If I Have to Be Haunted by Miranda Sun

Expected publication date: September 14th, 2023

Read: August 13th-15th, 2023

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Synopsis

Objectively, perhaps this book deserves a solid 3 stars. But after a month of mostly mediocre reads, I'm feeling a little harsher towards its flaws. (I don't think it helps that I read this book right after The Scarlet Alchemist, which I really enjoyed).

If I Have to Be Haunted is the story of Cara, a girl who can see ghosts, and Zach, her childhood nemesis. Zach gets bitten by a legendary snake, and one of the things about this snake is that there's a chance to resurrect him, but only within the 7 days after his death. Thus, Cara extracts a promise of money from Zach (whose family is loaded) and they go on a quest through the liminal world to find the antidote to his death.

One of the big issues I had with this story throughout was that the world felt poorly-defined, and the plot felt like Stuff Happening more than a connected series of events. Initially I thought that the liminal world was a whole other dimension, kind of like the spirit world in Avatar: the Last Airbender. But apparently that's not what it is, because at one point Cara and Zach call the regular, normal police on someone and that's expected to work. So it is...the real world...but there are also giant plant monsters and glades full of extinct creatures...Okay. I guess. I needed a little more explanation to really understand how that works.

Most of the book is spent in the liminal world (?), with the characters traveling through various "thresholds" that take them to different places. Along the way, Cara and Zach acquire a ghost hunter, Brittany, and we get some very obvious hints that maybe all three of them have grandparents who did a journey very similar to this a long time ago. Outside of that, one of the functions that Brittany serves is to point out that Cara and Zach are into each other, despite their protestations.

Anyways, the way the plot progresses from point to point in the liminal world without an organic ramping up of tension and stakes is one of the things that bothered me about this book. The conflicts mostly felt disconnected and of similar stakes to each other, which made me feel kind of bored. At the same time, there are some tone shifts that feel kind of weird. In one part of the liminal world, they have to face off against a wacky old man cannibal. In another part, there are ghosts whose whole thing is being super creepy and racist. The tone just didn't feel consistent. 

There were some interesting ideas in the liminal world, but I think they could have been executed better and interwoven more successfully. It doesn't help that at the beginning of the story, there's some set-up for some kind of conflict involving ghosts that was apparently all sequel tease. I would have liked to see that conflict come to a head in this book, instead of being left for a sequel, but that's not what happens.

As for the romance. Hm. The romance. The set-up was fine. Cara and Zach have hated each other since kindergarten. Okay, cool, we can work with that. But the problem is...there's very little actual development of the dynamic between them until really far into the book. Like, their dynamic remains almost the same throughout. Something happens. Maybe Zach saves Cara or helps her in some way. They share a Moment of physical closeness or emotional intimacy or something. But then, inevitably, the potential emotional intimacy gets shut down and Cara makes an aloof, acerbic comment. Zach responds in kind. Repeat almost ad nauseam. 

I got really frustrated with the romance and the lack of progression, honestly. If I had liked the way the romance was developing, that could have been a lifeline for me as far as liking this book. But the way that we kept getting the same kinds of moments and the same sequences of moments over and over just got annoying. Cara is convinced Zach doesn't care about her, only the fact that she can maybe resurrect him. Zach thinks Cara is only here for the money, which is not helped by the fact that Cara is verbally insisting that she's only here for the money. It's one type of miscommunication spun out over 70% of the story. Even when we broke out of that cycle and got the eventual fight (and later, the eventual confession), I just didn't care. 

What I would have wanted for the romance would be for Cara and Zach to have to re-evaluate their opinions of each other over the course of their quest. I would have liked more moments where they start to genuinely like and respect each other, moments where they re-evaluate their opinions and realize maybe they were wrong about each other. If we had actual progress in the relationship, followed by some kind of set-back, maybe things like Cara pulling back emotionally and saying “I’m resurrecting you for the money,” at a key point would feel more emotionally impactful. But as it is...I really just did not vibe with their relationship, and every time a supporting character was like "You guys obviously like each other!" I stared into space and questioned my decision to finish this book.

(One a writing note, I thought that we did not need quite so much figurative language referencing snakes. Maybe we could have killed some of those darlings. It felt a bit melodramatic).

