CBR18 Book 5: "Kraft & Mod (Courage)" by Trine J. Cederlöf

Page count: 163 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: A Middle Grade Book

Defeat the Goblin TBR: The Shiny book (added in December 2024)

Reading Rainbow - Green cover

Disclaimer! The author is a friend of mine, but my opinions are my own, and I bought the book with my own money (because friends make sure friends get royalties). 

As part of the peace agreement between the Green Shores and the Blue Mountains, Prince Mirounga (called Miro), nephew and heir to the king of the Green Shores, is sent into fosterage to the Blue Mountains. He is still grieving his father, an admiral who died in the war between the countries, but understands that spending a year working as a squire at the court will foster new diplomatic ties between the countries, as well as teach him important skills he will need when he becomes king in the future. 

The Red Sands was another country defeated by the Blue Mountains in the war, and it has also sent a young man to train with the royal guard. Tarek is the younger brother of the sultan, and he's clearly not intending to befriend any of the other recruits. He mostly keeps to the stables, more comfortable around the horses than people his own age. 

The two young men are pretty much exact opposites. Miro is almost as tall, wide and strong as an adult, but painfully shy, while Tarek is slender, agile and very flexible. During the second part of their training, the recruits are all supposed to be stationed in the snowy borderlands near the Black Mountains. There are multiple complications, which mean that all the recruits, even Miro and Tarek, need to learn to work together, or lives could be lost. 

In 2014, my friend Trine wrote a book, Crippled, retelling an old Danish fairy tale. Now she has written a sequel, set in the same fantasy universe, but focused on different characters. The boys who grew up over the course of Crippled are now the King and the General of The Blue Mountains, having fought and won a difficult war. King Vincent has a wife, a daughter and another child on the way. After the war, it is time for diplomacy, and the countries that lost both have to send a young man to apprentice in the Royal Guard for a year. 

This book doesn't retell any particular folk tale, but is a coming-of-age tale for the very different young men and how they find the friendship, belonging and well, the courage, to be who they were always meant to be. The story is in parts funny, adventurous, thrilling and moving. At more than one point in the story, especially towards the end of the book, I teared up and sniffled a little, because the writing hit me straight in my feels. I liked the first book, but I liked this one even better, probably because of the emotional beats. I just wish the stories were longer. 

Because I am lucky enough to have insider knowledge, I know for a fact that my friend is working on the third book in series, set in The Red Sands, involving the eldest princess of The Blue Mountains (who, it is hinted at having some unusual abilities) and the only princess of The Red Sands. So after two books where boys are the protagonists, we get to see the story of some young ladies, who build a friendship while solving mysteries together. I'm very excited. 

Judging a book by its cover: The first book in the series involved princes from the Blue Mountains, and the book cover was a lovely sky blue. One of the protagonists from this book is from the Green Coasts, and as a result, the cover is green. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 2: "The Swan's Daughter" by Roshani Chokshi

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC. My opinions are my own. 

Demelza is the seventh and youngest daughter of Araminta, a legendary veritas swan (extremely beautiful women who have the power to turn into swans, and whose voices compel anyone who hears it to tell the truth) and Prava, a centuries-old, very ambitious, and some would say, evil wizard. However, when veritas swans fall in love, the person they love gains control over them through a magical necklace with a winged key, which gives that person total control over them. The veritas swan can no longer choose when to transform and has to obey the wishes of their beloved. Only death can sever the bond, but if their beloved dies, so does the veritas swan. 

While Prava is quite monstrous, he does love his wife, and he clearly loves his seven daughters a lot. In fact, he raises them to be as cunning and ambitious as himself. As soon as they are old enough, he sends them off to advantageous marriage matches, so they can extend his sphere of influence and help him with his ultimate goal, to find the spell for eternal life. Demelza is different from her sisters. Unlike them, she doesn't have wings or the ability to fly, and while their songs are lovely, her singing voice is terrible. Because of this, Prava keeps her close to him in his castle. She grows up wanting to be as invaluable to him as her sisters, and reads and studies and tries to help him decipher all the clues as to how to complete the spell for immortality. 

Once she uncovers the final part, however, it turns out that what the wizard needs is a willing sacrifice, and the heart of a creature born of a beauty and a beast - namely, Demelza herself. He wants to carve out her heart, and the only safe place she can flee to is Rathe Castle, where the royal family of Malys live, and Prava is forbidden to enter. As it happens, this is just as the big competition to find Prince Arris' bride, so yet another young woman showing up on the castle grounds isn't exactly a problem. Araminta has told her daughter the truth: if she ever falls in love with someone, and surrenders her heart, she will be as trapped as her mother has been all these years. Demelza is therefore not intending to actually compete with the other young ladies to win the hand of the prince. She does propose an alliance with him, though, promising to use her truth-telling powers to help him discover which of the women competing may have genuine feelings for him, and which ones are there simply to murder him. 

King Enzo the Fool, ancestor to all the rulers of the Isle of Malys, managed to make the witch queen who once ruled there fall in love with him. He got her to grant him a magical boon. First of all, if one of his line died without an heir, the Isle would be ruined. Unfortunately, he worded the next bit badly. Only the male descendants of King Enzo, or whoever possessed their hand and heart in marriage, would be able to sit on the throne. Once the witch queen discovered King Enzo had manipulated her, she cut out his heart and, as a result, was the one with all the power. This continued down the centuries. The heir to the throne would marry and usually be murdered by their spouse within a day of the vows being spoken. Interestingly, Prince Arris' parents were an exception to this rule. His mother fully intended to murder his father, but fell so deeply in love before she had time to kill him, and hence Arris' father is the first king of the Isle of Malys in centuries who has been able to live to see his children reach adulthood.

In this world, everyone has two lives. When their first one ends, they are reborn as a tree or other plant, or occasionally a rock. Hence, all the previous rulers of Malys can be found as sentient trees in the grove of ancestors near the palace. They are happy to dispense advice to the current rulers, as needed. Prince Arris has chosen the spot he wants to grow and what tree he wants to turn into, but can't help but be romantic and hope he might find a semblance of the love his parents share (even if the queen keeps trying to murder her husband at least once a month, just to keep things interesting). 

