The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas

Sometimes a book comes out that everyone is talking about.  Sometimes it's in a good way, sometimes it's in a bad way, sometimes it's in a mix of the two.  The Hate U Give seems to fall into the third category; from what I've seen, it's mostly good chatter, but then a handful of people who seem to feel that Thomas is just "stirring the pot."  Which...let's not get into it.  Anyway, this is a book that had people talking, and made the long list for the National Book Award.  So when Emma Watson put it up as the May/June read for her Our Shared Shelf book club, of course it was an easy one to pick up.

The story follows Starr, a high school student who sees her best friend shot by a police officer after they're pulled over for having a tail light out.  Starr is the only witness, but she doesn't want anyone to know who doesn't absolutely have to, because she knows it could tear her life apart.  But the trauma itself has a lasting impact, and the events shake her city to its core, dividing communities, families, and friends.

Is the writing in this book the most amazing ever in style?  No.  However, it's very, very good.  Thomas uses slang and dialect without making it seem obnoxious--like the dreaded phonetically-written Scottish accent I seem to encounter so much--and instead it reads as natural.  She shows the division that inherently exists in Starr's life, between her home life and her school, where she carefully monitors her clothing and behavior so she doesn't come across as "ghetto" or "an angry black woman" and can fit in better with her peers.  She has a masterfully-crafted narrative of empathy, and that is really what this book knocked out of the park.  It truly does allow the reader to step into Starr's shoes and see things from her perspective--how there are conflicting narratives and how those narratives came to be from one set of facts, and how they affect her and those around her.  Starr is not a person of conflict by nature, but finds herself surrounded by it, from protests that turn to riots in her neighborhood to a friend who doesn't outright mean harm but is unwilling to recognize or work to correct her prejudices and racist tendencies.

This book does not have a specific location, as far as I can tell.  It has generic place names and a generic place feel.  It is not a retelling or a spin of any one incident, but instead a look at a mentality and the events that lead up to it, and provides a lens for which those of us who have not and never will experience things like this because of our privilege and background and can really see where these characters are coming from.  There is some info-dumping; there is some awkward time-skipping.  There is some "It's two months later"-ing, which is never really a good narrative device.  But the emotion and purpose in this book ring true, and once I figured out the out-of-order pages at the beginning of my library copy (a printing error and not something inherent in the book, I'd guess) I was truly engrossed.

4.5 stars out of 5.

Salt & Storm - Kendall Kulper

This is a book that I eagerly waited for before its release, then didn't purchase because it was too expensive--seriously publishers, what's up with the ridiculous prices for Kindle books?  If authors were getting more of it I'd understand more, but that doesn't appear to be the industry standard--and I was hedging on the library to purchase it, and then finally got when it was on sale...and then proceeded to not read for ages because something was always more pressing.  But I finally queued it up for my 2018 reading challenge for "a book with alliteration in the title."

Salt & Storm is the story of Avery Roe, the youngest in a line of woman who possess magical powers on the fictional Prince Island, which is based on Nantucket.  The island's industry is whaling, and the women of Avery's family have a tradition of supporting the industry through their magic, one at a time.  But Avery's mother forswore magic and her heritage and left her mother, and eventually took Avery away, as well.  But Avery wants nothing more than to claim her birthright and become the Roe witch, taking over the position from her aging and ailing grandmother.  Cursed by her mother and unable to find a way to use her own magic, she turns to a young sailor from the South Pacific, Tane, for help in exchange for reading his dreams which he hopes will help him gain revenge for the murder of his family.

This book got off to a slow start, but things started building when Tane entered the picture and he and Avery began working together.  I had high hopes for this book at that point.  Tane's magic conflicting with Avery's was an interesting aspect, and while I knew Avery's mother couldn't be quite the raging bitch she appeared, I was unsure of how she was really going to enter the narrative.  I wanted Avery to reclaim her magic and become everything she wanted--maybe even save the island from some disaster!  Cliched?  Yes.  Satisfying?  Also yes.  But when Avery came under fire for being a witch, rather than being lauded for it, I was good with that, too.  After all, it was the logical course of things based on how the story had happened up until that point.  And things were finally building, obviously coming up to some big, climactic finish...

But let's talk about Tane, shall we?  An interracial romance set in New England?  Yes.  Please.  More.  He possesses his own magic and is looking to reclaim it, and his heritage, in a similar way to Avery, making them an ideal pair.  But then there's that Roe curse in play...but it could have played out so much better.  I can think of a billion ways that this could have ended rather than the way it actually did, which is Tane fulfilling the Magical Negro trope.  Unfamiliar with this?  It's a trope in which a character of color, usually from a much less privileged background than the white protagonist, enters the story only to help the privileged white protagonist achieve her goals, rather than existing as a character with his own path and journey.  Tane seemed to have so much more going on at first, but ultimately, no, he was tossed to the side so Avery could go off and ~be free~.  Utter garbage.  I expected more of Kulper than this.

What Kulper does really well here is, ultimately, the atmosphere.  I listened to In the Heart of the Sea as an audiobook last year, and Salt & Storm really nailed the way that I expected a Nantucket-based fictional island to feel.  The way that the Roe magic had changed the island, and eventually turned on it, made perfect sense.  Despite the slow pace, all of these things really had me rooting for this book.  If only Kulper hadn't gone and fucked it all up.  And don't get me wrong--I can really go for a good bittersweet ending, one that has me thinking for days, wondering and wishing, "What if...?"  But this was not good.  Characters of color deserve to be characters in their own right, just as white characters are, rather than just tools for white characters to find fulfillment and then toss by the wayside.

2 stars out of 5.

The Darkest Part of the Forest - Holly Black

Holly Black never fails to please.  After reading Cruel Prince earlier this year, I realized that I was missing a chunk of her faerie stories--I had the Tithe background, as well as its sequels, but there were characters in CP whom I was clearly supposed to recognize, and did not.  Obviously, I had missed The Darkest Part of the Forest.  Or, not missed it, exactly--I knew it existed.  However, I thought it was completely unconnected to the other books and had a story significantly different from what it actually is (I have no idea where I got that sense) and so I hadn't sought it out.  Which is kind of a good thing, because I got to enjoy it now!

The story takes place in the strange Pennsylvania town of Fairfold, where humans live not with the Folk, but alongside them.  Every now and then, a tourist will go missing--tourists who come to the town to get a thrill from interacting with faeries and make mistakes that "locals" would never make, except when they do.  Changeling Jack lives alongside his human "brother," whom he was supposed to replace; a jump-rope line stops one line short of drawing a monster out of the woods; and a boy sleeping in a glass coffin is the centerpiece of many a high school party.

