All posts tagged book reviews

The Red Queen Should Be Read!

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Red Queen CoverA few months ago, I was trying to figure out what book to read next.  I had read all of my favorite authors’ books, as well as mammoth series like The Song of Ice and Fire, and needed to find something.  Then I ran across Goodreads’ YA Novels of 2018 List… where have you been all my life?  It was like this neverending supply of book ideas.  War Storm, by Victoria Aveyard, was #1 on the list for this year.  I can’t read the last book in the series, of course (I made that mistake with Joel C. Rosenberg’s Dead Heat years ago), but in just a few clicks, I found the first book in the series, Red Queen, and put it on hold at my local library.  Several months later, I was able to read it.

Red Queen is based in a land where there are two types of people: Silvers, who have silver blood and magical powers, and Reds, who have red blood and no power.  Our heroine, Mare Barrow, is a Red who has no prospects in life except to get drafted into the neverending war and die.  In the meantime, she steals for a living.  A few random events change her life.  She discovers that, despite her red blood, she also has powers.  These powers push her into a posh prison, faking that she’s a silver in the royal court.

Mare has to figure out how to survive in her new life.  In addition, she’s not the kind of person to lie still and let the corruption around her corrupt her.  She wants to fight for a better life for her people.  But how will she do that?  She begins to play a dangerous game where you’re never really quite certain who to trust… and you’re not quite certain who to love either.

The Red Queen series is popular for a reason: it’s good.  Although I think that Mare is foolish sometimes, I still like her, and think that she was portrayed well.  I enjoy reading about her love interest (or not) with Cal and Maven.  I enjoyed this unique world with electricity and cars and motorcycles… but not too much of it, if you’re not rich.  It’s not a medieval world, but it’s also nothing like ours.  All of these elements add up to an interesting universe.

The book has twists and turns, and you’re not exactly sure who to trust.  There are the “I didn’t see that one coming” moments.  Even though I read the blurb about what the book was about before I read the book, I didn’t know exactly how this book was going to play out, and was kept excited until the end.

Fortunately, even though I had to wait a couple of months to read Red Queen (I read this book and am writing this review at the end of July), the next two books will be available at the library soon, as I signed up to read them at the same time.  I might not get to read War Storm until 2019, but that’s okay.  Although I am excited to read the next installment of this series, I have a stack of books waiting to be read, and I’ll just have to have patience to read the rest of this series.

Frequency Resonated with Me

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Frequency CoverI recently read Frequency by Christopher Krovatin.  I absolutely loved it.  It kept me interested from the very first chapter until the very end.  I was fortunate enough to receive a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fiona is an 18 year old girl who lives in a small town and has a secret.  When she was nine years old, she saw her father and a few of the town council members beat a boy half to death.  It changed the way that she felt about her father — and her small town — forever.

When the boy comes back into the town, everybody seems enamored by his music — except Fiona.  It turns out, this boy is enamored with her.  Fiona ends up distancing herself from her friends; in the process, she discovers that her friends — and herself — are in danger.  Can she save her friends?

Frequency is infused with music.  This may be one of the reasons why it struck such a chord with me.  Fiona is always listening to one band or another; I used to be almost a walking encyclopedia of music (if I hadn’t been going into the military after college, my music recording professor would have offered me a job in his recording studio).  We both play instruments.  This book mentions a lot of bands and uses a lot of musical jargon.

While Frequency is primarily a contemporary novel, there is a bit of magic involved in this story.  Music has an ancient magical power here (in reality, doesn’t it actually have some sort of power?).  I love watching those shows where they discuss ancient mysteries like figurines that look like airplanes from ancient Peru or computers from ancient Greece; the ancient power of music in this story reminds me a bit of that.  The magic added to the allure of this story for me.

