The Bone Houses tells a tale of a world after magic has left and what you have are the dregs of it, the stories and the artifacts left behind. Ryn hasThe Bone Houses tells a tale of a world after magic has left and what you have are the dregs of it, the stories and the artifacts left behind. Ryn has to contend with bone houses, which are basically walking dead people who lurk in the deep woods at night, while also fending off the greedy hands of the local governor who would like nothing more than to kick Ryn and her family out of their home. Add in Ellis, a man with a mysterious past, and problem in that the bone houses are suddenly a lot more active than they used to be, and you have all the trademarks of a quest.
A very short quest. Or rather, it felt rather short to me, for everything that happens in it the actual journey didn't seem to take very long. I was expecting something more epic, something a little more exciting, but it never seemed to really take off. You get the turns and directions, the emotional aspect, the neat tie up in the end, but I wanted a little more. It took Ryn and Ellis a while to get the main action of the plot really going and it was fine, but only that. Give me more, damnit.
The POV shifts between Ryn and Ellis not quite every chapter, but close to it. I actually didn't super mind the dual POV for once, but it could have been because I never got sucked into the book the way I wanted. They both have their own emotional journeys to make and everything is wrapped up really prettily at the end. Both Ryn and Ellis as characters are decent, I didn't dislike either one, but I never loved either one either. I did like the goat though. Goat was MVP.
I just wanted more. More horror (which there was little, haha), more plot, more journeying. More ripping my heart out of my chest instead of everything just feeling okay. It looks pretty, but the substance was missing. It definitely wasn't a bad book, but I wouldn't call it great. 3 stars....more
This was such a solid book and such a solid ending to a stellar series that I really enjoyed reading overall. I can't say I liked book three as much aThis was such a solid book and such a solid ending to a stellar series that I really enjoyed reading overall. I can't say I liked book three as much as I did book two, but that doesn't mean that book three isn't really good by itself. In this case, it mostly means that it didn't go in directions I personally would want, but that made absolute perfect sense for El.
The Golden Enclaves picks up directly after the events of book two and that terrible cliffhanger. It was a little like screeching to a halt after going a hundred miles an hour because you go from the high of the ending of book two, the excitement and the adrenaline of it all, to, well, the aftermath and all the quiet awfulness it can contain. I also went directly to reading book three from two, so at least I didn't have to sit on that ending for like a solid year, haha. El is hurting so much, and you know and she knows Orion is even worse. But she's not allowed to wallow, she has to keep moving, because she has things to do and friends to help, and it sucks and everything is awful, but El can actually do something about it and she wouldn't be El if she just lets it be.
El is amazing. She's such a rich character who would be perfectly content with some friends and building some enclaves to help people, but gets shoved into conspiracies and plots because she's the only person who can handle them. It's not fair for her and she rails against it, but every single time she stands up and she does what she thinks is right. She's grumpy, she's not even particularly nice, but El does her absolute best for people and all she ever wants is to save everyone. I keep saying this over and over again, but she's such a good person.
The plot starts off a little slow, and understandably El is pretty traumatized, but it ramps up much the same way book two does, and by the end things are so fast and so tense you just keep flipping pages as you race along to the finish. It ties up beautifully, all the big questions are answered and maybe things don't turn out how I, or even El, wants, but it fits the world that Novik has created. The plot goes to places that fit so neatly, that make so much sense, and yet are still surprising.
