All posts tagged fiction

Ever the Brave Was Beautiful

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

Ever the Brave coverI 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.

Evenfall Fell Short

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

Evenfall CoverI was recently given the opportunity to read Evenfall by Gaja and Boris Kos (thank you Netgalley for the ARC).  While I thought the concept of the book was good, it sadly did not live up to expectations.  Evenfall did have to follow some of the most amazing books I read this year; even still, it was just okay.

After I was about 25% of the way through the book and I still wasn’t feeling this book, I tried to figure out why this book just didn’t mesh with me.  I think the biggest problem was that there was a lot of infodumping.  Ember, our heroine, was confused and was trying to figure out what was going on.  Her new friend Ada was trying to help her understand, but there was a lot of explanation and not much action.  For a lot of the book, there wasn’t a lot of dialogue either.  There were descriptions of them eating breakfast, traveling to Ada’s house, and a little bit of hiding, but there wasn’t a lot going on.

The action did pick up some in the second half, when Ember’s interactions with the “bad guy”, the Crescent Prince, pick up in earnest.  The last 20% of the book was actually fairly good.  Still, I thought there was a love interest that sparked a little too quickly in the last bit (Ember and another person declared their love to each other after knowing each other for probably less than a week).

Despite all of the explaining that was going on, there were times when the character seemed to know things that she shouldn’t have.  I hope that these are fixed before the finished product comes out, but there were two occasions where Ember names a character they were going to meet when we hadn’t been introduced to them previously.

On a positive note, the magic systems and the storyline were interesting and complex.  I started to feel like I was getting to know Ember by the end of the book.  I could also feel for her and the fact that she didn’t want to be used as somebody else’s pawn.  There were a lot of interesting aspects to the world here.

Considering that the action did pick up towards the end of the book, I might think about reading the sequel.  It’s not something I’d put at the top of my TBR, but there is a part of me that wants to see this world put back together.

Muse of Nightmares is a Dream

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

Muse of Nightmares coverMuse 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.

The Glass Sword Gleams

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

Glass Sword coverI recently was able to read Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard.  There was a really long wait at the library, and it was finally my turn (since I was waiting for King’s Cage at the same time, I get to read that next.  I thought it was a great book.  Since this a continuation of the Red Queen tetralogy, there may be spoilers for Red Queen in this review.

When this book begins, Mare and Cal have just escaped from the Bowl of Bones.  They are with the Scarlet Guard, but there is still a distance between them and everybody else because of their different abilities, and because of what they did in the first book.

Mare becomes more of a leader in this book, and she sets out to go find all of the other people like her: reds that have the genetic mutation that gives them abilities (called newbloods).  This is a dangerous mission, and some people end up getting hurt.  Mare takes some of this burden upon herself in the form of guilt.  At times, it separates herself emotionally from some of her friends, like Kilorn.

Mare and Cal grow together as a couple in this book, although things aren’t always rosy.  They both seem to have some growing to do.  I really like them together, but sometimes I had to say “Mare, you’re so stupid!”  Not only with regards to Cal, but with regards to some of her other relationships as well.  But she does admit that she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and she does have to make some very difficult leadership decisions.  She never wanted to be a leader, but leadership was thrust upon her anyway.  I also think that other people unfairly placed blame on her for things that weren’t entirely her fault.

Throughout the book, the characters go through several different trials, and the struggle between silvers, newbloods, and reds widens.  The world is complex and the plot twists are interesting.  In addition, Aveyard is not afraid to kill off some of her babies (sorry).

Towards the end of Glass Sword, I was a little frustrated at Mare because of how she kept thinking of herself as selfish and how she alienated the people that were close to her.  We are left with a cliffhanger at the end of the book (fortunately, King’s Cage is available for me to read now), and Mare makes a decision that shows that she is at least trying to do the right thing, even though she doesn’t always know what that is.

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.

When Elephants Fly Was Good, But I Could Have Gotten More

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

I recently received a copy of When Elephants Fly, by Nancy Richardson Fischer.  I forgot that I had entered a sweepstakes to win it, and I was pretty excited to see it in my mailbox.  It is a wonderful story about a girl, Lily, whose mother had schizophrenia and tried to kill her.  She just turned 18 and thinks that if she just keeps a stress-free life between now and the time she’s 30, then she’ll be able to prevent getting it herself.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t quite work out that way.  Living a life without stress means that you also miss out on a lot of good things in life.  She’s reluctant to apply for any college other than her local community college (her therapist convinces her to apply for a good college anyway, and she decides to apply to the best college out there, USC).  She had been reluctant to apply for the internship at the local newspaper as well, but as our story begins, she had already been accepted and is working there.

