Review: SKIN & EARTH, VOL. 1 by Lights

Rating: 5/5 stars

This was incredible!

Lights is one of my favorite musical artists. I’ve listened to her for many years, and her 2017 album of the same name, Skin & Earth, has been her best one yet. Somehow, though, I never managed to read the comic that goes along with the album until now.

Skin & Earth, Vol. 1 was way cooler than I expected it to be. It’s set in an apocalyptic world a few hundred years in the future where there is only a small area of inhabited land left and all the people are slowly being poisoned by the toxic waste being produced by a mining corporation that’s taking over the city. I’m already sold on the premise alone, but then add in the fact that we have a gritty but awesome female protagonist (Enaia) who wants to help save the environment, a bad boy who’s not what he seems, a mystical goddess, ritualistic tattoos, and the fact that Lights wrote, drew, colored, lettered, and made the entire comic all by herself?? Yes, please.

I devoted four hours to reading this comic, way longer than it should have taken me, but I was immersed in the world and was very invested in everything Skin & Earth. I had a really great time though so it was all totally worth it.

Each chapter in the graphic novel is named after a song on the album, and each chapter has a snippet of lyrics from that song. Or vice versa; I don’t actually know if the song lyrics were written first or if the comic was written first. But either way, they shared a few lines here and there, and I loved trying to find the hidden lyrics throughout the book. What’s more, each song perfectly aligns with the atmosphere of its matching chapter. I listened to each song on repeat while I was reading that song’s chapter, and that is absolutely how I would recommend reading this book. 

The album is amazing on its own, and the graphic novel has a story that would be amazing on its own as well. But mix them together and you have a whole new kind of experience. I’ve never seen a song match a story so well as this entire album matched this entire book on every page. Each lyric felt like it was perfectly chosen to be about this scene or that character, and I was honestly floored at how well it all went together. 

The reason it took me so long to read the book though is that I didn’t spend that whole time reading. I took breaks to investigate the map, and I watched all the music videos for the Skin & Earth album, which perfectly go along with the scenes from each corresponding chapter. Especially the “We Were Here” video—I love how well it shows exactly what Enaia and Mitsuki were doing at that point in the story.

Plus, the best part of all is the insane amount of bonus content that Lights has created to go along with her story. If you go to @skinandearthworld on Instagram, there is an interactive map that tells you about all the different sectors and areas in their world. If you click around on it and follow links to all the pages Lights has created, you will learn so much about the world of Madison City. I’m truly stunned at how much work she has put into creating Skin & Earth for us. The best part is that there is a pop star in the world named Lūn, and she even has her own Instagram and her own music that you can listen to! (I mean it’s all by Lights anyway but it’s still cool that she has this new persona now.)

Lights is truly a one-of-a-kind artist, combining art and music and more in a way that’s never been done to this extent before, and I love it so so much. Skin & Earth was only one album and one volume of the comic. I can’t wait to see where Enaia’s story takes us in volume two, especially since the story took a direction I did not expect at all, and I can’t wait to see if Lights’s next album is also a concept album that’s a continuation of this story.

Even without all the cool connections to the album and all the bonus content, I still loved the first volume in the Skin & Earth graphic novel series. The story was right up my alley and genuinely surprised me at times, and the art was pretty neat and matched the mood of the story well. I’m very much looking forward to the future of this comic series and all it has to offer. 

Review: THE SPRITE AND THE GARDENER by Rii Abrego & Joe Whitt

Rating: 2/5 stars

I initially wanted to read this graphic novel because it reminded me of The Tea Dragon Society, which I love. Both are published by Oni Press and both are soft fantasies for younger audiences about protecting our planet. But unfortunately, I didn't like this story as much as I hoped to. 

The Sprite and the Gardener is about a sprite named Wisteria who helps a gardener grow her garden. Sprites used to take care of flowers and plants in the past, but now humans take care of everything and the sprites just exist, hanging out in the plants and staying hidden from humans. But Wisteria wants to take care of plants again, so she goes out and does it. 

I thought the story was very wholesome and cute, but it just felt lacking. It needed to be a little bit longer and have more depth, in my opinion. I don't feel like this is going to leave a lasting impression on me like The Tea Dragon Society did, which is sad. 

I also didn't really care for the coloring in this book. The drawings and outlines are nice, and the colors are soft and cheerful, but the coloring looks like someone used Paint fill to color the whole thing, every object being exactly one color without any shading or depth. It makes the art feel very . . . incomplete. 

