tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23192110005498755082024-03-13T20:05:27.973-07:00Atlas Rising BooksI HAVE MOVED TO WORDPRESS!
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atlasrisingbooks.wordpress.comAtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.comBlogger194125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-57024278075748187812018-04-28T11:57:00.000-07:002018-04-28T11:57:09.749-07:00Moved to Wordpress<div style="text-align: justify;">
Hey guys! I've finally made the decision to move my blog to Wordpress. Mostly it's because Wordpress is easier to use and looks much fancier and more professional. </div>
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http://atlasrisingbooks.wordpress.com</div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-64042238302152920902018-04-26T01:00:00.000-07:002018-04-26T01:00:50.406-07:00The Uncrossing, Melissa Eastlake<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1505335609l/34328217.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1505335609l/34328217.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Luke always smelled like church and magic</b></blockquote>
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">Luke can uncross almost any curse—they unravel
themselves for him like no one else. Then he encounters the first curse he can't break. And it involves
Jeremy, the beloved, sheltered prince of the Kovrov family—the one boy he
absolutely shouldn't be falling for.</span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 10.5pt;">Jeremy's been in love with cocky, talented Luke
since they were kids. Jeremy's
family keeps generations of deadly secrets, forcing him to choose between love
and loyalty. As Luke fights to break the curse, a magical, citywide war starts
crackling, and it's tied to Jeremy.</span></div>
</span></blockquote>
<b>* * * </b><br />
<b>3 / 5</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Uncrossing was an odd little book. It’s about a curse on a young man called Jeremy Kovrov, the adopted son of a powerful family, and another boy who can unravel almost any curse. It’s about magic in New York, about power and history and the lengths we will go to to hide the past. But it was also just plain weird. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>"I know he's hard to like," Alexei had said, "but he loves you." There was nothing as simple as word for that.</i></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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Luke is employed by the Kovrov family, who are sort of the magical gangster family of New York. They’re powerful and dangerous and they employ Luke, against the wishes of his parents, to unravel curses for them. In Jeremy Kovrov, Luke finds the first curse that he can’t seem to break. It’s just a weird twist of fate that Jeremy’s been in love with Luke since they were kids and Luke has a boyfriend who seems like a bit of a dick. </div>
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<b>The Uncrossing is incredibly imaginative.</b> Jeremy’s curse is really interesting (I won’t spoil it for you) and you really feel for him. His family has a lot of secrets that are slowly revealed throughout the book and his relationships with his two older brothers are complicated and interesting. Eastlake has written some really compelling relationships: Luke the curse-breaker and his curse-maker sister; Luke and his parents; Jeremy and his slightly insane family; Luke and Jeremy. The romance between Jeremy and Luke is a slow-burn, full of heart-break and pain, and I thought it was very nicely done. </div>
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<i>Camille's glare was intimidating. She wore a thick layer of black lipstick like she wanted someone to ask her if it was a metaphor</i></blockquote>
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But <b>a lot of the book is just very confusing: </b>I didn’t really understand how magic and New York fitted together. Do normal people know about magic? Is there just magical communities? Then there’s some sort of magical gangs? Huh. The way curses are made and unravelled is also sort of weird and not very well explained.</div>
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Overall, whilst I found The Uncrossing confusing to read, it had a lot going for it: interesting characters, a novel setting, and an imaginative plot. </div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book.</i></div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-46084560880079516762018-04-23T08:40:00.000-07:002018-04-23T08:40:01.376-07:00The Smoke Thieves, Sally Green<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In Brigant, Princess Catherine prepares for a loveless political marriage arranged by her brutal and ambitious father. In Calidor, downtrodden servant March seeks revenge on the prince who betrayed his people. In Pitoria, feckless Edyon steals cheap baubles for cheaper thrills as he drifts from town to town. And in the barren northern territories, thirteen-year-old Tash is running for her life as she plays bait for the gruff demon hunter Gravell.</div>
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<b>* * </b><br />
<b>2 / 5 </b><br />
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I read and liked Green's "Half Bad", but it wasn't really my genre. The Smoke Thieves, however, seemed right up my reading alley - a fantasy novel, a princess looking to rebel, a demon hunter, some sort of intriguing political skulduggery - but unfortunately I was pretty disappointed. It felt like a was reading a novel aimed at thirteen year olds, but it had the occasional "adult" language and scenes thrown in that seemed like a cheap attempt to appeal to an older audience.</div>
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<i>Men and power. They loved it and were addicted to it more than she could understand</i></blockquote>
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Contrary to the synopsis of the book, <b>The Smoke Thieves has five main characters, all of which had their own chapters. I liked two of them.</b> Let's start with those! Tash is a thirteen year old girl who hunts demons with her mentor, a gruff older man called Gravell. She's spunky and bold and runs like the wind. Together, the two hunt demons for the smoke they expel when they die, which people use to get high off. It's also incredibly illegal, so they live a life constantly on the move. Despite the title, The Smoke Thieves, it's only really Tash's chapters and the very end that actually have anything to do with demons or their smoke...</div>
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Then we have March, a servant to the Prince of Calidor. Calidor was at war with Brigant and in the process destroyed March's homeland, the country of Abask. March seeks revenge and travels to Pitoria to find the Prince's illegitimate son and deliver him to Brigant, to see the Prince suffer as he had suffered. I felt a lot of sympathy for March and high hopes for his romance arc. In tricking the Prince's son, Edyon, March begins to fall in love with him. Unfortunately, Edyon is a bit of a boring flat pancake and seems like a bit of an idiot.</div>
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<i>When I represent my country I am not a woman: I am a land and a people and a queen</i></blockquote>
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Then we have Princess Catherine of Brigant, a country that is seriously sexist and her brother is an absolute ass, who is betrothed to the Prince of Pitoria. Unfortunately, 90% of her thoughts are occupied by our final character, Ambrose. I didn't care one whit about Ambrose's chapters, which mostly consist of travelling and thinking about how he can't be with Catherine because of her station. Catherine, who is a bit more interesting, spends her time trying to win over the people of her new kingdom, thinking about how much her life sucks (it does, it's depressing to read about), and daydreaming about Ambrose.</div>
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Five characters is a lot; <b>it's far too much when only a few of them are even likeable or interesting. </b>Most of them have separate arcs and journeys, only really joining together at the end, and whilst I admire Green's ambition, it didn't really work. The story is very slow, it takes a long time for an overall plot to emerge, and there's way too much focus on the romance. The twists at the end don't really make sense and it's all a bit black and white: some guys are clearly good, others are cartoonishly evil. </div>
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The Smoke Thieves would have appealed to me more when I was thirteen, but the book clearly seems aimed at older teenagers. The result is an unfocused book that drags on. </div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book. </i></div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-59802909433339533412018-04-17T01:00:00.000-07:002018-04-17T01:00:05.057-07:00Lucy and Linh, Alice Pung<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>That was when I learned a very important early lesson: here at Laurinda, mistakes meant annihilation</b></blockquote>
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<b>* * * </b><br />
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<b>3 / 5 </b></div>
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I found Lucy and Linh a hard book to get into. It's written in an epistolary format; the whole book consists of letters from Lucy to her friend Linh as we follow her journey from ordinary public school to an elite Australian private all-girls school Laurinda. This was a difficult read for two reasons: first, I found the writing style a bit weird and unengaging, and second, it was quite emotional!</div>
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Lucy Lam's family is poor and Chinese: her father works in a carpet factory, her mother sews clothes in the garage, and Lucy is mostly responsible for her baby brother Lamb. Whilst she fits in well with her friends at the local school, when she secures a scholarship at Laurinda, Lucy's entire life in upheaved. Laurinda is ruled by The Cabinet, a "Mean Girls"-style trio consisting of Brodie, Amber, and Chelsea who play cruel tricks on students and teacher alike, whilst promoting a wholesome image of Laurinda spirit to the administration and parents. </div>
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<i>"White lies be damned - sometimes I loved the truth"</i></blockquote>
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I loved Lucy's relationship with her family. As she grows accustomed to the extravagant life of her classmates, Lucy begins to see the things she has always loved about her house - the furniture, the films her parents watch, how she looks after her brother - and the things she never really noticed - how her parents eat loudly and dine off of newspapers - become embarrassing, cringy, and tacky, and Lucy is ashamed of these thoughts. She's caught between very different two worlds and I found it really emotional!</div>
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<i>"I wish I could say I didn't have a chip on my shoulder, but I knew I had a whole Pringles factory up there"</i></blockquote>
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But <b>I found Lucy and Linh quite repetitive</b>: the Cabinet pulls some harmful prank on someone and Lucy disapproves; the headmistress complains that Lucy is not participating in Laurinda-lifestyle (debating, sports, or any extracurricular activities at all); the parent of one's of Lucy's classmates has a massive white saviour complex; Lucy withdraws from her new friends and spends all her lunchtimes in the library, thinking about her new life. There's a lot here that seems cyclic.</div>
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Overall, I definitely loved Lucy and thought the whole book was quite thoughtful. I laughed a couple of times and felt tears threaten a few more, but the book lost a lot of its impact as it seemed to drag on and become repetitive. </div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book. </i></div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-70281732451685048492018-04-14T01:00:00.000-07:002018-04-14T01:00:22.062-07:00Final Draft, Riley Redgate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>She bowed under the heaviness of the hours she hadn't lived yet</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The only sort of risk 18-year-old Laila Piedra enjoys is the peril she writes for the characters in her stories: epic sci-fi worlds full of quests, forbidden love, and robots. Her creative writing teacher has always told her she has a special talent. But three months before her graduation, he's suddenly replaced—by Nadiya Nazarenko, a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist who is sadistically critical and perpetually unimpressed.</span></div>
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At first, Nazarenko’s eccentric assignments seem absurd. But before long, Laila grows obsessed with gaining the woman’s approval. Dr. Nazarenko has led Laila to believe that she must choose between perfection and sanity—but rejecting her all-powerful mentor may be the only way for Laila to thrive.</div>
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<b>* * * * </b><br />
<b>4 / 5</b><br />
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When I finished Final Draft my main emotion was sad. Redgate portrayed depression and grief so realistically, it made me feel a bit empty inside, which is how I know an author has hit the nail on the head. This isn't really a happy book, but it's definitely a great one. </div>
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<i>She wanted to pierce the furthest frontier of her ability</i></blockquote>
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Laila Piedra is half-Ecuadorian, half-French Canadian, and entirely full of passion for writing. Her creative writing teacher has been her biggest fan, but now he's ill and been replaced by a Pulitzer Prize winner. Nazarenko isn't so amazed with Laila's work, and judging from the excerpts included between the chapters, you can realistically see why. Laila's writing is sort of immature, the product of being eighteen with little life experience. When Nazarenko suggests that this is the reason for her low grades, Laila decides to throw herself into life and all it's experiences, to the detriment of her relationships and her mental health.</div>
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<b>Redgate perfectly portrays being eighteen and realising the world is wider than you had ever known. </b>The sense of introspection, of your friends drawing apart, of wanting to put yourself and your work "out there", and realising that maybe you aren't quite as good as you thought you were. It's sad and poignant but also kind of awesome. Laila dives into a world of alcohol and parties and drugs and sexuality and re-navigating her friendships (particularly with her friend Hannah), as well as tackling grief, loss, and mental health problems. </div>
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<i>Her inexperience didn't feel charming or virtuous, like she was some good-girl persona from a movie. It felt furious and heated, humiliating and childish</i></blockquote>
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Final Draft is my second Redgate novel and maybe I didn't love it quite as much as Noteworthy, but it still had that same flavour. I loved the writing style, poignant and relatively simple. Everything was emotional and also super diverse. I did find all the inclusion of Laila's writing, the development of a show the character's all love, the emails with her old writing teacher, all the fangirling - it was either boring or a bit weird and cringy. But that's my only real complaint here.</div>
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Overall, Final Draft is a a touching, thoughtful, and emotional read. It's very introspective and you spend a lot of time in Laila's interesting little head.</div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book!</i></div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-87629069686628547612018-04-11T01:00:00.000-07:002018-04-11T01:00:31.658-07:00To Kill A Kingdom, Alexandra Christo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Heirs were easy things to make, and my mother was the Sea Queen first and nothing second</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Princess Lira is siren royalty and the most lethal of them all. With the hearts of seventeen princes in her collection, she is revered across the sea. Until a twist of fate forces her to kill one of her own. To punish her daughter, the Sea Queen transforms Lira into the one thing they loathe most—a human. </span></div>
