#POV: the villains are more likable than your own dad

[ideas-on-paper]

Nothing lore-related for once, but can we just talk about the dialogue of the Cat and the Fox if you let them live?

I had never seen this before, as I just fought them in my first playthrough (XP greed is a brutal bitch). I expected there to be different dialogue, but I never thought it would be so heart-wrenching.

Like Lucio (aka the Cat) saying that he's just tired of the daily struggle to survive? Oof... that hit hard.

That he wants to try starting a new life with his sister in a different city is really heartwarming, though. (And a big relief, since leaving Krat is the only way for them to stay alive with the ending I'm going for.) I really hope that they'll be safe and happy together.

And if you spare Lucio, you even learn that Geppetto is alive a lot earlier!

As for the Fox, I was surprised that she actually apologizes to Pinocchio for exploiting him. It just feels wonderful, seeing her being genuine for once. She even tells Pinocchio her real name: Claudia.

You know, considering the Fox and the Cat are the overarching villains in the fairy tale, I never expected these two to grow on me so much. The found family vibes from them are just so wholesome.

Also, you can really tell how Claudia relates to Pinocchio's situation - she knows what it's like wanting to protect someone you're close to, so she helps Pino do the same for his father. (If only the familial affection was mutual...)

[jason-pipers]

the jason/piper breakup and jason’s subsequent death

it is a long and angry post so you have been warned 

 I’m really sick of seeing Jason Grace/Piper McLean slander in their own tag, and I’m really, really sick of seeing people justify their breakup/his death as good writing. 

As I’ve been studying literature and text for the past four years at Uni- I can say with absolute confidence that The Burning Maze utilizing Jason and Piper was horrible. Like a bag of shit mixed together then smeared on paper and published kind of horrible. Actually, you don’t even really need a degree to be able to point out the very basic absurdity of them appearing in TBM. So even though I have a paper due on a completely unrelated topic and a lot of homework, I naturally decided this was a much better thing to write about: 

 Maybe in another world, Rick’s ghostwriters will be better at writing his books. The reason why the Jason/Piper breakup was extremely confusing and done very poorly in the sense of their character arcs was that there was no buildup to the breakup. In fact, I think these two got together off-screen and broke up off-screen. Yet, I’m sure Riordan sat at his desk thinking “now why don’t people just like Jason and Piper?? I give them so much!” Actually, you gave them nothing. It’s also considerably easy to disguise their breakup as logical when it isn’t. Now, people will argue that the basic foundation of the relationship was poorly made because of Hera’s meddling and that’s why they broke up. This is a lazy way to think about it because it’s obvious you don’t care about the characters so you should just say that and go. Hera’s meddling (putting false memories of Jason in Piper’s head and wiping Jason’s brain) really only gave Piper a vague notion of Jason (based on real attributes the Mist pulls) and also gave PERCY and Jason multiple relationships after the switcheroo. But Piper actually meets Jason and then has a subsequent breakdown that maybe he’s not her boyfriend. However, once she gets to know the real Jason (very accurate to the one she knew in her memories because Aphrodite said she could sense real possibilities hinting at their romance), she is still developing romantic feelings for him. It’s implied that the reason why Piper is falling so fast is because the memories she has of Jason are based on the real Jason. It’s easy to establish that Piper has real romantic feelings for Jason, not the made up Jason because the majority of TLH is them getting to know each other. If she felt like there was some confusion on her part about developing feelings for him because of Hera switching Percy and Jason- why did it not come up EVER? The months where Jason and Piper started dating. How about that long ass quest on the Argo? It could have been a valid plot line but it never came up. If it had come up near the end of the series or maybe even if it was a small subplot in the series, it would make the breakup logical, at least narratively. But no, we end Blood of Olympus with Jason and Piper coming full circle with the moment in the stars. Flash forward three years later to TBM where everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) about Piper and Jason are thrown into the trash. They’re broken up due to the false memories and overall I guess it’s implied Piper doesn’t have feelings for him anymore or something? Or the trauma of being in something like that prophecy was a lot for her to handle and she needed some time to figure things out? Yeah of course! Just like when she will go through another trauma (Jason dying for her) and start dating someone new right after. This would be so much easier to read and digest if these things are shown- in their own series and maybe not as a side thing to Apollo’s series. Reading it in TOA was completely out of left field. I know SO MANY PEOPLE were like that makes so much sense! Good for you Piper! But I was like girl, who are you? I feel like I have not spent any time with you and none of what you’re saying is connecting to anything you were like before. Which leads me to believe people just did not like Piper in HOO but just say that and go. HOO Piper is not TBM/TOA Piper. RR doesn’t know how to characterize his own goddamn characters. Furthermore, everything in canon up until TBM implies and directly states that Jason and Piper are endgame. It’s not to say they didn’t have problems that were resolved or that the way they got together was conventional. There was not even a smidge bit of reluctance to admit they were canon endgame- I think RR even had Cupid involved. There was no prediction or even hint of what would happen in TBM in HOO, which is a very big narrative problem. Jason, always isolated by loved ones and quite frankly always shouldering way more than a human can handle dies exactly the way he suffers. There is no growth or even a small lovely moment where we can see Jason. 

