Muse of Nightmares - Liani Taylor

"Sarai has lived and breathed nightmares since she was six years old.

She believed she knew every horror and was beyond surprise.

She was wrong.

In the wake of tragedy, neither Lazlo nor Sarai are who they were before. One a god, the other a ghost, they struggle to grasp the new boundaries of their selves as dark-minded Minya holds them hostage, intent on vengeance against Weep.

Lazlo faces an unthinkable choice—save the woman he loves, or everyone else?—while Sarai feels more helpless than ever. But is she? Sometimes, only the direst need can teach us our own depths, and Sarai, the Muse of Nightmares, has not yet discovered what she's capable of.

As humans and godspawn reel in the aftermath of the citadel's near fall, a new foe shatters their fragile hopes, and the mysteries of the Mesarthim are resurrected: Where did the gods come from, and why? What was done with thousands of children born in the citadel nursery? And most important of all, as forgotten doors are opened and new worlds revealed: Must heroes always slay monsters, or is it possible to save them instead?"

I’m so impressed by how Taylor deftly dances across genres, careening between fantasy and science-fiction. Even more inspiring is how she sprawls out from her story’s already expansive beginning to an even broader canvas of magic and war and divinity, brilliantly tying the myriad threads of her story together by the end. It’s something that can be so easily abused and leaned on like a crutch, but in the hands of a skilled author like Taylor, the world of the book only manifolds, unfurling like concealed pages of a map, and uncovering a future full of terrible, unguessable magic. It's like falling into a nautilus shell: every time you think you've reached the end, another chamber opens. 

I know a lot of us were expecting Muse of Nightmares to be good, but I have to say, this book actually exceeded my expectations. I have a lump in my throat and I can't stop thinking about it. Taylors use of symbolism, poetic writing and grandeur is astounding to read. However it never feels inhuman and distant. 

No spoilers, of course. The beginning opens by introducing us to two new characters - Kora and Nova - and their compelling story eventually becomes deeply-entwined with the main plot in ways that were unexpected, thrilling, and sad.

If you are that sort of reader, this is definitely a crying book. There is one scene - you'll know it when you come to it - that was so heartbreakingly emotional that I had to put the book down for a few minutes to organize my feelings. Taylor creates such strong ties between characters that it feels like a physical, painful thing when those ties are broken.

The story at the heart of Muse of Nightmares continues Strange the Dreamer in that it's about discovering the origins of Weep and the floating citadel. What really happened all those years ago? How did five half-human children survive the Carnage and become trapped in a secret prison?

Finding out opens up doors to horrors and, let me tell you-- some parts of this are really creepy. Every single villian in this duology gets a redemption arc, which RIPPED MY HEART OUT. They all had tortured pasts and were forced to do awful acts in order to empower themselves, which was so heart-breaking to witness. There was so much rage and pain and moral grayness. 

The faranji! My beloved faranji! They were amazing! Calixte and Tzara, Thyon and Ruza. Ah, their dynamics warm my heart. The sass…the humour! And to think I hated Thyon in Strange the Dreamer! His character development was honestly amazing and everything I ever wanted! My only complaint is that they had such small and insignificant roles here. I was definitely left wanting more! Eril-Fane, Azareen, and Suheyla were also highlights for me. I’m so happy with how their storylines wrapped up. It was beautiful.

Age Rating 16+. Adult content. Rape, forced marriages, child slavery... 

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

"Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals."

The novel is a three part tale, written as a postmodern feminist rendition of a Victorian melodrama in its Gothic, Dickensian(Oliver Twist) splendour. The first part was amazing. I really enjoyed the developing of the characters and setting. The London and "Gothic House" all feel realistic, grimy and spooky in turns. The girl's journey of slowly growing together was fascinating and done delicately. The plot twists are jaw dropping and the atmosphere spot on. 

Sue is a great character personally. Morally grey, sharp but slowly learning to care with a better grounding due to a loving upbringing. I really enjoyed her POV. 

Part 2 was where things got a tad boring. The change of POV to Maud wasn't really the problem. It was the almost complete retelling of the previous part!! Sarah Waters goes over the entire thing with a new insight. This could have been interesting done in small doses but a large portion of the book just didn't really work for me. It wasn't sleep inducing just a tad tedious. 

Part 3 was again unfortunately so-so and the plot fizzles out. It didn't feel as climactic as it should have done with all the build up. 

Over all, however, definitely worth the read. Atmospheric, jaw dropping, twisted, and surprisingly action packed, a perfect winter evening read. The relationship between the girls is unique and fraught. 