When Demelza arrives at Rathe Castle, her mother has enchanted her so she looks covered in mud and grass and is dressed in an outfit made of reeds. Hence, the prince doesn't really consider her a potential bride, and most of the contestants are deeply dismissive of her. That works in her favour when she has to try to ferret out the truth from the various contestants, though they all underestimate her and her abilities. She meets in secret with the prince in the evenings, sharing her findings with him, while he normally brings her something he cooked or baked in the palace kitchens. But obviously, all these secret chats, involving food created specifically to cater to her likes and preferences (up to including pond weed, crunchy beetles or tadpoles), aren't going to lead to feels between the swan and the prince. Their friendship is totally platonic, yes indeed. 

In the first few rounds and basically the first half or so of the book, there are way too many contestants, and I couldn't really keep them apart. The two young women who share a room with Demelza are certainly no threat to Arris and seem to genuinely want to befriend Demelza. One turns into a giant bear and seems more interested in cooking the perfect recipes than marrying the prince, while the other seems to have more of an affinity with Arris' very fiercely protective twin sister. Then there's Edmea, the mean-girl beauty everyone expects to win the competition, who can magically create her own outfits, and who was described in such a way that it was impossible for me not to picture her as Ariana Grande's Glinda the Good from the Wicked movies. Couldn't tell you anything about any of the others.

Demelza, born different from all her other sisters, and mostly undervalued and treated with disdain by her mother (to make her seem insignificant and plain, so Prava wouldn't figure out that she was the missing link in his quest for immortality, has always felt like she needs to prove her worth and has a very low opinion of herself. Arris has pretty much known forever that since he is the crown prince, he is unlikely to survive his wedding day, and has therefore never dared make any hopes or dreams about the future, making every effort to live in the present and enjoy every aspect of life. Demelza fears falling in love because her mother has told her that it means giving her beloved total control of her life. Arris hopes to fall in love, even though he knows it's likely his future spouse will murder him to gain power and the right to rule the Isle of Malys. So they are slow to realise their feelings for one another, and both have very conflicted feelings about true love.

Arris has always been lucky enough to be loved by his parents and his very protective twin sister, while Demelza has always felt like the odd one out. Since her sisters all had beautiful singing voices and happily fit into Prava's plans for world domination (at least his little corner of the world), Demelza has lived a sheltered life, living the life of a scholar. She has a vast knowledge of all sorts of things acquired in books, but struggles in social settings. The two princesses she shares a room with are the first women she's known actual friendship with. So while this is a story with a romance in it, it's also about Demelza learning to appreciate herself as a person, and learning that she is worthy of friendship and affection, she doesn't just need to be useful to those around her. As the number of contestants is winnowed down with each new challenge, the remaining women, despite their many differences, all grow closer, as well. 

This is the first Roshani Chokshi book I have read (despite owning many of them). Based on this, it will not be the last one that I read. I am a sucker for good fairy tale retellings, or fantasy stories that feel like they could be fairy tales. As far as I can tell, this story isn't actually based on a previously existing fairy tale, but it has a lot of familiar elements for those who have read a lot of them. 

Judging a book by its cover: While I think it's a lovely cover, I still think it may be too ethereal and dreamy for the story this book tells. I think the story is darker than this image implies. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Book 46: "Kong Krøbling" (Crippled) by Trine J. Cederløf

Page count: 145 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: Disability rep

Disclaimer! The author is a friend of mine, but I paid for my own copy of the book and my opinions are my own. (Hope she'll still be speaking to me after she reads this).

In the fairy tale kingdom of The Blue Mountains, the king and queen try for many years, but the queen fails to have any living children. She encounters a witch who calls herself the Queen of Bees, who offers her a solution to her difficulties. Giving her a seed, which she must water with her tears, a plant will grow, with two flowers - one will give her a boy, the other a girl. The king and queen are desperate, so the queen eats both, and nine months later, two boys are born. The first is small and misshapen, with eyes in two different colours. The second baby is perfectly formed. The staff are worried when the firstborn, the heir, is born with physical disabilities, but the royal couple are equally delighted with both their boys. They name the eldest Vincent and his twin Niklas.

The twins grow up being treated exactly the same, and are pretty much inseperable. Vincent has to use a wheelchair, but excels in the lessons their tutor assigns them. His brother, who is handsome and healthy, struggles with understanding all the reading they are assigned. He manages to teach Vincent to swim and ride, because these are abilities important for a prince to know. Vincent helps Niklas realise that he's by no means stupid, he just has reading difficulties, so Vincent sums up their lessons to him with visual aids and helps him do his written homework. It takes their parents and tutor years to figure out their scheming, but once they do, the conclusion is that Niklas has dyslexia, and their parents realise the princes are probably old enough to go to school with other children, which means the boys start to make friends. Vincent is the more introverted and bookish one, Niklas is extroverted and excels at anything physical. Once they get older, Vincent goes to university, while Niklas joins the royal guard.

Then their mother announces that they are old enough to get married. Both princes need wives and heirs, and so they need to visit with princesses from nearby kingdoms to see whether they suit. While Vincent is well-loved and popular in his own kingdom, his visible disablilities create difficulties once the queen starts matchmaking. It turns out his perfect match is closer to home than he realised. 

This story is a retelling of a very well-known Danish fairytale called King Lindworm. Growing up, I loved mythology and folklore, and have read fairy stories from a lot of different countries. The story seemed vaguely familiar to me, but having read a summary of the original, this is not really a story that's very popular in Norway or Sweden. It also means that this book introduced me to a new (and kind of weird) fairytale, as well as a very entertaining middle grade book.