Overall, I thought The Sprite and the Gardener was just okay. It is a wholesome soft fantasy about how coming together can make the biggest difference as we can all support each other and accomplish something greater together than we can alone. I think this graphic novel would be enjoyed best by younger children as that is a good moral to teach them, but it leaves older audiences wanting more from the story, both in terms of the plot and the artwork. 

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Review: THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LaRUE by V. E. Schwab

 

Rating: 3.75/5 stars

Back in 2019, I attended a signing for Victoria Schwab where she did a Q&A panel beforehand, and I remember her mentioning that her current work-in-progress and the next book to be released from her would be called The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. She talked a bit about the story and said she’s been working on this book for many years and has put her whole heart into it. For some reason, I thought it was a middle-grade book, so I was very excited to learn later on that this is instead an adult fantasy!

You’ve probably heard the premise by now: Addie makes a deal with the devil to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone the moment she leaves their sight, putting a more literal twist on the old adage, “out of sight, out of mind.” That is until one day a boy remembers her.

I was completely sold by that short synopsis alone. I didn’t know anything more than that going into the story, and I recommend it that way.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a much more sweeping literary tale than Schwab’s previous works, containing only a dash of the fantastical rather than full-on magic. The beautiful, lyrical writing contributed to this too as it had a different feel than I’m used to from her. Addie always compares time to language and sentence structure: “That kiss, like a piece of long-awaited punctuation. Not the em dash of an interrupted line, or the ellipsis of a quiet escape, but a period, a closed parenthesis, an end. That is the thing about living in the present, and only the present, it is a run-on sentence.” (The fact that the sentence about life being a run-on sentence is itself a run-on sentence had me swooning because of how much I love words and the English language.) Passages like that give the book a very literary feeling, which was very fitting for this story. 

I was hooked right from the beginning. I’ve heard from others that the book starts out slow, but I didn’t find that to be the case whatsoever. I was drawn into Addie’s story in the early 1700s leading up to when she met the devil, interspersed with chapters of the present day in 2014 as you discover what her life is like now that she’s had so many years to figure it out.

I naturally preferred the present-day chapters more as I have found recently that I’m falling out of love with historical fiction, but both timelines still captivated me nonetheless . . . that is, until around page 80. From then on, I became uninterested in the chapters from 1700s France and other times and places in the past, looking forward to reading about Addie in present-day New York instead. The historical chapters at this point turned downright depressing and I simply didn’t want to read them: I really didn’t like seeing Addie sell her body for money when she doesn’t even need food to stay alive. Her promiscuity continues throughout the years, which I also didn’t enjoy reading about, but that first moment when she brands herself as a prostitute was horrible. 

I enjoyed Addie as a character other than that. She’s often motivated entirely by selfish reasons but I still managed to like her despite that. If I ever reread this book though, I will probably read only the present-day chapters and skip all of the chapters set in the past because I honestly just didn’t enjoy or care about them. 

I liked Henry well enough also. The typical quiet good guy. Addie is much more dynamic than him, but I think that’s the point. After the halfway point of the book, we start getting flashback chapters from Henry’s past of just six months ago. Although this wasn’t historical by any means, I started to feel about Henry’s past chapters that I felt about Addie’s chapters set in the 1700s. I really was only interested in the present-day chapters about Addie, or Addie with Henry. Everything else kind of dragged in my opinion. I’ve seen a lot of criticism that this book has very uneven pacing and I can really feel that.

I kind of guessed the twist. Back in the middle of part two when Henry first tells Addie that he remembers her I had an inkling of a thought, a reason why that might be, but I brushed it aside. But then Henry’s short chapter at the very end of part two, the way he smiled at the end, I returned to my earlier hypothesis about Henry, all the while begging the book to take a different route, that I would be wrong, because I knew if I was right then I would be ruined. While I wasn’t exactly right, I did guess some part of the truth. (Read the spoiler section at the end to hear my theories.) 

This book did not turn out quite how I expected it to. I can’t say for sure what, but it feels like something is missing from the narrative. Addie makes a big impact on and has commentary about art throughout history, but she doesn’t say anything about all the other historical events taking place. I know it’s hard to know in the moment that history is taking place, but I guess I still expected to hear more about it. She briefly mentions a war, the advent of color television, airplanes, but again, I just wanted more. 

I really did like the art aspect of the book though. There’s a heavy focus on the idea that there is always something to live for, so much beauty in the world yet to be seen and experiences yet to be lived. I thought that was a nice underlying tone to an otherwise darker narrative. 

