Dianthaa

excellent

Revisado: 01-22-25

perfect just what I wanted, loved the narrators too, will be following this author's serious books from now on

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excellent

Revisado: 02-29-24

so beautiful and bittersweet, I loved the characters, the protagonist kept catching herself mid lore-dumping and stopping in a fun way. so many feels from the ending

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lovely

Revisado: 02-06-20

I got Beautiful as an audible free original, because I’ve heard a lot about JM but never had a chance to read her books. It had pretty average reviews, but the story worked really well for me and I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a retelling, of sorts, of a fairytale I wasn’t familiar with, East of the Sun West of the Moon. It focuses on a young girl, named Hulde, who is a minor character, forgotten and ill-used in the original fairytale, and turns her into a fleshed out character. With the help of her mysterious bear friend, she learns about stories and a world outside the castle where her mother keeps her isolated and uneducated. She carves out her own story, choosing to be brave even when she is very afraid. The story has three parts, the first is the action from the fairytale, the second sees Hulde setting out on an adventure to learn about herself and the world, and the third sees her facing a dangerous new threat, with the help of the loyal friends she’s made along the way. I didn’t realize this at the beginning, so was really confused about why the story seemed to be wrapping up only a third of the way through.
I really enjoyed the writing, which was helped by a rich, atmospheric narration. It’s all very fairytale like, in both mood and narrative structure. Even after the end of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, we meet characters such as mysterious old ladies that have cottages in the woods.
I generally like fairytale retellings, and I loved how Beautiful takes a story that I imagine is pretty black and white, with the good prince and his brave wife facing off against the evil queen’s plans, and paints it will all sorts of shades. I also loved how Hulde was not only redeemed, but got a rich story of her own, on her own terms.

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Great story with excellent narration

Revisado: 01-20-20

The Bone Ships,Tide Child #1, by RJ Barker is another one of those books that I picked up based on hype alone, and luckily, I loved it. I loved it so much, that this is gonna be one of those gushing reviews.

The worldbuilding is great, the eerie magic lights, the sea-dragon-bone ships and the matriarchal society with some pretty bonkers views. The entire story takes place on and around islands set in one hemisphere of the world, and I’m very curious if further books in the series will give us more info on the rest of the world and the scale of it.

The narrator has such a deep lovely voice, and he does a great job bringing the vivid text to life, one of the cases where I’d recommend going for the audio if you can. I really enjoyed the writing, it has a lot of made-up sailing jargon, but I didn’t have any problems following along, and it’s often quite beautiful and musical, even when it’s just sailors cursing. I found the language sort of playful, a lot of fun with rhythm for instance, which came across great in audio. It also recently won an Earphones Award from Audiofile magazine. There are a lot of made up words that I thought add flavour to the world, most of them are close enough to English, or clear from context, that I didn’t have any problems, things like sither instead of sister, deckchild instead of sailor, different names for the days of the week, etc.

The world itself is dark, which I normally avoid, but because of the humor, the main characters working towards improving this grim reality, and the overall hopeful way characters and their relationships grow, I really liked it. The world also felt very real to me, I think because of all the details of ship life. I can see Tide Child and a lot of the other places they go, and creatures they meet, so clearly in my mind, I almost remember being there.

Joron is the inexperienced, and mostly incompetent, shipwife of Tide Child, a dead bone ship crewed by women and men sentenced to death for their crimes. Luckily for the survival of the crew and ship, the book opens with him losing his command to Lucky Meas, a much more experienced and competent captain. She whips the ship and crew into shape, and draws them into her plan to hunt down an Arakeesian (sea dragon). I absolutely loved everything about how the crew was transformed by having a leader and a purpose, for a rag-tag bunch of drunks to a strong and united crew. Joron’s the POV character, so naturally it centers on him, and his growth, both in his own eyes and those of the crew is pretty damn great.

Despite Jorun being the MC, and really digging his personal journey, he’s not my favorite character. I read someone else saying how Meas is much more like a typical protagonist, and I agree, it also helps that she’s very kickass. But my favourite character is the tragic Gullaim, a navigator bird-like magical creature (windseeker) I liked how otherworldly he was, and the story of his people broke my heart.

I thought it was cool how I listened to this in October and then again in January, so being such a short time between them, I was surprised when emotional moments that got me the first time around got me the second time around.

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hell of a ride

Revisado: 01-05-20

I know nothing of romance books, but Witchmark by CL Polk was the HEA bookclub pic for december on r/fantasy, and I’d heard only good things about it, so I went in. I was expecting a nice chill love story between two men, maybe some sort of fantasy of manners. I was not prepared for the wild ride this book had in store for me. Yes there was a love story and it was very sweet and I liked it, but oh boy was there a lot of story beyond that, and it got seriously dark.

It starts off pretty slow and chill, with Miles Singer working at a mental hospital. He’s a very good man by the way, he’s so compassionate and kind, a sort of Hawkeye Pierce but with magic instead of sarcasm. Then a poisoned patient is brought in by a handsome stranger, and I thought oh right, this is gonna be a murder mystery, nice. While trying to find clues about this murder victim, Miles is also trying to solve a medical mystery, a dangerous madness that affects soldiers recently come back from war. So about a third/halfway into the book I thought, ok this is gonna be about solving this puzzle with the soldiers. But then in the last third it becomes clear that there’s an even bigger fish, strap in everybody cause it gets insane. The final showdown ending scene is so dramatic, powerful and emotional. I wasn’t expecting it all to wrap up so well in a relatively short book, but I was very happy with the ending.

I really liked Miles, but I’m generally a huge fan of good characters. I passionately hated his sister, especially because she was seemingly moderate, wanting change for the oppressed class, but really pulling the same oppressive shit herself. She’s gonna be the protagonist in book 2, and I’m very concerned over how that’ll go. I thought love interest was interesting enough, though I was expecting a lot more of the book to be focused on their relationship, that’s not a complaint just an observation.

Oh I almost forgot, bicycles are an important part of worldbuilding, with even a bicycle chase at one point, and that’s super cool.
The narration was lovely and atmospheric

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Love the added dragons!

Revisado: 12-05-19

Jane Austen's Dragons series spreads the actions of Pride and Prejudice over 3 volumes, with Mr. Darcy’s Dragon leaving off just after the Netherfield Ball. Apart from the original plot there’s the added plot Mr. Darcy’s dragon egg having been stolen and needing to be recovered before it hatches. There is a secret order of dragon friends in England, watching over the Pendragon Treaty which has kept the peace between humans and dragons, and it would be very bad for this peace if a dragon were to hatch in the wild. This plotline adds a lot of mystery and danger, with lots of places in need of searching all people in need of being suspected of having stolen the dragon.

I always wanted to read Pride and Prejudice, because I loved watching the various adaptations with my mum, but every time I picked it up I ended up putting it down. I used to attribute this to my limited attention span and the book’s lack of pictures of Colin Firth, but now I suspect the lack of dragons might also have had something to do with it.

It had been a while since I’d last watched, so for a refresher, I ended up listening to Mr. Darcy’s Dragon and watching the 1995 adaptation. I think this was a good way for me to do it, because I got the feeling that the books expects you to be familiar with the original, and it was a joy seeing how the dragons were added to the story. It was great seeing where the story stuck to the source and where it deviated. For instance, I really liked how the dragon’s manipulations offer a very reasonable explanation for certain actions. It was a bit strange for me how a lot of original dialogue was left in, but I enjoyed the way it was occasionally twisted.

The main characters are the ones we know and love, with the addition of sections in Mr. Darcy’s point of view, and a much more important presence of Lizzy’s aunt and uncle who are both great. Since they’re all generally known I won’t talk about them too much, but there are dragon related shades added to all of them, for instance Mrs. Benett’s foolishness is played perfectly when it comes to her reaction to the dragons.

So let me get to the Dragons! There are different species of dragons, from small enough to be confused with a bird by the untrained eye to well, regular dragon size. They’re all sentient and very proud, often moody, good thing that Lizzy knows exactly how to deal with each of them. Lizzy, Darcy and Lizzy’s uncle each have a companion dragon. I really liked how different their personalities are and especially how they take some things after their companions and other traits are completely independent. There are also a kind of dragons very much like cats, and I’m here for the cat/dragon combo. The big dragons don’t feature that actively in book one, but I get the feeling we’ll see much more of them coming up.

I got a copy of this at my request and these are my freely given thoughts

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Good story, great characters, narration flat

Revisado: 12-02-19

In which I derped and read book 2 of a duology thinking it was book one and did not notice until I wanted to get started on book 2.

So, to paraphrase a well known reviewer, this isn’t a review of what it’s like to read Dragon Blood as it was intended, this is a review of what it’s like to read it like a huge derp.

I’d written up this next part before the truth dawned on me, there’s some irony in there:

I picked the Hurog duology up for bingo final book in a series published more than 10 years ago without having a lot of faith in it. It’s just one of the squares I’ve been struggling with and said fine I’ll just read whatever and be done with it. The old school covers did nothing to increase my enthusiasm.

But now at the end of book one you can call me smitten.

I was pretty put off by the beginning, there’s a lot of torture to start and the narration is pretty flat. But soon enough I was grabbed by the story.

