Book Blog Newbie Tag

Authors agonize over how to start their books, and the rest of us agonize over how to start a blog! There’s a few good ways I can think of: a list of your favorite books of all time, an introduction to what you usually read, a book tag… Well, I’ve chosen book tag! 

According to Emily @TheBookishLounge, the Book Blog Newbie Tag was originally the BookTube newbie tag, and was adapted to book blogging by Love and Other Bookish Things. I can’t find the Love and Other Bookish Things blog now, but the original BookTube Newbie Tag was created by Brenda C. 

1. Why did you start this blog?

“Here are some common reasons why we may deny your NetGalley request: You only review for Goodreads and/or only post reviews on a bookseller’s website. We can only approve reviewers who are affiliated with a blog or other legitimate outlet at this time.”

I have to be honest with you, dear strangers filled with a love of books that has led you to this introductory blog post: I love writing book reviews and I extra love writing book reviews for books that haven’t been published yet. I’m an eARC kind of person. And I never want to receive the above email again! 

2. What are some fun and unique things you can bring to book blogging? 

I’m hoping to write some essay-like posts that really go in depth with some of my favorite books. I think it’s so interesting to read those kinds of academic posts, but they’re hard to write since none of us want to relive 12th grade English class! They’d also take longer and wouldn’t be regular content, but it’s something I’d really like to explore.

3. What are you most excited for about this new blog?

I’m just excited to talk about books! I really do like reading and reviewing a large variety of books, but there aren’t a lot of people in my life that have the same joy, and those that do have very different reading tastes than me. The bookish community online seems really cool and I’m very excited to be a part of it. 

4. Why do you love reading?

I often think about how wild it is that there are people who live lives that are completely unlike mine. Last November my fiancé and I went on a road trip and I found myself looking at the houses we passed and realizing that there is no way I could start to imagine day-to-day life for the people who lived in them.  Books give us a glimpse into other people’s lives, even if they’re fiction. And to be able to read stories that are written by people with such different life experiences is a privilege that I am delighted to partake in.

5. What book or series got you into reading?

For this question I’m going to list the books that got me back into reading, which I’ll explain later in question #8. And for that I must credit the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks, which is my fiancé’s favorite series; the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer; and…Animorphs. Yep, at the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 I read the entire Animorphs series. It really threw my Goodreads challenge. 

6. What questions would you ask your favorite authors?

How do you get inspiration for your setting? What goes into creating a setting?

I’m a sucker for a strong setting and atmospheric writing and I really admire authors that can accomplish that, so I’d want to find out more about that, especially from authors that do it well!

7. What challenges of starting a blog will be hardest to overcome?

Generation of ideas! This blog will be mostly book reviews, but I am a relatively slow reader (compared to most other reviewers and bloggers), so I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a review up for every post. I’m planning on posting twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, so sometimes I will need to have a non-review post… it will be challenging to think of those!

8. When did you start reading?

Like many people, I was a voracious reader in elementary and middle school, but mostly dropped off in high school and college. I really started reading again my junior year of college when I studied abroad. I am completely indebted to my library for their extensive use of library apps like Overdrive and Hoopla for keeping me entertained through my study abroad semester. 

9. Where do you read?

I mostly read right before bed as part of my nighttime routine, so a lot of it happens in bed. Maybe that will change in the future when I move into my own apartment—I’d really like to have a nice armchair to read in. 

10. What kind of books do you read?

Fantasy is definitely my heavyweight genre—so far in 2020, about half of all the books I’ve read are fantasy books, but I’m trying to branch out a little more. I am really getting to enjoy some “strange” books, stuff like Borne by Jeff VanderMeer, Bunny by Mona Awad, or magical realism. Overall, fantasy is most of my reading but I’m not too picky and like to read tons of genres. I mainly stay away from romance, because I think I’m very hard to please with romantic relationships. I hate them in my non-romance books, but I’m sure that they’re done much better in actual romance genre books and I would enjoy it more. Still, I just don’t really read them a ton. 

And that’s it!

