Her Radiant Curse

Book Title: Her Radiant Curse

Author: Elizabeth Lim

Date Started: June 10th 2023

Date Completed: June 28th 2023

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

*Thanks to NetGalley for this ebook for review*

Ultimately, this book was alright but not amazing. I enjoyed the changing landscapes, the rising stakes, and the vivid sense of time and mythos alongside the contemporary worldbuilding. However, overall, it held back on its characters, unable to let them flourish as they seemed to want to, which dampened the overall feel of the story.

I could feel towards the end that things didn't seem to be resolving themselves, which of course is because Her Radiant Curse is a prequel to the Six Crimson Cranes duology. I love those books dearly, and I have to say that this is the most involved, engaging and satisfying prequel I've read in a long time - so much so that I forgot it was a prequel for most of it. But, it's still a prequel and at the mercy of meeting certain plot points and having limits to its character's arcs.

Impressively done within its own confines, Her Radiant Curse unfortunately falls into the pitfalls of many prequels, though it's a fun journey to get there.

Hell Breaks Loose

Book Title: Hell Breaks Loose

Author: Derek Landy

Series: Skulduggery Pleasant

Date Started: June 14th 2023

Date Completed: June 19th 2023

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Action, Historical, Mystery, Horro

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

Hell Breaks Loose is a very entertaining and cleverly placed adventure with our favourite characters from the Skulduggery Pleasant universe, while we await the last book to the sequel series to release. While I would rather the multiverse would stop infiltrating literally every form of media, it's undeniably hats off to one of the few franchises that actually puts effort into its spin-offs, embedding them so well in the main overarching universe while being entirely enjoyable on their own.

This story wasn't what I expected, while simultaneously being precisely what I should have seen coming. Once it gets into the swing of things, it's the classic action-adventure I fell in love with as a child, alongside the good old-fashioned drama and comedy that my adult self appreciates even more so.

The action is always so impressively written; it flows, the chaos is vivid, the movement articulate. You can see it playing out, startingly, in your head like a movie. And, always, Derek plays with violence and conflict and pain in an accessible way without glorifying it; action scenes leave scars, people get hurt, people are conscious of their actions. Those are all factors that so often are just left behind because they're heavy, and even more so with characters who you're supposed to root for without descending your book into discussions on moral philosophy. Derek touches on the dark, but has such an appreciation for the light (be it comedy, characterisation, motivation) that he can do both.

Hell Breaks Loose isn't my favourite in the series, but it's absolutely grounded in its universe, and fully appreciates its place and opportunity. This book is fun and easy to read in a way that a series sometimes limits; it's just what I needed for a little summer holiday action.

Atalanta

Book Title: Atalanta

Author: Jennifer Saint

Date Started: May 28th 2023

Date Completed: June 10th 2023

Genres: Historical, Adventure, Romance

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

I struggled a lot with Atalanta, for many of the same reasons I struggle with a fair few classical retellings; ‘strong independent woman’ who does still need a man in her resolution, reimagining a known tale from a different perspective but ultimately just making the protagonist be an observer, throwing in a bunch of references but not really executing what they thematically mean and missing out on the true wonder of these beloved myths. That being said, I do want to give it credit for not being entirely depressing, which I think is another common pitfall with female retellings of Greek myths.

I don’t think there was a lot of personality in this story, it was just the straightforward sequence of events of the Argonauts from a slightly different angle. While I appreciate that some myth retellings become hard to follow from how much effort being put into making it ‘different,’ I feel like the wonder and the glory, the characterisations and the morality is just lost. I also feel that this book, while reinventing a classical tale to make space for female stories, just came across ignorant to reality while still referencing misogyny and taking part. Atalanta didn’t really conquer anything, not because it wasn’t there, but because it didn’t seem to affect her.

The ending is so hilariously ironic, and sums up my frustrations with this book; we’re going to make fun of and look down on all these ‘womanly’ women throughout the story and be strong and independent (which mostly manifests as making judgements as we stand at the sidelines watching the actual story happen) with very little nuance, but our resolution will still rely on us falling in love with a man who tricked us (but it’s okay because we let him).

The Beautiful Ones

Book Title: The Beautiful Ones

Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Date Started: May 13th 2023

Date Completed: May 28th 2023

Genres: Romance, Historical

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

The Beautiful Ones was definitely more romance focused than I had expected after reading Mexican Gothic, though the setup and many themes carry through; this is Regency era politically infused love schemes with Moreno-Garcia's signature stylistic flair. Honestly, it's not my kind of genre, namely because I find characters who act this way very hard to get behind - but kudos is due to the book for giving tempered backstory so characters' actions are motivated. Unfortunately, I still didn't really enjoy reading any of the perspectives.

There's an awful lot of preamble for a final crux that wraps up startingly fast and neatly. The first half of the book acts essentially as a prologue for the latter, and I wished it hadn't felt so separate and detached. I also felt the magical elements were underused and more like some aesthetic feathers than built solidly into the world, which I found a little disappointing as the concept was interesting and felt at times like it could have contributed to raising tension and political pressure. In the end, it was just sort of displayed and left alone.

