Rave Review: Vicious

Vicious

VE Schwab

The Villains, Book #1

I Love This Book. It is, in fact, one of the best books I've ever read and I have a feeling I will always rate it highly. Reading this book feels like keeping a secret close to your heart (although it's not a secret since everyone's pretty much already read this one, and also I alone have told about two dozen people they need to get on it). It's somewhat frightening, somewhat enchanting, and definitely extraordinary.

May and June Wrap Up + Updates

Hello dear readers! It's been ages since a wrap up, which is how I knew it was time to post one. I'm pretty proud of the amount of reading I've been able to accomplish this summer, and also the amount of reviews I've been able to write. It has been slow, but it's also been steady (and you can expect next month to have more posts because I have a bit of a backlog at this point, oops). I know the last wrap up promised a lot, but those promises have to stay on hold for just a little longer. My new job has kept me busier than intended and I'm still adjusting.

Finished

The Eye of the Queen

Tess of the Road

The Humans

All That She Can See

A Midsummer Night's Dream

To Kill a Kingdom

Assassin's Apprentice

The Dressmaker and the Prince

Circles in the Stream

Starlings

Be Prepared

Vicious

The Hunter's Moon

Blood Rose Rebellion

Leviathan Wakes

All Summer Long

Legendary

Upcoming Posts

Reviews for Vicious, Blood Rose Rebellion, Leviathan Wakes, and Legendary are in the works, as well as a combined review of The Dressmaker and the Prince, Be Prepared, and All Summer Long.

I'll also (finally) be posting my spoiler-filled review of Infinity War and another installment in "debut's to be excited for".

Currently Reading

I'm just shy of 100 pages in The Cruel Prince, which I'm enjoying but also not seeing what all the hype was for (yet, at least), and then I'll be reading West, My Lady Jane, and Caliban's War. I'm also hoping to stop at the library and stock up on some spur-of-the-moment books.

Upcoming Reads

I have a bunch of books I really want to get to this summer and while it's still to far away to say for certain when I'll get to them, I thought I'd share.

Letter for the King

Call for the Dead

Bluets

My Plain Jane

Circe

Google It!

Sky in the Deep

 The Wrath and the Dawn

Any books you recommend that I must, must, MUST pick up?

Starlings

Starlings

Jo Walton

Goodreads Link

I received an eGalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

(This also means that any quotes may not read the same in the final copy.)

"[...] a universe without pain is a universe without change, without movement, without stories [...] What you have to ask yourself is whether the pain is necessary for the story."

Sometimes I request a book, receive it, and then forget why I requested it. It's a bad habit of requesting every shiny book that comes across my path and something I'm trying to stop doing. This book, though, was the most magical surprise and the best thing to come out of my bad habits. In fact, Starlings may be my favorite read of the year. It's definitely up there and it's definitely been something that changed my life for the better.

This book is a collection of short stories and poems by Jo Walton. I've never read Jo Walton before this (though I promise I'll be devouring everything she's put out). I do, however, work on a genre literary magazine for my school, and the stories here (the fact that they are not at all conventional short stories and genre short stories on top of that) reminded me of Quiver (my magazine) so much. It made my heart soar to find that in the wider world there is a home for stories like these.

Assassin's Apprentice

Assassin's Apprentice

Robin Hobb

Farseer Trilogy, Book #1

This is one of those series' I've had on my shelf for way too long. I bought them with the intention of reading them pretty much immediately and then never actually did. But a few weeks ago, in Gatwick airport, I was anxious for my flight and needed to buy something to calm myself down so I bought another copy of this book. And then I actually did immediately start reading it. I think I read more on that flight than any other flight I've ever been on, I was that engrossed in the book. And this book was nothing like I expected it to be. Not only was it a really good fantasy novel, but it was deep and dark and beautiful and it made me cry because of how close the story touched me. I don't think I've been this moved by a "traditional" fantasy novel in a long time.

Writing Update

Hello dear readers! I actually wrote a version of this post three weeks ago but I never published it because it had ceased to be accurate. Like most times I had bitten off more than I could chew and had really grand plans to write a novel this summer. One can dream, can't they? Well, my new job, while only part time, does take more energy than I had planned and every time I sat down to work on my novel words would not come out at all. It was a terrible case of both writer's block and lack of motivation to write anything, so I stepped back and reevaluated my plans because I still wanted to write this summer and I settled on a happy medium that I couldn't be more excited to share with you all, now.

Quick digression: I do plan to try and do writing update's every month or so because I like the idea of keeping you updated with how this is going. Both for my own motivation and because it's fun to talk about my current projects.

I've decided to work on a passion project of mine that I've been too afraid to try and attempt because it at once seems like a huge task and a very personal one because it definitely deals with a lot of the internal things I deal with. And that project is a collection of original fairy tales.

So far I know three of the stories that will be in there. One of them is a novel I worked on and finished last year (or maybe it was two years ago at this point). You may remember me talking about a project called The Queen's Ransom. Originally the idea for that was a novella but I reshaped it into a novel with really poor results. I want to take it back to the original novella format and high light the fairy tale aspects like it originally wanted to be. (When I wrote it as a novel it became more focused on a quest portion and not the Grimm fairy tale vibe I really wanted for it.) The other two are more traditionally structured fairy tale stories. The first one I'm working on is tentatively titled The Winter King and the other very, very tentatively titled The Thames Spirit.

I've begun writing The Winter King and have been handwriting it on scraps. I want to finish handwriting it before the end of the day on the 12th and I think as long as I put time aside I should be fine, I'm already about a third of the way through. I'm then going to type it up and edit it a bit as I type, make it more cohesive and such. After that I'll do a proper edit and send it out to some friends I trust.

That's where I am with writing so far this summer and I hope to finish at least two of the stories in the collection before I have to go back to school. As of right now I don't really have a title for the collection (though I would like it to be an ode to Midsummer Night's Dream, I think) so I'll probably just continue to refer to it as my fairy tale book.

I'd love to talk shop with people so feel free to hit me up on twitter or even in the comments here. I hope everyone is having a great summer so far and thanks for sticking around!

To Kill A Kingdom

To Kill a Kingdom

Alexandra Christo

Goodreads Link

I received an eGalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

This book has gotten a lot of love from the community lately. I keep seeing it appear on my feeds when people tote it as one of their favorite reads of the year so far. I really wish I could have been one of those people because I was looking forward to it. Sirens are pretty much always a win with me, so are fairy tale retellings. AND pirates. But even though it had all three the book just failed to grab me the way I wish it could have. I will say, it was a good book in the fact that it told a story beginning to end and was satisfying with it's conclusion. There are so rarely standalone novels in YA and I do appreciate that this did a good job in that category. I will also say I wouldn't say no to a spinoff featuring Madrid... but that's just me.

Tess of the Road

Tess of the Road

Rachel Hartman

Tess of the Road, Book 1

Seraphina Review

I read Seraphina a while ago, back when I first got my Net Galley account, so I think it’s safe to say I have a bit of a foggy memory on what exactly happened during it. I still remembered, roughly the world of the book… okay, no, that’s kind of a lie I only remembered that there are dragons that look like people and that Seraphina herself was a half-dragon, which was not a good thing for her. And then I never read the sequel, even though I really enjoyed the first. Because it was so long between Seraphina and Tessthere was a lot of important world building I had completely forgotten, or even missed because I skipped book two, and I will admit that it hindered my experience of the book a bit. There were just some tidbits that it was expected the reader to know going into it, and while none of these were plot-changing, they were plot-relevant, so I’d recommend reading the originals (which are an absolute treat) before diving into this one.