Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands #2)

Rebel of the Sands (#1)

Fair warning, right from the get go there are gong to be a lot of spoilers for book 1. It would be impossible for me to describe what is happening in this book without saying things that were revealed later in the first book. So get out now while you still can.

***

Amani has been captured and is carried across the sea to Izmani, the capital city, to meet the Sultan himself. He binds her using old Djinni logic, and compels her to summon her father, an actual Djinni, which Amani assumes is for the purpose of quelling Ahmed’s rebellion. With her indifferent father stuck in the basements of the palace, and herself stuck in the dangerous, political confines of the harem, Amani must figure out a way to get information from the palace and out to the rebellion to try to help and to beg for help escaping.

Usually I don’t enjoy the middle child of a trilogy. It’s the messy middle of a sandwich where stuff from the first book is wrapped up and stuff from the third book is foreshadowed. While these things are true about Traitor, I was pleasantly surprised to find an actual story all its own nestled in the heart of this second book.

The Sultan has embedded iron within Amani’s skin to prevent her from using her powers, and he has embedded other metals inscribed with the name of her Djinni father as well to bend her to his will. If he makes a command, she must follow it. Yet, even with this control over her, he shows compassion and honors her skills in the midst of his treaty negotiations with the visiting countries. It was interesting to see the villain that was painted in the first book be softened into slightly lighter colors. I mean, he’s still doing terrible things, but you get to see why those actions are being taken.

I have to admit that, given what I know about government and what I’ve read in other books, I really appreciated Hamilton giving life and humanity to the man we are supposed to be hating and rebelling against. It’s relatively easy to scream hope and change, A New Dawn/New Desert! but it’s entirely another to broker peace agreements with countries that want to annex you and take you for their own. With great power comes great responsibility, and while different people handle that power differently, most find that some kind of distasteful decision must be made for the good of all, as opposed to the choice that might have been made based on an individual’s beliefs or morals.

The complexity of this second book was what kept me reading. My alliances changed a few times as I read, and I am excited to see how the trilogy concludes in the most recent and final book – Hero at the Fall. Go get you some.

The Colour of Magic (Discworld #1)

In preparation for writing my own fantasy series, I’ve been working several new fantasy series that I have never read into my repertoire. The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is the next one I have to explore.

I have never read such a nonsensical conglomeration of happenstances, and I mean that in a good way. In a short 200 pages, Pratchett introduces us to a failed wizard, a strange visitor with luggage that walks and bites and a picture box run by a small imp who takes and processes pictures like a camera, and an entire city caught on fire. Death (the actual being) follows our wizard Rincewind around, just waiting for him to die and seems to be thwarted at every turn by a game of dice that the gods are playing (think Clash of the Titans) and dragons which are created out of thin air with those that wield the power of imagination.

I KNOW.

Every two paragraphs you are assaulted by some new twist or turn, placing Rincewind and Twoflower into the path of danger time and time again. It’s almost as though Pratchett just thought of the most severe non-sequitur that might follow the recently concluded action sequence and went with that. Did we just escape from an ancient demon’s underground temple maze? Why don’t we fight the dragon lords of the upside down mountain next? And never mind that all these lands exist on a spinning disc, which itself exists on the back of a giant space turtle, moving toward a big bang mating ground IN SPACE.

He also allows for the possibility of multiple timelines, when in the midst of a very stressful battle, Rincewind and Twoflower are ripped from their own world into a TWA flight where they have similar but different names that we might find in our own Earth, before their consciousnesses are pulled back into the Discworld.

You won’t have time to get bored in this fast-paced, wild-eyed, story of wonder that tests your imagination at every turn. When you’re done you’ll even believe it’s possible to will a dragon into being out of thin air. Go get you some, and I’m gonna get me the next one!

Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands #1)

Rebel of the Sands

How many teenagers do you know? Of those that you know, how many want to escape their hometown? To overcome their circumstances and find something better, something bigger than their beginnings? This novel by Alwyn Hamilton will speak directly into the heart of anyone who has ever wanted to escape or rise above where they started. It goes without saying that it spoke to me.

