Review - "Flame in the Mist"

Flame in the Mist, Flame in the Mist #1
by Renee Ahdieh
rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
published: 18th May 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

There is such strength in being a woman. But it is a strength you must choose for yourself. No one can choose it for you. We can bend the wind to our ear if we would only try.

Galley provided by publisher

You would think, after the ending of The Wrath and the Dawn, I would have learned that the only way to read Renee Ahdieh's duologies is to read the first the day before the second comes out, so that I'm not left suffering over a cliffhanger for an entire year.

I didn't learn.

Flame in the Mist is a retelling of Mulan set in Feudal Japan. On her way to marry the emperor's second son, Mariko's convoy is ambushed and Mariko is left to die. Believing the ambush to have been the work of the Black Clan, she decides to infiltrate their ranks and find out why they tried to kill her.

Once again, Renee Ahdieh manages to weave a captivating story, full of twists and turns (and cliffhangers) that you would never expect. (Though you should probably expect the cliffhanger.) I saw none of the twists coming, and each had me a little more excited than the last. The characters are, as per usual, wonderful, and I loved each and every one of them.

So, really, the only complaint I have is that I now have to suffer an unknown amount of time until I can see this conflict resolved.

Review - "When Dimple Met Rishi"

When Dimple Met Rishi
by Sandhya Menon
rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
published: 13th July 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

When Dimple Met Rishi may just be the cutest book I'll read this year. And it's also so good. I read it in about 4 hours (2 of which were actually spent watching hockey, not reading), and stayed up late because I just had to finish it.

For me, the characters were the best part of this book. I fell in love with them within about 5 pages of meeting them (especially Rishi). I can't remember the last time that I adored any character almost immediately, but this book managed it for pretty much every one that was introduced. I really, really just don't have words for how much I loved them.

If there was one (really really minor) problem I had, it was that occasionally the writing got a little bit borderline on purple prose, but it happened like only once or twice so, as I said, really really minor.

Review - "Spellslinger"

Spellslinger, Spellslinger #1
by Sebastien de Castell
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 4th May 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

First thing you learn wandering the long roads, kid. Everyone thinks they're the hero of their own story.

Sebastien de Castell's adult series, Greatcoats, is one of the best fantasy series I've read recently, and so I was intrigued to see what he'd come up with when instead writing for young adults. While I didn't enjoy it quite so much, it still had many of the characteristics that I love about Greatcoats.

The JanTep are a group of people living around an oasis that acts as the source of their magic powers. They are served by the ShaTep, who are JanTep who haven't succeeded in becoming mages. These ShaTep are often family members who, once revealed as having no powers, become a lesser class to the JanTep. Children gain their mage name at the age of sixteen, by passing four trials. So, naturally, there is a school for teaching magic. This was the major sticking point I had, especially to begin with, because "schools for magic" are done over and over, especially in YA fantasy, while they are used much less in adult fantasy. As a result, adult fantasy can feel more creative, so the start of this book at least felt a bit like it had already been done. Which meant I was thankful when the whole magic school thing turned out to not be even a major plot of the book.

What Sebastien de Castell does really well is keep the action going in a book. This is over 400 pages long, and I have a tendency to get bored around the 150-200 page mark of such long books, but that never happened with this book. There were never any lulls in the action, and it kept up right to the end.

If there is one thing I'd criticise about Sebastien de Castell's writing is that he's never quite able to write women of a certain age. Sure, he can write old women (very well in fact), and young girls aren't a problem, but it's ones that are in their teens to middle-age that always seem bland and are literally just there to serve the purpose of love interest. Yes, she did get some character development in this book, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she wasn't particularly interesting for the first 75% of the book or so. (I'm hoping the pattern whereby as we see more of her, she gets more interesting as in Greatcoats, continues.)

But overall, this book was very good. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm eagerly waiting for the second book (even if there does seem some promise of a love triangle. I suppose I'll just have to suffer that).

Review - "Goodbye Days"

Goodbye Days
by Jeff Zentner
rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
published: 6th April 2017
spoilers? not really

Goodreads

For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.

Galley provided by publisher

Honestly, I should really have expected how much this book would wreck me. I mean, it's Jeff Zentner. The Serpent King actually had me in floods of tears so I should have known this one would too. And I did expect to an extent that it would, I just didn't realise I'd be reading through my tears at points (chapter 24 was especially rough).

I loved pretty much everything about this book, but if there was one thing I didn't it was the romantic subplot (although it never fully came into fruition it was definitely hinted at). I didn't necessarily think that Carver falling in love with his dead best friend's girlfriend was really needed. I mean, the plot would have been just as good if they'd been friends and that was it. I guess it added a bit of angst but it wasn't like that couldn't have been achieved another way.

But in general, the book was amazing, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to have their heart ripped out and torn up.

