Red Queen

This is a world divided by blood - red or silver. The Reds are commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts, it seems like nothing will ever change. That is until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the balance of power. Fearful of Mare's potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime. But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous dance - Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own heart.

When my friend deposited this quadrilogy in my lap, declaring it utter trash but something I’d probably love, I was torn. On the one had; free books. On the other hand; what exactly was she saying about my tastes? I’ve heard plenty about the Red Queen series over the years (who in the YA blogging community hasn’t?) but had never got around to picking it up. Something about the blurbs always turned me off. They were too neat; hitting all the “bestseller” selling points and offering very little else. Still, free books are free books and I had a week’s trip to a remote Scottish island coming up, so I packed the books and dove in.

And was immediately glad I didn’t spend my hard-earned money on them.

I read somewhere that the author of Red Queen wanted to write “the next big YA series”. That to me is a pretty damning indictment of this book, and it shows on every page. There’s no heart, no passion in the story. Everything is cold, calculating and cynical. Everything YA trope is ticked off the list and every plot development can be seen coming a mile away because you’ve read it before in other (dare I say better?) books. You could play a YA trope bingo drinking game with this book, but you’d be dead from alcohol poisoning by the half way mark. I kid you not; you would actually die. The story itself is essentially The Hunger Games with X-Men powers. The first quarter or so of the book apes The Hunger Games so blatantly I’m amazed this was published without having some of the more glaringly obvious “similarities” edited out first. Surely I can't be the only one who felt this!?

My main issue with this book was the protagonist, Mare. Mare has it tough. She’s part of an oppressed underclass ruled by a rich and powerful city. A “capital”, if you will. Alongside her salt of the earth best friend and possible love interest, Gale Kilorn, she survives in her … let’s call it a district … by thieving and scavenging to feed her beloved family, especially her sheltered little sister. She dreams of running away to avoid what seems to be her inevitable, miserable end in life, but won’t abandon her family. After a few twists of fate, she ends up whisked away to the capital (with an "a"), a world of material excess, political intrigue and hot guys vying for her attention while she has to play up to the role created for her in order to save her skin and those of the people she loves. Oh, and then she becomes the face of an underground rebellion looking to use her as a pawn in their own machinations. 

Mare also complains. A lot. A secondary bingo drinking game, where you take a shot every time she sulks, whines or monologues about how unfair everything is, would see you dead from liver failure before you got through chapter three. Even when she’s been taken from her pitiful existence and taken to palace to be passed off as a long lost royal – even though this plan of action creates more problems for the evil king and queen than it solves – she doesn’t stop feeling sorry for herself. Sure, it’s not an ideal situation, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what she had going on before and puts her in a position to help a lot more people. If she quit feeling sorry for herself and chose to make the best of a situation, but that doesn’t appear to be her style.

In the desperation to make Mare the new Katniss, this book completely misses what made Katniss such a fantastic and relatable character in the first place. She wasn’t a unique snowflake who just needed to stumble ass-backwards into a situation where people would finally discover how special she was. She was just a normal girl who made rash decisions, and then had to live with the consequences of those decisions. Mare is not that. She’s the most special of all the superpowered people in this book, she just needed someone (a hot prince, of course) to discover just how incredible and special she is. Did I mention that she’s special? Everything she does is at the insistence or orders of other people. When she does finally make a decision off her own back by joining the rebellion, she makes a mistake so stupid I can’t believe it was passed off as a twist ending.

All the other characters are pretty standard across the board, with the two love triangle angles Cal and Maven coming off as bland at best and horribly calculated at worst. Cal in particular fell totally flat, with barely a defining characteristic to be found. His "romance" with Mare had absolutely zero heat, despite the obligatory learning to dance scene, and although his love/hate relationship wth brother Maven fared a little better, it was forced to take a backseat to the love triangle. Evangeline was your standard beautiful mean-girl who hated our protagonist because she was getting in her way of the men (apparently this is revealed not to be the case in later books, but I didn’t see much else here). The evil queen was evil. The puppet king was a puppet. The book was full of overly flowery prose that screams of an author writing her “profound” quotes first and then jamming them into the manuscript. If you’re not sure what lines are supposed to be quotable, don’t worry. They’ll often be italicised, lest we readers not know what to add to the Goodreads quotes section.

