The Phoenix and the Firebird, Alexis Kossiakoff & Scott Forbes Crawford

Book Title: The Phoenix and the Firebird

Author: Alexis Kossiakoff & Scott Forbes Crawford

Date Started: June 15th  2024

Date Completed: June 23rd 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Historical

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

The Phoenix and the Firebird is charming, enjoyable and good fun. A welcome addition to the pantheon of children's fantasy, it weaves traditional storytelling from Russia (our protagonist's homeland) and China (where the story is set).

While the inspiration is directly explored through various mythical creatures from Chinese and Russian folktales, I wouldn't say the cultural identity was necessarily pivotal in these story elements; they could just as well have been any other fantastical creature or even completely new inventions and have served the same purpose. It also felt like we learn a lot more about Russian myth than we do about Chinese. It was a shame that the unique roots and meanings of the creatures were lost in the action, but didn't take away from the fun of the story.

The modern narration style often found in contemporary children's books (and Young Adult) never fails to ruin the immersion of a period setting. This book does well for the most part of balancing the stakes and threat with an appropriate sense of danger and security. It was only towards the final act when Lucy faced the villain that things just felt a bit too silly to buy into. At the moments when real, genuine danger and fear came into play, the book decides to fall into nursery rhyme rather than accessibly deal with the subject matter.

The True Queen, Zen Cho

Book Title: The True Queen

Author: Zen Cho

Date Started: June 2nd  2024

Date Completed: June 15th 2024

Genres: Historical, Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Two Star

Final Rating: Two Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

I suspected I was going to fins The True Queen challenging; I didn't like the first book despite its popularity, but in my quest to finish as many series as I can this year I decided to try again. Unfortunately, no luck.

It's been a while since I decided not to finish a book - but three sittings and 20% through was enough for me on this one. While the narrative is happy doing its own thing, it's the tone that is all over the place. Are these supposed to be children's books? They have the token 'charm' and confusingly dramatic but unthreatening stakes that I'm familiar with in stories with that audience - but there are lots of things that make me think it's probably intended for an older audience. I can see a lot of similarities with the writing of Diana Wynne Jones, but this just doesn't have that sparkle for me.

With all that being said, these vein of stories show we're clearly fascinated with updating and imaginatively evolving this setting. From Carnival Row to Bridgerton to The Paper Magician, regency (ish) England has become a popular backdrop to introduce diversity and a worldview beyond Europe into old fashioned modes of storytelling. It's an exciting opportunity to see through new eyes that I'm enjoying in some other forms, but this one just feels childish to me.

Queenslayer, Sebastian de Castell

Book Title: Queenslayer

Author: Sebastian de Castell

Series: Spellslinger #5

Date Started: May 5th  2024

Date Completed: June 2nd 2024

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Action

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

The Spellslinger books are always fun and easy reads with enough excitement and political sleight-of-hand to keep things interesting. I got the first two books for review years ago, so it says something that I'm still reading.

Queenslayer takes place in a new corner of this story's world, with Kellen and Reichis mostly going it alone. While this has happened before, I find it quite impressive that de Castell moves his protagonist away from the established ensemble to explore completely new things. It's something that almost never happens, with authors avoiding resetting the narrative, I suppose to stay in their comfort zone with relationships the audience already love. But Spellslinger is more exciting for it - and it's one of the reasons I keep coming back. Each book feels like a new story - properly, rather than the next chapter of the same old thing.

With that being said, I do ironically have to contradict myself by saying that each book's plot does end up quite repetitive - Kellen and Reichis insist they aren't friends until one of them gets attacked and fears for the other's life, Shalla turns up to gloat, we're introduced to the next female interest that Kellen studiously avoids making a love one, and we get roughly 5-6 daring escapes from insurmountable odds. The changing scenery is ultimately necessary to keep a familiar story fresh, but if it works it works!

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.