It’s been 2 weeks since my last check in,
sorry about that. Got very lazy, been struggling with motivation
working from home. Also had some stressful work stuff so just haven’t
been doing much.
But, in those two weeks, I read 3 books!
(Well, 2 books and a graphic novel). 2 were the ones mentioned in my
last check in: Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi, and
Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland. The 3rd was the graphic novel Check
Please Book 1: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu. I technically had read it as a
webcomic but I did like the format of having it collected with the
extras in a book. (Side note: it wasn’t until I put these three covers together that I realized all these books were written by black women.)
I
didn’t really love Children of Virtue and Vengeance. I liked the first
book (Children of Blood and Bone) so I was surprised that I didn’t like
this one as much. It felt like this one was kind of a slog, and it
seemed to really require you remember the first book well because it
didn’t give many reminders of the stuff that had happened in the 1st
book. I remembered the overall arc of the last book, but with 2 years
and near 200 books in between I didn’t remember all the details so it
was kind of hard to get into it.
I think a lot of what I liked about the 1st book was the novelty of the world building, having a fantasy world set in Nigeria, rather than your average reskinned England/Europe. This book I think the novelty had worn off and I was more caught by the stereotypical YA tropes. The boy who’s actually bad but she still loves him and it’s so hard, and that sort of stuff. And since I was constantly trying to remember all the lore and characters that had been explained in the first book, it was just a kind of frustrating read.
2/5 stars. Not for me, but other people might enjoy. I probably would’ve liked it a lot more in high school.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed Deathless Divide! It did a good job of reminding me how the previous book had ended and wasn’t such a lore heavy book in general, so it was easy to remember what was going on. In general, the Civil War ended not because the north won straight, but because the dead came back to life and the south surrendered to get help dealing with zombies. It’s been ages since I read a zombie book! This one was very good and refreshing. I don’t want to give too many details because it spoils the first book, but I had a great time and flipped through it really quickly. One thing that I also loved was that it was queer rep! One of the main characters is a wlw, and there is a side character who’s a gay man! I really didn’t expect that because it’s historical fiction, so that was a nice surprise!
4/5 stars. I had a lot of fun with this one!
Like I mentioned, #Hockey is technically a reread, because I had read all the webcomics as they came out. A cute graphic novel about a southern boy who goes up north to college and plays hockey, but he’s afraid of being tackled (checked) and faints if anybody touches him. The captain of his team takes time to do extra practices with him so he can get over his fear, and he does, but he also starts to get a crush on the captain! The story is told through his vlogs, which is technically his cooking vlogs, because he also bakes a ton! It’s a very sweet comic, with explicit gay representation. This one covers his freshman and sophomore year, the sequel (on my hold’s list!) covers junior and senior year!
4/5 stars. A nice light read that was just the kind of de-stress I needed.
I have started one new book! Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe by Carlos Hernandez. I read the first one a few weeks ago (talked about it here) and now onto the sequel!
As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.
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