Well, here we are again, nearly two months since my last post . . . and only five books read! Back when I was reading over a hundred books a year (I've only managed 33 so far in 2020), I was getting in two to three hours a day, and I would read a whole book over a weekend every month or two. Ahh, those were the days. Now I'm managing only about 40 minutes of reading each day, so it is taking something like two weeks to read some of these books. Of course, I've had so much on my plate that I'm pretty sure I forget to add a book every so often. This actually happened with the first book I'll share in this post - I forgot to add it to my Goodreads list (which is how I try to keep track of what to put in these posts) and only found it by going back for the past three months through my library notices in my email! Hopefully I'm mostly only missing the mediocre ones, right?
The Sweetest Spell, by Suzanne Selfors was, well, different. I honestly don't remember whether I put it on my to-read list first, or if I just ran across it in the library. I'm pretty skeptical of either, actually, because the cover is pretty cheesy, and the blurb on Goodreads says, "Magic and romance entwine in this fantastical world where true love and chocolate conquer all." Also, cheesy. I thought the premise that the girl could churn milk into chocolate was pretty dumb (and, now that I think of it, it's especially dumb because milkmaids churn
cream not milk, duh!), but the blurb also says stuff like, "Emmeline Thistle, a dirt-scratcher's daughter, has escaped death twice-first, on the night she was born, and second, on the day her entire village was swept away by flood." I thought that was pretty interesting. Anywaaaaay . . . I wasn't super impressed at the beginning of the story, because it did have some more stuff that was pretty dumb, but the further I got into it, the more it read like a fairy tale that I'd just never heard before and I liked it more and more, and by the time I finished it I was like,
Huh. That was something special! And I promptly set out to find myself a brand-new copy for my home library. (And this is where I share with you a bit of wisdom that it shouldn't have taken me this long to learn but did: If you read a book and think you might even
possibly ever want to read it again, you should buy a copy NOW because once it goes out of print you won't be able to find a new hardcover copy and you won't be able to check it out of the library either because everyone will have stolen - Oh, I mean
lost - all of the library copies and you will be stuck buying one of THOSE even though you are loathe to reward the thieves -I mean
silly people who misplace things.) So, I really think you should read this book, if, of course, you can still actually find a copy in your local library. It was really original, and really lovely, and a really good fairy-tale-love-story-adventure and I think once you get past the first few chapters you will really, really like it too. (Reading Level 4.4 / Middle Grade +)
The Girl the Sea Gave Back is the second book by Adrienne Young. I told you about her first one,
Sky in the Deep in my last post (
here). I loved that one. I was really hoping that I would love this one too. Lucky for me, and for you too, I guess, I did. Yay! So, I got the impression before I read it that it was one of those books that takes place "in the world of" the previous book, but had entirely different characters. It wasn't exactly - it was written from the perspective of two different characters, one of whom was entirely new, and the other who had been a child in the first book and was now a young man of sixteen (I think!) The writing was a bit different in this one, partly because it was written from two different perspectives, but also because the heroine was a "Truthtongue," which means she read the bones and told the future, but of course in an enigmatic way. So in keeping with that, the book is kind of, how to explain it? Minimalistic? Kind of like April Genevieve Tucholke's
The Boneless Mercies or Ally Condie's
The Voyage of Poe Blythe. I don't come across stories like those very often (only these three easily come to mind out of the thousand I've read), but it packs the same punch as they do without all the words that could have been used to make it 100 pages longer. Not that it was short - at 327 pages it was an average length - but if the author
HAD added 100 pages, it would have been something entirely different. Anyway, I think somebody over in Hollywood needs to make these two books into a movie or a miniseries, or heck, how about a full-length series? It was a fantastic read and I was sorry when it was over. (And yes, a copy now sits on my bookcase!) (Reading Level: ? / Upper Grades)
I have a bit of advice for you before you read
Warrior of the Wild: don't read it right after
The Girl the Sea Gave Back, like I did. Don't read it after
Sky in the Deep, either. Do you see the cover art? The battle axe? The characters in the other two books use the same weapon . . . because they are bada** Nordic warriors. . . whose story is told in two absolutely amazing books. This one . . . not so much. It's like the other two are Academy Award winning historical fiction films and this one is a B movie with a strange mix of genres. Maybe even a bad B movie with a strange mix of genres. Maybe the kind that you sit through the whole thing because you have nothing better to do, but you groan and roll your eyes a lot and never recommend to a friend. Now, to be fair, if I hadn't read it right after a kinda-sorta similar book that was AWESOME, I might not have been comparing everything about it to said 5-star book, thus finding it severely lacking. Maybe I would have only found it somewhat lacking. Maybe, if the heroine was a bit more likeable, and the third wheel a bit less stereotypical and annoying, and it didn't have these stupid weird beasts that made it feel almost science-fiction-ish instead of historical fantasy-ish, and the writing had more depth, and the name of the god wasn't "Peruxolo" which, for some reason grated on my nerves every single time I read it, I might have actually enjoyed the romantic tension and accompanying banter between the two main characters, since it was just like in the author's previous
The Daughter of the Pirate King duology that I just loved. Come to think of it, the author followed pretty much the same formula for this one - kicka** warrior (pirate) girl who meets a bada** warrior (pirate) boy and she hates him until she doesn't, and she has an absent (mostly) mother and a cruel and demanding chief (king) of a father and she has to prove herself to him, and the boy helps her complete a task so she can do that. Okay. So now you know the whole story, and you don't need to bother trying to read this mediocre (at best) book. Go check out Tricia Levenseller's first series instead. It was WAAAAY better.
