All posts in Young Adult

The Light Between Worlds

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments
The Light Between Worlds cover

I recently read The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth. Look at that cover! Plus, Ms. Weymouth is a really sweet lady, so I ended up pre-ordering her book. The Light Between Worlds is inspired by Narnia. Who doesn’t love Narnia? I found that my favorite aspect of this book didn’t have anything to do with C.S. Lewis’s world, however.

In The Light Between Worlds, Evelyn (the Lucy character) longs to return to Narnia, errr… The Woodlands, and is having difficulty functioning in the real world. Just like in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the characters spent years in the alternate universe, and when they returned to World War II Britain, they had to re-adjust to being children again. Evelyn couldn’t make that transition.

Philippa (the Susan character) would like Evelyn to become a functioning member of society again, and when it doesn’t happen, she’s frustrated, and this puts a strain on their relationship. Not only does Philippa feel guilt over what happens next, she feels guilt over a decision she made long ago…

The book is told in two sections, with the first half focusing on Evelyn’s voice, and the second half in Philippa’s.

Narnia Inspiration

To be honest, the Narnia inspiration was my least favorite aspect of this book. The Narnia books are still copyrighted until 2034. It doesn’t look like the Lewis estate is interested in allowing permission for an extension of their work. Another author, Francis Spufford, actually tried to get a Narnia work published; the estate won’t talk to him. So the book is like trying to tell the story without any of the original characters or the original world. Although we know who all the characters are supposed to be, it’s just not the same.

Where This Book Shines

Although I wasn’t exactly impressed with the Narnia inspiration, this book does shine when it comes to the relationship between sisters and how they deal with guild and depression. Philippa is overwhelmed with guilt. Evelyn is depressed because she had to leave the place where she felt most at home and could never return. I enjoyed the second half of the book (where this seems to be the main focus) better than the first part.

The setting, characters, and language of the book were nice enough and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for Narnia fanfiction, then you’re probably better off heading over to AO3 – there are thousands of stories there to choose from, and they don’t have to hide the characters behind false names. However, The Light Between Worlds is much more than just thinly disguised fanfiction. This is a fantastic story about sisters, guilt, and depression, and I recommend it for that aspect.

Tower of Dawn

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Tower of Dawn cover

Tower of Dawn is the sixth book in Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series. Like the other later books in this series, this book is epic in size, but it’s well worth the read.

I was sad to say goodbye to Aelin and her friends to read this book, but a lot goes on in this book that will tie into the big finale when I finally get around to reading Kingdom of Ash.

Chaol and Nesryn have traveled to the Southern continent in hopes of finding a healer that might be able to repair Chaol’s broken body. At the same time, they’re hoping to find some allies to help them in the upcoming war. Here, we find more major worldbuilding going on, as well as some new characters. In a book series this epic, it can be a little difficult to keep track of everyone and every place. Fortunately, there are plenty of clues for those of us who get a little hazy on the details after a while (it’s been a few months since I read the last book with Chaol in it, Queen of Shadows. I can imagine what it would be like if you haven’t read that book since it was first released!).

Chaol’s healer Yrene is talented, but she has a few things against the old king, and she initially takes this out on Chaol. Yrene is a complex character like many other people in this series, and I enjoyed learning about her and her family. Eventually, Yrens is able to see Chaol as more than just the former king’s Captain of the Guard.

The royal family in Tower of Dawn is roughly based on the khaganate, which I thought was pretty cool to see. As a student of history, it was interesting to see elements of this historical civilization come to life.

You won’t want to skip over Tower of Dawn and move straight to Kingdom of Ash, because there are some significant revelations you’ll find in this book. My husband is better at guessing where plots are headed than I am, but I was surprised at some of the things that were revealed. Plus, you want to find out whether Chaol is healed or not.

I don’t think Tower of Dawn was my favorite book in the series, but I still enjoyed it a lot and was glad to read it. Perhaps the only drawback to this book is that 700 pages can be a bit much sometimes. Anyway, if you’ve followed this series so far and liked it, I recommend you continue with this book.

