Tag: Tamora Pierce

June Reading Roundup

Well, we’ve made it to July, though honestly I’m not sure if we have indeed made it or if we’re going to make it much longer. The best I can say is we are more than halfway through this disaster of a year. But as coronavirus cases are rising all over the country again and there’s no end in sight, I’ve kind of given into the existential dread I was fighting off in April. We’re all going to die. If someone could convince me otherwise I would really appreciate it. Because I haven’t been sleeping or writing much or generally feeling like a human. Which is why

i’m writing this so late into the month this time despite my really good intentions to get it done sooner.

So let’s talk about the books I read in June.

Collage of the covers of the books I read in June: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay, Briar's Book, We Must Be Brave, Speak, A Closed and Common Orbit,Such a Fun Age, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and The WitchesI read eleven books in June, bringing my grand total for 2020 up to fifty-eight books. Five of the books were rereads for me. Four were dystopians, one was science fiction, one was historical fiction, two were contemporary, and three were fantasy. And I read one book in Braille, bringing the number of Braille books I’ve read in 2020 to five, just one behind where I should be if I’m going to reach my goal of reading twelve books in Braille this year.

I started June with the prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. This was the story of the Tenth Hunger Games, and young President Snow, who acts as a mentor the first year mentors are included in the Games. I flew through this book, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. I found the worldbuilding fascinating. I loved seeing how the Games started and how they became what they are in the main trilogy. But I didn’t like being in Snow’s head. Knowing that he’s going to end up president meant that all his struggles in this book felt meaningless, because there were no stakes—everything was going to turn out fine. And Snow wasn’t really a compelling enough character to pull that kind of thing off, at least for me. Also the pacing of this book was really weird. So if you’re interested in the worldbuilding, this book might be for you, but otherwise I honestly wouldn’t recommend it.

I followed this up with a reread of the original three Hunger Games books because why not? My opinions of these books were largely the same as they have been in the past. I loved the first book. The second book was really good but again the pacing was weird, and I have strong negative feelings about the third book that I’ve ranted about in the past so won’t bore you with now. Despite the ending, this series remains one of my favorites, and it was nice to reread it right now.

Next, I finished my reread of Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic series with Briar’s Book. in this book, Briar and the girls face down an epidemic. I was worried about rereading this book, because it’s very much a plague book, but it was actually kind of a nice read. It was nice to escape to a world where the plague is taken seriously and everyone is behaving responsibly and a cure can be found. Plus I love these four young mages and this whole world. This series also remains a favorite for me and I continue to highly recommend.

My aunt gave my mom We Must be Brave by Frances Liardet for her birthday, and when I found out it was a World War II book, I picked it up too, because I love World War II books. We must be brave is about a couple living in the English countryside who discover a little girl alone on a bus full of evacuees. The girl apparently got on the bus by mistake, and the couple take her in while they try to contact her family. They never wanted children, but the little girl takes over their lives completely and becomes theirs as the war rages on. And then her family appears. The premise of the book really hooked me in, but honestly I was disappointed by this book. I found it to be slow to the point of tedium at points, melodramatic and maudlin at others. And it also just would not end. I can see why some people would like it, but personally I wouldn’t recommend it.

After that, I read Speak by Laurie Hals Anderson. This was a powerful and heartbreaking book about a girl finding the strength to speak up after she was raped a party the summer before high school.  i never actually read this book when I was a kid, but I know a lot of people who did and I feel like it should be required reading for all teens.

I needed something fun after that, so I read the second book in The Wayfarer’s series, A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers. At first, this book threw me a little because it doesn’t follow the same crew as the first book. It follows Lovelace the AI, now trying to adjust to life in an illegal human body kit, and Pepper, the mechanic we met in the previous book. But once I got used to these new characters, I was totally won over by both of their stories and their struggles and their growth and I was totally crying by the end. I loved how different this book was from the first, but how it was still connected. I also love this amazing universe Becky Chambers has created, and all these great characters with these wonderful heartwarming relationships. I am just dying to read the next book!

Then I read Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. I’ve had this on my list for a while and just happened to get off the waiting list at the library during June. So yes it was topical but not on purpose. Such A Fun Age is about a young black woman, Amira, who babysits for a three-year-old white girl, Briar, and Briar’s blogger mom whose name I cannot remember. When there’s a family emergency one night and Briar’s mom asks Amira to take Briar to the market down  the street to get her out of the house, Amira is accused of kidnapping Briar, and so begins a chain of events as Amira tries to move on with her life and Briar’s well-intentioned mom tries desperately to make amends. I loved this book. Not just because it was topical in today’s climate but because it was about so much more than the incident in the market, though of course that was central. All of the characters in this book were fully developed characters, with serious but realistic flaws, and it was really about Amira’s life and her struggles as she grew up and tried to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. The book encompasses the incident in the market and so much more, and I feel like this is a really important book because of that. Also it was very fast-paced and very easy to read. This is definitely one I would recommend.

I was reading the fourth Harry Potter book all month in Braille. It took me so long because first of all, I’m slower at reading in Braille, and second of all, I was really struggling with how I felt about the author and the books. I talked about this last month, so I won’t go into it again here. But at the end of June, I finished rereading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and that’s all I’m saying about it.

And I finished up June with The Witches by Roald Dahl. Like most of the Roald Dahl books I’ve reread in the last couple years, this turned out to be both delightful and horrifying. I know I read this as a child but I had no recollection of it and wow, just wow this was a wild book. A lot of fun but really wild.

And that’s it for the books I read in June. Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?

April and May Reading Roundup

Well here we are, more than halfway through June, and as usual, I’m abysmally late on posting this. I admit, I’ve been putting it off, because it feels ridiculously insensitive to be posting about the books I read in April and May with the world in the state it’s in. I don’t like to talk about politics online, and anyway I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said a hundred times and much more eloquently than I could. But I also can’t stay silent.

At the time I’m writing this, more than one hundred twenty-five thousand people have died from the coronavirus in our country. People are still calling it a hoax and refusing to wear masks. I viscerally hate masks, but wearing one saves lives, so it’s really the only decent thing to do. The pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color, and meanwhile, our president is focused solely on bringing back the economy and winning the upcoming election. And I get that bringing back the economy is important, I do, but we need to do so safely, and based on the rising number of Covid-19 cases in more than half the country, safety still isn’t the watchword, and this endangers everyone, particularly the people of color who will continue to be disproportionately harmed by the pandemic because of the way our society is built. Last, and certainly not least, we have been reeling over the brutal police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others, and then the police brutality and attacks by right-wing extremists against the peaceful protestors who have come out against the murders and the systemic racism and oppression that enable them. It is high time we are protesting, in all the ways we can, and I only hope we can keep the momentum up through November and beyond, because our country needs real, drastic change. I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about these issues, but I’m reading and I’m learning and I’m sharing. I am furious. I am furious, and heartbroken, and so stressed out I’m worried I’ve hurt my jaw with all the teeth-grinding I’ve been doing.

Most of this has come about since the end of May. But before that, in April and most of May, I was sheltering in place and freaking out about Covid. And learning all this important stuff. In April, I was so stressed out that I only read one book. I couldn’t focus on anything, and even though I started a bunch of other books, they were mostly library books, and I didn’t finish them before they expired, and then I had to get back on the waiting list. In May, though, I read thirteen books of all different genres. Some were rereads, but most were new. I read three books in Braille which brings my total of Braille books for the year up to four. Still behind where I should be for my goal, but yay!Collage of the covers of the 14 books I read in April and May: Ember Queen; Shadows of Self; The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; The Deceivers; Circe; There There; the first three Harry Potter books; Spark; Supernova; Daja's Book; Fantastic Mr. Fox and Other Animal Stories; and The Light Between Worlds.

The only book I read in April was Ember Queen by Laura Sebastian, the third book in the Ash Princess trilogy, which came out in February. Anything I say about the plot of this book will spoil the first two if you haven’t already read them. But let’s just say that things are heating up for Theo and her rebellion. Quite literally. I love what Laura Sebastian does with the characters in this book. I particularly love what she does with the villains, and the villains throughout the entire series. It’s really interesting from a writing perspective, and also just so well done. I loved this whole series and would definitely recommend it.

I started off May by finishing Shadows of Self, the second book in Brandon Sanderson’s second Mistborn Trilogy. In this book, Wax is investigating a set of highly improbable murders. We get a lot of Wax’s backstory from before he returned to the city too. I enjoyed this book, but the first two thirds were quite slow by Sanderson’s standards. The ending was heartbreaking though, and I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Next, I read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. This is the first book in the Wayfarers series, though as I’ve since discovered these books all stand alone and are actually just interconnected novels in the same universe, which I love. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet follows Rosemary, who has signed on as a clerk for a spaceship which creates new wormholes for other ships in the Galactic Commons to use to travel. The ship, the Wayfarer, has an interspecies crew of delightful characters, who embrace Rosemary wholeheartedly. But Rosemary has a secret, and when they are asked to travel for almost a year to build a wormhole to a kplanet at war with the rest of its solar systemand threatening war against the rest of the Galactic Commons, Rosemary’s secret is in danger of coming out. This is the best description I can give this book, because the plot is a bit thin. I’ve seen some reviews claim that this book doesn’t have a plot, but it definitely does. It’s just a very episodic novel, filled with different adventures for each of the crew members. We already know that happy space adventures are 100% my thing, but oh this book was just so much fun! Also it has a great title! It was exactly what I needed to be reading while the world falls apart, and this was the book that really got me out of my April reading slump. I just love it so much, and if you love fun, heartwarming, delightful space adventures too, I highly recommend you give this book a shot.

In May, I started my annual Harry Potter reread. I reread the first three books, Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban. This time, I was rereading them in Braille. I read these books before J. K. Rowling made all those awful transphobic comments on twitter, and I’ve been working through how I feel about her and the books ever since. Working through my feelings about JKR was pretty easy actually. I’ve been cranky with her ever since Cursed Child, honestly, and we’ve all known she’s transphobic before now, but the fact that she refused to learn from the countless people trying to tell her that her comments are hurtful, hateful, and dangerous for the trans community was too much for me. I’ve been bullied and excluded all my life because I am blind, and I cannot abide anyone who hates and attacks anyone else just because of who they are. So now JKR is she-who-must-not-be-named to me. Sorting out what to do about my feelings for the Harry Potter books themselves is much more complicated. I love these books so much, and I can’t just turn that love off. They have shaped who I am as a person and a writer. I recognize they aren’t great in terms of representation, and they’re actually pretty terrible on some of the sub-issues of the books (the house-elves only ever get better masters but as a species remain enslaved; anyone fat is a terrible person or just plain stupid; Snape is really abusive, but because he’s ultimately a good guy, he’s totally forgiven for that; I could go on). For me personally, I feel it’s important to continue to engage with the books, both because I do love the characters and the story and the fundamental themes of love and acceptence, and because I want to continue to study these books critically and learn from their shortcomings. However I understand that publicly supporting or discussing the books could cause real harm to my trans friends, and I absolutely do not want to do that. I have taken my Hogwarts house off my social media profiles and bios, and I won’t be wearing or displaying any Harry Potter swag in the future. And if I reread the books, I’ll keep it to myself. As I said above, I don’t pretend to know or understand all the issues at play here, but I will keep learning. And as I do, this tentative balance I’ve come to might change. All I’ll say for now is that I reread the first three Harry Potter books in May. Moving on.

Meanwhile, I read The Deceivers by Margaret Peterson Haddix, the sequel to The Strangers which I read earlier this year. In this book, Chess, Emma, and Finn and their friend Natalie have to venture back into the alternate world to rescue their mothers. This book is so much fun, and it’s got a lot of twists and turns. It was a great sequel to The Strangers, and I can’t wait for the third book to come out.

I also read Circe by Madeline Miller. This was another book I started in April but didn’t finish before my library copy expired and had to get back on the waitlist. We were trying to get my Harvard Law School book club back together, virtually, to discuss this, which is why I picked it up, but that discussion never happened, sadly. Circe is a retelling of Greek mythology from Circe’s point of view. It goes through her entire life, from her birth and her childhood, to her exile, and so on. I don’t want to spoil it in case you don’t know the Greek mythology, if you do know the mythology, I’m sorry to say you know the whole book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with Circe, especially because it’s gotten so many glowing reviews. Madeline Miller’s writing was very beautiful, if a tad melodramatic at times. But she didn’t add anything new to the story, and so it really dragged for me. I can see why people liked it, but it honestly just wasn’t for me.

Next, I read There There by Tommy Orange. This is a book that follows several Native American characters in modern-day Oakland, as they all prepare to attend a big powwow in Oakland. I’m ashamed to admit that aside from what I learned in elementary schools and the few books I read then, I know very little about modern-day Native American culture. I really enjoyed reading about all these different characters, but I admit that I got a bit lost because there were so many characters and they all connected in different ways. I also felt like it was a little too convenient how it all came together in the end. I did enjoy this book, but honestly literary fiction has to really wow me for me to recommend it to others, and this didn’t quite do that.

After that, I read Spark by Sarah Beth Durst. I started reading this in Braille but the electronic Braille version I had kept having whole sentences or parts of sentences missing, so I gave up and listened to it. Set in a world where children bond with dragon-like creatures called storm beasts and control the weather, Spark follows Mina, who is very quiet, and her new lightning beast, Pixit, as they learn to harness and control lightning. Mina struggles at the lightning school, because most lightning guardian teams are loud and obnoxious. She doesn’t feel like she fits in, a fact reenforced by her family’s perceptions of her, and she’s sure she’ll never be able to be a real storm guardian. But when Mina and Pixit learn the price of controlling the weather with their power, quiet Mina must learn to speak up. This was a really fun book. I loved watching Mina grow into the person she wants to be, and I just ador Pixit, who is like a dragon puppy. I would definitely recommend this book.

Then I finished Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series with Supernova. This was a great finale to this series. Everything comes to a head so nicely, and yes, a lot of it was still really predictable, but it was also a lot of fun. The only bit I didn’t like was the epilogue, which put a twist on everything and really didn’t feel like an ending at all. Now if there was going to be more content in the Renegades world, I’d be fine with it, but as it stands it didn’t work for me as an ending. Still, I really enjoyed the whole series.

After that, I reread the third Circle of Magic book, Daja’s Book by Tamora Pierce. I always love these books. They’re so much fun and really great to reread in times of stress. In Daja’s Book, the four young mages have traveled north with Sandry’s uncle, the duke, and their teachers to figure out how to help with a drought. Since they spun their magic together, the four’s magic has changed and is now getting out of control in some really weird ways, and they have to deal with that. Also forest fires. But the real joy of this book is how Daja has to confront her past and the people who cast her out after her family died in a shipwreck. When Daja accidentally creates a vine of living metal, a Trader caravan  offers to buy it, and Daja gets to interact with her people for the first time in months. This is a really great book, and as I’ve said before, I really recommend this whole series.

I then took a break for something fun and silly and listened to Fantastic Mr. Fox and Other Animal Stories by Roald Dahl. This was a collection of a bunch of different short animal stories: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Esio Trot, The Enormous Crocodile, and The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. We had this audiobook when I was a kid, and I remember listening to it on some car ride, but nothing else. This was quick and fun and very silly, which was really nice.

Finally, I read The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth, and guys, this might be my favorite book of 2020 so far. The Light Between Worlds reminds me a lot of Narnia, but it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted from Narnia. The story is about three children who are whisked into a magical world in the middle of an air raid in World War II, and the book alternates between their adventures in the fantasy world and their lives five years after they’ve returned home. It particularly focuses on the youngest child, Evelyn, who grew up in the fantasy world and is really struggling back in our world. This is an absolutely beautiful book that just gave me so many feelings: It’s the sort of book that I have been not just recommending to everyone but buying for everyone too. You absolutely have to read this one!

And that’s it for April and May of this year. My plan is to have my June reading post up not too long after the end of June, because this is ridiculous. If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to talk about them. And I hope some of these books might help you find some light in these dark times. Take care of yourselves, and I’ll be back soon.

March Reading Roundup

Over the past several weeks, I thought about blogging more and getting this post up sooner. I meant to do it. I really did. But a solid sense of time and my motivation to do pretty much anything have gone out the window in social distancing life. But here I am now.

I hope everyone is holding up out there. I so far haven’t gotten sick or gone insane, but there’s still time. I did finish my five trillionth round of revisions on my middle grade fantasy project, and then my five trillion and first round of revisions. Now I’m back to the memory-wiping academy project. I also bought myself a television because my iPad or laptop just wasn’t enough of a screen, and I hope to have friends over for a movie night someday ever. I’ve been cooking all the time too. I’ve learned to make some really good bread thanks to a recipe my brother shared with me. I tried lentil pasta, with mixed results, and harissa marinated tofu which probably would have turned out better if I had enough harissa to actually marinate the tofu. But after that it’s been a lot of staples like couscous and frozen veggies or rice and beans or pasta. I’ve also been making homemade ice cream, and there’s no going back to the store-bought stuff now.

Basically I’m doing fine but life is upside down and I hate it so much, even though it’s definitely necessary.

I also read eight books in March. I read most of these books in the first half of March, before the lockdown set in. Oddly I haven’t been reading as much even though I’m stuck at home now. I saw a tweet about this somewhere. I can’t find it now, but the gist is we expect to be a lot more productive with life on lockdown, but we’re also spending a lot of time holding the existential dread at bay.

Collage of the eight books I read in March: A Little Taste of Poison, Archenemies, Ash Princess, Lady Smoke, Sandry's Book, Tris's Book, Babylon's Ashes, and The Drawing of the ThreeWhile I enjoyed all these books a lot, I admit that none of them really stuck out to me, and I’m having a hard time remembering them, but I think that’s more because of the world getting thoroughly messed up in the last month than the books’ fault.

I continued a lot of the series that I started last month, and I started a couple new series. I also read a variety of genres again, some middle grade and YA, some fantasy and sci fi, and a superhero story.

All the books I read were audiobooks. I’m not doing so great on my goal to read one Braille book a month. But even though I won’t be completely successful on this goal this year (unless one of you knows how to time travel), I’m going to keep trying.

Now let’s dive in and talk about these books.

First, I read the second Uncommon Magic book, A Little Taste of Poison by R. J. Anderson. I read the first book, A Pocket Full of Murder, back at the end of January, and I loved it lots. This was a great sequel. It did a great job following up on the problems left unsolved at the end of the first book, delving deeper into the world, and complicating everything further. My only complaint is there’s this epilogue at the end that, without spoiling anything, puts a new twist on everything, and it’s really sudden and fast and in my opinion makes the book and series feel incomplete. If there’s going to be a third book, I’d be okay with it, but I’m not sure there will be a third book based on my very cursory research on Goodreads. On the whole though I really loved this world and these characters, and this is a very fun middle grade fantasy series.

Next, I read the second Renegades book, Archenemies by Marissa Meyer. I don’t want to say too much in terms of plot synopsis because I don’t want to spoil the first book if you haven’t read it, and almost anything I say would be a spoiler. But we continue with the spying and the secret identities and the superhero teamwork and friends and romance and everything I loved about the first book. Archenemies took the story forward in a logical way but a different way than I expected. It also raised the stakes a lot, and it did a lot better with the issue I had with the first book that I felt like we were in the wrong character’s head during key moments for the other character. And oh my gosh I loved the twists this took for its characters and the complexities it added. I just love all the characters and I don’t know how I want this to end because I’m cheering for all of them (with a few exceptions). I’m really looking forward to diving into the third and final book soon.

Last year while I was studying for the bar, I read Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian. I really loved the book, but also had no recollection of it because I was studying for the bar. And since the third book just came out, I reread Ash Princess this month and then read the sequel, Lady Smoke. And just oh my gosh these books are amazing! Ash Princess follows Theo, the princess of a conquered country who has been kept by the conquering force as a prisoner and tortured to keep her people downtrodden. But when she is forced to do the unthinkable, Theo decides to fight back. These books go some really unexpected places, and I just love how brilliant and driven Theo is. She is willing to sacrifice everything for her goal, and she does. And while she has emotions like any other sixteen-year-old girl, she has iron control over them and she acts for her head every time. The world is also really interesting, and like I said the plot takes some really interesting twists and turns. At this point I’ve finished the third book, and while I’m not talking about this until next month, this series is one I’d love to go back and reread from the beginning knowing what’s coming. If you haven’t read these books, I highly recommend them.

After that, I read the sixth Expanse book, Babylon’s Ashes by James S. A. Corey. A lot of this book felt like fall-out from the events of the last book. There was a lot of political maneuvering and planning and then finally a big battle. We get to see Holden play the mediator again which is fun because he’s bad at it. Some pretty big important things happened in this book that I won’t spoil. But on the whole, it was just an okay book. There were honestly too many point of view characters, characters who were very minor players in previous books and rose to the level of point-of-view characters in this book. Some of them it was cool to see their viewpoint, but on the whole it felt like just too much and it became hard to follow. I’m not entirely sure I’m going to continue with this series, because I can’t get any of the rest of the books on audio from the library, and I’m not sure I care enough to either buy the audiobooks or invest in reading them in Braille. I might just switch to the TV show at this point. I don’t know. We’ll see.

When the lockdown hit and I needed some literary comfort food, I started rereading Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books. In March I read the first two, Sandry’s Book and Tris’s Book. Did I momentarily forget that the fourth book in this book is a plague book, and now I’m on track to read a plague book in the middle of a pandemic? Yes. Yes I did. Will I read it anyway? Probably. These books have been all-time favorites for a while, and they held up on reread, which is fabulous. They’re just so much fun and full of such great meaningful relationships, and I love them. I also love Tamora Pierce’s Circle world way more than her Tortall world. It’s so detailed and rich. I loved rereading these books, and I’m looking forward to getting back to the series soon.

Finally, I read the second book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three. I enjoyed this more than the first book. It was way more coherent, story-wise. There was also a female main character. Yay! Unfortunately, I’m not really comfortable with King’s representation of mental illness in this book, and his treatment of women still isn’t great. I’ll probably keep reading this series, but not with a ton of enthusiasm. (Spoiler alert: I’m really just in it to get to the talking pink train I remember in the third book.)

And that’s it for March. Have you read any of these books? Do you have any other reads I might want to check out during quarantine?

January Reading Roundup

January felt like a very, very long month this year. This is the first year that I’m working full time and didn’t have a long break from mid-December through mid-January, which was definitely part of the feeling that January lasted forever. But a lot happened in January too. I started writing every morning before work, a friend from college came to visit for the weekend, I made a ton of progress on my revisions, and then I got the flu and a post-flu ear/sinus issue that I’m still dealing with. It was a lot.

Collage of the 14 books I read in January: Savvy, Scumble, Switch, The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages, The Whispering Trees, Well of Witches, First Test, Page, Squire, Lady Knight, Girl in the Blue Coat, and A Pocket Full of MurderI also read 14 books in January, which gets me well on my way toward my 100 book goal for 2020. I read three complete series this month, continued with a series that I was in the middle of, started a new series, and read one stand-alone. I only read half a book in Braille and switched to audio when I got the flu. And all of the books I read but one were fantasy, mostly middle grade fantasy but one adult fantasy series. The non-fantasy book I read this month was historical fiction. I really liked almost all the books I read too, so on the whole this was a really good reading month.

First, I blazed through the Savvy trilogy by Ingrid Law. I read the first two books, Savvy and Scumble, on New Years Day, and the third book, Switch, the day after. These books take place in contemporary midwest and west America and follow a sprawling family with magical powers. The first book follows Mibs, who gets her magical powers—called a Savvy—on her thirteenth birthday like the rest of her siblings, and sets off with two of her brothers and some new friends to try to get to the hospital where her father is in a coma after a car accident. It’s a crazy adventure and a ton of fun. The second book follows Mibs’s cousin as he tries to get his savvy of dismantling anything metal under control. And the third book follows Mibs’s younger sister after everyone in the family’s powers suddenly switch and they’re stuck with new powers just as they’re trying to help their very unmagical grandmother move to come live with them. These three books are more like related companion novels than a series with a single arc, but they are just all so much fun and basically everything I want out of a middle grade fantasy adventure book. I definitely recommend all three.

Next, I read the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I read the first book in this series, The Final Empire, last year, and I loved it to pieces. I loved it so much that I was afraid to pick up the second book, because I didn’t know where the story was going from here and didn’t want to be disappointed. After reading Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series last year though, I decided I had enough faith in his plotting ability to brave the rest of the series. And… I don’t know. The Final Empire is about a girl who discovers she is a mistborn, someone with the ability to unlock the powers of various metals. She’s taken on by a thieving crew working to overthrow the evil dictator known as the Lord Ruler. I have a full review of The Final Empire over here, so you can read all about how much I adored this book. The thing is, this plot is very wrapped up by the end of the first book, and so the second book is a very different kind of story. So is the third book. And while the plots of the second and third books definitely follow the first book logically, and both The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages are definitely good books, they don’t feel like a unified story to me. Also, a lot of what I loved about The Final Empire wasn’t present in the sequels. Finally, I know I was sick when I finished The Hero of Ages, but I feel like the ending should have had me balling my eyes out, and I just felt nothing. I know a lot of people really love The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, and I don’t think they’re bad books by any means. They just weren’t what I wanted them to be, and I ended up kind of disappointed. So while I still absolutely love The Final Empire and will continue to recommend it, I’m not sure I would recommend the rest of the series. On the other hand yes I am definitely planning to go on and read the second Mistborn trilogy which takes place a few hundred years after the events of The Hero of Ages.

While I was reading Mistborn, I also read the second and third Thickety books, The Whispering Trees and Well of Witches by J. A. White. I read the first Thickety book, A Path Begins, in December and loved it. The Whispering Trees picks up where A Path Begins left off, with Kara and Taff running for their lives through the Thickety. In this book, they come face-to-face with the forest demon himself, and things get really scary. I won’t say much about the third book because it would spoil the second, but Kara and Taff go on yet another dark and twisty journey through the well of witches, where the witches go after using the last spell, to try to save their father. I absolutely love how dark and twisted this series is but also how much fun and hope there is. So far this is a really excellent middle grade series. I started the fourth book this evening, and I am already hooked.

Next, I continued my reread of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books with her Protector of the Small series. I read First Test, Page, Squire, and Lady Knight in January. Of the Tamora Pierce I’ve read so far on this reread, these are definitely my favorite. The king decreed that girls could try for their knighthood, and Kel is the first girl to openly train for her shield in Tortall since Alanna the Lioness. The series follows Kel through her training as a page and squire and her first year as a knight as she faces down bullies, immortals, and a system that generally doesn’t want her there. Kel is so different from Alanna, and she faces different struggles because she is openly training to be a knight as a girl. She is very much a heroine it’s easy to get behind and support, and on the whole these books are really well put together and hold up well on reread.

This month I also read Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse. This is a World War II historical fiction book set in Amsterdam. I admit I don’t know much about the war in the Netherlands, so I was very interested in this book. Hanneke works as an undertaker’s secretary and black market delivery girl to support her family. She’s expert at avoiding the Nazis and finding the impossible, but since her boyfriend’s death fighting the Nazis, she has put a premium on her own self-preservation. When one of her black market customers asks her to help find a Jewish girl who ran away from her hiding spot in her house, Hanneke gets pulled into the resistance movement in the city and discovers the true horrors of the war. This was a pretty good book. I liked that it stuck to a narrow focus on these characters and events and didn’t try to include the entire war. I also felt like Hanneke had a really relatable journey, and her emotions and desires were so well-done. I will say that the pacing felt a bit off—the climax came too soon and there was too much denouement—but on the whole I enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

Finally, I finished off January with the first Uncommon Magic book, A Pocket Full of Murder by R. J. Anderson. This is the book that I started reading in Braille and switched to audio when I got the flu. This is a middle grade fantasy set in a kind of steampunk-style world where turn-of-the-century technology is powered by magic. Only the wealthy can afford magic, and the city is teetering on the brink of a workers’ revolution. Twelve-year-old Isaveth’s family is very poor. Her mother has recently died, and her father is out of work, forcing Isaveth’s older sister to drop out of school and get a job at a sewing factory. When Isaveth’s father is arrested for murder of the governor of the university committed using magic only a builder could get their hands on, Isaveth joins forces with a street boy named Quiz to prove her father’s innocence and find the true murderer. But Quiz may not be who he says he is, and Isaveth’s father is keeping secrets too. This was a really good book. I loved how rich the world was and how complicated the problems that Isaveth and Quiz face. I picked this up because I thought it would be a good comp title for my own middle grade fantasy project, and I wasn’t disappointed. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on the sequel this month.

And that’s it for January. If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to know what you think of them.

November Reading Roundup

I was intending to post my rambles about The Heart of Betrayal and the Beauty of Darkness before I posted this, but then I saw the date and wanted to get this post out there before it became even more ridiculous. Don’t worry, I going to talk about the rest of the Remnant Chronicles soon—but probably not until next week. But first I’m going to tell you all about the books I read in November.

November was a pretty good month. My parents came to visit and spent a week with me in D.C., I got my new writing group off the ground and after a few meetings we’re still going strong, I got sworn in as a real lawyer, and of course Thanksgiving. I managed to write every day in November too, so I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. I’ve been flipping back and forth between my middle grade space adventure project, which is what I’m showing to my new writing group, and my middle grade fantasy book, which I got more edits on from my agent. So a lot’s going on, but it’s all really good.

I can’t believe it’s already the end of December, and I’ve been living in D.C. and working at the FCC for almost four months now. I love December so much more than November, because the holiday season kicks off and everything is so much brighter and happier than November, which after daylight savings time is pretty much just dark and cold. December has Christmas lights and holiday parties and cookie swaps and carollers singing to you as you come out of the metro. See what I mean?

Collage of the covers of the 10 books I read in November 2019: The Heart of Betrayal, The Beauty of Darkness, Tunnel of Bones, Half a World Away, Willow Run, Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, Cibola Burn, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, and Lioness Rampant.December also means it’s time to look back at the books I read in November. I read ten books in November. Four of them were rereads. A lot of them were pretty short books that I just blew through in a single day. It was sort of a weird month in terms of how fast I read, because when my parents were visiting and when I was home for  Thanksgiving, I didn’t get much reading done because I wanted to actually interact with people instead of just hang out in my room reading. But in the couple weeks in between my parents’ visit and Thanksgiving, I just churned through a ton of books. On the whole, I was really happy with what I read this month.

