❧ Title: The Bitter Twins (The Winnowing Flame #2) ❧ Author: Jen Williams ❧ Publisher: Headline ❧ Publication date: 8th March 2018 ❧ Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦ The Ninth Rain has fallen, the Jure’lia have returned, and with… More
[Geeking With Spoons] Spoonie Convention Guide: Part 3
Travelling can be stressful at the best of times, let alone when you’re also disabled and in chronic pain. Whilst it’s possible to get things like assisted travel, these things only go so far towards actually helping.
So what are the essential things to remember when travelling?
1) Assisted travel. It sucks and the service leaves much to be desired but we need it.
Someone essentially helps you onto the train. That’s pretty much where assisted travel begins and ends. It’s not very accommodating and they do the bare minimum and often not very well at that.
For anxious travellers it can be difficult. Some people might struggle (I’m one of them) with the direct communication and, in my experience, the quality of service can very much depend on who you get and where you are. They tend to be quite accommodating in London stations (I tend to always land in Paddington), but in smaller stations (such as Cheltenham) the service can be lacking. Which is frustrating since it’s so essential: without assistance it’s pretty impossible to get a wheelchair on a train (the ramps are staff-access only) and even if it was possible, there’s the other passengers and the limited time available to consider. And all of this squeezed into the tiny infinitesimal minutes between the platform being announced, getting there, and then the train pulling out. It’s a mess, even with assistance.
So assisted travel isn’t something we can change and we need it but hey, the rest of the journey doesn’t have to be a nightmare.
2) Food and water!
Do yourself a favour and don’t rely on train station food. Not only is it expensive but it might not fit in with any dietary requirements you may have. I know lots of spoonies have dietary needs (me!) and you will not find them met in most restaurants or food places, let alone a train station café or shop. It might be annoying to prep the food, but you will thank Past You. Make sure to plan meals (or at least snacks) for each meal slot you’ll be traveling for. Having enough water is important, too, since there’s nothing worse than being dehydrated whilst traveling.
3) Medicate!
Traveling can trigger and exaggerate a lot of pain and discomfort and whilst pain meds might not entirely fix that (you’re not likely to start really feeling better until you’re done with the infernal traveling), it’s a start and it’s essential. If you have regular times when you take your medication, it might be a good plan to adjust those times around when you’re travelling, so you can medicate accordingly.
4) Travel aids/therapy aids
Anything from neck support pillows to lumbar pillows – if you think it might help, take it with you. You might feel a little self-conscious on the train (because oh but people do love to stare) but weigh up how useful they’ll be for you and decide if it’s worth carrying the extra bulk. I personally can’t travel without some kind of pillow to lean on, otherwise my shoulders and arms hurt even more.
5) Entertainment!
Don’t underestimate now much you need to keep yourself distracted as you’re travelling. Not only is there the pain to contend with, but there’s the stress and anxiety of traveling. I always have music when I travel and I always read. You might like to watch something on a tablet or laptop (especially if you have WiFi) or maybe arrange to chat with friends online whilst you’re traveling. Or you could always hope that there’s something interesting to live tweet if that will keep you more entertained!
6) Organisation!
Make sure you know what you’re doing, where you’re going and when. Each train or plane or taxi, è every connection or change. You need to know what you’re doing. It’s hard enough to travel, without then needing the presence of mind to look at train tickets and check times and figure all kinds of other stuff out. Ideally you need to know what every step of your journey entails, from the train seat you’ve got to the times of arrival and the prospective prices of taxis. All these things can be found easily online and, instead of forcing yourself to remember them, you should write them somewhere on your phone or tablet, or even in a planner that you keep with you. This will mean that you’re always in control, even if you don’t feel it whilst travelling!
[Geeking With Spoons] Spoonie Convention Guide: Part 2
Once the lists are done, most of what remains in that area is to work through them. Easier said than done when there are ~8 different lists to work through and tick off each item. Sure, some things that can be ticked off are as simple as putting each thing in a bag and crossing it happily off. Others (such as the chores list and food prep list) are more complicated and likely won’t all be completed until the last minute (in that there will be some things to do on Wednesday night (e.g. food for the train), which is basically last minute – but which can be prepared for in advance all the same!). The same can be said for packing the actual suitcase and bags (especially the travel bag).
So that leaves a week(ish). The con is on Thursday, travelling at around midday, so even the last bits and pieces can be slipped into the travel bag on the morning. Most of what remains to do between now and say, Wednesday, is rest as much as possible. Okay, so that’s what I should do and that’s what I would advise any spoonie to do. But then not every spoonie is a bundle of ADHD and OCD energy who absolutely has no idea to stay still and will get very, very stressed by the notion of doing just that. Instead, I’ll do my best in the coming days to control my time and to balance my energy between doing the things that need doing, and making sure I don’t do too much. It’s … a very shaky balance, I’ll admit.
So. Here’s how the now-until-Wednesday-night will actually go.
