CBR16 Book 45: "The Ex-Talk" by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Pets (Steve Rogers Goldstein plays a fairly major role in the book)

CBR16 Bingo: Dreams (Shay has dreamed about having her own show on public radio for over a decade)

Shay Goldstein grew up loving radio. She and her now deceased father would listen to radio together and even have their own pretend radio shows, so she is very grateful for her job as a producer at a Seattle public radio station, and is very happy with what she does. However, while trying her best to be an indespensable help to the hosts whose show she produces, she can't help but wish she could have a show of her own. She's also very frustrated about the fact that one of the radio station's new hires, Dominic Yun, keeps being given positive attention by their boss, even though Shay has worked there for a decade, while Dominic only recently graduated with a journalism degree.

Unexpectedly, during a pitch meeting (where her boss asks her to take notes, naturally, can't leave that to a man), one of Shay's ideas is met with great enthusiasm and before she knows it, Shay will have a chance to host her own live call-in show. The only problem? The show is supposed to be hosted by two exes, who now share relationship advice, rooted in their own relationship failures. The station boss proposes that Shay and Dominic pretend to be those exes, a little white lie to help bring listeners and advertising revenue to the station. Neither is happy about having to lie to their listeners, but once it becomes clear that both of them, and possibly their young producer too, are likely to lose their jobs if they don't go ahead with the show, they reluctantly agree.

The Ex-Talk very quickly becomes a huge success, and their fan base grows week by week. On social media, there is a lot of talk of Shay and Dominic's supposed relationship, with a lot of people hoping "they get back together". The co-hosts are both shocked and pleasantly surprised at how well their show is doing, but they also start feeling more and more uncomfortable about lying. Only their boss knows their relationship is pure fiction, even their producer thinks they dated for a few months but kept it quiet. What will happen if the truth comes out? After spending so much time together, discovering the other person's strengths and weaknesses, Shay and Dominic also find themselves falling in love. Can they really risk an actual relationship when their entire working life is based on them being broken up?

Confession here, I find radio generally very boring. Going to university in Scotland, with so many of my friends absolutely addicted to BBC Radio 4, I've listened to my fair share of it. I just don't get it. I don't really get podcasts either. Why would I spend lots of time listening to people talking about stuff when instead I could read, or listen to an audiobook? It just seems like wasted time. I will, on occasion, listen to pop culture related podcasts with my husband, but we also watch a lot of TV together, so it becomes more about the shared experience, and feels less like I'm frittering away time when I could be reading. So I cannot tell you how true to life all this behind the scenes in the radio world this book is.

I did, despite my indifference to radio shows and podcasts, really enjoy this book, mostly because Shay and Dominic are great characters, both separately and together. Both of them are very lonely people, and once their initial antagonism (much greater on Shay's part than on Dominic's) passes, they discover that they have a lot in common. Shay has invested sensibly and bought herself a house, but it feels far too big for her, and she can't really be there without all the lights on and TV or radio playing. Once she adopts a dog, the adorable, if somewhat demanding, Steve Rogers, her life improves, even if she now has to go home every afternoon to make sure he gets walkies.

Shay manages to squash down her misgivings about lying to their audience because she's wanted a show of her own for so long. She gets Dominic to agree to give it six months, even though he's scrupulous about workplace ethics and being truthful. As their show becomes not just a local listening success, but starts becoming a thing nationwide, both of them are uncomfortable about the way their boss is managing the situation, and especially how much he seems to ignore Shay, but listen to Dominic, even when they're saying the same thing. The job market is tough, and a steady paycheque is important, but how long can they continue lying to their family, co-workers and friends? 

My LibraryThing tells me that I own quite a few Rachel Lynn Solomon books, both YA and adult fiction. This is my first romance by her, and based on it, considering how much she made me care about characters and a premise I wasn't sure I would even like, I am absolutely going to be reading more of her books in the next year or so. 

