When a powerful viceroy arrives with a fleet of mechanical dragons and stops an attack on Anlei’s village, the villagers see him as a godsend. They agree to give him their sacred, enchanted River Pearl in exchange for permanent protection—if he’ll marry one of the village girls to solidify the alliance. Anlei is appalled when the viceroy selects her as a bride, but with the fate of her people at stake, she sees no choice but to consent. Anlei’s noble plans are sent into a tailspin, however, when a young thief steals the River Pearl for himself.
Knowing the viceroy won’t protect her village without the jewel, she takes matters into her own hands. But once she catches the thief, she discovers he needs the pearl just as much as she does. The two embark on an epic quest across the land and into the Courts of Hell, taking Anlei on a journey that reveals more is at stake than she could have ever imagined.
Continuing with the trend for Asian inspired #ownvoice fantasy; this time with added dragons, this book had all the hallmarks of a perfect read for me. However, it was a story I struggled with. Stronger than a Bronze Dragon isn’t a bad book, far from it – it just didn’t bring much new to the table for the genre. The only proper standout point was the steampunk element which was unexpected and gave a much needed extra layer to the story. So let’s start with that. Although we are far from a contemporary setting the wonderfully crafted mechanical dragon ships give a background of creativity and industry. The cyborg soldiers adding a sci-fi twist to this world of cogs and wheels. The world building has a high attention to detail and I have to say that the author does a good job of balancing both a character and plot driven story points, a rare feat.
Anlei as our protagonist though, was a difficult character for me to get on with. Depending on how you feel about particular tropes, readers will either love her feisty, fighting, no holds barred persona. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll find her constant need to put herself and her own sense of justice first frustrating, especially given the amount of people relying on her; literally all the time. For this reason I struggled to connect to her character – she just never learnt from what came before and she lacked any real depth. Tai on the other hand couldn’t have been more different, I enjoyed his character immensely, so much secrecy around him and so many layers to his character. He had a great story arc and I found myself actually enjoying his cheesy one liners and light hearted approach to even the darkest of scenarios.
The narrative however did feel clumsy at times, some sections seemed very laborious, yet sections full of mystery and action felt like they were over in a blink. There is to a degree too many things in play at the same time and not much felt like it was covered in a satisfying way. I just don’t know if there were too many ideas in the story for them to really be given full justice in a standalone setting. Honestly, I thought that the Dragons would play a bigger part too. I appreciate that there were elements of this that maybe were just not my cup of tea, or maybe I’ve just read too much of this sub genre recently but there just wasn’t enough to make me think wow about the story sadly.
3*
The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw was a brilliant read, It was a pretty short book and I read it in one sitting. The creepiness of Swan Season and the mythology around the setting was amazing. I totally get why it can only be a stand alone but I would love to know more about the sisters and maybe earlier Swan Seasons.
Grace and Fury is a book that I had low expectations for, not because of any fault of the book but because I received it in a Fairyloot box. I fell out of love with Fairyloot last year and I had come to the conclusion that the curators and I simply had very different tastes in books. However Grace and Fury was outstanding, full of great characters and plot twists – it had it’s fair share of tropes but they were done so well. So this surprised me insofar as it was a Fairyloot book I actually loved!
I feel like I’m tempting fate with this one a little as I don’t yet have it in my hands, but a signed copy of Aurora Rising was one tough cookie to get. Having spent hours across 2 days trying and failing to get the Goldsboro edition in what Jay Kristoff describes as “The Great Breaking” I was really happy when Illumicrate announced they would be featuring an exclusive edition in their May box. Whilst I similarly had to spend a large amount of time negotiating a crashing website, I finally got a subscription after an hour of trying, now I just have to hope that it renews on the 1st May like it’s meant to!
Not an obvious answer for this one, but not for the first time today I’m choosing Queen Maas for my prompt. ACOTAR is not a spring cover as such but given how much of the story takes place in the Spring Court of Prythian – it’s the only book that comes to mind.
The Emperor’s Harvest by R.A Denny was read by me in it’s previous incarnation as the Mud, Rocks and Trees series. Spirituality and religion play a large part, as the concept of a singular god over the multiple gods of the Romanesqe setting is key. However as I was reading, it never felt as if this aspect was preachy. It was a great fantasy series and I wish the author a ton of success with her re-launch!
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remains one of my favourite books of all time, there is one particular section that I always need to skip though. Far superior to any adaptation and in fact to its counterparts in the trilogy, it is thriller writing at it’s best in my view. Because of my muggle job I try to avoid things to do with crime investigation, but this cold case style made it a very difficult book for me to put down.
Illuminae is forever in every basket on every book outlet I buy from. I don’t know what is holding me back because everyone I know and especially those who know my reading style says I will love it. I think it comes down to the editions. In the UK the preference by publishers is mainly paperback. I do prefer my books in a hardback variety and then there are different types of hard covers and hidden covers so I just don’t know where to start! I will probably just end up getting the paperbacks from Waterstones one day, but for now I have to carry on powering through my current tbr!