This story is geared towards young adults, but I would recommend it for the older range of the YA spectrum, probably 15/16+.  Several of Fiona’s friends are into drugs, and there are frequent mentions of sex in this story (although nothing is actually explicitly described on the page).  Most of the characters are 18 or older.  Frequency could also be categorized as NA instead of YA.  It was probably a marketing decision since YA tends to be more popular at the moment.

If you enjoy YA contemporaries and you love music, I highly recommend this book.  I absolutely loved it.

Are You Addicted to Outrage?

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

Addicted to Outrage coverLast Tuesday was an amazing day for new releases.  One of the new releases that I was looking forward to was Addicted to Outrage, the new release by Glenn Beck.

As with all of my political reviews, I first need to state my views.  I am a conservative libertarian.  I voted third party in the last election, mostly because I think that character matters.  I’m willing to listen to everybody though.  Somebody who was really smart once suggested that you should never be the smartest person in the room.  I don’t necessarily think that’s talking about IQ.  I think that it means that you should realize that other people know things that you don’t and you can learn from them.

If you want to get the book in a nutshell, I’ll give you a quote from the first chapter: “We many times — not always, but much of the time — are saying almost the same exact thing, just with different words.”  Since we have so much in common, why are we arguing with each other?

Our words can make a difference in other people’s lives.  This is why, lately, I’ve tried to send compliments to authors when I love their books.  I’ve also tried to focus on sharing articles that are less divisive, that more of us can agree with.  I’ll leave the more divisive issues to other people.

Addicted to Outrage is a book that encourages us to calm down and try to treat each other civilly.  There might be things that we disagree with, but arguing with people and calling people names is not going to make them change their minds.  Being respectful of people might actually allow us to get along and help repair this broken country.

We need to look at ourselves.  I love how in chapter 7, Beck calls out both sides on their hypocrisy.  His words contain humor, making the book interesting.

Addicted To Outrage tells us why it’s so important at this time in history to get along with others.  There are a lot of problems that this world will be facing in the next 5, 10, 20 years.  For example, as artificial intelligence is able to do more and more, jobs are going to be lost.  How are we going to deal with this?  Conservatives and liberals have different ideas.  Can we be absolutely sure that our “side” is right?  Rather than fighting about it, we need to get together and try to understand one another in order to try to come up with a solution.  As Glenn states, “we are not talking to each other or growing more compassionate toward our fellow man at a time when we need it most.”

Learning Something

There are some pretty scary things coming along.  The machines that we will be programming to drive our cars (as one example) are going to have to make life and death decisions.  Should it hit the bus of school children, or hit the bus containing Bill Gates and Elon Musk?  China already has a social scoring system; will our AI give priority to the lives of people with higher social scores?

Not only do many of us demonize people on the “other side”, we also demonize historical figures.  The world is a complex place, and our opinions are not always derived from simple facts.  For example, some of us criticize Washington and Jefferson for owning slaves, but it was actually against the law to free your slaves, except upon your death (and you couldn’t even do that if you were in debt, like Jefferson was).  Are we any better?  Almost all of us use some sort of electronics that were created under slave-like conditions.  There are more slaves today than in the days before the Civil War.  I’m sure that none of us like that, but probably a lot of people feel as helpless as I am about doing something about it.

As you read Addicted to Outrage, you might learn about other things, like the tragedy that occurred in “Black Wall Street.”  Or that even though Churchill was a great war hero, he was also a flawed individual that did some not-so great things (maybe the same is true about us).  There are good and bad things about the United States, and this book touches upon a little of both.

Doing Something

We might not be able to end slavery (as an example) but we can do something to reduce the anger in our lives.  It has to start with us, after all.  The last section of Addicted to Outrage talks about what we can do about our problems with anger.

Part of it is to try to acknowledge when someone is trying to find common ground with you, and take what you can get.  Beck tells the story of how his grandfather, who grew up in an age where blacks were discriminated against, once told him00 in the early 1970s “No matter what anyone says about coloreds, they are just like you and me.”  Almost nobody talks like that anymore.  If one did, it would probably seem offensive, but in this case, Glenn’s grandfather was trying.  I love this quote: “Can we not look into one another’s heart and see how hard we are trying?”  We don’t need to vilify people that are trying to understand our point of view and don’t quite grasp what we mean.