Heroine Hazel grew up in Fairfold, with a short stint in Philadelphia while her older brother, Ben, was in music school.  Ben has music magic, a gift (or curse) from a faerie when he was a baby.  Hazel has no such gifts, but she wishes she did; she supports Ben in his magic and takes on the role of his loyal knight, the two of them hunting bad faeries as pre-teenagers in the woods.  But all that ends with the time in Philadelphia, and upon returning to Fairfold, Hazel makes a stupid mistake that puts her off hunting even longer.  But when the glass coffin is broken and Hazel has reason to suspect that she did it--even if she doesn't know why or even remember doing it--and the boy inside it is gone, a world of trouble is unleashed from the darkest part of the forest.  Hazel has to fight for her family, friends, and Fairfold itself, even though she is woefully unprepared to do so.

This was slow to get going, I will admit, and there's not a lot of real tension or action until fairly late in the book.  I also wasn't a huge fan of Ben as a main character--perhaps because he seemed to enter the role of main character fairly late in the book, where Hazel had occupied that role by herself for much of the early parts.  Ben himself was okay, but I liked him more in a supporting role; while his motivations were clear, I never felt he got the character development that a main character really needs to shine in a starring role.  Hazel, on the other hand, had much more page time; we were in her head much more, saw more of what she did and why she did it.  It just worked better for Hazel.  (Though I liked how things ended up for Ben!)

This is a different setting and a different faerie Court from Black's other books, and that aspect of this wasn't felt out as well.  However, I liked Fairfold itself.  The way that Folk and humans twined together, but with humans walking the razor's edge of danger all the time, really appealed to me.  The humans of Fairfold felt safe, until they weren't, justifying that "only tourists" were in danger, but doing some "tourist"-like things themselves.  And the way they seemed so okay with things, but quickly turned on Jack--the only faerie among them--as soon as things went wrong seemed exactly like what would happen in real life to me.

These faerie tales are Black's definite strength.  I'm so glad that she's returned to them with Cruel Prince, and I can't wait to read the next installment in that series--and luckily, I think reading this in the meantime will help bulk out my understanding of that series, too.

4 stars out of 5.

The Astonishing Color of After - Emily X. R. Pan

Book of the Month sometimes has some interesting selections.  They tend to be mostly literary fiction or suspense/thriller; I guess the judges' favored genres tend in this direction.  However, every now and then something very different slips in.  Something like Exit West or this one, The Astonishing Color of After, which has a definitive magical realism bend to it.

The story is about Leigh, whose mother commits suicide while Leigh is finally, finally kissing her best friend, Axel.  But while Leigh's mother might be dead, she is not gone, because Leigh is one thousand percent certain that instead of going away, her mother has become a red bird.  Her father thinks she's crazy, but some strange occurrences as well, and he takes Leigh to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents, whom Leigh has never seen due to a rift between them and her mother.  Leigh wants to find her mother, to figure out what she's supposed to know or remember, and finds herself on that quest with her grandmother and a strange young woman named Feng.

This is an interesting take on magical realism.  The things that Leigh experiences are definitely  happening.  They are not in her head.  Other people even sometimes acknowledge them.  But there's a whole aspect to it that only Leigh notices, that only she can see, or only she can remember, and I haven't encountered that in other magical realism books, which tend to have everyday magic more closely woven into the real world as a whole.  I spent a lot of the book flopping between "it's magical realism, no, it's just plain fantasy," but overall I think that magical realism is a more apt descriptor, just given how the magical plays into the story and characters.

Most of this book is set in Taiwan, but there are also flashbacks to parts of other people's lives and Leigh's own evolving relationship with Axel.  I really liked Leigh and Axel.  They're teenagers, and they do stupid things and have stupid fights, but their pull is undeniable.  They have a connection, and despite Leigh shutting down after her mother's suicide, that connection persists and grows even when they're separate and not talking...with a little magical help, of course.  But I think the aspect of this book that most intrigued me was Feng.  I had some idea of who she had to be, but I think Pan did a good job of concealing her true origins and revealing them in a way that wasn't designed to trick you but to make you put together all of the little pieces that had come before.

There were some things I didn't like, however.  First, Leigh's father is horrible.  Not in a typical "Leigh is a teenager and doesn't get along with her father" type of way, but in a "I knew my wife was depressed and so I pretty much abandoned her and my daughter rather than deal with it" type of way.  He hates that Leigh loves art.  He sends her off to a camp that she hates to the very depths of her soul and doesn't tell her anything regarding her mother's health, even though Leigh is the one who cares for her mother, because her father isn't present.  Pan tries to reconcile Leigh and her father at the end, but I am not at all convinced that he would suddenly become so supportive of her, or that he would become an involved father.

Second...can we talk about the pretentious color words?  Pan uses so many descriptive color words that I have never, ever encountered before, and I have a large vocabulary and am widely read.  Which means if I haven't encountered these words, I doubt her target young adult audience has.  I actually started highlighting them as I went through the book, there were so many!  The result is that there would be "[some crazy word] orange" and I would just disregard the descriptor, because "orange" was the part that mattered.  There are so many words for colors and hues and shades that the average reader knows, so I'm not sure why Pan veered away from those and to these spelling bee ones instead.

Overall, I did like this quite a bit.  Leigh's father was awful and the vocabulary was eye-roll worthy at times, but the story itself is solid.  The magical realism is done well, Leigh is a compelling main character, and the setting of Taiwan is a strong one.

4 stars out of 5.

The Cruel Prince - Holly Black (Folk of the Air #1)

Holly Black, as far as I'm concerned, is the Queen of Faerie, or at least of writing it.  Her book Tithe is one of my favorites in the paranormal and urban (or suburban, as Black calls it) fantasy genres.  Seeing her return to this world, in a different capacity, was a thrill, and waiting for this book to come in from the library was a form of torture.

Unlike Tithe and its sequels, which weave in and out of Faerie and the mortal world, The Cruel Prince takes place almost entirely in Faerie, in the High Court which has slowly been subsuming other Courts.  The main character is Jude, who saw her parents murdered by the redcap general Madoc when she was seven and spirited away, along with her sisters, to live in Madoc's home and be raised as one of the Faerie Gentry, though Jude is keenly aware that she is not and will never be fae herself.

This is a book of shades of gray.  No character here is wholly good or bad.  Jude's tangle of emotions form the core of the story, driving her to take risks that plunger her into the center of a dangerous and changing Court.  Her desire to be fae and to be better them, her love for Madoc and her hate for him, her longing to be one with her twin sister and to stand on her own, to stand out and to fit in--all of these are a swirl of conflict within her, and they drive her to become a spy and try to untangle the slowly-tightening web surrounding the changing of the High Court's ruler.  And while all of that is going on, she's enmeshed in another ongoing conflict, with Cardan, the youngest of the High Court's princes, who hates Jude and leads his merry band of followers on a campaign of all-out war against her, without ever letting her die.  And then there's Locke, who presents a reprieve and a dilemma all his own.