Empire of Storms

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Empire of Storms cover

One of the outstanding books I’ve read this year is Empire of Storms, the fifth installment in the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. A part of me was disappointed to finish the book and move on to Tower of Dawn (although I wasn’t disappointed with that book either). I still have to finish Kingdom of Ash, which I’m looking forward to reading this spring.

Aelin is supposed to be the queen of Terrassin, but not everybody wants to see her that way. Even a girl with a queenly bloodline that can incinerate cities as easily as taking a walk through the park needs supporters, and with the dire situation of the world, she can’t exactly incinerate her way onto the throne. Aelin makes some very shrewd decisions that I’m sure will pay off when we rejoin her in Kingdom of Ash.

Empire of Storms spends a lot of time with different points of view. Sometimes I was disappointed in leaving one POV for another, but the story kept on building and it was great nonetheless. There are many great characters in this book, and even though Chaol is gone from the scene (for now), many of them meet up for an epic showdown towards the end of the book.

The ending of Empire of Storms was absolutely crazy. I’m not sure if I had been Aelin I would have made the same decision she did, but she did what she thought was right and I can’t wait so see how everything works out in Kingdom of Ash. It’s an ending where you are left scratching your head and wondering how they’re going to make it.

There is some mature content in this book that isn’t in the previous ToG books, so I wouldn’t recommend this for younger teens. Aelin and Rowan do find some time alone… and end up enjoying it quite a bit.

The worldbuilding here is epic and as a writer… I just hope that I can do worldbuilding even a fraction as well in my books as in these. The territory is so vast that as a reader (who didn’t binge read the series) I sometimes have difficulty keeping track of all the towns and people, but I always have a general idea of where they are on the map, so I don’t really need to. The world is populated with animals and magical creatures that Lysandra (the shape-shifter) must have had a blast with.

The whole plot is so complex and involved that I can tell it took a lot of planning to create it. But real world wars are complex too… that’s why historians write volumes on events like World War I.

If you’ve enjoyed the previous Throne of Glass books, I recommend you continue with Empire of Storms. I thought it was great and can’t wait to finish the story with Kingdom of Ash soon.

Legend (The Graphic Novel) Is Adorable!

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments
Legend Graphic Novel cover

One of my Christmas presents to myself last year (with my gift card money) was getting a copy of the Legend graphic novels. I’m not really a graphic novel reader, but these were so adorable that I couldn’t pass them up. Besides, as a book reviewer, I’m starting to try new things.

Legend (in case you haven’t read the original novel) is the story of Day, who grew up in a poor family, and June, who grew up in a wealthy family, in the dystopian future country, The Republic. Fun fact: Day is related to Asher Wing from Warcross. Anyway, after June’s brother Metais dies, she goes to look for who she thinks is the killer. Things aren’t exactly as she thinks they are, and they end up on an adventure together.

The first thing that I notice about this book is that it’s adorable. The first few pages show 10-year-old Daniel (Day is a nickname) taking his trial, which is used to determine things like what high school (if any) you get into. 10-year-old Daniel is just so adorable you want to reach into the book and give him a hug, especially when you find out what happens to him.

Most of the book happens after they both turn 15 in this book. Legend the Graphic Novel follows he original storyline fairly accurately, although the order the story is told in had to be altered a bit to fit the format, there is less detail, and it’s not told form the 1st person perspectives of Day and June like the original novels.

One of the things that I appreciate about Legend the Graphic Novel is that it gets a lot of details from the book correct (unlike some movies that I’ve seen of popular movies ::cough cough Divergent::). The hair and eye colors seem accurate, most of the clothing seems accurate; even Kaede’s vine tattoo is correct. As someone who has written Legend fanfiction and strives to make sure I get the details correct, I appreciate that the graphic novel was done so well.

The fourth Legend book, Rebel, is coming out this fall.  If you don’t have time to reread the original series and want to review everything before you read it, you might want to try Legend the graphic novel.  It doesn’t take that long to read, goes over all the major details, and is cute on top of that.  Happy reading!