Addie LaRue was one of my must-read books of 2021, and I’m so glad I got to it early on in the year. Overall, I quite enjoyed it and I ultimately recommend it, even though it’s not quite what I expected. I love Victoria Schwab and I will read anything she writes. This wasn’t my favorite book of hers, but I still think it tells an important story worth reading. I can’t wait to see what story she comes out with next.

I have a lot of thoughts related to the plot and reveals of the story, so I have separated them out in a SPOILERS section below:

I had two possible theories about why Henry could remember Addie: 1) Henry was actually the devil in disguise. Both Henry and Luc have curly black hair and green eyes. Only the devil could remember Addie, so that would still be the case if Henry is actually the devil, and only the devil can say Addie’s name until she meets Henry. Plus at one of Luc’s visits to Addie soon after she made the deal with him, he tells her that of course he made it a hard life for her, because if she’s going to give her soul to him when she doesn’t want it anymore, then he’s going to make her want to give it up sooner. So I thought that Luc had been planning for hundreds of years for a way to get Addie’s soul at last and decided to pretend to be Henry to make Addie fall in love with him so when he finally revealed himself she’d be devastated enough to finally either give up her soul or follow him into the afterlife. Or, 2) Henry also made a deal with the devil. I thought maybe it was a deal to remember everything and therefore he was able to remember Addie.

The first guess was my primary thought, but the second guess turned out to be the truth, in part. Interestingly enough though, when I explained the story’s synopsis and my theories to my husband, he had two theories of his own: 1) Henry was the devil’s child and is therefore exempt from the effects of any deals he makes with others, thus making him able to remember Addie. Or, 2) Henry also made a deal with the devil, but his deal was that everyone will see what they want when they look at him. I am not kidding here, my husband guessed the correct answer without even having read the book!

I do think it is very interesting that both Henry and Addie suffered very similar curses. No one is able to see the true Henry, while no one is able to remember the true Addie. The whole time, they both just want to be seen. It’s also worth noting that when Luc showed up to offer the deal to each of them, both Addie and Henry were in a vulnerable and emotionally charged state, not allowing either of them to make the most rational decision at that moment. Leave it to the devil to take advantage of the situation and come out with the better bargain while the people he made the deal with were left with dissatisfaction and regret.

I ended up being surprised by and really loving the ending. I think the first 80 pages of the book and the last 60 pages of the book are the most interesting, while the middle section is slower and not as engaging. The ending had me genuinely excited though! Some friends have told me that they cried during the ending, but I was only smiling. When Addie gets Luc to agree to the new deal, and how she’s making him play her game on her terms now, I loved that. And how Henry publishes Addie’s story as a book called The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, so now everyone can remember her after all, I loved that so much. I had a suspicion when he first started writing down her story that it was going to turn into a book-within-the-book of the same title, and I was right. The whole ending was my favorite part of the entire story. 

Review: DARK ONE Vol. 1 by Brandon Sanderson

 

Rating: 1.5/5 stars

As a massive Brandon Sanderson fan, I knew I had to get my hands on whatever new book he comes out with next. Dark One, his latest release, is about Paul who lives on Earth but can see visions of another world called Mirandus, including seeing Nikka, a ghost girl who befriends him. He thinks he's going crazy, but in reality, he's prophesied to become the Dark One in Mirandus. 

I have to admit that I was pretty confused during the whole story. I've always struggled with fantastical graphic novels because there's never enough worldbuilding for the story to make sense, and magic and character motivations are shallow as well. I didn't understand the connection Paul had to Mirandus, or what exactly his dad's role was either. I'm also not sure about his mom's client's role, and that seemed to be pretty important, yet it went right over my head. Paul was from New York yet took so quickly to his role as the Dark One that I just didn't find it believable. I personally feel like we needed a lot more page time getting to know the background of the world and getting to understand Paul's thoughts, which is why I think this story would have been better as a prose novel instead of as a graphic novel. 

I also struggled with this story because I expected this to be very different from what it was. I've seen Brandon mention this story in the past, a spin on "What if Harry Potter was prophesied to be Voldemort instead of the one who defeats Voldemort?" That would be a very different story, he explained, if the boy was prophesied to be the Dark One instead of the Chosen One. So somehow I imagined the story would be set in a more classical fantasy setting, something similar to Mistborn, and we would follow a good young boy as he learns he is to grow up to be an evil ruler and how he comes to grips with that. I thought we'd watch him grow up and slowly give over to the evil even though he didn't want to, something along those lines. But that is not at all what Dark One is about. The modern-day Earth setting threw me off, as did Paul being an adult when he learned about the prophecy and his willingness to accept the prophecy. Plus I'm not sure we even saw a real prophecy, it was more like someone just told him that was his role, and he was like, "Oh, okay." 