While this is aimed at a younger audience, as all the best books for children, it doesn't underestimate them or talk down to them. A number of serious issues are touched upon, such as infertility (this led to a very interesting discussion during our book club chat about this book), physical disabilities and dyslexia. At no point are the boys bullied or mistreated in their own kingdom by teachers or peers. The twins have a really close relationship, and while it's mentioned that they fight a lot as children, they always present a united front against others. Without Niklas, Vincent would not have challenged himself physically, and would have been much more limited by his disabilites. Without Vincent, Niklas would have convinced himself he was stupid and useless, and good only for grunt work. There are also several examples of openly queer characters, so while this is set in a sort of vagely 18th Century time period, there is no discrimination or prejudice (in The Blue Mountains, at least). 

While I try to challenge myself to read in Swedish a couple of times a year, so I don't forget how to, this is the first time in a very long time I had to read a whole book in Danish. To non-Scandinavians, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish would not appear to be very different from one another, and the most commonly used form of written Norwegian is directly derived from Danish. A lot of the language is therefore not that challenging, but every so often, there will be a word or expression in Danish that means something entirely different in Norwegian, and it took me out of the story for a moment. Thankfully, the book has a fun and engaging plot which moves at a nice pace, and once I actually set down and concentrated, it didn't take me long to finish the book.

To me, the opening difficulty with infertility obviously affected me greatly. Among the topics we discussed about this book is how many stories in myth and folklore involve parents who struggle to concieve or have living children, and how common infertility difficulties are, yet very rarely talked about. My little boy is the result of several long gruelling years of IVF treatment, and I feel very lucky to never have suffered a miscarriage during my many years of trying. If medical science wasn't advanced enough, would I have made a deal with a mysterious old woman in the hopes of having a baby? I suspect I would. 

Because this is the first book in a planned series, the author already has several other books in development, all focusing on different kingdoms in this fictional world. We get a glimpse of some of the neighbouring kingdoms, and one of our major complaints when discussing the book with the author was the lack of a map. The book should absolutely have included a map at the beginning (so Trine sat down and drew one for us during the meeting). Having heard her talk about her ideas for future books, and some of her influences for the various kingdoms and peoples, I cannot wait to get my hands on more of her stories.

So why only four stars? I wanted more! This story was great, but I wanted more time with these engaging characters, and I would especially have liked to know more about the Queen of Bees. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really love the simplicity of this cover, with the wheelchair which plays such an important part of the plot (and Vincent's life) front and centre. The various shades of blue are also lovely, no doubt picked because the book takes place in the fictional country of The Blue Mountains. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR15 Book 67: "Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery" by BROM

Page count: 305 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Connecticut, 1666. An ancient spirit is awoken in the darkness of the wood, fed by blood and the prayers of the wild spirits name him Father and Slayer. They lure a clumsy farmer into a cave to feed him to the spirit, making young Abitha a widow. Abitha already doesn't fit into the Puritan community with her outspoken ways and questioning of the rules. Having grown up in London, Abitha was sold by her drunken father and married off to a stranger, who thankfully turns out to be a gentle and rather simple man. Unfortunately, his gentle ways also make him easy for his domineering older brother to manipulate, and Abitha's brother-in-law is furious when the community elders allows Abitha to stay on by herself on the farm after her husband's death. If Abitha is able to raise enough crops to pay off the farm's debts, it's her brother-in-law who will be in trouble with the magistrate. 

Abitha nearly kills herself working the fields on her own, until she befriends Father (who she names Samson, after the goat that the forest spirits first killed to raise their slayer) and he starts tapping into ancient memories of being one with the land. His magic allows Abitha to grow plenty of corn, but her brother-in-law breaks into the farm at night and burns most of her harvest. Desperate, and unwilling to let her odious brother-in-law win, Abitha makes another deal with Samson, who gets the bees to produce huge amounts of honey and honeycomb, allowing Abitha to pay off her debts. 

Abitha's mother, who died when she was still a teenager, was a wise woman, who helped people with simples and healing potions. Abitha has also been helping some of the women and young girls in the community with little blessings and managed to cure one of the preachers' daughters of measles. This obviously comes back to haunt her when her brother-in-law decides to accuse her of witchcraft. Ironically, he's not entirely wrong, she has been dabbling with magic to succeed, but his wild accusations of her fornicating with the devil are obviously untrue. Sadly, because the community gets carried away, no one is willing to listen to Reverend Carver (whose daughter Abitha healed), and his wife Sarah is accused of aiding a known witch and tortured nearly to death before she finally breaks down and denounces Abitha. The villagers have tortured and murdered Abitha's cat, humiliated and tortured a kind woman whom Abitha respected, and done their best to torture "the truth" out of Abitha as well. If they want a witch, Abitha is determined to give the community what they want and fear. She accepts Samson's bargain when he comes to save her (he's been off fighting his own battle for his identity) and together she and Samson enact vengeance on the community who spurned her.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the truest monsters in this book, set in Puritan America in the 1660s, are the humans who get caught up in religious hysteria. The forest spirits lure a goat and an impressionable man into a cave and get them killed to reawaken their forest god, and try to set him to kill all the colonists (this doesn't really work out as they planned), but Father/Samson feels deeply confused and conflicted and refuses to do their bidding. Some people die at his hand, but usually none who don't deserve it. There's some quite graphic violence in parts of this book, and I really wish that so much of Abitha's eventual vengeance didn't involve bugs (so many bugs *shudder*), but the most upsetting parts to read are the ones where Abitha and Sarah are tortured by the so-called righteous magistrate and his minions. 

This book was very well-liked by my book club and we had an interesting discussion about it during our meeting. It was agreed that one of the things that probably made it a bit different from another witch hunt during the Puritan era novel was the aspect of the forest god/Father/Samson, and the nature spirits and their attempts to eradicate the white colonists. Samson is a deeply conflicted character, and it's revealed over the course of the story that this is because he has been many things over the years, and the remaining forest spirits have only tried to revive one aspect of him, so he's separated from his true self. He doesn't really want to be a slayer and a vessel for vengeance, he delights in the simple worship that Abitha offers him and the nature magic he is able to perform with her. He needs to go on his own quest to discover who he once used to be, and when he returns, he discovers what the townsfolk have done to Abitha. 

