I’m back on this Rambling Review thing because my memory is bad and my thoughts don’t always make sense! đ
It’s fine.
Today I review For the Wolf, by Hannah Whitten! The blurby bit on the back says
The First Daughter is for the throne
The Second Daughter is for the Wolf
The Wolf is for the Wilderwood
Here’s a photo of the cover!
For the Wolf is rooted in my heart
We have Neverah and Redarys, twins born to Queen Isla. Neve is First Daughter. Red is Second Daughter. So while Neve was being raised to become the next queen, Red was basically treated like that one thing you got for your birthday but you feel bad getting rid of it until you don’t anymore and you sacrifice it to a forest to bring some god-kings back.
As you do.
Except for Neve. Neve loves her sister SO MUCH. So much so that she wants to free her sister from the Wolf’s evil clutches.
The Wilderwood is an ancient magical forest that’s also evil! Right? Maybe? You’ll have to wait and find out.
So Red, on her 20th birthday, gets sent to the Wilderwood because people are superstitious and all that stuff and believe that someday the forest will puke up the Five Kings it ate a long time ago. As long as the girl they send is a good enough sacrifice. This isn’t the first time. Nope.
We have OG woman who went into the forest. Then OG Wolf brought her bleeding corpse out and demanded more Second Daughters for the Wilderwood. So the people of Valleyda decide OKAY WE CAN DO THAT and do it two more times before Red gets her chance.
Lots of things happen in the Wilderwood that are spoilery so I won’t type them here. Pretty much most of the book would be spoilery. Sorry.
So I’ll talk about Eammon. He’s the Wolf to Red’s Second Daughter. He’s big and burly and tall. I kept imagining him with a beard. He reminds me of my husband off and on. Which is AWESOME. It’s super rare for me to find a LI like him. They’re usually lithe and athletic instead of a LUMBERJACK.
This book deals with consent. Permissions granted and not. And LISTENED TO. Always questioning if this or that is okay. And that’s pretty awesome too.
It has complex sisterly love. Complex relationships with mothers. Romantic and non-romantic relationships. All kinds of relationships. Which was nice.
Here’s another photo.
This book is loamy. It’s a comfort read for me now. It brought back so many amazing feelings from when I was 13 or so? 12? When I read Caroline B Cooney’s The Stranger. The earthiness of a dirt person. A forest person. The strength of the characters. Their love for each other.
I can’t wait for this book to be out in the world. For more eyes to devour it. More hearts to let it blossom in them.
Did I mention Eammon smells like forest and coffee and paper? And that there’s a LIBRARY?
Sometimes a book comes along and it slips under your radar. It publishes during such a strange time, where there are no customers in the store, no music overhead. Just the music from your phone. Or your coworkersâ phones. The work day is filled with boxes of books and moving fixtures and phone calls for curbside.
The House in the Cerulean Sea is just one of those books. It was published in March. It slid by like the sand beneath your feet. With its vine-twined red house, the van out front all crusted with weeds, it escapes your notice. Like a whisper beneath the rumbling of the huge oven in the cafe.
I picked it up a couple of times, but I had no idea the magic that rested within its pages. Itâs just paper. But itâs a story that has etched itself into my blood.
The book opens with Linus Baker, a caseworker with DICOMY. The Department in Charge of Magical Youth is meant to protect these magical youths as they are raised in orphanages. Sometimes the masters of the orphanages are kind. Sometimes they are cruel. Linus is here to make sure no one is cruel to these children.
To Linus, they are children. They are children in need of care, treated like children rather than simply the magical unknown.
Linus, a straight-laced worker of DICOMY for 17 years, is called to Extremely Upper Management to go to this remote island to investigate an orphanage and its master. Marsyas Island is its name. Itâs level four classified, you know.
What happens on Marsyas Island, with Lucy and Chauncey, Sal and Theodore, Talia and Phee, Zoe and Arthur, is nothing short of spectacular. Itâs filled with rich color and radiant warmth. It cascades love through each speck of black ink, each swath of blank paper.
