The Fountains of Silence

Book Title: The Fountains of Silence

Author: Ruta Sepetys

Date Started: August 23rd 2019

Date Completed: August 26th 2019

Genres: Historical, Romance, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Since I read Salt to the Sea three years ago I've been dying to pick up another one of Sepetys' books. The Fountains of Silence dives into a very different era in a very different place with very different people but is no less thorough and engaging. And hey, you gotta love a cute romance.

Sepetys is very good at representing history without feeling like you're in a lecture. She cares about her story, and so enriches it with the context, furled by the extensive research she's done - rather than distracting you with unnecessary tangents for the sake of it. The one blip for me were the contextual quotes; they were fascinating and helpful for my understanding of what was happening, but they took me out of the story with how irregularly they were placed throughout the book. It was a big sign pointing at the important plot twists that I would've preferred to have felt out myself. But at the same time, those quotes really hit their mark.

The protagonist of Fountains of Silence is a photographer, something which I didn't think much of until I started reading. For one thing, the way Sepetys writes about photographs without actually showing them is so engaging. But it's also a very clever device to put in a story about Francoist Spain, and she takes full advantage of that. (Ironically, the egalley I have doesn't include the photos at the back of the book that I imagine are either supposed to be Daniel's or are what inspired them. It'd be so interesting to cross-reference them with what's mentioned in the story.)

The Fountains of Silence has a time jump in it that I wasn't convinced about to begin with but actually, having finished, it really works well. I think it could've been more towards the middle of the book because I really wanted it to go on a little longer. I can see why it didn't or we would've had an entirely new story inside the same book, but things ended very abruptly. I finished the last page and was confused that the author's note was suddenly there.

Once again Ruta Sepetys is proven to be the queen of young adult historical fiction both in her diligence of research and mastery of stories inside that. The Fountains of Silence is a reasonably easy read for one so dark in many ways, and definitely an enjoyable way to educate yourself about important topics.

The Zeppelin Deception

Book Title: The Zeppelin Deception

Author: Colleen Gleason

Series: Stoker & Holmes #5

Date Started: August 24th 2019

Date Completed: August 24th 2019

Genres: Historical, Romance, Mystery, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

Stoker & Holmes has been a guilty pleasure of mine for about three years, and I'm a little sad to see it end. The Zeppelin Deception does a good job of satisfying wrapping up the series to the point where I enjoyed it a little more than the others, actually. It didn't have loads of filler crammed in to make it longer; it just focused on finishing the story.

So pacing was a real strength in the final instalment, but it still didn't stop the completely unnecessary descriptions. I really don't need to have two pages reporting on every piece of food eaten or every outfit worn. I really don't care. Yes, the designs (particularly of clothes) are pretty cool with the Steampunk element prevalent in this series, but I'm not here for a catwalk or a buffet. Take a paragraph (if that) and then move on, please.

But, regardless, The Zeppelin Deception was very disciplined in wrapping up the series as a whole. The temptation in a final instalment is to throw in loads of last-minute twists for the sake of it, but this ultimately ends up either confusing the resolution or just completely changing the game you're supposed to be wrapping up. What this book did was give enough of a new plot to get momentum up, but then allowed the characters to naturally follow their own lines of suspicion that have been building up over five books to finally end the series. (And that's not to say that there weren't any final twists - oh, there definitely are - but they aren't at the expense of the final resolution.)

A book where the characters are allowed to be themselves with (mostly) no consequences - while unrealistic, especially in Victorian London - is really nice to read. I'm not here to gather material for an in-depth essay, I'm here for an enjoyable, easy read. And, whether deliberate or not, Gleason takes full advantage of that in her creative license; our imagination is already stretched so use it to give the reader things they will genuinely get joy from. For example, these books are 60% fluffy romance - totally valid anyway. But it's not my thing, yet a couple like Mina and Grayling are cute enough for me to forget about that for a while. Why not?

It's quite a sappy ending, but sometimes that's enjoyable. Stoker & Holmes are definitely a guilty pleasure and aren't works of Shakespeare, but they've been a lot of fun to read.

