So, I have finished The Mime Order. And, everything, everything, everything in this post is going to be full of spoilers for both The Mime Order and the first book in the series The Bone Season.
If you have read the books, please join us for discussion and wild speculation in the comments! Some of my thoughts about the book after the cut.
This was a really different tale than I typically read. Set in what is a fantasy-version of Medieval China, it follows the lives of a number different people who have a huge impact on the course of the empire. The tale starts with Shen Dai who is spending his official mourning period following the death of his father at the site of his father’s worst memory, a battle field at the edge of the empire which was so devastating that many of the slain weren’t even able to be buried. He spends the mourning period burying as many of the dead as he can. This ends up having tremendous consequences for him because he is honored for his work with a gift of 200 of the strongest and most beautiful horses. This is cause for some alarm. He’ll probably be killed for these horses. So, he has to figure out how to navigate the world he’s been out of for two years without getting killed.
Meanwhile, his lover in the capitol has been taken as a concubine by a rival. That rival has moved up in the Palace ranks and is a hugely influential adviser to the king and his brother is that rival’s most trusted adviser. Additionally, his sister has been raised to a princess and has been sent to marry a border tribe leader to cement a treaty.
And, that’s not even half of it. The story follows the lives of Shen Dai, the rival, his brother, his sister, the concubine, an assassin, the heir to the throne, army leaders, border leaders and outcasts and the Emperor’s favorite wife. All of these threads weave in and out of each other in a personal tale about a crisis within the whole empire.
This was an immensely fun listen and I am happy to have read it. Although, it is full of an incredible amount of detail so I ended up listening to some parts of it more than once. (As it turns out, when it snows heavily during your evening commute, you have a lot of time for listening and re-listening to audio books.) If you’re looking for a break from teen romance, I recommend this!
This is a beautiful book.It really is. I guess that should be surprised since it has got nothing but good reviews all over the place. It was all *THE* book of the holiday season, as my bookstore I worked at kept running out of it. Despite all of this, I really didn’t have much of an interest in reading it. It doesn’t fall into my normal fantasy/teen genres but it was the pick of my friend Katy’s book club so I read, I did. I’m glad I did because it’s beautiful.
It’s about Marie-Laure, a blind French girl and Werner, a German orphan. That first sounded a little cheesy at first, especially when since the narratives goes back in forth with their childhoods before World War Two and the lives during the war but it isn’t cheesy. Their stories are intertwined as we watch them grow and at time mirroring each others experiences. In between their stories is the Heart of Flames, a diamond that is housed in the Natural History Museum in France, where Marie-Laure works. The diamond has a curse, the owner will liver forever but their love ones will end in tragedy. As the Germans take over Paris, the museum intrusts the diamond with her father for safe keeping. Soon a German Major Sargent, who’s job is to find treasures the the Third Reich becomes obsessed with the Diamond and tries to track it down.
I’ll try my best to spoil but there may be some spoilers behind the cut. Continue reading
I wanted to like this book more then I did. It’s not that I didn’t like it but I found it hard to get into it and stay into it. I’m not sure if it was the writing style or the characters or the pacing. I just never truly connected with it fully. Maybe I have hit my threshold on Hunger Gamesish type dystopian.
Red Rising is about Darrow, who is a miner on Mars. He and his family are Reds. The lowest of the color castes. Their job is to mine precious elements to prepare the surface of Mars for colonization. They were told they were colonist but really they are slaves. Mars was colonized for centuries and the ruling color castes, Golds, have been living it up on the surface, while Reds toil away below. All this is revealed to Darrow after his wife, Eo, is executed and Darrow joins the Army of Ares to take down the Golds and the Society from the inside.
Maybe for me it’s more of a question of pacing then anything else. Eo, is executed so early in the book, that I was never able to get to know her or Darrow or their relationship. Obviously they were in love. I got that much and apparently Eo was someone that everyone loved. True, it’s sad when anyone is killed at such a young age. Especially over something that is a simple as a song but it was a blink and you miss her and she’s gone. Oh, ok. Then Darrow is whisked away by the Army of Ares, told the truth about how the Society really is and joins the rebellion. I guess I never felt I had time to know who Darrow was before all this happened. I didn’t get to know where he came from before he was set out on his revenge. I think this is also a problem of the author because to compare to the Hunger Games, the reaping happens very early on in the book and Katniss and Peeta are on the train to the capital by the third chapter but by then the connection for me was already made. I was invested.