There are flowers brighter than jewels. Water bluer than the cover of the book can convey. There are trees that are so old and massive youâd think they were there at the beginning of the world. And a van so overgrown with weeds you wonder if it ever ran since it was parked there for the first time.
Yes, this book has the machinations of terrible racism in it. This time, itâs against magical youth. The village of Marsyas hates them. Despises them. Fears them. There are a few people in that village that are good and kind. There are harsh words for the children, words that Linus will not stand for.
I wonât say thereâs anything triggering in the book that I know of. There is mention of abuse of a few of the children. Itâs one reason theyâre at Marsyas Island. Theyâre unknowns. Theyâre even more unusual than the children that are at orphanages on the mainland.
There is hatred in this book dealt by terrible characters.
But there is also an abundance of love.
This book is so gentle. Itâs loving. Itâs a hand that rests atop your head gently, scratching your scalp as you watch TV. Itâs the cup of coffee made by your best friend, your partner, your children. Itâs a deep breath of sweet autumn air after being indoors for hours. The gentle purring of your cat as you lie in bed, staring out the window.
I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who needs that breath. That cup. That deep rumbling purr from your favorite ball of fluff and whisker.
Please read it. TJ Klune is a master of the soft smile, the kind nudge of shoulder to shoulder. Itâs the first novel Iâve finished in over a month.
Donât you wish you were here?
Perfect with leftover chili. Always better the next day.
Anyone who knows me knows I loved Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. It came out last year, in September, and birthed my love of space necromancers and the bones they conjure. Recently, it came out in paperback, just this July 7.
Though Harrow the Ninth, the second book in the Locked Tomb series, doesnât come out for another two weeks, I was gifted a copy from the publisher, TorDotCom. They didnât ask for anything return. Iâm writing this review because I want to.
Here is the newest bit of my Locked Tomb collection: the paperback Gideon and the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of Harrow.
FOR THE NINTH
Including those above, I also own the First Printing (with black sprayed edges) and the Ninth Printing (with a red cover) of Gideon. I also have the eARCs of both volumes. So far. Weâre still waiting on Alecto the Ninth, though I havenât seen a release date yet.
Iâll try to keep this Rambling Review spoiler-free, but Iâm assuming if youâre reading this review of Harrow, that youâve already read Gideon. Itâs been almost a year. Go read it first, before you move on.
Enjoy it. The swords and the necromancy. The tension and the mystery. The varied characters and their personalities and various weirdness.
Done? Here we go.
Harrow picks up where Gideon left off. Kind of. Gideon, as we know, died at the end of her volume. Sorry if I spoiled it, but I did tell you to go read Gideon before you continued with this review. Itâs your own fault.
The bit that stood out right away was the POV. About half of the book is in Second Person POV. A lot of âyouâ going on. We are Harrow. The narrator is telling us what we did as if we were Harrow. It was jarring, in the best way, but you learn to get used to it. Like a sheared-off tooth thatâs been worn smooth.
We get to meet new faces: the Lyctors and God. Augustine, Mercymorn, and God. He has another name, but Iâm really not gonna spoil that for you. I mean itâs just too bizarre to put down here. Youâll have to read it to find out what name he was given by Tamsyn Muir. Itâs the best for someone called God.
Thereâs a big war, as I think we already knew from Gideonâs novel. The Host of insect-things, space bees, murder wasps. They clamp onto a ship, buzz their wings, roasting you. I think thereâs actually a bug that does that to hives. Roasts them inside their home. But I canât Google that because Iâm on a tablet. Typing away. Rather than my computer.
So we have these creatures, the Host, going around and killing everyone. There are the Resurrection Beasts, that are never really described because theyâre just too terrifying. They try in Harrow, but itâs so disjointed because theyâre all so different. Thereâs no one way that a Resurrection Beast looks.
