Category: Fantasy

dystopian, Fantasy, literary fiction

Book Review: Tilt by Emma Pattee

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“You and me, when we die, we’re going to evaporate back into the earth like we were never even here. Bodies made of air, bodies made of dirt.”

Annie is 9 months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, she decides to walk to his workplace and then go home with him. As she makes her way across Portland and witnesses human desperation, kindness and depravity, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career and her anxiety about having a baby.

“People will tell you that everything is clear in hindsight, but really it’s just rewritten.”

The events in this book all take place within a day. As Annie makes her way across Portland, she forms an unlikely friendship with a young woman who helped her at IKEA, and they walk some of the way together. Annie’s reflection about her marriage and her past was super compelling to listen to. Looking back at the stagnation of your life when it’s been upheaved is very fascinating. She performs an autopsy of her life and marriage and how she got there, as she walks to her husband. And I did not like her husband, at all. I understand how hard it is to let go of a dream, but I felt like he was selfish in not accepting that that dream was dead.

“I want something more than this. That thought is like a pebble tossed inside a lake, sinking down into darkness. It’s better to forget the things you want but don’t have. The happiest people are the ones who want what they already have. This ache, this ache inside of me, I don’t know how to get rid of it.”

This is not a thriller or a suspense. I suspect this expectation and its ending, are the reasons for the middling rating on Goodreads. The book ends at the end of the day with no resolution; nothing is wrapped up in a pretty bow. We are still in the middle of a natural disaster that has decimated hundreds of thousands, and Portland is still on fire. This book is primarily about the journey and not about the destination. I enjoyed the writing so much and I think it kept me pushing. Also, this book is less than 250 pages, so it goes by fast. I think this is a well-executed and thought-provoking novel and you should give it a try.

“While washing the dishes, only be washing the dishes—that’s what he always says. Some Buddhism shit he read on Instagram. Only a man could say something like that.”

If you like plot driven books, then this is not the book for you. Plenty happens since this is the middle of an earthquake, but nothing actually pushes the plot forward. This book is purely character driven and I completely understand why so many didn’t like this book, but I did. If you go into it after reading this review with a clear understanding of what this book is, I think you’d like it too.

Have you read this one? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Leggy

Chick-Lit, dystopian, Fantasy, literary fiction, Magical Realism, romance, women's fiction

Book Review: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

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“You can’t stay married to someone forever just because they climb out of your attic one afternoon.”

Lauren returns to her flat in London late one night to be greeted by her husband, Michael. There is only one problem – she’s not married. She’s never seen Michael in her life. But according to her neighbors, friends and family, this is her husband, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to make sense of this situation, Michael goes up the attic to change the bulb. In his place, a new man emerges from the attic and a slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren has to decide what truly matters to her in a man. How do you decide to stick with what you currently have if there is a chance that better could be coming down from the attic? When do you stop trying to get better?

“She has always thought of her willingness to go along with things, her outsourcing of decisions to friends and circumstance, as passivity, not courage. But observed and described by this man she likes so much, she can almost believe in herself as someone with an audacious spirit.”

This book was my pick for Book of the Month in April and the description intrigued me. When I finally picked it up, it was a fast but exhausting read. Reading Lauren continuously go through man after man was insane. It tired me out. I can’t even begin to imagine what Lauren felt living it. I think Gramazio achieved what she set out to do with this book. I also found the attic to be a metaphor for dating apps or dating in general, when do you decide to settle with good enough? Is there always going to be better? When do you make a decision and stick to it and see how far that decision takes you and your partner until it ends, or it doesn’t? If you can switch out men for eternity, what determines when you stop?

“In the years before the first husband emerged from the attic, she had felt the burden of long singleness lying upon her. Being happy to be single had felt obligatory, a statement of feminism or autonomy or just a way to head off coupled friends who she didn’t want feeling sorry for her. The weight of that requirement had made it difficult, sometimes, to figure out how she really felt.”

Another thing I loved that Gramazio demonstrated was the autonomy of the other person to also decide to not be with you. Even though, Lauren sent man after man back into attic, there were men that she thought she could be with who unknowingly went back to the attic and out came a completely new person. In the end, it wasn’t just up to Lauren to make a decision, you can make a decision and the other person can decide that they don’t want you or life happens, and the relationship just doesn’t work out. Even when Lauren decides to stop exchanging the men, the men had to make the decision to also stick with her and also the attic kept luring them back in.

