I HATE YOU PIERCE BROWN. ...and I say that in the nicest way possible. (Review in the morning when I can think straight!)
------ It's 6:45 am. The sun is I HATE YOU PIERCE BROWN. ...and I say that in the nicest way possible. (Review in the morning when I can think straight!)
------ It's 6:45 am. The sun is just beginning to peek through her window when Jenica suddenly bolts upright, yelling "I'm okay!", and promptly falls out of the bed.
If you've read either of the two previous books in the Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown, you know what you're getting into. I've seen others who describe the reading experience as something akin to riding a roller coaster, and they're completely right.
You experience soaring emotional highs and devastating lows when the characters achieve greatness and overcome overwhelming odds, or when they suffer a crushing defeat (more often than not through betrayal). You feel the joy of humanity and the love and passion we can express for one another; friends, brothers and sisters in arms, family. You feel despair and experience heartbreak, knowing just how fragile our alliances can be when faced with pride, misplaced ideals, or vengeance. The possible extent of humanity's depravity is brought into the light for all to see, and you realize how thin a line it is we all walk. All these emotions, concepts and more play an enormous role throughout the series, but in Morning Star, the emotions were brought to a soaring crescendo.
There were times when I wanted to break out and let out an "AWHOOOOOOO" with Sevro's howlers, I felt the war drums of the Reds pulsing through the corridors of the Pax(you're welcome), and of course, there were many of those wonderful moments when I was breathing through clenched teeth, pulling at my hair and muttering "No no no no no no no...!", and even letting out one agonized yell of "NOOO" before slamming the book closed and pacing the room a few times before returning to bury my nose in it again.
Like I said...
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The Reaper has come to reap what they have sown... but death begets death begets death.
Was the insane ride worth it in the end? Yes. But strap yourself in first, and clear your schedule. You're not going to want to stop reading!
Please, please, do not click the spoiler link unless you've read Golden Son or Morning Star. For all our sakes. (view spoiler)[ NO! DO NOT CLICK THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ GOLDEN SON OR MORNING STAR! BAD READER! GO BACK! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
After the trauma of Roque's death (I'm such a sucker for noble buttheads, which made his betrayal in Golden Son utterly heartbreaking for me,) I just about lost it when Cassius "shot" Sevro. I have almost never felt such shock and dismay from reading a book; and after what Sevro had JUST DONE for his father's murderer! The payoff was more than worth it though. I hate you, Pierce Brown. Don't do that to me, my heart can only take so much!
Never mind. I love you. Good job on a good book and all that jazz. (hide spoiler)]...more
Have you ever felt like a book was written just for you? Not even in a vague "this is my JAM!" kind of way, but more like t[incoherent happy squealing]
Have you ever felt like a book was written just for you? Not even in a vague "this is my JAM!" kind of way, but more like the author performed a lobotomy on you while you were asleep, scanned and catalogued every part of your brain for all the things that click and make you happy, and then wrote a book, specifically for you, about those things? Er... maybe not the unaware lobotomy part. That's kind of gruesome, and not behavior that I would normally condone.
ANYWAY!
Uprooted was written just for me, I'm sure of it. Dark, twisted, enchanted forests? Grumpy wizards? No-nonsense heroines? Magical books? Spells that take the form of stories?
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I went in to Uprooted knowing next to nothing, and honestly, I'd recommend the same for others (though knowing more wouldn't hurt!) All I knew was that once every ten years, The Dragon demands that a maiden be sent to his tower, where she spends the next decade and when she returns, she is wholly changed. By her experiences? New knowledge? Nobody knows... but what Agnieszka does know for certain is that there's no way she will be chosen. The Dragon always takes the most special girl in the valley, and that girl is not her, but her best friend. But of course, Agnieszka gets taken, and hijinks ensue.
The best way I can think of to describe the mood and feeling of Uprooted would be to say that it's like Howl's Moving Castle... for grownups. If Howl's Moving Castle is like a warm, comforting cup of hot cocoa with mini marshmallows, then Uprooted is rich, dark chocolate mint cocoa- with a hefty splash of Bailey's.
This one of of those books which I finished all in one night, in one long, breathless sitting.
And now for disjointed story-time with Jenica!
When I wasThis one of of those books which I finished all in one night, in one long, breathless sitting.
And now for disjointed story-time with Jenica!
When I was a little girl, around five years old, my dad was a seminary student in search of his first church to pastor. This meant that we got to travel to different parts of the country when a church liked the material he sent in and requested that he come to candidate. One of those times led us to a church in Georgia. We stayed at someone's... guest house? Cabin? Whatever it was, it was a beautiful little place. But what stayed in my mind afterwards was a puddle outside. Now, as a kid, I was a kind of puddle connoisseur. Puddles were great for splashing in, yes, but they were also lakes, seas, oceans for little crafts made out of pine bark to sail in. The water was so murky, who was to say it was only a few inches deep? It could have gone down for miles! We were invited later that evening to someone's house, where the kids were watching... I wish I knew what movie it was! There was a little old man, and two children who were convinced he was a Leprechaun. He told them strange stories about death on the wind and the banshee's wail... (at least, that's what I remember. It WAS twenty years ago!) I thought about that puddle behind the house when I was in bed that night, and what could be at the bottom of it. I thought about the wind outside, and the voices that could be in it and what could be the creatures to whom the voices belonged and... I spent the rest of the night as a blanket turtle.
This book made me think of that night for the first time in I don't know how long. As a child, you really are able, at times, to believe that anything is possible. The dark is so much darker, the nights so much longer, and what at first you thought was just a fairy story becomes very real indeed when faced with an open closet door! And then, you grow up. You forget.