I’ll work through the lists slowly (trying to get any chores out of the way first, so as to better be able to organise at least some of my energy) as well as planning the convention itself. It’s helpful that there’s a schedule online so I can at least try to figure out where I’ll be, doing what and when, but also so I can make sure to at least try and pace myself. This is another thing I’m pretty terrible at. I honestly don’t know how to pace myself, even though I see other spoonies doing it (or at least talking about it) all the time. Maybe a lot of that comes from the neurodiversity I have going on, but hey, maybe I’ll still figure it out one day.
So in the days running up to a con, what things do I absolutely need to make sure I do?
1) Keep the routine as normal as possible
Not all spoonies need this, but I certainly do. Being neurodiverse the way I am, routine is oh-so very important to me. I tend to thrive with a routine and fall apart without one. My routine is quite strict, from the time I get up to when I go to bed. Meals and work time and even downtime is scheduled, however loosely. It’s hard doing things this way, being a spoonie and always essentially trying to do so much–but them’s the rules and I don’t make ’em. Starting today, however, Chez Cristea has officially flipped over to “Holiday Mode”, which essentially means doing different things to working during the same, and a looser schedule around what gets done, when. Since Nine Worlds begins on the Thursday and there’s only the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to deal with, which means there was no real point in not declaring “Holiday Mode” a few days early: it gives me the time to at least try and pace, or, in the very least, not go so hard at it when trying to prep.
2) Not think too much about being at the convention
Maybe this is just me, but for the most part, my anxiety absolutely can’t handle me thinking about being there. Last year I surpassed by own expectations by going to a few panels and actually leaving the room. This might sound like a pretty low bar for a convention, but hey, I’ve learned to go easy on myself and not to expect more from myself than I’m able to give. I am absurdly socially anxious, don’t know how to “people”, and have a lot of issues about being with and even around people. So, I don’t think about the being there, until I’m actually there. Planning the schedule notwithstanding, of course.
But this also stands in regards to not worrying about being at the con in a sense of activities and pain levels and additional fatigue brought on by travel and all the related things of actually being disabled/sick whilst trying to do something. There’s not a lot of point thinking about the stress and the additional fatigue and pain that is usually triggered by actually doing something, when that something isn’t yet being done. So, until the bags touch down in the hotel room on Thursday, I have no intention of thinking about being at the con, or what I will or won’t be able to do. It saves a lot of spoons, that way!
3) Prepare for amped up pain levels
Whether I do or don’t take it easy before travelling on Thursday, I absolutely run the risk of a mini-flare up of symptoms, brought on by the background anxiety of the upcoming stress and fuss and everything. Not thinking about being at the con doesn’t mean that my subconscious doesn’t worry about it. So I need to be aware that the pain might be worse between now and Thursday, and I need to try and plan for that, so that it doesn’t get in the way and make the planning and preparation even harder. I need to be ready for anxiety and insomnia on Wednesday night. It’s pretty difficult to be ready for anxiety, since all the prep in the world won’t really make a difference, but at least if I’m aware that it may be a thing, it won’t take me by surprise. The potential insomnia is easier to prepare for, though, so that’s at least a plus.
4) Don’t skip out on any single thing on the list and spread them all out in advance
The list is there for a reason: it’s a little gift from Past Leo to Future Leo. It will make everything easier, even if it seems arbitrary and dull and too detailed. It isn’t. It is all essential and it’s boring and I’ll be grateful for not having to think later, when I’m stressed and anxious and hurting (more than usual). If I leave everything until the last minute, I’ll be flaring before I even know it and already I’m at a disadvantage. Bad idea. The lists are your friend, Leo.
[Friday Flash Review] Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor
❧ Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
❧ Author: Laini Taylor
❧ Publisher: Little, Brown Books For Young Readers
❧ Publication date: 27th September 2011
❧ Rating: ✦✦✦✦.5
Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”, she speaks many languages – not all of them human – and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.When beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
❝In A Nutshell❞✎ Angels and demons (chimera)–and ne’er the twain shall meet! (Except they do and they hate one another and they fight.) A big, very old war between angels and demons that is about to get far worse and drag old wounds and memories to the surface.
✎ A blue-haired girl who has hamsas on her hands and trades in wishes and works for a monster in a shop. She draws monsters in her sketchbooks and speaks more languages than she should. She has a sense that there’s a secret within her, only she’s not sure she ever wants to know.
✎ The supply of wishes that the monster peddles is running dangerously low–a valued and valuable currency–and its up to the blue-haired Karou to do something about the dwindling supply. But as she sets out on what appears to be a normal errand, she has no idea that she’d about to find out more than she ever expected about who she truly is. Or, perhaps, who she was.
✎ An angel who once loved a chimera and who still loves her even after she was executed by her own people for their love.
✎ Diverse 🚫 (unfortunately, nope)
❝What I loved❞
✎ The chimera and their differences; so many different races/species of chimera, some more monstrous than others.