I’m really looking forward to starting this blog and hope that you’ll join me for the journey! If you’re interested in what kinds of books I read, I’ve already posted some book reviews that I’ve written to this blog, and you can also check out my Goodreads.

The header image is by Caio from Pexels

ARC Review: “City Among the Stars” by Francis Carsac

The City Among the Stars by Francis Carsac; translated by Judith Sullivan and Margaret Schiff

Thanks to Flame Tree Press and Netgalley for the eARC. The City Among the Stars by Francis Carsac, translated by Judith Smith and Margaret Schiff, is available to purchase now, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so.

Just a quick disclaimer. I like sci-fi, but not to the point where I’ve gone back to read the classics, and I haven’t read any pre-1990s sci-fi besides some H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Thus, I’m not sure how this book compares to others of its era. 

The City Among the Stars promises to be a classic from the Golden Age of science fiction; a brusque military man finds himself floating in space after his ship is compromised, only to be rescued by a nomadic space people who despise planetaries like him.

I hated it.

Firstly, plot and characters. The narrator was:

• unlikable
• a brat
• shallow
• rude
• sexist
• insufferable
• narrow-minded
• selfish
• a humongous asshole

And yet women threw themselves at him. All of the characters had the blatant inability to empathize with others or consider their point of view, so the majority of the book was Character A saying, “I want this!”, and when Character B says no, Character A decides to put thousands of people’s lives in danger out of stubbornness. The plot also seriously meandered. It didn’t feel like there was any direction and the action didn’t feel meaningful. The book didn’t come to any satisfying conclusion because the storyline that it wrapped up was whether or not the main character had one ounce of character growth (supposedly he did) and not any of the big picture stuff. 

Like, okay. In some instances, an unlikable narrator can really work. But there is a difference in a character doing things that the author knows is wrong, and the character doing things and the author assuming that it’s fine. There are some instances where it’s like, “Oh, yeah, this is deliberate.” But it’s honestly way too heavy-handed and the result is like pulling teeth.

Prose-wise, it also sucked! I’m not sure how much was the original author and how much was the translation, and I can’t find the original online to cross-check (it’s French title is “Pour patrie l’espace”). This book is 90% dialogue, and poorly written dialogue at that, in which characters have no unique voice and continuously over explain everything. It’s clunky and it’s boring and it’s confusing. There’s basically no transition in between scenes—you can skip over three months and not have any idea at all. If you skim, you’ll miss plot points, but you’ll want to skim because it’s so awful. I read this as fast as I could because I wanted to get this book over with. 

As I was reading this, though, there is one thing I think could save this story: turning it into a comic book. As a novel, it sucks. However, with more visual cues, I think it would work a lot better. And the way it jumps from one absurd scenario to the next is better suited to comic book form and more forgivable. It still wouldn’t be a phenomenal story, but it would be much more digestible. 

Review: “Scavenge the Stars” by Tara Sim

Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim

I was very excited about Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim—a young girl is sold to pay off a debt, escapes, and returns home to exact her revenge.

Unfortunately, it ended up being a huge disappointment. I’ve been sitting on this book and thinking about my review for awhile because I just don’t know how I feel about the book. The problem for me, I think, isn’t that the book was bad—rather, it is a Count of Monte Cristo retelling, and The Count of Monte Cristo is my all-time favorite book (despite its flaws, lol). I had high hopes because I love the original so much, but this just didn’t live up to it and because of that I wasn’t able to look at the book with a neutral feeling.

So instead, I have been trying to think about why I was disappointed with the retelling, which was also challenging because what makes a good retelling? I have, admittedly, read very few retellings; I guess more of the retellings that I’ve consumed have been movies and such—She’s the Man, Rent, West Side Story—I guess the only book I can remember reading is Peter and the Starcatchers. So what is it about these retellings that make them compelling, and loved by both myself and the public?

I think the above retellings, and other retellings I can think of, fall into two different categories. Firstly, the same characters but either an alternate point of view or an alternate timeline—like Peter and the Starcatchers, or Wicked or Maleficent. These retellings bring something new to the old story, add a twist to the original. The second category is the alternate universe category—these stories use the original and keep the essential elements (the conflict, the strong feelings and themes) but create a new world and often update the setting so to make it relatable to modern readers. This second category is, of course, the category that Scavenge the Stars falls into.