Age Rating 15+. Adult themes. Mad house abuse, pornography and sex scenes. 

Nevernight (#1) - Jay Kristoff

"In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.
Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.

Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.

Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?"


I have mixed feelings on this book. It has both unique pros and clichéd cons. 

First of all, to get it out the way, I didn't really mind the extremely floral writing style. At times it was beautiful, at others I just kind of frowned and moved on. I can see that it would frustrate other readers but lucky it didn't drag me to much out of the story. 

I loved the three suns and the world building in this story. I think it was stellar and I felt the world was unique and complete. Mia lives in a world with three rotating suns (hence Nevernight) and the author did a fabulous job of incorporating that in the book. I also really enjoyed all of the little details he includes - like the sand creatures or the odd customs from the other characters.  The lore from their religion really helped ground such a fantastical world. Also, I enjoyed that the Gods weren't imaginary - that they were real and they did influence the human world. The notion of melding the cultures of Venice and Rome together in unusual and surprisingly pays off. I enjoyed the footnotes from a purely world building perspective, however if you don't enjoy reading them you don't lose anything in the story by skipping them. 

I liked the characters, Tric was my favourite followed closely by Spiderkiller. Mia wasn't too bad but was occasionally a bit pretentious. It was occasionally very obvious it was written by a man with all the references to her "bow lips" and such. The humour was vicious and funny and I really enjoyed it.  

Now onto the cons. 

I was wanting more murder and death, but I am left with a boarding school type scenario with mostly cliched secondary characters. However The Red Church is such an incredible setting. It’s painted beautifully vivid, and it’s full of so many mysteries that, no matter how much I learned about it, I constantly felt that I was barely scratching the surface of what it had to offer.

Also what is it with blood magic in current YA fantasy novels? Like three books in a row has had some kind of blood magic involved. It is gross and I don't like it. 

Something else that surprised me is that I will say that I personally feel like this is an adult fantasy novel, not a YA fantasy novel, despite the characters age. There is sex, a lot of sex, and violence, a whole lot of violence, and gore, don’t forget all of the gore! So please go into this book knowing this, and knowing that this is a very mature book in general. The sex scenes I happily skipped so I cannot really comment on them. 

Over all, definitely give it a go. It is an acquired taste and some may really not enjoy it. It is a fun read, nothing to change the world but a fun solid fantasy novel. 

Age Rating 16+. Explicit sex scenes, gore and violence. Also some swearing. 

The Deathless Girls - Kiran Millwood Hargrave

"They say the thirst of blood is like a madness - they must sate it. Even with their own kin.

On the eve of her divining, the day she'll discover her fate, seventeen-year-old Lil and her twin sister Kizzy are captured and enslaved by the cruel Boyar Valcar, taken far away from their beloved traveller community.

Forced to work in the harsh and unwelcoming castle kitchens, Lil is comforted when she meets Mira, a fellow slave who she feels drawn to in a way she doesn't understand. But she also learns about the Dragon, a mysterious and terrifying figure of myth and legend who takes girls as gifts.

They may not have had their divining day, but the girls will still discover their fate..."

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a creepy gothic thriller and a must-read - taking the premise of his brides (who get a one line mention in the original tale) and telling readers their story should have been amazing. There's so much freedom to explore their backgrounds, which is completely open to any interpretation, and what it was like for them becoming creatures of the night. Hargrave has a nice writing style and I suspect she prefers to focus on slow-burn narrative as opposed to action, which is fine for backstory but not so good for keeping readers engaged. The Deathless Girls gets so caught up in said backstory that by the time the story moves past it it's all over, and those of us who came to see 'Brides of Dracula' are left feeling severely underwhelmed.

Vampires aren't even mentioned until page 189 - that's over 50% of the book done before we even get a glimpse of fangs! I mean COME ON. Don't promise me Dracula's brides and then give me nothing to do with Dracula or anything mildly vampiric  for 70% of the book. 

The f/f romance was fine - it didn't feel shoe-horned in which was nice. I liked Mira; she was strong in that silent-but-smart kind of way. Lil our protagonist though, I found her to be completely (yep, you guessed it) boring. I also thought that the romance was quite sudden with little build up. 

Kizzy I really had a problem with though. Kizzy is perfect. So perfect that even when she refuses to do something which could potentially endanger the life of someone she considers family, aaaaall the characters smile and nod their heads in agreement because perfect Kizzy is perfect, and beautiful, and strong, and she is always right (because she's perfect), so we mustn't go against perfect Kizzy's wishes and will just go and nearly get ourselves killed and belittled because poor Kizzy has morals that must be upheld no matter the cost.

