The Cold is in Her Bones

Book Title: The Cold is in Her Bones

Author: Peternelle van Arsdale

Date Started: March 3rd 2019

Date Completed: March 11th 2019

Genres: Historical, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Two Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Two Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

I didn't do well with this book for a number of reasons, even though it sounded right up my street. This is inspired by Medusa? Only as far as the snakes in her hair. And just because you show women suffering doesn't make it feminist - I think that's approaching the opposite, actually.

I get that it's building up to be a commentary on female hysteria. The girls hearing things in their heads as they get older that go against everything the village says and expects of them. Of course, there's a magical realistic element in the way that snakes literally grow from their heads and whisper to them, but it's essentially about historically the oppression and punishment of women. I get that. But it's so forcefully/melodramatically done that it doesn't make its point. At times it feels like the opposite argument.

Milla is so passive and fragile, and then suddenly so stubborn and 'empowered' that the whole thing is just hard to swallow. Maybe if you had some other characters around her that were written to have different sorts of personalities, it would've balanced out more. Yes, they're all under the same oppression, but people react in different ways. I don't believe that within a generation every female of the species became quiet, docile and unassuming. Yes, there is a fantastical element being used to give creative freedom, but it's still essentially a story about a human being. And Milla wasn't there as that for me.

I got 42% through this book. I'm sure the story goes somewhere eventually but I don't care to find out where. I think it's a real shame the author/publisher wanted to go for the Young Adult market just so they could throw in some brutality because it could've been a really good and progressive kid's book (that feels like one already) if they had treated it properly.

Vengeful

Book Title: Vengeful

Author: V.E. Schwab

Series: Villains #2

Date Started: February 19th 2019

Date Completed: March 1st 2019

Genres: Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Action, Thriller

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

Vengeful was fun, but it was confused. I ended up enjoying it more from nostalgia than the actual story, which is disappointing honestly. I love Schwab's stories and writing but I haven't had the best of luck with them recently.

Yay girl power, I guess. But for all the emphasis on strong female characters, they don't really do anything in the end. The battle is still fought and won elsewhere (something I'll get to in a moment). There are definitely glimmers of pure strength from the women, moments where they each make an assertive, active choice that is a challenge for them. And while, yeah, Marcella is a badass, she's kind of a token centrepiece that is eventually pushed to the side - which is damn ironic considering her whole characterisation.

Where Vengeful lost me was when it decided not to be true to its own story. Is it Marcella's story? Because it feels like it's trying to be. You can feel the enthusiasm radiating off the words in her chapters, and she's a very interesting character. So then why is the climax not hers? Why is the arc and resolution of the whole novel separate? Because it isn't her story, really. It's still Victor's. Which is fine, but not when you steer away and confuse the narrative from it in the middle 300 pages because it's not moving yet - and especially not when you let us get attached to Marcella in those pages, only to leave her to dwindle in the actual conflict.

To me, it felt like it wanted to tell something new, but couldn't let go of old characters. I wonder if maybe not having Victor and Co. in until maybe halfway through when they actually become a part of Marcella's story would have been more compelling. (That seems to be how it's being marketed, I mean she's on the damn cover, she's the prologue of the novel, she described three times as many times as anyone else). You'd have the audience on their seats waiting for him to appear too. But that wouldn't work with the current story because it's not Marcella's story at all, it's Victor's. I think we're just misled somewhere in the middle about that.

What was nice was getting to learn about all the characters in more depth. People like Mitch, Dominic, people that we know from the first book but were only really sidekicks. Although, unfortunately, it didn't really need to be there. In fact, at the end of my edition of the book there's a short novella following Rios, and it could have been literally lifted from the first half of this book which consists almost exclusively of additional exposition. Like I said, interesting, but not a part of this story. And considering its nearly 600 pages, it really isn't necessary and convolutes the story even more.

I loved Vicious, so I'd definitely recommend everyone read it. Whether you continue on to Vengeful is your own choice, because I don't really know what to advise. I think I would've preferred to leave Vicious as a stand-alone story, but I can see other people liking the chance to see the universe expanded enough that they'll let go of its flaws.

A Wizard of Earthsea

Book Title: A Wizard of Earthsea

Author: Ursula Le Guin

Series: Earthsea Cycle #1

Date Started: February 11th 2019

Date Completed: February 19th 2019

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: 

Review:

Ursula Le Guin is the mother of modern fantasy, twin/partner/shadow only to Tolkien. And so, being a fantasy-lover, I am ashamed to say I had never read any of her work before this. My exposure had been my mother's recommendation and the Ghibli film by Goro Miyzaki. Of course, background knowledge of 60s/70s fantasy literature and a healthy appetite for mythology comes in handy, but none of which you need to enjoy what has to be one of the greatest and most underrated fantasy novels of all time.

