book.dreamblog’s Book Reviews!

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill  *Warning: This review contains spoilers*  Summary & Review  Ok, so I want to start by giving Kelly Barnhill major props for actually coming up with such a unique concept. I have literally never read anything like it before, so I was pretty blown away by that.  The prose is remarkably well written, and the narration of the audiobook I listened to was fantastic as well. As was the actual structure of the novel. I liked the brief “historical” interludes the separated sections of the story being told to give the reader historical and scientific commentary on “dragoning,” as if this truly were a biography (autobiography? Memoir? Case study?) written about the character of Alex to explain the story’s events. This is a kind of structuring that can’t necessarily always be pulled off well, especially in a fantasy novel. If done wrong, it can throw off the pacing of the entire book, but Barnhill handles it with finesse. I actually...

Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May *This review contains spoilers* *Content Warning: This review mentions r*pe*  Summary & Review  I want to preface by saying that when I listened to this on audio, I had absolutely no idea that this was loosely inspired by the Great Gatsby and reimagined as a sapphic historical dark fantasy. (Actually, once you turn Gatsby into a sapphic historical dark fantasy, how inspired by Gatsby can it really still be?) But, I think not knowing that actually allowed me to enjoy the story more. Had I known that this was supposed to be inspired by Gatsby, I would have been a lot more critical of the plot, the characters, the general direction of the story, etc. Not knowing just simply allowed me to appreciate this story for what it is on its own.  I don’t have terribly a lot to say about this book. There was nothing terribly bad about it that I want to rip apart, and there was also not a lot overly impressive that I want to gush about either....

The Daevabad Trilogy Books 3 and 4: The Empire of Gold and The River of Silver (by S.A. Chakraborty) *Warning: This review contains spoilers* The Empire of Gold Wow. Simply that much must be said. Because this series absolutely blew me away.  A large portion of my feelings about the final book in the Daevabad Trilogy , The Empire of Gold , are similar to my feelings about the second book. It captivated me from start to finish, and I plowed through it. I loved the lore, the politics, I loved the characters and their arcs.  Actually, the character arcs for all three of our protagonists were definitely the highlight of this entire novel.  First, starting with Alizayd. I greatly enjoyed the exploration with the other half of his heritage and Marid roots, which allows him water-based powers rather than fire-based powers, which are the custom of Daevabad. It tied perfectly into his miraculous survival of going into the lake earlier in the series. While it was difficult to accep...

The Deavabad Trilogy Book Two: The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty  *Warning: This review contains spoilers*  Summary & Review  Ok, so when I say that I devoured this book, I mean, I literally devoured it. My hardcover copy of The Kingdom of Copper is 600 pages long, and I read it in approximately two sittings. I should specify, I don’t actually read at lightning speed. I love reading, and for that reason, I like to savor reading. I read slow. But I was physically incapable of reading The Kingdom of Copper slowly because I was just so invested in what would happen next with every chapter I read. There aren’t a lot of series that exist where I feel that the second book was an improvement over the first. These instances are rare, and The Daevabad Trilogy is one of those rare instances. I had issues with the initial pacing of the first book (though it picked up quite a bit during the second half), but this book didn’t have any of those issues for me. It was the pe...

The Daevabad Trilogy Book One:  The City of Brass  by S.A. Chakraborty  *Warning: This review contains spoilers* *Content Warning* This review mentions genocide. Summary & Review   I was not expecting to end up loving this book as much as I did. Towards the beginning of the book, I was quite underwhelmed by it, despite my high expectations. Nahri was a great protagonist right from the start (and remained so the whole trilogy), but there was just so much going on at the start of The City of Brass. It felt like a lot of info-dumping in places, with Dara's constant explaining about the history and lore of Daevabad and the key differences between Daevas and Djinn and Shafit to Nahri. Keeping track of the lore when it was only being told to me and not actually shown thus far in the story felt exhausting at times. On top of that, a lot of these early chapters were about Nahri and Dara journeying to Daevabad, and I'm not a huge fan of exclusive travel chapters in books,...

  These Violent Delights (Duology) by Chloe Gong *Warning: This review contains spoilers* *Content Warning: This review mention suicide* Book 1: These Violent Delights   There is certainly a lot to enjoy about this wildly popular book duology. It has a great premise, an interesting mix of characters, a very unique setting, and it’s based on one of the most well-known Shakespearean plays ever written, Romeo and Juliet .  I should specify that I say “based on” pretty loosely because the actual direct references to Romeo and Juliet are pretty few and far between here. After all, this book is a dark fantasy romance set in 1920/ Shanghai, not a historical piece about English teenagers like the original play. We have the infamous balcony scene played on, the main characters’ names (Roma and Juliette) are pulled straight from the source material, and it’s fairly easy to figure which characters represent whom from the original play (Lourens in Friar Lawrence, Tyler is Tybalt, M...

  King of Scars ( Full Duology) by Leigh Bardugo *This review contains spoilers*  Book One: King of Scars  The final installment in Leigh Bardugo’s grishaverse, the King of Scars duology, comes across to me as the quintessential “love it or hate it” edition to her universe. Die hard fans if the Grishaverse are going to love it. More casual fans might feel more like I did jumping into this duology, which is that it’s pretty much a mixed bag of things I really liked and things I really, really did not like.  Starting with things I liked:  The actual mechanics of the writing. Bardugo’s skills in writing prose have improved exponentially since the original Shadow and Bone trilogy. The actual writing of King of Scars is just much more practiced and mature. It’s less bumpy, more likely to appeal to an older demographic than the Shadow and Bone trilogy.  I also really enjoy that this duology takes both existing pieces of the established Grishaverse, Shadow and Bo...