Sunday 31 December 2017

TheDaisyDeer's Best Books of 2017

Reading Year In Review

Books Read: 88
Novels Read: 42
*Pages Read: 23,693
*according to GoodReads so take it with a pinch of salt 

Novel with the Best Story read in 2017:

The One Hundred Nights of Hero
Isabel Greenberg
Read my summary review of The One Hundred Nights of Hero here!
honourable mentions to:
Circe, Madeline Miller
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt


Novel with the Best Writing read in 2017:

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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood

Novel with the Best Entertainment read in 2017:

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Resurrection
Derek Landy


Best New Discovery read in 2017:

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I Love This Part
Tillie Walden


Best Fantasy Novel read in 2017:

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The Final Empire
Brandon Sanderson


Best Sci-Fi Novel read in 2017:

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Invictus
Ryan Graudin


Best Dystopian Novel read in 2017:

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Our Dark Duet
V. E. Schwab
Read my review of Our Dark Duet here!
honourable mentions to:
The Song Rising, Samantha Shannon


Best Historical Novel read in 2017:

Circe
Madeline Miller


Best Contemporary Novel read in 2017:

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The Foxhole Court
Nora Sakavic
Read my review of The Foxhole Court here!
honourable mentions to:
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Release, Patrick Ness


Best Mystery/Thriller Novel read in 2017:

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The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt


Best Graphic Novel read in 2017:

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On a Sunbeam
Tillie Walden

Best Poetry Collection read in 2017:

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Hold Your Own
Kate Tempest

Best Review Copy [not otherwise mentioned] read in 2017:

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Spellslinger
provided by Hot Key Books
Sebastian de Castell

Friday 29 December 2017

The Faceless Ones

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Book Title: The Faceless Ones
Author: Derek Landy
Series: Skulduggery Pleasant #3
Date Started: December 26th 2017
Date Completed: December 28th 2017
Genres: Fantasy, Action, Adventure, Horror, Young Adult, Childrens
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Five Star
Final Rating: Five stars
Review:

Rereading this series is like discovering them all over again, regardless of the fact I've skim-read and reread my favourite parts more times than I can count. The Faceless Ones was never my favourite, and that holds, but reading the story in full again makes me appreciate the hints for the future and the character arcs so much. This was really the book that kicked the Skulduggery Pleasant series into action and for that it's special.

What gets me about these now that I'm older is how well executed they are for younger audiences. I remember reading something where Derek was defending his use of violence in these books - and yes, there is a lot of violence - and saying that the whole point is that it's serious. There is murder, and there are violent people, and there are heroes getting seriously hurt. Because it's a world in which those things happen, and Derek takes that seriously. Which means that Valkyrie, even when she's 14, is involved. But it's not taken lightly; she does get hurt, and people acknowledge that she's too young to be in the middle of that.

In general, Derek is aware of the problematic elements of being a hero but he doesn't shy away from it, even if his hero is a pre-teen. Instead of dismissing her and her abilities, the characters TALK to Valkyrie about it; they make sure she understands the real danger she's in, and they ASK her how she feels. And respect her answers. She's a 14-year-old in an adult's dangerous world, but that doesn't mean she should be patronised or restricted, it means that she should learn and be protected until she can defend herself. My favourite line of this book is Kenspeckle telling her 'you seem to have this ridiculous notion that being treated like a child means to be treated with any less respect than an adult'. These books are mature without being cruel, accessible without being patronising, and empowering without being manipulative.

Which leads me on to our protagonist. When I was younger, I basically remembered my age as being a year younger than Valkyrie - that's how much of a role model she was to me (despite the fact we aren't really that similar - I'm far more a Tanith). And rightly so. Val is a great protagonist not because she's a hero, but because she so regularly makes mistakes and learns from them. It's 'how to write a children's protagonist 101', but Derek approaches it with a very adult perspective; this isn't a one-off per book, this is creating a solid human being. She's a reckless smart-mouth who can be rude at the best of times, but she's clever and kind too.

To be honest, I could sit down over three or four days and read this entire series cover-to-cover without stopping. I never want to put them down and I feel so at home with them that I wouldn't really need anything else. It's become somewhat of a tradition to say this in every review of this series, but Skulduggery was the equivalent of Harry Potter in my childhood, and I think they're some of the best children's books that can be read by anyone out there.

Tuesday 26 December 2017

How to Be Both

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Book Title: How to Be Both
Author: Ali Smith
Date Started: December 3rd 2017
Date Completed: December 26th 2017
Genres: Contemporary, Historical, Adult
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star
Final Rating: Four stars
Review:

I'm a bit sore about this book; I think my enjoyment was seriously affected by the formatting on the Kindle version. I still enjoyed it, but I ended up being more concerned with if I'd missed something at the start of the book that I wasn't able to properly focus on the book itself. If I hadn't read up on the formatting while I was reading it I would've been completely lost, and I was still pretty confused.

