Time to do an unboxing for October’s Illumicrate. As you know I was part of the blog tour for Angel Mage, so this book was no surprise to me, however the red edges were and the rest of the items. So let’s unbox starting from the book and going clockwise:
Angel Mage by Garth Nix. This book is like the 3 musketeers became very magical religious. I liked it a lot more than I expected to.
Shatter Me Magnetic bookmark set. I am not really keep on magnetic bookmarks, as they either break from the top joint or I have damaged pages trying to take them off, they are cute but won’t be keeping them.
Dreamers Pouch. I tend to like pouches specially if they are sturdy and nicely sized for travelling or taking some kind of supplies (I have one that came in a book box I use for my “quick drawing” supplies for example).
Theme booklet.
Abhorsen Bells Pin. This is fully inspired by the book, and I loved it. I had been looking into getting one of those pins to hold blankets/shawls/thingies together that look pretty and then I got the box and it was awesome!
Villains character card set, which I loved and quickly started describing each character (they are from Vengeful and Vicious by V. E. Schwab) to my colleagues when I unboxed it.
A tea tin, another unusual item and I have already filled it up with tea bags (but I also use them for loose leaf tea) Loved it.
I also somehow skipped the metallic magnetic coin which this time was Aelin, but not bothered by it.
All in all, it was a quirky box with two out of the ordinary items I really enjoyed, which made it nice rather than just okay. Can’t wait for this month’s box!
Do you know how unicorns got their horns? It all began once upon a magic forest, when a little girl called June discovered tiny horses learning how to fly in her garden. But one of the poor horses couldn’t fly at all! So, with the help of her parents, June thought of a very sweet and very delicious way to make her new friend happy. I wonder what it could have been…
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When June discovers a bunch of cute tiny horses trying to learn to fly and then there is one that can’t, she tries her best ot help the little horse fly. And so goes this heartwarming story.
The artwork was perfect and I love it because it is very cute, the colour palette was perfect for this and not just too bright but lovely. I want a tiny horse that flies.
I also liked the fact that June’s parents aren’t absent but they actually help her try things to help the little horse. And the fact her clumsiness kind fixes this and of course that there is ice cream was fun.
I had never thought of the origin of unicorns this way and it was super cute, mad eme smile and just want my own little mini unicorn/flying horse and a cone of ice cream and just to go sit under a tree and read and enjoy life (I know, a bit random).
Lovely book about not giving up, good for reading out loud and for just showing pictures, it’s just super lovely.
Catherine Helstone’s brother, Laon, has disappeared in Arcadia, legendary land of the magical fae. Desperate for news of him, she makes the perilous journey, but once there, she finds herself alone and isolated in the sinister house of Gethsemane. At last there comes news: her beloved brother is riding to be reunited with her soon – but the Queen of the Fae and her insane court are hard on his heels.
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Under the Pendulum Sun was a trip. One crazy interesting trip of a read. Catherine Helstone has managed to figure out how to get to Arcadia, the land of fae where her brother is a missionary and who seems to have gone misisng, not responding to her letters.
Once she arrives there, things aren’t exactly how she expected them to be, and despite most of the story happening in a single place (Laon’s house, Gethsemane, which was the house of the previous missionary that came to Arcadia) and the whole story is carried by Catherine, some of it by Laon and by other of the characters that make it (the main cast is limited, as in it isn’t a big cast).
There is a lot of fairy in this and I don’t mean the cute Tinkerbell style, but the cunning truth and lies and negotiating fae that are Irish and old time tales than the ones that just grant wishes. Faeries here have fangs and won’t think twice before using them on you. One of the details I really enjoyed was the fact that you have to salt any food you receive (sweet or savoury) while there, from a special salt shaker. This tiny “plot” thread was a thing in itself and it is a recurring thread throughout the story.
Actually, the whole story is like a tapestry, woven out of many small plot threads making up the background, the details of the main plot (Catherine meeting Laon and the Queen of Fae visiting them and trying to negotiate with her). At first, all you see is the main picture and lots of small threads around it that are there and don’t seem to do much except be there and then as the story progresses, every thread seems to have become part of the whole.
This book is heavy on pondering religion, and the story of creation and where Fae come from. Most of the elements in the story are not new and therefore, having read many stories with one or many of those elements before meant I had a lot of background and could get extra nuance with some fo the actions or parts of the story.