“She’s chosen her husband. She hasn’t met him, but she’s chosen him. And if he’s not right, she’ll get out of it the old-fashioned way: an immense pile of onerous legal chores that wear her down over the course of many months, and a determination to keep it cordial that ultimately collapses over a missing vase that they both fixate on as a metaphor for their mutual failings.”

Ultimately, this book ended the best way it could have possibly ended. I understood the choice the author made to end it in the way that she did, and I quite appreciated the ending. By the time I got to the end though, I was so tired of reading this book because I was worn down by the many, many men and how quickly they came and went. We never got to know any intimately. All in all, I enjoyed this book and recommend it. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

Fantasy, Fiction, literary fiction, romance

Book Review: The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

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Life was made up of a series of accidents and drastic errors. The unexpected became the expected, you made the right turn or the wrong turn, and all of it added up to the path you were on.”

Ivy Jacob is from an affluent family in Boston but is not able to relate with her family. She gets pregnant as a teenager and with no support from her family and the father of her child, she runs away. She unfortunately finds solace in a cult. Cult leader takes a liking to Ivy and marries her while also promising to be a father to Ivy’s child, Mia. It doesn’t take long for Ivy to realize that this is a mistake as the rules are stifling. Children belong to the community, members are not allowed to read books and disobedience is punished by branding but Joel has threatened Ivy that if she ever leaves she will never see Mia again.

“In a place where books were banned there coud be no personal freedom, no hope, and no dreams for the future.”

Mia gets older and becomes curious. She discovers the local library and breaks the rules and begins to steal and read books. She discovers The Scarlett Letter that seems to have a personalized note addressed to her but how could that be? The book saves her life as a series of events leads to her having a new life until one day she is face to face with the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne and has to make a choice about her future.

“It wasn’t easy to walk away from the past, even when you locked it up in a box for which there was no key. Memories rattle around late at night, they claw at the latch, escaping when you least expect them to do so.”

This is my first Hoffman book and I was very much into this story. All the themes were up my alley and the plot was paced in a way where you were slowly drawn into the story. I felt so many emotions from joy, dread, sadness and I was still looking forward to what was going to happen. I enjoyed the subtle way she conveyed the powerful love between a mother and daughter and how parenting comes with hard decisions. Right from the note to readers that was in the beginning of the book, you could tell with every line you read that Hoffman loves what she does and truly believes in the power of reading. As Mia discovers reading, Hoffman found a way to remind the reader of just how powerful books can be.

“Herein are a thousand different doors, and a thousand different lives. Turn the page and you open the door.”

Everything was going great for me till we entered the magical realism portion. I have mentioned before that I am going through the fictional best reads of 2023 and I have noticed that this seems to be a popular genre. When Mia encounters Nathaniel Hawthorne and they start a romantic affair, I was so confused. I don’t think an explanation was given as to how the portal was unlocked.

In my confusion, I looked up Hawthorne’s biography and Hoffman stayed true to his life story. As Mia decided whether to stay in that time period or return to the present, again I was confused. After experiencing the freedoms of the modern world as a woman, who on earth would even consider staying in a time period where women had little to no rights?

Overall, I thought this book was good storytelling and had a mix of everything and my only gripe as mentioned above, could probably be because I am too much of a realist and I struggled with accepting the magical liberties.

Taynement

Fantasy, Fiction

Book Review: Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang

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“Because good people can turn desperate when the horrors are upon them—especially people whose culture of plenty has left them with no systems to cope with scarcity or cataclysm. Good people will turn monstrous when it’s down to their survival or someone else’s.”

Sciona has devoted every moment of her waking life for the past 20 years on magic and it might finally pay off, she is about to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry in Tiran. When she finally breaks that glass ceiling, she realizes that she will never get the respect she has desired all her life from the male highmages.

Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor position instead of a qualified lab assistant position. What no one realizes is that Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier, working for a highmage. He’s finally able to understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland and keep Tiranish in power. When Sciona and Thomil discover an ancient secret that the order has spent years protecting, Sciona is faced with the most difficult choice of her life.

“Truth over delusion. Growth over comfort. God over all.“

This book is a standalone book which is rare in fantasy, and it is a dark academia fantasy novel filled with mystery, tragedy and questions of morality. I think in our capitalist world today this book is not that farfetched. How much are you willing to give up the comforts that you’re used to just because you’ve realized that it’s at the expense of other people who you don’t know?

