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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.

The Iliad Graphic Novel

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The Iliad

Let’s face it. The classics can be difficult to read. When I saw The Iliad in graphic novel form available on Netgalley, I decided to read it. It’s been a book I’ve been meaning to read for years, but have never gotten around to it.

This book makes it easier to read The Iliad, but I have to be honest with you: this book was still difficult for me. The book has a huge cast of characters, some of whom only show up on one page. This person dies, that god helps this hero out… it’s a little difficult to keep track of. In addition, there are a lot of place names to try to keep track of. After reading this book one time, I still don’t feel like I have a good grasp of this part of the Trojan War.

The pictures are pretty good, but they happen to be on a grand scale, which makes it more difficult to convey well through art on a book-sized sheet of paper. In the places where there are a lot of soldiers or ships, the pictures seem a little busy. I’m not sure what could be done about that though.

The book seems to be true to the original story, although I never managed to read it, I do know a decent amount of Greek mythology. I was surprised to discover that the story of the Trojan Horse is not part of The Iliad though. I would have liked to have seen that.

If you’re curious about this classic, The Iliad graphic novel is an easier way to understand the story. With the huge cast of characters and all the customs that are completely different than ours, it still isn’t the easiest book to read, but it’s certainly easier than the original Homer.

Brenna Morgan and the Iron Key

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Brenna Morgan and the Iron Key cover

Recently, I read Brenna Morgan and the Iron Key.

Last summer, I was on Twitter and there was a discussion about things that it would be really cool to happen to you as a writer. Katie Masters (who is really nice) wrote that it would be really cool if someone wrote fanfiction of her work. So I said “I’ll write a fanfic for you.” Because that’s one of the things that I do. Write fanfiction.

I didn’t know that she already had a book out until months later! So that’s how I happened to end up picking up Brenna Morgan and the Iron Key. It was a good book, and I’m looking forward to reading more stories from her.

Brenna’s family moves around a lot. Her parents are writers and she’s homeschooled. When they stop by Ireland for four months, she’s immediately drawn into an adventure involving fairies… both good and bad. She has to protect a girl, but she doesn’t know who she is or where she’s located. And there’s this cute boy, Patrick, that is her closest neighbor that she discovers also sees fairies.

There were a lot of things I liked about the story. We don’t get too many stories set in Ireland, so I really liked that. There’s a wee little bit of Irish in this book… Irish is the second-most difficult language that I’ve ever tried learning (Hebrew is slightly more difficult for me) but I thought it was cool to see it here. And no, you don’t have to speak any Irish to enjoy this book.

The fairies in this book share many similarities, although they are slightly different from, the fairies you might find in The Cruel Prince or The Shadowhunter’s books. These fairies are tricky, but they could potentially lie.

I liked the adventure in this book. After Brenna agrees to protect the girl, she has to find out who the girl is, where she is, and how to protect her. With the help of Patrick and some new fairy friends, she discovers the answers and even gets into a couple of fights. This propels the story forward.

The relationships in this story are good too. Brenna is close to her mom, and she seems to share a typical mother-daughter relationship with her. Mom threatens to share embarrassing baby pictures with her, cajoles her into going to school on time (they decide that she’ll attend school while she’s in Ireland), and is upset when her adventures take her out too late at night. She has a slow-blossoming love relationship with Patrick, a fairy that might be taking an interest in her, and a friendship that she develops at school.

It’s not the perfect book. It has the feel of a debut at times. There were a few places where it should have said “breathe” but said “breath” instead, but I’ve seen minor things like that in books from more established authors as well. Overall, the book was good.

I did write that fanfic too, if you’re interested. “Brenna Morgan and the Silver Portal” is a crossover fanfic that occurs after this book, where Brenna is in college, Patrick is visiting her, and they just happen to run into Jace and Clary and get portaled into Erenya (my world from the book I’m writing) and have to go on a quest in order to get back.

Spectacle was Spectacular!

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments
Spectacle cover

2019 is already turning out to be an amazing year for books. I recently read Spectacle by Jodie Lynn Zdrock. It was a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. I was fortunate enough to be provided with an Advanced Review Copy from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Nathalie is a normal girl living in 19th century France. Or so she thinks. She recently got a summer job at Le Petit Journal writing the daily morgue report. In Paris back in these days evidently, unidentified bodies would be put on display at the public morgue for people to identify (and gawk at). Nathalie’s job is to visit the morgue every day and report on what she finds there.

Recently, there has been a murder. When Nathalie goes to the morgue to report on it, she touches the glass separating the body from the viewing public, and has a vision of what happened. She’s freaked out by this, of course. Evidently, she says something while she’s having the vision, but she doesn’t know what she says. She also ends up with memory loss after she has the vision. The book is written from third person limited perspective, so as a reader, we know what her lost memories are, even though she doesn’t.

As the summer progresses, there are more murders. Her ability to view the murders was not just a one time thing. She is torn by wanting to help, and accepting the accompanying memory loss, and wanting to avoid these visions. She’s also afraid that she might inadvertently attract the killer’s attention herself.