So, this retelling needs to, in theory, reflect the same themes as The Count of Monte Cristo—the things that make The Count of Monte Cristo a good story needs to also be present in Scavenge the Stars. So what do I love about The Count of Monte Cristo?

• The story has a little bit of everything—similar to the line at the beginning of The Princess Bride, The Count of Monte Cristo has “Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…”
• The Count learns that revenge doesn’t solve all his problems BUT the ones who wronged him still get their due. Yes, he learned it was wrong, but not before everyone’s lives were ruined. It’s satisfying.
• There are clear enemies. The reader knows, right at the beginning of the story, who did Dantes wrong, and why they did it (and they all did it for selfish reasons. It wasn’t the way of the world, their actions were completely self-serving, which is important to the story). 
• The Count sees how his actions to destroy his enemies ultimately affect people he loves. Those who helped Dantes, and were kind to him, get their reward. Again, the lines are clear-cut—by the time Dantes escapes, he knows with certainty who was his enemy and who was his friend.
• Intricacy. The Count of Monte Cristo has an extremely intricate plot. The Count lays the groundwork for the end game much earlier in the book, and the reader sees everything play out in such a satisfying way.

The problem for me was that I simply didn’t see most of these elements in Scavenge the Stars. The elements of the story were changed in a fundamental way. The enemies are not clear-cut, the people Amaya thinks she can trust betray her, and she is simply not well put together. Yes, maybe this makes her more relatable as a character, but it loses the charm of the original story. Amaya does not lay out intricate plans to take down her enemies slowly and painfully. I might even forgive this if she had laid out such plans, but the plans were foiled; instead, it feels like she is just floundering and doesn’t know what she’s doing at all. She is not all-powerful with the downfalls of man, she is not able to hire highly competent people to carry out her plans, she does not have the years of wisdom and knowledge imparted onto Dantes by the Abbe Faria. You really lose something essential to The Count of Monte Cristo when you don’t have that.

Frankly, most of the issues I had were with Amaya’s perspective. I actually really enjoyed Cayo’s perspective (our Albert). His storyline and plot was much more compelling and I think it fit into the Count of Monte Cristo story much better. Honestly, I think I would have preferred this book if we hadn’t gotten Amaya’s perspective at all—if she could have appeared as Countess Yamaa and started controlling the city like a puppet, but we saw it all through Cayo’s eyes (except, maybe, her flashbacks from the beginning of the book. I thought those worked alright as well). Even if the plot moved the same way, and the ending was the same, I think that taking away Countess Yamaa’s perspective would have done a lot for the retelling. I don’t think including it added anything to the story.

As for some other issues I had with regard to the the retelling, I’ll have to wait to comment on it until the second  book (if I read it…). As I said above, due to these issues that I had trouble overcoming, I was struggling to evaluate the merits or pitfalls of the book itself with a neutral eye. I think the pacing was a little quick, but it was honestly a pretty fast book in general and I got through it very quickly—were I not a working woman, I probably could have finished it in one sitting. At the end of the day, it was an enjoyable enough read but my expectations were too high and I was bummed with the end product.

Review: “The Blinding Knife” by Brent Weeks

The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks (Lightbringer #2)

The Blinding Knife is the second book in the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks; if you haven’t read The Black Prism this review may contain spoilers. In this second installment, we follow the aftermath of the first battle against the Color Prince, as Gavin loses his colors and Kip learns more about his powers.

The struggle with this book is it was so long, and it took me a couple weeks to read, and also the entire world went to shit while I was reading it so with all that it’s kind of challenging to remember where we were at the beginning of the book. But it was one of my 2020 resolutions to write a review for every book I read, so I’ll do my best.

So on the one hand, the obvious criticism here is that the book is maybe a little too long. I hesitate to say that though because I can’t remember much of the book that was redundant or pointless; it explored most of the things I wanted to explore and I didn’t feel like anything was cut short, which is usually my problem in books. I think what might help would be a clear division of acts—dividing the story into 2+ parts would make it easier to think about what happened in each part. It also offers the reader a set place to stop and recap on their own.