I love Black's writing.  She writes complicated teenage girls very, very well, and her depictions of Faerie continue to be marvelous.  It is beautiful and cruel, lush and dangerous, magical and menacing.  All of this is very apparent, and the world that it all contributes to is breathtaking.  There are also appearances from several familiar faces, though I found myself scouring my brain for some sign of a few of them--Kaye and Roiben are easy to place, of course, but I couldn't pin down Severin, who I think must be from The Darkest Part of the Forest, which I haven't yet read.  But while these familiar characters are a delight to see and important to the plot, Black doesn't let them take over the actual story, and it would have been very easy for that to happen.

The actual plot here isn't hard to puzzle out; all of the pieces are laid out for us, and it's fairly easy to see the conclusion before Jude herself reaches it.  Jude isn't stupid, she just allows herself to be blinded by her own desires--something that she herself admits when everything comes undone.  But she's also a budding master strategist, and while this one wasn't hard to puzzle out, I'm interested in seeing where her machinations go in the future books of this series.  Which we have to two years for.  Well, one for the second, but two for the third and final!  Aaaargh.  Well, at least I'll have The Darkest Part of the Forest to turn to, now, and I think I need to reread the dark and glowing jewel that is Tithe as well.

4.5 stars out of 5.

The Perilous Sea - Sherry Thomas (Elemental Trilogy #2)

Ah, the second book in a trilogy.  A difficult hurdle to overcome, indeed.  The characters and their motivations have already been established; the conflict has begun but the big battle isn't going to happen until the final book.  So what do you do to propel them from the end of the first book to the beginning of the third book?

You give your characters amnesia, of course.  Well, not "of course."  There are plenty of trilogies that go about without anyone getting amnesia.  But when your two main characters have already fallen in love and are well on their way to taking down the Big Bad, what easier way to set them back than to dump them in the desert and wipe their memories?

And so we find our heroes at the beginning of The Perilous Sea.  Don't get me wrong, it's not all amnesia here.  The book is actually divided into two parts: the "amnesia in the desert" part and the part that preceded it, with chapters alternating between the two.  Titus and Iolanthe are then simultaneously stuck in the Sahara with the agents of Atlantis closing in on them and with no idea who they are or why they're there, and also struggling with revelations regarding Titus' fellow Exile Wintervale, who appears to have become a powerful elemental mage in his own right and might be poised to take Iolanthe's spot as Chosen One from her, which throws a bit of a wrench into the dynamic between her and Titus.  Awkward.

Overall, though, I don't think this was quite as tight as The Burning Sky was.  Much of the action here was dispersed in little segments that took about three minutes to read, and were broken up by longer chunks in which Iolanthe and Titus sniped at each other or made out.  The awesome world of the Crucible was largely absent until the end of the book, and while I got a handle on what was up with Wintervale fairly early on, not much happened with it until the end when everything started to come together.  There also appeared to be some gaps left hanging at the end; for example, if Titus was related to the person who made the blood circle and yet Iolanthe was not, doesn't that mean that who made it wasn't actually who they thought it was?  Why were Titus and Iolanthe's memories wiped, since it doesn't seem like Titus could have met the contact threshold that the memory spell required and Iolanthe probably couldn't have either?  There seemed to be several conflicts within the logic here, and unless I missed something bit, it seems like there were holes that were never resolved but were made out to be to the characters' satisfaction, which doesn't seem to sit right in my head.

Titus and Iolanthe also fall into the insta-love category in this book with their memories wiped, which was a little eye-roll worthy.  In the first book, they were definitely attracted to each other but actual love took longer.  This time, they basically lay eyes on each other and want to make out even though neither can be sure the other isn't trying to kill them.  For a while I pondered the possibility that Titus wasn't actually Titus and there was going to be a third party throwing a wrench into things, but nope.

This didn't necessarily feel like a middle book in a trilogy.  Things still happened and while the pacing wasn't necessarily even, it definitely wasn't stalled in place like many second books.  But the book was definitely flawed, though in different ways than the first one.  Still, it ended on a resounding note and I'm really looking forward to reading the third and final book in this trilogy.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The Burning Sky - Sherry Thomas (Elemental Trilogy #1)

Whaaaaat a great book!  I'm not sure the last time I read a fantasy that was quite so awesome.  This was very exciting to find--Nenia over at Readasaurus Reviews gave it a good review, which is pretty rare for a book of this variety, and since it was already on my to-read list I jumped at the opportunity to read it!

This is a fantasy set in an alternative universe in Victorian times.  There are all the normal countries we're familiar with--part of the book takes place in England and particularly at Eton--and also mage countries, which are nominally independent but all appear to be under the oppressive rule of Atlantis.  In one of the mage realms, Iolanthe Seabourne is a teenaged elemental mage who wants to go to a university.  But when she calls down a bolt of lightning to fix a ruined batch of light elixir, which her guardian ruined on purpose to keep her away from an event that might draw Atlantis' attention to her (Atlantis having a propensity to kidnap strong elemental mages, who are never seen again) she accidentally draws the wrath of Atlantis and also the attention of Prince Titus, Master of the Domain.  A flurry of escapes is then executed and ultimately ends up with Iolanthe disguised as a boy at Eton in Titus' company, and sworn to help Titus bring down Atlantis' despotic rule, the Bane.

Sherry Thomas hails from a historical romance background, and this book consequently has a lovely romance between Titus and Iolanthe, though it doesn't take over the story by any means.  Instead, it plays nicely with the other story elements--two types of magic (elemental and "subtle," which is more like Harry Potter-style charms and spells), an enchanted book with a world inside, an evil global superpower, mythological creatures, and a few tantalizing family ties that I'm excited to see truly revealed in future books.  The writing is good; it has that "right proper" feel to it that goes with English boarding school stories, and of course the magical elements added in are great.  Thomas' background as a romance writer means that, while there is instant attraction between Iolanthe and Titus, their relationship doesn't immediately ring false and instead grows and changes with them--though I'm eager to see what Iolanthe's reaction to the revelation of Sleeping Beauty will be...  Hm.

The one thing that I didn't like here was that the pace was rushed.  A lot happens in this book, considering that it's only the first one in the series.  But from the very beginning, Iolanthe and Titus rush from place to place and crisis to crisis with hardly a chance to breathe in between--though Iolanthe does manage to squeeze in some cricket while she's disguised as a boy.  The Crucible is by far one of the coolest things here, but even then it's hied and hoed across, with few bits lingering to explore the potential of a book that contains worlds.

However, despite some of the uneven pacing, I really enjoyed this; I pretty much devoured it in one sitting, and I can't wait to read the next two volumes.

4.5 stars out of 5.