I give this book two stars instead of one because it was a very well written story and it's obvious that Victoria Aveyard is one hell of an author. Structure, pacing, writing style, all were top notch. Contrary to my friend's warning this book may be many things but it is not trash. If I felt like this author was telling her own story, writing from the heart, I probably would be giving this book raves. However the whole thing felt like a calculated exercise in producing a bestseller. If someone programmed a robot to write “the next big YA series”, Red Queen would be what it spat out. And, fair play, it was a success in that respect. But strip away the hype and the awards and you’re left with a basic book, and not a very original one at that.

The Cruel Prince

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself. 


DNF 70%

I was expecting to love this book. I really was. I’d head nothing but good things and was eagerly awaiting my copy weeks ahead of the delivery date. And I couldn’t finished it. I forced myself to keep reading despite putting in down countless times with no real desire to pick it up again until, finally, I gave up. Don’t get me wrong. The Cruel Prince is not a bad book (you only have to read the numerous glowing reviews to see that), but I found it an absolute crushing bore.

After being stolen from the human realm by her parent’s killer, Jude and her sisters grew up in the fairy realm under the roof of father-figure/parent-killer Madoc. Jude is desperate to be accepted by the fair folk, and when it becomes apparent that she never will be, she turns her attention to being better than them and winning a place as knight of the court. While all this plays out, she’s tormented by the titular cruel prince Carden and his gang of sidekicks. And this is my problem with the story. It’s juvenile in the extreme. Much of it revolves around Jude being cornered and bullied by Carden like a less satirical version of Mean Girls.

Seriously, this is pure high school drama. Sure, the fair folk’s magic gives these encounters a neat twist – like force-feeding Jude magical fruit that makes her incredibly suggestible – but this stuff felt a bit too cynically targeted at young people who go through severe bullying. Jude is presented to the reader as a capable, determined girl, but over and over again all I saw was a bitter, emotionally damaged girl who hates the popular kids while longing to be one. I didn’t connect with her at all, and so had little to no interest in her story.

On top of that, Jude's sort-of attraction to Carden was skin-crawlingly creepy. Hate-to-love is one thing, but portraying Carden as Jude's abuser, only to hint that she was attracted to him as a result, was beyond poor taste. I do not lie when I say these scenes genuinely left me feeling queasy. I was kind of confused as to why Jude was so comfortable living under Madoc's roof and protection too. She saw this guy murder her parents and she apparently harbours him no ill will beyond getting stroppy when he won't let her train to become a knight. She's about ready to kill Carden for cruel taunts, but apparently straight up murdering her parents before her eyes gets you nothing more than a side eye every once in a while.

I give this book two stars because it is incredibly imaginative and well-written. And if I was still in high school, maybe this book would resonate more with me, but I found the basis of the story to be in such poor taste that it soured the whole thing for me. Maybe the book picks up in the final act that makes the preceding 70% of Jude's suffering and misery worth it, but by that point I didn't care enough to find out.
 

Sunburner

No one said being queen was easy...

Kai, the newly-crowned queen of Miina, finds her reign threatened by a plague of natural disasters that leave death and destruction in their wake. Are the gods truly angry at the peace between the moon and sunburners, or is something more sinister to blame? Kai's throne and her very life may be forfeit unless she can appease the gods' anger and her peoples' superstitions.

Determined to find a solution, Kai and the Sunburner Prince Hiro embark on an extraordinary and dangerous journey to discover the true cause of the plagues. What they find is an ancient enemy determined to plunge their world into eternal darkness — and one desperate chance to save it.

Sunburner picks up a short time after Moonburner left off. Kai has taken her place as queen, with Hiro as her side, but the sinister prophecy about her rule looks to be coming true. Famine and disease are taking their toll on her people, and it seems the gods themselves aren’t happy with the alliance she’s forged with her old enemies.

Kai and Hiro’s relationship was all but absent from Moonburner. It was an unusual tactic from the author, but it worked. Keeping their romance on the backburner while they dealt with bigger issues made it feel genuine, rather than a shallow infatuation. Now, we finally get to see them together. And what a pairing. I loved seeing Hiro content to take Kai’s side without having to constantly prove his macho credentials. There was no possessive behaviour, no putting her in her place to make himself look like a big man. Theirs was at true partnership, and it showed.