✎ Wishes as currency and with different “value” and potency: not all wishes are equal or cost the same amount. Some are tiny wishes that cost practically nothing, whilst others are as valuable as gold or silver and are far harder to spend.
✎ The setting, the world, the everything. Taylor’s writing is perfect and poetic and wonderful. The audiobooks were beautifully narrated, too, which was a bonus.
✎ Zuzana!!
✎ Prague, Poison Kitchen, and Zuzana!
❝What I didn’t love❞
✎ No diversity. Boo.
❝If you liked this…❞
…then you might also like: Strange The Dreamer, also by Laini Taylor, or The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. Taylor’s latest duology, of which Strange The Dreamer is the first, is as magical as the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, telling the story of a librarian and the leftover children of the gods. The Raven Cycle combines the same sometimes-whimsical strangeness with a story that has been taking place for centuries, with the search for the tomb of a dead Welsh king.
[Geeking With Spoons] Spoonie Convention Guide: Part 1
For most people (those whose lives aren’t governed, one way or another, by spoons), the planning involved in convention prep is relatively minor (especially if you’re not traveling super far or cosplaying, etc – and even then, it’s not totally exhausting). Perhaps you’ll browse the con schedule and decide which events and/or panels you want to attend, make lists so as not to forget any essentials (toothpaste! pants! tickets!) and maybe even buy mini pots to reduce the bulk of shampoo and shower gel, etc. I need to do all those things, too, but they’re not what comes first. Not even close.
The very first thing I, as a spoonie, need to do when preparing for a convention, is make a list of everything I need to plan. That’s right: before I can even start with the prep, I need to prep my prep. If I don’t, chances are that I’ll forget something. Whilst that amorphous something might be relatively minor–such as a phone charger, which can be easily purchased near to the con, or a forgotten toiletry that can also be casually sourced–it might also wind up being prescription painkillers which absolutely cannot be purchased from the nearest Boots, or even something as essential as a wrist support or crutches. (Trust me: rushing out the house to get into the taxi, in my wheelchair and laden with bags, does not lend itself to remembering to shrink down crutches and stuff them into a bag–and you never know when the additional walking aid might be needed to cross from bed to bathroom in a hotel.)So there are three reasons that I need to plan my prep. One is that there is a lot of it. The second is that I have so much going on mentally/physically everyday, that I’m liable to forget something. My type of ADD makes me hyperfocused and my OCD can make me need to do some things right there and then or in a certain order, otherwise… Well, the only otherwise is that it feels very, very wrong and bad and not good. Not all spoonies have these issues to deal with, but they more than likely have the brain fog and forgetfulness, or just lack of spoons with which to get everything done. This brings us to the third. Energy. When you’re a spoonie, everything takes energy and that means planning and preparing and thinking. Without pre planning, there’s the risk that I’ll start flaring or I’ll be low on spoons out of nowhere, and suddenly those tiny tasks become mountains.
I’m not generally very good at planning. I like to think I am, but I find sitting still and planning pretty difficult, compared with just doing the thing. 
I’ll be the one saying “oh, we can pack in the morning! We’ll have time!”. This was true, once. Before I became disabled and before everything that used to make sense, no longer did. Before brain fog and constant fatigue and pain. Now, we absolutely do not have the time to pack last minute.
I’ll be the one saying “oh, we can pack in the morning! We’ll have time!”. This was true, once. Before I became disabled and before everything that used to make sense, no longer did. Before brain fog and constant fatigue and pain. Now, we absolutely do not have the time to pack last minute.So it comes down to lists! Lists of things that need doing, lists of things that need packing, and lists of miscellaneous tasks that need attending to one way or another. Micro lists are the way to go. Anything else and my energy gets drained just thinking about everything that needs doing, and I will end up half-assing everything because I’m already so done.
So the first list is going to look something like this:
- Write chores list
- Write packing list
- Write convention food plan, and subsequent food prep list required
- Write travel bag list
- Write list of medication and therapy aids required (supports or ear plugs, etc)
- Plan food for Wednesday night, Thursday morning and Monday afternoon/evening
- Write spending budget for convention
- Pencil in convention schedule, leaving space for meals and rest
It’s basically a list of all the lists that need writing, or things that need planning. This way, I can work through doing one thing at a time, or, if I get tired of one line of thought, can easily skip to start on another. By not leaving anything left unplanned, I’m not going to be anxious about packing and forgetting something or being too tired to cook.
This system is a result of always having forgotten something before, or having forgotten to take into account something that I’m then kicking myself for after. I don’t want to spend money on usually gross takeout food when I get home and need rest, just because I neglected to anticipate how tired and broken I would be after a convention and the stress and travel involved. It’s always something I know, on an unconscious level, but I tend to get swept up by things and forget that I’m incapable of doing all this stuff with no payback. Chronic illness sucks and it doesn’t go away, but you’d be surprised how easily the things you’ve known for years can still get the jump on you. The OCD and ADD don’t help with that, since I am always doing more than I probably should/safely can, but hey, that’s another topic altogether.So stage one is done (or it will be, once I write these lists down on paper in a way that feels tangible and I can interact with), and close behind that, is actually working through the lists and writing down everything that’s required. It already feels like so much to do, and that sucks, but this is literally what any expedition feels like when you’re disabled and chronically ill.