Judging a book by its cover: I like the cute simplicity of this cover, and the two faces over the microphone. It works for me, even though I'm very aware that modern radio and podcasts in no way are recorded this way. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR14 Book 48: "Greywaren" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 335 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Spoiler warning! This book is the third and final in the Dreamer trilogy, which in itself is a follow-up to the four-book Raven Cycle. It very much doesn't stand on its own and won't really make sense unless you've read the previous books. The place to begin is Call Down the Hawk, or if you want to read all the books about Ronan, Adam, and their friends, The Raven Boys. 

I'm going to be honest, while I normally love Stiefvater's writing and willingly go along with pretty much anything she comes up with, for a lot of this book, I was worried I was going to have to rate it a mere 3 stars, maybe rounded up to 3.5 if I was being generous. There was a lot of stuff in this book that didn't entirely work for me, and bits that I felt dragged rather a lot. Sadly, it's pretty much impossible for me to write about these things without spoiling some major plot points, and I don't want to influence anyone else's reading of the story - it may work better for them.

Let's just say that I wasn't exactly happy with Ronan's role in things for a lot of the book. I was also actively disappointed by the reveal of the "big bad" and the way the other characters had to rally to defeat said individual. I'm not sure what I expected for the final book in this trilogy, but it certainly wasn't that. Considering that Stiefvater is so clear about how this trilogy is all about the Lynch brothers, it felt odd that all three felt strangely sidelined for much of the plot in this one. Although, my new beloved Declan got to be pretty awesome, which seems to be about time. With every new detail revealed about the terrible life of poor Declan Lynch has led so far and the sacrifices he's had to make to keep his unusual brothers safe, the more I'm amazed that he's able to keep it together as well as he has. He deserved to finally let loose a bit. 

While the whole nefarious villain storyline was one I could have done without, and Carmen still mostly bored me (but is a LOT more fun when being constantly exasperated by Hennessey, who could clearly irriate the halo off a saint), the deep dives into the beginnings of the Lynch family, beginning with Mór and Niall and giving the readers more insight into young Declan, Ronan and finally Matthew, were lovely. I don't like Mór even a little bit, but I don't think she's meant to be likable and wouldn't care one jot what anyone thinks of her, but it was nice to see a more relatable side of Niall and once again, Stiefvater clearly has a strange and wonderful imagination. 

Lastly, it may be sentimental of me, but the epilogue, set four years after the main story, which some might see as fan-servicy and possibly wrapping up everything a bit too neatly into a little bow, felt like everything I'd wanted and hoped for as an ending. 

So, to sum up - this third book had some stuff that I kind of loved, some stuff that pretty much bored me and made me want to skip sections, and an epilogue that made me blissfully happy. I can't wait to see what Stiefvater is going to do next. 

Judging a book by its cover: While the fierce beasts on this cover may look intimidating, they represent Ronan's love for his brothers and the lengths he's willing to go to protect them. I agree that his sun hounds are rather terrifying, but it's not like they'll harm anyone who isn't out to harm the Lynch brothers. I also saw someone comment that the cover design very subtly shows one bird on the first book, two people on the second, and here three hounds. That's a nice subtle touch. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 47: "Mister Impossible" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 340 pages

Rating: 4 stars

This is NOT the place to start if you're not caught up. Begin either with the start of this trilogy, Call Down the Hawk, or with the start of the previous series (in which Ronan is an essential character), The Raven Boys. 

This book kicks off a little while after the rather dramatic cliffhanger that the previous book left us with. Ronan and Hennessey are fugitives from the Moderators, learning new and helpful tricks to deal with their mysterious hunters from the enigmatic Bryde. According to him, something is blocking and diminishing the powers of the dreamers and it's up to Bryde, Ronan, and Hennessey to unblock things. They remain incommunicado with those who worry and care for them - Declan, Matthew, Adam, and Jordan are all left to figure out how to proceed, while their loved ones seem to be taking up eco-terrorism. 

Jordan, especially, who has never lived alone in her life, needs to discover who she is away from Hennessey and her dead dreamt sisters. The mysterious women-run organisation known as Boudicca certainly seems interested in her art. Through them, Jordan discovers the existence of sweetmetals, strange objects that can keep a dreamed object (or person) awake even if their dreamer dies. And since Ronan and Hennessey certainly seem to be risking their lives doing whatever it is they're doing - both Jordan and Declan have a vested interest in trying to get their hands on some powerful sweetmetals as soon as possible, preferably without ending up in lifetime servitude to Boudicca. 