After a lengthy process of changing Darrow from a Red to a Gold, which includes surgeries, we finally get to the Institute that turns Golds into the leaders and rulers of the Society. The Institute is nothing but a Hunger Games style of live action game of Risk. The students are set up into different houses where they try to invade, conquer and slave the other students. Again with the pacing. At times, it was exciting and I hated that I was at my stop on the train and had to stop reading to get off but then momentum would end and I was like “can we get on with it” The ending itself was also a little meh. I guess it does set up nicely for the sequel, Golden Son, which is out now.
It was ok. I’ll probably will read the sequel eventually but not right away. I think this was Pierce Brown’s first book, so hopefully the next one will be better. I like the concept, I do. The execution just wasn’t quite up the the task.
Beth has started her series highlighting series that she’s enjoyed and that she feels have been neglected by the blogging community. After some discussion we’ve decided that my more or less regular series will be about non-fiction books. The world we live in is just so cool that I love to dip my toe into the realm of non-fiction (it’s a pretty huge realm) and learn all sorts of new things. No thing is safe from me reading!
For my first installment, I’m going to review/discuss a few self-help books. January is the time for resolutions and there are lots of things that you can read that will offer you advice on how to live better or healthier or smarter (whatever any of those things mean). In the past month, I’ve started two books meant to better inform me about how to be happy and healthy. In the past six months, I’ve read an additional book that I’ll be discussing on this list. In general I’m pretty skeptical about the usefulness of these volumes. It isn’t that they don’t offer interesting insight into theories and research about health and well-being. (Some of them do.) It’s more that there are no quick fixes to changing habits and your health. Regardless of the method you use, you still have to commit to a change and make that change work in your life. And, committing and working can be boring, slogging, grueling processes, not matter how exciting of novel your approach to them might be. But, I like the idea of taking stock of where you are and making a plan to move towards where you would like to be so I like the practice of making resolutions or goals. The first two books on this list are self-help designed to help you better manage your time and accomplish your goals. The first one focuses on your feelings and how you can get more desired feelings into your life and the second one focuses on time and how you can change how you think about time and the tasks you have to accomplish in order to get more done. The last book I’ll discuss is an overview of Chinese medicine and women’s health. At this point, I should probably say “spoilers ahead” (although, that’s probably a good thing since I’m panning at least one of these books.)
I borrowed this book from a friend, so I feel pretty bad that I’m about to pan it.
This book was so poorly written. It was like reading someone’s notes or inferring a deeper meaning from a series of pinterest posts. The book is divided into two parts. The first is theory. And, after I got past her opening (it was painful) we got to the epiphany: how do you want to feel? how can you focus on how you feel and meeting the needs revealed those feelings and then use that to reach your goals? I have sympathy for this idea. I can be pretty goal-oriented and fall into patterns of thinking that have me so focused on end results that I miss not only how unhappy I am in the present but I fail to realize how unfulfilled I will feel upon completing the goal. And, I doubt I’m alone in this. So, focusing on my emotional needs and seeing how to meet them more directly so that I’m in a more comfortable place sounded great. It also sounds pretty realistic. Life is about the journey, right? Which brings me to my major problem of the book: I have heard this before. I’ve heard this before and some of the ideas she presents seem, well, appropriative (passing Buddhist philosophy off as a magical part of her system) and like they might be taken out of their context. When we take big ideas out of context like this they often lose some if not all of their depth and resolution. So, passing Buddhist philosophy off as magic made me uncomfortable. And, then failing to engage in a deep and critical discussion of the philosophy (or anything really) made me feel unfulfilled and annoyed. I’m not looking for magic. This is a self-help book! I was looking for a little help!
The rest of my beef with the book was formatting. Books are not power point slides. They are not flash animated videos on the internet. Do not have multiple fonts on the page. Just don’t. After awhile I imagined that this was done to distract from a lack of deep engagement and discussion of the subject matter. I was not fooled. Honestly, I skipped a hundred pages because I couldn’t deal with it and I knew if I kept on I wouldn’t get to the workbook part and I wanted to see if there were useful things there. The worksheets and activities were useful in the workbook portion of the book. But, again, there wasn’t anything novel about it. I’ve seen mindfulness exercises that had similar formats. So, this book could be useful. But, it was not great and it annoyed me way more than it helped me.
This book was so very helpful. The Now Habit was mostly about time management and how to be more mindful of your time. It had you think about where you lose time in your day (where you go off the rails and end up watching TV or facebooking or reading that novel on your phone) and what you’re avoiding (and why). Then, it had you make a calendar and schedule where you were going to be places, when you would be traveling, when you’d be eating or cooking. This created a really nice visual of how much extra time I didn’t which made time-wasting not all that appealing. The author had you include recreational time in your week so that you weren’t all-work-all-the-time and that also was a nice feature. Putting things like knitting and reading on my schedule was like giving myself permission to relax and do those things. There was also an element of mindfulness in this approach but it wasn’t sold as magic but rather practice that can help you achieve your goals. I’ve incorporated a number of elements of this book into my life and it has been working pretty great.