The story isn't just anti-colonialist, the forest spirits clearly remember the natives coming to their land and seem to be against anyone encroaching on their territories. We discover in the latter half of the book why the forest spirits have become so vengeful, and it gives the book an interesting dimension that with the exception of a few men, usually motivated by greed, there are no really evil players here. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do. It was also pleasantly surprising to me and gave the story more nuance that not the entire Puritan community was against Abitha from the start. Reverend Carter and his wife Sarah are portrayed as genuinely good people, which makes what happens to them in the latter half of the story even more tragic.

This has been one of my favourite book club reads so far this year. I haven't read anything else Brom has written, but based on this, I would absolutely be open to reading something else as well. 

Judging a book by its cover: I'm not surprised that cover art is gorgeous, considering the author is also a professional artist. Nevertheless, the cover for this actually made a couple of the members of my book club gasp audibly when we were shown it at the meeting last month. It's so incredibly pretty.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 26: "Nettle & Bone" by T. Kingfisher

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books I already own

CBR15 Bingo: Violence

15-word-review: Princess Marra has to complete three impossible tasks to kill her brother-in-law. A quest follows.

Longer review: Marra, the youngest princess in a small, rather insignificant kingdom, who has spent half of her life in a convent and so is almost, but very significantly not, a nun, has been set three impossible tasks by a dust-wife (a magic-wielding woman who can communicate with the dead). She must spin thread out of nettles and fashion a cloak in less than a night and a day, and she must make a dog out of cursed bones and wire. Her final task is to capture the moon in a jar. All of these tasks are to find a way to kill her brother-in-law, the prince of a neighbouring kingdom. The prince married her eldest sister, who died after less than a year. Then the second eldest princess was married off to him, and although inexperienced and naive after a very sheltered upbringing first in a palace and then in a convent, Marra discovers that her sister has been abused and tortured, and keeps trying to stay pregnant so her husband doesn't hurt her as much. Marra wants to avenge her oldest sister and save her remaining living one, but is rather powerless on her own.

In fairy tales, the impossible frequently becomes possible, and Marra succeeds in her impossible tasks against all odds and is granted the aid of the very powerful dust-wife who set her the tasks. Along with the dust-wife and her demon chicken, accompanied by her bone dog, and eventually also an exiled (if very gentle) killer and a wicked godmother, Marra slowly travels to her brother-in-law's kingdom to try to stop him from ever hurting her family ever again. 

When my husband asked what I was reading and I told him the title of the book, he wilfully decided to misunderstand and kept asking why I would read a book about soup. There is no soup of any kind in this novel, the nettles and bones are parts of the impossible tasks that Marra nearly ruins her hands and body to accomplish, all to find a way to save her remaining sister (who she thinks has always hated her and probably still does). The wicked prince has killed his first wife and will probably murder his second one if she finally succeeds in bearing him an heir (fair warning to those who might find it distressing, the abused queen has a lot of miscarriages - no graphic details are included, but this book might not be for everyone). 

This book was a fast and engrossing read for me. It's my first novel by Kingfisher, and I was a bit worried, as I've heard some of the books she's written are mostly in the horror genre. There are absolutely horrible elements to this story, but they are all very believable, human-inflicted acts. Despite the abuse and violence committed by Marra's brother-in-law (and sadly ignored by her mother, the Queen, and spymaster of their little kingdom), quite a lot of this book is cozy and focuses on friendship, loyalty, and togetherness. It's about not underestimating those who might seem humble and weak, or too old. It's about second chances and embracing opportunities. There's a romantic subplot, but it's very gentle and almost entirely off-page.

I loved this book so much that I bought it in paperback as well, so I can have it displayed on my bookshelf. I've already recommended it to several of my friends. Anyone who likes a dark fairytale-inspired fantasy should check this out. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really like the e-book cover of the book, with the cover model wearing a dress that looks like it's made of vines and thorns, but also the UK paperback edition that I got that is in dark colours with a number of the elements from the story on the cover. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 93: "How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories" by Holly Black

Page count: 200 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Spoiler warning! Don't read this book, or review unless you've finished the entire trilogy of The Folk of the Air. The Cruel Prince is the place to start. 

This companion book, which I suspect would clock in at novella-length if you removed all the beautiful full-colour illustrations throughout by Rovina Cai, works as part prequel and part sequel to The Folk of the Air trilogy, as well as an alternate POV to several of the series' events, especially in The Cruel Prince, where Prince Cardan is possibly at his most loathsome.

In this book, told from Cardan's point of view, we see him and Jude as High King and Queen of Elfhame, riding to the mortal world to deal with a supernatural threat, while Cardan thinks back to several of the events in his life that brought him to such an unlikely place. We see him first as a feral, unwanted child in the palace stables, left to fend for himself and scramble for scraps, encountering a troll woman named Aslog and hearing her tell a story of a stone-hearted boy. This is only the first meeting between Cardan and Aslog, and with each encounter, the story is told, but changes subtly and takes on new meaning and moral. 

We also get to see how Cardan is given a place to live by his elder brother Balekin, and molded in his image, but at a terrible price. We find out how he and Nicasia, Princess of the Undersea become friends, and how they eventually join forces with the sadistic Valerian and wicked Locke, and terrorise all around them and give in to their worst excesses. Quite a lot of Cardan's antipathy and mistreatment of Jude is given some background, to explain some of why Cardan kept lashing out at the woman he would eventually fall for and marry.

For anyone who possibly gave up on the series after the first book, Prince Cardan of Elfhame might seem utterly irredeemable. He certainly did a lot of very dark, cruel, and f**ked up things and treated Jude, her twin sister and others absolutely appallingly. Even before this story, which attempts to show some of Cardan's side of things, it became obvious over the course of the series that Cardan was very much a victim of his upbringing and circumstances, and while a prince, really had possibly even less control of his life and destiny than Jude did. It's also important to remember that none of the faeries in Holly Black's fantasy world are kind and nice and cannot be held to human morality standards. They are all wicked, manipulative and untrustworthy and most consider humans utterly beneath them. Ensorcelling humans and forcing them into months or even years of slavelike servitude is entirely common-place, and trickery and deceit are in their nature. It's not surprising that Cardan saw the human girls being raised to believe themselves equal in rank and stature to true-born faeries as an affront and an insult, especially as they seemed to have a proud father and a loving home, something Cardan himself had never known.