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The ocean is the only place Prince Elian calls home, even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean, she’s more than what she appears. She promises to help him find the key to destroying all of sirenkind for good—But can he trust her? </div>
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<b>* * * *</b><br />
<b>4 / 5</b><br />
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To Kill A Kingdom<b> absolutely lived up to the hype</b> - and I'm not even fond of The Little Mermaid! Ocean inspired fantasy novels are typically not my cup of tea at all, but with all the buzz, I couldn't help but try this one up. It was absolutely a lesson in stepping (<i>or reading) </i>outside of my comfort zone from time to time, because this novel is a gem!</div>
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<i>"So may hearts. You'll soon run out of room to bury them all." I lick my lips. "Maybe," I say. "But a princess must have her prince" </i></blockquote>
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Loosely based on The Little Mermaid, To Kill a Kingdom pumps up the volume with a load of viciousness. Princess Lira is a siren, a part-human and absolutely monster mix that sings men to their deaths. She's vicious and unforgiving and <b>I loved her</b>. When a mix of events culminates in her killing one of their own, Lira is turned human by her mother, the Sea Queen. On the other <i>tide</i>, Prince Elian loves the sea and murdering the sirens that hunt his people. Putting aside his princely duties, Elian captains a ship and a crew that adores him. I reckon the best thing about this book is the way you really get both of their cultures - one moment I was rooting for Lira standing up to her mother, keeping the hearts of princes under her bed, and the next page I was grieving for those Elian had lost to the sea and her monsters. </div>
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<i>I know that I should tell him that it's the land that steals away who I am and the sea that brings me back</i></blockquote>
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When Elian pulls Lira out of the sea, he doesn't quite trust her. I was really interested to find out how Christo would write the whole "I'm your enemy and I need your heart" to "You are the human love of my life" thing, and I was not disappointed. There's lots of sass, lots of wit, and lots of angst, but none of it feels overdone. Again, <b>I loved the POV swapping</b>, as we see how each characters see the other, flipping from hero to villain, murderous to suspicious with each chapter (although my copy didn't have chapter headings, so sometimes it was like woah what's going on here). </div>
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So, <b>why not five stars? </b>I've sung this book's praises, but I have this odd sense of <i>uncertainty </i>throughout the book that made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I was never quite sure where the plot was going - I expected some sort of war theme, or diplomatic ideas themed with sword fighting, but instead we got some sort of jewellery and teleporting weirdness. Then there was the interactions between Lira and Elian - at times it was definitely awesome - but there was this rushed and awkward (and not in the cute way) romance. I wasn't really digging it. </div>
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To Kill a Kingdom was an amazing retelling that I think actually improved on the Disney film. Packed full of violence and myth and treachery and witty banter, this is definitely one to give a shot!</div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book!</i></div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-79181920451372958252018-04-08T01:00:00.000-07:002018-04-08T01:00:30.627-07:00Daughter of the Burning City, Amanda Foody<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>We are putting on a show, but I had always believed that was because Gomorrah is a city of performers. Turns out, we are a city of liars</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Sixteen-year-old Sorina has spent most of her life within the smoldering borders of the Gomorrah Festival. Yet even among the many unusual members of the traveling circus-city, Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the Festival’s Freak Show.</span></div>
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But no matter how lifelike they may seem, her illusions are still just that—illusions, and not truly real. Or so she always believed…until one of them is murdered.</div>
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<b>* * * </b><br />
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<b>3 / 5 </b></div>
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Daughter of the Burning City was a bold attempt to break out into the competitive YA circus-themed novel genre. I have read and adored The Night Circus and enjoyed last year's breakout novel Caraval, so I was looking forward to seeing what fresh ideas Foody had brought to the circus. And it was definitely novel, full of weirdness, but I think it was <b>a bit too weird </b>for my tastes. Definitely lots to enjoy here for the right reader though!</div>
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<i>"I am Sorina Gomorrah, daughter of this city, and this is my destiny"</i></blockquote>
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Sorina is the daughter of the proprietor of the Gomorrah Festival, a moving, constantly on fire circus that is more like a city, complete with uptown and downtown areas. Sorina's a pretty unique girl - she's has no eyes but can also somehow see (I never really got this, just how I never really got how Gomorrah is always smouldering, a lot of this book is a bit unexplained) and she's also an illusion-worker, the only one in living memory, and her creations are her bizarre family. Alongside her family, Sorina runs the Festival's Freak Show. I loved her creations, they were all so unique and I felt such attachment to them. Which made it hurt all the more when they started being killed off.</div>
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So on the one hand we have emotional, gritty Sorina searching for answers about her family. Her father seems to think that this is tied up with an Up-Mountainer (are they really up a mountain? who knows!) plot to murder someone important. Her new friend Luca, a gossip-worker and man of mysterious talents, seems to think otherwise. There's a lot going on here, and it's all definitely fun and action-packed, but it never really made much sense to me. Daughter of the Burning City has such an ambitious plot and worldbuilding packed into four hundred pages, that it does seem a little light on the details. </div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>"At what point do my requests stop being opportunities to teach me some kind of lesson?"</i></blockquote>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I did like all the ideas in this book! You've got all these imaginative illusions of Sorina, the interweaving plots, the themes of persecution and being different, of family love and duty. There's also a fair smattering of tastefully done sexual diversity - bisexuality, a lesbian, and an asexual guy. Which is always nice. I did manage to guess the murderer pretty early on, so maybe there was a bit of lack of tension at the end for me.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Overall, I loved the wholesome illusion-family aspect. That was absolutely my favourite part of the book! Maybe the plot and the background was a bit confused, but Daughter of the Burning City was fun and ambitious, and I think Foody has a lot of potential as a writer!</div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book. </i></div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-8360400450600138022018-04-05T01:00:00.000-07:002018-04-05T01:00:05.105-07:00Sky in the Deep, Adrienne Young<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1508350209l/34726469.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1508350209l/34726469.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<b>"Ond Eldr." Breathe fire. </b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield—her brother, fighting with the enemy—the brother she watched die five years ago.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Faced with her brother's betrayal, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki, in a village where every neighbor is an enemy, every battle scar possibly one she delivered. But when the Riki village is raided by a ruthless clan thought to be a legend, Eelyn is even more desperate to get back to her beloved family.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<b>* * * * * </b><br />
<b>5 / 5</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
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<div style="text-align: start;">
Sky in the Deep features my favourite kind of woman - <b>the warrior woman, the woman with a sword and an axe and a glare that could shatter empires</b>. Eelyn is tough, bitter, discerning, and sensitive upon occasion. She is raised in the pseudo-viking Aska Clan, bitter rivals to the Riki people with whom they meet in battle every five years. Five years ago, Eelyn's brother Iri died on the battlefield, leaving her and her father alone; today she stands shield to shield with her friend when she encounters a ghost on the bloody field.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I tried to remember who I was. Strong. Brave. Fierce. Sure. I tried to summon her to me - that Eelyn who would choose her people over anything else</i></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Captured by Iri and his new brother Fiske, Eelyn is taken as a slave to the homes of the Riki. Whilst Sky in the Deep starts strong with heavy action, this middle section is rather slow but I found it very beautiful. Others may be bored by the slow building up of relationships, of Eelyn interacting with the Riki village people and weaving baskets, but <b>I found Young's writing so delicate and enveloping</b> that I hardly cared that we hadn't seen a knife for fifty pages. I also appreciated how much research seemed to have gone into creating this Viking-inspired world - I'm hardly an expert on Viking village culture and lifestyle, but it definitely felt authentic.<br />
<br />
Then the violence comes thundering back and the <i>emotion </i>in this book is incredible. The battle scenes were well-written, the tempo excellent, and the plot managed to surprise me - I wasn't entirely sure where it was headed, and I was intrigued. I must say I wasn't the world's biggest fan of the romance, but I appreciated that it was subtle and as tasteful as it could have been. I much preferred Eelyn's relationships with her family - her newly undead brother, her father, her shield-sister - and how her mindset changed and developed. <b>I adored how myths of Young's creation</b> were woven into the story, how Eelyn's devotion to her god was explored.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Vegr yfir fjor." Honour above life.</i></blockquote>
<br />
Steeped in history and myth and blood, Sky in the Deep was a beautiful novel that I thoroughly recommend!<br />
<br />
<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book!</i></div>
</div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-53610489729515136002018-04-02T06:42:00.001-07:002018-04-02T06:51:19.017-07:00[article] March Round-Up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/tXPdTH14k2dsjhW7CV5p1xF2wDjPGgZJO5lKflchwY2K8zVWq_TjDjKWTw7_vjVJogJnYomKhcaUZHm5CffigF92_AG4FwH3-cD6LgtKfsBUDg1k0ryVCh2lUfeNFR_YSo97AzVXya2m_9r3O5pX7KQuAV_MkfmShYLF9Bw_UAh74znE5iJluQggAm_Kri2mZJRHG7cqUWpX9XK1WmsWJ0Axa7aEqbKTJLolLe18syK0GlnsTIricjJnqPE4X0YZpyof-wYgzY1yTxdQdz2awpaMDoUt-zkQVNJEAXUlcQAOPAly-R5sZ7yeG-BNyDvm9qCYVQ23mvZsI6R8Hm57J6hc4IYSBDh69IWIJpC5b6dPYod-J1CtPeWOZEw1lJpleD3XuEzFnXk15wCotJOz13qlPpNcOMA0VrgPU8iI5kKYUMl8LwtpLxyZf1q7gKuXPA4pNEdvR7gMNdZ63We7DQin4FSO91IUOCbQcfeOLz3jIn9s9R4Sa3JhiUDs4xhij_tQd1OGTjQwC8-tiXYaxjTqbG_OL7QYzShLmyA_WUocDlfi3dqJz75PIrpeaVQPlTZ0hC4iO2PfumwTb8O-6dMT-xTWOncQVwU2GpQ=s695-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="695" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/tXPdTH14k2dsjhW7CV5p1xF2wDjPGgZJO5lKflchwY2K8zVWq_TjDjKWTw7_vjVJogJnYomKhcaUZHm5CffigF92_AG4FwH3-cD6LgtKfsBUDg1k0ryVCh2lUfeNFR_YSo97AzVXya2m_9r3O5pX7KQuAV_MkfmShYLF9Bw_UAh74znE5iJluQggAm_Kri2mZJRHG7cqUWpX9XK1WmsWJ0Axa7aEqbKTJLolLe18syK0GlnsTIricjJnqPE4X0YZpyof-wYgzY1yTxdQdz2awpaMDoUt-zkQVNJEAXUlcQAOPAly-R5sZ7yeG-BNyDvm9qCYVQ23mvZsI6R8Hm57J6hc4IYSBDh69IWIJpC5b6dPYod-J1CtPeWOZEw1lJpleD3XuEzFnXk15wCotJOz13qlPpNcOMA0VrgPU8iI5kKYUMl8LwtpLxyZf1q7gKuXPA4pNEdvR7gMNdZ63We7DQin4FSO91IUOCbQcfeOLz3jIn9s9R4Sa3JhiUDs4xhij_tQd1OGTjQwC8-tiXYaxjTqbG_OL7QYzShLmyA_WUocDlfi3dqJz75PIrpeaVQPlTZ0hC4iO2PfumwTb8O-6dMT-xTWOncQVwU2GpQ=s695-no" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Happy Easter!</i></b></div>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<u><br /></u></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<u>March Round Up, 2018</u></h2>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<u><br /></u>I ploughed through some really awesome books this month, from the highly anticipated conclusion to the Illuminae Files, Obsidio, to some banging ARCs like Sky in the Deep and To Kill a Kingdom. I <b>didn't read a single book under three stars</b> this month - truly an awesome March!</div>
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<a name='more'></a><br />
I'm still digging my way through the audiobooks of Brandon Sanderson's epic Stormlight Archive, ready to get my grubby hands (or ears, I guess) into Oathbringer. On top of that I'm trying to get my Netgalley TBR pile under control and to revise for my end of term university exams - I always seem to be busy this year!</div>
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<i><u>Spotlight ARC of the Month:</u></i></h3>
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<b>Sky in the Deep</b></div>
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<div>
Adrienne Young</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>* * * * * </b><br />
<b>5 / 5</b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: start;">
<b>"Ond Eldr. Breathe Fire."</b></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: start;">
Sky in the Deep features my favourite kind of woman - <b>the warrior woman, the woman with a sword and an axe and a glare that could shatter empires</b>. Eelyn is tough, bitter, discerning, and sensitive upon occasion. She is raised in the pseudo-viking Aska Clan, bitter rivals to the Riki people with whom they meet in battle every five years. Five years ago, Eelyn's brother Iri died on the battlefield, leaving her and her father alone; today she stands shield to shield with her friend when she encounters a ghost on the bloody field.<br />
<br />
Captured by Iri and his new brother Fiske, Eelyn is taken as a slave to the homes of the Riki. Whilst Sky in the Deep starts strong with heavy action, this middle section is rather slow but I found it very beautiful. Others may be bored by the slow building up of relationships, of Eelyn interacting with the Riki village people and weaving baskets, but I found Young's writing so delicate and enveloping that I hardly cared that we hadn't seen a knife for fifty pages.<br />
<br />
Then the violence comes thundering back and the <i>emotion </i>in this book is incredible. I must say I wasn't the world's biggest fan of the romance, but I appreciated that it was subtle and as tasteful as it could have been. Steeped in history and myth and blood, Sky in the Deep was a beautiful novel. </div>
<br />
<i>Official Synopsis:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"><i>Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield—her brother, fighting with the enemy—the brother she watched die five years ago.</i></span></blockquote>
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<i><u>Spotlight Read of the Month:</u></i></h3>
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<b>Obsidio (The Illuminae Files #3)</b></div>
<div>
Amie Kaufman<br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1805555278?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1">Review</a><br />
<br />
<b>* * * * * </b><br />
<b>5 / 5</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>"EVERY STORY NEEDS ITS MONSTER"</b></blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I'm going to tentatively say (because I haven't read Illuminae and Gemina since they were released) that this was better than Gemina but not quite as good as Illuminae. Because hot damn there was nothing like reading Illuminae for the first time - not knowing how amazing and brutal and well put together and hard hitting and tear-worthy it would be. Now you expect to feel tearful over characters that got like 2 lines, and to expect dead favourites and mutinies and deaths and sacrifices and AIDAN. But still <b>totally and utterly amazing</b>. </div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