That’s more of a reviewer kind of issue, though. I think as a reader, the story flowed really well and Weeks is very talented at reminding the reader about whatever you forgot whenever you need to remember it again. The appendix at the back of the book is also very useful, since if something does come up that forget about, you can flip back and check it (this includes terms and characters!). One BIG omission from the appendix was Nine Kings, the card game. Although I understand the benefits of not explaining it in depth (knowing the exact ins and outs of the game isn’t really necessary), I definitely could have used a little background info on it and it was a little challenging to understand some of the plot without that info. Not impossible, but I’d definitely prefer a little extra info about Nine Kings that’s easily accessible.

A big aspect in a lot of Weeks’ books—or at least the books I’ve read, the Night Angel Trilogy and the first Lightbringer installment—is the issue of sexism particularly where Weeks is actively trying not to be sexist. I’d really like to give Weeks the benefit of the doubt here; I really think that he includes aspects in his novels that are trying to subvert sexism, like making female magic-users much more powerful than male magic-users. He unfortunately misses a lot of the time, but I think this book was a definite improvement over The Black Prism. There was still a little too much focus on clothes and women’s bodies for my taste (particularly in Liv’s chapters), as well as an issue that was present in Night Angel, which is that the women who are on the bad side have sex, and the women on the good side wait for marriage (and men are not held to the same standards). 

In addition, I have issues with the depiction of slavery in this book. I’m not sure what it was about the last book that I glossed over it, but here I really didn’t like how the slaves were depicted. For one thing, there is unevenness in the gender—we see plenty of young female slaves, but only one male slave who is much older (Grinwoody). For Teia, who is a slave character introduced in this book and who is trying to join the blackguard, I think the storyline was very interesting—being under the control of one person, and being used as a bargaining chip between Kip and Andross, but I don’t think it was actually necessary to make her a slave for that. The same effect could have been used with plenty of financially abusive situations, and there was no reason that one of our main characters had to be threatened with sexual abuse on multiple occasions. There are plenty of reasons women can feel threatened; it doesn’t always have to be with sex. In addition, there’s the issue of Gavin’s room slave (aka, sex slave with additional chores) falling in love with him, and then choosing to stay in bondage because of her love for him. I do think you could argue that she does have agency—despite being a slave—but this is just a gross male fantasy that plays out in a fictional plot that Weeks has complete control over. It gives me a really icky feeling and again, I think that the fact that she is a slave is not integral to the story. At the end of the day, there is no plot-worthy reason any of the slaves in the story have to be property instead of people with their own agency. Yes, some of the power plays are important to the plot, but they could have been played out differently rather than with the use of a slavery system.

I am aware that the Color Prince uses slavery as one of his justifications for war, and this might become more important as the story progresses; indeed, I should hope that by the end of the series, slavery is abolished, because I think it’s a Chekov’s gun kind of situation—if you introduce slaves in the first act, slavery better be abolished by the last act. I think that it’s very likely that the story could play out without a slavery system, but I’ll wait until I finish the series for a final judgement.

Ultimately, I think the things I mentioned are huge issues with the book, but they don’t necessarily ruin the book. I am really enjoying the series and I will continue to read it! And I think that the pacing and the writing are both really good and keep me engaged and interested throughout the 600+ pages. But I would be remiss to leave these critiques out, especially since I think the Lightbringer series is very on the fence vis-a-vis sexism (and also racism, to a lesser extent, since I think especially in America our attitudes towards slavery inherently have a racial tinge). Again, I do want to give Weeks the benefit of the doubt; I think he tries, but misses. It doesn’t take away much from my reading experience, and I can’t wait to read the next installment.

Rating: 4 stars

Review: “The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

I am slowly working my way through all of Barbara Kingsolver’s fiction. The Bean Trees is her first novel about a Kentucky woman in her early 20’s who wants to see more of the world and get out of her hometown, and by the time her janky old car finally breaks down in Tucson, Arizona, she’s accidentally adopted a Native American toddler. We follow surprised mother and adoptive daughter as they settle into life in Arizona, meeting people from all walks of life and learning what it means to be a family.