That was a lot of negatives. I'm not trying to be overly negative, I just really didn't have a good experience with this book. But even though I think there are some objective flaws here, I think this is a book that some people could really enjoy. A more generous reader than I currently am could certainly have fun with this, and I'm interested to see what Miranda Sun writes in the future.

The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker

 

Expected publication date: October 3rd, 2023

Read: August 11th

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Synopsis

This is my favorite book I've read so far this month. Which is kind of a surprise, considering I hated Keeper of Night, Kylie Lee Baker's debut.

But sometimes people improve! This book, to me, is a massive improvement compared to Keeper of Night. It has quite a few of the same elements - a deeply flawed protagonist who yearns to belong, a focus on an unjust and merciless world, and more than a sprinkle of blood and gore. But here, it really, really worked for me. Maybe it helps that before this I read four really mediocre books, but I enjoyed The Scarlet Alchemist immensely.

The easiest way for me to describe this book is to say that it's A Deadly Education meets Fullmetal Alchemist, with the added note that Kylie Lee Baker was apparently inspired to write it after reading The Poppy War. It's visceral and bloody, but there's also a duck named Durian. It's the story of a girl who wants to burn the world down, but it's also the story of a girl who wants to be wanted.

The Scarlet Alchemist is about Zilan, a self-taught alchemist in an alternate Tang China who dreams of becoming a royal alchemist. Her cousins, Wenshu and Yufei, are her closest companions and her accomplices in her secret and illegal side hustle where she raises the dead. The three of them have been saving and studying for years so that they can one day go to the capital and get work as government officials (or as a royal alchemist, in Zilan's case). Zilan has to fight against classism and prejudice at every step of the way, but she fights tooth and nail to get a position as a royal alchemist.

Meanwhile, gentle prince Li Hong is fending off assassination attempts at every turn, and begs Zilan to resurrect him, if he ends up dead.

I liked this book so much. I don't know where to start. I loved how angry and lonely and determined Zilan was at every step of her journey. I loved how, despite how dark this story is, ultimately Zilan is determined to do whatever she can to make things better and make things right. I think that kept me invested when things could have gotten too grim to bear. There’s a lot of thematic emphasis on how it should be the responsibility of those who have power to change unfair circumstances and improve society. Zilan is constantly frustrated when powerful people are telling her that they can't change or improve the injustices she sees and lives with every day. She's not content to not try. I really liked that about her.

The magic in this book was also really cool. Alchemy uses different kinds of stones to cause various transformations. It felt well-developed and there were some really good set-ups and pay-offs with how Zilan uses alchemy that had me really really excited.

Overall, this is definitely a tense and high-stakes book with a lot of blood and corpses, but also a lot of fire and heart. I really liked it, and I'm looking forward to the next installment. I hope Inkyard Press closing won't impact the publication of the next book too badly.

Content warnings borrowed from Storygraph below cut:

Mini-Review: A Bright Heart by Kate Chenli

Pretty cover!

Expected publication date: October 17th, 2023

Read: August 9th-11th, 2023

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Synopsis

A Bright Heart exactly captures the feeling of watching a kind of cheesy Chinese drama in book form. That's honestly pretty impressive in its own right. That being said, there are some caveats that come with that. The characters are archetypes without a ton of depth, the relationship and character development that does happen is usually pretty sudden, and there's more than one instance of some clunky exposition-by-dialogue. Also the writing is sometimes very pretty, and other times a bit awkward.

But, like, if you want that C-drama experience, this will give you that. It's about a young woman who is given a second chance at her life after the prince she helped become king betrays her. The second time around, she knows who a lot more of her enemies are, and she falls for a different prince. She also gets to look cool and smart in a lot of different scenarios (she is the main character, after all) ranging from outsmarting the princes at an archery competition to showing off her intellect at the king's birthday party.

Also, there is set-up for a sequel, but I personally didn't feel like it was a big cliffhanger of an ending. I feel very content not reading the sequel, so i think this can be read as a standalone.

The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu

 

Expected publication date: August 29th, 2023

Read: August 8th, 2023

Rating: 3/5 stars

Synopsis

The Infinity Particle is the story of a robotics engineer who falls in love with a very handsome, very humanoid robot, and then helps him escape his abusive creator. That is the story in a nutshell. There's...not a lot more to it outside of that.

