#Genre: ya

[dracereads]

Heartstopper V1 | Alice Oseman | ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was a birthday gift from one of my IRL friends. I have never read Heartstopper before, and this is my first experience with it! synopsis: Charlie and Nick sit next to each other during a new semester at school, and Charlie convinces Nick to join the Rugby team. Shenanigans ensue!

my thoughts: what a lovely little comic! It was easy to follow, and the characters are so cute. I thought it was going to be a lot more complex that it was, and I am so sorry that I have been putting it off for as long as I have. Honestly, I can see why it's so popular now, LOL. I'll try to acquire more volumes soon to continue this little story. and I am so fucking sorry that it took me like 3 months to read babe

[bookmovieaddictee]

His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire #1) by Naomi Novik

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire.

📖📖📖📘📘

Okay, second time writing this, let’s go! 

I completely forgot I never posted a review, so I sat down to get right to it. Wrote up a lovely piece full of feelings, reactions, and the like— and wrote up many other pending reviews! Then, Tumblr raised me a big fucking middle finger because I accidentally hit CTRL+Z instead of CTRL+X (I had wanted to change the position of a paragraph) and…

The Whole Damn Thing was gone. 

Enough about me, we’re all here for the books. Fictional struggles are so much more exciting than the nuisances of daily life. 

This is another one of those books that have been on my to-read list longer than ten years. I found it out when I was in my Age-of-Sail, POTC, Golden Age of Piracy obsession. Amistad, Master and Commander, One Piece, Island of the Blue Dolphins— if it was media centered around the 17th-19th century and had boats, I would try to consume it.   

Plus…dragons!

Never mind that a bitch couldn't swim, nor ever seen a damn boat in my life.

Or a dragon for that matter.

This book falls way more on the historical fiction side than the fantasy— truly a fantastic epic of the high seas! It’s very historically accurate, which just leads to the depth of worldbuilding. At first, Laurence as a narrator felt a little like dry toast at first, but as the story goes on, I feel a warmth for the character. Duty drives him, but it’s really his love for Temeraire and his genuine respect for his peers that drive his actions, and I’m weak for a heroic hero. I also really like how Novik makes Laurence a product of his times— no anachronistic virtue-signaling in this piece. It’s his environment and the people he engages with that guide the growth of his character, and it’s this facet of plot that kept me returning to this book eagerly. 

The other star of this story is of course the eponymous dragon— Temeraire. His blue and orange morality, innocence yet canniness, and attachment to Laurence make him one of my favorite characters in this book. 

The action scenes are where this particular book shines. It slows down near the middle, which is typical of Novik’s novels, but the ending battle was just 

Overall, the first book felt like the origin story movie. Slow, character focused, worldbuilding is central to the plot, but if you're invested in the universe, you'll certainly pick up the next book—which I did!

[misireads]

Myrrys ("Sage") by Anniina Mikama

[ physical book, read in finnish ]

a charles dickens-esque story with a sprinkle of magic set in the kainuu region of finland in the famine years of early 1800s, niilo is an orphaned boy living in poor conditions as a slave in a wealthy-ish farmer family. his life is shit, especially thanks to the cruel master of the house, but he cannot complain since the family bothered to take him as a small child when his mother died. one day a local sage takes niilo as his apprentice as the payment for curing the family's son's leg that's mauled by a bear. niilo is scared of the sage at first because of his reputation as a witch doctor doing black magic in the middle of the woods, but the man turns out to be a fine lad and the first person ever who treats niilo as an equal human being. they live together for almost a year, going through all sorts of experiences and little adventures together, and become close friends. niilo comes to love the wilderness and the forest and also learns some magic from his new master. although niilo's life has drastically improved, the fact that it did angers the asshole father of his old home who continues being a menace to both him and the sage until the bitter end. on the side, niilo begins to learn more about his late parents, what really happened to them, and what kind of future they intended for him.

➕ so this is a YA book, it was in the children's area at the library, so it has a juvenile vibe that softens the harsh themes a lot. it's a mid-length book, almost 400 pages, and somehow felt simultaneously very long, like the story felt very big for a book of this length, but was fast to read because there's a lot happening all the time also due to the YA nature probably. there are several episodic chapters where niilo and martin go hunting, niilo helps a man out of a frozen lake, etc.

➕ martin the sage is a very sympathetic character, i liked him a lot. niilo has less personality but he's meant to be the young hero character coming from poor conditions and thriving when someone actually likes him and gives him the chance, i find that very dickens-like. there aren't exactly any flaws about him, he's perfect at just about anything he does in the entire book, his "flaw" is that the farmer family doesn't like him. the real MVPs of the story are the pastor who helps niilo to reconnect with his family and the farmer family's son who has the truest character development arc.

➕ the finnish mythology elements

➕ beautifully written, this author's commitment to descriptions of nature and especially the woods is no joke

➖ i don't really like stuff set in historical finland, like the aesthetics of this sort of old-timey living conditions shit are off-putting. i don't even care about museums with this theme or anything.

➖ i was expecting this to have more fantasy elements… the first spread before the real book begins opens with a spell in the archaic finnish style so i really thought that was supposed to set the tone, but it was just kind of a minor element in here after all. i mean it's important, niilo saves the day with his forest magic several times, but overall… just not as much mythology stuff as i expected. honestly my expectations got in the way once again because i was hoping this would be like teen lit about finnish mythology set in modern times so when i realised very early on it's not, it kinda flattened my mood and the start was very slow for me because i was like ehh… meehhhhh…. a farm house in northern(ish) finland in the 1820s….. bleh.... do i have to read this.....

➖ juhani the master of the farm house is such a comically evil character. but i feel like that too is a dickens-esque character archetype? there's the mean, wealthy man who turns out to be fradulent on multiple fronts and it comes down to the young hero to prove it to everyone. still, i just kind of wanted someone to grab an ax and toss it at his head like, five pages in

⭐ score: 4 -- i teared up reading the final page and am not even sure why, maybe some line struck a chord or it was just the story coming to an end. but i never cry at anything so that has to be the sign of a great book

[darkwithasharpenededge]

YA Horror Is Not My Thing: A Review of When Ghosts Call Us Home by Katya de Becerra

Rating: 55/100

Summary: I read the whole thing in like two and a half hours, and only sort of enjoyed it. What is it with YA books and a tendency to have just the vaguest outlines of characters? It just was not very good, weak characters, like the author ran down a list of characters needed for a YA novel and included them all. Scheming adult, love interest, blah blah blah. None of the characters other than the main character receive any real character development. I liked the horror movie framing of the whole thing, but it was by no means a good book, or even a bad book that's suited to my tastes. I spook easily, and while this wasn't too scary for me (I would have DNFed it if it was), it was just on the edge, so I read the whole thing in a state of nervousness for when it would become too scary for me and I would have to ditch out, which I'm sure makes me more critical to the book overall. It also has that YA writing style that I dislike so much. Someone remind me why I decided to read this again instead of doing something I would have liked better.

Final Verdict: If I read another horror book this year, point me at this review.

Review Word Count: 221

[langernameohnebedeutung]

ngl, I'm beginning to take issue with how in conversations about anti-intellectualism almost automatically, the face of girls and women will be slapped on the problem.

[fuckmeyer]

the choice between Edward & Jacob is not a question of which relationship is healthier or which partner is best suitable for Bella. neither is correct. neither is best. neither produces a happy ending for Bella. at the end of the day this is still a vampire novel. any choice Bella could make would yield, at best, a bittersweet happily ever after.

if she chooses Edward, she gets the terrifying Breaking Dawn ending: a girl who rejected her call to grow up has hung her love & her eternity on an emotionally stunted partner who hates himself marginally less than he loves her. she's a teen mom with a kid she never wanted who perpetuates the generational trauma passed down from her parents. by keeping this child, the Cullens have set the stage for an uprising/cold war against the Volturi who are likely to take revenge in order to maintain power. Bella is living in a tenuous "dream come true" wrapped in a nightmare & doesn't realize it.

choosing Jacob is the true coming-of-age ending that rips the stitches out of a wound that never fully healed. even if we ignore the fact that she ends up with a man who sexually assaulted her (we must bear in mind Jacob's character is influenced by smeyer's racism, but it did happen), they can't have a secure romantic relationship. based on the high imprinting rate of the pack, Jacob will likely find his imprint in his lifetime & will lose himself to the imprintee. he will no longer be her Jacob. he will inevitably abandon her (whether he wants to or not), & she must reconcile with the reality that she will always be inadequate to Jacob's imprint. & say he never manages to escape the vampires? he will presumably not age for a long time, meaning the relationship Bella always feared with Edward (her being an old grandmother while he stays forever young) remains a possibility. this is the story of a girl who slaps a Band Aid on an open wound & calls herself healed while flinching every time she sees the shadow of the knife that cut her.

if she chooses neither (team therapy), her healing requires her to lose or be at least partially disconnected from everyone she cares about. Bella must spend the rest of her life shut out from one world while never fully existing in her human world ever again. she must always keep secrets. she can never go back home. even in the unlikely event that she manages to escape the Volturi, the threat of being hunted by vampires will never leave her. in addition, she must face her worst fears (aging, losing Edward) while always keeping in mind the immortal life that could have been hers, if only.

even the "healthiest" option produces scars that will never quite heal.

Twilight is a horror. Twilight is a vampire novel. Twilight is gothic. Twilight is fiction. neither Edward nor Jacob is a "bad" choice because neither will give Bella her happily ever after. the choice between Edward & Jacob is simply a matter of which horror story you prefer to read.

[shizunitis]

how fucked up would it be if shen yuan transmigrated into shen qingqiu because bing-ge had an errant thought of ‘i wish he was kind to me’ in the woodshed literally nanoseconds before the switch?

the system couldn’t figure out how to give shen yuan to bing-ge, or it simply didn’t care enough to figure out the logistics of setting up such a divergence. as long as the possibility was explored in an alternate simulation-type setting, it would be satisfied.

he inadvertently created a better life for himself, but not one he’d ever get to live.

[mylifeisjustafeverdream]

If I had a nickle for everytime one of my favorite book series was adapted into a single mediocre movie with bad writing but great casting choices that had all the sequels cancelled AND a mid teen show that's fine on it's own but horrific as an adaptation that also got cancelled AND had Dominic Sherwood playing a main character.... I'd have 2 nickles, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

[tunisian]

what colleen hoover did to literature is what rupi kaur did to poetry

[painfully-unoriginal]

okaaayy

[dracereads]

The Boy in The Red Dress | Kristin Lambert |⭐⭐⭐⭐

read: a good example of function over form

synopsis: It's New Years Eve 1929, and a swanky party is taking place in French Quarter Speakeasy. Tensions become high when a young woman with ties to the stage performer, Marion's, past emerges and threatens to tear down her life around her. However, all that gets turned on it's head when the young woman ends up murdered in the courtyard of the bar, with the blame all to easily falling on the queer person she had a reasonably expected altercation with. My take: Like I stated in the read, the easy way to sum this book up is function over form. There is a very workable detective story here. All the pieces are in place, the characters are lovable, and the outcome wasn't something that I reasonably saw coming.

However, the form that this book takes is what's my main issue with it. The 1930s setting of the book appears more as a backdrop for the characters to participate in rather than a commentary on the time. None of the characters participate in the time, so much as they all actively rebel against it. Which makes me wonder why the author wanted to use this time period if she wanted literally none of her characters besides the villains to be period appropriate.

There are a few well-placed damages and wounds that are period appropriate, but for the most part the contention of the setting does not pair well with the contention of the story. There are a litany of OOPs that the author didn't have time to flesh out, or just didn't understand she was making. If the author had made any sort of inclination that this was going to be her intention for a good story, and we could fuck off if we didn't enjoy it, then I would have been more prepared for it and less critical overall. As a historical novel, this one just makes me purse my lips. However, as a queer novel, it is quite functional and I enjoyed it for what it was. Please don't take my nitpicking as a sign that this wasn't a good book though. I really did enjoy it, and I was glad I stuck a bookmark in it to save it for New Years Eve proper.

[poisonbooknerd]

Storm Chaser

Storm Chaser Lindsey Duga The first in a new series The Storm published by Entangled Teen on October 31st, 2022 Storm Chaser Rating: goodreads storygraph Chasing dangerous storms is in Marley Pascal’s blood. For her, it’s an obsession—a need to confront the powerful, destructive forces that killed her parents.But the storm she and her brother track down seems to violate the very laws of…

[honourablejester]

Every time I go back and watch Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, I’m amazed all over again by the panoply of genres this movie and the VHD setting in general indulges in.

The story is set in “the distant future, where vampires rule the night but their numbers are dwindling”. It sort of plays like a weird techno-gothic post-apocalyptic sci-fi western? Over the course of Bloodlust, we start out in a cross-bedecked gothic city, head to a meeting in a ruined church straight out of western, complete with rifle-armed cowboys on guard, go full fucking Dune in the middle with D riding his biomechanical horse across the back of field-sized sand manta rays migrating across a massive duned desert, head to a small canyon town that's a hideout for various yokai, stop off at a roman ruin in a lake and a massive science fiction stronghold with a mirror-cloaked exterior and automated defense lasers, before heading to the final showdown in the massive crimson techno-gothic castle of Carmilla the vampire queen, which doubles as a spaceship. Because the vampire D has been pursuing this whole time wants to go to the endless night of space to be with his love.

The team of hunters competing with D are armed with, variously, a massive fucking hammer, an absolutely ridiculous arm-mounted crossbow that launches roughly 2000 silver arrows a second, a singularity shooting pistol, and an astral self that flies around the battlefield like an angry sparkly ghost that shoots lasers.

Conveyances include said already-mentioned biomechanical horse, a horse-drawn carriage drawn by similar horses, a full-on motorbike, a massive armoured motor truck-slash-tank, and also said previously-mentioned spaceship.

Let’s just say the aesthetic is simultaneously all over the place, and weirdly unified. It’s a far flung dystopic future run by gothic creatures of the night, after the slow apocalypse that has led to their dwindling. So you have futuristic technology and gothic medieval sensibilities in bizarre but functional post-apocalyptic union. It’s really cool.

Possibly helped by the fact, mind you, that this movie is just stupidly beautiful and so gorgeously animated that you’ll forgive it a lot of sins. But it isn’t actually committing too many. The weird genre blend makes sense, and the vibe is cool and coherent enough that you’ll roll with it.

[misireads]

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

[ physical books, read in english ]

a four-part sci-fi/fantasy romance & action series inspired by classic fairy tales (and sailor moon, apparently). each part introduces one new heroine and her romantic relationship into the plot. the story is set in far-off, futuristic post-WW4 version of the earth where the continents have been divided into just a few very large countries, and the moon is its own colonised planet named luna whose inhabitants for whatever reason have psychic abilities to manipulate other people both physically and mentally by entering their minds. luna has been ruled by an authoritarian tyrant queen ever since its real princess died in an accident and has been isolated ever since. meanwhile, the earth has been plagued by a widespread pandemic that has no cure.

#1 Cinder: cinder is a cyborg mechanic living with her asshole stepmother and two stepsisters in "the eastern commonwealth" a.k.a somewhere in east asia (china??). one day, cinder is asked to fix an android for the commonwealth's prince and they become acquainted. this starts a chain of events where she begins to figure out what the plague tormenting the earth is really about, eventually finding out that [spoilers for pretty much everything from here onwards] she's not only immune to the disease but also a lunar and the real princess of luna who got turned into a cyborg instead of dying. also the commonwealth's emperor dies and prince kai becomes the new emperor, and then the evil queen of luna wants to marry him in order to create a new-found alliance between the earth and luna. cinder crashes a ball at the royal palace to warn kai that the queen actually wants to kill him and is imprisoned in the process.

#2 Scarlet: scarlet is a girl from france europe whose grandmother has gone missing. one day she meets a wolf-like street fighter guy (who's unimaginatively called wolf throughout the story) who turns out to be part of the group that has kidnapped her grandmother, so they leave on a journey to go look for her in paris. wolf is eventually revealed to be a bioengineered supersoldier serving the lunar queen levana but scarlet is just too sexy so he falls for her and starts defying his master. meanwhile in the eastern commonwealth, cinder escapes from prison with an american fugitive named thorne who has stolen a military spaceship. they also go looking for scarlet's grandmother for plot reasons, and scarlet turns out to be the granddaughter of the doctor who turned cinder into a cyborg after saving her from the accident that supposedly killed the lunar princess. they all escape together with the stolen spaceship.

#3 Cress: cress is a giftless lunar girl who's been orbiting the earth in a satellite in secret, hidden there by one of the lunar queen's closest servants to be used for hacking jobs whenever needed. she gets in contact with cinder&co with her crazy tech skills and asks them to save her, but her captor finds this out and a showdown ensues where the satellite crashes to earth with her and thorne in it, scarlet is captured by the lunars and taken to luna, and a random lunar guard who piloted cress's captor's spaceship joins cinder's side. cress and thorne land in a desert and hike through it together until they meet a group of lunar traffickers who kidnap cress but take her to the same hotel that cinder&co are residing in after travelling to africa for plot reasons. the reunited group start planning an infiltration of luna to stop the wedding between the lunar queen and kai and to end the queen's reign for good.

#4 Winter: winter is queen levana's stepdaughter and loved by everyone in luna for being the most beautiful girl ever, but she suffers from the lunar disease of refusing to use her gift to manipulate others. turns out that the captured scarlet is being kept as winter's human pet in the lunar royal palace, and the rebellious lunar guard, jacin who joined cinder's side is winter's love interest, childhood friend, and unofficial personal knight. once he's back in luna, the queen asks him to murder winter because the people love the princess too much and she's a jealous bitch. jacin instead helps both winter and scarlet to escape from the palace. meanwhile cinder&co carry out their plan to infiltrate luna. this book is asses long and i'm too lazy to summarise it all for myself here but basically they all reunite in luna and incite the plan to dethrone levana by rallying the common people of luna against her and also get some of the bioengineered wolf soldiers to turn against her and all kinds of things happen. also cinder and kai somehow became a couple throughout all this despite almost never being in the same place. also also there's iko the android who's one of the best characters but idk how to include her in these summaries, she's cinder's sidekick and the best

➕ love the fairy tale theme. anything to do with fairy tales just wins me over immediately no matter how many times it's been done already, i don't care

➕ i adore the characters, i pretty much liked them all. which is rare for me. i like the ships also even if i'm not usually really into this kind of het shit where each girl has a designated boy and then they're so very heterosexual together and whatever, but this one did it in a comfy way for me. maybe it's because i genuinely found myself fangirling over thorne/cress kinda hard in the third book, fave ship hands down (and thorne is my favourite guy, what a himbo playboy, also the last book kind of hinted a bit that he may not be straight so i'll take it.) i feel more ambivalent about kai/cinder who didn't get all that much time together so it felt a bit "he's a boy, she's a girl, what more do you need" plus wolf/scarlet is kinda ehh i felt kinda meh wahtever about the whole wolf pack thing. which resulted in me kinda shipping cinder and wolf in the last book tbh? but like i don't mind the actual ships, it's all good

➕ world buildiiiiing… this is a bit embarrassing to admit but this is one of the few sci-fi novels i've read. i haven't liked the genre super much before (because it often feels a bit. complicated with the science stuff) but this could act as a gateway series? lol

➕ idk i just really enjoy the way marissa meyer's prose flows. it's a lot like how i want to write myself. i'd say it's a lot like how i do write but that would be a bit too flattering towards myself but you know what i mean

➖ once you're finished with the whole series and have the whole picture of its tone, this isn't such an issue anymore, but. a lot of what happens to the characters here is painfully inconsequential. like a character gets hurt or something such happens to them, you're like ohh noo!!! but then the thing is fixed later so nothing permanently bad happens to them after all and you're just. oh. okay. like for example thorne losing his eyesight but then it's just, cured within a couple of pages in the beginning of the next book. there were times when it felt like meyer chickened out from doing anything truly consequential with her characters. but then again, at the end i was kinda happy giddy about the happy ending for everyone soooo

➖ while i say i do like the ships… they were also all painfully similarly written once they got together. extremely similar making-out scenes for all of them, everyone going all horny immediately. and since there's four pairs total by the end, it got repetitive and suddenly lacked so much of the personality the characters have otherwise. kai and cinder especially were somehow wow wait whahaha would either of them even know how to like, kiss someone. cress also, why would she be like a natural at this stuff when she's spent her whole life in a satellite in space consuming unrealistic romance shit

➖ i adored the last book but it also started getting seriously messy with all the changing perspectives. the first book pretty much only has cinder's PoV, maybe kai in there iirc?? anyway by the fourth book there are not only eight PoVs of the four pairs but also iko, levana and adri, at least. i mean… i don't HATE changing PoVs but… it's a lot. and sometimes you don't hear of a character in reaallly long when there's 10 different ones to rotate. meyer did a good job at keeping it together regardless but like, really. and my 4kingdoms has been called confusing for having four PoVs

➖ kinda touched this already but this is a very very very heteronormative series. like there will be 0 surprises and nothing interesting at all in that front. maybe this came out a bit too early (finished in 2015) to be wholly inclusive.

⭐ score: 4 -- it's a strong four, i gave the first three books that and winter a 5, definitely now a big comfort series for me. there's apparently supplementary stories also but i'm not sure where to get them, i've read all the rest by borrowing the books from my library and don't know if i really care to go out of my way to get them any other way. and there's apparently an animated movie in the making, i'm a little scared of that buuuut i'm more lenient with animation than live action adaptations at least. ah well as long as they make thorne beautiful, if he's in it

[darkwithasharpenededge]

I've Only Been Meaning To Get To This For Like Three Years: A Review of Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Rating: 90/100

Summary: I read The Hunger Games (the first book in the series) like three years ago (what can I say, I always read things years after they get popular), and thought it was good, and then never read the sequels. Well, I finally got to it, and the second book was good too, surprise surprise.

It did occasionally remind me of other worse YA dystopian fiction. (Don't ask me about my reading habits and how I ended up reading other worse derivative YA dystopian fiction before I read The Hunger Games [the famous books are always checked out on the library ebook app]), but that's not really its fault, that's the fault of its worse imitators. Anyway, great stuff. Iconic. The love triangle wasn't as bad as it could have been, but I still didn't care for it. I have no taste for that kind of thing. I'm nearly out of books and I'm not sure when the next time I'm going to be able to pick up more is, so who knows how bored I'm going to get over Christmas.

Final Verdict: It's such a shame that reading too many derivative things can reduce a person's enjoyment of the original.

Review Word Count: 188

[fyepertine]

Demon at the Temple