Book Review: War Storm (Red Queen #4) by Victoria Aveyard

War Storm by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

War Storm by Victoria Aveyard was SO GOOD. I got scared for a moment that I really wasn’t going to enjoy it, but I did. I really loved the fact that it had multiple POVs, Cal was in his Mariah Carey/Toni Braxton/Bill Withers era when it came to Mare, because he kept looking at her and wanting her when he’s the new king, and it's like the Samos family and his grandmother are forcing him to marry Evangeline, who really doesn’t want to get married. All Evangeline wants is for her and Elane to be alone somewhere, far away so no one knows them. But I really enjoyed this book, even though I didn’t like some things.

The one big thing I didn’t like was Maven’s death. I felt like this was kinda not satisfying than Volo Samos’s. His was satisfying because Julian sang him to his death. Maven just ran around like a little bitch and goating Mare to kill him. Then when she does get near him, he chokes her half to death, and then when she stabs him (I think), he just…dies. I mean, yeah, because of the Silent Stone it would’ve gone differently if it didn’t end the way that it did.

Throughout the book, I was oddly cheering Evangeline on. I wanted this girl to have to happy ending SO BAD that I’m sitting here upset that she can’t get that happy ending because of what she had to do as a princess when all she wants to do is run off with Elane and be herself. When she finally realized that she could live the life she wants when she went to Monfort to see how Davidson lived with his husband without hiding her true self or anything, she started to want it, to crave it. At the end, she decided to run away once her parents tried to kill her (which was bullshit, by the way) and I hope she and Elara are living happily ever after.

Now Cal…Tiberias the Seventh, the True Flame of the North…this boy was going through his GoT type crap along with his Mariah Carey/Toni Braxton/’I must listen to every sad boi music because I miss Mare’ era. Like…he was still feein’ for this girl after he chose his crown over her. Then I felt like he was going through what his grandmother wanted when I don’t think he really wanted to do it. He shot her down with the idea that he must plant his flag in Delphie or wherever she wanted him to make capital, and he didn’t do it. Then he and Mare spent the night together, but after that one night, he didn’t talk to her until the Lakelander War and when the Lakelanders attacked. But Evangeline, before she ran off, told him that he can get his happy ending if she could too. In the end, he and Mare decided to be apart, to see what she wanted and what he wanted, and when they’re ready, they’re ready.

Iris’s point of view was pretty interesting. Reading hers was very interesting, from trying to manipulate Maven, getting Bracken’s children from Monfort, and even going home and working with her mother and sister to try and attack Norta and take it from Maven and Cal. Sadly, Maven kinda comparing her to a dog pee’d me off, but at the same time, she took it with pride when I wanted to pimp-slap the shit out of him. Then when she tricked Maven and gave him to his brother, I cheered. I really liked Iris-just that I hope she had a nice day.

And Mare…I just want Mare to be happy. I want Mare to live her best life and never let anyone get on her nerves. But after reading her chapters, that’s all she needs, in my opinion. She loves Cal so much, but at the same time, she wants to find Maven and punish him for everything he’d ever done. She wants to stay with her family, who moved from Piedmont to Monfort, I believe, but she keeps on moving. She almost lost Kilorn one time during an attack on one of the Tech Towns but thank god for Sara Skonos and her healing him. I was worried for Kilorn for a minute when that happened, but he’s good now, even though at the end I thought something really bad happened to him. But he was fine, and I really liked Tyton-he looks and feels like a silver-haired anime character, which was funny, and I got worried when she went after Maven one final time.

I really enjoyed this book so much, it’s a new favorite series and I would re-read it over and over again.

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Book Review: King's Cage (Red Queen #3) by Victoria Aveyard

King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

May has been busy, but I’m finally reading like crazy now. King’s Cage was the first book I finished in May, and OH MY GOD…it hurt. It was an enjoyable ride, I hated Maven with all my heart, and I was not expecting the multiple POVs of Mare, Cameron, and Evangeline. In fact, Evangeline’s POV surprised me. I never really liked Evangeline, but the more I read her POV, the more I started to like her.

The book starts with Mare being a prisoner of the boy king, Maven Calore after she turned herself in after her brother Shade’s death. She couldn’t get in contact with her lightning because of the silent stone, her manacles, and her guards, which were Avrens. She did everything Maven told her to do, even though she hated every single minute of it. She had to give a speech, twisting the lies of the Scarlet Guard and painting them as terrorists, and was known as the leader of the Scarlet Guard. She was interrogated so badly by a man named Samson Merandus that she relived Shade’s death repeatedly.