Now the cons. It makes sense, but I (view spoiler)[really wish Orion was around more. He pops in a little bit and then goes away again and just, please give me more of my beautiful broken boy, haha. (hide spoiler)] I also wanted a little bit more friendship and El really interacting with the people we know and love, but that takes a pretty big backseat to the plot and what El has to do. That and her friends live all over the world now. I don't love Liesel. I didn't like her much in the last book, and I still don't love her in this one, but she grew on me. Not enough to like a certain... not quite emotional line, but I mostly handwaved that off as good for El at the end of the day. Supposedly, haha. (view spoiler)[Quite frankly, there's no romance between the two, it's just physical release to get El out of her own head. I don't love those parts, but it's never been about romance and I think readers forget about that. Even El was saying how if Orion had gotten out she would have probably made them go slow, see other people a bit before deciding maybe they'll spend the rest of their lives together. El has always been more practical, more cool headed in this regard. (hide spoiler)] And yes, the book didn't go exactly to the places I wanted it to go, but it probably would have been lesser if it had (though perhaps a bit more emotionally fulfilling for me lol).
Overall, a beautiful end to an excellent series. 4.5 stars, rounding down to 4....more
First off, holy hells cliffhanger. I may have shrieked a little when I finished the book because excuse me, that was uncalled for. Thank you to past mFirst off, holy hells cliffhanger. I may have shrieked a little when I finished the book because excuse me, that was uncalled for. Thank you to past me for deciding wait until all of the trilogy was out before reading book two because wow, that was mean leaving off at that point, haha.
The Last Graduate details the final year of El's... journey? Imprisonment? in the Scholomance. The bare bones of the plot is like you would think--El trying her best to train and come up with ideas with her friends in an effort to get herself and the people she loves out of the school in more or less one piece. But it's so much more than just that. It becomes so much bigger than just that.
I loved this book. I loved this book so much. I enjoyed it even more than the first book. She has friends! Good friends! People she laughs with, spends time with, can trust. It's so heartwarming to see her slowly open up. Granted, she's still El. She's still guarded and spiky on the outside, but she's just. So soft on the inside and she kind of hates that about herself. She grumbles and is maybe disgusted with herself, but El is so good and she tries so very hard to be good too because that's not the easy thing or even the safe thing, but it's the only thing El can live with.
I loved seeing more of her friends and getting to know them and their circumstances. I was a little disappointed with the lack of Orion in the beginning and even the middle. He pops up more towards the end, but I really wanted him there more. I know El is branching out, has friends now, but he did feel kind of shunted to the side for a good chunk of the book.
And I guess that segues me into Orion and El. Who I love and adore and they're SO DUMB, I can't even explain well enough how dumb they are, but they're perfect and they're so true to form for themselves. Orion is really a mirror to El, they're both so similar and dissimilar to one another. Both are outcasts, both have tremendous powers, both have different sorts of expectations shoved onto them. Two lonely souls made less lonely by finding one another. Orion is actually even more troubling than El because he just seems too insular, so out of touch with other people. I like him so much though, even if I think he low key has a death wish.
Novik has a way of having a fulfilling emotional journey as well as balancing the plot that ties the two together so well. It's slow in the beginning, but it ramps up nicely and the end is just so good. The plot makes sense in its direction, while still being surprising with the twists and turns it takes. It's just really well crafted. Yeah, it's a little info dumpy at parts. Yeah, I wish I could have had more Orion in the beginning and them spending time together, even just hanging out. And yeah, it takes a while to really warm up. But I still loved it. It was still a fantastic book for me. 5 stars....more
It's been a long, long time since the last Stephanie Harrington book, so long that I maybe read through the first three again (in the span of three daIt's been a long, long time since the last Stephanie Harrington book, so long that I maybe read through the first three again (in the span of three days!) before I embarked on my journey to read the fourth one. Funny enough, I was almost immediately disappointed that we didn't start off with Stephanie, but some new character named Cordelia that I promptly decided I didn't care much for.
Thankfully, it got better, haha.
Mostly this book deals with a new character, Cordelia, finding herself bonded to a treecat. Then a new conspiracy is afoot as a rash of accidents cause concern in both a journalist and then Stephanie and co. The latter is where the book shines, and while the former is important it just didn't engage me.