Here’s hoping that the con will be worth the stress and spoons, exacerbated pain and, finally, the inevitable payback!
The Last Days of Jack Sparks, by Jason Arnopp
❧ Title: The Last Days of Jack Sparks
❧ Author: Jason Arnopp
❧ Publisher: Orbit
❧ Publication date: 3rd March 2016
❧ Rating: ✦✦✦✦
Jack Sparks died while writing this book. This is the account of his final days. In 2014, Jack Sparks – the controversial pop culture journalist – died in mysterious circumstances. To his fans, Jack was a fearless rebel; to his detractors, he was a talentless hack. Either way, his death came as a shock to everyone. It was no secret that Jack had been researching the occult for his new book. He’d already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed in rural Italy. Then there was that video: thirty-six seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.
Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed – until now. This book, compiled from the files found after his death, reveals the chilling details of Jack’s final hours
❝In A Nutshell❞
✎ Jack Sparks is an asshole who is also a former journalist, who started writing books. Jack Sparks On The Supernatural is the book we’re reading, with (more or less insightful/biased/self-serving asshattery) frequent annotations by his brother, Alistar Sparks, and the occasional piece of additional material from additional sources. Since Jack always wrote his books as he was researching them, that’s why we have a more-or-less finished version of Jack Sparks On The Supernatural.
✎ Jack Sparks does not believe in the supernatural–and he’s about to prove that it’s all one big lie. That’s what this book is: Jack Sparks globetrotting to wave a big flag for Science and tell the world what’s what. Or, at least that’s what he thinks he’s going to do. Instead, Jack finds himself in the middle of the twisted game of a dark entity that wants to teach him a lesson, after Jack inflicts the greatest insult of all during an exorcism: he laughs.
✎ We read through a detailed account of the truth of what happened to Jack Sparks, and the book is literally written as the book Jack himself would have/did written/write. It works really well. Additionally, the audiobook is very effective because of this, especially with the first-person recounting of events.
✎ Diverse 🚫 (unfortunately not: the suggestion of a bi/lesbian character as a throwaway line half used for (I’m assuming??) comedic purposes, however ambiguous, doesn’t count; additionally, seeking out a medium in Hong Kong, who is then white with an Asian sidekick, isn’t really fab)
❝What I loved, aka Jack Sparks is an asshole❞
✎ This is a fact straight off the bat. But the thing is, he’s an entertaining asshole and he writes a pretty good book. But more than that, he’s the kind of asshole that was made and not born. I won’t go in to too much detail, since some of it is vaguely spoilery for later on in the book, but the fact remains: Jack’s a little bit complicated. He covers it all up beneath layers of self-confidence and bravado (fake it until you make it, that was the Jack Sparks’ motto) until there’s not much left of whoever he was before. And since the drugs… Well, he’s probably more of an asshole than he’s ever been before. I picked this book up after attending a panel at NineWorlds Geekfest 2016 and liked the sound of the book, and also thought Jason Arnopp was pretty entertaining and did a good job of selling Jack Sparks to me–and the convention panel sales pitch (so to speak) did not disappoint.
✎ This book feels like it’s written by a guy who is saying, “Hey, guys (to the reader), we know there’s a bit more to the supernatural than just black or white, right? Get a load of this guy–get a load of Jack Sparks. What an idiot. Guy’s a fool right? Let me show you how much of a fool.” The Last Days of Jack Sparks is the “found footage” equivalent of a book, with Jack having written the whole story down, even through (or especially, through) the really, really unbelievable parts of what happens to him, in his, aforementioned, last days. If you buy into to supernatural (I do: bite me) or if you’re even just an intermediate in horror, you’ll recognise all the mistakes Jack makes, even before he makes them, and you’ll see the freaky bits coming a mile away. There’s a sense of foreboding when following Jack around on the writing of his latest (and last) book and it goes deeper than just us knowing that he’s going to shuffle off this mortal coil; it’s almost as though we, the reader, are experiencing something a little bit meta, already knowing how things are going to go, whilst simultaneously wondering how we’re going to get there.
✎ But there’s more to this book than just an asshole amateur ghost-hunter trying to prove that ghosts, in fact, don’t exist. Jack has a lot of issues, and so many of them lead him to this place, right here, pissing off the big evil guy himself and ending up dead. His brother, Alistair, is a first-rate jackass (don’t be fooled by his calm, rational and sometimes over-saccharine footnotes–the guy’s a jerk) and Jack’s childhood was an elongated episode of Dad Left Because Of You and You Don’t Matter. Up grows Jack, issues in tow like a subscription to Vogue and with a desperation to make everything further in his life about him, him, him–about Jack, Jack, Jack. In a sad way, he gets exactly what he wants.