Interspersed amongst the Second Person POV chapters are chapters that are in Third Person. These harken back to our days in Canaan House, with Teacher and the weird skeletons. With Abigail Pent, Magnus, Ianthe, and all the rest. The cold metal rooms. The crumblingness of the House.
But itâs wrong. Itâs all wrong. Even for me, and I have a terrible memory. But even I know that a lot of these things didnât happen that way.
Thereâs also a glaring difference in these âmemoriesâ that I wonât say. But you know theyâre wrong. Itâs no secret.
Harrow is hard to describe. Itâs a brilliant book that left me completely bereft of the desire to read anything else. I wanted to go right on to Alecto. For reasons. I wanted to move on to the third book in the Locked Tomb. But I donât have it. I canât go on. But I donât want to read anything else just yet. Iâm still trying to breathe deep and recover from this ride.
Thereâs definitely a lot more diaphanous feelings in this one. Some disjointed thought. Like wading through pool water that feels like warm pee water. You know itâs not pee, but it feels uncomfortable. But also warm and comfortable because you know itâs not pee. Itâs just water. Warm water. So itâs nice. But also a little weird.
Harrow is more than a little weird. Itâs a chill that settles into your wrists, especially if youâve broken one as a child. Itâs that breath you just canât catch. The one you didnât realize you were holding. That happened once while reading it. I let out a breath I didnât realize I was holding. Serious.
We see so much more of Harrowâs thought processes. Her limitations she puts on herself, all through that âyou.â We see her strengths. That genius that is Harrowhark. We live through it.
Then the reveals. I started paying attention to certain chapters, and my theory definitely holds up.
I highly suggest rereading Gideon before diving into Harrow. Itâll make a lot more sense if you do. Then, after reading Harrow, read it again. See all the little things you missed. Pick apart the meat to find those glorious bones beneath.
Devour it. Inhale it. Subsume it.
I realize this wasnât much of a review, but I donât want to spoil anything. Thereâs a Cavalier in it that shocked me. God made me laugh and also feel really sorry for everyone in the universe. The Lyctors made me sad, happy, angry. I rooted for them and cursed them. I yelled at them in my head as I was reading it, like what you do while watching movies. You hope it doesnât happen, but it does.
Harrow descends on August 4. Thatâs two weeks from today. Not that much longer now.
Make sure you read Gideon first.
Hey, Skelekids. Read the skelebook. Itâs skelegood.
A few years ago, I was playing Lord of the Rings Online, or LotRO, with my husband. It was during the Halloween event. It’s mostly the Haunted Burrow, but they’d just introduced a new area. Spooky and atmospheric. It was called Wistmead! I think it was the first time ever that they’d had it.
So my husband and I were there when suddenly, a wild GM appeared! See below.
GM +Diplodocus
It was +Diplodocus!
Such a happy visit!
I think I had asked the GM to visit for Athkarr’s birthday. That’s Husbeast’s character. He’s a bear. A Beorn. The GM, +Diplodocus, was good enough to oblige and it was a grand time. They turned Athkarr HUGE.
Teeny tiny Athkarr man.
And +Diplodocus also made Athkarr very tiny. Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots of Tiny Bear.
It was a really awesome thing for the GM to do for us. A little gift from me to him. And +Diplodocus made it happen.
I don’t know if +Diplodocus is still with LotRO, but I hope so. It was such a lovely thing for them to do.
Thank you! On and on…
It was one of the most fun birthday presents I could have given him.
Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells, published by Tor Dot Com
Let me start off this Rambling Review by saying I have a very special guest!
My 8-year-old is doing a guest post for our Read-Aloud of The Murderbot Diaries! Weâll call her Goblin. Off we go!
This is verbatim. What she says, Iâve typed it up. Nothing has been changed. Enjoy!
THIS MAY HAVE SPOILERS.
âI thought Big Wormy One [Hostile One] was very funny. Even though he tried to eat Bharadwaj. How I imagined him he was still very cute, even though he probably had a million teeth.