Long May She Reign - Rhiannon Thomas

An intriguing cover and a promising premise--about a young woman who is twenty-third in line for the throne and only wants to become a scientist, but finds herself queen when most of the nobility is poisoned and everyone in the succession before her abruptly dies--this has been on my radar for quite a while.  Of course, it's also been on quite a few other people's radar, since I was number eighty-something on the hold list at the library and it took quite a while for me to actually get the book to read it.

 I will say that I expected this to be a sci-fi book, maybe a space opera with a monarchy in place, something like Empress of a Thousand Skies.  Nope.  This is a fantasy world, one in which all innovations were supposedly left behind by a race called the Forgotten and one in which apparently Freya, our heroine, is the only person in the entire kingdom with the intelligence and desire to do something related to science.  Literally.  The hopes of the kingdom rest on her not because she's queen, but because she's apparently the only person who can figure out a test to detect arsenic and the only person who actually wants to figure out who killed the vast majority of the court.  Of course she has some communists (ish) to win over to her side as well as higher-born political enemies and the public at large.  And a love interest in the form of the illegitimate son of the king, who might want the throne for himself!  Gasp!

This was fairly well-written for what it was.  Despite the thin plot and overall a lack of action--Freya spends most of the book looking for a way to detect arsenic/figure out who poisoned the court and waffling about her duties as queen and letting other style her appearance for her--it was a fun teenage court drama.  Having a heroine interested in STEM is always a good thing, even if her being the only person is somewhat suspicious; an easy way to make her the best, perhaps?  Because of course if a girl is ever going to be good at something in a book/movie/show, she has to be the best or it doesn't count.  See: Celaena Sardothien, Alanna the Lioness, etc.  I did like how Thomas handled the romance; things go south (of course), and at the end it's not all happily ever after.  Freya admits things are on shaky ground and it will take work to repair the relationship, whether it ultimately ends in romance or just friendship.  This was a nice change from the "we are teenagers but must be in love forever" vibe that most young adult books put out.

Additionally, the book was a bit surface-level but Freya wasn't stupid.  Of course, you might say.  She's a scientist, after all.  But you'd be surprised.  What I mainly mean is that I didn't want to slap Freya upside the head.  She can sometimes get wrapped up in her own thoughts, but for the most part, she thought things through and acted accordingly, based on the information she had available to her.  I approve!  Additionally, it seems like Thomas neatly wrapped this up in one book and won't be drawing it out for a whole series.  Young adult stand-alones are so rare in the fantasy genre that I feel like I have to give this book a point just for that.

One thing that I do feel like I have to mention was the world building.  There was some stuff that seemed really intriguing here, but then it was never expounded upon.  Why is Epria so isolated from "the continent"?  What the heck is up with the Forgotten?  It seems to be implied that they're not real, but where did all of this other stuff come from?  Because this isn't a series, these seem like aspects that will never be explored fully, and consequently there are holes left in the fabric of the world.

Still, overall an enjoyable book.  Not an extraordinary one, but a solid young adult fantasy that can stand on its own and with a heroine better than most.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Perennials - Mandy Berman

I never went to sleepaway camp as a kid or teen.  I went to week-long day camp a few summers as a Girl Scout, and I think there were a few weekend-long overnight excursions, but nothing long-term.  It was just something that never came up and something, reflecting back, that my family probably couldn't have afforded even if it had come up.  So to me, summer camp has all the sheen of media, and typically in the horror movie sense.  You know, campers missing in the woods, something in the lake that's killing people...that kind of stuff.

Perennials both is and isn't like that.  Ostensibly about two young women, Fiona and Rachel, who attended a camp as children, as they return for one final summer as camp counselors and learn about growing up in the face of a tragedy.  Well, there is a tragedy indeed--more than one.  And while there are no serial killers lurking in the woods and no monsters cruising the lake, this book sometimes struck me as a horror story of another kind entirely, because what is up at this camp is very, very wrong.  Counselors are sleeping together--as teenagers do--and the camp director even gets involved.  Someone witnesses a rape--a very obvious one, in which the victim is seen saying she wants to go to bed, and is blatantly pulled into the woods and raped despite her protests--and the victim is punished for it along with the perpetrator.  Ill fates await not one but two campers over the course of the same summer. 

The lens Berman chose for this was interesting.  The story is told in third-person through a variety of perspectives; Rachel and Fiona each have a couple of chapters, but most of the book has the viewpoints of a variety of other characters.  The camp director, the two girls' mothers, Fiona's little sister, other counselors, campers, etc. all get to chime in with things happening over the course of the summer.  My favorite was probably Sheera, and I would have liked to see more of her; she was so different from the other characters, which was no doubt the point, and I felt a little robbed when she exited the stage relatively early in the book.  Seeing things through both Rachel and Fiona's perspectives was interesting, though--from Fiona's perspective we can see that she thinks Rachel doesn't really care about her except to serve as the "responsible" one, but from Rachel's we get another view: that she really does love Fiona, she just wishes she would come out of her shell and not need constant reassurance that she's liked.

The title here was especially poignant; while marigolds, the plant the camp is named after, are annual flowers, Fiona and Rachel themselves are perennials, coming back year after year and seeming to pick up right where they left off.  The difference is this final summer, when things seem to change so drastically in such a short period of time.  Both of their lives are ultimately turned upside down and the two are pushed apart by the events of the summer--however, the book ends on a positive note, with the potential for them to recover and grow closer together as a result, if they want to.

On the downside, the multiplicity of viewpoints leads to a lot of info-dumping.  Because there are so many characters and Berman wants to give you the full story about what brought each of them to Camp Marigold, there's a lot of "This happened to this person, which made them feel this way, which led to this."  There are a few great flashback scenes that did far more to contribute to character building than the straight-up info dumping, which showed some of what Berman could do, but the book's short length limited them by necessity and so we were left with long periods of info separating out bits of character interaction and forward movement.

Ultimately, I liked this.  However, I think it's much darker than Berman intended it to be.  Obviously there are some tragic events here, but there's another layer of darkness underlying it all that I'm not sure was deliberate.  And if it was--well, this was marketed in entirely the wrong way.  But for a character-driven book, I thought this was very good.

4 stars out of 5.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for winning a Goodreads giveaway.

Temptation - Karen Ann Hopkins (Temptation #1)

Things I did not know before taking on the Unapologetic Romance Readers challenge for 2017:

1) Christmas/holiday romances are pretty much all shorter than the typical romance novel.
2) Motorcycle romances basically all involve treating women terribly.
3) Amish romances are a thing!

Temptation was recommended for this category by a group member because it was cheap on Kindle.  And while price doesn't necessarily tell quality in Kindle books, sometimes it does...

The story here is about Rose, a non-Amish aka "English" girl who moves to a rural area with her father and brothers after her mother dies from cancer.  They are welcomed by the neighboring Amish family, and Rose instantly falls in love with their son Noah and he with her.  Oh, instalove.  But of course, their lifestyles are in the way of their twue whuv!  #drama  That is literally the entire plot to this book.

