Book Review: Belle Epoque

I don't really have anything to open up this review with so I'll just make a general announcement first. It only recently occurred to me that it is both late November and that I've barely read any 2015 books. So, while I have checked out several armfuls of them from the local library I doubt that I will have reviews of any of them up before the end of the year and thus, like this year I'm going to push my general listing of the best books of 2015 back. Probably not until June this time, this year I realized I didn't actually need a full six months, but March or April seems likely.

Belle Epoque by Elizabeth Ross

Book Review: Tokyo Demons volume 2

"Alright Helen, what's your excuse for not having this review up on time?" Well, it was one I was having some trouble with this review which is never a good sign. Plus, I'm trying to cut back on caffeine but had a soda at work Friday and spent literally nine hours trying not to bounce off of the goddamn walls, made focusing on writing a little hard! And with the fall anime round-up coming up on Monday it's been a little chaotic around here.....

Tokyo Demons: Add A Little Chaos by Lianne Sentar, illustrated by Rem

Book Review: Tides

I got this book in a curious way, an author I follow on tumblr reblogged another author saying her second book was coming out soon and she would like to have more reviews of the first book up on Amazon so she'd be happy to send a PDF of the book to anyone who wanted to review it on there. Naturally I was interested so I'll be cross-posting part of this review over there, hope it does some good!

Tides by Betsy Cornwell

Book Review: The Golem and the Jinni

Wait this is a 2013 book? Shoot, I was totally going to add this to my "best books of 2014" list because it's easily one of the best books I've read this year. I know I said I was going to focus more on reviewing YA books on this blog, since clearly I like them better and I feel like I give them more interesting reviews, but I had seen it reviewed on some mostly-YA book blogs before and honestly thought it was one. And it's a good book, a great book even, so let me try and convince people who like YA and adult fiction alike to give it a shot!

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Book Review: City of A Thousand Dolls

This was one of the 2013 books that I was most excited to read, the combination of the premise and the setting sounded rather cool and I did win it in a contest but there were some embarrassing moments when emails just didn't get sent when they were supposed to, plus a few moves on my part, so it took me a while to get to this book. So, it's hard to say that any book is worth a six month wait but did it come close to being worth it?

City of a Thousand Dolls by Miriam Forster 

Book Review: Battle Magic

Hi management here, initially my plan was to just take the week of August 3rd off to work on Otakon things but it looks like I really need to take this week off as well, between work and my sewing machine finding new and creative ways to break I'm just really far behind. So, I will put up my next review August 11th and things should be much more regular at that point!

Some books I have to wait longer for than others and this is one of them. When I was a freshman in highschool The Will of the Empress came out which I really enjoyed. I was curious where Pierce would take her Circle of Magic universe next, it's her lesser known series but I've always liked the imagination in the magic and the settings. I had almost forgotten this boom was coming out when I saw her at the 2013 National Book Festival (and, in a twist that made me feel like I was at a con, I had to miss her talk to get in a good spot in line for her signing). Since that's in the fall obviously it took me a bit longer to actually get to the book but, given the longer and longer breaks between her books, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing!

Battle Magic  by Tamora Pierce

My favorite books of 2013

I'm sure some people looked at that title and wondered if I got the date wrong, nope! Since I get so many books from libraries it takes a little while for me to get to everything and, since last December the list of books from 2013 I wanted to read was greater than the list of those which I had, I decided to revisit the idea halfway through 2014. I'm actually not done posting all my reviews of 2013 books yet, who knows if I'll ever be done, but all of the ones on this list I have reviewed previously so let's get started! Oh and, unsurprisingly, not only is this a short list but it's also all YA, I really am trying to read more broadly but I'm having a hard time finding adult fiction that simply entertains me as much as YA that's not straight-up non-fiction.

Book Review: Crown of Midnight

Well that didn't go as planned, apologies that my schedule is so off, between HTTYD2 taking longer than usual to write, my work deciding that I should work 8 days in a row (heck, anytime my reviews are late just assume it's work related), and having three family crises in 12 hours just completely threw me off and I'm going to work as hard as I can to get back on track as quickly as I can!