âDeltFall could have survived if it hadnât been for the other rogue team. No one really knows why they decided to sabotage DeltFall. Why they really tried to kill them.
âWhy doesnât Murderbot want to show its face? Why is it so awkward?
âMurderbot is super funny and a little weird and super silly. He has kinda weird thoughts. Like how he was thinking LET ME LEAK IN PEACE while Mensah was bothering him. LET ME LEAK IN PEACE.
âIn the end, it got bought. Which was REALLY CUTE but it didnât like it that much because it really likes protecting people and it was scared it wouldnât get to protect anymore.
âMurderbot likes its humans, except for the augmented human [Gurathin]. I like that it likes its humans.
âWhy did they decide to insert a Combat Module into the SecUnits and kill the people and cost the company millions of dollars? It wasnât a very nice decision to do that.
âMy favorite parts were when Big Wormy One showed up because itâs super cute, and the end of the book.
âI hope Murderbot finds out what he wants in book two. So he can go back to his humans because Mensah spent a lot of money on him and because I want Murderbot to have adventures and be with the humans that he likes. And the augmented human that it doesnât like so much [Gurathin].â
There you have it! A super Rambling Review of ALL SYSTEMS RED!
Anne Leckie isnât the only one! đ¤
Weâve started ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, and the review for that will be posted as soon as weâre done!
I don’t know if this one will have any photos, but we’ll see.
Today isn’t a book review. Not a Rambling Review. But just some thoughts on what it was like as a kid vs. now with all of this social media stuff going on.
Perusing social media can be an adventure. Likes are key for most people, but I just dope around and have a good time. Talk with old friends and family. See cat videos and spiders and Halloween stuff all times of the year.
But you know what’s really surreal for me?
The idea, the very notion, that you can talk to published authors and publishers in real-time.
And that they reply back.
Every time an author replies back to me, I freak out. It’s so surreal. When I was young it just wasn’t heard of unless you knew these people personally. But now? Now a friend of mine has actually talked to an author about a topic for a paper. Clarification on passage in their book.
Now you can ask why the curtain was blue.
I remember the first time I tweeted and tagged Margaret Weis. She’s one of the brilliant and lovely people behind Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight and the subsequent two books. I didn’t expect her to reply. She was untouchable. She was a big published author from 1997 or something that I read and loved so much that I haven’t read anything but fantasy novels since.
But then she replied. And I grabbed a screenshot. I flipped my ghost. MARGARET WEIS. She’s LEGENDARY. She wrote DRAGONLANCE. A book series that changed my fundamental SELF. And she replied back to me.
She’s since replied so some other tweets and I freak out just as much every time.
It’s even more prevalent with YA authors. The younger generation is so steeped in social media that these things are normal? for them? Are they? Seems like it what with all the threads I’ve seen. Casual conversations with Astrid Scholte, Margaret Owen, Nicki Pau Preto, Emily Duncan and so many other YA authors. It’s bizarre for an old goat like me.
Four Dead Queens, by Astrid Scholte
I’m not active with the lit fic crowd. Just mainly SFF and YA. Even with YA, it’s mostly SFF because that is what I like. And I’m not all about that trend of reading other genres to be more “well-rounded.” That’s something else and not this here.
I’ve talked with Samantha Shannon (Priory of the Orange Tree), CSE Cooney (Desdemona and the Deep), Nicholas Eames (Kings of the Wyld; Bloody Rose), and a few others. I’m sure I could get in on more, but I don’t want to bother anyone. They’re all SFF.
Kings of the Wyld, by Nicholas Eames
These authors are delightful! They read the reviews (I guess?) and genuinely care about their fans. They’re friendly and open to talking with a married old lady with a kid who’s too young to read their books (yet). They’re just wonderful folks who talk. Published authors. It blows my mind that I, a normal woman, can talk to these authors. They’re like celebrities to me and my family.