Meanwhile, Carmen Farooq-Lane is getting more and more convinced that while some dreamers may be dangerous and provide a threat to society, the vast majority are just harmless people trying to live their lives, and murdering them without compunction make the Moderators just as bad, if not worse, than most dreamers.

This is a bridging book of sorts, and I can tell you it very much didn't go where I was expecting it. A central concept in all of these books, starting with The Raven Cycle, is the importance of ley lines. I don't think either the characters or Ms. Stiefvater's readers were really prepared for how the ley lines were going to play into everything. I can say that anyone who was hoping that this trilogy would be the thrilling romantic continuation of Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish are going to be very disappointed indeed. Of course, in place of the romance that I'm sure many wanted, we get the rather lovely romance of Declan Lynch (who I still can't believe I love and adore as much as I do) and Jordan, Hennessey's dreamed twin. 

There were certain things in the book that didn't really work so well for me. Bryde is far too mysterious and vague to really feel like a proper character. He keeps trying to force Ronan and Hennessey into learning to be better, more efficient dreamers with a lot of philosophical questions and platitudes, and I found him generally boring. I guess discovering where he came from was a bit interesting, but I'm still not entirely sure about the how and why of him. I was also generally not that interested in the ongoing moral qualms of Carmen and her visionary sidekick Liliana. Every time the plot focused too long on either Bryde or Carmen, I was tempted to skip ahead. 

Nevertheless, this was certainly an interesting ride, and I can't wait to see where Stiefvater is taking this next. She certainly excels at cliffhangers - and I'm so grateful that I waited until the trilogy was completed to catch up, so I don't have to wait an entire year to find out what happens to my fantastical babies next. 

Judging a book by its cover: It's obvious to anyone who has read the first book that the very cool individuals on the cover here are clearly Ronan and Hennessey. They have their dreamt swords and their careless attitudes and having now finished the book, I also know which car they're standing in front of. I still think the cover is a strange follow-up to the hawk on the cover of book 1, the image styles don't really go together. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Books 65-67: "The Sandman, part 1" by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs

Page count: 632 (covers the collected volumes of Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country)

Audiobook length: 10 hrs 54 mins

Rating: 4.5 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Happy (I never thought that Sandman could be adapted into an audio story, so this made me very happy indeed)

Official book description:

When The Sandman, also known as Lord Morpheus - the immortal king of dreams, stories and the imagination - is pulled from his realm and imprisoned on Earth by a nefarious cult, he languishes for decades before finally escaping. Once free, he must retrieve the three “tools” that will restore his power and help him to rebuild his dominion, which has deteriorated in his absence. As the multi-threaded story unspools, The Sandman descends into Hell to confront Lucifer, chases rogue nightmares who have escaped his realm, and crosses paths with an array of characters from DC comic books, ancient myths, and real-world history, including: Inmates of Gotham City's Arkham Asylum, Doctor Destiny, the muse Calliope, the three Fates, William Shakespeare , and many more. 

In July 1998, my life changed forever. In those days, I still lived in a suburb of Oslo and didn't necessarily visit the centre of the city all that often. When I did, I always took a trip to Avalon, the dedicated fantasy/sci-fi/all things nerd book shop there (the book shop sadly closed long ago now). On a display table near the front of the shop was Fables and Reflections, by no means the first volume in the long-running Sandman series, but an excellent introduction. I think Neil Gaiman had recently visited Oslo for the first time, and the shop was promoting his most famous work. I had never read any graphic novels before but was drawn by the description of the series. I bought the book, started reading it on the bus on the way home, and my mind was blown. I had never read anything like it before, and I was utterly hooked on the stories of dreams and nightmares, the family dramas with references to all manner of mythology, classical literature, comic books, and the like. 