Considering Cardan's upbringing, it's rather remarkable that he is able to change as much as he does over the course of the trilogy. It's also important to remember that his nemesis, the woman he eventually falls for and marries, is Jude Duarte, a fierce, bitter and combative girl whose upbringing was at the hands of one of Elfhame's most ruthless generals. Her most abiding childhood memory is of her foster father slaying her actual parents and taking her sisters and her away from the only home they'd ever known. While Jude is raised in a loving home of sorts, she is always very aware of how different she and her twin Taryn are from the fae, and while Taryn does her best to conform and fit in, Jude, always aware of her vulnerability and how helpless she is compared to the faeries, works to make herself stronger, cleverer and utterly defiant of all of them. Cardan's cruelty only makes her more determined to become unbeatable. At one point in this book, Cardan thinks "Jude wouldn’t have made a mistake like this, he is dead certain. She would have been on guard from the moment she entered the woods. No, that isn’t right. Jude is on guard every hour of every day of her life." That sums her up rather nicely.

I really like a good fairy tale, and the way the story of the stone-hearted boy changes with each retelling here was very well-done. For all that they both start out as rather horrible, neither Jude nor Cardan are ever boring characters and it was nice to spend some more time with them. Cardan and Jude's love story over the course of the series is a true enemies to lovers story that few storytellers actually ever manage to pull off, and this book just made it all the more clear why I should re-read the whole trilogy soon, seeing how the relationship develops now that I know where they end up. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover, like the inside illustrations, is by Rovina Cai, who captures Cardan, Jude, and the other faery creatures wonderfully. I really like how this cover compliments the other three covers in the series, while also being different, because of the art style. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 104: "Crimson Bound" by Rosamund Hodge - double Cannonball!

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

From Goodreads, because I'm lazy and it's mostly a pretty good summary (I will point out the ways in which is it not afterwards):

When Rachelle was fifteen, she was good - apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless - straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in an effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand - the man she hates most - Rachelle forces Armand to help her find the legendary sword that might save their world. As the two become unexpected allies, they uncover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. In a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Inspired by the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Crimson Bound is an exhilarating tale of darkness, love and redemption.

Rachelle lives in a world where there are evil things lurking in the Forest and they believe that three thousand years ago, an evil entity known as the Devourer, god of the forestborn, swallowed the sun and the moon. A brave pair of siblings, known as Zisa and Tyr managed to recover the sun and the moon, and bind the Devourer in sleep for millennia. But soon, Rachelle's aunt, the village wood-wife (wise women trained to protect people against the evil of the forestborn) announces, the Devourer will awaken, to swallow the sun and moon once more.

With the foolish impulsiveness of youth, Rachelle decides to try to figure out a way to subdue the Devourer once more, should he really return. She starts walking in the woods, attracting one of the dangerous servants of the dark forces. She keeps courting danger, until one day, he persuades her to remove her protective charms, and (naturally) attacks her. Once marked by a forestborn, an individual has only two choices. Kill someone before three days are up, or die. Rachelle fights the compulsion, but ends up killing her aunt. She does discover, from the sinister and seductive forestborn who marked her, that the only way to defeat the Devourer, is with Zisa's legendary bone swords, believed lost forever.

Three years later, Rachelle is living in the capital, and is one of the king's order of penitent bloodbound. She was marked by the Forest and killed to stay alive, but has not fully submitted to the call of the Forest and become fully forestborn yet. Instead, she spends every waking hour hunting down the wicked creatures that threaten innocent civilians. She has a semi-flirtatious relationship with Eric D'Anjou, the Captain of the King's bloodbound, but refuses to give into his attempts at seduction, refusing to become another notch on his belt.

After foiling an assassination attempt at the King's bastard son, Armand, she is ordered to be his bodyguard. As Rachelle has only just gotten word from the shadowy forestborn who changed her that the Devourer will be rising as soon as the next Solstice, she has only a few weeks to try to locate Joyeuse, one of the bone-swords the legendary Zisa used to free the sun and the moon. Stories say it is hidden "below the moon, above the sun". She certainly does not have time to baby-sit one of the King's many illegitimate sons, especially one who has been proclaimed a saint by the populace after he was allegedly marked by a forestborn, refused to kill, but still survived after three days. He did lose both his hands, and now has silver ones he wears instead. The blurb claims he is the man she hates the most, this is wildly exaggerated. She despises him, believes he is a liar and a fraud - as there is just no proven instance of anyone surviving three days after encountering a forestborn, unless they kill someone, like she did.

As the assassination attempt on Armand that Rachelle foiled is not the first, she is told to accompany him to one of the King's sumptuous country estates. Rachelle is persuaded to bring her fully human friend Amelie, who wants to basically be Rachelle's stylist, now that she has to appear at court functions. Armand tells Rachelle a legend from his region of the country, that makes her believe that the sword she is looking for, may in fact be hidden somewhere in the palace they will be staying. As it is impossible for her to be on guard duty and keep on searching, she reluctantly enlists Armand's help. She is still convinced he is lying about how he lost his hands, but the more she observes him, the more unlikely it seems that he wants any kind of glory or fame, and he is clearly deeply uncomfortable being venerated by the general populace.

The return of the Devourer draws ever closer. Rachelle and Armand are running out of time and the closer to the solstice they get, the more the sinister Forest seems to be encroaching on the royal residence, even though protective spells are supposed to be all over the grounds. Will Rachelle find the legendary sword and stop the Devourer, before it's too late?