This one introduces a new pair of characters - Asha Grant and Rhys Lindstrom - but they don't really get that much page time because Obsidio (<i>what the heck does the title mean</i>? the only thing I can think of is like obsidian, the rock?) is shared between Kady, Ezra, Hanna, Nik, Ella, and now Asha and Rhys. They're still pretty cool and tragically in love though. Obsidio is pretty much of the same format as the other two books - it's got the countdowns and the cool graphics and the turn the book around in your hands to try and read the words pictures</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Illuminae Files is a masterpiece and Obsidio is a cracking end.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Official Synopsis:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: start;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Five years ago, Corin Cadence’s brother entered the Serpent Spire — a colossal tower with ever-shifting rooms, traps, and monsters. Those who survive the spire’s trials return home with an attunement: a mark granting the bearer magical powers. According to legend, those few who reach the top of the tower will be granted a boon by the spire’s goddess. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: merriweather, georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: merriweather, georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">He never returned. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: merriweather, georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: merriweather, georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Now, it’s Corin’s turn. He’s headed to the top floor, on a mission to meet the goddess. </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></i></div>
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<i><u><br /></u></i></h3>
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<i><u>Other Reads:</u></i></h3>
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<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1502950230l/35960813.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1502950230l/35960813.jpg" width="133" /></a> <a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1489641818l/34219880.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1489641818l/34219880.jpg" width="129" /></a> <a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1508244685l/34499221.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1508244685l/34499221.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
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<b> * * * * Final Draft, Riley Redgate</b></div>
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After loving Redgate's last book, Noteworthy, Final Draft is another dazzling and ambitious book. Featuring a girl that loves to write, Redgate examines how much we give to develop our passions and how much it can cost us. </div>
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<b> * * * * The Tethered Mage (Swords and Fire #1), Melissa Caruso - <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-tethered-mage-swords-and-fire-1.html">Review</a></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A Venetian inspired fantasy novel featuring hefty amounts of political skulduggery - one of my favourite things. It might be a little low on the action despite featuring a heavy-hitting Fire Warlock, but when the fights are there, they're good. </div>
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<b> * * * * To Kill a Kingdom, Alexandra Christo</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
A vicious retelling of The Little Mermaid, To Kill a Kingdom completely blew past my general dislike of stories featuring the underwater world with a cast of violent sirens, a suave prince, and a rag-tag pirate crew. </div>
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<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487367685l/30237061.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="312" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487367685l/30237061.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517943339l/38391002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="303" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517943339l/38391002.jpg" width="127" /></a><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1427740839l/448873.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1427740839l/448873.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
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<b> * * * Daughter of the Burning City, Amanda Foody</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Likened to Caraval and (the much better) The Night Circus, Daughter of the Burning City once more transports us to the magical circus setting. Intriguing, well-written, but also completely wacky, this was an ambitious book that didn't quite hit the mark for me. </div>
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<b> * * * The Queen's Rising, Rebecca Ross - <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-queens-rising-rebecca-ross.html">Review</a></b><br />
I mostly bought The Queen's Rising because of the absolutely gorgeous cover, but I stayed because I was intrigued by the premise: Brienna is a student of knowledge, about to graduate, and she's inherited the magical memories of her ancestor which will prove vital in the winning of a war.<br />
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<b> * * * The Thief (The Queen's Thief #1), Megan Whalen Turner - <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-thief-queens-thief-1-megan-whalen.html">Review</a></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This book has <b>a lot of rave reviews,</b> but to be honest it's not that great. I gave it three stars because I enjoyed how it reminded me of reading slightly bad fantasy novels in the 2000s - character who is weirdly good at something with little explanation, a band of sidekicks, bizarre worldbuilding, full of myths and legends, and totally odd/implausible plot twists.</div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-77727712777203745762018-03-29T01:00:00.000-07:002018-03-29T01:00:11.552-07:00The Queen's Rising, Rebecca Ross<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517943339l/38391002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="303" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517943339l/38391002.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"Come on, fight me as a queen would"</b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span id="freeText18351942031349798291" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Born out of wedlock, Brienna is cast off by her noble family and sent to Magnolia House - a boarding house for those looking to study the passions: art, music, dramatics, wit and knowledge. As Brienna gets closer to the eve of her graduation, she also grows closer to her smart (and handsome) tutor, Cartier. </span> </blockquote>
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<b>* * * </b><br />
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<b>3 / 5</b></div>
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I mostly bought The Queen's Rising because of the absolutely gorgeous cover, but I stayed because I was intrigued by the premise: Brienna is a student of knowledge, about to graduate, and she's inherited the magical memories of her ancestor which will prove vital in the winning of a war. I really loved the first half of the book, but thought that as the revolution/war plot progressed, it became a bit farfetched.</div>
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Brienna's grandfather left her at Magnolia House in the country of Valenia at the age of ten without any knowledge of her father. She only knows that her father is from Maevana, a country with a violent past and a culture of battle. Magnolia House is a place to study the passions - art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge - and each student chooses one to specialise in. Brienna is unskilled in all of them, spending one year at each before deciding to become a passion of knowledge under the smart and handsome tutor, Cartier. </div>
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<i>Passion is wholehearted devotion; it is fervour and agony; it is temper and zeal</i></blockquote>
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Maevana is supposed to be ruled by the royal female line of the house of Kavanagh, but the throne was seized in a plot in which Brienna's ancestor was involved. Twenty five years ago, three houses banded together to fight a revolution but failed, ending in slaughter. Now they are ready to rise again and Brienna's memories of her ancestor seem to be the key to their success, and Brienna is faced with a choice: the safe future of a scholar that she wanted, or one of blood and a battle to raise a Queen.</div>
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<b>I really enjoyed the first half of the book!</b> Brienna was great, I found the whole passion process interesting (though not that unique), and I loved her bonds with her passion-sisters. I even liked the budding romance! But once Brienna graduated and joined the force of the revolution, I felt that the plot became rushed. The twists came thick and fast, there wasn't much time to connect with all the new characters, and the whole myth and magic aspects weren't that well explained. </div>
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<i>"If you believe you will fail, then you most likely will"</i></blockquote>
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The Queen's Rising was a fun and novel standalone book. I really connected with Brienna and loved the whole passion aspect, but felt the last half of the book was rushed and could have done with more development. </div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-80044982267328249792018-03-27T09:18:00.002-07:002018-03-27T09:18:18.757-07:00The Thief (The Queen's Thief #1), Megan Whalen Turner <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1427740839l/448873.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1427740839l/448873.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<b>"A thief never makes a noise by accident"</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities. </span></div>
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What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.</div>
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<b>* * * </b><br />
<b>3 / 5</b><br />
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This book has <b>a lot </b>of rave reviews, but to be honest it's not that great. I gave it three stars because I enjoyed how it reminded me of reading slightly bad fantasy novels in the 2000s - character who is weirdly good at something with little explanation, a band of sidekicks, bizarre worldbuilding, full of myths and legends, and totally odd/implausible plot twists. The Thief was an odd little book, definitely fun but no shining example of great fantasy literature. </div>
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Clocking in at around 250 pages on tiny paper, The Thief is a small book. At least 150 pages of it are taken up by travelling - if you've read fantasy novels you know the drill - walking, eating, camping, fighting, and stories around the fire. We meet Gen in prison, locked up for stealing from the King. Renowned as a thief, Gen is released by the King's scholar, the magus, who wants him to steal an ancient stone. The team includes Pol, a swordsman, and the magus' two apprentices Sophos and Ambiades. </div>
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<i>"I wanted Ambiades to understand that I considered myself a hierarchy of one"</i></blockquote>
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Gen is witty and tough and a decent narrator, but the story takes a goodly while to get going. The side characters don't really help to add much spice to the narrative - the only one I really liked was Sophos, who is kind and sweet and a bit useless. The rest are either irritating or flat as a board. I did enjoy the Greek setting and the inclusion of lots of cool myths of Turner's invention, and the plot picked up around the three quarter mark. </div>
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The Queen's Thief series gets a lot of praise, but unfortunately The Thief didn't astound me. The rest of the series is rumoured to be excellent, so I will be trying the next book. </div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-79516602695224148912018-03-10T11:32:00.002-08:002018-03-10T11:32:32.726-08:00The Tethered Mage (Swords and Fire #1), Melissa Caruso<div class="separator tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1489641818l/34219880.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1489641818l/34219880.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
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<b>"Figure out what you are good at and make that the game"</b></blockquote>
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<b>Zaira</b> has lived her life on the streets to avoid this fate, hiding her mage-mark and thieving to survive. But hers is a rare and dangerous magic, one that threatens the entire empire. <b>Lady Amalia Cornaro</b> was never meant to be a Falconer. Heiress and scholar, she was born into a treacherous world of political machinations. But fate has bound the heir and the mage. </div>
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The Tethered Mage is a Venetian inspired fantasy novel featuring hefty amounts of political skulduggery - one of my favourite things. It might be a little low on the action despite featuring a heavy-hitting Fire Warlock, but when the fights are there, they're good. Featuring two great female leads, The Tethered Mage is a solid start to a new fantasy series.</div>
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We follow the viewpoint of Lady Amalia Cornaro, daughter of one of the most dangerous women in the Raverran Empire and heir to a seat on The Council. Bookish and into creating artefacts, <b>Amalia also has a spine of steel</b> that gets slowly polished throughout the book as her confidence and skill in navigating the difficult political world of her mother increases. Amalia is down a dodgy street seeking out a rare book when she sees a warlock go supernova. In Raverra, mages are strictly controlled by magic bracelets that prevent them from using their magic unless their partner, their Falconer, speaks the release word. The only one able to help, Amalia slaps a bracelet on the burning woman and becomes her Falconer. The problem? Nobles aren't allowed to be Falconers.</div>
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<i>"If Raverra wants my fire, she can have it. Let the city burn!"</i></blockquote>
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Zaira is living her life on the streets to avoid becoming a Falcon. Fire mages are the rarest and more prized of them all, and Zaira would rather live her life on the run than be a caged prize, brought out only to inspire fear and wage war. Unsurprisingly, she isn't best pleased with being bound to Amalia. <b>The two have a rocky start</b>. Their relationship is realistic - Zaira has been dirt poor her entire life, Amalia is one of the richest heirs in the Empire. Amalia is good-natured but ignorant, good with books and not with people. Zaira has a biting tongue and years of suffering have made her bitter. </div>
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Unfortunately for them, they are going to have to get along. One of the Empire's former countries is attempting to rebel, as tension rise regarding missing children and raised merchant taxes. A secret group is trying to shake up trouble and make an alliance with the brutal nation of Vaskandar. Amalia, Zaira, and the Lieutenant Marcello Vardi are thrust in the middle, trying to keep peace. <b>The core of this book is based on the relationships between these countries and the political manoeuvrings of their courts</b>. If you aren't into that, this isn't the book for you! Personally, I loved it. It's got assassinations, secret deals, traitors, and plots, all set against the background of a quasi-Venetian Empire. </div>
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<i>"My footsteps echo with the tread of legions. My breath is the wind that fills the sails of armadas. You stand within my dominion"</i></blockquote>