This is going to be divisive but I actually really loved a Court of Frost and Starlight. Mid air sex aside (I mean not even I can get past that scene) I actually found the preparations for Feyre’s birthday to be lovely. Yes there are poignant and heartfelt sections of the story, but Illyrian warrior snowball fights were incredibly sweet in my view.
The lovey people at Titan Books have kindly provided me with an Arc of Snakeskins by Tim Major – it’s all to do with rejuvenation and cloning and has been likened to the T.V show Humans, which I love, so I’m excited to start reading this tonight – look out for a Friday night wine IG post!
I’ve not read as much as usual as I’ve been formatting this week but I did manage to fit in a re-read of Legendary by Stephanie Garber. I did this as a buddy read with the wonderful Sylv from Whizzpop candles. I’m glad I re-read this for 2 reasons, firstly so I’m up to speed for when Finale comes out in May, and Secondly because when I read it the first time round it wasn’t under the best of conditions. We were away for a week, the kids weren’t sleeping as they were sharing a room and I was exhausted – It was my holiday read and I was determined to get through it. Truth is, first read I was non plussed, second read I absolutely adored it! So roll on May for Finale!
I can’t believe I’m already halfway into my influencer period for Whizzpop candles. I really love their candles and so happy to have found them! Whilst I have started to burn a few I just had to show off the ones that were still intact, including my daughters Adora candle inspired by She-Ra, I’m still blown away that Sylv gave her reveal kudos for unboxing that! You can find their Etsy store 
Whilst originally published in the late 1940’s this book came to my attention in the early 80’s when it was adapted by the BBC for Children’s hour (yup I only got an hour of kids based tv fun each day!) I quickly sought it out from the school library and recently picked up a copy for my daughter, although I think it’s by now showing it’s age. It does though still hold up remarkably well in my view. Focusing on a group of old and well loved dolls who move out of a shoe box and into a fine Victorian doll house. It deals with quite a broad range of issues from bullying and jealousy to inclusion and class heirarchy, caused when an upmarket china doll moves in. It’s gorgeously written and utterly charming in an old school way.
As popular now as it ever was, The Worst Witch seems to be completely timeless. It was a book bought for me by my nan, I then picked up on the others at the school book fair and they were probably my most re-read books on my shelf. At a time when witchy boarding schools were not as popular as they are now, I loved everything about Mildred and her friends, things always pretty much worked out for the best, alongside of the fact that the bully’s always got their comeuppance. A wonderfully creative and inclusive world which Biba loves just as much as I do!
Trying to narrow down just one Roald Dahl book for this was so hard but I think that Georges Marvellous Medicine has to be my favourite. Gloriously outrageous and absolutely full to bursting with imagery. I think it’s the finest example of the sheer magnitude of Roald Dahl’s imagination. Looking at it now as a parent, the fact that George had open season on everything in the house makes me quake, but as a child I set about making my own concoctions of toothpaste and bubblebath, and I think petals of some description! It’s also helped by the fact that back in the day the book was featured on Jackanory and was read by the great Rik Mayall in a way that only he could (if you’ve ever seen the movie Drop Dead Fred – that will give you an idea)
The pride of the Scholastic book fair, Christopher Pike dominated the teen market with low level horror books such as Chain Letter (wow chain letters really were a huge thing when I was younger lol) but Last Act was something a little different. Probably my most re-read of all of the books of his I own, it’s more of a whodunnit than a horror, with thriller aspects that were out of this world for a young reader. Arising out of a high school drama production where someone is murdered, all fingers point at the female lead, but Christopher Pike does an amazing job of introducing so many other players into the mix, and in that I started my long and unblemished career of getting it absolutely wrong every single time!
Honestly I don’t know if Judy Blume books are still as popular or as much of a thing as they were in the late 80’s. I still remember my mum having to give permission to the school library for me to take out Forever, and for many, that book is the “go to”by this author, but Deenie is the one that remains fixed in my mind. Proving that body image issues are not a new thing, the scene where Deenie meets a vision of her future without her back brace is a reminder that often nothing shakes us into submission more than a visual representation. A strong lesson in expectation versus reality, this story often challenged ableism alongside a whole range of issues which are just as relevant today as ever.
Dianna Wynne Jones is an exceptional author of children’s fiction, Neil Gaiman describes her as “Astonishing” yet I rarely see mentions of her. She is best known for Howls Moving Castle (although you might not know it,) and whilst A Tale of Time City was my first book of hers, Archers Goon is the one that stands out for me. It is a book which is so difficult to summarise but in her usual style she created an unusual, but striking, twist filled world. Set in against a backdrop of a family man who must write 2000 words of nonsense every quarter for “Archer” it becomes a story of feuding siblings, strange magical locks preventing them from moving outside of the predetermined zones, and time paradoxes. Yet the narrative never stutters and it was turned into a wonderful TV adaptation in the early 1990’s which conveyed such dread and excitement. If you’ve not read any of her books, I strongly recommend that you give her a try!