When I first heard of
The Merciful Crow I
HAD to read it. Why? Well, if you've been following my blog since the beginning, you'll know it's because of the CROW. I have a thing for crows. Or ravens, those will do too. I will read every single book I can get my hands on with those darned birds, and I am more than a little bit disappointed when such a book does not deliver what a book with crows should. For those of you who understand . . . you get it, right? If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, I don't think I can explain it to you. So, moving on, the crow in this book is not a crow at all. Not a bird, but a girl of the Crow social caste - a caste whose sole purpose in life is to remove and burn plague victims. Which means, of course, that they are
outcastes. But, even though the crow was not an actual crow, this book delivered everything I expected it to and more. It is sooooooo original. Well, not wholly original, but it took a whole bunch of original and not-so-original parts and put them together in a wholly original way. And, if you read my way-back-when review of
Daughter of Smoke and Bone, you'll understand when I say that it also has TEETH, but even those are wholly original (So here's one for you, Janelle!), making this an absolutely fantastic work of (historical-ish) fantasy. Of course . . . . I do have a few complaints: (Allow me to step up onto my soapbox for a moment.) The (young) author threw in a whole bunch of non-traditional orientations (if you know what I mean), but almost all of the references were
completely irrelevant to the story, so it seemed like either the editor told the author she needed to add it all in there (don't mess with somebody else's art!), or she has been conditioned by modern society to think adding it in is necessary (as an avid reader, I can tell you it IS NOT. It is just
distracting, especially the use of "they" as a singular pronoun used over and over in a novel). In line with this is the character of the female general, who just so happens to have
many husbands and wives. As any anthropologist will tell you, the main reason that polygamy is practiced is because a man gains wealth and status by having multiple wives - he typically pays a bride-price for each wife, but those wives will have daughters for whom other men will pay a bride-price to him. Even in the well-known religious group that had polygamy as one of its customs, the purpose was to have as many children as possible for a future benefit. Having multiple husbands does not help a woman have more children, and besides, cultures with this practice are rare, usually only occurring when the male to female ratio is severely out of balance or when men are prone to die in battle and leave children with no father. So, how about let's not throw non-sensical elements into a story just for the sake of modern identity politics, yeah? It is also pretty obvious that the author was trying to give a 'social justice' message in this story, but anybody who has obtained even a rudimentary education should realize that the book has parallels with the types of societal ills that have been occurring over and over and over again across the entire world since the beginning of civilization when social classes first emerged. (Don't get me wrong - I wholeheartedly think such systems are unfair, it just irritates me that many readers will not understand that it is not a new problem, nor has it historically been primarily related to race.) So. If you like fantasy, and you crave something original, and you are on board with the social justice movement, you will love this book. If however, you just love fantasy, and crave something original, and have mastered the eye-roll and ignore method of dealing with certain things, I think you will also love this book. (Reading Level: 5.5 / Upper Grades)
by S. Craig Zahler, was a bit weird. It is the story about a strangely malformed boy who is shuttled from place to place during the course of his childhood. So strangely malformed that the story itself doesn't really fit into one specific genre, but not in the annoying way (like some other books I've recently read).
Goodreads tags it as Fantasy, Fiction, and Horror, but I think it is pretty light on the horror part and should have Sci-fi added in. So, obviously, the story itself is a little weird. It is also written in a very interesting way, with certain quirks that are used throughout. For example, the author uses verbs and adjectives that aren't commonly used, but sprinkled in here and there in just the right amount to give the story a unique, interesting feel without sounding boring or pretentious. He also gives the age for every single character when they are first introduced, which is kind of annoying the first two times, but once you pick up on the pattern is actually quite brilliant, because it makes you look at each character in a way that draws upon your preconceived ideas of a person of that age. The story is often quirky and sometimes funny, but it is also sometimes sad. It is a fascinating read, and took me less than a week to finish, so you might be able to get through it in only a few days if you have some free time on your hands. Definitely a winner. (Reading Level: ? / Upper Grades)
I am still in the middle of reading another book right now . . . actually, I'm only 56 pages into it with 481 pages to go, so who knows how long that will take. Maybe even past Christmas, which would put me over two months since my last post, so I'm going to save it for next time. Happy reading!