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Perhaps The Tethered Mage is a little too long weighing in at a hefty 450 pages. It could have done with a few more sword fights and Zaira getting to let her powers loose. But <b>it's got skulduggery, plot twists, loveable characters, a sweet romance, a bisexual main character, and chunks of wit, so I'm not complaining! </b></div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of The Tethered Mage. </i></div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-55926749036145097422018-03-06T01:00:00.000-08:002018-03-06T01:00:49.278-08:00Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension #1), Andrew Rowe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1499327630l/35610002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1499327630l/35610002.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<b>"It was the day of my Judgement and I was prepared in a thousand ways that didn't matter"</b></blockquote>
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Five years ago, Corin Cadence’s brother entered the Serpent Spire — a colossal tower with ever-shifting rooms, traps, and monsters. Those who survive the spire’s trials return home with an attunement: a mark granting the bearer magical powers. According to legend, those few who reach the top of the tower will be granted a boon by the spire’s goddess. </div>
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He never returned. Now, it’s Corin’s turn. He’s headed to the top floor, on a mission to meet the goddess.</div>
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<b>* * * * </b></div>
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When I was a great deal younger I spent a reasonable amount of time devouring books and manga of the LitRPG genre - the most famous of which might be Sword Art Online, The Tower of God, and 1/2 Prince. Essentially, these are books based either literally around people in a game or a world that functions like an RPG; typically these feature dungeons, levelling up, magic, trading, forging weapons, and parties (the dangerous, monster fighting kind).</div>
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First off, I bought Sufficiently Advanced Magic on audiobook and the narration was excellent (if very strongly American, which I soon got into). As with all male narrators, the female character's voices are a bit gruff and hoarse sounding, but that is easily overlooked (the opposite occurs with female narrators). I might actually recommend listening to the book over reading it - our main character Corin Cadence is incredibly curious about literally everything and we spend a lot of time in his head, listening to the "<i>I must remember to research that later" </i>and the continuous <i>"I wonder if I could..." </i>commentary is suited to being spoken. I could imagine skimming a little if I was reading.</div>
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But on with the review! Sufficiently Advanced Magic is a fantastic example of quality, well-written LitRPG (in a genre saturated by some not-great works featuring power fantasy characters). <b>It's complex, has a varied and excellent cast</b>, and I adored all the RPG elements: puzzles to solve, dungeons to explore, powers to level up, and <b>my absolute favourite trope: magic school. </b></div>
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<b></b>Corin Cadence is the son of a powerful family. He stands before the Spire ready to take his Judgement, years after his older brother took his and never returned from the tower, presumably consumed by one of the beasts that lurk within. One must enter and climb the tower alone to earn one of six attunements that function sort of like character classes; for example, there is a Guardian attunement that grants powers of endurance and protection. Each room in the Spire is a test by the Goddess, built to filter out the unworthy and send them plummeting to their deaths or to be eaten by beasts. Each puzzle is inventive and fascinating! They were all so awesome and the very prospect of such a trial is really kind of terrifying. </div>
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<i>There is no fencing term I’m aware of for drawing a pistol and shooting your opponent in the face, but that was what it felt like when I heard his final words</i></blockquote>
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The synopsis of this book makes it sound as though the entirety of the book takes place in the Spire. This is not so! The bulk of the book takes place in a magic school, built to train those who have survived their tests and gained an attunement to use their skills properly. Not to provide spoilers, but Corin gains an attunement that is at odds with his father's expectations and his own desire to climb to the very top of the Spire to meet with the Goddess and ask for the return of his brother. I adore the magic school trope (I reckon everyone who grew up on Harry Potter does) and this is where the cast really gets fleshed out - there's Corin's half-sister Sarah, the mysterious foreign student on the floor above, some of Corin's childhood friends, and a feisty farmer girl. </div>
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Sufficiently Advanced Magic is a long and complicated book. The magic system is so complex, it's like something Brandon Sanderson might have dreamt up (the highest compliment I can pay to an author), but it's so worth it. I've never really read anything quite like it, and my only gripe is that sometimes Corin's stream of inner thoughts can be a touch grating and I really, really wanted to know more about the gods and the mystery of the Spire! </div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-22830707359441757472018-03-03T01:00:00.000-08:002018-03-03T01:00:00.281-08:00No Time To Spare, Ursula K. Le Guin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1489159159l/33503495.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1489159159l/33503495.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
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<b>"If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty-five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub"</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she’s in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice—sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical—shines. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">No Time to Spare</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> collects the best of Ursula’s blog, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her wonder at it. </span> </blockquote>
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I started reading No Time to Spare on the 28th of December, intending to consume it's collection of short essays leisurely. Unfortunately, partway through the title became somewhat prophetic as the author sadly passed away. As a child I loved and devoured Le Guin's <i>Earthsea Quartet</i> and as an adult I have read some of her more adult works such as <i>The Word for World is Forest; </i>she was a writer who was very dear to my heart and the thought of reading (what I believe to be) her last published book was rather upsetting, so I put it down for a while.</div>
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The essays inside are, I believe, drawn from her blog and personal writings. They are varied in nature: musings on age, on time, on her cat, on her life as a writer and in general, on politics, and on human nature. Some of these, particularly the ones on age and the passing of time, were recast in different light and became more emotional for me after her passing. </div>
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<i>When all the time you have is spare, is free, what do you make of it?</i></blockquote>
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Her character really shines through the thoughtful words written here, her wit, her passion for writing and for life, her love for her family and for her cat. Some of them I did find of little interest to me - perhaps this was because of my younger age, or my not being American - and whilst her cat sounded lovely and adorable, I didn't really need to know all that much about him! However I did find the vast, vast majority of this collection to be <b>insightful, witty, and fascinating</b>.</div>
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Le Guin's writings affected my past and I am sure as I read more they will change who I am in the future. No Time To Spare is no exception. Rest in peace, Ursula K. Le Guin.</div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book. </i></div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-52801029011918895852018-03-01T06:43:00.003-08:002018-03-01T06:43:40.104-08:00[article] February Round-Up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><i>My book-plant is the most awesome thing</i></b></div>
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<u>February Round Up, 2018</u></h2>
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<u><br /></u>Well, it truly has been a record-low on the review writing front for me this month! I've been a disaster this month between getting on top of my university month, prepping for summer internship interviews, competing at a national level in my sport, and training for another. I've done a fair amount of actual reading, mostly in the car or on the train or the bus, but very little writing. But March might be my month of getting back on track :)</div>
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February did get me back into audiobooks! I have owned The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and all the Skulduggery Pleasant books on audio for years and I listen to them on repeat fondly. But I finally thought I should get some new ones to listen to whilst walking, so I bought an Audible subscription and <b>I'm loving it</b>. I'm currently working my way through Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings (which I have already read and own in paperback) in preparation for reading Oathbringer.</div>
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<b>No Time To Spare</b></div>
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Ursula K. Le Guin</div>
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<b>* * * * </b><br />
<b>4 / 5</b><br />
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<b>"If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty-five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub"</b></blockquote>
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No Time To Spare represents one of my rare forays out of the genre of fiction. As a child I loved and devoured Le Guin's <i>Earthsea Quartet</i> and as an adult I have read some of her more adult works such as <i>The Word for World is Forest; </i>she was a writer who was very dear to my heart.<br />
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The essays in this book are, I believe, drawn from her blog and personal writings. They are varied in nature: musings on age, on time, on her cat, on her life as a writer and in general, on politics, and on human nature. Some of these, particularly the ones on age and the passing of time, were recast in different light and became more emotional for me after her passing.<br />
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Her character really shines through the thoughtful words written here, her wit, her passion for writing and for life, her love for her family and for her cat. Some of them I did find of little interest to me - perhaps this was because of my younger age, or my not being American - and whilst her cat sounded lovely and adorable, I didn't really need to know all that much about him! However I did find the vast, vast majority of this collection to be <b>insightful, witty, and fascinating</b>.<br />
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<i>Official Synopsis:</i><br />
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she’s in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice—sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical—shines. </span></i></blockquote>
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<b>Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension #1)</b></div>
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Andrew Rowe<br />
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<b>* * * * </b><br />
<b>4 / 5</b><br />
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<b>"It was the day of my Judgement and I was prepared in a thousand ways that didn't matter"</b></blockquote>
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It's probably more accurate to say that is my listen of the month, since I bought the audiobook! Sufficiently Advanced Magic is a fantastic example of quality, well-written LitRPG (in a genre saturated by some not-great works featuring power fantasy characters). <b>It's complex, has a varied and excellent cast</b>, and I adored all the RPG elements: puzzles to solve, dungeons to explore, powers to level up, and <b>my absolute favourite trope: magic school. </b><br />
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<b></b>Corin Cadence is the son of a powerful family. He stands before the Spire ready to take his Judgement, years after his older brother took his and never returned from the tower, presumably consumed by one of the beasts that lurk within. One must enter and climb the tower alone to earn one of six attunements that function sort of like character classes; for example, there is a Guardian attunement that grants powers of endurance and protection. Each room in the Spire is a test by the Goddess, built to filter out the unworthy and send them plummeting to their deaths or to be eaten by beasts. Each puzzle is inventive and fascinating! They were all so awesome and the very prospect of such a trial is really kind of terrifying.<br />
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Sufficiently Advanced Magic is a long and complicated book. The magic system is so complex, it's like something Brandon Sanderson might have dreamt up (<b>the highest compliment I can pay to an author</b>), but it's so worth it. I've never really read anything quite like it, and my only gripe is that sometimes Corin's stream of inner thoughts can be a touch grating and I really, really wanted to know more about the gods and the mystery of the Spire! </div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Five years ago, Corin Cadence’s brother entered the Serpent Spire — a colossal tower with ever-shifting rooms, traps, and monsters. Those who survive the spire’s trials return home with an attunement: a mark granting the bearer magical powers. According to legend, those few who reach the top of the tower will be granted a boon by the spire’s goddess. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">He never returned. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Now, it’s Corin’s turn. He’s headed to the top floor, on a mission to meet the goddess. </span></i></div>
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<b> * * * * The Cruel Prince, Holly Black</b></div>
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This book has had a lot of hype. I'm not normally one for books about the fae or the fair folk, but the hardback copy was so beautiful I bought it and I was really, pleasantly surprised! It was fun and wild and violent and had some weird twists!</div>
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<b> * * Frat Girl, Kiley Roache</b><br />
As part of her scholarship project Cassie, a self-proclaimed feminist, pledges Delta Tau Chi, an all-male fraternity house. I liked the insight into frats, not knowing much about them as a brit, but the main character was a pain and the book seemed undecided on what the message was.</div>
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<b> * * * The Uncrossing, Melissa Eastlake</b></div>
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Probably the weirdest book I've read so far this year, The Uncrossing is about a boy, Luke, who can untangle any curse. Whilst working for the Kovrovs, he finds a curse that he cannot break in the form of Jeremy Kovrov, who has had a crush on Luke since they were boys. A cute, if confusing, read.<br />
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<b> * * * * * Almost Human, Ari Walkingnorth</b></div>
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Almost Human is actually a webcomic, and damn was it good. The art is simply divine, the characters touching, and it has some really cool futuristic concepts. Sunati and Austen meet and fall in love and their story is at times light and fluffy, but often tackles important and difficult ideas.</div>
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<b> * * Before She Ignites, Jodi Meadows</b></div>