This graphic novel isn't actually written by Brandon Sanderson though. As far as I'm aware, he came up with the idea and wrote an outline for it, and then someone else wrote the graphic novel based on his idea. But anything that has Sanderson's name on it I will read, and this is no exception. I just wish it had more of a Sanderson feel to it because his prose novels are so good about fleshing out the world and filling the plot holes. 

The art style in this book reminds me of a classic grungy superhero story. It's set partially in downtown New York City and partially in Mirandus, and each panel has a mostly monochromatic color scheme with thick lines and gruff drawings. It's not my favorite art style—in fact, I really didn't like it—but I do think it matches the tone of the story. 

Dark One is not my favorite thing I've read from Brandon Sanderson. I enjoyed his epic fantasy novels and young adult sci-fi stories more, and I even liked his other graphic novel series, White Sand, better. In fact, I hate to admit this, but this book might be my least favorite story I've read from Sanderson, and I've read almost everything he's written. Ultimately, my expectations were way off so I was left disappointed and confused. I think the concept is cooler than the execution. If you, too, liked the concept but didn't like the execution, check out Brandon's full-length novels, which do a much better job of fleshing out the world and explaining the plot. I will be continuing on with this series, but only because it's Brandon Sanderson; if any other author wrote this book, I wouldn't be reading any future installments. 

I'm really sad I didn't end up loving Dark One, but you can't love every book an author writes, even if it's your favorite author. I think if you like the gritty art style, know what the story is actually about beforehand, and don't set your expectations too high for the plot, you would enjoy this graphic novel. Like I said, it still is a cool idea, just not done at all in the way I thought it would be. 

Review: ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM, PART 1 VOL. 1 (manga) by Miya Kazuki

 

Rating: 2/5 stars

A month ago I read the light novel of this first volume in Ascendance of a Bookworm and was disappointed with it to the point of quitting a third of the way through, but I liked the concept behind the story enough that I wanted to check out the manga instead and see if this medium was more to my liking. 

I did end up enjoying the manga more than the light novel as the story moves along faster and thus is more interesting, but ultimately, I still didn't love this story. I think this series just isn't going to be for me. I expected it to be a bit different than it actually is, and a hyped-up expectation versus reality is always a setup for disappointment. 

The art style is adorable here though, I will give it that. And I think eventually once the story gets going, it will get more interesting, but if I'm not hooked enough by the first volume then I'm not going to continue. 

I think I still want to give the Ascendance of a Bookworm anime a chance since I will be able to move through the story faster that way, but I'm not going to give it more than a few episodes before I decide if I'll be continuing or not. 

Even though this series sadly wasn't for me, I encourage you to give it a shot if you think it sounds interesting because I desperately wanted to like this series and I think it's a fun concept. 

Review: FRUITS BASKET ANOTHER, VOL. 1 by Natsuki Takaya

Rating: 3/5 stars

The original Fruits Basket manga is very beloved to me. It was the first manga I ever read and the first manga series I completed, and it’s the only manga I own, and I own every volume in the original editions. I love the series so much, so I was intrigued and excited but also nervous to see a spin-off of the series one day when I was browsing the bookstore. 

Fruits Basket Another follows Sawa Mitoma as she meets a bunch of Sohmas at school and eventually gets invited over to their house for dinner. That’s pretty much the whole book, and I hate to admit this, but I didn’t really see the point? I was pretty confused the whole time. 

First of all, this felt and looked so similar to the original series that it bothered me. Sawa looks almost identical to Tohru. Hajime looks just like his father, Kyo, and Mutsuki looks just like his father, Yuki, to the point that if I didn’t know better, that’s who I’d assume they were. Even the Prince Yuki Fan Club president’s daughter was the Sohma Family Fan Club president in this book and looked just like her as well. It just seemed a bit . . . unrealistic and borderline humorous, almost like Furuba fan fiction because of how uncannily similar this story was to the original storyline and art. Kids do not always look like their parents or follow in their footsteps, so the fact that the entire cast looks exactly like their parents and are all the same age at the same time and are in the same school and even have the same personalities as their parents felt like deja vu, and that really prevented me from fully loving and embracing this story like I did with the original series. 

I am so happy that we got to see Kyo and Yuki’s children, but I would have liked to see more originality with their personalities. I also really want to see Tohru and Kyo and Yuki as adults so I hope they at least make a cameo sometime in the next two installments. 

