Okay kids, let's get to it: Everything that my fantasy-needing brain has consumed in the last several weeks, in order of when I read them.
1. Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
I liked the main character, Agnieszka, and loved her relationship with her best friend, Kasia. Agnieszka is a heroine through and through, and the story of what plagues the land where she lives and how she saves everyone is perfectly fine. Perfectly Fine!! But that damn Dragon. Oh I hated him so much. It's so very obvious from the beginning that he is meant to be her love interest. So Obvious!! What's not obvious is how things between them will go from seething hatred to mild tolerance to deep and unending love, and that's why you keep reading the book yeah? But The Dragon just stays at seething hatred like, forever? And then maybe at the end progresses to mild tolerance? Maybe??
You guys, I get the appeal of the Stockholm Syndrome-esque Romance tales. I GET IT. I like Beauty and the Beast too, okay? And YES I want an alt-version of Phantom of the Opera where Christine and Erik work things out and live happily ever after. I love my Depressive Demon Nightmare Boys and want them to find happiness and love and peace, even the captors!!
But The Dragon can take his mean and verbally-abusive self straight to Hell. Dude literally calls Agnieszka an idiot and then kisses her for the first time in the same breath. And like, the kiss is super hot but while I was reading about it I was like wait, what? Maybe my problem is just that I'm pretty much over the romanticizing of cruelty and verbal abuse, especially if the perpetrator never comes around and changes. Or apologizes, geez is that too much to ask? If he'd said "Sorry I was an ass" even once it would have been better.
(But the real way to make this story better would have been to have Agnieszka and Kasia end up together.)
Anyway, I think eventually at some point I'll give Novik's Spinning Silver a shot, but I swear if main girl's dude is a jerk I'm OUT.
2. Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi
This book is so great, I loved it so much. I love Zélie and Amari, and I'm very much looking forward to them becoming an unbreakable and unstoppable force moving forward in the series. I like Tzarin, but I think he needs more character development before I really love him. Inan was a heartbreaking character for me to read about, and I suspect lots of people had issues with who he ended up paired with in the book, but I wasn't bothered. Sometimes idealism and hope draw people together, and sometimes it's ill-fated.
I've also since come to love Tomi Adeyemi's Instagram. She's funny and kinda nerdy and beautiful and I am addicted to her Stories wherein she talks about her writing process and progress towards the next installment. Children of Virtue and Vengeance's release date has been pushed back a couple of times (including again today 😭), but I'm not even a little mad about it, and I still cannot wait!!
3. The Young Elites, by Marie Lu
Oof, this was a really difficult series for me to read. I think maybe I'm not cut out for stories that are told from the perspective of a villain. Obviously I was on Adelina's side from the beginning because that's how the author set me up, but at a certain point I had to accept that in order for things in the series to end in a way that was fair, the person I was rooting for had to end up in a way that I didn't like. And that sucked. Especially when so many things (everything?) could have been different if people just talked to each other and said what they were feeling or afraid of!!! I kind of want this series rewritten as if those conversations that should have happened actually happened. My main thought at the end of the series was very "Uh, I wanted that to go different."
4. The Folk of the Air series (The Cruel Prince and The Wicked King), by Holly Black
Truthfully, I wouldn't have read this series unless I'd been at the local library here and seen book #2 on the New Releases shelf like a week after it had been released. A part of me was like this book is on a waiting list a mile long in every other library and so I felt some obligation to read it because of how lucky I seemed to be in that moment?
I will say that on the very first half-page of The Cruel Prince three things made me stop and think what the... The first was the word 'microwave', which really threw me off because no fantasy book that I have read since Harry Potter probably has been set in modern times. The second and third was the introduction of Jude's sister Vivienne, who went by Vivi. As it turns out, none of these things ended up being that weird or a big deal.
I surprised myself by liking this series, in spite of the book titles labeling the potential love interest as "cruel" and "wicked." To me he didn't actually live up to those words, maybe just "mean." (Not as bad as The Forkin Dragon) (I'll probably get over that character eventually) Jude is a compelling enough main character, though I don't care for her decision to use her past as motivations for power. The Wicked King ended on a sort of cliffhanger, and I will certainly be keeping an eye on the New Releases shelf at the library when the third book comes out next year!
5. Shadow and Bone Trilogy, by Leigh Bardugo
I've seen the book Shadow and Bone all over in the past two years, and it wasn't until last month that I decided to get into it. I liked Alina, I thought Mal was a little too insecure too often, I LOVED Nikolai, and I thought the villain was pretty good (I think there's a side novella about the villain's past, but I did not read it and kind of wished a bit more about his past had been in the main trilogy).
