Tag: Young Adult

Book: “The Navigator” by Erin Michelle Sky and Steven Brown

Publishing Info:  Trash Dogs Media, LLC, October 2019

Where Did I Get this Book: NetGalley

Book Description: Wendy’s troubles are far from over. Hook wants her in irons, the crew wants to throw her overboard, and Pan’s magical compass is the only thing standing in their way. But Pan himself is nowhere to be found.

When a new everlost captain appears on the horizon, it will take everything Wendy has to survive.

Previously Reviewed: “The Wendy”

Review: This is definitely an “under the radar” little fantasy series. I pretty much only strayed upon it after scrolling way, way into the backfiles on NetGalley. But man, I’m glad I did! I, obviously, love re-tellings, and “Peter Pan” is definitely one of the more rare ones, mostly because of how hard it is to get right, I think. But the first book definitely proved that the authors had a new take on the story, so I was really excited to pick up this sequel and see where things went from there!

Wendy has finally made it: she’s the navigator of a ship. Of course, no one but herself is very pleased about this fact and without the magical compass that only she can read, she’s fairly certain they would all toss her overboard at their first chance. But still. Challenges are still ahead, however. Not only must she continue to try to prove herself to this new crew, but loss and uncertainty await on the horizon as a war brews around her.

So, overall, most everything that I enjoyed from the first book continued on here. I love the twists and turns that the authors are bringing to a well-known story. There were several that took me quite by surprise. I was also pleased to see variations on other familiar characters make an appearance, like Tigerlija. It’s always fun to see new takes on characters like this, especially ones that had fairly minor roles in the original story (not to mention…um…questionable ones at that).

I also still really enjoy Wendy herself. Her story tackles a lot of emotional legwork with her struggles to gain the respect of her male crew. But she also doesn’t fall into all of the trope-y “strong woman” moments that can be seen everywhere. Instead, we see her have to become more vulnerable when confronted with unexpected losses that strike her where it hurts. She’s dealing with a war, after all, so I’m glad the authors didn’t shy away from the dangers and realities that that would present.

Hook and Pan, of course, are also still great characters. Hook’s POV chapters were especially interesting. It’s definitely a challenge to write chapters from the perspective of the villain of the story, but if done right, it can add many additional layers to the story and the interactions between characters. It’s hard not to like Hook, frankly.

Overall, I really liked this book. If you’ve read the first one, this is pretty much more of the same. Which, in this case, is not a criticism but a bonus! And if you haven’t read this series yet, but like “Peter Pan,” then I definitely recommend checking out these books. They deserve more attention than they’re getting!

Rating 8: Still a rollicking good time to be had here!

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Navigator” isn’t on many Goodreads lists, but it is on this strange, little list Clean Peter Pan Retellings.

Find “The Navigator” at your library using WorldCat!

Book: “Blood & Honey” by Shelby Mahurin

Publishing Info: HarperTeen, September 2020

Where Did I Get this Book: Edelweiss+

Book Description: After narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Dames Blanches, Lou, Reid, Coco, and Ansel are on the run from coven, kingdom, and church—fugitives with nowhere to hide.

To elude the scores of witches and throngs of chasseurs at their heels, Lou and Reid need allies. Strong ones. But protection comes at a price, and the group is forced to embark on separate quests to build their forces. As Lou and Reid try to close the widening rift between them, the dastardly Morgane baits them in a lethal game of cat and mouse that threatens to destroy something worth more than any coven.

Previously Reviewed: “Serpent & Dove”

Review: Well, after enjoying the first book well enough this summer, it was kind of a given that I’d include it in my fall reading schedule. After all, I’d had a lot of success this summer with reading books that had been very popular last year and then were followed up by equally good, if not better, sequels (“The Merciful Crow” and its sequel, for example!). And, while the first book in this duology (ugh trilogy) wasn’t as strong as that one, it still caught my interest, and I had hopes the trend would continue. Alas, no. Not only did the trend decidedly not  continue, but I actively disliked this book and am probably out on this (again, ugh ) dulogy-turned- trilogy.

After the dramatic events at the end of “Serpent & Dove,” Reid, Lou and their friends find themselves on the run and in need of allies. Their search is a long and arduous one, pushing them all to the limits. On top of this all, Reid and Lou are still managing the new waters of their marriage after secrets on both of their sides have now been revealed. Will they all be able to stand strong together and will they be able to outwit the powerful force amassing against them?