I felt like this story was largely unnecessary, but I love Fruits Basket with my whole heart so I will read any stories or spin-offs set in this world even if they have no plot. Fruits Basket Another is only three volumes long so I intend to finish it pretty soon, and hopefully the story will make more sense and come together more in the next book. It also probably doesn’t help that I read this book during my breaks at work spread across a week. I feel like if I had read the whole book in one sitting then I might have got more out of it? I don’t know for sure though. 

Overall I was a bit disappointed with this book, but I have hopes the next two books will be better. Fruits Basket pretty much owns my heart and nothing can hold a candle to it, even a spin-off of itself, apparently. 

Review: THE ONCE AND FUTURE WITCHES by Alix E. Harrow

Rating: 3/5 stars

I enjoyed this book, but I likely wouldn’t have bought it or read it if I didn’t read and love Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January and then subsequently decide to read everything she writes.

I attended an event with Alix Harrow and Erin Morgenstern in January 2020 and I remember that Alix was talking about her new book that she was working on, which was this book. She was like, “It’s about suffragettes, but they’re witches!” And she was so excited about it! I’m glad that she was so enthusiastic about her novel, because that’s how authors should feel about their own works, but I have to admit that when I heard that, I was not very excited myself. I’ve never been very interested in reading about real-world problems such as political or social issues, and sadly adding them into a book with historical influence and a fantasy plot does not increase my interest at all. So if Alix Harrow hadn’t written this novel, I likely wouldn’t have picked it up because it just doesn’t sound like my kind of book.

The Once and Future Witches is historical fantasy, but it has a heavy focus on the historical aspects. The main issue I had with Ten Thousand Doors is that I expected a lighthearted portal fantasy novel when in actuality the book had a more solemn tone, focused on discussing social issues plaguing our society today but in a historical setting with a touch of magic, and that is the same situation with The Once and Future Witches. This novel is largely historical fiction with only a slight fantastical element in the form of witches who can cast spells, which are only partially fantastical anyway since back in the 1800s, when this book is set, some people believed them to be real and acted as if they were. So just be aware going into this story that the heavy historical influence overshadows the fantastical bits.

The Once and Future Witches was released at the perfect time (although I didn’t read it until a few months after release, thus defeating the point). This book is all about women’s rights and the suffrage movement, and it was released a month before the 2020 election. I like to think this was a deliberate decision of the publishers to encourage their readers to go and vote. The book takes the concept of voting as a woman’s right and compares it to witchcraft as a woman’s right—both are denied to women, yet both are activities that women should be allowed to do. The book constantly makes the claim that behind every witch is a woman that was wronged, and all women were wronged by not being allowed to vote.

The story follows the three Eastwood sisters—James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna—who each represent the maiden, the mother, and the crone. They come together after many years apart and form a society of women’s rights, but it basically becomes a coven of witches. They are all about what women should do and can do and have the right to do. Now mind you this is taking place in 1893 when the patriarchy ruled and believed women didn’t have many rights, and suspicion of witchery was punishable by imprisonment or death, specifically death by fire.

I unfortunately got the three sisters mixed up at times, but I feel like that is my own fault and inattention to detail and the fact that I listened to the audiobook rather than reading the physical book. I don’t think this would have happened had I read the book with my eyes.

I love the scene when Juniper joins the women’s association and the facilitator asks her which women’s group she’s interested in joining and June is like, “Witchcraft,” and they all just stare at her as if that’s an invalid option. I’ve always loved stories about witches, and it’s interesting that witches are such a broad topic that each book I’ve read takes a different spin on the idea.

I love that each chapter begins with the words for a specific spell and what it’s used for. That was very cool to see. 

I also love that there are mini-stories within this story, ones that the girls have heard over the years or are witches’ folklore. I also LOVED the music used during these mini-stories in the audiobook, and especially the music during the epilogue and "The Tale of Rapunzel and the Crone"! If anyone knows what the music is, please let me know, because I want to listen to just the music as background music because it was so beautiful!

This book makes me wish I had sisters. I love the sisterhood and the pacts between them and the trust and reliability they have.

Alix Harrow is a talented writer, and I will continue to read her books in the future. I liked The Once and Future Witches, but I didn’t love it. I can’t say exactly why that is, probably because it’s just not quite my style of story, but it was still good, and it’s a book I think I’ll like better the second time around. It’s still well-written and I would still recommend it, though I enjoyed The Ten Thousand Doors of January better and would recommend trying that book first. I can’t wait to see what historical fantasy masterpiece Alix Harrow writes for us next. 