The clothes we wear, the phones we used, the stability we have in our different western countries all come with a cost and how much are we willing to turn a blind eye. Even though this book makes you wonder what you would do if you were Sciona and the people of Tiran, it is also not preachy at all. You only start linking these themes to real life once you’re done. You think more deeply about the book and that’s when the threads start connecting in your head.

“It matters because you’re a child. The future ultimately isn’t mine or Sciona’s. It’s yours.”

I wondered what I would have done if I was in Sciona’s shoes and I realized that all the technology and magic we harness is at the expense of the rest of the world and frankly, I would have done the opposite of what she did. I understand her actions to be noble and the right thing to do but I know that I wouldn’t have been a good enough person to do it.

Also, everything Thomil predicted would be her people’s reaction proved to be accurate. People do not want to be bothered by you exposing that their comforts come at the expense of other people. People might claim to want to be do the right thing but when push comes to shove the majority of human beings will choose their group being on top over doing the right thing that benefits other groups.

“You’re the worst kind of murderer, I think… The kind who won’t even acknowledge her crime. You’ve never worshipped a god of truth… You worship a delusion.”

This stand alone adult fantasy forces you to think but ultimately, with the way Sciona’s noble intentions turned out, it also forces you to face the reality of the world. People are good, yes, but people are also incredibly selfish. I recommend this book. I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, romance

Book Review: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

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“Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities.”

Violet Sorrengail has studied all her life to enter the Scribe quadrant. Her father had always taught her that the scribes hold all the power – the power to erase history, reframe history, and rewrite history. When he dies, Violet’s mother – the commanding general in Navarre- orders her to join the hundreds of students who are striving to become one of the elite dragon riders. Violet is weak and has no fighting experience and now has to join the hundreds of kids who have trained for this all their lives. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, people are willing to kill to be successful especially when they perceive weakness. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter especially Xaden Riorson whose father her mother executed for treason.

“Fascinating. You look all frail and breakable, but you’re really a violent little thing, aren’t you?”

I started this book when it first came out, read the first 50 pages and dropped it. I picked it up again sometime in August because Tayne told me her coworker asked her about it. So, I decided to finish it so I could properly talk about how terrible it was, but I ended up really liking it. My problem with the first 50 pages of this book is my problem with most female characters in fantasy – the description of their bodies. Yarros spent every second reminding us how weak and slender but oh so beautiful Violet is. The number of times Yarros describes Violet’s porcelain skin is actually quite insane. Then the exaggeration of the villains in this book is utterly laughable. Right from the parapet to enter the riders’ quadrant someone who literally just met Violet and has no history with her, or her family was already chasing her down to kill her because she looks weak.

“A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.”

When I continued with this book, what won me over was how weak Violet actually was and the numerous ways she had to work to overcome her weakness. I like that at the end of the book she didn’t still transform into some physically strong rider who could beat anybody in a fight. I enjoyed the cunning ways she had to survive the violence of the cadets in the riders’ sect. I started rooting for her once I realized she wasn’t going to be a Mary Sue. If you spend 50 pages telling me your protagonist is weak, you better not suddenly have her beating everybody in a physical fight. Another misconception I had going into this one that I want to correct for everybody is that this is NOT a YA fantasy book. The cadets are young but are all in their twenties. The youngest class in the cadet is 20. Also, there is sex aplenty and it is not implied, it is explicitly stated that everyone is sleeping with everyone and there’s no shame surrounding it, unless of course you’re sleeping with a superior. This is an open door book.

“One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.”

I’m glad there is actually a bigger story here than the love story between Violet and Xander. There is much more at stake, and I honestly guessed what the big conspiracy was within the first 100 pages of the book when certain things that seemed like passing conversation was mentioned. I’ve read way too many fantasy books to ever gasp at the ending of this one. I enjoyed Xander as a character. I thought all his decisions were right and correct even if the protagonist did not see it that way. I understand the path that led Violet and Xander to each other even thought their families had violent histories with each other. At the end of the day though, their relationship is the least interesting thing about this book. When certain secrets were finally coming to light, I just wanted Violet to get over the feeling of being betrayed so Xander could get on with telling us what the whole picture actually was. Yarros also makes you care about the supporting characters so deeply that you care about what happens to them and when anything happens to them you are so invested that you’re bawling at 5am in the morning. Okay, that was just me.