I picked this up at a Half Price Books in its clearance section for two bucks. I think it was two bucks well spent. This book is a very general introduction to Chinese medicine focusing specifically on women’s health written by a doctor trained in both Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). After the opening chapter that discussed the Traditional Chinese system, each chapter takes a look at specific time-frames in a woman’s life. It begins with menarche and goes through menopause. I really liked all of the discussion on prevention. One of the things I learned from this book was that TCM is big on balance and preventative medicine. And, thinking of the body as a whole system where problems in one area can spill over into another area made a lot of sense to me. I also enjoyed the focus on how “healing” isn’t the same as “curing”. The author spent a lot of time highlighting how modern western medicine treats systems and doesn’t support patients. And, I’m sympathetic to that idea. If you’re not meeting your emotional and spiritual needs the physical can go way, way wrong. Striving for balance is a worthwhile goal. There were parts of the book that made me feel like I was being sold snake oil. She told some stories of women treated with Western Medicine who then found healing with TCM throughout the book. Some of these seemed a little over the top but the overall message of balance and trying your best to take care of all of your needs was good. I would have liked a more in-depth discussion of Traditional Chinese Medicine and all of working parts.
Have you read any Self-Help books in a lead up to Goal Setting for the New Year? What do you like (or hate!) about the genre? What are your goals for 2015?
For those who know me, I love the sport of tennis. I actually love sports. I think they are one of the real dramas in life. They are unpredictable and entertaining. They happen live so no edits or rewrites. Almost nothing can unite a group of people, city, state or country the way sports can. So yeah, I love sports but I really love tennis. So two years ago, when tennis legend Monica Seles decided to write a teen novel, I was so on it. So in honor of the Australian Open currently being played, here’s the skinny on The Academy Series.
I once described the first book in the The Academy Series, Game On, to friends as Gossip Girl meets Bollettieri’s. For those not in the know, Bollettieri’s is a tennis academy in Florida that has produced such great champions as Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova and Seles herself. In Game On we are introduced to Maya, a tennis player who dreams of playing professionally. She has earned an scholarship
into the prestigious Academy that will hopefully set her on her way to tennis glory. There are two ways into the Academy, scholarships or just being filthy rich and buying your way in. At the Academy Maya meets many different people. There’s Cleo, her roommate, who hopes to make it in Golf to support her family in China. Nicole, already a tennis star, who is threatened by Maya. Renee, a swimmer, who’s rich family has sort of dumped her there even though she doesn’t really have much athletic ability and Travis and Jake, sons the of Academy owner. Travis, the golden son being groomed for Football glory and Jake, the bad boy living in his brother’s shadow. I think you get the picture.
Now, these are not the greatest books but I don’t think anyone who picked them up were looking for them to be. They are fun beach reads with not a lot of substance but a whole lot of drama. It turns out that Maya has more to worry about than just her tennis. She also has to contend with possible endorsement deals, internet gossip, jealous rivals and boys’ fickle affection. Life at the Academy is a lot harder than Maya thought it would be. The best thing about Game on and it’s sequel, Love Match is the friendship between Maya, Cleo and Renee. Renee is clearly in the Haves and Maya and Cleo, the Haves-not but they make it work. You don’t always get books with good female friendships. (You don’t really get it in movies or TV for that matter either.) Girls are often rivals for grades, boys, beauty, etc. I really dug the friendship of these girls. They are vastly different. Cleo is a free spirit and a lesbian. Renee is super rich and beautiful and Maya is your average American girl from Buffalo. They are constantly supporting each other and pushing each other forward. They sometimes get jealous of each other but they do always find ways back to each other. Oh and they talk to each other. What a concept! What I don’t really like about the series is the lack of tennis. Maya is determined to make it as a player. It’s her dream but tennis often falls to the back burner as soon as she has an opportunity to pose for an ad campaign or audition for a movie or Travis or Jake start to show interest in her. It’s not until one of those things falls apart that she recommits herself to tennis. Promising to focus on tennis from then on or until, you know, the next thing pops up. Not exactly the best message for young girls.
So basically, if you are looking for a book about girls and sports, this really isn’t it. It definitely has it’s problems but I do think fans of Gossip Girl and the like will like it. At the moment, it’s only the two books. Seles definitely left things open for a third book but I haven’t been able to find any news of a third book coming out. I have to admit that does disappoint me because there are some story lines that would like to see how they unfold but those are the breaks.