Review - "The Girl with the Red Balloon"

The Girl with the Red Balloon, The Balloonmakers #1
by Katherine Locke
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 1st September 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

I loved this book. Everything about it was so so good, and it was really enjoyable, even if I did take longer to finish it than I might have (reading slumps come at the worst time).

The Girl with the Red Balloon tells the story of Ellie Baum, who is accidentally transported back in time to 1988 East Germany when she takes hold of a red balloon. She finds out there is a group of people who work to help those stuck in East Germany escape to West Germany, using such balloons, but the one that transported Ellie back didn't work as it was supposed to.

The premise of this story is so original and it's written so well too. I loved all of the characters, especially Mitzi, Kai, and Ellie, and I'm sad this is just a standalone book. I can totally understand why it would be but that doesn't stop me wishing there was more from these characters.

If anything, there was just a bit too little action for me, but then again I need action almost every page because I'm so impatient and get bored so easily. It helped that the chapters alternated between different characters' points of view, though.

The ending was perhaps a little abrupt - they seem to be slowly working their way to a conclusion, and then all of a sudden everything's happening, and just as suddenly it's done. But that besides, I didn't have a problem with the pacing of the book.

Review - "Future Leaders of Nowhere"

Future Leaders of Nowhere
by Emily O'Beirne
rating: ☆☆☆
published: 15th March 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

This book was so cute. Unfortunately, it often felt to me like there's not much more to it than that. Instead of having the camp with its political games as the central plot, and the romance the side plot, it has it the other way round, which leaves the side plot not so fully fleshed out as it could have been, and the romance is not quite strong enough to carry the book on its own.

The writing at times felt a little too much like purple prose, meaning I had points where I just kind of rolled my eyes and prayed for the story to move along already. I mean, you get things like "Because she is. Finn earths", which makes no sense. What is "to earth" even supposed to mean? That she's down to earth? Or that she's solid? Who knows.

Then there was a lot from both girls going on about how wonderful/amazing/brilliant the other was, and okay I get they're smitten but I don't need pages going on about it. It also seemed that neither would be able to admit to a fault in the other, which doesn't make for all that interesting characters, on the whole.

There were a couple of great moments later in the book, the first where Finn was like to Craig "you know bisexuality is a thing" after he points out she's been with a guy before. And the second was when Amira called Amy out for criticising her using her sexuality to get guys' doing what she wanted, and also vaguely slutshaming her. It was so wonderful. And there are so many good girl friendships going on in this book. I loved it.

Review - "The Broken Bridge"

The Broken Bridge
by Philip Pullman
rating: ☆
published: 2nd May 2017
spoilers? yes

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

DNF @ 45%

To be honest, I was disappointed by this one. I don't know if it's me misremembering how good Philip Pullman's writing is, or it's because this is an earlier one of his than His Dark Materials, but I was just underwhelmed by it.

The Broken Bridge tells the story of a mixed race girl growing up in a small, Welsh village in the 1990s. One day, she finds out that her dad wasn't married to her mother, as she had thought, but instead to another woman, and he'd had a child with her, before meeting Ginny's mother (meanwhile, not having divorced the first woman). And that revelation takes up the first half of the book. It's pretty tedious, to be honest. I was expecting some fantasy aspect to the book, but there was none.

It's understandable that if you're writing about a mixed race child growing up in a small, presumably relatively isolated, village in the 90s, you're going to have to touch on racism and microaggressions at some point. That's surely to be expected. Except every time Pullman approached the subject, he managed to make a mess of it. There is some clear internalised racism going on, made especially so when Ginny, who's mother is Haitian and studied art, refers to Haitian artists as "primitives".

"The lady from Haiti? They have a lot of painters there." "Yeah," Ginny said, "primitives. Peasants. I know about them. But she wasn't like that. I can't be, either. See, once you know about Picasso and stuff, Matisse, all the modern painters, well, you can't pretend to be a peasant who's never seen them.... You're stuck, really. You can't go back; you've got to go forward. My mother, she was studying art properly, like I'm going to do." "European art," Stuart said.

Ginny, herself an aspiring artist, should surely know better than to value the European artists over another style of art, let alone refer to that different style of art (coincidentally one with non-white artists) as primitive or lesser. It also seems that Pullman is using Stuart, a white guy, to tell her that this is a dubious opinion to hold. Especially when he goes on to tell her about Haiti, from his perspective (granted it's because she doesn't know because she's never been, but couldn't she have read about it at least?).

At this point, I just gave up. Coupled with the fact that the other black character, a boy who has been adopted by white parents, refers to himself as "a white kid with a black face" - which I get is intended to reference the fact he doesn't feel like he fits in anywhere but instead feels uncomfortable coming from a white author - I just had to stop.