DNF Review | The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The Priory of the Orange Tree is a fantasy novel by Samantha Shannon.

A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

I only read 200 pages so these are mainly just notes for myself.

I don't think Samantha Shannon's writing is a good fit for me. I can usually switch over to an audiobook, but things are mentioned several times before we are told what they are or why things are the way they are. I think this will work for some people, but I had a constant feeling of not knowing what was going on and it was even worse on audio.

There are cool elements (like dragons) and I like the characters, but I started plotting out ways to motivate myself to finish. I would love to make it to the other side of this and know why people love it, but I'm not sure how kind it is to force another 600+ pages when my TBR is towering.

I'm sad because the cover for the prequel is beautiful, too...

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Review | And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Source: library borrow. This is a review of my reading experience.

And Put Away Childish Things is a fantasy novella from Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Harry Bodie’s been called into the delightful fantasy world of his grandmother’s beloved children’s books. It’s not delightful here at all.

All roads lead to Underhill, where it’s always winter, and never nice.

Harry Bodie has a famous grandmother, who wrote beloved children’s books set in the delightful world of Underhill. Harry himself is a failing kids’ TV presenter whose every attempt to advance his career ends in self-sabotage. His family history seems to be nothing but an impediment.

An impediment... or worse. What if Underhill is real? What if it has been waiting decades for a promised child to visit? What if it isn’t delightful at all? And what if its denizens have run out of patience and are taking matters into their own hands?

✅ Portal fantasy (and horror and scifi)
✅ Tchaikovsky spider

And Put Away Childish Things is the third novella in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Terrible Worlds: Destinations series, but each installment is a standalone story. I've read the first novella (Walking to Aldebaran) but haven't read the second one yet. My library happened to have this available when I needed a short read.

The main character Harry's grandmother was a famous children's author who wrote stories set in Underhill, and there are quite a few people who remain obsessed with his grandmother's stories. Set during the start of the pandemic, it felt like Tchaikovsky was working through a number of things with And Put Away Childish Things.

I continue to really enjoy Tchaikovsky's writing. He has written so many things that span the breadth of speculative fiction, and I intend to read them all.

⭐⭐⭐💫★
3.5/5 stars

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Book Den (@bookdenjen)

Review | Be Sure by Seanan McGuire

Source: review copy provided by publisher. This is a review of my reading experience.

Where it all began―the first three books in Seanan McGuire's multi-Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series.

Join the students of Eleanor West, and jump through doors into worlds both dangerous and extraordinary.

Book 1: Every Heart a Doorway
Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Book 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Meet Nancy, cast out of her world by the Lord of the Dead; Jack and Jill, each adopted by a monster of the Moors; Sumi and her impossible daughter, Rini.

Three worlds, three adventures, three sets of lives destined to intersect.

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations / No Visitors / No Quests

But quests are what these children do best...

Be Sure collects the first three books of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. The Wayward Children series is one of my absolute favorite series.

In the Wayward Children books, the characters find a door into another world but are eventually forced to go back home. These children struggle to cope and often wind up at the school for wayward children. Some books are set in another world and some are set at school.

If you haven't started reading the Wayward Children books, Be Sure is such a great way to start! Here are some of my non-spoiler thoughts on the books included in Be Sure:

Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway is a perfect introduction to this universe and what it's like to be a wayward kid who has gone through a portal to another world and forced to come back to the life they left behind. I love the magnitude of what Every Heart a Doorway spells out for these characters. There's an imaginative quality to Every Heart a Doorway, but it's also horror adjacent and should appeal to a wide range of genre readers.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Down Among the Sticks and Bones tells the backstory of two characters we meet in Every Heart a Doorway. Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a dark story in the dark world of the Moors, but the true beauty of Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the portrayal of gender roles. It's so heartbreakingly relatable.

Beneath the Sugar Sky

In Beneath the Sugar Sky we meet a brand-new character and head into a brand-new world, but we start our adventure at the school for Wayward Children with characters we already know and a problem we are sort of already familiar with. While there is still darkness in this volume, Beneath the Sugar Sky shows us just how different these worlds can be.

5/5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Book Den (@bookdenjen)

Review | In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune

Source: review copy provided by publisher. This is a review of my reading experience.

In the Lives of Puppets is the latest fantasy novel from T.J. Klune.

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots--fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They're a family, hidden and safe.

The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled "HAP," he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio's former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic's assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?

Author TJ Klune invites you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts.