Do you know how STRANGE this is for me? For someone who would only dream of writing to Piers Anthony about Xanth. Who could reread the bios of these authors in the backs of their books, wishing I could write them a letter. But now. Now they’re just a social media account away.
And don’t get me started on publishers.
To talk to even ONE person at Simon and Schuster or Penguin or Angry Robot or Orbit or Random House or Macmillan. To talk to TOR.
TOR, you guys!
Desdemona and the Deep, by CSE Cooney, pub Tor.com
The first time I got a reply from Tor, I swear I almost peed myself. I went to every coworker and told them I got a gif reply from Tor. I was grinning like I had just won the lottery.
And for someone who had grown up with Tor’s fantasy titles, I had. I had won the lottery of social media because a SFF giant like Tor replied to me.
To me. A simple bookseller, wife, cat lady, gamer, mom.
I still freak out, even now, when publishers and authors reply. It’s a special moment, to be honest, even if it was something ridiculous like my daughter’s toy she named Pooprat. Yes, for real.
She knows all about publishers. Imprints and parent companies. She knows about Scholastic book fairs and what they publish. She knows about Tor, and Mommy’s love for their line of books. She knows about Desdemona and dragons and elves and Gandalf and Bilbo and phoenixes and the Dark Crystal and crows and magic. She knows. And she wants to publish her own book.
And she wants it to be with Tor.
Crown of Feathers, by Nicki Pau Preto
Maybe someday Tor Teen will publish her book. It’s not done yet. But she’s got her eye set on that publishing giant because she saw the gifs they’ve sent to her mom. She knows all of these authors by name and works. She wants to be among them someday.
And with Tor, you know it’s going to be Something. Not just any kind of fantasy.
Fantastic Fantasy.
Enter Tamsyn Muir and her trilogy. We have our first installment, Gideon the Ninth.
Here’s the first photo.
Image on tablet from Tor.com
Marshmallow has a thing for Gideon.
Welcome to another Rambling Review! I’ll do my best to keep it free of spoilers.
The basic, very basic, idea behind Gideon the Ninth is necromancers in space. You have Houses, all on differing planets, numbered First through Ninth. They all have their strengths. Weaknesses.
Each of these Houses has a ruling family. In this book, each ruling family has their Necromancer (Necro from now on because that’s a lot to type) summoned along with their Cavalier. Like a guardian/warrior person trained specifically to protect the Necro.
So they’re all summoned to an ancient and crumbling, moldering citadel on the sea.
Commence puzzles. Secrets. Necromancy.
This book has it all. Bones amd blood and bones and love and magic and life energy and black robes and skeleton paint. And bones.
Also CW, infanticide. Kids die in this book. Not during the story, but it’s talked about. Also debilitating illness, death, and re-death. Some mild gore. This is categorized as SFF and would be shelved in the section for adults in bookstores.
I had to look up some bones because I’ll be darned if I remember anything about biology in high school. That’s 20 years ago!
But that aside, the characters are amazing. The characterization! We have Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the Necro from Nine. She’s the daughter of the ruling family and her story is messed UP. But, at the same time, this mean and spiteful, selfish and harrowing young woman is quite believable. Even though she’s a necromancer, her characterization makes me flip between loving and hating her.
Gideon Nav is our star. She’s a bucket of sass with a potty mouth and I adore her for it. Not often I see some key phrases of today used in SFF. Like buckets of ass. Legit.
You wouldn’t know it, dear reader, but I was gone an hour.
So Gideon. Griddle. Griddlecakes. Wee Griddy. Baby Navalavadingdong. I love this kid. She’s tough but also soft sometimes. She’s strong and sleek and has an attitude my kid would try to emulate. I call her kid because she said something like a 30-some-year-old was old. So I’m old. I’m her auntie and I’m so proud of Gridlock. Look how she’s grown.
Great stuff happens and I don’t want to spoil it. But the rest of the characters are prime. Necromancers from all the Houses. Their Cavaliers. They’re all so distinct from one another. Sure, at times I had some confusion about the starched ones. But you know.
