The Mime Order - Samantha Shannon (2015)

3.5 stars

I bought this book as soon as I saw it because I was interested to see where the story could go after the last one, and I was pretty happy with it.

I think this book was on par with the last book but I found the first half kind of hard to get through, I was enjoying it when I was reading it, but when I wasn't I didn't have any desire to keep reading. It's similar to the last book in that it takes a while to remember what all the words and slang of that world mean, but once you're in it it's a bit weird when you're back in reality. I feel like this book was kind of unneccessarily long, a lot of the first half was really long and explanatory and when I reflect on the book I can't remember anything significant happening in the first half. My favourite character was once again Warden, I find his part of the story so much more interesting and unpredictable than anything that Paige is doing, and his history of the rephaite and ranthen was probably the most interesting part of the book apart from the final battle. I would recommend this series to people who like high fantasy series like Eragon.

Paige is back in London and although she doesn't want to she must go back into Jaxon's gang as he can protect her. She wants to expose the rephaite and government's corruption to the entire syndicate, but Jaxon won't let her. Soon the Underlord is murdered and his mollisher disappears so Jaxon applies for the position, and Paige considers fighting for the position herself but she doesn't have the money. She is approached by Errai and Pleione, two rephaite that were helping them in Sheol I and they tell her that if she finds Warden then they would consider an alliance to help bring down Nashira and the other rephaite. Paige uses a substance that Warden left her to find where he was captured - in the Rag and Bone Man's territory wherer she must go to and break him out of. Once she does that Warden gets her an alliance with the ranthen and she has their bankroll so she can go for Underqueen. She manages to defeat everyone in the battle for Underqueen, including Jaxon by taking control of his dreamscape and making him concede instead of killing him. In the process she learns that most of them were working for the Rag and Bone Man, including the temporary Underqueen herself, The Abbess, and they were all, including the old Underlord Hector, selling voyants to the government. She tells the syndicate this and is dubbed the Black Moth, Nashira however gets the government to hold some of the other Sheol I survivors hostage and broadcast them on TV to try to get her to turn herself in. She goes into a guard's dreamscape and uses him to go to talk to Nashira, but before anything can be decided Nashira brings out her new ally, Jaxon.

This Shattered World - Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner (2014)

5 stars

I bought this book after I finished These Broken Stars because the ending had me so invested in the story that I wanted to keep reading right away, and I was not disappoointed at all.

This book is told from two different perspectives than the last book but in the same style, this time from Jubilee and Flynn, with snippets of Jubilee's childhood at the start of each chapter. Ironically I think the other people in this book asides from them weren't really that neccessary because I loved them so much, but I absolutely loved the connection between them and Tarver and it makes me think that the focus of the third book will be the Knave of Hearts person they mentioned. The plot of this book is so much better than the last one as I just could not put it down, but I understand that they had to lay the groundwork for it with the first book so I strongly suggest that if you were kinda into the first book but didn't like all the constant travelling that you finish it and get to this one. My favourite character was Jubilee, I love strong female characters and she is such a great example of one that thinking back on this book all I can remember iss how much I loved her. I would recommend this series to anyone who likes young adult fantasy and romance.

