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.
Today is Friday again, so you know what I’m going to do… fangirl! Today we’re going to talk about my favorite book I read in February. Fangirling on Friday is hosted by Books in the Skye!
And my favorite book from last month was… Four Dead Queens! I saved the best for last in February, considering this book didn’t come out until the 26th and I technically didn’t finish it until 2:30 AM on March 1st. But I hadn’t gone to bed yet, so I still consider it to be part of February.
Anyway, I read eight books in February, and while a few of them were very good, there were three that were just “meh”. So overall, it wasn’t a great month, but Four Dead Queens was definitely one of the highlights.
I had been hearing about this book since last May, and that’s a lot of early buzz for a debut author. I was a little bit nervous to start it, but I was not disappointed.
The book takes place in Quadara, which is a unique world where the inhabitants live in different quadrants and have different traits (a little like Divergent). While I first thought all the different queens and quadrants would be confusing, it really wasn’t.
The ending had something of an Enchantée vibe to it, where I knew the character had to get out of the mess somehow but the pages were ticking down and… how was this going to end?
Anyway, this isn’t my review to it, I just want to say how much I loved it, and I’m glad that it lived up to it’s hype!
Next week, for Dr. Seuss week, we’re talking about children’s books! I think.
February was a short month, and so not quite as much happened this month, but we’ll see what I did do:
Books Read:
After such an amazing reading month in January, February was kind of “meh” for me. There were a few bright spots but a few that were just okay (that was almost half of them). I’ve read 7 1/2 books this month (so far). I fully expect to finish reading Four Dead Queens today, so I’m putting it here, even though I’m not 100% done.
Hundreds – Pepper Winters
Second Star – J.M. Sullivan
Tower of Dawn – Sarah J. Maas
The Iliad (graphic novel) – Gareth Hinds
Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo
The Waking Forest – Alyssa Wees
The Dysasters – P.C. and Kristin Cast
Four Dead Queens – Astrid Scholte
Blog Stats:
Twitter has been really weird this month. I’ve been hovering around 1,932 followers for weeks now. I’ll get followers and lose them. Don’t know why.
Blog users have been fairly steady.
Writing:
I finished the first round of editing on The Brightness of Shadow this month. It’s going slower than I’d like it to, but even though I’d like to query early summer, there isn’t a deadline or anything. I don’t want to send this thing out until it’s ready. I read the first page to my critique group and they liked it, and then I went and changed a few things and made it better… so I think the first page would be ready to go out, but there’s still a lot of work to do on the remaining ~300 pages.
Life:
My daughter is back from the hospital, so I don’t have to spend every Sunday and Tuesday afternoon visiting her. Since I can see her every day now.
I’m teaching Spanish this semester, and I’m taking a writing class to work on TBoS. So life is teaching, working, getting ready to teach, writing, tweeting. Hope to get our house refinanced soon so I can work at home again.
We got our taxes done! Last year I owed about three months of our salary and we had to set up a payment plan (a job loss caused us to make less money at the end of the year than at the beginning). This year, we got a huge refund, and that basically is going to pay for everything we owe the IRS. So that will be paid off. Which is good, I’d rather owe money to Vinny who might break my legs or not paying him.
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.
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.
Today is Top Ten Tuesday, and the topic is supposed to be “Places Mentioned in Books That I’d Like to Visit” but I actually did that topic in October, and I’m not sure too much has changed since then. So I’m going to go the opposite direction and do places I DON’T want to visit. Some of the places I wouldn’t want to visit are dependent on the time frame too. If that’s the case, I’ll mention that.
I suppose if they do the topic of “Bookish Places I Don’t Want to Visit” as an official topic in a few months, maybe I’ll have more places I do want to visit by then. Anyway, as always, TTT is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.
The setting of Red Queen – Nope. It might be an okay place ten years after the conclusion of War Storm, but during the series, I don’t think so. There’s a war going on, and it doesn’t really matter if you’re a red or a silver, it’s not really an appealing place. I think I’ll skip a vacation here.
Pre-Revolutionary War France (Enchantée) – There are a lot of historical places I’d like to visit, but if I were to visit the time period of Enchantée, I’d want to do it as an observer only. This would have been a nightmare of a place. First, if you’re poor, you’re probably starving. The crops had been terrible and there really wasn’t enough food for everybody. If you were rich, you were expected to be the king’s lapdog. No thanks. I wouldn’t mind seeing this place in a holodeck as a ghost where nobody could see me, but I don’t really want to live here.
Ukraine during the Holodomor (Red Famine). Another real place and real time period I wouldn’t want to visit, except as one of those ghosts that couldn’t interact or be seen by anybody else. The Holodomor was a time period in the last century where Stalin tried to starve the Ukrainians because they wouldn’t go along with his farm collectivization program. I haven’t read this book yet, but I know enough about this ugly little period of history that I don’t want to go there.
Several locations in The Last Year of the War. I would not have wanted to be set to one of the Japanese/German internment camps that the United States set up during World War II, despite the propaganda videos that show how happy the people were in them (I’m sure they weren’t). Then, I wouldn’t want to be in Germany or Japan during the end of World War II or right afterwards. I have a German textbook that was printed in the 1970s and even then, local calls were still expensive to make and most people didn’t have phones. That was 30 years after the war ended! So no, I think I’ll avoid taking a trip to this location.
Australia of A Thousand Perfect Notes. I absolutely adore Australia. I spent five weeks there many years ago, and it was wonderful. I spent time in Sydney, Cairns, Brisbane, even went to Canberra… and I loved it. But the people in A Thousand Perfect Notes have really rough lives. I’d love to visit Australia again someday, bu I’ll skip this particular neighborhood, if at all possible.