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I really wanted to love this one: the cover is gorgeous and it promised dragons! But Before She Ignites is sorely lacking on the dragon, action, and scenery fronts. It mostly takes place in a boring prison where Mira is threatened, bullied, and manipulated. Fun times not included. </div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-25024054424838828302018-02-08T07:13:00.003-08:002018-02-08T07:13:58.046-08:00All Rights Reserved (Word$ #1), Gregory Scott Katsoulis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>My silence meant something. It was a protest. I owned it.</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Speth Jime is anxious to deliver her Last Day speech and celebrate her transition into adulthood. The moment she turns fifteen, Speth must pay for every word she speaks, for every nod, for every scream and even every gesture of affection. </span></div>
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But when Speth’s friend Beecher commits suicide rather than work off his family’s crippling debt, she can’t express her shock and dismay without breaking her Last Day contract and sending her family into Collection. Rather than read her speech—rather than say anything at all—she closes her mouth and vows never to speak again, sparking a movement that threatens to destroy her, her family and the entire city around them</div>
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<b>* * * * </b><br />
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<b>4 / 5</b></div>
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It's been several years since dystopia was the go to genre for the upcoming YA author and, upon seeing All Rights Reserved, I thought that enough time had passed for me to brave this book. <b>And damn, it was good! </b>I've read <i>a lot </i>of dystopias in my time but never anything quite like this. Yeah, maybe it had a few kinks in the plot that could have been smoothed out, a few hallmarks of a new author, but these are easily forgiven.</div>
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Speth Jimes, she of the unfortunately cheap name, is moments away from her fifteenth birthday party where she is contractually obliged to speak the words of her Last Day speech and enter adulthood where every word and gesture is trademarked and charged, when she sees her childhood friend commit suicide. In shock, Speth vows never to speak, never to communicate with a trademarked gesture or word, again to prevent her family - her older sister and younger brother - from sliding further and further into debt. </div>
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<i>I knew sorry was always $10 - and a legal admission of guilt</i></blockquote>
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This is a <b>fascinating narrative choice </b>because the lack of speech means that you are very much inside Speth's head all of the time. It's really immersive and her pain at being unable to communicate with her siblings, to let them know what she is doing and why, is hard hitting. I was totally engrossed in this incredibly weird but oddly believable universe, so much so that when I put the book down I found it weird to speak, to realise that virtually ever action I did would, in Speth's world, put me further in a massive sinkhole of debt. The book also incorporates a lot of cool futuristic sci-fi elements, such as eye lenses and fully personalised adverts and curiously hidden people known as Product Placers. </div>
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<i>I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to pretend that I hadn't seen them. But I was slowly realising that I wasn't very good at doing what was expected of me</i></blockquote>
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The book does have <b>a couple of problem issues</b> - the arc involving Speth's older sister is totally bizarre, but I did enjoy it, the one involving her younger brother was, I think, tragically unnecessary and a waste of shock value, and there's this weird love relationship going on. Sometimes Speth is difficult to relate to and her choices seem odd and the writing a touch clunky, but generally I loved Speth's perspective: she's young, afraid, cynical, and genuinely has no idea what to do in this massively messed up universe. <b>She's a lovely character drowning in tragedy</b> who I couldn't help but empathise with. </div>
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Overall, I had my eye on All Rights Reserved for several months before I took the plunge and bought it. I certainly wasn't disappointed. It's got a lot of aspects that dystopian literature should have - social and political commentary, for example - and manages to seem totally new and fantastic.</div>
<br />AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-54735868062771285032018-02-03T01:00:00.000-08:002018-02-03T01:00:42.682-08:00[article] January Round-Up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvt6_F-aZMOWI_tXzBCexbcImFqEW1TpDBV5LRxPTm75AcgL2wAR53TURYg1aN2H5mFGWvVr0ZkV5LbrZS1YVAaEVQAoSCz_NcEDHJNclbUfIqq6VvHMDKfLk9UbS6psp09pVqcDMyBeUZ/s1600/IMG_20180202_135113_282.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="686" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvt6_F-aZMOWI_tXzBCexbcImFqEW1TpDBV5LRxPTm75AcgL2wAR53TURYg1aN2H5mFGWvVr0ZkV5LbrZS1YVAaEVQAoSCz_NcEDHJNclbUfIqq6VvHMDKfLk9UbS6psp09pVqcDMyBeUZ/s320/IMG_20180202_135113_282.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Are your reading resolutions still in full swing?</i></b></div>
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<u>January Round Up, 2018</u></h2>
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<u><br /></u>A new year and with it, new books! The majority of January was unfortunately taken up with studying for and sitting my third year university exams, but after celebrating the end I dug into my massive stack of books. Mostly, these were Christmas presents and so a massive thank you to all my family and friends for their generous gifts :)</div>
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Unfortunately, I managed to pick mostly hyped but average books to read - Empress of a Thousand Skies, Blood and Sand - and had better luck with some other anticipated books of mine - All Rights Reserved - and childhood nostalgia - The Tournament at Gorlan. Of course, the showstopper of the month was Pierce Brown's <b>Morning Star</b>. I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on Iron Gold, but am patiently waiting until the paperback edition comes out. </div>
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<b>Blood and Sand</b></div>
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C. V. Wky<br />
<a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2018/01/blood-and-sand-c-v-wyk.html">Review</a></div>
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<b>* * </b><br />
<b>2 / 5</b><br />
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<b style="text-align: start;">"</b><b>She wanted to run and run until her breath was spent, until the ashes of her bones mingled with those of her people"</b></blockquote>
In answer to the age-old gladiatorial question: "are you not entertained?", the answer is "only a little bit". Blood and Sand promised not only the tale of a gladiator who strives for freedom, Xanthus, but also that of a warrior princess of Thrace, Attia! It sounded awesome and I eagerly began reading this book, only to discover that it is dominated by a poorly plotted romance and a lack of exciting action.<br />
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<b>The opening of the book was fantastic. </b>We have Attia, recently enslaved and mourning the death of her people and her father, who takes her chance to run, fleeing over the rooftops with guards in pursuit. Then there's Xanthus, a prize gladiator slave from Britannia who hates killing but is exceedingly good at it. But the plot is rather weird and the romance gave me whiplash.<br />
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<b>Blood and Sand had it's entertaining and awesome, badass moments, </b>but it also felt slow in terms of plot and moving at break-neck speed in terms of romance. There's also a lot of characters with similar names (Lucius, Lucretia, Lebuin, etc.) who often feel like props - Lucretia is a slave whose only role is basically to be pitied by Attia. Blood and Sand, I think, will appeal to a specific type of reader who, unfortunately, was not me.</div>
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<i>Official Synopsis:</i></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>Attia was once destined to rule as the queen and swordmaiden of Thrace, the greatest warrior kingdom the world had seen since Sparta. Now she is a slave, given to Xanthus, the Champion of Rome, as a sign of his master’s favor. Enslaved as a child, Xanthus is the preeminent gladiator of his generation.</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>Against all odds, Attia and Xanthus form a tentative bond. A bond that will spark a rebellion. A rebellion that threatens to bring the Roman Republic to its end―and gives rise to the legend of Spartacus...</i></span></div>
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<b>Morning Star (Red Rising #3)</b></div>
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Pierce Brown<br />
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<b>* * * * </b><br />
<b>4 / 5</b><br />
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<b>“The Reaper has come. And he’s brought hell with him.”</b></blockquote>
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The concluding book in the Red Rising trilogy, Morning Star takes the shocking conclusion of Golden Son and blows it up. This book is, in essence, a war book: it is full of family and love and sacrifice and rebellion, but it is a war novel and because of that I thought it lacked some of the emotion of cleverness of Red Rising and Golden Son, which <i>had </i>war and epic fights in them, but were not <i>about </i>war. </div>
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Beginning with Darrow's capture under the Jackal we are immediately introduced to a couple of new characters. The rough strokes of the plot of Morning Star are fairly typical: Darrow seeks allies, it doesn't always go to plan, there's devious twists and turns, there's plots and plans and sorrow (I almost cried at one point), and the ending is sort of what you expect but also ... not. But there's a lot more to it than that; the past and the future haunt Darrow now that the world and his friends know what he is, Mercedes is there constantly asking <i>what are you Darrow, what are you going to build? </i>and he doesn't really know. </div>
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The characters are vicious and dangerous and ultimately loveable in all their flaws: Darrow, Victra, Sevro, Mercedes, Trigg, Sefi, and Ragnar. Whilst I thought this book was the weakest of the three, perhaps due to the length or that it was the <i>end</i>, it is still a masterpiece and thoroughly fascinating. </div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. The Gold overlords demanded his obedience, hanged his wife, and enslaved his people. But Darrow is determined to fight back. Risking everything to transform himself and breach Gold society, Darrow has battled to survive the cutthroat rivalries that breed Society’s mightiest warriors, climbed the ranks, and waited patiently to unleash the revolution that will tear the hierarchy apart from within.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Finally, the time has come.</span></i></div>
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<i><u>Other Reads:</u></i></h3>
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<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1507308545l/32283133.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="276" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1507308545l/32283133.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437410068l/25946028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="297" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437410068l/25946028.jpg" width="125" /></a><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1503104857l/34613312.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1503104857l/34613312.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>
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<b> * * * Origin, Dan Brown</b></div>
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The fifth of the Robert Langdon books, Origin twines together a story of Spain, AI's, and the death of a scientist with the answers to the questions: "where do we come from?" and "where are we going?". Not my favourite of the books, but still entertaining. </div>
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<b> * * * Complimentary & Acute, Ella Lyons</b><br />A short little gay novella featuring two seventeen year old girls who are roommates. A little bit of teenage high school, a little bit of underage drinking, a little bit of pining and teenage angst; Complementary and Acute has just a little bit of everything and is sweet, but not particularly novel. </div>
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<b> * * Valley Girls, Sarah Nicole Lemon - <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2018/01/valley-girls-sarah-nicole-lemon.html">Review</a></b></div>
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I really, really wanted to love Valley Girls - it promised rock climbing adventures featuring a stubborn, ill-advised teen set against the stunning background of Yosemite. But the main character, Rilla Skidmore, is exceedingly annoying with barely any redeeming and endearing qualities.<br />
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<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1486704896l/33257478.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1486704896l/33257478.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428340878l/23846048.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428340878l/23846048.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485697898l/30269126.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485697898l/30269126.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
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* * * * All Rights Reserved, Gregory Scott Katsoulis</div>
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Every word is copyrighted, every gesture trademarked, and Speth decides never to communicate again. Super unique setting, realistic main character, some great twists - maybe the plot had a few kinks and could have been smoothed out a bit, but overall I loved it!</div>
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<b>* * * The Early Years: The Tournament at Gorlan, John Flanagan</b></div>
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On the one hand this was very nostalgic: it features Halt and Crowley in their younger years, shooting arrows and being badass, which I liked quite a lot. On the other hand, the plot was rather lacking in comparison to some of the other books and the cast was quite large, featuring about twelve rangers, making hard to connect with anyone beyond Halt and Crowley.</div>
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* * * Empress of a Thousand Skies, Rhoda Belleza</div>
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On the one hand: space, space opera, spaceships, aliens, space princess, and a massive twist in that the synopsis makes this book sound like a romance but! it! isn't! On the other: there's something weird about this book that I couldn't quite put my finger on.</div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-3510489968231244732018-01-30T01:00:00.000-08:002018-01-30T01:00:16.054-08:00Blood and Sand, C. V. Wyk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>She wanted to run and run until her breath was spent, until the ashes of her bones mingled with those of her people</b></div>
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Attia was once destined to rule as the queen and swordmaiden of Thrace, the greatest warrior kingdom the world had seen since Sparta. Now she is a slave, given to Xanthus, the Champion of Rome, as a sign of his master’s favor. Enslaved as a child, Xanthus is the preeminent gladiator of his generation.</div>
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Against all odds, Attia and Xanthus form a tentative bond. A bond that will spark a rebellion. A rebellion that threatens to bring the Roman Republic to its end―and gives rise to the legend of Spartacus...</div>
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<b>* * </b><br />
<b>2 / 5 </b><br />