✎ Don’t get me wrong–Jack is an asshole. He’s that me, me, me kind of guy who is casually sexist and assumes he deserves all the space in a room–in a building. Why not the world? He is entirely a product of being ignored as a child and damn, if he ever lets that happen again: Jack Sparks is what he is and he thinks he’s happy with that. And perhaps he is, until Jack Sparks On Drugs and everything started to unravel. And maybe he could have even kept himself together, if not for what came next–if he’d not run away from everything and hidden himself down some dark rabbit hole under the pretence of writing another book.
✎ By the time he gets to even thinking of Jack Sparks On The Supernatual, the deal is already done and Jack is bound for complete failure. It’s almost as if it was inevitable, really. Maybe it was.
❝What I didn’t love❞
✎ Not a lick of diversity. Boo.
✎ White medium in Hong Kong with a Chinese sidekick dealing with a haunting. The other way around would have been more authentic and inclusive. Chinese combat sorcerer and a white sidekick, or, better still, two Chinese ladies to kick some ghost ass.
✎ Awkward dialogue scene between two female characters, with one obviously having asked the other if she’d be interesting in sexy time (jet lag makes her horny) and the other girl being a little confused by the question before saying she hasn’t and sounding perplexed by the question. It honestly felt a bit weird and so either should have been cut altogether, or handled in not so ham-fisted fashion. Since it only lasts literally two or three lines it did not need to be there.
❝If you liked this…❞
… you might like: the upcoming Jack Sparks movie? (Cop-out rec because I don’t read much horror and have no idea what else to suggest!)
Shattered Minds, by Laura Lam [Pacifica #2]
❧ Title: Shattered Minds (Pacifica #2)
❧ Author: Laura Lam
❧ Publisher: Pan MacMillan/Tor UK
❧ Publication date: 15th June 2017
❧ Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
She can uncover the truth, if she defeats her demonsEx-neuroscientist Carina struggles with a drug problem, her conscience, and urges to kill. She satisfies her cravings in dreams, fuelled by the addictive drug ‘Zeal’. Now she’s heading for self-destruction – until she has a vision of a dead girl.Sudice Inc. damaged Carina when she worked on their sinister brain-mapping project, causing her violent compulsions. And this girl was a similar experiment. When Carina realizes the vision was planted by her old colleague Mark, desperate for help to expose the company, she knows he’s probably dead. Her only hope is to unmask her nemesis – or she’s next.To unlock the secrets Mark hid in her mind, she’ll need a group of specialist hackers. Dax is one of them, a doctor who can help Carina fight her addictions. If she holds on to her humanity, they might even have a future together. But first she must destroy her adversary – before it changes us and our society, forever.
❝In A Nutshell❞
✎ A female Dexter makes imaginary kills in a virtual world in order to quell the urges that tell her to spill blood outside of the Zealscapes and her dreams, whilst trying to both lose herself in a drug addiction and rewrite the code to take back control of her brain after she was programmed against her will and her life fell apart.✎ A group of cyber hackers who are trying to bring down a corrupt corporation without getting caught or killed in the process.
✎ Brain-hacking scary funtimes and corrupt, evil scientists.
✎ Diverse ☒ (race, gender, queerness – not only there on the page with the main cast and surrounding, but literally normalised all over the page and everywhere)
❝What I loved❞
✎ One of the things I love best about Lam’s Pacifica books is the technology. Sometimes sci-fi writers get stuck in our own century without thinking far enough or deep enough and the tech is completely wrong–it’s not been pushed far enough. Our tech is already pretty advanced; our sci-fi tech has to push that whilst still being something lived every day by the characters and cast and not tech that is solely relevant to the plot. Lam does this in her sleep and the effect is a world you can see and imagine existing in.
✎ Every character has a well-developed personality that shines through, even when Carina is involved. Someone like Carina could so easily have become the only character on the page, whilst those around her faded into the background. This absolutely does not happen. The Trust are richly-developed, diverse and readable. Carina’s changing relationship with them is expertly-rendered and not once does Lam bend Carina in one way or another to make her interactions with her companions less awkward and more “sociable”.
✎ Everything? Absolutely everything, from the diverse rep to the awkward-but-wonderful romance that builds throughout the book. If possible, I loved this book even more than False Hearts and that’s saying a lot. The writing is compelling, aided by the choice of narrative voice, and Shattered Minds is just impossible to put down. There are a thousand stories that could take place in Pacifica and I want to read them all. There’s so much potential in this setting and Lam has built a world in which she could spend her whole life exploring and still find a new story to tell, some new and terrifying technology or concept to twist and mess with. So far, each Pacifica book feels like a single episode to form part of an overarching saga, where some threads might weave and cross and tangle, but every story exists on its own page.
