Orilium Gear-Up Readathon – Wrap-Up

I did it! And with time to spare. What a fun way to get hyped up for G’s amazing Orilium Readathon. I am amazed every single time she comes up with one of these at how much effort and love she puts into every single detail. It’s not every day that someone invents an entire fantasy world, with its own peoples, abilities, and magic systems just so readers like us can play around in it.

Books read: 2
Pages read: 528

The Orilium Gear Up was just the right kind of mini readathon with low enough expectations that I could finish it easily and feel a sense of accomplishment. 500 pages may not be much for a week but looking at how my Fabruary went, it’s a pretty big step forward for me at the moment and I am damn proud. Plus, I still love the character building aspects of these readathons. It makes me feel like every book I read helps my character grow and become a more interesting and better person.

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Conduit

I chose the staff as my conduit, mostly for practical reasons. The reading prompt was easy to fulfill (fantasy readers everywhere rejoice) and I can see my character not misplacing a staff as easily as, say, a wand or a feather. My second choice was the spellbook but that simply didn’t feel as cool and also my book of coice, C.S.E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Daughter, was way too long for this mini readathon. I have started reading it yesterday and love it so far but it’s 480 pages so…

In order to fulfill the reading prompt – read a book from a series – I instead treated myself to Night of Cake & Puppets by Laini Taylor. My review is going live on Tuesday but I can spoil the fact that I really enjoyed it and it makes me want to go back into the world of the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series and spend some more time with these lovely characters.

Other than the main series, this didn’t have the weight of destiny and world shattering decisions on it. It is just a lovely, clever, funny romance with beautiful illustrations.

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Legacy

As an Archivist, for my Guild Legacy, I got to pair up with a god! At first I thought this isn’t quite as cool as having an animal famliar or being able to go to a different plane like the Mind Walkers, but look at what it says about my goddess of choice:

Sneaky (and, okay, temporary) familiar for the win! Again, the choice was surprsingly easy. Not only do I identify with someone whose power are tripled int he early hours – I am most productive in the morning – but I also love starting new book series. And I find the idea of temples made of white marble really beautiful, so there’s that.

For this reading prompt – read the first book in a series – I finally picked up Tithe by Holly Black. I didn’t find it unreservedly good but despite its debut problems, I was completely hooked an didn’t want to put it down. Holly Black has come a long way since that book and I am going to read the rest of the trilogy as well, even if it’s not quite as good as Black’s newer works.

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I would call this mini readathon a great success. Not only am I finally out of that slump that early pregnancy put me in, but I also read two books that I enjoyed a great deal and I equipped my character Sistani with the necessary tools she’ll need for the big month-long readathon. I can hardly wait!

Not Quite There Yet: Holly Black – Tithe

I am finally catching up on some older works by authors I have come to love in the last few years, and among them is Holly Black. Her debut YA novel subtitled “A modern Faerie Tale” didn’t sound like my thing and several anti-buzz words (I’m calling them that now) made me avoid this series. But Holly Black’s other books intrigued me enough to give this one a try as well. With mixed results.

TITHE
by Holly Black

Published: Simon & Schuster, 2002
eBook: 310 pages
Series: Modern Faerie Tales #1
My rating: 6/10

Opening line: Kaye took another dragon her cigarette and dropped it into her mother’s beer bottle.

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother’s rock band, until an ominous attack forces them back to her childhood home.

To the place where she used to see Faeries.

They’re still there. But Kaye’s not a child anymore and this time she’s dragged into the thick of their dangerous, frightening world. A realm where black horses dwell beneath the sea, desperate to drown you . . . where the sinister Thistlewitch divines dark futures . . . and where beautiful faerie knights are driven to perform acts of brutal depravity for the love of their uncaring queens.

Once there, Kaye finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms – a struggle that could end in her death . . . 

