Waking Gods, Sylvain Neuvel

Book Title: Waking Gods

Author: Sylvain Neuvel

Series: Themis Files #2

Date Started: April 6th  2024

Date Completed: May 5th 2024

Genres: Science Fiction, Mystery

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

I remember really enjoying the first novel in this series when I got it for review a few years ago. It was science fiction but with a strong current of mystery, archaeology and human-centric drama and philosophy. Waking Gods wasn't quite the same experience with me, but I expect this is because it suffers from middle-book-in-a-trilogy syndrome. That and it features the most unconvincing ten-year-old ever.

The transcript style of prose gets old pretty quickly and loses its novelty - it worked pretty well in the first book but I think it loses the story's momentum once the mystery element has gone. The problem with just dialogue is also that you lose a lot of the subtext, and writers are tempted to be far too direct with their characters' intentions. And once you have more than two characters in a scene it becomes hard to follow - not the best for a character-based novel!

The story in general felt like filler; lots of weird mysterious events are introduced but with no real progress on uncovering them. I guess it'll be revealed in the final book of the trilogy, but it's always a frustrating experience to have to read a whole book with no satisfying resolutions and just more questions. I hope the final book balances the action and talking across both the plot and the relationships a bit more, so we get satisfying answers to the alien mysteries and vaguely convincing closure to the characters' arcs.

A Mind Full of Murder, Derek Landy

Book Title: A Mind Full of Murder

Author: Dereky Landy

Series: Skulduggery Pleasant #2

Date Started: March 30th  2024

Date Completed: April 6th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Action, Mystery, Adventure

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

The new Skulduggery Pleasant book always feels like coming home. And I think Derek's cycle-like series of varying lengths is the best way to revisit stories and characters without just rehashing sequels for the sake of it - they grow up and have something new to learn and explore and show us.

Do I remember everything from the last series? No. Did I do a double take when certain characters showed up? Maybe. Did I keep going and pretend I knew exactly what was happening? Absolutely. That being said, it's so impressive how wide and complex this world is now and that, for the most part, it isn't too difficult to fall back in and work off patchy memory of how it got there.

I've always admired Derek's ability to seed out series-long plot lines and mysteries while finishing off the individual story arc of each particular book. Every chapter is a joy rather than a necessary bit of story to get to the end. And these books, still, remain to be some of the few that have me laughing out loud. There's such perfectly placed tonal appreciation for culture, people and modern storytelling while being absolutely rooted in traditional forms of mystery, action and fantasy.

My only ongoing gripe with the new Skulduggery books is that I want and need more Tanith. It's like being a teenager constantly on the look out for your crush in the school hallways. I love that we get to see so many old favourites every now and then - as real life relationships end up being - and that there is space for new characters to step in too. But the OG four really are so beloved to me and they're still the scene stealers after all these years.

Eona, Alison Goodman

Book Title: Eona

Author: Alison Goodman

Series: Eon #2

Date Started: March 4th  2024

Date Completed: March 30th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

It’s been a long time since I read Eon, the first book in this duology. Upon revisiting the series, I found it just as wide and sweeping, but perhaps less grounded than what I remember of the first one. Regardless, it was definitely fun and captures the same epic scale that made Eon so impactful.

One of the key things that stuck in my memory around this series was how it tackled adult themes in a mature way; sexual abuse, court politics, gender identity, religion and extremism are all foundations for the world Eona finds herself in, and this second book once again does a really good job of introducing younger readers to these themes and tropes often used in epic fantasy in a largely responsible way.

My main gripe with this novel was actually in its romantic distractions; it gets a bit lost in its love triangle (that it also never fully commits to). I seem to remember Eon was refreshingly free from the YA tropes of teenage angst in favour of a varied cast of characters all with complex platonic and romantic relationships rather than labels. That’s not to say that those relationships aren’t still there, but we end up seeing far more of Eona’s forbidden love than her friendships and fractured alliances. The ending also leant into this - feeling similar to a Disney fairytale - and I found it quite old fashioned from an earlier era of the YA genre.

Eona is one in handful of books I’ve set out to read this year to finish various book series I started as a child/teenager. I’m not setting out to read everything - there are some I have no interest in revisiting - but Eona was definitely around the top of my list and I’m glad I picked it up. It was an enjoyable experience, even if I was able to notice its pitfalls more easily as an older reader.

A Crane Among Wolves, June Hur

Book Title: A Crane Among Wolves

Author: June Hur

Date Started: March 1st  2024

Date Completed: March 3rd 2024

Genres: Historical, Mystery, Romance

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

I’ve wanted to read a June Hur book for a long time, and I absolutely devoured this one as soon as I laid hands on it. It took me three days to read this whole novel, and the hype seems to be real because I can’t wait to pick up another one.

A Crane Among Wolves feels like a historical K-Drama in novel form; keeping the best bits of the genre, pacing and politics, and taking full advantage of the literary medium to spin out the mysteries, motivations and historical detail. If you read the Author’s Note at the end you’ll also find that a lot of the history is completely true - and Hur strikes a good balance between fact and fiction to tell her story as well as represent the true events.

I also adored the places Hur chose to use Hangul (the Korean language’s alphabet) and gently elaborate on some traditional elements that perhaps readers unfamiliar with Korean culture might not be familiar with. It’s so subtle that it doesn’t turn the book into a history lesson, but even as a intermediate Korean learner I appreciated.

This book also had the perfect balance of romance versus plot for me. I often moan about the distraction of love arcs in derailing many a Young Adult novel, but Hur has a lovely satisfying sub plot that exists alongside the core narrative. I had a lot of fun with this book and I look forward to the next.