Bonus: For more on The Academy, here’s Brian Phillips of Grantland.com’s hilarious review of the series.
When I first read the description of Talon, I thought it sounded very familiar to another Teen series, Firelight by Sophie Jordan. They both feature a protaganist who are dragons or a form of dragons, that can blend in with humans. A human boy love interest, who is also a form of Dragon hunter/slayer and another boy dragon to complete the love triangle. As Talon progresses the similarities start to fade. Not completely, though. Readers of both will see them but it’s not the same.
On Tuesday, the second book in the Bone Season series, The Mime Order comes out. If you have read the other posts you know that Kate and I loved the first book, The Bone Season and a certain character, Warden. So we both were anxiously waiting the sequel. I already had a chance to read The Mime Order. There are a few perks of being a bookseller. Having the opportunity to read books before they are officially released is just one of them. The problem with reading books before the release is that when I’m done, I can’t talk about them because no one else had read them. I know, I know. I’m probably not getting much sympathy out there so I’ll stop complaining. I am very happy that it will finally get to be released so Kate and our cousin Sarah, who suggested The Bone Season to us can finally read about it so we can discuss it. Finally!
So without giving too much away, The Mime Order is a worthy sequel. It opens up, exactly where The Bone Season ends. Paige and the other voyants have escaped Schoel 1. . Knowing what she now knows on who really runs Scion, she can’t just go back to living her life like nothing happened, can she? That’s exactly what Jaxon wants her to do. Soon after she comes back there is a big shake up in the Syndicate and Paige sees this as an opportunity to push for change against Rephaim.
Admittedly, it starts off slow. I feel like as a reader you just have to expect that from a sequel. Paige’s indecision on what to do next and how to motivate the Syndicate against the Rephaim sort of bogs down the pacing but once she formulates a plan and yes Warden finally returns, the book really starts to pick up. A lot and I mean a lot happens in this book and the ending that made me scream for it not to end there! I can not wait for the next book.
SPOILERS AHEAD! IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE WOLVES OF MERCY FALLS BOOKS DO NOT PROCEED! BUT THESE BOOKS ARE TOTALLY AWESOME SO YOU SHOULD READ THEM!
Holly Black is no stranger to Fairies. This is her third foray into the world of the fair folk. She first co-authored the Spiderwick Chronicles with Tony DiTerlizzi and then went solo on Modern Faerie Tales, Tithe, Valiant and Ironside. She knows her fairy mythology. The Darkest Part of the Forest is a return to her fairy roots, so to speak.
Sister and Brother Hazel and Ben live in a strange town of Fairfold, where humans and fairy live side by side. They have sort of agreement where the fairies leave the townspeople alone but can do what they want to the tourists. Nice, right? In the center of the wood, lays a glass casket that has an attractive horned fairy inside, sleeping. Never waking. Both Hazel and Ben are in love with him and one day are going to wake him and save the town.
Hazel knows to fear the fey. They may seem harmless but they are not. She and Ben used to hunt faeries. Ben has a gift for music, blessed and cursed by a fairy when he was a baby. Ben would lull the faires with his music and Hazel would strike them down. The Bard and the Knight. All went well until Ben couldn’t control his gift and got scared. Hazel makes a bargain with the Alderking, who rules the fairies in the forest. If Ben gets a scholarship to a music school in Philadelphia, she’ll give seven years of her life to them. Ben did but things didn’t turn out as planned, as often it does with fairy bargains. Back in Fairfold, Hazel throws herself at boys to distract her from troubles, while Ben desperately tries to escape Fairfold and be normal. Everything changes when the mysterious horned fairy boy is freed from the casket and awakes. Hazel and Ben must finally face all of their secrets and fears and do what they did as kings. Hunt down fairies and save the town.
I liked this book but it wasn’t my favorite. I don’t know how to explain it but it seems to not have the spark of her other books. Or maybe since I loved her last book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown that I just expected more. The characters are all likable. The most likeable is Jack, the changeling boy who is also Ben’s best friend and Hazel’s long time crush. I liked how that Ben is gay but it doesn’t define him. It’s not a obstacle he has to overcome or come to terms with, it’s just a fact and accepted. Or the fact that Jack is a changeling. People just seem to accept him as is, until things start to fall apart of course.
So really the story isn’t about fairies at all but about finding yourself and being honest with yourself and others. In like most novels, the conflicts could have all been avoided if they didn’t keep secrets from themselves but I guess that wouldn’t be much of a story. All and all, it was a good but not great.
2 Women, So Many Books 