cloudbooks's reviews
156 reviews

This book is a retelling of The Red Riding Hood though it warps it into something new.
Adele, the main character, lives in a small village named Oakvale. All around is a forest full of monsters but unlike the other villagers, Adele has a grandmother who lives in a clearing in the forest. She is also a descendant of a long line of guardians who have watched over the villages in surrounded by the woods. When her time comes, she has to make a choice between the love of her life and the life she was destined to live from birth.

It's a quick read but well written!

The bad:
The premise sets up a typical YA story and that's exactly what you get. Adele is sixteen, stubborn and her head is full of teenage love and boys.  She tries to stray away from her mother's advice and believes she knows better than all the other women before her. It's an old story at this point and quite common for YA.

The bad was mainly that the story spends so long setting up the woods as this common enemy but spends the vast majority of the time circling around the kind of love triangle and Adele's doubts about who to love and trust. It makes for a rather forgettable story.

 

The outcome is also rather obvious from the start and you don't really ever get convinced by Adele that she's right.

 

The good:
The ending! This book went where most YA won't go. I won't spoil the ending but I would have loved if the ending had been longer and we had spent a lot less time fussing over boys and teenage issues.

Would I read it again? Probably. It's not a bad book because of the ending but it's not the first book I'd reach for if I was out of books to read.

An interesting take on a modern dark fairytale. I enjoyed the surrealism of a girl born to be a raven, unable to speak human yet looks human. 

My love for this was endless. Then I realized this was just a love story with time travel, and it all fizzled out. 

The good:
The concept of time travel as a condition rather than a power was really, really interesting.
Getting to know the two main characters was such a big part of the experience!
I absolutely loved Alba. I think this story would have been better had it followed her. 

The bad:
When you think about it, the characters grow more and more flat. They have characteristics and interests but not really personalities. Outside of Henry, we're never told what Clare is like. Her whole existence is to love him and to want him.
Henry is a bit more fledged out. He has interests beyond Clare and a work life as well. But if he didn't have time travel as a condition, he'd be a rather boring character.
Their relationships to other people are built around experiences we're not told about. Henry's best friend dislikes him the first time he meets him, then carries on being his best friend afterwards for no apparent reason. The same for Henry's father. We're never told how he makes it out of his grief, let alone how Henry manages to repair his relationship to him. 

The book, in the end, seems to try to handle too many issues at once which prevents it from going into detail about anything. I'd have loved to hear more about Henry's genetic disease, about Clare's relationship to her mother, about Alba's childhood. Instead we get excessive descriptions of music, art and books that somehow define the characters but don't give much in terms of who they are and what their life is like.

I'm glad I listened to it. I probably won't read it again though.

If anyone asked me what the plot of this book was, I'd tell them I listened to it but I have no idea.

The book is about Ayosa, a 12 year old very lonely girl whose mother leaves her for long periods of time. She lives on the outskirts of a Kenyan village as she explores her own loneliness, her relationship to her mother, and things she should not remember. 

What was good?
The writing is very unique. It's beautiful and captivating and sometimes so detailed you feel a little off about it. It puts complex things such as loneliness into words in a way that breathes life into it. I really liked this quote: "If you wine and dine your lonesomeness, maybe it won't sneak up on you in the middle of the night and slit your throat."

The book is about relationships more than characters and as such, the characters all felt a little flat. I don't think that's a bad thing in this case since the book is interested in exploring relationships, emotions and trauma rather than specific characters.

What was bad?
It's hard to say, really. The book was slow, yes, and not a lot happened either. For the vast majority of the book, it felt like moving from one scene to the next without much plot involved at all. Perhaps some of the 'bad' in this story is simply that I've not read a lot of African stories before and I'm not used to this kind of storytelling. The little bit of magical realism worked well for me too, it just didn't seem to matter much since there wasn't much point to Ayosa's doings until the very end of the book.

Would I read this again? Maybe. I feel I missed something crucial about this book. Something I'm not able to understand yet or I haven't encountered often enough yet to unravel and understand. But as I write this, I don't feel like I would read it again or recommend it unless someone looked for something very specific where this book would fit in.