At the internship, Lily gets to write little pieces for her local newspaper on local interest events, like the new baby calf being born at the zoo.  Unfortunately, after the baby calf is born, its mother rejects the calf and tries to kill it, which brings up her own memory of when her mother tried to kill her.  This triggers a series of events that changes Lily’s life forever, as she tries to save the baby elephant.  It brings more excitement into her life for sure, but also causes the risk of mental illness to increase.

I thought this book was pretty good.  I really enjoyed Lily’s friendship with her best friend, Sawyer, which unfortunately becomes strained during this book.  Sawyer is going through his own problems with detached parents, and Lily doesn’t see that for a while because of her own problems.  I would have liked to have seen more of their friendship though.

Lily meets a guy in this book that she develops a relationship with, but I don’t particularly feel it all that much.  Maybe if they would have spent more time together, I would have shipped them more, but as written, they were just okay together.  This part of the book could have gotten a little more attention.

The ending of the book leaves a lot unresolved.  Does Lily get into USC?  Does she develop schizophrenia?  What happens to her friend?  What happens to her and her new boyfriend?  What happens to the baby elephant?

Overall, I thought When Elephants Fly was good.  The subject matter is really important; there are so many people these days dealing with mental issues, so this book will be helpful for a lot of people.  The story was good, the characters were interesting, and the friendship in this book was represented well.  It goes on sale on September 4th, but you can pre-order it now.

The Kiss Quotient Adds Up!

By Brookelorren on 10 Comments

I recently saw a review for The Kiss Quotient and saw a review that made it look good.  The main character is an econometrician who has Asperger’s.  You had me at math, LOL!  It certainly looked like a unique kind of love story.  I had recently read a string of dark fics where the guy and the girl aren’t together at the end of the story, so I wanted something different.  We can’t read Holocaust stories and stories with war all the time!

Our protagonists are Stella, the econometrician with Asperger’s, and Michael, who works part time as an escort to help solve his money problems.  Stella has really bad luck with relationships.  She really doesn’t care for them, but her parents are bugging her about grandchildren.  Stella decides to hire Michael to teach her about relationships and sex.

Michael is getting a little tired of his job, but he needs to keep doing it because he needs the money.  When Stella hires him, he’s expecting an old lady, but he’s happily surprised when he finds a lady that he’s quite attracted to.  He doesn’t think that she needs to hire an escort, and initially doesn’t want to work with her (she wants to hire him for more than one Friday, but he has a rule to not work with someone more than once), but he eventually agrees.

I liked the characters.  Even though I don’t have Asperger’s, I can see a lot of myself in Stella.  Like Stella, boys have never asked me out (there’s a reason why I met my husband on the internet).  I rehearse conversations in my head before I have them, and sometimes I almost have a panic attack when I have to call someone on the phone.  So I found myself identifying with her quite a bit.  She is also a person who has interests and dreams, and is not a stereotype.  Michael is a kind person, which is exactly what Stella needs as she gains confidence with relationships.  He has family and friends that make his life fuller.  As you read the story, you discover why he needs all of this money.

The Kiss Quotient is not a young adult book; it has some scenes that are not appropriate for non-adult teens.

If you’re looking for a light book, The Kiss Quotient might be for you.  It’s a cute little read that will keep you entertained.  I would consider reading Hoang’s next book, The Bride Test (which deals with Michael’s cousin Khai, who also has Asperger’s) next year.

The House of One Thousand Eyes is an Important Book

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

The House of One Thousand Eyes coverI was recently given the opportunity to read The House of One Thousand Eyes by Michelle Barker, in exchange for an honest review.  This is an important book to read, especially if you are unfamiliar with the days when the Soviet Union and East Germany existed.

The House of One Thousand Eyes is set in East Germany in the year 1983.  Back in those days, there were informants in East Germany everywhere.  You never knew who you could trust.  The German secret police, or Stasi, could scoop you up and take you to prison, or make you disappear completely.  As an aside, I recently was watching a video on security and privacy where they mentioned that the Stasi would sometimes go into a person’s house and move things around just to mess with them and make them think they were crazy.  This was a place where real repression happened.

Our protagonist, Lena, spent some time in a mental hospital prior to the beginning of the book.  Her uncle, Erich, is a well-known writer.  One day, he just disappears.  Throughout the book, Lena tries to find out what happened to him.  We follow her investigation as she works as a cleaning lady at Stasi headquarters.  As we read the book, we find out what she found.

The book was enjoyable, but it wasn’t my favorite.  I’m sure that there are people that will like this book more than I did, but I probably will not reread this book.  This book is a book that is important more than anything else.  I can’t think of any other fiction written during this time period, but I believe that it is more important than ever for people to know what happened there.

