March 2022 update: Books

Time for my first monthly update since the year began. I’ve not made much progress on editing this year, unfortunately. Books and video games have been my poison of choice this winter, so I decided to delve into both a little more thoroughly in separate posts.

Please note: I am not a critic and do not pretend to be. I read what I like and have neither the time nor inclination to go into detail why I enjoyed/what I didn’t enjoy about the books I read.

I started off the year veering away from middle grade novels briefly, along with my usual habit of reading only one book at a time. The first three books of this year I read more or less simultaneously, which I think I’ll be avoiding from now on.

First, I finished off Cytonic, third book in the Skyward series by Brandon Sanderson. I had suspected that this would be the end of the series, which turned out not to be the case. The story did go off in a different direction for longer than I expected, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had such a thing happen with Sanderson’s work. There were some interesting surprises, though overall, it was simply a fun continuation of the series.

After that, I finished When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells. Since I’m publishing a graphic novel adaptation of the book later this year, I thought it would be a good idea to read the original. There are some very interesting concepts presented in the book, including predicting television, propaganda being used to control the masses, and rule by an oligarchy that controls the vast majority of the money on Earth. However, other concepts in the book are… let’s generously say dated. It may not have been written that way maliciously, and there may be historical precedence for those choices, but it’s an aspect that needed to be modernized. Aside from that, Graham is a very passive protagonist, even for its time. While I enjoyed reading the book for the most part, I’ll admit it was, at least from a modern perspective, a lowlight of my year so far.

I then snuck in Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Volume 2. Although some of the stories were shorter than I expected, I absolutely loved the variety of art and writing present, the realness and rawness of comics by indigenous creators, as well as the beauty of the stories they told that highlighted indigenous mythology. This book was a joy to read.

But, forgive me for saying that the next book has been the highlight of my year so far and since: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I loved both The Martian and Artemis, so I really should have jumped on this book sooner, though it wasn’t until a friend started gushing over it that I finally checked it out of the library. I suppose I’ve had enough in general of the ‘story opening with a character suffering from amnesia’, though with Weir’s typical blend of excellently portrayed science, humour, and down-to-earth characters, it immediately hooked me. And, by setting up the story that way, I completely didn’t know what to expect, which made the experience that much more engaging. Suffice to say, it was a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.

After that, I returned to some middle grade novels, starting with yet another dragon-themed book recommended by my local library for the lunar new year, The Dragon Warrior by Katie Zhao. This also interested me because through the other MG books I’d read, I’d yet to encounter one based on Chinese mythology. I started off reading this book simply enjoying the fact that ’12-year-old girl goes on a magical adventure through her culture’s mythology’ has become common enough to be a trope. However, The Dragon Warrior ended up taking darker turns than I expected. It’s not as intense as some of the MG books I’ve read over the past couple years, but the directions of the story made it a surprise. It was very interesting and I currently have the second book in the series waiting to be read.

Then, I returned to another MG novel I tried to read late last year but didn’t make it through for one reason or another, Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee. This was a very different rendition of the same trope, as it takes place in a spacefaring future. The blend of science fiction and Korean mythology worked very well together and overall it was a more space opera book than any other MG I’ve read so far. This was my first introduction to Yoon’s work, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for his other writing, including his adult science fiction.

Last weekend, I took a trip to Chapters/Indigo so my daughter (and I) could spend the gift cards we got for Valentine’s Day. The books I was most interested in weren’t available in store, but a graphic novel in the MG section immediately caught my eye: Wingbearer written by Marjorie Liu. I hadn’t heard of it before, which isn’t surprising, since it turns out it was only scheduled for release this week. It is a very fantastical story of charming characters and beautiful world, with gorgeous artwork by Teny Issakhanian. It sucked me in from page one, and while the twists were for the most part fairly predictable, it was still captivating enough to make me sad that it only just released and there isn’t even talk of a volume 2 yet.

Finally, just last night I finished off one of the books that has been waiting in my TBR pile since last summer, Three Seeking Stars by Avi Silver. I’ve met Avi and partner Sienna at a few different conventions, and it was at the launch party for Two Dark Moons, the first book in the series, that I bought it, which I enjoyed enough to want to preorder the second book as soon as it was available. Continuing in that tradition, Three Seeking Stars expanded on an already richly realized world, helped along delightful characters on their journeys, and juggled both ideology and culture clashes very well. The raw emotion of the characters even brought me to tears at once point. This is a wonderful book to sink into and escape with. I shall also treasure my Instax photo of Avi and Sienna’s bearded dragon which I got for preordering.

A solid showing so far and plenty more great books to come. I want to dive back into my TBRs, though I still have three other MG books from the library to read in the next two weeks, and every time I go back I see more that interest me. Not to mention that it’s only one month until the release of the fifteenth Wings of Fire book and I haven’t read any of the books past the tenth still.

So much to read, so little time.