Fantasy – Page 3 – Nonfiction and Nonsense

Fire and Blood by George R. R. Martin

I first read the A Song of Ice and Fire series a few years before Game of Thrones was adapted for the screen. It was an exciting time, nothing gets me more pumped up than when I hear that a book I love is going to be turned into a movie or a show. And for the first five seasons, Game of Thrones more than delivered everything a reader would have wanted. The show stuck to the plot of the books very well, the chosen actors suited their roles and played the characters admirably, and the special effects were excellent. But once the show started to go further than what we readers currently had available to us I started to experience feelings of trepidation and happy thrills. It gave me joyful shivers as I watched the show with my friends that did not read the books, knowing what was going to happen and waiting to see their shocked faces when things went bad or took unexpected turns in the plot. It was equally amusing to turn towards my one friend who did read and give them a knowing smirk. When the screen went further than the page, I became one of the non readers, doomed to be surprised with every minute. I was looking forward to being surprised, but also disappointed that Mr. Martin was lagging behind with getting his story on the page. I won’t go into what we all know happened towards the end, that being one of the greatest disappointments in show history. I will only say that I wished for better for certain characters, namely Jon Snow.

I miss those days. I don’t know if there will ever be a cinematic event like that again in my lifetime. I keep looking for the next best thing. The closest I have come to that is having recently picked up Fire and Blood, which dictates the Targaryen rule in Westeros. It begins with a short history of the first Targaryens who lived on Dragonstone, of whom were there a few centuries before the conquest, and it starts to get detailed after the birth of Aegon the conqueror and his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys. The three dragons were born to their parents Aerion and Valeria Velaryon on Dragonstone, and due to Valyrian customs, Aegon married his older sister Visenya, but even stranger, he also married his younger sister Rhaenys. Due to endless squabbles between the seven kings of Westeros, and an offensive offer made by one king to Aegon, he decided that the best course of action would be to eliminate the seven kings and have a single king to rule over the seven territories. The kings would become lords, still ruling over their individual territories, but answering to a single king. Aegon also decided that the king would be himself. And that is how Targaryen rule began.

That is all I am going to give you here. The end of this book ends with the individual that came out as victor at the end of the Dance of Dragons, the Targaryen civil war. I won’t say who wins and who ends up as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, you will either need to read this hefty volume or watch Fire and Blood on HBO. I don’t think the end of the Dance will happen this season, I think there will be a third season and possibly a fourth if they drag it out. So if you really want to know what happens you can either be incredibly patient or read this very detailed history. I will say, I am not satisfied with the end, only because I wanted more. I wanted to know everything that occurred from the end of the Dance all the way to the Mad King. There are about one hundred thirty years between the end of the history as detailed in Fire and Blood and the end of the reign of the Mad King. The only thing you get is a family tree and a chronological succession at the very end of the book. There are two more books that I think may give me what I am looking for, those being The World of Ice and Fire and The Rise of the Dragon. Let me see how long I can hold out until I need to get both of those.

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

Fiction

I have been having a hard time getting through the last psychology book I had planned to end the month with, surprise surprise. So, I kind of got a little side tracked and began my summer of fun reads a little early. I started with a standalone fantasy novel that takes place in a world where humans, vampires, and werewolves all live together, but not harmoniously.

For hundreds of years, there have been feuds, kidnappings, and murders between vampires and weres, weres are humans, and humans and vampires. All three species hold grudges, most everyone believes in the common stereotypes, even when they are told otherwise, and no one ever seems to be able to hold to a truce for very long. One such attempt at keeping the peace over the years has been the exchange of a collateral, in which a family member of one species is traded with the family member of another and forced to live amongst them for ten years. In a further attempt to try to force peace, this time, a vampire female is traded to an Alpha werewolf, not just as collateral, but as his bride. The female in question, named Misery, is an unusual and surprising choice, but I won’t tell you why.

I enjoyed this because it was classic monsters but with a modern twist. Not all the standard characteristics you would expect to be true of vampires and werewolves are true here. You do get some of the usuals, such as blood drinking and shapeshifting, but some of the other things you would expect these creatures to do are left out. I liked that there were multiple mysteries that were going on at the same time, it kept the plot interesting. I needed that interesting plot because the romance didn’t even start until about mid book, this being the reason I got the book in the first place. However, the scenes I read were worth the wait because I definitely see a re-read in my future.

Even though I wanted a standalone as opposed to an entire series, I was left wanting more. Like a novel I read a few months ago, Nocticadia, the end left it open to a future novel if the author decides in the future that she would like to write more about these characters. I don’t believe that I could possibly be the only one who feels this way.