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In answer to the age-old gladiatorial question: "are you not entertained?", the answer is "only a little bit". I have a fondness for books set in Ancient Rome - <i>The Eagle of the Ninth, </i>for example, or virtually anything by Simon Scarrow - and Blood and Sand promised not only the tale of a gladiator who strives for freedom, Xanthus, but also that of a warrior princess of Thrace, Attia! It sounded awesome and I eagerly began reading this book, only to discover that it is dominated by a poorly plotted romance and a lack of exciting action. </div>
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Blood and Sand has received some rave reviews, so certainly many people have enjoyed this book, and it did have it's strong points - <b>the opening of the book was fantastic. </b>We have Attia, recently enslaved and mourning the death of her people and her father, who takes her chance to run, fleeing over the rooftops with guards in pursuit. Then there's Xanthus, a prize gladiator slave from Britannia who hates killing but is exceedingly good at it. The book definitely has a strong hook and initially I liked the two main characters. </div>
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<i>Xanthus pitied the man. It didn't matter what god he worshiped. All of them were already in hell.</i></blockquote>
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<b>But then: the romance.</b> Attia is given to Xanthus by their <i>dominus </i>as reward, presumably to be a bed slave. Xanthus allows her to sleep in his bed whilst he sleeps on the floor. They have approximately three conversations before Attia proclaims that Xanthus is setting her heart (and other parts) on fire, and that she won't take her chance for freedom whilst he is still enslaved. Which is patently ridiculous and unbelievable considering the first chunk of the book sets Attia up as exceedingly devoted to the scattered remains of her people, the renowned fighters, the Maedi, and willing to go to any lengths to reclaim her crown. </div>
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I also found the plot quite bizarre. There's a scene where the family are travelling with their retinue, which includes slaves like Attia and a contingency of gladiators, and they are surrounded and out-numbered by a group of sword-wielding villagers who want their provisions and Xanthus. But instead of just taking what they want, they agree to some insane plan of putting Xanthus in an arena and he has to fight anyone they send at him until dawn. If he survives, they go free. Why would this happen?? It wouldn't. There's also this odd twisting of historical events and their timeline to fit the narrative of the book, which didn't really bother me too much, but did feel a touch unnatural and forced. </div>
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<i>Because maybe in this house, in this prison, they both wanted the same impossible thing: to be just a man and just a woman, standing free in the rain</i></blockquote>
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<b>Blood and Sand had it's entertaining and awesome, badass moments, </b>but it also felt slow in terms of plot and moving at break-neck speed in terms of romance. There's also a lot of characters with similar names (Lucius, Lucretia, Lebuin, etc.) who often feel like props - Lucretia is a slave whose only role is basically to be pitied by Attia. Blood and Sand, I think, will appeal to a specific type of reader who, unfortunately, was not me. </div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book</i></div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-42115598680252861502018-01-27T01:00:00.000-08:002018-01-27T01:00:29.727-08:00Valley Girls, Sarah Nicole Lemon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1503104857l/34613312.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="320" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1503104857l/34613312.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<b>They looked like they had always been and would always be in Yosemite</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">Determined to make up for her screw-up and create a stable new home for herself, Rilla charms her way into a tight-knit group of climbers. She sets her sights on climbing El Capitan, one of the most challenging routes in Yosemite, and her summer becomes one harrowing and ecstatic experience after another.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">But becoming the person Rilla feels she was meant to be jeopardizes the reasons why she came to Yosemite—a bright new future and a second chance at sisterhood. When her family and her future are at odds, what will Rilla choose?</span></blockquote>
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<b>* * </b><br />
<b>2 / 5 </b><br />
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I really, really wanted to love Valley Girls - it promised rock climbing adventures featuring a stubborn, ill-advised teen set against the stunning background of Yosemite. Valley Girls delivered in the sense that the rock climbing aspects were detailed and immersive and the scenery sounded breathtaking and filled me with wanderlust. It failed in that the main character, Rilla Skidmore, is exceedingly annoying with barely any redeeming and endearing qualities. </div>
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<i>All around her, the air seemed cavernous and wide. You're alone. All alone, it breathed.</i></blockquote>
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Rilla's mother sends her packing from West Virginia to live with her older sister Thea, a park ranger in Yosemite after some incident involving a boyfriend and a punch up in a car park that is never explained. Understandably, Rilla isn't that pleased about leaving her immediate family, friends, and home to go and live on a national park with the sister that left her a few years ago. <b>I liked Thea: </b>a young gay woman who struggled with her mother and seemed to have found some peace in Yosemite with her girlfriend, right up until she offers to take on her trouble younger sister who has no motivation to do anything but worry about Instagram and smoke weed. </div>
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<b>Then there's Rilla. </b>She's probably the most inconsistent character I've read about in a good few months. Essentially, there's three Rilla's:</div>
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<li><b>Rilla Number One: </b>Skives off school, makes friends with the local weed dealer, calls her ex-boyfriend six times a day, scrolls through Instagram all day thinking about how much better everyone else's life is, is rude to her sister, steals, and is exceedingly petty</li>
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<li><b>Rilla Number Two: </b>Decides that being a rock climber is <i>literally the most glamorous thing ever</i> and posting sexy pics of her climbing is sure to get her old friends running back to her, but simultaneously thinks that all the climber girls she has met hate her for <i>virtually no reason</i> and that, despite people telling her she's decent for a newbie, thinks she's a total failure</li>
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<li><b>Rilla Number Three: </b>Ambitious, motivated, works hard at odd jobs to get money for quality climbing gear so that she can tackle tougher climbs and be a good team member, offers to cook group meals and is generally quite a nice girl who you might actually be friends with</li>
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Now you would think that there is quite a clear progression her, a satisfying character arc from Rilla One to Two to Three. There's not. One page you are cheering Rilla on as she tackles an impressive route, envying her life a little as she eats sandwiches on top of a mountain range in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and the next she's throwing a literal tantrum, stealing, driving recklessly, and locking herself in her room. <b>It's bizarre. </b>If Rilla was someone I knew, I'd be seriously concerned between the delusions of grandeur and the acts of self-destruction.</div>
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<i>Mountains do not care who you are, they will kill you all the same</i></blockquote>
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Valley Girls does have a <b>cool secondary cast </b>between Thea and the rest of the climber girls, and I loved the climbing scenes - I would have particularly enjoyed it if the book had allocated more time to Rilla's climbing of El Capitan which gets shoehorned in at the end. Overall, Valley Girls drew me in with the premise of climbing but was let down by the unlikeable main character. </div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of Valley Girls</i></div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-9397075746333740752018-01-25T01:00:00.000-08:002018-01-25T01:00:23.648-08:00[article] AtlasRisingBooks Turns One!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrG23LCcYGjTL97Qm9QJL0aS5gbM0zvOo7pGMxztbtWyd19i-ntyq67uHPDOdps5sT-bDRnOxjsf8k9oekZPUv9TKsdm8SHBgLasapUcOnhie4nFqMIiNBuzO2A75GKBOAh3P0RZWvIpDN/s1600/IMG_20180124_164551_452.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="646" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrG23LCcYGjTL97Qm9QJL0aS5gbM0zvOo7pGMxztbtWyd19i-ntyq67uHPDOdps5sT-bDRnOxjsf8k9oekZPUv9TKsdm8SHBgLasapUcOnhie4nFqMIiNBuzO2A75GKBOAh3P0RZWvIpDN/s320/IMG_20180124_164551_452.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><i>A Year in the Life of a Book Blogger</i></b></div>
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<u>AtlasRisingBooks Turns One!</u></h2>
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<i><u>Or, I successfully manage to run this circus for a year</u></i></h3>
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When I take up a new hobby I do try very hard to stick to it. But I don't always manage it; previous failed hobbies include crocheting, digital artwork, kung fu, yoga, and learning to code. These lasted a couple of months at best, taken up at a moment of passion and then soon given up, but writing book reviews has, <i>somehow</i>, managed to last an entire year! I'm super proud of myself and I'm going to <b>reflect a little bit on my year of book blogging</b>, including some blogging tips!</div>
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<u style="font-size: 18.72px; font-style: italic;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />The Successes</u></div>
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Number one of my list of blogging successes is that <b>I've consistently posted a review or an article pretty much every three days</b>. The exception to this is the last few weeks, when I've had some very serious exams and my blogging queue (<i>normally my lord and saviour in times of stress</i>) ran out... Apologies for the lack of content! Please be assured that I will be getting back on track over the next week, and I've read some books <b>I really want to rave about </b>(hint hint, I'm talking about Golden Son and Morning Star). </div>
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I've managed to build up a small, but significant (and <i>loved) </i>readership. Popularity is not always, or even often, the key to success, but damn does it feel good! I'm just shy of 500 friends and followers on Goodreads, have another 20 direct followers on this blog, and consistently get pageviews every day, which is pretty nice :) <b>Massive shoutout</b> to people that comment on my reviews - I love you guys and your comments are always read and appreciated (even if I can be <i>terrible</i> at replying). </div>
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I took <b>some of my own advice</b>! Three months into my blogging adventure <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/04/three-months-of-blogging.html">I wrote a post</a> detailing some of my blogging tips and, like most people, I'm alright at giving advice but not the best at following it. I recommended that bloggers:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Use the queue on their blog, lining up posts in advance so you don't have to remember to post </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Jot down some initial thoughts upon finishing a book - I often write these down on Goodreads when I mark a book as finished</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Write reviews between three days and a week after reading, to allow thoughts to mull around but not to forget anything major - I do my best with this one, but alas I often have quite a hectic life </li>
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<u style="font-size: 18.72px; font-style: italic;">The Not-Successes</u></div>
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In the very same article, I recommended that people take photos of their books if they also run a bookstagram. <b>My bookstagram, I am ashamed to admit, is a trainwreck</b> - there are either two posts a day for a week, or nothing for a month - and I really ought to rectify that. I'm just not any good with a camera! On that note, I ought to go make a post...</div>
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<b>My eternally long, towering TBR (to be read) pile. </b>This is already bad enough with books that I buy and own - I source most of my books from second-hand bookstores, so it's not really a matter of spending too much money, but rather of buying books with the intention of reading them and then just <i>not</i> - but add <b>Netgalley </b>into the mix and <i>ahhhhh</i>. Netgalley, a site which provides book reviewers with advance copies of soon-to-be-published books provides you with a nice percentage of the books you have read and reviewed out of all the books you have received from them. The goal is a nice, round 80%. Currently, as I have been for about three months, I'm sitting at about 70% and it <b>won't go any higher! </b>I read a book, tick it off the list, and then I go and request five more. It's a vicious cycle. </div>
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Over the year, I can conclude that <b>being a book blogger is a lot of fun! </b>Talking to people who love books about books is fantastic, getting books before they're published, <i>for free</i>, is amazing, knowing that sometimes people read my reviews and like them makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. </div>
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I also believe I promised some blogging tips, so here's what I think has been most important in my journey:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Reading books I feel passionate about - whether I hated it or loved it, it's much easier to review a book I cared about, rather than one that was just "meh"</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Don't get too caught up in the statistics - yeah, it can be a bit sad to write a raving review that you were really proud of and to see it get two views, but firstly, popularity isn't a great measure of your reviewing skills or passion, and secondly, reviews can get loads of hits at really weird times - I've had reviews up for months that suddenly get a spike in views for no apparent reason</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">And, to end on a cliche, enjoy yourself!</li>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-70348140279786983932018-01-06T01:00:00.000-08:002018-01-24T08:02:06.917-08:00[article] Another Year Bites The Dust, 2017<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT2RrbSUWISmV3gypPgzpwEFl_sGytRuxDouRN0zkYlln-Ili924oZ8XuK7us0jM8gF7-n6dbsxF0Umsh5xVTlJOlw9RhaN162K08M7_6G4YU0D3PQYmvH6tcX1FNPtyOzL6X3fZeZATGF/s1600/IMG_20180102_185137_853.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT2RrbSUWISmV3gypPgzpwEFl_sGytRuxDouRN0zkYlln-Ili924oZ8XuK7us0jM8gF7-n6dbsxF0Umsh5xVTlJOlw9RhaN162K08M7_6G4YU0D3PQYmvH6tcX1FNPtyOzL6X3fZeZATGF/s320/IMG_20180102_185137_853.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><i>First read of the year! But let us look to the past</i></b></div>
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<u>Another Year Bites The Dust, 2017</u></h2>
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<i><u>Or, I survive a busy year of reading and blogging & the rest of my life</u></i></h3>
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Another year come and gone and it's time for the first yearly summary of my blog! Hurrah! I can't believe how many reviews I've written (almost a hundred) or how many books I've read (more than ever before), or how I've actually managed to post on this blog pretty much every three days! Well done me. <b>What have I achieved?? </b>Presenting a short bullet point list:<br />
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<li>Despite reading more than ever, I've actually not spent too much money on books this year - massive shout out to Netgalley and my local library, you are lifesavers!</li>
