I would like to have a funeral for this book. The squandered potential is truly staggering. The framework was there: A young black American suffers a traumatic loss, and "discovers" a parallel reality where creatures born from nightmares ravage the land. As this girl's community suffers more tragedy, as she falls out with friends and family, as she feels hopeless and powerless, the nightmare horde rises in strength. She goes through all the stages of grief, denying that the monsters have sway in her world (or that they're even real, maybe for a time she wonders if grief has made her hallucinate), channeling her anger into combat, surrendering to tears and allowing the darkness to consume her... Until the safety of her loved ones is paramount, and she rallies the strength to confront her fears and sorrows. The power of friendship gives her the strength to vanquish the nightmares. A brilliant, fantasy tale to help process the grief and daily uncertainty the black community feels (and feels is overlooked), and a strong Woman of Color readers could champion.

I must stress: THIS is NOT that book.

It could have been, but alas.... L.L. McKinney didn't build her own world. She didn't make a fantasy realm to get lost in, or a cast of characters with depth, or a bridge between the two to reflect how fantasy is just a mirror of humanity. Nope. What I can tell you is that L.L. McKinney has seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sailor Moon, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the Disney live-action Alice in Wonderland, and decided to mash all of those up into a fanfiction. The references are blatant, names DROPPED! When Alice slays monsters, she shouts Sailor Moon's catchphrase, "Cosmic moon power!" Instead of characterizing Alice's allies, Dee and Dum, the book says they're "Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer" times two. Our heroes need a macguffin gem, so Alice pulls it out of a mirror, a la Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. When she pretends to hand the macguffin gem over to the villain, she actually slight-of-hands him "a time-turner". When the villain gets mad, he turns her friend into a Balrog (which Alice defeats with the equivalent of a "You shall not pass!"). Constant pop culture references. Heck, the whole book is a loose Alice in Wonderland retelling! Entire plot and characters are just ripped off from other works.

Or, skipped over, as if the author didn't know how to write them out. There was a civil war in Wonderland that our heroes reference, but the reader never gets to see firsthand, no flashbacks, no switched PoV, no nothing. Alice was trained for 3 months by Hatta in how to fight monsters, totally skipped over and implied. She then went on monster-hunting missions for a year, also skipped over. Sometimes Alice gets knocked out, and wakes up a day later to discover that her people have continued the plot without her... Why?... You don't think the audience wants to SEE how this everyday muggle transformed into an angry warrior and then into a grieving-but-healing protector of others?!?! That should be the story! Why are there so many blanks where the STORY ought to be?!?!

And nothing is done to bridge the Wonderland story to the Black Lives Matter story. A lot is SAID about how human dreams/nightmares fuel Wonderland. But Alice's mounting, anxiety-inducing, personal problems never result in a correlated rise in monsters. If anything, there are large chunks of the book where our "heroes" traipse easily across Wonderland and just eat and sleep and stare at the sky. There are equally large chunks of the real world plot devoted to melodrama: Missing curfew or a party because duty called; stressing over crushes or dirty clothes; sooo many "Eat. You'll feel better." scenes... And the allegedly dangerous stakes that should exist in both worlds, don't, BECAUSE MAGIC! Our heroes develop super healing, they can make superhero landings and take no fall damage, they have an alchemist on call who can heal them all with potions. The stakes don't matter.

Part of the magic of this universe is in words: Spellcasters are called Poets and their spells are said in verse. Alice could have been a fan of R&B, could have been a poet and a Poet, could have LITERALLY saved her community by being the voice of her people! She could have started with The Vorpal Blade and come to realize that the pen is mightier than the sword. It would have been a great metaphor for how she learned to deal with grief: That lashing out in anger was no different from living in fear, and what she needed to do was be open and unburden her heart.
But not only was this opportunity ALSO missed, but the book itself failed to have any homage to poetry or writing. If anything, the prose was juvenile. Again, it felt ripped straight from a fanfiction. Alice's voice frequently bled into the prose, so phrases like "gonna" or "tallass" were used, unironically, in the prose. If the book had been done FIRST PERSON, this could have been done artistically! Letting Alice be the voice her community needs, by letting her also NARRATE HER OWN DANG STORY, would have been - sorry to keep using the phrase - ... poetic.