I enjoyed the introduction of the traveller element. It was unique, historically accurate and added to otherworldly and oppression motif.  

Overall it had sooo much potential but it feel short. It should have been an intense gothic retelling with complex female characters navigating their powers and powerfully menacing villans. Instead I get a frustratingly slow burn book with a handful of clichés and caricature worthy villans. 

Age Rating 14+. Deals with some adult themes such as rape, slavery and the oppression of minorities and women. 

Swimming Home - Deborah Levy

"Swimming Home' is a subversive page-turner, a merciless gaze at the insidious harm that depression can have on apparently stable, well-turned-out people. Set in a summer villa, the story is tautly structured, taking place over a week in which a group of beautiful, flawed tourists in the French Riviera come loose at the seams. Shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize."

Deborah Levy is an interesting writer. There is a visual quality to her work that makes the reader blink. Is this a novel, or is it a film, we ask ourselves? Are we reading or watching? We become immobile in front of the screen of her set pieces, watching passively as the events happen before our eyes, as if in a documentary or a piece of reality TV. But there is no voice over, hardly any backstory, and no linking of scenes. What we see is all there is so we have to make of it what we can.
I really wanted to love this book, and I did love Levy's writing, her prose is masterful - conveying character, setting, and insight in small spare beautifully crafted paragraphs. The entire book is quite lean -- a week of time, briefly, surgically told . Levy's craftsmanship is rich. I thought the bluntness of the language matched well with the theme which predominated for me: the workings of fractured minds. There’s an absence of pronouns like ‘whom’ and ‘which’ and ‘that’ which make some of the sentences read as if there were an invisible twist in the middle but when you go back and reread them, you can’t find where the disjunction lies. It is as if, although it is a third person narrative, the writing itself is the product of a splintered mind. This did lead however, to the story being remarkably difficult to follow in places as it isn't incredibly clear what is going on. 

The problem is that the book is cold at the core. The oddly comforting epilogue rings false in a book that so limpidly depicts layer upon layer of rejection, failure to connect, and selfishness. The overwhelming urge that you have as a reader is to slap everyone concerned as they solipsistically labour at their own undoing. 

I assume this book was supposed to be a heart wrenching piece about depression and family detachment, but I was left feeling that is was more about human apathy and selfishness. I didn't feel anything in the end, maybe that was the point. To show you where as apathetic as them. Either way it didn't really work for me. 

Age Rating +15. Adult themes, disconcerting writing, swearing and suicide. 

A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab

"Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive."

Hi, Guys. Sorry for not uploading in a while. Had a bit of a family emergency and not much reading was happening. 

A Darker Shade of Magic had great potential. The world V.E. Schwab created is fascinating, full of magic, blood and politics. There is Kell, an Antari, a blood magician who can travel between parallel universes, and Lila, a street thief who wants to become a pirate and experience great adventures, and when their fates intertwine, they are the only ones who can save all three London's from the tainted magic that destroyed the forth. I mean, it sounds pretty amazing, doesn't it. 

I personally loved the world building in this story. The different attitudes toward magic in the different London's was fascinating and the different political structures where complex. 

I can't say that the execution failed me, because I was all too eager to read Kell and Lila's story, to turn the pages and fight and travel and discover the mysteries of the powerful obsidian stone and uncover conspiracies and secrets. But in the end I was unsatisfied. I expected something more and my expectations were not met because I couldn't connect with the characters. They were superficial and I was detached. I didn't care about their fates, I didn't find in them the depth I wanted and the pang of enthusiasm I usually feel when I start a new series. I was just a silent observer, witnessing their story unfold without finding the spark of magic that would make me an active participant and cheer for them, worry for them and eventually love them. 

I don’t care for having one-dimensional characters just for the sake of faux-representation. Prince Rhy is well, a prince, but he’s also bi/pan/sexual…. and that’s about it. Sure he is our MC’s best friend/adopted brother and serves some purpose in the story, but he’s mostly a token character since there is nothing more to him. Our second case of pandering comes from our female MC, Lila. She’s a tough female protagonist with a dark past that shuns and distains femininity, because we’ve never seen that before. *eye roll*  I get that audiences need strong female characters and are sick of Mary Sues, me being one of them,  but Lila reads like a stock character. She’s tepid and boring and a little patronizing.  

Over all wonderful, wonderful world building. I would suggest reading it just for that. 

Age Rating 13+. Nothing overly untoward.