was thrust upon her anyway. I also think that other people unfairly placed blame on her for things that weren’t entirely her fault.

Throughout the book, the characters go through several different trials, and the struggle between silvers, newbloods, and reds widens. The world is complex and the plot twists are interesting. In addition, Aveyard is not afraid to kill off some of her babies (sorry).

Towards the end of Glass Sword, I was a little frustrated at Mare because of how she kept thinking of herself as selfish and how she alienated the people that were close to her. We are left with a cliffhanger at the end of the book (fortunately, King’s Cage is available for me to read now), and Mare makes a decision that shows that she is at least trying to do the right thing, even though she doesn’t always know what that is.

The Red Queen Should Be Read!

By Brookelorren on September 27, 2018August 2, 20182 Comments

A few months ago, I was trying to figure out what book to read next. I had read all of my favorite authors’ books, as well as mammoth series like The Song of Ice and Fire, and needed to find something. Then I ran across Goodreads’ YA Novels of 2018 List… where have you been all my life? It was like this neverending supply of book ideas. War Storm, by Victoria Aveyard, was #1 on the list for this year. I can’t read the last book in the series, of course (I made that mistake with Joel C. Rosenberg’s Dead Heat years ago), but in just a few clicks, I found the first book in the series, Red Queen, and put it on hold at my local library. Several months later, I was able to read it.

Red Queen is based in a land where there are two types of people: Silvers, who have silver blood and magical powers, and Reds, who have red blood and no power. Our heroine, Mare Barrow, is a Red who has no prospects in life except to get drafted into the neverending war and die. In the meantime, she steals for a living. A few random events change her life. She discovers that, despite her red blood, she also has powers. These powers push her into a posh prison, faking that she’s a silver in the royal court.

Mare has to figure out how to survive in her new life. In addition, she’s not the kind of person to lie still and let the corruption around her corrupt her. She wants to fight for a better life for her people. But how will she do that? She begins to play a dangerous game where you’re never really quite certain who to trust… and you’re not quite certain who to love either.

The Red Queen series is popular for a reason: it’s good. Although I think that Mare is foolish sometimes, I still like her, and think that she was portrayed well. I enjoy reading about her love interest (or not) with Cal and Maven. I enjoyed this unique world with electricity and cars and motorcycles… but not too much of it, if you’re not rich. It’s not a medieval world, but it’s also nothing like ours. All of these elements add up to an interesting universe.

The book has twists and turns, and you’re not exactly sure who to trust. There are the “I didn’t see that one coming” moments. Even though I read the blurb about what the book was about before I read the book, I didn’t know exactly how this book was going to play out, and was kept excited until the end.

Fortunately, even though I had to wait a couple of months to read Red Queen (I read this book and am writing this review at the end of July), the next two books will be available at the library soon, as I signed up to read them at the same time. I might not get to read War Storm until 2019, but that’s okay. Although I am excited to read the next installment of this series, I have a stack of books waiting to be read, and I’ll just have to have patience to read the rest of this series.

Books By Awesome Authors I Still Haven’t Read

By Brookelorren on September 25, 2018September 22, 201848 Comments

Welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Today’s topic is supposed to be “Books By My Favorite Authors That I Still Haven’t Read,” but I want to also include authors that I like, but don’t necessarily consider to be among my “favorites”. That way this post can have more variety.

Cassandra Clare. There are a lot of books that I haven’t read by Cassandra Clare yet. I haven’t read any of The Infernal Devices yet, or The Dark Artifices. Although I’m finishing up The Mortal Instruments, I haven’t had the time to read any of these. I’ll be checking them out of my library soon, however.

Sarah J. Maas. I have had the opportunity to read most of the Throne of Glass series over the last couple of months, but I haven’t read any of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Or any of the novellas. I’ll get around to them someday, but she’s written quite a lot.

Renée Ahdieh. I read Flame in the Mist, Smoke in the Sun, and The Wrath & the Dawn earlier this year, but I still haven’t read The Rose & the Dagger. I would like to read it at some point, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe because this book doesn’t have a waiting list and I can read this whenever I want to.

Victoria Aveyard. When I first wrote this post, I thought that there would be no way War Storm would become available at the library before today. Well, it did become available, and I did get to read it, but I haven’t read any of the novellas. I’m going to be really busy in November with NaNoWriMo, maybe I’ll read some of the novellas that month.

Stephanie Garber. I read Caraval earlier this year, and I thought it was great. I haven’t had the chance to read Legendary yet. Of course, I also haven’t had the chance to read Finale yet, because it’s not out yet.

Laini Taylor. Now we’re getting to the part of today’s list where I’m getting desperate to find books I haven’t read by amazing authors. I haven’t read Muse of Nightmares yet, although I do have it on pre-order. But then again, I also haven’t read her Daughter of Smoke and Bone series yet, so I guess we’re not getting too desperate to find books I haven’t read. Yet.

Gavin Menzies. I’ve read two of his books, and I thought they were pretty good. I still haven’t read 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance yet. I’ve had to dig into nonfiction at this point, but I haven’t read this book, and would like to.

Bill O’Reilly. There are quite a few of O’Reilly’s Killing series that I haven’t read yet. I have read Killing the Rising Sun, Killing Reagan, and Killing Lincoln, and I thought they were really good. I haven’t read Killing the SS yet, although it’s not out yet. There are a few other Killing books I haven’t read yet either.

