Book Review: Bleach (3-in-1) vol.2 by Tite Kubo

Bleach (3-in-1 Edition), Vol. 2: Includes vols. 4, 5 & 6 by Tite Kubo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hello, BLEACH. I missed you so much. Even though your coming out with a new arc, the Thousand Year Blood War arc this October, so I thought I’d read the manga while I wait for the show to come back on…and this didn’t disappoint. I missed Ichigo, Rukia, Orihime, Chad, Uryru, and even Kon, and hell, even Kisuke. It did introduce Don Kanoji in the beginning and how Ichigo really hates him in the beginning…

Until Don Kanoji turned someone into a hollow when he came to Karakura Town, and oh boy, it was not good.

Ichigo juimps in to save him and stop the hollow, and Don Kanoji does help, but then at the end Ichgio defeats the hollow and all is good…

Until Uyru enters…and it turns out, Uyuru is a Quincey that hates Soul Reapers. He even goes to Ichigo’s school (shocking) and he gives Ichigo a challenge: to see how many hollows they can kill, and to also see if the world really needs Soul Reapers. Ichigo agrees, and the two go at it, not even knowing that Chad and Orihime’s powers manifested and they destroyed the hollows that were attacking them, and then that’s when a huge Menos appeared after Ichigo and Uryu were surrounded by a whole bunch of hollows, and Ichigo, with help from Uyru, destroyed the menos and all was well…

Until the night Rukia left and then Renji and Byakuya shows up, asking about Ichigo and to take her back to the Soul Society. Before she could do anything, Uyru shows up…and that was it. Am I worried about what’ll happen next? Yes. Am I excited to be reading this again? Yes. I can’t wait to read the next volume to find out what happens next.

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Book Review: Critical Role Vox Machina: Kith and Kin by Marieke Nijkamp

Critical Role: Vox Machina—Kith & Kin by Marieke Nijkamp
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kith & Kin stars the twins from Campaign one of Critical Role, Vex’ahlia and Vax’ildan (played by Laura Bailey and Liam O’Brien) and how they solved three problems. It does go back when they were younger in the village of Byroden and to their father’s home in Syngorn, which I have to say, I really don’t like their father, even when they went to Syngorn to see their father and deal with the prejudices their father had against them (which is bullshit). Anyway, reading about Vex and Vax (and Trinket, can’t forget about the bear) before they joined up with the others and became Vox Machina was pretty good to read about, even though this book felt like a normal D&D book, sans the dice.

So all of this started was when Vex was at a book stall, looking for a book on dragons when a rich looking man appeared and tried to get her to hang out with her. Vex said no, turning him down, and what does the officer of the court of law does? Put out a hit on her. Thank god for Vax following her and taking down the person that was going to kill his sister, then going down to the tunnels to go and have a talk to the Clasp. He does, meeting Spireling Gideor, who gives him a little job: get a ring in the village of Jorenn, and the hit/contract on your sister is gone.

Vax agrees, and the three of them head off to Jorenn, and before they could even enter the city, they are attacked by Ash Walkers. Vax is badly wounded, and Vex went to the city, where she meets the Shademaster Derowen and her daughter, Aswin, and Wick, a half-giant. Vex gets close to the Shademaster and Aswin while trying to find her brother, who is with another group outside of the Umbra Hills who lives in the mines.

With Vax, it’s a totally different story. He meets Thorn, another half-elf, and he tells the story of how the Shademaster basically killed his sister, and how he became the leader of the miners when she died, and he wants vengeance on the woman that killed his sister and is hunting him down. Many times Thorn pushed Vax away, telling him that it’s not his fight, but Vax, after hearing his story and everyone else’s story, decided that yes, it was his fight, and joined in.

There was an attack on the miners thanks to Vex trying to look for her brother, and once they found each other, both of them on different sides, thats when everything went to hell, honestly. Thorn got captured and was wounded when the Ash Walkers attacked him, the ring, it turns out, summons them and also create a shield to protect the people of Jorenn, and Derowen keeps calling the miners outlaws when they didn’t really do anything. When Vax broke into the Shademaster’s Office and found a notebook full of things that were sus and sounds EVIL af, that’s when the twins talked and tried to figure out what they wanted to do, and they decided to do the right thing.

Vex was in the room with Thorn when Derowen entered and basically nearly killed him, and then she and Vex got into a fight, when Derowen’s brother, Culwen, appeared, and killed her when the Ash Walkers attacked. Vex was shocked, but then before all of this went down. Vax went to have a little chat with Culwen, and it turns out Culwen works for the Clasp and is actually one of the Spirelings. Culwen made Vax a deal and I don’t think he took it, so Culwen appeared in the room Vex was in once the conversation was over, and then…well…he killed his own sister. Which was fucked up, by the way. Vax somehow stole the ring (he rolled it expertly off of Derwoen’s finger) and then he and Culwen got into a fight, using Thorn’s serpent belt for help. Vex took the ring from Vax and with Wick, went to a spot to stop and get rid of the Ash Walkers, and once she was done doing that, she told Wick everything that happened. It was heartbreaking for Wick, because he did walk in and saw that Derwoen was dead, and that Aswin won’t have a mother anymore (thanks Culwen, you piece of shit).

After everyone said their goodbyes, the twins went back to Westruun, where Vax got branded as one of the members of the Clasp, Vex was about to get a new bow but didn’t, and then the two walked into the sunset (along with Trinket).

Speaking of Trinket, he was in the book, but he basically took care of Aswin while the twins did their thing.

I truly did enjoy this book and I’m so glad there’s now a written form of the Vox Machina story before their show comes back on (and I will watch it). I would reread this book in a heartbeat because it was that damned good.

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Book Review: City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This might be the I Hate Sebastian Morgenstern book review, and honestly…it is.

I really, REALLY don’t like Sebastian Morgenstern, even if he forced Jace to tie himself to him thanks to Lillth’s mark. Even if he tried to be the best brother to Clary, even though I kept thinking, “Sebastian is a jumped up little shit, I know he is, he’s up to SOMETHING.” and hot damn I was right, he was up to something. The little shit had the AUDACITY to reveal that he’s going to raise his “mother” Lilith from the underworld so he can make infernal Shadowhunters, and then he actually had the bloody nerve to kiss Clary after teasing her about Jace and her alone, WHICH WAS THE MOST DISGUSTING THING I’VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE AND I WANT TO SHANK THAT JUMPED UP LITTLE SHIT.

And Alec…poor, poor Alec. He wants to be with Magnus SO SO BADLY, you can tell. But then he started to get suspicious about Magnus all of a sudden, being all insecure about their relationship because Magnus lived for a long time and he didn’t, and he wanted Magnus to grow old with him. So guess who he went to?

Camille Belcourt.

And what did Camille suggest?

That he finds a way to take half of Magnus’s immortal life.

Thank god he didn’t do it, but Magnus found out and they broke up, which made me sad because I loved them and I wanted them together forever. But at least they worked together and had that ‘Magnus fell and Alec couldn’t do anything but kill the evil shadowhunters that wanted to kill them or follow Sebastian then go over to him and try to heal him’ and I almost CRIED for my boys because I loved them and wanted them to be together. But it did suck that Camille was killed by Maureen.

And then Simon, in the middle of it all. With his mother calling him a monster, his sister basically believing him and trusting him, to having a weird relationship with Isabelle and summoning the angel Raziel for something that’ll help split Jace and Sebastian apart. When Raziel gives him the Archangel Michael’s sword, he takes it to where Sebastian was doing his evil ritual to bring back Lilith and make his infernal shadowhunters, he passed it to Clary when she asked for it and Clary stabbed Jace, freeing him from Sebastian’s control, then the Heavenly Fire went into Jace and now he has the fire??? And he’s going to use it to stop Sebastian (which I full heartily agree on?)

It was a really good book, just Sebastian irked the hell out of me like Dio did in the JoJo manga and what Maven did in Red Queen.

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Book Review: Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1) by Cherie Prest

Maplecroft by Cherie Priest
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was my first horror novel and I have to say, this book didn’t scare me as much as I thought it would be. I honestly came in the book without knowing anything about the horror aspect of it, only that it was a reimaging (I think please correct me if I’m wrong) about Lizzie Borden and why she killed her parents (well dad and step mother). But this book, I think, was really good and I did jerk and it made me catch my breath, but all in all, I truly enjoyed it.