Weep of Strange the Dreamer. I’d love to visit Lazlo’s library, but Weep would have been a terribly depressing place. There’s this big monstrous metal structure hanging over the city, casting a shadow over the whole place, the whole town has recent memories of how the gods used to steal the people away, no thanks. I might want to visit the setting of this series after the conclusion of Muse of Nightmares, but not before.
Thule, Queen of Air and Darkness. I love the Los Angeles setting of The Dark Artifices, but I wouldn’t want to live in Thule, which is an alternate world that split off when… well, I wont give spoilers, but something bad happened during The Dark War in Thule. We’ll see more of Thule in The Wicked Powers, which I’m glad about, but I don’t want to visit Thule, even if I want to read about it.
The world of An Ember in the Ashes. I doubt it matters whether you are in a powerful position or not in this world, it seems like a terrible place to live. You’d always live in fear, and war comes to the land. Maybe this place won’t be so bad after Ember 4 (I don’t know), but as it stands now, I’ll stay away.
Brazil of Never Stop Walking. There are probably a lot of wonderful places to visit in Brazil. I wouldn’t pass up a trip there if offered. However, the particular locations that Christina Rickardsson talks about in her memoir… I’ll stay very far away from. Places where corrupt police shoot children, where kids live on the street and are vulnerable to exploitation or might have to kill to live… I’ll stay away from there.
Germany before World War II (Defying Hitler). Maybe Germany would be a good place to avoid entirely between say… 1900 and 1960? But I would’t want to spend too much time there in the days leading up to World War II, when people were trying to live with runaway inflation. After inflation was under control, they had to live with Adolph Hitler’s rise to power. No thanks.
So there you have it. Ten places mentioned in books that I wouldn’t want to visit. I look forward to seeing the places that you would like to visit, or maybe you went another direction like I did.
The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner is a really sweet story about two friends, one German and the other Japanese. I have to warn you though, you’ll want to bring tissues with you when you read this. I received an Advanced Reader Copy free in exchange for an honest review.
The title of this book refers to two wars that Elise ended up going through: the literal war that she lived through during her teenage years, and the war against Alzheimer’s disease taking her in her twilight years. She might not be able to remember why she walked into a room sometimes, but she can remember what she was doing during World War II.
Elise ends up in one of the American internment camps that were set up during World War II to house Japanese and German people that the government thought were threats. This is where she meets her best childhood friend, Mariko. Towards the end of the war, they are forced apart, never to see each other again. Until finally, right before Alzheimer’s is about to claim Elise and she’ll never have another opportunity, Elise finds her old friend on Google and makes a spontaneous trip to see her (hoping she won’t forget why she went on the trip in the first place).
The Last Year of the War primarily deals with their story as children. It’s easy to forget that this is a fictional story. Even though Elise and Mariko weren’t real, people really did live through circumstances just like theirs. The choices they had to make weren’t always happy ones, because it was a really dark time in history, especially if you were German or Japanese.
I cried a lot while reading this book. The passages from elderly Elise’s point of view were so sad, because in them you watched her memories creep away. Then when she finally sees her old friend… more tears. I didn’t cry much during the parts where Elise recalls her childhood during the war, even though they went through rough times, because I knew it would all work out for her.
This is a book I highly recommend, especially if you’re looking for a good friendship story or you want to see the world through the eyes of someone living through World War II. Even though it’s a fictional story, there is so much truth in this book that it will definitely help you see a part of our history that hopefully the world will never end up repeating.
It’s Friday again, so it’s time to do a little fangirling. On today’s edition of Fangirling on Friday (hosted by Books in the Skye) we’re talking about slow burn romances. It’s still February, after all!
An Ember in the Ashes was one of the first books that came to my mind when I thought about this topic. Elias and Laia have been interested in each other for what… nearly three books now? Something always seems to keep them apart. I don’t want to give spoilers away though.
Ms. Tahir better allow them to at least stay together at the end, but I’m pretty nervous. She’s always talking about all the characters she’s killing in Ember 4. Once she posted a list of all the people who were dead or hurt, with just the last fraction of a letter showing. I have a guess about who one of the dead people will be, but I’m not saying. She could have change it by now anyway.
The Rose Society and The Midnight Star feature a slow burn romance between Adelina Amouteru and Magiano. I was surprised (and a little sad) at the end of The Young Elites at what happened at the end of that book, but the surprise turned out to be a happy one after all.
However, Magiano and Adelina are friends for over a year between the end of The Rose Society and the beginning of The Midnight Star. Magiano is a very patient boy, I tell you. Anyway, I just love those two together… I love them so much, I’m writing a fanfic from Magiano’s perspective and another AU fanfic where they meet over World of Warcraft.
How appropriate that I get to fangirl about Fangirl today. This is an adorable story and I loved how Cath and _____ grew to be a couple. No spoilers though, because there’s more than one option if you haven’t read the book yet.
“Midnights,” a short story by Rainbow Rowell, is also a kind of slow burn romance, as it takes the place over several years (even though it’s a short story). It’s absolutely adorable.
The final book I want to fangirl over today is Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth. I’m excited that The End and Other Beginnings is going to have two Carve the Mark short stories in it! Akos and Cyra are a great couple, but since they start out as enemies it’s understandable that it takes a while for them to warm up to each other. Lately I’ve really wanted to read this duology again, since I’ve only read The Fates Divide once (on release day last year) and I’d love to read their story again before Ms. Roth’s new book comes out. October first! Yay! That’s going to be an amazing publishing day.
So there are some books that I really loved with some couples that it seems like ages before they become a couple. What are your favorite couples? I’ll see you again next week with my favorite book I read in February!
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.
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!