I love one of the quotes towards the end of the book:  “We must not become what we say we are against.”

It might be difficult to change, to become nicer people.  Some people might not even like it.  It might not feel good, at first, to be kind to others and bite back a snarky retort, especially if they are not nice to us.  But maybe, like many risks, it’s one worth taking.  As Glenn says on page 303 “Risk big, win big — do whatever homework is necessary, but don’t let your fear prevent you from rolling the dice!”

Wildcard was a Wild Ride!

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

Wildcard coverFinally, the wait is over!  Today was Wildcard‘s release day and I was so happy to get to read it.  The wait was worth it, though, it was a great book.

As with all of my reviews that deal with sequels, this may contain spoilers to the first book.

Our book starts right after Hideo downloads a program that takes away a person’s free will to commit crimes.  This causes some trouble right off the bat.  People are turning themselves in for crimes they committed but got away with, crime was prevented… wait, how could that cause problems?  We don’t all have the same standards about what is right and wrong.  Some countries have different laws that they want enacted.  Other wealthy people want exceptions for them (isn’t that the way the world works?).  To quote page 106 “Everyone’s going to want something different from Hideo.”

Emika quickly finds herself getting tangled up with Zero.  For a long time here, it’s hard to figure out who is the bad guy and who is not.  Hideo is trying to do something good by ridding the world of crimes like those that caused him to lose his brother, while Zero wants people to be able to make their own choices.  There seemed to be nobody in this book that had power that was actually good.

Time is ticking away for those that are trying to fix everything.  The beta version of the Warcross lenses (which Emika and most of the Warcross players have, and doesn’t take away your free will) will be upgraded on the final day of the Warcross season.  Emika must rely on her friends (and put faith into people she’s not so sure of) in order to figure out what’s going on and how to set things straight before the lenses upgrade and nobody has free will anymore.

Eventually, we find out the truth… which I won’t give away… but I really wasn’t expecting that.  There is a satisfying ending to it all.

One of the things that I’ve loved about the Legend series and The Young Elites trilogy were the love relationships.  I’m a big Day/June and Adelina/Magiano fan.  While this book does have a love interest, it’s a fairly minor part of the storyline, and I was fine with that.  The Warcross/Wildcard story takes place over a span of only a few months, while Legend and The Young Elites both cover a time span of over a year, so perhaps it is more realistic for the characters to not develop a deep love for each other anyway.

This book caused me to feel anger and happiness and cry, sometimes all in the same chapter.  In chapter 20, we find out what actually happened to Sasuke, and I found myself thinking, “oh, that’s sad.  Oh, how sweet.  I’m in tears now.  I’m so angry!” And then shock.  Later on, in chapter 32, I was really tearing up.  Especially when they were talking about loved ones… about how Emika missed her father and she says “And that’s when I realize that, at the end, we’d all wish for the same thing.  Just a little more time.”  I was thinking of my grandma as I read that:  how she seemed to be in remission from cancer, and then one day I got a phone call, and the next day she was gone.

The book says a lot about artificial intelligence and computer technology, and delves into some of the issues that we may have to deal with in the very near future.  Ray Kurzweil believes that one day we’ll be able to upload ourselves into the cloud and live forever that way.  Is that something we want to do?  Is that life?  Do we live on in people’s memories?  What role should technology play in our lives?  These questions popped up in my mind as I was reading Wildcard.

This was a great story that I highly recommend.

Previously on this blog, I reviewed Warcross.