If you don't know, half the print run of How to Be Both has Francesco's story at the start of the book, and the other half have George's first. The idea is that everyone who reads it will read it slightly differently, and have a different experience. Which, for the record, I think is a great idea. Until you mess it up on the Kindle format - which a lot of people read. In the Kindle version, BOTH editions are included in the same file meaning that a) I felt like I was reading a 400ish page book slower than a tortoise b) when you actually finish the story, you start reading the exact same thing again thinking it's just deja vu and c) most readers are always going to read Francesco first unless they know about the formatting style and skip halfway through the book.

The last of those I'm actually grateful for. Francesco's story takes place in the Renaissance, while George's is modern day. I don't think I would've personally been pulled into the story had it started with George - that's just personal preference but the exploration of a female painter hiding as a man to be able to work is fascinating, while George's story follows more of what you immediately think of for Ali Smith: modern, political, everyday person dealing with the internal struggles of life. All good, but you collect far more references and parallels having read the historical era first since the developments in society move forward rather than backwards. Perhaps the idea is that you continue to reread the story the other way around afterwards and see how the experience is different.

The thing that always gets me about Smith's writing is how it somehow captures perfect, pure moments of human experience. Subtle, insignificant things when we go through them, but translating the way a mother smiles after her child says something, or the shock registering when someone discovers your secret - capturing those tiny reactions so perfectly in writing astounds me. That's what makes her writing stand out, and it's why I always come back to it.

The only downside is it doesn't string together for some people, and I have to count myself in that. Those moments are wonderful, and the prose is easy-to-read and understand, but the story beats don't connect as intuitively for everyone and can be hard to follow. Smith's writing isn't for everyone (though I disagree with people who say she's unnecessarily difficult and pedantic - she isn't at all, she's just honest), which is a shame since it discusses things that are so relevant to today: what is it to exist in this era? How do we interact with the past, as well as the present?

It's always fascinating to read Smith's books, but I am sad that I don't connect to them in the same way a lot of people do. Though part of me wonders if it is an age thing. It doesn't have to be patronising to admit that the number of years of human experience you've had affects the way you perceive and absorb things. I'd be interested to read some of her work again when I'm older and see if I enjoy it more.

Sunday 3 December 2017

The Cruel Prince

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Book Title: The Cruel Prince
Author: Holly Black
Date Started: November 22nd 2017
Date Completed: December 3rd 2017
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star
Final Rating: Three stars
Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

The Cruel Prince reminded me why I wanted to get away from mainstream Young Adult books - I don't think the whole genre is bad, and I don't necessarily think this book was terrible, but I'm so sick of romance being the only thing that's paid proper attention to in a story. I adored the use of traditional faerie - it's one of the reasons Holly's been such an important writer for me since I was a kid - but that was about all I liked in this one.

In terms of the overall story, I felt like this novel was very repetitive at the start. I'm not a fan of the bullying trope at the best of times (once you've read it once, you know it regardless of if you swap out school books for fairy fruit). The Cruel Prince just had the same scene several times over without much development between them. But then, once you pass the halfway mark, suddenly everything becomes very fast and rushed. The amount of exposition and action shoved into the end of this book was too much - it almost felt like two books pushed into one so there was a build-up at the start.

That being said, my biggest complaint is the romance. If you've been around for a while, you know this isn't a new thing. For some reason that I don't understand considering the idea of female empowerment and independence so many modern YA authors seem to support, romance continues to be all-consuming when it's put in a Young Adult book with a female protagonist. It doesn't happen with the male protagonists - they might have a love interest, but it's generally given a balance of attention. But if a book is targetted towards a female audience, the romance has to get in the way of the heroine's quest. It gets very, very boring.

Amongst this, the romances tend to be really unhealthy in this book. They're explicitly revealed as so (eventually), but they're still treated with such casualness that I couldn't help but be uncomfortable. The man who raises Jude, and who she looks up to (regardless of what she says in her head) literally murdered both her parents in front of her. (That's not a spoiler, it's in the first ten pages.) These unhealthy relationships also get in the way of important ones the protagonist has - most significantly her sisters. Female-to-female relationships are so important, but they're neglected in favour of romance here seemingly without major consequence. Yes, characters can change. But they haven't in the course of this book. Actions speak louder than words.

Although, that also contradicts my next gripe. While the characters don't develop as such, they're too volatile throughout the entirety of this story to be convincing. There were times I didn't understand what was happening because a character had acted so out of the blue - a reveal I didn't realise was a reveal until it was too late because their motivations didn't make sense. Maybe I struggled to understand them because I found them all dislikeable (flawed characters are fine, but horrible people are hard to engage with), but regardless it built up another barrier between me and the story.

I'm really sad I didn't enjoy The Cruel Prince. As I've said, Holly has been a huge figure in my reading since I read The Spiderwick Chronicles, which was one of the first books that got me into reading as a whole. Her exploration of faerie and it's parallels to the real world are always fascinating, I'm just disappointed that the YA cliche of romance got in the way of this one.