Jubilee is a soldier and Flynn is a rebel on Avon, a planet that's never fully terraformed and is known for driving soldiers that are posted there too long to go insane. Jubilee has lasted the longest on the planet and is at her normal bar when she is kidnapped by Flynn Cormac who wants her to tell him about a secret base that he's seen in the swamp, she knows nothing about it and when he takes her to the island it's on nothing is there, but Jubilee sees a flash of the building appear and she picks up a microchip with a LaRoux symbol on it. Flynn then decides to take her back to the rebel base and try to trade her back to the army for some much needed medicine for their people. When he gets back the other leader of the rebels, McBride, is trying to rouse the civillians to go storm the base because he says they've taken Flynn. He calms the crowd, as he wants everything resolved peacefully, but then McBride finds Jubilee and nearly beats her to death before Flynn saves her. She tells him about the microchip and they decide to try to do something about it together so Jubilee calls her old captain, Tarver Merendsen. Tarver and Lilac tell them what happened to them with the whispers, which they realize are whats on Avon and Tarver tells them that if they plan on infiltrating the base they also have to tell the world that LaRoux are behind it. McBride slaughters a bunch of his own people while Jubilee is unconcious and he tells everyone that she is who did it so that they'll march against the army base. Jubilee and Tarver manage to break into the whispers building but one of them soon takes over Flynn's body and tells Jubilee that humans have taught them cruelty and separation so that's what they will show in return. It turns out that one of the whispers knew Jubilee as a child and is what has been taking her dreams, because it considers her a friend. It tells her to destroy them as they've become cruel and aren't one being anymore which is how they're supposed to be, he fends off the one in Flynn's body long enough for Jubilee to shoot the machinery that was holding them together. The war between the rebels and the army has come to a battle on the island that the whispers were held on and Jubilee gets shot trying to get to the loudspeaker to broadcast to everyone, so Flynn must do it on his own and he manages to talk everyone down from war and expose LaRoux industries. Jubilee lives and she and Flynn see the clouds start to clear on Avon now that LaRoux is leaving their planet alome.

More Than This - Patrick Ness (2013)

2.5 stars

Mac bought this for me for my birthday and I'd heard so many good things about it that I ended up being pretty disappointed.

I really wanted to like this book, but I just found that it made me really uncomfortable for the majority of the book when it's just Seth and his depressing thoughts of the afterlife. The parts of the book that I enjoyed were his flashbacks to his life and the parts where he's with Tomasz and Regine. It gave me a similar creepy feeling to what I had when I read Gone but this one was less due to people and more about the world I guess, I'm not really sure what it was about the book that gave me such a weird feeling, but I think the explanation for Seth's situation was way too late in the plot to give me any solace. My favourite character in this book was Tomasz by a mile, he managed to bring a smile to my face in every bleak situation they faced and I don't know how anyone could dislike him. I would recommend this to someone who likes young adult fiction with lots of introspection and reflection and isn't bothered by a seemingly apocalyptic setting.

A boy drowns. He dies. He then wakes up outside his old childhood home in England wrapped in bandages and thirstier than he's ever been before. The town he is in is deserted with no one in sight and everything covered in dust and overgrown as though it had seen no life for years. The boy soon starts to remember his life, including his name; Seth, and why he drowned; he killed himself. After raiding a grocery store and still finding no people around he goes to kill himself again, this time by jumping off a mountain, however he is stopped by Tomasz and Regine people who are also there and are running from the man in black who then appears and tries to kill them. They learn that they were all killed by a blow to a specific spot on the back of their heads and Regine thinks that they were in an online reality when the real world went to shit, Seth still thinks that they're all in hell. The man in black follows them multiple times after that and they manage to escape him in each one until Seth breaks into the prison, where Tomasz awoke from and said that there were thousands of other coffins just like theirs in it. Seth finds thousands of people in what seems to be comas in their coffin like things and the man in black is some sort of robot that maintains them. They then manage to destroy the man in black and Seth goes back to the virtual reality world to try to bring people back to the real one.

These Broken Stars - Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

3.5 stars

After reading the blurb of this book I didn't want to read it because I thought I'd read a couple books like this before but then I saw a couple different rave reviews of it and I decided to give it a try and I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

This book is told from alternating perspectives of  Tarver and Lilac, the two main characters of this book, with the start of each chapter having a snippet of an interrogation with Tarver that must be from when he is rescued. Although I found the first half of this book to be nothing special, once the whispers came into the plot I thought it improved greatly and although I found the end very weird and I still don't fully understand what happened, I was really interested in the story at the end and am now pretty excited to read the next book. When thinking back on it I'm pretty sure a lot of this book was the two of them just travelling across the planet, which says a lot about the authors that I could read probably over 200 pages of that and not give up on the book. My favourite character was Tarver, though I didn't really have a lot of choice as there were only really two characters in this book and I really did like them both, the tipover point was really that he came up with the my girl/my Lilac nickname. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes the show or book The 100, but probably not if you've read many more books like this one like Across the Universe or Glow.

