Why did I wait so long to read this?! I guess I thought I wouldn’t like it – it had some mixed reviews, and recently I’ve seen mostly bad ones, so I started questioning whether it would be a me book or not. But it totally was! I love how strange and haunting this book was – it’s definitely a darker fantasy. It pushed the boundaries of magical realism, without being annoying and full of wtfery like the genre usually is […]
You are made of dreams and this world is not for you. Okay, so I loved the Raven Boys series, and Ronan was my FAVORITE character out of the whole series. So imagine my elation when I found out that he had his own series coming out!!!!! I was kinda worried going in that this wouldn’t amount to the very tall pedestal of hype that I had raised it on in my head, but IT DID. OH, it did. RONAN […]
Fear is part of life; all that matters is what we do with it. Murderous mermaids, sea monsters, and swashbuckling, oh my! This book was pitched as Caraval meets Throne of Glass, but it was literally nothing like them other than having magic in my opinion. It felt a lot like To Kill a Kingdom to me! I loved the magic system! And also the backstory. The lies and mystery and secrets connected to the kingdom and its magic were […]
If you know me, you know I am a HUGE sucker for Asian Fantasy. Especially if it’s Japanese. And there’s so few of them! This had everything I love about Japanese fantasy – oni, yokai, kitsune, miko, Shinto shrines, and plenty of glorious Japanese culture. (Which I am positively obsessed with.) That was definitely my favorite part of this book! It was super easy to picture everything – you know how some books tell you they’re in a certain country/place, […]
This one is rather hard for me to review, because I had some pretty mixed feelings about it. First, I just want to say that the concept is EPIC!!! Alchemy! Phoenix horses!!! I loved the riders’ use of specific alchemical components to basically upgrade their horses. The concept was the shining gem of this book, and ultimately the main thing that kept me interested. I adored the horses and everything about them. The race was cool, too – it had […]
In the beginning, I was on the fence about reading this book. I had actually picked it up once, wasn’t feeling it, and moved on to something else for a while before coming back to it. The French-esque setting (but not actually France?) and social themes had a historical feel, which I hate, and I was struggling. I didn’t care about anything and it was slow going. When Lou and Reid met, everything changed. From the moment that Lou sets […]