Noah has a Madonna/whore complex about Rose that really rubbed me the wrong way here.  He likes her because she is vibrant and different and nothing like the girls of his acquaintance--but also resents when she wears pants or makeup or talks to boys that aren't him, which are perfectly normal things for a sixteen-year-old girl to do, and Noah knows that it's normal for her and resents her for it anyway.  This is not the foundation of a healthy relationship.  Neither is Noah expecting Rose to drop her entire lifestyle and walk away from her family when he is not willing to make any concessions for her, because it's "just better" if they stay in the Amish community.  And Rose's willingness to go along with this really made me want to slap her upside the head.  You know how in The Little Mermaid movie, Ariel protests that she's fifteen and can do what she wants because she is an #adult, and you kind of want to smack her because No you are not you are fifteen!  Yeah, that's exactly what this was like for me.

This is a series, and I cannot possibly imagine how I could put up with this drama for two more books plus another that focuses on a different main character.  Yikes.  I mean, given the "climactic" events for this book, I'm very wary of Hopkins jumping the shark even moreso in the other books.  Additionally, the writing is just average and Hopkins very much does not have a good editor or clear grasp of grammar as it relates to dialogue, at all, which sometimes made it difficult to tell who was talking, when conversations began and ended, etc.  Additionally, as I mentioned before, there's no complexity at all to the characters or the plot, which actually made this a pretty bland read.

Overall, not something I think I'll be continuing.

1.5 stars out of 5.

When Dimple Met Rishi - Sandhya Menon

When Dimple Met Rishi was one of my most-anticipated reads for Fall 2017.  It seemed like it had so many things going for it: main characters who aren't white (diversity matters), a young woman in a STEM field (Dimple has a passion for coding), and a romance plot with an arranged marriage--or rather, a hopefully arranged engagement, since Dimple isn't actually aware of the fact that her parents are trying to hook her up with an Ideal Indian Husband, though she knows her mother wants her to get married.  Unfortunately, I felt like this book ultimately fell short of my expectations.

The story follows the two title characters as they attend Insomnia Con, a six-week app-coding bootcamp, the summer before they enter their freshman years of college.  Dimple dreams of being a coder.  It is her passion, and attending Insomnia Con and winning the app-coding competition for a chance to work with her idol seems like a coup that she won from her reserved parents, especially considering the thousand-dollar fee that she knows is a stretch for her family to afford.  Rishi, on the other hand, is resigned to being an engineer like his CEO father, though his true passion is drawing comic art.  He attends Insomnia Con mainly to get to know Dimple, as his parents and Dimple's parents know each other and think the two would be an ideal match.  Unfortunately, Dimple has not been made aware of this, and their first encounter ends with her throwing an iced coffee at him and fleeing the crazy guy who apparently thinks she's going to marry him.

Unfortunately, this didn't end up being a story of "getting know you while building world-changing app."  Despite their rocky first encounter and Dimple's determination to not get attached to anyone, Dimple and Rishi fall in love with each other pretty much right away, and only the barest minimums of the actual Insomnia Con competition are mentioned.  Instead of working on their app, Dimple and Rishi appear to spend most of their time swanning about San Francisco, eating out (can't blame them on that one) and practicing for a bizarrely-inserted talent show in which they perform a Bollywood dance.  No wonder the competition comes to the end it does--though of course, we're supposed to see that clearly they are the rightful winners!  (Why?)  The two have chemistry, but it was disappointing to have the conception that Dimple basically just ditched her app programming.  I don't think we're supposed to think this, but there's about three sentences of Dimple working on it in the book, so it really doesn't feel like she's as focused as we're supposed to believe she is.  And Rishi doesn't seem to know anything about coding, so it's hard to see how he got into Insomnia Con at all!

Watching the characters struggle against the expectations and preconceptions of their families was interesting, I'm not convinced that it was enough to propel the entirety of the story because ultimately, it doesn't end up being much of a struggle.  The parents cave pretty easily into wanting their children to be happy as soon as the children actually, explicitly push back.  So not much drama there, despite the "big deal" the characters make it out to be.  It ended up being a story that overall lacked dimension, with things seeming to come to the characters very easily on all fronts with only about five minutes of suspense in wondering if things will work out happily.  I think there were a lot of good concepts and themes in here, but none of them were worked to the degree they could have been, and should have been if this was to be a truly great book.

3 stars out of 5; I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not sure I would go for it again.

Into the Bright Unknown - Rae Carson (Gold Seer Trilogy #3)

Hmmm... What to say about this.  The conclusion of Rae Carson's Gold Seer trilogy, I had Into the Bright Unknown pre-ordered pretty much the moment it became available.  I loved Leah and her friends, and was eager to see the conclusion of her story, especially since the evil Uncle Hiram seemed to be out of the picture.

With Hiram being out of the picture, Carson had to make a sort of strange pivot for Leah & Co. in Into the Bright Unknown.  Instead of Leah trying to outwit her uncle and win freedom for herself and her friends in their mining would-be-town of Glory, she now has to face a different villain: the rich Hardwick, who we encountered in Like a River Glorious but who took a backseat in that book to Hiram's villainy.

In pivoting the story, I think Carson tried to hold on to the same "feel," but I'm not sure she succeeded.  What she did succeed in is writing an 1850 gold rush-themed episode of Leverage with Leah and her friends in starring roles.  As they all plot to take down Hardwick for a variety of reasons, each person has a piece they're trying to carry out that's separate from the rest.  Carson does finally introduce another character with "abilities," but despite the big "mystery" surrounding her (I would have loved to see more of her!) I had her pinned pretty much from the start, as well as the "big twist" at the end.  Maybe I've just read too many books by this point, but these plot contrivances were pretty see-through.

Once again in this trilogy, the setting does the heavy lifting.  The story takes place mostly in San Francisco, when the city is busy rebuilding from a devastating fire that destroyed most of the area.  Leah and her friends take up residence in a ship that was run aground and abandoned, which is completely charming.  This is good for the setting, because the characters leave a lot to be desired.  Becky has become spunky between the first book and this one, but still doesn't have much depth, and honestly none of the characters have much.  Leah herself is a bit better, but still not really a character to write home about; her abilities develop, but she never does.

Overall, this was okay; light and enjoyable, but I doubt I'll remember much about it in a few months.  This trilogy was better at the start, and it's been a pretty steady decline since; a disappointment compared to Carson's wonderful Girl of Fire and Thorns and its sequels, which seemed to get better with every sentence.

2 stars out of 5.

Ruin and Rising - Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #3)

For the final volume of this series, I was hoping for something dazzling.  I found the series had gotten off to a lackluster start, and while the second book was stronger, it still wasn't what I'd been hoping for.  However, it left off in a promising place, and this book picks up shortly after.

