All posts tagged book reviews

Champion (the Graphic Novel) is Cute

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The third book in Marie Lu’s Legend series is Champion. I bought Champion the Graphic Novel with some of my Christmas money. It was well-done, stayed true to the original, and is a pretty quick read.

In both the original book and in Champion the Graphic Novel, the Colonies are winning the war against the Republic. The colonies are angry because the Republic’s biological warfare has unwittingly unleashed a disease that nobody has a cure for. They think Eden might have the cure in his blood… but Day doesn’t want the Republic touching him again.

Day not only has to worry about his little brother, he also has to worry about his own mortality and perhaps even June’s life as well. There’s a lot of political maneuvering at the end of this book, but I won’t give it away. I will say that this book does end in a little heartbreak, but there’s hope too. Life after Legend (I and II) and the Rebel quotes I have seen just tell me that it’s only temporary heartbreak. The ending didn’t leave me unhappy like the ending of Allegiant did (although it did make me want to write fanfiction).

The graphic novel doesn’t go into as much detail as the original Champion does. It doesn’t touch on how Day is upset that the wealthy people get preferential treatment in the evacuations, nor does it reveal who the true patient zero is for this strain of the virus (and neither will I because spoilers) but it does cover most of the big points in the book. Both books end the same way, so you’ll be ready to read Rebel this fall after reading this book (although Prodigy the Graphic Novel doesn’t have the scene where Day talks about how he wanted their story to begin so it’s not quite as sweet).

If it’s been a few years since you last read Champion and you don’t really want to spend a lot of time reading the whole Legend series before Rebel comes out, I recommend this book. I might let my boy borrow this series. It takes him a lot longer than it takes me to read a book, and he was enjoying Legend the other day on audiobook when we were in the car together, so this might be a good way for him to become acquainted with the series.

Although the graphic novel isn’t a complete replacement for reading the original books, it is a lot of fun. I recommend it.

Blood Heir – The Book and the Controversy

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments
Blood Heir cover

I was so excited a little over a month ago when I was approved to read Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao. It sounded amazing: a Russian-inspired fantasy! And look at the cover! Almost immediately after I downloaded the book, it suddenly became controversial.

Today’s post is partly a review of this book, and partly a discussion of the controversy surrounding this book. Unfortunately, the author has chosen not to publish this book for the time being. I was given an advanced reader copy of Blood Heir in exchange for an honest review.

Our hero, whom I’ll call Ana, was framed for a murder she didn’t commit. She teams up with a con man (Ramson Quicktongue) in order to seek revenge. In the meantime, both Ana and Ramson discover that they sometimes have to make difficult choices between right and wrong, while at the same time fighting off corruption and discovering a much larger conspiracy…

The Controversy

This isn’t one of the fairy-tale books you read in your childhood, where the hero always wins in the end.

Blood Heir ARC, ~loc. 5586

I think this quote from Blood Heir sums up my feelings on this controversy. In case you don’t know what happened, Ms. Zhao was accused of racism because of some of the content in the book. One of the characters, a girl named May, ends up getting killed after being rescued from a slave auction. Slate wrote an article about this. Yes, there is slavery in Blood Heir, but despite some people saying that the book was referring to African slavery in the 1800s in the US, most of the slaves in this book weren’t even black.

Yes, I can see how some people might be upset because May ends up dying, and it wouldn’t really be very good optics to kill off your main black character after a slave auction, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that May wasn’t even black. She has ocean-colored eyes, to give one example.

The book had so many good things to say about corruption, and powerful people taking advantage of the less fortunate… it breaks my heart to see this book with such a beautiful message be taken away from public access. There’s a whole dedication page at the front of the book where the author says why she wrote the book… because she sees the racism and hatred that people have for “the other” and wanted to try to combat that. Anyway, from a messaging perspective, I am very sad about what happened. I hope at some point this book will have another chance.

The Book

Overall, Blood Heir was an interesting story. The characters had depth, and even though they were trying to do the right thing, had plenty of darkness inside of them as well. The book kept me interested and I needed to know what happened next. Even after finishing the book (which was originally supposed to be a trilogy) I’d still like to know what happens next.

There was some phrasing that I personally wouldn’t have kept, but I’m probably just being nit-picky because I’m in the middle of editing my book… so editing mode me seems to always be in full gear. It didn’t detract from my enjoyment though.

The book was meant to be Russian-inspired. This was one of the things that drew me to the book in the first place because I speak Russian and go to a Russian meetup group every week. There was some beautiful Russian worldbuilding: the Taiga biomes, the domed buildings, the governmental setup, but there were some things about the Russian inspiration that I think would be distracting to readers. Some of the “Russian”-ish words were very difficult to pronounce, even for someone that speaks Russian (many of the Russian sounding words weren’t Russian). This is a fictional world, so it doesn’t have to follow Russian conventions; the author probably could have made the names a little simpler.

