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inkandplasma
Full review on my blog 22/11/2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/11/22/gilded/
Thanks to Faber & Faber for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: death, grief, captivity, grief (parental), child death, pregnancy, abortion mention, torture.
I'm a big fan of Marissa Meyer’s writing style, so I was excited to get into this one. I chose the audiobook for this read because I got impatient waiting for my subscription box copy and the library had it available, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The narrator does Marissa Meyer’s writing style justice and it’s super listenable. In regards to the writing style, GILDED is just as easy to read as Meyer’s other books, but I particularly enjoyed quite how much like a fairytale this felt.
Serilda herself is an absolute delight. Her power is very weird, which makes her particularly interesting as it’s a bit of variety from the powers we usually see in fantasy. I liked that we got to see Serilda uncovering the depths of her power and how it works – I worked some of it out before she did and I enjoyed watching her put the clues together. She’s a brave and strong main character, but what I really liked was that she didn’t start the book a cookie-cutter ready to bake hero. She was not prepared to slay any kind of monster at the start, so we got to see her go through a real conflict as she weighed what she knew was right against what she wanted and what she believed she was capable of.
Another aspect of the book that made Serilda easy to love as a main character was her relationships with the other characters. I’ll get to Gild, but that wasn’t the relationship that made me love Serilda. Instead it was her relationship with the children she helps to teach. It’s so vivid in every interaction how much she adores the children and how much she delights in using her storytelling to bring them joy. Every interaction was so wholesome and sweet that I couldn’t help but love her.
And then there’s Gild. Damn. It’s very rare that I simp for a m/f pairing in a book (I’m just so gay) but if they don’t get a happily ever after in the sequel I might actually scream. Their relationship is definitely slow-burn in my opinion, and that made me adore them. The way that they grow to know each other, trust each other and eventually rely on each other felt so authentic in the way that it developed. It felt absolutely real and I love them.
The worldbuilding in this book is really curious to me. I know the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale but not much of the other monsters/myths included in this book and it definitely had be interested in googling more of them as they were pulled from all kinds of stories.
The ending of GILDED comes out of absolutely fucking nowhere. It ramps up a lot and had me staring open-mouthed for the last few chapters. I still haven’t quite decided if that was a good thing for me or not, and I probably won’t be able to make that decision until I’ve read the sequel. This book is very YA level the whole way through and then the ending has a huge increase in darkness and brutality and I’m not sure how much that was necessary. I’m curious to see if the sequel manages to maintain the fairytale tone with how dark I’m expecting it to be.
Thanks to Faber & Faber for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: death, grief, captivity, grief (parental), child death, pregnancy, abortion mention, torture.
I'm a big fan of Marissa Meyer’s writing style, so I was excited to get into this one. I chose the audiobook for this read because I got impatient waiting for my subscription box copy and the library had it available, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The narrator does Marissa Meyer’s writing style justice and it’s super listenable. In regards to the writing style, GILDED is just as easy to read as Meyer’s other books, but I particularly enjoyed quite how much like a fairytale this felt.
Serilda herself is an absolute delight. Her power is very weird, which makes her particularly interesting as it’s a bit of variety from the powers we usually see in fantasy. I liked that we got to see Serilda uncovering the depths of her power and how it works – I worked some of it out before she did and I enjoyed watching her put the clues together. She’s a brave and strong main character, but what I really liked was that she didn’t start the book a cookie-cutter ready to bake hero. She was not prepared to slay any kind of monster at the start, so we got to see her go through a real conflict as she weighed what she knew was right against what she wanted and what she believed she was capable of.
Another aspect of the book that made Serilda easy to love as a main character was her relationships with the other characters. I’ll get to Gild, but that wasn’t the relationship that made me love Serilda. Instead it was her relationship with the children she helps to teach. It’s so vivid in every interaction how much she adores the children and how much she delights in using her storytelling to bring them joy. Every interaction was so wholesome and sweet that I couldn’t help but love her.
And then there’s Gild. Damn. It’s very rare that I simp for a m/f pairing in a book (I’m just so gay) but if they don’t get a happily ever after in the sequel I might actually scream. Their relationship is definitely slow-burn in my opinion, and that made me adore them. The way that they grow to know each other, trust each other and eventually rely on each other felt so authentic in the way that it developed. It felt absolutely real and I love them.
The worldbuilding in this book is really curious to me. I know the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale but not much of the other monsters/myths included in this book and it definitely had be interested in googling more of them as they were pulled from all kinds of stories.
The ending of GILDED comes out of absolutely fucking nowhere. It ramps up a lot and had me staring open-mouthed for the last few chapters. I still haven’t quite decided if that was a good thing for me or not, and I probably won’t be able to make that decision until I’ve read the sequel. This book is very YA level the whole way through and then the ending has a huge increase in darkness and brutality and I’m not sure how much that was necessary. I’m curious to see if the sequel manages to maintain the fairytale tone with how dark I’m expecting it to be.
Full review available on my blog 25/11/2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/11/20/little-thieves/
Content Warnings: discussed child abuse, neglect, attempted sexual assault.
Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
I actually knew nothing about The Goose Girl when I started reading this book, and despite reading several summaries I still know basically nothing about The Goose Girl now. I recognise one fairytale and that’s the story of Vanja Schmidt. I did love the Germanic folklore-ish setting though. Vanja is sarcastic and sharp-tongued and a little (a lot) bitter about her lot in life. After being adopted by Death and Fortune, two goddesses she’s now indebted to, and then cursed by another god for her greed, she’s disenfranchised by pretty much the whole world (mood, Vanja) and she’s willing to do just about anything to get herself out of her life and into a future where she’s completely free. She’s so vibrant that she just seemed to leap off of the page. Honestly, all of the characters are this vibrant but I will not deny that Vanja and Emeric completely own me.
I loved the way that this book felt kind of like I was being told a story. It made it spectacularly easy to read and I marathoned it so quickly. It also makes for a great audiobook, as it kind of feels like you’re being told Vanja’s tale by some kind of bard – she’s definitely the hero that nobody wanted. The character relationships are the real heart of this book. It had a weird opposite-to-found-family thing going on, that I actually really liked. Vanja’s kind of been forcibly adopted into her found family against her will, even as she tries to stay a heartless and independent thief. There’s a lot happening in this book, but Owen does a good job at keeping it from getting overwhelming and overcomplicated and manages to bring everything to a really satisfying conclusion.
The relationship between Vanja and Emeric is just so, so good. I absolutely love that we have this very proper and procedural investigator trying to catch our fierce antiheroine out and ending up falling head over heels for her during their chase. It’s incredible and you can see them growing closer and then fighting their feelings for each other over and over again in such a satisfying way. I loved how real and authentic their relationship felt and that we’re once again being gifted with gorgeous fantasy settings that are completely queernorm worlds.
Not long after I finished this, there was an announcement that we’ll be getting another book in this world and I’m so pleased because while I usually prefer standalone novels (and this wraps up perfectly) I just love these characters so much that I can’t wait to read more about them.
Content Warnings: discussed child abuse, neglect, attempted sexual assault.
Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
I actually knew nothing about The Goose Girl when I started reading this book, and despite reading several summaries I still know basically nothing about The Goose Girl now. I recognise one fairytale and that’s the story of Vanja Schmidt. I did love the Germanic folklore-ish setting though. Vanja is sarcastic and sharp-tongued and a little (a lot) bitter about her lot in life. After being adopted by Death and Fortune, two goddesses she’s now indebted to, and then cursed by another god for her greed, she’s disenfranchised by pretty much the whole world (mood, Vanja) and she’s willing to do just about anything to get herself out of her life and into a future where she’s completely free. She’s so vibrant that she just seemed to leap off of the page. Honestly, all of the characters are this vibrant but I will not deny that Vanja and Emeric completely own me.
I loved the way that this book felt kind of like I was being told a story. It made it spectacularly easy to read and I marathoned it so quickly. It also makes for a great audiobook, as it kind of feels like you’re being told Vanja’s tale by some kind of bard – she’s definitely the hero that nobody wanted. The character relationships are the real heart of this book. It had a weird opposite-to-found-family thing going on, that I actually really liked. Vanja’s kind of been forcibly adopted into her found family against her will, even as she tries to stay a heartless and independent thief. There’s a lot happening in this book, but Owen does a good job at keeping it from getting overwhelming and overcomplicated and manages to bring everything to a really satisfying conclusion.
The relationship between Vanja and Emeric is just so, so good. I absolutely love that we have this very proper and procedural investigator trying to catch our fierce antiheroine out and ending up falling head over heels for her during their chase. It’s incredible and you can see them growing closer and then fighting their feelings for each other over and over again in such a satisfying way. I loved how real and authentic their relationship felt and that we’re once again being gifted with gorgeous fantasy settings that are completely queernorm worlds.
