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Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show

By Brookelorren on November 5, 2018Leave a Comment

Come one, come all, and get your freak on for Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show!

That could have been how this story begins. This book, by Jennifer Lee Rossman, has a lot of fun moments to it. Although the writing style was fun, it wasn’t my favorite book of the month. For me, it was a book that started off strong but finished just okay.

Jack Jetstark is a circus performer who travels throughout the universe with a small band of “freaks.” Set in the far off future, there is a set of conjoined triplets, a girl with angel wings, and a mutant whose ancestors described the destruction of earth. Like most circus acts, there’s a catch to the whole thing. They only become these mutant creatures for a short period of time each day, when a song plays over their speakers.

As the story progresses, we discover that his former lover, Diantha, is the person that has been performing these songs for the past several years. When she stops performing the song, the circus ends. Oddly enough, all of these people start turning into their freak show selves.

That was the part that I enjoyed most about the book.

I didn’t dislike Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show, but I wasn’t as enchanted about the part where they were trying to sneak onto Diantha’s world in order to save the rest of the “freaks” (who were actually genetic experiments). There were questions about whether Diantha was good or bad, and I didn’t really find myself caring as much, because we didn’t get to interact with her that much. Her daughter did have a fairly big part in the book, and I liked her.

The book also had a couple of weak romances in it. I just didn’t see enough of the love interests together to care all that much. There was a love triangle in the book as well, but again, I didn’t see enough of the characters interacting to care too much about their relationship.

I did like the message that Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show was trying to convey. Just because someone is different doesn’t mean that they are lesser people.

Overall, I found this book good, but not amazing. If you read a lot of science fiction books and need something for your TBR, this book might be for you, but if you’re only going to read ten books this year, I probably wouldn’t make this your highest priority.

Villains (Top Ten Tuesday)

By Brookelorren on October 23, 2018October 22, 201831 Comments

Another Tuesday, another round of Top Ten Tuesday. Today’s topic is Villains. While thinking about this topic, I realized that not every book has a good villain.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Without further adieu, these are some of the villains that I found interesting:

Valentine: The Mortal Instruments (Books 1-3). Valentine from The Mortal Instruments series is a great villain. He thinks that he’s doing the right thing. Perhaps at one time, he was doing the right thing, but he got carried away. And he became very, very bad. Real life villains are often the same way.

Adelina Amouteru: The Young Elites. It’s not often that the villain and the heroine are the same people. You have to feel sorry for Adelina because you know her story, and you know that deep down inside, she’s a decent person, but she’s wicked at the same time. Somehow, you just can’t help but root for her and hope that she redeems herself.

Vicomte de Séguin: Enchantée. I don’t think that there’s many redeeming qualities about the Vicomte de Séguin in Enchantée (it’s an amazing book, you’ll want to read it when it comes out). He is so devious and smart though. And in the end, it seems like he might feel that he has no choice but to be evil. Of course, we all have choices.

Maven: Red Queen series. Maven is one of those villains that you have to like, at least a little. He had crappy parenting and might have been a decent person, if he hadn’t been pushed to the dark side. I was even hoping that he would change.

Pit Viper: Frequency. He seems like such a nice guy! People seem to love him. And he was treated horribly. Still, once you find out what he’s planning, you realize that he’s not such a great guy after all. Maybe he’ll change. You want him to change. That’s why he makes a great villain.

Redacted: Everless. Unless you read Everless, then you probably don’t know who the true villain of this story is. If I was to say who this person was, it would be too much of a spoiler. This person makes a great villain because you don’t even suspect him/her! He/she seems so nice. I’m not sure if there are any redeeming qualities to him/her, but he/she’s a great villain because he/she blends in so well!

Zero: Warcross. Is Zero really the villain? Or is he a hero? Or is someone else altogether the villain? One of the things that I love about the villainy in the Warcross duology is that there’s a point in Wildcard where you’re thinking “there is nobody in power that is good in this story.” Sometimes real life is like that, especially when it comes to politics.

Prince of Hearts: Legendary. He probably doesn’t have too many redeeming qualities to him, but he puts Tella in a seemingly impossible situation. He’s quite devious, and as a result, he’s a fairly noteworthy villain.

Catherine: Heartless. I’m not sure if we can consider Catherine to be the villain of this story or not, but we know that she becomes a villain. Maybe that’s why she makes such a good villain in this story. She’s not really a bad person, is she? But life’s circumstances shape her in a way that cause her to become a bad person. Often, that’s the way people become villains in real life.

The Nightbringer: Ember in the Ashes tetralogy. This guy is really creepy. I don’t want to give out spoilers if you haven’t read the series, but the way he uses people is just disgusting. Which makes him a good villain. Because you have to loathe him. Maybe at one point there were good things about him, but his interactions with Laia… ::shudder::. Another good thing that for a long time, he fools some of the readers into thinking that he’s not really a bad guy. Now that I know better, I’m going to have to think of this when I reread the series prior to Ember 4 coming out.

