#finna

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

Subheader: “The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made” which about sums it up. This is a nonfiction book that looks into the rough development cycle of some big name games, including Dragon Age Inquisition, Stardew Valley, The Witcher 3, Shovelknight… and plenty others besides! It was fascinating to hear about the highs and lows, what worked and what didn’t… especially for some of the games that I’ve actually played! It was just narrative enough to keep me interested, never felt overly dry, and was accessible to someone like me who is only like… a periphery gamer at best. A really enjoyable read. 

The Brave Little Toaster

I never knew this was originally a book, I only knew of it as a movie! It’s written to be a “modern fairytale” about appliances who have been seemingly abandoned in a summer cabin. When their “master” doesn’t return over several years, a few of the remaining, functional appliances decide to set off into the woods in an effort to find him again. It’s a harrowing adventure with many obstacles for them to overcome, and some honestly rather unsettling scenes — those weren’t only reserved for the movie! Ultimately the movie and book have some significant differences, but if you liked one it would be worth trying the other. A very neat kids novel.

The Brides of High Hill (Singing Hills Cycle)

I’m completely enraptured with this series and I don’t know how I’m going to wait for the next novella ;^; it doesn’t even have a release date yet to my knowledge! Augh! You can see my reviews of the early books in the series for more detail, but the general premise is that it follows a cleric from a monastery which is specifically tasked to collect and record stories (both historical accounts and fictional tales) to bring back to be recorded in the archives. With this as a framing device, Chih travels all over an intriguing fantasy world with their magical bird companion, getting into strange adventures, meeting interesting characters, and hearing stories within stories. In this one, Chih finds themself accompanying a young lady who is travelling to marry an older man of questionable character…

The End of the Line

A youth novel that takes place in Holland during the Nazi occupation. Brothers Lars and Hans run a street tram, and are shocked one day when they witness the Nazis find and arrest a Jewish woman on their very tram. What leaves them even more shocked, is what the woman is able to stealthily leave behind: her young daughter. Scared, overwhelmed, but unable to bear abandoning the child completely, the brothers end up sneaking her through the city and back to their own home, to try to figure out what they can possibly do with a Jewish child during the Holocaust.

Finna

An interesting little novella. It takes place in a fictional “Ikea” called LitenVärld. However, this company is known to experience strange occurrences from time to time… wormholes will occasionally open in their stores, linking to other LitenVärld in countless other universes. At one time they had entire teams trained specifically in dealing with these wormholes and ensuring customer safety, but overtime there’s been budget cuts and layoffs and no nothing exists but old tech and dated instructional videos. When a customer’s grandmother disappears in one of these wormholes, a pair of employees get strong armed into “volunteering” to take on the task of entering the wormhole and finding her once again. It’s a fairly creative scifi adventure that offers some decent (though not subtle) criticism of modern life and capitalism. 

…Not a bad read, I enjoyed it, but honestly if you want “Weird Upsetting Ikea Story That Mocks Retail Life” then you should really go read Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix instead which, imo, was a much tighter version of this sort of story, with a much more effectively delivered message. Seriously, just go read Horrorstör, one of my favourite reads from this year so far.

Heaven Official's Blessing v7 (TGCF )

Heaven Official’s Blessing just gets better and better! We’re in boss fight territory and it’s getting so intense! This series has way more Gundam battles than I expected but honestly I am here for it! And I’m such a sucker for any story where all the friends (?) you made along the way begin to amass to help in the big final confrontation! Ahhh. So good, so good.

If you haven't heard of this one: it's the story of Xie Lian, a prince who ascended as a god... only to be banished. And then ascend again. And then get banished again. The series starts off after his third ascension (to the exasperation of everyone in Heaven) and is a gradual series of adventures and mysteries that tie together events of the past and building tensions in the present. It's lots of fun, with a ton of humour and heart built into it to cut the tragedy

Night Witches

More WWII, this time not a youth novel! Night Witches takes place in Russia, beginning during the Battle of Stalingrad. It follows a teenage girl whose father is already gone to fight, and who is forced to watch as both her mother and grandmother die to German bombing. After losing her mother, her only goal is to find the elusive Night Witches — an entirely female and very infamous branch of the Russian air force. Having grown up flying with her father, she’s determined that there she can do the most good, and fights her way across a war-torn city in her effort to join the forces to repel the Nazis. Night Witches (the actual, historical Night Witches, which are cool in and of themselves and very worth looking up if you’ve never heard of them before) were known for flying a special type of light-weight plane which could go much quieter and much slower than other planes, allowing them a shocking amount of stealth and maneuverability on bombing missions.

