everember

[everember]

My Review for A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir (December 2020):

Be warned! be prepared for this book to cut your emotions down and then resurrect them to kick them into oblivion

Reading this book at a time when I was procrastinating and swamped with school? Not a good idea. Wouldn't recommend doing this. But the book was staring at me, just waiting for me to read it.

From the first page, I could just tell that Sabaa Tahir did not waver in her brilliant story telling. That she made her poetical writing into a story that let me experience the rawness of the construction of war. The destruction of war's creation, the humanity that is mourned with death and the power of life that war cannot fathom until it is upon us.

Since the power of the war absolutely seeped through the pages of this book, I knew I had to brace myself for a beloved character to die since Sabaa hinted that some might not make it. And of the main characters, I was nervous for them all.

Never in my life have I felt so much heartbreak. Never. All the characters go through it which bombarded me with the bleakness making me want to yell, sob, throw things, a full on tirade. But the tirade did not last too long.

A Sky Beyond the Storm is a fitting metaphor for how I saw this book. There was a storm of emotions, a tempest of the violence, the injustice, the rage. But then there was the sky, the hope, reaching for it beyond the storm to see the violence clear up and the happiness to descend. With the characters getting their ending, to bask in it.

"Love can be more powerful in a battle than planning or strategy. Love keeps us fighting. Love drives us to survive."

For the characters, I was all for Elias and Laia all the way. My heart broke for both of them. Elias my lost soul, I ached for his pain, the loss of his humanity and all that made him who is was. He wrestles with trying to supress his human side as the soul catcher but it tore me up, that he thinks he deserves it due to his past. His desire to serve penance to redeem himself, made his character one to be admired and his redemption story to be believable.

Laia was the character that I loved from the beginning and this book showed how her character developed. She was not just the ember in the ashes, she was whole fire, burning in her new found strength, fighting against the oncoming evil with the help of a friend, a friendship with Helene I was so there for.

Helene I was not a huge fan of her in the beginning but the second book altered my opinion a bit, the third book reveled in her badassry, and this fourth one really emphasized her will to be a leader. Though most of all what really gave her a well written arc was her striving to repent or make up for all that she represented and did as an unfeeling mask. Unlike Elias who recognized his sins and was sorry for them, Helene did not recognize them before but she made up for them by fighting for the everyone, not just her people.

I was also all in for Helene and Avitas in their quest for love but they were going through some battles of the heart along with their duties to as soldiers. The battlefield was where their hearts and minds lay, but it was not where the heart would be forever. Their story is one about endurance and the will to let yourself be loved.

One other character I wanted to mention was the nightbringer. Another of product of of Sabaa's brilliant writing skills, I could not resist mentioning him.

Sometimes in books, you love to hate the villain in the story but this was not all that I felt for the nightbringer. The nightbringer is supposed to be the 'villain' of the story and I emphasize villain because he is a complex one. I would not precisely call him the straight villain, he was a character that pushed past that designation. His characterization really challenged the barriers of what being a villain really means. That even though he is not human, he has a humanness to him in the love for his people, a desire to be loved, but also the capacity for hate. Since hate drives him, it consumes him to be the evil that give him his name which makes him more than a villain.

Although the nightbringer is all about vengeance, the characters remind us of the love that they hold, how it strengthens and motivates them. For me, this is what gave the story even more power since it is not just about saving the world, it is also about the love for those in it.

Overall, this series gave all that it could. It explored the human capacity for love, hate, survival, and the life that exists to hold these motivations in its hands. As one of my all time favorite series, it demonstrates the power that narrative can have. Characters with human flaws and strengths drive the narrative and give it meaning. The meaning giving it the power to endure anything

[everember]

My review of Plot Twist by Bethany turner:

At first I was totally going to talk about an anecdote to in my decision to read this but let's cut to the chase. Holy plot twist this book gave me whiplash.

The first thing you need to know is that the plot twist is already in the synopsis. The synopsis is pretty misleading and I absolutely hate it when I am misled by synopses (synopsises?). I have been misled before going in with all these expectations only to totally disappoint me. But yeah, I know (most of the time) when the little blurb doesn't want to give something away (the plot twist, of course) but this time, it was misleading in a way that made me want to strangle all the characters.

As a book about coincidences and ironies, I can deal with a few in rom-coms because let's face it, they're part of the whole LOLs of the love story. But this one had way too much. It was just too painful that way.

The biggest irony though which now makes me laugh in a sardonic way, is that this book refers to the song Ironic by Alanis Morisette and when I looked it up, I remembered how much I used to listen to it and like it but not really know it. And after they referred to it in the book, I couldn't help but get it stuck in my head while reading. Bad idea. The irony being, that now, when I listen to it, I'm going to remember this book and how much I disliked it. (But I'll still listen to it...sometimes).

The thing that really gave me whiplash though was me going back and forth from liking it to hating it. So basically I have a love/hate (but mostly hate) relationship with this book.

I can't give too much away without spoilers but I will say that it all goes back to the fact that the synopsis is pretty misleading and I am bitter and I wish this book went the way I thought because the characters also screwed up perception of themselves all on their own. It was that bad.

It was pretty obvious in the first quarter of the book where this story was going to go and I was not into it but I went through it more to see if it would go in a different direction. But nope, it didn't. Let's just say I was totally into Hamish Mcdougal, other love interests can go suck an egg.

So due to my mostly hate relationship with this book and due to the direction I saw this going in, I dragged myself through this, thinking about not continuing to read it all. Of course, the stupid saying, curiosity killed the cat got me, and I read it till the end...hating the ending even the big plot twist that disappointed me too.

The biggest catalyst to make me not like it though was that there was cheating. But I know, I know, I'm sitting here rolling my eyes, knowing that I have read other books and seen it in movies (a la The Notebook a fave of mine). But, I don't care if this spoiler gets out, in this book, it was about the best friend code or whatever version of the bro code there is for women. They didn't have any real good excuses and their circumstances were not so dire as to suddenly make smoochy face. It all made me yell in my head "WTF?" and for me I rarely swear.

This is why I avoid books with double dipping, and I was right to. It's gross and just makes all the things awkward afterward even if the characters are not feeling it, I am. I hated it in this book. It made me actually think that good thing there was no huge hot sexy moments. It would've made it weirder that way to me.

But for my overall opinion of this book, in the words of Alanis Morisette, "It's good advice that you just didn't take" my own advice of my conscience that told me to put this book on the TBR list and not read it for a long time