This is a sweet, romantic story, but certain elements felt rushed or a little underdeveloped. The two leads, Clem and Kye, seemed to fall for each other incredibly quickly compared to the amount of time they had spent together. For the record, I did like their interactions! The way they connected based on the shared experience of having an emotionally abusive parent was nice! But I was surprised to see them declaring their love after what felt like maybe a week in story time.

I also found the ethical implications of AI to be kind of underdeveloped in this story, especially given that this book has received praise for its portrayal of said implications. There were questions about Kye's right to independence because of his burgeoning free will, but they were mostly answered in a pretty straightforward way. He's sentient like a human and he looks like a human, so he should be treated like a human and have human rights. Okay, that's fine, but what about all of the robots who aren't humanoid? Which is like...all of them except Kye? What are their moral and legal rights? What about robots who aren't fully sentient? Do they get any rights? This really isn't touched on.

As for the art, I mostly liked it. It's a pretty limited color palette, mostly pale purples and pastels. The occasional inclusion of other colors becomes more dramatic as a result, which is nice. But I do have to comment on the character designs. As you can see from the cover, Kye is a tall, pointy robot man with a long, pointy face. He has these areas below his cheekbones that are always shaded purple, which makes his cheekbones look really sharp and his face look really angular. I think the purple shading might be a robot indicator thing, and not just a simple shadow, but it looks like shadow shading, so it's really not easy for my brain to read it another way.

In contrast, Clem is short, with a rounder face and a cool, youthful bob. She's 19 in the story, but could easily be a younger teenager. The contrast between the two of them makes their romance a little weird at times. I think Kye is supposed to have a similar experience level to Clem, or even less, because he hasn't seen much of the world, but he does look like a pointy man in his 30s to me, whereas Clem very much looks like a teenager. I think a different visual indicator for Kye's robot-ness might have been better.

Overall, this is a charming story with a lot of cute robots, but not a huge amount of depth. I recommend it to graphic novel enjoyers or anyone looking for a simple, straightforward romance.

Star Splitter by Matthew J. Kirby

 

Publication Date: April 25th, 2023

Read: July 30th, 2023

Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis

Star Splitter is a YA sci-fi story about Jessica, a teenage girl who is traveling via teleportation to a planet light years from Earth in order to help her parents research. She resents her parents for leaving her when she was a kid, and doesn't really want to do any of this. That's one timeline. In the other, Jessica wakes up on the surface of the planet in a crashed lander, accompanied only by another version of herself who seems to be keeping some secrets.

I really enjoyed Star Splitter. It's tense, atmospheric, and pretty existential, all things considered. Teleportation is at the core of the philosophical questions posed by this book. In this world, the way that teleportation works is that your body and memories are scanned, you're put into stasis, and then you're "printed" at your destination from the atom up. This is what allows for two Jessicas to be present in one timeline of the book.

The way teleportation works in this world leads into some interesting issues, like the mind-body dualism required to be okay with letting your initial body be destroyed in favor of your new teleported one. We get intriguing hints into the controversy that exists on Earth, as well. One of the supporting characters is no longer in contact with his father because his father believes him to be dead now that he's teleported.

As for the two Jessicas, are both of them Jessica? Are neither of them Jessica? Over the course of the two timelines, both of them become different people from each other and from pre-teleportation Jessica. This question of identity is interrogated throughout the story, but ultimately, Star Splitter is less interested in easy answers than it is in hard questions. I enjoyed that about it.

While reading, I had a couple of interesting discussions about this version of teleportation with my friends, which was fun to discuss. Would you be willing to teleport if it meant waking up as an exact copy of yourself somewhere else? Et cetera. This book is fun simply for the thoughts it provokes, but it's also fun for the slowly ramping tension and thriller aspects. I definitely recommend it to those who like sci-fi and/or thrillers with a philosophical edge.

A Hundred Vicious Turns by Lee Paige O'Brien

Pretty cover!

Expected Publication Date: September 12th, 2023

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Synopsis

My experience reading this book was a lot like trying to hold onto a handful of sand. No matter what, the sand always trickles away. In much the same way, the things this book promised never quite seemed to materialize, no matter how much I tried to hold onto them. A lot of elements in this book feel half-formed, like I can tell that in the author's head everything's there, but what's on the page just doesn't click for me. Which is a bummer, because I really wanted to like this book.