Queen of Shadows Rules

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

Queen of Shadows coverI just finished reading Queen of Shadows, the fourth book in the Throne of Glass series.  Although I loved it, I have to be honest — after several weeks of reading a ton of LONG books (this one is about 650 pages) I want to read something a little shorter for a change.  The next book, Empire of Storms, is almost 700 pages, and I’m not ready to conquer it yet.

Because this is the fourth book in the series, this review may contain spoilers for the first three books.

Celaena (now mostly going by Aelin) returns to Rifthold in this book, and she’s ready to bring justice to the world.  She has a few goals in mind as she comes back into town.  For one thing, she wants to obtain the amulet that her parents gave to her when she was a child.  Arobynn has it, and it also happens to have the third Wyrdkey in it.  Speaking of Arobynn, she wants to have her revenge on him as well.  Then she has a score to settle with the king.  While she’s at it, maybe she’ll bring magic back into the kingdom.

It’s a tall order, but if anybody can do it, the Queen of Shadows can.  This book is full of action and is not without a dull moment.  There are many delicious scenes involving deceit and killing monsters and exacting revenge.  It was a lot of fun.

Rowan comes back in the book, which also brought a lot of amusement to me with it.  I loved how he bickered with Aelin’s cousin Aedion after he returned; the fae can sometimes behave like humanoid animals, and it was quite a bit of fun to watch.

When I read Heir of Fire, I wasn’t that excited about the chapters involving the witches.  I actually enjoyed the chapters with the witches more in this book than in the last one.  Manon shows character growth in Queen of Shadows, and I am beginning to like her some.  I’m looking forward to see how the alliances shake up involving the witches in the next book.

I definitely recommend this book, along with the books before it in this series.

Heir of Fire was Awesome

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Heir of Fire CoverToday, we’re continuing our review of different books from Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass Series.  Heir of Fire is the third book, and although I liked it a lot, I’m not sure if I liked it as well as I liked the second book.  Since this is the third book in the series, there may be spoilers from the first two books.

In Heir of Fire, Chaol has sent Celaena Sardothien away to her homeland.  The king sends her there as an assassin, but she finds out that she can’t carry out her mission.  Instead, she hopes to get some information from her aunt, the fae Queen Maeve.

Heir of Fire splits off into three storylines.  In the first storyline, we see what happens to Celaena, now going by her fae name of Aelin, along with the fae prince, Rowan, who is supposed to oversee her training.  The second storyline revolves around Prince Dorian, Chaol, and some rebels back at Rifthold.  The third storyline revolves around the witches, who are gathering in a fragile alliance.

Since the first Throne of Glass book, we see a dramatic change in where the story is headed.  Whereas there was fairly little magic in the first book, this book is overflowing with magic.  There is magic everywhere, from the fae, to Rifthold, to the witches, and of course, there are magical creatures to fight.

I think that one of my favorite parts of this book was Celaena and Rowan’s growing relationship.  It looks like they can’t stand each other at the beginning of the book, but even then, you can tell that there should be something going on between them.  I like them together.

My least favorite part of the story was the storyline involving the witches.  I didn’t dislike their story, it just wasn’t my favorite.  I was always looking forward to seeing Celaena and Rowan together.  I did like the character of Manon though.

I love how this world continues to get more complex and diversified as the books continue.  I’m glad that the next book in the series is already waiting for me to read on my Kindle (even though I’m currently drowning in library books).

 

Crown of Midnight May Keep You Up Until Midnight!

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Crown of Midnight coverBack in May, I put the Throne of Glass series on hold at the library; it took until July for the books to start becoming available, but shortly after that book became available, Crown of Midnight was ready to read.  I had to start reading it right away, and I think I liked it better than Throne of Glass.  Since this is the second book in a series, this review may contain spoilers for the first book.