Not long after I finished this, there was an announcement that we’ll be getting another book in this world and I’m so pleased because while I usually prefer standalone novels (and this wraps up perfectly) I just love these characters so much that I can’t wait to read more about them.
Full review available on my blog from 2nd December 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/12/02/horseman/
Thanks to Titan Books for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: gore, blood, violence, animal death, character death, sexual harassment, attempted assault, period typical racism, transphobia and homophobia, misgendering and deadnaming.
I actually don’t know the legend of Sleepy Hollow very well. I watched a few episodes of a Sleepy Hollow tv show years ago, but have never delved much deeper into it, so most of what I know comes from pop culture references to the Headless Horseman. From what I can tell, though, this book is much more a Sleepy Hollow continuation as opposed to a strict retelling. I actually kind of preferred that as it allowed Henry to delve into lots of fresh new aspects and create a character that we hadn’t seen before.
Ben, as our main character, was a really interesting perspective. I liked him a lot, both as a child and, after a time skip later in the book, as an adult. He was brash and reckless, selfish in moments and constantly quick to anger. But I loved this, because it felt incredibly true to character for a teenager growing up with split expectations – to become his father from his grandfather, or to be a girly-girl from his grandmother – and the pressure of being a trans character in the 1800s (if that time period is wrong, my bad, I failed GCSE history). I was initially a little wary when I realised Henry had given us a trans protagonist, as in my experience this can be handled badly in historical fiction, but I think she did well in the way he was written and treated by other characters and I liked having a queer protagonist in a Christina Henry horror novel! More trans horror is needed tbh.
HORSEMAN is a very atmospheric read. It’s gripping from the early pages and its relatively short page count works really well in combination with the slow and sinister pacing. This is a glancing-over-your-shoulder kind of read and the small-town setting really added to that. I love horror stories set in little towns, especially when you add a gloomy and threatening forest to that, because there’s a real sense of uncanny fear from knowing that the protagonist knows everyone in town and that one of them is a monster or a villain anyway. Adding to that the legend of the Headless Horseman threaded throughout the novel and I was constantly going back and forth between whether the threat was human or supernatural as I read.
I have seen a fair amount of mixed opinions on the ending of this book, but I really loved it. The final section of this book, after Ben is all grown up, is really emotive and powerful and I didn’t see the last few twists coming. I found myself genuinely emotional by the end of HORSEMAN and that’s rare for a horror novel.
Thanks to Titan Books for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: gore, blood, violence, animal death, character death, sexual harassment, attempted assault, period typical racism, transphobia and homophobia, misgendering and deadnaming.
I actually don’t know the legend of Sleepy Hollow very well. I watched a few episodes of a Sleepy Hollow tv show years ago, but have never delved much deeper into it, so most of what I know comes from pop culture references to the Headless Horseman. From what I can tell, though, this book is much more a Sleepy Hollow continuation as opposed to a strict retelling. I actually kind of preferred that as it allowed Henry to delve into lots of fresh new aspects and create a character that we hadn’t seen before.
Ben, as our main character, was a really interesting perspective. I liked him a lot, both as a child and, after a time skip later in the book, as an adult. He was brash and reckless, selfish in moments and constantly quick to anger. But I loved this, because it felt incredibly true to character for a teenager growing up with split expectations – to become his father from his grandfather, or to be a girly-girl from his grandmother – and the pressure of being a trans character in the 1800s (if that time period is wrong, my bad, I failed GCSE history). I was initially a little wary when I realised Henry had given us a trans protagonist, as in my experience this can be handled badly in historical fiction, but I think she did well in the way he was written and treated by other characters and I liked having a queer protagonist in a Christina Henry horror novel! More trans horror is needed tbh.
HORSEMAN is a very atmospheric read. It’s gripping from the early pages and its relatively short page count works really well in combination with the slow and sinister pacing. This is a glancing-over-your-shoulder kind of read and the small-town setting really added to that. I love horror stories set in little towns, especially when you add a gloomy and threatening forest to that, because there’s a real sense of uncanny fear from knowing that the protagonist knows everyone in town and that one of them is a monster or a villain anyway. Adding to that the legend of the Headless Horseman threaded throughout the novel and I was constantly going back and forth between whether the threat was human or supernatural as I read.