Lilac La Roux is the daughter of Roderick La Roux, the most powerful guy in the galaxy and Tarver Merendsen is a decorated war hero. After Lilac blows Tarver off because of her father she is rescued by him when the ship they're on starts having extreme technical difficulties. Tarver and Lilac end up in a pod together and Lilac manages to get it released from the ship and they land on a planet with no people on it but has clearly been discovered and terraformed for human life. They soon see the Icarus, the ship they were on, crash onto the planet and when they make it to the ruins they find no survivors. Lilac starts having strange visions that when she tells Tarver about he thinks she's crazy but soon he starts having them as well and they start to think that there is some form of life on this planet helping them. The visions lead them to an abandoned communications station that they are unable to get into until Lilac rigs up an explosion that not only opens the station but also kills her. Tarver is distraught until the lifeforms create Lilac again after a few days who can remember all the time she spent dead. Tarver is determined to make her last permanently because everything else the whispers have created has been temporary, but Lilac only wants to get Tarver rescued. They learn that both the lifeforms and the communications array are in the basement with a password protected lock, they soon learn the password is Lilac and when they get in Lilac sets up a rescue signal but the lifeforms are also the source of the power for the base. Lilac becomes incredibly weak and Tarver realizes it's because the whispers are spread too thin, he grabs Lilac and jumps into the archway that is holding the whispers which both destroys them and the base and somehow makes Lilac permanent. La Roux industries then comes to pick them both up and when her father threatens Tarver because Lilac says she loves him she says that if anything ever happens to him she'll tell the galaxy about how he enslaved the first intelligent life that wasn't human in the galaxy.

A Thousand Pieces of You - Claudia Gray (2014)

4.5 stars

My sister got me this book for christmas after I put it on my list because it was on my recommendations page on goodreads and I thought it sounded alright and had the coolest cover ever, it turns out it was much better than I expected.

The concept of this book is basically travelling through the multiverse which is so cool and interesting that whenever I was getting a bit bored of the story Marguerite would think about the ramifications or the ethics of all the dimensional travel she was doing and I would immediately be drawn back in. My only real problem with this book was that it was a little predicatable with the switch of Marguerite's feelings between Theo and Paul, and I found it really annoying that she only spent two or three weeks with Lieutenant Markov but then thought she had fallen in love with just that version of him. I really appreciate the fact that with some of the dimensions she travelled to it was only for a couple chapters, but the author was so good at giving them all distinguishing features that I can remember them all and what their differences were. My favourite character was probably Paul, surprise surprise I like the love interest, but I thought he was just super adorable and considering how few characters are in this book I thought his character was definitely the most interesting. But also I feel for Josie because everyone's in love with her sister, how annoying. I would recommend this book to anyone who like YA fiction, or who don't mind a bit of teen romance with their interdimensional travel stories.

