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MORE Amazing Marie Lu News!

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

It seems like every time I get major Marie Lu news that I can’t wait to share with everybody, I’m at work.  I spend my 15 minute breaks on Twitter; that’s when I see them.  I knew Marie Lu had some news to share with us either this week or next, but I couldn’t imagine that she was going to write a FOURTH book to Legend!  I’m so excited!

Oh, and it’s supposed to come out NEXT FALL!  I was a little disappointed last month when Ms. Lu said that Kingdom of Back wouldn’t be coming out until 2020.  Goodreads had been saying it was a 2019 release, so I figured I had over a year to wait for a new book from her.  This might be why there was the delay.  I do have some short stories to read (I plan on reviewing the Slasher Girls and Monster Boys anthology later this month, which has a story by her in it), but we get a whole new book next year. Yay!

Oh, and that’s not the ONLY good news today!  She will have another book called Skyhunter coming out!  It looks like Skyhunter is going to be a duology.

There is an article about the deal in the Washington Post.

So this last 30 days has been an AMAZING reading month for me.  Not only have I read some of the best books this year (Wildcard, Enchantée, Muse of Nightmares, more Mortal Instruments books), I get this news.  When I read this on my last break, I practically floated through the last hour of work!  And of course whenever anybody asked how I was, I told them “outstanding!” or some other thesaurus variant of the word.  If they asked why I was doing so well, I told them about the book, LOL.

Have a wonderful day!

Ever the Brave Was Beautiful

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

Ever the Brave coverI first heard about Ever the Brave when I kept seeing that Once a King was going to come out this fall.  The story sounded really interesting, so I just had to get the books from my library.  I read Ever the Hunted in July (you can read my review here), but I had to wait a lot longer in order to read the second book in the series.  This book was worth the wait.

Since this book is the second in a series, it may contain spoilers for the first book.

Britta might have gotten herself out of immediate danger in Ever the Hunted, but her life has not gone back to normal.  She now has this mysterious bond with King Aodren, and on top of that, he now seems to have the same kind of mysterious connection to her that she used to have with Cohen.  Of course, she’s in love with Cohen, which makes the situation even messier.  To make things worse, the king seems to be developing feelings for Britta.

The danger in Britta and Cohen’s life hasn’t gone away, either.  The Spiriter that was controlling Aodren is now wreaking havoc in the kingdoms of Malam and Shaerden, threatening to destroy the fragile peace between the two countries.  Cohen has to track down this Spiriter, which is causing strain in his relationship to Britta.

Britta eventually discovers that she has to choose between Cohen, who sometimes is a little overprotective of her, and Aodren, who continues to shower her with gifts.

Choice seems to be a pretty big theme in Ever the Brave.  Cohen has to learn that even though he wants to protect his love from all of the dangers of this world, he can’t make that decision for her if he doesn’t want her to feel smothered.  He also feels like he needs to give Britta the freedom to choose between her and Aodren, even if it means that she might not choose him.  I thought it was sweet that he cared enough for her to want her to make that decision, even if it potentially could hurt him in the end.

I loved the ending of Ever the Brave and am looking forward to reading Once a King at some point, even though Britta and Cohen won’t be main characters in that story.  This is a sweet story with a beautiful ending.  I highly recommend it.

Evenfall Fell Short

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

Evenfall CoverI 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.

Really Long Books That I’ve Read

By Brookelorren on 30 Comments

Time for another Top Ten Tuesday!  Today’s Topic is “Longest Books I’ve Ever Read” but how does one figure that one out?  I’ve read some really long books in my life.  Since I can’t pinpoint the longest books I’ve read in my lifetime, I guess you’ll have to settle about reading about some of the really long books that I’ve read.  They’re all over 800 pages long!

A lot of these are history books because they can be really long.

American Patriot's Bible coverThe Bible might be the longest book that most of us ever read.  Maybe.  I’m guessing that the majority of people around today have never actually read the Bible from cover to cover.  I try to every year, but I’m failing miserably this year.  I have different editions that I read (one year I read it in Spanish for a challenge and to improve my Spanish language skills).  The American Patriot’s Bible is 1568 pages and contains a lot of interesting facts about the founding of the United States.