Okay, okay... No one told me this was THE SECOND BOOK in a trilogy! Imagine my horror when I thought it was over. When I thought I actually picked up the biggest tragic book to date. Then my relief when I realized it's the second book.

With that said... let's catch up:

This book is obviously the second book in a trilogy where we follow Tessa, the King's Justice, and of course the King of Kandala. The consuls who control the moonflowers cannot back down and the trio is forced to find new ways to provide enough medicine. The saving grace is, of course, a new face. A ship from Ostriary sails in and the captain claims to be the son of a spy sent from Kandala before king Lucas and his wife were murdered. In desperate need for medicine, Prince Corrick and Tessa board the ship with the intention to establish a trade with Ostriary. But there's a locked room on the ship that the captain refuses to open and they only have three guards on board to help them. Can they really trust the captain to sail them to Ostriary? And how will the people of Kandala react once the King's Justice is gone?

What's the good?
The brotherly affection. If there was any doubt that Prince Corrick and King Harristan had a solid brotherly bond, this book solidifies it! I loved the fear between the brothers when they're forced to separate and the absolute love they have for each other.

The complexity and depths of the characters remain true to the first book as well. While I feared we'd get a more shallow development this time around because sequels tend to do that, this book didn't suffer much. Perhaps we did get less development but they remain within the characters originally established and I appreciated that.

The scheming! That plot twist! I had seen some of it coming but by far not the whole thing! I was genuinely terrified I'd have to end this book with my beloved cast dead at the hands of their enemies.

The pirate adventure! I was honestly thrilled to go out on the sea with these characters but a little disappointed that the vast majority of it was spent on...

What was the bad then?
The love triangle. It was a little too on the nose for me and took up some of my joy. Jealous Prince Corrick just didn't do it for me. It made it quite hard to enjoy the boatride when a lot of chapters were spent on two men fighting over Tessa - in the most polite way possible.

The pace was just a little slow but not so much that it impacted my reading experience. Still it took a long time before something significant happened for the plot and some scenes felt a little like padding.

Overall, a solid 4.5*. The last 0.5* was removed for the love triangle. Drama and miscommunication just doesn't do it for me. But I still love the characters and the world, and the story kept me listening to the very end (and I plan on reading it too so you know it's good!). I definitely will pick this up again! 

I was tempted to 4* this but after thinking about it, this ending still doesn't justify expanding the trilogy to a saga. So a solid 3*.

I think my dislike for this saga boils down to what I expected from it. I knew it was YA and it was written during the early 2000s. But I didn't expect to be thrown into couple dramas and at least 50 pages of every book being makeout sessions. I guess I'm too grown up for these books, really. 

This book spared me the makeout sessions, the couple's dramas and even some of Jace's never ending drama about being Valentine's son and evil. Clary's insufferable selfishness was also much less this time around. Overall, they were all just much more grown and actually handled the issues without trying to die all the time. Everyone felt more solid this time except Sebastian. I still have no idea who he is or why he does as he does and I didn't really care for him as a villain. Valentine was better, if anything just because he had reasons to do as he did. 

There were some scenes that I really liked in this book. I ended up really liking Simon and Alec and that stayed true through all the books. They were the ones I rooted for till the very end.

But all the parts I didn't like from the other books just didn't change. There was so much stalling. The introduction to a whole cast of kids just didn't make it better. I didn't care, I didn't have a reason to care, and I'm positive it didn't do anything for the reading experience. It just stalled on and on and on. Sebastian's character was evil for the point of being evil and his obsession with mothers never stopped.

The incest never stopped. THE INCEST NEVER STOPPED. This was my biggest issue. There was no need to include that. It didn't make Sebastian more evil, it just made me more tired of the series.

Overall, I'm glad it's over. I'm glad I won't read this again. I kind of regret reading it but at least I know what it's all about.

If any book could present a pathetic meow meow, this book did it. Never have I ever been more frustrated and completely in love with the same character. The way he's rendered completely speechless by the sheer softness of Alizah just made me squeal.

With that said, the story itself is not very solid. It takes a while to get going, and while I excused it for trying to present the world - and it did - it did feel like a bit too many pages were spent on seemingly unimportant scenes and inner dialogue. There was also a solid lack of important secondary characters until at least the 2/3rd through and even then it's not like they play a major role. The only real secondary characters are a boy who seems to mainly just push the plot forward, and a very whiny lady who has an evil stepmother.

I listened to this book, not read it, but I have a feeling that the writing of this author takes some time to get used to. It's very descriptive and in some ways formal, more formal than I'm perhaps used to in fantasy settings. There were times where I lost track of time in the book and it took me a while to figure out.

Another thing is that this is, in some ways, a slightly twisted retelling of Cinderella, and the setting is in no way unique - sure, it's more diverse than the original fairytale but it's not new. It doesn't really pull the book down for me but if you expect something else than a somewhat classic "poverty makes a queen, unfairness changes spoiled princes" story, you'll be disappointed.

Last but not least while I loved the characters and the romance in this story, it was a little unrealistic. It is quite literally love at first sight to the point that the prince starts out wanting to murder her, then begs his grandfather not to murder her, then announces that he wants to make her his queen (if she'll allow it). But if you stick by the Cinderella retelling, it's to be expected.

I will probably read this book again on my own just because I loved the characters so much but it's definitely not the greatest book I've read.

Man this book. It's clear that Clare is getting the hang of writing convincing stories now. Her books seem to follow the same build up and climax and it makes it rather predictable. Still, I don't feel bored out of my mind reading them as much anymore. Maybe that's a sign they're getting better?

I'm still incredibly bothered there's 6 books and not 3. I still don't see the point of starting another trilogy and just smash them together into a series. Sebastian as a character is twisted as ever and I honestly enjoyed him. But I don't see why that qualified him to be the antagonist of 3 books. Surely we've had enough? Also the incest. The incest is such a hard no. I thought we were over that? But no, no. The actual incest was just introduced. It seems like Clare just couldn't drop the topic and decided we needed more fuel for our nightmares.

Story-wise, I hated how the book ended. The way she wraps up the subplots in the epilogue because suddenly the main plot took all the main focus? Not a fan. You don't lead me down the subplot lines only to drop them for 150 pages and pick them up once the main story is over. It was like she just needed fodder for more pages. What was the point of introducing Camille and just... not even give us a satisfying end to her story?

The Jordan/Maia pairing is so pointless now. Jordan was really only introduced to give Maia a love interest and their whole story revolves around them making out. It's all they do. Their whole purpose in the book is just to make out. And that's on top of all Jace/Clary make out sessions which we get plenty of.

Clary remains impossible to love. She's so blindly loyal to Jace, she should probably see a therapist. She goes about getting herself in trouble, making life hell for everyone else, and when she comes back she doesn't really care that she brought herself and everyone else in danger. Maybe just... let the adults handle it, kids? Maybe just actually remain seated and maybe, just maybe, we'll have a more interesting book.

I liked Magnus character in this though. He stays true to himself even when he has to take impossible decisions. He's seemingly the only mature character in this whole series.

I probably won't read this series again. I'm glad I'm getting through it but only so I can warn others to stay away.

People compared this book to Six of Crows and I went into it thinking it was another great heist book. But it was just so confusing.

The first half of the book, I had no idea what was even going on. The magic system is poorly described let alone executed. I've still no idea who or what or why about it. What's the limits? No idea. We're told there's Forging. It's related to five fragments in five cities. It's an art of making objects from other substances. Those objects will have both functional and magical properties. But we're supposed to believe those skills are innate because no one is ever taught how to use them, wonder how they're used, or need training, it seems. It's just kind of there. 

The narrative was so confusing. I spent so long trying to figure out what was going on, why the characters did as they did, and sometimes even the scene itself was confusing. The writing is beautiful but the consequence is a very confusing narrative. And that just ruins most of the book for me. The good thing is, the book handles some problematic issues like slavery in the background without it overtaking. The romance too was in the background but absolutely there, never taking over the story but never really fading either.

The characters were lovely though! I definitely felt that the characters were well-fleshed out. Their dynamics just made the book worth finishing! How do you write an angsty character without ever making it the whole narrative? Clearly this is how you do it!

Would I listen to it again? No, it was way too confusing.