Finally, and this may not annoy the majority of readers, but it annoyed me: The original Alice in Wonderland/Alice Through the Looking Glass DOES have many zany, fantastical moments, BUT at its core, it's about a little girl processing the concept of growing up. She wonders whether the lessons she learns and the things grown-ups fixate over are important or nonsense. It is about Alice CHOOSING the person she wants to be.
A Blade So Black honored THAT beloved classic... by making Wonderland into a carnival of goofy hijinx: You can play with fluffy colors, and drink metal, and the trees have eyeballs! And you never ever ever ever EVER have to question yourself, or the things you've been told, and forge your own path because LOOK OVER THERE a giant bubble falls!
I cannot stress enough.... that Wonderland... is NOT actually nonsense. It is not meant to be whackadoodle cartoon world. Rather, its whole point was two-fold: To embrace the creative whimsy of children in a fairytale-like atmosphere, while simultaneously showing us that WE are the nonsensical ones, we the adults, and all the arbitrary rules we make! It would have been AMAZING to have Angry Alice confront HER reality with that same realization! "This world has beat me down and held me back for arbitrary reasons: My skin, my hair, my gender, my age, my finances, my street, my music, my words... I am not limited by their labels, and I do not recognize their hold on me. I can imagine better. I can make something better. I decide who I am."

BUT WE DIDN'T GET THAT STORY!!!!

I want to cry over how much this book could have been. If only it had found its own voice. Instead, it had nothing to say. ;____; A staggering loss for literature.

A heart-wrenching, magnificent. post-apocalyptic tale about the monsters we make. I wondered why I had never heard a succinct summary of what this book was about; even the back cover was vague. But it's because this book is about EVERYTHING, every haunting situation you can possibly imagine:
- Being hunted by the creepy myths of urban legend.
- Reliving trauma.
- Abusive family.
- Religious zealots.
- Living under war-torn or post-nuclear-fallout conditions, and feeling the violence and grief alive inside you even when the immediate threat has subsided.
- Having a compulsion which takes on a life of its own.
- Feeling demonized by those who don't understand neurodivergence, while simultaneously feeling distant from other people because it's a struggle to parse sensory/emotional information.
- Class disparity or gang warfare dehumanizing the opposition, on both sides of the divide. And, sub-bullet point in the case of the lower class, fighting to survive when there are even more obstacles to overcome, and lamenting how much is lost (peace of mind, time for art, resources, time for human connection) when every minute is Survival Mode.

While all of the monstrous situations were compounded in this book, the story still made time to show how effective therapy and human connection can be. It's a small glimmer of hope, a twinkling star in the vastness of space, but life does have its little sources of peace: Music, nature, pets, and occasionally another person who Sees you.

This book does a lot of heavy lifting, and it's amazing that V.E. Schwab is able to represent so many different people with only Kate and August. It should feel messy and overstretched, but it absolutely doesn't. I think that says something beautiful about the human condition, how we all have different inner demons, but we're in more company than we know, and can relate more than our surface differences would suggest. And, I think it says something immeasurable about V.E. Schwab's flawless writing, that she can weave so much together AND still tell a gripping post-apocalyptic/monster survival story. The monsters in this book are very familiar, but still unique. The Sunai especially, the way they seem to be a mix of siren and fallen angel, are mesmerizing!!! Hats off once again to V.E.S. for giving us a book that is new and classic, adventurous and thoughtful, angsty and hopeful - human and monstrous!

This sequel didn't quite live up to my love for the first half of the duology. The first 150 pages with the hackers in the more modern/less deteriorated city was realistic, but also frustrating, disheartening, and boring. Instead of being drawn to a diverse, ragtag crew, I was just angry at their privilege. Cute, they get to live away from the war, in their safe little apartments. Meanwhile, in another city, people are being systematically slaughtered. Maybe that's the point, maybe it's supposed to be Too Real, maybe I'm supposed to be upset. But it's an annoying intro to your book to give me half a dozen characters I just do not care about.

Same with the sections from Sloan's PoV. I felt he interrupted the DUET of this duology. This is supposed to be Kate and August's story, and they made great everymen for dissecting complex themes and feelings. But Sloan is a campy, cartoon villain. People are juice boxes, he has ennui having successfully conquered his little corner of the world, but eurgh he's surrounded by morons, how taxing!! *Eye roll*.