“Coming in last is better than coming in dead.”

All in all, I recommend this book. It’s 600 pages but a very quick read once you get out of those first 50 pages. I gave this one 4 stars on Goodreads and I’m looking forward to the next book.

Have you read this one? What did you think?

Leggy

dystopian, Fantasy, scifi

Book Review: Upgrade by Blake Crouch

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“We don’t have an intelligence problem. We have a compassion problem. That, more than any other single factor, is what’s driving us toward extinction.“

There’s something different about Logan Ramsey. He’s physically stronger, processes information faster, better at multitasking, better at concentration. He’s just better at everything all of a sudden, after a raid gone wrong. After Ramsey has the doctor check his genome, he discovers that it’s been hacked and almost everything about him has been upgraded. There’s a reason he has been targeted for this upgrade, something that has to do with the darkest part of his history, why he went to prison and his dark family legacy. Worse still, what is happening to him is a sign of what’s to come. He’s a practice run in a more coordinated effort to upgrade humanity as a whole and only him has the ability now to stop this overreach from going forward.

“We were a monstrous, thoughtful, selfish, sensitive, fearful, ambitious, loving, hateful, hopeful species. We contained within us the potential for great evil, but also for great good. And we were capable of so much more than this.”

This is really a superhero story. If you like superhero stories and you enjoy science fiction, this is a perfect alloy. Blake Crouch writes really simple and accessible science fiction for everybody regardless of your genre preference. I always tell people, if they want science fiction lite, then Crouch is the best place to start. This book also made me think of what I would do if I was in the main character’s shoes. I think I was torn about this book because I genuinely don’t know who I would support in real life. I thought the supposed villain had a very good point about upgrading humanity and if not for the side effects of the upgrade, I would have been on her side. But I also understand why the main character thought – when will it be enough? Cool, radicate a few gene causing diseases in kids, change a few things but when will it ever be enough? It’s a little like plastic surgery, you get one, you want them all.

“What if this isn’t the solution? What if you end up killing a billion people for no reason? What if you just end up creating a world of Miriam Ramsays—all convinced they know what’s best, all capable of inflicting unimaginable harm if they’re wrong? What if you create a bunch of people who are just drastically better at what they already were. Soldiers. Criminals. Politicians. Capitalists.”

Crouch had really big questions in this book but I think this book pales in comparison to his other works. Upgrade was more straightforward when I usually love Crouch for the twists and turns his books bring. I do think the author presented us a possible solution to the problem that is humanity and I think he chose a good answer but ultimately I was disappointed as a whole. But I will say that I think this is a good entry into the Crouch world if this is something you’re interested in doing. It is easy to read, moves at a fast pace and doesn’t get bogged down in the science. This book ultimately read like a summer blockbuster, like it was written to be adapted. I suspect that’s why he made it so straightforward. We’ll see if it ever comes to the big screen. Anyway, I really recommend this book. We also have another Crouch book review that you should check out. I gave this one 3 stars on Goodreads.

Do you enjoy science fiction? Are you going to give this one a chance? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, literary fiction, scifi

Book Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”

It’s 1912, Edwin St. Andrew is exiled from polite society by his parents after ranting about colonialism at the dinner table and finds himself in Canada. He enters the forest one night to admire the Canadian wilderness and is shocked to see a sudden vision of a man playing a violin in an airship terminal. 200 years later, Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour on earth from the outer space colonies when she is asked about a strange passage in her best selling book. A passage that describes a man playing a violin in an airship terminal when suddenly the Canadian wilderness rises behind him for a couple of seconds. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts is hired to investigate this anomaly and determine if we are living in a simulation, he travels through time to meet each participant to interview them and finds so many different lives upended.

“You know the phrase I keep thinking about?” a poet asked, on a different panel, at a festival in Copenhagen. ‘The chickens are coming home to roost.’ Because it’s never good chickens. It’s never ‘You’ve been a good person and now your chickens are coming home to roost.’ It’s never good chickens. It’s always bad chickens.”

I genuinely do not know how to describe this book to you because I went in blind. I saw that Mandel had a new book out and I just downloaded it and read it without even checking to see what it was about. I recommend you go in that way because there is really no description for this book. It’s so many things at once. It is a pandemic novel, a time travelling novel, an apocalyptic novel, a human nature novel etc. I did not enjoy Mandel’s last novel, The Glass Hotel, as much as I did Station Eleven but this one is Mandel at her absolute finest. If you read Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, you get to pick up the different little easter eggs she drops on the way. Characters from her previous books pop up in this one and it was so thrilling to recognise characters I thought I would never see again.

“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you, with seemingly no intermediate step.”

As is the style with Mandel, this is a quiet slow build story. The exploration of what living in a simulation might mean for humanity is so riveting and her writing of human nature is absolutely beautiful. We begin with different chapters of characters in different centuries and settings with stories that seem totally unrelated and you wonder where exactly this is leading to. The way she ties the stories together beautifully at the end is so good. Mandel’s writing has such a nostalgic feel to it, how do you feel nostalgic about what is essentially a time traveling investigatory story? I don’t know but you do.

“Sometimes you don’t know you’re going to throw a grenade until you’ve already pulled the pin.”

If you enjoy slow burn books, then you should give this book a chance. If you’ve never enjoyed any Emily St. John Mandel’s books then this is not any different. The reasons you hated the others probably exist in this one. It’s very difficult to write a review for this book but I definitely recommend it if it sounds like something you’d like and with every Mandel book, you already know to expect very stellar writing. I think I’ve decided to be a completist where Mandel is concerned. I’m going to go and read her previous books before Station Eleven blew up and see. Anyway, I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, romance, Young Adult

Book Review: Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

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“Some scars are carved into our bones – a part of who we are, shaping what we become.”

Daughter of the Moon Goddess is inspired by the legend of Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess, in which a young woman’s quest to free her mother, pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm. Xingyin who has spent all her life on the moon discovers that her mother, the moon goddess, is actually a prisoner on the moon. One day, her magic flares and brings her mother’s powerful jailers to the moon to investigate forcing her to flee the only home she’s ever known. Alone and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom where she disguises herself and comes up with a plan to break the enchantment keeping her mother on the moon and gain her mother’s freedom.

“I was no longer a child willing to drift with the ride – I would steer against the current if I had to. and if I won, by some miraculous stroke of luck, I would never be helpless again.”

I was very excited when I found out about this book. Fantasy? Female protagonist? A Chinese setting? CHECK! I think I was expecting more Poppy War so, this protagonist and the entire world building fell flat for me. The story telling and world building wasn’t strong enough to immerse me into this world. Xingyin comes to the celestial kingdom and finds a job as a maiden for a powerful family and no one even investigates her background? Okay, I’m going to let that go.

But then she competes and wins a place as Prince Liwei’s companion and no one knows where she’s from, who her family is and nobody bothers to ask or investigate? It just rang so ridiculous to me that a stranger would be let near the heir to the throne without even a single question asked. Also, the competition to be selected as Prince Liwei’s companion was an absolute joke. I just expected it to be more intriguing, to show us how cunning or smart our protagonist was but it was all rigged for her to win.

This is a YA fantasy so of course there’s a love triangle. I thought this trope was being phased out of YA but I guess not. I found Prince Liwei to be a very 2 dimensional character, entirely predictable. A prince who is too good and cares too much. A prince who is better than his father but detests all the obligations he has to fulfil as the crown prince like being betrothed to a member of one of the most powerful families in the kingdom. He just wants to train and fall in love with whoever he wants and paint and care soooo deeply without having to make any tough decisions.

Wenzhi, the other love interest, is a high ranking army official who has won so many battles and brought great respect to the celestial kingdom. He has a dislike for all things royal and just wants to fight. He’s competent and smart and mysterious. Yet another person who was just allowed to rise in the army ranks even though no one knows where he’s from.

“It was only later that I learned the Chamber of Lions was reserved for the army’s most skilled warriors. While most had taken months, a year even to master every trap, it took me a matter of weeks.”

Xingyin was great at EVERYTHING she tried. She shot an arrow for the first time and was just an absolute natural. She learnt everything and became so strong in a matter of weeks. This is a woman who spent all her growing years in solitude and has never worked out a day in her life. She almost beat Prince Liwei in archery a mere month after she started training even though he had trained all his life.