What I liked:
- I absolutely adored the dark fairy tale told at the beginning of many of the chapters, relating the story of Zisa and Tyr. There were clearly elements of Hansel and Gretel, but with much darker undertones throughout, and there are clearly other folkloric tales mixed in there too. The horror that the siblings go through and what Zisa is willing to sacrifice to rescue her brother is lovely. Creepy and fantastic as all the best fairy tales are.
- The various folklore elements woven throughout the story. 
- The sinister creeping dread of the Forest, and the almost vampire-like forestborn. The bargain the marked have to make to continue living and the ever-present threat that they submit fully to the call of the Forest, and become fully inhumane.
- I liked Rachelle's complexity, even though I didn't always like her. She made an incredibly stupid mistake in her youth (some TSTL behaviour right there), but strove so hard to atone for it. Working to fight the threats from the Forest and saving innocents, even as she believed herself wholly damned.
- The sweet and genuine friendship between Rachelle and Amelie.
- I liked Armand as a character. His cut-off hands and his silver replacements (that burn him when the metal gets too hot) was suitably gruesome. I was also impressed when it was finally revealed what actually happened to him - the full extent was both cool and horrible.
- The concept of the wood-wives, local wise-women who could weave various charms to protect the populace against the creeping evil of the Forest. Zisa was apparently the first of the wood-wives and they pass down the knowledge through the generations.
- I mostly liked the decadent Renaissance French court setting.
- I liked the monsters Rachelle had to defeat, both in her everyday fight against the encroaching Forest and when looking for Joyeuse. 
- The plot wasn't entirely predictable (for all that some things were pretty obvious to me from early on). There were a lot of cool reveals along the way.

Did not like:
- Erec D'Anjou. He gave me the creeps from the moment he showed up. He was an arrogant creep and the way he treated Rachelle was condescending and appalling. The fact that he was presented as charming, handsome and a supposed third in the love triangle of the story was baffling to me. He was pond scum.
- Rachelle's initial aversion to Armand really did seem very extreme and was really never well explained.
- Nor was her sudden change of heart, where she pretty much out of the blue loves him. Not at all sure at what point her feelings changed from distrust, disdain and slight loathing to true love.
- Absolutely and utterly hated the whole love triangle.
- The structure of the story was a bit messy and the book could have been tighter plotted. The ending seemed a bit confused and rushed.
- The Little Red Riding Hood inspiration was tenuous, at best. 

This is Rosamund Hodge's second book, and from what I can see from various reviews, a lot of people don't think it's as good as her first book, Cruel Beauty. As there was a lot that I really liked about this book, I'm now even more excited that I have the supposedly better book still to read. As some reviews also say that the plots are a bit reminiscent of each other, I think I'm going to wait a bit, so the books don't suffer too much in comparison.

Judging a book by its cover: I've seen some people complaining that the cover of this book is too close to Rosamund Hodge's debut novel, Cruel Beauty, but I honestly don't see why this is problematic. The books are published by the same company, they probably wanted to make it more obvious the books were by the same author. The spiralling stair motif is a cool one (even though it has very little to do with anything in the actual book), whilst the black and white, with the bright green of the trees and the splash of red of Rachelle's cloak are lovely contrasts. The way the trees seem to be moving ever closer to the stairs is a nice call-back to the encroaching Forest in the book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 53: "The Stepsister Scheme" by Jim C. Hines

Page count: 346 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

And they all lived happily ever after... Or did they? What happens after we close the story books and leave the princes and princesses to the rest of their lives? Danielle Whiteshore, popularly known as Cinderella, is having some trouble adjusting to life as a royal, having been treated no better than a slave by her vicious stepmother and stepsisters until her sudden elevation in status upon marriage to Prince Armand. Even though they were nothing but awful to her, she still feels bad about the way birds swooped in to attack the three women on her wedding day. So when her stepsister Charlotte comes to the palace, demanding to see her, Danielle invites her in, and discovers that her bitter and jealous stepsister is determined to murder her, by mundane or magical means.

Shortly after the aborted assassination attempt, Danielle is told her husband has been kidnapped and it seems likely that both her stepsisters are involved in the scheme. Queen Beatrice, her mother-in-law, seems fairly calm under the circumstances, enlisting the help of two formidable young women, her very own "secret service". These women are Talia, also known to some as Sleeping Beauty, whose fairy gifts have ensured that she's exceptionally skilled with martial arts and weapons, and Snow White, who learned magic to defend herself from her jealous mother. The two foreign princesses are doubtful when Danielle insists on accompanying them on the rescue mission, believing that she will be a burden, as she is innocent and inexperienced.

As it turns out, Danielle may be kind and forgiving, but she's certainly not stupid and she has the useful ability to communicate with birds and animals, which more than once helps them in their quest. As they enter Fairyland, it turns out that all the three princesses are badly outmatched, and the only way they'll be able to retrieve Prince Armand and get themselves out is by working together.

I spent much of my childhood and teenage years devouring fairy tales. Scandinavian, German, French, Celtic, Arabic - I read as many as I could get my hands on and I loved seeing the various twists in folklore. I don't remember what age I was when I discovered that some of the early versions of these tales were rather brutal and violent, certainly for the evil-doers, but often for our heroes and heroines as well. Jim C. Hines is certainly aware of the darker origins, something apparent both in Snow and Talia's rather horrific backstories.

Clearly not too pleased with the often rather passive role taken by the ladies in their original stories, the women have all the agency here. The prince is relegated to kidnapping victim, while both the rescuers and villains are female. Danielle may not be as independent and capable as her fellow princesses at the beginning of the book, but learns a lot over the course of the story and more than proves her worth.

This is the first book in the series, and I suspect did a lot of setting up. I was entertained, but not exactly blown away by the story, although from my book twin Narfna's reviews of the series last year, I'm pretty sure that I want to continue with the series, if only to see how Hines reimagines other fairy tales and princesses.

Judging a book by its cover: I own this book in paperback, and having left it out on the living room table, my husband was not kind in his judgement. I can see what he means, it's not exactly the most inviting of covers. There's a whole lot of different shades of pastel competing here and some pretty awful outfits. Then there's the fact that all three of our heroines seem to be simpering in different ways, Snow White (the one with the snow flake throwing star, if you hadn't guessed) being the most egregious. What's up with that posture? Of the three, Talia is the one who comes off the best, but I refuse to believe she'd wear that much pink. The German cover for this book is WAY cooler. The publishers should consider a redesign with that.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 69: "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik

Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer! I got this as an ARC through NetGalley in return for a fair and unbiased review.The book is available now.

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its power at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman to be handed over to him every ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things that Agnieszka isn't, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

While this remarkable novel by Naomi Novik isn't actually a retelling of some traditional fairy tale, it feels like it should be. The book moves slowly, thoroughly establishing the sleepy little environment Agniezka and Kasia live in, with the terrors of the slowly encroaching Wood so close by. Once someone disappears in the Wood, they will hopefully stay lost. Should they return, they are like creatures possessed spreading its malevolent influence. It's because the dangers that threaten them constantly that the villagers accept having to sacrifice a young woman to the mysterious and reclusive wizard who lives in the tower nearby. He keeps them for ten years, when they return to their families briefly, apparently unharmed but inevitably changed. They never seem content to stay in their home villages, usually going to the capital, rarely to return.

The Dragon always chooses the most promising and accomplished of the women, and so everyone in the area are expecting Kasia to be the next young woman to be taken. It's a huge surprise to everyone, not least Agnieszka, when she is the one selected to go with the wizard. She barely gets time to say good bye to her loved ones before the Dragon sweeps her away. Now, terrified and confused, because while the women who return from the Dragon's service always appeared healthy and unmolested, there were always rumours. They lived alone with a man for a decade after all. The impatient and surly wizard seems completely uninterested in her physically though, and after finding a note from a previous occupant of her room, Agnieszka is relieved that she won't be molested in any way. She tries to follow the orders of her new master, but because the Dragon isn't exactly very clear in what he actually wants, it takes her quite a while to understand that he's trying to teach her magic, and his lessons are not going as expected. It's only when she finds the dusty spell book of a legendary witch that she seems to get the magic to work for her.

At first the Dragon doesn't believe that Agnieszka's brand of magic could have any effect. Only after several attempts does it become clear that his way of using magic is more intellectual and book based, while Agnieszka's is more emotional and intuition based. As the threats from the Wood become greater, it's clear that they need to find a way to work together. One terrible day, when the Dragon is called away to deal with a crisis, Agnieszka receives word that her village is being threatened as well. When she discovers that her dearest friend Kasia has been taken by the creatures of the Wood, she risks everything to rescue her. Now she needs to find a way to free her friend from the Wood's influence, even if such a task has always been believed to be impossible.

To begin with, Agnieszka seems like one of those women who only seem to exist in fiction, too clumsy for words and completely out of her element. We are told that while Kasia is all that is beautiful, talented, graceful and accomplished, Agnieszka can't go through a single day without getting her clothes torn or stained or in some way screwing things up. No one expects her to be the next woman to go with the Dragon. She is terrified and confused, unclear about her duties and feels absolutely horrible from the simple spells the Dragon makes her do. Because he's more than a century old, used to girls with more aptitude for magic (because that's what he does, he trains them in magic so they can help him keep the Wood from taking over more of the area), he's not used to having to explain his methods or motivation. He is also appalled when Agnieszka explains to him what everyone in the surrounding villages believes is his ulterior motive for selecting the girls.

Because Agnieszka has always been unfavourably compared to Kasia, and is so completely unable to grasp the tenets of the Dragon's magical spells, she, like everyone else underestimates herself greatly. It takes time for her to realise that she has value and gifts of her own and that she is has a gift for magic, just not one that has been seen in the country for a long time. She truly begins to find her strength and powers when her best friend is threatened. Doing the impossible, she rescues Kasia from the Wood and refuses to give up on her. In the process, she is also forced to examine her feelings of inadequacy and jealousy towards her dear friend, because even best friends aren't always charitable in the ways they think of one another, and there will always be times when we are jealous, insecure and petty. Moving through and past this, Kasia and Agnieszka's friendship is changed, but stronger as a result.

In the second act of the book, so to speak, Agnieszka has to leave the world she's always known, as well as the safety of the Dragon's tower and go to the capital, to deal with political intrigue, other wizards and discovers that the sinister forces that control the Wood are present even there and bent on causing destruction and havoc not only in her home country of Polnya, but also the neighbouring country. Because of Agnieszka's miraculous rescue of Kasia, the youngest prince of Polnya is determined to reclaim his mother, the missing queen, who allegedly ran away with her lover nearly twenty years ago. They both disappeared in the Wood. Is what they rescue from the forest, at terrible loss of life, truly the lost queen, or something much more sinister?

The last third of the book got a bit wearying, with what felt to me to be unnecessary and repetitive violence and finally a rather puzzling explanation of what the motivation behind the terrifying force of the Wood actually was. I can't stress enough how creepy and sinister I felt the Wood and its many "minions" was. It's such a great villain, for all that it's not one thing, but this seemingly unstoppable and relentless force, with feral wolves, giant preying mantises, evil trees and other monsters at its disposal. Still, I got a bit tired and confused towards the end, just wanting things to wrap up.