So there are all the baddies for this week! I who are your favorite villains? I can’t wait to find out. Leave a link to your Top Ten Tuesday and I’ll visit!

Next week: Stories with Dark Magic and darkness. I’m not a real Halloween person (I’ll give you the back story next week) but there are plenty of stories with dark magic to go around!

War Storm was Electrifying

By Brookelorren on October 18, 2018September 17, 2018Leave a Comment

I recently finished reading War Storm by Victoria Aveyard. It was an amazing end to this series. This is a huge book (672 pages), but I read it in three days because I couldn’t put it down. Although the ending was quite fitting, I was sad to see the series end.

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

As the book begins, Mare and Cal have decided to part ways. Despite the fact that they obviously love each other, there are things that they can’t agree upon. Mare is dedicated to her cause of equality for reds and silvers, while Cal feels that becoming king is the best for both him and his country — even if it requires that he marry Evangeline.

Almost nobody wants Cal and Evangeline to get married. They don’t want to marry each other. Mare doesn’t want them to get married. Although Mare and Cal’s friends tend to be indifferent about the subject, they’re still a little annoyed with having to watch Mare and Cal moon over each other all the time. The only people that really want them to get married are Cal’s grandmother and Evangeline’s father, as a way to strengthen their alliance. That seems to be a recurring theme in real history as well though.

War Storm‘s extension of the world of the Red Queen series is outstanding. As the whole continent is at war now, we’re now dealing with characters from all over the place. We get to see more of Montfort in this book (whose allowance for same-sex marriage is tempting to Evangeline) as well as characters from the Lakelands.

This book seems to have a theme of what our destiny is, and whether we can make the choice to change things. Evangeline and Cal don’t seem to think that they have a choice in their futures, or even in the future of their nations. As the series comes to a close, they begin to realize that maybe they do have a choice after all.

The book’s ending was fitting. I thought it rang true to how the characters were behaving, especially in this last book. I finally didn’t mentally yell at the characters about how foolish their choices were. It may not be the ending that I would have chosen, but I thought it was the right ending. And I didn’t end up crying or throwing the book in frustration (yes, I’m still talking about Allegiant chapter 50).

I definitely recommend War Storm and the entire Red Queen series if you like fantasy, stories about equality, or just really good books in general. I was happy to find out how this series ended, yet sad to see it end at the same time.

The Wren Hunt Sings

By Brookelorren on October 15, 20183 Comments

I recently read The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson (thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury YA for an Advanced Review Copy in exchange for an honest review). It is a magical book in a fairly unique setting that made me want to keep reading.

The Wren Hunt is set in modern-day Ireland. The story starts out with some excitement: every year after Christmas, some boys chase Wren (our heroine) until they catch her, and demand some sort of trinket for her. Wren doesn’t find this chase amusing, but for some reason, they continue to bully her year after year.

Soon, we find out that the boys that chase her are part of a group of people that her family has been feuding with for generations. Like in Romeo and Juliet or The Weight of Feathers, Wren’s family is part of the augurs, and the boys that bully her are the judges. Both judges and augurs have a sort of druidic magic to them. Wren’s gift allows her to have visions of the future, although sometimes it is difficult to interpret what they mean.

The augur’s magic appears to be fading, and they blame the judges for it. Wren is sent to take an internship at a business run by the judges, in order to spy on them. The judges there don’t know that she’s an augur, and if she is found out, it wouldn’t do well for her.

Over the course of this book, she falls in love, finds out some shocking truths about herself, and has to make difficult decisions about her life. There’s betrayal, and twists, and things aren’t always exactly as they seem. It all makes for a great story.

Setting

I love how Ireland was used as the setting for this book. It makes an excellent backdrop for the druidic magic. The Wren Hunt transports you to a small village in this country. The town has this small-town feel of a place that kids grow up in and don’t really escape from. It’s unlike a lot of fantasy book settings, which made it interesting.

Characters

I really liked the characters and relationships portrayed in this book as well. Although she lost her parents when she was young, Wren is close to the family members she lives with, as well as her childhood friend. In this book, Wren is growing apart from her family, and I love how Ms. Watson tackles this. There are also enemies, a growing but sometimes awkward attraction to a boy, and coworkers.

Overall

Will The Wren Hunt make my list of Top Ten Books I Read in 2018? No, but I’ve read a lot of books this year, and a lot of good books aren’t going to make it onto the list. This book is a unique book that kept my attention from the beginning until the end. I definitely recommend it.

The Wren Hunt won’t be available until November 6th, but you can pre-order it now.