A Hundred Vicious Turns is a duology-opener as well as the story of Rat, who is gifted with a rare ability to wayfind passages that aren't supposed to (currently) exist. Prior to the beginning of the book, Rat made contact with an otherworldly being in a space between dimensions (or in a separate dimension, maybe - it doesn't matter much, I think) who wanted to spirit them away. Rat turned to classmate Harker for help, but then Rat's mother found out, things went wrong, and Harker now hates Rat, hence the synopsis talking about Rat having to face off against their rival.

That's all backstory. The book actually opens with Rat beginning to attend Bellamy Arts, a magical college with powerful wards. They are hoping that the wards will keep them safe from the otherworldly being who they think is still after them. It turns out that Harker is also going to Bellamy Arts, and has befriended two girls, Jinx and Agatha. Rat immediately decides that Harker is Up To Something and begins blowing off other friend Will (yes, poor Will) to try to figure out what Harker is up to. This involves ingratiating themself with Jinx. Jinx is also the Mysterious New Girl in a school of trust fund babies, even though she actually is just as well-connected as everyone else. (Harker is the only character who actually lacks magical familial connections).

This book starts off pretty slowly, but I was okay with that at first. We were building atmosphere, hinting at backstory, introducing characters. I'm very amenable to a slower-paced story. But then things started to feel circular and kind of boring. It seems like a lot of this book is Rat being anxious in their room, going out to meet someone (often Jinx or the rest of the group), there's a little bit of spooky other dimension stuff, the characters might discuss the thing they're trying to find, and then everyone goes back to their rooms and the cycle starts anew. There's a significant chunk of this book where it feels like the plot is just treading water.

(Also, this is a magic school story where the characters literally never go to class, which is a pet peeve of mine. If it's a school story, I want to SEE the school parts! It's not enough for them to just be on a campus.)

And again, I could have been okay with the plot taking a backseat if the writing had been beautiful or the character interactions had been standout. I don't remember there being a ton of plot in the Raven Cycle, but Maggie Stiefvater's character writing is so good that it carried even when nothing is happening. That wasn't the case here, at least not for me. All of the characters had the potential to be interesting, but it felt like we didn't spend enough time on developing any of them. Even Rat felt kind of flat after the millionth anxiety-ridden "Rat [did x} and hated themself for it" we got in the narration - not to mention the numerous times Rat starts typing out texts to people and then deletes them. I really wanted more of Agatha, or more interactions with Harker that didn't just boil down to him and Rat glaring at each other.

On a writing note, I think this book also had the somewhat rare problem of over-relying on pronouns? Since the four main characters mostly use different pronouns (except Agatha and Jinx, who are both she/her), a lot of the time the narration refrained from restating character names more often than I personally prefer. At one point, there was a half page of conversation between Rat and Harker at the end of a chapter where Rat's name is used twice and Harker is only referred to via pronouns. It may not sound like a big deal, but it did affect my comprehension, and it would easily be fixed by just using the characters' names a bit more often.

By the time I was halfway through the book, I was starting to lose steam and I began to get increasingly frustrated with the pacing. Sometimes it felt like the characters would just stand around and take forever to make a decision; other times the action and resolution of things felt weirdly fast. Someone who was still enjoying reading the latter half of the book probably wouldn't have been as bothered as I was by these things, I fully admit.

I do think this book has an interesting premise and is tackling some kind of interesting ideas. The whole premise of Rat and Harker's dynamic is that they currently "hate" each other because they used to be so close, and Rat is constantly dealing with the fact that part of them still defaults to Harker when they need someone to talk to, etc etc. There were some genuinely interesting moments between them that made me wish I liked the way their backstory had been set up more, because I was pretty meh on the execution of it all. Additionally, the dynamic of Harker not having the same connections everyone else does and having to deal with assumptions that he MUST be using people because his family isn't rich was intriguing, although there could have been more exploration of it in my opinion (Give me the full Adam from the Raven Cycle experience, c'mon!). 

Plus I like otherworldly/interdimensional stuff in general, combining it with a magic school setting seems sick, and Agatha and Jinx both seem like very interesting characters in their own right. 

While this book fell flat for me, I think there's probably an audience out there for it. I can see some people loving this book and being able to look past the flaws that prevented me, personally, from loving it. I did enjoy the concepts in this book and it was cool to read a book with a nonbinary main character and a trans love interest (even if I ultimately wished that Agatha or Harker had been the main character). 

Oh well. I hope someone likes this book. I didn't.