This book had multiple POVs, something I’ve never read in a book before because I just…never picked one up until now. But I find that I liked reading those multiple POVs from Lizzie, Emma, Dr. Seabury, Nance and Dr. Zollicoffer. I liked reading how they’re trying to figure out what it is that’s plaguing the town of Fall River, starting with Emma sending Dr. Zollicoffer a strange sample she found on the beach. As you read the novel, you follow how the sickness of what was in the water started to turn the people in town into something terrible.

The first deaths was a boy named Matthew and his grandmother Felicity-well, actually, the first person that ever got the ‘sickness’ that went around town. Matthew only picked up rocks and the like before he found a very special rock that started to change him into something very horrible, and one night, Ebenezer and Felicity went into Matthew’s room to check on him…only for him to be found swimming in the air and then kill his grandmother by picking her up by her hair and drowning her.

But the one “death” I guess we can call it that, is Lizzie’s lover, Nance. Nance had a couple POV chapters about her wanting to know what secret Lizzie is hiding, and she tricks (well more like seduce) Lizzie to get her key. When she gets the key after looking at the door and hearing the song of the thing in the water, she gets…I’m going to say possessed because that’s how I saw it, honestly, and that’s when things went downhill.

Nance grew gils and she had to be strapped down, but she kept whispering one word-”out”-and one day, Emma or Lizzie knows how, Nance slipped out of her bindings and left-no one knows how she escaped or what. Lizzie goes after her, calling her name, trying to get her to snap back to herself and to come back to her, but it doesn’t work as Nance leads her to the sea, and Dr. Seabury follows her, leaving Emma behind to deal with the possessed Dr. Zollicoffer.

Dr. Zollicoffer tries his best to convince Emma to leave with him, only for Emma to come back and kill him with her axe. I was almost certain for a moment that Emma would leave her sister (and she did at the end) and I applauded Dr. Seabury when he shot the water demons. In the end, Dr. Seabury started to slowly lose his mind, staying cooped up in the house and trying to find things and muttering to himself. Emma left the house and went somewhere-wherever she is, I hope she’s happy. And Lizzie…I have no idea where she is. Might be in a laboratory in Fall River or just still looking for Nance. I enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read book two.

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Book Review: The Sorcerer and the Swan Princess by Lucy Tempest

The Sorcerer and the Swan Princess by Lucy Tempest
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was alright-nothing to run home to tell mama about. It’s a retelling of the Swan Princess, all except it’s enemies to lovers and a princess with a disability, thanks to a ballet accident. It does have her sister pretending to be her, and the reveal of the supposed prince that got kicked out and is looking for someone to pretty much give him money so he can do whatever the hell he wants with it, and that just made me trickle the stars down from five to four.

But let’s talk about the characters. Aventina is crowned the Grand Duchess of Oopona, and when she’s kidnapped and turned into a swan, she really, really hated Dietrich Morgenstern. She thought that he was bad, he treated people horribly, and he only does evil shit. Instead, as she says at the Mondosee School of Magic…she sees that he’s caring, sometimes strict, and he can also turn into a barn owl.

A barn owl.

A BARN OWL.

When she went to see the students’ rehearsal of a winter play they were going to put on, she went and actually performed a little dance when she could do ballet. Dietrich did help her with his magic, turning her arms into swan feathers, and then they flew together. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read, and I cried. There was that once instance before all of this that she did fly away to see if she can go back home-and she did. Only for the love her life to try and kill her, which sucked.

But I’m glad that she fell in love with the big, bad sorcerer who took care of her, got mad when she told him that her leg never healed, and that the castle never gave her rehabilitation for her leg, thus leaving her limping and with a disability for the rest of her life, which sucked but I understand, including Dietrich, who turns out was like Sebastian de Poitiers from Reign: he was the son of a dancer, concubine, something like that, and the queen didn’t like him so she banned magic and also kicked his father’s son out while giving his other two sons titles and all of that, which was terrible by the way, so I hate this queen now. But at least they went to the wedding and exposed the two liars and turned both of them into swans, which was very good and smart of them, by the way.

At the end, Aventina got her crown back, the winter recital was a success, and on top of that she threatened her man to marry her. Jokenly. But other than that, I liked it, it was really good and I wish there was more, but hey, at least it was good and enjoyable.

