#YA review

[theloneliestblackgirlblog]

SOOOOOOOO I decided to reread the entire Hunger Games trilogy as an adult and then write about it. Thanks to everyone who commented on my question about Katniss loving Peeta. I agree with most of the points. I do think she does just not in the way we’re used to. Wrote about all of that and more. Check it out!

[in-dire-read]

The Boi of Feather & Steel (Book Review)

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

Information

Author: Adan Jerreat-Poole

Genre: YA (Young Adult) Fantasy

Number of Pages: 448

Format: Paperback

Summary

In the sequel to "The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass," Tav grapples with their identity and newfound magical abilities after a perilous journey to the City of Eyes. Upon returning to the human realm, Tav's team works to mend holes in the barrier between worlds while facing a faction of young witches seeking to overthrow a dictatorial Coven. The story unfolds amidst the shedding of both blood and magic, raising the question: who will emerge victorious?

Thoughts

I recently finished reading a book that left a strong impression on me. There were several elements that I found particularly compelling. I was especially moved by the conclusion, as it left me feeling uplifted and fulfilled. Furthermore, the way the book addressed unresolved questions from the first installment of the series was skillfully done and added depth to the overall narrative. I also appreciated the representation of a nonbinary character, as it brought important diversity to the story.

On the other hand, there were some aspects of the book that I found challenging. For instance, I struggled with the multiple points of view because the author didn't clearly distinguish between the different voices. This made it difficult for me to fully engage with each character's perspective. Additionally, I felt that the plot was heavily reliant on tropes, which affected the believability of the story within the fantastical world it was set in. The abundance of fantastical descriptions also made it hard for me to visualize certain parts of the narrative. Moreover, the frequent jumps in location without clear time references made it challenging for me to keep track of the timeline of events.

[booksformks]

Book Review: A Countess Below Stairs

A Countess Below Stairsby Eva Ibbotson 3 out of 5 stars Anna and her family have fled to London after the Russian Revolution and she is forced to work as a maid in order to support her ailing mother. Rupert, the Earl of Westerholme, is on his way home from serving in WWI, and the entire household is working night and day to have the house ready to receive him. He is bringing his rich fiancée,…

[runawaymarbles]

Reading Mockingjay as an adult is extra devastating because. Of course the plucky teenager and her ragtag friends aren't going to sneak into a government building to kill the president with a bow and arrow. That's absolutely ridiculous. It's the kind of thing that's only possible in the kind of propaganda that Coin developed. But she's so good at it that in some ways she tricks the reader into thinking that's the kind of story this is, too--even after 3 books reminding us that pretty much everything that Katniss does the second she volunteers is manipulated by adults pulling strings to make propaganda in some form or another.

[mediashadowreads]

[REVIEW] STARLING HOUSE BY ALIX E. HARROW

Book info ⭐ Name: Starling HouseAuthor: Alix E. HarrowRelease Date: October 3rd 2023Edition: Illumicrate HardcoverPages: 308Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Gothic Synopsis: Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished,…

[acornreviewsya]

Muir, Tamsyn. (2019) Gideon the Ninth. Tordotcom.

The Ninth House Reverend Daughter and Necromancer Harrowhark Nonagesimus finds herself in need of a swordsman to accompany her on her journey to prove herself to the Emperor through a mystery of trials. Her only competent choice for companion happens to be the brash, difficult, and full-of-sarcastic-charm, Gideon. Though constantly at odds and often wishing the other dead, these two embark on a journey that will reveal more about themselves and each other than either of them are prepared for.

This captivating novel manages to land itself right in the middle of science fiction and fantasy while silmutaneously teaching me more about human anatomy than I ever expected to know in my lifetime. There is an incredible amount of LGBT+ representation with many of the main characters exhibiting same-sex attraction and I found the descriptions of gay panic and flirtation to be incredibly spot-on and entertaining. This book had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish with a mystery so intense I found myself drawing maps and keeping track of items while reading to see if I could figure it out.

Awards: None

Look here for an interview of author Tamsyn Muir on the book: https://www.vox.com/culture/22266652/tamsyn-muir-interview-locked-tomb-gideon-the-ninth-harrow-the-ninth-vox-book-club

Image Source: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42036538

[khaoray]

2024 WATCHLIST

Humanity has always been aware of the presence of darkness since ancient times and call it by different names... Ghosts. Demons. Goblins. Apparitions. These things constantly crave for bright places, that sometimes they cross over to our world... Exhuma, south korea (2024)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Weinersmith and Boulet’s “Bea Wolf”

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Bea Wolf is Zach Weinersmith and Boulet's ferociously amazingly great illustrated kids' graphic novel adaptation of the Old English epic poem, which inspired Tolkien, who helped bring it to popularity after it had languished in obscurity for centuries:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250776297/beawolf

Boy is this a wildly improbable artifact. Weinersmith and Boulet set themselves the task of bringing Germanic heroic saga from more than a thousand years ago to modern children, while preserving the meter and the linguistic and literary tropes of the original. And they did it!

There are some changes, of course. Grendel – the boss monster that both Beowulf and Bea Wulf must defeat – is no longer obsessed with decapitating his foes and stealing their heads. In Bea Wulf, Grendel is a monstrously grown up and boring adult who watches cable news and flosses twice per day, and when he defeats the kids whose destruction he is bent upon, he does so by turning them into boring adults, too.

And Bea Wulf – and the kings that do battle with Grendel – are not interested in the gold and jewels that the kings of Beowulf hoard. In Bea Wulf, the treasure is toys, chocolate, soda, candy, food without fiber, television shows without redeeming educational content, water balloons, nerf swords and spears, and other stuff beloved of kids and hated by parents.