Overall

My conclusion about this book: it was enjoyable, the book shouldn’t have been pulled off the shelf, but the Russian inspiration could have used a little work. I would recommend this book if it ever is published, I would read the sequels to this book, and I would definitely read more work from Amélie Wen Zhao again. I was blessed to have the opportunity to read this book and I wish more people would have been able to read this as well.

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!

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!

Children of Blood and Bone: Good, but Not the Book for Me Right Now

By Brookelorren on 3 Comments
Children of Blood and Bone cover

One of the most popular books of 2018 was Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone. I wanted to see what all the excitement was all about, so I naturally signed up to get on the waiting list at the library to read this book. And waited months. Despite it’s popularity, and despite the fact that I realize that this is a well-written book, it was just not the right book for me right now.

I don’t know if you’ve experienced it or not, but I experience it all the time: most of the time, I’m drawn to the right book at the right time. Like last fall, after I had just started studying Welsh, I start reading The Infernal Devices, and one of the main characters, Will, utters Welsh phrases every now and then. It may be a minor thing, but it helps me identify with the characters. I didn’t experience that with this book.

Which doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a good book. I can tell the writing was good. The story seemed to have good pacing. I liked the characters. In this story, Zélie, a girl whose ancestors were magical in a land where magic has disappeared and the government reviles magic, tangles herself up with a couple members of the royal family: Amari, a princess who is appalled at what she discovered her father did, and Inan, a prince who has a secret. Along with Tzain, Zélie’s brother, they go on an adventure, where they find betrayal and friendship. The stakes are high: if they fail, magic could disappear from the land for good.

This book explores several themes: what it feels like for people to unfairly target you for intimidation because of who you are, what happens when people have too much power, and where should your loyalties lie. These are good questions to explore, and this book does it well.

Children of Blood and Bone didn’t quite resonate with me, even though I know it’s objectively a good book. For me, the mythology was just okay. I would have preferred a little more romance in this book. Perhaps, at another point in my life, I may find more ways to identify with the story and enjoy it more. Just as Will’s Welsh made me appreciate The Infernal Devices better, perhaps I’ll learn more about the culture in this book and appreciate it more at a later date.

I probably won’t read the sequel this year, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t reread Children of Blood and Bone at another point in my life. Right now, it’s me, not the book, that causes me to not be enthusiastic about this series. That could change. I certainly would not want to try to persuade anybody else to not read this book, because it might be just the thing that somebody (perhaps you) might need to read to inspire them to make them better people.

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.

Clockwork Princess Made Me Ugly Cry

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments
Clockwork Princess cover

I read Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Princess a little over a week before Queen of Air and Darkness came out. When I originally pre-ordered QOAAD, I figured that it would take me forever to read all of the books in front of it, but as I just happened to obtain copies of the rest of the series a week before it came out, I had a Shadowhunter’s reading marathon. Clockwork Princess was the first book in that reading marathon, and I’m really glad that I didn’t finish it at work. I don’t know if I’ve ugly cried so much while reading a book — ever.

As this review is for the third book in The Infernal Devices, there are spoilers for the first two books in this series.

Tessa is now engaged to Jem… and now she knows that Will loves her too. Her heart is breaking because she loves them both, although she tells Will she doesn’t love him, and Will won’t mention his feelings for Tessa to Jem either. Jem is also dying. The supply of yin fen is drying up, and he cannot live without it. It’s a mess, and my heart was breaking for them, even though I googled the ending and knew what was going to happen.

Mortmain is still on the loose too. He still wants Tessa for some reason, and he’s not about to let a little setback stop him. Unfortunately, Mortmain kidnaps Tessa, and Will has to make the choice of whether to go rescue her, or stay with his dying parabatai.

If that wasn’t bad enough, members of the council are still plotting against Charlotte Branwell. Will they deem her competent enough to keep the Institute? Or will her career end up in disaster?

All these tangled plots make Clockwork Princess a masterpiece. Yes, I wanted to read these four very long books before the even longer Queen of Air and Darkness came out, but I could not put this one down. In this book, we finally find out the truth about Tessa’s heritage (which is complicated in itself). There are things that happen in this book that affect events in The Mortal Instruments series. If I hadn’t already decided to reread the series at some point, then I definitely wanted to reread the series after this. This book gave me writing goals: write in little inconspicuous lines in one book that are explained in a later series.

The last chapter and epilogue to Clockwork Princess made me ugly cry. Hard. Snotting up and everything. It was so beautiful. I warn you, don’t read it at work. This was one of the most beautiful but heartbreaking ends to a book ever. But it was the best possible resolution to this story that I could think of. And after reading this story, you’ll want to make sure you read Chain of Gold just as I will.

This was a gorgeous final book to an amazing series, and if you liked The Mortal Instruments, then I highly recommend you read this book.