This book was hard to rate. On the surface, it’s a great book—the writing and storytelling is fantastic for a debut novel. Kingsolver’s strength is definitely her narrative voice, because she really manages to capture and convey the voice and personality of her narrator, while exploring very sophisticated themes (although her narrators aren’t usually particularly sophisticated). The story is touching, and ends in a satisfying way. The message that Kingsolver tries to impart to her readers is a good one, and although it may be a little heavy-handed, we’re still talking about the same issues 30 years later, so maybe it wasn’t heavy-handed enough.

The problems I had with these book were deeper than surface level. Yes, the narration and the development of the narrator’s voice is amazing, but our main character, Taylor, didn’t have a lot of substance. She was a twenty-something-year-old girl from Kentucky, who doesn’t know what she’s doing and finds herself in a new place. In my opinion, she didn’t actually have much by way of personality, and I felt much more connected to all of the other characters, and cared a lot more about them, than I did her. She feels underdeveloped. 

The plot also doesn’t have a lot of direction. I can forgive this to an extent; Kingsolver’s books are filled with day-to-day scenery, and the “plot direction” is quite often moving forward in time, and I haven’t complained about those. However, a lot of this book focused on Lou Ann and Taylor, and their conversations and relationship, which didn’t really go anywhere by the end of the book, so a lot of the time spent on them felt like a waste, and then I felt like a lot of the scenes between Taylor, Estevan, and Esperanza were rushed. 

So, not my favorite Kingsolver book, which can be forgiven because it was her debut, but ultimately, if this is Kingsolver at her worst, I have no problem declaring her one of my favorite authors of all time. 

Rating: 3 stars

Review: “Finna” by Nino Cipri

Finna by Nino Cipri

When a wormhole opens up in a Swedish furniture store,  corporate sacrifices their two newest employees to risk their lives saving a customer. The only problem is that they’re ex-lovers who broke up only three days beforehand. Such is the premise of Finna by Nino Cipri.

Ultimately I got out of this novella exactly what I was looking for: a fun, short read for pure entertainment value during self-isolation.

The anti-capitalism messaging is pretty heavy-handed, and if you’re the kind of person that just can’t stand politics being inserted into books for “no reason,” you should steer clear of this book. If you don’t think that singular they/them pronouns are grammatically correct, or that they are only used because of the aforementioned politics being inserted into books, you should stay away from this book and author, and also me. Personally, although the commentary was heavy-handed, I think it was very believable—it all came from the mind of an average millennial, and the anti-capitalism was primarily the fatalism of the main character.

The biggest problem I had with Finna is a problem I knew I would have: I like long books. I like giving action a lot of space, and I like expanding on scenes or characters, and you just can’t get that in a novella. I wish it was a full-length book! I do honestly think that a little too much was crammed into this novella. I think Cipri has awesome ideas, and this was an amazing premise, and I really hope that they expand into full-length novels soon!

In summary, if you’re looking for a fun sci-fi novel set in the worst IKEA ever, and all of its terrible alternate universe versions, that features own voices queer main characters, I highly recommend you pick up this little novella. It’s action-packed and won’t take you too long to get through, so I don’t think you’d regret it!

ARC Review: “The Strange Adventures of H” by Sarah Burton

The Strange Adventures of H by Sarah Burton

Thank you to Netgalley and Legend Press for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. The release date for The Strange Adventures of H is a little hairy—Netgalley says that it’s publish date is May 1, and it looks like it’ll be available in Australia on May 7, but in the US and UK it seems that the publish date is January 1, 2021. I’m publishing this review now because of the earlier publishing date I was told.

First of all, according to Goodreads the paperback edition of this book is a mere 272 pages. Either this is an egregious lie, or the font in that edition is too small for any human to read. This book was so long. And usually I’m the kind of person who wants books to be longer—I love it when a book fulfills all of its potential instead of cutting parts short! The Strange Adventures of H was a drag from start to finish (and still managed to rush the ending???). 