This brings me to the most unnecessary death I’ve ever read in my life. I know RR’s ego hurt from the complaints about Jason/Piper/Frank/Hazel/Leo (basically a non-Percabeth character) being underdeveloped. I know his ego was fucked when he “killed” Leo but didn’t really kill Leo so everyone was like what the fuck. I know he wanted to prove he is a good writer but like any other bad writer, he decided to jump the shark. And I know he wanted Jason and Piper to be more likable but the fandom really wanted a Leo-esque character. The breakup really happened because he wanted to demonstrate to critics that he could live with couples not being endgame and knew Jasiper was relatively unpopular compared to Percabeth/Caleo/etc. He wasn’t thinking in terms of ‘does this fit what I’ve created’ but in terms of ‘people might be like oh shit this is violent and they’re finally gone!’. I don’t know what idiotic thought process made him reach the point of killing one of them but he obviously got there. See, there is no difference between Jason or Piper dying in TBM. It could’ve easily been Piper who was impaled by Caligula and reminded Apollo “what it’s like to be human”. They were made *that* insignificant in TBM. Pretty much fucking interchangeable. IN DEATH. It also could’ve been anybody else in the world. It could’ve been that cheerleader from The Battle of the Labyrinth. It could’ve been Piper’s dad. It could have been Sally Jackson. Not a single part of Jason’s death was really related to Jason or his growth. Jason was the main/lead from HOO and if he was destined to die (which he wasn’t because RR doesn’t think anything through anymore), he should have died in his own series. That would make his sacrifice more compelling and important, but dying in TOA is just a big fuck you to his character. I think the only equivalent I can think of is if HOO had solely been Jason’s series but RR pulled up Percy to simply kill him and then just kept writing. What the fuck does TOA have anything to do with Jason or Piper? Or even Leo? I usually love when characters make cameo appearances to remind us of the past we loved them in. Kind of like when Lynda Carter appeared as Asteria in WW1984. Conversely, involving them in the plot and then using them as a plot device for the main character- AKA USING YOUR MAIN CHARACTER AS A PLOT DEVICE FOR ANOTHER MAIN CHARACTER IN A SEPARATE SERIES- is not only dumb but it truly makes everything else you’ve written for the first main character devoid of any real significance. Jason was never a fully fleshed-out character, the way he deserved to be written, because RR couldn’t world build as well as he thought and that ‘every single character gets a POV’ didn’t do the legendary thing he thought it did. However, anything that mattered about Jason was pretty much killed in TBM because he was easily killed by a villain that was not even remotely interested in Jason or aware of his existence. What does FUCK does Caligula mean to Jason? Nothing. Did the final battle create a full circle for Jason other than the line “remember?” which is not really related to his amnesia- no. His character arc was about an identity crisis- being pushed and pulled in two directions. Jason barely means anything to Apollo so RR using Jason as a convenient kill to send home a message is also shitty for Apollo. Lead hero characters can die- they sometimes just have to. Marissa Cooper’s death in the OC narratively makes sense due to the nature of the character being a damsel in distress from the very beginning- a foil to her counterpart, Ryan Atwood. But in this case, RR knew he had to shock people to keep getting $$$. I never got the impression RR cared about Jason or Piper, especially since he was incredibly disrespectful and lazy when writing about Piper. (For that- I can link really detailed posts explaining his racism). The truth is Riordan cannot live without putting his characters in relationships- Frazel, Caleo, Tyson/Ella (?), Hedge/Mellie- but he wanted to prove that he could which is why Jasiper broke up.