After that terrible interrogation, Mare wakes up to find Maven over her. Sadly, even though I wish he didn’t, Maven still has feeling for her, and he forces her to give a speech about the Scarlet Guard, and also Maven gave all newbloods sanctuary from the Scarlet Guard. He forces Mare to experience all of this, and she hated every minute of it.

In this book, we learn more about Maven and Elara, and how Elara manipulated Maven so well in his mind that it makes me wonder if he ever had any emotions at all/ And the more he forced Mare to watch all of the newborns pledge their allegiance to him, the angrier she got, even though she couldn’t do anything. Then during a wedding between Maven and the Lakelader Irs Cygnet, the Scarlet Guard attacked to save Mare.

Mare was freed by Evangeline Samos, who was tired of her being in nice and simple imprisonment, so once she was freed, Mare left with the Scarlet Guard and reunited with everyone, including Cal. When they started moving against Maven and his enemies, that’s when things were coming out of the woodwork.

This leads me to Cameron’s POV. Cameron wants to save her brother Morrey so hard from the Red War camp. She keeps asking Colonel Farley and Diana Farley, but they said no, until Farley, while pregnant, comes up with a plan to break in the Choke I think, and get her brother back. They do, but thanks to Maven’s televised speech, Morrey, along with the rest of the Reds and newbloods, think that the Scarlet Guard are terrorists. But after some convincing, I think Morrey agrees. Also, she’s very suspicious about Cal and what he was doing behind doors (I was too).

Evangeline’s point of view was very…her. Her father wants to become a kingdom, breaking apart from Norta and wants to become Queen. Evangeline just wants to be with her girlfriend while she’s married to her brother. But things don’t go as planned as Evangeline thought, because with the meeting with the Scarlet Guard, her father, and Queen Anabel Leloran said that Cal and Evangeline to be married, and for Cal to take the throne. Mare left and Cal followed her, and Mare told Cal not to do it…but he didn’t say it back. So Mare turned around and left, leaving me to finally finish this series with War Storm. I’m enjoying this series so much and it’s one of my favorites.

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Book Review: Pretty Dead Queens by Alexa Donne

Pretty Dead Queens by Alexa Donne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pretty Dead Queens was the book I was in the mood for and was perfect after Elminster. This book took me from death to someone terrible, to solving a really old murder written in a famous book, and the surprise wasn’t something I was expecting. Pretty Dead Queens blew me away, and it is one of those books that make me want to reread it as if it was the first time.

Cecilia Ellis has just moved to her grandmother’s place after her mother’s death and was enjoying the days of being a senior—making new friends, going to classes, and having a typical weekend. But then one day during a game against the school’s rivals, she finds a friend dead in the pool, just like one of the characters in her grandmother’s novels. Shocked that someone would kill the girl, Cecilia starts to investigate her friend’s murder. With help from her friends and Ben, an intern that works for her grandmother, they dig up things about who might be the murderer, thinking about the murder that happened to another girl in the 70s.

While investigating the murder, there is a con going on in town about her famous grandmother (the grandmother is a writer). Her grandmother wrote books based on the town of Seaview, and of a murder about a prom queen—something Cecilia’s friend was. But the more she dug and got into it, the more she realized that her so-called friend, Natalie, was a total bitch who uses people to get what she wanted. I was and wasn’t expecting that Natalie was a bitch, but when we met her in the cafeteria, you can feel like she is.

At the funeral, Cecilia lashes out and just revealed everyone’s dirty secret, and the mayor thought that she was the one texting him. He nearly jumped her at the funeral, but her grandmother stopped him, and I think the police did as well. After giving the police officer a read about his drinking, they went home. At the prom. Cecilia apologized to everyone and even got a weird text message about going back to the poolhouse, where she saw Natalie’s dead body. The texts started to get weirder and she left, going back inside until she found her prom date, Ben, and they left to go back to his old home.

The two spent the night, and Cecilia started to look around, to be nosy…and she found the key that Natalie and Bronte has. Then her phone kept blowing up with texts from Amber, Bronte and I think Morgan about Ben, wondering if she was alright, and that they had something on Ben. Cecilia went to the bathroom, thinking that she could escape when she opened the door and Ben was there, revealing that he was the one who killed Natalie, and the two got into a tussle and slipped and fell nearly off the sliding house. But the both of them were saved, and Cecilia went home…

…when her grandmother started acting oddly strange. Things started to click in her head about the past, how it was Maura (the grandmother) who killed the prom queen Caroline, and also her husband for a book she was writing. Cecilia was trying to run away while her grandmother was trying to kill her but in the end, Cecilia defended herself and pushed her grandmother in the dumbwaiter, and now that Ben was in jail and her grandmother is dead, she got the house and everything else, and the FBI agent whom Cecilia thought was the killer is conducting her search into Maura Ellis and if the books she’d written were based off murders she committed.