I have seen a fair amount of mixed opinions on the ending of this book, but I really loved it. The final section of this book, after Ben is all grown up, is really emotive and powerful and I didn’t see the last few twists coming. I found myself genuinely emotional by the end of HORSEMAN and that’s rare for a horror novel.
Full review live 6th December 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/12/06/youll-be-the-death-of-me/
Content Warnings: drug use, murder, inappropriate relationship (underage & power dynamics), parental abandonment, chronic health issues, underage drinking, needles.
YOU’LL BE THE DEATH OF ME starts a little slow, as we have a fair amount of build-up where we meet all three of our main characters; Cal, Ivy and Mateo; and learn more about their past and present. They were all best friends, and once had an epic ‘ditch day’ where they missed school once to go on a grand adventure. As they’re gearing up to leave high school they decide to relive that day – even though they haven’t been friends for a while. Once we reach the point where they find a body, the book starts to move at a much faster pace and I was fully invested from then onwards as the reveals come thick and fast. I don’t think I predicted a single one of the twists before they were revealed and I loved the constant feeling that the rug was about to be pulled from under my feet. The ending of this in particular was a real kicker and I absolutely loved it.
I would like to have seen a little more from some of the subplots. One, in particular, felt like it should have had more… consequences than it did. I also started to feel like McManus’s books are a little formulaic now. There’s a lot of plot beats and twists that seem to come up a lot, which is absolutely not an issue for a casual reader but I’ve read all of her books religiously so I can see a lot of similarities. That being said, I still have so much fun reading them that I don’t mind that much. It’s fun to meet new characters and new plots either way. I’d love to see McManus blow me away completely, but I’m pretty happy to keep getting these gripping page-turners as they are.
Personally, I think the relationships were the strongest part of this book. The convoluted ex-best friends relationship is always fun to read with deeply buried emotions about their friendship break up. I found myself waiting to find out what secrets were going to come out, especially as each of the POV characters had secrets that were all fighting to come out. Ivy’s was the absolute worst to read and caused me so much anxiety as I waited for the other shoe to drop. I think I’ll always love McManus’s books because of how much I enjoy reading about her characters and their friendships and relationships, they really make the thrillers so much stronger.
Content Warnings: drug use, murder, inappropriate relationship (underage & power dynamics), parental abandonment, chronic health issues, underage drinking, needles.
YOU’LL BE THE DEATH OF ME starts a little slow, as we have a fair amount of build-up where we meet all three of our main characters; Cal, Ivy and Mateo; and learn more about their past and present. They were all best friends, and once had an epic ‘ditch day’ where they missed school once to go on a grand adventure. As they’re gearing up to leave high school they decide to relive that day – even though they haven’t been friends for a while. Once we reach the point where they find a body, the book starts to move at a much faster pace and I was fully invested from then onwards as the reveals come thick and fast. I don’t think I predicted a single one of the twists before they were revealed and I loved the constant feeling that the rug was about to be pulled from under my feet. The ending of this in particular was a real kicker and I absolutely loved it.
I would like to have seen a little more from some of the subplots. One, in particular, felt like it should have had more… consequences than it did. I also started to feel like McManus’s books are a little formulaic now. There’s a lot of plot beats and twists that seem to come up a lot, which is absolutely not an issue for a casual reader but I’ve read all of her books religiously so I can see a lot of similarities. That being said, I still have so much fun reading them that I don’t mind that much. It’s fun to meet new characters and new plots either way. I’d love to see McManus blow me away completely, but I’m pretty happy to keep getting these gripping page-turners as they are.
Personally, I think the relationships were the strongest part of this book. The convoluted ex-best friends relationship is always fun to read with deeply buried emotions about their friendship break up. I found myself waiting to find out what secrets were going to come out, especially as each of the POV characters had secrets that were all fighting to come out. Ivy’s was the absolute worst to read and caused me so much anxiety as I waited for the other shoe to drop. I think I’ll always love McManus’s books because of how much I enjoy reading about her characters and their friendships and relationships, they really make the thrillers so much stronger.
full review to come but Y'ALL my heart was in my throat this whole book
*narrator voice, a year and a half later* review was not to come
*narrator voice, a year and a half later* review was not to come
24/11/2021: Upped my rating to 5 stars on the reread. Loved it.
Full review on my blog as of 3rd September 2020: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/the-bone-shard-daughter-by-andrew-stewart-blog-tour-review/
Rating: 4.5 stars!