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<li>Tried to diversify my reading across genres just a <i>liiitle </i>bit</li>
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<li>Hit my Goodreads goal of 100 books!</li>
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<li>Rearranged my bookcase by book cover colour! It looks super nice :)</li>
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<li>I took up running and kept at it (not a reading goal but man I'm so proud of myself ;) )</li>
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<b>What have I failed at??</b></div>
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<li>Keeping my Instagram regularly updated (@atlasrisingbooks) - nuh uh. Very sporadic</li>
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<li>Reaching that coveted 80% books reviewed on Netgalley - I've been hovering at 70-75% since September - I'll review a few books then request a few and it just keeps fluctuating!! It's a shame because I love a good badge</li>
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As you can see, it's actually been quite a positive year! Hurrah!</div>
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<i><u>The Stats</u></i></h3>
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I really enjoy (sadly) keeping an eye on my Goodreads stats over the year (you can see your year in review <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2017/">here</a>), and these are a couple that are interesting:</div>
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<li>First up, I've read a whopping <b>177 books!</b></li>
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<li>Across these books, I read an approximated 57500 pages </li>
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<li>The longest and highest rated book I read on Goodreads was <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/05/assassins-fate-robin-hobb.html">Assassin's Fate, Robin Hobb</a> at 853 pages (clearly I never got around to that Brandon Sanderson re-read!)</li>
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<li>The most popular book I read was <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/08/cinder-lunar-chronicles-1-marissa-meyer.html">Cinder, Marissa Meyer</a> which I gave 3 stars</li>
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<li>The oldest book I read was Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, which was a very weird experience of a book!</li>
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<i>Proportion of star rankings given</i></div>
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As you can see from the pie chart, I gave the highest proportion of books (48 books) 3*, followed swiftly by 4* at 40. I also left a lot of books unranked (32) - mostly these were Warrior Cats books or other childhood favourites that I didn't really want to rank, or more technical non-fiction books. I gave the least amount of books (a mere 12!) only one star, which is great because who really wants to spend time reading books they don't love? </div>
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<i><u>The Questions</u></i></h3>
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Rather than just writing out a boring list of my favourite books of the year, I've decided to answer a series of questions! I pinched most of these from this <a href="http://www.perpetualpageturner.com/2017/12/8th-annual-end-of-year-survey-2017-edition.html">list here</a>.<br />
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<i>Favourite Book of 2017?</i></h4>
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Always a toughie - how does one compare a YA sci-fi with an adult fantasy? - but my answer probably has to be <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/03/red-sister-book-of-ancestor-1-mark.html">Red Sister by Mark Lawrence</a>. Red Sister is the amazing, heartwrenching, slow-paced, bloody story of ten year old (then twelve, then older) Nona Grey, first sold to a child-seller, then to a a gang of ring-fighters, then inducted into the Sweet Mercy convent of assassin-nuns to save her from the hangman's noose. It started with a bang and ended with my heart in pieces and my eyes yearning for more. It was, basically, Nevernight by Jay Kristoff but <i>better </i>(sorry Jay). </div>
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I had a fair few disappointments this year, but <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/10/solitaire-alice-oseman.html">Solitaire by Alice Oseman</a> reigns queen among them (Three Dark Crowns was also a strong contender). Near the start of the year I read and massively enjoyed <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/04/radio-silence-alice-oseman.html">Radio Silence</a> by the same author, which was a masterpiece of young adult writing, so thoughtfully capturing aspects of the "teenage experience". Solitaire, on the other hand, was cliche and painfully embarrassing. </div>
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<i>Favourite New Author Discovered in 2017?</i></h4>
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Hmm. A toughie - I don't tend to find an author and read all of their books, and tend to have very few "favourite authors" as such. But a new favourite of mine is Melissa Brayden, who primarily writes lesbian romance novels - I've read a couple of hers this year, including the five star read <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/04/strawberry-summer-melissa-brayden.html">Strawberry Summer</a> which I simply adored!</div>
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I don't read a lot of adult novels, but I took a chance on the highly acclaimed <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/07/eleanor-oliphant-is-completely-fine.html">Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine</a> and it was an absolutely stunning (if horrifying/disturbing/strange) read. A young woman with poor social skills, a quiet life of small routines that is changed when she and Raymond, an awkward man from work, help an elderly man who had fallen on the pavement. It's a touching, thoughtful, and overall lovely work from a debut author. </div>
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I'm going to go with <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/09/nyxia-nyxia-triad-1-scott-reintgen.html">Nyxia by Scott Reintgen</a>. To quote a cliche: I laughed, I cried, I got my heart broken, and I flipped the pages like there was no tomorrow. Nyxia is sort of a mashup between Ender's Game (which is okay), The Hunger Games, Red Sister (wowowowow) and Red Rising by Pierce Brown (which was wow, wow, wow), and my god it really works. Reintgen crafted such excellent characters, there's so much emotion in this book, but also so much badassery, and I was even rooting for the romance!</div>
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<i>Favourite Cover?</i></h4>
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I would nominate the Tor Books cover of Schwab's <i>A Darker Shade of Magic</i>, which is simply beautiful. But it's also a re-read, so it doesn't really count! For new books, I think I'm going to cheat and have a few selections, because I had a lot of simply gorgeous covers:</div>
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<i>Best Popular Book of the Year?</i></h4>
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Without a shadow of a doubt, this one goes to <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/07/strange-dreamer-laini-taylor.html">Strange the Dreamer</a>: poignant, lyrical, masterfully written. With Strange the Dreamer I was so enveloped by the prose, so wrapped into the world that Taylor has crafted, that I was barely aware of even turning any pages (and very lovely pages they were too, blue-edged and everything). It blends together myths, monsters, dreams and tragedies into it's beautiful prose. </div>
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It's about a boy who is raised in a library, a librarian who has a dream about a city lost two hundred years ago. The city of Weep whose name is not Weep, whose name, fifteen years ago, was wiped from the name of every human. It's also about a girl with blue skin. Sarai: seventeen years old and a goddess and a girl and a demon all in one. This book blew my socks off</div>
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<i>Hidden Gem of the Year?</i></h4>
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<a href="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485357884l/29543122.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="200" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485357884l/29543122.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="131" /></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">There is no doubt in my mind that this award goes to <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/10/satellite-nick-lake.html">Satellite by Nick Lake</a>. This book was incredible and I have barely seen it at all on my dashboard, an absolute travesty! The plot is unlike anything I have ever read (three kids, born in space, yearning to see Earth) but what really makes this novel is the characters. Our three central characters are all distinct: Orion is a music-lover, a devourer of poetry; Libra is green-fingered, an aspiring botanist and a thoughtful girl; Leo is a dreamer, a thinker. </span> </h4>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">I thought the writing itself was beautiful, philosophical, and deliciously quotable, the main characters and particularly Leo were delightful and felt like real people, and that the plot had the right mix of action, space-related things, wonder, suspense, conspiracies, and drama. All in all, an excellent novel.</span></h4>
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<i>Thanks for reading and I hope you had a fantastic year! Let me know what your favourite books of the year were so I can add them to my ever-growing TBR!</i></h4>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-67885030009070949292018-01-03T01:00:00.000-08:002018-01-11T02:22:43.324-08:00Rosemarked (Rosemarked #1), Livia Blackburne<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>It's just the two of us this time; the rosemarked healer and the soldier with no fear of her disease. Together, somehow, we are to steal Ampara's secrets</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">When Zivah falls prey to the deadly rose plague, she knows it’s only a matter of time before she fully succumbs. Now she’s destined to live her last days in isolation, cut off from her people and unable to practice her art—until a threat to her village creates a need that only she can fill.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">Broken by torture at the hands of the Amparan Empire, Dineas thirsts for revenge against his captors. Now escaped and reunited with his tribe, he’ll do anything to free them from Amparan rule—even if it means undertaking a plan that risks not only his life but his very self.</span></div>
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Soft and almost melodic, Rosemarked is a lengthy, slow-burn YA fantasy novel. We follow two lovely characters: <b>Zivah</b>, a gentle healer who loves her people but must be quarantined due to a plague, and <b>Dineas</b>, a young warrior who serves his people, the Shidadi, in resisting the onslaught of the Empire. Rosemarked wasn't the most fast-paced, exciting, or even believable book I've read recently, but it was fun and enjoyable and eloquently written and made me feel things, which was all just what I needed.</div>
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<i>"We are never really orphans in this tribe," he says. "Shidadi blood runs deep"</i></blockquote>
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The Amparan Empire has been expanding for many years, turning it's greedy eyes to country after country. Dineas' people, the Shidadi tribes, are fighting back, leading resistance parties and shooting the soldiers of the Empire on sight. Zivah's people, the Dara, are quiet village dwellers who have surrendered to the rule of the Empire. Zivah has just passed her trials to become a well-respected healer when soldiers stationed in her village are infected with the Rosemarked plague: most die, and those who do not bear the angry red marks of the disease, a warning that they will become sick and die in a number of sparse years. A very lucky few are Umbertouched: they recover fully from the plague and are now immune. </div>
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Dineas is Umbertouched whilst Zarah becomes Rosemarked and quarantined from the rest of her village. She is just becoming accustomed to her solitary life when Dineas crashes into her life, bringing with him a plot to infiltrate the Amparan Empire. T<b>his is where the plot requires a bit of suspended disbelief: </b>Zivah uses her skills as a healer to wipe Dineas' memory, able to restore it with just a few herbs when convenient, so that he might join the army and gain secret knowledge without being aware that he is a spy and so arousing less suspicion. It did strike me as a bit ridiculous and farfetched, but also led itself to some fairly humorous scenes involving the "other, memory-less Dineas". </div>
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<b>I loved the slow burn and the sweetness of Dineas and Zivah's interactions;</b> at first they are hostile, she thinks he's a blood-seeking warrior who thinks only of vengeance, he thinks she's a peace-loving delusional woman whose people are cowards. But they put this aside for the sake of their families and learn to trust each other. <b>I also empathised with Zivah </b>and her quest to reinterpret herself: she devoted herself to becoming a healer and just when it became possible, her future was torn away from her by a plague.</div>
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Perhaps there could have been a little more action, a few more heart-pounding moments or clever twists of intrigue, but Rosemarked is solidly enjoyable and I look forward to reading the second book in this duology.</div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-54962404248810878902018-01-01T01:00:00.000-08:002018-01-01T12:42:08.362-08:00[article] December Round-Up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><i>I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas/holidays!</i></b></div>
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<u><br /></u>I'll keep this one short and sweet because, as we all know, we are at the end of the year! And that means a yearly round up, featuring some questions asked and answered. I'm going to take a look at what I've done this year book-wise and hopefully feel quite good about myself, so keep your eyes out for a post like that in early January!</div>
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This month has gone pretty well - I got a small number of books for Christmas including the highly venerated <i>The Gentleman's Guide To Vice & Virtue </i>and Dan Brown's new book <i>Origin</i>. I've dug into a few of these whilst others I am leaving until 2018 :)</div>
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<b>The Last Namsara</b></div>
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Kristen Cicarelli<br />
<a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-last-namsara-iskari-1-kristen.html">Review</a></div>
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<b>* * * * </b><br />
<b>4 / 5</b><br />
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<b style="text-align: start;">"Asha wore her scar like a crown"</b></blockquote>
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The telling of stories is forbidden. As a young child, Asha used to sneak out of the city to speak them to the skies and the dragons answered. The First Dragon, Kozu, listened to her stories, but when she denied to tell him any more he burnt her to near death and set the city on fire. Ever since, Asha has been paying penance for her sins - her stories summoned the dragons and their fire and she must make amends to her people, to her city, and to herself - by taking on the role of the Iskari from myth and hunting the dragons into extinction. </div>
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<b>I loved Asha.</b> Telling stories killed her mother and telling stories killed her city and Asha hates herself for it, so much so that she accepts the role of Iskari, <i>the destroyer and the death-bringer</i>, and makes it who she is. She pursues her prey like it is the only thing worth living for and spends little time thinking about society, about the quarrels her people have with other kingdoms over the morality of slavery, amongst other issues. She is angry and dutiful and dangerous and vulnerable and afraid of Jarek and of her future; <b>there is so much emotion in this girl, but she is almost always sensible and reasonable</b>.<br />