Alina and the other survivors of the Darkling's attack on the Little Palace are sheltering in the underground White Cathedral with the Apparat, but they're more like prisoners than anything else.  Alina is wilting without access to the sun and her light powers, and she seems to have picked up a little bit of shadow power, as well, from her near-death encounter with the Darkling.  They need to escape, find the firebird that is the third amplifier Alina hopes will help defeat the Darkling, and then actually defeat him.

Again, this book is very surface-level with few characters or components with any depth.  Light is good.  Dark is evil.  Alina admits, eventually, that the Darkling loved Ravka and did what he thought was best for it, even if it sometimes had terrible consequences, but that's about as close as Bardugo gets to layering in complexity in this book.  She tries to integrate a quirk involving the firebird as the third amplifier, but I found that scattered and not entirely convincing, as if Bardugo had a different plan for this book and then, in the middle of writing it, decided to go in a different direction--but didn't make the rest of the book or the series match up to that new direction.  It also felt like a ploy to pull on the hearstrings of readers, but honestly, I couldn't bring myself to really care that much about it.  That's because Mal is involved (of course) and I've always found him to be an utterly bland character.

The most interesting parts of this book were 1) Baghra and the revelations regarding her, the Darkling, and the amplifiers, and 2) Nikolai.  Nikolai was awesome.  Bardugo clearly had to sideline him for so much of the book because he was too busy stealing the scenes from everyone else he interacted with, being so superior to every other character in every way.  The Spinning Wheel was also an awesome location, but that was tied up with Nikolai's character, so I count it in with him.

Ultimately, this was an okay book, but it just didn't have heart.  The ending was predictable and nonsensical at the same time--no one ever realizes who Alina is?  Really?  I find that unlikely.  Characters who were less than engaging took up most of the book, and there was a lack of depth on any facet that left me wanting more.  This was Bardugo's first trilogy, and she has another duology set in this world that I'm still willing to try in hopes that it shows some evolution in her work, but I'm going to have my hopes set lower from the beginning based on my experiences with this trilogy.

2 stars out of 5.

Turtles All the Way Down - John Green

"But you don't understand, sir.  It's turtles all the way down."

Turtles All the Way Down has probably been one of the most hotly-anticipated books of the season, because it answers the question, "What on earth has John Green been writing since The Fault In Our Stars came out five years ago?"  I didn't read TFIOS, because I refuse to read a book that's set up primarily to pull at readers' heartstrings.  But a few early reviews for Turtles came out from friends saying that it was different, so I gave it a go.

John Green specializes in teenaged narrators who are much "deeper" than most teenagers typically are.  #notallteenagers  In this case, the narrator is Aza, who has an anxiety disorder that's paired with compulsions--I wouldn't go so far as to say she has OCD, but she definitely has some compulsions that are centered around germs, particularly gut bacteria.  She suffers from invasive thoughts that she can't control and can't get away from, and gets stuck in what she calls "thought spirals" where the thoughts just chase each other around inescapably and completely take over her existence when they occur.  I think this happens to everyone occasionally, particularly when something is going wrong in life, but Aza suffers from it on pretty much a daily basis.  She has medication that she takes intermittently, because she wants to escape her mental illness, but also is weirded out by the idea that she needs to take medication in order to be herself.  It raises questions of who your "self" really is, and I think that digging into a character with a mental illness was an interesting take and one he hasn't really done before.  And also importantly, Aza doesn't have an experience in which she falls and love and is magically cured by some guy's awesomeness, which is kind of common for characters with mental illness in novels that feature a romantic interest.

The main plot here involves a missing billionaire, the father of a friend Aza had when she was younger.  Her best friend, Daisy, insists that Aza re-insinuate herself in Davis' life in hopes of finding something that will qualify them to win a hundred thousand dollar reward for information leading to his father being found--Davis Sr. having absconded in an attempt to avoid criminal charges involving a lot of money.  There isn't really a "search" that Aza gets involved with, though she picks away at a few weird things that Davis' younger brother brings up.  However, most of the story really revolves around Aza and her mental illness, which doesn't really seem to be mentioned in the book description.  I feel like some people might be disappointed by what they find in this book, but I think that the way it was structured and the way it ends perfectly suited a character like Aza.  The ending is one that might not be considered "happy," because Aza isn't magically cured of her illness, but it is a fitting one.

Writing about characters with mental illnesses is tricky, because you're just asking to be jumped on by a ton of people with similar mental illnesses who haven't had the same experience.  But I think Green did a good job here, and this was a very enjoyable read.  My only complaint is actually about Daisy.  Daisy is made out to be this great friend to Aza, except for one thing involving the Star Wars fanfiction she writes, with the point being made that Aza hasn't really been a great friend because she's so stuck in her own head.  But Daisy is kind of a terrible person.  She knows that Aza has a mental illness, but doesn't care.  She lashes out and ditches Aza and and doesn't give Aza credit for anything that she does, insinuating that Aza doesn't deserve credit for anything because she is more privileged than Daisy.  But we can see that Aza does know things about Daisy, that Daisy accuses her of not knowing because she doesn't pay attention.  Does it seem like, in Aza's more stable periods, she could have made more of an effort?  Yes.  But Daisy is utterly terrible to Aza when she's spiraling down into a pit, and Aza just lets her off the hook for it, which I can't quite forgive on either front.

Overall, though, a good read.

4 stars out of 5.

Scarlet - Marissa Meyer (Lunar Chronicles #2)

Scarlet is the second book in the Lunar Chronicles series and is the last book of the series I need to review' life's funny like that, innit?

This book both continues Cinder's story as rogue moon princess and introduces a new character, Scarlet.  The main setting here also shifts to France, where Scarlet lives and is looking for her recently-disappeared grandmother, who was also involved with Cinder's relocation from Luna to Earth, though Scarlet doesn't know it.  The new romantic interest for Scarlet, Wolf, also takes the scene, as does Carson Thorne, an American deserter with a stolen spaceship who falls into Cinder's company.  Kai is also still involved, dealing with the drama of Cinder's escape and rising tensions with Luna from the palace in New Beijing.

Cinder starts coming into her own as a moon-princess-badass here, and Scarlet quickly sets herself up as someone who is not to be messed with.  Scarlet is a typical "fiery redhead" character, which is a bit lacking in originality, but at least her hair is only mentioned twice instead of being harped on for the whole book.  Her "Little Red Riding Hood" story is queued up with her signature red hoodie and, of course, Wolf, as well as a brief encounter between Wolf and a street fighter named Hunter.  There's a bit of a twist in this book, one that I don't think was as evident as the "twist" in Cinder, but reading it through a second time it's pretty obvious where the story was going.  Still, I found the story to be enjoyable.  This is also more of a romance than Cinder was, with a strong bond between Scarlet and Wolf from the beginning, even though both admit that it doesn't make sense.