Ever the Brave Was Beautiful

By Brookelorren on October 12, 2018October 11, 2018Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Muse of Nightmares is a Dream

By Brookelorren on October 7, 2018Leave a Comment

Muse of Nightmares was released last Tuesday, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should definitely put it on your TBR. It’s getting to be that time of year where I start thinking about what the best books of the year were, and there’s a good chance that this book is going to make the Top Ten Books I Read for the First Time in 2018 list.

Because this review is the second in a duology, there may be spoilers for the first book.

This book begins where Strange the Dreamer left off. Lazlo discovered that he was godspawn, Sarai was dead, and Minya was trying to get Lazlo to do her bidding to allow her to go down to Weep and let her get her revenge on the humans. What a mess! Of course, Lazlo is this gentle soul who wouldn’t hurt a fly. What is a poor boy who loves his Sarai to do?

In addition to the difficult situation the godspawn were left in, we were left with questions. Where did all the other babies go? Why did Lazlo suddenly turn into godspawn when for twenty years he was just an ordinary boy? What does the bird flying around have to do with anything (and why is the bird on the cover of this book? All of that will be answered in Muse of Nightmares.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Lazlo and Sarai’s relationship continues, the humans down in Weep finally meet the godspawn, and secrets are revealed about the universe that I certainly didn’t expect. The characters that we loved in the first book are back, and most of them grow and become better people.

Just like Strange, Muse is a beautiful book with gorgeous prose. Laini Taylor has such a lovely way of writing. The alluring words made me want to keep reading. The world that she built is imaginative, and the way that she writes it makes it vivid. You grow to love the characters and empathize with them.

Another thing that I loved about reading this book was that it has such a beautiful message to it. Minya wants revenge for what happened to her. The humans who were exploited have reason to hate the godspawn. Another character that we will meet when we read this book has another reason to hate. One of my favorite lines in this book is repeated twice: Let all the ugliness end here.

It’s such a timely message. Let all the ugliness end here. If we could get one thing from reading this book, that would be it. Wouldn’t the world be such a better place if we could all just listen to each other? To try to understand where other people are coming from? There would be so much less anger floating in the air if we could just get that. Just like the humans, godspawn, and the new character we meet in Strange the Dreamer and Muse of Nightmares, almost all of us are trying to do the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is not easy to discern. Maybe if we were all a little more like Lazlo and Sarai, our hearts would heal.

The ugliness does end, at least for the characters here. I won’t say what happens, but I was in tears for the last 50 pages of the book or so, it was so beautiful. The ugliness even ends for some of the characters that you might not even think could change. Not everyone gets a happy ever after, and not everybody’s soul can mend, but the end was perfect.

Or was it? This book opens itself up to fanfiction or further books in the series. Maybe we’ll see some more novellas from here. That would be nice.

Everless was Endearing

By Brookelorren on October 4, 2018September 10, 20186 Comments

I recently read Everless by Sara Holland. Driving my daughter to school takes quite a lot of time, which I can use to listen to audiobooks. This one came available at my library recently.

Jules lives in a humble village with her papa. They barely are able to make ends meet — then again, that’s true of most people in the village. Once again, the rent is due, and they don’t have the money to pay for it.

Everyone in Sempera uses time as a currency. If you can’t pay the rent, then you can take it out of the time you have remaining in your life. Most of the poorer people have shortened lives as a result. In a place like Everless, where the wealthy people live, some people can live for hundreds of years.

Jules used to live in Everless, as a child. A tragedy forced them to flee years ago, however. Now that Jules is 17, she can help Papa pay the rent by using her own time. Papa forbids it, but if he uses some of his time, he might die. In an attempt to save Papa’s life, Jules decides to go back to Everless, where well-paid jobs as servants await, preparing for the wedding of Roan Gerling and the queen’s adopted daughter.

Roan and Jules used to be friends as children. Going back to Everless means that she will see Roan again, although he will be marrying someone else. It also means that she will see his nasty brother, Liam. Everless is not a very safe place to be, and Jules believes that part of that reason is Liam.

As the story progresses, we find out why Everless is such a dangerous place, and we find that there are long-buried secrets held there. We find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem, and the past may come back to haunt everybody.

I enjoyed this book. The imagery was wonderful. I started getting my suspicions about some of the plot points partway through the story, although there were still some surprises, even at the very end. When I was getting towards the end of the story, I would want to sit in my car a little longer, just to find out what was going to happen next.

I’m looking forward to finding out what happens in Evermore, which should be coming out on December 31st. Which is weird, because most book releases come out on Tuesdays and December 31st is a Monday, but who knows? More than likely I’ll read it sometime next year.

Frequency Resonated with Me

By Brookelorren on September 24, 2018September 10, 20182 Comments

I 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.

Wildcard was a Wild Ride!

By Brookelorren on September 19, 2018April 17, 20194 Comments

Finally, 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 September 16, 2018September 2, 20184 Comments

I 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.