I'm in my Martha Wells era

City of Bones IS on here twice, thanks for noticing

For a summation of what is likely to be a pretty wordy post, just look to the title. It says it all.

(Basically, this is a little retrospective on my Martha Wells journey, since she's the author I am definitively the most obsessed with at the moment)

Sing Me to Sleep by Gabi Burton

  

Sing Me to Sleep is the story of Saoirse Sorkova, a teenage siren who lives a secret existence in the kingdom of Keirdre, which is cut off from the outside world by a magical barrier enacted by the king. Sirens are feared for their blood lust and mind control powers, and the king hates non-fae creatures in general, so Saoirse has spent the last several years pretending to be a normal fae who lacks an elemental affinity and training to one day become a soldier or enforcer (whatever pays the most). She also indulges her blood lust on the side, and for the last several months she's been working for an assassination organization called the Raze, which basically carries out the petty grudges of the nobility against each other. When she graduates her Delta training at the top of her class, she's offered a position among the fae prince's personal guard. And when she accepts, she begins to run into trouble as the royal family start to investigate the murders that she's been committing on behalf of the Raze. At the same time, she's trying to unravel the mystery of who's blackmailing her and threatening her adopted younger sister.

And there's a prince, so obviously she's going to start falling for the prince. You saw that coming, right?

The thing about this book is that it is extremely YA. That is not a value judgment on the quality of the writing. (I am saving the judgments on the quality of the writing for later in the review). It just means that this book is packed with YA tropes, and if you don't like reading very traditional, tropey YA, you probably won't like this book.

For a brief run-down of what I mean with the YA tropes:

• Saoirse has a sweet and innocent twelve-year-old sister who she would do anything to protect, even killing people for money. 
• Saoirse's adoptive parents run a mill, but the royal family prevents them from charging a reasonable price for their product, so they rely on the money that Saoirse makes from being a serial killer/assassin, even though they don't approve of her being a serial killer/assassin.
• Saoirse has secret, forbidden magic, and to make things worse, her secret, forbidden magic is because she's a secret, forbidden creature.
• And as a bonus: Before we ever meet her, Saoirse has already trained and become a super competent warrior, and she's really good with crossbows, apparently.

Are these things bad? No. They're just tropes. But for me personally, these tropes don't tend to bode well. I enjoy a lot of YA books, but the YA books I usually enjoy aren't the ones that utilize this combination of tropes, and Sing Me to Sleep wasn't an exception to this.

I had a mixed reading experience with this book. On the one hand, I was entertained enough to keep reading. On the other hand, some of my entertainment was coming from rolling my eyes at the book, not rolling my eyes...with the book. You know? We started off with tropes I don't really enjoy, and then Saoirse began making bad decisions at a truly impressive rate. I guessed one twist, but there were a few others thrown in that felt a little silly.

The very end was good. The very end intrigued me for the sequel more than anything that preceded it, to be honest.

But even with the ending being intriguing, this only nets a 3/5 with me. There was potential here, but it didn't land for me, and I think the execution being what it is always would have hindered my enjoyment.

To sum it all up, I can excuse serial killing, but I can't excuse being BAD at serial killing and getting away with it because everyone around you is even worse at investigating murders.

That's the spoiler-free review. Now it's time to get nitty-gritty and devolve into disorganized ranting.

July/Mid-Year Wrap-Up

I've already done a July reading update that covers most of what I read in July, but I did squeeze in a couple more books after finishing the dreaded ACOMAF, so I thought I might as well discuss those and then do sort of a late mid-year wrap-up of my current reading stats.

After finishing ACOMAF, I read The Harbors of the Sun, and then I picked up Star Splitter by Matthew J. Kirby. 

Crash-landed on a desolate planet lightyears from Earth, sixteen-year-old Jessica Mathers must unravel the mystery of the destruction all around her--and the questionable intentions of a familiar stranger.

I really enjoyed Star Splitter. It's a tense young adult sci-fi survival/mystery story that poses some interesting philosophical questions, and it was a pretty quick read. I want to do a full review of it at some point, so I'll leave it at that for now.

And then I finished out August by rereading Fugitive Telemetry. I didn't want it to get jealous of the other Murderbot novellas because it's only been read twice, so obviously I had to read it a third time.

Obviously.

Anyway, onto the mid-year wrap-up.