This isn't a very complex story, and I think that Scarlet's part of it actually moves more slowly than Cinder's story initially did.  Meanwhile, Cinder's story picks up pace as she and Thorne flee New Beijing and try to determine their next steps.  Thorne is a delightful character, someone who thinks that he's much more charming than he actually is and with a checkered past that he tries to spin in the best light possible.  This all sets him up wonderfully as a true hero in the next book, when he see him through a different pair of eyes.  Iko also makes a return to the page here, and she is just as wonderful as ever.  Cinder herself is also a stronger character than she was before, gaining a true determination and sense of self that she lacked in the first book.

Overall, this is a great book, a strong continuation of the series and, I think, better than Cinder itself was.  On the re-read, I'm not quite as dazzled with it as I was the first time I read it.  When I do my re-read of Cress, we'll have to see if Scarlet can retain its place as my favorite book in the series or if it will be overturned.

4.5 stars out of 5.

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett- Chelsea Sedoti

This was the Big Library Read for October 12-26.  The Big Library Read is a initiative where they work with libraries using Overdrive to make a book available (via ebook or audiobook) to everyone who wants to read it without any holds or waitlisting.  The DC Public Library was featuring it pretty heavily on their site, so I picked it up.

My firs thought regarding this book is that it's terribly misnamed.  Lizzie Lovett doesn't tell any lies in this book.  In fact, she only has about three lines of dialogue at all.  I'm guessing that her "lies" were that she acted different ways in different situations and sometimes appeared to be contrary, but guess what?  People are allowed to be contrary and to act differently in different situations!  They're allowed to change over time!  Figuring that out takes the main character a ridiculous amount of time, which was a bit sad.

So, the story here is about narrator Hawthorn, a seventeen-year-old girl who is a bit of an outcast at her high school, and whose world is turned upside down by the disappearance of the titular Lizzie Lovett, who Hawthorn adored upon meeting and then later despised for most of the one year they were at the same school--Lizzie as a senior and Hawthorn as a freshman.  Now Hawthorn is a senior, and she only has one friend.  The book description says that Hawthorn inserts herself into a missing persons case, but that's not entirely accurate either, because she never gets involved with the investigation itself--just with Lizzie's boyfriend, rambling around in the woods looking for Lizzie, who Hawthorn actually believes is a werewolf.  Now you might get some idea as to why Hawthorn doesn't have many friends and is considered weird.

This had a lot of potential, but ultimately it lacked depth and nuance and character growth.  Hawthorn does get some leeway for her hard-headedness and self-absorption, because she is a teenager, and that's what teenagers are.  But in some ways, she acts much younger; her dream is to go out on an adventure and discover that werewolves are real and be able to tell everyone, "I told you so," which seemed like something more suited to a middle- or elementary school student than a high school student who, while still being able to enjoy fantasy, make up stories, etc., should still have a better sense of fiction and reality.  She wants to make her point so much that she involves herself with Lizzie's boyfriend, who might have killed Lizzie.  What?  How is this mental stability?  Yes, innocent until proven guilty--but still, exercise a little caution, Hawthorn!  Her instability (yes, I'm calling it instability) is depicted as something cute and quirky and even romantic, but I just couldn't find it to be so because of the utterly stupid things it drove her to do.

Hawthorn's main "nemesis" in this book is Mychelle, a stereotypical popular bitchy girl who bullies Hawthorn.  There's never anything that's gone into with her own motivations, insecurities, etc.  Hawthorn's family, her best friend, and all the other supporting characters, including Lizzie's boyfriend who Hawthorn becomes involved with over the course of her "investigation," are all equally flat and undeveloped.  The one person I thought showed promise was Connor, but ultimately he never got enough page time to develop into the true, warm character I thought he could become.

One thing that I do think this book really had going for it: the setting.  The story takes place in the fictional (I believe) town of Griffin Mills, Ohio, which is a slowly-dying steel town.  I could perfectly picture the atmosphere in the town, which Sedoti captures in a one-page essay that Hawthorn turns in after forgetting to do the real assignment.  It was the perfect atmosphere for a story like this, and I could see why Hawthorn used fantasy to escape her mundane life--but I was still concerned for how deeply she seemed to believe the things she made up.

This was a quick read, and it was mildly entertaining, but Hawthorn's delusions left me side-eyeing her.  She showed a bit of growth by the end, but I'm still concerned for her mental status, and the rest of the book left something to be desired.

2.5 stars out of 5.

Trickster's Queen - Tamora Pierce (Daughter of the Lioness #2)

I wasn't actually planning on reading Trickster's Queen so soon after reading Trickster's Choice, but after a few books that were just "meh," I found myself in a bit of a reading slump.  And when I'm in a reading slump, I like to go back to books that I know I enjoy to get me out of it.

What struck me immediately upon re-reading Trickster's Queen is its great disconnect from the first book.  It picks up several months and much character development after Choice, which Pierce tries to bridge with a couple pages of prologue that is essentially all info-dump about what the characters have been doing in the interim.  However, the effect of this is that it feels like this is the third book in a trilogy in which the second book is missing.  Most of the development of Aly's relationship with Nawat, which was so sweet and charming in the first book, is just skipped over; so is Aly's building of her position as spymaster for the growing rebellion.

On the whole, however, this book has less infodumping than the first one.  The prologue is the vast majority of it, and the narrative itself is less interrupted with intermittent infodumps than Choice was.  Additionally, I think this one does a better job of building the environment, culture, and overall feel of the Copper Isles.  Aly also really has room to come into her own and show off her skills in this book, rather than scampering to use them while also hiding them as she had to in the first book.  Tensions come to a head regarding Sarai, and the twist that's hinted at all along finally actually happens.  Dove continues to be an excellent character, far wiser than her years, and the integration of many of the side characters is done very well.  The other minor flaw that comes to mind is that the end does feel a bit rushed; Pierce lists off a list of casualties, one of which was a major-minor character (if that makes sense) in the first book and then was just brushed aside in the second and then written off as a sacrifice of the rebellion.  With all of the build-up to the rebellion, it just seems to be over in remarkably few pages, and then the epilogue just feels a bit off as well, though I can't quite put my finger on why.

Overall, this is a good book; I definitely enjoyed re-reading it.  However, I don't think that it's as good as the first book in the duology.  It feels disconnected from the first part of the story, and the ending also feels rushed and off-kilter with the rest of the book.  The body has a good feel and good characters and a good plot, but without a strong beginning or end, I don't think it can be stronger than the first book.

4 stars out of 5.