It’s such an interesting experience to read an author’s work not as it is being published but in a mixed up order, starting with newer books and then going back through their backlist. In this case, I was both surprised and impressed with how much Holly Black’s writing has improved over the course of her career. My first read of hers was The Coldest Girl in Coldtown which I liked well enough, then I dove into the Folk of the Air trilogy and that one (the middle book, specifically) totally gripped me. As her Modern Faerie Tales were Mythopoeic Award finalists, I thought I would definitely love them. And I didn’t dislike Tithe but I also couldn’t help but see how very, very clumsy a book it is and how the writing is so below the standards I was used to from Holly Black.

Kaye is a super cool, weird teenager who lives with her musician mom, hasn’t been to highschool in years and used to have fairy friends when she was younger. Through circumstances, she and her mom return to their former home and move in with grandma for a while (just until they get back on their feet) which means a reunion with former friends – the human kind – for Kaye and of course an adventure for us to follow.

The first thing I noticed with this book and its biggest flaw in my opinion is that scenes aren’t set properly and everything happens way too fast. And by that I don’t mean what we usually talk about when using the word “pacing” – it’s more than that. It’s that life-shattering events happen over the course of three lines! And that goes for many scenes that could have been great and impactful, like when someone kisses someone for the first time or when characters are in danger. It makes the book a super fast read but I also felt overwhelmed a lot of times, like I’d missed a page or something.
Add to that the fact that Kaye “lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding” a whopping three times in this rather short novel and it just goes to show that Holly Black was still a less experienced author then. Objectively speaking, this isn’t a well-written book.

BUT here’s the thing. At no point, while reading Tithe, did I want to put the book down or stop reading. The whole one more chapter shtick took on a whole new level for me and I race through this book in record time. Because despite its clumsy writing, lack of focus, and sentence-level pacing issues, there is that spark, that little bit of writing magic that draws me in.
Seriously, the world building is mostly basic faerie lore (Seelie vs. Unseelie, kelpies, pixies, etc.), the romance is just Kaye pining over a hot dude who likes her for reasons that are not further explained, but there’s something there anyway. I probably shouldn’t have but I enjoyed the hell out of this book!

This is the kind of book I recommend to people in a slump. It may not be great literature, not even particularly great writing (although we know the author has come miles since then!), but it’s light and fun and has some nice kissing in it. And it’s a fast read so you get the satisfaction of having finished a book again when things have been slumpy.
So even though the betrayal of year-long friendships is handled on half a page, the death of a character happens almost as a side note, and the characters don’t have a lot of depth, I will continue reading the rest of the series. Because who doesn’t like fun?

MY RATING: 6/10 – Good (for some reason)

Reading the Hugos 2020: Lodestar (Not-a-Hugo)

Before we head on the Best Novel, let’s have a look at another favorite category of mine, the Lodestar. My thoughts and ballots for the other categories can be found here (the ones below the Lodestar will go live on the following Mondays):

• Best Short Story
• Best Novelette
• Best Novella
• Lodestar
• Best Graphic Story
• Best Novel
• Best Series

This was a category in which I had more catching up to do than expected. I read a fair share of YA but apparently, I missed out on a lot of great books last year. I’d like to thank my fellow Hugo nominators for having read and nominated them. Because if they hadn’t been finalists, I might never have picked up some of them. I even discovered one that will make it to my best-of-the-year list. And who wants to miss out on great books? That’s right, nobody!

The Finalists for the Lodestar (Best YA/MG Book)

• Frances Hardinge – Deeplight
• Holly Black – The Wicked King
• Naomi Kritzer – Catfishing on CatNet
• Yoon Ha Lee – Dragon Pearl
• T. Kingfisher – Minor Mage
• Fran Wilde – Riverland

I didn’t think this would be so hard, guys! There are some seriously great books on this list and I am both happy about it but would also have liked ranking them to be easier.

The Wicked King by Holly Black does that amazing thing where the middle novel of a trilogy is actually the best. The world is set up, the characters are established, now it’s time to up the stakes and move the relationships along. And that’s just what she does. This was such a page turner, I think I devoured the book in two days. But it also managed to convince me of the very flawed, somewhat messed up relationship at the heart of the story. The romantic couple is not one you root for from the start – in fact, at the end of the first book, I hoped there wouldn’t be any romance at all. Boy, did I change my mind! As much as I adore this story, I am aware of its flaws and I consider it more of a guilty pleasure.