Piper’s girlfriend in TON- I didn’t read TON for the reasons above and I don’t think I’ll ever read a Riordan book again: I did find out that Piper gets a GF in TON which at first I thought was incredibly neat but then later became angry when I learned it was only months after Jason’s death? I have always wanted Piper to explore her sexuality but RR has this case of never giving important things the development it deserves. He’s incredibly messy and inconsistent when he creates lgbtqia+ characters, usually only including them so he can get credit for including them. He’s never actually explored Piper’s sexuality fully in the series, but he threw her in yet another relationship we didn’t get to read about right after she was almost beaten to death and then witnessed the murder of her ex-boyfriend. If you think that is representation, please rethink that. We don’t get to hear her talk about anything at all, except maybe mentioning the girl’s name. A subtle hint. Just representation is not good representation and it is right that we demand better representation. Don’t settle for less. For fuck’s sake, Riverdale is only really good at queerbaiting but they get so much praise. (Do they? At this point I can’t tell). If we wanted to explore Piper’s sexuality, it could have been done while she was with Jason or even broken up with him in her own series- why didn’t RR explore the nature of being lgbtqia+ in an Indigenous family? He had the chance to demonstrate an awareness of intersectionality through Piper but he fucked up. He had so much to write about. So, people who are yelling happily about that Piper appearance in TON-??? 

 This was long and frustrating to write. But I had feelings.

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #13-15 Thoughts

Previous thoughts here.

Yes I know I couldn’t be later to this party but I started this series so I’m going to finish giving my thoughts on it.

I tried very hard to finish Houser’s run on RYV in time to read Spider-Girls but it just didn’t happen, I only made it up until just before the penultimate arc and I didn’t write up a proper post of my thoughts back then. So I re-read her first arc today with ambitions of re-reading the next 2 stories before finally experiencing the final arc and then Spider-Girls as part of reading over most of Spider-Geddon. What you will read below are a mixture of some initial thoughts I jotted down during my first read through and my thoughts upon revisiting the story, mostly the latter.

Oh SPOILERS I guess

So let me immediately get some obvious business about Renew Your Vows’ direction from here on in. The book, sans its covers, desperately misses Stegman. It also misses Conway but that is not a condemnation of Houser at all.

Houser in this arc does a good job with the situation presented by the new direction. Whether that new direction was her idea or editorials is unknown, though likely the latter.

And really that is the absolute worst thing about this story, the new direction itself.

It isn’t so much that it is bad unto itself but it is reductive that after 12 issues building a certain status quo, the one also built by the RYV Secret Wars mini-series and was promoted by Marvel prior and during the book’s initial release that we are abruptly changing course in a big way.

The book is still unique, at least the Spider-Books on the stands (even now). But it is less unique for various reasons.

Firstly we simply have way more teen heroes than pre-teen ones. Secondly a book that pays much attention to Spider-Man’s super powered teen daughter is going to either tread upon familiar ground that Spider-Girl stood on or else it will evoke Spider-Girl in the memories of the readers. Annie unto herself innately did this anyway, but that was offset when she was much younger than Mayday.

It also throws away the world building and set up Conway enacted in his initial arc, not to mention it just fast forwards a lot of Annie’s potential character development.

