Book review: Fearsome Dreamer by Laure Eve.

In the remote country of Angle Tar, apprentice hedgewitch Vela Rue has had strange dreams all her life: mysterious and incredibly real. Then she learns that her dreams mean something more - and that her government will do anything to nurture her talent. Embarking on her clandestine training, she meets the enigmatic White, who has been forced to flee his own unforgiving country to the safer realm of Angle Tar. White is seen as a prodigy - perhaps even the ultimate weapon the government have been waiting for. But the electric attraction between Rue and White may spell disaster... or change everything.
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From the very beginning of Fearsome Dreamer Laure Eve brings the reader into a rich and intriguing fantasy world. Angle Tar, where most of this book takes place, is an alternate universe version of the UK with little to no technology, where people who live in the countryside are treated not by doctors but by hedgewitches. On the other side of the ocean is World, a conglomeration of countries that is so technologically advanced that people there have become dependant on a virtual reality system called Life.

Laure Eve's world building is fantastic and as I was reading I found myself fully immersed in the world that Rue and White inhabit and intrigued by the special Talent that they possess. There isn't a lot of action in Fearsome Dreamer and the story line isn't quite as defined as it might have been, but Eve's writing style more than made up for that. The reader is dropped straight into White and Rue's respective lives at the start of the novel and those characters and the world they inhabit are the driving force of the story.

There were many great aspects of Fearsome Dreamer, including the mysterious Talent, the fantastic world building, and the interesting characters, but I don't think I quite believed Rue and White's love story. There are moments where we see Rue and White falling for each other, yes, but on the whole I felt more as though I was being told that they were falling in love, rather than shown it. And the whole thing seemed to escalate very quickly toward the end of the book. An ending that left such a cliff hanger I ordered the sequel immediately after finishing the last chapter.

Despite it's faults I would still recommend Fearsome Dreamer for the fascinating world that Eve has created and because Rue is such a great character and I will definitely be reviewing its sequel, The Illusionists, soon.

3/5 stars.

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Book review: Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater.

There is danger in dreaming. But there is even more danger in waking up.

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.
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Blue Lily, Lily Blue is the third in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Boys trilogy, which follows the story of Blue Sargent and the Raven Boys on their search for the ancient Welsh king Glendower.

I loved the first two books in the series, The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves, and I can't recommend the series enough. Maggie Stiefvater's writing style is so immersive I always feel like I can't read her books quick enough and she writes teenagers who really act and sound like teenagers, which is always a plus in YA. I enjoyed Blue Lily, Lily Blue because of Stiefvater's style, because of the characters, because of the world, but honestly I felt like not much really happened. I mean, of course things happened, but I spent pretty much the whole book waiting for something big to happen. Waiting for the story to really start.

There are new characters who don't really do anything and a plan that never actually takes place and even the things that did happen didn't really make as much of an impact as the events of the first two books. But this is a Raven Boys book so I did really enjoy it and I would still absolutely recommend the series, even if you aren't normally a fan of fantasy.

One thing Blue Lily, Lily Blue did do fantastically well was to set up the story for the next book in the series and I can't wait to read that one.

3/5 stars

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Book review: Love in the Gilded Age by Saruuh Kelsey.

Once in a hidden queendom...

There is an ocean: In the infinite distance, between one hidden world and the next, is an unmeasurable expanse of twenty seas. One sprawling edge of the world to another is filled with waters as beautiful as they are deadly, as miraculous as they are fraught. Treasure and treachery litter their ocean beds, sleeping side by side with adventurers whose travels ended abruptly, lives caught and held under a wave until all breaths fled.

There is a land: Tucked into a corner where four oceans fold together, land rises up illustrious in a jagged slash of mountains and forests, with secrets and wonders as plentiful as any water.

There are chronicles: Not of the twenty savage seas but of the fissure of land and the people who sigh life into it.
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Love in the Gilded Age is the first collection of stories in a series called The Fissure Chronicles, of stories which all take place in the same universe. The stories are all based on classic fairy tales and in this first collection we have; 'Love in the Gilded Age', based on 'Rumpelstiltskin'; 'Xanna', based on 'Little Red Cap'; and 'A Fortress of Thorns', based on 'Brier Rose'.

Each of the three stories takes the source material and turns it on its head. The stories all stray from their original fairy tales but they also all contain enough of those fairy tales to be recognisable. 'Love in the Gilded Age', for example, tells the story of a girl who must spin straw into gold for a king who keeps her locked in a tower, however this is pretty much where the similarities to 'Rumpelstiltskin' end. She does promise her first born child to someone but there's a very clever twist to that promise that I won't spoil for you.

All three of these stories are about young heroines who must save themselves, someone, or something else and although they all need help from time to time that is never portrayed as a weakness. They all remain the heroes of their own stories. The stories also feature characters with disabilities, characters of colour, and LGBTQ characters, which is a lot more diversity than you'll find in most YA books right now.

These stories are all really interesting and unique takes on some of the most famous fairy tales. They're all entertaining and full of adventure and I can't wait to read the next collection!

5/5 stars

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