History of Modern Europe coverA History of Modern Europe – at 1515 pages, this is a really long book!  It’s definitely not something that you’re going to read over the weekend.  It was really good though.  A lot of history that I’ve read over the years either deals with world history or American history.  This one focuses solely on Europe, which has had plenty of its own problems!

Atlas Shrugged CoverAtlas Shrugged might very well be the longest fictional book that I read.  This edition is 1188 pages!  It is not an easy read, either.  This particular book took me months to read.  I wasn’t blogging about books at the time, but even if I were to reread this book today, I think it would take me a while to get through.  The writing is not easy.

A Dance With Dragons coverI’m sure that there will be a lot of George R.R. Martin books on Top Ten Tuesday posts this week.  The edition of A Dance with Dragons that I read was 1125 pages!  No wonder they took me so long to read!  I read the five books that were published while I was at work last year; I was reading this series on my lunch break for months!

A Storm of Swords coverThe edition of A Storm of Swords that I read was 973 pages.  Even though these books are long, they were a lot easier to read than Atlas Shrugged.  They’re still long enough that I don’t plan on reading them again until the last book comes out.  Well, maybe if Winds of Winter comes out ten years from now, I might reread the series before that, but if it’s out in another two or three years (LOL) then I’ll probably wait on the reread.

Patriot's History of the US coverA Patriot’s History of the United States is another very long book, with 960 pages to it.  This one focuses on the history of the United States, from its discovery by the Europeans to fairly recently.  Although long, it was well-written and easy to read.

History of the Ancient World coverThe History of the Ancient World is 896 pages.  Susan Wise Bauer’s writing is interesting and easy to read.  Even though this book took me a little while to get through, it didn’t take me months like some of the more difficult books on this list did.

From Dawn to Decadence coverFrom Dawn to Decadence is 895 pages (at least the original hardback edition that I read was) and took me a very long time to read.  It’s not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination.  I had aspartame poisoning the first time I tried reading it, which made it difficult for me to remember details of the book as I read it.  Years later, I tried reading it again, and I was able to finish it.  I read it right around the time that the author died (he was really old at the time).

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire coverThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a long book, even in the abridged version, which is what I read a long time ago.  This Penguin Classic edition was 848 pages.  It took me months to read this.  Someday, I hope to read the unabridged version of this book, but that’s 3,674 pages — and it’s not easy reading, either!  That will probably be the longest book that I’ll ever read.

The Creators coverThe Creators by Daniel J. Boorstin is 832 pages long.  I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I did The Discoverers, but this was a good book.  For a book this long, it didn’t take too much time for me to finish.  Looking this book up on Goodreads, I discovered that there’s yet another book in this series — The Seekers — that I had never heard of before.  I had to add that to my TBR, because these books are amazing.

So there you have it: ten über long books that I’ve read.  I have some really long books on my TBR, but most of them (with the exception of Kingdom of Ash) are not quite as long as these!

Next week I will probably write about settings in books that I’d like to visit.  The topic is on bookstores and libraries I’d like to visit, but since I can only think of three of those, I’ll be switching up the topic a bit.

Muse of Nightmares is a Dream

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

Muse of Nightmares coverMuse 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 6 Comments

Everless coverI 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.

Authors I’d Love to Meet (Top Ten Tuesday)

By Brookelorren on 30 Comments

Hooray for another Top Ten Tuesday!  Today we’re going to talk about Authors that I’d Love to Meet.  For this question, I’m not necessarily going to talk about authors that I’d like to wait in line at a bookstore to get an autograph from… because that would basically include any author whose books I like.

Today’s list includes authors that I’d like to hang out with for the day.  Maybe go to their house, have over for dinner (assuming that I wasn’t cooking and there’d be maid service involved) or just chill.  I’m also assuming that I wouldn’t be a blithering idiot when hanging out with them and we could just hang out like normal people (that’s a big assumption, but let’s say a little magic is involved for that.  It’s not like any of these fantasy scenarios are going to happen in the first place).

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.  Thank you once again!