Does this render Annie uninteresting or the premise less likable? No because Houser has a strong handle on both the characters and more specifically what RYV as a book is.

Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent in how she structures her opening arc. Each issue shifts the POV to one of the Parker family, starting with Peter, then handing off to MJ and concluding with Annie, exactly like Conway’s first three issues did. This is a pretty clever way of conveying to readers Houser ‘gets’ the book and reassure readers who might not be thrilled about the time skip that these are the same characters just at different points in their lives, and not even that different, sans Annie.

This is rather realistic because Peter and MJ being the adults are comparatively less likely to change all that much even within 8 years whereas Annie inevitably will drastically change going from a pre-teen to an out-and-out teenager. Fittingly Houser compensates for this by showcasing Annie’s new state of being throughout the issues that are about Peter and MJ.

On the one hand this does somewhat undermine the idea that this book is about the family collectively as opposed being about Annie or placing Annie as the ‘first among equals’ in the team dynamic of the book.

On the other hand since the book is about the Parker family it adds up that so much of Peter and MJ’s characterization will stem from their relation to Annie; your child is after all the most important thing in your life.

So we get Annie’s somewhat more salty and disconnected relationship with a Peter who is very much starting to feel his age. Which is GOOD, the obnoxious proliferation of teen Spider-Man renders almost any older portrayal interesting by default. With MJ though, Annie seems to have a much more conciliatory relationship, its more that she exhausts her mother and seems more comfortable going to her about stuff. Also as a nice way of distinguishing her from Mayday, Annie seems to share her mother’s passion for fashion which Mayday actively didn’t.

Speaking of fashion lets talk about Annie’s new costume. I’ll level you all..it looks better than her prior costume, but also less unique but neither is...all that great. I guess when you have Mayday Parker and Spider-Gwen and all the Spider-Women running around, coming up with something thing that fits the general Spider-Man motif, looks unique and also is really dynamic can be difficult. I can see where the designer was going though. Peter, MJ and Annie share the same outlines for where the chest areas of their suits turn into another colour. Peter’s is red and blue, MJ’s red and white and Annie’s is blue to black. So the ‘shape’ of the suit lends to the ‘unified family’ idea. The colours also make her stand out but maybe too much. If her parents had red chests and then she has blue it’s kinda weird. If the idea was she was trying to strike out on her own sure but I don’t get that impression at all. It is kinda cool she has MJ’s mask design but I preferred her old mask which was a compromise between her parents’ masks.

As for the main plot, I think Houser could’ve milked it much more than she did, we could’ve done with much more of the slice of life stuff and the Lizard was underutilized. There is a strong element of family defining the Lizard’s character because of his wife and child. In a book about family I presumed that was where we were going when he showed up. But...no he was just used as a monster amidst monsters.

I’m not saying Houser got the Lizard wrong just that there was an obvious and more compelling angle to exploited in the story.

The two big reveals surrounding the plot, that there is a zoo full of near-human people, and that it’s being run by Mister Sinister was also...underwhelming.

Spider-Man has the best supporting cast and rogue’s gallery within Marvel comics. Not only does this mean we don’t really need to see non-Spider-Man characters (like the X-Men) pop up, it’s frankly less interesting when we do because they have little-no history with Spider-Man or his family.

It was also just kind of a reveal that didn’t land for me, I could not care at all.

Mister Sinister was a little different because, I like Sinister as a bad guy I really do...but not in Spider-Man. I get including and referencing the X-Men in this arc because for some reason they were practically supporting cast members in Conway’s run, so paying that off makes sense. But why double down upon it with a major X-villain? Like the Jackal, even Doc Ock, either of them would be more fitting villains in this type of story or where the series implies it will be leading onto later.

It didn’t help that when we met Sinister initially in disguise there was just very little gravitas to him because he obviously looked like a no-name 18th century circus reject.

The ending let this arc down is what I guess I’m getting at. Issue #13 and #14 had pretty nice hooks for the next issues.