Review: A SIGN OF AFFECTION, VOL. 1 by suu Morishita

 

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

I have wanted to read this book since the moment my friend showed it to me just a few days ago. I love seeing a deaf girl in manga! I studied sign language at university so I have a special appreciation for the deaf community and for sign language.

A Sign of Affection is a shojo manga about a deaf first-year college girl named Yuki. One day she gets asked for directions by a foreigner on a subway, and her classmate Itsuomi notices her signing and steps in to help, thus sparking a connection between the two of them.

First of all, the art style is adorable! It’s soft and delicate, really a good choice for this series. Especially the colored pages at the beginning—they have a beautiful watercolor effect to them. It makes me wish the whole book was in color.

This was my first time reading a manga as an ebook, and it was an interesting experience. The ebook is formatted like a normal ebook, to be read from left to right, but each page must still be read from right to left in the traditional manga style. The only problem I encountered was when an illustration spanned two pages, it would show the right page first and then the left, so it felt like I was seeing it out of order, but that only occurred once as far as I can tell. I still prefer to read manga physically and that’s what I would recommend, but the digital format still works just fine if you prefer that.

I really enjoyed this story a lot. Yuki is so sweet while Itsuomi is rather forward but in a friendly way. I love that he took a genuine interest in her.

This story delicately tackles all the hurdles that come with being deaf. Yuki experiences the feeling of knowing people are talking about her right in front of her because she can’t hear. She experiences what it’s like to be expected to lip-read and not be able to see someone’s lips and also not understand some of the words being said. She has to learn how to navigate a school full of hearing people who can’t sign and don’t understand her. She knows what it’s like to feel left out. She is confronted by people’s ignorant comments that since she’s wearing a hearing aid she should be able to hear just fine. There are so many realistic scenes and moments in this manga; anyone who has any experience with the deaf community will really appreciate it. I was amazed at how much deaf culture the authors were able to capture in this single volume alone.

I loved seeing the difference in fonts depending on how communication was occurring in the story. There was the classic manga font for Yuki’s thoughts and the narrative of the story; a lowercase sans-serif font for text on a screen since Yuki usually types back and forth to communicate; the classic manga font but in grey instead of black to show when people were speaking and Yuki was reading their lips to see what they said; and then a fourth font in grey to represent what someone was saying via sign language. It was very easy to tell whether someone was speaking or typing or thinking or signing, and I really appreciated that added detail in the story.

Overall, I loved the first volume of A Sign of Affection! (And that title is so clever!) I can’t wait to read the future volumes and watch Itsuomi learn signs here and there to better communicate with Yuki. She’s so smitten with him and it’s so sweet! I’ve already added this manga to my list of must-buy series because I’m already in love.

Review: THE LAST UNICORN by Peter S. Beagle

 

Rating: 1/5 stars

DNF at 31%.

I was feeling apathetic about every book I was picking up and I didn't want to read what I had next on my to-read list, so I walked into my library to browse for something new. The sun was shining through the window right onto my fantasy shelf and this book called out to me. Maybe because unicorns are so wholesome and the perfect addition to my already beautiful sunny day, or maybe the bright yellow cover was the sole reason my eyes were drawn to this book. Either way, I knew this was going to be my next read. So I happily took this book out to the couch and sat down and began reading. And reading. And the longer I read, the more dismay I felt, because I was not enjoying this story whatsoever. 

Let me back up, back to when I was a young child. I was pretty sure I read this book back then and had a wonderful and magical experience with it. So when I saw this copy of the book at a used bookstore a few years ago, I happily brought it home with me so I could relive that glorious experience of youth. But now I'm convinced this is a different book. The unicorn book I remember reading as a child was about, you guessed it, a unicorn! And this unicorn lived in the forest and befriended a girl and there were happy adventures, yada yada. 

But this book . . . This book is less about a unicorn and more about who the unicorn encounters. There are full chapters that don't even reference the unicorn. But the story supposedly follows a contemplative unicorn who is the last of its kind as she sets out to find any other unicorns in the world. She gets captured by a woman who runs a traveling carnival and is put on display for all to see before she escapes with a magician as she sets out to find the Red Bull, who she thinks will answer all her questions. 

I don't remember any of this. I don't like books about carnivals; there's no way I forgot a carnival existed in this story. I also don't like all the boring side characters. If I can't sit through this book as an adult, I doubt I would have finished it and enjoyed it as a child. So no, I am now convinced I read a different book when I was little, and I mourn forgetting what that book was. (If anyone knows of a unicorn book that has a similar cover to the edition of The Last Unicorn pictured on the right, please inform me, because that is the edition I'm convinced I read as a child but apparently didn't.) 

