Y: The Last Man Review – Brian K. Vaughan

3 stars (1)

I read it because it was described as having a magician and “The Walking Dead but with Women” and also because of the impending TV show.

Whilst there is a hefty 10 volumes (around 60 issues), I actually found that it was quite an intriguing story. Y (aka Yorick) is as the title says “The Last Man” on Earth. Following some kind of unknown event all men cease to be (including animals etc).

It’s interesting to see how the women continue on without any men in the world (I’m pretty sure we’d cope just fine if it happened in the real world lol).

The art work wasn’t anything special, but it wasn’t that bad that I couldn’t read it.

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Joyland Review – Stephen King

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Stephen King wrote Joyland as part of the Hard Case Crime Series. You can check out their books here. The creators of the series ask well-known authors to write a stand alone read for them to release. The reason I chose to read this was because Stephen King is one of my all-time favourite authors and it was one of a few that I hadn’t managed to read yet.

It is a fantastic read, not necessarily what you would’ve expected from King but still a good book. It had an intriguing story, with enough mystery to keep you interested. After checking out the Hard Case Crime website, King is releasing another book into their line-up: The Colorado Kid. I’ve already read this book and loved it. One of my favourite TV shows is based off this book.

Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.

5/5

5 stars

Monthly Reading Summary – January 2019

As January has now finished, I felt it was time for me to summarise my reads. I won’t be sharing much more in the way of a review as I’ve already reviewed all of my reads. I will mainly be talking about what I read this month, my favourites and least favourites, If I manage to plan ahead, I may also share what I will be reading in February.

 

Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet (From the author of The Paper Magician series)
The Kill Order (The Maze Runner #0.5)
The Master Magician (The Paper Magician #3)
American Vampire (Volume #1)
The Plastic Magician (The Paper Magician #4)
Behold! Oddities, Curiosities & Undefinable Wonders (Short Story Collection)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

 

January Stats

Total books read: 7
eBooks: 5
Paperbacks: 2
Graphic Novels: 1
Part of a series: 5
Total authors: 5

Running Totals
from Goodreads stats page (based on 2019 readings)

Pages read: 2336

My highest ratings this month were for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Master Magician, whilst my lowest rating was for The Kill Order.

February Reading Plans

As for the upcoming month, I haven’t really thought ahead too much. Unless I am in the middle of a series or have to read a book for a specific reason, I rarely know what I will be reading after I finish my current read however as my Kindle Unlimited runs out in the middle of this month I have two left to finish before then.

 

Joyland is my current read, I’m about a third of the way through it. It’s a book that has been in my TBR for a long time but I never managed to get round to it. It’s also by one of my favourite authors – Stephen King.
The Fifth Doll is my final KU book and again, it comes from Charlie N. Holmberg (the author of The Paper Magician series). After discovering Charlie through the Paper Magician books, I’m trying to read as many of her books as possible.
The remainder of my reads are likely to come from either my “Unread” bookshelf (which is that big, it warrants a post all of its own – watch this space) or my “Unread” Kindle purchases (which, at this moment in time comes in around the 1500 count, again await a further post relating to this).

What did you read in January? Do you have any planned reads for February?

E.L. James’ New Book! The Mister

E.L. James has a new book due to be released in April 2019. Venturing away from her widely popular stories about the intriguing (and possibly controversial) Mr Christian Grey, James has something new up her sleeve.

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London, 2019. Life has been easy for Maxim Trevelyan. With his good looks, aristocratic connections, and money, he’s never had to work and he’s rarely slept alone. But all that changes when tragedy strikes and Maxim inherits his family’s noble title, wealth, and estates, and all the responsibility that entails. It’s a role he’s not prepared for and one that he struggles to face.

But his biggest challenge is fighting his desire for an unexpected, enigmatic young woman who’s recently arrived in England, possessing little more than a dangerous and troublesome past. Reticent, beautiful, and musically gifted, she’s an alluring mystery, and Maxim’s longing for her deepens into a passion that he’s never experienced and dares not name. Just who is Alessia Demachi? Can Maxim protect her from the malevolence that threatens her? And what will she do when she learns that he’s been hiding secrets of his own?

From the heart of London through wild, rural Cornwall to the bleak, forbidding beauty of the Balkans, The Mister is a roller-coaster ride of danger and desire that leaves the reader breathless to the very last page.

(Blurb taken from Amazon)

 

Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet Review – Charlie N. Holmberg

Maire is a baker with an extraordinary gift: she can infuse her treats with emotions and abilities, which are then passed on to those who eat them. She doesn’t know why she can do this and remembers nothing of who she is or where she came from.
When marauders raid her town, Maire is captured and sold to the eccentric Allemas, who enslaves her and demands that she produce sinister confections, including a witch’s gingerbread cottage, a living cookie boy, and size-altering cakes.
During her captivity, Maire is visited by Fyel, a ghostly being who is reluctant to reveal his connection to her. The more often they meet, the more her memories return, and she begins to piece together who and what she really is—as well as past mistakes that yield cosmic consequences.

Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet (From the author of The Paper Magician series)

Charlie N. Holmberg does it again with another fantastic story.
Imagine if a book was a cake, this would be one of the sweetest and most flavoursome cakes you’ve ever tasted.
Maire is a fabulous character, lovable from the very beginning when she has no idea of her life other than the last four years. She’s the completely perfect example of a lovable ditz until her life takes a turn for the worst. The way she brings power back to her life is fantastic, it is truly a story of self discovery (or re-discovery depending on how you look at it).

If you get a chance you should definitely check out this book. I feel like Holmberg is slowly becoming one of my “go-to” authors.

Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders Review

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Where do I begin with this weird book? It attracted me initially because of a few factors – the inclusion of a story by Neil Gaiman (a recently found (new) favourite author of mine), the appeal of multiple short stories and the title sounded like I was going to get a wonderful array of weirdness.
It definitely didn’t disappoint on the weird factor – every single story was weird in various ways, some more weird than others. Nor did it disappoint on the amount of short stories, with 18 in total. 

As I expected, the Gaiman story was fantastic along with a couple of others but the ratio of good to poor stories was rather lacking. I’m definitely thinking of around an 80/20 split of poor/good tales. When I refer to a story being poor, I’m simply commenting on whether I enjoyed it. There wasn’t anything specifically wrong with them, just that I wasn’t as impressed by it.

I decided that for a short story collection I’d only name ones that stuck out/in my head. For this book, I’m only talking about Knitter by Christopher Coake. The story describes a being of unknown description and race (maybe human, maybe not) that has the ability to change reality through removal or creation of things and people. Like a sprite or imp that can remove something or implant something as though it has always been there or never existed. The idea of a Knitter is an intriguing concept and I’m very interested in finding out whether there are any similar stories out there of this kind.

3 stars (1)

American Vampire, Vol 1 Review – Scott Snyder and Stephen King

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Scott Snyder and Stephen King come together for the first volume in American Vampire. Bringing the story of Skinner Sweet to the world, Snyder’s story tells us what happened in 1920’s LA while King’s story takes us back to the Western world, taking place before Snyder’s story. Both stories are about Sweet, showing us how he became who he became.

I read this because of Stephen King. He’s one of my favourite authors so I was automatically drawn in to wanting to read this but I don’t know if I’ll be moving on to volume two. Whilst it was a decent read, I wasn’t all that invested in the story and I don’t really have much to say about it.

3 stars (1)

The Kill Order (The Maze Runner #4) Review – James Dashner

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1 stars (1)

James Dashner is well known for his writing of The Maze Runner series of books. The trilogy that includes The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure. I say trilogy because that was clearly all it needed to be. Sure a bit about the background and how W.I.C.K.E.D came to be would be nice (which I now believe is explained in The Fever Code, although judging by the majority of the reviews I’m not sure it actually does give us any unexpected answers) but Dashner could’ve just stopped at the end of The Death Cure.

The Kill Order, book #4 in the series is a prequel. Set not long after when the sun flares have finished but left the entire planet in disarray, The Kill Order takes us to a time when people were trying to stay alive and survive. Not to end up with the “madness” that so many have already succumbed to.

In The Kill Order we meet BRAND NEW characters. NONE, and I mean, NONE of the characters from any of the original trilogy are in this story. Whilst I appreciate, that the previous characters are of YA age, it would have been good to have been able to connect the characters in this story to the original trilogy. The only connections between this book and previous books are 1) the crazies (people affected by the madness) and 2) the sun flares.
I think I understand what Dashner was trying to do, by telling us more about the world before the “maze” it would give us a clearer picture of what was happening but to be honest, I didn’t feel that at all. We didn’t learn anything in this particular prequel that we didn’t already know from previous instalments.
I not only had issues with the story, but with reading this book. I started reading it back in August 2018 but due to having difficulties (which I’m not sure was due to myself or the book) it took until today to finish it. I couldn’t read more than a few pages at a time.

While I did have issues with it, when reviewing I try and provide some positives as well as negatives. Had this been a stand alone story, it could have worked as a good old apocalyptic action story (there was definitely plenty of action).
I had a favourite character, I usually do, even in books I don’t like. Alec an older ex-forces gentleman, leading the charge throughout the book, he made it worth sticking with. I liked him.

James Dashner, I’m disappointed in this particular book. Not only did it not deliver what I thought it would, I’m not sure that it delivered what you wanted it too either.

 

 

Graphic Novels

In 2017 I found graphic novels.

Before creating my Facebook group, I’d never read a graphic novel (or a comic) as an adult. I purely read written books. The appeal of seeing the story in pictures never really came to me. I used to think that they were aimed at children for the most part.

A friend of mine, (and fellow admin in the group), was a big big fan of graphic novels and would regularly post about whichever one she had been reading. After a while I started to notice that some of them definitely were NOT for children and actually, they had a little more substance to them than I had originally thought.

So sometime during last year, I started on a massive binge of graphic novels. I had one main rule (and one smaller, less significant one) – no superhero comics or graphic novels. I’m not really sure why I said that because I love the superhero world of films but the idea of reading a superhero comic just didn’t appeal.
The other smaller, less significant rule is that it has to have a decent amount of pages before I will consider reading it (unless I am knowingly going into a series released as issues).

Now I am obsessed with graphic novels and as they are generally a quick read, they give me a good boost to my total books read for the Goodreads challenge too.

Do you read graphic novels? Can you recommend any?