Alice isn't much better, with her Harley Quinn-esque moments of mayhem, without making a direct attack on August. It would have been more satisfying if Alice (Kate's doppelganger) and the unknown shooter (August's doppleganger) had been added to the story as dark mirrors of their twins, to further explore the grey area of what makes a man different from a monster.

The book still had some amazing themes. Violence changes people, makes them compromise parts of themselves to survive or rationalize traumas endured. Survivors can suffer from PTSD or depression, which can cause irritability, irrationality, disorientation, self-isolation, and even lead people to commit acts of self-harm or violence. Violence then becomes a cycle, a cycle brilliantly personified with the void monster. But the monster's fractured, stream of consciousness poems were such a different format from the first book, that it felt like I was reading a completely different series. I found myself skimming the poems instead of appreciating them, they mostly said the same things over and over. Villainizing depression IS a cool concept, but the format shift wasn't quite right; I was reminded of all my own emo high school writing

This was advertised as a middle to YA sci-fi, and it is not. It's much closer to being an early chapter book for young, grade school readers. It is not entertaining for an older audience, too much is explained simplistically. For example, in the first ten pages, the narrator explains, "Rey didn't know Rose. But now she did. Rose was a nice person." Or, "Rey, Rose, Poe, Finn and Chewie were on a mission. Rey couldn't wait to be done with the mission, and get back to her friends."... What other friends? You just named ALL of her friends?! It's that pervasive, sing-songy insistence that Friendship is Magic, without building much of anything else - characterization, conflict, action, metaphor, etc. - that makes this VERY obviously a book for LITTLE kids.

2 stars for encouraging little guys to read, that's always important. But there's no art or fun in this book, so no more than 2.

May the 4th Be With You

Telling without showing. The first 50 pages are just summary of the war between the realms; their incompatible religions; the mandatory militarization of all magic users; Wren's completed military training, time in the field ignoring orders, completed scandalous hookup with her superior officer, and dishonorable discharge; Wren's neglectful and borderline abusive sequestering in a monastery, twice; Wren's contentious history with her aunt, the queen; Said queen's fall from popular favor for lack of military successes - There is a whole book before the book starts!!! There is no atmosphere, practically no dialogue, no action, no meaningful character interactions of any kind to build these rises and falls from grace. All the conflicts have already happened and been resolved, and are being quickly info-dumped on us by Wren's internal monologue. The entire first third of the book could have been cut, and revealed later through dialogue or flashbacks. Or, not at all! For example, there is no payoff for Wren's involvement with Una, it's just queer-baiting. Cut it, and the story flows smoothly as a YA enemies-to-lovers. There was just too much being told that wasn't central, wasn't drawing the reader in and propelling the story forward.

What little literary attempts were made were ham-fisted. The metaphors were often medical, I assumed to underscore Wren's proficiency, but they just read very awkwardly. Ex. "The silence between them buzzed like tinnitus." Often a technical or overly complex word (I like to call them S.A.T. words) was used in place of something more accessible, but then the rest of the prose was colloquial (with a lot of contractions), and the jarring rare word in a juvenile internal monologue made me feel as though this writer had just consulted a thesaurus to make Wren sound smart. Also also, this writer was prone to LISTS! Long long lists describing everything Wren saw or heard. Sometimes, less is more. A description shouldn't need five examples to build a picture in the reader's mind, the word choice should do the tonal heavy-lifting.

TL;DR - Needed a lot of editing. Too much world-building, not enough tone or character or PLOT building. Like reading the appendix instead of the book proper.