So ultimately this book was highly disappointing, not only because I thought it was my beloved childhood unicorn book and it turned out not to be, but also because I was just bored with the story, and I really hoped this would be a good unicorn story. The Last Unicorn really struggled to keep my attention and I considered quitting the book multiple times before finally deciding to officially quit on page 93. I knew whether I continued to read until the end or not, this book was getting one star from me, so no use wasting my time reading something I'm not enjoying and not going to give a high rating anyway. Now there is a movie of this book, released forty years ago, that I intended to watch, but after watching the trailer I don't think I can sit through the whole movie, so I guess this is the end of my strange experience with this disappointing unicorn book. 

Review: ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM, PART 1 VOL. 1 (light novel) by Miya Kazuki

 

Rating: 2/5 stars

DNF at 35%.

Urano loves books so much that they’re probably a detriment to her life at this point, and she literally dies by being crushed by a book avalanche. She is then reincarnated as Myne, a poor, young, sickly girl in a world where books are extremely rare and expensive. Desperately wanting to read books and not being able to get ahold of any, Myne resolves to make books herself. She then stumbles through this world—a historical medieval version of our world where poor commoners work hard to support the rich nobles and literacy rates are very low—trying to find materials she can use to construct a book.

I want to know what happened to the original Myne. Urano took her place, but where did Myne’s soul go now that Urano’s soul is in her body? Are details like that ever explained?

This is my very first light novel. I’ve read some manga in the past (primarily Fruits Basket), but never a light novel until now. I’ve had my eye on this series ever since it first was released though. Every day at work when I’d shelve the manga, I’d want to read Ascendance of a Bookworm because it always looked like the perfect series for me as a book lover. 

This story wasn’t as much about books as it was about Myne navigating this new world and learning about life there. It’s a story that focuses heavily on day-to-day life rather than on a central plot, although there is the central plot of Myne trying to make books and eventually become a librarian that runs throughout the entire series. It’s nice that there is more going on than just the main storyline, but that also made the story feel really slow to me. I just kept waiting for something interesting with books to happen, but Myne takes her time squeezing oil from fruit to make shampoo, melting bone tallow into candles, helping gather firewood for the winter, watching her father slaughter a pig, going to the market with her mom, etc. Most of this story is not actually about books. I suspect it will be more in later volumes as she ascends, but this first book was largely a set-up for the world.

The writing was a little weird to me, like it didn’t flow very well and the dialogue was super stilted. I don’t know if that’s a translation problem or what. It reads as if someone read the manga and turned it into a novel, except I think this story was a light novel before it ever became a manga. Some of the phrases and descriptions sound like they’re straight out of manga panels though. It was kind of awkward to me. One sentence goes, “I was so embarrassed . . . I decided to double facepalm.” That sounds like a panel that was then directly turned into text, but “facepalm” works better as a drawing than as a written description, so it just came out sounding awkward. 

I know the protagonist is five, but this book reads really young, like a five-year-old actually wrote it. The language, dialogue, descriptions, all of it. It feels to me like something a middle-schooler would write, you know during that phase when every middle-schooler is like, “I’m going to write a book!” but they have no training on how to write and don’t know how to foreshadow or properly use any literary devices so it all turns out pretty poorly written. That sounds so mean! But it’s true with this book, unfortunately.

I was really excited to start this series, but I actually really struggled to get through it. It felt like I was reading a full-length novel—it seemed so much longer than it actually was. Eventually, I just decided to quit because I was not enjoying my time. 

I’m guessing that this book is the worst of the series, mostly a set-up for more exciting events to come actually involving books later on (as this is a pretty long series). I intended to read the whole series of light novels because the concept is super cool to me, but I think I might give the manga a chance instead and see if that works better for me. I’m assuming the manga and light novels are essentially the same story just told in different mediums. I might also try out the anime as well. I really wanted to like this story, but I’m worried future installments of the light novels will feel like this one did, and I don’t want to read like 15 books that are just mediocre when I can enjoy the same story much better in a different way.

Ultimately, I liked the concept behind story—a girl who loves books getting reincarnated into a world with no books and then creating books for the people of that world and becoming that world’s first librarian—but it took too long to take off, it was not written well, and it was not quite what I expected. I am really sad that I did not like this book as much as I expected to because I have been hyping up this series for myself for almost two years now. I am really disappointed, so I hope at least the manga or anime will live up to my expectations. 

Review: AMONG THE FREE by Margaret Peterson Haddix

 

Rating: 3/5 stars

The final book in the Shadow Children Sequence takes us back to Luke’s point-of-view, thankfully. As can be inferred from the title, the shadow children finally get to be free in this book.