Thanks to Orbit Books for the review copy of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Trigger Warnings: parental abuse, parental neglect, child death/murder, human and animal experimentation, violence, murder, coercion.
The strangest thing about my The Bone Shard Daughter read was knowing even as I read it the first time that I was going to love it even more fiercely on the reread. I have a Goldsboro edition on its way to me this month and I can’t wait to reread as soon as it’s in my hands.
The Bone Shard Daughter was nothing like what I expected, but somehow much better. It had several POV characters, each on a different island in the very cool moving islands that make up the book’s setting, though they do eventually converge in unexpected ways. At first I struggled a little with having all those POVs to keep track of, but by the halfway mark I was so attached to all of them that I didn’t mind. The switches from POV to POV were never confusing and flowed really well, keeping me on my toes and eager for more. Please don’t let the multiple POV put you off, they’ve been pieced together perfectly to tell the story as it unravelled across the islands.
The bone shard magic was different to what I expected (yes, I’m quick to assume eerie necromancy) but that actually made it more interesting as it was a creative and new, at least to me, concept. The constructs sound as creepy as they do fascinating, and I would be all over this bone magic if it wasn’t for the horrible, horrible consequences – and I’m a real sucker for magic with horrible consequences. I admit I thought that Lin, daughter to the emperor and heir to the bone shards, would be the main character and I was initially a touch disappointed to realise Jovis was more focal. I say initially, because as soon as I met Mephi his perspective was all! I! card! about! Mephi is the cutest creature and I’m really excited to see if my Suspicions about him play out in later books in the series.
The established f/f relationship was, unsurprisingly, a draw to me and I really liked the way that it played out. The way class differences and complicity were tackled was incredibly interesting and I liked that the POV character was the privileged character as the process of examining biases and privilege isn’t one that I’ve seen personally in fiction very much. It made for an interesting dichotomy, where I was rooting for Phalue and Ranami while also fully not blaming Ranami for her anger.
Overall this was a brilliant read, with twists threaded throughout that unravelled slowly but steadily and kept me guessing. I can’t wait to see where the rest of the series is headed and to, no doubt, find a few more of those gasp out loud reveals that got me so good in this one.
Full review on my blog as of 3rd September 2020: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/the-bone-shard-daughter-by-andrew-stewart-blog-tour-review/
Rating: 4.5 stars!
Thanks to Orbit Books for the review copy of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Trigger Warnings: parental abuse, parental neglect, child death/murder, human and animal experimentation, violence, murder, coercion.
The strangest thing about my The Bone Shard Daughter read was knowing even as I read it the first time that I was going to love it even more fiercely on the reread. I have a Goldsboro edition on its way to me this month and I can’t wait to reread as soon as it’s in my hands.
The Bone Shard Daughter was nothing like what I expected, but somehow much better. It had several POV characters, each on a different island in the very cool moving islands that make up the book’s setting, though they do eventually converge in unexpected ways. At first I struggled a little with having all those POVs to keep track of, but by the halfway mark I was so attached to all of them that I didn’t mind. The switches from POV to POV were never confusing and flowed really well, keeping me on my toes and eager for more. Please don’t let the multiple POV put you off, they’ve been pieced together perfectly to tell the story as it unravelled across the islands.
The bone shard magic was different to what I expected (yes, I’m quick to assume eerie necromancy) but that actually made it more interesting as it was a creative and new, at least to me, concept. The constructs sound as creepy as they do fascinating, and I would be all over this bone magic if it wasn’t for the horrible, horrible consequences – and I’m a real sucker for magic with horrible consequences. I admit I thought that Lin, daughter to the emperor and heir to the bone shards, would be the main character and I was initially a touch disappointed to realise Jovis was more focal. I say initially, because as soon as I met Mephi his perspective was all! I! card! about! Mephi is the cutest creature and I’m really excited to see if my Suspicions about him play out in later books in the series.
The established f/f relationship was, unsurprisingly, a draw to me and I really liked the way that it played out. The way class differences and complicity were tackled was incredibly interesting and I liked that the POV character was the privileged character as the process of examining biases and privilege isn’t one that I’ve seen personally in fiction very much. It made for an interesting dichotomy, where I was rooting for Phalue and Ranami while also fully not blaming Ranami for her anger.
Overall this was a brilliant read, with twists threaded throughout that unravelled slowly but steadily and kept me guessing. I can’t wait to see where the rest of the series is headed and to, no doubt, find a few more of those gasp out loud reveals that got me so good in this one.
