Hey, y'all! So once again, I'll be participating in Top 10 Tuesday, hosted on The Broke and the Bookish! It's been quite a while since the last time that I did one of these, but I wanted to jump back in the saddle and this week was perfect for that because the topic is all about my most anticipated book releases for the rest of the year.
I'm not sure that I have a full 10 books on the list, but I do have a sizeable handful. Also, I've decided not to include books that are continuations of series that I haven't started, thus excluding continuations of the Throne of Glass and Magisterium series (despite how much I want to start both series). That being said, let's just go ahead and jump into it!
1. A World Without You
by Beth Revis
Beth Revis is one of my favorite authors, and when I discovered that she was releasing a new book, it immediately got added to my TBR. This one is especially interesting because Beth Revis has always written dystopia/sci fi in the past, and despite seemingly having some sci fi overtones, this appears to be a darker contemporary. I'm really intrigued to see what a contemporary novel from her is like and how she marries these genres together.
2. This Savage Song
by Victoria Schwab
Everything about this book sounds extremely interesting. It's a dark urban fantasy where music plays an integral role and the characters sound really complex. I've read 2 V.E. Schwab novels already and have enjoyed (but not quite loved) both, so I have pretty high hopes for this first installment in a new duology.
3. Heartless
by Marissa Meyer
This one isn't quite as high on my TBR as the others. I think the main reason that I'm even interested is because Marissa Meyer has proven that she's really great at turning classic fairytales on their head, so I'm interested to see what she does with Alice in Wonderland. That being said, I'll probably wait to see the reviews before actually picking it up.
4. The Fate of the Tearling
by Erika Johansen
This is one that I'm really excited about. I've only read the first book in this trilogy, but it was really great and I'm hoping to catch up with the second book before the conclusion to the trilogy comes out later this year.
5. Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy
by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan,
Maureen Johnson, and Robin Wasserman
As much as I love The Mortal Instruments, I'm admittedly a bit wary about this. I had mixed feelings about The Bane Chronicles, which were written by 3 of the people who are writing these novellas. I know that the novellas are available in ebook format, but they're all $2/3 and I'd rather not bother with it, since that'll be about the same price as the hardcover (if not more expensive). Either way, I'll probably still end up getting this when it comes out.
6. Gamescape: Overworld
by Emma Trevayne
Admittedly, I just discovered this book while going through lists of 2016 book releases, but it does sound really interesting. The premise gives me Ready Player One vibes, which makes me both interested and a little wary. Yet another one that I'm going to read some reviews for first.
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Illustrated Edition
by J.K. Rowling
And finally, of course I'm going to be getting this! The illustrations in Sorcerer's Stone were gorgeous, so I have high hopes for Chamber of Secrets. I can't wait to have all of these illustrated editions.
So, that's it for my post on my most anticipated releases for the second half of the year. What releases are you really excited about? Do we have any in common? Let me know down in the comments!
Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See y'all soon!
Hey, y'all! So, this week's topic for Top 5 Wednesday was Top 5 Anticipated Pre-Orders For the Rest of the Year. I ended up having a fairly long list of books, and since I wanted to talk about all of them, I decided to do an entire post talking about all of the releases that I'm really excited about. The books I talked about in my video will also be included, and they'll be organized by release date. Titles link to the Goodreads page for each book, if you want to learn more about it.
This one is one of the ones that I've been anticipating for the longest. I read The Diviners back in October and initially thought that it was just a standalone. Obviously, when I actually read it. I discovered that it's going to be a series (a 4 book series, if I remember correctly). I loved The Diviners (You can check out my written review here if you want) and can't wait to finally be able to dive into the sequel. It's even longer than the first book- 702 pages!- which actually makes me even more excited. And I'm really glad that they made a slight change to this cover re-design. Originally, the new cover was pretty similar to this, but with worse coloration and these weird faceless people. It was just bad. This is at least a little better.
Yes, I will be getting the UK cover, because it's so much cooler than the US cover. Anyway, I still haven't read a full book by Patrick Ness. I liked what I read of The Knife of Never Letting Go, so I'm hopeful that I'll enjoy this one. The concept is really interesting and plays with tropes that are normally seen in YA, so I'm really excited about this one.
For some reason, I didn't think too much about The Iron Trial last year, even though it sounds like it's right up my alley. I love magic school books, and that's what this series is. Yes, it's middle grade, but it's by Cassandra Clare, who is one of my favorite authors. Either way, The Iron Trial is one of the first books I want to get after my ban, and I will, of course, be getting this one as well. And I want to read them sometime this fall.
Just like with the last one, this is another book where I haven't read the previous book(s), but I want to start it really soon. And the Throne of Glass series is even higher up on my TBR than The Magisterium series. I've been wanting to read it for a very long time, and I'll be buying all of the books ASAP when my ban is over.
I might hold off on buying these for a while. I love all of these books, and I made a video all about these new covers. I like them enough that I want to buy them, but since they're books I've already read, I'm not sure I'm going to get them immediately. I'll probably buy a box set of one series, and then wait a bit before buying the other one.
