Tag: fantasy

Nettle & Bone

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

Nelson Mandela once said that it always seems impossible until it’s done. This book is a fairy tale about an impossible adventure in which princess Marra seeks to help her sister. The sister is stuck into a forced marriage with a king who is torturing her. He is protected by an immortal and almighty fairy godmother and other less visible forces, like an army, and is untouchable. Marra will start a decades long journey where he’ll find support by people and entities with magical powers. Will they succeed on time? After all, a recurring theme in the book is that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

If I were to compare it to other books, Nettle & Bone is reminiscent of Uprooted by Naomi Novik and the first Witcher novel.

Nettle & Bone is an excellent little fantasy with a simple idea and a complex magical system based on millenias of superstition and fairytales. It’s written in a young adult style but covers adult themes like domestic violence. Not sure how to classify it. Fantasy, I guess.

5*/5

Night of the Dragon by Julie Kagawa, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

Yumeko is a half-human half-fox teenage girl, gifted with the magic of illusion and trickery. She has the mission to bring a powerful scroll to safety. The scroll grants its owner a single wish, granted by the almighty dragon god, who can only be summoned once every 1,000 years. It was used to build or ruin empires, to give immortality, and to trap immortal creatures. However, over the last 2 books, the scroll was taken by an evil and long undead blood mage who wants to open the gates of hell. Yumeko and her friends will try to get it back.

This book is a LOTR-style romantasy where the entire magical system is inspired by Japanese folklore. No elves, or even kobolds. I didn’t tag the previous two books as romantasy because the love story was relatively insignificant and not out of the ordinary for fantasy books. However, this last part is all about characters doing things for each-other out of love and care. Yumeko is so nice that she can melt the hearts of demons.

5/5. Night of the Dragon is slightly less appealing to readers who aren’t into romantasy because some moments are cringe. I think the romance is tolerable.

The print quality is great and the series got its own shelf for now.

The real question for me is if I should keep reading Julie Kagawa. I’m not sure yet. It was a nice detour from the epic fantasy I usually read but another detour might be too much.

Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

Yumeko is a half-fox teenager who wields illusion magic. She has fox ears, a fox tail, and is otherwise human. She starts on a long journey to fulfill a long-awaited prophecy about the end of an era. She would need to hide her non-human nature because most of the creatures around her wouldn’t consider her worthy if they saw the ears. Her main magic is her kindness.

The book is written in the POV style, with 3 different characters. Yumeko and Tatsumi are quite pleasant to read, and the third one shall not be named. The book is qualified as Young Adult but I’d say it’s not too juvenile.

I want more of it.

5/5

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Clay Cooper is a retired mercenary, part of a group of 5+1 named Saga. His band was once the best group, known for defeating countless monsters, even a dragon. The plus one is the bard, which Saga could not keep alive, so they had to replace him or her so many times that the band members don’t even remember the individuals. Until one day they met an undead bard.

This book shares a world with another 2 series I recently read – it has the similar swarm of different fantasy creatures from Orconomics and Legends & Lattes. It has bands and heroes, harvesting monsters for profit. But it also has the epic-ness of LOTR (and its overall general structure), and the drama of Ready Player One.

Most characters both positive and negative (who aren’t bards) are nearly immune to anything the author can throw at them. This makes the story more like a fairytale than an actual fantasy. But it’s cool and somewhat balanced. A reader should particularly like it if they’ve not read any of the books I mentioned earlier.

5/5, I like it and recommend it but you need to have zero expectations of realism. Realistic it is not.

Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

Viv is a powerful orc who wants to be a mercenary but somehow ends up in the bookstore business.

Legends & Lattes showed us Viv at the end of her career, tired of killing, and really motivated to run her own business. Bookshops & Bonedust shows us Viv at the beginning of her career, as motivated to run her own business as the other Viv. Why did she ever become a mercenary? That’s unclear. She can do it in book 0.1, there’s no point to pursue a career of head cutting somewhere between book 0.1 and book 1. Her motivation is unclear and her path is circular. We’ve now seen the beginning at the end, and they are the same point.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree is a bubblegum, the easiest type of books to read. I struggled to reach the end but I appreciate the sweetness of the story, so for the purpose of this blog, it gets the middle score – 4/5.