Monthly Archives: November 2018

Book Review: Inkmistress

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inkmistressInkmistress
by Audrey Coulthurst
Young Adult/Fantasy
392 pages
Published March 2018

As I mentioned on Friday, this book is the prequel to Of Fire and Stars, so I read it first, even though it was published second. I prefer to read in chronological order when I can.

Inkmistress follows Asra, a demigod of unknown parentage, as she first follows and then is chased by her lover-turned-dragon who is intent on vengeance for the destruction of her village. Her lover, Ina, is convinced it is the King’s fault that the village was destroyed, as he’s been letting bandits roam over the outer reaches of his kingdom unchecked. So after taking on the form of a dragon, she’s off to kill him to avenge her family. Asra is trying to talk Ina out of it, and chases her across the country, from their remote mountain to the inner forests and cities.

I really love Asra. Ina’s kind of a bitch, but Asra is loving and funny and just an awesome person, fighting to protect herself and those she loves, even as those she loves evolve and change past what she can hold onto. Her magic takes a terrible price if she uses it, both on her and on the rest of the world. She has to wrestle with so many unknowns – her parentage, her magic, the world off her mountain, politics, other demigods – and somehow she manages to land on her feet. (Though not without help!)

The romance is sweet, and I love the emphasis on chosen families. Both Asra and Ina appear to be bisexual, which also doesn’t appear to be unusual in this world. Reviews of Of Fire and Stars complain about the lack of worldbuilding, which is NOT a problem in this book. Perhaps I’ll have an easier time having read this book first; which is a bit of a problem – you shouldn’t have to read a prequel to understand the setting of the first book in a series! It does make me glad I’m reading them in this order, though.

I really loved this book. The urgency of the chase really came through in the story – Asra had to get to certain places and get certain things done before certain times, and obstacles thrown in her way made you worry she wouldn’t get things done in time. It was well-written, with good character development of Asra, at least, and great world-building.

From the cover of Inkmistress:

Asra is a demigod with a dangerous gift: the ability to dictate the future by writing with her blood. To keep her power secret, she leads a quiet life as a healer on a remote mountain, content to help the people in her care and spend time with Ina, the mortal girl she loves.

But Asra’s peaceful life is upended when bandits threaten Ina’s village and the king does nothing to help. Desperate to protect her people, Ina begs Asra for assistance in finding her manifest – the animal she’ll be able to change into as her rite of passage to adulthood. Asra uses her blood magic to help Ina, but her spell goes horribly wrong and the bandits destroy the village, killing Ina’s family.

Unaware that Asra is at fault, Ina swears revenge on the king and takes a savage dragon as her manifest. To stop her, Asra must embark on a journey across the kingdom, becoming a player in lethal games of power among assassins, gods, and even the king himself. Most frightening of all, she discovers the dark secrets of her own mysterious history – and the terribly, powerful legacy she carries in her blood.

A sweeping and romantic fantasy full of dangerous magic and dark choices, from the author of Of Fire And Stars.

Friday 56 – Inkmistress

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inkmistressThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from Inkmistress, the prequel to Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst. Technically Inkmistress was written second, but I prefer to read things in chronological order when I can, so I’m reading it first.

I stood frozen with horror. How much of Ina was still the girl I loved, and how much was the creature she’d taken as her manifest?

I had done this. I was responsible.

I crept through the woods with my heart in my throat until I got close enough to see the rise and fall of Ina’s sides heaving. Though the dragon’s gaze was keen as ever, she hung her head in exhaustion, her white scales streaked with blood. My chest constricted. In spite of all those Ina had killed, it still wounded me to see her hurting.

Book Review: Darius the Great is Not Okay

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darius the great is not okayDarius the Great is Not Okay
by Adib Khorram
Young Adult/Contemporary Fiction
314 pages
Published August 2018

This novel got a lot of hype before and after its release – and it deserves it. It has great minority representation, from Persian (and bi-racial!) to Zoroastrian and Baha’i, to clinical depression and male friendship. You could also read gay and/or asexual into it, but that’s not explicitly mentioned. Romantic love is just never addressed; perhaps because the story just doesn’t involve it, but you could definitely read the main character as ace.

Darius is a great main character. He’s funny, self-deprecating, and complex. He has clinical depression, is medicated for it, and can sometimes tell when it’s the depression making him think a certain way, but sometimes he can’t. He’s biracial, visiting Iran and his mother’s Persian family for the first time, and adjusting to Persian social norms and traditions while trying not to lose sight of his American life. His connection with his father is tenuous and fraught with miscommunication, and lot of the book is spent wrestling with that relationship. His new friend, Sohrab, is a great foil to that, as his father is completely absent from his life, having been arrested and thrown in jail prior to the start of the story, largely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being part of a minority religion.