✎ I don’t read that much sci-fi–but it’s not for lack of trying/wanting to. I just find it very difficult to connect to a lot of sci-fi that I come across. If it’s YA it’s dystopia (which isn’t my thing) and if it’s regular SFF it usually feels like it’s trying to be Grimdark In Space (again, not my thing). Aside from that, sci-fi usually just seems to lack any of the things I look for in a book: relatable characters, diverse characters, character-driven plot. The Pacifica books are thrillers-dressed-as-scifi (or scifi-dressed-as-thrillers – whichever way you roll) and even in spite of how the plot is the driving force, they appear character driven.
✎ The prose of Shattered Minds was exciting and very fitting. It was my first outing with this tense of narrative–and it worked perfectly. It’s hard to imagine the book having been written any other way, fitting the book so easily and well that, even if I was a little surprised by it at first, since it read very differently to False Hearts, I’m excited to see if any further books in the Pacifica series will be similar. Shattered Minds is a clever and slick-as-hell novel that is every bit as thrilling as its predecessor.
✎ There was absolutely nothing to slow this book down; the pacing was on point, the characters were alive on the page and even the plot falls so close to something that could be in our own futures that we really feel the stakes.
✎ All in all, Shattered Minds is an absolutely stellar installment of the Pacific series, effortlessly blending sci-fi with thriller to deliver an unstoppable story that is every bit as gripping as it is awesome as hell (who doesn’t want to root for hackers against the cold-ass, evil scientists and the corporation they embody?). Absolutely one of my favourite books this year so far. Lam needs to write more of these books.
[Friday Flash Review] The Abyss Surrounds Us, by Emily Skrutskie
❧ Title: The Abyss Surrounds Us❧ Author: Emily Skrutskie
❧ Publisher: Flux
❧ Publication date: February 8th 2016
❧ Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
Cas has fought pirates her entire life. But can she survive living among them?
For Cassandra Leung, bossing around sea monsters is just the family business. She’s been a Reckoner trainer-in-training ever since she could walk, raising the genetically-engineered beasts to defend ships as they cross the pirate-infested NeoPacific. But when the pirate queen Santa Elena swoops in on Cas’s first solo mission and snatches her from the bloodstained decks, Cas’s dream of being a full-time trainer seems dead in the water.
There’s no time to mourn. Waiting for her on the pirate ship is an unhatched Reckoner pup. Santa Elena wants to take back the seas with a monster of her own, and she needs a proper trainer to do it. She orders Cas to raise the pup, make sure he imprints on her ship, and, when the time comes, teach him to fight for the pirates. If Cas fails, her blood will be the next to paint the sea
❝In A Nutshell❞
✎ Pirates! Sea monsters trained to defend against pirate attacks, bred for purpose and trained hands-on by a single person they bond with. Cas is taken captive by a pirate queen and told to raise the Reckoner pup she somehow managed to steal, or die. Cas is forced to choose between loyalty and her life.
✎ Broken social/political system across oceans and floating cities where the pirates so very obviously aren’t just The Bad Guys else why would this book have been written come on.
✎ Diverse ☒ (biracial MC, sexuality, f/f romance – not #ownvoices afaik)
❝What I loved❞
✎ The Reckoners are amazing. Everyone says “Pacific Rim” when you mention sea monsters, but I didn’t like Pacific Rim but so this was much better. The relationship between Cas and the Reckoner pup is intriguing and also pretty fun to read. This book is fun in the best sense of the word. It is exciting and I’d have happily read another hundred or so pages, so it was a little disappointing that it was so short (under 300 pages for the ppb ed).
✎ The careful way the potential romance is handled, in the possibly-problematic situation of Swift and Cas definitely not being equals on the ship and Cas, in fact, being a prisoner. It makes it fairly difficult for the two to have a clear and easy romance, but they do manage and even though a lot is held back on both sides, there’s still enough romance on the page for it to not feel entirely frustrating. The romance is hate-to-love, which can be a little “oh my god get on with it; pick one!” but the initial attraction here really shows that the eventual romance doesn’t just spring out of nowhere: what holds them back more than anything else is the odd power dynamic (captor/captive) and their own views of one another.
✎ The Reckoners. They are everything. But so is a Chinese American MC who is also queer. The cover is also so good.
✎ The fact that it’s pretty clear there’s much more to the world than the black-and-white version we see through Cas’ narrative and the suggestion that we’ll get to see more of this develop in the second part The Edge Of The Abyss.
❝What I didn’t love❞
✎ Cas’ absolute loyalty at first and her determination to take the pill and end her life instead of being taken by the pirates just… it doesn’t work for me. I’m never really a fan of the theme of people putting things like keeping what amounts to trade secrets higher than their own lives, and, whilst I get that it’s how Cas has been raised, I like people to call out BS like that internally and realise how brainwashing it is. Eh, maybe I just don’t like authority in situations like this, so the whole “if you’re captured, you must sacrifice yourself!” my first reaction is “why?” followed by “hell, no”. Maybe it comes from me being the kind of person to question absolutely everything ever, ever, ever who knows.
