She Who Became the Sun : The Radiant Emperor #1 by Shelley Parker-Chan - Book Review (No spoilers)

Synopsis

"In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness."

My review

5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book was a whole journey. It started off great, and I loved the writing from the first page itself. The middle portion of it was slightly dull, but I found the ending really exciting. The author sounded like she knew what she was talking about. I liked reading a book set in China, and though all the characters and places confused me at first, things got clearer after a while.

    “If you want a fate other than what Heaven gave you, you have to want that other fate. You have to struggle for it. Suffer for it.”

The characters were written well, and I felt like each of them had a separate personality that made sense. Zhu was fun to read about, and I liked her character. Some of Ouyang's chapters felt lacking in descriptions, and although that added to him being presented as someone with no emotions, it also made them slightly boring. I liked that the book had many characters, as that also facilitated a lot of people being killed.

The pacing was good, and the story took off from the first chapter itself. None of the chapters was drawn-out, and all the events contributed to the plot development as well. The magic part of this book was about the powers of yin and yang- the life force and the spirit force. There was also the Mandate of Heaven and a lot of talk about fate. This part was different from most fantasy series in the sense that a lot more of Heaven was involved, but the characters giving off light is the case in a lot of books.

    “Destroying what someone else cherished never brought back what you yourself had lost. All it did was spread grief like a contagion.”

The author created the characters in such an interesting way that I found myself rooting for them despite all the henoius acts they committed. They felt like real people instead of generic undeserving heroes with a tragically mighty ego and a superiority complex. Although Zhu and Ouyang were on opposite sides, I couldn't help but wish that both of them would win. The side characters were nice too, and the relationships between everyone were well-written.

I liked that this book was unique, fast-paced and that Zhu actually used her brains and schemes to get out of trouble rather than be handed all the victories by fluke. I look forward to reading the next book!

The Eye of the World : The Wheel of Time #1 by Robert Jordan - Book Review (No spoilers)

"The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

When The Two Rivers is attacked by Trollocs-a savage tribe of half-men, half-beasts- five villagers flee that night into a world they barely imagined, with new dangers waiting in the shadows and in the light."

Read till 60%

1 star

I couldn't do this to myself anymore. Just the thought of picking up this book and continuing it filled me with dread, and at this point, I decided it was not worth it. There are other things I'd much rather do.

The setting was interesting, and the world-building was done well. The author is very imaginative and he made up a lot of legends to provide some history to their land. But after reading a few of them, I got really tired. The names of all the kings and magicians and devils started getting mixed up in my head. I found I absolutely did not care which great person had defeated who or what, where, in which Age and the other unnecessary details that came with every story that was told.

The plot was good too, but the narration was the most excruciatingly slow one I have ever read. The story given at the back of the book started almost on page 200. Two boring hundred. Until then it was just about the dudes hanging out at their village and somehow that was the most interesting part of the book.

The story went nowhere after page 200 either. The next hundred were spent in the characters roaming in the forest, after which similar predictable things happened. I could quite actually sum up all four hundred and fifty pages I read in one sentence. 

The amount of sheer over-reacting in the book was atrocious. It was like something I used to write as a kid, when all the characters gasped and gaped at any and every event just because the actual story wasn't dramatic enough to warrant the same reaction from readers. The village folk were also pretty unintelligent when it came to everything. At one point "Rand gasped, trying to smile and gape at the same time." and I don't see how that's a valid reaction to seeing a tower or a bridge or whatever they had come across at that moment in the story, or a valid reaction to anything, really.

The characters were rather two-dimensional, and all of them had similar dialogues. Rand was only a tall person who fell for everything. Mat was his trickster friend, and the other guy was a muscular blacksmith's apprentice. Moiraine and Lan had practically no emotions. In the author's attempt to make all the women appear powerful and strong-willed, he has ended up writing them as short-tempered and rude. 

I also didn't understand why the other two boys spared by the Trollocs were not included in their runaway party. Couldn't one of them have been the person the Dark One was after?

I do not see how the author had the patience to write this 800-page book, and thirteen others like it, because I certainly did not have the patience to read it. I wanted to know what happened at the end, but the 300 or so pages of entirely boring sentences were too daunting. I tried skimming through the last couple of chapters, but I lost interest after a few lines.