I went into Naomi Kritzer’s Catfishing on CatNet with low expectations. I just wasn’t sure that the author could pull this off. Well, shame on me, because Kritzer not only wrote one of the most endearing AI characters I’ve ever read but also managed to make CatNet feel vibrant and alive, she peopled it with lovable diverse characters, and threw a super exciting plot with a mystery into the mix. The only thing that didn’t stand out to me was the romance, but then again, I like books where the romance isn’t the main focus, so that’s not really a bad thing. I found myself deeply caring for the characters in this book – real and artificial – and that’s usually the reason a book sticks with me.

T. Kingfisher is one of my favorite authors and I always adore her plucky, practical heroines. In Minor Mage, the protagonist is a young boy who is – as the title suggests – only a very minor mage who knows all of three spells. But in order to save his village he sets out on a journey, accompanied only by his armadillo friend. He meets new people, escapes death several times, and even learns some new minor magic. This is an adorable and heart-warming adventure story and I loved it so much. But it lacked some of the emotional impact of its competitors. It was a fantastic book and it did make me feel things but as a shorter book aimed more at the middle grade age group, it looks like it won’t make the very top of my ballot. Trust me, nobody is more surprised at this than myself!

The only previous Frances Hardinge book I’d read was Fly by Night which impressed me deeply with its original world building and great multi-faceted characters. For some reason, I never continued the series and never picked up another Hardinge book (although I keep buying them). I was so excited to get into Deeplight and Hardinge didn’t disappoint. Set in the Myriad, a series of islands, everyone lives and breathes the ocean. Sometimes quite literally. Because the ocean used to have gods in it which are now dead. But their relics remain. Deep sea diving, submarines, diving bells and bathyspheres are what this is all about. It’s also about Hark, a young con man whose best friend Jelt usually gets them into trouble.
This book was just pure joy! I have raved about all its aspects in my review, but I’m still not quite over how perfect an adventure it was. Unlike some of the other finalists, this is also one of those books that can work for many age groups because it just has so much to offer. 34-year-old me enjoyed the character development and relationships the most (plus many other things), but it could also be read just as a straight up adventure with trips to the Undersea (where the water is breathable!), finding out the truth about the gods, and suriving all sorts of shenanigans.
I didn’t think the Kritzer could be knocked off its top spot on my ballot but here we are.

I was looking forward to Yoon Ha Lee’s foray into YA/MG fiction. Dragon Pearl did many things right. Min, a young fox spirit on a rather uncool planet, yearns to join her brother in the Space Force and explore the universe. When her brother is accused of desertion, she sets out on an adventure to find him, and the truth, and maybe even the mysterious Dragon Pearl that can help terraform her planet.
What follows is an exciting adventure with lots of action, new friends, betrayal, battles, chores (so many chores!) and of course shapeshifting. The story as such reads like a nice middle grade adventure. What made this slightly more interesting to me was the incorporation of Korean mythology and the way Lee deals with questions of gender and identity. There are several supernatural creatures but only foxes can shapeshift into anything. Min changes quite a lot on her journey and that offered much food for though. Ultimately, the characters remained a bit pale and while I was interested to see what happened next, I wasn’t really in it, if you know what I mean. I’d recommend this to younger kids but for me it was only nice, not amazing.

My last read was Riverland by Fran Wilde. As I didn’t enjoy her novel Updraft at all, I went into it with low expectations. It just won the Andre Norton Award so it must be good, right? Well… I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it. I kinda sorta liked it but with many reservations. Wilde picked a tough topic to write about – two sisters living in an abusive household, dreaming of a better life. And the author did a fantastic job on creating this oppressive atmosphere, of showing these girls’s lives with all the fear and shame and anxiety. But this is also a fantasy novel, specifically a portal fantasy with a magical river world. And that part was not executed well. I also felt that the plot lacked focus, tension, and solutions came  (surprisingly) too easily. I am very conflicted about my rating of this novel because I can’t imagine how hard it must be writing about this issue for a young audience. So I liked some parts of the book (the ones in the real world) and felt others were neglected (fantasy world building, characters, plot in general) which leaves this book at the bottom of my ballot.