Anyway, a lot happens in this book so at least you get a lot of bang for your buck. I think because I read a lot of fantasy, this book was not for me. It wasn’t very good world building, the politics isn’t intriguing enough for me to ignore the plot holes and the romance wasn’t passionate enough for two people, not to talk of a three way.

I do think if you enjoy romance books and YA literature, you’re going to enjoy this book. If you enjoy epic fantasies or if you read Poppy War and are looking for a dupe, this book is not for you at all. So while this book was not for me, I actually think it has an audience. It has above 4 stars on goodreads so it’s definitely popular.

This is one book that I wanted so badly to talk to someone about after I finished it so much so that I’m so desperate to join an in-person book club. Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

Book Related Topics, Chick-Lit, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, romance, Uncategorized

What I’ve Been Reading Lately: 4 Quick Fire Reviews

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Image result for what i've been reading lately

When I’m not reading the latest literary fiction books, I’m reading backlist titles that are fun and don’t require any thinking on my part. These are the sort of books that have kept my mental health in check this year. Enjoy 4 short reviews for the price of one!

1. The Hike by Drew Magary

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“This future you live in . . . would I like it?” “Honestly, it’s probably not that different from the world you know. Some people are happy. Some people are angry. There are wars. I don’t know if time makes much of a difference. The world changes, but people act the way people always do.”

Ben takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania and decides to take a hike while waiting for his meeting. He stumbles on a hiking path and starts down the road only to find himself in the middle of a nightmare. He is warned that if he gets off the path he will die. With no other choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself encountering monsters, and talking crabs, men from the 18th century and giants who are trying to kill him. He spends years on the path just trying to find his way home. He is told he just has to stay on the path and track down the “producer” – the creator of this bizarre world to get back to his family.

I picked up this book because it was recommended as a spooky read for halloween. They were wrong because this isn’t a spooky read at all. It reads more as fantasy or an adventure tale. There was nothing scary about it. Also, everyone mentions the last page being amazing. I didn’t think it was that great and I figured it out before I got to the end of the book, maybe because I was looking for it after reading all the reviews that were amazed at the ending.

I gave this one 3 stars on Goodreads. I really don’t know who would enjoy this book. It’s very bizarre but I guess if you liked Alice in Wonderland, you might like this one? It was a fun read to me.

2. Forge of Destiny by Yrsillar (Forge of Destiny #1)

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Ling Qi is a girl who has had to survive in the slums for years but she has just been recruited for having the talent that might make her an immortal in the future if she works hard. Ling is from a world ruled by immortals and stalked by beasts and spirits. The immortals are the richest and most revered members of the empire. Sent to the prestigious Argent Peak Sect to harness her talent, Ling is determined to take advantage of every opportunity given to her at school. She must work hard to catch up with her peers who are from rich immortal families and have been training for this their entire life. The sect grants the students only three months truce, for three months they’re not allowed to kill or fight each other but after the three months all bets are off. Ling struggles to advance and be stronger in time for the end of the truce and also gather enough allies who’ll stand and fight with her when the time comes.

I quite enjoyed this book. It ticked off a lot of my fantasy loves – female protagonist who’s not here to fuck around, school/training a la Harry Potter, strong enemies and allies. If you love progression fantasy, this is the book for you. I really enjoyed this one but I must say it got slow at the end and I wanted to see more of the bigger picture, so I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads. Ill definitely be continuing the series.

3. Iron Prince by Bryce O’Connor and Luke Chmilenko (Warformed: Stormweaver #1)

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Afflicted with a painful disease and abandoned by his parents because it, Reidon has been a ward of the state all of his life. He has had to fight all his life for a place at the academy where he has been training and getting beat up. His perseverance gets him noticed by the most powerful artificial intelligence in human history who grants him a CAD – a Combat Assistant Device- with awful specs but an infinite potential for growth. Reidon is at the bottom of his class at Galens Institute with everyone wondering why the reputable school admitted someone with such horrible specs. He becomes a target for everyone who thinks he shouldn’t be there. Reidon begins a slow but determined journey up the school rankings determined to be the greatest fighter the universe has ever seen.

Again, I love fantasy books set in school and this was such a fun read. I love main characters who are underdogs and you get to root for them as they defy the odds. I gave this one 4 stars on Goodreads. It’s nothing deep but if you’re looking for fantasy that you don’t have to think too hard about or keep up with a lot of characters then give this one a go.