One of my favorite things about Dragon Bones (yeah cause I thought I was reading Dragon Bones at this point) is how well established the characters and the world are. It reminds me of a sort of condensed Game of Thrones, and in some ways of Tigana. There’s a lot of context. The main character is already a known hero due to his past victories, there are pre existing relationships between almost all the characters, a former rebellion gets mentioned often. It was a bit tough keeping track of who’s who at first, but afterwards I was impressed with the rich world. (should that have been a clue? Maybeee. .. but I powered through the confusion)

I also liked the magic, it started off looking as thought it would be low magic and then more layers kept being added. Magic that is believed to be a myth turning out to be real is one of my favorite tropes.

I wasn’t sold of Ward at first. Big buff dude with magic powers from the part of the kingdom generally considered barbarians, meh. But he really grew on me. He’s pretty sly underneath his gruff exterior.

Back to present, wiser Dia

Another thing I really liked was how the main relationship went. Whenever a man thinks to himself “I’m gonna pursue her but if she wants me to back off I will” I get very happy. I’m all for funding this. It’s not entirely that clear cut, she does object but it’s more “I’m not ready for a relationship yet, I’m not princessy enough for you”, and the reader can tell she’s got the hots for him.

Overall it kinda reminded me most of Conan, even the narration was a bit similar, and there are only so many books I’ve read about big strong barbarians, but I liked it so much more. Ward turns out to such a nicely rounded character, I just liked him so much by the end. There’s a lot of action and sort of similar mysterious and dangerous settings, a sense of a big world with unknown and powerful magic.

Of course I can’t speak for book 1, or how this would be if read as intended, but I do recommend this to people looking for a darker sword and sorcery with a lot of action and mystery. CW for torture and mentions of rape.

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dark but good

Revisado: 11-30-19

I really should’ve been more careful when picking this book for media tie-in. I love Stranger Things, big fan, love the concept, think it’s very well done, etc. I really hate the feeling of dread that comes from knowing things aren’t gonna end well. I’ve got some anxiety issues, and I really don’t read to get more anxiety issues. So why, you may ask, did I pick a book about Eleven’s mum knowing how she ends up? I have no clue but it was not a good choice, and it took me ages to get over the stress and start enjoying this book.

Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1) by Gwenda Bond is the story of how Eleven’s mum met doctor Brennan and the experiment she was involved in. We meet her as an energetic young student who wants to change the world. It is set on the backdrop of the Vietnam war and Woodstock.

11’s mum and a few other students sign up for an experiment, to make some extra cash during uni, they make fast friends, and I really enjoyed all the main characters, they quirks and their dynamics as a group. Also the shift in portrayal of doctor Brennan from competent if harsh professional to ruthless monster was interesting. I’m curious to look up how many of the questionable if not outright immoral experiment practices from the book here actually happening during 60s, but afraid to find out. I was worried that it would just be expanding on the plot related to 11’s mum that we see in the show, but it was set well before that. Oh and we see a very young Kali, who is very sweet and powerful.

Personally I loved this next part, but I can imagine some readers would have the opposite reaction. I loved how modern the book felt. I’m not saying that reasonable views about people of color or women wouldn’t have existed back then, just that I haven’t found them in fantasy books all that much. Things like MC’s dad describing the horrors of WW2 concentration camps and how guards could be that horrible and not see that what they were doing was wrong, and how nothing like that could even happen in America, people wouldn’t let it. Or how the smartest person in the group is a black woman and she talks about challenges that raises for her, in town or at school.

Overall I think Suspicious Minds is a great addition to the Stranger Things universe, and fans should give it a try, but maybe not anxious fans like myself.

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Great from the dungeon's POV

Revisado: 11-28-19

Dungeon Born by Dakota Krout is a litRPG/progression fantasy told from the perspective of the dungeon. That sentence alone was enough to sell me on it, and it turns out it’s a very fun enjoyable read. I’m not 100% sure about the narration, I love Vikas Adam’s positivity and energy, but I felt he went a little overboard at times with the excited screaming.

Dungeon Born is the first book in the Divine Dungeon 5 book series, the latest of which came out this year. Cal is the main protagonist, he is the dungeon, he controls it and grows with it. There is also another point of view character, Dale, a human from the area where the dungeon showed up. I wasn’t very keen on Dale’s chapters to begin with, but he ended up doing a lot of the heavy lifting for worldbuilding and socio political context, and on the fun adventuring side.

I was not expecting it to be so sweet. The beginning especially, with Cal gaining consciousness and learning about the world, his constant sense of wonder, it was very endearing. I liked how both with Cal and Dale the book was mostly about their growth, as a dungeon and as a person, accumulating knowledge and understanding, sometimes very literally. I also liked how Cal felt distinctly non-human, especially his version of morality.