Blood for Blood

Book Title: Blood for Blood

Author: Ryan Graudin

Series: Wolf by Wolf #2

Date Started: August 22nd 2019

Date Completed: August 22nd 2019

Genres: Historical, Thriller, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

What would've happened if the Nazis had won WWII? What would've happened if the resistance sent a little Jewish girl, forced into the powers of shapeshifting, to kill Hitler? And what if she failed? The Wolf by Wolf concept is still a really good idea, three years after I read the first book. Blood for Blood didn't take long to remind me of that, and I read the whole thing in a day - so I clearly enjoyed it. But it has faded in my memory very quickly after finishing it and I come back to the same conclusion I had about book one: it's just missing something.

Blood for Blood is quite a bit darker than I remember the first book being. Wolf by Wolf was essentially a road trip story, with Yael taking part in the Axis Tour (motorcycle race) under the guise of Adele Wolfe. Of course, it touched on a lot of the horrors of the Nazis but it was mostly in the peripheral vision of the competition and its dramas. This time, with Yael on the run and rekindling her rebel mission, we dive headfirst into it in a lot of cases. The history is great, it feels well-researched and respected (if a little dramatised), but it's not going to shy away from the shadows and the smoke.

The plotline of this book didn't go in the direction I expected; not so much in massive twists, but just in the natural stream of events flowing a different way. It was nice to feel like I was along for the ride rather than just reading the book but, as I said, there was just something missing. Was it the depth of character relationships (I got them, but I didn't feel them)? Was it tiring to have things so high-tension all the time? Was it something else entirely? I really don't know, because there's nothing straight out wrong about this book - I read all 496 pages IN A DAY - but I wanted more.

The series has an interesting bunch of characters, very varied. My first instinct was to want to spend more time with them to just see what happened; they're the kind of people that you put in a room together and they will undoubtedly form rivalries and friendships (but also kudos for keeping to a self-contained story because that is hard). What worked nicely in Blood for Blood is that you finally get to see these characters be themselves for the first time, free of the disguises of their mission or self-defensive pride. Yael gets to be Yael (which is significant in so many ways), but you get to see Felix with his actual sister, you get to see the Luka underneath the pretty boy champion. Some aspects of reclaiming their identities felt rushed (Felix was hollow and Adele was a bit too stuck up), and, in general, there were character reactions missed for the sake of the plot. Maybe things would've dragged on if we got to let the people play out their own personalities, but I think I would've liked reading it.

I enjoyed Blood for Blood while reading, and it definitely satisfying concluded the duology, but like its predecessor it just didn't hit that one thing (that still eludes me) that could've taken my breath away.

Before the Devil Breaks You

Book Title: Before the Devil Breaks You

Author: Libba Bray

Series: The Diviners #3

Date Started: August 19th 2019

Date Completed: August 21st 2019

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Mystery, Horror, Adventure, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

Book three down in less than a week and it's only getting better. I devoured this book, loved every minute, and cannot wait for the last instalment in this series (I mean that literally, please help me).

As I've seen other people say, Bray's narratives are so good because they make the personal political. These books are about the Diviners as much as the ghost stories they solve. And that's empowering from so many angles; yes to girls saying goodbye to manipulators, yes to people of colour being proud of their backgrounds, yes to people recognising their own worth. It's of course very timely for the world we're currently in, and you can't help but feel the comparisons hovering very obviously behind some of the prejudice and violence. If anything, that makes it all the more effective.

Before the Devil Breaks You is essentially two stories in one, and that actually worked well. The first half is very much like the previous books and their ghost hunting arcs. But going into the second half of the book, a bigger world is opened up and things get serious. It's like we went from a 1920s Scooby-Doo to a full-blown blockbuster in the best way. And it suddenly exposed that Bray has had everything planned for a long time - or at least it feels that way. It doesn't feel like Bray is trying to sneakily make it seem like she's going somewhere just to make sequels, I trust that things are just being revealed now.

The Diviners is like a television drama. It's taken me three reviews to get to a point of saying that confidently because Before the Devil Breaks You really brings it home: every single one of the massive cast have their own story arc which is intrinsically fed into the main plotline. Everyone has their ambitions, weaknesses, and moments in the sun, even if they're not included in every single climax or battle (because, frankly, there's so many of them I don't know how you could). And it's glued together with their relationships, held up by proper platonic love as well as romantic (though I must admit, I'm a sucker for Evie and Sam more than ever).

Like ghost stories, secret conspiracies, and mystery? Like the roaring 20s in New York? The backstreet underground of it too? Complex girls who won't take nonsense, and boys with developed personalities? Diversity and representation? Then Libba Bray's Diviners series should be on your list. I picked up the first book on a whim, and six days later I'd read all three available books. They're fun, they're engaging and they touch on some really important topics in an accessible way.

Sword and Pen

Book Title: Sword and Pen

Author: Rachel Caine

Series: The Great Library #5

Date Started: August 17th 2019

Date Completed: August 19th 2019

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley & Allison and Busby for this eBook copy for review ◆

Man, have I loved this series. Before I get into it, I want to thank Berkley Random House who gave me an ARC of the early first book last year (it's only been a year since I've been reading these?!), and of course Allison and Busby for this last installment - thank you for making sure this story came to the conclusion it deserved. Because I don't know what I would've done without this final action-packed, adventurous and indulgently sentimental story. The Great Library series comes from a devout adoration of books and is a wonderful addition to the infinite modern collection of fiction we have today - and it can't be burnt down anymore.

The aesthetics of The Great Library series are really something to commend. As a childhood lover of Ancient Egypt and an adult admirer of Ancient Greece, really the Library of Alexandria was going to be a winner full stop. But Caine creates a world so different to everything else out there at the moment, replicated in a way that feels authentic but also creatively exaggerated for our own excitement. The people she places into that world hold it up, but the foundations are pretty solid for them to perform on.

The Great Library series has taken us on pretty much a world tour during its four earlier books, but Sword and Pen is the first time we've been confined to just Alexandria. I don't think it suffers from that at all. Alexandria is like home at this point, and it's really the only place things could come to a close. And everyone gets to a hero in their own subplots but, as I was desperately hoping and as this series deserves, everyone gets pulled together for the last finale. No spoilers people, but it's worth it.

I may complain about the plot lines sometimes, but these books have such a cool mix of side stories, world-building, and character dynamics. Yes, some things don't pay off as you'd expect (why was Morgan so powerful all along? What's the deal with Eskander? Is the war really the main enemy here?), but the pure glee I got while seeing all these different people interact in so many different circumstances, under so many varied threats and pressures. The stakes remain high because Caine is so creative in the obstacles she sets - many, many obstacles - and the characters are so solid it's a game getting to watch them figure out her puzzles.

Because really, when you come down to it, it's the characters who win or lose a story's success. And the Great Library makes me want to keep coming back because of the people placed inside it. Each with their own personality, their own motivations, their own backgrounds, their own subplots that are (mostly) all allowed to come to fruition. The romance is great, the rivalries are great, but what's really impressive are the non-romantic relationships. The pairings that are platonic, familial; the physical affection between friends as well as lovers; the unconditional love for arses that are still friends.

I'm sad to see this series come to a close, but it was a good ending. There's potential room for more stories in this world, I guess, but I think The Great Library was done justice enough - though that isn't to say I wouldn't read a sequel series. I'd probably devour it immediately, honestly. But for now, this is the end.

Lair of Dreams

Book Title: Lair of Dreams

Author: Libba Bray

Series: The Diviners #2

Date Started: August 15th 2019

Date Completed: August 17th 2019

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Mystery, Romance, Horror

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Book two of the Diviners series down, and I'm still rolling ahead to devour the next one. With her television-size cast of characters, places and plot lines, Bray is shaping up to be quite the storyteller as she keeps expanding her world with remarkable control. Slightly pretentious analysis aside, Lair of Dreams was just as enjoyable as the first installment in the series, even if it depended more on the friction between characters than to their plight.

You gotta love some light-hearted romance where the girls have just as much self-respect as they deserve; you gotta love some creepy ghosts making things go bump in the night; you gotta love the roaring twenties and its dreamers trying to make their way in it. Add a flair of fantasy and you have the Diviners, a group of gifted young people converging closer and closer as something wicked this way comes. It was really exciting that we got to expand into Chinatown in Lair of Dreams, and I'm still impressed by how well balanced the narrative is between so many characters and cultures and their individual subplots. It's why I keep referencing television writing because each character's personal arc often seems more at the forefront of their chapters than the overall plot does - which has its pros and cons.

