Fantasy Book Reviews & Illustrations

Books! I write book reviews and make art inspired by what I'm reading

[thebookbandwagon]

Favourite Books I Read in 2019

My blog is still a mess so not all the reviews I’ve posted this year are books I read this year so if you’re wondering why not all the books I’ve given glowing reviews to are on this list, that’s probably why. Here’s my list and summary of my favourites out of all the books I read for the first time in 2019, in no particular order:

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan – I pitch this series as what Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them should’ve been. It’s an adult fantasy series about a woman who’s a naturalist living in a world that’s similar to Victorian England, only there are dragons. And she makes it her job to study them. Each book covers a different adventure she goes on to study dragons, sometimes in the mountains, in rainforests, at sea… I’ve only read the first two in this series so far but I’m eager for more

Lessons From a Dead Girl by Jo Knowles – contemporary hard-hitting young adult book about a girl and her childhood best friend. The main character experienced child on child sexual abuse and it’s only as she gets older that she begins to realise how much it’s affected her and she starts putting together some things about her friend that she couldn’t put together as a child. It discusses very difficult topics (check the warnings if you need to because there’s a lot here) in an accessible way with the main characters feeling very realistic and incredibly flawed

How Not To Be a Boy by Robert Webb – autobiography of a British comedian/actor that’s a combination of his life story plus his thoughts on toxic masculinity and how both men and women can benefit from feminism. Also talks about grief, abuse, unhealthy coping mechanisms, his bisexuality, and how much of a dick he used to be. Very funny, witty, insightful, nuanced, and, at times, sad (it finishes on a happy note though). Highly highly recommend the audiobook – it’s the author reading it and his voice is absolutely fantastic. I’m so glad I gave this book a shot on a whim because it’s one that stays with you

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend – 1st in a middle-grade fantasy series that’s also widely enjoyed by adults. It’s about a girl who discovers a magical world and has to compete in various trials to be accepted into an elite society. Very fun and imaginative and whimsical but its reception probably suffers from the inevitable comparisons to Harry Potter (though saying that, it is the series that comes the closest to the magical feeling of the early HP books)

Down Among the Sticks and Stones by Seanan McGuire – Book #2 in the Wayward Children series. This one’s about the twins Jack and Jill who go through a door and find themselves in a fantasy land that’s like a cross between the worlds of Frankenstein and Dracula. Love the complicated sibling dynamics in this one and the darkness of the world they’re in. It reads like a dark fairy tale with their relationship at the heart of it and feels like a bridge between YA and adult fiction

Captive Prince trilogy by C. S. Pacat – Slow burn adult political fantasy M/M enemies to friends to lovers about two princes. One of them was betrayed and was given to the other prince for use as a pleasure slave. Laurent isn’t interested in using Damon like that but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t treat him terribly to start with (and not without good reason). Advise checking the warnings for this one since the 1st book in particular has a lot

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff – Adult fantasy series about a girl who’s sworn vengeance on those that wronged her family and joins an elite assassin training school. Lots of violence, action, complicated relationships, and subtle magic. Also has a snarky talking shadow cat companion. Overall pretty dark but there are bits of humour throughout. Phenomenal plot climax. The writing style is highly stylised which can put some people off though

[ekho-ekho-ekho]

I’ve started reading Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series and I’m starting to think that Camorr is like the Florida of the City-States - except that any reports that may circulate with regards to “Camorr Man” are more often than not just the Misadventures of Locke Lamora in a Variety of Silly Hats. 

“Camorr Man Spends Entire Morning Being Strangled in Hopes of Attracting Lucrative Business Opportunity”

“Camorr Man Calls Literal Wizard an Asshole - Kills His Pet Bird”

“Climbing Down 100-Foot Trellis After Taking an Emetic Honestly Camorr Man’s Best Option Given the Circumstances”

“Camorr Man Lucky He Wasn’t Devoured by Giant Spiders After Nearly Drowning in Barrel of Horse Piss”

“Camorr Man Fakes Assassination Attempt in Order to Steal Man’s Pants”

“Camorr Man Punches Old Lady in the Face - Jumps out Fiftieth Story Window - Claims it was ‘Really Big Bird’“

[thebookbandwagon]

[video] I kind of like the way this one turned out, even if it is a lot more abstract than I usually go for. Made this after reading My Dark Vanessa and wanted to make an illustration that captured leaves in red hair. 