What was a letdown throughout though was the action sequences. They were pretty pedestrian along with the art overall. Like it wasn’t BAD per se (except Peter’s eyebrows...wtf?), it just was a major step down from Stegman and even Stockman, the latter of whom I think the artwork was chosen to be more like. It had this softer undefined element to it, and not in a Romita Senior way.

Returning to the character though, I do commend Houser for having a good grip on everyone and efficiently finding a way to distinguish them from one another across the three issues.

Peter dealing with being older and now decidedly less cool and engaging to his teen daughter is delightful..even if at points it feels like the narrative is kind of undermining him, especially in the Wolverine scene at the start of the story...still Dad Joke Spider-Man is awesome. Even more awesome is how together he over all is. This isn’t an angst ridden Peter Parker or one who is introspectively questioning himself. Throughout the story he gives off this air of relaxed experience, like he knows what he’s doing and can tell the situation allows for a few jokes and a bit of fun. Refrshingly he doesn’t angst about not pursuing the bad guy at all.

Moving on, Houser probably dissing MJ’s place in the Iron books at the time with her reprimanding and smack down of Tony was awesome (although I don’t get why she was so miffed at him). Her playing Spider-Mom, and more poignantly dejectedly owning it, was hilarious. Her sense of exhaustion is relatable whether you’ve been a parent or just been around them. It very much taps into Conway’s characterization of MJ as a juggler

Houser’s Annie also shines. She is believably an older version of the kid Annie we once knew but also stands firmly as her own person. She’s somewhat embarrassed by her Dad and wants greater independence. She loves being a superhero, but is (also in contrast to Mayday) a more of a punch first think later kind of gal with a dash of overconfidence.

She is untrustworthy of the Lizard and more gung ho, whilst MJ and especially Peter (to my delight) are both more reigned in and trusting.

This is nicely explored in the family’s single page descent underground where Houser gives Peter a really great speech about what it means for Annie to accept the great responsibility of the mask, that it might mean trusting those who are not trustworthy for the sake of others. This serves to nicely develop Annie as its her Dad treating her as more of an adult for the first time. the fact that it’s her Dad, the iconic hero Spider-Man conveying this wisedom onto her is very fitting and helps further legitimize Annie as a Spider-Hero to the readers of RYV and legitimize the new teen version to those jumping aboard at this point.

Not to be outdone, MJ an issue earlier got a wonderful piece of dialogue about how in spite of how their lives might be messed up by being heroes she and her family will still endeavour to make plans and live normal lives. Which is both a wonderfully inspiring heroic statement but also so very true to who she and Peter are as people.

Some other small points:

I saw Carrion amidst Sinister’s menagerie

The underground nature of the story’s conclusion nicely evokes the first arc by Conway

Overall Houser sells/sold you on the new dynamic with this arc as much as I preferred the older one and wish they hadn’t changed.

B+

[betweenthepage]

Mini Book Reviews

I let myself fall waaaayyyy behind on reviews so what I’m going to do is compile them all here by making them shorter than usual, and more to the point.

Mild spoilers ahead! (all pictures belong to me unless stated otherwise)

Illuminae, Turtles All the Way Down, Madness, Welcome to the Dark House, The Last Magician, Not If I Save You First, The Cruel Prince, The Diviners, Daughter of the Burning City reviews!

Illuminae by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

I had high hopes for this, and truth be told, I wasn’t let down...but I wasn’t too impressed either. I think what really threw me off was the format of the book. I liked it at a glance and thought it was really impressive and creative, but reading it? It kept me distant from the story. It took me a while to read it (almost a month). The story and writing were great. I wasn’t TOO invested in Kady and Ezra until more towards the end of it. I wish we could have seen more of their personalities (like in the beginning where they were being sarcastic and stuff) since most of any interaction with those characters were “reports.” I did like the plot twists in the story. I didn’t see some of them coming and was pleasantly shocked. It might have taken a good while but I really liked Kady by the end of the book. BUT THEN I FOUND THAT THE SECOND BOOK IS TOLD IN DIFFERENT POVS??? I’ll probably read the next one but I’m not in any rush for it.

