Author: lajoslin

The Immortals by Jordanna Max Brodsky is a fantasy romance, and serial killer

This is a book about an immortal goddess learning that maybe love is more important than power, and how to forgive people for past mistakes. Its main subplot is Artemis realizing that she loves the mortal man who is helping her solve the murders, which all started with his ex being killed. This is a quit exhausting plot point, its nothing new, strong female lead believes she can’t fall in love because it’s weak, or maybe it’s because she’ll put him in danger. Its all been done before, and there is nothing special about it this time, it was boring once and it is boring again.

There is also the whole, immortal has been around for a couple million years but still hasn’t figured out things most humans have by fifteen. As well as being a virgin is what keeps her divine, she is annoyingly portrayed as really old, but acts really young, and rather that has no interest in romance, she is scared of it and wants to throw-up every time its mentioned. Stories like this have been told and retold over and over, it was boring the first time, why are you still trying? There were also some gods that weren’t fading because people still worship there aspects, like the god of wine, but the goddess of motherhood and children dies??? But there are children, and mothers, like everywhere, that just makes no sense. The murder mystery part is really only a mystery if you don’t have a brain, or if you are Artemis, the still brainless after 10 thousand years of life. Artemis’s love interest, Theo, wasn’t much better, also just a whole bunch stereotypes lumped together to make a character. Most, if not all of the characters where like this, the only Latina character effectively hits every stereotype for that ethnicity. Bravo! The only half way decent character was Hippo, the dog. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. I’m not that cruel.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is science fiction novel set after the second American civil war which was fought over reproductive rights. In the post war society teens who are predicted to go no where in life are unwound. Unwinding is the process of taking apart their body, organs and limbs, while keeping all of it alive, and then using the pieces to help other people who need replacements.

Unwind won many awards including the Margaret A. Edwards Award. This award is awarded to an author for a specific body of work that will have a lasting affect on the YA genre, and deals with characters becoming aware of themselves, their world, society or relationships.

Unwind fits this award quite well, a large amount of this book is about weather these kids have a place in the world, which directly relates to what the award is for. It is also a well crafted book that makes it worth selecting over other books that could have also gotten the Margaret A. Edwards Award.

This is a wonderful book for anyone who likes to be presented with difficult moral questions in a way that allows you to think about it on your own. Shusterman is very good at laying out a problem, and then not telling you what to think, but that you should think.

Challenger Deep, by Neal Shusterman is a book that uses many extended metaphors to travel through the mind of a teen boy named Caden, as he struggles to understand what is real, and what is in his head.

Challenger Deep is about a boy named Caden that is put in a mental hospital. The story is told from two vantage points, one is this world, and the other is the world Caden spends some of his time in. Caden’s world is on a pirate ship with the Captan, and the parrot as the two main entity’s. In the mental hospital there are people who, as the book unfolds, become eerily similar to those on the ship. The times Caden meets people in the mental hospital is misaligned to when he meets them on the pirate ship, making the pirate ship become more real as the pieces fall into place throughout the book.

Challenger Deep is brilliantly laid out, at the beginning Caden is not in the mental hospital, but you still get pieces of the pirate ship, although it is unclear the actual time the two worlds line up. The way Shusterman slowly reveals the connections in the worlds is absolutely brilliant. There are also many extended metaphors that seem random until the end of the section, then they are often used later in the book as short hand. It’s like an inside joke between you and the book, although many of them aren’t funny. The metaphors are extremely affective and they add another level of enjoyment to reading this book. I now live for secret metaphors.

If you like books that pose difficult questions you should read this book. At first glance Challenger Deep could be viewed as fiction, but upon further inspection you realize this book is all too real. If you are someone who has no respect for realities other than your own you need your bubble burst. In other words, read Challenger Deep.

WARNING: If you have not read The Final Empire DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW. The two books come in very quick succession, and the plots can not be reversed. READ THIS SERIES IN ORDER. Spoilers for The Final Empire can’t be avoided. Just read it first.

The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson, the sequel to The Final Empire, directly follows the events of the previous book. It follows Kelsier’s old crew and Vin as they attempt to rebuild and defend the once mighty empire. The plot deals with impending doom as three armies threaten to destroy what they worked so hard to create. It deals with subtle politics and schemes, battle tactics and the hopeless fight running on faith and morals, but the story deals with the crew after Kelsier’s death. It deals with Vin learning who she is and who she wants to be. It follows Elend as he tries to go from young scholar to king, and what that means. The plot is a masterfully crafted intricate puzzle of leads and misleads, and the story is of people trying to fit in a world they once knew, until they broke it.