The obvious thing to point out is the old-timey feel. Maybe the grammar and sentence structure might throw a few people off, to begin with, but I'd recommend carrying on anyway. I found it kind of nostalgic for a fantasy reader in her twenties, though I liked it. I think a great deal of the magic is its poetic and deeply atmospheric tone. The prose makes you feel like you're living with these people, hearing their dialect as if it were a far off land, but somewhere that you are travelling along with the hero himself.

We follow Sparrowhawk, a young mage who goes from being a goatherd to a wandering apprentice; calling forth a demon from the afterworld to defeating a dragon, to befriending animals; going to wizard school, to sailing a ship to... The point is, this book has everything. Like most old-fashioned epic fantasy, it works in an episodic structure akin to The Odyssey or Narnia. In what is actually a pretty small book, we are guided through this expansive world with just enough exploration to sate our curiosity, but not too much to overwhelm. It's a love letter to a fictional land as much as it is its own story.

For modern readers, I'd call it the mid-point between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. It has the epicness of Tolkien; the vast, fathomless landscapes and cultures, driven by nature and magic. But it's the whimsy, the people, the universal relationships that you stay for. I, personally, think it's far more accessible than Middle Earth, wonderful as it may be. And reading Le Guin's foreword and afterword I can tell in the later books there are going to be some powerful women, so it's a shame these books don't get as much recognition as they probably deserve.

I wish I'd read this as a child because I would've been entirely lost inside this world. Even as an adult it sucked me in, but I remember how stories like this used to utterly consume me for days on end where I wouldn't be able to put the book down. A skill perhaps useful for reading this rather extensive collection of stories that I hope to continue soon.

Scythe

Book Title: Scythe

Author: Neal Schusterman

Series: Arc of the Scythe #1

Date Started: January 12th 2019

Date Completed: January 17th 2019

Genres: Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Thriller, Romance

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

Oof, this is a tough one. Cool idea, unexpected twists, room for lots of new things in subsequent instalments. But, for me, the execution of Scythe (pun intended) was a little... fragile. Tame, absolutely not. It took things and really went for them, but there wasn't enough foundation for it to ring true.

The biggest issue I had with this book was its worldbuilding. Because it was sloppy. Like, I'll just lean these two poles and have it support a building sloppy. With sympathy, it's a very complicated concept to being with; hard to communicate and even imagine, so it needed a lot of attention to establish solidly which unfortunately wasn't there. It was probably an attempt to avoid information-dumping, but there are so many loopholes and times when Shusterman goes back on himself that I couldn't keep track or feel any weight because the politics wasn't linear. You have to be moral to be a Scythe, and yet very clearly a lot of them aren't. Fine. But no has want or need of money or anything else, yet there's still a class system (not to mention where are you getting the resources from). And then, there is a class system (which must be deliberate and therefore even more prejudiced) and yet no unrest from anyone at this unfair ranking of people? Believing no one dies anyone is tough enough, but if the world itself isn't consistent around that, how are we supposed to be fully immersed in the story?

At which point, I am not going to be the one going back on myself. Because I have to admit that the ending was fantastic, and made up for a lot. The plot of this book, while interjected with moments of action, is pretty slow. Interesting, but slow. And the political tension which the slower scenes are laced with doesn't really come across because the politics doesn't make sense, as mentioned. But that final scene, what happened and the implications of where we're going to go from here, is annoying. Because I actually want to read the next book to read the next book to find out what happens, and I'm tossing between if it's worth it or not.

Going back to the loopholes in the world for a second, I have to say it is a harsh critique. Because it's the hardest part of creating a fictional story, especially one not set in our world. But the fact that the characters weren't consistent either is what sent the red flag up for me. I honestly couldn't understand them until the last third of the book. They just didn't follow an arc until then, flip-flopped on their personality traits and motivations. Citra hates the very idea of Scythes, and yet within a week of training she's interested not resisting it at all. Rowan supposedly isn't that remarkable at anything, but he quickly becomes the best protegee they've seen in ages. Neither of them are really into each other even if they have some small feelings, and then a few months apart and they're head over heels for each other. And neither want to study Scythedom but are forced to and yet neither gets depressed? Or numb to what they thought their society was? Or anything like that? Come on. It was infuriating because even if the world was flimsy, the characters could have mended up the holes. Sadly, by the time they did start to feel solid, I'd become passive to them.