Nathalie eventually discovers where this ability came from, but I’ll leave that as something for you to discover when you read this book. Her ability is connected to the murders, which become more personal as the story progresses.

I didn’t want to put down this book, because I wanted to find out who the killer was and see him come to justice. I wanted Nathalie to find out more about her gift. While reading the book, I tweeted “If only I didn’t have to sleep! Spectacle by @jlzdrok is amazing! I’m 69% of the way through it and darn it… if I could get by on less sleep to finish it I would! You have to read it.” I think that’s a good recommendation for the book.

Spectacle won’t be released until February 12th, but you can pre-order it today.

The Unbroken Hearts Club

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The Unbroken Hearts Club by Brooke Carter is a short novel/novella about a girl and her father recovering from her mother’s death from Huntington’s Disease. She’s having difficulty in school, and has to finish her media project in order to graduate. Her best friend Cole is helping her get through this time.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an Advanced Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Unbroken Hearts Club was an enjoyable enough story. Lo (short for Logan) is an interesting character who enjoys taking photos and bonds with Cole over their shared passion for 90’s movies. Cole would like their relationship to be more, but Lo is having difficulty feeling much of anything after the death of her mother.

I thought that Lo and her father’s grief seemed realistic. While Lo turned into herself, her father sought the companionship of other people (which is why he allows a grief support group to meet in their basement). We don’t always have the same reactions to grief, and I like how this book shows that.

Although the book was enjoyable overall, this book did have a few problems. It probably could have used a little more editing to make the prose tighter. Some of the conversations seem a little off. Lo and Cole’s relationship issues seemed to resolve themselves a little unrealistically. These were minor issues that didn’t keep me from enjoying the story, but it did keep it from being a four-star read.

Although The Unbroken Hearts Club is a cute story, it’s not going to be one of my favorite books this year.  It’s not available yet, but it is available for pre-order.  It is scheduled to be released on January 29th.

Enchantée was Enchanting

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Enchantée coverEnchantée is an amazing book!  I had a feeling that I would love this book when I first started hearing about it, and I was certainly not disappointed.  This book was so amazing that, with about 30 minutes left in the book, I actually considered coming to work late so I could finish it.  The responsible part of me prevailed; I ended up going to work on time and finishing it at lunch.  When I finished the book and started putting my things away to go back to work, the smile this book left me was so bright, one of my co-workers thought I was going home.  It’s that good!

Netgalley gave me an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you!

I probably should add a little background information on myself because it might influence how much I love this book.  I love history.  Last year, I took a class on Coursera about the French Revolution.  Part of the charm of this book to me was seeing this part of history come to life.  There’s a lot in this book that is historically accurate, and I love that about this book.  While I loved the historical aspect of the book, it’s not a central feature of the story.  The French Revolution is in the backdrop of this powerful story of love, magic, and illusion.

Camille is our heroine.  Her family has fallen on hard times, as it has for most Parisians.  Her brother is an abusive drunk, and they’re behind on their rent.  Sophie, her younger sister, is an excellent hatmaker who dreams of marrying into nobility.

Although everything seems bleak, Camille and Sophie’s lives change when Camille helps a couple of balloonists with their runaway balloon.  Their lives further change when Camille chooses to use la magie to transform herself into an aristocrat and start gambling at Versailles.

She falls in love with Lazare, one of the balloonists.  When she discovers that he’s actually an aristocrat and sees him at Versailles, things become complicated in her life.  To top it all off, the Vicomte de Séguin seems to have taken an interest in her, and Camille doesn’t want to have anything to do with him.

With a half hour left to go in the story (there were no page numbers in my book, just approximate reading time), I was wondering how Ms. Trelease was going to pull off a satisfying ending.  Camille was in an almost impossible situation, and I didn’t know how her life was going to end in anything but disaster.  This was either going to be one of the best books that I read for the first time in 2018, or it was going to have a disappointing ending for me like Allegiant chapter 50.  I was not disappointed.  The ending was more delicious than I could have even imagined.  The ending of Enchantée made me want to perfect the ending of my own novel that I was outlining at the time.

J’aime Enchantée so much!  The writing was magical.  The characters were amazing.  I loved Camille and Lazare together, and I love how Camille cared for her sister.  This story had me hooked from the very beginning.

Enchantée will be released on February 5th.  I highly recommend this book.  It is one of the best books I read last year, and I definitely plan on reading it again someday.

The Wicked King was Diabolically Good

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The Wicked King cover

The Wicked King, by Holly Black, was sitting in my mailbox yesterday, and after reading The Cruel Prince, I had to read it right away. It was an un-putdownable book. After finishing it, my first question was “How long until the next Folk of the Air book again?” The next book, The Queen of Nothing, can’t come soon enough, if you ask me.

Because The Wicked King is the second book in a trilogy, there may be spoilers for The Cruel Prince in this review.

When we last left Jude and Cardan, Jude had managed to place Cardan on the throne as High King of Faerie. It was a scheme to eventually put her brother Oak on the throne while keeping her foster father, Madoc, from having control of the realm. Instead, she was actually the one in control, with Cardan as her puppet king. When we join them at the beginning of this book, Jude is acting as Cardan’s seneschal, and he has to do anything that she commands.