And the descriptions of the twins! Corona and Ianthe and Nab. Nab is the Cavalier. Corona was the shining star and she kinda got on my nerves. In an enjoyable way. Line how you’d feel about your kid when they’ve interrupted you a thousand times to show you a dragon on a video gamr while you’re reading. You love the kid, but dang just let me read. I loved Corona, but dang just have a seat.
Camilla and Silas are great, too. I didn’t know how to feel about Silas at first. Camilla, like most Cavalier types, hung around in the drapes. Which was fine. But Silas grew on me like a slow and persistent cough. Annoying at first, then you get used to it, and eventually you try not to do it. I tried not to like Silas, but he pushed his spectacles into my heart. Good kid.
There are so many characters! Magnus and Abigail, though, are my faves. Older. Good cook. Magnus seems cuddly. Love them.
The ending wrecked me in the best way.
Need to wrap this up. I suggest reading Giddy with a friend, like this.
Glitterbones reminds you that the tablet image is from Tor.com
Glitterbones wanted to be in the photo. He was getting ready for bed. He’s my kid’s favorite thing. Look at those eyes!
So everyone should read this. The blurb online is Lesbian Space Necromancers. But it’s so much more. There is LGBTQ rep in here, but it’s not like, “here is a gay couple now feel proud of us.” It’s much more natural than that. It flows and reaches a point that’s beautiful. I wanted more Giddyup and Silas and Dulcinea and Harrowhark and Teacher.
I’ll have to wait for book 2.
And so will Marshmallow.
Such a happy Skelebone. Gideon cover from Tor.com!
Introducing Desdemona and the Deep, a haunting, richly-tapestried tale by C.S.E. Cooney.
Behold! My black-glass scrying mirror! Because everyone has one. It’s the new dagger.
Behold.
This book. I’ve not read a book with such hoity language in a long time. But I don’t talk about that book that I never finished. This book did hoity language well.
Desdemona and the Deep embraces poetic language. It throws you into a world where poets can reach The World Beneath the World Beneath. Where are surpasses reason. Where creativity reigns.
It grasps you by all nine of your tails and doesn’t let a one wag without permission. It takes your face and pushes you into a deep dark lake where no fish swims.
Desdemona is a high-society girl with no idea where her father’s money comes from. Her mother is involved in charities out the butt. Her most recent deals with the girls who work with white phosphorus, an ingredient in matches, that slowly eats them alive. But all Desi can think of are the dresses she loaned them.
The dresses she vows never to wear again.
Enter Chaz, a lovely young human who did not, in fact, wear his gown to the charity event like he promised. So Desi brings in The Art.
Stuff happens with lilting prose and language full of depth and color and alliteration.
I live for alliteration.
Eventually our dear Desi finds out exactly where her dear dad’s money comes from: a contract with the Kobold King.
So we have Desi and Chaz, drunk as skunks, in the billiards room. Desi plans on drinking herself into poetry, because the Door opens for artistes. And Desi is not.
This whole book was one fantastic dream. We have Chaz who comes into her own body like a queen.
Umber Farklewhit and his pink lace apron, curling horns, and hairy body. Stubby tail.
Tattercoats with her many eyelids, ears, tails, and pelts.
The Kobold King with his green flame and righteous indignation.
Susurra with her spidery hair and flaring eyes.
Everything, from the Mirradirra to the Gentry King to the deadly soprano flowers to the antlered crown is described with lush reverence to the feeling of the thing. Now what it is.
What it is. What it feels like.
I cannot stress the sheer importance of reading this book. It could have been twice as long, the journeys drawn out to thrice their length, the reveals peeled away to give more, the backdrop described in even richer detail and it still would have ended too soon.
I grew to love Desdemona Mannering. I adored Farklewhit from the start, and his character only became deeper.