[thebookbandwagon]

My Dark Vanessa book review

Book summary:

Hard-hitting adult contemporary standalone

Narrative flits back and forth between the past (15 year old Vanessa having a relationship with her 42 year old teacher) and the present (Vanessa in her thirties being forced to begin to confront the aftermath of it)

Unreliable narrator. It’s easy as the reader to spot young Vanessa romanticising things and see how warped her perspective has become. This relationship impacts her whole life and has devastating consequences on her psychology and success throughout her teenage and adult life

Nothing is neat and clear cut. Vanessa is no convenient victim, nor would she even call herself a victim. She has no desire to come forward, often doesn’t recognise the abuse as abuse, and ends up being complicit in some dubious things herself

Very much about grey areas and shades of morality, touches on collective responsibility and wilful ignorance too

Feels incredibly realistic

TW for grooming, statutory rape and dub-con, gaslighting

[my video review] My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is not a book that’s easily stomached. It doesn’t hold your hand, it doesn’t tell you want to think, it just tells you the story as it is and leaves you to take what you will from it.

One of things it does so incredibly well is how Vanessa’s story is told. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a novel that has such a vivid picture of someone who is undeniably a victim (even though she’d deny it) who is also in no way a convenient victim. It would be easy to make Vanessa the heroine of the story, searching for justice. There’d be nothing necessarily wrong with that story, but it’s not Vanessa’s story.

This story is very much about the grey areas that exist within decision making, morality, and people. Nothing is easily resolved, no one is 100% innocent or 100% a monster, and the plot doesn’t fall in line with what a lot of people would expect from a book that deals with this type of content. How events transpire and how it impacts Vanessa’s life is what makes it such a disturbing read because it feels so real and believable.

Another thing it really doesn’t hold back on are the details. It paints a full picture of Mr. Strane’s grooming, how their relationship came to be, along with precisely what happened during it and afterwards. Be warned that there are explicit scenes that were a lot more explicit that I was expecting. For me, the most difficult parts to read were seeing the consequences upon Vanessa’s way of thinking and behaviour, but many readers found the explicit scenes the hardest to stomach, and with good reason.

The story has a way of hooking you in and keeping you locked there, so much so that I read this is less than two days because it’s such a hard book to put down. It’s not an easy read but it’s a read that has so much value and merit and generates questions about topics that there are no easy answers for. For that, this has been one of the most valuable and worthy of discussion books I’ve read in a long time.

5/5 stars.

[thebookbandwagon]

Book Preferences Tag

hardcover or paperback / rent or buy / reads in silence or reads with music / standalone or series / annotations or pristine pages / ebook or physical copy / dog ears or bookmarks / mismatched series or complete set / cover matters or you don’t judge / lend books or keep them to yourself / enjoys lit classes or despises them / browses shops or orders online / reads reviews or goes in blind / unreturned books or clean library record / rereads or once was enough / fanfic enthusiast or a stickler for canon / deep reader or easily distracted / must read the book before seeing the movie or order doesn’t matter / has neat bookshelves or messy bookshelves / skips ahead or resists temptation / reads aloud or in your head / guesses plot twists or never sees them coming

Aaaah some of these were just so hard. I’ve only just started getting into annotating my favourite books I own but if they’re not favourites then I’m a stickler for pristine. 

Something similar goes for rent/buy - if it’s a favourite book/series then I want it on my shelf but I DNF so many books that it just makes so much more sense for me to borrow from the library/other people first instead.

If it’s a massive book series with loads of characters I think that might actually be the exception to if I prefer to read the book before seeing the adaptation because if I see the adaptation first then I get to access whether or not I’ll be invested in the characters far quicker than if I was to read a long book/series. For a series like A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, I don’t think I would’ve finished the books if I read them before seeing the first couple of seasons of the show because they’re really slow moving and there are so so many characters and locations to keep track of, and it’s just easier to do that if it’s on screen. 

[coolcurrybooks-deactivated20230]

Science fiction and fantasy by Asian authors! A text list with Goodreads links is available below the cut.

My absolute favorites include Jade City by Fonda Lee, The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo, Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang, The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao and Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan.

The first half of books is adult, the last is young adult.

Lees verder

[hogwartscastle]

Harry Potter is authorless.

[what-even-is-thiss]

No. As an English major and a transgender person, no. We do not take this attitude.

Harry Potter is a culturally important work and JK Rowling wrote it.

So many culturally important works of literature were written by people with bad views by today’s and even their time’s standards. Shakespeare? Racist, sexist, islamophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic. But we don’t erase his name from those plays. Because if we try and claim that those plays were authorless it gives us an awfully convenient excuse to ignore all of the flaws within them and how we may or may not agree with those flaws on a subconscious level.