It was a bit of a shame that Kai's relationship her sensei-esque fox Quitsu was a bit surplus to requirements this time around. With Hiro in the picture as Kai's confidant and supporter, Quitsu could have been left out in the cold, but the author managed to keep him in the story and maintain his close relationship with Kai without him feeling like a third wheel. Kai herself was easily one of the best things about this story, keeping it grounded as the odds became increasingly stacked against her. One of my pet peeves in YA fantasy - as much as I love it - are 'sassy' protagonists. I say sassy in inverted commas because, more often than not, I read them as rude, insufferable and arrogant. So it was wonderful to read a strong-willed, fiercely determined character who didn't once insult anyone, threaten them with violence if she didn't get her way or throw a tantrum when someone didn't show her proper respect.

Kai’s best friend Emi was back in Sunburner, much to my delight! This straight-talking, take-no-shit moonburner was one of my favourite characters in the last book. Her burgeoning relationship with bitter sunburner Daarco felt a bit trite at first, but the messages of forgiveness and growth that played out through it made it worthwhile. I had to love Emi putting the arrogant Daarco in his place time and time again!

The story itself – of an age-old war between gods and demons playing out to the detriment of the innocent humans that are caught up in its effects – felt like a huge step up from Moonburner. That’s not to say there was anything wrong with the first book’s story, it’s just that this felt like everything great from that book, turned up to 11. The stakes were higher, the world bigger and the consequences more severe. I loved the idea of the gods being somewhat weak and ineffective. It makes sense of course – they’d relied on the Burners they’d created to fight for and defend them – and was a great twist on the usual trope of the protagonist racing to raise an all-powerful being or uncover a magical MacGuffin to save the day, leaving the characters themselves in the dust. These characters weren’t going to be saved. They had to save themselves.

As for the ending … well, I won’t spoil anything, but it was absolutely note perfect. The story is wrapped up and the characters have come full circle, although the door is open for new stories in this world. And I, for one, will be snapping up any sequels.

The Evaporation of Sofi Snow

Ever since the Delonese ice-planet arrived eleven years ago, Sofi's dreams have been vivid. Alien. In a system where Earth's corporations rule in place of governments and the humanoid race orbiting the moon are allies, her only constant has been her younger brother, Shilo. As an online gamer, Sofi battles behind the scenes of Earth's Fantasy Fighting arena where Shilo is forced to compete in a mix of real and virtual blood sport. But when a bomb takes out a quarter of the arena, Sofi's the only one who believes Shilo survived. She has dreams of him. And she's convinced he's been taken to the ice-planet.

Except no one but ambassadors are allowed there.

For Miguel, Earth's charming young playboy, the games are of a different sort. As Ambassador to the Delonese, his career has been built on trading secrets and seduction. Until the Fantasy Fight's bomb goes off. Now the tables have turned and he's a target for blackmail. The game is simple: Help the blackmailers, or lose more than anyone can fathom, or Earth can afford.

I really hate rating this book so low for two reasons. First, Mary Weber’s Storm Siren trilogy is one of my all-time favourite fantasy series and I had high hopes for her next duology. Second, the themes, diversity and messages in this book are so, so important. I really admire what the author was going for here. From the ethnically and sexually diverse cast to the thorny subjects of human trafficking and political corruption, this series aimed high and deserves kudos for doing so. The problem was I just didn’t connect with the characters and found the story hopelessly confusing at times.

The book kicks off in the midst of the games; a partly computer generated and partly real fight between child gamers representing various corporations. But it was never really clear what was going on. The descriptions and information came so thick and fast that I struggled to keep up. It didn’t help that one moment characters were saying that players couldn’t get hurt by the games, but a few chapters later were talking abut actually injuries and potential death. Add into this the mentions of corporations that rule earth in place of a government and an alien planet floating nearby, and there was just too much going on, especially for a first book. It didn’t help that the details of the corporations, what they did and how they’d seized power, were never fully explained. Nor was the sudden proximity of an alien planet, either its history or how a new mass could suddenly appear next to earth without wreaking havoc with its environment.

The story moves at such a fast pace there really isn’t much time to get to grips with the society and world it’s taking place in. Random future words and non-sensical tech speak pepper the story ("hacking" is apparently another word for magic - that's the only explanation for some of the things computers can do here). Add to that the mystery of just what happened to Shilo, Sophie and Miguel’s tangled past and flashbacks to a sinister past Sophie can’t quite remember, and I was too confused by the story to be engaged by it.