More than this, it speaks to the idea that we all have something special about us that we might overlook due to our upbringing and childhood circumstances. Amani is a young woman who grew up learning to shoot a gun as well as a man – raised by her aunt and uncle because her mother was hanged for murder – and is now facing marriage or escape. The setting is very Middle Eastern and includes a vast desert, calls to prayer, and multiple wives/harems, so prepare yourself for an environment that is not very woman-friendly.

Her salvation comes in the form of a foreign stranger, Jin, who also needs to escape – but from the approaching army seeking to capture not only him but one of the First Beings which reside in the remote desert of Amani’s birth. This world contains humans, Djinni, Ghouls, Nightmares – many magical creatures that interact with humans in both positive and negative ways. You will also learn about Demdji, the children borne of human mothers and Djinni fathers endowed with dangerous special abilities.

The Sultan at the center of all of this has a multitude of children who have taken sides, either with the Sultim (the heir apparent) or with the rogue Prince Ahmed, who is leading a rebellion to reclaim the throne from his father who seems to be giving too much power to neighboring countries. He promises a new dawn, and a new desert.

A war for the heart of a country, magical beings, a heroine discovering her own abilities (both personal and magical), extreme danger, all set in the middle of a never ending desert? SIGN ME UP YES PLEASE.

I think I enjoyed this more than An Ember in the Ashes, which is similar in taste and setting, although not completely. I am moving to the sequel to Rebel faster than I’ve moved to Ember’s #2, and I couldn’t really tell you definitively why that is. I think I liked the main character better, and the plot seems less cookie cutter rebellion like Ember or even Legend. There is also something to say about the fact that I couldn’t put this one down.

A fantastic beginning to what promises to be a lush, magical series. Go get you some.

The Parking Lot Attendant

Parking

Debut novel – April 2018

I have really been striking out with books lately. Yet another is The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat, which is an ARC provided to me by Macmillan Publishing Group in return for an honest review.

I read more than I expected to of this strange “girl hangs out in parking lot with older man” book. All parties involved have ties to Ethiopia, and you sense an undercurrent of the mob or a gang, at least some unsavory goings-on. A sentence on the back of the book claims that this would be “an unforgettable, haunting story of family and fatherhood, national identity, and what it means to be an immigrant in America today.” Really? I read 60% of this book and it’s mostly this girl hanging out in a parking lot where the attendant, Ayale, lets her do her homework in the attendant booth and eventually involves her in “package delivery” when she seems to be hanging around enough to pick up what’s happening.

Her father is largely absent, and when he is present he’s upset about how much time she spends with Ayale but doesn’t take steps to prevent her from going there. I guess she kind of goes to school too? And the book begins with her and her father escaping to an unnamed island to start over, which I suspect is a kind of witness protection, but I am okay never finding out.

If this is what it means to be an immigrant in America today then I apparently don’t get it. This book is written well enough to keep me hooked longer than others have lately, but it is not compelling enough to make me feel guilty about not finishing it. I became tired of the short chapters revealing nothing, and stringing me along without revealing anything. Perhaps this story is too personal to what it’s like to be an immigrant in Boston, and so alienates readers outside the limited sphere of influence. We’re not in on the joke. We’re not in the know enough to connect.

I guess I just didn’t get it. There is an immigrant story to be explored, but this book seems to be reaching out to a very small audience. The writing was good enough to keep me going, but eventually I got tired of Lucy pulling the football out from under me and set the book down. If you are looking for a book about the immigrant experience in America I would seek out Americanah, Homegoing, or Behold the Dreamers, among others.

Heads of the Colored People

heads of the colored people

New release, coming out 4-10-2018

All right everybody, it’s time for me to face the facts. I’ve tried, I’ve read them, and I continue to put them on my TBR, but I think the simple truth is that I don’t like short story collections.

In Heads of the Colored People, you’re presented with a collection of situations that black people of all different backgrounds might find themselves in. The stories help us to realize that black Americans are multifaceted and live a myriad of lifestyles that people may never assign to them based on the established stereotypes and preconceived notions. I am 100% here for this.