4 out of 5 stars from me.

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

John Green is a hit or miss kind of author with the masses ever since TFIOS. Personally, I like him. I like his writing. TATWD was a bit deceiving from the synopsis. I expected a bit of a murder-mystery vibe from it, but instead I got more Looking for Alaska vibes (which is my least favorite Green book). I absolutely loved Aza and was impressed by how real her anxiety and OCD felt. I also was impressed by her and Davis’ relationship and how it played out. Not everything goes as planned and not everything goes the way you want it to. I was disappointed in the outcome of Davis’ dad though. Like I said, I expected murder-mystery vibes. I was also put off by how....smart EVERYONE sounded. And yeah yeah, kids, teenagers, adults, etc., can and DO sound smart on a day to day basis. According to my teachers, I am one of those people. But I still use slang, I still say stupid things. The teenagers in this book had very little moments where they SOUNDED like teenagers. I mean there were PAGES BEYOND PAGES of Davis going on and on about space and the sky AND. I. WAS. BORED. WITH. IT.

To be honest, this would have sat better with me if he didn’t throw in the “missing rich parent of cute boy I used to hang out with” thing. It would have been a great book on someone dealing with OCD.

The last pages are what really saved it for me. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great moments and characters (cough Daisy cough), but the last pages are what really felt like John Green, what really got me feeling the feels. They spoke about life, and how it moves on, the good and bad, and everything in between. Those were amazing. It left you with a good taste in your mouth and a bit of an out of body experience (in my case anyway.)

3 out of 5 stars.

Madness by Zac Brewer

I actually got an arc of this but never got around to reading it until recently. I’m glad I didn’t dive in (I was a big fan of Uncle Z’s Vladimir Todd books soooo). I opened this book during a bad mental episode and it helped me a lot. It was so amazing to see the downfalls and uplifts of Brooke, as well as the people around her. Her best friend, whom she calls Duckie (and is gay JS), is someone I hope we all find in our lives. He was a loving supportive friend, as well as a guide without being to cliche.

Speaking of cliche...this book had some. I have yet to read a book about suicide/depression without some (okay a lot) of cliches in it. I’m sure you can imagine it, so I won’t go on about them. The book started off dark, and went on in a realistic way about coming back from the point in your life where you don’t want that life, to being okay with opening your eyes in the morning and finding that you’re living another day.

Through the climax of the book, some very dark stuff happens (can’t say I didn’t see it coming) that leads to a surprising ending. I love the ending because it’s not something I would have done. This book brings hopes, second chances, and more.

4 out of 5 stars.

Welcome to the dark House by Laurie Faria Stolarz

I’m just going to be honest and say I was disappointed with this. I was expecting so much more, and got a cheap knock off out of those expectations. The characters were two dimensional, a lot of their personalities and motives felt fake, and the writing was boring. This may be because I’m VEERRRYYY picky with horror novels, but I doubt it. I was anticipating so much more from this author, but alas, it fell short. So short in fact that I just googled what happens in the second book because I knew I wasn’t going to read it.

I did, however, like some of the horror elements to the book. The characters worst fears and how they played out was pretty creative.

2 out of 5 stars.

The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell

I AM KICKING MYSELF FOR THIS ONE.

I’ve been seeing the book around for a bit, always picked it up, and continued to leave it. Finally, I took the plunge and bought it. WHY DIDN’T I DO IT SOONER.

Time travel related in anything is sketchy and--in my opinion--hard to make sense. Lisa Maxwell made it simple, to the point, and very efficient. The main character Esta is very likable, kick ass, yet not superhuman. Which I like. I couldn’t help getting attached to almost everyone Esta met, and feeling more and more excited about the story as it progressed. The way the magic worked was simple and clean, everyone had their own talents in one way or another. The plot was well driven, the writing even better, and I know I said it but, THOSE. CHARACTERS. And that ending? Broke my heart, had me shocked, and most importantly, had me screaming for more. I cannot wait for the second book.

