C.A. Gray's Blog, page 41
March 5, 2021
Victoria, Daisy Goodwin
Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Victoria by Daisy Goodwin.
The post Victoria, Daisy Goodwin appeared first on C.A. Gray.
March 4, 2021
Review of The Banished of Muirwood
Another winning start to a series by Jeff Wheeler. I’ve come to be very familiar with his fantasy worlds, which are all interconnected. This one was probably written before the Harbinger series, as the Harbinger series references what happens to Maia as Sera’s ancestor. Because of this, there were a few spoilers, but it really did not detract from my enjoyment.
Maia is a princess whose father disowns her due to his failed marriage to her mother, since her mother was never able to bear any more living children after Maia. Her father casts off her mother, though he is not allowed to legally divorce her since they were married by what they call an irrevocare sigil, and she was not unfaithful to him, though he was to her. He makes his mistress the new queen, and his children by her his legitimate heirs–and here, the story is very much a Cinderella tale. Maia is despised and humiliated in every way, and finally banished with a kishion as a “guide,” though he is meant to kill her under certain conditions. (This might be inspired by the huntsman who fails to kill Snow White?)
But this is where the comparison to the fairy tales breaks down. Maia finds that she has become a hatayra (sp? since I listened rather than read this), which essentially sounds like demonic possession. She did not give her consent, which is not usual, and she longs to be freed from the myriad one who possesses her when she sleeps. (Maia dreams when she is possessed by the myriad one, which is an effective device for conveying her back story.) She can only be freed by an aldermaston of an abbey, so she searches for her freedom and encounters obstacles along the way. She also finds an unlikely and ultimately forbidden romance.
Like most of Wheeler’s stories, this one is episodic and contains multiple twists and turns, rather than one clear conflict with rising and falling action. I always fall in love with his characters, though, and his plot twists keep me guessing!
My rating: *****
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: fantasy only
Political content: fantasy only
The post Review of The Banished of Muirwood appeared first on C.A. Gray.
February 26, 2021
Skyhunter, Marie Lu
Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Skyhunter by Marie Lu.
The post Skyhunter, Marie Lu appeared first on C.A. Gray.
February 25, 2021
Review of Persuasion
Apparently this was the last book Jane Austen ever wrote, rather than one of the first, as I had supposed. I definitely notice a formula in Austen’s stories: the unlikely protagonist who is quiet, retiring, but deep and intelligent. The wealthy suitor who doesn’t seem to pay her any attention at first. The bubbly fluffy pretty girl who seems to catch his eye instead. The rake who courts the protagonist and almost turns her head for awhile, until she learns what a scoundrel he really is–and who meanwhile serves to incite jealousy in the real intended suitor.
In this iteration, Anne Elliot is an older unmarried female, which is unusual–but she is unmarried because while she fell in love in her youth, a woman by whom she was guided had reservations and encouraged her to break off the engagement (hence “Persuasion”). She was wrong in her estimations, and Anne never forgot Captain Frederick Wentworth. When she encounters him again eight years later as virtual strangers, she feels she has lost the bloom of her youth, and she is forced to watch him flirt with women of her acquaintance while she eats her heart out, and tries to forget him.
Then her cousin (weird) shows up and wants to marry her, though he has motives of his own. She has reservations about him, and finds out only after gossip spreads all over town that they are as good as engaged what he really is. Captain Wentworth (spoiler alert), by now reconciled to the fact that he still loves her despite the slight from years ago, hears of this too and is about to leave town, jilted for the second time. But chance enables her to convince him, indirectly of course, of the constancy of her feelings.
One thing I truly hate about Austen novels is that after an entire book of setup for the moment of confession, she summarizes it instead. We don’t get to see what he said and what she said–she just tells us they said “all that they ought,” or perhaps that they talked over the minutiae of the previous days and months and explained all that was in each of their hearts. It’s definitely anticlimactic.
And yet! I continue to read and reread all of her novels.
My rating: *** 1/2
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: none
Political content: none
The post Review of Persuasion appeared first on C.A. Gray.
February 19, 2021
Daughter of Lies by Kenley Davidson
Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of Daughter of Lies.
The post Daughter of Lies by Kenley Davidson appeared first on C.A. Gray.
February 18, 2021
Review of Victoria
I LOVED this! It was almost like reading a Jane Austen novel, except the protagonist is the queen, and so all of the Victorian (no pun intended) rules are turned on their head. I definitely wonder how much of it is fact and how much fiction, because it reads exactly like a novel, though.