This book kept me in twists and turns, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the book. It was that good, and I wish there were more because I liked the world and how Cecilia solved the case. I was not expecting that twist at the end at all, and I’m still thinking about this book to this day.

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Book Review: Elminster Must Die by Ed Greenwood

Elminster Must Die by Ed Greenwood
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Sadly, after thinking about it for a day, this book is a one-star. I've never had a one-star before, but this is the first time that this happened-but I have plenty of reasons why this is a one-star. One, it was too long. I felt like it was dragging, and knowing as much as I know about Elminster, I thought he was going to use magic, but sadly he didn't, because if he did, he would go mad. So he had other people use magic for him.

Secondly, the jumping around with the POV. It was so confusing that I didn't know what was going on. All I knew was that Elmister was looking for some magical items to feed to his lover...and then it switched to the villain Manshoon, a beholder who had so many bodies to shift into, and he kept going into people's minds and riding them...then it switched to Amarune Whitewave, who is Elminster's great-grandniece or something like that? She's a dancer and is also known as the Silent Shadow, and she's all curled up with some lord Arclath and the both of them are trying to figure out what the hell is going on in Cormyr.

Then when it came to the other villain, Martlin Stormserpent...I really didn't care at all about him. He got two artifacts of these things called the Nine, and he's trying to summon them and all that? He summoned two, and the third one was someone else, not a fierce warrior. Martlin didn't hold my attention throughout the book, and he was just...boring in my opinion.

It was an okay book, nothing to really come home and tell mama about. If Ed Greenwood would just make the chapters a lot shorter and not all detailed and has a bunch of dialogue, then I think I would've enjoyed this book more than I did, and it certainly would've had more action than a bunch of murders and ghosts and Elminster not doing magic but actually doing some magic, then I would've loved it. Sadly I didn't and I should've DNFed it when I had a chance.

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Book Review: The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book can be a mixture of cozy meets drama meets EMOTIONAL DAMAGE meets thriller in this book. It is the trilogy’s last book, and it was a RIDE. This book had me going through so much emotional damage that I had to take a break sometimes and read something else. But I enjoyed reading about Diana, and I’m sad that this book and this trilogy is over. I wish we could get more books about Diana and the others, but this felt like a perfect ending to a really good series that I love, coming second to the Raven Cycle series.

The book is basically about everyone trying to find the Ashmole 782 and putting the missing pages back into the book-the pages they have, and the pages the daemon Edward Kelley had ripped out years ago. It turns out that this book was made from the body and bones from dead vampires, witches and daemons themselves, along with their blood. It does have action in it from the vampire stalker Benjamin, who is also Matthew’s son, who is very disgusting and triggering. He wants the book and Diana himself, so she can give him children (ha ha, no). But at the same time, Diana is pregnant with twins, and once they were born she was very protective of them (Matthew was too).

It also introduced some new characters, like Benjamin, Fernando, the London coven and Baldwin, Matthew’s brother. Baldwin did get on my last nerve with all his postering and all that, but he actually made some sense somehow. This book also reintroduces Jack Blackfrair, the boy from Shadow of Night. He’s now a vampire, but he also have the blood rage disease that Matthew and Benjamin have, and each time everyone touches him or get near, he’ll snap. But thanks to the motherly love of Diana and Matthew, he’s trying to beat it, even though Benjamin was the one that drove him to the blood rage.

There was a sad scene in the book where Diana and Matthew had to split up so Matthew can take care of Marcus’s children in New Orleans, and she deals with the book back home. Then when she finally finds the book, that’s when the book turned her into a walking palimpest. And then at then end, we have to deal with Benjamin and Peter Knox, who happily tricked Matthew and tortured him so badly and starved and poisoned him to death (which I had to stop because it was so triggering a bit). Then Diana and the others came up with a plan to stop Benjamin and Peter Knox, with Diana weaving a trap while she let Peter run his mouth.

But before she went and tried to save Matthew, she went to the Congregation to get him. At first, Domenico and Gerbert and Satu didn’t want nothing to do with it, worrying about everything else other than what they were there to talk about. But at the end, Diana got what she wanted, and she took down Benjamin and Peter, and is now part of the Congregation and is also a professor again. Matthew is at home with the twins, Philip and Rebecca, while he is healing up from his trauma, and that’s how the book ends. I really enjoyed reading this book, cannot wait to read more from her.