5 out of 5 stars.

Not If I Save You First by Ally Carter

I love Ally Carter. She’s a great writer, and I’m always happy with her stories. So I was so excited to get an ARC of this book. Reading it on the other hand? I wasn’t happy with it but I also wasn’t disappointed. It starts off great, setting a tone for the story with ups and downs and some background information on how the main character got to where she is. But then the story...just lacks depth. Everything is see through, I’m never really surprised, and I’m left wanting something more out of it. I did like the characters personalities and the location of the book. It made for numerous interesting scenes and I actually learned a lot from some of it (apparently many things can kill you in Alaska).

Overall it wasn’t bad, some great high points, but not her best.

3 out of 5 stars.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Oh boy do I have some issues with Holly’s books. I’m always left wanting so much more with her stories (usually the stand alones) so I wasn’t too sure about this. Regardless, that cover had me hooked so I bought it. In the past, i enjoyed her writing but was never impressed with the overall story. Boy oh boy did that change here.

Immediately I liked Jude. I liked that she had inner turmoil over feelings for her adoptive family and home. I liked that she stood up for herself despite being kicked over and over again. I liked her demeanor and outlook on things. But what I really liked? Her courage to become the villain in the eyes of those around her, including her family.

And her family? God, I was so conflicted. On one hand, I liked her adoptive family because they cared for her and her sisters. On the other, I couldn’t get over what had happened to her biological family. It left me feeling confused, much like Jude, about my feelings towards these people. Props to you Holly for that one. By the ending, I knew what was going to happen, which is okay because my imagination was in no competition with the actual story.

I’m mad I have to wait for the next book. Let the conquering begin!

5 out of 5 stars.

The Diviners by Libba Bray

This book was a bit slow for me. I think what threw me off was the slang used (based off of 1926 NYC) and the constant...niceness that vibrated from Evie. At least how I read her. But more so Evie’s slang. Kind of annoying. I liked Evie though, she was brave and wanted the glamorous things in life. And while Evie wasn’t a terrible character, I wish we could have gotten more of the secondary characters. Specifically Sam, Theta, and Henry. Their back stories were so interesting and really had me wanting to know more about them. The overall story wasn’t bad, but I did see a lot of it coming. Libba’s writing was great (besides the slang...I just can’t). Though I’m not in a rush to read the second book, I will be picking it up at some point. Hopefully more of the secondary characters will be added.

3 out of 5 stars.

Daughter of the Burning City by Amanda Foody

UM HELLO, WHY IS EVERYONE SLEEPING ON THIS BOOK??? It was so good! I liked the main character and her family so much! I had such a soft spot for them all.  

I’m such a huge fan of circus/carnival themed books so of course I picked this up. Though the story doesn’t completely center around the circus, I do wish we learned a bit more about how it works. You know, the magic behind it.

Sorina--who is an illusionist--was a likeable character with a very soft side. Some of the people around her were very “business first” (especially her adoptive father, Villiam) but she wasn’t. I really liked that. Most main characters are very, “I’m tough as shit, except for some things” which is totally cool, but boy was it so refreshing to see someone so emotional. Could be because her family kept getting murdered but whatever.

Some downfall to it was that I saw the identity of the murderer coming from the first murder. Didn’t see the other thing with her illusions coming though (which, if you read the book, you know WHO I’m talking about. And while I love the character, idk how to feel about the feelings between the character and Sorina). Another downfall was Sorina’s attitude towards becoming proprietor of the circus. She kept putting herself down and comparing herself to others, never really letting herself take a chance at trying it. There were numerous times that proved she could be a great leader, if she only tried. BUT, she was very insistent (from the first page actually) that her family would always come first. And as a leader, she would have to put the circus first. And I LOVED that about her. family first, always. 

Another great thing about this book? Many characters were a part of the LGBT community. Some preferred men, others women. The main character was bi and, this part was a bit murky, but I’m pretty sure the love interest was demisexual (which I hope he is, because that would be great). 

4 out of 5 stars from me.