Review: Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas

– goodreads –

ARC received from the publisher (Quill Tree Books) in exchange for an honest review.

I’m pretty sure I’ve been looking forwards to this graphic novel for a few years now, having first heard about it back in my webcomic-heavy era – the concept and the art were an immediate draw. I was delighted when I got a chance to give it a try.

Review: The Tropic Of Serpents by Marie Brennan (The Memoirs of Lady Trent #2)

– goodreads –

…it does little good to cry, “I only wanted to study dragons!” Science is not separate from politics. As much as I would like it to be a pure thing, existing only in some intellectual realm unsullied by human struggle, it will always be entangled with the world we live in.

Reviewing sequels is tricky business. Reviewing sequels years after you read the previous book is trickier. I read the first book before I started this blog, and I knew I liked it enough to want to continue – but, well, it has been a while. While I fortunately had no issues remembering what happened before, I was very much not in the mood for it anymore. If not for the r/Fantasy Bingo, I would not have persisted.

Review: Novice Dragoneer by E.E. Knight (Dragoneer Academy #1)

– goodreads –

ARC provided by the publisher (Ace Books) in exchange for an honest review.

Back in the summer, I had a mighty need for something light and above all, nostalgia-inspiring. Something that would give off the same general vibe as the books that first got me into fantasy. Then I saw this. It seemed absolutely perfect – dragons, magic schools, plucky underdog orphan girls, fuck yes, give me all of it. And it delivered on that. If I read this book when I was a kid aroung the time I read Eragon, I’d be singing it nostalgic praises to this day.

There is only one problem that keeps me from enthusiastically recommending it to everyone in sight. A rather large one. It’s simply not that well-written.

Review: My Beautiful Life by K.J. Parker

– goodreads –

ARC received from the publisher (Subterranean Press) on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve always been interested in reverse stories, where the ending (in this case, the death of the narrator) is known from the start, and then they slowly work its way towards it. Where the question is not what happens as much as how it happens. And I have enjoyed what I read of K.J. Parker so far.

I’ve done some truly appalling things in my life. I’m bitterly ashamed of them now. Saying I did them all for the best—and saying, those things weren’t my idea, other people made me do them, is just as bad; admitting that I’m a spineless coward as well as morally bankrupt. I’m a mess, and no good nohow.

But despite the catchy opening, I was not…quite satisfied with what I got.

Review: In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

– goodreads –

 

This magic land was all wrong. In the books, you had to destroy an evil piece of jewelry or defeat an evil-though-sexy witch or wizard. In the books, people did not hide documents and steal land and try to cheat dwarves and dryads.

I don’t even know how to begin reviewing this book. It can be best summed up as “I shouldn’t have liked it, but I did.” I’m not usually a fan of satire (which In Other Lands edges into at times) or unsubtle books, and asshole protagonists can be hit or miss, but man, this one pushed all the right buttons for me. I picked it up because Sharade of The Fantasy Inn recommended it for its humour and quotability, and I was not prepared for the assault on my feelings it launched in the process.

Reread: The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar (Olondria #2)

– goodreads –

Note: I have not read A Stranger in Olondria before The Winged Histories. It works perfectly fine as a standalone.

This is one of my favourite novels of all time along with The Gray House and more recently The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I first read it in the summer of 2017 and have been thinking it was a shame I never wrote up anything on it ever since. A book that means so much to me – that deserves words. Praise. Anything. So allow me to write something a little…extra ✨

I have breathed on shadows, as one breathes into a soap bubble, to give it breadth and life. I did it because I had to, because human beings cannot live without history, and I have no history or tradition that is not located in a pale, aggressive body lying in the dirt, or hanging from a tree. […] What is the difference between a genius and a monster?

It’s so hard to set expectations correctly. Anything, anything you knew about fantasy and the paths stories take, their structure – it goes right out the window. Forget it. As much of literary fantasy, it avoids the beaten path.

Mini Reviews: Ninefox Gambit, Treason’s Shore, Prince of the Godborn (DNF), A Coalition of Lions

You may have noticed there haven’t been any posts for a while. Since March started and I got hit with a full load of classes and assignments again, time and energy for reviews have been scarce. Writing takes a lot out of me. I faced quite the conundrum: I still wanted to review every book I read, but at the same time I’ve been way too exhausted to and in a massive reading slump besides. Blogging simply fell by the wayside.

This is a compromise: a series of mini reviews that don’t quite fit my usual format. It’s probably not going to be the last post of this type. I’m starting to feel better, there will be longer reviews again, but it’s probably still a while until I’ll be able to post with any sort of consistency.

Review: Touch by Claire North

– goodreads –

Whoa. Just…whoa.

First recommended to me by Coffee/Travis of The Fantasy Inn, who has been almost as insistent with it as I am with my darling, The Gray House – and when it finally got chosen as the bookclub pick for the month after being nominated for probably like a year in a row, I simply had to. And even now, days later, I am still thinking about what I read. It did not leave me untouched.

It is not beauty, in an eye, a hand, a curl of hair. I have seen old men, their backs bent and shirts white, whose eyes look up at the passers-by and in whose little knowing smiles there is more beauty, more radiance of soul, than any pampered flesh. I have seen a beggar, back straight and beard down to his chest, in whose green eyes and greying hair was such handsomeness that I yearned to have some fraction of him to call my own, to dress in rags and sweep imperious through city streets.

Kepler is a body-hijacking ghost. With a touch it can jump into any body and use it for any amount of time, leaving a host with a gap in their memories. And it is not alone. When a host it loved and cherished is killed from under it, seemingly with the intention to kill Kepler too, it goes on a journey across Europe to find out who did it and why.

Review: The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #2)

– goodreads –

Thanks to Tor and Netgalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Quotes provided may change in the final vesion.

For me, this has been one of the most anticipated releases of 2018. I couldn’t wait to return to the world and see where the story takes Baru next, I pre-ordered in case I wouldn’t get the ARC, and when I did, I was almost wary of reading it, anticipating the emotional punch. The enthusiasm from bloggers who got it earlier was contagious. Sadly, while it was good, it didn’t quite live up to its hype.

Who says you have a duty to a nation? Who says you cannot reject an unjust duty? Who says you can decide which evil is small enough to tolerate, and which is too great to allow? Who says you should allow anyone to hold such power over you, the power to use your work for purposes you do not understand?

Review: Devices and Desires by K.J. Parker (Engineer Trilogy #1)

– goodreads –

All in all, it’s a book that focuses on its themes and prose so much that it loses focus of almost anything else. Perhaps it comes from his background in short stories (I am very familiar with them, but I never read anything he wrote as Holt, so I can’t say exactly),

Conceptually and stylistically, it’s easily one of the best fantasy books I have ever read, but it’s not without some serious flaws. While I enjoyed it very much, this makes it very hard to rate and recommend.

He had to have it; and if it meant the end of the world, that wasn’t his problem.