Scythe was disappointing, more from a foundation perspective than the actual story. That much was interesting and enjoyable, but the worldbuilding just tripped up too much of the movtiations and message for me. Maybe I'll get round to Thunderhead to see what happens to Citra and Rowan from here, but I'll be taking a rather long break first.

Skyward

Book Title: Skyward

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Series: Skyward #1

Date Started: January 3rd 2019

Date Completed: January 11th 2019

Genres: Sci-Fi, Adventure, Action

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Five stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley and Gollancz for this ebook for review ◆

So I have a bit of thing with sci-fi novels. For some reason, I just can't seem to get into them - and I say that as someone who was raised on and loves sci-fi tv and film. But, if anyone could write one that I could get into, it would be Brandon Sanderson. And he did not disappoint.

Skyward started off kind of strangely. We're thrown into this community of people trapped underground while being ambushed by aliens in the skies, but the community feels so... well, stilted. It's conservative to the point of doubting its realism since everyone seems to settle into it so neatly - which, especially in recent years, is a strange thing to imagine. The idea of a 'coward', held up by pretty much everyone, is incredibly one-dimensional, and the class system is so secure that you wonder how people don't question it. The fundamental concepts and ideas are very familiar and scarily relevant to modern readers, but it was taken a bit too stiffly. Of course, because it's exaggerated so much, it's there for a purpose, and Sanderson builds it up neatly enough that when he breaks the rules later his point is very clear. Which did pay off, undoubtedly. But going through the arc of the characters rising above their ignorance/fear/whatever you want to call it was hard to swallow to begin with because everyone was so self-assured in their very-obviously-backwards society.

What I really liked was that it took the Father's Legacy storyline in a new direction. I will admit that narratives that focus around a character coming to terms with what a parent (usually the father) did before their time make me automatically sceptical because aren't we all tired of pre-determined fates set out for us by our parents? But, while Spensa's initial kick into her ambition was helped along by her father, she is undoubtedly driven by her own passion and motivation, and the story doesn't obsess over her desire to clear her family name.

The use of classism really helped this too because, while not being derived from her relationship to her father, the prejudices the academy have towards her are influenced by her class status as well; you wouldn't find them having as much of a go at the daughter of a coward who was far richer. In general, I think the politics between individuals of different statuses was nicely done, and it's not all to do with money. Cowardice, wealth, piloting prowess all determined the assumptions that were made about people (and not just Spensa) and made the world that much richer. It is, first and foremost, about fighting aliens, and that was great. It doesn't have to be solely about these other complex concepts to feature and explore them.

Spensa - or Spin - is the beating heart of this novel. But she was sometimes a bit much. Following the same sort of trend as the storyline, she starts off way too exaggerated - or aggressive, I suppose. (While I appreciate the character Sanderson was aiming for in Spin, I think the balance of femininity while still being able to show those more 'masculine' qualities was a bit unbalanced). But, also following the story trend, by the end of the book she was really solid because we got to see her whole arc. It helped that she had several things to overcome; her goal to be a pilot, but also how she managed friends, her relationship with the academy and all the different dynamics that came with it. Kudos to the variety of characters and dynamics in this book, because it really kept everything interesting.

I really damn enjoyed Skyward, I didn't want to put it down. I read it in a really busy period (here's to writing dissertations) and it made me want to carve out time just to sit down with it. If you want the comparisons, it's like Ender Game meets Star Wars IV with a modern kick. I can't wait to read the next one.

The Girl in the Tower

Book Title: The Girl in the Tower

Author: Katherine Arden

Series: Winternight Trilogy #2

Date Started: December 28th 2018

Date Completed: January 3rd 2019

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance, Historical

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Five stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey for this ebook for review ◆

I read The Bear and the Nightingale last winter and immediately wanted to go onto The Girl in the Tower, but the thought of having to wait more than a year for the final book was unbearable. So, I waited. And then this winter came around and I took the first opportunity to dive into this - and, believe me, I will not be waiting so long to read the final book when it comes out in a couple of weeks. This is a fairytale weaved so widely it becomes myth. It hovers and haunts you wherever you go, and becomes as familiar as the stories you were told before bed just because it has such presence, from the writing to the characters to the story.