What I Liked About the Book

The book was well-written, and the characters were interesting.  From what I know about East Germany at the time, I think that the things that happened (people disappearing, people ordering things and not getting them for eons, etc.) were realistically portrayed.  I liked the use of German, and especially German slang used in the country at the time.  The book had some suspenseful parts where I found myself trying to read as fast as possible because I wanted to find out what happened.

What I Didn’t Like About the Book

I think that I’m the only person that I’ve seen review this book so far that didn’t think that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  While I did like it, I didn’t think it was as über-wonderful as some people did.  The main character, Lena, didn’t exactly make the smartest decisions.  I find it difficult to believe that someone growing up in East Germany would be as dense as she was when it came to asking questions about her uncle after he disappeared.  As she was investigating what happened to her uncle, she seemed to be a little more foolhearty than most people in her situation would be.  When she has to make an important decision about her future towards the end of the book, I find it difficult to believe that she makes the decision that she did.

Trigger Warnings

While this book is being marketed as a YA book, I don’t believe that this book is really appropriate for younger YA readers.  Lena is sexually assaulted on multiple occasions, by the same person; the attacks get worse throughout the book.  I didn’t particularly like this part of the book, although I do realize that it is probably a realistic portrayal of the way things could have happened.

Overall…

The House of One Thousand Eyes is a book that you should consider reading, especially if you are unfamiliar with the time before the Berlin Wall fell down.  We are in a time period where our privacy is becoming less and less and the power of the state is increasing.  It’s good to read books like this in order to understand what could happen if a country became this powerful and overbearing.  While it wasn’t the best book I’ve read this month so far, it was good for me to have read it.

Another book about East Germany that you may be interested in is Deep Undercover by Jack Barsky.  That book is nonfiction and deals with an East German spy that went to America, but it’s also a good book to read as he continually had to deal with his handlers back in the Communist world.  That book was one of my favorites from last year.

This book will be released on September 11th, but it is available for pre-order now.

I Love The Young Elites

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Young Elites coverToday I will be reviewing the Young Elites trilogy, so it looks like I will be reviewing all nine of Marie Lu’s books this year.  My review for Wildcard will come out September 18th or 19th, and I’ll probably end up reviewing her Batman: Nightwalker book in September as well.  Like my review of the Legend trilogy last month, I will review all three books at once.

The Young Elites trilogy is comprised of three books:  The Young Elites, The Rose Society, and The Midnight Star.  I like the second two books better than the first book of the trilogy; in fact, I currently have two Young Elites related fanfics in progress, and they are more influenced by the second two books.

The three books follow the story of Adelina Amouteru.  As a child, she caught the blood fever and one of her eyes become infected and had to be burned out, leaving a scar.  She also was marked with silver hair.  Although she was still pretty, her scar left her marked: she was a malfetto.

Many people who caught the blood fever as children survived with marks of various types and lived as malfettos.  People hated and feared them.  Adults who caught the blood fever died.

Some children who got the blood fever eventually discovered that they had supernatural powers.  These people became known as The Young Elites.

The blood fever also infected her sister Violetta, who survived and remained unmarked.  Violetta remained pretty, and was the favorite of their father.  Over time, Adelina became resentful and bitter towards her sister.

Until one night, her father decided to sell her to a wealthy merchant… as a mistress.

Adelina wasn’t having that.  She decided to escape instead.  In the process of escaping, she accidentally killed her father — and discovered that she had the power to conjure up illusions.  She was an Elite.

She is taken in by a group of Elites known as The Dagger Society.  They taught her how to use her powers.  She falls in love with the leader of The Dagger Society.  While all this was happening, she discovers that she is trapped into making impossible choices.  She doesn’t know who to trust, and we are led along through all three books.

Themes

Trust and rejection are a huge part of this story.  Adelina feels like she is rejected by everybody in her life.  Society rejects her for being a malfetto.  She’s rejected by her father.  She feels like she is rejected by her sister.  Then, she is rejected some more.  The more she faces rejection, the more bitter and dark her soul becomes.  When she achieves power over others, she takes it out on them.  She becomes one of those wicked people that you read about as the villains in many other stories.  Yet… you don’t wish ill for her.

Another theme in this story seems to be about mental illness.  As Adelina becomes more powerful, she starts seeing hallucinations and has nightmares.  If she existed in the 21st century and not in a fantasy novel, we would say that she had a mental illness.  Her hallucinations only contribute to the darkness in her heart, until it almost seems impossible for her to crawl out of this dark hole that she’s dug for herself.  My theory on this trilogy is… that she would never have been able to crawl out of this hole on her own.

