August Wrap-Up

 I don't actually know what people usually say for monthly wrap-ups, but I read 11 books in August and liked most of them. My favorites were probably The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin and The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison and my least favorite has got to be The Infinity Courts by Akemi Bowman.

Let's get started!

 

 1) A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin 

Date Finished: 8/3/21

Rating: ★★★★☆

This month was when I finally got started reading the Earthsea books, which I've been meaning to do for a while. A Wizard of Earthsea is a great introduction to the series—where better to begin than the beginning? This book really deals with Ged developing into the man he is throughout the other books. He continues to grow and change but this book is his big coming of age, coming to face himself arc. It's good! 

 

2) The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin

Date Finished: 8/3/21

Rating: ★★★★★

Right after finishing A Wizard of Earthsea I moved on to Tombs of Atuan. I ended up loving it more than the first book and I think it's my overall favorite of the series. That being said, as I'm writing I've just finished The Other Wind and it was really good as well and just such a good conclusion to the series that it's hard to say. Anyways, I feel like Tenar's emotional journey and arc stands out from Ged's and Arren's to me because her upbringing and the things she has to unlearn and reject are so different. Tenar as a character is what makes this book stand out to me for sure. 

 

3) The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Date Finished: 8/8/21

Rating: ★★★★★

I greatly enjoyed this book. It has everything you could want from fantasy: political and courtly intrigue, an abused and downtrodden youth coming into his own as emperor, really nice clothes, hard-to-pronounce names, and an inconveniently located pronunciation guide at the back of the book. I really felt the detail and care Addison put into her worldbuilding so that it doesn't feel generic. The names are confusing at first but they do have a consistent logic to them. I also like that the elves still differentiate between formal and informal personal pronouns (I/we, thou/you, etc). I liked Maia a lot as a character and was pleased to see him slowly winning over the people around him and learning how to be emperor. The political problems in this book actually remind me of Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore quite a bit, which definitely isn't a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. 

 

4) The Farthest Shore by Ursula K Le Guin

Date Finished: 8/10/21

Rating: ★★★★☆

I think it was hard for this book to follow in the footsteps of Tombs of Atuan. Is it still good? Yes. Is it critical to the overall story arc of Earthsea? Yes. Do I like Arren as much as I like Tenar or Ged? No, not really. But it's still a good Earthsea book, and there's a lot to like. That being said I don't really get what exactly makes Arren the destined king of Havnor, but it's alright. He's alright. 

 

5)  Tehanu by Ursula K Le Guin

Date Finished: 8/11/21

Rating: ★★★★☆

Tehanu starts off a bit slower than the other books preceding but I think that's justified. Le Guin was trying to write a different kind of book about Earthsea and I'm really glad she showed us the other side of things—the world experienced by women and the powerless. It's simultaneously a little grittier and a little more domestic, but no less interesting and affecting. And although I wasn't really expecting it, I was happy to see Tenar and Ged get together.  

6) The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

Date Finished: 8/17/21

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This book took me a couple days to finish. I've been trying to read Sanderson to understand the hype and I gotta say, I'm still not understanding it. It's just weird to me how many adoring fans he has if this is what his writing it like? Not that it's bad! It isn't bad. Well, some parts are bad. The way Tindwyll was written is an absolute crime. The Allomancy is cool, the ancient conspiracy is very interesting, and I like Vin even though she's kind of a mass murderer. 

People say Brandon Sanderson is very good at worldbuilding, and I'm wondering if Mistborn just isn't the series where that shows through the most. The magic system is the coolest part as far as I'm concerned. The world itself feels very...kind of boring and indistinct. I like some of the characters but they're rarely convincingly three-dimensional and there were moments when they would have interactions that didn't feel justified. As I said, I do not like how Tindwyll was written. Generally speaking, I'm tired of Sanderson only being able to write one well-rounded female character per book. Does he get better at that? Also some of the conflicts stretched out kind of long. I think the first book had slightly better pacing?

 

7) Woven in Moonlight by Isabel Ibanez

Date Finished: 8/18/21

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I don't have a lot to say about this book. It was just kind of boring and disappointing. I keep hoping these non-European inspired YA fantasy books will be good (and some of them absolutely are!), but some of them are just the same old same old overused YA tropes. 

 The premise of this book is that our main character has lived her life as the decoy to the heir of the government that was overthrown ten years ago. The new king summons her to be his bride and she's planning to do anything she can to take him down, but instead she makes some friends and learns that the previous goverment was actually Bad and Oppressive! She decides that the girl she's been pretending to be all her life wouldn't actually make a good queen. There are some weird conversations where the main character is told to acknowledge her privilege when she's actually been in a position of powerlessness for more than half her life at this point...? Like how is she still privileged?