My three star rating for In the Lives of Puppets hurts a bit. This really is a wonderful book, but my overall feelings land me somewhere in the middle.

I'll start off with some of the great things about In the Lives of Puppets. I love T.J. Klune's writing, and I love his messages on hope and kindness and just seeing the world through a Klune lens. In the Lives of Puppets reminded me of the Rampart trilogy (Book of Koli) by M.R. Carey in many ways. They are both about humanity, the destruction of humanity, Artificial Intelligence, and the world after AI. I loved and cared for the characters in In the Lives of Puppets - both human and AI. The world Klune created was fascinating, and I was in love with the first half of the book.

Now for the parts that didn't work as well for me. At the halfway part, In the Lives of Puppets went the way of Fairy Tale by Stephen King. To this day, I still haven't finished reading Fairy Tale. I have such a hard time reorienting myself when there is a complete change of setting and plot. It really bogs the book down and makes it a slog for me. I did eventually get 100% reinvested, but then I had to suffer my least favorite trope of all tropes. So this was a mixed reading experience for me.

Even when In the Lives of Puppets wasn't working for me, the beauty of it all was still there. I can see why people are head over heels for this story. I loved these characters. I won't forget any of them. I also loved Klune's thoughts on AI. There were just too many times I felt like I was having to push through.

⭐⭐⭐★★

3/5 stars

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Reads Books (@bookdenjen)

Review | The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is the first book in a new fantasy series from Shannon Chakraborty (S.A. Chakraborty). 

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power… and the price might be your very soul.

Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

10⭐ out of 5.

The reason I most wanted to read The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is because it's a pirate book written by a woman. I had expectations going in, and it far surpassed every single one of them. It checked boxes that I didn't even realize I had.

Amina Al-Sirafi is a retired pirate in her 40s. She's a mother and she's living peacefully with her family after having left the pirating world behind her, but she gets an offer that pulls her back into that world for one last adventure (or so it would seem).

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi had everything for me from plot to adventure to imagination to characters to relationships... It was so skillfully crafted, and I loved every minute of it from the first word to the last. I hadn't savored a book that slowly in so long. I went several days without reading at all because I didn't want it to end.

I haven't read the Daevabad trilogy by Chakraborty yet. I love so much that she has shifted from S.A. Chakraborty to Shannon Chakraborty with The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi. I feel like this is a choice, and I support it so hard.

Thankfully The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is not Amina's last adventure. This was such an incredible start to a series, and I cannot wait for the rest. It's set up to be longer than a trilogy so fingers crossed we get several more books. This is now my most anticipated on-going series that will trump all other releases.

I recommend this book for everyone. You don't need to be a pirate-loving, treasure-seeking reader like me to fall for Amina, her crew, or this world. It is such a wonderful book, and I truly can't sing it's praises enough. Hit up your library, order you a copy, and please let me know once you've read it so we can wait in anticipation together for the next one!

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Reads Books (@bookdenjen)

Review copy provided by publisher

Review | Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House is the first book in the Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo.

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

Reread review! I'm so glad I reread Ninth House. It's been a few years since I read it, and with the release of Hell Bent, I wanted to remember why I was so anxious for the next book in the series. It was definitely a successful reread.

There's a lot going on in Ninth House, and it should appeal to a wide range of readers. There's horror, fantasy, dark academia, ghosts, mystery... This is a huge plus for me, but I can see why this is a negative for some people. It's a lot, and there's a lot to take in. Ninth House definitely builds up over the course of the book, but I enjoyed all of it.

Do seek out trigger warnings, though.

Ninth House is still the only book I've read by Leigh Bardugo. I have a copy of Hell Bent that I will be reading in the very near future.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can read my original review of Ninth House here! 

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Reads Books (@bookdenjen)

Review | Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the second book in the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire.

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

I didn't write a review the first time I read Down Among the Sticks and Bones, and I'm having the same struggle after rereading it. It's hard to put into words the things that Seanan McGuire is able to capture in the Wayward Children series.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones tells the story of Jacqueline and Jillian, twins who eventually find their doorway to the Moors after being born from horrible, self-serving parents and raised by their grandmother. We first meet Jack and Jill in Every Heart a Doorway (book #1 of the series), and Down Among the Sticks and Bones is their backstory.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a dark story in the dark world of the Moors, but the true beauty of Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the portrayal of gender roles. It's so heartbreakingly relatable. If you aren't reading this series, I really can't recommend it enough.

