#lockdownreads

So here’s to reading more books.

Here’s to falling in love with more fictional characters.

Author: Alexandra Bracken

Published by: Quercus

Pages: 550

Format: Paperback

My Rating ★★★1/2

For centuries, Zeus has punished the gods with a game called the Agon, which turns them mortal for one week, and at the mercy of being hunted by those with godly ambitions. Only a handful of the original Greek gods remain, the rest replaced by the mortals who killed them and ascended.

After her family's sadistic murder by a rival bloodline, Lore escapes and vows to repay her parents' sacrifice by doing one thing - surviving. For seven years, she has pushed back dark thoughts of revenge against the man responsible for their murder, a man by the name of Wrath who has attained unimaginable power. Except for one week, every seven years. A week that is fast approaching ...

When Lore comes home on the first night of the Agon to find Athena gravely wounded on her doorstep, the goddess offers her an alliance; they have a mutual enemy, after all. But as the world trembles under the force of Wrath - a god with the power to destroy all of humanity - will Lore's decision to bind her fate with Athena's come back to haunt her?

My thoughts:

Every seven years, the Agon begins. Essentially this is a punishment created by Zeus for past rebellions. During the Agon, nine Greek Gods are forced to walk the Earth as mortals, all the while being hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines. If a God is killed during the Agon, the hunter responsible for their death gets to seize their powers and immortality, thus becoming a New God.

Melora, known as Lore, is a part of the Perseous line. She is no longer participating in the Agon. Lore has left that whole world behind and kept herself hidden since the last hunt left her entire family dead in their home, including her two little sisters, murdered by a rival clan. Living in New York City, Lore has done a good job blending in and has successfully flown under the radar of anyone related to the hunt. At least that's what she thinks. Over the course of the story, you really watch her character evolve from a damaged soul to a true force to be reckoned with. I think readers will be surprised by just how brutal this story actually is. I mean, Greek gods are violent beings, and this story definitely leans into that side of them. I think it made the concept of the Agon that much more desperate and dangerous.

However, I do think the story could have benefited from dual POVs. Castor’s arc and development is too important to the story for him to just be a side character. I think if he had his own chapters, the world-building might have flowed a bit smoother, and his character would feel more real.

I was so intrigued about this whole concept and enjoyed seeing Lore emerge as a really interesting character. I think Bracken did a great job of building this out and there was always plenty of action and intrigue to keep me wanting more. It was all very fast-paced, nonstop action. And yet, there were moments when the story lulled within the action. It all started blending together. Despite that, I wish there had been slower moments to better know the characters and history of the world. The pacing didn’t quite work for me, and I think the whole thing was just too long. There is a lot of information dumped throughout the book, and at times I felt I had to forced myself to keep going.

All in all, this was still a fairly fun read, and I would recommend it to fans of YA fantasy and especially anyone who’s into Greek mythology. It did, however, fall somewhat short of my admittedly high expectations.

Overall reaction:

📚Absolutely loved reading this series of books by Jojo Moyes this year, her writing is comical in places and very dramatic in others. I had only seen the Me Before You movie before I had started reading these, now I can say that I much prefer the books! 📚  I will now include the different blurbs from each of the books, so you too can see how much goodness these books contain ✨

📚 Me Before You 📚”Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her Boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now, and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that. What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time. “

📚 After You 📚”Lou Clark has lots of questions. Like how it is she’s ended up working in an airport bar watching other people jet off to new places. Or why her flat she’s owned for a year still doesn’t feel like home. Whether he family can ever forgive her for what she did eighteen months ago. And will she ever get over the love of her life. What Lou does know for certain is that something has to change. Then, one night, it does. But does the stranger on her doorstep hold the answers Lou is looking for- or just more questions? Close the door and life continues: simple, ordered, safe. But Lou once made a promise to live. And if she’s going to keep it, she has to invite them in...” 

Author: Holly Black

Published by: Hot Key Books

Pages: 308

Format: Hardback

My Rating ★★★★

He will be destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne. Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power. Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril. Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines, she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics. And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity… From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black, comes the highly anticipated and jaw-dropping finale to The Folk of the Air trilogy.

My thoughts

There are books that you eagerly binge in a day and books that you deliberately read slowly because you don’t want them to ever end. The Queen of Nothing is that rare treat of a YA fantasy novel that you want to both absorb quickly and savour slowly.

Enchanting from the very beginning, the Folk of the Air series has grown more exhilarating and more scheming with each book. It was always going to be difficult to beat The Wicked King, but all in all, this was such a fun read and everything I wanted from the finale.

Jude is back with a vengeance in The Queen of Nothing. She is probably the character who felt the most authentic from start to finish of the whole trilogy, and I really enjoyed her narration throughout. I think out of everyone in the book her character development was the best. I also loved the memorable introduction of Grima Mog, who is a complex and quirky character in this book.