I read the first two books in the series at the beginning of 2014, and I enjoyed both of them. It's not my favorite series I've ever read, but I did like it. I'm probably going to wait before reading this, because the Miss Peregrine's movie is going to be released... sometime? I'm actually not sure when it's going to be released, but that will be the perfect opportunity to reread the first couple and to finish reading the series. Normally, I wouldn't wait that long, but I'm not that attached to it. I can wait a while without getting anxious.
I loved Fangirl, and the Simon Snow series sounds pretty cool, as does Cath's fanfic. From what I've seen, this isn't actually Cath's Carry On fanfic, but I'm still really excited to read this, because this is her first fantasy novel, and MAGIC SCHOOL! YAY!
I've mentioned several times that these two are my favorite YouTubers. I'm very frustrated at all of the YouTubers writing books, but I'm excited about this one. Yes, it's another memoir, but they actually wrote it (from what they've said- and I'm going to trust them), and the description makes it sound just as quirky, fun, and random as they are, so I'm really excited to get this one. I've already pre-ordered it, too.
I've recently fallen in love with Brandon Sanderson, after reading his Mistborn trilogy and The Rithmatist. I haven't continued on to Mistborn 4, and this book is Mistborn 5, so I'm not sure if I'm going to get to it immediately upon its release, but Sanderson is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors (and depending on how good the rest of his books are, he might become my favorite author) and I want to read all of his books.
This is one of the books on this list that I'm most excited about. Caz from Little Book Owl talked about this book near the beginning of the year, and I was really intrigued by it. It wasn't super high on my TBR yet, but it intrigued me and I kept it at the back of my mind as a release I might want to look into. But then I started learning even more about it and it sounds really interesting. Not only is it tagged as dystopia/fantasy/sci-fi on Goodreads (aka my favorite genres), but it also has unique formatting with case files included, and stuff marked out. And then I saw the ARCs that people got at BEA and it just made me even more interested in it. I can't wait to read this one!
The first book in this series, A Thousand Pieces of You, was released last year, and it's one of the books I really want to buy after my ban. The concept is really interesting, because it deals with a chase across parallel universes, and it just sounds super cool. These covers are really cool as well. Anyway, this is a series that really intrigues me, and I hope to read the first book in this series and then jump into this one.
I feel like every single YA reader is excited about this release. I'm pretty late to the Lunar Chronicles party, because I only read the 3 books that are out back in April and May. I really enjoyed them, and this has become one of my favorite series, so this is one of the ones that I'm most eagerly anticipating. And it's supposed to be 800 something pages, so that makes me really excited. I need to know how things end up for these awesome characters!
OK, so you're probably like "Kristen, this clearly says 2016. This is supposed to be books released in 2015." I made an oopsie. This was originally going to be released in 2015, but got pushed back to 2016. And I forgot about that. And this is one I'm really excited about, so when I narrowed down my list, this was one of the ones I decided to include in the video... and then I realized that this is now a 2016 release. So it's not supposed to be on this list. However, since I included it in the video, I decided to talk about it here as well.
Anyway, this just sounds incredibly awesome. First of all, the MC is a violinist, and it sounds like it might play a big role in the book. And as a violist music major, that makes me so excited. Plus, this involves time travel and is like a treasure hunt across time and several continents, That just sounds so cool. I can't wait to read this one. It sounds so cool.
So, those are all the 2015 releases that I'm super excited about! Let me know down in the comments which ones you can't wait to read!
Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See y'all soon!
Hey, y'all! So today I'm going to be reviewing all 3 books that are out of the Lunar Chronicles series!
Series Overview
The Lunar Chronicles series is a four-book sci-fi dystopian series by Marissa Meyer. Each book focuses on a new main character, while including the main characters from the previous books. Individually, each book in the series is a fairy tale retelling, and they combine to create a really intriguing story about an evil queen and a large cast of characters working to bring her down. As of now, the first three books (Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress) have been published, as well as a prequel novella called Fairest. The conclusion to the series, Winter, is set to be released in fall of 2015.
Cinder
Cinder, as is probably obvious from the title and cover, is a retelling of Cinderella. Cinder takes place in the future in New Beijing, where 16 year old Cinder is a mechanic. She's also a cyborg. Because of an accident when she was younger, one of her feet and one of her arms have been replaced by metallic parts. As a deadly illness plagues humans and the relationship between Earthens and Lunar residents strains, Cinder finds her life intersecting with Prince Kai's and finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle.
There were a lot of things that I really enjoyed about Cinder. The first was... Cinder! I thought that she was a really great main character. She's not exactly the "Cinderella" stereotype. She's intelligent and resourceful, not totally lovesick, and not willing to be walked all over. Her main purpose within the story differs greatly from the original tale, and she is a much more substantial character, which I appreciated greatly.