I didn’t feel Sophie’s relationship, such as it was, with Miguel. Their backstory was too vague and briefly touched on (they almost had a thing, but he walked away and broke her heart) to make much impact. The relationship between Sophie and her brother Shilo fared much better. Their sibling bond was strong enough to make the lengths Sophie was willing go to to get him back believable, and it was nice to see the sibling relationship take priority over the romantic one. I wasn't a huge fan of Miguel's pov chapters either. Because the author had to withhold crucial information from the reader, his character constantly felt dishonest and I felt like I was being cheated.

If a character has information - especially the kind that Miguel did - it doesn't feel real when they go out of their way to avoid mentioning it, even in their internal dialogue. I lost count of the amount of times Miguel would start to think about his past, only to then stop dead in his train of thought and refuse to think any more about it. Maybe it was this that kept me from connecting with Miguel as a character and made his perspective on the story a low point for me. He also joins the ranks of YA characters with job ludicrously implausible given their age; in this case; Earth's ambassador to the alien ice planet at 16 years old! 

I really admire this book for the themes it tackles and the message it conveys, unfortunately these were wrapped in too many storytelling knots for me to enjoy it.

 

The Last Namsara

In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit, who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be darkness—and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death-bringer.

These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up learning in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn’t until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari—a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl.

Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she’s offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend—a slave boy from her betrothed’s household—Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her. 

Ass-kicking, dragon-hunting protagonist? Say no more, I’m there! That’s pretty much all I knew about this book going into it after receiving a copy in a subscription box, but it was all I needed to know. I was anticipating action and adventure, fierce females and far-away fantasy. And this book delivered it all, and then some!

Protagonist Asha is a dragon-hunter. She hunts and slays dragons to atone for inadvertently summoning a dragon that destroyed her city when she was a girl. Her people fear her. Her father, the king, names her Iskari after a vengeful goddess and uses her drive the last of “the Old Ways” from his kingdom. She’s betrothed to a glory-hunting jackass and only ‘one last (dragon-hunting) job’ can save her from his clutches. That’s probably as much detail as I can go into without starting to run off a synopsis of the book, but suffice to say, she’s badass.

It was up to the supporting characters to draw the real Asha out though, and they were a great cast! Asha’s slave-blooded cousin, Safire, was my personal favourite. Her brother Dax seemed like to much of an idiot through most of the story for me to believe as the heir to the dragon king’s throne, until revelation later in the story revealed that to not be the case. Of course, no such book would be complete without a love interest, which is where things started to unravel a bit for me. Torwin was…fine. Just…fine. He’s a slave to Asha’s royalty, so they had the whole Romeo and Juliet thing going on, but it felt a bit too by-the-numbers to be organic. I think I’d have preferred to read them as friends rather than would-be lovers. Asha’s relationship with her pet dragon Shadow – and later, *named redacted because spoilers* – was more believable. Torwin was a great character and played out the other side of Asha’s world perfectly, but their burgeoning romance felt forced. I wasn’t a huge fan of the way Asha turned to mush around Torwin. I get their slow burn romance and the author was showing the real Asha starting to emerge from the hardened shell she’s built around herself, but I just have a dislike of female protagonists going gooey ever time they’re in close physical proximity to the designated love interest. A love interest that, of course, smells great no matter what’s just happened to him. Seriously, is it too much to ask that a character acknowledges that their partner smells like they really need a wash?

The world-building in this book is absolutely fantasy perfection; enough to create a rich, vibrant world without bogging itself down in irrelevant details. Asha’s refined kingdom of Firgaard and the wild, free scrublands are pretty much the only places we hear about, but their history and cultures shine through, woven through the story seemingly effortlessly. The ancient stories that peppered the book itself were a lovely touch. As well as letting the reader see the tales which inspired such awe and fear, they were a clever way of sneakily feeding the reader the history of the world without glaringly obvious infodumps. 

The book is action-packed from start to finish and it ends pretty much perfectly. There’s plenty of scope for a sequel, but it also reads stand alone without dangling plot threads or unanswered questions that serve to annoy more than they entice. My kind of ending!