Moments where I thought “oh, I think this may be where we are going because I remember that the story for this goes that way and it is in the nature of x to do y”. And it wasn’t that it was utterly predictable but more that despite knowing some of what could happen it was still a full tale and story.
One of the nuances that kept giving me what I call food for thought was the focus on religion. Catherine, Laon and some of the other characters each have a view of the same core religion and as the story moves on, they either affirm those beliefs or start questioning or morphing them into dissonance to try to match them with truth and reality. God, so many places I stopped and thought “yes, I know exactly what is being dissected here and I could add some more dissecting of my own to this”.
I didn’t want to put the book down and even though I don’t think I’d like to live in Arcadia this was a very interesting and fascinating tale. Highly recommended if you liek fairy tales sprinkled with philosophy and lots of nuance.
Nature is out of balance in the human world. The sun hasn’t shone in years, and crops are failing. Worse yet, strange and hostile creatures have begun to appear. The people’s survival hangs in the balance.
To solve the crisis, the oracle stones are cast, and Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. Taisin is a sage, thrumming with magic, and Kaede is of the earth, without a speck of the otherworldly. And yet the two girls’ destinies are drawn together during the mission. As members of their party succumb to unearthly attacks and fairy tricks, the two come to rely on each other and even begin to fall in love. But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever.
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This was on my wishlist and then Aliette mentioned it and it was bumped up so I bought for myself.
It was a quick read, the kind of book that for me is a relaxed book. It is a quest, a story about fairies, about identity, and love.
Reaidng Huntress, it was easy to follow the story, it is relatively quite quick paced and doesn’t really stop to explain everything to the reader but just a moving along. It was interesting to read and I liked that it made me just enjoy the fantasy in it. I didn’t feel like I had to think too much or that it was challenging my brain and ideas a lot, but it also wasn’t a boring book. It was entertaining and fulfilling.
The thing I kinda felt the most about was that the ending came too quickly, too fast and I felt like there could have been more of it, more of what happened and more of what the consequences of what they had done where and how that reflected on their world. But otherwise it was a fun relaxed read that I felt good to read.
The Chinese influences gave it an extra layer and it was just a nice world to come to (I haven’t read Ash so this to me was a new world to come into). And it was the relationship between Kaede and Taisin I found intriguing as it had a lot of things to work through from both of them to get to the point ti does in the end and that was nice to read from both points of view on how each was moving through their perceptions and then their feelings.
A timeless exploration of high-stakes romance, self-discovery, and the lengths we go to love and be loved.
Sixteen-year-old Zarin Wadia is many things: a bright and vivacious student, an orphan, a risk taker. She’s also the kind of girl that parents warn their kids to stay away from: a troublemaker whose many romances are the subject of endless gossip at school. You don’t want to get involved with a girl like that, they say. So how is it that eighteen-year-old Porus Dumasia has only ever had eyes for her? And how did Zarin and Porus end up dead in a car together, crashed on the side of a highway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? When the religious police arrive on the scene, everything everyone thought they knew about Zarin is questioned. And as her story is pieced together, told through multiple perspectives, it becomes clear that she was far more than just a girl like that.
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I can’t remember the exact reason why this book caught my eye but it had been a preorder that ended up in my too big pending to be read book list. And I felt like reading it and wow.
A Girl Like That packs a punch and a half. Seriously, this was a very powerful read.
We start with Zarin and Porius hovering over the car accident that has cost them their lives. I’ve only really ever seen this type of narrative of the spirit/soul witnessing something happening or that happened to their body and helping with the narrative work well once (in Gayle Foreman’s books) but it works here too.
That first chapter of the accident and the scene and just setting up the key players and our main cast of zarin and Porus gives you a glimpse into them and who they are. We then get a few points of view telling us how they either see Zarin, why they see her that way, or of Zarin or Porus telling us about hoe they came to be in the car that night.
For a very long time I had a theory about the car accident and kinda didn’t want to be right, and I weasn’t, which made this even better. Anyway, it is interesting to see Zarin trying hard to make herself be what she needs to be, but at the same time rebelling and wanting to be herself, to not ahve to hide so many things. She finds that letting others have an opinion of her gives her space to breathe, they are already judging her, so it means they pry less, they assume more and she has a little bit more freedom.
Because even though they say she is a girl like that, the kind mothers tell you to avoid being, the kind boys talk about; there’s is way more to Zarin than just being a pretty girl that goes out with boys despite the fact that they shouldn’t. And Porus can see somehow beyond that.