The Cruel Prince is a series that I just don’t get. I kind of convinced myself into a 3* review on the basis that the ending was fairly good for book one but actually I really shouldn’t have. Trigger warnings for bullying and abuse should be rife for this, but strangely I find them to be lacking, which is baffling to me as they seem to appear in abundance everywhere else. I found the high school element trite and I just went into major anxiety mode for most of it as I relived my own high school bullying hell. This is not a good book in my view, granted I’m not the demographic but still, other than the last 50 pages where the story actually became a story I found very little to like about it. I’ve not gone anywhere near book 2 and with quotes like “kiss me until you hate me” or some such, I’m not convinced it’s going to up the series in my estimation.
I’m going to have to go with @fantasticbooks_awtft with this one and say I just don’t get Rowan and Aelin. For a start there wasn’t much about Rowan that I found particularly swoonworthy and when they ended up together it just felt wrong and a bit weird. Rowan was horrible to Aelin at the start, his treatment of her was pretty shocking. It shouldn’t take scaring a woman to the degree she wets herself to have made him realise he needed to perhaps try a carrot rather than a stick with her. There is also that chasm like age difference between them which just felt icky – and I’m saying this when my husband is nearly a decade older than me. Honestly, I would have loved to have seen Aelin take the same road as Manon, but I’ll leave it there in case there are some reading this who haven’t completed KoA yet.
Another popular series that I just don’t get is Shatter Me and whilst I hold little regard for all the characters save for Kenji, Adam by far is my least favourite. His behaviour towards Juliette is abusive, controlling and in my view borderline rapey. Juliette repeatedly tells him where to go, yet he still forces his way into her room at night demanding she declare her love for him. A girls allowed to change her mind and guilt tripping her into staying is just wrong. Again a series with surprisingly few trigger warnings given the domestic abuse aspect – letting abuse slide because the abuser is hot is actually pretty worrying and this is sadly not an isolated example.
The Maze Runner series is so popular and I picked up a 4 book boxed set from The Works for like £8 – but try as I might I just can’t bring myself to pick up book 2 as I can’t get on with James Dashner’s writing style at all. I forced myself through book one and it’s a series that’s going to be sat unread on my shelf for a long time to come I feel.
Twilight just holds zero interest for me. I think had I not watched the first movie I might have been tempted to give them a try, but that film really didn’t do it for me at all and has soured any desire to read what are pretty hefty books. I think that other than Buffy the vampire thing kind of passed me by at the time!
The first and probably most beautiful item I have ever had in a book box was a gorgeous bookshelf scarf showcasing a number of amazing YA reads. I’ve already worn it loads, but trying to get my favourite book spine on display is tricky! Now here is the thing with the scarf, for the eagle eyed amongst you there are some spelling errors. Fairyloot’s initial response was that it should be treated like the work of art it is, an interpretation by the artist. However they soon backtracked and announced they would be replacing the scarf. Now here’s the thing, Fairyloot have very sensibly offered the option to opt out of a replacement, which I have done. I love the scarf as it is and honestly I would rather they didn’t spend the next few boxes clawing back the cost of replacements with substandard items as they have really upped their content in recent months. Also as a wearable we had a pair of Alice in Wonderland inspired bookish socks – I LOVE bookish socks and the quality is much improved from when they started the other year, given that they are one size they fit my child sized feet perfectly although not always good with my cankles lol
Also included was a lovely metal bookmark inspired by Strange the Dreamer with one of my favourite quotes, and so I don’t miss out on keeping those quotes flagged in future we also got page tabs. I know they featured these not so long ago but I didn’t get that box so I’m happy to have them now! There were prints in the box too, the Warcross inspired one looks amazing, the other 2 I’m not part of the fandom so let me know if you want them! It looks like Fairyloot are also making an enamel pin for each of their boxes now which makes my heart very happy, this months was understandably their logo. Before I get to the books, there was a new fandom for the tarot cards this month with Six of Crows – I’m super happy about this and also that the first we get is Wylan and Jesper ❤ I can’t wait to see who gets featured next month, I have a feeling it will be Nina and Matthias though.
There were 2 amazing books featured in this anniversary box the first was Viper by Bex Hogan, by chance I actually got to read this as an e arc through Netgalley a couple of weeks ago and I absolutely loved it, so to get it in paperback, signed and with an exclusive cover was fantastic and I am so happy to have it – also if you’re quick you can also submit your Fairyloot receipt to register for the pre-order incentive (confirmed by Team BKMRK today to me on twitter.) The second and main book was To Best the Boys by Mary Weber, correctly guessed by book box sherlocks. I’m intrigued by this as it’s not a book I would have bought myself, I’m not in love with the title – but high stakes maze has a Maze Runner feel about it so we’ll see! It’s again signed with sprayed edges – for that satisfying sound when you turn the pages fresh for the first time.
Paperbacks and Pinot 