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

Fiction

It’s really nice to be able to read a sequel immediately after finishing its predecessor, especially for a series that you just started but one that others have been waiting months to get their hands on. It ends on a bittersweet note for me, however, as there will be another book following this one that I will have to wait a long time for. And the cliffhanger for Iron Flame was one that had me much more anxious to get to the next part of the story than the surprise I read at the end of Fourth Wing. Read no further unless you don’t mind spoilers.

I was glad that the story picked up right where it left off, with us learning how Brennan faked his death and joined the rebels. After I got over that unexpected twist, I was wondering how the rest of the story was going to go. It didn’t seem like going back to Basgiath was an option after what happened during the War Games. Violet and her squad were led into a trap by Colonel Aetos, a trap in which he expected all of them to die. After recovering for several days in rebel territory I couldn’t see how they would explain where they had been and why they had been gone for so long. Xaden and some of the other rebels came up with a plan, and it was actually pretty clever. It’s a good thing that the battle tactics were well written and made sense, because the ongoing fight between Xaden and Violet hardly does.

Here is where I go on a rant, I apologize in advance but I just need to say my piece. It’s understandable that Violet is mad at Xaden for keeping a few secrets, particularly the ones regarding their relationship, but she can’t expect him to tell her everything when he is protecting so many people with the very secrets she insists he reveal. She then chose to act the hypocrite when she started keeping secrets of her own, ones that she chose to not reveal to Xaden out of both secrecy and spite. She insisted on complete honesty between the two of them in order for her to consider removing the romantic hold she placed on their relationship, yet she herself becomes dishonest towards him. And the dialogue between the two of them gets increasingly frustrating the longer the fight drags on, to the point that I didn’t even care that it put their relationship on hold, I just wanted it to make a bit of sense. I’m pretty sure that at one point Violet herself questioned what they were fighting about, and if that’s not saying something about the irrationality of it all I can’t think of anything else that could make it clearer. They do stop fighting at some point and the plot gets going.

The last eight pages were where a bomb got dropped on us. A lot of stuff happened suddenly and all at once. Even though this series has been heavy on the death, killing established characters maliciously, I was still holding out for the good guys to overcome. I don’t know if that is going to happen now. There is going to have to be another huge twist or some kind of revelation in the next book for a certain character to survive what happened to them during the battle between riders and venin. I am kind of predicting an unhappy ending.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Fiction

This book really helped with the Crescent City hangover I was going through. I can’t believe I held out for so long when it came to this series as it was honestly becoming a hassle trying to avoid spoilers online. But it fit in with this month’s theme, fantasy, and now I can peruse the internet without fear or anxiety of having the plot ruined! I say that because I immediately started on the sequel hours after finishing Fourth Wing, because it ends on a really heartwarming cliffhanger and I had to know what happened. But you will have to wait until Thursday next week for that review, I am not that quick when it comes to writing my thoughts down.

Fourth Wing takes place in a fantasy world of two kingdoms in which dragons and gryphons exist, along with magic. The territories of Navarre and Poromiel have been at war for four hundred years and it seems like there will never be an end to it. Even the trade agreement put into place two hundred years ago, in which goods are exchanged four times a year, doesn’t stop the two kingdoms from constantly fighting with each other. We follow our main character, Violet, a girl born with a weak body due to an illness her mother had while she was pregnant. She had been training her entire life to work in the library as a scribe due to her physical limitations, but after the death of her scribe father, her General mother forces her to join the riders quadrant to become a warrior. Either the General has a lot of pride or she just doesn’t even like her daughter at all, because she has to know that Violet’s chances of surviving the brutal training that comes with being a cadet of the riders quadrant are slim.

That’s the plot without giving too much away. Still, I do want to talk about some of the characters. Dain, Violet’s friend since childhood, seems nice at first in his desire to keep her alive and safe, but he soon starts to rub me the wrong way with his hovering, overprotectiveness, and lack of faith in her. He constantly tells her what she isn’t and what she cannot do, and I know I would have lost my patience with him long before she did. Contrary to Dain, Mira, Violet’s older sister, goes about trying to protect her in the correct way, by giving her as many tips as she can in the short period of time she has with her before she enters the quadrant. Mira knows that Violet was better suited to be a scribe, not just because of her physical limitations, but because of her brilliant mind. This doesn’t stop her from being the good kind of protective, by providing Violet with an armored corset that she tells her to wear at all times, and a book from their older brother, which they are not supposed to have but is full of valuable information for survival. There are a lot of other characters in the book, but I warn you, try get too attached to anyone, as there is a lot of death.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about my favorite theme that is an essential part of the story, and that is sexuality. Because the riders quadrant is the most dangerous, a place where you can literally die any day, the cadets live as though every day could be their last. That translates to a lot of sex. Violet, being weak, has to be on guard at all times, so she refrains from getting physical with anyone because being killed before, during, or after sex is a possibility. This leaves her feeling lonely and frustrated, and sometimes the butt of jokes with her few friends. Finding someone to trust enough to have a physical relationship also poses a problem for Violet, as relationships are discouraged. The training in the riders quadrant is so rigorous, and the competition between cadets is so great, that death from training or assassination is something that occurs nearly every day. No one wants to date someone only to see them die during a training exercise or watch them get stabbed by a fellow cadet, so everyone tries to leave emotions out of their physical encounters and this leaves Violet without any options. Besides all that drama, I do love the representation of heterosexual and homosexual characters.