My ballot (probably)

1. Frances Hardinge – Deeplight
2. Naomi Kritzer – Catfishing on CatNet
3. T. Kingfisher – Minor Mage
4. Holly Black – The Wicked King
5. Yoon Ha Lee – Dragon Pearl
6. Fran Wilde – Riverland

The only switch I’m still debating in my own head is between Minor Mage and The Wicked King. Holly Black doesn’t exactly need a push by winning awards. She is wildly popular, well loved, and will do just fine with or without a Lodestar. But I did love that book…
Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher on the other hand is an author I’ve been shooving in everyone’s face for a while and I’m glad she’s getting more recognition these days. But she’s not yet getting the acclaim she should! So I probably will leave these books in the spots they are now. I loved them for very different reasons and I love both their authors’ other work, but I would like to give Kingfisher a little extra boost.

Up next week: Best Novel

A Slightly Too Quick Wrap-Up: Holly Black – The Queen of Nothing

After being swept away by The Wicked King I knew I needed to read The Queen of Nothing as soon as it came out.  This conclusion to the Folk of the Air series was satisfying in the end, although it felt rushed and a little to neat at times. I wouldn’t have minded an extra 200 pages for more character development, more action, and more Jude and Cardan. But maybe that’s just me. Warning: Massive spoilers for The Wicked King below (don’t read the synopsis if you haven’t read the first two books!)

THE QUEEN OF NOTHING
by Holly Black

Published by: Little, Brown, 2019
Hardcover: 308 pages
Series: The Folk of the Air #3
My rating: 7,5/10

First line: The Royal Astrologer, Baphen, squinted at the star chart and tried not to flinch when it seemed sure the youngest prince of Elfhame was about to be dropped on his royal head.

He will be destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.
Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.
Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.
Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.
And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…

Jude is stuck in the real world with her sister Vivi and her little brother Oak. She does what she can to teach Oak to be a good person, but she longs to go back to Elfhame. Whether she just misses the power she once held, her friends from the Shadow Court, or a certain king, she’s not ready to admit. But we readers know Jude well enough by now to understand that she’s not made for our world. As mortal as she may be, she belongs in Faerie. And as it so happens, an opportunity arises when Jude’s traitor sister Taryn arrives and asks for help.
Pretending to be her twin, Jude returns to Elfhame, only to discover that war is brewing (again). In disguise (well, sort of), she has to navigate her old family, find out secrets, and also save King Cardan’s butt from being assassinated. But it’s only a matter of time until someone recognizes her for who she really is…

I really enjoyed how all the plot strings from the previous books come together here. Madoc’s mad grab for power has reached dimensions where they can only be resolved by outright war. Jude and Cardan’s dancing back and forth finally has an end. But that’s the first thing where I felt the story went a little too quickly. Sure, much of their relationship was based on misunderstandings or their inability to just come out and SAY WHAT THEY FEEL, but here, Cardan felt like a completely different character. Suddenly, he just tells Jude outright how he feels. As romantic and lovely as that is, it felt out of character and came almost out of nowhere. Although he does still have a trick or another up his sleeve just to drive Jude mad. 🙂

The plot about impending war and its various rival factions almost felt like background decoration to me. I was fine with that because, hey, I’m not ashamed to admit that I read this mostly for Jude and Cardan. But there was potential here to do more. Or to do what was done (Madoc’s plan for the Queen of the Undersa is fantastically vicious!) but more of it. Everything felt a little rushed. A lot of characters from the previous books show up again: the Bomb, the Ghost, the Roach, and Nicasia. And they each get stuff to do and play roles of varying importance, but it felt like a bit too much was stuff onto too few pages. So I didn’t dislike any of this book, I just wanted more of it. Certain scenes could have lasted longer, some chapters could have been added just to give us a break between action-packed ones. But these are just my complaints and they’re not even really complaints… I’m just sad it’s over.