There isn’t a lot of SciFi in Young Adult. Not much by the way of aliens and space. Usually YA focuses on humans in SciFi, which is fine, but sometimes I want aliens.
Honest-to-goodness aliens.
In A Conspiracy of Stars, by Olivia Cole, I got my aliens, but not in a way I was expecting.
Humans were the aliens.
This is going to be a 2-book review. A Conspiracy of Stars and Anatomy of Beasts. Both are by the amazing Olivia C. Cole. I’ll just call her Olivia. She’s a very nice person!
This, below, is An Anatomy of Beasts, which I won in a contest. Maybe I’d forgotten, but it was signed! Do you know how few of those I actually have?
Fewer than you’d think.
Here’s the book, nestled in my beautifully overgrown garden.
Aliens! Glamor Glow! Gorgeous bookmark!
Anywho.
These books both star a human main character, Octavia, middle name Afua. She’s a strong girl, weak at times as we all are. Her parents are scientists, as are many others who came to Faloiv from Earth, the Origin Planet.
Something happened on Earth. Humans destroyed the planet. Maybe it was something like what’s going on now. Maybe something else. The book itself is vague, except to say a big company helped the demise along.
I really liked this series and hope there’ll be a third. YA SciFi is hard to come by. Especially ones with actual aliens!
Anywho.
We have Octavia and her friends doing teen things. They’re basically in school, learning to be scientists. The arts aren’t really used at all. No poetry or creative writing. No music, besides mentions of drums (a tradition brought from Earth) and an izinusa (a stringed instrument that’s important later). That made me sad.
Rondo and Alma are the main secondary characters. Alma is the Best Friend. Rondo is the Love Interest. BF and LI.
Im really rambling extra on this one. That’s why I dub them Rambling Reviews!
So, since this is a review for both books, THERE WILL PROBABLY BE SPOILERS. You’ve been warned. So before I get into that, I really loved reading these books. They were fun. I appreciated the pacing. There was some good character development.
The Faloii are the native species of biped on Faloiv. They’re very tall, have paw-like hands and feed, rather flat faces, and luminous eyes. Their skin can change for camouflage and their voices have a wooden tone, big and resonant. Also they choose their gender (and sex?) when they come of age. So there is one character that goes by they/them.
This book is something of a coming-of-age story. Well, both of them are. Because I’m talking about both of them at the same time. It deals a lot with Octavia and her growth, along with the help from her friends, some mysteries to solve, secrets to uncover.
Octavia really starts out as this idealistic kid who wants to be the best scientist in the Lab and be a Whitecoat. Like her parents. She thinks only the best of N’Terrans (N’Terra is what they call New Earth, but they never say New Earth, just call this settlement N’Terra) and the science they both use an uncover. Like most kids. Because humans destroyed the Origin Planet, surely we must have learned our lesson and are doing better on Faloiv?
Yeah, right. Octavia’s a bit naive here in the beginning of the story. Her dad is distant, as a lot of dads tend to be in YA. But at least he’s there? I guess? I didn’t much care for him as a person just because he was so consumed with the death/disappearance of his MIL that he ignored everything else. His wife and his daughter. Maybe I was never that close to any grandparents, but I didn’t stop living when one of them died. I can’t imagine shutting my child out because my MIL died.
The mom is a little better, though she’s pretty consumed in her work, too. But she takes some time out a bit to help her kid. So that was nice. She’s still upset about her mother’s death/disappearance, too, but it isn’t all-consuming RAGE like what the dad has. Maybe he knows something?
Skipping around, I know.
So anyway. Octavia has a Major Growth Spurt when she finds out just what kind of science the Lab is doing. Experiments on the critters and whatnot of Faloiv. Not to mention they have a Faloii! One of the native creatures what allowed the humans to stay! What terrible things are they going to do to him?
Humans have learned nothing since the destruction of the Origin Planet. I gotta say I’m not shocked. I really did like how, while humans are given a new start on a new planet, they still mucked it up. Sure, the humans were only given a wee plot of land without permission to expand massively. But it wasn’t their planet.