The relationship between Porus and Zarin was an interesting part to see develop and how it was developing from each side, there were points when I wanted to just grab them and go “now kiss” and times when I just wanted them to go on their own path or felt bad for one or both of them. I had so many feelings going on while reading this.
It explores a lot how subtle power can be, as the form of gossip and knowledge, as a way of knowing you are attractive and using that as power to get things you wouldnt otherwise, as reputation, and sometimes how manipulation can be power. It also poises the fact that men have more power in a society like that and what can entail. There is a lot of questioning why choices are made and what the consequences may be.
I enjoyed this book a lot, learned a lot from it and it made me question things a little more. I do recommend reading and expect some intense moments throughout the book, this isn’t a soft book but a gritty book about abuse, about reputation, about love, about friendship and beliefs.
Five friends cursed. Five deadly fates. Five nights of retribución.
If Lupe Dávila and Javier Utierre can survive each other’s company, together they can solve a series of grisly murders sweeping though Puerto Rico. But the clues lead them out of the real world and into the realm of myths and legends. And if they want to catch the killer, they’ll have to step into the shadows to see what’s lurking there—murderer, or monster?
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This book was provided to me for free from the publisher, and the hopes I’d review it. And of course I did because it is a book about Puerto Rico and el Cuco (I know it as el Coco).
The story has many points of view due to telling us the story from each of the five friends, plus Lupe’s view and a few others that add to the whole what is going on.
We start with a murder and even though you’re reading about it, you’re not entirely sure who did it. I kinda knew but was more interested in the why that person, why there and then, and everything.
After that we meet Lupe who has been acting as her own keeper and is a big too full on (I never really got on with her, she had too much of a white saviour complex at the same time as having a “but I am from here too, therefore I must find my place”). Lupe knows how to get her way and is angry at her dad but happy she has some extra freedom and takes her chances to try to come to the crime scene and meet her uncle who is part of the police force in the area.
We also meet Javier, who is a friend of the victim and who is finding this confusing. Lupe puts her detective hat on immediately as she has watched it all in TV and of course has to solve the mystery (thankfully she gets a bit of reality slapping her in the face and that it is never like the TV shows say).
All throughout the book Lupe manages to clash or endear herself with people (which causes more clashes) but somehow everything ties up relatively nicely in the end. On the other hand Javier is on a race against time to find out why someone or something is murdering his friends and wondering if he will be next.
The book not only deals with the theme of identity (for all characters there is a lot of “how do I fit here” and “this is/isn’t my place”, as well as trying to coem to terms with choices made in the past), but with drugs and becoming part of that world (the good, the bad, the ugly) and how it affects those around you. And mostly it is about consequences and retribution on what you have done, on being responsible or paying for the things done.
The pacing was a mix of fast and good and sometimes a bit too slow and sometimes a bit too fast that you felt like you had lost part of the story in it. And this isn’t a “the murders were fast” but more of a “we take ages for 24 hours” and then bam everything happens in the next 2-3 hours and it’s weird. Which is why this didn’t make it to four foxes.
As for world setting, this was well done and very rich (or as rich as can be without going too far into detail).
TL;DR A spooky paranormal Puerto Rican story about friendship, identity, retribution, choices and consequences. Worth reading.
WATCH OUT! There’s a jam thief about! Have you ever bitten into a jammy doughnut and thought – This needs more jam? Imagine Sam’s horror when he discovers that his favourite treat has been SUCKED DRY! Who did it?!
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This caught my eye while browsing other illustrated books and bought myself a copy.
The artwork is cute and fitting and the jampires are very sweet. Could totally see them as a plush toy or something with their little jam doughnut on the side, all puffy and soft.
We meet Sam wanting a jam doughnut but it doesn’t have any jam inside! (I’d be so disappointed, jam doughnuts without jam are sad ones.) So he sets off to try to find out what happened and why is the jam disappearing.
Sam sets a trap with some doughnuts filled with ketchup and traps the Jampires, who then take him Sam to their world.
This was a cute read and gosh, it made me very hungry so I had to go buy some jam doughnuts afterwards. I’d say this is the kind of book to read with a treat. Buy some jam doughnuts (make sure the Jampires haven’t gotten to them or do while you read), cuddle with the kiddos or just on your own, and read while enjoying the doughnut. Delicious!