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Book Review: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The last and final book of the Raven Cycle was pretty damned good. After Blue Lily, Lily Blue, I thought nothing would top that…until I opened up the Raven King. Once I did that, everything started to go to hell in the small town of Henrietta.

The book starts with the line “Depending on where you began the story, it was the story about …” and tells the story of the characters that the chapter will focus on. It has been repeated a couple of times, and I recognized it immediately-I and have done it myself in my last writing assignment for class, and I kept my eye on it each time it showed up. I liked the repeating sentence over and over again, giving us a bit of time to see the picture of how the story will go.

So new things are happening in this story that threw me for a loop while I was reading: one, the introduction of Henry Cheng and his RoboBee, two, the demon and the unmaking of Cabeswater, which was very weird because I wasn’t even expecting that to even happen. Third was Neeve being in the story for a bit. She was trying to help Piper, but sadly Piper decided to tell the demon to ‘unmake her’. The Piper tries to sell the demon to Seondok, who is Henry Cheng’s mother, and Piper’s father, Lamonier.

Sadly when that happened-I forgot the Gray Man was there as well and then that’s when the demon-or wasp or whatever-fed on Piper’s blood as she died. Like WTF??? Seriously?? Then the worst thing happened when Ronan went to dream, along with Adam trying to scry…to find Cabeswater destroyed by darkness, and Ronan’s mother Aurora unmade, which is extremely fucked up.

And when they finally decided to find Glendower, it took a murder of ravens to lead Gansey to him, only to find him dead. Then Gansey had to die, which was shocking but I kinda knew it was coming, though the thing about Blue kissing him coming true was still shocking to me. Like, I didn’t want that to come true, but it did. And Blue talking to Artemus while he was in the tree was fun but also very weird. She had to use the English translator to talk to him to get him out of the tree, which ultimately helped him get out of the tree that Blue loved and to get him to talk about his past and Glendower.

BUT CAN WE TALK ABOUT RONAN AND ADAM FINALLY KISSING AFTER THREE WHOLE BOOKS?! Please?! I knew they would get together, but I was hoping they would in book three. But during the going away party?? When everyone was downstairs enjoying themselves? I wanted more of them. I wanted to know what happened to them in the end-did they stayed together once Adam left for college (they did, I called it, they freakin’ did)? Did they try the old college online dating try? I need to know because I’ve become so invested in the

The ending, and the epilogue was pretty fun to read and glad that Adam went back to his parents and asked for an open relationship while he was going to college. And the end when Ronan thought of how Cabeswater can be protected, and he closed his eyes to dream…I got both worried and wondered what would happen next after he did that. Will Cabeswater come back to the knowing world or just stay there, protecting Henrietta while everyone heads off to college and beyond? These questions fill my head as I finish this series, and this also became my favorite series of all time.

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Book Review: Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Blue Lily, Lily Blue is the third book in the Raven Cycle series, and it was better than the Dream Thieves. Even though the last book was all about Ronan, this book, I felt like, was all about Blue and Adam and Gansey as they look for Glendower. They don’t find him exactly-they find his daughter, Gwenllian, who is annoying as hell with all of her riddles and songs and not getting anything straight.

This book also introduces Mr. Greenmatle, a man who used to be Mr. Gray’s boss. He’s in town to find the Greywaren and also find Glendower, but he never caught the Greywaren, even though Adam and Ronan plotted to blackmail him (and holy cow, it worked). He and his partner, Piper, a psychic, are looking to find the sleepers, but Mr. Greenmatle upped and leaves her, leaving Piper with Neeve, who thinks she gonna be Queen when she wakes up Glendower.

The cave that Gwenllian was sleeping in was on a farm owned by Jesse Ditley, who speaks really loud, only eats Spaghetti-Os, and thinks that his cave was cursed. He did try to stop Mr. Greenmantle and his party to go into the cave by sitting there with a shotgun, but sadly, he didn’t make it, even when he got shot three times by Piper.

But the most heartwrenching death ever was Persephone. Adam and Persephone were talking at an old General Store, then moments later she was gone. Adam called the house, and Calla and Blue found poor Persephone in between Neeve’s mirrors, where she died. I hated that had to happen, but in the end, near a grave in Ditley’s cave, they do find Maura and Blue’s father, who is surprisingly British. All of them did escape the cave, except Piper.

Piper, who found Neeve in the chair, saying that she can’t be Queen alone…whatever that means.

I really enjoy this series, and I’m going to read the last and final book and cry because I really don’t want this series to end. I really don’t.

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