✎ Not really something I didn’t like, but I wish, wish, wish this book had been longer because I enjoyed it so much and wanted more.
❝If you liked this…❞
…then you might also like: Zenn Scarlet, by Christian Schoon, which is kind of similar-ish with the theme of the “monsters” and a girl who’s really good at what she does. The sequel Under Nameless Stars is not recommended as highly, however, since it honestly bored me rigid and was so much worse than the first book I didn’t even buy it after reading and reviewing the ARC. But! Zenn Scarlett can definitely be enjoyed as a standalone, so go ahead!
[Friday Flash Review] The Blazing Star, by Imani Josey
❧ Title: The Blazing Star
❧ Author: Imani Josey
❧ Publisher: Wise Ink
❧ Publication date: 6th December 2016
❧ Rating: ✦✦✦.5 (3.5)
Sixteen-year-old Portia White is used to being overlooked—after all, her twin sister Alex is a literal genius.
But when Portia holds an Egyptian scarab beetle during history class, she takes center stage in a way she never expected: she faints. Upon waking, she is stronger, faster, and braver than before. And when she accidentally touches the scarab again?
She wakes up in ancient Egypt—her sister and an unwitting freshman in tow.
Great.
Mysterious and beautiful, Egypt is more than they could have ever imagined from their days in the classroom. History comes alive as the three teens realize that getting back to the present will be the most difficult thing they’ve ever done. Stalked by vicious monsters called Scorpions, every step in the right direction means a step closer to danger.
As Portia and the girls discover that they’re linked to the past by more than just chance, they have to decide what it truly means to be yourself, to love your sister, and to find your way home.
❝In A Nutshell❞
✎ Time-travel back to Ancient Egypt with magical powers and twins, one of which is very selfish (she is!) and the other constantly pressured into “twinning”. Though the tables are a little flipped/evened out when they are both sent back in time and Portia discovers she has magic. Basically the less “special” twin is cast into the spotlight where she gets to discover more about herself.
✎ Black teenage girls in Ancient Egypt, generally being pretty awesome.
✎ Diverse ☒ (race #ownvoices)
❝What I loved❞
✎ The setting! Ancient Egypt is one of those settings that is woefully underused, and often when it is visited, it’s usually in movies and ends up being pretty terrible.
✎ The characters. Well, Portia and Selene were my favourites. Seeing Portia claim her own identity and strike out for who she wants to be was one of the best parts of the book. She needs that independence from the twinning and through the events of the book, she begins to realise the courage to go it solo when she wants to.
✎ The plot was engaging and full of intrigue that kept me turning the page. It was fast-paced (for the most part–more on this below) and fun.
✎ Three black girls taking absolute centre stage and owning it and a cast full of women.
❝What I didn’t love❞
✎ The pacing was great, and then slow and saggy, then great, and then slow and saggy again. There seemed to be whole swathes of the book where nothing happened, then everything happened at once. There was no urgency overall and it made the book less exciting to read than it first started.
✎ The old theme of person gets taken back in time (to Ancient Egypt of all places!) and still keeps up the insistence that there’s some kind of “misunderstanding” or prank going on, instead of actually accepting the rational explanation of, when it looks like you’re in Ancient Egypt, maaaaybe you’re in Ancient Egypt! It didn’t last that long, but long enough to be a little irritating and unrealistic. It felt like a series of scenes from a cliché movie which didn’t work for me.
✎ We’re in Ancient Egypt, but… we could honestly be anywhere else in the world, because I didn’t really feel that we were in Ancient Egypt at all. There seemed to be no descriptions, no depth to the setting. Just costume and occasional set-dressing. I feel that with the short length of the book, we could have really been invited to see more of the setting, especially as that’s what I was looking forward to the most.
✎ The potential love interest/relationship was just… it felt tacked on because, oh, look, gotta have that romance! It didn’t work for me. Not every story needs a romance and this was definitely one of those.
✎ I was inexplicably irked by the constant use of “the freshman” instead of Selene’s name. You don’t just go around referring to someone as the freshman when you know their name. It stuck out in the narrative and was just irritating as heck. You’d say “the lieutenant” or “the captain” or even “the priest” etc, but not “the sophomore” or “the freshman” every other word when talking about the character. It happened a lot (or seemed to) which is what made it noteworthy for me. I think it was most annoying because it felt as though a strange distance was being put between Selene and Portia, when that wasn’t expressed in the story itself, so it stood out even more. I mean, it’s a tiny thing, but hey ho.
❝If you liked this…❞
…then you might also like: Heidi Heilig’s The Girl From Everywhere and The Ship Beyond Time. More historical time-travel with great diverse characters, lots of myth and history and so much heart.
[Friday Flash Review] And I Darken, by Kiersten White
❧ Title: And I Darken (Conqueror’s Saga #1)
❧ Author: Kiersten White
❧ Publisher: Delacorte Press
❧ Publication date: 28th June 2016
❧ Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.Lada despises the Ottomans and bides her time, planning her vengeance for the day when she can return to Wallachia and claim her birthright. Radu longs only for a place where he feels safe. And when they meet Mehmed, the defiant and lonely son of the sultan, Radu feels that he’s made a true friend—and Lada wonders if she’s finally found someone worthy of her passion.
