Why are y’all yearning for a brother so much😭😭 mine has an obsession with eyeliner but he never bothers to buy his own so everytime I put on makeup I have to beg and bribe and threaten him to get MY eyeliner back and most of the times it’s dry or empty😩 that’s not the only thing either, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the chocolate I keep inside the fridge. Once it’s in there, it’s no longer mine. Even though I brought it with MY money it’s like a constant screaming match in my house
1. I’m happy to share my eyeliner. Only thing I love more than a brother is a brother who breaks gender stereotypes
2. I don’t like chocolate he can have it
I can give you one of my sisters. One of them can cook well and the other has an obsessive need to keep the house clean. You can take both if you want to :)
One thing I love about gift exchanges is that it’s a great way to get the content I love reading. So here are the sibling love stories I’ve been gifted over the years.
<3 Thank you to all of the authors listed, you’re wonderful!
Shooting the Breeze by Cavaticarose / @cavaticarose
Garrus tries to mend things with his sister with a fun outing. Solana's just worried about her little brother. Rated T.
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Team Vakarian by Wafflesrock / @wafflesrock16
A look at Garrus and Solana’s sibling relationship and childhood. Rated G.
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And Then There Were Two by Kahika / @camalyng
From the moment he's born, Garrus is never alone. There's no Vakarian without... - Rated T
And by that I mean: The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu!
You don’t have to be a music fan to know the name Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In fact, you probably have no idea what in the hell a Sonata in K K331 Third Movement even is until you hear it. Then you’ll know it immediately. In fact, you can know nothing about Mozart but still be familiar with many of his pieces. Maybe you had the misfortune to be forced to watch the movie Amadeus* in your German class (a movie that is probably not appropriate to show public high school students even if it’s dubbed in German) or have seen the 30 Rock parody episode where, instead of writing music, they create a porn video game. My point is: you know Mozart. Everyone knows Mozart, especially kids who were made to learn piano. Or, in my case, piano AND violin**. The main reason for that is, well, public domain, but also because Mozart is the shit.
I mean, I’m more of a Beethoven girl myself, and I have a lot of love for the 19th century Russians (Tchaikovsky and The Five FTW!), but, seriously, if you learn anything about music, you learn about Mozart. And, as someone semi-fluent in German, who has dedicated most of her life to learning German, you have no choice but to learn about the greats of German music. Yes, Austrians count as part of German music. As I’ve mentioned before, there was no “Germany” until 1871, and I’m including any and all native German speakers as part of German music. Austrians speak German. Kind of. I mean, 99.9% of my German teachers were either from southern Germany or Austria, so I may have a bit of a bias...though my main bias is against Swiss German which literally is not German stop calling it that, Switzerland!
What were we talking about?
Oh. Yeah. Mozart.
You know he had a sister, right? One who was a musical prodigy in her own right, who used to play for the courts of Europe alongside her little brother, right?
No?
Yeah, you probably don’t. Because back in the 18th century, women weren’t allowed to be composers or musical prodigies. Once they grew up, they got married, had children and were subsequently erased from history while the men in their family achieve immortality.
Meet Maria Anna Mozart, known by her family as Nannerl.
The Kingdom of Back is Nannerl’s story.
Salzburg! 1759! Nannerl Mozart is only eight, but is desperate to please her father and prove her mettle as a musician. The Mozart family is in a perpetual state of one-missed-paycheck-away-from-homelessness, and Nannerl’s stage dad, Leopold, hopes to cash in on the whole child prodigy thing. Unfortunately, Nannerl’s first demonstration for a court musician goes wrong when she’s distracted by her baby brother, Wolferl. That night, Nannerl dreams of a beautiful kingdom full of music, and of a beautiful boy with glowing blue eyes.
As she gets older, Nannerl is as shocked as her parents when Lil Wolferl shows a knack for music. She’s horrified to discover that she feels jealous of her baby brother, who idolizes her. One night, Nannerl and Wolferl are woken up by a strange light coming from their music room. When they investigate, they find the beautiful boy from Nannerl’s dream, in the flesh. He steals Nannerl’s music notebook then promptly jumps out the window.
Like so:
Complete with broken glass.
Anyway, the next time Nannerl sees the boy, she’s out in Salzburg with her brother on a shopping trip when she opens the door to a shop’s storage room, only to find it leads to the magical kingdom she’d seen in her dream. The boy, Hyacinth, wants Nannerl’s help to reclaim his throne. In exchange, he will make sure Nannerl gets her greatest wish: to be remembered forever.
Shortly after, Nannerl and Wolferl are called to Vienna to play for the Emperor and Empress. Wolferl puts on quite the show, charming everyone in the room and even proposing to the Emperor and Empress’s youngest daughter. It’s after this that Nannerl and Wolferl’s parents decide to take them on a massive tour of Europe. In the long, dull carriage rides between destinations, Nannerl and Wolferl come up with a name and origin story for Hyacinth and the magical kingdom that they saw: The Kingdom of Back. As the tour continues and Wolfer’s fame rises, Nannerl worries more and more about being forgotten - that her fate is sealed: she will never be a composer and a musician, instead she will become a wife and mother and nothing more than a footnote in history.
But the Kingdom of Back is more than just a fantasy story shared between two bored kids. Hyacinth’s magic has an effect on our world, causing calamities and illness. As Nannerl struggles to cope with her conflicting emotions, Hyacinth starts to seem less like a fairy prince and more like something sinister. But his promises of fame and immortality to Nannerl are so very, very tempting. I mean, wouldn’t you be a little jealous if your baby brother was an 18th century child rockstar?
(Ok, the throwing of underthings may not have happened to Mozart, but it definitely happened to Liszt so that episode of the Simpsons isn’t entirely inaccurate).
If you come into The Kingdom of Back expecting it to be something like Marie Lu’s other novels - namely, action packed sci-fi/fantasy serieses - you are bound to be disappointed. The Kingdom of Back is unlike all of Lu’s other novels - it is a standalone historical fantasy dedicated to someone who, in spite of her talent, was relegated to the dustbin of history just because she was a girl. I adore Marie Lu’s books (the Legend trilogy is probably one of the best YA trilogies ever - if you haven’t read it, stop everything and do that now, please) and I’m also a fan of music, 18th century Germans, and 18th century German musical composers so I wasn’t at all put off knowing that The Kingdom of Back wasn’t going to be like her other books. It was more like “holy shit, Marie Lu is wrote a book about Mozart’s sister, put it in my brain immediately, please.” The Kingdom of Back is just wonderful, you guys. Lu beautifully captures what it’s like to have a sibling that you love, but also envy. Lu’s writing is lyrical and enchanting without crossing into purple prose territory. Music can be difficult to capture in prose, but Lu manages to do so without alienating the reader with too many weird technical musical terms that would be off putting to the average reader (hi!). The way time works in the book is weird - you’re never quite sure when you are at any given time or how old anyone else, unless you have the timeline of the Mozart children’s grand tour open while you read. Months can go by in a single sentence which can be a bit jarring, but the book manages to condense a decade into 300 pages. I’d rather have 300 pages and a few pacing issues than way too much detail within 900 pages.
My absolute favorite aspect of this book is Nannerl herself. Nannerl, as an 18th century girl, is bound by 18th century constraints - she’s not allowed to compose openly, as herself. She’s not allowed to talk back. She’s expected to look after her brother, as her position as older sister makes her mom-in-training. Nannerl is a good and proper 18th century lady, and she hates it. She hates the limits placed on her by society, but at the same time, she’s desperate to please her parents and earn their praise. Because what else can she do? It’s the shit situation women have experienced since time immaterial: conform, or else. Nannerl may seem meek and submissive compared to the likes of June from Legend or Emika from Warcross, but make no mistake, she is just as strong as they are. Her strength lies in her quiet resilience. Nannerl can’t exactly fight back against the system the way June and Emika do, so she rebels in other, quieter ways. She maintains eye contact for her father, waiting for him to break first or stays quiet when she’s expected to voice her praises. She creates a whole fantasy world in which to take refuge. Nannerl’s way of fighting back is subtle because it has to be.
Unfortunately, it takes only a click of a Wikipedia link to know how Nannerl’s story ends. It is bittersweet and something that will definitely strike a chord (pun absolutely intended) with any girl or woman who reads The Kingdom of Back.
RECOMMENDED FOR: Any girl or woman who has ever seen her accomplishments ignored or passed over in favor of a man’s, anyone with a sibling they’re just a little bit jealous of, music fans, Mozart fans, Marie Lu fans, anyone in the mood for a gorgeously-written YA historical fantasy.
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Haydn aficionados, Leopold Mozart, children who were forced to learn piano, men’s rights activists, people who would mistake an 18th century girl’s quiet resilience for weakness.
RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020 - hey, I promise cromulent reviews, not “on time” reviews or “reviews in advance of publication.”
RATING: 4/5
MOZART RATING:
BEETHOVEN FANS, WHEN ENCOUNTERED BY MOZART FANS:
You can hear the 5th symphony with every haw.
*Please remember the movie Amadeus is also a historical fantasy - Salieri and Mozart were peers and were most likely friends, if not friendly. Also, Salieri had like, 8 kids and at least 1 mistress, he wasn’t some pious weirdo like he’s portrayed in the movie. I mean, he was Italian. F. Murray Abraham was awesome in it, though. My point is, don’t get your history from movies. It’s a bad idea.
Get it from Wikipedia, like a normal person.
That soundtrack, though. If you want an intro to Mozart’s music, that is a good way to go.
**Ahahahaha I was, then and now, and will forever remain, terrible at both.
When we were kids, my sister had a little goldfish-shaped cheese cracker she kept in her jacket pocket that she named Timmy and she kept it in there for like two weeks and "fed" it sugar packets she swiped from a coffee stand and my parents couldn't get her to throw it away because she was emotionally attached to it until one day it got crushed while inside of her pocket and it made a crummy mess and my mom was disappointed having to do laundry and that was the end of Timmy the Pocket Goldfish 🐠
