Fantasy Books

 

Love is Sweet (2020)

36 episodes

Synopsis from MyDramaList

Jiang Jun is a girl who is allergic to tears and has a double degree in economics and psychology. She is unrestrained and idealistic due to her family's superior background. After graduation, she worked in a philanthropy organization where she pursues her dreams. However, her father's sudden accident leaves her in a dilemma. Eventually, she decides to work in a top investment company to fulfill her father's dying wish.

In MH, Jiang Jun meets her childhood playmate, Yuan Shu Ai. However, the current Yuan Shuai is no longer her gentle protector, but her rival. In MH, where the "culture of wolf instinct" is rampant, someone is plotting against Jiang Jun while someone sees her as an eyesore. However with her kind nature and attention to detail, along with her high EQ and sense of judgment, Jiang Jun eventually attains success in both her career and love life.

(Source: DramaWiki)

~~ Adapted from the novel of the same name by Qi Zi

7.5/10

* * *

This was so much fun to watch! Coming off from a very angsty Till The End of The Moon drama with the same actors, Luo Yunxi and Bai Lu I've seen Love is Sweet mentioned a few times as their previous collaboration, so I thought I'll check this one out.

Love is Sweet is light and fluffy and full of tropes. School crush? Check. Unnecessary love triangle? Check. Second couple who no one particularly cares about? Check. Logical inconsistencies in character to create plot twists? Check.

And yet, Lou Yunxi and Bai Lu are fun to watch. They truly managed to recreate the ease of childhood friends coming back together. They have sassy, childish banter, constant goading of each other and good-natured cattiness. And it's all delightful. 

Yuan Shuai has known Jiang Jun since middle school and used to look after her because she was a cry baby and had unfortunate allergic reaction to tears, so he used to get paid by her dad to protect her, but in his mind his protection consisted of strengthening her character so he ended up constantly pressuring her into challenging situations to toughen her up, which in the end made her resent him so much that she transferred into another school. At the same time his parents sent him to study abroad and they completely lost touch.

Ten years after graduation they meet again. Unexpectedly, she is applying for a job in the investment banking firm where he works, and quite successfully too. At the last stage he kicks her out, convinced that this job is too tough for her, and in a typical mansplaining fashion tries to arrange a job for her which should be more suitable and less stressful. Jiang Jun has her own important reasons to get into his form, so she manages to get through anyway, and he is forced to become her boss.

What he doesn't realise is that the girl he used to protect, grew up and did toughen up. She is clever, methodical and resourceful, so his machinations are not taking kindly. Luckily, he is a very smart guy himself, so he adjusts to new realities and start working together with her and very successfully at that. It's really funny that at work he is this cold, ruthless businessman, but he is pretty defenseless against the girl he had a secret crush on in school as she brings to the surface his most childish parts. He basically turns into a boy grabbing his love's pigtails to grab her attention. They are pretty adorable in their interactions.

There are minor irritations here, like Jiang Jun's naiveté in the beginning, the inconsistent character of the third wheel in the relationship, Du Lei, who was wildly swinging from the villain to a good guy depending on script demands, and of course the second couple who acts as a filler and fades into background. You could easily cut 10 episodes out and still have a lovely story. Overall, though, it's relaxing and cute, and I definitely recommend it to all lovers of contemporary romance genre. 

 

From the BLURB: 

Part coming-out story.

Part falling-in-love story.

Part falling-apart story.

Harvey's dads are splitting up. It's been on the cards for a while, but it's still sudden. Woken-by-his-father-to-catch-a-red-eye sudden. Now he's restarting his life in a new city, living above a cafe with the extended Greek family he barely knows.

Sotiris is a rising star. At seventeen, he's already achieved his dream of publishing a novel. When his career falters, a cute, wise-cracking bookseller named Jem upends his world.

Harvey and Sotiris's stories converge on the same street in Darlinghurst, in this beautifully heartfelt novel about how our dreams shape us, and what they cost us.

The sun sets on a bonfire in Leichhardt.

Back from Brisbane Writers Festival, and I finally sent something off that was overdue - which means my brain had been freed up to treat myself to some books I’ve been hoarding and *desperate* to read.

Top of that pile was Will Kostakis’ new #LoveOzYA from Allen & Unwin - ‘We Could Be Something’

Now, before I can give my opinion you need to know that Will Kostakis got his first book-deal before he graduated high school, and his debut ‘Loathing Lola’ released when he was 19.

Now do you get it?

Never mind that I know and greatly respect Will - I was a fan first, but now I know him as an artist and friend too - and part of me wondered if my knowing how much this story is drawing on his own experiences would cloud my reading?

Never fear.

Because this book *walloped* me in the best ways. Humour and heart that I already knew Will could do, but a reckoning and sharing on the page that’s so generous and tender from him as an artist.

He really is grappling with voice here, amongst these characters - how they’re finding theirs, when Will’s as author has never been clearer, is pretty spectacular … he’s touching on some complex and wrought discussions about young people breaking away and finding out who they are, how they tear off pieces of themselves to give to other people - and what do they keep or hide for (and from) themselves. There’s a lot happening and all of it is brilliant and feels like a levelling-up in YA, particularly Aussie queer lit for teens. I don't want to give anything away; but I think Will Kostakis is giving people what they *think* they want from Queer YA, and then in the most loving way he's saying "actually, this is what we need." He's pulling it into a new era, and I agree.

