Reading The Riot Act

Friday, 3 October 2014

The Witch of Duva & The Too-Clever Fox by Leigh Bardugo.

Warning: Spoilers! (duh.)

There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls...or so the story goes. But it’s just possible that the danger may be a little bit closer to home. This story is a companion folk tale to Leigh Bardugo’s debut novel, Shadow and Bone.

I had no idea what to expect from this short story. I have to admit I am glad that it is merely based in the world of Grisha rather than following the characters in there. This story started off as a very fairytale like in a village in which girls are being eaten by a mysterious force in the woods. It is basically a re-imagined version of Hansel and Gretel. I was not expecting that ending though, its incredible though because there were so many clues and I didn't even catch on, such wonderful writing.

The story follows Nadya (In 3rd person), after her mothers death, girls begin to get eaten in her village, soon her father remarries, to a woman she is convinced is evil and behind the attacks. A series of unfortunate events (ha) lead her straight to the door of the Witch of Duva. There is an incredible twist on who is killing the girls and I won't spoil it for you because that is the best part of this story. The thing about this is that it just shows that Leigh Bardugo can write, no matter what the length and even with new characters, she can still create exciting, touching stories that lead you somewhere then throw you on your ass halfway through. Just genius.

In Ravka, just because you avoid one trap, it doesn't mean you'll escape the next. This story is a companion folk tale to Leigh Bardugo’s upcoming novel, Siege and Storm, the second book in the Grisha Trilogy.

The Two-Clever Fox is another rewritten fairy tale short story from Bardugo, only this time is loosely based around Little Red Riding Hood. Bardugo is really good at plot twists, I cannot describe enough how I can never tell where the story is going and yet she drops clues and lays it out so it all makes sense. This time we find a hunter who is believed to have the power of a witch, in order to let him be silent through the trees and leave no tracks. The Too-Clever Fox befriends the Hunters sister who is forced to wear a grotesque, patchwork, cloak of furs, and they plot to take him down. Once again I will not reveal the ending because as always that is part of the fun. I could read these forever. They are so ingeniously written and such an original take on the fairy tales that it just blows my mind.

I was however expecting a little bit of information on Nikolai as Alina does describe him as a Too-Clever Fox when she first meets him, but maybe there was something underlying I just didn't get. Anyway I highly recommend and on with more books.

Happy Reading

Thursday, 2 October 2014

wrap up

September Wrap up and October TBR!

Louise Wilkes 01:35:00 0

After a really terrible reading block couple of months I am finally back and ready to party.This month I read 5 books and am currently halfway through 3 others.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
The Too Clever Fox by Leigh Bardugo.
If I Stay by Gayle Forman.

I imagine I will have all of these plus Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo read by next week so you can happily look forward to that. I will also be doing a Grisha short story review as well as they are just delightful. So not a bad month for reading I think.

This month however apart from cracking on and finishing these books I will also be pulling a last month and just reading whatever takes my fancy. I find I can be in the mood for different books at different times, so we will see. I am hoping to start Isla and the Happily Ever After or maybe even a little Hemingway this month. Or maybe the Lux series or possibly the Shatter Me series.

There are so many books in the world, how do I choose?

This month will not only be reviews however, I have also acquired a great number of books and shall hopefully be doing a BookTour post, with my many many books. (It will probably be in parts, from now until Christmas.)

So that is this coming month, of course I am full of plot twists so I'll keep things a little fresh as well.

Happy Reading.

seige and storm

Seige and Storm by Leigh Bardugo.

Louise Wilkes 00:29:00 0

Warning: Spoilers! (duh.)

Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land. She finds starting new is not easy while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. She can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.

The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka. But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal. Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her--or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm.

Every well read Word Nerd knows how a series goes. We read second books with trepidation, not getting our hopes up due to the dreaded 'Second Book Syndrome.'

With every second book we can make some assumptions. A love connection made in the previous book will fall to tatters. The protagonist will doubt his/her power and one character will have a complete and incredibly sudden personality overhaul. Admittedly all of these happen in Siege and Storm but then again, it works.

I feel like all these 'Second Book Syndrome' constructions authors use over and over until readers are so tired of them, we beat ourselves in the face with the book (hopefully it's a paperback.) are all used because this is what they hope to achieve. They want to clinging to the edge of my seat, is everything going to come together? jump up and down with excitement feeling that we get when this structure works and goddamn does it work!

Naturally Mal and Alina struggle to make there relationship work but to be fair even in the first book I didn't feel like their relationship would be easy. She starts off too insecure, too grateful that he would want to be with her and he enjoys being the powerful and attractive one. No relationship can work without both people having the opportunity to grow and change. So of course once Alina becomes incredibly powerful and sought after and busy, Mal stamps his feet about it. There's this beautiful scene where they argue and he asks her to go back to who she was before everything happened she says she can't and he says if she could,would she give it up?...and she refuses. This doesn't seem like a beautiful scene but there is a certain elegance for standing up for yourself and this really marked a crucial moment for them I thought. After that and the kiss with Zoya, their relationship will never be the same, who knows for better or worse?