As we begin this novel, our heroine, Celaena Sardothien, is now the king’s champion.  The king has been asking her to kill enemies of the realm for a while now.  Not too far into the book, however, you realize that Celaena is keeping a secret about these assassinations…

Meanwhile, Celaena is getting closer to Chaol.  At the end of the last book, Celaena decided to break things off with Prince Dorian, giving the excuse that she didn’t think it was appropriate for the king’s assassin to be dating the crown prince.  While reading the first book, I didn’t get the impression that Celaena was that into Chaol, but in this book things dramatically shift.

But not all will remain rainbows and lollipops for the king’s assassin.  There are forces at work in the kingdom that were hinted at in the first book, and we find out more about them here.  Celaena’s most recent assassination assignment leads her to a group that may be trying to overthrow the kingdom… but are they on her side?  Well, let’s just say that you don’t want to piss the king’s assassin off.  In this book, you get to see quite a bit of Celaena’s badassery.

Even though magic was supposedly banned in the kingdom years ago, we learn in this book that plenty of magic remains.  Crown of Midnight reveals more magical secrets, both of the world, and of some of our main characters.  Because the king has banned magic, these secrets can be very dangerous.

This series is like an onion: the farther you get into the book, the more is revealed about the characters and the storyline that you need to find out answers to.  Throughout this story, we find out more about Celaena’s past.  The king’s assassin definitely has some secrets that she wouldn’t want to have exposed.

The book concludes with a nice set-up for the next story.  There are no nail-biting cliffhangers, but you’ll want to find out what happens next to these characters.  I’m looking forward to Heir of Fire becoming available at my local library!

Throne of Glass Sparkles!

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

I recently started reading Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series.  Well, I’m waiting for the second book to become available at the library, but I got to read the first book.  I thought it was excellent and can’t wait until the next one becomes available.

Celaena Sardothien has had a difficult life.  After her parents died, she was trained to be an assassin, and was pretty good at it.  Unfortunately, she was caught and was sent to be a slave in the mines.  Although most people die in the mines fairly quickly, Celaena survived for over a year there.  When the king needed a trained assassin to do his bidding, Celaena as picked as one of his potential “champions.”  If she became picked as his champion, she would receive her freedom after several years of service.  Otherwise… back to the salt mines she goes (literally).

When she gets to the castle where the competition is going to be held, she has to train hard and regain her strength.  It takes her a while to get up to speed.  All the while, other things are going on in the castle.

We find out that the king is corrupt, but the prince, Dorian… maybe not so much.  There is something out there that is killing some of the competitors vying to be the king’s champion.  Celaena makes a friend for the first time in probably eons, and maybe… there still is a little bit of magic in the world after all.  This story is full of court intrigue and political maneuvering.  Celaena also has a love interest in this story; I’ve seen other reviewers say that there’s a love triangle, but she really only seems to show interest in one person for most of the book, even though another person seems to be developing an interest in her as well.

There really is a lot going on in this story, and it doesn’t all get resolved by the end of the book.  It’s a good thing that there are more books in this series, because there is so much happening that it will probably take a while to resolve everything.

I like the main character, Celaena.  She might be a little bit too bad-ass to actually be believable in real life, but this is a story, so anything is possible.  I like the fact that she actually has interests beyond killing — she is also a girl who is into fashion and reading books.  There are also a few funny scenes in here that are pretty cute.

It seems like most people who read Throne of Glass either love it or hate it.  Most people who hate it seem to dislike the main character.  I happen to like her, and also happen to like the books.

The Wolf and the Rain is Worth Reading

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

The Wolf and the Rain coverI recently read The Wolf and the Rain by Tanya Lee.  It is a book about a dystopian world set in the future.  Although it was not my favorite book that I’ve read (even this month) it was fairly enjoyable.  I received an advanced reader copy of this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Wolf and the Rain follows the story of Samarra, who also goes by Sam.  She has a fairly good (although perhaps shady) job, in a place where good employment is scarce.  The world is a fairly dangerous place, where most people don’t know how to read, and knowledge of things like basic sanitation is limited.