I wanted to like this book, but at the same time, it was highly unlikely that I would have read the entire series even if I'd enjoyed it, so I guess good riddance.

Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley - Book Review (No spoilers)

"This is a love story.
It's the story of Howling Books, where readers write letters to strangers, to lovers, to poets.
It's the story of Henry Jones and Rachel Sweetie. They were best friends once, before Rachel moved to the sea.
Now, she's back, working at the bookstore, grieving for her brother Cal and looking for the future in the books people love, and the words they leave behind."

3 stars

This is not really a love story.

The plot was kind of interesting, and I liked the idea of having a main character whose family owns a second-hand bookshop. The story didn't progress much from there, though. I know these books aren't that plot-based, and it's more about the other things, but I was still bored. The book was short, and that was good because I might have stopped reading it midway otherwise.

I didn't like any of the characters much. There were enough of them to have some side-plots, but all their separate stories intertwined, and I found that annoying rather than satisfying because the author gave just the one happy ending to them all. With that being said, I also couldn't get myself to care about Fredrik's wife or Josie's son, and maybe it was for the better that the side characters remained side characters.

All of them felt like cookie-cutter characters from a typical romance novel. Their friendships and relationships felt more forced than I would've liked, and it didn't really feel like a love story, though the blurb claims to disagree. 

Though nothing else was happening, I felt like Rachel and Henry's relationship didn't progress much either. They already knew all there was to know about each other, and after a few chapters, Rachel went back to being her earlier self. There was no unlearning and relearning, just going back to how they were before.

In the first three-fourths of Rachel's chapters, it was all Cal this and Cal that. At first, it didn't bother me so much, because I get that a lot of things are going to remind her of her brother. But after some time the repetitiveness started to get to me. The author also repeated some of the recent events when the point-of-view changed. It was just a few paragraphs, but at first, I was confused as to why it was all happening again, and I didn't want to read all of that one more time. I skimmed through a few pages toward the end, as I was desperate to reach the climax of the story.

I also don't get why all of them insisted on writing letters to each other. They all had cell phones, and they texted their families. If Henry and Lola were as good friends of Rachel's as she claimed, I don't see why they couldn't have just called or occasionally texted each other. Yet the first thing that Lola says when she sees Rachel is that "good friends write" not text.

The Letter Library sounded sort of impractical and unrealistic, but hey, imaginative books are what I'm here for. I didn't like the concept of scribbling in the margins of books and writing notes for each other, but leaving a part of yourself in your favourite book sounded nice. 

Overall, the book was a good short read, and somebody who likes romance novels will mostly enjoy this one too.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue : The Raven Cycle #3 by Maggie Stiefvater - Book Review (No spoilers)

Summary-

"Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel."

My review-

I was surprised by how much I liked this book. The story was interesting, and I loved the author's writing style. In the first two books, I had been bored in the beginning, but this one was much improved on that front. The plot didn't actually progress much, but something exciting seemed to always be going on. I do realise that this book hardly contributed to the story, but that didn't bother me much and I still enjoyed reading it. 

I liked the descriptions of the caves, but after a point, they felt repetitive. Too many people had been in that cave too many times. Sometimes they saw the place in their dreams, sometimes while scrying and in the end, in reality. Some parts of it felt unnecessary and like filler scenes, but I didn't mind them.

I found the atmosphere of tension slightly missing in this book. The characters talked about how scared they felt in the cave or how some scream startled them, but I did not get that feeling from the descriptions. A lot of this book was spent underground, and I thought Blue and the others would have gotten used to caves by the end.

Colin Greenmantle and Piper were two new characters introduced in this book. Thankfully, Colin had very few chapters, and there were none from Piper's point of view. This book also had fewer of the raven boys hanging around doing nothing, which I liked. In the previous books, the scenes in which Blue just sat at 300 Fox Way, or in which the four of them spent time at Monmouth Manufacturing bored me. The pacing in this book was much nicer, and I hope the author maintains it in the fourth instalment as well.

I am excited to read the last book of this series. I suppose that's the only thing middle books intend to do, which is why I gave this a 5-star rating.