These stories were weird though. Well written, but very strange. And not interesting strange, more like “how did you think of these stories other than knowing someone first hand that experienced this” kind of strange. I finished the book, but just barely. I almost gave up a couple of times, once during a story about a white woman who was a fruitarian and working with a reality show to complete her PhD research on distance parenting with her black husband(?) (boyfriend?) and their daughter. We enter the story when the dad takes the daughter to get a sleeping bag so their home can look more desperate to get a crossover episode with the home improvement special, but as they move through WalMart he realizes that something about what they are doing is wrong and after buying her the Elsa Frozen sleeping bag she wanted and lunch at McDonald’s, he returns to the home to let his wife know that he’s leaving and to deal with it. It was…it was really weird.

I think it’s really fun when these theme weeks happen to me without purposefully setting them up, but I think that this is another book that I’m not smart enough to get. This is the kind of book a seminar instructor would assign and then discuss/pick apart with a group of upperclassmen – it’s not a book you read for fun.

But I want to get back to the idea that short stories are not for me. When I say short stories I don’t mean essays that are collected into memoir/creative non-fiction. I mean fictional short stories. I think it’s because I didn’t read a lot of them growing up, and so when I sit down to read a book I expect a connected journey from beginning to end. Short stories make me feel like I’m on a hike, and I know I’m about one chapter into my journey, but when I start chapter 2 I find myself back at the beginning of my hike again. It’s a lot of starting over, and for some reason my mind does NOT like that very much.

This is one of those reviews where I hope that by describing what I didn’t like, you might hear something you do. This was not a bad book, it just wasn’t to my taste – both in structure and content. If you enjoy short stories that challenge how you think about relationships, you might really like this book. I just didn’t.

The Friend

the friend

New Release 2-6-2018

This is one of those books that sucked me in with the jacket description, but once I was inside the book reading the contents, I felt hecka bamboozled. The only explanation I can offer is that I must not be smart enough for what this book was trying to tell me. I thought it was going to be about how we deal with grief, but then it was about sexual things like rape, assault, affairs, and lust. Also this book is about being a writer and how being a writer is multifaceted and difficult and yet unchanging over time.

I’ve read about 5 pages max about the dog. If I am being honest with myself, I was expecting this book to be about how pets help us process grief and move forward.

That is not what this book is about. I mean, I guess it kind of is but it’s sneaked in between all this other…junk.

Hecka bamboozled. I put it down at page 77, just over 33% or so Goodreads tells me. There are so many good books to read; I’m not going to spend my time reading one that feels like it would be assigned for a deep post-feminism writing seminar for which I have not completed the prerequisites. Hard pass.

The Dry

The Dry is set in the drought-ridden rural Australian town of Kiewarra, a locale outside of Melbourne. It is the first in a series of Aaron Falk detective novels, and involves Falk returning to his hometown to deal with prejudices from the past, and the murders in the present. Falk has become a federal agent who deals with financial crimes, and so the parents of his now deceased best friend Luke think that he is the best one to root out why Luke might have killed his wife, oldest child, and himself; their family farm was in trouble due to the drought.

If you have been reading my reviews you know that I am very difficult to trick. I don’t read a lot of mystery or thriller novels because my mind often figures out whodunnit early on and then the rest of the book becomes either an exercise in finishing what I start or I get bored and give up.

Jane Harper set up a story where anyone could have done it, and not in the basic “confuse you” kind of way – literally everyone in this terrible little shithole town could be capable of murdering anyone else. Kiewarra feels backwoods and old west and small town insular all wrapped in a nice neat package that is being beaten about by the financial strain brought onto a farming community by a prolonged drought. Most of these people are just terrible, but maybe not by choice but by virtue of their location so you’ll feel a shred of sympathy for some characters too.

I had no idea how this book was going to end. Every time I thought I had it figured out something happened that made me doubt my assumptions. Harper kept my curiosity peaked for 320 pages and I absolutely had to keep reading until I knew who the murderer was because I had to know if I figured it out. The intensity of this book lies in the reader’s need to know. You will find yourself demanding answers alongside Aaron Falk, because this this fucking backwater town isn’t going to stump you or run you out before you get justice.