In this book, the action that was so vivid in the first volume and slowed a bit down in the second one starts to pick up the pace again. But there is something different about the action of this third book. It feels much more twisty.

Feelings here just go deeper. They get intensified by the discovery of that fine line between hate and love. The whole blinding veil that’s been dropped over the slightly odd relationship between Jude and Cardan is lifted and now our two protagonists seem to really be on the same page. I routed for them in this book more than ever.

With The Queen of Nothing, Holly Black delivers what we’ve all been longing for. There’s action, romance, magic, double-crossing and intricate scene setting.

Black’s writing is basically fantasy perfection – always dark, beautiful and filled with enchantment. Any time you read a Holly Black book; you know you can count on fantastic world building and I’m always blown away by her creativity.

I really liked that there was more of a clash of Faerie and the mortal world in this volume. It added a nice element to the story and I enjoyed the light-hearted moments in the early chapters while Jude still remained in exile, living a mundane life in the human world. But of course I also loved being back in Faerie. This fae world is without a doubt my favourite and I'll always love how Holly Black is basically the master of creating all things faerie.

The Folk of the Air series really captured my imagination and I have enjoyed the trilogy immensely.  

Thinking back on all three parts, perhaps my favourite aspect of the trilogy is the circularity of it. Everything ends in the same spot it started, and I’m not talking about a mental state but a physical one – the mortal world. With that, the circle is complete. And the trilogy is undoubtedly a total success.

I can’t believe it’s over. Concluding Jude and Carden’s story carries with it a sense of bittersweet finality but with all great series, it will be a pleasure to revisit as we live in hope of Black returning to her Faerie world in the future.

The whole trilogy is great. Holly Black is a gifted writer and I enjoyed her world-building, her plot and her characters very much. 

Overall reaction:

Author: Siri Hustvedt

Published by: Sceptre

Pages: 318

Format: Paperback

My Rating ★★★★

Remember this: the world loves powerful men and hates powerful women. I know. Believe me, I know.

New York, 1978. A dangerous city then, but one burning with ideas…

A young woman arrives from Minnesota looking for adventure: to live, love, become a writer and to suffer the slings of fortune, as all true adventurers must.

Four decades on, S.H. unearths the journal she kept that exhilarating, sometimes frightening year and the past springs to life: the kindred spirits she found in smoke-filled bars; the mysterious neighbour, whose disturbing monologues penetrated her apartment’s paper-thin walls; the men who patronised her – and worse.

As S.H. measures her memories against the record, she regards her younger self with often rueful amusement, but also with anger. Why didn’t she break the rules? And why are women still fighting to make their voices heard?

My thoughts:

Memories of the Future is Hustvedt’s recount and reflection on one very important year of her life, aided by the help of her rediscovered diary.

Fresh from Minnesota and hungry for all New York has to offer, twenty-three-year-old S.H. embarks on a year that proves both exhilarating and frightening – from bruising encounters with men to the increasingly ominous monologues of the troubled woman next door. Forty years on, those crucial moments come back to vibrant life when S.H. discovers the notebook in which she recorded her many adventures alongside drafts of a novel.

Hustvedt’s seventh novel is a multi-layered portrait of the artist as a young woman.  A perfect set up. It is a complex novel with many reflections on memory and self-exploration. This book is truly a gem on so many levels. It is provocative, funny, and brilliantly precise. Every page is writing to savour. It makes for such an original and engrossing read, further enriched by Siri Hustvedt’s own little illustrations and doodles which pop up every now and then. I loved how these personal details reflect what a deeply personal read this is and remind readers that much of the writing has been lifted directly from her old diary.

Carrying echoes of Hustvedt’s own life, the novel follows a young woman as she attempts to find her identity and her voice amidst the noise of New York. During the book we read of how she becomes totally obsessed with her neighbour, a woman named Lucy. S.H. even gets a stethoscope sent by her father so that she can listen better through the walls to her regular rantings. This eventually leads to a meeting with Lucy and others who have formed a coven of witches. S.H. also has an awful encounter with a man that she meets, and much of the novel is about her coming to terms with this encounter.

References to great writers and thinkers occur throughout the book. One of the characters mentioned throughout is "The Baroness" a real-life poet and artist who apparently was probably responsible for the urinal sculpture that has been attributed to Marcel Duchamp. This acts as a springboard for the author to ponder on how men have often overtaken women in pretty much all fields, taking credit for the accomplishments and inventions of the women on many occasions.

I love this author for her intelligence and her well-formed feminist views. What she has done is created a fascinating fictional memoir. In the process she examines memory, the female in the arts, a #MeToo incident, and perhaps most importantly, the power of imagination, anger and rebellion.

Memories of the Future is a compelling and beautiful read, one I would highly recommend for people who love a book that will make them think.

Overall reaction: