Keeper of the Lost Cities Plot

Sophie is not a normal 13 year old, she has the power of telepathy and can always hear everyone’s thoughts. To go along with that, she’s extremely smart, and has a photographic memory. She’s an outsider because of all of those things. Then, she sees a boy, on a class field trip, who just looks too pretty. And he is looking at her, something feels off and she talked to him.

Turns out that something is off about her life. Fitz, the boy, tells her that she isn’t a normal human, in fact, she isn’t a human at all. There is a secret world of elves and other magical and mythical creatures out there. In our own world, but just out of sight due to magic. But her life as a human will need to go away if she is going to be an elf and live the life that she’s supposed to.

More Details and Harry Potter Comparison

So I don’t want to go into much more. What I wrote is basically the back blurb on the cover, but it’s something that should wet your appetite. And don’t worry, Keeper of the Lost Cities is not another Harry Potter. There are elements that might feel similar. The main character integrates into a new world that they didn’t know existed.

And to continue that comparison, she is a bit of a chosen child, but not in the way that Harry Potter is. I think that chosen child comparison is something people will latch onto, but Shannon Messenger does a better job of writing a chosen child. Sophie is really behind for an elf. She doesn’t know the world, she is expected to know and catch-up to what she doesn’t know. When she gets stuff wrong, elves are disappointed.

Harry Potter constantly should be in trouble, and he is not. Sophie often should be in trouble, and when she is, she gets punished. Her life has many more real elements to it. Characters worry about her. They pester her. They bug her, stuff that you don’t see happen in Harry Potter. People either hate Harry or love Harry, there is nothing between the two. For Sophie, people look to use her, to befriend her because of who she is, avoid her, and expect everything from her. And she is trying to balance all of that.

What Doesn’t Work?

There is very little, if anything that doesn’t work. I should talk about book 8.5 here. Mainly because that might be something that won’t work for some people. Even for me, I found it fairly boring. The point of book 8.5 is that it’s a bit of a recap for everything that has happened. Plus a novella that tells some story where book 8 left off and where book 9 begins. Or at least I am assuming that.

If you read the series in a compressed period of time, most book 8.5 is unneeded. I know what the characters did recently. I don’t need a full recap, no matter what way it is written. And some of the sections are better written than others. It is more the authors notes turned into something in the world that you are reading through.

I don’t even mind that they exist. I mind that there is a pretty important feeling novella in the book. It is different than she could write for the main book. The main books only show Sophie’s perspective. The novella bounces between perspectives. But to get the novella, you get the whole book. And I say now, get the book, just read the novella.

What Works?

Characters

So much works in this series. Sophie is a believable main character and the side characters are strong as well. Often in Middle Grade or Young Adult books, the main character is a paper cutout of a character. It is meant for the reader to put themselves into their shoes. Sophie is not that. She is a fully realized and deeply developed character. And each of the side characters at least the core, are as realized as she is.

I fail to think of many series where this is the case. Especially in that grade range. And I think there should be more. The story is easily digestible for an adult. And while there are intense moments for maybe middle grade reader, it is going to be pull them in.

Story Depth and Intensity

And let’s talk about the intensity. The story, unlike others in it’s age range, isn’t shy about bad things happening. And not like they happen around Sophie. Some of them do happen to other people. And it is character development for those characters. And reasons that friendships become stronger. But often the bad is directed to Sophie. She is not given an easy life. She is not a hero who always steps in and saves the day.

In fact, most of the time, she needs to rely on others to help her. Does she lead, for sure, she is the chosen one after all. But it isn’t a situation where she can do it alone. And that is a struggle for her. To compare her to another fictional character, it is a lot like how Harry Dresden, in the Dresden Files, is always looking to do stuff himself. He does so because he doesn’t want others to get hurt. Sophie is the same way.

World Building and Themes

Shannon Messenger is very good about building out her world. It helps that some of it is our world. But the rest of it, with the elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, and more is different. But it is still similar. I think it is worked well like good fantasy or sci-fi. It is different enough that you feel like it isn’t our world, but close enough that it can touch on themes and issues that are true for us our world as well.

And I think that is another thing Messenger does well, also. She tells a good story with items that ring true. Now, it is still middle grade, so the depth of an issue isn’t always there. But that is okay, she is writing through the eyes of a 13-15 year old. Sophie is not going to understand everything, so as a reader, our view of these issues in the story should be simpler.

At the same time, I talk about the intensity of the story. And that means that as an older reader of the series, I understand some things that Sophie doesn’t. The story ages up well, that way. It makes the young reader start to think and the older reader understand the depth that is there.

Who is Keeper of the Lost Cities For?

I think that the young end would be twelve for the series. Though you maybe could go younger just reading it aloud and talking about what is going on. But that depends obviously on how you spend time. I don’t want to assume that people do a story that way. But twelve or thirteen is when I’d say a kid would be up for reading it.

As for getting older, it depends. I think a lot of people around my age and younger so mid-thirties and younger. The story is familiar. It feels a bit like Harry Potter, but in my opinion better. And my generation and younger, we read Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, Divergent, Maze Runner and more. Keeper of the Lost Cities contains all of that and more.

Final Thoughts

I love this series. I am reading a few other things right now, but I fully expect to come back to the series and read it all again. And I already pre-ordered the next book in the series. I want to know what is going to come next, and I want to spend more time with these characters in that world.

I really believe that a lot of people are going to enjoy this series as well. Like I said, the story is different, more meaningful than things it feels similar to. Yet it will hit the same beats that you expect from a Middle Grade or Young Adult series and novels. Plus there is a lot to the story, just in terms of how long the story is.

Have you read Keeper of the Lost Cities?

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The Great Library Premise

Jess is a book smuggler, his family as a whole are book smugglers, but that’s not what he loves. He loves to read books and learn. But due to the Library at Alexandria controlling all of the books, he doesn’t get read everything he wants and all knowledge is tightly controlled by the library. He ventures to the library to become a scholar so that he can help the family business. There he meets and interesting cast of characters as he studies and finds out that the library is not that good an organization. How can he and his fellow classmates and library counterparts work to take down this institution?

Initial Thoughts

The premise is not that unique, but it is unique at the same time. The idea that one area controls all knowledge is how some parts of the actual world work. But this takes it even further. It’s not just that all knowledge is controlled, it’s that your story, and your life, that information of it belongs to the library as well. And the library doesn’t want anyone else to know about certain things. And there is magic, but in an interesting and smaller way than something like Harry Potter.

Now, just because the library piece is interesting, this falls into that category of Divergent and The Hunger Games, where it is a small group against the big evil rulers. The plot is a bit simplistic that way. Caine does try and create two groups, the Library and the Burners who the protagonist has to deal with. Even the main character’s family being smugglers are another group that he bumps up again. But it is a tried and true, generally, plan for the plot.

What Doesn’t Work

Honestly, I don’t have too many complaints about the books. I think that compared to a lot of YA (young adult) fiction, that it works well. But that doesn’t mean that it is flawless. I think there are two things that have stood out to me, the biggest issue being the third book.

The second book ends on a cliffhanger. I won’t say what it is because that’ll give away part of the story and I don’t want to do that, I think it is a good series. But book three makes a key mistake in it, at least for me. When there is a cliffhanger, I want it resolved and then have the story progress. I don’t think the third book does that, it spends a long time working through the fallout of the cliffhanger, and the story just kind of stagnates. I get why that might be the case in how Caine writes it. We are getting our main introduction to a group of characters, but it’s too long and while stuff happens, it could have happened much faster.

The second part of book three is much stronger because the story progresses and progresses in a way that I really like. But that’s the last half or less of the book when it feels like the story progresses again. I think that book three just needed another pass by an editor to really tighten up the story, which would have probably made the book shorter, but it’d have felt like less of a slog to get through.

The other thing that bugged me and it isn’t a big deal, is she sets the time frame when this happens. That shouldn’t be a big deal, but it’s kind of dumb. There is zero reason for this to be set at any time, and with the bits of text we get from “real” people who are writing against the library, we can generally place when this story must be happening. I think the issue for me is how she added it into the story, it was dropped at the end of a paragraph like it was a big reveal ,it most certainly wasn’t. That just felt wrong with how it was handled.

What Works

The characters in the series are good. I think that Jess is an interesting protagonist which is nice. Too many YA series give you a really flat main character. Or that main character who is too good at everything. Jess is good but he’s not always the best at anything. The cast of characters around him are good as well. Not more interesting than him, but as interesting, because often YA books have the side characters be more interesting. It’s also a diverse cast of characters in terms of gender, race, religion, and sexuality, but it’s done very naturally. So the story flows and feel real world like.

I also like books about books, so the library controlling everything is an interesting premise. It shows the twisting of the ideas of the library and how they have turned something that isn’t good. And it is done in a logical way, some books, Divergent, for example, creates a premise that doesn’t make any sense, it isn’t the logical end to any situation. But in The Great Library series, it makes sense, like I said, there are real world parallels with some areas of the world controlling knowledge.

And I like, generally the story progression, like I said, the third book loses me by spending too much time on generally the wrong things. It takes that cliffhanger and drags it out without feeling like we progress the story. But generally, Caine doesn’t do that. She also doesn’t information dump the history of everything or how the world and magic works in the world. You find that out as you need to find it out. In fact, you find out some of it as the characters find out about it. So it feels natural in how she is writing to how it works in the real world.

Final Thoughts On The Great Library

Obviously, I am not done with the series. There are five books in it, and that feels right for the series. Any longer and the story would drag out, and any shorter, say going the trilogy route, and the story would feel rushed. Maybe four books would have been ideal, because of my issues with book three. I own all the books, which says something about the series though. It means that it’s one that I might come back to.

I will say, that is my strong recommendation for this series. It’s well written, interesting enough premise, though not that unique, and compared to some others, such as Divergent which I would actively recommend people not read, I’d come back to this one gladly. If you want to read a well written YA series, this is going to be a solid one. It won’t likely blow you away, but it won’t likely disappoint either. If you’re not interested in reading YA, I wouldn’t recommend this series because it is what it is.

Have you read The Great Library Series by Rachel Caine? What are your thoughts on it?

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The Plot

Alina is an orphan who, like most orphans either gets brought to fight in the army or become a cartographer. She’s a cartographer, and her best friend, Mal, is in the army. Neither of them have the powers that the Grisha have, expect, well, Alina actually does, she just doesn’t know it. She quickly finds out that she is what is known a sun summoner. A power set that is not common and is basically just a myth. This attracts the attention of General Kirigan, the head of the Grisha. Meanwhile, Kaz, the leader of a group known as the Crows, finds out about a dangerous job to get through the darkness that separates the lands in order to get the sun summoner.

What I Didn’t Like

That’s a very basic summary of the start of the plot that I give you there. I think that the plot as a whole is pretty solid. There are a few elements that feel pretty standard young adult fantasy. The friendship and relationship of Alina and Mal works well, but in terms of any complexity to it, it is what you’d expect.

And, I will say, not as a real dislike for myself who hasn’t read the books, or my wife who has, they combine two different series in the same world that happen at different times. So Kaz and Alina’s stories don’t cross in the books, at least not in the same way that they do in the show. I couldn’t tell that they were supposed to be separate with how they weave things together. That said, some readers of the books might notice that or not like it as well for that reason.

What I Liked

So, I say that some of the story is a bit standard. But for the most part, I don’t feel like that is the case. We get magic and science mixed together with the armies have guns and weapons but you still have the Grisha who very powerful as well. The setting unique and the scenario is unique as well. This darkness that separates things is not normal for fantasy, so it’s a good plot device that drives a wedge between the countries, literally.

The acting in the show is also very good. Freddy Carter as Kaz is amazing as are all of the Crows. They really stand out as some of the most interesting character. Jessie Mei Li as Alina is good as is Archie Renaux as Mal, but they are given less to work with, so their story is just more lacking. It’s fairly standard to YA where the main characters are a bit more vanilla. And Ben Barnes as General Kirigan is a very strong actor, he has the charisma that his character needs.

The world building is done well in the show as well. I don’t like it when shows give you an information dump at the beginning, actually same with fantasy books. I want to find out about the world when I need to. And Shadow and Bone gives you the information as you need it. Shows tend to be better about not doing that, and Shadow and Bone is very solid at just giving you enough so you aren’t confused.

The aesthetic of the show is also really well done. Like I said, it blends magic, almost the industrial revolution, and guns along with that for the show. So it’s not your normal high fantasy look, there is a bit of dirtiness to the world and the people which you also don’t always see. It manages the idea of a dirty or real world that the characters live in, but without going grim dark to make it gritty.

Who Is This For?

I do call this a YA (Young Adult) series, at least for the books. But it isn’t YA in a bad way, there are a lot of good YA stories out there. There are also a lot that just live off of angst. This isn’t one of those. It tells a compelling story for adults without making the theme too mature so that you’d question teenagers watching it. This goes back to that actual world but not gritty. So I recommend this for most people, especially if you like fantasy.

Final Thoughts

This is a really enjoyable show. The people I’ve told about it have really liked it as well. The fantasy is just enough different to keep even us big fantasy lovers engaged throughout. And in terms of acting, this is so much better than most YA shows, it’s impressive. So if you want to find some good fantasy, I highly recommend Shadow and Bone.

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The Story

Bloom thought that she was just a normal girl until an accident happened and she almost killed her mother with some magic. At that point, she got admitted into a special school in “Switzerland”. Really, it was a magic school for fairies. Most of the students there are fairy born, and Bloom doesn’t fit in right away. Things go crazy, around the school, however, as Burned Ones, a monster that had been thought to be gone for a long time start to show up again. Bloom also needs to figure out where she is from and how she fits into this world that is very new to her.

Thoughts On The Show

The Plot

This story is pretty predictable, though that’s not a horrible thing. Now, I don’t know that the show tries to be predictable, but a lot of the twists and turns it has coming are quite predictable. This is a bit of a knock, especially in the later episodes where everything falls into place in a way that you’d expect. There were a few interesting twists on things, but overall it felt like a young-adult story that had been done a lot of times before. And while it is a young-adult show, there is a lot of swearing in the show as well, not bad, but a surprising amount.

The Characters

The characters in the show are fine as well. In the dorm, the four girls that Bloom shares are room with are more interesting than here. Bloom falls into the boring main character trope. I’ve talked about it before, but the idea is that the main character is supposed to be standard enough that the viewer, or reader in the case of books, can insert themselves into the role that they are playing. It can work fine, but it has to be done with a deft hand, and it works better in books than shows. In this, all of her dormmates are more interesting than her, the love interest is more interesting than her. Bloom should be more interesting, and she is the main focus, but everything around her feels rushed somehow but also like it doesn’t mean as much or feel as intense as it should. Also, this is supposed to be high school aged kids, I’d believe college, it’s odd.

The Bad Guy(s)

Fate: The Winx Saga ends up having surprisingly interesting villains. I think that is the strong point of the show. Multiple villains show up throughout the show so I won’t spoil them all. One of the first we meet is another student named Beatrix. The villains definitely have their own agenda and believe what they are doing is right. For me that is one thing the show gets right. You can feel how bad these people are, but also that they so firmly believe they are the heroes of the story as well. Even the burned ones, who are more of a mindless drove are interesting monsters.

But Is the Show Good?

That’s what we are all really here to find out. Is Fate: The Winx Saga a good show? I’d say, kind of. In terms of world building, it is good. They have created a very interesting setting, a good school, and some very interesting ideas with the burned ones and how everything is working. In terms of the story, it’s a bit of a mess. I think it falls into too many tropes, which is common for young-adult focused shows. Locke And Key is another fantasy young-adult focused show, and while it strips away a lot of the adult content from the comics, it still keeps much of the spirit of it and the show has a lot of whimsy and tension to it. Fate: The Winx Saga doesn’t have that nearly as much. It comes across more as a CW show.

So, no, it’s not a good show, but did I enjoy watching it, generally yes. It was entertaining, like I said, the world building and the villains are good in the show and they deserve more than this standard young-adult handling of the story. But even with that issue, it didn’t get in the way of this feeling like something big and something different. It’d have been easy for it to feel like generic fantasy, but it doesn’t and that’s a credit to the show. I’ll definitely be checking out the second season if it comes out.

Should You Watch It?

I’ve tried to lay it out well so that you will know if this is the show for you. I think there is something enjoyable to watch there. But if you can’t stand the standard CW young-adult tropes, you won’t like this. Flat out as simple as that, if you are willing to dive into the world that is being created and just let the trope filled story lead you through it, it’s a fun watch. It isn’t anything deep, a popcorn show is what I’d call it, but it’s also not as bad as my knocking it would suggest.

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Locke & Key follows a family who is moving back into the families home after tragedy has struck them. Rendell, their father, has passed away so Nina picks up and takes the kids from Seattle to Mattheson, Massachusetts. None of the kids, except the youngest, Bode, are excited to be there. But when Bode hears a voice in the well house talking back to him when he makes his voice echo, it’s clear that this isn’t a normal house. Soon Tyler and Kinsey are drawn into the crazy world that the house holds with many magical keys and Echo, the voice from the well who has gotten out. What does Echo want and why can’t their mother, Nina, remember anything about the keys?

Let me quickly give my thoughts on the show and then I’ll go into more depth. There might be some spoilers later on, but I’m going to try and keep them to a minimum. I really liked this show, even though it isn’t as dark and horrific as the first trade paperback, there’s definitely a very interesting and creepy story behind it. And that was enough for me, plus Joe Hill did the work on it to keep it in the spirit of the books, but not have to go fully dark. However, because of that it has much more of a YA feel to it, so if you’re a huge fan of the comics, know that before you jump in. There are a few things that stand out to me for the show.

The first thing is the acting. Most of the time, you have a cast that is mainly teen age (though teen in acting can be early 20’s) or kid actors, the acting will end up being suspect. However, in Locke & Key they do an amazing job. The actor who plays Bode, Jackson Robert Scott, does a great job. Bode is supposed to be a wide eyed 8-10 year old in the show, and you can really see that in the acting. He does a very good job of portraying an innocence and sincerity to his acting. And I won’t go into it a ton with the other actors, but the actors portraying Kinsey and Tyler, Emilia Jones and Connor Jessup respectively, do really good work as well. There are shifts in their acting as you get to see more of their character and as their characters change that are really well done. Even the adult acting is well done and it doesn’t just feel like so many YA stories where there’s a group of teens and no adults believe them and then the adults are wrong.

Another thing is that while this leans into horror tropes and supernatural elements that could seem cliche, it does a good job of keeping them different. When we were watching through it, it felt to Kristen and myself like several things we’ve seen or played before, Haven, Life is Strange, Oxenfree, and more, but it still felt unique. The element of the keys and how they work is really well done. And you can see where Joe Hill is borrowing form the work that his father has done before, but in a very respectful and well done way. I got numerous callbacks to IT in the show, and I appreciated that. It’s really that none of the tropes it used felt out of place or felt like they were forced in there because it’s horror or anything like that, it just flowed naturally.

Let’s talk a bit more about the story before I wrap up here. Like I said, the story is not going to be as heavily horror focused, which I’m fine with. While I love some good horror, there’s something whimsical about the keys that lends itself not just to horror but to this more fantastical element as well, and the show leans into that some more. As things unfold, there is definitely more horror and violence, but there’s also a sense of fantasy or magic to the story. Like I said previously as well, it doesn’t fall into the storytelling tropes of YA where the kids are smart and the adults are dumb and don’t believe the kids. It avoids some of that by a nifty plot device that they explain but also by just having the kids do their own thing. They use the grief of Rendell’s death and Nina’s reaction to it to drive some of why Kinsey and Tyler don’t bring as much to her as well, which I think is well done. And Bode is just too Bode to think about that.

So, I’ve said that I like the show, but would I recommend it to everyone? I’d lean towards no. It still has horror elements, so some people aren’t going to love that as much. Kristen actually stopped watching part ways through episode one because of some of the creepy stuff that was going on. But in the middle of the season, it hit more of that fantasy and whimsy, so I stopped and we rewatched it because I knew that she’d like it. So there’s definitely a piece where if people aren’t horror fans they’ll enjoy it as well, and like myself, Kristen and I are waiting for, hoping for, a second season to come out. Definitely an interesting show and if the trailer seems interesting, they do a good job and it’s worth checking out.

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Like your standard party game, Bring Your Own Book runs off of the prompt and reply system. This is why I brought up games like Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples. Now, I actually like some prompt and reply style of games. I think that games like Stipulations and Beyond Balderdash (which I believe I can just call Balderdash now) are enjoyable because in these games you are coming up with your response, so it relies on your creativity, not just a hand of cards you’ve been given. Bring Your Own Book doesn’t do that, because, instead of using a card or writing something down, you are finding a line in a book to use, and that can be whatever book you brought to the table.

This is a strength and issue of the game. It’s a strength because it lends itself to variety. When we’ve played it, we’ve had books ranging from technical or non-fiction books to YA books. So you actually get more variety and you don’t see cards repeat like you do in something like Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples. But, at the same time you’re limited to whatever book you brought to the table or that was at the table when you got there. So if the book I have at the table is an epic fantasy novel, everything I read is going to sound like an epic fantasy, and if it’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, it’s going to sound like that. So as a player, you are still being limited in variety of what you can do, unless you have a book of short stories.

But also with that, there’s another issue. You have a time limit to find your passage in the book, and this is very much needed, but that also cuts down on how much you can really search for a good sentence. If you had unlimited time, there would be people who would just start reading the book every time. I think that the title is very accurate of this game, though, to get around the problem of the time limit. You need to bring your own book, and you need to know it well. If I got the first Harry Potter book, I’m going to be able to comb that for certain passages and scenes better than I would The Expanse, for example. Because I’ve read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone several times and I haven’t read The Expanse. That’s going to be different for everyone, and while my wife and I have a good collection of books, we might not have books that someone else has read, so the game is going to be trickier for them. So, you might want to bring your own book, which means that this party game now needs to be planned to work at it’s best.

And I will say, that it’s definitely at it’s best, I think you can do it with random books. However, if you play with random books, I would suggest rotating books as you rotate the person giving the prompt. That way, everyone one gets the chance with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and everyone gets a chance with How to Win Friends and Influence People. This will make the game more fair, because, while How to Win Friends and Influence People might not be a dry book, it’s not as exciting as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and there is probably less familiarity with it around the table. Or, if you are doing random books, keep them all in the same family. Fantasy fiction would be a great one, you don’t even need to pick a type of fantasy, but that is going to keep everyone on even footing.

The actual game components, I think that the kickstarter version looks amazing, and that’s what I have. I, however, don’t really like the retail version all that well. As compared to the kickstarter, it looks cheaper and it loses the charm of looking so much like a book itself. Now the game doesn’t play different, it’s just an aesthetic thing. I think had I not gotten the kickstarter version of the game, I don’t know that the retail version would have even caught my eye.

Overall, this is another party game. If you like games like Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples, but you want a party game with unlimited variety, but still restricting, Bring Your Own Book works well, because where ever you play it, it will feel different. I’d pull it out again off my shelf, but probably not in a lot of situations. If I themed a board game night around books, it would probably be the warm up game before we split off into other smaller games.

Overall Grade: C
Gamer Grade: D
Casual Grade: B-

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This is the far flung future after humanity has blown itself up and screwed up the world. There are mobile houses that people travel around in where they can mine, and make a living. There are also bigger predator cities that chew up these smaller buildings for fuel. We meet our main character, Hester Shaw as the small vehicles that is getting chased down by a predator city. On the city we have Tom who is a researcher who has noticed that things on the city are going missing, things that could be used for a weapon.

In some way the story just sounds too predictable YA Dystopia. And I think that is some of the issue. The story leans into tropes, but leans into them too much, you want the familiar, but you also don’t want it to feel like it hits upon every trope. The movie packs in too many tropes this way and also because it tries to hit on so many things, you end up with a very disjointed story. You get a predictable bad guy with an anticlimactic end. We get a few other deaths that are supposed to feel like they mean something to the audience, but we’re not connected with the characters. It feels rushed, but also feels like it doesn’t have the action that it should. And when it does have action sequences, they aren’t anything all that interesting, and the main character who is fighting is just a poorly done character.

The characters are also an issue in this movie. Hester has an interesting backstory, and I think that Hera Hilmar does a solid job, but she isn’t given much to work with. We really don’t get to see her shine as a character either, and there is some with her look if you think about it doesn’t make a ton of sense. With Tom, played by Robert Sheehan, he’s a pretty flat character, where he was great as Klaus in Umbrella Academy and playing an eccentric character, here he is a pretty thin character. Then you have Anna Fang. Talk about a great looking character but a very disappointing character. Kristen put it this way, she’s kind of supposed to be a Han Solo type character, but they don’t give her great lines to work with, and she does less than anything with them. She looks cool, maybe a little bit out of place, but that could be set-up with some better character development and story development, but that wasn’t there, and Jihae does nothing with it.

Now, not all the characters are bad. Hugo Weaving as the villain is amazing. His motivations aren’t fully developed, nor is his character, but he does a very good job with what he’s given. The real shame with his character is it’s death. It’s a cheap and not impactful death. I think you could argue that the point of it is to keep blood off of the main characters hands, but we already know that really isn’t something she’s worried about. So it feels weak and more like they hoped they could do another movie, but didn’t think that they’d be able to get Hugo Weaving again. Leila George has a smaller role in the film, but her part was interesting and she portrayed it well. I wish that we’d see more of her Katherine Valentine and Ronan Raftery who plays Bevis Pod with her. They were interesting characters that have the distinction of being the secondary characters who are more interesting than the main characters, which is too common is YA.

I’ve bashed this movie pretty hard. I think even with the characters who have some good development or are better acted, they aren’t given what they should have to work with in this film. I do want to knock one more thing, and that’s the weapon that is used in the movie. There are certain angles where that thing feels like a horrible mid 90’s green screen effect, not nearly as cool and polished as the rest of the world. That’s all I’m going to say about it, because I do want to jump into the visuals of the rest of the world which are amazing. The different vehicles all make sense as something that would be in the world. And while the Shanara Chronicles also do the future earth after something has happened, I think that the world of Mortal Engines is a whole lot cooler. The flying ships, the wall, and the general aesthetic of the world are cool, but the predator city is amazing, and the smaller vehicles are all slightly unique and you can see how they fit into the world. There’s are a level of dinginess in the world as well that works really well, and while you do get some Hunger Games vibes in the movie, they don’t lean into it too much.

There’s so much to explore visually and storywise in this world if someone were to do a good job of creating something cool, that it’s a shame this is the movie we got. And the movie did poorly in theaters, so we’re not going to get another one. Maybe fifteen years from now if the books have done well for Mortal Engines, we’ll get another crack at a move which will do better. There’s so much potential of the world that I want to see more of it. I don’t care that it seems to borrow from Shanara Chronicles, Hunger Games, Gurren Lagann, and Howl’s Moving Castle, and a lot more. There’s a chance for it to be unique, and I’d even read the books after having seen the movie in hopes that they are better and that I’ll get the story that I really want.

Overall Grade: C-
Critical Grade: B+ (Visuals), D (Story)
Fan Grade: C

Have you seen Mortal Engines, if so, what are your thoughts on it? Is it a movie you want to see if you haven’t seen it?

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As one glance at the book cover will tell you, Chemistry is a parody of Twilight, but with zombies this time instead of vampires. Or at least, that’s how it started out — as the author notes in her Goodreads profile, she set out to write a book that was the exact opposite of Twilight, and the characters took on a life (er…undeath, in some cases) of their own. What is on its surface a goofy satire of Twilight that plays for laughs is in actuality a book with more depth, heart, and well-rounded characters than I’ve chanced across in quite some time.

Our heroine is Stella Blunt, a tall, curvy, brash, and supremely confident junior in high school. After Stella’s mom gets her dream job, Stella is forced to move across the country (Canada, in particular) with her parents, to Vancouver, British Columbia. To Stella, the move might as well be the end of the world — to say she doesn’t make friends easily is a vast understatement, and she dreads trying to fit somewhere into an unknown social sphere. At first, it’s just as bad as she fears — the students at her new school bully her relentlessly from the start (not that she puts up with it in the slightest, but this doesn’t even seem to slow them down). But then, she comes across Howard Mullins (known by all as Howie) in her chemistry class, and life as she knows it changes still further.

As soon as Stella sits down beside Howie, he can’t keep his eyes off her. His relentless yet unassuming adoration intrigues Stella, and she forms a tentative, curious friendship with him. She discovers that he is unfailingly sweet, if a little slow when he hasn’t eaten in a while, and full of an old-fashioned charm the likes of which she’s never seen. His pallid complexion, monotone voice, and lurching gait confuse her at first, so she does some research — and finds out that Howie, along with his father, brother, and sister, are all zombies. They eat brains (from animals only, of course) and inject themselves with formaldehyde on the reg in order to stay functioning/semi-normal, and to keep the virus from progressing or making them contagious. Naturally, Stella finds this beyond strange, but by the time she finds out, she’s gotten to know Howie well enough to know that he’s a rare gem, virus or no virus — and that she’s crushing on him, hard. Love quickly blossoms between them — but will it be enough to carry them through all the dangers and difficulties that lie ahead?

As I mentioned, this book is indeed a parody of Twilight, but to limit it to that would do it a disservice. More than just a feminist response to Twilight, Chemistry is a compelling feminist work that can stand on its own two feet. Thus, to my thinking, reading Twilight before reading Chemistry is only necessary for deriving maximum enjoyment from the jokes throughout the book — certainly not for enjoying the book as a whole. Not only does the story take every potentially questionable part of Twilight and stand it on its head, as well as elegantly fill in every plot hole that tripped up Twilight, its characters understand what feminism really is (i.e., what true equity, agency, and respect really mean) — and it manages to communicate this without sounding preachy, which was refreshing as all get-out.

Beyond this, the characters in this book are just fantastic. I believe we’ve noted in past reviews that there seems to be a trend among a lot of fiction these days where the protagonist of the story is totally flat and uninteresting, while being surrounded by loads of great side characters, all of whose stories we’d much rather read than the main character’s. So much of the time (especially with stuff that’s written in first-person POV), the protagonist is nothing more than a benign lens through which to view the story happening around them. That’s definitely the case for the material Chemistry is inspired by, and it’s something I’ve run into more times than I care to count. Because of this, finding a protagonist who actually feels like a real, multi-faceted, actually interesting human being in a book that I expected to be all goofiness and absurdity, well — it blew my tiny little mind, you guys.

And Stella, magnificent as she is, isn’t the only great character in this story. Howie is an absolute delight (beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure), and is the kind of sweet, respectful, capable male protagonist I want to see way more of. Almost all of the side characters have a compelling persona and backstory, everybody’s motivations feel well-founded and understandable, and the majority of them go through some level of believable character development.

As much as I could continue gushing about this book for ages, I do have a couple of critiques — the most prominent one, for me, was the way Stella’s new classmates take to brutally bullying her right away. Like, they are instantly peppering her with fat jokes and mean, snide comments. Now, it’s been a little while since I was in high school, so maybe the memory is slightly less seared onto my brain, but it seemed a little implausible coming from students who didn’t know Stella or have any sort of history with her. I’ll grant you that kids can sometimes be jerkwads for no reason, and for the purposes of this story, it worked okay, but it felt like a lot to swallow at some points. This behavior is partially explained by the fact that Stella draws attention not so much because she’s tall and plus-size, but more so because of the sheer force of her personality (which is considerable). Basically, her peers are threatened by her way of owning whatever room she walks into, so they lash out at her. This goes some distance toward explaining why Stella’s classmates are so hostile, but it still felt over-the-top to me at times.

Another thing I noticed is that the reader is sometimes asked to suspend disbelief just a smidge too far, or sometimes a moment goes a step past the point of no return in terms of cheesiness. These moments are few, and easily forgivable in the larger scheme of the plot, but there were a couple of points where it was enough to give me pause and pull me back out of the story a bit. But then I reminded myself I was reading satire, and that it all serves the larger purpose, and I dove back in to the amazingness.

Lastly — and this isn’t a flaw so much as a heads up — the content often veers toward the very mature (swear words and sex talk and violence, oh my!) — I didn’t find it too much to swallow, but some readers might, and it was enough that I’d be hesitant to call this book a straight-up Young Adult novel, even though it’s billed as such. I would maybe recommend it to a mature 17- or 18-year-old, but that’s a pretty hard maybe. Basically, use your judgement–if this sort of stuff tends to be a bit much for you, approach with caution.

Despite these things, though, I pretty much enjoyed every minute of this book. The powerful combination of fantastic characters I wish I could befriend in real life, a ton of refreshing themes, and a pace that doesn’t let up, this book was exactly what I wanted to read right now, and nearly impossible to put down. It had so many of the tropes and themes I want to see more of, like the soft action boy (listen, I know this is barely a thing, but I’m trying to make it a thing, so there), the BBW, great platonic friendships, and some really great, non-token-y representation. Basically, it did a lot of the things I love to see a story doing, and beyond that, it was a straight up blast, and I already kinda want to re-read it (and I definitely want to do fan art of it).

After finishing Chemistry, I was beyond stoked to find that History, the second book in the series, is out now too, and I promptly devoured it as well (I may do a separate review of it later, but I’m still deciding…with the way it plays out, it’d be a challenge to review it without dropping some major spoilers, and I am morally opposed to spoilers). There’s a third book, Biology, in the works as well, but Chemistry just came out in 2016, and History in December of 2017 (fresh as fresh gets, y’all!), so needless to say, it’ll be awhile. And I shall be waiting with bated breath until it’s out!

Love or hate Twilight, would you read Chemistry? If you’ve read it, what did you like and/or dislike about it? What popular book would you love to see someone do a parody of?

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As any book-lover knows, narrowing your favorites down to a small list is HARD. I think I’ve managed it, but just as Peder did, I’ve included a couple of series rather than just single books. I agree with his opinion that some series are just too good to separate out, and that it generally makes more sense to look at them as a single unit rather than individual books.

So without further ado–here are my top 5!

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Like Peder, I couldn’t quite narrow my list down to five — so, a few honorable mentions: Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Impossible by Nancy Werlin, Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen

So which of these have you read? Did you love them as much as I did? What are some other books you’ve read and loved?

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