4/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐★ 

Update: Turns out I did post some quick thoughts here after reading it the first time.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Reads Books (@bookdenjen)

Review | Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi is a cross-genre novel by Susanna Clarke.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

What a strange and wonderful book.

How do I even review Piranesi? This is 100% a book that is best to go into blind. I'm so glad I chose to avoid reviews for this one so I'm going to keep my review vague and avoid talking about the details of Piranesi.

I do want to mention if you decide to try Piranesi, don't put it down. I would actually recommend reading it in as few sittings as possible, but I mean don't DNF it. For most of Piranesi I had no idea what was going on and I assumed I wouldn't care about the characters that I was struggling to get to know, but I was wrong. I wound up loving the characters and loving Piranesi. This strange little book has turned out to be one of my favorite books of the year.

I wondered throughout reading Piranesi who I would even recommend it to if I wound up loving it, but now that I've finished reading it, I would recommend it to anyone willing to take a chance on a unique story. If you love finding a reading experience unlike anything you've read before, you should definitely consider picking up Piranesi.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Reads Books (@bookdenjen)

Review | Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Every Heart a Doorway is the first book in the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire.

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.

This reread is so heartbreaking. Having now read 6 more books in this series and coming back to the beginning - I think it hits even harder reading about these wayward children who have been forced to return "home". I get it now that no matter where they went through their portal doorway - a nice place, a dark place, a nonsense place, that was home.

I went back and read my original review for this and for some reason I focused on how weird this series would get according to reviews. It definitely does get strange, but it's wonderful and quite often heartbreaking.

I don't know if it's the end of the year or my lack of focus, but I've been in full reread mode. This is the perfect time for me to make my way back through this series. I think I will enjoy book 7 and the new book coming out in January much more revisiting the previous books in this series. I want to reacquaint myself with all of the characters we've met along the way.

Every Heart a Doorway is a perfect introduction to this universe and what it's like to be a wayward kid who has gone through a portal to another world and forced to come back to the life they left behind. These children struggle to cope and often wind up at the school for wayward children which is where Every Heart a Doorway is set.

In each book after Every Heart a Doorway, we get to follow someone through a doorway to another world (with the occasional return to school). This is one of my favorite series, and I look forward to a new release every year. You could probably jump into most books of series without starting at the beginning, but I love the magnitude of what Every Heart a Doorway spells out for these characters and the expectations that are set for these children ever finding their doorway again.

I'm awful at classifying genres so I've always thought of these books strictly as fantasy, but I can see why these also make it onto horror lists. Every Heart a Doorway is certainly horror adjacent and should appeal to a wide range of genre readers.

I feel like you will know if this is a series that sounds right for you. As for me, I love it and I hope it lasts forever.

 

4/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐★

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Reads Books (@bookdenjen)

Review | Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune - Review

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Under the Whispering Door is a fantasy novel by T.J. Klune.

Welcome to Charon's Crossing.
The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.

And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.

I've had T.J. Klune's books on my wish list for a while now. Thankfully, Under the Whispering Door was my local book club's pick for October. I went into Under the Whispering Door expecting a much lighter and more heartwarming (throughout) read. I wound up really enjoying Under the Whispering Door, but it was more focused on death and grief than I was expecting.

I enjoyed Under the Whispering Door a lot more than the other members of my book club. I feel like I need to point out the fact that there is no explanation for the way the magic works in Under the Whispering Door. This did not bother me in the slightest. I don't need rules for my fantasy, and I don't need explanations of how the magic works. No one understands how the afterlife works, right? But if you are the type of reader who needs rules for your fantasies and you want to know why things are the way they are and how things work the way they work, Under the Whispering Door might not work as well for you as it did for me.

In the end, Under the Whispering Door turned out to be as much of a romance as it is a fantasy. I think I really needed this type of read right now.

As I mentioned, there is a lot of death and grief and mentions of suicide in Under the Whispering Door so be prepared for that, but everything in Under the Whispering Door is handled with care. This is the first book I have read by T.J. Klune, and I would really love to go back and read The House in the Cerulean Sea.

One thing I have noticed in feel-good fantasies is there is a lot of tea, and I am here for that. I want feel-good fantasies, warm tea, found friends, love, kindness, and happy endings please. (These are all things you will find in Under the Whispering Door.)

If you are a fan of Becky Chambers or Travis Baldree, you might want to check out T.J. Klune's books as well.

 

4/5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐★

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen 📚 Reads Books (@bookdenjen)