The book starts as soon as Marguerite has jumped dimensions for the first time, explaining that her parents invented interdimensional travel between owrlds because they theorize that the multiverse is real,meaing every possible choice you could make creates a new dimension. You also discover that she jumped dimensions to try to avenge her father, who her family believes to have been murdered by Paul, one of her parents graduate students. The other graduate student Theo is the one who brought Marguerite the firebird (the device that allows interdimensional travel) so she could chase Paul across dimensions with him because Paul jumped dimensions after the murder and the police believe he did it. The first dimension they come to is more technologically advanced than their own, but Marguerite's whole family is dead. There she confronts Paul and learns that he didn't kill her father, but he has to keep jumping through dimensions to try to get to Wyatt Conley, head of the Triad corporation. The next dimension her and Paul jump to together except she falls when she jumps in and breaks her firebird, it is a 1900s technology type age where Marguerite is royalty and Paul is her guard, but before he can fix her firebird his is confiscated and without it he can't remember his true self. They are stuck in that dimension for a few weeks while Marguerite both falls in love with Lieutenant Markov and gets her father to rebuild her firebird for her. Lieutenant Markov dies in battle and Marguerite assumes that Paul also died, but he managed to retrieve his firebird and jump dimensions beforehand. She follows him into a dimension very similar to their own where Paul explains that they had already made interdimensional travel work and this Wyatt Conley wants to start a war. He has done this by making Marguerite the only person from her dimension to be able to travel into others and remember herself without needing a reminder, he then wants to use her against her family and Paul and Theo. They manage to evade him but Paul tells Marguerite that he must travel to another dimension but he won't tell her why, when they get there Marguerite works out that her father is actually alive and has been put in this dimension's body so Wyatt could use him as leverage. Marguerite tells Theo that he and Paul can build him a new firebird so he can come home, but then Theo convinces her to go in a submarine with him where she learns that he has been a spy Theo from Wyatt Conley's dimension for the past three months so she steals his firebird and gives it to her dad so they can return to their dimension together. The book ends with her and Paul tentatively together, Theo upset that the other Theo ruined his chances with Marguerite, and her parents happily reunited.

Neil Patrick Harris Choose Your Own Autobiography - Neil Patrick Harris (2014)

5 stars

My mum got me this book for christmas after I told her it was probably the one off my list that I wanted most, and I was certainly not disappointed.

Although this book is a "choose your own adventure" book I just read it straight through, which at times was a bit confusing but I just didn't want to miss anything and I would definitely recommend reading it that way if you're a massive fan. This book is so hilarious that even if all you know Neil Patrick Harris from is How I Met Your Mother then I would tell you give it a read if you're looking for a fun book to read. I actually found the footnotes giving you options of where to turn to next often the funniest part of the book, so even if you read it straight through definitely don't skip over the options just because you're not using them. Considering this is an autobiography which is obviously about real people I can't pick a favourite character (although the two sentences where Lena Hall was mentioned I almost cried) so I'll instead give a favourite chapter/moment. It's so hard to pick just one chapter because they were all so entertaining, but being the broadway nerd I am my favourites were definitely the one about planning "bigger" and the one about his process as Hedwig, as well as the chapter where he meets David because that was so adorable with all the annotations I was constantly either laughing or crying. I would recommend this book if you like Neil Patrick Harris and you're looking for a light funny book to read.

This book chronicles all the major events, as well as some minor, in Neil Patrick Harris' life. It starts with his childhood and moves onto how he got his first gig in a movie with Whoopi Goldberg, his work on Doogie Howser, MD, his first foray into theatre, his coming out process, how he met David Burtka, how they had their kids, his work on How I Met Your Mother, his work on Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, all the shows he hosted, some of his celebrity friendship stories, his work on Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and his fortieth birthday surprise scavenger hunt among many others.

Dreams of Gods and Monsters - Laini Taylor (2014)

4 stars

I started this as soon as I finished Days of Blood and Starlight because I was so ready for a book full of Akiva and Karou togetherness, and I was very disappointed on that front.

It was actually quite hard for me to give this book such a high rating because I found the end, which I did not enjoy, really took over my memory of the book even though I did enjoy the rest of it quite a lot. I found the ending was like something the author thought of at the last moment and just decided to put it in this book to give it another twist ad storyline, I'm pretty sure that isn't the case, but a bit more weaving in or foreshadowing in the earlier books could've helped a lot when reading through it and finding it incredibly both boring and unneccessary. I really enjoyed the rest of the book, even if it was a bit slow for the resistance to get to Eretz I liked all the intricacies of the two armies joining together and all the betrayal and effort that took. My favourite character in this book was once again Zuzana, but in this book Liraz was also a beautiful charcater to watch develop and by the end I found her and Ziri's story was much more enjoyable to watch unfold than Karou's and Akiva's which quickly became very repetitive. I would recommend this series to anyone who likes intricate fantasy worlds and romance because it has plenty of both.