But, never fear, that is not the end of her story.  A third theme of this story is unconditional love.  There are people that love Adelina for who she is and not what she can do for them.  These are the people that finally help her redeem herself in the bittersweet end.

Setting

I love the setting for this book.  The world is a fantasy, medieval-type world (quite unlike Legend, which is a future dystopian setting).  Each part of the world has a different flavor to it.  The world that Adelina is born into seems to have the flavor of Italy, and in particular, Venice.  The northern part of the world reminds me of the Celts.  In the South, where Adelina’s ancestors hail from, the world seems like medieval Persia.

I felt that this was a really clever way to set up the world.  In my Young Elites WIP, Saving Adelinetta, I’ll be extending on the theme of her settings; but I still have about 1/3 of the first draft to do, and it’s going to need a lot of editing, so who knows when I will finish it.

Overall

This is one of my favorite stories.  In order to write fanfiction, I have to spend a lot of time reading the original books, getting into the character’s heads, and studying what the story is trying to say.  I’ve only written for four fandoms, and this is one of them.  The Young Elites trilogy is good enough for me to want to live in these character’s heads and reread the books enough to write fanfics based on it.  I think that’s enough of an endorsement to say that I really like it.

Should You Fear A Reaper at the Gates?

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

A Reaper at the Gates CoverA Reaper at the Gates is Sabaa Tahir’s third book in the Ember in the Ashes Quartet.  It is another outstanding book in the series.  I read the three books in three days, and now I feel like I’m stuck in the Waiting Place until 2019 when the final book comes out.

This review contains spoilers for An Ember in the Ashes and A Torch Against the Night.

When we last left our fearless characters at the end of A Torch Against the Night, Elias had died, but in exchange for his life, he had agreed to become the Soul Catcher, which allowed him to return to the mortal world and help Laia and his friends in the outside world, when he wasn’t working with the ghosts.  Darin had been busted from Kauf prison, but he wasn’t like his former self.  Laia had discovered that she was gifted with the power of invisibility, and was starting to become a leader (although she didn’t want to admit it).  Helene’s family had been killed, with the exception of Livia, who was now married to the sadistic emperor.

Can things get any worse?  I asked that while I was reading A Torch Against the Night too.  Unfortunately for these characters, things continue to get even darker in the third installment of this series.

Like the last book, A Reaper at the Gates is primarily told from the perspectives of Laia, Elias, and Helene.  A lot of the time, they are dealing with their own battles, so it makes sense to follow these three.  The Nightbringer also has a couple chapters from his perspective.

After she accidentally gave away a piece of the Star to the Nightbringer (dumb dumb dumb!), Laia goes on a quest to prevent him from getting the final piece.  She’s also trying to help the scholars rage against the machine (the Empire, that is) and not get killed.  Meanwhile, her brother wakes up, and she needs to help him get back to work making Serric steel weapons.

Elias has his own battles to face.  He’s taking over as the Soul Catcher, but he’s still trying to help Laia, whom he loves.  If he doesn’t do his job as Soul Catcher well enough, there could be disastrous consequences.  Unfortunately, there is a tug at him to give up his care about the world in order to do his Soul Catcher duty.

Helene is dealing with politics in the Empire.  Keris Veturius is trying to undermine her at every step, and there are enemies trying to wage war on the Empire.  Meanwhile, her sister Livia is in danger, both with the Emperor and with Keris.

A Reaper at the Gates is even darker than A Torch Against the Night.  The characters deal with court intrigue.  They learn secrets.  Many of them grow as people.  Some of them seem to be fighting a losing battle.

One of the subplots of the series is the relationship between Elias and Laia.  If I were to give this relationship a tag on Archive of our Own, it would be sloooooooow burn.  At least they finally realize that they love each other in this book, and are willing to admit it.  There are a couple of really nice scenes between the two regarding their love for each other, but with Elias’s new gig as Soul Catcher, is their relationship doomed?  You may or may not find out the answer in this book.

At the end of A Reaper at the Gates, the characters don’t run off into the sunset and sing Kumbaya.  They still have a lot to deal with.  You may finish this book and, like me, feel like you will be stuck in the Waiting Place until 2019 when this book concludes.  I’m personally a little scared though… I really hated chapter 50 of Allegiant, and I hope to not see another repeat of that.  However, the darkest hour is just before the dawn.  Perhaps there was a little foreshadowing involved when Laia said what Nan once told her “as long as there is life, there is hope.”  While things will look bleak when you finish this book, you will want more, and fortunately, there is one more book to hopefully set this world right once again.

Other books in this series I have reviewed: