Title: Tempests and Slaughter (Numair Chronicles #1)
Author: Tamora Pierce
Initial Thoughts: I felt like I had come home.
This is likely just me because she is one of my favorite authors and I've been reading her works for so long, but in the middle of reading, I realized that, even though I had never read this story before and it was set in Carthak rather than in Tortall, everything was just so familiar. The feel of the characters, the imagined setting, everything. This is really weird and probably only other hardcore bookworms could even understand this, but as I was reading, I was picturing everything in my head. I get a general idea of a place and that infuses everything I read in that setting. I probably couldn't tell you exact details because I don't actually have any, just a general sense of things. It's like a ghost or afterimage of something, the idea of it without any details. That's how I picture my worlds. Some I can give a very slight description (Wheel of Time is bright, colorful, busy and bustling, full of life and adventure and magic; Sword of Truth is natural, actually rather empty of life, but where there is life, it's on a large scale, so it's either empty flatlands or capital cities, all in shades of brown and green and just little hints of magic; etc.). Tortall is busy cities, knights, castles, mages, the smell of road dust and taverns. As I was reading, I realized it smelled familiar (in any way that an imagined scent that I wasn't even consciously imagining could smell) and it was like I was home. It smelled and felt like Tortall. To explain how much that means, I first picked up Wild Magic over 13 years ago after we had just moved to a new state (the one I'm living in now and have lived in for over half my life). The copy I had got sold at a yard sale (it was actually my sister's), but I never forgot it. A few years down the road I came across it at the library and found out that there were more books in the series, both before and after it. Since then I have reread all her books but the newest multiple times and her books are one of only two author's whose books I've listened to as audiobooks. I never get tired of rereading her works and I always look forward to anything new by her. So yeah, reading this new book by her was like returning to a favorite place with my oldest and longest friends and discovering something new about it.
Even though he's just a child and he goes by a different name, it is so easy to see that this is Numair. He's still struggling and growing, still becoming who he will be, but it's him. Conversing with crocodile gods and raising sunbirds, no wonder he's so good with Daine. It's really interesting also to see Ozorne and Varice when they were all young and inseparable. I don't think I'll be reading Emperor Mage the same way again. The book is just a lot of fun and epicness wrapped together, such is Pierce's style. I really enjoyed it, meeting and remeeting the characters you know so much later in life and getting their background stories. (I really like background stories.)
Rating: 5 In all honesty, with it being just the beginning book for the series and not as much happening as I'm sure it will later on, it should probably actually be a 4, but that sense of familiarity bumped it up to a 5.
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Kingdom of Ash
Title: Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass #7)
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Initial Thoughts: If I was ever going to get a book hangover, it would be from this book. And I never get book hangovers.
First: was that a hint of something to come in the ACOTAR series?!?!?! I swear, when Aelin was falling through the worlds, the winged male with a dark power and the pregnant female fae sounded an awfully lot like Rhys and Feyre, at least to me. Though last time we saw them, Feyre was not pregnant. Is it a hint of things to come? Or am I just reading too much into it?
As a friend pointed out to me, Nox Owen didn't show up again. We never got to see him and Aelin reunited. My friend thinks he might have died. I think he had just gone off to deliver messages asking for help and either didn't return yet or he did and Maas just decided that that reunion wasn't important enough to make the book any longer than it already was. After she mentioned it, though, I started keeping an eye out for other loose ends. I thought there might be one with the last of the cadre who had gone north to look for Lorcan, but they mentioned him at the end. So yeah, she didn't a pretty darn good job of wrapping up all her loose ends. And I totally called the field of kingsflame blooming, though it took a bit longer than I expected (mostly because I didn't keep the seasons in mind and wanted it to bloom as soon as she was crowned, not even thinking about the fact that it was winter). Halfway through, I would have rated this book at a contented 4, glad that we were finally getting the ending, that everything was coming together, characters were starting to reunite. By the end, all the feels, the ups and downs, the heartbreak and laughter, the tense moments and the joyous reunions, I can't do anything but give it a resounding 5. If anyone had been around as I read the last hundred or so pages, they would have seen a distinct shine in my eyes, from both unshed tears and the sparkle of pure joy all at the same time as I read about the triumphs and losses of that final battle. Years ago when I finished Breaking Dawn, I thought that was one of the best endings I had ever read. It wrapped things up but left the promise of the future. If I wanted, I could imagine for myself how their lives went on, and every imagining was full of joy. Maas topped that. By a long shot. She wrapped up everything, found all the happy endings, we see the future stretched out before them all and we know it will be a better future, a better world. What started as questionable alliances came through the war as friends, as lovers and brothers and sisters, and they will only make sure that continues and that those relationships grow. While everyone returns home, they will no longer be three separate continents, but three neighboring kingdoms who fought and bled together to ensure a future for them all and that will not soon be forgotten. Hope. That most important dream. Hope for a better world. Hope for a better future for us all. Maybe that's why I love her books so much, because I have always believed in hope, just as Aelin does, and dreams, like Feyre. I believe that we can imagine better, and as long as we don't lose that, we will make progress towards that bright future, one day at a time. Breaking Dawn left me with a contented smile. Kingdom of Ash leaves me with a heart full of joy, a head full of dreams, and a longing to do my part to make a difference, to bring us closer to our better world, our promise of a brighter tomorrow.
Rating: 5. Like I could ever actually give it anything less.
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Initial Thoughts: If I was ever going to get a book hangover, it would be from this book. And I never get book hangovers.
First: was that a hint of something to come in the ACOTAR series?!?!?! I swear, when Aelin was falling through the worlds, the winged male with a dark power and the pregnant female fae sounded an awfully lot like Rhys and Feyre, at least to me. Though last time we saw them, Feyre was not pregnant. Is it a hint of things to come? Or am I just reading too much into it?
As a friend pointed out to me, Nox Owen didn't show up again. We never got to see him and Aelin reunited. My friend thinks he might have died. I think he had just gone off to deliver messages asking for help and either didn't return yet or he did and Maas just decided that that reunion wasn't important enough to make the book any longer than it already was. After she mentioned it, though, I started keeping an eye out for other loose ends. I thought there might be one with the last of the cadre who had gone north to look for Lorcan, but they mentioned him at the end. So yeah, she didn't a pretty darn good job of wrapping up all her loose ends. And I totally called the field of kingsflame blooming, though it took a bit longer than I expected (mostly because I didn't keep the seasons in mind and wanted it to bloom as soon as she was crowned, not even thinking about the fact that it was winter). Halfway through, I would have rated this book at a contented 4, glad that we were finally getting the ending, that everything was coming together, characters were starting to reunite. By the end, all the feels, the ups and downs, the heartbreak and laughter, the tense moments and the joyous reunions, I can't do anything but give it a resounding 5. If anyone had been around as I read the last hundred or so pages, they would have seen a distinct shine in my eyes, from both unshed tears and the sparkle of pure joy all at the same time as I read about the triumphs and losses of that final battle. Years ago when I finished Breaking Dawn, I thought that was one of the best endings I had ever read. It wrapped things up but left the promise of the future. If I wanted, I could imagine for myself how their lives went on, and every imagining was full of joy. Maas topped that. By a long shot. She wrapped up everything, found all the happy endings, we see the future stretched out before them all and we know it will be a better future, a better world. What started as questionable alliances came through the war as friends, as lovers and brothers and sisters, and they will only make sure that continues and that those relationships grow. While everyone returns home, they will no longer be three separate continents, but three neighboring kingdoms who fought and bled together to ensure a future for them all and that will not soon be forgotten. Hope. That most important dream. Hope for a better world. Hope for a better future for us all. Maybe that's why I love her books so much, because I have always believed in hope, just as Aelin does, and dreams, like Feyre. I believe that we can imagine better, and as long as we don't lose that, we will make progress towards that bright future, one day at a time. Breaking Dawn left me with a contented smile. Kingdom of Ash leaves me with a heart full of joy, a head full of dreams, and a longing to do my part to make a difference, to bring us closer to our better world, our promise of a brighter tomorrow.
Rating: 5. Like I could ever actually give it anything less.
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