The writing of this one wasn’t my favourite, but the subject matter was interesting enough to buoy me through it, especially in how it portrayed some of the absolute horror that goes along with urban warfare and trying to fight with scant resources, under the Soviet regime, during a Russian winter. Lots of tragedy.

More About Paddington / Paddington Goes To Town / Paddington On Top /Love From Paddington / Paddington’s Finest Hour

Travelling to the UK in July got me on a Paddington Bear kick! I got to see his statue in Paddington station and honestly it was too delightful not to drag me back into the books. I’d only ever read a couple as a kid, so this was both a reread and a chance to read some of the stories I’ve never heard before, these were especially nice as audiobooks to listen to as I was falling asleep. For some reason my Libby is missing quite a few so I mostly listened to later ones in the series. I particularly enjoyed Love From Paddington which was a different format from the rest of the series and kind of a need deviation.

If you’ve somehow never heard of Paddington, these books are about a young bear “from Darkest Peru” who immigrates to England when his grandmother enters the Home For Retired Bears and can no longer care for him. He’s adopted by the Brown family, and the books are a recount of the everyday mishaps and misadventures he gets up to around London. They’re sweet and charming and funny! 

Pinocchio

I’ve never read the original story of Pinocchio and I found it a very interesting contrast to the Disney version. It’s very much a coming of age story, in which Pinocchio, a wooden puppet — who can serve as a stand-in for any child — is constantly confronted with a need to balance what sounds enjoyable in the moment versus what is a morally upright choice that often requires more effort. He’s constantly being tricked, fooled, or lured off the moral path, but is never portrayed as irredeemable. He’s a child who is “trying to become a real boy” and is always given chances to fix his problems and return to his loving father. It’s a sweet story with a satisfyingly harrowing adventure and lots of fun naughtiness!

I specifically got this version because of Gris Grimly's art, because he helped out with Guillermo Del Toro's film, and man it was worth it. The art was so cool and creepy!

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System v1

Now that I’ve reached the end of Heaven Official’s Blessing and have previously finished Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation I inevitably have to start MXTX’s first series, The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System. This was the one I was most leary about since, as a rule, I don’t really enjoy isekai stories, but I enjoyed her other two series so much that I figured it was worth giving the first book a chance. And boy! Am I glad I did! The first book started off like a gunshot, it pulls you right into the action and it really doesn’t slow down! Shen Yuan, upon dying while furiously reading the worst webnovel he’s ever seen, finds himself transported into the story… specifically into the villain who is destined to be torn apart by the protagonist during a revenge plot! From there, Shen Yuan — now Shen Qingqiu — begins to desperately scheme how he can change his character enough without becoming OOC (which the mysterious “System” that governs this world won’t allow) while still giving him a chance to avoid a horrible death.

This book is hilariously satirical without ever feeling dull or jaded, which is an impressive mix. Shen Qingqiu may scoff at the ridiculous tropes of this world or the author’s poor world-building, but he’s just as swept up in it all as anyone else. He’s a cunning, calculating character, while also managing to run around like a chicken with its head chopped off, rife with misunderstandings and humour and adventure. I’m very very excited to continue!

Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer

I wasn’t sure about this book at first, I almost quit part way in, but in the end I’m really glad I kept with it! It ended up being much more charming and delightful than I anticipated! This is a youth novel about a girl whose family has just moved to their late great uncle’s farm. While trying to get her feet under her, she comes across a catalogue advertising “unusual chicken for the exceptional poultry farmer”. Though her parents don’t seem keen on having animals on the farm, she decides to write to the company. To her surprise though, she doesn’t need to wait for an order of “usual chickens” because it would appear her great uncle already had some… and she’s found one. And “unusual” really doesn’t even begin to cover it. Things only get stranger as the woman from the catalogue writes her back, and when the first attempt is made to steal this strange new chicken.

Winner Takes All (Doctor Who)

This is a standard fare Doctor Who novel. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good. It was an enjoyable little thing to read just for the sake of reading something relaxing and Doctor Who related. This one follows the Ninth Doctor and Rose who have returned back to Earth so that Rose can visit her mom, and along the way they get to learn all about a strange new give-away that’s being promoted in the local shops. There’s lottery tickets and free vacations and a new video game and all sorts of curious things… including some unexpected disappearances.