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Book Review: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Holy hell. This book blew me away. I read this book with very low expectations like I always do with books, and I came out of this book with such awe and love for this book that I want book two to come out already. I fell in love with this book, the world, the characters. Each of them took my breath away, and I’m now a huge fan of Tracy Deonn.

This book is about a girl named Bree Matthews who had lost her mother in a car accident. She was mesmered by a Merlin from the Order of the Round Table to forget about what she knows, but the problem is, she can’t. She can’t stop thinking about that night, even when she created After-Bree and kept her anger and grief inside. When she and her best friend Alice go to college at UNC-Chapel Hill, that’s when she finds out about the world of the Legendborn and the Order of the Round Table.

She meets Selwyn Kane at a party she really didn’t want to be in and he tried to memser her, but she shook it off somehow and saw him and another girl fight an insel. Then she was probation because of what happened, and she was assigned a Peer student named Nick Davis-who turns out used to be part of the Order because he was the Scion of Arthur, and she told him about her mother, and she and Nick went to the Order so she can be a page and find out what happened to her mother, along with Nick coming back to take his spot back in the Scions.

The trials was tough for Bree and the others, but she did encounter racism in the Order, and nearly got killed if it wasn’t for the healer, William, whom I love SO SO MUCH. There, she finds out about what happens to her mother, and also she meets up with the therapist, Patricia, who works in rootcraft, and reveals to Bree that she can also do rootcraft, but it turns out, once she added a medium and figured out what really happened to her mother and the women in her family, she didn’t want to talk to anyone about them, until the gala night.

Bree went there to say goodbye to Nick and the others, instead Nick chose her to be his squire. Every white person in the room was outraged, and Nick’s father thought that Nick was joking and even had his Kingsmage mesmer her and take her to talk to his father. I really hate Nick’s father, and he revealed everything he was doing-opening up Gates to let the shadowborn in, to awaken Nick so he can take up Excalibur and start Calmann.

All except it didn’t go that way.

Instead, after walking through the past and meeting Vera, Bree took Excalibur and it turns out she’s the Scion of Arthur, not Nick. After the shadowborn was destroyed, Bree told the group everything (after she rested up) and then Sel tells her that they took Nick. I’m now wondering what happens now after she finds out about Nick, but I guess we’ll find out in the next book, which is coming out soon.

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Book Review: Closer to the Chest by Mercedes Lackey

Closer to the Chest by Mercedes Lackey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Closer to the Chest, though it was a good book, had some parts in it that were super slow. I felt like the story was dragging on and on and wasn't gonna get to the good parts, which came at the end of the story. But I really like the story, and the relationship between Mags and Amily. They are cute, loving, and they cared for one another, even when trying to figure out this mystery of the Poison Pen and the vandalism of stores ran by women, along with religious sects that are ran by women, like the Temple of Ardana. They try to link up why all of the misogynistic shit has been happening, and they linked it up to the Temple of Sethor, who are so, so misogynistic to women for no apparent reason.

The Temple of Sethor thinks that women should be listening to their husbands, keep their heads down and not speak, which, to me, is a bunch of bullshit. But they have been sending horrible letters to young ladies at the Colligate School, making them so afraid that one of them tried to kill themselves, but thanks to the quick work of the Heralds and the Companions, they pull the girl out before anything terrible happened to her, which I'm glad for. Then a Sister of the Ax I believe came to see the girl, and told her that she's going to join their order to get a spine, which is truly a really good thing.

But the defiling and sacrilegious temples ran by women and also kicking one out of their normal home was the most horrible thing I've ever read in the book, but at the same time, they do save the women and make sure they are taken care of, which is something I really liked as I read this book. But hearing what happened to that music teacher who did those horrible things to the girls that he was teaching was bad that I almost cried. But at the end, the Temple of Sethor was no more, and everything can go back to normal.

I actually enjoyed the book, even though there were some parts of it I really didn't like. I really like the relationship between Amily and Mags, especially when Mags changes identities-Harkon, Magnus, Parkler, and I also liked how Amily was involved with everything and make sure Mags was okay. I've never read the beginnings of their story, which is my bad, but they were so caring and loving to each other that I loved each and every bit of it, and reading the anger when Mags got his instruction to kill his own wife, which is fucked up by the way, but I'm glad they stopped the Temple of Sethor before anyone gets more hurt.

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