After reading Throne of Glass I was fairly excited to read the next book as well and, between when it came out and when I read it, the author announced that while she had originally signed a three book deal for the series, it had been extended into a six book deal which was how she originally outlined it and that the series would completely finish. It seems as if she's already finished with the editing for Heir of Fire but I'm still happy since I do actually have a few YA series that are in unfinished limbo and have no desire to add to that list. Also, whatever my feelings on the individual books might be, I have to say that they have the best short, snappy but not one word, titles out there right now, they're rather fun to keep typing out!

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Book Review: Sorrow's Knot

I can't remember if it was last summer or the year before but whichever it was I finally picked up a copy of Plain Kate, which I had seen at the library for years and avoided since the blurb didn't sound interesting, and feel completely in love with it. So, as it often happens, I poked around the internet, found out that she had a new book in the pipeline and that it would be a fantasy set in a Native American-esque setting which in an of itself is exciting since I can think of very few other books like that (the only one that even comes to mind is one I read back in middle school and I'm not completely sure of the title!). As per usual it took a little bit of time for my library to get the book, and more time for me to remember to search their catalog to see if they had it yet but I certainly got to it more quickly than Plain Kate!

Sorrow's Knot by Erin Bow

Book Review: Hero

This book was particularly hard to get a hold of. I'm not sure what is going on with one of my library systems but occasionally they'll list a book in their catalog which apparently they haven't actually received yet and it can take literally months for me to get an email saying it's on hold (I requested the fourth volume of Wandering Son around the same time, last December, and still have not gotten a hold of it, this isn't just me being impatient!). So I spent several months going "this idea I have for a story, did I really come up with it on my own or is that supposed to be the summary of Hero?" before I was finally able to double check for myself!

Hero by Alethea Kontis

Book Review: The Bitter Kingdom

Confused why there was no review Wednesday? I started thinking about what I wanted to say about the first volume of Inu x Boku SS and realized I had absolutely nothing. And trying to spin that out would be a terrible review so I decided to just cancel it instead of trying to scramble and rearrange my schedule, hopefully that won't happen again soon since I am really trying to cut those ones out of my review list!

Last year I had a chance to read The Girl of Fire and Thorns and really liked it and wished I had been following the series as it came out instead of playing this mad catch-up with it, especially since I did try to write each review before I read the next book but that didn't work out. I was a bit discouraged by the second book but hoped that the third book would be stronger (especially since it was not The Middle Book In A Series) and I had a chance to read the short stories Carson wrote with the series. They're fun but not necessary to understand the books, especially since some of the character writing (like with Elisa's sister) felt a bit inconsistent with the other books.

The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson

Book Review: The Dream Thieves

I feel rather topical, the cover and title for the next book in The Raven Cycle was just released, Blue Lily, Lily Blue which not only has me excited for the next book but also clears up one or two thoughts I had about this book and The Raven Boys which means that for once I'm glad this review is going up quite a bit after I read the book itself! I will note however that I had apparently forgotten a few key details of TRB (as in, we've already had one main character die and revive, this is in addition to the one who is a ghost and the one whose fated to die) but once I started reading this book I was feeling too greedy to put it down, do a reread and then return to it. I plan on doing a post on my favorite books from 2013 sometime in June, when I've actually been able to get around to reading all of them, and unless I'm surprised between now and then I can say that this book will be on that list for sure.

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Book Review: Siege and Storm

As I believe I mentioned recently, occasionally I just plain forget to review something and that was the case with Shadow and Bone last year where I didn't realize until months and months later that I hadn't reviewed it and by that point my memory of the book was just fuzzy enough that I didn't feel as if I could do a good review. Which is strange, not only did I enjoy the book but I also looked through it's list of references in the back and was reading this enormous, 1980s tome of Russian history from practically it's beginning in modern-day Ukraine up until the late 1800s, you'd think that sitting down to read that nearly every day for a month would have reminded me at the very least....

Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo

Book Review: Untold

Hmm, for the first book in this series I was able to get an ARC and I was able to get an ARC for this one as well, abet I wasn't able to actually get a hold of it until well after the book was released (moving makes directing/picking up mail rather challenging it turns out). And of course my backlog of books to review doesn't make this review anymore timely but, since I haven't yet had to use tumblr savior for the third book in the series (which I had to do for this book about four months before it came out) I think that means I'm not too late to talk about it yet!

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

Book Review: A Natural History of Dragons

This will be my last review of a 2013 book for a while, thank goodness, I've had to completely reorder my reviewing list to get these done as quickly as I could and as a result there are some things that have been on there for quite a while. Perhaps in the future I should continue reviewing novels during November Month of Manga as well, hmm. Regardless, I'm a little surprised that out of all the 2013 books I was looking for in my library that hey had this one (new author, not your typical set-up for a fantasy, etc) but I am not one to complain when the library has things I want to read!

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Tent by Marie Brennan 

Book Review: Quicksilver

While I scrambled and tried to post reviews of as many 2013 books as I could before the year changed I wasn't able to get them all up in time and in this case it's rather ironic since, while many of those books wouldn't have made my top five favorites list this one certainly would have. Back in 2012 I read Ultraviolet and while I really did enjoy it I was a bit leery when R.J. Anderson announced she was doing a companion/sequel novel to it since it wrapped up so nicely. But it sounded like since it was going to focus on another character (and I should note now, you shouldn't read this without having read Ultraviolet because it completely spoils it, although I am attempting to keep review as spoiler-free as possible for both books) which sounded interesting, and then she announced the main character, the point of view character, was asexual. And then there was no way I wasn't on-board for this, how could I say no to the first book I know of with a narrator with my own sexual orientation?

Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson

Book Review: Dark Triumph

With so many new books to keep track of this year it's not surprising that one or two nearly slipped my mind, after all it's not like I'm thinking of medieval, nearly-France, or assassins everyday. However my new library system actually has a section within the young adult section (the section forbidden to over-eighteens after 3pm on weekdays and all day on weekends, for once my ambiguous age appearance works in my favor!) dedicated to new books and that has helped me out quite a bit in keeping track of books. Now, if only all the books I wanted to read would magically pop up there....

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers 

Book Review: Out of the Easy

Since the end of the year is very close by now this means two things, one that all of the books I read that came out in 2013 get priority for being reviewed (so that everyone knows what I'm talking about in my end of year wrap-up) and two that I'm now suddenly finding all of said books at the local library, it seems to happen this way every year. I seem to recall hearing about this book this past summer and while it's not quite my cup of tea (straight historical fiction which I could tell from the setting was going to be running into a lot of ugly stereotypes) it sounded interesting enough so I was more than happy to pick it up when I came across it in person.


Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

Book Review: Cinders and Sapphires

So, I just realized that my last manga review for November never actually posted (what the heck blogger) so that's up now right below this post, talking about a manga called Qualia the Purple which, odd as it sounds, might fit in well with Verical's line. Since I already needed two reviews tonight I'm going to call that my first review and get on with writing this one, all these late nights for work (getting home just a bit before 10pm and with a headache most nights) is just not helping my blogging schedule, even if I start writing the posts earlier in the day.

There's no special reason why I picked up this book at the library, I believe I had heard of it before (and I do make a point to try and grab as many books as I can that have come out in the past year) but the setting interested me more than anything else. I'm only half joking when I say that since I didn't watch this year's season of Downton Abbey (looked at the summaries of it and decided that I didn't want to deal with those plot twists) that I needed something set in Edwardian England to tide me over and this seemed like the next best thing!

Cinders and Sapphires by Lelia Rasheed

Summary: The Somerton estate in England is in a tizzy not only because the lord of the manor is coming back with his family after spending years as an administrator in India but because they've just learned he's to remarry immediately after he returns. And that's not the only love in the air, it seems like nearly every other character has a secret tryst going on and if any of them were revealed it could damage the reputation of the entire household.