The two are no longer enemies in school. They spend their days running a kingdom where its inhabitants have to be truthful, even if they are scheming and deceptive. They still see themselves as enemies, but they have to work together nonetheless.

And they still just happen to have this weird attraction to each other. Which I love from a reader’s perspective.

It’s been five months since Cardan pledged to be obedient to Jude, and she can feel the months trickling away. Sooner than she’d like, he will be released from his promise, and he can do what he’d like again. Oak still won’t be old enough to rule. What then? Jude is concerned about all of this, when threats come to her, Cardan, and Oak from the Queen of the Undersea. She wants him to marry her daughter, Nicasia. And that’s all I’m going to say, because you’ll want to find out what happens for yourself.

The book was well-written. The prose slides through your mind like you’re watching a movie, and you forget it’s even there. Ms. Black brings the characters and the setting to life, and even though it was getting late as I read this, I just could not put it down. It’s almost as if I was in Faerie dancing: once you start, you can’t stop until it’s over.

At the same time, the ending! It was a little unexpected, but I absolutely loved it. It didn’t exactly end in a cliffhanger, but I wanted more. Immediately. I must have the next book!

Needless to say, I highly recommend The Wicked King. It’s the best book that I’ve finished all year (so far). Never mind that it’s January 9th and I’ve only finished three books. I have a good feeling that The Wicked King will end up on the list of my favorite books of 2019 anyway.

So when does The Queen of Nothing come out?  Because we needs it!  I will definitely try to get an ARC of the next book, because I need to find out what happens as soon as I can!

Here and Now and Then (Read It)

By Brookelorren on 10 Comments

Here and Now and Then coverBack to the Future was one of the most popular movies of the 1980s.  Here and Now and Then is a book that reminds me a little bit about that movie.  The book has time travel, having to avoid time paradoxes, and the driving need to save family members.  I recently had the opportunity to read this book, and I highly recommend that you read it too.

I was provided with an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Kin is a time traveler from the year 2142.  I wonder if all of these authors are trying to tell us something, because the epilogue to Champion ends in 2142 as well.  Hmmm…  Anyway, the time traveling program is classified, so he’s not supposed to tell his family members and loved ones about it.  None of this would be a problem, until he gets stuck in our time period.  For years.

He ends up being stuck in our time for long enough that he gets a job, finds a wife, and has a daughter.  And he lives happily ever after in our time, right?  Not quite.  Eventually, the people from 2142 figure out when he is, and they come back to rescue him, even though, at this point, he doesn’t want to be rescued.

So what happens to a time traveler’s family after they’re left behind?

The remainder of Here and Now and Then deals with the consequences of his life in our present.  Kin is heartbroken over losing his family.  When he looks into the past to find out what happened to them, he doesn’t like what he sees, and tries to change it.  Of course, the Temporal Corruption Bureau has something to say about that when they find out…

Not only does Kin have to deal with what happened to his family, he also has to reacquaint himself to the future he left behind.  To the fiancée he forgot about when he was living in our time.  The time he spent in our time changed him.  Will he be able to reconnect with the life he left behind?

You’ll just have read the book to find out how this all turns out.  I was very happy about the ending.  I think you will be too.  It tied the Kin of our time with the Kin of the future together in a nice way.

Here and Now and Then will probably interest adult readers, as the protagonist is a parent dealing with a fiancée and a teenage child; however, the content is appropriate for all ages.

The Cruel Prince Is Magical

By Brookelorren on 8 Comments
Cruel Prince Cover

One of the most popular books of 2018 (according to Goodreads readers) was Holly Black’s book, The Cruel Prince.  I had to wait forever for it to become available on my library’s waiting list, and it was so good, I ended up buying the hardcover during Amazon’s Black Friday sale anyway.

The book drew me in right from the beginning.  The text was inviting, and the book starts with… a murder.  From there, the story continues to stay interesting.

The story revolves around a set of sisters.  The oldest, Vivi, was half faerie.  The two younger twins, Jude and Taryn, are human.  After their parents are murdered by Vivi’s biological father, they are taken to live in faerie.

Jude and Taryn don’t exactly fit in.  The prince, Cardan, along with his friends, treat them cruelly.  Despite this, Jude wants to be a warrior among the faerie.  She has the temperament for it.

The king is expected to pass on his throne, and several of his children are conspiring to get it.  As with a lot of transitions of power, this one might come with some surprises.  Jude becomes involved in one conspiracy, only to find that her father is involved in some shady dealings of his own.  You won’t want to put down this book as you find out what happens.

There were a lot of things that I loved about this book.  First, the writing is great.  It’s hard to explain why, I just could feel how it drew me in.  Second, the setting and characters were great.  I haven’t read too many books set in faerie, but that didn’t matter, reading this book.  The characters weren’t flat good-guy or bad-guy types; they all had a little of both to them, just like real life.  The plot was also great.

The Cruel Prince was one of my favorite books from 2018 for a reason.  I’m looking forward to reading The Wicked King when it comes out as well.