The Well of Ascension reads like a second book in a trilogy. It is well worth reading if you’ve read The Final Empire, but don’t expect it to be equal. It’s not. This book is a good book, amazing for fans of fantasy, it’s a shame it had to follow in the wake of The Final Empire. This book goes further into characters the first book glazed over, particularly Ham and Breeze. It follows the first book in dealing with complicated themes, however themes in The Well of Ascension are more focused on love and how people fit in their world. This is a truly wonderful book if you can over look the obnoxiously placed love triangle (probably there for good reason knowing Brandon Sanderson). The Ending is immaculate, the whole book sets it up, clues strategically placed, theories proven and disproven, hope given then taken away again at the last moment. The ending makes reading book three mandatory. There is no other option. You should read this book. Make your own decisions, you’ll either want to burn it or put it on an atium pedestal.

The Well of Ascension hits you like a cat with its claws out, but The Final Empire hits you like a semi-truck full of used kitty litter.

Do not read this book unless you want emotions you didn’t know you had twisted ways you didn’t know they could be.

Brandon Sanderson wrote Mistborn in such a way that you don’t know if you want to kill him, or hug him. Mistborn is a dark fantasy book with real world parallels. It is set in the Final Empire, ruled by the Lord Ruler. The empire is divided into noblemen and Skaa, the Skaa work as slaves for the noblemen, except for the thieving crews who hide themselves in buildings disguised as shops. The noblemen supposedly have pure blood, and some of them are Allomancers. Allomancers get powers from ‘burning’ different types of metals, most can only burn a select type, these are mistings, but some, the Mistborn, can burn all 10 metals. Skaa are not supposed to be able to be Allomancers, but there has been some interbreeding, causing some exceptions. This book is about a 17 year old girl named Vin who has spent her life on the streets as part of a Skaa thieving crew that scams noblemen, she is one of the exceptions.

Kelsier is a Mistborn who has spent his life as a leader of a thieving crew. Because his wife was killed by the Lord Ruler’s men he has been planing to topple the empire. To do this he gathers a select team, Dockson, the only sane one on the team, Breeze, a misting with the ability to sooth emotions, Ham, also a misting, but with the ability to enhance physical ability, Clubs, a misting with the ability to hide Allomacers from Seekers, Marsh, Kelsier’s brother, a misting with the ability to detect other Allomancers (a Seeker), and Vin, a young Mistborn discovering her powers, and the idea of trust. Kelsier devises a seemingly impossible plan to start a Skaa rebellion, a war among the noblemen, and topple the Final Empire.

This book leads you along like a dog follows a treat, once you’re in there’s no way out. There is no way to think of anything except this book, be prepared to forget your life, it doesn’t matter any more. You won’t care. The characters are developed and complicated to a degree to make you believe that they are real. This is not a story. It is someone’s life. This book makes you care about the characters and their goals, it gets you invested in their quest. This book should be read by any fantasy or science fiction fan, I would not recommend it to someone who doesn’t want to think. It is not an easy read. The language is fairly simple, but the ideas are not. There are some very heavy themes that some people may not want to deal with, such as slavery, sexual assault, nepotism, and faith.

The Book of Three is the first book in the The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. It is a light hearted adventure steeped in mythology that takes place in a fantasy realm called Prydain. The story follows a young Assistant Pig-Keeper named Taran. He was raised by an old sorcerer named Dallben, and a bald, retired hero named Coll. Taran’s duties consist of tending to the only oracular pig in Prydain, named Hen Wen.

When Hen Wen runs away Taran is forced to go after her, even after learning of the growing evils in the form of an evil warlord called The Horned King. Along the way Taran meets several new friends, such as the warlord Gwydion, the princess Eilonwy, and the retired King and failed bard, Fflewddur Fflam. He learns how vast the evils at work truly are and must expand his mission to more than just finding Hen Wen, He must warn the Sons Of Don of the growing evils. 

The balance of the characters and how they play off each other adds the perfect level of humor and allows this book, that subtly hints at dark themes, to remain fun and easy going. This book has many themes presented in a fun and easy way, but if the reader is willing to do a little thinking it can lead you down a winding rabbit hole of social issues having to do with our place in the natural world. In that way it is suitable for all ages. It discussed how you matter as a person even, possibly even especially, if you make mistakes, and that sometimes looking for an answer is more rewarding than finding it, and how there is a piece of everyone in everyone else. It talks about how even if you don’t do everything perfectly it doesn’t matter, you never do anything alone in life, and you share everything you do with others.

The Book of Three is a brilliantly humorous and fun story suitable for anyone who is a fan of fantasy and doesn’t mind taking a break from the dark intensity of so many other novels. It is lighter than some readers may want, and it is written with a slightly younger audience in mind, but I firmly believe it has the ability to be enjoyed by the right people of any age. It is the kind of book that you can appreciate on another level if you understand the mythology it is based on. As my dad said when he went back and read it as an adult, after loving it as a kid he found new parts to appreciate, specifically the parallels with Welsh mythology. It may be a hard book for some readers to get into without the nostalgia of reading it as a kid, but it is still truly a solid pillar in the fantasy genre. It was written in the old style Tolkien loved and expanded on. Each of the characters have relatable aspects for the modern reader, yet they maintain their folkloric charm.