This book starts with Akiva and Liraz guiding the chimaera to the Kirin caves after they agreed to a treaty. Once there Karou and Akiva reconcile after she explains that Ziri is in the wolf's body and then she has an idea that can remove Jael and the angels from earth without harming anyone. The rebel army set off to the portal to send Karou and Liraz through to retrieve Jael and his army, but the Dominion is there in full force and in the fray Liraz manages to push Akiva through with Karou and seal the portal because she wants him to have a chance at living. Once through Akiva and Karou encounter Eliza, a descendant from one of the fallen angels like Razgut who cannot stop chanting in seraphic who they leave with Zuzana and Mik and Esther, one of Brimstone's old contacts. Esther had formed an alliance with Jael however and warned him of Akiva and Karou's approach, but they still get the upper hand as they brought Haxaya who had remained glamoured the entire time. Akiva burns a handprint onto Jael's chest, which he can alight any time which is how they convince him and his army to return to Eretz without any weapons or technology. Once returned Akiva is shown by the Stelians that he has been detroying the world by using Sirithar as it is drawing energy from the veil between worlds, which is keeping them from the beasts that almost destroyed all the angels millions of years ago, which was caused by Razgut and Eliza among others. The Stelians have been holding the veil together for years and they now require Akiva's help so he must go with them to the other side of Eretz. Eliza shows them that they are all godstars, the ones who will defeat the beasts one day when they break through the veil and the book ends with Karou going over to the Stelian islands to be with Akiva for a month before she can start resurrecting bodies in better weather for crops and survival.

Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor (2012)

4 stars

I bought this book at the same time as I bought Daughter of Smoke and Bone (which I didn't post about because I was on a cruise when I read it) and although this has a lot more detail about the chimaera and Eretz, I still enjoyed the first book more.

Although a lot happened in this book, I felt like a lot of it was internal and nobody really did anything until the last moment. The first books constant mystery, although I had kind of half worked it out, kept me intrigued the entire time whereas the constant twists in this book were often predictable and the only one that really had me keep reading until I found it out was Brimstone's. I sorely missed Brimstone's prescence in this novel, and I found the consistent mention of the book's main theme; hope, kept having me expecting him to come around the corner at any moment and I was often disappointed. I enjoyed all the introduction of new characters though and I loved reading from Zuzana's perspective in this book. My favourite character in this book was Zuzana, I found her hilarious, her chapters were always my favourite and her arrival as the Kasbah made Karou's storyline so much more interesting. I would recommend this series to anyone who like YA fantasy.

The book starts with Akiva returning to Liraz and Hazael and telling them that Karou is dead and explaining everything that had happened between them over the years. Attacks on angel camps begin and many of the chimaera slaves are set free with a message of hope being spread to them by chimaera that no angels can seem to witness in action. It is discovered that Karou is still alive and has taken Brimstone's old postition as resurrectionist once she was found by Thiago, who made her give all of their soldiers new gruesome bodies to be able to kill angels easily with. Akiva and his siblings start showing mercy to chimaera and hatch a plan to kill their father, Joram, the emperor, while Karou is living constantly under Thiago's watch as he turns all the chimaera against her. When Akiva and his siblings kill Joram, Jael immediately kills the next heir so he can be Emperor and invade the earthly realm, killing Hazael in the process. When Karou resurrects Issa she learns that many of the chimaera souls are trapped in a make do thurible tomb under Lorramendi and when she confronts Thiago with this information in front of the army he immediately gets them back on his side and plans revenge. He lures Karou down to the pit and tries to rape her but she stabs him in the neck and kills him, Ziri then decides to go into Thiago's body so they can maintain control of the chimaera without anyone punishing them for killing him. Akiva and Liraz come to Karou to try to get her to resurrect Hazael, but they did not capture his soul and there is nothing she can do to help them. They go to seal the portals between the worlds so that Jael can't invade Earth but they are too late so the misbegotten and the chimaera form an army together to stop him.