This book taught me something: Jedi are boring protagonists

From the jacket illustration, the cover summary, the hashtags, and the way this book was advertised to me many many times, it sold itself as a paranormal horror story, a haunting psychological tale: Does Christopher really have an imaginary friend, and if so, who is his malevolent, manipulative new buddy.... But that description is not entirely accurate, and this book lost a lot of stars just from false advertising and missed expectations. This is a doomsday story, it is Christian fiction: What if The Devil caused all the evils of the world, tempting humanity to humor their deepest fears and desires, and it was down to one boy (CHRISTopher) to be so pure of heart as to sacrifice himself so that humanity could heal. Sure...TECHNICALLY the endless descriptions of hell-on-earth ARE horrifying, but they don't tell me anything that a Bible study hasn't told us all already. And sure... TECHNICALLY Christopher doesn't KNOW that the Biblical figures and powers are literal for a good long while, and he wrestles internally, wondering if he's crazy and who the paranormal figures are guiding him through these terrible events. But it's not a psychological horror, or even a haunting. It's a temptation parable. Tale as old as time.

Adjusting my expectations, I find myself running into the same problem I have with all Armagedon stories: Who is this for? A Christian audience might enjoy the love-conquers-evil message at the tail end, but they would have to slog through 600 pages of literally hellish content, first. And a non-Christian audience might feel cheated, like this book doesn't really have anything to say about the human condition that hasn't been said before, and even then the message is dated and toxic: The problems of the world are no one's fault, no one chose to be evil, we were all manipulated by a hellish boogeyman, and if we just woke up one day and CHOSE to ignore our doubts/fears/anger/anguish/psychoses/abuses/etc we could have heaven-on-earth.

I found the book, in general, to have some real Boomer energy. The core heroes of the story are 2 children with unconditional love for their families, a single mom who pulled herself up by her bootstraps, a sheriff who won't quit, and a wise and neglected veteran. They're all white and Catholic. The central conflict is that there is a war on Christmas. Literally, a war will breakout ON Christmas Day. The prose falls into a rant at one point about how children in elementary schools have to say "Winter" or "Holiday" pageants, instead of Christmas. One person of color who appears minorly in one chapter is an Indigenous woman who is at a casino (yuck, stereotype much?), and she is described as "Indian - Squaw, not Bombay".... Raaaacist. The author repeatedly describes women, or introduces them, as "pretty", as if that were a personality trait, as if being pretty equals being a kind person. Also, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this author equates "pretty" with "110 lbs". Many times groups of people are broken down into cis genders: All the men did this, all the women did this, life was simpler when men were expected to blah, and women were only expected to blah. Say nothing of children, the children in this book were written by someone who hasn't known a child in quite some time. Turtlenecks? Four-Square? Favorite book is Frankenstein? The story is meant to be modern, but it often has some Stranger Things or Stephen King energy just because the language is soooooo dated! It's as if this book MEANT to timestamp itself in the 70's or 80's.

But my last quibble with the language is what put me off this author for good X_X. Knowing what I know about the reveal in Perks of Being a Wallflower... I was veeeeery upset by the amount of pedophilic language and imagery in Imaginary Friend. A lot of attention is drawn to naked children, children in sexual situations, or even just sexual imagery like children waking up from wet dreams or having dreams about lying on top of naked adults. The sexualization of children didn't heighten the horror, it just made me question the proclivities of the author. I worry for what this author has endured or perpetrated.

If you're nostalgic for Stranger Things or The Stand, you might enjoy this. If you don't like your Sunday School mixed in your Horror Story, don't bother.

So strange, and campy. This is one of those rare examples where the adaptation is better than the original. There is nothing in here about the power of family, to harm or to heal. It's just zany supervillains and sci-fi shenanigans. Underwear on the outside, killer robots... The family drama at the heart of the conflict is just gone, replaced with cliches. The women are particularly underwhelming: Cowardly, manipulative, hysterical, over-sexualized visually... And the show was right to diversify the kids, because HOW are all these spontaneous births white?!

You know, someone took the time to design this and draw this, and the art is dynamic and intricate.... But I feel nothing after having read this. Major disappointment.

Better than the first. Far more focused on the psychology of the family: Does the world need them, and how do they relate to each other? The story really picks up with the central anti-villain: The Temps Aeternalis. Hazel and Cha-Cha steal every scene they're in.....which is why it's a crime against storytelling that they are psychically manipulated into killing each other!!! What a waste!!! Klaus is really OP in the comic: Psychically stops the moon from crashing to earth, awakens teammates by reaching through the TV, gets assassins to assassinate each other, finds a convenient time-travel device by talking to a dead guy.... Every major conflict is resolved by Klaus using magic. It's a waste of an ensemble.