I’m starting to read YA fantasy as bedtime books and I think this is a sign that I’m falling out with the genre for the time being. I’ve had my run, but it may be time for me to move on. Or, maybe they really are just very good books for bedtime because I’m having a harder and harder time getting into it.

A Deadly Education follows El, a young woman who has been sent away to school in order to better train in magic because if she doesn’t, the monsters drawn to magical beings will eventually kill her and possibly everyone around her. The school takes kids from all over the world and seems to be perpetually infested with monsters while having no teachers. The story has a very episodic feel to it, with each chapter largely focusing on a different aspect of the universe or a monster.

It’s a cool concept and a lot of the text of the book focuses on the universe building and how the magic and monsters works done through the lens of El’s stream of consciousness narrative. These elements are more important to the narrative than the actual story, which is essentially that she has to survive until the end of the year.

A large part of the problem I had with the book was that El is very much a teenager. This is a good thing for a YA book, but as an adult I found her insistence on being contrary to be irritating. I remember being like that as a kid and I didn’t really want to revisit those moments for an entire book.

I don’t ultimately understand how the school functions, though. There’s classes on schedules and assignments and graduation and all the parts that make it a school, but there’s no teachers or faculty. With all the world building that is being done elsewhere, I feel like I must have missed the chapter that outlined the way the school itself actually works.

Overall, if you like YA it’s not bad. I think this is a me thing, and I am just moving away from the genre for the time being. I may come back one day, but I think I already knew I needed this break.

Today in getting random library books because Libby put it in front of me and I went, “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s a romance in it so…” a science fiction book that I think was up for a Hugo along with This is How You Lose the Time War. So hopeful!

The story follows Sophie, a young student who gets arrested, dumped outside of town, and left for dead for a minor indiscretion. She meets a crocodile, the local species on January who are definitely not crocodiles, and returns to the city and meets up with her old roommate and unrequited love interest, Bianca, who is pursuing activism and is a little too open to violence to get her way without fully understanding what the consequences of her actions might be so long as she gets what she wants.

The other half of the story follows Mouth, a woman who is essentially a nomad on January traveling between places after her people were all killed by a natural disaster, her being the only one left alive and wanting that connection with who her people were while coming to terms with the idea that who they were in her memory is different than who they actually were.

This story feels much more… think-y than what I normally read. A lot of questions are raised in the context of these characters and none of the answers feel like they are correct. Sophie’s idealism is repeatedly punished or used to manipulate her, Mouth never seems to really bring herself into the present or find peace with the past, and Bianca’s activism ultimately proves to be shallow and shortsighted. I can see what the book was likely trying to say, but I don’t know that I ultimately agree with it.

I think I’m starting to understand what kind of books I want to read right now. I go through weird reading moods and right now I think I’m in one where I’m being drawn to ones where there’s larger societal conflicts being looked at through the perspectives of the individuals dealing with the results of them. At least, that’s the case with scifi and spec fic. This book absolutely fulfills that, and even though I really didn’t care for one of the two narrators, I really did enjoy the story and it left my brain feeling good.

Overall, I’d say check it out. It’s a really interesting science fiction novel with themes that feel like they resonate. And also the crocodiles.

This is another one of those books that I put on hold so long ago that I’d completely forgotten what it was about. I think I saw people talking about it and liking it, which I probably should have taken as more of a sign of what was to come than I did.

The story follows January, a young biracial girl who has been raised by Mr. Locke while her father goes out to gather strange artifacts for him. Her father goes missing and Locke insists that he’s dead, which kicks January into discovering that she can write things into existence and open doors to other worlds, worlds that Locke and his compatriots are very interested in.

Like the main characters, the story wanders. Even though it feels very much like a standard three act structure, there’s something about it that lost me so I didn’t really feel the tension building to the climax in the way it was supposed to. It felt more like events were happening that didn’t feel properly connected to one another rather than building on each one. The stakes were raised, but it didn’t feel like they were raised as a result of what had happened before.

There’s also the two Romeo and Juliet romances ((Love interests meet, like each other right away, kept apart by external forces, and then one or both die by the end)) ((Spoiler, they live but are essentially dead to one another for a good amount of time until the ending)) that happen in the story, first as the story within the story and the one that January experiences that doesn’t really build to anything, and you know that had me skimming. On top of that, I’m now learning that I have to skim the stuff where authors try to explain what being biracial is like because nah. ((Unless the author is actually biracial, something about it just feels so incorrect))

I was reading it as a bedtime story, though, and it did a good job of letting me unwind at the end of the day. It’s a very calm story, and there were some very interesting ideas in it. But ultimately, it wasn’t for me. Maybe it will be for you.

I’m doing good this year! I’m picking up sequels! I’m probably not picking up the last one in the series, but I am starting to read the rest of the series!

The book is a sequel, but it feels very disconnected from the first one. It’s many months later and now there’s a tournament arc. After Kell saved Rhy at the end of the last book and now they feel one another’s pain, they are both feeling trapped by the arrangement and have decided in order to resolve this, Kell is going to fight in the tournament. Because he needs to get out some aggression and Rhy feels guilty that he’s taken away his brother’s freedom.

And besides the tournament arc, there really isn’t much of a plot. What we get instead is stuff happening in White London that has no connection until it crosses over at the end, and a whole lot of pining and relationship drama. Kell is less interesting, so there are now no characters I care enough about to see their relationship drama.

But I did like seeing Rhy in pain. So there was that.

Once again, Lila as the other lead doesn’t really play much of a role in the overall narrative. She joins the tournament, helping to ensure that we know exactly who is going to move on to the next round with each match, ((The characters we know, they win every round unless they are intentionally losing)) but besides being a bit more fun to follow, she doesn’t really do anything to move the story along in a meaningful way.

Which I wouldn’t mind if Rhy and Kell weren’t both so damn miserable the entire book.

Anyway, I’m probably not getting the rest. But there’s a lot more relationship stuff in this one, so if that’s your jam you’ll probably like it.