Stars Above

by Marissa Meyer

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Short stories starring the delightful ensemble of characters you loved from the Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter).
• Backstory! Alternative viewpoints! Weddings!

And Why You Might Not:

• You've got to be a fan of the Lunar Chronicles to enjoy this. For the most part, there's no point without that, I think.
• I think most stories could be more tightly written, in terms of view point and theme. I find this quite essential in short stories, so if you do too, you might not enjoy these.

Jinx

by Sage Blackwood

Story summary: Jinx is abandoned by his step-father in the wild woods of Urwald, and then promptly kidnapped by a possibly-evil magician. He becomes his apprentice, starts talking to trees, meets a thief boy and a cursed girl--and another magician who has knives in his thoughts.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• THE CHARACTERS!
• THE FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS!
• Also the world and the humour and the adventure and the insights, but mostly those first two.

And Why You Might Not:

• The only reason I can possibly think of is if you're against kids' entertainment, even if it's fabulous. If you wouldn't read The Chronicles of Narnia and wouldn't watch Pixar because they're for kids, then yeah, you probably won't like this either.

Winter

by Marissa Meyer

Story summary: A retelling of Snow White, where the seven dwarfs are space outlaws, the evil queen is a mind-controlling ruler of the Moon, and everything is awesomely science fantasy.
Sequel to Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Such great characters, especially the mentally unbalanced title character.
• Revolution and romance; cyborgs, hackers, and princesses; battles and plagues and kisses and last-minute rescues.
• The last book in one of the more surprisingly entertaining series I've read in the last few years.

And Why You Might Not:

• There are too many points-of-view for one book, and it changes between them too quickly, making the book a little scattered.
• I think partly because of this, some of the relationships aren't given the depth and focus they deserve to be interesting.

Fairest

by Marissa Meyer

Story summary: Levana, the lunar princess, is horribly disfigured, has to exert her powers constantly to cover it up, falls in love with an ineligible man, can't be queen because her cruel and shallow sister is the heir, and has an annoying niece to stop her from claiming the throne. Her life sucks, eh?
In the Lunar Chronicle series. See also Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and the upcoming Winter.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Entertaining, despite who it has for the main character (basically the evil queen from Snow White--and not a version of her that was made into a sympathetic good guy, either).

And Why You Might Not:

• It's a very short book, and although well-written, probably mostly of interest to people who are already fans of the series.
• It's not exactly a happy book, and not fun and adventurey like the rest of the series.

The Last Ever After

by Soman Chainani

Story summary: I lazily stole the Goodreads description for the first two books--of course I'm going to do it for the third. Here it is, slightly rearranged to avoid spoilers:
"[A]s [former best friends Sophie and Agatha] settle into their new lives, their story begs to be re-written, and this time, theirs isn’t the only one. With the girls apart, Evil has taken over and the villains of the past have come back to change their tales and turn the world of Good and Evil upside down.
[E]verything old is new again as Sophie and Agatha fight the past as well as the present to find the perfect end to their story. This extraordinary conclusion delivers more action, adventure, laughter, romance and fairy tale twists and turns than you could ever dream of!"
Sequel to The School for Good and Evil and A World Without Princes.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Epic fairy tale battles.
• Epic friendships and romances.
• Epic secret organizations of really old retired people.

And Why You Might Not:

• Boy, the relationships in this series are really intertwined and convoluted.
• And these relationship twists pretty much take up the first half of the book. It's a thick book, and could have been cut in half and been much better.

A Wicked Thing

by Rhiannon Thomas

Story summary: What would it really be like to be awoken by a kiss from a stranger after sleeping 100 years? Startling, upsetting, lonely, confusing. Aurora awakes to a long-dead family, a marriage with an unknown prince, and future-queenship to a city completely changed from the one she knows--filled with unease and hints of rebellion.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Focuses on a girl's realistic reaction to the extreme events of a fairy tale.
• The female characters are great; all of the main ones are interesting and complex and not clichéd "strong female characters".

And Why You Might Not:

• There were three separate guys with a possibility for romance, which is two too many. This was mitigated by the fact that it became clear she was really not in love with one of them, and romance with another became unlikely due to certain events. But still...
• Despite the inward focus, it is still a fairly light book.

A World Without Princes

by Soman Chainani

Story summary: I didn't make my own summary for the first book, so I don't think I should have to here either. And laziness wins again!
Beware the SPOILERS for the first book!
"After saving themselves and their fellow students from a life pitched against one another, Sophie and Agatha are back home again, living happily ever after. But life isn't exactly a fairytale. When Agatha secretly wishes she'd chosen a different happy ending with Prince Tedros, the gates to the School for Good and Evil open once again. But Good and Evil are no longer enemies and Princes and Princesses may not be what they seem, as new bonds form and old ones shatter."
Sequel to The School for Good and Evil.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• A passionate friendship is at the heart of this book.
• Explores dichotomies like Good & Evil, Male & Female.