I think this book just wasn’t my cup of tea. For one thing, it wasn’t what I was expecting. From the title, I thought that this would have, well, more strange adventures—a little bit of everyday magic, a little more strangeness, but H’s adventures were anything but. They were relatively straightforward adventures. After H, an orphaned child being raised by her aunt, is thrown out of her cousins house at the height of the bubonic plague, she takes to the streets of London, penniless and pregnant (due to unwanted advances by her cousin). She turns to prostitution to make her living. This is roughly what the hook of the book is, but these events don’t even happen until a third of the way through the book! You have to slog through her entire backstory before even reaching the defining moment, and that was the most interesting part. It goes downhill from there. 

The biggest problem that I faced in this book is that I just didn’t care about H. Her character fell flat, which makes the entire book a struggle since it is written as her faux-memoir. In the first third of the book, she is painfully naive, and the reader can muster up some sympathy for her as she faces up against her pervy cousin and his catty wife. When she is thrown out, though, all of that innocence falls away, and we find ourselves with a very dry, matter-of-fact narrator. She goes through the motions, and the author relies heavily on telling rather than showing. I just never got a good sense of character from H. 

As a result, her actions don’t really carry any weight. Why should the reader care about whether she’s ruining her, or anyone else’s, reputation? Why should we want her to overcome her struggles, when it hardly feels like she is struggling at all? Equally, we can’t follow the other character’s motivations either. The romance came completely out of nowhere, and then got pushed to the side again and again until the very end of the book. The ending wraps up with a neat little bow on top, and it really feels like through her entire life, H never faces consequences for anything bad she’s done, including murder.

Ah, the murder. This is not a spoiler, because the book is framed by a prologue in which H chillingly describes the hanging of a man who has been deemed guilty of murder. The reader is then informed that H is watching this execution despite the fact she knows the man to be innocent of this crime, “for [she] had tied [the victim] up and Kat had beat her with the poker.” It’s a very promising introduction to the story, and leads us to believe that the story will be about H’s fall from grace and how she became a criminal, and yet when we finally get to the murder it’s horrifically anticlimactic. H goes from 0 to murder in less than a page, and then she basically has no fallout after the fact. It was barely a blip on the radar, and it only acted as the turning point for H to get a bunch of money and move into her own house. 

I don’t want to say that this book is unequivocally bad and that no one should pick it up. If you’re a fan of historical fiction and are looking to read a book where the women have a bit more agency, then you might enjoy this book. For me, however, reading this book was a chore and a bore. 

Rating: 2 stars

ARC Review: “Something Is Killing the Children, Vol. 1” by James Tynion IV

Something is Killing the Children, Vol. 1 by James Tynion IV and illustrated by Werther Dell’Edera

Firstly, thank you to BOOM! Studios and Netgalley for the eARC! Something is Killing the Children, Vol. 1 will be available on May 26, 2020.

A small town starts finding bodies of children torn to pieces. Still more children are missing. As the body count gets higher, a survivor teams up with a strange woman who comes to town asking questions.

I’ve heard rumblings about this book so I was very excited to receive the first volume as an eARC! One issue that I had while reading that is not going to factor into my rating is that there were a lot of two page spreads, that I didn’t realize were spreads at first—it’s difficult to read electronically, even with an iPad, so be sure to pick this up in physical form. 

I definitely got a lot of 80’s horror vibe from this comic—if you’re a Stranger Things fan, this will be right up your alley! I literally got chills on the last page, which was so refreshing because I haven’t had that reaction to horror for a long time. I wouldn’t say that the whole volume is super scary, just that Tynion knows how to end a book, haha. It is pretty gruesome, I would include a content warning for body horror and child death.

It’s a comic, so it is pretty fast-paced, but I think it did a pretty decent job at keeping a reasonably steady pace. I’m usually a reader that prefers to take my time with stories, and I like a lot of buildup, but that’s obviously not going to happen with a comic that gets released in issues. I do hope that now that the first story arc is out of the way, we’re able to get a lot more world building and character development in the future.

Overall, I thought this was a fun read and would definitely recommend it! I am looking forward to continuing with the series. 

Rating: 4 stars