Fantastic theme and I knew immediately which book it’d be and was excited for the box because I seriously enjoyed it a lot, so let’s unbox starting from the top left corner and going clockwise:
Theme card, very wild West like.
Underneath a Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets tea towel which I loved because it has a huge moon and is really beautiful art.
Favour stickers, it is book related and I instantly knew what they were and thought it was awesome.
Two promotional bookmarks.
Chocolate “Pixie Dust” covered pretzels. I don’t eat a lot of chocolate, so I had one but the rest were scoffed by my husband. He first was like “what is this, meh, funny pretzels” and then was like “need more, delicious!”
Desert sticky “bookmarks”, made my work colleagues smile and me too. I found it amusing.
Verify promotional postcard, intriguing book indeed.
The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis. I enjoyed it a lot and reviewed it here.
A Bookish Rebel mason jar, I was just sad it didn’t come with a lid but still, liked this.
All in all strong box and had lots of great items, probably the only thing I wasn’t crazy about was the promoitonal stuff, which to be fair is nothing bad at all or anything to complain about. Also the cover for Good Luck Girls is like someone poured liquid gold on it and wow. Absolutely stunning! Really blew me away.
Moon and Me: The Little Seed by Andrew Davenport. Illustrated by Mariko Umeda
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This book was gifted to me by the publisher, because we both liked the idea of having “Moon”(me) talk about it. All opinions are my own.
It is a super cute little book, and sturdy. Plus it is very blue, all the tones of blue and it has shiny silver on the title (I am easily satisfied sometimes)
Inside it includes a series of read out loud friendly, that can be read doing voices (I kinda did the voices in my head as I read). They are centered around sleep and friendship. Obviously they feature a little seed that will grow, and all the friends contributing something.
And of course, Moon and Moon baby which was cute to find. I just found this book to be a good bed time story. The book can be read all in one go (for older children) or in small chunks that appear as mini chapters/stories (for younger children).
Artwork is cute and colourful but not crazy bright, just a lot of blue tones and a sense of happy feelings in it. Very cute, and the moon is so pretty!
My favourite page!
A story is always a good idea (or at the very least almost always). Moon recommends stories to soothe souls, encourage little ones to sleep or just make you feel good as an adult when you read a cute book.
The three meet here, at Cheshire Crossing–a boarding school where girls like them learn how to cope with their supernatural experiences and harness their magical world-crossing powers.
But the trio–now teenagers, who’ve had their fill of meddling authority figures–aren’t content to sit still in a classroom. Soon they’re dashing from one universe to the next, leaving havoc in their wake–and, inadvertently, bringing the Wicked Witch and Hook together in a deadly supervillain love match.
To stop them, the girls will have to draw on all of their powers . . . and marshal a team of unlikely allies from across the magical multiverse.
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I was intrigued by the fact that this was written by Andy Weir, and then it is illustrated by sarah Andersen, so I bought it and decided to plunge in. Review are mixed so I went in carefully.
For starters, it is a graphic novel and it appears to be directed to younger teens. Alice, Dorothy and Wendy have been “dumped” into this boarding school due to their odd behaviours. They have been labeled many things, so it is is a slightly refreshing take to find that this school is more lenient even if it involves a “nanny” that is on the ball.
The Alice of this book reminded me a lot of the Alice in American McGees games. She is dark and Wonderland is a friend and foe, all in her head in a way. Wendy and Dorothy are a lot less familiar to me, not that I haven’t read the books but rather I have less fondness for a “beyond the original story” version of them.
However, they didn’t seem too out of character, just a “now what do we do with ourselves?”. There’s a lot of shenanigans and Alice definitely doesn’t help much make it easier, but regardless, I found it a relatively easy read.
If you haven’t read the stories behind the three girls, then you miss a lot of the “nuance” of the story, which adds references to their original stories over and over (the red poppy field from Oz, the melting “witches”, all of Neverland, Tinkerbell, Cheshire cat, etc) I don’t want to say all of them as some are subtle and some not so much, and I enjoyed the subtle ones.
At some point I read The Martian but that’s all I remember and so I didn’t have expectations exactly for this book. I think this helped me enjoy it more, it is a simple tale in that it jumps, does a lot of plot holes and continuity but it is all about the fun, the adventure and adding as much as possible into it as I think there wasn’t really a “sure, there will be more” but more of a “one and if we’re super ultra lucky, more?”
Still, it is enjoyable, fun references. Quick read of a graphic novel and probably ticks a lot of boxes for readathons.