But once in a while, you go back. You see something, you read something... You remember....more
I know, I know, the title makes it sound like a bad romance novel, but hear me out! Cruel Beauty is a BEAUTIFUL fairy tale retelling (yes, another one I know, I know, the title makes it sound like a bad romance novel, but hear me out! Cruel Beauty is a BEAUTIFUL fairy tale retelling (yes, another one of those,) that, for me, stood out from a good 90% of YA fiction, both for its mature and well-crafted prose and for its believable and relatable relationships... both familial AND romantic.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single evil all-powerful-overlord in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Meet Nyx. Nyx, because of a deal her father once struck, has for years been betrothed to a certain Mr. Mysteriously-Evil All-Powerful-Demon-Lord. What a catch! He is the one responsible for the cutting off of her entire country from the rest of the world, leaving it trapped under a magical paper dome with a false sun for a sky, and demons howling to get in from outside. Oh, and at least 10,000 a year. But is this person really the man of her dreams? After all, she's never even met him! Ahha! You were right in doubting! She’s actually been trained since childhood to be the one to kill him. And what better position for a would-be assassin than to be the wife of your target?
You can absolutely read this book for the A+ banter and fun times which ensue, but what struck me the most was the fact that as I was reading, I kept thinking of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces (which is probably my all-time favorite book aside from The Lord of the Rings). The parallels between the fiery and resentful Orual and Nyx were too striking to ignore, and once I finished, lo and behold, the author gives credit to said book for inspiration!
The relationship between Nyx and her sister struck me hard personally, because it reminded me (ouch) of how mine with my sister has sometimes been. You're supposed to identify with the heroine, right? Well, I'm Astraia and my sister is Nyx (oops.) It made me think more about how we view and treat each other. (Hey sis, I know you read my reviews so I LOVE YOU!)
Rosamund Hodge is incredibly gifted at setting the mood and building her world (a magnificently described Greco-Roman/Victorian place,) while at the same time NOT falling into the trap of "TOO MUCH INFORMATION". She paints rich pictures of moods and settings, and because of that, Cruel Beauty is absolutely dripping with ambiance.
All in all, I would describe Cruel Beauty as a luscious read. Delicious worldbuilding, banter, and writing style, all the while playing with your expectations and yet, in the end, giving you the most emotionally satisfying ending you'd expect from a fairy tale retelling. 5/5 stars! (Also, if you did enjoy Cruel Beauty, I really do recommend that you read Till We Have Faces next!) ...more
Hey, I haven't written a review of THE BOOK on here yet. Yes, THE BOOK- you know, THE BOOK that you read at just the right age to impact you in ways tHey, I haven't written a review of THE BOOK on here yet. Yes, THE BOOK- you know, THE BOOK that you read at just the right age to impact you in ways that will last the rest of your life? Yeah, THAT BOOK.
Well, The Lord of the Rings is THAT BOOK for me.
What can I even say about it that hasn't been said many times over? Maybe I should take a more personal approach; how I first started reading it because my big sister was reading it and said it was scary, so it had to be worth investigating? How I fell head over heels in love with Strider and started skulking in the bushes even more than usual because I wanted to be a Ranger too? The impact of the beauty of Tolkien's worlds, prose, and ideas?
Tolkien will always hold the most special place in my heart for the hope his writing has given me over the years. His writing about goodness, beauty, love and friendship is so inspiring. When you think about the trauma he experienced in his own life... all but one of his closest friends slaughtered in what might have been the single most senseless of wars (World War I), how he must have seen the true depths of the depravity of man there in the trenches- slogging through the muck, surrounded by the ever-present stench of death, it's all the more amazing to think how he was the man who wrote this:
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. ”
There's so much darkness and evil in this world. We don't need a Dark Lord who sends literal clouds of doom to cover the skies to see that. The hatred, rage, infighting and slandering that goes on in our day to day lives is enough evidence of the everyday evils we face, let alone the horrors we read about that are happening right now, both here and abroad. Why shouldn't we just give up? What hope is there in the face of such pain and heartbreak?
"For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach." ...more
“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”
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Till We Have Faces is not for everyone. I'll be the first to admit it. It's a dark, unearthly, and often unsettling journey into the unknown... both the spiritual unknown and the psychological.
So, you know about books like Wicked that tells a classic story from the point of view of the villain? Well, Till We Have Faces did it first. Retelling the legend of Cupid and Psyche, Lewis brings us into a fictional Mesopotamian country where the Greeklands and its people are strange and distant, but their religions are closer than it might seem at first look.
Orual is the eldest daughter of a cruel, drunken king, whose stepmother was not, in fact, evil, but the classical delicate, pure, and beautiful lady, who gave birth to Istra, or, as we come to know her... Psyche.
Yup, our heroine is the "ugly stepsister", whose crime is not the one we've been told about: hatred and jealousy of her half-sister and her beauty... OR IS IT? Orual feels an intense, possessive and self-sacrificial love for her little sister, but as the story unfolds, we begin to wonder if her love is really the pure kind that Psyche shows time and time again, of if it's something just as dark, jealous and twisted as that shown by Phyche's enemy, the goddess Ungit.
Even though this story takes place in a pre-Christian world, the imagery and almost twisted parody of Christianity found in the pagan rituals are striking. The pure sacrificial lamb being offered to feed a dark and hungry Brute, loving and devouring being one and the same, the "horror of holiness" that hangs around Ungit's temple... but most striking of all is the climax, where Orual brings out her accusations against the gods. It's such a human impulse, when we have no control, to shout out "It's not fair!"
But when Orual, in the presence of the gods, looks at this book of accusations she has poured her whole life and soul into...
Well, I'm not going to spoil it. But it's one of the most perfect summaries of Christian belief and ultimate hope, despite our own failings.
By the way, if you're one of the people who did enjoy this book, I'd really also recommend reading Cruel Beauty, which was strongly inspired by it....more
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