As for the overall conflict of the Ravka and beyond, I'm kind of over Have(magic/power)s vs Have-Not(magic/power)s. (I also found this to be true of Lu's Young Elites series.) I get the conflict, I've seen and read it in a lot of places, and it's getting a little old for me.
6. Six of Crows Duology, by Leigh Bardugo
Okay, so I reserved the ebook copy of Six of Crows at least two times in the past two years and for whatever reason I didn't read it each time. And honestly after I finished Alina's story I really wanted to skip these two books and move straight on to Nikolai's story in King of Scars, which had just been released. And now I'm calling myself an idiot for all of that because I LOVED this two-part series and it's my favorite of all the Grishaverse works I read.
I loved all of the characters, the action was great, and who doesn't love a good heist (or two, or three, or...)? Obviously I ship Kaz+Inej forever, and I hope that precious little Depressive Demon Nightmare Boy has a good life (sorry guys, I'm obsessed with this archetype, I'm never letting it go).
I liked Six of Crows more than Shadow and Bone, and I know that you can read SoC without having read SaB and get on just fine. But it's a little fun to catch all of the little quick references that come up here and there. And also, it's just nice that the world-building has already been done in another book and you can just focus on the story of SoC and not constantly be like wait, what's a Grisha?
7. King of Scars, by Leigh Bardugo
I really loved Nikolai in the Shadow and Bone series, and I was really excited to read more of him in this book. And well, it was okay. I have a feeling I will like it better when the second book comes out and the story is finished, but I thought this book didn't really have as much substance as I was wanting. I probably feel this way because I started it right after finishing Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom and those two are jam-packed with action, so maybe that's my own fault.
I (and everyone, probably) had a guess at who Nikolai would end up paired with by the end of the book, and I wasn't really looking forward to seeing that happen. Up to the start of this book we don't exactly know much about the girl other than she's been really unlikeable and mean in the past. So a big thing I was looking for in this book is any and all information revealed about her to make me soften my opinion of her. Bardugo gave that info, and yeah I like the character better now, but I'm not sure I love her quite yet. We'll see what happens with her next installment. (And with the pairing in general.)
At first I got annoyed every time the book switched to show what Nina was up to, but by the end I loved her story and I'm really looking forward to seeing what she does next year and how she meets up with everyone else. I also really loved a new character who was introduced, but I also have grievances regarding him. (I'm being vague on purpose, sorryyyyy)
Dat ending tho. Wowzers.
8. An Ember in the Ashes, by Sabaa Tahir
I love this series so much, and I can't wait to re-read it! After I finished Soc and CK, Jon asked me which of everything I read he should read when he has free time. I told him he'd probably like Six of Crows the best so I told him to start with Shadow and Bone. Then I started reading An Ember in the Ashes and was like STOP, you should start with this!
The characters are so great and really well fleshed out, and I love Laia, Elias, and Helene so much. There are a few villains, but one in particular is just so terrible and evil and has depth and it's great. There's also a lot a violence which DEEPLY satisfied some part of me that I am not ready to analyze.
The only bad thing I ran into with this series was in the third book, Reaper at the Gates. From the start I thought this was a trilogy, but like halfway through RatG I was like wait how is all of this going to be resolved? And then at the 90% mark I was like oh. no. And then at the end I was like FORK FORK FORK FORK I NEED THE LAST BOOK NOWWWWWW.
Anyway, this series is not done, and I am devastated about having to wait to see what's going to happen to my babies.
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TL;DR
1. I would only recommend Uprooted to you if I thought you'd also hate The Dragon and would rant about him with me afterward.
2. Children of Blood and Bone is fantastic, and Tomi Adeyemi is my favorite Instagram follow right now.
3. I want The Young Elites to be rewritten in the way that I wanted the story to go (lol).
4. Dude wasn't that "cruel" or "wicked," but the two books are inoffensive, fast reads so why not read?
5. Shadow and Bone was not my favorite of the Grishaverse series, but good for world-building that is helpful/necessary for the series that I liked better.
6. DO NOT hesitate to read Six of Crows if you get the chance, you'll be mad at yourself if you do.
7. Still love Nikolai, but I needed more of... anything? everything?
8. Violent and perfect and UNFINISHED (😭) but perfect.
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