So, that’s a pretty junky book summary that I just wrote. And that’s because…this is a pretty junky book? Seems harsh, but I really am having  a hard time coming up with any positive to say about this book. The problems start right away when I can’t write a good summary of this book because nothing happens in it. And it’s over 500 pages long! Instead of any plot to speak of, it’s made up of angst, drama, out of character actions/thoughts, and the worst case of “middle book syndrome” that I’ve ever seen. Part of the blame for this is, of course, because either the publisher or author (I’m guessing this was pushed by the publisher after the success of the first book) decided to stretch what originally envisioned as a duology into an unnecessary trilogy. And it shows. In a bad, bad way.

There is practically no action in this book until the last 40 pages. It’s just Lou, Reid and the others looking for allies, and with not much success. It’s not so much a story plot as a story plot point…a small one, at that. Definitely not one that justifies this book’s extreme length either. I mean, on one hand, it was always going to be a hard sell changing what was meant to be a duology into a trilogy kind of late in the game. But then to make the now-added middle book into a massively long middle book? The plot can’t support it. The character arcs (if there are any to speak of) can’t support it. It’s just not good storytelling.

The other major problem for me was in in the character arena and the romance. As I pointed out, this book was clearly stretched too thin on plot, and it feels the same with the characters. Their arcs no longer felt natural, but instead each character felt, at best, wildly out of character at times, and at worst, like they had been made into totally unlikable, totally different characters altogether. I struggled with Reid’s likablity in the first book. He was downright unpleasant in this one. His overly protective attitude towards Lou was in no way endearing and was often aggressively sexist in its portrayal. When he wasn’t caught up in that, it was internal angst and indecision all the live long day. Lou was a bit better, but still less likable than she was in the first. For her, much of her “arc,” such as it was, was more confusing than anything. She seemed to lose much of the personality she had in the first book and was at times almost unrecognizable.

To top a bad situation off, the book ends on a massive cliffhanger. And at this point, given how bad the rest of the book had been, this did not have the desired affect of cajoling last minute interest out of me, but instead just pissed me off more. It’s almost as if the publisher/author knew the book on its own wasn’t enough to keep most fans around, so they added this final twist as a last ditch effort. Really, the entire book seems to serve an example of publishing greed gone to far. If it had remained as a duology, with this the second and final portion, I’m sure we would have had a lot more actual plot and a lot less unnecessary character drama. The tone of the entire series could have remained consistent, and fans would have been satisfied. Instead, out of a need to squeeze the last drops out of the golden goose that was the first book, the series was stretched to a breaking point that is now losing fans. At least, they’ve lost me.

Rating 4: Supremely disappointing and barely recognizable as having come from the same author as the first book.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Blood & Honey” is on these Goodreads lists: “2020 YA Sequels” and “Can’t Wait Sci-Fi/Fantasy of 2020.”

Find “Blood & Honey” at your library using WorldCat!

Book: “The Silvered Serpents”  by Roshani Chokshi

Publishing Info: Wednesday Books, September 2020

Where Did I Get this Book: NetGalley

Book Description: Séverin and his team members might have successfully thwarted the Fallen House, but victory came at a terrible cost — one that still haunts all of them. Desperate to make amends, Séverin pursues a dangerous lead to find a long lost artifact rumored to grant its possessor the power of God.

Their hunt lures them far from Paris, and into the icy heart of Russia where crystalline ice animals stalk forgotten mansions, broken goddesses carry deadly secrets, and a string of unsolved murders makes the crew question whether an ancient myth is a myth after all.

As hidden secrets come to the light and the ghosts of the past catch up to them, the crew will discover new dimensions of themselves. But what they find out may lead them down paths they never imagined.

A tale of love and betrayal as the crew risks their lives for one last job.

Previously Reviewed: “The Gilded Wolves”

Review: I wasn’t blown away by “The Gilded Wolves,” the first in this YA fantasy trilogy. But as I liked it more than Chokshi’s other books I’ve read and the cast of characters was compelling, I decided to keep going with the series. Well, I have, and…I don’t think I liked this one any better? Maybe worse? And yet I still will probably read the third? I’m not sure what this says about me as a reader or about the trilogy itself. Me, probably a completionist. The trilogy, something about it must be intriguing enough to keep me invested.

