INTO TO CROOKED PLACE
by Alexandra Christo

Feiwel and Friends
October 8, 2019

From Goodreads:

The streets of Creije are for the deadly and the dreamers, and four crooks in particular know just how much magic they need up their sleeve to survive.

Tavia, a busker ready to pack up her dark-magic wares and turn her back on Creije for good. She’ll do anything to put her crimes behind her.

Wesley, the closest thing Creije has to a gangster. After growing up on streets hungry enough to swallow the weak whole, he won’t stop until he has brought the entire realm to kneel before him.

Karam, a warrior who spends her days watching over the city’s worst criminals and her nights in the fighting rings, making a deadly name for herself.

And Saxony, a resistance fighter hiding from the very people who destroyed her family, and willing to do whatever it takes to get her revenge.

Everything in their lives is going to plan, until Tavia makes a crucial mistake: she delivers a vial of dark magic—a weapon she didn’t know she had—to someone she cares about, sparking the greatest conflict in decades. Now these four magical outsiders must come together to save their home and the world, before it’s too late. But with enemies at all sides, they can trust nobody. Least of all each other.

The good people at Feiwel and Friends and Raincoast Books provided me with an ARC of Into the Crooked Place in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I was such a fan of To Kill a Kingdom that I only needed to see Alexandra Christo’s name on the cover to say yes to this one. Unfortunately, whatever magic TKaK had, this one wasn’t quite at the same level.

The characters were well done. They were singular, each had their own strengths and flaws. Well-rounded and felt very real. The relationships between all the characters made up a complicated but interesting web. The friend of someone’s friend was the enemy of a different friend, so on and so on.

The magic system was pretty great, too. For the most part, spells were self-contained in physical form. The people using the spells had to carry them around in much the same way a person who uses a gun had to carry a number of bullets. I thought that was really interesting. Actually, I would have loved to have read a lot more about the finer points—the strengths and limitations—of that unique magic system.

Where this one fell short for me was on the plot itself. It sets itself up well, and then it just dies. The majority of the book just kind of drags on and I couldn’t really tell where it was going. There was a journey involved, and what really threw me off was that despite the fact that the journey’s end was stated, there was nothing given to create reference to length of the journey. Five minutes or five months. Without that being established early on, it felt a little aimless.

It’s hard to say if I’ll be picking up the sequel. I’m not going to be running to the book store when it comes out, but the characters are interesting enough to make me want to know what happens to them next.

Fun fact about this post: This review is so late!

ONLY ASHES REAMIN
by Rebecca Schaeffer

HMH Books for Young Readers
September 3, 2019

From Goodreads:

After escaping her kidnappers and destroying the black market where she was held captive, all Nita wants is to find a way to live her life without looking over her shoulder. But with a video of her ability to self-heal all over the dark web, Nita knows she’s still a prime target on the black market.

There’s only one way to keep herself safe.

Nita must make herself so feared that no one would ever dare come after her again. And the best way to start building her reputation? Take her revenge on Fabricio, the boy who sold Nita to her kidnappers. But killing Fabricio is harder than Nita thought it would be, even with Kovit by her side. Now caught in a game of kill or be killed, Nita will do whatever it takes to win.

The good people at HMH Books for Young Readers and Raincoast Books provided me with an ARC of Only Ashes Remain in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book’s prequel, Not Even Bones, was a great and unique concept that the rest of the book just didn’t deliver on. It wasn’t bad, but not as great as I had hoped. What it did give me was a couple of characters that I felt I knew reasonably well and an optimistic view toward any sequels.

I expected Only Ashes Remain to answer some questions, pick up the pace a little, and bring some depth to these characters that I previously spent 400 pages with. Unfortunately for me, I was left unfulfilled again.

The plot, though somewhat interesting, was a little slow and lacks any real twists or turns. The characters aren’t bad, but I found them hard to relate to or care about. The one I liked best was a brand new supporting character: Adair! 

I desperately wanted to the book to take a sharp left and follow him around, because he was fascinating. Unfortunately, all I got were bits and pieces spread over a few scenes, that were all too short and too few for my liking.

My main issue with Only Ashes Remain was that it felt specious. Characters would say they wanted one thing, but their actions were the complete opposite. Other times they said things and would say the opposite before the end of that very page. It was a little bipolar. 

And when the prose talked about the setting and the world, a lot of it came off as thinly veiled opinion from the author. There’s always a bit of the author in everything, but I have always believed it should be invisible. I shouldn’t know if it was the author’s opinion or the character’s. I shouldn’t be able to pick up your political views or what your favourite movie is by reading your fiction. Just my opinion, though. Maybe some readers like that little glimpse behind the curtain. 

Overall, I feel disappointed, but I’m not completely convinced that I’ll be able to ignore the 3rd book… only time will tell.