So why did the Faloii only give us a wee plot? SPOILER. Because they’d met us before. They’d come to Earth a long time ago and given us a gift to better ourselves. And humans squandered it.
Not surprised. At all.
I loved that. I’d been wondering why the humans were sequestered. Got a very nice answer.
But not all of the humans were garbage. We find out that 100 of them were living with the Faloii! I’d rather be in that group, honestly.
Spoilers galore! I warned you.
So Octavia gets out of the compound and finds the main home of the Faloii and finds out some stuff. She finds some people. Finds a bunch of Faloii. Good times are had.
I gotta say there’s a part in the second book that freaked me out bad. I didn’t know there was a scene deep beneath the water. I have a strong phobia of deep water. Very bad. I was shaking all through this part. Yes, there were cuddly critters that were giant. There was also a fearsome beast that was more giant. Just remembering it makes me queasy.
It did enlighten me on why Octavia and the rest were vegan. Predators only eat other predators. They can smell the fact that the creatures ate dead animal. And, once Big Bad Guy comes to power, he serves meat. Only one of Octavia’s friends ate it and suddenly the giant walrus creatures wanted nothing to do with this small group of three humans.
By the end, Octavia must choose a side. Human or Faloii.
I super enjoyed this book. I know my opinion doesn’t carry much weight online, but that’s fine. I throw my weight around at the bookstore instead. My reach is massive in person. I’m very memorable!
There is a small romance in this series. It was cute. But I’m hoping for Octavia to fall for one of the Faloii. Still holding out for that!
All in all, this is a delightful slice of YA SciFi. It’s much more enjoyable than some other YA SciFi that I’ve read. No love triangle, for one. And there are otherworldly creatures that don’t look human. Two solid points for that! A small romance that really pushed Octavia into her own person. Friendships that I thought fell apart but NOPE. A supportive parent, so that’s grand.
I just hope some of my questions get answered in the next book! It’s definitely open for a sequel.
I have a full time job. I’m a Bookseller at the BEST place I have ever worked in my life. I love everyone I work with. Do you know how rare that is? Everyone. I. Work. With. I don’t even have that Token Terrible Coworker. Everyone is fantastic.
I also play video games. Sometimes it’s Pokemon. Sometimes it’s games on the computer. My kid has recently gotten me to play Roblox. That’s what that screenshot is. Roblox. It’s from a game called Feed Your Pets. It’s vaguely like Pokemon, but you can’t really improve your chances of catching critters except for better nets.
It’s just not feasible to read all the time. Read books, I mean. I read like one magazine and it comes out 4 times a year. I read blogs sometimes. Sometimes I read book reviews of books I’ve read before, only to wrinkle my nose as I disagree.
So book bloggers don’t always read books. I would love to spend more time reading, but I have a 7yo. She doesn’t allow crap like that. So I play with her. I answer zillions of questions, like if she should pull this sticker outline thing apart. Sure, kid. Have at it.
I also have an amazing husband. He recently cut my hair for me. But until it’s dyed, it’s gonna stay vague. He colors my hair. Cuts it. And we co-parent. We’ve been married for 17 years! Together for 22. Longer than some of my coworkers have been alive! Crazy.
So don’t feel bad if you can’t read all the time. If you can’t read more than one book a month. Sometimes, like when the kidlet has school, I can read a book a week. Sometimes less than that. A book and a half a week. But summer vacation gives less time for reading and more for the kid.
Which is fine. I enjoy these times with her. When she wants me around. When she talks to me about Minecraft or Roblox or snakes and spiders. She loves Pat and Jen, Coyote Peterson, and Gumball.
I just have to ask for a little less Gumball.
Wow, that show.
So read! Or play games! Draw or color! Bake! Sew or paint or crochet! And don’t feel bad about it. I sure don’t. I’ve got Roblox up in another window as she looks for ANOTHER game to play.
notenoughshelfspace 