Things have kind of fallen apart for our crew after the dramatic events at the end of “The Gilded Wolves.” Each on their own, each has been trying to make their own way in the world, feeling cut-off from the rest. But when a lead on “The Divine Lyrics,” the magical book at the heart of Severin’s (and Laila’s) quest, finally comes to light, Severin brings them back together for one last adventure. Into the heart of the north and through mysteries new and astounding, the crew must once again bring each of their unique skill sets to hand in order to pull of this last job. But, of course, nothing goes as planned and a darker price is waiting than any of them could have imagined.

So, a lot of the problems I had with the first book (and with this author in general) were still present here, unfortunately. There’s something about her style of writing that I struggle with. On one hand, there’s the turns of phrase that seem to be written more because they sound beautiful and poetic rather than the fact they convey any actual image. The titles, for example, of both of these books doesn’t seem to really connect directly to much in the story. But they sure sound pretty! Most of the time it didn’t bother me too much, but there were definitely other times when I would re-read a sentence and be like “Sure…sounds nice…but…what?” And that confusion carries over to my second struggle with the writing.

While the author does a good job with characterization for the most part and clearly has a bunch of unique fantasy ideas. She’s not lacking in imagination on either front. But when it comes to the actual description of locations, objects, and how they interact with each other…it’s just not good. There were entire locations (where the book spent a significant amount of time) that I couldn’t describe to you. There was an entire action scene that was a blur of movement, and by the end, again, I couldn’t tell you what exactly had happened. The writing looks pretty on the front of things, but it too often failed at its most basic requirement: conveying ideas clearly.

I also struggled with the plot itself. The mystery was both at times not clear at all (Severin and his cohort would jump through leaps of logic that were either impossible to follow or just totally unbelievable that anyone would connect those dots). And at other times so bizarrely obvious that I couldn’t be less impressed when AHA! the reveal finally came and Severin and his crew were just oh, so clever for putting it together.

And, sadly, on top of all of this, my favorite part of the first book, the characters, was a let-down here as well. They’re all still interesting enough, but man, this was a glum book. Severin was practically unrecognizable, and his decisions were, again, hard to buy at times. As for the rest, they all seemed to become more and more caught up with unnecessary secret keeping that served no other purpose than to stir up more drama. It was just all kind of sad and tiring.

And yet…I’m probably going to finish out the story. For one thing, this book mostly felt like a place hold and necessary vehicle for the author to get from point A to point B. So while this middle portion of the trip was a let down, I can still be hopeful that it was all to the purpose of getting us somewhere more interesting. I’m not really holding out much hope for the writing to clear up and suddenly become my cup of tea, but I do have hopes that the characters themselves will go interesting places and resolve their own story lines in compelling ways. Fans of the first book are sure to like this one. But if you were on the fence there, you’ll probably have similar feelings here. I leave it to you whether it’s worth going through it based on only the hope of a well-executed landing.

Rating 6: Fairly glum and mired in its own “middle-ness” in the trilogy.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Silvered Serpents” is on these Goodreads lists: “Asian MG/YA 2020” and “2020 YA Sequels.”

Find “The Silvered Serpents” at your library using WorldCat!

Book: “A Deadly Education” by Naomi Novik

Publishing Info: Del Rey Books, September 2020

Where Did I Get this Book: Edelweiss+

Book Description: Learning has never been this deadly

“A Deadly Education” is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere. El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

Review: Naomi Novik has quickly become a must-read author for me. After this book, she’s pretty much a must-buy author (I only have maybe 5 of those, so that says something, I think!). But, still, when requesting this book, what I’d read from her had been both of her fairytale retellings and the first several of her Napoleonic wars/dragon historical fantasy series. This didn’t sound remotely like either of those, instead being billed as a modern, more grim, “Harry Potter” style boarding school story. But man, Novik can do anything, and my trust is now fully earned, no matter how strange the book description is!

Scholomance is technically a school. There are no teachers and students are on their own to make classes and finish homework, sure. But that’s only half, and arguably the less important half, of what this school provides. Instead, it offers magical kids the best chance they have of surviving their juvenile years. Sure, their odds are still pretty darn bad in the school, but better than the next to nothing they have outside. El’s chances have been even worse from the start. Yeah, she has the raw power, but she seems to repel people for some reason. And in a place where forming alliances is a necessary survival tactic, that’s not good. But here, in her second to last year at the school, staring down the barrel of a final year full of even more likely death, El begins to uncover secrets about not only the school, but herself, and the boy who has been roaming around annoyingly playing savior to all this entire time.

