EDIT 18/07/2021: Removed my rating for this one bc the author is a terrible, terrible person. I do not recommend this or any other of Rainbow Rowell's books.


“Ha! Does Agatha know we're coming?"

"It'll be a surprise!" Penny says.

"Surprise!" Baz singsongs. "It's your ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend and that girl you never liked very much!"

Rating: 3 stars

I didn't like the sequel to Carry On as much as I loved the first one, but that doesn't mean it's not a good entry to the series, it just wasn't as fluffy and Soft as I'd expected. Spoilers through the link below if you haven't read Carry On!

Full review available on from 10/12/19 here on my blog!

Full review from August 31st: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/08/31/a-deadly-education-by-naomi-novik-review/

Huge thanks to Del Rey for the eARC of this book. It hasn't affected my honest review.

I think that this book is definitely going to be a love it or hate it kind of book. I absolutely adored it but I think for some people the narrative style just isn’t going to work. It is unusual, but I found myself totally drawn into it and I can’t wait for the rest of the series, not just because I need to know what happens next but because I kind of miss El’s perspective already. To me the narrative feels a lot like a stream of consciousness – or like the haphazard way that I tell stories. It feels very personal, like El is talking to you as the reader, and as she’s relaying what’s happening she will slide into stories about her past that relate to what’s happening. It means the worldbuilding is a little heavy at the start, but I think it works with the idea that El is telling you about her life and I think Naomi Novik did a really good job of making sure that the story never wandered so far off that I lost track of what was happening before.

The narrative style also worked really well for me because I absolutely adored El. I kept joking before I got the review copy that with her sharing my name and having destructive magic, I was guaranteed to love El. Well. I was right. By the end of A Deadly Education I felt like I was friends with El and hitting the last page of the book pained me. She wasn’t what I was expecting from seeing the book marketed as ‘girl with destructive magic at terrifying murder school’ but I actually liked her better than I thought. El could commit atrocities. She could easily walk out of the school without a scratch, and all it would cost her is a little murder. It would be easy for her. But she doesn’t want to do that. Instead she makes her like three times harder to do things right. It’s almost aspirational, even if I did desperately want to see her do something hugely destructive (I like powerful women, okay).

This book was tropey as hell in SUCH a good way. Fake dating. Accidentally dating. Chosen One. And the school itself is just about the coolest (scariest) idea I could imagine. It’s a school for magical students where the students are trapped until they graduate, and the only way to leave is to walk through the graduation hall. Which just happens to be full of monsters that want to kill students. So ‘learning’ at the school isn’t exactly a structured curriculum, but a concentrated effort to learn enough to get out alive, or to be useful enough that someone else gets you out alive. Add in that the school is sentient and exists in the void and it might just be the school from hell. I can’t wait for the next book, because the end of A Deadly Education had me literally gasping out loud.

The only thing that seemed a little off to me was that the main character is biracial (Welsh-Indian) but while it was mentioned once or twice, it didn’t feel like it really showed in the text at any point? I’m white, so it’s not something that I can really comment on, but I hope ownvoices Indian and Indian-British/Welsh reviewers are getting to read this because I’d love to read their take on the character. It didn’t feel like bad representation to me, but equally, it didn’t feel like her Indian heritage was really represented at all so I hope it wasn’t just put in for diversity’s sake.

First thoughts: Review to come. This book was incredible but please check tw before reading!! I'm going to include them in my review, but damn. DAMN. Unbelievably good book.

Full review available on August 27th; https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/08/27/the-first-sister-by-linden-a-lewis-review/

Rating: 4.5 stars!

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the review copy of this book, it has not affected my honest review.

Trigger Warnings: violence, death and graphic injury, implied torture, amputation, PTSD, denial of bodily autonomy in various ways (prostitution, plastic surgery, neural implants, experimentation), blackmail, execution, untreated mental illness, mentions of child abuse, dysphoria, gender expression denial.

(Content warnings borrowed from iam’s review, https://mibookreviews.wordpress.com/2020/05/02/arc-review-the-first-sister-by-linden-a-lewis/ , because they phrased them better than I could. Check out their review too, because they convinced me to read this, so they can convince you too!)

This book. This book. I’m so glad that I had a friend who’d read The First Sister already, so I could shout in their DMs about it whenever this book punched me in the heart. Which was all time, damn. Reading The First Sister is an emotional roller coaster, and while it’s definitely important to note the trigger warnings for this book, the payoff is unbelievably good. The First Sister is a dark book. The lack of personal autonomy is a huge theme within the story and impacts all of the characters to varying degrees, from the First Sister who has her voice taken from her, to Hiro and their…. whole life. It’s hard to explain the specifics without delving into plot points that are just too well revealed for me to be willing to ruin them for any readers, but I audibly gasped when I reached a particular reveal and sent about forty messages to my friend to scream about it before I could even bring myself to turn the page. Any book that can get such a strong emotional response from me is an absolute favourite, and I finished this book and immediately ordered a finished copy.

I don’t quite know what I was expecting when I started this book, but what I got was a complicated and well-developed space epic, with tangled politics that extended across planets and dragged characters from across cultures together in ways I could never have predicted. I think this is the kind of book where I’ll read it again and find more and more things I missed. Every time I was absolutely certain I knew what was happening next, Linden pulled the rug out from under my feet and then tipped me down the stairs for good measure. I had no idea what was going to happen, and I loved that. It made for constant surprises, and meant that every single twist swept me away until I was so deep in the story I couldn’t shake it from my bones.

There’s so much rep going on in this book that I honestly can’t remember it all. First Sister is white, Lito is Italian and Spanish, Hiro and Saito Ren have Japanese ancestry and no attempt is made to westernise those cultures or languages. The main characters include non-binary, bisexual and pansexual rep and all kinds of LGBT+ characters and relationships are scattered casually throughout, and there’s also what I swear is a QPR between Lito and Hiro, two soldiers who have a unique bond that’s made them closer than close friends. Diversity leaps out of this book, but doesn’t feel forced. I absolutely love the relationships in this book, and I’m honestly really glad that it’s plot-first and not romance-first because the plot of this book is so complex and interesting that it deserves all the page-time. Despite my very fierce desire for Lito, Hiro and First Sister to retire to a space farm somewhere and live happily ever after, this book doesn’t lean on HEA at all. The book ends on a solid, hopeful note, but I know things are going to be absolutely terrible throughout book 2 and 3 and while I’m dreading it I’m also looking forward to having my heart ripped out over it.