Trickster's Choice - Tamora Pierce (Daughter of the Lioness #1)

Tamora Pierce is undeniably one of my favorite authors.  Whenever I need a reading reset or get into a book slump, I turn back to her books to get me going again.  When I feel sick or nostalgic I reach for them, too, because they make me feel good.  They have strong female characters, plots that are delightful without being too convoluted or simplistic, and they always interlock in wonderful ways.  On the strong female characters front--the very first thing in this book is not a paragraph-long excerpt, a laudatory review, or a list of Pierce's other books.  Instead, it's a list of other books with strong female characters; how awesome is that?

Trickster's Choice is the first in a duology following Aly, daughter of Pierce's first main character Alanna the Lioness.  Aly longs for adventure, hopefully working as a spy for her father.  She ends up with more adventure than she bargained for when, on a trip down the coast, she's captured by pirates and sold as a slave in the Copper Isles, and then sucked in a wager with a god to keep a family safe from a mad king and his feuding family over the course of the summer.

I've always liked Aly as a character.  She's smart and independent, just like all of Pierce's heroines, but she has a dry wit and a keen sense of sarcasm that most of them lack--in fact, the character whose sense of humor most closely matches Aly's would probably be Neal, a supporting character in Pierce's Protector of the Small series (and who Aly knows).  Additionally, I find the setting here fascinating; while the different regions of Pierce's Tortall universe are all based on different real-world cultures, the Copper Isles are definitely the most lush setting we've seen from her, and the culture probably the most different from the typical European-influenced fantasy settings that dominate her other works. She builds on prior story lines, throwing in little cameos of her other characters from previous series but without making this book feel like it exists only as fan service.

Additionally, the character of Nawat has really grown on me.  I didn't really like Nawat in prior readings, at least not as a romantic interest; I preferred Aly with a character who shows up in the second book.  But his innocent charm and utter devotion to Aly has won me over after some time away from this book.  All of the characters here are actually excellent, with no one feeling superfluous or developed only at a superficial level.  I remember having a feeling about who the One Who Is Promised was the first time I read this book, and it's even more blatant reading it through again, and that's because Pierce does such a good job of the characterization here.

The one weakness that I think is here is that, in trying to loop in readers who aren't already familiar with Tortall, its characters, and its mythos, Pierce engages in a bit of infodumping.  Information about the Copper Isles actually seemed to be worked in pretty well as Aly discovered it, but info about Aly's homeland wasn't worked in very artfully.  This might have been a necessary tactic, since not all readers would have read the entirety of the Tortall books before getting to this one, but it still made the reading experience a bit jarring at points.

Overall, rereading this was an absolute delight, and I can't wait to dive into the second book once again.

4.5 stars out of 5.

Siege and Storm - Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #2)

I wasn't super psyched about the first volume of the Grisha series, but I held out hope for the other volumes.  In this second book, Alina and Mal are fleeing Ravka and the Darkling--until they're not.  And soon, Alina finds herself with a second amplifier and hopes for a third, control of the Second Army, and no idea where the Darkling actually is, but a sense that all is not going to go well.

There's a split in my opinion on this book.  On one hand, there's definitely a case of second-book syndrome going on here.  Not a lot happens in it other than Mal and Alina fighting--and more on that later.  On the other hand, I felt like this book was a bit better than the first because the symbolism wasn't quite as heavy-handed and Bardugo didn't do as much to deliberately manipulate readers and without much art.  The "dark is bad, light is good" dynamic is still there, but because the Darkling isn't present on the page for most of the book, it's not played up as much.

Instead, the focus of this book is largely the relationship between Alina and Mal.  I'm not sure why this is a relationship that Bardugo continues to push, because it's clearly very toxic.  Mal can't accept that Alina has a moral compass that doesn't always align with personal desires (his or her own) but Alina clings to him and refuses to let go of some dream of them being together, because they've known each other their entire lives.  Note: knowing someone your entire life does not automatically make them a suitable romantic partner.  Alina pushes away another potential romantic interest who, though he has his own motivations, is probably also much better for her, just because she's so wrapped up in Mal, who is downright nasty to her for most of the book.

Bardugo did add in some interesting supporting characters in this book, mainly in the form of Sturmhond/Nikolai and his crew.  This is exactly the sort of dynamic that I think this book needed.  Nikolai is a very strong character and I hope we see more of him in the final book, though I suspect that it's going to be a lot of Mal and Alina on their own.  Seeing Grisha who weren't actually part of the Grisha hierarchy was also interesting, and made sense; after all, if Grisha are born in all nations in this world but are only welcomed in Ravka, it makes sense that not all of them would run away to join the Second Army.  I do wish we knew a bit more about this whole dynamic, because Ravka seems like such an isolated country and that's really not how countries work, but I guess that's not something Bardugo really plans on going into, at least not in this series.

So, yes--a stronger book than the second one, and it gives me hope for the third.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The King of Attolia - Megan Whalen Turner (The Queen's Thief #3)

The third book of The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia continues in the third-person vein that the series switched to after the first book.  Additionally, it introduces a new protagonist, Costis; indeed, Eugenides, now the King of Attolia (and sometimes going by the "official" name of Attolis) only has a few, very brief sections that focus on him as the main character.  Instead, this has become Gen's story through Costis' eyes, as he seems to struggle to come to terms with his new role.  After all, if we can recall, Gen only took the role of king because he wanted to marry the queen, not because he actually wanted to rule.

I'm not sure if I'm a huge fan of this perspective shift.  The thing is, by now readers should know that Gen is a tricky character.  This means that, instead of seeing him as a bumbling fool for much of the book, as Costis does, I spent the duration squinting suspiciously and going, "What is he up to now...?"  And, of course, Gen is up to something.  Costis is an interesting point of view character because he resents Gen, just as much of Attolia does, but because we know Gen is up to something, he's not entirely convincing in his depiction of Gen as a bumbling fool.  Seeing Costis coming around is something of a paradigm shift, for the character rather than for the reader in this case, but honestly it just makes him, and the rest of Attolia, seem easily manipulated, rather than showing anything of Gen growing as a character.  And ultimately, this is still Gen's story--it is a series called The Queen's Thief, after all.

However, I think I did like this better than the second volume.  The relationship between Gen and Attolia/Irene is more believable here, and while the story is still very political in nature--with Gen apparently failing as a king--it was on a much smaller scale.  This is a story of intrigue and assassins rather than the movements of armies and navies, and I think it's a scale that was done much better than the preceding book.  If only the dynamic of Gen being incompetent could have been kept up, I think it would have been good...but two books of that was more than enough for readers to catch on that it's just a trick and to wise up to the ongoing deception.  With that in mind, I'm not sure how much longer this series will continue to be convincing.  The setting remains interesting, and there's clearly a rising of forces on the horizon, but without a compelling central character, it can't help but fall flat, and I'm not sure how much longer Gen can be compelling unless the dynamics are seriously switched up.

3 stars out of 5.