The story switches back and forth between the North (where Sam works at this shady job) and the South, where there is a completely different storyline going on.  We know that Sam is from the South, and so it’s fairly simple to deduce that the storyline in the South is probably about her, but the whole switching back and forth between the two timelines can be hard to follow, at first.

In the South, life is completely different.  They know about basic sanitation.  People have work.  Yet everything seems so… regimented.  It almost feels as if the people in the South have no freedom or identity.  This is a huge contrast to the North, where chaos reigns, but people have choices to go to parties and aren’t told what to do for most of the day.

From the beginning of the story, Sam seems obsessed with the disappearance of a girl that she’s never met (in the Northern storyline, at least).  She spends her free time trying to track down the girl, even though it puts her into danger.  For much of the story, I was wondering “why does she care so much?”  This remains a mystery for most of the book.

While this is a dystopian book, there is also a puzzle to it.  You’re left trying to piece together why Sam is so interested in the missing girl, what happened to the girl, and how do the timelines from the North and the South intersect?  Sadly, you won’t get the answers to ANY of these questions as you read this book.  Although the puzzle starts to come together, it doesn’t completely form into a whole picture by the end.  There is supposed to be a sequel, and I guess the answers lie there.

The book started off slow.  The multiple timelines were confusing at first, and at first, I didn’t really care about the outcome all that much.  Towards the end of the book, after I got to know the characters and I started to figure out what was going on, it got interesting and I wanted to find out more.

I do plan on reading the sequel to The Wolf and the Rain at some point.  While this isn’t one of my favorite books, it was interesting and I thought it was worth reading.

Batman: Nightwalker Was Good

By Brookelorren on 8 Comments

I recently finished reading Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu.  When I first heard about the book, I wasn’t planning on reading it; I am so not a superhero person.  My husband drug me to see a couple Spiderman movies a while back, and I’ve seen the Superman movies and some others… but it’s definitely not my genre.  That being said, I loved Brad Meltzer’s Book of Lies, which has something to with Superman, that I read several years ago.

Anyway, I had started saying that Marie Lu could write about the alphabet and make it interesting.  If I really believed that, then I should read her Batman book to see if it’s true.  It actually was good, so that theory still holds.  It’s probably my least favorite book that she’s done (but she set the bar really high with her other seven books), and it’s not going to make my top 10 books of 2018 list (which is okay because she might have two books on that list anyway), but I definitely enjoyed it.

The story follows Bruce Wayne right after he turns 18, about the time that he’s graduating from high school.  He’s already fabulously wealthy, and is already realizing that there are some people that just care about him because of his influence.  He’s ready to spend his last summer before college with his two best friends… until he happens to run across a crime scene.

He has a cool car that can chase down the bad guy, so he does — and gets in trouble with the police as a result.  He is sentenced to community service at the local insane asylum.  There, he discovers a little more about the string of crimes happening in the area, committed by a group called the Nightwalkers.  He ends up bending the rules a little bit, but in the process ends up saving the day.  Oh, and he also develops a thing for a criminal that may not be as bad as she initially seems to be.

One of the things that I love about this book (and pretty much all Marie Lu books in general, I’ve come to realize) is that it shows compassion for people that many would otherwise dismiss.  People sometimes can be condemning of people because they happen to be the wrong race, or had to make difficult choices because they were poor, or did something stupid in their past.  Our villain, Madeleine, might be a criminal, but there were forces that drove her there.  I love how the book delves into the reasons why she chose the path that she did rather than just writing her off as a bad person.  This book also deals briefly with sexual harassment, which is very timely in the #metoo era.

Batman: Nightwalker introduces us to Bruce Wayne discovering some of the cool Batman toys that he’ll later use as Batman.  I thought it was also cool how the book goes a little bit into his interest with bats.

I thought that Batman: Nightwalker was a good story worth reading.  My daughter is reading it now and also likes it; she enjoys superhero movies in general.  Although this book isn’t in a genre that I routinely read, I did find it interesting.