But there is maybe a bit too much plot for a 300-page book. So Jude needs to get back to Faerie, she needs to save her sister, there’s a war brewing, she finds out the queen of the Undersea is threatened, her friends are in danger, and then at one point, a prophecy about Cardan comes up – because Jude doesn’t have enough on her hands already. I’ll let Cardan tell you about that prophecy himself:

“There was a prophecy given when I was born. Usually Baphen is uselessly vague, but in this case, he made it clear that should I rule, I would make a very poor king.” He pauses. “The destruction of the crown, the ruination of the throne—a lot of dramatic language.”

Of course, this being a fantasy book, this prophecy is important! But in finest faerie fashion, it can also be read several different ways and doesn’t have to be interpreted literally. Not that Cardan has been a great king so far, but throwing one too many parties doesn’t equal the “destruction of the throne”, right?

Holly Black wouldn’t be Holly Black if she didn’t add a twist or two to her story. The first comes to you earily on and courtesy of Cardan himself, the second happens much later in the book – and that’s where the real action kicked off for me. Jude has a difficult and emotional choice to make, backed by allies, threatened by enemies, and the question is: Will she prove once again that she can outsmart the Folk? I won’t spoil anything for you here, but let me say that I love how clever Jude is and how she knows to play the faerie’s games and use their tricks against them.

The ending, quickly as it happens, felt well-rounded and satisfying. Again, I would have liked a bit more information, more about what the future might hold, more about the various Folk and their fate. But overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was a fast paced thrill-ride that played with my emotions just the way I like it. It wasn’t as good as The Wicked King but it’s a worthy ending to a great trilogy. And I kind of already want to start reading all three books again from the beginning…

MY RATING: 7,5/10 – Very good

 

Fairy Politics and Forbidden Romance: Holly Black – The Wicked King

Unlike most other people, I did not love The Cruel Prince unconditionally. It was a fun read that offered a refreshingly complex story for a YA book. But apart from the twist at the end, it wasn’t the kind of book that made me go: I need the second one NOW! “Now” has arrived, however, and after reading this sequel, I am definitely among the people who are screaming for the third book. What an exciting ride this was! Spoilers for The Cruel Prince below!!

THE WICKED KING
by Holly Black

Published by: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2019
Hardcover: 336 pages
Audiobook: 10 hours 20 minutes
Series: The Folk of the Air #2
My rating: 8/10

First sentence: Jude lifted the heavy practice sword, moving into the first stance – readiness.

You must be strong enough to strike and strike and strike again without tiring.
The first lesson is to make yourself strong.
After the jaw-dropping revelation that Oak is the heir to Faerie, Jude must keep her younger brother safe. To do so, she has bound the wicked king, Cardan, to her, and made herself the power behind the throne. Navigating the constantly shifting political alliances of Faerie would be difficult enough if Cardan were easy to control. But he does everything in his power to humiliate and undermine her even as his fascination with her remains undiminished.
When it becomes all too clear that someone close to Jude means to betray her, threatening her own life and the lives of everyone she loves, Jude must uncover the traitor and fight her own complicated feelings for Cardan to maintain control as a mortal in a Faerie world.

At the end of The Cruel Prince, Jude had maneuvered herself into a precarious position. Yes, she wields incredible power, but that power is bound to run out. Over five months have passed when we rejoin Jude and Cardan at the Faerie Court and their relationship is… strained. Add to that the fact that Orla, the Queen of the Undersea, made a pact with the previous High King and now kind of considers that pact void – because reasons.

The shift in power dynamics between Jude and Cardan makes for excellent drama. Even if there hadn’t been a plot that includes the threat of war with the Undersea, Jude’s relationship with her sister, and her hiding that she is literally pulling the High King’s strings, this would have been enough to keep me entertained. As unhealthy and problematic as it might be, the tension between Jude and Cardan was also so damn sexy. I know I’m bad for liking them, but I just can’t help it. 🙂

I really don’t want to talk too much about the plot because, much like in the first book, there are plenty of things to discover. Jude is warned that someone close to her is a traitor, she meets new characters that reveal interesting things about the people she knows, she learns more of Cardan’s past… And all the while, she is worried about Oak, her sister is preparing to get married, and the Shadow Court is still doing its thing but we get way more insight into everything. Generally, it felt like Black used this second volume to expand her world, to give us a better idea how everything works and how the various political factions influence each other.