And Why You Might Not:

• There were a lot of issues caused by a simple lack of communication. I find this really annoying, personally. Why don't people just talk to each other and be straight forward? It's prevented any number of problems in my life.
• The relationships kept switching back and forth and there was sort of a love triangle and just in general too much focus on that aspect of things.

The School for Good and Evil

by Soman Chainani

Story summary: I'm very lazy and don't feel like doing a summary of my own, so Goodreads it is:
"With her glass slippers and devotion to good deeds, Sophie knows she'll earn top marks at the School for Good and join the ranks of past students like Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Meanwhile, Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks and wicked black cat, seems a natural fit for the villains in the School for Evil.
The two girls soon find their fortunes reversed—Sophie's dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School for Good, thrust among handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication.
But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are?"

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Focuses on a female friendship in a non-cliched, non-boring way.
• It's surprisingly complex, for a kids books with such a dichotomy in the title. (This book has been on my radar for a long time, but I could not get myself to read it because it seemed like it was going to be simplistic and boring. I don't think the title helps with that.)

And Why You Might Not:

• It is still a little simplistic, especially in writing style.
• The relationship complications caused through lack of communication can get tiresome. It's annoying when problems could be solved so easily if people just talked to each other, even a little bit. Though saying this, it isn't actually very bad in this book--it's the sequels where it really started to bother me.

Cress

by Marissa Meyer

Story summary: Retelling of "Rapunzel" in a futuristic, cyberpunk world where Rapunzel is stuck in a satellite instead of a tower, rescued by a dashing spaceship captain instead of a prince.
See the first books, Cinder and Scarlet, and the next book, Winter.

Why You Might Like This Book:

• AIs, mind control, evolved societies living on the moon, daring escapes, thrilling heroics, and lots of trudging through the desert.
• Captain Carswell Thorne: Han Solo of YA. 'Nuff said.

And Why You Might Not:

• By this point, with the story lines and relationships from the previous two books still not resolved, there ends up being a lot of threads going on at once. There are six or more different viewpoint characters, and it gets a little much at times.

Scarlet

by Marissa Meyer

Story summary: Retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" in a future, cyberpunk world. Also a continuation of the "Cinderella" retelling from the first book, Cinder.
And see also the next books, Cress and Winter.

Why You Should Read This:

• Great scifi world, funny and interesting characters, just all round great fun.
• Wicked moon queens! Mental control powers! Charming space captains! Sentient spaceships!

And Why You Shouldn't:

• There's a fairly typical YA romance. Can be slightly offputting for me.
• There ends up being a lot of characters with points of view, and it switches up a lot. I like this, but sometimes it can be a bit tiring to switch up so much.

The Castle Behind Thorns

by Merrie Haskell

Story summary: Sand wakes up in the nearby castle, in which every single item has been torn asunder, with no memory of how he got there. Stuck behind the wall of living thorns surrounding the castle, he builds a blacksmithing forge and begins to slowly mend all the broken items, setting up a life in the castle, and surviving. But he discovers he may have more of a talent for mending than he thought when the princess buried in the castle crypt comes to life.

Why You Might Like This Book:

• The theme of forgiveness is excellently done, especially for a children's book.
• It actually makes me want to take up blacksmithing. And that's saying something.

And Why You Might Not:

• It's a quiet sort of book, and not fast. This is a good thing for this book, but it does mean that it can seem like nothing much is happening for the first half of the book.

Cinder

by Marissa Meyer

Story summary: Cinderella as a cyborg. Sounds like a simple and maybe uninteresting premise, but there's a lot more to it, trust me.
Also see the sequels: Scarlet, Cress, and Winter.

Why You Should Read This:

• Cyborgs.
• AIs.
• Did I mention Cyborgs and AIs?
• Also mind control and girl mechanics and strange people from the moon.
• In other words, the world-building is awesome.
• But there are also great familial relationships, interesting characters, and suspenseful plot.
• And "Cinderella as a cyborg" actually works surprisingly brilliantly.

And Why You Shouldn't:

• It is written in a definite Young Adult style. Not my favourite, but if everything else is really good, as it is in this book, then it doesn't matter so much.
• Nothing really gets resolved. You're going to have to read the other three books in the series to get answers, relationships, etc.

Cruel Beauty

by Rosamund Hodge

Story summary: Retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" (with maybe a bit of Hades & Persephone thrown in?).

Why You Might Like This Book:

• The characters are flawed and faulty without being morally repugnant. Complexity, ftw!
• The cover is beautiful. Yes, don't judge a book by its cover and all that, but sometimes sitting down to read something that looks so nice has a reward of its own.
• In a similar isn't-supposed-to-be-relevant vein, the main characters are called Nyx and Ignifex! How cool are those names? I want to call my daughter Nyx, but I don't think I could get away with that, sigh.

And Why You Might Not:

• The beauty/sexiness of the "Beast" was emphasized more than I like. I like my BatB retellings to actually have ugly Beasts, not just beautiful Beasts with a dark side.
• Coming off from that, the romance was also not my style. There was a sort-of love triangle that bothered me, and way too much emphasize on beauty/sexiness as opposed to getting to know each other.

Dearest

by Alethea Kontis

Story summary: After having a book each about the adventures of two of the Woodcutter sisters, Sunday and Saturday, we continue down the line (in reverse age order) to Friday. As in "Friday's child is loving and giving". And this is kind of cheating, but I'm going to quote the Goodreads summary, because it's been too long since I've read this and I don't feel like trying to remember the details and summarize it myself:
"When Friday stumbles upon seven sleeping brothers in her sister Sunday’s palace, she takes one look at Tristan and knows he’s her future. But the brothers are cursed to be swans by day. Can Friday’s unique magic somehow break the spell?"
Sequel to Enchanted and Hero.

Why You Should Read This:

• There are so many fairy tales, all integrated into a big mess of fairy tale goodness.
• There is a large, boisterous family of seven brothers. Great fun. I love large families.
• It's a nice contrast in tone to Hero, the previous book.

And Why You Shouldn't:

• Maybe there are actually too many fairy tales for one book.
• The romance is of the "instant" variety.
• There is not enough Thursday. (Never enough Thursday.)

Hero

by Alethea Kontis

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: Sequel to Enchanted, this time about the second youngest Woodcutter daughter, Saturday. She is the sister who has never been magically special, who spent her time chopping wood in the forest with her father and her brother. But everything changes when disaster strikes, and Saturday is off on the adventure she always wanted. Except this adventure, of course, ends up quite differently than she expected.

Thoughts: Strangely enough, for a book where the heroine decries romance, and wishes it didn't always have to "be part of the adventure", I actually liked the romance more than anything else. It was a highly unusual romance, which I tend to quite enjoy*. This was especially true in the case of Peregrine, the "hero". There are a fair many other books out there nowadays with slightly more masculine heroines such as Saturday. But rarely is anybody willing to go the other way and make their hero slightly more feminine. (Note, it can be interesting discussing gender as a Catholic (or as anything, of course), as the Church's thought and teachings differ both from modern day "traditionalists" and "progressives". But it seems to me (on quite limited analysis) that Saturday's "masculinity" and Peregrine's "femininity" are of the sort to be accepted by the more "traditional" and the more "progressive" alike.**)

The rest was quite enjoyable as well--it had a slightly less confusing plot with less random fairy tale references than Enchanted, and it had more of Thursday. (More Thursday makes everything better.) I think Kontis is a terrific "story-teller", meaning the books are best enjoyed if you don't try to fit everything together and understand everything, but delight in the strange events and interesting people and romance. Much like the original fairy tales.

Since Saturday was my favourite sister besides Thursday, I'm hoping I'll still like all the sequels as much as this book. Though I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up being my favourite of Kontis's books. (Unless perhaps it's Thursday's book. I hope to goodness there's a Thursday book some day. Did I mention I love her?)

*See The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer for another set of male and female protagonists (brother and sister this time) who are unusual in a somewhat  similar fashion.

**Sorry for the ridiculous amount of quotation marks I've used in this review. It seemed necessary--none of these words are the exactly the ones I want to use, but I'm not sure how else to put some of these things.

The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle

by Christopher Healy

Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Story Summary: Sequel to The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. The four Prince Charmings (or Princes Charming) have saved the day once already. But now the minstrels have got it all wrong so everyone thinks the princes are idiots (I mean, they actually sort of are...but that's beside the point). So obviously that needs to be fixed. Also Briar Rose has an evil plan, and is roping the princes into helping her.

Thoughts: Like THGtSYK, this was very funny, with great characters, and really great illustrations. Also like THGtSYK, it was a bit too long, and would have been much better cut down a bit. This time around, however, I couldn't overcome  the padding issue. I ended up very tempted to skim through a bunch of it, and basically forced myself to read through a bunch of it. Mind you, this could have been partly due to my particular mood at the time. (It does feel weird to have rated this one so much lower than the first one, even though they are quite similar in style and humour.)

Still, as I said, it could be quite funny in parts. I'll read the sequel when it comes out, and hopefully be in a better mood to enjoy it this time.

Travel Reading Part 4

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each. Here goes the fourth and last set:

"Goose Chase" by Patrice Kindl
Grade: 4 stars
Retelling of the fairy tale "The Goose Girl". The goose girl is stuck in a tower for her own safety, courted by two men she highly dislikes. She plans a daring escape, and that's when her adventures start. A light read, but I loved it. It was pretty much the perfect comfort read for this particular time. The geese were hilarious, the goose girl was bad-tempered and awesome, and the romance was unusual.



"Shards of Honour" by Lois McMaster Bujold
Grade: 4 1/2 stars
The first book in the Vorkosigan saga. Cordelia is the captain of a scientific expedition, and she gets captured by the captain of a military ship from another planet. She has to survive for 5 days on an alien planet with him, and then there's politics and  battles and more survival and stuff. Faaabulous book (my description SO does not do it justice), which I'm guessing is the start to an amazing and unforgettable series. Where has this been my whole life? One of my favourites parts of this book is a little difficult to describe in so few words, but suffice it to say: it's titled perfectly. I loved the way the theme of honour was dealt with. This book and then next (Barrayar, discussed a bit below) are contained in an omnibus called Cordelia's Honour; this is very aptly named, for truthfully, Cordelia "pour[s] out honour all around [her], like a fountain". Also--Bothari. He is...quite something. There's not enough room to describe it all here, but his story was one of my favourite parts of the book.

"Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities" by Mike Jung
Grade: 2 stars
A couple of fanboys of the superhero Captain Stupendous have to help him out when all of a sudden he's not acting as stupendous as usual. This books subverts some common tropes (girl power, non-white characters, and more), which I always like, however it didn't really manage to keep my interest very well. Maybe my time of loving Middle Grade fiction more than most other kinds is slowly coming to an end, because it seems that the complaint "this book is too young for me" has come up a lot recently. (There are of course important exceptions, like Ordinary Magic, books by Frances Hardinge, and by Stephanie Burgis, and more.) Or maybe the book is simply a bit too simplistic. Not sure.

"Barrayar" by Louis McMaster Bujold
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Begins right after Shards of Honour, so I don't want to discuss it too much because of spoilers. But there's a lot of Cordelia acclimatizing to a different culture, having lots of trouble with the horrific Barrayarian politics, and trying to save her unborn son. I liked it less than Shards of Honour, but it was still really good. My main issue might have been that it seemed to have less of a main theme and be less self-contained than Shards of Honour, but then I've read other reviews which have thought pretty much the opposite. So I don't know. What matters is that it has confirmed in my mind that this series is definitely worth reading. I am now going to go out and read as many Vorkosigan books as I can get my hands on.

The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: Half "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" and half "Beauty and the Beast", with a dash of the story of Hades and Persephone thrown in for good measure.

Thoughts: I am four reviews behind, so point form it is:

--Nice complexity for some of the characters, especially the Princess whose name I've forgotten and the really handsome boy whose name I've also forgotten. (Yeah...I have a bad memory, and I don't have book on hand right now.) The "Beast" or Hades character was not as blameless as he tends to be, either, though still on the side of Good.

--I seem to have read quite a few books with feisty 12-year-old fantasy heroines recently, the best being Kat, Incorrigible, Ordinary Magic, and this one. Reveka is a great addition, with her interest in herblore so passionate that she was willing to give up marriage and a family to become a nun and study it for the rest of her life.

--Speaking of which, it was immensely refreshing to have a recently-written character who actually wanted to be a nun (though nuns weren't exactly portrayed well...). Many people seem to completely misunderstand the place the religious had in the middle ages--being a religious was actually rather freeing for women. Like the awesome Hildegard of Bingen, who was mentioned several times in this book, and was recently canonized (yay!).

--It was good and worth reading, and the take on Beauty and the Beast was rather unusual. And I have nothing else to say because, as I mentioned, I'm four reviews behind.

P.S. My favourite cover illustrator Jason Chan again! Sooo pretty.

Enchanted

by Alethea Kontis

Grade: 2 1/2 or 3 stars
Story summary: Basically every single fairy tale you can think of mashed up into one story. Behind it all is the story of a girl named Sunday and her eccentric, magical family.

Thoughts: Rather a strange book. I must admit, I was never really sure what the heck was going on a lot of the time. And even by the end, I hadn't really figured everything out. What exactly was going on with the prince's cousin Velius? Is Sorrow evil or just mixed up or what? Why did all that weird stuff happen to the king again? I heard that Alethea Kontis wrote this for NaNoWriMo, or some other challenge of some sort, which was perhaps why she did the checking off of fairy tales thing.

There was a somewhat sweet romance, which was unusual in the fact that after the first few pages it was mostly settled and lacking tension. But that actually made it much more bearable for me (who tends to get rather annoyed at romances in books).

The characters were all really great though, especially the central family. I kind of wished it could have spent more time on them and less time on all the random fairy tale references. I could have used a whole other book just on Sunday's older sister Thursday, who ran off to marry the Pirate King. Saturday deserves her own adventure as well, we know next to nothing about Peter, and what was Monday's story exactly?