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The Last Namsara bears the marks of a debut novel from the fairly obvious plot twist at the end to the slight stumbles in pacing and plot, but <b>overall it has so much to love</b>: dragons, storytelling and a unique magic, a fantastic main character in the form of a dragon-hunter, and a great narrative voice. </div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit, who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be darkness—and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death-bringer.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she’s offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend—a slave boy from her betrothed’s household—Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her</span></i></div>
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<b>The Female of the Species</b></div>
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Mindy McGinnis<br />
<a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-female-of-species-mindy-mcginnis.html">Review</a><br />
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<b>* * * * </b><br />
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<b>"I am vengeance"</b></blockquote>
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Alex Craft killed a man and she doesn't regret it. When the murderer and rapist of her older sister walked free, Alex took vengeance into her own hands but now she's afraid that she'll never quite fit into society, that it's safer to remain in this small town with her alcoholic mother for the rest of her life.<br />
<br />Alex and Peekay meet when they both volunteer at the local animal rescue centre, getting off to a great start when Peekay calls her Anna, the name of Alex's murdered and avenged sister. Alex and Jack meet it becomes clear that the two are in competition for the title of valedictorian: Jack needs it to get scholarships to go to college, but Alex doesn't care, and that interests Jack. These three teenagers are drawn together by Alex and at the heart of Alex is violence: she's not afraid to speak with her fists, but she is afraid of who, of what, she is becoming.</div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Three years ago, when her older sister, Anna, was murdered and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best—the language of violence. While her own crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people. Not with Jack, the star athlete who wants to really know her but still feels guilty over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered. And not with Peekay, the preacher’s kid with a defiant streak who befriends Alex while they volunteer at an animal shelter. Not anyone.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">As their senior year unfolds, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting these three teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever.</span></i></div>
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<b> * * The Rogue Queen (The Hundredth Queen #3), Emily King - <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-rogue-queen-hundredth-queen-3-emily.html">Review</a></b></div>
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The third volume in The Hundredth Queen series, the Rogue Queen does better than it's predecessor because it moves away from the "tournament" style plotline to try out an "epic war" vision, which wasn't that interesting but was more novel. </div>
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<b> * * * * Wolf By Wolf (Wolf By Wolf #1), Ryan Graudin - <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/12/wolf-by-wolf-wolf-by-wolf-1-ryan-graudin.html">Review</a></b></div>
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The synopsis is interesting: Hitler won the war, there's a motorcycle race, and a young shape-shifting Jewish girl who wants to kill Hitler. Surprisingly all these weird elements combine really well into a cracker of a book.</div>
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<b> * * * Mandelbrot the Magnificent, Liz Ziemska - <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/12/mandelbrot-magnificent-liz-ziemska.html">Review</a></b></div>
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Out of my normal reading genre, this is an odd, imaginative magical realism-involving biography of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. Peculiar but an easy, engaging read. I was never quite sure what was truth and fact and what was embellishment on the part of Ziemska.<br />
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<b> * * * Everless, Sara Holland </b></div>
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Everless isn't that original but it has a killer premise:<b> </b>time is currency, extracted and bleed from an individual to turn into a coin. To pay off one's debts, one flirts with death as they bleed away their future. Literally.</div>
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<b> * * * * Rosemarked (Rosemarked #1), Livia Blackburne</b></div>
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Soft and almost melodic, Rosemarked is a lengthy, slow-burn YA fantasy novel. Zivah is a gentle healer who must be quarantined due to a plague; Dineas is a young warrior who serves his people, the Shidadi, in resisting the onslaught of the Empire.</div>
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Henry Montague is a rake who like his drink and his ladies (and his boys) far too much for his father's approval. With his best friend Percy and younger sister Felicity, he undertakes one last hurrah to go on a Tour of the Continent. <br /><br />
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<b>* * * * * Golden Son (Red Rising #2), Pierce Brown</b></div>
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Truth be told, this was my absolute favourite book of the month. It isn't feature above for two reasons: (i) it's a sequel and I would rather feature a first book in a series or a standalone, and (ii) I haven't written a review yet, ha ha. Regardless, Golden Son is everything Red Rising was but with a much greater scope: the battlefield has become space itself</div>
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AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-646905039117742632017-12-30T01:00:00.000-08:002017-12-30T01:00:08.748-08:00Everless (#1), Sara Holland <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">In the kingdom of Sempera, time is currency—extracted from blood, bound to iron, and consumed to add time to one’s own lifespan. The rich aristocracy, like the Gerlings, tax the poor to the hilt, extending their own lives by centuries. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">No one resents the Gerlings more than Jules Ember. When Jules discovers that her father is dying, she knows that she must return to Everless to earn more time for him before she loses him forever.</span></div>
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Everless is about a young teenage girl who loves her father with whom she lives in poverty, occasionally venturing into the woods to hunt to earn some extra money. <b>Sound familiar? </b>By changing a couple of words I could be describing The Hunger Games, Red Queen, A Court of Thorns and Roses, or many other books based on a similar premise. <b>What makes Everless stand out is a really cool premise: </b>time is currency, extracted and bleed from an individual to turn into a coin. To pay off one's debts, one flirts with death as they bleed away their future. Literally.</div>
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Jules Ember lives in poverty and her father owes time to the debtors. Having just turned seventeen, Jules thinks to extract her own time to pay off her debts - she's young, she'll have plenty of time to save herself, right? But her father isn't having that, so Jules picks another equally bad possibility. She returns to Everless, a massive estate home to the rich aristocrats the Gerlings as a servant, where she and her father lived years ago until a dangerous event occurred which forced them to flee. <b>This is where the book bore a great many similarities to <a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/02/gilded-cage-vic-james.html">Gilded Cage </a></b><a href="http://atlasrisingbooks.blogspot.com/2017/02/gilded-cage-vic-james.html">by Vic James</a>: a mansion and obscenely rich family, servitude, two sons who aren't quite what they seem but aren't great people. The beginning is enjoyable, but other than the really cool blood/money/time premise, it only really <b>retraces well-trod YA ground in a well-written manner. </b></div>
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Whilst at Everless a sequence of events is put in motion involving the two Gerling sons, Jules' childhood crush and his fiancee, Jules' father, some devious royal plots, and a legend: the legend of the Sorceress and the Alchemist who were responsible for the citizens of Sempera having time in their blood. I wasn't all that invested in the middle chunk of the book, it didn't have that much going on that I could connect to emotionally: Jules sneaks around, makes some foolish mistakes, gets drunk and bonds with the fiancee of the Gerling heir. It's satisfactory reading, but there was no real spark there for me, no hook. Jules is an acceptable character, but I felt her fairly typical of the genre: driven by love for her family, has an unattainable crush, has some solid female friendships, but generally seems a touch dim. </div>
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<i>"Fox," said Snake, curling slowly around her friend's heart "It's time we face the truth"</i></blockquote>
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It is <b>the last third or quarter, perhaps, of the book that really amazed me. </b>All of a sudden there's tension, there's intrigue (with a massive twist that I only got half-right!), and the romance hooked me in. The ending packs in punch after punch and Jules really began to shine here! The book cleverly weaves in this myth, the Alchemist and the Sorceress, which comes to a climax in the final few pages. On the ending alone, Everless is an easy four stars, maybe even five, but the fairly cliche beginning and the plodding middle drag it down - I hope to see, as I did with Gilded Cage, an amazing sequel that takes these strengths and builds on them.<br />
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Everless' best quality is it's interesting premise (though it did leave me with a lot of questions - do people have a set amount of time, say 80 years? Or is everyone born with a different amount of time?), and I look forward to reading the sequel!<br />
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book. </i> </div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2319211000549875508.post-57559112643160358532017-12-27T01:00:00.000-08:002017-12-27T01:00:27.954-08:00The Last Namsara (Iskari #1), Kristen Ciccarelli<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>"Asha wore her scar like a crown"</b></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit. But where there is light, there must be darkness—and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death-bringer. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up learning in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn’t until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari—a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl.</span></div>
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Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. With the help of a secret friend—a slave boy from her betrothed’s household—Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her.</div>
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<b>* * * * </b></div>
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<b>4 / 5</b></div>
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The Last Namsara grabbed me from the first scene: Asha calls a dragon forth with a forbidden story and slays it, bringing it's head home to her father, the king. Any good book could probably get better with the addition of dragons, but it's hard to get a fresh perspective on them, though a few have managed it - Seraphina springs to mind. The Last Namsara manages it. It has a couple of flaws, but is overall a stunning debut novel and I can't wait to snag the sequel. </div>
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<i>"Asha lured the dragon with a story"</i></blockquote>
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The telling of stories is forbidden. As a young child, Asha used to sneak out of the city to speak them to the skies and the dragons answered. The First Dragon, Kozu, listened to her stories, but when she denied to tell him any more he burnt her to near death and set the city on fire. Ever since, Asha has been paying penance for her sins - her stories summoned the dragons and their fire and she must make amends to her people, to her city, and to herself - by taking on the role of the Iskari from myth and hunting the dragons into extinction. Further, her father promised her hand in marriage to his commandant of the army Jarek, a man full of cruelty and a thirst for power. He looks at Asha like she is something to be owned, to be dominated, and in desperation Asha strikes a deal with her father: he will call off the wedding if she brings him the head of Kozu, The First Dragon.</div>
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<b>I loved Asha.</b> Telling stories killed her mother and telling stories killed her city and Asha hates herself for it, so much so that she accepts the role of Iskari, <i>the destroyer and the death-bringer</i>, and makes it who she is. She pursues her prey like it is the only thing worth living for and spends little time thinking about society, about the quarrels her people have with other kingdoms over the morality of slavery, amongst other issues. She is angry and dutiful and dangerous and vulnerable and afraid of Jarek and of her future; <b>there is so much emotion in this girl, but she is almost always sensible and reasonable</b>. Her brother, the heir, Dax is pretty much her opposite: air-headed, foolish, concerned with morality, his actions swing between the result of utter stupidity and far fore-thought. </div>
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<i>"Life taker," they said. "Death bringer. Iskari."</i></blockquote>
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The romance is a bit weird - and not just because I'm not often a fan of romance dominating my books - in that Asha's love interest is a slave that doesn't have a name for a good half of the book. It didn't really sit comfortably with me that she could entertain ideas of liking this man, who under the laws of their society is not allowed to look her in the eyes, when she didn't even know his name for half the time! It's odd in other respects to - for a good chunk of the book it doesn't seem like he will be a love interest at all, just a way for Asha to re-evaluate how her father and her society treats people badly and how slavery is wrong and all that, but then they go from zero-to-obsessed and willing to get beaten for each other real fast. </div>
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Aside from the romance, Torwin, the slave, is a great character. Unlike many YA male romance-interests, Torwin is gentle but stubborn, he's willing to walk away from "the great fight", and it would have been nice to watch a more natural relationship blossom between the two, one not trapped by their roles of slave and social-outcast-but-nobility. <b>Talking about side characters, Ciccarelli doesn't seem to have quite struck the right balance: </b>you want side characters to populate your book, to give a sense of breadth to the narrative and to be well-written, but you don't want them to dominate the page. For example, Asha has a cousin called Safire, a girl who gets quite a lot of backstory and reader sympathy initially but whose actions and presence are barely noticeable beyond the first few chapters. </div>
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The Last Namsara bears the marks of a debut novel from the fairly obvious plot twist at the end to the slight stumbles in pacing and plot, but <b>overall it has so much to love</b>: dragons, storytelling and a unique magic, a fantastic main character in the form of a dragon-hunter, and a great narrative voice. Woven into the plot are stories and they work really well, giving this book a unique character. </div>
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<i>My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book </i></div>
AtlasRisinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14085892935122972962noreply@blogger.com0