Jude is trying to juggle all the players on her Faerie chess board and, naturally, gets herself into the occasional super dangerous situation. This is not an action-packed book but when things get tricky for our protagonist, it’s impossible to put down. There was one chapter in particular that had me at the edge of my seat, filled with worry for Jude, and for the fate of Faerie in general. And apart from that, every scene between Jude and Cardan was just so loaded with tension, unspoken feelings, held-back desires, and struggles for power that I just couldn’t stop reading. Cardan also grew as a character which made it much easier for me to understand how Jude feels about him. In the first book – no matter how the ending tries to justify it – he was just an asshole. A cruel, heartless bastard who enjoys the pain of others. But here, we discover that there’s more to him than we first thought. He may still be a jerk most of the time, but he also has moments that show that there is definitely good in him.

For the middle book of a trilogy, this was truly a stunning novel. Most middle books don’t really do much to further the plot but rather set up the grand finale. That is the case here, too, but the book would also work really well as a standalone. It has its own story arc that would work well by itself, but of course, it also furthers the greater conflict of the succession to the Court, of Jude coming into her own and finding who she wants to be.

Without spoilers, let me tell you that the ending was again mind-blowing! Holly Black makes you feel that you kind of know what’s going to happen, then turns everything on its head. And then she puts an unexpected knife into her readers’ hearts and twists it around, because she can. I have come to believe that she is an evil genius who enjoys toying with her readers – and I am absolutely loving it! Now I feel that I am truly a part of all the other fans who are eagerly awaiting the publication of The Queen of Nothing (a title that makes so much sense now).

MY RATING: 8/10 – Excellent!

Reading the Lodestars: Not-A-Hugo for Best YA Novel

I’m still reading the nominated works for this year’s Hugo Awards. It’s just that challenges and readathons took preference recently. I won’t be able to finish all the books I intended to read in time but then again, I knew that going in. I have read all of the Lodestar nominees except for one. My top spot was clear very early on and hasn’t changed after catching up on the other nominees.

The Nominees for the Lodestar Award

1. Rachel Hartman – Tess of the Road
2. Holly Black – The Cruel Prince
3. Justina Ireland – Dread Nation
4. Tomi Adeyemi – Children of Blood and Bone
5. Peadar O’Guilín – The Invasion
6. Dhonielle Clayton – The Belles

My top pick by a large margin is Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman. It’s a very special kind of book that takes the reader on a journey both literally with its protagonist and figuratively, while reading. Although it’s a quiet book that focuses on character growth, there’s always something happening. I grew to love Tess fiercely and I also found myself caring for the people she met on her journey. Hartman’s world building is intriguing and as someone who hasn’t read the Seraphina books, made me want to go out and read everything she’s written. The writing is beautiful, the message is amazing, this was really a wonderful book that I can’t recommend enough.

The only bookI had already read when the nominees were announced was The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. I liked that book, especially the way its characters were definitely not black or white, and the world building and complex political intrigues felt like Holly Black trusted her young readers to be smart enough to get it – I always appreciate authors who write YA as if their readers had a brain. 🙂 The only thing it was missing was a plot that could hook me throughout. It was a good book and I’ll continue the series, it just felt like this book mostly set up everything for the rest of the series. That ending, however, had one of the most twisty twists that truly surprised me. And because it’s a book that I have kept thinking about ever since reading it (right when it came out), it gets the second place on my ballot.