That said, the beginning was achingly slow. I didn't really love Cordelia and her circumstances when I was clamoring to go back to Stephanie and the gang. The plot seemed to have trouble lifting off at first--or maybe it's just that I don't fair well with multiple POVs. There were parts I was tempted to skim because it bored me. But then it just... became more engaging? Somehow? It happened near the middle of the book, things started to pick up, the plot was making itself known, we see the gang striving towards a goal, even if it's a nebulous one.
It's a bit odd, actually, how this book feels both of a beginning and ending of something. Stephanie and her friends are growing up, finding their way into the future, and the growing pains are very relatable. The treecats are as cute and amazing as always, and the bond humans and treecats have with one another still makes the inner preteen me ridiculously happy. I really enjoy how even past foes become something just a little bit more.
The inter-character relationships are... interesting, I suppose. You'd think after the entire Anders falling in love with Jessica thing that happened throughout the entire last book it would go somewhere, but it definitely went places I wasn't quite expecting. I'm not entirely opposed to it, but it was kind of funny how you went from book three to this one. I am happy we see more of Karl and his thoughts, because the poor guy has been mostly pushed into Stephanie's shadow.
For all the book had a gap of almost ten years between book three and four (I thought a new book would never come out), the story keeps going with just the slightest hitch in its beat that smooths out relatively quickly. For all my disappointment with the beginning, the ending was rather delightful. If the beginning was two stars, then the ending was a solid four and, quite frankly, endings count more than beginnings for me. 4 stars....more
It's hard to tell exactly how I feel about Dead Silence. I love spooky books. I love mysterious things going on and trying to figure out what happenedIt's hard to tell exactly how I feel about Dead Silence. I love spooky books. I love mysterious things going on and trying to figure out what happened, what's currently happening, what will happen to the people I've grown attached to. The thing about this book though, is that I never did quite get attached to anyone but Nysus--I mostly found Claire and co 'meh, okay' at best, which I can get past for a super interesting plot and that does happen... in the first half.
You get a main character, Claire, who seems more than a little off her rocker, on her last assignment before she's shipped off to some tidy desk job. You have her crew with her, an interesting bunch even if you don't learn all that much about them. They find this ship, the Titanic of space (no, seriously, it's really the Titanic in space just named differently), something that has been lost for twenty some odd years. This claim could set them for the rest of their lives if they do it correctly. So they get on board and promptly lose their minds.
It actually is genuinely creepy in parts in the beginning half. You have no idea what's going on and people are hallucinating or seeing ghosts. You have no idea why and neither does the crew. That said, sometimes you're jerked out of the atmosphere by going back to the present time line (which is another thing all together), and then it just abruptly cuts off about halfway through the book to stay in the present and it's... a bit annoying, actually.
The second half of the book is Claire trying to get her shit together and go back to the ship. There you find all the answers you could possibly look for (view spoiler)[(very conveniently spouted out by the antagonist in one giant infodump explanation) (hide spoiler)]. It was kind of a let down. The explanation made sense, sort of, but it wasn't something that was puzzled out by Claire, it was just really... very plainly laid out. The motivations behind it made sense and tied things up pretty neatly, but I wanted more. I also thought it was super convenient that (view spoiler)[out of all the people who survived, it was Kane, the love interest. (hide spoiler)]
I don't hate the book. I don't particularly love it either. I felt it could have been so much more spooky or interesting, but it kind of let me down halfway through, and that really sucks when you enjoy the first half but the last part of the book wasn't as good. It makes sense, but I wanted more, and I do feel as if the rest of the crew got shafted in character development. I did sort of puzzle out what happened (well, the broad strokes of, (view spoiler)[I immediately pinged there was something odd about this special metal they put on the ship that has never been used before, hahaha. Not to mention something really screwing them up [and therefore sub-audible stuff for hallucinations makes a lot of sense] (hide spoiler)]), but I really disliked how the explanation was so plainly thrown in your face. Also, the romance seemed gratuitous at best, and I like romance in my books. 3.5 stars, rounding down to 3....more
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