Reviews – Page 4 – Books Dani Likes

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Hello Kittens! Today I have for you one of those books that everyone agrees sounds great, but few people actually pick up and read. That’s because this is on big honkin’ book. It’s just over 800 pages long. I actually read it in about a week, though that’s just a guess because I paused and read a few other things that had piled up after I got to the end of part 1. In any case, this is a standalone high fantasy book for adult readers that has dragons, magic, court intrigue, and a strong f/f romance set in a partially matriarchal society. While it is a large book, the experience of reading it didn’t feel that way. I felt like I was flying through this book and the only thing that reminded me that it was big was the fact that my arms kept getting heavy while I read it. It looks daunting, but it is absolutely worth the read.

Title: The Priory of the Orange Tree

Author: Samantha Shannon

Author website: https://sshannonauthor.tumblr.com/books

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Publish date: February 26, 2019

ISBN: 9781635570304

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

In The Priory of the Orange Tree we meet an expansive cast of characters. We meet Tané, a young woman who has trained for most of her life to be eligible to become a dragonrider in the East. She is getting ready to take the test that will determine if she is worthy to be chosen by a dragon when a stranger appears in the night who could alter her fate and delay or destroy her dream. She asks a friend for help in dealing with the situation and both of their lives, plus several others, are changed from that day forward.

We meet Ead, a young woman serving in the court of Queen Sabran IX, the 36th Queen of Inys and head of the House of Berethnet. Ead has been placed in the queen’s court to secretly protect her. While the court thinks she is an average servant, she is actually a mage working on behalf of the Priory of the Orange Tree. In Inys, she is forced to worship a religion that goes against everything the Priory has taught her, but she will risk everything to keep Queen Sabran safe. The longer she stays at court and the closer she gets to Queen Sabran, the more her feelings for this foreign Queen grow. While Ead may have a duty to the Priory, she is finding that more often than not, situations are not as clear as she once thought them to be.

Queen Sabran is a force to be reckoned with who has lived her life with the shadow of prophecy on her shoulders. The Queens of the House of Berethnet all have exactly one child, a daughter, and as long as they do, they keep their world safe from a red wyrm known as the Nameless One. The Nameless One has been sealed in a watery tomb for 1,000 years, but there are rumors all over the land that he is about to break free. The last time the Nameless One was free, he destroyed cities and brought a deadly plague to people that causes them to burn with an unquenchable fever. Sabran and her people believe that as long as she can keep the bloodline going, they will be sage from the Nameless One. As such, there is tremendous pressure in her court for Sabran to marry and become pregnant, thus ensuring the safety of her people.

We also meet Areloth, known as Loth to most. He is Sabran Berethnet’s best friend and when we first meet him he is being banished to Yscalin, a nearby land that has been invaded by enemies of Inys. He is being sent away because some in the Queen’s court felt that he was getting too close to the Queen and would not make an appropriate husband for her. As he faces an uncertain future, Loth has to work to figure out how to survive, how to get back to Inys, and how to make sure Sabran is safe. When he discovers that matters in Yscalin are more complex than he first thought, he will set out on an adventure in an attempt to keep all those that he holds dear safe. He is hardly an adventurer, but he pulls courage from somewhere deep inside to do what he must for those he loves.

All of these stories and more come together to tell a tale of many lands preparing to do battle with an old and dangerous foe. Across an immense world that Shannon weaves brilliantly, these characters will bring pieces of information from one land to the next that will help them figure out how the Nameless One was defeated last time, and how they might do so again. Watching all of the pieces come together is masterful, and even though this is a fantasy book, there are plenty of twists that will have readers flying through the pages.

Why I liked it:

The world-building is amazing here. In 800 pages, there was only one small part of the book that I didn’t feel had a lot of importance to the entire book. That’s amazing for a tome of this size. Every little thing flowed into the next thing and so on so that very few words are wasted. It was a huge book that didn’t feel cumbersome to read.