There are so many small things touched on this book – suspicion at customs when flying through, bullying at school for being Persian, not speaking his family’s language because his mother didn’t teach it to him (and feeling cut off because of it) – all little things that a lot of immigrant children deal with.

Aside from the cultural things the book addresses, there’s also the mental health aspect. Both Darius and his father have clinical depression, and there’s stigma attached to having the diagnosis, and to taking pills for it. We see how their mental states affects their relationship with each other and with the rest of their family, and it’s quite powerful. The author talks about having clinical depression in an afterword, and includes some resources that helped him. This is an #ownvoices novel in more ways than one, and it really shows. Excellent book.

From the cover of Darius the Great is Not Okay:

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian – half, his mom’s side – and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life.

Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush – the original Farsi version of his name – and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Adib Khorram’s brilliant debut is for anyone who’s ever felt not good enough – then met a friend who makes them feel so much better than okay. 

Library Loot Wednesday

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I picked up three books this week – P.S. I Still Love You, the sequel to To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Silence Fallen, a new Mercy Briggs book that I somehow missed when it came out at the beginning of the year, and The Good Demon, about a woman in search of the demon that was exorcised from her because she wants it back. (Intriguing!)

Book Review: The Bees

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the beesThe Bees
by Laline Paull
Fiction
340 pages
Published 2014

I was cautiously optimistic about this book, because I’d heard good things about it, but really? Bees? An entire book from the viewpoint of a worker bee? Even fictionalized, how much material is there really to work with?

SO MUCH.

My fears were completely ungrounded because this book is AMAZING. Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, tasked with taking dead bodies out of the hive, cleaning up wax cells after new bees have hatched, and other duties to keep the hive clean. Somewhat extraordinarily, it is discovered that she can produce the liquid needed to feed bee larva, and is taken to serve in the nursery for a bit, where she starts to develop a mind of her own.

As Flora develops new abilities and works her way through the ranks of the hive, we start to learn that something in the governing of the hive is not quite what it should be. Something is wrong. But the strictly enforced castes and other outside factors, like weather and predators, delay Flora’s quest to ferret it out.

Between lying wasps, conniving spiders, and a conspiracy within the ranks of her own hive, Flora bounces from danger to danger trying to protect what she loves in an engrossing story of bravery and sacrifice.

I absolutely loved this book. I especially liked that anywhere possible, actual bee behavior was described and used to further the plot. This is definitely one of my favorite reads this year!

From the cover of The Bees:

Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive, where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw, but her courage and strength are assets. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect nectar and pollen. A feat of bravery grants her access to the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous. 

But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all – daring to challenge the Queen’s preeminence – enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the hive’s strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by a greater power: a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, and her society – and lead her to perform unthinkable deeds.

Thrilling, suspenseful, and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees and its dazzling young heroine will forever change the way you look at the world outside your window.

Sunday Stuff

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Oh man, I am so tired of being sick. I am over the worst of it, and I’m getting better, but it’s in small increments. I’m still pretty stuffed up. I just want to be better by Thanksgiving, because we’re leaving for Philadelphia the next morning! We’ll be spending the weekend in Philly – there’s a VNV Nation concert Friday night, then we’ll be doing tourist things the rest of the weekend, because I’ve never been to Philadelphia! My husband has been once or twice, but it’ll be all new to me. There’s a couple of museums we’ll be going to, as well as the Poe House. (We’ve been to the Poe House in Baltimore, and Poe’s grave here, but not to the Philadelphia one! Have I ever posted those pictures here? I should do that, even if they’re from many years ago.) We’ll also be stopping by Baldwin’s Book Barn, a giant old barn converted to a bookstore just outside Philly. I’m pretty excited. I just want my head to clear up before all of that, especially because an industrial concert while my ears are wonky from a head cold sounds like migraine territory to me.

I’m a little sad to discover that Katherine Locke, who wrote The Girl with the Red Balloon, is doing an event in Philly the Wednesday AFTER we’re there. I was really hoping she’d be at something that weekend and I could meet her! Oh well. I’ll have to keep an eye on her author events. She’s based out of Philadelphia, she’ll have to do something I can make it to eventually, right?

I am so glad I normally have posts scheduled out two weeks in advance, because that means I didn’t actually miss any days here while being sick! I’ve run out of leeway just in time to be leaving for a weekend, so I’ll have to hurry and review this stack of books now that I have some focus back, but that cushion really helped. Definitely going to have to build that back up again.

And the past couple of days have sucked, because we rent an old house with terrible plumbing, and right now any water that goes down drains winds up coming up in our laundry room! The plumber is coming sometime today, so hopefully that will get figured out soon. And I really hope he gets here early in the day, because we were planning to go see a friend perform in The Toxic Avenger this afternoon!

Blargh. Being sick and not being able to take a shower or flush the toilet has also not been real pleasant, either. I can’t wait to buy a house this spring and get away from this shoddy plumbing!