That substitution is key to transposing the thousand-year-old adult epic Beowulf for enjoyment by small children in the 21st century. After all, what makes Beowulf so epic is the sense that it is set in a time in which a primal valor still reigned, but it is narrated for an audience that has been tamed and domesticated. Beowulf makes you long for a never-was time of fierce and unwavering bravery. Bea Wulf beautifully conjures the years of early childhood when you and the kids in your group had your own little sealed-off world, which grownups could barely perceive and never understand.

Growing up, after all, is a process of repeating things that are brave the first time you do them, over and over again, until they become banal. That's what "coming of age" really boils down to: the slow and relentless transformation of the mythic, the epic, and the unknowable and unknown into the tame, the explained, the mastered. When you're just mastering balance and coordination, the playground climber is a challenge out of legend. A couple years later, it's just something you climb.

The correspondences between the leeching away of magic lamented in Beowulf and experienced by all of us as we grow out of childhood are obvious in hindsight and surprising and beautiful and bittersweet when you encounter them in Bea Wolf.

This effect owes a large debt to Boulet's stupendous artwork. Boulet brings a vibe rarely seen in American kids' illustration, owing quite a lot to France's bande dessinée tradition. Of course, this is a Firstsecond book, and they established themselves as an exciting and fresh kids' publisher in the USA nearly 20 years ago by bringing some of Europe's finest comics to an American audience for the first time. You can get a sense of Boulet's darker-than-average, unabashedly anarchic illustrations here:

https://www.comixtrip.fr/bibliotheque/bea-wolf-weinersmith-boulet-albin-michel/

The utter brilliance of Bea Wulf is as much due to the things it preserves from the original epic as it is to the updates and changes. Weinersmith has kept the Old English tradition of alliteration, right from the earliest passages, with celebrations of heroes like "Tanya, treat-taker, terror of Halloween, her costume-cache vast, sieging kin and neighbor, draining full candy-bins, fearing not the fate of her teeth. Ten thousand treats she took. That was a fine Tuesday."

Weinersmith also preserves the kennings – the elaborate figurative compound phrases that replace nouns – that turn ordinary names and places into epithets at you have to riddle out, like calling a river "the sliding sea."

These literary devices, rarely seen today, are extremely powerful, and they conjure up the force and mystique that has kept Beowulf in our current literary discourse for more than a millennium. They also make this a super fun book to read aloud.

When Jim Henson was first conceiving of Sesame Street, he made a point of designing it to have jokes and riffs that would appeal to adults, even if some of the nuance would be lost on kids. He did this because he wanted to make art that adults and kids could enjoy together, both because that would give adults a chance to help kids actively explore the ideas on-screen, but also because it would bring some magic into those adults' lives.

This is a very winning combination (not for nothing, it's also the original design brief for Disneyland). Weinersmith and Boulet have produced a first-rate work of adult and kid literature, both a perfect entree to Beowulf for anyone contemplating a dive into old English epic poetry, and a kids' book full of booger jokes and transgressive scenes of perfect mischief.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/24/awesome-alliteration/#hellion-hallelujah

[bookcred]

emily wilde's encyclopaedia of fairies; heather fawcett

[theloneliestblackgirlblog]

I finally got to read The Stolen Heir by Holly Black and there was so much going on I just NEEDED to write it out. Check it out!

[in-dire-read]

Bloodmarked (Book Review)

Rating: 4 ⭐

Information

Author: Tracy Deonn

Genre: YA Fantasy

Number of Pages: 551

Format Read: Paperback

Summary

Bree, a Black teenage girl, inherits King Arthur's power. Faced with the looming threat of Camlann, the prophesied apocalyptic battle, young descendants of the original 13 knights of the Round Table are summoned to claim their ancestors' abilities. Together, they must fight Shadowborn demons to protect humanity.

Thoughts

I loved the introduction of new characters, especially Valec, and how the cycle continues with the Order using a mage as a scapegoat rather than being upfront with their community. Bree's struggle against Arthur's possession was intense, leading her to temporarily surrender control of her body, which added depth to the story. The Order’s determination to maintain power over the chapters fit perfectly with the book’s theme of control. I also appreciated how the book didn’t shy away from addressing race and discrimination. And finally—Bree kisses Sel! It was a long-awaited moment. The reveal that the Hunter and the shadow king are actually Erebus was a surprise. He turns out not to be a threat but more of a supernatural bodyguard, fulfilling a bargain.

On the downside, Sel mesmerizing Bree to conceal his descent into demonia was unsettling. His cryptic behavior regarding his feelings for Bree throughout most of the book was incredibly frustrating. I also found Cestra to be an annoying and ineffective villain, and I’m hoping she plays a smaller role in the next installment. Lastly, it was hard to watch Bree get shamed by the Regents for her ancestor’s predatory actions towards Vera, who made the original bargain to protect their bloodline from the Round Table.

[booksformks]

Book Review: Roswell High The Seeker

The Seeker (Roswell High, #3)by Melinda Metz (Goodreads Author) 3 out of 5 stars Maria found a mysterious ring and she thinks that it is helping her to channel psychic powers. She hopes that her new powers will capture Michael’s attention, and maybe he’ll stop thinking of her as just a friend. Michael is eager to learn to more about a new alien the group meets. He wonders if he might have an…

[pjs-everyday]

pinky got 'em cat-quirked for fun, here are her thoughts!!!

[mediashadowreads]

[REVIEW] BELLADONNA BY ADALYN GRACE

Book info ⭐Name: BelladonnaAuthor: Adalyn GraceRelease Date: August 30th 2022Edition: UK Fairyloot HardbackPages: 408Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Mystery Synopsis: For as long as Signa Farrow has been alive, the people in her life have fallen like stars… Orphaned as a baby, nineteen-year-old Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her…