This was a time when Norwegian libraries were not particularly well-stocked with fantasy of any kind, and certainly not English-language comic books and graphic novels (I'm happy to say that that's changed massively over the last 20 years - one of the public library branches in Oslo is now dedicated entirely to comics and graphic novels in different languages. Hence, I had to buy each volume before I could read the full story. My records show that it took me about a year to get all ten volumes of trade paperbacks, some of which I've now had signed by Neil Gaiman himself. 

Funny story, one of them isn't actually signed to Malin, because my dear friend Ben was a bit of an idiot back when he took my copy of Preludes and Nocturnes to a signing in Newcastle. This was back before I really knew him, and he was still just my then-boyfriend, now-husband Mark's school friend. See, Ben and another of Mark's school friends, Ruth, had initially joked that his Norwegian girlfriend's name was Helga. By the time Ben was taking one of my precious trade paperbacks to Newcastle to get it signed as a favour, he'd met me several times, and knew my name was Malin. But when he got to the front of the signing line, and Mr. Gaiman asked him who to sign the book to, Ben (lovable moron) blurted out Helga, and only after he'd left the shop remembered that it was not, in fact, my actual name. This is also why I have a signed copy of Anansi Boys, where Neil Gaiman apologizes to me for getting my name wrong. 

 

Anyway, the long and rambling introduction to this review is included to show just how long Sandman has been part of my life, and how much it means to me. It was my introduction to graphic novels and the writings of Neil Gaiman. It showed me a whole new way of storytelling. I never thought it could be adapted well in a million years (I'm still skeptical about the Netflix series). I've rarely been so happy to tell you I was wrong. This was an excellent adaptation, and I think I liked parts of it a lot more than the actual original comics issues (while a lot of the artists and artwork used in the series was state of the art back in the 1990s, it's sometimes a bit "grimy-looking" now - unless you have the stunning Absolute Sandman volumes, that cost a small fortune). 

So how do you successfully adapt what is both a written and a visual medium, you ask? You hire an excellent ensemble cast, so that all of the various characters we meet in the pages of the first three volumes of the graphic novel opus are voiced by different and distinct voices (there's a huge ensemble of people who do multiple voices over the course of the audio drama, but never in the same scenes, making it much easier to keep track of who's speaking at any given time). You also get someone to narrate and describe the various scenes and characters in them (or occasionally add descriptions of the setting and characters to the inner monologues of one or several of the people in a scene), so the listener is told what they would have seen on the page if they were reading the comic. That the narrator here is Neil Gaiman himself (whose voice I find very soothing) just seems extra fitting.

I read several reviews of this audio drama that complained that with very few exceptions, everything is kept exactly as it was in the original 90s comics, with no attempts to adapt or bring it more up to date. This was mentioned as a criticism, I didn't think it was a problem. I also know the source material being adapted exceptionally well, having read the comics multiple times. Even so, as I kept listening, I actually pulled my trade paperbacks off the shelf to halfway follow along. To someone who's never read the original graphic novels, it may be harder to follow the plot, even though the team who adapted did a very good job in filling in with background sounds to give you an idea of action and plot.

Each issue of the comic is one approximately 30-minute long episode, with little audio credits and everything. It felt like I was listening to an old-fashioned radio play, and I loved it. How well the adaptation works for you may also depend on how you feel about James McAvoy. I love him and his voice, and think he did a splendid job voicing Lord Morpheus. Kat Dennings worked surprisingly well as Death. The only one I wasn't entirely happy with was the guy playing Desire, whose voice just didn't "fit" with my mental image of what it should be. 

A brief trigger warning towards the end. In both Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country, there are elements of horror. The issue 24 Hours, for instance, where a number of people are kept trapped in a diner by an escaped Arkham Asylum inmate in control of Dream's ancient ruby and are slowly driven increasingly more insane over the course of the story was even more horrifying than it is on the page because all the various people got their own voices and felt more real than they do when you just read them. It was harder to stay detached. There are also stories of serial killers, and child abuse and women being raped and beaten - so be aware of that. 

Now I'm left impatiently waiting and hoping that this becomes enough of a success for Audible that they'll choose to adapt the rest of the series as well. Recording audio dramas must be something that should be perfectly doable even now, with production halted on so many things due to Covid-19.