The Waking Forest

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments
The Waking Forest Cover

I recently had the opportunity to read The Waking Forest by Alyssa Wees (thank you Netgalley). I love that cover! So spooky. I have mixed feelings about the book though.

The Waking Forest is divided into two parts. In part one, the chapters alternate between the story of the Witch of Wishes, who lives in an enchanted forest and grants wishes to visiting children, and a family of homeschoolers who are a little strange (the main character, Rhea, has visions). As the story progresses, you eventually find out what these two storylines have in common. Part two builds on the first part, and I don’t wish to give spoilers.

This book does have a lot of good things going for it. Ms. Wees has a very descriptive style, somewhat like Laini Taylor. Although some of her descriptions are beautiful or clever, I wouldn’t exactly describe her words as beautiful prose like I do with Taylor. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the descriptions, which help the story come to life.

I really enjoyed the first part of the book, where we read about the Witch of Wishes in the forest, who befriends a boy who visits her disguised as a fox, and the family who lives next to the beach and have names that all start with R. It was fun to see the similarities in the stories and try to figure out how they were related. This part of the book would have gotten a solid four stars from me.

After we find out how these two storylines converge, part 2 was… just okay to me. While the descriptive prose remains, the action was a little muddy and I didn’t find it to be all that interesting. Sometimes things were a little confusing.

The other part that I found to be a little confusing was all the names in the family whose names started with R. It was hard to keep track of all of them, and they don’t have a small family. Amazon says this book is only 298 pages. With such a small space devoted to the family, it was really hard to get to know what all of their personalities were like. Fewer family members or more pages devoted to getting to know them would have probably helped with that.

Overall, I thought this story was okay.  I’d consider reading future books by this author, but The Waking Forest isn’t one of the best books I’ve read this month.

Furyborn

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Furyborn cover

When I first heard of Furyborn last spring, it sounded interesting. Two queens fulfilling a prophecy over thousands of years? Sign me up! Then I started to hear mixed reviews and I decided to hold off on it.

My review will be slightly mixed as well.

The first queen, Rielle, seems like a very nice girl. Her family has kept her sheltered because she has magical powers that she has trouble controlling. As a child, her powers got out of control – with deadly results. When she sneaks out of the house and ends up using her powers to save the prince, the whole kingdom makes her go through trials to prove that she’s the prophesied (and eagerly anticipated) Sun Queen. You root for her, but you know from the prologue that she’s actually the Blood Queen – the other prophesied queen that people have dreaded.

The other queen, Eliana, is not even in the nobility in this book. Eliana is an assassin with a strange power: she can’t be damaged. As a reader, you know that she has to be the prophesied Sun Queen, but how? While Rielle seems to be so nice, Eliana is not really.

My thoughts on this book are mixed, probably because it took me a while to warm up to this book. The book switches POVs between the two girls, and for several chapters, just when I start to care about one girl, the POV switches and… I don’t care as much? I’m not sure if it’s because I listened to this in audiobook format and I was a little confused about what was going on or if it just wasn’t amazingly exciting, but it took me a while to get the two girls’ stories straight and become excited about what was going on.

Nevertheless, as the story progressed and I got to know the two girls, I became intrigued. How did sweet Rielle become the monster that the people in the second timeline know her as? How did Eliana the assassin become the Sun Queen? Alas, you won’t find out in this book.

Despite the fact that it took me a while to warm up to Furyborn, I do want to find out what happens next. I won’t rush out to pre-order the next book in the series, and I’ll probably get it from the library, but I do plan on reading it. This book may not be one of the best books I read last year, but it was nevertheless enjoyable.

The Dysasters was Anything But

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

One of the good things about having a real-life friend at work to fangirl over books over is that you can talk about books at work! One of my coworker’s favorite authors is P.C. Cast, but I had never read anything by her. When I saw The Dysasters on Netgalley, I had to apply to review the book. My coworker was so jealous!