Speaking of Zoya, personality overhaul anyone? She very much the Celeste (The Selection by Kiera Cass) of this series. She stunningly gorgeous and of course all the men want her but she also a raging anti-other women bitch...apparently. I feel that woman have a tendency to be demonised by other women in fiction and it annoys the crap out of me. And then suddenly that character has to have some "development" and stops being a total A-Hole. The girl who always followed the Darkling wasn't even invited to join him and so he just murdered her family by expanding The Fold? It all just seemed a little unbelievable for me but then again it was also nice to have someone to fight against Alina in this book. Not in the same way the Darkling does but someone on her side who won't put up with her crap and Zoya definitely fit the bill.

Then we have the visions Alina keeps having of the Darkling that make her doubt her power. She takes a second amplifier, from an awesome Water Dragon might I add, and starts seeing him everywhere and feeling him and basically begins to doubt her own abilities to own all the amplifiers and still, control her powers without losing her mind. You wanna know why this worked? because it wasn't the main plot, this was no Spiderman 2, all based around doubt. This was Alina getting ready to go to war and feeling scared, worrying about letting people down and failing. It was a small narrative within the larger narrative and it really, really worked.

This second book also came with what might be some of my favourite new characters. We have awesome fighting, sun saint warriors Tolya and Tamar. I've always been a sucker for a really badass girl who just shows up to beat the crud out of people, but pair her with a smart Hodor-esque twin and I'm in. You had me at Hodor. Then we have Nikolai who is just utterly the most charming character I have ever read. I adore him and ship him and Alina so hard I may burst a blood vessel. The only problem is I don't trust him, with the whole Darkling switch up in the first book I'm now looking at everything about new characters and seeing them as signs they are evil. This book has given me serious trust issues.

Now, because this plot was so good I am not going to tell you what happens, I know without a doubt that people read these reviews even when they haven't read the book and I so don't want to spoil you on how it all turns out, just dear god read them, they are really incredible pieces of literature and my heart was pumping so hard all the way through. This is a very exciting series and it takes you in so many directions and just throws emotion and world building and beautiful, real characters at you in one 300 paged shot to the brain. Read it.

Happy Reading.

Friday, 26 September 2014

shadow and bone

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Louise Wilkes 04:47:00 1

Warning: Spoilers! (duh.)

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart.

All hail Leigh Bardugo. Honestly I adored this book. It has had many mixed reviews, mostly for every four 5 star reviews, there is one 1 star review. This is a 5 star review!

This book really reminded me of The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon but a much more accessible version. High fantasy can be really hard to get into and Bardugo makes it look easy.

Alina is a delightful protagonist, she can be a little annoying at first with her weakness and moaning about Mal but once her powers become clear and she becomes determined not to fail or let herself down, she becomes incredibly refreshing. Shadow and Bone takes all the great things from other YA, Dystopian and Fantasy books and mixes them together in a really fantastic, fresh way. It uses Russian Folklore and a huge twist to make itself stand out.

When we first met the Darkling, I admittedly was taken in by his charm, just like Alina. He seemed to really be a good guy if not a little driven and bossy. I never saw the change coming, I was honestly just thinking he was a little dark and mysterious and then it was like BOOM! Bad Guy!

Naturally once he was evil, my attraction faded. Prior to this though I had experienced nothing of Mal besides him ignoring her and sleeping around with girls. So the moment he came for her I was just overcome by gushy-loveyness. The Mal and Alina relationship became incredibly beautiful from that point and there were moments where I had to sit back and just take in such beauty.

Though the book was not only about the love triangle. There was a lovely friendship between Alina and Genya, and I thought her betrayal really helped highlight the hard decisions of a war. You could see her reasoning but also to betray her friend like that was just devastating and I had so many feels.

Overall the storyline was great, the world was so wonderfully built, we were just thrown in and yet everything still felt great and I could tell what was happening. The world was so easy to understand, it was incredibly vibrant and visual and was just so well written. The characters were beiaveble and they all had this great inner self awareness, there were subconcious parts of them which is really hard to achieve through writing and I adored it.

I can't fully explain my newfound passion for this series but I already bought to sequels and pre-ordered Bardugo's new series that comes out in 2015. Maybe that will help show how much I loved this series.

Happy Reading.

Wednesday, 24 September 2014

the infinite sea

The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey.

Louise Wilkes 11:58:00 0

Warning: Spoilers! (duh.)

How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.

Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

I had my reservations with the second book in The Fifth Wave series. I started reading and I struggled to remember who was who and what exactly had happened previously, at one point I even confused Ringer and Zombie but once all that was cleared up. I think this book was stupendously better than the previous.

The multiple POV's work so much more efficiently with their separate parts rather than named chapters. I do however feel like Cassie's is the weakest plotline, she very much takes a backseat and is more the voice of reason behind everyone else. Primarily we follow Evan (who's story is delightful and fun.) and Ringer, who is now by far, my favourite character ever.

I always thought she was badass in the first one and I aggressively ship her and Ben Parish. I think they are like perfect together, but her story was the one that pulled me in. It really says a lot about your writing talent if you can introduce a love interest in the last couple chapters, have them fall in love and then tragically kill them without it suffering the dreaded INSTA-LOVE! Cassie and Evan had always felt very insta-love to me but from the beginning, Razor is so her opposite and he s charming and relentless. It feels like it would be difficult not to have feelings for someone like that. So much time passes throughout these chapters and rather than skip to the part when you get to the emotion, you feel it change and develop and that was really beautiful. I even had to take a picture when I thought it was incredibly cute.

I mean, that is beyond adorable. Then we had the whole shocker of HE BETRAYED HER! I was physically upset on the train home. Rick Yancey is a master of breaking my heart because then he tries to convince her to flee and run, but obviously she won't until Vosch releases Teacup (After Ringer accidentally shoots her...long story.) Then when he tries to help her escape he is shot and presumable dead. Which is really annoying because Evan just won't die and we get someone we want alive and he's dead within 6 chapters.

I do also feel the need to mention the use of the phrase "The Infinite Sea" this is in no way a perfect book, Yancey reuses the same descriptions and images throughout but I don't care. I'm so connected to the character, it doesn't bother me. I will however question the big "reveal" I mean the whole idea that by simply telling people they have aliens inside them, means people will kill everyone due to some government/extraterrestrial cleanse of the world seemed a little crazy to me.

Evan turns out not to be dead as you can see and there really doesn't happen much plot wise with him and Cassie. The minor characters definitively took the wheel this time and it was refreshing. I mean Poundcake was like the MVP of this book. His story was so heartbreaking and his bravery just really touched me and from a character who has never said a word, it was really incredible.

This is no longer Cassie's story and as much as I loved Cassie in the first one, it's nice to see her take a backseat and Yancey to explore the backgrounds of others because they were beautiful, breathtaking and incredibly touching.

Also Sams is a dick in this book.

Happy Reading.

Wednesday, 17 September 2014

review

Landline by Rainbow Rowell.

Louise Wilkes 02:35:00 0

Warning: Spoilers (duh.)

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems beside the point now.

Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her.
When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.
That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts . . .
Is that what she’s supposed to do?
Or would Georgie and Neal be better off ifs their marriage never happened?

I hated it. I absolutely hated it. I can't believe I hated a Rainbow Rowell book. I love her books, Attachments is one of my all time favourite books ever...but this book. I hated it.

It was monotanous and dull. It was so slow, Georgie gets up calls Neil, no answer, mopes around in her own thoughts for hours and then goes to bed. Then sometimes she'll have these awkward conversations with the kids (Whom I don't care about at all) and they are clunky and awkward and not at all nice to read. Neil basically disappears apart from his past self which leads to no explanation but does tell us exactly how the book will end...so I won't waste my time.

I have felt with Rainbows books that there is room for critique but I let it off because the story is so wonderful and it doesn't matter. But this book honestly did not care about any of it. It was D-U-L-L. Georgie doesn't seem to have a personality, I can't tell you what she's like and the relationship with her kids and husband seems pretty non-existent even though she keeps talking about how much she loves him. And honestly I thought Neil was a bit of an Asshole.

The whole thing where he dumped her cause she went to a "TV People Party" and he didn't know if he could put up with that forever but then said he could so proposed was ridiculous. It seemed kind of insane that he would pull this whole leaving her thing again, over the exact same reason. He knew what he was getting into. And I felt he was completely unsupportive, even in the flashbacks of anything Georgie wanted. She gets the dream she's been working towards for over 20 years and you have a bitch fit cause she'll miss one lousy Christmas? Then you go and start hanging out with your ex, grow up Neil. This entire book felt like 14 year olds dating, what they were doing was so immature.

I just have no energy for it. I was just screaming at Georgie and Neil throughout the entire book to stop being so ridiculous. Why doesn't he call her back? WTFH is that about? It makes no sense. The book is going for this magical realism thing and it would if characters actions matched their motivation.

I just can't even. I love Rainbow Rowell and I feel like a traitor but I honestly hated it. I was so bored and angry and I just feel exhausted from reading it.

I'm sorry Rainbow. I still love you.