The Cat Who Saved Books, Sōsuke Natsukawa

Book Title: The Cat Who Saved Books

Author: Sōsuke Natsukawa, Louise Heal Kawai (translator)

Date Started: February 26th  2024

Date Completed: March 1st 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Contemporary

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

Sarcastic cats leading humans on adventures, magical bookshops and morally challenged individuals remembering what lies beneath their misguided efforts? Someone please put this book in front of Miyazaki, it's a Ghibli adaptation waiting to happen.

Sometimes The Cat Who Saved Books is a bit on the nose with the story it's trying to tell - why books are precious despite the way some may use them for money, power or status in the modern world - but it's incredibly heartfelt. It feels like it could only be told this way against the landscape of Japan and its people's temperament, with their unique grasp of crippling modernity and intrinsic tradition.

While this story is absolutely universal, it feels quintessentially Japanese in its simplicity, adoration of feline souls and thoughtful philosophy that in itself says stop overthinking so much and recognise where you are right now. Where it critiques, it also says look beneath the surface; everyone's trying their best but some just need to be reminded to correct their course.

I also really enjoyed the translator's note from Louise Heal Kawai both in her recognition of the terms that remained in Japanese and the journey of translation itself. The love for books is palpable in both her and Natsukawa's writing, and Kawai highlights a fitting inspiration as the labyrinths Theseus travelled through to find the Minotaur in Greek mythology. Despite my background in mythology, I hadn't even spotted it while reading and that in itself is a testament to how this novel tells its own transformative tale that appreciates the history of storytelling, but proves that there is still endless magic they offer the modern world.

Mortal Gods, Kendare Blake

Book Title: Mortal Gods

Author: Kendare Blake

Series: Goddess War #2

Date Started: February 7th  2024

Date Completed: February 24th 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

The Goddess War series has such a fun concept. Placing these immortal figures in a place of complete vulnerability in the modern world as they slowly die to the things that used to give them power (Athena chokes on owl feathers, Ares begins bleeding from every cut he ever lived through, Artemis is hunted by her own hounds) is such an original idea that plays with these characters in a way beyond the shallow and loose interpretations I’m used to in contemporary reimaginings. This year, I’m working to finish some of the series I started as a teenager - but only the ones I care enough about. The Goddess War trilogy is firmly in that category.

While this book is mainly filler, the filler itself is engaging enough. There are a lot of ways these kinds of retellings can fall apart, and the main one is dependant on how much the author actually understands the source material they’re working with (not just the stories and the names, but the nuance of culture, honour, how different Ancient Greek values were to our modern ones - the stuff that thematically pulls everything together to feel real). It’s so refreshing to be able to say Kendare Blake really knows her stuff. Her background knowledge is adept, but so is her characterisation and where she grows it.

The characters are the really fun thing, and this book is basically just about them ahead of what I expect will be a more action-packed finale in Ungodly. I personally find the mortals more interesting as they grapple with their previous reincarnations starting to blend with their current lives and destinies. The gods who are slowly becoming mortal are often more intriguing in concept than their actual actions on the page. This was also the series that made me love Cassandra of Troy as a historical figure. I’d really hoped she’d get a little more screen time and development in this book considering she’s the pivotal anchor for the plot, but forward progression was slow in general. I’m willing to wait for her arc to resolve in the final book.

Not a lot happens in Mortal Gods - suspect this could’ve just been a duology like Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood series - but it’s fun and a real show of creativity around the ideas of myth, immortals, pain, legacy and new beginnings. I’ll happily be paying to get an out of print copy send over from the US and hope that a UK publisher will rediscover this little series and bring it back here.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden

Book Title: The Warm Hands of Ghosts

Author: Katherine Arden

Date Started: January 25th 2024

Date Completed: February 8th 2024

Genres: Historical, Fantasy, Mystery

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

War fiction isn’t generally a genre I’m interested in, but I’ve been homesick for the magic of Arden’s historical fantasy so didn’t hesitate to jump headfirst into this one. Her magical realism elevates any story and while The Warm Hands of Ghosts is far more rooted in reality than her other novels, the book balances both well to tell a story quite unique.

My one reservation about this novel was how slow it was to start. Arden takes real time to build depth in her characters beyond the typical war time portraits, but it’s more than a third of the way through before we get some actual fantasy. What becomes an almost timeless saga, seeing more sides to the war than trenches and hospitals, takes quite a lot of lead in time to grow in new directions.

The ‘some people cannot create, they can only use and destroy’ motifs are the real polish for me. While thematically it sometimes gets battered about, it is undeniably the core of a dazzling crescendo, and a very long thread tying each person and each story together. The narrative takes place over about a year or so, but far less consistently than we tend to be used to in modern novels - that thematic truth of nature is what marries it all together.

Laura herself is a great character to anchor the sweeping story, time period and ensemble cast. It could have been so easy to fall into stereotype but the brusque nurse doesn’t drown out the emotional person underneath - and likewise her logic is always there for Laura to fall back on in defence. Her identity, and her companions’, are crafted so well the story can be political without derailing the narrative for a moral high ground. Beliefs and actions are consistent because they align with the characters we are falling for.

I really do love Arden’s bittersweet style of storytelling. Everything always feels so rich and grim and exciting all at once. The Warm Hands of Ghosts harkens to so many references from folklore, to poetry, to music, to history and on and on. But her story feels uniquely original and new - and that’s hard to come by.