The Diviners, the first book, relied a lot on the Naughty John plotline to glue everything together; Lair of Dreams is far less concerned with its ghost story. Instead, it drops hints upon hints of what's to come: foreboding FBI agents, missing mothers, traitors in family homes, suspicious premonitions, surprising connections weaving everyone together since before they were born. The 'dreaming killer' plotline is still there, and ultimately resolved, but it felt like it was on a backburner. Honestly, this was mostly fine - it meant less momentum but we have enough investment in the characters are this point for it to work - but my one hesitation lies in if whatever's coming is coming fast enough? I want to sink my teeth into this big conspiracy hiding behind them instead of popping back and forth between a ghost story, a melodrama as well as the 'ultimate test' that's approaching.

But until then, I am still totally occupied with the Diviners themselves. Evie (who seems to be the protagonist, in my mind, just from the structure of the series) continues to be fascinating selfish and irrational but complex and heroic. But it's also really nice that each character gets to take the limelight for a bit because you do feel affection for them all. It's interesting that quite a few people are in different power positions than they used to be, and constantly evolving. Evie has a radio show, Sam's living well off the museum, Theta's rising in the ranks on stage, Henry's changing his dreams, Mabel's standing up for herself, Jericho's starting to reach out of his comfort zone. It keeps things moving even when the main story isn't so much in focus, and mostly importantly it makes us root for these developing characters because they feel so much more real.

Guess who's already bought the next book and is devastated she has to wait until February for the last book? This girl. I've raced through these novels pretty fast, but I don't feel like I've exhausted them of their entertainment just yet. They're reasonably long books but they're so easy to topple into that it feels like the blink of an eye, and that's really what books are supposed to do. Small flaws aside, Bray has reached the heights of escapism and that's all we readers can ask for.

The Diviners

Book Title: The Diviners

Author: Libba Bray

Series: The Diviners #1

Date Started: July 21st 2019

Date Completed: August 14th 2019

Genres: Historical, Mystery, Romance, Horror

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

This book has been on my kindle for years, I have the second novel as a digital ARC, and I'm so glad. I devoured this book, everything from the mystery to the politics to the romance. It's historically rich, enjoyably written and teeming with varied characters with their own vast backstories. As I was reading it, it almost felt like a well-made television show, spanning several side plots but with a strong focus on its main storyline pulling it through.

The writing was well researched, with a nice blend of real-world things and creative license in what was presented. But the real politics and representation - and the experiences of different communities during the 1920s - was what really elevated this book. It felt very real, and therefore even the fantastical elements were more believable. My issue is that there were some really obvious jumps in logic and a couple of mistakes in the order of events in a scene. Whether they were overlooked in editing or just weird choices, they staggered me and totally pulled me out for a moment. It's still worth it, they're little annoyances more than anything else, but it did strike me as weird for a finished book to have what were very obvious and easy-to-fix flaws.

What this book absolutely succeeds in is mixing the supernatural genre with 1920s New York. In some ways not too hard, in others near impossible. But the supernatural mystery was chilling and engaging rather than just there for the scare factor. The whole book is very atmospheric, in its creepy scenes but also on the booming New York streets and the back alleys. It's Bray's ability to contrast these that makes everything work in the end.

The way Bray explores all these different atmospheres and environments is through her cast of characters - and it's a big cast. At the heart of it is Evie O'Neill who is utterly fascinating. She's spoilt, selfish and annoying at the best of times. Yet there wasn't a moment I didn't root for her. Even more, she's clever and brave and can be exceedingly kind. Maybe it says more about our society than the book that I'm so surprised Bray managed to pull that off, but to have a female character who is at times dislikable and still see her as a complex person worthy of being the heroic protagonist was a breath of fresh air and a high merit for the novel.

Unfortunately, I do have to admit that the final climax felt like a bit of a let down since, having spent the book learning about all these different characters, only two of them (and eventually one) were at the finale. I'm sure that at the end of the series there's going to be an explosive finish with everyone coming together for one massive standoff for good and evil, but even having the majority of the primary cast absent at the end of this first installment felt disappointing. I wanted more of everyone; I didn't want any of their stories to end.

I'm already reading the second book and loving it, so if that isn't a recommendation I don't know what is. There are some frustrating blips in this series, but overall it is a highly entertaining and worthwhile read that you can race through or take your time with.