Overall, this is such a great read, with Agnieszka as a wonderful heroine at its centre. Her friendship with Kasia is heartwarming and her slowly developing powers and confidence feels empowering in all the right ways. The medieval style kingdoms felt extremely real and the whole story feels as if Naomi Novik found some treasure trove of old Eastern European fairy tales and just reinterpreted them. There is a romantic subplot in the book as well, and one of my other complaints, along with the dragging last third of the book, is that the romance isn't more fully developed. It has so much promise, damn it, and I felt cheated that there wasn't more of it. The only thing I'd read by Novik before this, was Temeraire (or His Majesty's Dragon, as it's also known). While that didn't appeal to me that much(even with dragons, there was too much military history, not my thing), this was great. For anyone with an interest in fairy tale narratives with strong, female friendship at its core and some real horrors to be overcome before there is a chance at a HEA, this is a book for you.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 30: "The Glass Casket" by McCormick Templeman

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Rowan Rose lives in the little village of Nag's End with her father. Like her father, an experienced scholar, Rowan enjoys assisting him with translations and is proud of her achievements. Five soldiers ride through the village on their way up the mountain, and some days later, are found horribly killed by the men of the village. In a journal left by one of the soldiers are the words: "It's starting.". The elders of Nag's End declare the deaths the result of an animal attack, but not everyone is convinced. Among them is Rowan's best friend, the innkeeper's son Tom. He's clearly affected by the dead men, and reluctant to tell her about what they found. He's also clearly smitten with the new girl in the village, the distractingly beautiful Fiona Eira, who Rowan's father has forbidden her to ever speak to. Rowan is sad to see her best friend drifting away from her, but also wants nothing more than for him to be happy.

Soon it's obvious that whatever killed the soldiers in the mountain was not a wild animal, and the death toll in the village keeps going up. Rowan keeps having vivid nightmares that seem connected with the lurking horror spreading in the village. Tom is acting more and more strangely and together with his brother Jude, Rowan tries to investigate the cause.

The Glass Casket contains influences from a number of fairy tales, and much of it feels like it could have been written by the Brothers Grimm. The atmosphere of the distant little village in the mountains of some central European Medieaval kingdom is superstitious and oppressive and it's clear that unorthodox thinking and progressive ideas are not particularly welcomed. Strangers are distrusted, as evidenced by the arrival of Fiona Eira and her step-parents. Decisions that go against the wishes of the elders are practically unheard of. A woman has little to no independence once she is married, she is her husband's helpmeet and aids him and his family. This is one of the reasons Rowan doesn't really want to get married, she loves her translation work and dreams of travelling to the capital, where her father once lived.

Rowan has known Tom all her life, and while she knows his mother would be delighted if they were to marry, she loves him only as a friend. His older brother Jude has always unnerved her. She is slow to accept his help, but once tragedy strikes in the village, Tom gets more and more distant. He seems to stay out in the woods all night and Rowan begins to fear that he is somehow connected with the tragic deaths that have struck the village. Her father has always kept himself and his daughter apart from a lot of the traditional beliefs of the other villagers, and as the increasingly more terrible events unfold, Rowan begins to discover that there are reasons for this.

This is not a perfect book, by any means, but it is a very creepy, at times surprisingly gory young adult book book. I thought the loyalty and affection between Tom and Rowan was great and I appreciated how Rowan wanted to break out of the more traditional feminine roles of her society, but not in a way that felt anachronistic or wrong for the time period the book is set in. There are so many different things that unnerved me about this book and I have to admit to staying up far too late into the night just to finish it. The various twists that are introduced towards the end of the book didn't all work that well, in my opinion, but on the whole this was a very satisfying and scary read that I suspect a lot of teen readers will adore.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR4 Book 90: "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making" by Catherynne M. Valente

Page count: 288 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: August 26th, 2012
Date finished: October 7th, 2012

September is twelve, and lives in Omaha. Her father went away to war, and her mother works in a factory. One evening, when she is doing the dishes, the Green Wind shows up at her kitchen window on a flying leopard and invites her to come along on adventures to Fairyland. But while Fairyland is a delightful and magical place (naturally), all is not fun and games. The former queen, Mallow, has been replaced by the capricious Marquess, a girl not much older than September.

While on a mission to try to retrieve a very special spoon from the Marquess for some nice witches who assisted her along the way, September is sent on a quest to the woods of Autumn. If she doesn't fetch a very precious artifact for the Marquess and return in a week, the Marquess will hurt not only September's new friends and companions, the Wyverary (a wyvern whose father was a library) and the boy Saturday, but generally make the inhabitants of Fairyland suffer.

So September has no choice but to go off questing. During her adventures in Fairyland, she meets a whole host of interesting creatures (like the aforementioned witches, gnomes, a soap golem and more), she sacrifices her shadow to save a child, she faces her Death, very valiantly tries to avoid eating Fairy food, and learns all manner of important and significant lessons. Will she manage to find Queen Mallow's sword before The Marquess' time limit runs out? What will happen to her and her friends if she fails?

Clearly inspired by Victorian children's stories like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan, this book is a wonderful story, which never talks down to kids, and makes me wish I had children of my own to read it to. Having read Valente's Deathless before this, I knew that she had a wonderful way with words, but the brilliant way she constructs the story in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (surely the longest children's book title out there) took my breath away.

September is a great protagonist, impulsive and headstrong like 12-year-olds should be, and described as quite heartless (as children's hearts grow as they age) but also brave and loyal and affectionate. She's intelligent and knows quite a bit about how things must happen in stories, having read many of them herself. Her companions are also great, and I'm very much looking forward to reading the rest of the series, the second of which was published in hardback earlier this month.

"The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed" by Patrick Rothfuss

Publisher: Subterranean
Page count: 72 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 12th, 2010
Date finished: July 12th, 2010

The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed is a picture book, beautifully illustrated by Nate Taylor. It features a sort of fairy tale. It's definitely, absolutely NOT for kids. Unless those kids are slightly older and fond of darker stories. I saw this book described as Calvin and Hobbes meets Coraline, and that's a pretty good take on it.
The Princess lives in her marzipan castle with her best friend, the stuffed bear Mr. Whiffle. They have lots of fun and exciting adventures, but at night, in the dark, there is the thing under the bed. The book has three different endings, at three different points. It's not very scary, or terrifying, but it does get rather twisted towards the end.

I thought it was extremely entertaining, and am beyond happy that the copy of the book I have is a very early ARC printed up by Patrick Rothfuss himself, and signed by both the author and the very talented artist. I was lucky enough to win the ARC as part of Patrick Rothfuss' Worldbuilder's Raffle (for details, see: http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2009/12/worldbuilders-2009/) and was absolutely delighted with it as a prize.