The sequel to this book is sitting in my office as an ARC and I may just move straight to it because this first one was so good. If you love mystery, if you love a detective novel, if you like a WOAH moment, you should go get this book. It’s intellectually challenging and fun to boot. Go get you some.

Out To Dinner – 35th Birthday

The one thing I wanted for my birthday this year was for the husband’s family to make the trek out from Orlando to go out to dinner at Bern’s Steakhouse with us. I wanted to spend time with people and have a fantastic meal.

Note: Most pics are enlarge-able by clicking them.

There is a dress code there, but not too severe so we put on our business causal best and headed out! When you arrive at Bern’s it’s always a little disorienting because it’s so dark inside the lobby. We always make the joke that it’s like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld.

Once everyone in our party was there (at 5pm sharp!) we were seated and prepared to make our selections. We also ordered drinks. Cosmopolitan for meeeee.

We decided to get a cheese plate, which came with olives, mushrooms, and toasted bread, but I forgot to take a picture of it and then it was gone (sorry Paige :-(). Also it turns out the Cheese Cave is not a place you can actually go. Really the cheese brought disappointment but it was very tasty.

Left to right: Sisters in law Sarah, Stephanie, and Stephanie’s husband Ariel.

Every entree at Bern’s comes with soup, salad, baked potato, fried onions, and vegetables. First comes the French Onion Soup covered in a trio of cheeses. It was accompanied by small garlic bread and regular bread, lightly toasted.

Then came the salad, which I forgot to take a picture of but who even cares because it’s salad.

Then came the entrees and the baked potatoes. I chose to have my steak accompanied by a side of LOBSTER because I am a baller and a shot caller. Also my steak was actually medium – what they do is they recommend that couples get a steak for two, and then they can cook each half the way each person wants it. I wanted medium and the husband wanted medium rare, and I think when the waiter cut it to serve at the table he caught the edge of Scott’s on mine. It was a little more on the rare side than I would have liked but I ate it all and it was delicious. My eyes said NO TOO RARE but my mouth was like “give us more of that.”

Everyone got something that they absolutely enjoyed. The baked potatoes came with sour cream, whipped butter, bacon, and chives, and the waiter made them for us at our table.

After dinner we went on a tour of the kitchens and the wine cellar. The wine cellar holds enough bottles of wine to have a different label every night for 22 years and never drink the same wine twice. There is also a bottle that goes for $30,000 (a merlot I think?) but really it’s an impressive collection and considered the largest collection in the world.

The bottle in the box on the floor in the upper left is the $30,000 bottle of wine. This is the part of the cellar where the most expensive bottles are kept so they are behind glass.

After taking a walk through the cool wine cellar, we were escorted to the stairs which led to the upstairs Harry Waugh Dessert Room. The dessert room is made up of several private booths, completely walled in with a small door on each side. You can pipe in any kind of music you’d like, including the live piano music happening at the center of the room.

We all ordered some “drinks with spirit” – I had a mint chocolate coffee with mint liqueurs.

Then we ordered our desserts. I did end up getting the Framboise Chocolate Decadence: Chocolate, macadamia nuts, raspberry, and whipped cream.

The rest of the family got an assortment of desserts, including a HUGE hot fudge sundae for Sarah, and a banana split for my father in law Jim. He got to choose 3 different flavors of ice cream to include on his split! There are many flavors to choose from.

The husband got a Baked Alaska, which arrived at the table on fire. Check out the Facebook group for a video!

Overall it was a really enjoyable evening. Jim cleared every plate in front of him, and made the joke that everything was so terrible that he had to eat it all so other people wouldn’t be subjected to it. There were lots of smiles all around, and I think that they were glad they made the trip.

Special thanks to Maggie S, whose $50 gift card helped to provide my side of lobster and coffee with spirit at dessert!