In the world of literary analysis these days the author is no longer dead. We don’t do that anymore. The author is a ghost hanging over your shoulder. You can interpret their work any way you want and they can have no say in it. But you as a reader must also acknowledge that their original intentions are there. Their personal history and the times they lived in are there.

JK Rowling wrote that series whether you like it or not. Whether that makes you comfortable or not. Harry Potter is one of the most culturally important book series of the last century and it was written by a transphobe. It was written by JK Rowling. Face up to it. Look it dead in the eye. Recognize its flaws and like it anyways if you still want to. But don’t. I repeat don’t. Do not claim that it is authorless. No work of literature is.

[dragonwitchlibrary]

We're holding JKR accountable like mature adults and embracing the reality though it hurts us to admit something we love was written by someone who continues to dig her grave but we must

[celiabowens]

some random Adult SFF books with lgbt rep:

A Memory Called Empire (f/f): MC is a diplomat working as an ambassador for her tiny planet and gets involved in political intrigue. Also great portrayal of imperialism and colonialism. 

The Starless Sea (m/m): follow the MC as he discovers a mysterious subterranean library and the secret societies fighting over it. 

The Raven Tower (bisexual, trans): very weird political fantasy narrated by a god who’s also a rock? Sort of reminiscent of Hamlet.

Ninefox Gambit (lesbian, bisexual): a space opera set in a math-based universe, lots of manipulative characters and political subplots (TW: mass shooting, sexual assault, suicide).

The Fifth Season (polyam MC, bisexual, trans side character): post-apocalyptic SFF, with an extremely interesting (and complex) magic system based geology and tectonics.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune (f/f, non-binary): novella following a cleric chronicling the life of an exiled empress. 

In The Vanishers’ Palace (f/f): novella retelling of Beauty and the Beast, with an all-Vietnamese cast, following a shapeshifting dragon and a ruined scholar.

This Is How You Lose The Time War (f/f): enemies to lovers f/f romance set in a time travel war.

Foundryside (f/f): following a thief trying to steal an artifact that could revolutionise her world.

The Binding (m/m): set in a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th century England where people can bind their worst memories (TW: graphic suicide, abuse, pedophilia).

[shawnmendeslatinamerica]

shawnfoundation:  We compiled some resources, materials & reading on racial injustice in one place for you. Let’s all continue our efforts to learn, act and make change. #blacklivesmatter  ( blklivesmatter, colorofchange, naacp,  surjswfl,  civilrightsorg, unitedwedream, theconsciouskid, ckyourprivilege, ebonyjanice,  ethelsclub)

[thebookbandwagon]

Inspired to paint a river after reading Into the Water!

[thebookbandwagon]

Into the Water book review

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins is an adult mystery/thriller that revolves around the dark history of a river that runs through a small English town.

Book summary:

river with dark history of drownings (cw for suicide)

small town drama

multi 1st person POV chapters

complicated dynamics between characters (especially between sisters and mothers and daughters)

cast of complex flawed characters

theme of grief

begins with the discovery of a body in the river

4/5 stars. My overall thoughts are that I really enjoyed the audiobook and thought the cast of narrators added a huge amount to the experience of the story. The characters felt very well realised and their grief felt realer than I’ve read in any other book within this genre. I wasn’t unsatisfied with the plot twists and how the mystery resolved itself but at no point was I completely unsurprised by what happened either. If you want more in depth thoughts on this, watch this where I discuss my final thoughts while I paint an illustration of a river.

[thebookbandwagon]

Bleh. Fell behind both on reading and actually posting my thoughts about the books I’ve read on here. Good news is that my momentum seems to be coming back but I think I might have to change what I normally do a bit to avoid this happening again.

I’m thinking instead of making videos where I review a book then make a post with another in depth written review, I might as well only do one or the other rather than doing what’s basically the same review twice.

So the plan is to make the videos with my review and illustration inspired by the book I’m reading, then type up short summary reviews over here on tumblr. GIFs of my art can continue as normal. Hope that suits you guys anyway. The shorter stuff tends to get more notes anyway so I’m assuming people prefer less lengthy to read stuff on tumblr which is fair enough.

Got a bit of catching up to do anyway with the er... approximately 6 books I never got around to reviewing, though two of them are rereads

[thebookbandwagon]

*waves* still alive, just haven’t been very active recently. More book reviews and art to come soon!

[thebookbandwagon]

Tagged for the big book tag. Thanks @belle-anne-the-book!

Biggest five books I’ve read according to Goodreads (for the sake of variety, I’m only including one book per series):

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

The Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Biggest five books I want to read:

Worm by Wildbow (okay, okay, I know a webseries isn’t a book but I’m counting it because it’s original fiction and the author said they want to publish it in book form anyway)

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderon. I have a complicated relationships with Sanderson’s adult fantasy books so this would probably be the last chance I’d give his adult fantasy a go

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. I’ve tried to read this one before but the pacing was really slow so I’ll have to wait until I’m in the right frame of mind for it

[thebookbandwagon]

The Monster Baru Cormorant book review

dark political adult fantasy. Brutally dark but not exactly grimdark

Slytherin lesbian PoC main character tries to take down a corrupt government from the inside – not by becoming a spy or assassin, but by becoming an accountant

2nd book in The Masquerade series

sea voyage adventure with someone trying to get revenge on the main character, meanwhile the main character just kind of despises themselves

really strong sense of characters and vivid dialogue

emotive and elegant but not too difficult to read writing style

[book review & illustration video]

The Monster by Seth Dickinson is the second book in his dark political adult fantasy series The Masquerade that follows Baru Cormorant as she attempts to take down the government from the inside but the further she gets, the more sacrifices she has to make.

Seth Dickinson writes with flair, his prose elegant and yet not too dense, and he conveys incredibly vivid characters and emotions. Dialogue, in particular, is a strength of his.

So if I enjoy his writing style and characters so much why am I only giving this book 6/10*s?

It’s because I had a very difficult time trying to grasp what was going on.

Firstly, it’s been a few years since I read The Traitor so my memory of what happened in the first book was hazy which wouldn’t have helped.

Secondly, we’re suddenly introduced to a wide range of perspectives. Unlike the first book where the only perspective we follow is Baru’s (I personally found it to be a nice change to be reading a political fantasy with only one perspective), this time there are multiple perspectives from multiple characters, many of them having a combination of very unfamiliar sounding names and similar-sounding names. Normally, this isn’t a huge issue because, being a person who’s generally pretty terrible at remembering names, I can just refer to a list in the book that contains all the names of the characters and a brief description of who they are. However in this book there is no such list, let alone a pronunciation guide.

As a result, for the majority of this book I wasn’t sure why the things that were happening were happening and to which characters. The first two-thirds ended up being a slog and despite how much I did end up enjoying the last third, it didn’t make up for how tiring it was to read the first two thirds.

My complaint is one I haven’t seen from many other reviewers, so it’s entirely possible this is just a me problem, but this is just my honest opinion. From reading this book, I know I’d have to reread the entire series close to one another if I want to read the last two instalments when they come out.

The world is expanded upon, which many people enjoyed. Already finding it hard enough to remember the characters, this aspect just made it even more difficult for me. There’s enough there that I’m sure it would be interesting if I wasn’t already having problems. It’s not as if I’m not able to follow a cast of large characters – I didn’t have this problem reading A Song of Ice and Fire, for example.

In terms of the plot, this time the story is more of an adventure. Lots of it occurs on ships and islands and there are less political machinations involved compared to the first book. Baru is involved in a quest to find something that has links to extended life as well as meddling with various country’s economies, all while someone is intent on exacting their revenge upon her.

Like I’ve mentioned, I do really enjoy Seth Dickinson’s writing and characters and how easily he conveys emotion. But this book, except the last third, was just too hard for me to follow. My attention span has been really low lately which wouldn’t have helped either but I digress. The last third would’ve been an 8 or 9* read but considering the first two thirds, I lowered my rating down to 6*s.

[thebookbandwagon]

An illustration inspired by reading The Monster (Baru Cormorant) by Seth Dickinson [book review & illustration video]. Used chalk pastels and chalk pencils on black paper to illustrate a mask falling into dark water

[thebookbandwagon]

Unpopular Opinions Book Tag

I’ve seen this list of tag prompts floating around and find them really fun to read and watch so here’s my take on it. This is just for fun and I’ve put the image of all the stuff I talk about below so you can skip over this post if you don’t like the idea of seeing potential criticisms of them. My Youtube version of this is here.

1.) A popular book or book series that you didn’t like

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I read the first two in the trilogy and I just don’t connect on a personal level to any of the characters. I’ve enjoyed other books by this author but Mistborn just… doesn’t do it for me. I don’t have the level of emotional investment in the characters that I want and they don’t feel like vivid people to me.

2.) A popular book or book series that everyone else seems to hate but you love

Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat. I know not everyone hates this series, but there’s a fairly high proportion of the people who read it who end up hating it. Based on the negative reviews I’ve seen, many people’s reasons for hating it seems to be rooted in labelling it as problematic. While I agree there are a couple of elements of the series that aren’t handled with as much care as they should be, I still don’t think it’s quite as bad as some people make it out to be. It’s also a pet peeve that some people make it out as if an author having certain things happening in their stories means they endorse those things happening in real life and that’s just... not logical.