Anyways, the interactions between the main character and her love interest were super boring. Poorly written snarky heroines really suck the life out of me. And then we have this weird almost-love triangle with another character (who I actually liked much better than the guy we're apparently supposed to be rooting for), along with some contrived betrayals, and...I don't know, this book just wasn't as fun as I was hoping it would be. I know some people love it and that's great. But if you're going to have a romance, I need to be able to buy into the romance. And honestly there was very little I could buy into in this book. The worldbuilding and plot weren't much better than the romance.

 

8) Message Not Found by Dante Medema

Date Finished: 8/19/21

Rating: ★★★★★

This book isn't out yet~! I read an ARC of it that I acquired through work. The main character's best friend dies in a car crash and the main character builds a chatbot of her friend because she can't cope with the loss. She ends up learning some unexpected things about her best friend and making some new connections with the people around her.

I liked this book a lot. I don't read a lot of contemporary YA fiction or contemporary fiction in general, but I like this book. The portrayal of the friendship between the main character and her best friend felt very real & relatable & high school to me. Even though I never had a friendship exactly like these two characters, it rang true. I felt like the portrayal of grief and the messiness it leaves behind was also very real. And the ending made me tear up, I'm not gonna lie. 

9) Swan Lake and the Quest for the Three Kingdoms by Rey Terciero

Date Finished: 8/19/21 

Rating: ★★★★☆

Another ARC! I couldn't find the cover on Google. This is a middlegrade graphic novel where the heirs of three ballet-themed kingdoms team up to try to find a cure for Princess Odette's curse. During the day she's a swan and during the night she's a girl.

This is definitely a cute graphic novel with great art, but it tries to promote a message of self-acceptance that honestly fell a little flat for me. It's not terrible, just a little clumsy. Overall I would still recommend it! It's a sweet story and I'll be on the lookout for any sequels.

 

10) The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury 

Date Finished: 8/21/21

Rating: ★★★★☆

This is a middlegrade book about a girl who wants more than anything to study music at the same school her mother attended, even though her grandmother doesn't approve. She ends up getting into the school based on a mix-up of names and is only allowed to stay on a probational basis.

I enjoyed this book. I don't think I would say it's one of my favorites, but it was a fun read and I might read the sequel when it comes out. One detail that really irritated me is that Orpheus is referred to as the Greek god of music at one point. This book is set in an alternate universe where music has always been magical, so maybe in this universe Orpheus just IS the god of music, but it bugged me because there's already a Greek god of music and it's...Apollo. Right? They could have just referenced Apollo instead, or one of the muses, or just not called Orpheus a god.

 

11) The Infinity Courts by Akemi Bowman

Date Finished: 8/23/21

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Yikes. The best thing I can say about this book is that I read it for free. I am so glad I did not buy this book.

The premise sounds good: Teenager Nami dies on her way to a party and ends up in an afterlife ruled by the evil and all-powerful AI Ophelia, who acts as a virtual assistant in the real world. The afterlife is ruled by evil Siri? Cool! But no, it isn't as cool as you would hope. After dying, Nami quickly winds up recruited into a group of rebels fighting back against the AIs, who they call Residents. I don't know what the reasoning is for why they're called Residents. It sounds really dumb. I can only assume Akemi Bowman wanted a cool name to call her AIs

Anyways, the rebel encampment ("the colony") is located in one of the four kingdoms of the afterlife, Victory, which is apparently where AIs go to shop and attend parties. Since they can't create anything they rely on sad, mind-controlled humans to produce new stuff for them to consume. Unlike the other rebels, Nami sucks at controlling her consciousness in order to affect the world around her, but she can make herself look like an AI, so she becomes a spy. But (spoiler alert) her role as a spy is absolutely pointless because the prince of Victory has been controlling a spy among the rebels since the very beginning. This leads to a love triangle which is not a love triangle but is very stupid. As a rebel this guy tells Nami she has to kill all of the AI to protect humanity in the afterlife, and then as a prince he gets mad at her for trying to kill him and his family...which she wouldn't have tried to do if not for him convincing her earlier...God, this book makes my head hurt.

I was also annoyed that the fact that AIs can casually make their way into the afterlife isn't explored. Is Ophelia simultaneously doing people's Google searches while ruling her kingdom? What is that like? Could human souls do the same journey backwards to visit the living digital realm? What if Nami could connect with her family by doing that?

At the beginning of the book, Nami is preparing to officially confess her feelings to Jamie, who is her best friend and crush of several years. Don't worry, though, because he never appears in a scene and Nami forgets he exists pretty quickly. I know nothing about Jamie except that he likes to put silly names on playlists. I don't understand what the point of including him was if Nami is just going to have a semi-evil AI elf prince love interest anyways.

I'm not planning to read the sequel but I will check out its reviews.

So there we have it: all the books I read in August. It was a lot of books! I liked most of them, luckily. So far in September I have finished the Earthsea books and read A Winter's Song by Christelle Dabos, Truly Devious by Kathleen Johnson, and Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao. I'm having a good time so far...except for having started The Hero of Ages today.