Category: Reviews

House in the Cerulean Sea follows Linus, a case worker who is sent to check up on an orphanage that takes care of supernatural children. This one in particular contains not only the antichrist, but a mysterious headmaster and a town that is racist against the supernatural people on the island.

I kept hearing that this book was cute and it turns out that was right! The story feels very much like a light, slice of life narrative where it’s more about Linus meeting the children and helping them overcome obstacles than anything else. There is the idea that he could shut this orphanage down lingering in the back of your mind at the start, but ultimately you know pretty soon into this book that it is going to be a fairly calming read about interpersonal relationships and seeing how people learn to accept themselves in a healthy environment.

I’d argue that there is a framing device, but ultimately there is no overarching plot. This isn’t ultimately a bad thing, but there are no major antagonists outside of the general circumstances. It’s entirely characters interacting with one another and growing.

It does do that thing at the end, though, where it explains the thesis of the book in very direct terms. This isn’t so much a criticism of the book as a trend I’ve been noticing more and more in modern fiction that I’m not sure how I feel about.

Overall, I really liked it. It was a calm, light read about people finding themselves and I do like stories about that.

Today in reading books I found randomly in the library, it’s been ages since I picked up an anthology! This is a collection of vampire short stories, each taking place in their own contained universe and different perspectives on being a vampire or living around them in general.

There were a lot more hits than misses in this one, though I admit that I did skip a couple of them. I found myself particularly drawn to the very voice-y ones. There is a variety in here, though, and something that is likely to resonate. There were two specific ones in there that I am still smiling about.

One of them is framed as a guide for a newly turned vampire kid who has just woken up alone and might be trying to figure out what the hell is going on and why what happened to them was illegal. And also that they should absolutely go after British tourists for sustenance, which is so great in context.

The other is essentially a Tumblr blog of a kid who is in theory impossible, having been born to vampire parents, and his journey to try and figure out just what he is, what he looks like, and if he really is alone or if his parents are keeping something from him.

Overall, it was a really fun read. There’s something in there that will likely resonate with you and I’d definitely recommend giving it a look!

I’ve been reading xkcd for years and I do love the comic, so this book has been on my list of to read books for a while! And then I forgot it existed, but it is finally time and I got my hands on a copy!

This is a non-fiction book filled with random facts. It’s structured as a series of researched answers to questions that have been sent in to the author. The answers are written in plain, understandable, and conversational English, and they’re filled with some really interesting information that I as someone who hasn’t looked a lot of this up before, was able to take away, even if I wasn’t that interested in the question.

I really enjoyed this and have already recommended to other friends who like random facts. It’s an interesting book with a lot of answers to questions I wouldn’t have thought of.

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 romances12 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.3

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.

1. Love interests meet, like each other right away, kept apart by external forces, and then one or both die by the end [↩]
2. Spoiler, they live but are essentially dead to one another for a good amount of time until the ending [↩]
3. Unless the author is actually biracial, something about it just feels so incorrect [↩]

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,1 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.

1. The characters we know, they win every round unless they are intentionally losing [↩]