First, I finished The Remnant Chronicles series by Mary E. Pearson. In October, I read the first book, The Kiss of Deception, which I talked more about here. This month I read The Heart of Betrayal and the Beauty of Darkness. Since I just talked about the first book and I’m aiming to talk about the other two soon, I’m not going to go too deep into the plot summaries in this post. The second book follows Lia, Rafe, and Kaden as they navigate life in Venda. Lia is trying to escape with Rafe, but she’s also becoming more entangled with the people of Venda. Rafe is trying to help her escape, and Kaden, of course, is trying to both keep her alive and keep her in Venda. I won’t give you a plot summary of the third book at all because basically anything I say about the third book will spoil the second book. I absolutely loved this series. The first half of the first book was a bit cringy, but it grew on me so fast, and now it’s definitely a favorite. I just love Lia and how she goes from a runaway spoiled princess to a young woman who makes these really difficult choices. She becomes such a strong character, and I love it.

Last spring, I read City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab. The sequel, Tunnel of Bones, came out recently, and I read that next. After their adventure in Scotland, Cassidy and her family are off to Paris, where Cassidy manages to attract the attentions of a poltergheist and get a glimpse of what her ghost friend Jacob could become if he gets too strong. This book was delightfully scary, but also full of such great moments. I love Cass and Jacob’s friendship so much and I love how it develops over the course of this book. I can’t wait for the third book!

After that I read Willow Run by Patricia Reilly Giff. This is a companion novel to Lily’s Crossing, which I read last year. Twelve-year-old Meggie moves with her family to Michigan to work at the Wi’low Run airplane factory during World War II. We deal with prejudices against German Americans, a son and brother who is missing in action, and the fears of war. For being from the point of view of a twelve-year-old, it gets into some deep issues and it feels very real. Which just proves the point I make every chance I get that middle grade and young adult books can deal with really serious issues often in ways that are more poignant and powerful than adult books. This book made me cry quite a few times. Actually since it’s such a short book, I just cried the whole way. Not that it’s a downer of a book. I just have a lot of feelings sometimes.

Next, I read Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata. This is another book that I read in an evening. Twelve-year-old Jaden is adopted, and he considers himself an epic fail. Which is obviously why his parents are going to adopt another son. but when they arrive at the orphanage in Kazakhstan they learn that the baby they were going to adopt has been given to another family. They have to choose another baby on the spot. Jaden’s parents pick a baby, but at the same time  Jaden latches onto a different toddler. This book was another one with a lot of feelings attached to it, and I really really liked it. The ending felt a little rushed and convenient, and I felt like Jaden’s feelings that his parents were replacing him weren’t really resolved to my satisfaction, but I really did enjoy this book.

I was talking about Tamora Pierce’s books with a friend in the beginning of November, and we were being generally gleeful about the fact that her Tortall books are going to be made into a TV show. My friend asked if I’d discovered the Tortall Recall podcast, which is basically a forroup of friends who read the Tamora Pierce books as children rereading them now as adults and yelling about them. I decided to give it a try, and then decided to reread the books along with listening to the podcast. So I reread the entire Song of the Lioness series this month. As always, I really enjoyed revisiting these books about a girl who decides she wants to become a knight and disguises herself as a boy to do just that. Tamora Pierce’s books had a huge influence on me as a young writer, and even now I am banned from rereading her Circle of Magic series until I get my revisions done. But I admit that a lot of what keeps me loving the Song of the Lioness books is nostalgia. Now that I’m older, more widely read, and honestly more woke than I was even a few years ago, these books don’t stand up as well, and that makes me kind of sad. They’re still good books, I still enjoy them, and I’d still recommend them to anyone who hasn’t read them, definitely, but I now have other feelings that I need to unpack. I’m actually planning a whole post on this so stay tuned.

And finally, I read the fourth Expanse book, Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey. After I finished the third book back in September, I said I would give this series one more book before I gave up on it, and I’m so glad I gave it one more book. Because this book was great! Now that they’ve figured out the rings, humanity has access to all these new earth-like planets, and there’s basically a land rush going on. But then there’s a group of refugees who fled Ganymede after the incident in book two and a corporation who start fighting over one of the planets, and the U.N. and the OPA send James Holden to mediate. And then of course the alien artifacts on the planet get cranky and everything goes off the rails. This was a fast easy read. I loved seeing the characters I loved from book two coming back in so many different ways, and I loved the different roles Holden and his crew were forced into in this book. It was good, and I’m pretty much sucked in for the series now, though I’m still not sure if it’s one for the favorites list.

And that’s it for November. I’ve already read a bunch of books in December, and I’ve already passed my goal of reading 100 books in 2019.  I’ll be back in a few days with a wrap up of all the crazy and great things that happened to me this year, my December reading roundup, and my favorite books of 2019. I’m also hoping to talk about the rest of the Remnant Chronicles, cliffhangers, and strong female characters soon too. In the meantime, let me know if you’ve read any of these books and what you think of them.