LitRPGness
I’m not really knowledgeable about the genre, but I think this is also among the ones that might work for people not keen on it, but who want to give it a go for bingo. There are no boxes, at least not that can be perceived in the audio version. There are some stats, namely a sort of power level that characters increase by accumulating mana, and that they can see if they look in certain way at other characters. It’s got more gamelike stats that Sufficiently Advanced Magic for instance, but it’s still an internally consistent world that has characters, not players and NPCs. It’s not someone playing a game, but a world that functions with game mechanics. You could even make the argument that it's more progression fantasy than litRPG, but I’d say it’s close enough to count.

The worldbuilding is a very traditional, almost Dungeons and Dragons tie-in, RPG world. I think it would be great to read for D&D GMs as it really spends a lot of time on planning and populating a dungeon with traps, mobs, bosses and fair rewards. I mentioned D&D tie-in because I was very surprised to see Drow appear and be called Drow not just dark elves. The dungeon mobs on the other hand are original, a mix of cute and scary, as Cal is limited in his creations by working with what his environment provides.

I only read the first one for now, cause bingo, but I felt like I got a complete story out of it. There are plenty of hooks for the next book, and it ends with an ominous epilogue suggesting a new great threat, but it’s more a foreshadowing than a cliffhanger situation.

As all gamelit/litRPGs, I think this is very audience specific, if you like this sort of thing, you’re probably gonna like Dungeon Born. It offers such a fun and interesting perspective on how dungeons work and think, and Dakota Krout really went into detail for a lot of aspects, answering a lot of questions such as why don’t they eat, why do they drop loot, why do people keep going in, etc.

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Funny, action packed, heartfelt

Revisado: 11-23-19

I really enjoyed The Last Sun by K.D Edwards. My friends have been going on about it for months, so I was pretty sure I’d like it, but ohhh I loved it. It’s fun and funny (great banter, many highlights, wow) and fast and full of everything. It’s the first of planned 9 book series, with book 2 coming out on dec. 17. Book one wraps up the first story pretty well, but there’s also a lot of groundwork laid down for the future volumes and a lot of mysteries remain unexplained.


My friends who kept talking about this book and how much they loved it failed to emphasize enough just how awesome the magic is. I love a good magic fight, spells flying from people’s hands in colorful powerful bursts? hell yeah! I wouldn’t have thought guns and grenades would be a good addition, but despite the fact that “ you don’t bring bullets to magic fight, it offends our sense of spectacle” they turn it all up to 11.


I always miss the memo about a book being urban fantasy. What I’d remembered about The Last Sun was that it featured Atlanteans and Tarot cards, so I was pretty thrown when cars and cellphones came into it.


As urban fantasy mixes go, this has more magic than I’ve usually seen. There’s a pretty hard, high magic system, with different classes of spells, all manner of magical creatures and occasional god-like bursts of power. A lot of UF is from the perspective of a human being introduced to the strange world, The Last Sun is about an Atlantean who only tangentially interacts with the human world. Rune is however a detective/mercenary for hire, so that much is traditional.


What my friends did rave about was the sweet, gay, budding romance. Now, I’m generally more likely to leave it than take it with romance, I especially hate it when it feels tacked on. So I was thinking a bit along the lines of, eh, sure, whatever, we’ll see. Well I saw, and it was lovely and heartwarming, and I ship it so hard. I was a huge fan of how natural it felt, part of the story but not overpowering it. I really enjoyed how it went from tentative flirt to “I’m pursuing you, but also giving you space” without any angstyness involved. I’m also a huge fan of people being open and honest, but not too pushy, about their romantic interest, it’s the sort of healthy relationship that I want to read about.


There was also a great bromance, between Rune and Brand, his Companion and bodyguard. I loved how they are both protective of each other, and trusting in each other’s competences. And in general all the different friendships, both existing and new in the book, were sweet and positive. I was a bit concerned about how a teenage crush would be handled, but it ended up all good and not creepy.


The pacing is intense right from the get go. It starts with a party-turned-bloody-raid and then as various threats get introduced the danger scales up. There’s a mystery to unravel, hidden alliances to figure out, hordes of undead to fight, an evil forest to cross. There’s really a lot packed into a relatively short book.


My one complaint is something I personally struggle with a lot, keeping track of the names and who’s who. Cause some people are referred to in connection with their house names (these are tarot names so justice, death, lovers, sun, tower, etc), their normal names, Geoffrey, Michael etc, their family names which are all Saint -something- and the house leaders also have another title sometimes. I could manage most of them, but the Saint something didn’t stick to me at all, and everyone is someone else’s sister or brother, I was pretty confused at one point thinking we were talking incest, but nah, it was fine.

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