I actually just finished a class about German fairy tales, and that helped me to appreciate Cinder even more. The original tale's plot is easy to recognize within the book, but it never feels like it's trying too hard to remain true to the source material. The use of the original tale is never heavy handed, which was one of the best aspects of the book. The modernization is drastically different and cleverly done, and I really, really enjoyed the way that worked within the book.
As for the world-build, I would say that it's good. The world was well-developed, but nothing stood out to me as particularly amazing or outstanding. This might partially be because some of the technology reminded me of technology I've read in other books. I'm not claiming that it stole concepts, or anything like that, I just think that it could have been slightly more creative in that aspect.
The one complaint that I did have about Cinder had to do with the foreshadowing. Obviously, we all already know the story of the original tale. However, this is separate. Some elements of the book were very heavily alluded to, long before they were revealed. And, while this didn't necessarily take away my overall enjoyment of the book, it did take away some surprises that I feel could have been clever and interesting.
Aside from a couple minor flaws, I really enjoyed Cinder and decided to give it 9 stars out of 10.
Scarlet
Scarlet, as is probably obvious once again, is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Scarlet mostly takes place in France and is focused upon our newest main character, Scarlet (go figure). Her grandmother disappeared shortly before the beginning of this book, and alongside a mysterious new companion named Wolf, Scarlet attempts to discover what happened to her grandmother.
My opinions on the characters in this book are a bit more ambiguous than my opinions on the characters in Cinder. In general, I think that I would say that I like both Wolf and Scarlet, but I still feel slightly hesitant to even say that. Maybe I just haven't fully formed my opinion on them. I think I can definitively say that between all of the important characters presented within the first two books, Cinder is my favorite. With Captain Thorne (a new character introduced in Scarlet) as a close second. I thought he was annoying at first, but he's grown on me quite a bit. The guy never fails to make me laugh.
One thing that the book did really well was integrating Scarlet's story with the continuation of Cinder's. When I started the series, I was under the impression that each novel was going to be a succinct story that all fit together to form an overarching plot, and that is definitely not the situation at all. It's clear at the end of Cinder that her story is not yet complete and that made me really curious to see how the back and forth was handled within the coming books. And, like I said, I thought that the two plots were integrated really nicely.
Like with Cinder, the original tale is definitely recognizable, but never overbearing, which (as I said before) I really enjoyed. Overall, I enjoyed the book and had minor problems with it but decided to give it 8.5 stars out of 10 because I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Cinder. I thought Cinder's plot was more exciting and its characters more interesting and just overall enjoyed it more than Scarlet.
Cress
Once again, this is probably quite obvious from the cover, but Cress is a retelling of Rapunzel. Cress has been locked within a satellite for most of her life and in that time has become a pretty accomplished hacker. She wants nothing more than to get off of her satellite, and she might have just finally discovered her way out...
So far, Cress is my least favorite character. Not just of the main girls, but of all of the lead characters. I don't hate her, I'm just not a big fan. This makes me extremely glad that the story doesn't just focus on her plot. However, I do have to mention that I did think that the plot hit a bit of a lull not too far into this book. That generally doesn't happen in this series, since there are so many different plots weaving together and even if one is a little slow, the rest have something interesting going on, but it just hit a point where all of them weren't extremely intriguing and therefore it felt a little slow. HOWEVER, that's not to say that I didn't like it-- it just wasn't quite as interesting as the rest of the book.
However, that's the only semi-negative thing that I have to say about this book, because the rest of it was awesome. Once the lull ended, the plot got really intriguing and built up more and more toward the AWESOME last 150 pages. Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure that I got through the last 150 pages in slightly over an hour. I'm a pretty fast reader, and with a book that's as easy to read as this one, I can usually get through about 100 pages in an hour. But 150, that's just crazy fast even for me. I was just so invested in what was going on because it had this great mix of action and information reveals and it just kept me on my toes and kept me flying through it.
Once again, I also really enjoyed the way that the original tale was reworked into this story. Overall, despite the lull that I felt occurred during this one, the rest of the book made up for that and more. I decided to give it 9.5 stars out of 10 because what even was that ending?!
Overall Thoughts
I really like this series, and I can't wait to see what happens in Winter. As far as the world, it's not my absolute favorite world nor is it my favorite part of the book, but I do really like it. I think that the world was built well and subtly, without any sort of info dumping. However, some of the things within the world are slightly reminiscent of some other books I've read, and while that might not be the Lunar Chronicles' fault, it doesn't seem quite as fresh when I've experienced it within another book.
Overall, I would say that I think that the overall plot is more intriguing than any of the individual plots has been so far. That's not to say that I don't like the individual plots, but rather that the whole is better than the sum of its parts.
In general, the characters are also really great. They each have a very distinct personality, and the range of personalities within them is incredibly diverse.
In the end, this series has quickly become an all-time favorite for me, and I am now among the large group of fans who are eagerly awaiting the release of Winter in the fall.
Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I'd really appreciate if you'd subscribe/follow so that I know you're enjoying what I'm posting! See y'all soon!