While I'm choosing to use this for my "Happy" square for this year's bingo, it could just as easily have fit with "Nostalgia", since this was such an important part both of my adolescence and so ground-breaking for comics in general during the 1990s. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have tried to track down the name of the cover artist for the dark, broody image of Dream, without any luck. It's a good depiction of Lord Morpheus, and I like that it looks like he himself is made up of sand or dust and kind of blurring at the edges a bit. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 52: "Call Down the Hawk" by Maggie Stiefvater

Page count: 480 pages
Audio book length: 13 hrs 45 mins
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Orange

This is the start of a new series, so it stands alone. You don't have to have read Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series, starting with The Raven Boys, but it gives a lot of useful background to Ronan and the other Lynch brothers. 

Official book description:

The dreamers walk among us . . . and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming – they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives – they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.

And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all.

Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.

Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.

Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer . . . and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed. . . . 

In this new Dreamer trilogy, Maggie Stiefvater takes some of the characters from her Raven Cycle, like the deeply spiky and hostile Ronan Lynch and his boyfriend Adam Parrish and writes a new story, which also gives more room and development to some who were very peripheral supporting cast, like Ronan's brothers Declan and Matthew. She also introduces a number of new characters, like the talented art forger Jordan Hennessey, who hides the fact that all the women she lives with, are in fact, copies of herself that she dreamed into being. Women who will become comatose shells if she ever dies - and with each dream where she brings forth a copy, she comes a little bit closer to that point. There's also Carmen Farooq-Lane, who works with a group of people determined to track down dreamers, and either make them stop dreaming (which is impossible, then they'll eventually die) or kill them. There is a dangerous prophecy, you see, that one or more dreamers will bring forth the end of the world. While she's unhappy about her assignment and haunted by the fact that she had to help bring down her own brother, she really doesn't feel she has a choice. She's helping to stop Armageddon. 

Ronan and Declan, always at odds, are both haunted by the legacy of their father, the charming, but dangerous Niall Lynch. He was killed very suddenly, and clearly didn't have the time, or possibly just didn't have the inclination, to teach his son the art of dreaming safely. Adam, Ronan's true love, has gone away to college, and due to the dangers that Ronan can manifest when he dreams, he cannot move from the family home, and unfortunate and difficult to explain away things happen when he goes to visit Adam at school, effectively banning him from campus. Now he basically starts having guest appearances in his dreams from another dreamer, who keeps setting him tasks and leading him on a merry chase, for reasons unknown. 

Declan, the eldest, left with the legal responsibility for his brothers when their father died, and their mother, a dream creation of his, drifted into sleep forever, tries desperately to appear as normal and inconspicuous as possible. He dresses to be non-descript, he makes sure to make himself invaluable to his employers in Washington D.C, but not so much so that he might get promoted into a position where people might take a good look at him or his family. Declan has trouble eating and sleeping and worries constantly, something neither of his brothers seem aware of at all. Declan comes to discover that there are more secrets in his past than even he suspected, and he and Ronan will need to find a way to work together to figure them out.

Sweet, good-natured Matthew Lynch has absolutely no idea that he isn't actually one of Niall's three sons, that he was dreamt into creation by Ronan as a child, and raised alongside the two young men he considers brother. If Ronan and Declan are united in anything, it's that Matthew is to be kept safe, and unaware of his own true nature. But something is up with Matthew. He keeps leaving his fancy prep school and running off to look at a particular river - and it may prove difficult to keep the truth from him for much longer.

As well as the Lynch brothers, we have Hennessey and her unfortunate dreamt sisters, whose doom is approaching all the quicker if Hennessey doesn't learn to control her dreams more. While Ronan learned little from his own father, Hennessey learned even less from her famous artist mother, who committed suicide in front of her. She sets a timer to keep herself from falling asleep for more than a few minutes at a time, knowing that each time she dreams properly, she brings out another copy of herself from the dreams, and comes one step closer to her own death.

