Black Wings Beating

August 26, 2020October 18, 2020 / Brienna / 1 Comment

This YA fantasy book by Alex London pairs falconry and mysticism for a fun, but ultimately unsatisfying adventure. Kylee and her brother Brysen are desperately trying to pay off their dead father’s debts to the Tamirs, the family that lords over the Six Villages. Brysen gets into some trouble, and Kylee is forced to help him get out of it.

With a forgotten language, opposing religious factions, and a strong female lead character—Kylee—this novel started with a lot of promise. It gets bogged down by the spelling of each character’s name; We have Kylee, Brysen, Nyall, Nyck, Vyvian, Yzzat, Dymian…. is there a law in the Six Villages that names must contain the letter Y? While this might be a minor or non-issue for some people, I found it to be very distracting.

Quite a bit of the plot is predictable. There are two big plot twists; one you can see coming from miles away and the other is sort of a let down given the obviousness of the other. I felt it dragged on for a long time, and then it had a bit of a cliff-hanger ending, where to find out how it ultimately ends, you need to read the next book. All in all, I don’t think I liked it enough to read the next book, so it gets 2.5 stars from me.

I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley.com in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

Day 13 – book review time!

March 28, 2020April 16, 2022 / Brienna / Leave a comment

While I was on vacation, I read The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I hesitated to pick up this book, as I found her first novel, The Night Circus, to be quite tedious and boring. However, I am very, very glad I gave this book a chance. I absolutely fell in love with it.

The Starless Sea is an amazing adventure. It centers around Zachary Ezra Rawlins and his discovery of the Starless Sea, and yet, in the end it is unclear if he is the main character, the narrator, or merely just a player in the story within the story within the story.

I have rarely come across a book like this — layer upon layer, containing many stories within stories. Six other stories are interwoven and interconnected within The Starless Sea. Each tells a different tale… or are they all the same tale?

How would you feel if you found an ancient-looking, author-less, uncatalogued book in the library that seemed to recount, no wait, honest to goodness DID recount, a story from your childhood? Not just a story, but actual events that took place in your life.

This is what Zachary Ezra Rawlins discovers when he finds Sweet Sorrows in the library. This is what leads him down the proverbial rabbit hole in search of the Starless Sea. Little does he know that his actions are being tracked, that he, the son of a fortune teller, is the key.

If you have a love of adventure, a love for stories or storytelling, you might fall in love with this book just as much as I did. There is mystery, intrigue, mythology (or perhaps legends might be a better word?), evil, and love contained inside.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the Moon and Sun could meet? What if Time and Fate fell in love? What if there was a wondrous secret world beneath the world filled with marvels and stories?

This was a book about endings, as much as it was about many other things too. Are endings truly the end? Or does one story have to end simply so another can begin?

I highly recommend this book! However, as Erin Morgenstern says — “Books are always better when read rather than explained.”

The Priory of the Orange Tree

January 19, 2020January 19, 2020 / Brienna / Leave a comment

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

This book is a story about a world where there are dragons, magic, and many divided kingdoms and queendoms with differing beliefs. In Virtudom, they believe in a saint who founded their religion and ensures their safety through his bloodline. In the east, they have dragons as their gods, dragon riders and the red sickness.

I discovered this book through the goodreads nominations for best fantasy books of 2019. On to my library list it went, and by the time it popped up as available, I had mostly forgotten about it.

I went ahead and read it, and I’m so glad I did! At over 800 pages, it’s a very long book. It almost feels like something other authors might have split into two or three smaller books. It was satisfying to have the whole story at once, rather than waiting for future novels to be published. However, this book switches between 4 different points of view, and there are a large number of characters. Because of this, at times it can be difficult to follow.

The Priory of the Orange Tree spends a significant amount of time on world-building; showing you the history of the various nations, their lore and religious beliefs, and how those came to be. What divided the world? With the threat of The Nameless One looming, can they resolve their differences long enough to stand against evil and fight for the future of the world?

This is one of the best fantasy books I’ve read in quite some time. A female driven cast of characters, a clever and unique magic system, some romance (but not as the main focus of the story), and an epic battle against evil are awaiting within the pages of The priority of the Orange Tree.

This novel tells one complete story. The world is so amazing, so rich and filled with wonders and fantastically real, well-developed characters, that it feels as though the author might have many stories to tell us about in the future. If so, perhaps we’ll get a glimpse into what becomes of the priory.

The Shadow of What was Lost

February 27, 2015February 25, 2015 / Brienna / Leave a comment

The Shadow of What was Lost by James Islington

I love, love, love a good fantasy novel. I started reading The Magic of Xanth series by Piers Anthony when I was a teenager, and I have loved fantasy novels of all sorts ever since.

Some of my favorite fantasy novels and series include The Sword of Truth, A Song of Fire Ice, Mistborn, Daughter of Smoke & Bones, and Harry Potter. Oh, and we can’t forget Lord of the Rings!

I think fantasy is probably my favorite genre, and I while I read a lot of fantasy, I definitely don’t read enough of it! To give you an idea, my good reads account has over 1,000 books shelved, with roughly 500 read and 500 t0-read. I have more books shelved under fantasy than I do under non-fiction, and I read a fair amount of non-fiction. Apart from read, t0-read, and fiction, my fantasy “shelf” has the most books (and these are all included on the fiction “shelf”).

So, after finishing The Shadow of What was Lost, you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that this was a newly published novel (the author’s first!) and the remaining books in the trilogy have yet to be written.

In The Shadow of What was Lost, we are introduced to a vast and unique world where the Gifted are oppressed and controlled by the non-Gifted. Artifacts of a long ago war, the Gifted are distrusted and ruled over by administrators and the King.

Davian, our main character, must learn to control the Gift, or else he will be turned into a Shadow, a class of people even more shunned than the Gifted. Setting out on an adventure, he travels through the lands and sets in motion events that will change his future, and the future of everyone.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I thought of the novel, but after 30-50 pages, I was hooked. I am eagerly awaiting the second in the trilogy, and in the meantime, I think I might finally start reading The Wheel of Time series.