Happy 35th birthday to me! I’m almost 40! 🙂

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror

Merry Spinster

New release 3-13-2018

Here at Angry Angel Books the question I get asked all the time is “Why are you angry? What are you angry at?” Honestly I have a lot of trouble answering this question in the moment, but really the answer is more open and generalized. I want to float in on my amazing Victoria’s Secret wings and be angry with you. I want to vent about anything you are angry about and offer to seek out vengeance with you. Nothing makes me feel more happy and powerful than commiserating with other people, complaining, and then getting angry at a common enemy. That feels so fucking good.

Tangentially I think my anger is about so many themes that are prominent right now: equality of all kinds, safety, sexual and medical freedoms. I am angry that these things don’t exist for everyone, and that anger (and to be honest, fear too) motivates me to stay focused and keep writing, specifically about how the books I am reading could help grow understanding on these issues and bring not only enjoyment but action as well.

Now let’s talk about, and to, Daniel Mallory Ortberg.

Dearest Daniel how did you write fairy tales and children’s stories in exactly the way my soul feels at this moment in history? My spirit looked exactly like the thing in the cover art as I devoured the stories of characters that GET THEIRS. You wrote how we should GO FOR IT instead of coping or dealing with it and, more importantly, MAKE THEM PAY if necessary.

This collection of rewritten stories made me feel like I could get not only what I desired, but also the revenge that I am owed. AND I AM OWED.

This is a collection of stories for adult women who want to just be ANGRY, but in a constructive way?

I’m not doing this book justice in any way. I just…I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed it like the wicked queen probably enjoyed watching Snow White fall after taking the bite out of the poisoned apple. I enjoyed it like I enjoyed watching Sam Nunberg flop about on MSNBC last week. This collection scratched an itch so deep in my soul that I felt only satisfaction at the conclusion of each story.

After a few I whispered to myself: Fuck yes.

Let this book shock you. Let this book entertain you. Let this book take you to a place where you are out for YOU and fuck everyone else.

Go get you some.

An American Marriage

New release 2-6-18

I put this ebook on hold at the library on February 5th and I just got access on the 28th so I was very excited get started on it. I only had 14 days of access so starting right away was very important.

I wrote a very critical review of The Hate U Give last year. This book has been on the NYT bestseller list forever and has received critical acclaim from reviewers and casual readers alike. I think there is a movie or tv show in the works too. This is all fabulous for Angie Thomas. My two critiques of the book boiled down to (1) this is too much stuff to cram into one girl’s experience and still accept it as realistic and (2) it was too obvious when Thomas made her characters sidebar out of the action to “learn you” on something that was important in black life in America. So while her message is important and informational, the delivery of that message left much to be desired, at least to an adult who likes to stay informed.

Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage is everything I wanted The Hate U Give to be and more, which probably speaks to the expected reader level of THUG versus An American Marriage more than anything. Jones explores most of the same themes, but couches them in a realistic, devastating scenario, and challenges you to understand all of the points of view and motivations of all the characters at once.

A man is wrongly convicted of rape and imprisoned only a year and a half into his marriage, and is kept in prison for almost 5 years before his conviction is overturned and he is released. That’s the core that the entire story is woven around. We learn about black relationships: romantic ones, familial ones, friendships, and racial bonds. What is a father? What is a wife? What is fidelity? When is being true to yourself at once both a betrayal of your promise to another person but also the right thing to do?

It is almost impossible for me to write this review. The story is compelling, smart, terrifying, and infuriating in turns, and it is next to impossible to choose a side. Everyone should get what they want but if they do then everyone also loses, but in losing they win the power to move forward? GOD THIS BOOK IS SO INTRICATE AND COMPLICATED. It is a perfect representation of the complications faced by black Americans every day.

Jones has allowed us a window into the anxiety that is simply existing as black in America, and if you don’t understand what that’s all about, especially in the American South, you should go read this book immediately and ask yourself how you could possibly navigate the existence of any of these people and not come out on the other side irreversibly damaged in some way. And perhaps more importantly, after you’ve imagined this, do more than just use the damage of black lives as entertainment and find a way to do your part to move our country in a direction where these injustices no longer happen.

Holy shit this book was so good and so important to read. Go get you some.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31