The next two books may yet switch places on my ballot because they were both good but not great, they both had certain things really going for them, but others that I felt needed a lot more work. For the moment, my number three is Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation. When I think about this book, the first thing that comes to mind is the voice of its wonderful protagonist. She’s a cheeky one, I love how she tells her story, and that made the entire book a joy, even when the plot kind of meandered. Which is also the novel’s biggest flaw. Former slaves, now sort-of-freed (but not really because people are assholes), are trained to fight against the zombie hordes that started rising up during the Civil War. The plot starts one way and made me expect certain things, but then stayed kind of put and focused on a small side quest. I assume, the bigger plot will be the story of the entire series and I’ll probably read the second part to see if I’m right.

My number four is probably lots of people’s number one. Whether it was the massive hype that biased my expectations or the gorgeous cover (I won’t pretend I’m immune), Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone was a bit of a letdown. It was truly a fun ride, a great adventure story with some interesting world building and particularly cool magic, but the story was just so predictable. As soon as the group arrived at a new place, I knew where it was going. And inevitably, the plot did go that way. The same goes for the romances. They were very obvious from the start and while that’s not a bad thing (because they were very well done), I was hoping for something a little more original. With all the rave reviews out there, I thought this would have a plot twist or two, would surprise me. But except for the very ending, I kind of knew the entire story before it happened. It was fun enough, however, for me to continue the series.

The only book I didn’t get to yet, but hopefully will before voting ends, is The Invasion by Peadar O’Guilín. I did read the first part of this duology, so I have some idea of the author’s style and world building. I liked The Call well enough. Mostly, it kept me reading for the sheer horror of what’s happening in this version of Ireland. Sometime during your teenage years, you will be whisked away to the Grey Land (a dark sort of Fairyland) where you’ll have to survive for 24 hours – only a few minutes in our world – or be killed by the fairies hunting you. Even the people who do come back alive are changed, physically and psychologically. It was a thrilling book that could have used a few more pages spent on character development, in my opinion.

My least favorite of the bunch was The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton. Here, the supposed plot twists were even more obvious than in Adeyemi’s novel. But it also didn’t have much else going for it. The writing itself was okay, it was a quick read, but I thought the villain was over-the-top, and the story didn’t manage to get me interested. My biggest pet peeve was probably the world building because I’m generally willing to suspend my disbelief (I read mostly fantasy, so obviously) but this world just didn’t make sense. Sure, the protagonist is a Belle and so only sees a certain part of her world that has to do exclusively with beauty and appearance and royalty. But nowhere is it mentioned how this society would even work and I kept asking myself very often where food comes from, how poor people live, and so on. It was not a bad book but it wasn’t a very good one either.

So this is the current state of my Lodestar ballot. Depending on how good The Invasion is, places may change yet. The last category I’m tackling (and won’t finish) is the Best Series nominees. There will be one series of which I haven’t read a single book, but with the others, I have at least read one book or novella. I honestly don’t think that’s enough to form a proper opinion on the entire series, but  it’s the only thing I have to go on. And I have the suspicion that if The Laundry Files or the October Daye series don’t win this year, they will be back next year. At least I’ll have a head start for then.

Holly Black – The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

And slowly my faith in YA fantasy is restored. I had known about Holly Black for years but never did start her Tithe series. Then I saw a post about The Darkest Part of the Forest which ticked off all sorts of boxes. But I couldn’t wait to try out this author – throw in a handful of great reviews of her vampire novel (yes, I picked up a vampire novel!) and here we are.

THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN
by Holly Black

Published by: Little Brown, 2013
Ebook: 306 pages
Standalone
My rating: 7/10

First sentence: Tana woke lying in a bathtub.

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.
One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

I think it’s safe to say the world is over vampire romances. Which does not mean that when a good one comes along, we won’t enjoy it. Holly Black has taken the vampire myth and put it firmly into the modern world. People in this world know that there are vampires and, in order to keep them from spreading all over the place, have created Coldtowns. But like any other town, big or small, these Coldtowns don’t just exist within their own closed-off culture, they share something with the rest of humanity that many novels still like to forget or ignore: the fucking internet!