The Good: I will first admit that it's been a little while since I read this, had I realized how long it would be (and how many books I would read in-between) I would have written a rough draft of this review earlier. I didn't however and I must say this, I'm having a hard time recalling any parts of the book I truly liked. This isn't to say the story was written poorly, the characters were consistent, the problems they encountered made sense for the setting and I liked how the growing movement for India's independence became a subplot in the story (the world can't truly be called global in the pre-WWI era but that doesn't mean characters in stories have to be ignorant). But despite all of this bits of solid writing it just never connected for me and I'm having a hard time recalling any specific details that I did enjoy. 

The Bad: The story is comparable to Downton Abbey not just in terms of setting but also in the number of characters, all with their own subplots, that it tries to balance yet I feel like ultimately fails. It tries too hard to make everyone sympathetic and I just couldn't care about the main relationship since it was one where the characters had an immediate attraction and then started to get to know each other, this means that by extension the readers were being told to care about these two characters before we were ever given a reason why. In the end I never ended up sympathizing with any of the characters and, since this is a story about these specific characters and their lives more than anything else, ultimately that means the story failed for me.


Overall I was rather disappointed with the story and am giving this book 2.5 out of 5 stars. I don't plan on reading the next book in the series, guess I'll have to look elsewhere for my Edwardian England fix!

Book Review: When We Wake

Took me a bit longer than I would have liked to get to this book, considering how big a fan I am of Healey's other works, but I got to it within the year which is an improvement for me! That said I was a little nervous about it, it's a completely different genre from her other books and my track record with YA science fiction is surprisingly spotty (occasionally I find books I've already read in the library and can't help but shudder and move on) but thankfully this was one of the better books.

When We Wake by Karen Healey

Summary: In the near future Tegan was an average Australian teen with family and friends she loved. And then she wakes up, horrified to find out that she was killed in a botched assassination attempt and, thanks to the forms she had signed donating her body to science, has now become the first person to be successfully woken up after 100 years of being frozen. And the world has changed in a lot of ways in 100 years but one thing that hasn't is that games of politics are still played and it seems like everyone wants Tegan on their side for less than savory reasons.

The Good: THIS is why I say that dystopias are an easy, lazy way of setting up a plot most of the time, while Tegan's new world can't precisely be called a dystopia (it doesn't have the all controlling government aspect) it is an even more deeply flawed and twisted world which makes it all the more realistic. So yes I am celebrating that this is a horribly depressing book, often when I read I think "so what point in this story would I want to live in, the beginning, middle, or end?" and here I wouldn't want to live in either of Tegan's presents, especially because of how horrifyingly real some of the things talked about (rising temperatures, first world countries dumping their pollution and garbage on third world countries and then blaming them for not having the resources to deal with it, etc). Moving on from that, I was happy to see that Tegan manages to have a best friend in here who is a girl and their not fighting over a romantic interest (I'm sad how rarely this seems to happen in fiction these days) and that ended up being my favorite relationship of the story (second to Tegan's relationship with the scientist who revived her). And that also sums up the world she woke up in, while it might be crap the social issues that plague us today have gone a long way towards being resolved and she sees this as the one bright hope in this brave new world of hers.

The Bad: While the ending is a bit ambiguous I was alright with that but I've now heard that Healey is working on a companion novel which retells the story from the point of view of one of the other main characters and I'm suspicious of it. Will this add anything new to the story or continue on past where this one ended? Which would indicate something was missing in the first place and, well, I rather like the ambiguous ending so I'm a bit worried at how this book plans to end. Strictly speaking this isn't a problem with WWW but I've known a few series, mostly anime, where a sequel has completely messed up the ending of the previous installment so I'm twice burned extra shy now. Other than that, some groups did come off as rather flat and it's a bit hard to believe that there seems to be so little activism/people weren't able to prevent what happened to the world (since there truly is some amazing technology in the works right now to prevent the world from becoming an overheated and polluted wasteland) but I'm a bit of an optimist so I'm supposed to question whenever someone creates a story with a bleak world and apathetic people.

So I give this book 4 out of 5 stars for being heart-breaking in a good way and something which caused me to need a lot of chocolate and cute fluffy things to read when I was done, that seems to be the trend with the 2013 books I've read this year (looking at you The Summer Prince).