Among the Free felt a little anticlimactic to me if I’m being honest. There are going to be some minor spoilers ahead for some scenes in this book. 

The story starts with Luke working undercover for the resistance in the Population Police headquarters and getting chosen to go on a mission to some rural towns. While he’s in those towns, he deserts the Population Police and runs away and a few days later finds a house of people watching tv, which is broadcasting that there was a peaceful overthrow of the government and the Population Police are no longer in control. Um . . . I spent six books following Luke and his friends and watching them infiltrate the enemy and scheme and plan, just for the ultimate overthrow of the government to have nothing to do with them? Excuse me for sounding a little cliche but I kind of expected Luke to have a bigger part to play in the end. 

The way this book ended kind of made all the previous books feel pointless. Like what was the point of watching Trey and Nina and Matthias do their own sneaky things, and what was the point of Luke helping Smits and do anything that he did, if it ultimately didn’t matter in the end? Haddix does try to make it sound like every detail matters, that every small act of rebellion played part in the takedown of the Population Police, but it didn’t really feel like that in the moment. Maybe it’s because this is a middle-grade story that we didn’t get more detail, but I expected there to be more of a struggle overthrowing the government. It’s never peaceful and easy, it never goes according to plan, and this book painted a picture that was too idealistic to be believable. I thought the first six books did a good job setting up the dystopian setting and the story and leading into future books, but I wish Luke had had a bigger part in the end since this was ultimately his story, after all. 

I also wished we were able to see more of the rebellion across the country. This entire series takes place essentially in the same cluster of small towns. What was going on even one state over, or on the other side of the country? I know Luke might not be able to know that, but since we were getting POVs from other characters besides him, I would have liked to get a book from someone completely unrelated to show that the Population Police are the same everywhere and the resistance is strong everywhere as well. 

I also think more explanation was needed as to why the Population Police were not actually trying to grow more food, if not enough food is what caused this whole fiasco of population control to begin with. Luke sees tons of farms and gardens throughout this series that are abandoned or unattended and wonders why the Population Police would allow that to happen when the whole world needs food. As an adult reader who has read many dystopian novels, I understand that totalitarian governments like power and only care about staying in power, and they don’t care about actually feeding the people as long as they themselves are fed. But a middle-grade reader might not understand that, especially if this is their first dystopian, so I really feel like more explanation surrounding some of the mysteries of why things are the way they are should have been explained. There were a lot of corners cut and details I forgave because this series is middle-grade. I’m so used to adult books that reading a middle-grade is a bit jarring in this aspect because less detail is needed for events and plot twists to be believable, but I still think some added explanation would have been nice. 

I would have liked to learn more about the repercussions and outcomes following the overthrow of the government, like what’s actually going to happen now that everyone is free. Uncontrolled freedom is just anarchy, so someone has to be in charge still. Luke dreams about some possible futures for him and his friends, so it’s presumed that’s what will actually happen, but the story was still left rather open-ended. 

This entire book is about Luke, and I would have loved to see the other characters too. Each POV character intersected with Luke at the end of the other books, so it seemed to me like everyone was going to do something together in the final book as one force, but we don’t even see Nina, Trey, Mr. Talbot, Mr. Hendricks, or anyone else besides Luke in this book until the very last chapter after everything has been resolved. That was a little disappointing to me. 

Margaret Peterson Haddix is a very compelling storyteller. Even though I had a lot of problems with this book, I still enjoyed it, and I still flew through the story as there are cliffhangers at the end of every chapter to make you keep reading. 

Ultimately I enjoyed this series but I do think it would be better suited for younger children as they are the intended audience, although I read the first book when I was younger and I liked it better as an adult, so who knows. Margaret Peterson Haddix is still one of my favorite nostalgic authors and I hope one day to read every book she has written (and there are a lot!) because I have enjoyed so many of them and she always has unique alternate reality speculative concepts in her stories. 

Review: AMONG THE ENEMY by Margaret Peterson Haddix

 

Rating: 3/5 stars

The sixth installment in the Shadow Children Sequence follows Matthias as the population police take him and other children from their school in the middle of the night and force them all to work for the new government. 

This book is my least favorite of the series. I just didn’t love Matthias’s story and I felt less connected to him as a character than our other protagonists, probably because we’ve never seen him before, whereas the other viewpoints we’ve had besides Luke have been side characters that we already knew. 

It was nice to see how Matthias’s character arc connected with Luke and our main characters in the end and showed us some implications for the final book. This is such a great series.