3.) An otp that you don’t like

99% of the time I just don’t care about pairings and there aren’t that many pairings I can think of that I actively dislike instead of just not caring. Buffy/Angel? I’m counting it as qualifying for this tag because it has comics. I never found a Buffy pairing I either liked or was neutral about. I found Buffy/Angel to be way too over the top and corny and too instant. I honestly have no idea what they talk about when they’re not dealing with various apocalypses and watching it made me realise where part of the inspiration for Twilight probably originated from.

4.) A popular book genre that you hardly reach for

Young Adult Fantasy that’s geared towards the older end of the spectrum. If I’m reading YA it’s either because I trust the author to write something I like in that genre or because I want to give myself a brain break and read something I can get through really quickly. I’ve found with the older end of the YA spectrum that there doesn’t seem to be much difference in the reading difficulty between YA and Adult within the fantasy genre so the genre usually just ends up not giving me what I want from it.

5.) A popular/beloved character that you do not like

Kvothe from The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I like there to be things characters are bad at and Kvothe was just way too good at every single thing he did for my taste. Never before have I been so invested in the main character of a book failing and I was left completely unsatisfied because at no point in The Name of the Wind does Kvothe fail when it isn’t because of being sabotaged by someone else. I know there are theories about how he’s an unreliable narrator but unless I see actual evidence on the page then I just don’t have the faith that he is. Saying that, I really did love the writing style so if Rothfuss writes anything not involving someone who I despise as much as Kvothe then I’d give it a go.

6.) A popular author that you can’t seem to get into

Leigh Bardugo? I’ve read Six of Crows, Crooked Kingdom, as well as Shadow and Bone and they were all fairly meh reads for me. I feel like my reasons for not being able to get into her books come down to my repeating previous points I’ve made because they’re a combination of the genre she writes in as well as me knowing I love the tropes and character archetypes she’s using but just not having the level of investment in her characters that I want.

Robin Hobb is another popular author I can’t get into. She has characters that feel much more vivid and writes within Adult Fantasy but her pacing is so so slow and I’m not patient enough as a reader to be able to get through her lengthy books.

7.) A popular book trope that you’re tired of seeing

Redemption = Death. I love a good villain eventually turning sides or an anti-hero/anti-villain having a good redemption arc but it seems like all these arcs inevitably end in their death and it just… doesn’t have to be that way. I’d find the story far more interesting if the redemption arc doesn’t end so abruptly and the person undergoing it has to figure out their new place in the world, how to live with themselves, and other people’s changing perceptions of them.

8.) A popular series that you have no interest in reading

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien. As a fantasy fan, peer pressure makes me feel obligated to like this series. I don’t like this series. I’ve attempted to read it three times and only managed on one of those times to get almost halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring. All the characters just don’t do anything for me (except you, Gollum) and I have no interest in what happens to them or the themes within the story.

Me not liking Lord of the Rings doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate what it’s done for the fantasy genre though and I’m well aware most of the series that I love probably wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the book that’s basically responsible for the catalyst of the genre of fantasy books that feature worldbuilding.

9.) What movie or TV show adaptation do you prefer more than the book?

Hmm. If I was only going off seasons 1-4 of Game of Thrones I’d go with that but considering what happened after I’m… ugh.

So instead I’m going with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Originally by Douglas Adams, it’s a very witty and quirky comedy book series with sci-fi and fantasy elements set in modern-day (which back then would’ve been around the 80s). It follows a detective who employs bizarre techniques like Zen Navigation:

“Rather than using conventional avenues of wayfinding like consulting a map, the Zen navigation method consists of finding someone who looks like they know where they’re going and following them. This is supposed to deliver the navigator to their destination, although its results are variable and often unexpected and unintended. It very rarely gets you where you wanted to go but always where you needed to be.”

The only issue I have with Douglas Adams is that his characters tend to be a bit on the caricature-ish side but this is something the TV show put a huge amount of effort into and it paid off so so well. I had my reservations about the show since, other than Dirk, it looked very Americanised but they actually did an incredible job. It’s funny, complex, wacky, unpredictable yet (sort of) makes sense. There are lots of warm fuzzy feelings between the main characters and it’s great. Also there’s a portal to a fantasy world where the knights fight each other with giant pairs of scissors. It’s an incredibly underrated Netflix Original series that always deserved more attention than it got.