Marie Lu. Amazingly enough, I actually haven’t read everything by Marie Lu. Shocking, right? While technically she’s only a contributor to these books, I recently found out about some stories that she wrote for a couple of anthologies, including Slasher Girls and Monster Boys. I really liked Veronica Roth’s story in Summer Days and Summer Nights, so I figure that I have to go check this one out now. Plus, there are other great authors in this anthology too.

She also has a story in A Tyranny of Petticoats that I’m going to have to check out as well. Then she has an essay in another book and I think a Middle Grade book that I haven’t read yet. So I guess I have some things to check out between now and 2020 when Kingdom of Back comes out!

Untitled Sabaa Tahir Sabaa Tahir. I haven’t read the fourth book in the Ember in the Ashes Tetralogy either. It doesn’t even have a title yet. But fortunately, we’re at 10 books now, otherwise I’d tell you how I also haven’t read The Chosen Ones, which will be Veronica Roth’s new book, out in 2020. But we’re out of time now.

Frequency Resonated with Me

By Brookelorren on September 24, 2018September 10, 20182 Comments

I recently read Frequency by Christopher Krovatin. I absolutely loved it. It kept me interested from the very first chapter until the very end. I was fortunate enough to receive a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fiona is an 18 year old girl who lives in a small town and has a secret. When she was nine years old, she saw her father and a few of the town council members beat a boy half to death. It changed the way that she felt about her father — and her small town — forever.

When the boy comes back into the town, everybody seems enamored by his music — except Fiona. It turns out, this boy is enamored with her. Fiona ends up distancing herself from her friends; in the process, she discovers that her friends — and herself — are in danger. Can she save her friends?

Frequency is infused with music. This may be one of the reasons why it struck such a chord with me. Fiona is always listening to one band or another; I used to be almost a walking encyclopedia of music (if I hadn’t been going into the military after college, my music recording professor would have offered me a job in his recording studio). We both play instruments. This book mentions a lot of bands and uses a lot of musical jargon.

While Frequency is primarily a contemporary novel, there is a bit of magic involved in this story. Music has an ancient magical power here (in reality, doesn’t it actually have some sort of power?). I love watching those shows where they discuss ancient mysteries like figurines that look like airplanes from ancient Peru or computers from ancient Greece; the ancient power of music in this story reminds me a bit of that. The magic added to the allure of this story for me.

This story is geared towards young adults, but I would recommend it for the older range of the YA spectrum, probably 15/16+. Several of Fiona’s friends are into drugs, and there are frequent mentions of sex in this story (although nothing is actually explicitly described on the page). Most of the characters are 18 or older. Frequency could also be categorized as NA instead of YA. It was probably a marketing decision since YA tends to be more popular at the moment.

If you enjoy YA contemporaries and you love music, I highly recommend this book. I absolutely loved it.

Wildcard was a Wild Ride!

By Brookelorren on September 19, 2018April 17, 20194 Comments

Finally, the wait is over! Today was Wildcard‘s release day and I was so happy to get to read it. The wait was worth it, though, it was a great book.

As with all of my reviews that deal with sequels, this may contain spoilers to the first book.

Our book starts right after Hideo downloads a program that takes away a person’s free will to commit crimes. This causes some trouble right off the bat. People are turning themselves in for crimes they committed but got away with, crime was prevented… wait, how could that cause problems? We don’t all have the same standards about what is right and wrong. Some countries have different laws that they want enacted. Other wealthy people want exceptions for them (isn’t that the way the world works?). To quote page 106 “Everyone’s going to want something different from Hideo.”

Emika quickly finds herself getting tangled up with Zero. For a long time here, it’s hard to figure out who is the bad guy and who is not. Hideo is trying to do something good by ridding the world of crimes like those that caused him to lose his brother, while Zero wants people to be able to make their own choices. There seemed to be nobody in this book that had power that was actually good.

Time is ticking away for those that are trying to fix everything. The beta version of the Warcross lenses (which Emika and most of the Warcross players have, and doesn’t take away your free will) will be upgraded on the final day of the Warcross season. Emika must rely on her friends (and put faith into people she’s not so sure of) in order to figure out what’s going on and how to set things straight before the lenses upgrade and nobody has free will anymore.

Eventually, we find out the truth… which I won’t give away… but I really wasn’t expecting that. There is a satisfying ending to it all.

One of the things that I’ve loved about the Legend series and The Young Elites trilogy were the love relationships. I’m a big Day/June and Adelina/Magiano fan. While this book does have a love interest, it’s a fairly minor part of the storyline, and I was fine with that. The Warcross/Wildcard story takes place over a span of only a few months, while Legend and The Young Elites both cover a time span of over a year, so perhaps it is more realistic for the characters to not develop a deep love for each other anyway.

This book caused me to feel anger and happiness and cry, sometimes all in the same chapter. In chapter 20, we find out what actually happened to Sasuke, and I found myself thinking, “oh, that’s sad. Oh, how sweet. I’m in tears now. I’m so angry!” And then shock. Later on, in chapter 32, I was really tearing up. Especially when they were talking about loved ones… about how Emika missed her father and she says “And that’s when I realize that, at the end, we’d all wish for the same thing. Just a little more time.” I was thinking of my grandma as I read that: how she seemed to be in remission from cancer, and then one day I got a phone call, and the next day she was gone.

The book says a lot about artificial intelligence and computer technology, and delves into some of the issues that we may have to deal with in the very near future. Ray Kurzweil believes that one day we’ll be able to upload ourselves into the cloud and live forever that way. Is that something we want to do? Is that life? Do we live on in people’s memories? What role should technology play in our lives? These questions popped up in my mind as I was reading Wildcard.

This was a great story that I highly recommend.

Previously on this blog, I reviewed Warcross.