The story follows young Queen Victoria, from her girlhood initially to her early years as a reigning monarch, at a time when women have very little respect among the men of Parliament. She is a sheltered teenager with a complicated and codependent relationship with her mother. When her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, offers to be her personal secretary, she at first declines after hearing that he has a reputation as a womanizer. But she quickly learns that she cannot do without him, and changes her mind. What follows is their story, primarily. It’s an ill-fated love story, at least a told in this version, between a nineteen year old inexperienced queen and a fifty-something year old widower–and while that sounds super creepy without other facts, it’s just sweet and sad as Goodwin relates it.
Melbourne is a prince (figuratively), always preferring Victoria’s happiness and best interest to his own. Ultimately this is why he steps out of the way, to make way for Albert, who was to be her king consort. I had always heard that Victoria and Albert were a love match and that she adored him, despite all the rules that typically surround royal marriages, so it was a surprise that she had anyone else in her history. Had their age disparity been less than it was, I would have been sorry they didn’t end up together despite all the political ramifications that might have followed… but it is very clear that they were never meant to be. And somehow, though I hardly thought it possible, I actually was rooting for Albert at the end. Though I was sad for Melbourne.
My rating: *****
Language: none
Violence: none
Sexual content: none
Political content: none (historical only)
The post Review of Victoria appeared first on C.A. Gray.
February 12, 2021
Review of Skyhunter
Marie Lu’s stories are always fast-paced action with fantastic characters, so they suck me in–yet I often don’t care for her endings. They tend to spoil all the enjoyment I’ve had up until that point. Skyhunter was a happy exception to this trend, though.
Talin is a striker without a voice, wh0 loses her Shield (her partner) early in the story and is haunted by his death. “Ghosts,” in this world, are more like zombies, and they are what the strikers are trained to fight against, though they also have human enemies. One such enemy, Red, is about to be publicly executed… but something about him reminds Talin of the Shield she lost. On the impulse of a moment, she decides to step in and speak for him, to beg for his life. The High Blade decides to punish her for her embarrassing interference by consigning him to become her new Shield instead. He is foreign, and he does not speak her language… and Talin speaks only sign language, so for quite awhile they have to communicate through an interpreter, which is unusual.
But then, suddenly, in the heat of sudden battle, Talin learns that Red has been turned into a war machine by their enemies: a Skyhunter, the first of his kind. (This part reminded me of X-Men.) He was designed to bond with his makers, but then suddenly he bonds with Talin instead. This forges a mind link between them, bypassing all of their cultural and language barriers in a moment. The sudden intimacy between them after this is of course predictable, but it doesn’t immediately turn into romance. I’m sure it will in the sequel, though, as it is pretty heavily foreshadowed in this one.
I’d love to go straight to the next book in the series (Marie Lu’s books always have this effect upon me, if she doesn’t completely lose me with her endings), but unfortunately it has yet to be released!
My rating: ****1/2
Language: none that I can recall
Sexual content: none
Violence: present but not excessive
Politically correct content: present in secondary characters.
The post Review of Skyhunter appeared first on C.A. Gray.
Broken Veil by Jeff Wheeler
This podcast comes form this blog review, Broken Veil by Jeff Wheeler.
The post Broken Veil by Jeff Wheeler appeared first on C.A. Gray.
February 5, 2021
Review of Daughter of Lies
I know what I’m getting with the Andari Chronicles at this point, but it’s always delightful to see how Davidson will pull it off this time. They are all unusual, creative, and very loose retellings of fairy tales. This one is a retelling of Snow White, but… barely.
The main character Brenna, first of all, is not especially beautiful. She’s not a princess, either–she thinks she’s a long lost countess, though in a previous book in this series, she was a supporting character who was a spy, and very good at her job, too. She finds court doesn’t suit her at all, and she’s trying to adjust to her new identity. Meanwhile, someone apparently wants her dead… and she thinks it might be the woman she’s just discovered is her mother. Her mother is obsessed with her own youth and beauty, and is trying to snag the “prince” (who isn’t a prince, though he does have a title) for herself, though she isn’t aware that he, Rom, is actually also a spy.
Brenna, meanwhile, has to flee for her life, pretending to be a bar maid and living with some down-and-out women (in lieu of the dwarves). Her “mother’s” ultimate reason for wanting her dead feels a little forced, but it doesn’t matter–the structure of the fairy tale itself is reason enough. Brenna is definitely not a damsel in distress, and it turns out this is the very quality that makes her so attractive to Rom.
Like all the stories in the Andari Chronicles, this too ends happily ever after. They’re all light reads, entertaining, and clean, which I definitely appreciate!
My rating: ***1/2
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: very little
Political content: none
The post Review of Daughter of Lies appeared first on C.A. Gray.
The Ickabog by J.K. Rowling
This week’s podcast review comes from this blog review of The Ickabog by J.K. Rowling.
The post The Ickabog by J.K. Rowling appeared first on C.A. Gray.