I also loved that we had matriarchal societies that were functioning beautifully. While there was trouble brewing on the horizon, all of the female characters are presented a formidable in their own right. We get some representation here, in that as far as I can tell, most of the characters are described as having dark or brown skin. We also get a variety of romantic relationships, with m/m, f/m, and f/f relationships represented. We don’t get any graphic descriptions of sexual scenes, but we do get beautiful relationship development. This is the kind of book that is going to hit you with some feelings.

I know we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, but the cover on this book is truly stunning. I got the paperback edition (a trade paperback, not a mass market) and it has the most beautiful blue foiling on a dragon on the front. It features a slightly raised tower (which the dragon is curled around), and the rest of the cover is a vibrant orange-yellow tinge. It is absolutely stunning in person.

What I would like to change:

Like I said, there’s only one scene in the entire book that I didn’t completely understand. It is a scene where Ead is crossing a desert while attempting to return to the Priory. She meets a character and has a conversation with him, but as far as I can remember, we never see that character again and Ead leaves soon after without explanation to the rest of the party. It was just a little bit like a throwaway scene for me. It could have just been written in a few sentences and appended to the beginning of her next chapter. There were other places in the book where the passage of time was indicated and characters were in a new place without us getting detailed information about their journey, and it worked fine.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed. I purchased this book to participate in a read-a-thon and it looks gorgeous on my shelves.

My library rating: While the representation of homosexual relationships will turn some readers away, the lack of violence or descriptive sex scenes makes this one easy to recommend. The biggest hurdle other than that will just be getting people to pick up a book that big.

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

My personal preference rating: I gave this book 5 stars and I’ll be picking up more of Shannon’s work in the future. While this is a standalone, she also has a 7-book series that already has 3 works published, with a 4^th due out next year.

Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Hello Kittens! How do you guys feel about fairy tale re-tellings? I am a fan of them, personally, which is why I jumped at the chance to read an upcoming release that is a re-telling of Cinderella. This is a YA fantasy book that features a black female lesbian protagonist. It is a debut for this author, who has signed a 2-book deal with the publisher. It’s always hard to know how a book like this will land in my area of the country, but I really enjoyed this read. It wasn’t perfect, but I honestly enjoyed this take on the classic Cinderella story and I was rooting for the protagonist throughout. Give it a try if you’re willing.

Title: Cinderella is Dead

Author: Kalynn Bayron

Author website: https://www.kalynnbayron.com/

Publisher: Bloomsbury YA

Publish date: July 7^th, 2020

ISBN: 9781547603886

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

It has been 200 years since Cinderella married Prince Charming, and all who live in her land know the story by heart…all the girls at least. Things have changed a little bit since Cinderella sat on the throne. First, there are a set of decrees that are designed to “protect” the women of this land. Things like curfews and rules about obeying their heads of households (all men, by the way). Additionally, a ball is held in honor of Cinderella’s fairy tale ending every year, but attendance is now mandatory for every young woman of marriageable age. Girls come to the ball to be chosen by their husbands. If they are not chosen by their third ball, they are considered “forfeit” and are sent to work as laborers in service to their kingdom.

This year, a young woman named Sophia is agonizing over the upcoming ball. She’s read Cinderella’s story over and over again. She knows it by heart, as do all of the girls in this land. The only problem is, she wouldn’t have chosen a prince for herself, she would much rather have married a princess. She is in love with her best friend Erin and has no desire to be “chosen” by any man at the ball. As she struggles with what her parents and her country expect of her, desperation sets in. Not content to accept her fate, Sophia begs Erin to run away with her. If they’re caught, they’ll be put to death and their families will suffer, but Sophia sees it as their only option. Erin, however, is not brave enough to turn away from their fate and endanger her family.

When the night of the ball finally arrives, everything goes wrong and Sophia ends up fleeing for her life. As she runs from the castle, she encounters a young woman named Constance who is a descendant of one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. Constance begins to unravel the tale that Sophia thought she knew and they both set off on a course to change this world for all of the girls who are still trapped in it. It won’t be easy. They’ll have to seek magic that they aren’t even sure exists and will still need to return to the castle to confront the evil king. No one thinks they will win, but Sophia and Constance know that there are no other options.

Why I liked it:

I appreciated that the original story was kept in tact, but that the author played with the interpretation of events. I think that Sophia is a well-developed character and the reader is invested in her personal growth throughout the story. There are some emotionally gutting moments in the story that the reader feels as viscerally as Sophia does. I also appreciated that Sophia’s inner monologue directly addresses what might feel like inauthentic moments in the plot. In particular, I appreciate how Sophia’s feelings about the witch are expressed in the story. Up until it was put on the page, I found her acceptance of Amina to be a little too convenient, but Bayron gives the inner monologue the authenticity that was lacking a little in the dialogue.

I really appreciate that we get a Cinderella (both in the character of Sophia and the original Cinderella) who is more of a warrior. I know Disney likes their happy, uncomplicated endings, but I like a Cinderella who has a little more depth to aspire to. The Cinderella that we get in this story suffered a terrible fate, but she was a fighter who was trying to do what was right for her people. Admirable.

What I would like to change:

We get thrown right into the story here, and that was pretty disorienting for me as the reader. We get a lot of information dumped on us at the very beginning, which feels a little awkward because the book is 400 pages long. I was left wondering what the rush was and it made the first part of the story feel clunky. Once that initial portion was over, we moved on to a little more action.

I also didn’t love Erin’s development in the story. I felt like the character was sacrificed but that her motivations didn’t line up with what the reader was told about her. She’s in a relationship with Sophia up until the ball and then she suddenly shuts it all down? Her first foray into marriage is with a highly abusive man and she doesn’t take an opportunity to run? I can understand her staying if the pattern of abuse was more established, but by all accounts she had a good home life and a reason to believe in Sophia. I just didn’t quite buy into that part as a reader.

Disclaimer: I received an electronic copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.

My library rating: Like I said, it’s hard to peg how a title like this will be received in my area of the country. There are certainly people who will object to it for a number of reasons, but I think in terms of my ability to recommend it to patrons, it still has a lot of potential. I hope there will come a day where I don’t need to worry about someone screaming at me or writing to the local paper because a Librarian recommended material that they consider “inappropriate” to their child. I hope it comes soon.

lemonade_icon 3 glasses of lemonade= a book that you could recommend to coworkers and friends you don’t know very well.

My personal preference rating: I gave this title 4 stars and look forward to the author’s next book.

The Shadows by Alex North

Hello Kittens! I was looking through my archives in preparation for writing this review because I just knew that I had reviewed The Whisper Man by Alex North sometime last year. I absolutely had to have reviewed it because I raved about the book to nearly anyone who would listen and recommended it to all of my colleagues who read thrillers. But, guess what? I must have been so busy talking about the book that I forgot to write about it, because there was no review on the site. I will not make that mistake again. Here today for your reading pleasure, I offer my review of Alex North’s second book, The Shadows. It is even creepier than The Whisper Man was. If you like spooky thrillers, then you need to clear your calendar for this book, because it is definitely worth the read.

Title: The Shadows

Author: Alex North

Author Twitter (no website found): https://twitter.com/writer_north?lang=en

Publisher: Celadon

Publish date: 7/7/20

ISBN: 9781250318039

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

Twenty-five years ago something terrible happened in the town of Gritten Woods and Paul Adams was an unwilling witness to most of it. As a young man, his best friend James got caught up with two other local boys who were nothing but trouble, Billy Roberts and Charlie Crabtree. Before the school year is out, Billy and Charlie will murder one of their classmates in a ritualistic effort to leave this world for a dreamworld that they have worked to convince James and Paul is real. That murder will tear many lives apart for many reasons, but the biggest one of all will be that while Billy is brought to justice for the crime, Charlie is never seen again. Did his sacrificial offering work? Did he die in the woods? Is he still out there somewhere? These questions will haunt everyone who was involved in the case then and have unforeseen repercussions in the present.

Paul left Gritten Woods as soon as he was old enough, severing contact with nearly everyone there. He hasn’t been back since he was a teen and only returns now because his mother has been placed in hospice care. Coming home is not easy and he is bombarded by the memories that he has been shutting out for so many years. He is forced to confront everything that happened then and works to figure out what actually happened wtth Charlie. Someone is leaving creepy and threatening messages for Paul in the present and this time he is determined to stand his ground instead of running away.

We also reunite with Detective Amanda Beck (who readers will remember from The Whisper Man). While she was not involved in the original case, a current case in her jurisdiction sends her looking for answers in Gritten Woods. What starts out as an isolated incident suddenly seems to have connections to the dark past of this desolate town. Amanda will be facing her fears and confronting her feelings about her job and her relationship with her deceased father, all while chasing a killer who seems to be pure evil.

Is it all just a story made up by twisted teenagers or is there something lurking in the shadows of Gritten Woods? Something that wants to finish what it started 25 years ago?

Why I liked it:

It’s seriously creepy right from the start. While we only have 2 books to judge, this seems to be an Alex North hallmark. He sets the scenes perfectly in these dying towns which are described as being lacking in purpose and opportunity. These are the places that people want to leave but often find themselves stuck in. These descriptions really add to the perception that the characters are going to become trapped in their situations.

I loved the twists in this book. It made writing the review a little tricky, because there’s one piece of information about 75% of the way through the book and it makes the reader re-evaluate everything they’ve read up to that point (as all good twists should). Once you know, you can’t un-know it, and I look forward to re-reading this title with that knowledge the second time around.

I also like that North gives the reader everything that they need to know for the story to make sense without twisting the plot too dramatically in an effort to shock the reader. I don’t love when authors make the bad guy at the end an unknown entity with motives that the reader would not have known ahead of time. North gave us all of the clues and I appreciated that, even if I didn’t catch them all at the time. I did peg one of the twists, but the second one caught me completely off guard and I loved that.

What I would like to change:

I wish that I had re-read The Whisper Man more recently before starting this. For me, Detective Amanda Beck started out as a stranger for me. I had to go back and re-read some reviews from the first book to remember her character. I really appreciated that she was there and that there was a reference to the “Whisper Man” case in this book, since it was like finding an Easter egg for the fans, but I really had forgotten a lot about her in the meantime.

Disclaimer: I received an e-galley of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My library rating: There are a lot of f-bombs and a little bit of gore in this book. I would probably be a little more selective about who I recommended it to. While it is a thriller, it’s darker than a traditional thriller and leans heavily towards horror.

lemonade_icon 3 glasses of lemonade= a book that you could recommend to coworkers and friends you don’t know very well.

My personal preference rating: I gave this title 5 stars. I have no idea how long we’ll be waiting for the next book from Alex North, but it will be an auto-buy for me for sure. This was no sophomore slump effort as far as I was concerned. I may have even liked it better than The Whisper Man.

Extra stuff:

The Mysterious Alex North

Alex North is a somewhat mysterious author at the moment. This is his second book written under this pen name and there is no author website or photo associated with him, only a Twitter account and some brief info on the publisher’s page. A little internet digging is suggesting however, that Alex North and Steve Mosby are one in the same (http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/M_Authors/Mosby_Steve.html#North). Mosby has 11 published works that might be worth a look, just based on how great Alex North writes. I’m not sure what the point of separating the works is at this point, but I can only guess that his work as Alex North is drastically different from the Mosby writings. Either way, it adds an air of mystery to Alex North’s titles.

Lucid Dreams

A good bit of the plot in this book deals with a concept called lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a type of dreaming that involves the dreamer being aware that they are asleep and having the ability to control what happens in the dream (a simplistic definition). As it turns out, this is an actual thing. If you’re interested in learning more about it, I found a list of books on Goodreads that focus on lucid dreaming.