I am excited to see where this story goes. I imagine that there will be one or two additional books in the future. And as long as the second book is as good as the first I think this is a series I will anticipate in seeing the conclusion of the tale.

Crescent City: House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas

Fiction

I am going to start off yet again stating that this post is full of spoilers, much more so than my last post. I would suggest that unless you have finished HOFAS or you just don’t care about spoilers, do not read any further than this paragraph.

I was very pleasantly surprised. This book does a really good job of cleaning up a lot of loose ends. It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, but I was left with a few questions, nothing that will keep me up at night, but it gives me hope that there will be a fourth book in the future. And seeing that each of the books have been titled after three of the four houses, I think it would be safe to assume that the fourth book would potentially be titled House of Many Waters. I don’t want to get into the plot, because it is a lot, but every major cliffhanger we were left with at the end of HOSAB is resolved. We also got the crossover we were waiting for, and I really liked that we not only got to see some of the ACOTAR characters in the very beginning of the book but at the end too. A lot of the evil, cruel, and misogynistic characters are killed and there is a happy ending for almost all of the protagonists. In this book, there is a lot of back and forth with the first person point of view which goes constantly back and forth between Bryce, Hunt, Ruhn, Tharion, Ithan, and Lidia. I feel like there might even have been a few other first person point of views that I am missing, I think Hypaxia might be one of them. I was hearing that a lot of people didn’t like that the point of view changed so often but I did not mind it. All the main characters were split up for a lot of the book. The way the story flows makes it so that the reader is seeing things as they happen in the present time, so even though Bryce is in Prythian, Hunt is in the dungeons with Ruhn and Baxian, and Declan and Flynn are doing reconnaissance, sometimes with Ithan and Tharion, you get to see what everyone is doing at the same time on the same day. I feel like this worked well, even if you were dying to know what happened to someone but you had to read from the point of view of a few characters before you got back to the story line you were most interested in.

That is about as much as I will say about the plot overall. Now, I just want to get my questions out there.

Is Sathia in some kind of trouble? She went to the Meat Market to try and see if she could free her friend from the Viper Queen. And Tharion, on his way there to find her, is confronted by Ariadne, who was kind of working for the Viper Queen as a fighter, but left her service towards the end of the book. Speaking of which, is she even still a slave?

Who killed the seventh Asteri, Octartis? Sirius was killed, or removed from the world, a long time ago by one of the Princes of Hel. Bryce killed Polaris on the battlefield by using the blades and her power to open the portal to nowhere. Immediately after that she and Hunt teleported to the first light tubes where they were met with Rigelus, soon after joined by Eosphoros, Hesperus, and Austrus. Bryce sends them into a second portal. Both Ruhn and Bryce mention that they felt time slow down in between the death of Polaris and the other four Asteri, which is an indicator that an Asteri had been killed. Did I miss something? I swear no one talks about it in the aftermath. I also couldn’t find an answer online.

The tattoo on Bryce’s back is in the same language as the symbols used in the Book of Breathings, as stated by Amren in the beginning of the book. Are these the same symbols that Ithan sees on the metal bowl that the statue is holding when he and Hypaxia go to see the Under King in the Bone Quarter? He says the symbols look familiar but he can’t place them. If he has seen Bryce’s tattoo, maybe that is why they seem familiar. Or, it could be that Ithan was a history major and maybe he saw something similar in a book while he was in school. And following that, are the symbols Wyrd marks? As in the symbols that are prevalent in the Throne of Glass series?

Finally, why did that one language, the old Fae language, stop being spoken in Prythian over 15,000 years ago? Did it just fall out of style? I feel like it might have something to do with the Asteri. Maybe they didn’t want the Fae of Prythian and the Fae of Midgard to be able to communicate with each if they ever came into contact. Maybe it was like their kill switch, an insurance policy created on the very slim chance that the portal between worlds would open and the two groups could somehow figure out that the Dagdan and the Asteri were the same beings.

I know that I probably won’t get answers to these questions for a long time, but I can wait patiently. I believe that the next book SJM is writing is another installment in the ACOTAR series and that is probably a few years away from being published. And while I think that there will be mentions of what happened in HOFAS in the next installment of ACOTAR, I think it will primarily focus on the characters in that universe. I personally am hoping for an Azriel focused story, he is my favorite, and I am really hoping that he ends up with Gwyn, or, in a surprise twist, Eris.