The story begins with Tana waking up in a bathtub after a long (and apparently wild) party. A few minutes and one walk through the house later, she realises everybody is dead. Everybody, that is, except her newly infected ex-boyfriend and a vampire in chains. Being a decent person, Tana rescues both of them from the group of vampires responsible for the bloodbath. Being in danger of infection herself, the only place of safety – hers and that of her family – is the nearest Coldtown. So that’s where they go. On the way, they pick up two bloggers desperate to be turned into vampires – it’s a regular Coldtown party.

In Coldtown, things are very different from what I expected. It becomes clear early on that the place is full of both vampires and humans, some of them out for eternal life, others just to report the news from the inside. Bloggers, Vloggers, Reality TV vampire hunters – you name it, Coldtown’s go it. The amount of social media, camera coverage, celebrity status and murder-on-tv is both disconcerting and realistic. That’s what the world is like, after all. You see a picture of someone saving someone else from drowning and wonder why the person taking the picture didn’t drop the camera to help. Coldtown is like that.

Holly Black doesn’t ride on the vampire myth for long, expecting some basic knowledge from her readers. Drinking blood is terrifying and sexy and messy and a necessity of un-life. We know that. But there is one scene – my favorite in the entire book – that encompasses all of these aspects with utter perfection. All I’ll tell you is that it involves a kiss.

Gazing at her for a long moment with something like horror, as though he was seeing her for the first time, he spoke.
“You are more dangerous than daybreak.”

As my readers know, what I care most about in any given book is the characters. Tana made a great protagonist, in that she is a decent human being who doesn’t let friends die to save her own ass. She has almost lost her life and did lose a parent because of the infection but there is no denying the positive aspects of eternal life. Tana’s awareness and her constant questioning of her own feelings and wishes was refreshing to read. She doesn’t blindly run into the new life as a vampire, she tries to remain human. Because she knows that she doesn’t know just what being a vampire entails. I was particularly impressed with the description of her relationship with ex-boyfriend Aidan. Boy, oh boy, I used to know someone just like that – which made the description all the more vivid and believable. But Aidan (unlike that person I knew) has redeeming qualities that make him an acceptable sidekick. In fact, he is almost annoyingly sweet when he wants to be.

Mysterious and sexy, Gavriel is the picture-perfect romantic interest. I didn’t really see any sparks flying until Tana took the initiative (which was awesome), and generally felt we didn’t see enough interaction between Gavriel and Tana to explain their feelings. In the end, very deep feelings seem to already be there. Yes, there is an explanation for their attraction to each other, but love? Nah. But a little suspension of disbelief is necessary for most romantic fantasies I’ve read. Maybe I’m just cold-hearted… Gavriel’s past, however, was highly interesting and the chapters recounting it among my favorites in the entire book. He walks the edge between cunning and insanity and because of that, turned out not to be the stereotypical romantic hero. I loved his unpredictability, the mystery surrounding him and the slow unravelling of his past.

What didn’t sit well with me was how small Coldtown felt. We are told several times that politics within Coldtown are complex, how large it’s grown, how many diverse people and creatures populate it. But the plot sticks with only a handful of settings, remaining much more small scale than I had hoped. Blog coverage is instant so anything that happens to Tana in the vicinity of cameras gets out to the wider world immediately. But being told “You’re famous now” and actually seeing the results of that fame are two things that make a lot of difference. I would have liked more showing, less telling when it came to certain aspects of Coldtown. And I would have loved if one of the settings wasn’t the most famous vampire’s villa. You know, just to mess with readers’ expectations.

The novel touches upon many topics that invite you to think for yourself and for that I applaud it. Eternal life, insta-romance, fame and surveillance, sacrifice and love, it’s all in there. But a little more depth wouldn’t have hurt. Add a couple of hundered pages and you’ve got an excellent book whose merit even YA-haters can’t deny. The ending was surprisingly quiet and, at first, a little disappointing. But the more I think about it, the more I see its perfection, its inevitability. There is beauty in how this story ends. Holly Black doesn’t outright tell us what Tana’s future will be like but for my part at least, I felt an overwhelming rush of hope.

MY RATING: 7/10 – Very good