There is also Carmen Farooq-Lane, who has to babysit a surly, German, teenage visionary, trying to figure out where the dreamer who is going to doom them all is located. She's dutiful, yet conflicted and frequently feels frustrated about her mission brief. 

I remember thinking that The Raven King, the fourth and concluding volume in the Raven Cycle wasn't everything I wanted it to be, and was a bit let down by the ending and pacing of the book. In October 2019, Maggie Stiefvater posted a lengthy, very honest blog post, explaining just how little of the book she actually remembers writing, because she was struggling with really debilitating health problems at the time, and nearly died before they figured out what was wrong with her. So it seems the fact that it works as well as it does is remarkable. 

Now that Stiefvater is healthy again, she writes as lyrically and vividly as always. She's hidden that Ronan is one of her favourite characters, and that there is a lot of her in him. He's a character who it's difficult to like, because he's so angry and defensive and sharp, but you can't help but love him. I really liked learning more about his brothers, and hope the family dynamics become something closer and healthier in the coming books, after some of the revelations in this one. 

I was glad to revisit characters I already knew, and it's always good to meet more of Stiefvater's creations. She writes so well, and I'm glad she's healthy and thriving and writing a new series of books for me to enjoy. Neither the title nor the release date for book 2 is out yet, so I shall just sit, impatiently waiting, for more about the Lynches, and Jordan and Hennessey and Farooq-Lane. I suspect they are all going interesting places. 

 

Judging a book by its cover: This is one of those books that I ended up owning both in paperback and audio format. The paperback I have is the UK edition, where the hawk on the cover (and of the title) looks a bit more stylised and the colour scheme is more peach than orange. Nevertheless, the audiobook cover is the US one, with a lot of orange both in the font used for the title and in the background for the swooping hawk. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 77: "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

Page count: 532 pages
Rating: 5 stars

From Goodreads:
The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around - and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance to lose his dream forever. 

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god?And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?

The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries - including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo's dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed?And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

I am reluctant to give more information about this book than the blurb already reveals, because as several other reviewers have pointed out before me, this book is a wonderfully immersive reading experience and the less you know about the details of the plot, the more lovely surprises there are for you along the way.

Anyone who's read anything by Laini Taylor before (and if you haven't, go check out Daughter of Smoke and Bone immediately. Don't worry, this review will wait) will know that she has a very rich prose, and is excellent at world building. She describes settings, experiences and characters so vividly and her books tend to completely engross me. This is absolutely the case here. She's also very good about writing complex individuals, there is very little black and white in her characterisation. Everyone is flawed in some way. Rarely is someone entirely good or wholly evil, but they are always interesting to read about.

The reader is taken into the story through the eyes of Lazlo Strange, an orphan who becomes a librarian and spends all his free time finding information about a mythical lost city. He vividly remembers the city having a different name at one point, but one memorable day in his childhood, it was as if it was stolen out of his mind, being replaced by the word 'Weep'. By the time he grows up, he almost doubts that there ever was a different name to it, but he still dreams. Lazlo is clever and humble, and a very good person. He will selflessly help others, even when it might lead to others exploiting his hard work and presenting it as their own. He is finally rewarded for his hard work when an exotic delegation comes to the library where he works.

There are so many other fascinating characters in this story as well, and so many different settings to explore over the course of the book. There are mysteries to be solved, and dreams that may or may not come true, and hints of romance, but also great loss and tragedy. It's also important to note that this book is NOT self-contained and ends on a heck of a cliff-hanger. There is as of yet no publication date for the sequel (I think this will happily only be a duology, so once you have the next book in your hot little hands, you'll get to read the end to the story), and if you hate unresolved endings and waiting for months or maybe years between books, maybe hold off until The Muse of Nightmares is released.


Judging a book by its cover: Both covers for this book are very pretty, but the edition I read had this, the UK cover, with the beautiful dark blue background and the stylised moth in the centre of the cover. I like that the faint patterns in the blue could be stars, or maybe tracings of a map, it's not entirely clear. Since the colour blue and moths are both very significant in the book, this cover seems wholly appropriate and the deep blue just soothes my soul.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.