Anyway, the book was pretty fun. About as fun as a book featuring disasters can be. I’d consider reading more by this author.

Foster is a girl who has been on the run for the past year. She lives with her foster mom, Cora. As the book begins, they’re supposed to meet someone. That someone just happens to be the cute but annoying jock that Foster had a slight altercation with at the beginning of the evening.

The evening turns out to be… well… a disaster. Soon, Foster and the jock, Tate, are on the run. Oh, and they also discovered that they have this amazing power to control the wind. Foster thought her bio-dad had died, but it turns out that he’s become this evil mad scientist instead. Dun dun dun! They’re being chased and they have to escape four other people that can control the elements.

When they finally get to this place of safety, they discover that there are other people in their shoes that they need to go out and save. Will they be able to do that in time? Read to find out!

There was a lot of death and destruction in this book, but I still saw this book as fun, not dark. Maybe that wasn’t how I was supposed to see it, but that’s how it came across to me. The characters went through a lot of things that should make them grieve, and although they do grieve, they are also involved in trying to save the world. There are pop culture references and they’re singing “Rockin’ Robin”. Foster is afraid of the horses she refers to as “dinosaurs.” I couldn’t really take it too seriously.

I liked the characters, but I don’t know if they were supposed to be taken too seriously either. Tate’s “G-pa” was pretty funny. The villains seemed like the superhero villains from old cartoons. Tate and Foster’s enemies to lovers was superficial but fun.

The cast of characters in The Dysasters was diverse. They came from all over the country, were from different races, and there was even a transgender character.

Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable story and I’d consider reading the second book in the series. It’s probably not what you’re looking for if you’re in the mood for something dark and serious, but if you’re interested in a low fantasy where the characters float to the ground while singing “Moon River” and making out, you might like The Dysasters too.

Queen of Air and Darkness Changes Everything

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Queen of Air and Darkness cover

Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare is the last book of The Dark Artifices series. At 880 pages, this is a monster book. To be honest, it could have probably been two books instead of one. Other than the fact that it was really long and a little exhausting to read (of course, it didn’t help that I read three very long Shadowhunters books in the 9 days prior to starting this book), I loved it.

Thar be spoilers in this book review! Don’t proceed any farther if you don’t want some major spoilers for The Dark Artifices, and perhaps some spoilers for The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices.

When we last left the Shadowhunters, they were in the Clave meeting where Livvy was stabbed. This probably was really frustrating to people reading Lord of Shadows right after it came out, but for those of us who don’t have to wait, we can find out what happens right away. At any rate, Ty is devastated. He doesn’t want to accept her death, and tries to raise her back from the dead. Kit, his best friend, doesn’t want him to do this, but he goes along with his plans, hoping that Ty is going to come to his senses.

The corrupted Nazi-esque Clave is on a rampage, trying to silence anybody that disagrees with them. The people that know the truth are trying to stop them, but for a lot of Queen of Air and Darkness, I had to wonder how they were going to be stopped.

I love the ships in this book. Emma and Julian know that being in love as parabatai is dangerous, but there really isn’t anything they can do about it. They try to stay away from each other, but good luck with that. Christina realizes that she has a thing for both Mark and Kieran, in probably the most interesting love triangle I’ve seen. Both of these storylines will resolve in this book, and we have to wait until The Wicked Powers books come out to see more of them together.

You would think that you’ve seen everything in the world, but you haven’t. Clare continues to add to her world, and we are introduced to the land of Thule in this story: an alternate world where Clary died during the Dark War and the land turns very… dark. Here we are introduced to some alternate versions of characters we already know, like Thule Jace and Thule Sebastian, and another character I won’t mention because spoilers.

There’s a lot to Queen of Air and Darkness and the end of this book changes everything. It doesn’t leave you with a completely massive cliffhanger where you’re going to be upset for the next three years until you can read The Wicked Powers, but after reading this, you’ll know that nothing in the Shadowhunter world you’ve known about so far is going to stay the same.