Goodreads list: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/19403.Best_books_about_Lucid_Dreaming

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Hellooooo Kittens! I have got an upcoming spooky thriller release for you today. I found Riley Sager’s books just as quarantine was getting going and quickly became a big fan. I will literally read anything he writes from now on because everything I’ve read from him ends up being a favorite. It doesn’t come out for about a week and a half, but if you have not pre-ordered it or reserved it from your local library, hopefully this review will convince you to do so. This book is being widely compared to The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (I’ll just have to take their word for it since I haven’t read that one, but you best believe I have added it to my TBR after reading this one!)

Title: Home Before Dark

Author: Riley Sager

Author website: https://www.rileysagerbooks.com/

Publisher: Dutton

Publish date: June 30, 2020

ISBN: 9781524745189

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

Maggie Holt has lived her life in the shadow of a house she lived in as a little girl, and the book her father wrote after they lived there for only 20 days. The house is now one of the most famous haunted houses in the country and Maggie’s name is synonymous with the little girl whose terror is portrayed in her father’s famous book. The only problem: Maggie doesn’t remember any of the events from that book and suspects that her parents made the whole thing up. She has grown up an outcast because of that book, and her demands for real answers have gone unheeded by her parents, which stilted her relationship with them.

After her father’s death, Maggie gets the unexpected opportunity to return to the house as an adult to try and find out what really happened. As a designer, she approaches the house like any other project she tackles, but she sets aside time to dig into the house’s history and what really happened to her family in the time that she spent there. The longer she’s in the house, the more memories begin to return to her, and she is forced to confront a startling truth: maybe the book wasn’t as full of lies as she originally believed? As the house’s caretaker once said, “Baneberry Hall remembers…And sometimes history has a way of repeating itself.”

It’s classified as both Thriller and Horror, so prepare yourself before you start because it’s going to get creepy.

Why I liked it:

The story is told in alternating chapters between what Maggie is experiencing and remembering and corresponding chapters from her father’s book. I really loved that approach to telling this story, especially because the similarities between the chapters increase as the book goes on.

I also love how Maggie’s character approaches the entire history of the house. She doesn’t believe it’s haunted and goes through every logical explanation that she can. Some of her explanations are so solid that even the reader will be questioning her dad’s book before long. This is an awesome device as you are reading, because it essentially turns her father’s book into an unreliable narrator.

I also loved how many twists there were! Twists on twists on twists. It is a thriller reader’s paradise. All of the twists are believable and you have the information in there to parse a few of them out if you pay attention. I will tell you that I pegged a villain pretty early on, then retired that guess when one twist made me re-evaluate, only to get some vindication for my guess in the end. On the other hand, I also have to admit that I pegged another character as a villain, only to be completely wrong. He wasn’t a villain, he just annoyed me and acted in a somewhat creepy manner.

Sony already bought the film rights for the book and I cannot wait to see what they do with it.

What I would like to change:

I think there may have been a few unplugged plot holes in there regarding some of the spooky events. At some point in the near future I’m going to re-read this one and see if those things actually were explained and I just missed it (entirely possible). At times I was reading so fast to get to the next “thing” that was going to happen that I was actually just skimming some of the words.

Also, this book may have ruined what was previously one of my favorite scenes in The Sound of Music. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to hear that song again without getting goosebumps.

Disclaimer: I originally received an e-galley of this title from the publisher via NetGalley, but then it came out as an early release Book of the Month pick, so I ended up primarily reading the physical copy that way. Either way, the preceding review is my honest opinion of the book.

My library rating: This rating is primarily due to the number of curse words in here. I’ll admit that I barely notice them when I’m reading anymore, but I still have patrons who will mark them out in the books that they read (welcome to the South). I did a search on my e-galley to see how prevalent they were, and it was actually…pretty prevalent. I will still be recommending this book to a wide variety of adult readers. It was fantastic.

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

My personal preference rating: No surprise here. I gave this one 5 full stars. It was great and I look forward to reading it again soon (I already loaned out my copy to a friend). If you love thrillers, you need to get on the Riley Sager bandwagon like right now.

Extras:

The Murder By the Book Bookstore is doing a live Zoom event with Riley Sager on June 30^th, at 6pm Central time. Purchasing a copy of the book from the bookstore counts as your admission to the Zoom event, and it will even be a signed copy (not personalized since that deadline already passed, but signed is still cool.) The link for the event is here if you’re interested: https://www.murderbooks.com/event/riley-sager

I don’t earn anything from the event or sale of the book, etc. I just thought it was a cool opportunity for anyone who was interested. I live in a town that doesn’t get a lot of big authors for book signings generally, and while I know this event is solely because COVID-19 is preventing them from doing an in-person event, I would love to see bookstores offer stuff like this permanently. I don’t think we should stop having in-person events once it’s safe, but it would be nice to have more digital events for those of us who can’t attend locally.

Furyborn by Claire Legrand

Hello Kittens! This title was a little late to get on my radar considering it’s a trilogy that will be complete this October. I’m going through a YA Fantasy renaissance and going back to start some of the series that I missed from the last 5 years or so. If you, like me, missed this one the first time around, I highly recommend giving it a try. Plus, if you start it now, you can have the first and second books done before the finale this Fall.

Title: Furyborn Furyborn (Empirium, #1)

Author: Claire Legrand

Author website: https://www.claire-legrand.com/

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Publish date: May 22, 2018

ASIN: B077Y63CVW

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

Furyborn is told in two timelines focusing on two women and a prophecy. The book starts with a foundational scene where a character named Rielle is giving birth to her first child, a girl. She is mostly alone for this process and we learn that her husband, the king, has died and that she is viewed as responsible for his death. After a traumatic event, we find ourselves meeting a character named Eliana who lives 1,000 years later. Alternating chapters tell us their stories. While their lives are very different, we learn that they are bound together by the same prophecy regarding two queens in this land, one who will destroy the land and one who will save it.

In a land of elemental magic, Rielle has had to hide her abilities because she has had trouble controlling them in the past. When her magic makes itself known at a public event, Rielle is challenged by the King and his court to prove that she is the Sun Queen, the queen from the prophecy who will save her people. In order to prove this, Rielle is forced to undergo a series of challenges to show that she can master all of the elements in this magic system. If she fails, she will most likely be killed, but if she succeeds, she will assume her role as a protector of the realm.

Eliana just wants to keep her family safe. If that means working for the Empire, so be it. She emotionally disconnects herself from the work that she is doing, even though she knows that nearly every person she turns over to the Empire’s forces will be executed, regardless of age, gender, or other factors. The people around her, especially her little brother Remy, are always working to remind her of her humanity. She’s not a big fan of their efforts and justifies that her work keeps them all much safer. When the Empire asks her to find a rebel mercenary known as the Wolf, she is all too happy to oblige. Unfortunately, the Wolf finds her first, her mother is taken by seemingly invisible forces, and Eliana is forced to work with the rebels in order to try to get her back.

Why I liked it:

It’s fast-paced and very well-developed. The elemental magic system is well thought out, and we really only get a taste of the lore surrounding it from this first book. I also appreciated how much the story was starting to come together. As the reader, you’ll catch on to certain elements of commonality before the characters do, but I didn’t mind that at all.

I’m definitely invested enough to keep going with this series. I already got the second book, Kingsbane, from a nearby library offering curbside services right now.

What I would like to change:

The book lacks symmetry for my taste. When we get that first chapter, I expected that we would be circling back to that event by the end, but that was not the case. While we did get much closer to it, we evidently won’t be resolving a lot of what happened in that first scene until the second or third books.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed. I borrowed an e-book of this title from my library.

My library rating: While I didn’t think it was too much, some people might object to the steamy scenes in the book (there’s only 2). It also gets a little gruesome towards the end and that was a little tough to read (think innocent people being used without willpower).

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

My personal preference rating: 4 stars. I really enjoyed this one and didn’t mind the steamy scenes or the tough battle scenes. We’re just getting started with what I think are going to be some epic love stories and truly magnificent strong female characters.