I adored everything about this book, so it’s kind of hard to think of where to start when reviewing it. It’s also so totally unique, interesting, and complicated that it’s hard to find the middle ground between reviewing important aspects of the story and not spoiling the fun for new readers. There’s just so much good stuff to unpack!

I guess I’ll start with the world-building itself. The book description has a tough job trying to describe what Scholomance really is, and, as you can see, I probably struggled too in my own summary. That’s because it’s so complicated and well-constructed that it’s almost impossible to really give a broad overview. Novik seems to have thought out every intricate detail for this magical place, from how the cafeteria works, to the menacing library, to the simplest of things, like how the school assigns and monitors homework and what happens if students fall behind. And it’s all just so creative! I can’t think of a single other fantasy story that has anything like the place Novik has thought up here. And that’s saying something, I think, in a genre that is becoming more crowded by the day (especially YA that has a tendency to become trope-ridden and bogged down in certain themes every few years).

One of the most impressive aspects of all of this that, being as complicated and detailed as it all is, our narrator is given a heavy load of information to be handing off to readers. There’s a significant portion of the first half of the book that is largely devoted to detailing all of these little aspects. It would have been so easy for it to have felt like info-dumping or to have dragged down the pacing and plot of the story. But, for one thing, the information being provided is just too interesting on its own to feel bored by. And secondly, our narrator had a fantastic voice from the start that is strong enough to carry this type of detail-ridden load.

El is everything I like in a narrator: snarky, consistently characterized, yet vulnerable in ways that we (and she) discover throughout the story. From the book description, I was kind of expecting some type of tired anti-hero story or quasi-villain plot line for her, but it’s really nothing like that. Sure, her powers are destructive and there’s this pesky doomsday-esque prophesy lingering around her, but she’s just as skeptical of all that nonsense as the reader wants to be. El’s story, here, is not only finding acceptance with some key friends around her, but in accepting what she has to offer. On one hand, she can be overly confident, but on the other, we see her realize her own values and where her personal lines are between survival and standing up for some moral greater good.

And to balance her out, of course, we have a “Chosen One.” This friendship was everything! Both El and Orion’s characters play perfectly off each other. She, stand-offish, uninterested, and, again, snarky. He, bumbling, clueless of his affect on people, and obnoxiously heroic. I loved everything about this friendship and the slow build to sort of romance that it comes to towards the end.

It’s also clear, here, where the comparisons to “Harry Potter” are coming from. Orion Lake is definitely a response to Harry Potter and all of the other “chosen” heroes we see in fantasy fiction. Novik has said that “Spinning Silver” was essentially her “yelling” at the “Rumpelstiltskin” fairytale, and that this would be her yelling at “Harry Potter.” Comparisons to “Harry Potter always make me nervous. For one thing, I love Harry Potter so, for me, a book being compared to it is either going to be a massive let-down of trying to copy something that shouldn’t be copied. Or it’s going to be some type of “response” piece that spends more time criticizing another book series than in being its own thing. Luckily, this falls right in the middle and does it perfectly.

You can definitely see where Novik is making a point about the type of “chosen one” story that Harry Potter tells, but, while she does touch on some of the obvious themes, she also deep dives into a lot of aspects of this type of storyline that one doesn’t often think about. There’s a strong focus on inequality and injustice, but it’s approached through angles and perspectives that are unique to this world. The themes, of course, carry over, but it stays true to the fantasy world it is and the types of justice and injustice that would be inherent to it. It’s left to the reader to transcribe these thoughts onto our own world and our own experiences of injustice within society.

This review has already gotten pretty long, and I could go on and on. But, in this case, I almost feel like the less said the better! There’s so much great stuff to discover here that I don’t want to spoil any more of it! Needless to be said, my copy is already pre-ordered, and I highly recommend any and all fantasy fans to get their hands on this book ASAP!

Rating 10:Breaking fantasy walls that I didn’t know even exited! Simply fantastic!

Reader’s Advisory:

“A Deadly Education” is a new title, so it isn’t on many Goodreads lists. But it is on “Non JKR Magic School Novels.”

Find “A Deadly Education” at your library using WorldCat!