There’s a lot more to look forward to in The Wicked Powers, whenever it comes out, but until then, there will be plenty of new titles coming out first. These books are so densely packed that I might want to do a reread between now and then. With the size of these massive books, that could take a while.

Lord of Shadows Rules

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Lord of Shadows cover

Right before Cassandra Clare’s Queen of Air and Darkness came out, I had a marathon read of her last books, including Lord of Shadows. It’s the second book in The Dark Artifices series, and I highly recommend it.

Because this book is the second book in the series, there may be spoilers. Also, since the Shadowhunters books tend to build on one another, I also recommend that you start these books with City of Bones (although not my favorite).

There’s a lot going on in this book (which is probably why it’s a whopping 699 pages). But there are certain things that stand out.

The Clave has gone rogue again. Is that any surprise? Some of the people in charge truly remind me of Nazis. They are also quite crafty. If you oppose them, it can’t be good for you. Although a huge plot involves finding The Black Volume of the Dead, because it would be dangerous if it gets in the wrong hands, the Clave’s action keeps the plot driving in the background for the whole story.

The ships in this story are twisty and complicated. Emma and Julian are parabatai and aren’t supposed to be in love, of course, but you can’t really deny your feelings. They certainly try though. Emma decides to conjure a fake relationship with Mark that backfires, because he starts to fall for someone else. Emma and Julian know that something drastic has to be done, but there seem to be no good choices.

The platonic relationships in this story are fantastic as well. I love Kit and Ty together, and I’d love to see them become parabatai in The Wicked Powers series. Then of course Ty and Livvy are close. Dru is going through her own difficulties as being too old to feel like a child, yet not old enough to be thought of as an adult.

The characters spend a lot of time in Faerie in Lord of Shadows. The plot revolves heavily in this area. I love how, even after 10 books, there are always new places to explore in the Shadowhunter’s world.

And the ending! I don’t want to spoil it, but it ends in quite a cliffhanger. Fortunately, I finished this book the day Queen of Air and Darkness arrived, so I didn’t have to wait. After finishing Lord of Shadows, you’ll probably want to dive right into QOAAD, so get them both at the same time if you can.

Overall, this was a great book that I highly recommend. Just get QOAAD at the same time!

Lady Midnight Begins a New Day

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Lady Midnight cover

I went on a Cassandra Clare marathon read right before Queen of Air and Darkness came out. Lady Midnight, of course, is the first book in the most recent of her series, The Dark Artifices.

It’s interesting to see how Young Adult books have changed over the last 18 years or so. You can do that over the course of the Shadowhunter’s Chronicles. Lady Midnight originally came out in 2016. Compare that with City of Bones and you’ll see a huge difference in how YA literature has changed. Not only has Cassandra Clare improved as an author, but what is permitted in a YA book has changed as well.

I could tell when I read the final books of The Mortal Instruments that Emma and Julian should not become parabatai. They did, however, because they didn’t want to be apart from each other. I love them as a couple. Maybe not as much as Clary and Jace or Will and Tessa, but they’re great together anyway. But they’re not supposed to be.

In this story, people are starting to show up dead, and Emma thinks that these deaths might have to do with her parents. The Shadowhunters have to figure out what’s going on — before it’s too late. Complications arise in this story (of course). The Cold Peace is still going on with the fairies, and they send Julian’s brother Mark back — temporarily. If they figure out who’s behind the murders, Mark will be able to choose whether he want’s to stay with his family, or return to the Wild Hunt.

There are so many things I loved about this book. One of the things I thought was well done was the setting, which was Los Angeles. I went to USC, so I know the place well. I loved how well the setting was done.

We have new characters in this book! Cristina is Emma’s new friend from Mexico, Kit is a boy with the sight that finds out he’s actually a shadowhunter, and Mark (although not new) returns from fairie a changed person. We’ve met the Blackthorns before, but it’s been a few years, and they’ve grown up since then.

Lady Midnight was an excellent start to The Dark Artifices and I highly recommend it.