4. A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy (Longhope Abbey #3)

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“Lucy picked up her skirts and danced down the hall to her own door. “I’m going to run away to Ireland!” she yelled. Cassandra followed after her. “Haven’t the Irish suffered enough?” “Maybe a pirate will kidnap me. If I’m lucky.” “If we’re all lucky.”

Cassandra has seen her husband only once – the day she married him. She’s perfectly fine with this arrangement because she only got married to secure her inheritance anyway. She doesn’t care that he has essentially banned her from going to London because she’s still going to go when he’s guaranteed to be out of town. Until he shows up in London too and gets into an argument with her where they don’t even recognize each other. Cassandra finds herself sharing a house with her husband for the first time while he’s trying everything to get her to go back to the country and leave him alone. Joshua has his life exactly how he likes it and doesn’t want something as inconvenient as a wife ruining all that. But can he resist falling in love with her?

I really enjoyed reading this one. I’ve had pandemic brain this entire year and reading romance and fantasy have been the only thing keeping me afloat. If you enjoy historical romance, this is the book for you. The characters are absolutely delightful and watching them fall in love was really cute. Definitely give this one a shot. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read any of these books? Am I the only one whose reading patterns have completely changed this year? Let me know how your reading year has been so far!

Leggy

Fantasy, Fiction, literary fiction, race, thriller

Book Review: The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

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“With heightened awareness of cultural sensitivity comes great responsibility. If we’re not careful, ‘diversity’ might become an item people start checking off a list and nothing more—a shallow, shadowy thing with but one dimension”

Nella is an editorial assistant at a publishing house called Wagner Books. Despite her many efforts in diversity, she is the only black employee and has to deal with the microaggressions and loneliness that comes with it. One day, through the smell of hair grease Nella is ecstatic to find that a new black employee has been hired, Hazel. Nella helps Hazel navigate the company, giving her tips and the two start to form a friendship.

Everything is going well till Nella begins to notice that she is becoming sidelined in favor of Hazel. She is not sure if it’s all in her head until Hazel leaves her hanging in a company meeting and to make things worse, Nella starts receiving threatening notes telling her to leave Wagner. As Nella tries to find out what is going on, we are also given insight into people who worked at Wagner in the past and she finds out that there is more at stake than she realized.

“Even when you just subtly imply that a white person is racist—especially a white man—they think it’s the biggest slap in the face ever. They’d rather be called anything other than a racist. They’re ready to fight you on it, tooth and nail.”

I was quite excited to read this one, even more excited when the wait list at the library was so long because that would mean it’s so good, right? Well no, wrong. This book was not it at all for me. First of all, it was quite slow. It took a while to get to the point and honestly, it still doesn’t get to the point till maybe the last few chapters. It was written from Nella’s point of view and Nella seemed like someone who wasn’t fully comfortable in being black because she grew up privileged and is dating a white guy (which I don’t consider reasons one should be unsure) She sounded timid and like she second guessed herself a lot. There is nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t exactly make for a fun read. I think the title of the book is what made me suspicious from jump when we are introduced to Hazel.

“Jesse Watson’s words about being seen as an equal to white colleagues: “You may think they’re okay with you, and they’ll make you think that they are. But they really aren’t. They never will be. Your presence only makes them fear their own absence.”

The prologue for the book introduces us to Kendra who worked at Wagner in the past and this was so confusing to me. I didn’t think it necessarily added to the story and instead complicated it. It almost seemed disjointed. I have seen many comparisons of this book to the movie “Get Out” and I see why people say it but I don’t get it. Harris decided to add a psychological thriller element to this book that I found unnecessary and drew what the focus of the book was in different directions. What I mean is – is the focus what it is to be a black person in the publishing world where noone looks like you? or is the focus that you have to be a certain kind of “black” to make it in a corporation – the latter which I found insulting.

“With heightened awareness of cultural sensitivity comes great responsibility. If we’re not careful, ‘diversity’ might become an item people start checking off a list and nothing more—a shallow, shadowy thing with but one dimension.”

Overall, I did not like this book for many reasons. It was not engaging, the characters were not compelling. Maybe this was my fault but I was not expecting a book where the black girls were competing against each other and the big twist was weird because it ultimately came down to being compliant to white people makes your life easier? Once again, I did not like this book and I do not recommend it. If you have read it and liked it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments!

Taynement