Much of this book, from the early plot to worldbuilding, was necessary for the final beats but felt largely included just for the deus ex machina. The distinction between the 'beautiful ones' of the title and everyone else felt tagged on for an explicit status divide but not followed through with lore or actual politics. While this is predominantly a love story, I had hoped that the background framing everything and so deliberately thought about would be more than just a background in the end.

The Bone Shard War

Book Title: The Bone Shard War

Author: Andrea Stewart

Series: The Drowning Empire #3

Date Started: April 21st 2023

Date Completed: May 13th 2023

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

The Bone Shard War wasn't what I was expecting from the final instalment in Andrea Stewart's glittering trilogy, and while I was disappointed at the absence of real adventure the previous books had, I undeniably loved revisiting these characters and seeing their tales come full circle. I was also impressed by how easily I remembered names and backstories, and that's a real testament to the previous books that I could fall so easily back into this world.

My reservation around this final book is around the lack of momentum, and how isolated it felt from the rest of the series. The story took a significant transition at the end of the last book (as trilogies often so), but the time jump forced the story to have to generate its own momentum all over again, rather than riding from the wave already created. Separating the characters created more self-deprecating internal monologuing than actual tension - though it's interesting to remember that the first book was largely structured with individuals on their own paths, and it worked well back then. I feel like the internal motivations for our ensemble have been existing in an increasingly complicated political system, but their internal through-lines should always be the same within that. With so much going on in this final book, that felt a little lost.

The story itself, while I'm sure conceived early into the series, felt like it was going in circles to reach its finish. Any seeds planted for later resolution felt very obviously done so (and highlighted in this final book rather than previous ones) and the reveals came so thick and fast, but sort of unrelated to the core characters arcs we were attached to - that they were ultimately unsatisfying. In hindsight, some of the worldbuilding and reveals were very clever and cool, but in the moment reading them I felt no dramatic tension or epiphany, which was a shame.

The Bone Shard War was still enjoyable to read (I promise) and will remain one of my favourite trilogies, and it was nice to see the story wrapped up well enough. The characters for the most part had their fitting ends - it just felt sadly flimsy how we got there.

The Screaming Staircase

Book Title: The Screaming Staircase

Author: Jonathan Stroud

Series: Lockwood & Co #1

Date Started: April 12th 2023

Date Completed: April 21st 2023

Genres: Adventure, Mystery, Horror, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Double Day for this proof copy for review (from 10 years ago, I'm sorry) ◆

Having enjoyed the show, and receiving this proof copy in the mail about a decade ago, I thought it was time to have a little easy read from my TBR. The first Lockwood & Co book was good fun, exciting and spooky, and just the sort of thing I was looking for. Like the show, the well-balanced mix of worldbuilding and fantasy building, fleshing out parallels and similarities with our own reality, was pretty key in making the spoopy ghost-hunting adventures feel more mature and complex, with bigger enemies clearly at play behind the curtain and waiting for the heroes to find them.

It's fair to say that the recent Netflix adaptation is really quite faithful to the book, though this first novel instalment takes up a mere couple of episodes as the start of the tv series. On reflection, of course it was destined for Netflix glory as its episodic style, with multiple seemingly unrelated threads all tying together into a chilling finale is the perfect source material for such creations. And, even though I know the story and its twists, I still found experiencing it in its original medium engaging.

The most significant area of surprise for me was how unkind to its characters the prose is. There are constant jokes about George's weight (there isn't a single time he's referenced that doesn't include exaggerating his size) and Lucy 'smiling prettily' to get her way and being more 'sensitive to emotions' than the boys. Look, I don't think it's unfair to say that it hasn't aged very well in the last 10 years. That had no small part in making me appreciate the TV show and how well it adapted the story, developing areas of weakness and utilising the cinematic and enthralling mysteries and themes.

Unfortunately, the early 2010s attitude of body shaming and casual sexism isn't honestly something that fills me with a great desire to continue the series in book form, though I hold big hopes for the continuation of the more culturally-conscious Netflix adaptation bringing me more exciting ghost-hunting adventures with (their version) of the gang.

Jade City

Book Title: Jade City

Author: Fonda LEe

Date Started: March 12th 2023

Date Completed: April 13th 2023

Genres: Thriller, Fantasy

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

I wasn't expecting an incredibly detailed and political gangster-clan war story when I picked this up. And yet, while it came as a surprise to me, you can't oppose that the hype is founded; Lee's grasp and exploration of sometimes incredibly violent, sometimes incredibly vulnerable, complex characters - her humanisation of them and ability to lift them beyond their actions alone, into their motivations, vices, and ambitions - rival and surpasses classic gangster or even epic fantasy tropes.

It's undeniable that the worldbuilding is simply lush. The fantasy elements are so naturally constructed and fit into the story it comes across closer to magical realism, where the fantastical elements heighten the stakes and drama of the otherwise familiar characters, dynamics and narrative.

If you enjoy watching characters you've come to feel (for over the course of years in-story) making terrible decisions, and yet being unable to disagree with them, then this is probably going to be a wild ride for you - and a very good one.