There's so much bursting at the seams of these books; all these vibrant historical images that let the reader's imagination fill in the gaps (rather than overwhelming us with information). I'm not particularly familiar with Russian history, nor the culture, yet I can picture everything happening around Vasya; I can even smell the markets and feel the cold wind. You can tell that Arden is as in love with fairytales as Vasya is, and as the reader becomes. Sure, I've been in love with fairytales longer than I can remember, so maybe I'm a biased case, but it rekindled my love of them all over again and made me want to look into the fairytales of Russia specifically.

Really, The Girl in the Tower wasn't the book I was expecting to follow the last one. The first book was almost like an odyssey in itself, following so much of Vasya's childhood and her growth into both the 'real' world and the world of folklore and spirits around her. This time we get into the action and into her adventure. It was just as enjoyable, and it built so well on The Bear and the Nightingale that you have to admire that book all over again too.

One of the things we build on is the romance which, honestly, caught me a bit off guard in the first book. Which is kind of why I liked it so much. As it became a bigger part of the story in this book I fell in love with it more because it was done just right. It's nicely balanced - and weaves into - the main plotline, influencing our heroine's path. There are much higher stakes than just romance, as well, so we feel a weight to the scenes that are romantically driven. It's not there to be self-indulgent, it belongs as much as everything else does. But she is and will always be Vasya first.

And that's why I love the kind of feminism that Arden writes. Vasya isn't invulnerable or the token 'badass', but she won't be held down by what people demand she should be either. The period is managed well in that she is insecure about her femininity (and the 'wicked' connotations her actions have on it in the historical context), and she sometimes wants to give up being a girl altogether. Because wouldn't it be so much easier to be herself? Her actions and ambitions about be accepted if she were a boy. As it is, she would give up a lot for her freedom (love, family, security), and I don't think we see that a lot. In women, it's portrayed as selfish (yet, of course, men are allowed to do it all the time), and that makes it all the more powerful. It's a refuge to readers that don't have the words to say it for themselves. (And it's also then significant when she makes the hard decision to put her family or the spirits first because we know how much it means to her to have her freedom.)

The Winter of the Witch is only about two weeks away as I write this and it's too long. I need more Vasya in my life, I need to follow her story to its conclusion because these books make me feel like a child discovering fairytales for the first time again. There's a freedom in reading about heroines like Vasya, and I'm not sure I can wait around for much longer.

TheDaisyDeer's Best Books of 2018

Reading Year In Review

It's been a year filled with researching for my final project, my dissertation, and my personal development, as well as exploring new review copies and becoming a proper film critic! As a result, it's been up and down in terms of what I've been reading: some things I've absolutely fallen in love with, and others have disappointed me and sent me into reading slumps. The upside is that this year's winners have been pretty easy to narrow down, if difficult to assign to categories; I could've put most of them at the top of multiple groups, but without further ado, these are my stats and the best books that I read in 2018...

Books Read: 80
Novels Read: 41
*Pages Read: 24,743
*according to GoodReads so take it with a pinch of salt 

Novel with the Best Story read in 2018:

Kingdom of Ash

Sarah J. Maas

Read my review of Kingdom of Ash here!

Novel with the Best Writing read in 2018:

Home Fire

Kamilla Shamsie

Read my review of Home Fire here!

Novel with the Best Entertainment read in 2018:

Ash & Quill

Rachel Caine

Read my review of Ash & Quill here!

Best New Discovery read in 2018:

Nevernight

Jay Kristoff

Read my summary review of Nevernight here!

Best Fantasy Novel read in 2018:

The Bear and the Nightingale

Katherine Arden

Read my review of The Bear and the Nightingale here!

Best Sci-Fi Novel read in 2018:

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

Read my review of Ready Player One here!

Best Historical Novel read in 2018:

The Miniaturist

Jessie Burton

Read my review of The Miniaturist here!

Best Contemporary Novel read in 2018:

Girl Meets Boy

Ali Smith

Read my review of Girl Meets Boy here!

Best Graphic Novel read in 2018:

Paper Girls Vol.5

Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang & Matthew Wilson

Read my summary review of Paper Girls Vol.5 here!

Best Poetry Collection read in 2018:

New American Best Friend

Olivia Gatwood

Read my summary review of New American Best Friend here!

Best Review Copy [not otherwise mentioned] read in 2018:

Spinning Silver
provided by Pan Macmillan

Namoi Movik

Read my review of Spinning Silver here!

(My review for Spinning Silver was also featured on Pan Macmillan's twitter!)