But Mehmed is heir to the very empire that Lada has sworn to fight against—and that Radu now considers home. Together, Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that strains the bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point.
❝In A Nutshell❞
✎A re-imagining of the story of Vlad the Impaler, actual man-person and not the would-be vampire of myth. In this, his daughter, Lada, is set to rise to the legendary heights of Vlad in his stead, in a historical revisiting of the setting and his rise to power. Lada is a fierce princess with a very soft, handsome and clever brother, Radu. Lada and Radu are sent into the heart of the Ottoman Empire by their father as part of his politicking, when his own influence and position begins to slip. They are essentially hostages to ensure his cooperation.
✎ Lada is not a typical princess. She is a skilled warrior, violent and even vicious, and she refuses to let her home go. She wants the power and position of a man and refuses to play the courtly games her brother is so skilled at, whereas he shies away from battle and war unless absolutely necessary. They are very close as siblings but the relationship can be strained at times. They will defend one another at all costs.
✎Diverse ☒ (race (the majority of the book takes place in the Ottoman empire with only a few characters from outside), queerness, positive depiction of Islam); not #ownvoices.
✎ History and politics and love and war and a thousand things besides.
❝What I loved❞
✎ Radu is gay. He is gay and he is a main character. Did I mention he’s gay? G A Y. Also, he’s gay.
✎ Lada is terrifying and brilliant and you want her on your team for absolutely anything ever that involves horrible killing and maiming because she will win and also scare you just a little.
✎ A positive, historical(ly accurate- afaik) depiction of Islam.
✎ This book is rich with intrigue and tension and filled with suspense. It is a luscious adventure into the past where the world comes alive in full colour. The level of detail and research was impressive and shone through, showing how much ground work and reading (and visiting!) White must have done. There is a fierceness to the narrative that Lada conveys and it is at times both horrifying and readable, whereas Radu’s gentler wit weaves an almost poetic story alongside his sister’s. The two are a contrast, yet entirely complementary. Radu’s sexuality is treated as a learning of his own self and it is not badly written. There is a lot of truth to Radu’s slow realisation of his feelings for Memed (not a spolier; sorry not sorry) that really shows how carefully his story was approached by a writer who is very obviously not a gay boy!
✎ And I Darken is so gripping it’s impossible to put down. If we’re not being held hostage by the tense narrative of Lada and Radu’s childhood years, we’re kept at the edge of our seats as we’re invited right into the heart of the intrigue of the court as Lada and Radu aim to, at first, survive, and then eventually, to thrive. This was one of my very favourite books of 2016.
❝If you liked this…❞
…then you might also like: I don’t read much historical fiction so I genuinely have no idea? Maybe possibly, for “history with a twist” (which is the closest I can come), check out Anne Lyle’s Alchemist of Souls books. They’re not YA, but they rep queer MCs and I enjoyed entering a slightly-alternative Elizabethan England when I read them way back.
[Friday Flash Review] When The Moon Was Ours, by Anna-Marie McLemore
❧ Title: When The Moon Was Ours
❧ Author: Anna-Marie McLemore
❧ Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press
❧ Publication date: 4th October 2016
❧ Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦
To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.
❝In A Nutshell❞
✎Absolutely gorgeous magic realism romance amazingness!
✎#ownvoices Latina MC, queer romance
✎Diverse ☒ (race, queerness (trans rep!!))
✎ A Pakistani trans boy who makes moons and hangs them everywhere is best friends (and more!) with a girl who came from a water tower and grows roses from her wrist.
❝What I loved❞
✎I picked up this book on a whim–and maybe that’s the best way to pick up a book sometimes! It was utterly delightful and beautiful and unexpectedly full of heart and depth and power.
✎Positive trans rep that isn’t attached to the magic realism element but that stands on its own and understanding parent of a trans teen
✎ The prose is stunning and almost achingly beautiful. Not only is the story compelling and magical, there’s a sense of strange urgency that isn’t rushed, but keeps you turning the page again and again, desperate to reach the end, desperate to read another page, another word. 
✎ Can I say “everything”? I couldn’t get enough of the romance or the imagery. This book was just so breathtakingly beautiful. I’ve never read any magic realism before and I wasn’t sure what to expect at all, but this book was just pure poetry and I adored every second of it. I think that this book taught me what magic realism is.
✎ Special mention for the dedication (above), which is beautiful and magical:
❝If you liked this…❞
…then you might also like: McLemore’s other books The Weight of Feathers and Wild Beauty as well as Roshani Chokshi’s The Star-Touched Queen and the accompanying sequel A Crown Of Wishes, both of which are resplendent with gorgeous imagery, magic and mythology, with prose that flirts a little with magic realism.