1. Marie Lu

Is this one really a surprise?  It probably shouldn’t be if you’ve read this blog for a while.  I’m not exactly sure I’d want her to know how much fanfiction I’ve written based on her books because that might be embarrassing though.  We went to the same college, so I guess there’s a couple minutes of conversation that we could have, LOL.  Ms. Lu seems like a really nice person who cares about people.  At least that’s how she comes across in her books and tweets.

2. Veronica Roth

I had to also include my other auto-buy author, Veronica Roth.  Her book that’s expected to be released in 2020 was the first 2020 book on my TBR.  I love everything that she’s written so far, even the short story that she’s written that made it into Summer Days and Summer Nights.  Okay, not chapter 50 of Allegiant, but I try not to think of that one.  Ms. Roth doesn’t post a lot to Twitter, so I don’t really know if we’d have much to talk about other than her books, but I suppose I could ask her about how she likes Chicago.

3. Cassandra Clare

I’ve been reading a lot of The Mortal Instruments lately, and I think they’re really good, but that’s not the main reason why I’d want to meet her.  I’d love for her to show me her library!  She posted a picture of her workspace on Twitter once and it was only part of her library, and it was gorgeous!  Plus, her bio says that she’s travelled a lot.  She also got her start by writing fanfiction, so it would be cool to talk to her about that.  Plus… maybe I could ask her if she’d convince her publisher to release R-rated versions of some of her books ;-).  I know she writes those extra scenes and posts them on Tumblr.

4. Alice Reeds

Alice Reeds isn’t well-known, but she’s the author of Echoes, which I reviewed earlier this year.  Why would I want to meet her?  She lived in Germany for a long time.  She speaks both German and Russian, and so do I.  I think that she would be really interesting to talk to.

5. Paper Fury

So if I met her today I’d have to apologize for not reading her book yet, but I did buy it!  She seems so nice on her blog and on Twitter, plus I’m pretty sure she lives in Australia.  I love Australia!  I spent five weeks there on an exchange with the Australian military, and it was awesome.  I got to see quite a few cities on the East coast, from Canberra to Cairns.  So I think she’d be fascinating to meet.

6.  Sabaa Tahir

Not only do I love her Ember in the Ashes books, but she seems like a really nice person on Twitter (if you’ve liked or responded to one of my tweets, your chances of getting on today’s list go up drastically).  After A Reaper at the Gates came out, she stayed at a few hotels that were haunted.  I’d have to ask her if she’s stayed at any haunted hotels recently!

7. Astrid Scholte

I haven’t read her book, Four Dead Queens, that is supposed to come out next year (although I’d love an ARC), but she seems like a really nice person on Twitter.  We could probably talk about our favorite books, and I could ask her about what it’s like to get her first book published, because why not?  I’d love to do that someday.

8. Laura E. Weymouth

While I haven’t read her book The Light Between Worlds (it isn’t even out yet), she seems like a really nice person that I’d like to meet; we’ve tweeted back and forth a few times.  Plus, she lives on a big farm or something that would probably be pretty cool to visit.

9. Laini Taylor

Strange the Dreamer is a wonderful book and I’m looking forward to Muse of Nightmares as well (out today!).  She also seems to be fairly intelligent when it comes to politics, although I’m sure there’s a lot that we wouldn’t agree on.  But what’s the fun with talking to an echo chamber?

10. Kiersten White

Here’s another author whose books I haven’t read yet (although I did buy a couple of her books, LOL) but I’d like to meet her.  She’s very encouraging on Twitter.  I don’t know a whole lot about her other than that, but if she came over to my house for dinner, we could talk books!

So that’s this week’s Top Ten Tuesday.  What authors would you like to meet?  Would you like to hang out with them and pick their brains, or do you think that meeting them while they sign your books is intimidating enough?  Leave a link to your TTT and I’ll visit back!

Next week, I’m posting some of the longest books I’ve ever read!  I don’t know if it’s the very longest books I’ve ever read, but I did find ten books that I read ranging from over 800 to more than 1500 pages long.  I’m glad not all books are that long!

September 2018 Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on 8 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)

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King's Cage coverKing’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

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Glass Sword coverI 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.