No wonder this book has been heralded as a clear front-runner for the sweep of awards that’s sure to come. And I must say - I agree.

Not to mention - the writing within is just … *gorgeous*. It’s a voice cut to the bone, with such clarity that sighs and sings on the page. In particular (because I’m a sucker for them!) some of his opening and closing chapter lines - particularly those setting location - were just stunning!

It’s the kind of writing that feels effortless, but has clearly been honed and carefully considered so you don’t notice the effort. That’s hard to do. Will’s slam-dunked it here.

The whole thing just delighted me. I KNEW it would be good, but this? Was *exceptionally* good.

5/5

I abandon my cup. I leave a bonfire in Leichhardt.

 

Damsel by Elana K. Arnold

bought on Audible

Synopsis from Goodreads

The rite has existed for as long as anyone can remember: when the prince-who-will-be-king comes of age, he must venture out into the gray lands, slay a fierce dragon, and rescue a damsel to be his bride. This is the way things have always been.

When Ama wakes in the arms of Prince Emory, however, she knows none of this. She has no memory of what came before she was captured by the dragon, or what horrors she has faced in its lair. She knows only this handsome prince, the story he tells of her rescue, and her destiny to sit on the throne beside him. Ama comes with Emory back to the kingdom of Harding, hailed as the new princess, welcomed to the court.

However, as soon as her first night falls, she begins to realize that not all is as it seems, that there is more to the legends of the dragons and the damsels than anyone knows–and that the greatest threats to her life may not be behind her, but here, in front of her.

* * *

8.5/10

Please, imagine my standing ovation for the ending. So satisfactory!

It's an unusual listen but beautiful and fierce.

Long story short, I saw a good review for the book with the same name which also had dragons in it with a movie happening soon based on it. So, I went to look it up on Goodreads, was not impressed by the other reviews and saw that there is another Damsel. With a darker, more whimsical plot. Yeah, dear reader, I was sold on this one instead.

Ama is a damsel rescued from a dragon's lair by a prince and destined to be his queen.

Nevermind, that damsel does not remember her past life and has to believe what the Prince is telling her. Never mind his cloying, mansplaining attention, and the condescension, my god, ladies! He made me fume.

The reader guesses correctly about the damsel's origins pretty early in the book, and all that's left is rooting for her to break through her awful environment, her destiny as a vessel to a royal child and the suffocating existence in the castle.

What sells this book is that it's very atmospheric. It shows you the monotony of Ama' s new life and how it leeches her vibrancy day by day.

So, when she finally snaps out of it and fights back, it feels so damn good! I was screaming at the end. The ending was everything I wished for, and that's probably was the whole point. *smirks*

It's a very quick listen, moody and almost surreal, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. It's an adult read with some abusive behaviours described, but it felt like an important and inspiring read to me. Much recommended.

 

From the BLURB: 

Set in an incarceration camp where the United States cruelly detained Japanese Americans during WWII and based on true events, this moving love story finds hope in heartbreak. 

To fall in love is already a gift. But to fall in love in a place like Minidoka, a place built to make people feel like they weren’t human—that was miraculous. 

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tama is sent to live in a War Relocation Center in the desert. All Japanese Americans from the West Coast—elderly people, children, babies—now live in prison camps like Minidoka. To be who she is has become a crime, it seems, and Tama doesn’t know when or if she will ever leave. Trying not to think of the life she once had, she works in the camp’s tiny library, taking solace in pages bursting with color and light, love and fairness. And she isn’t the only one. George waits each morning by the door, his arms piled with books checked out the day before. As their friendship grows, Tama wonders: Can anyone possibly read so much? Is she the reason George comes to the library every day? Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s beautifully illustrated, elegant love story features a photo of the real Tama and George—the author’s grandparents—along with an afterword and other back matter for readers to learn more about a time in our history that continues to resonate.

⦿⦿⦿

Probably surprising nobody, I picked this book up (in Australia) when I saw that Booktopia had copies in-stock and after ready author Maggie Tokuda-Hall's brave blog post Scholastic, and a Faustian Bargain . In that post, she detailed US publisher Scholastic's attempt at censoring this book by asking Tokuda-Hall to edit her author's note at the end, removing mentions of and the word "racism" in her description about how 'Love in the Library' is based on the true story of how her maternal grandparents met; while both were in a Japanese internment camp in Idaho, during WWII.

Scholastic is not the original publisher of this book (that would be Candlewick Press, and kudos to them) but Scholastic wanted to license the book for sale in their catalogue and at the infamous Scholastic Book Fairs that they run in schools the world over. However, their condition on this licensing was for Tokuda-Hall to remove much of her 'Letter to the Reader' at the end, in which she provides the true-history context to the Internment of Japanese Americans (including her grandparents) - she refused, and Scholastic rescinded their offer (making abundantly clear that it was contingent on her whitewashing and silencing of this aspect in the book).

I am happy to see that Tokuda-Hall being brave enough to detail this publisher interaction has garnered her a lot of support, and the story has been shared widely (and Scholastic, rightly, shamed);

⦿ Got Values? Then Live Them. It’s time for publishers to operationalize their ideals

⦿ Bay Area author refuses Scholastic's suggested revision to cut 'racism' references in book

⦿ Scholastic wanted to license her children's book — if she cut a part about 'racism'

What this has thrown a light on, however, is the insidious idea with far-reaching ramifications that publishers are acquiring books (or, not) and being led by book-ban and censorship pushes that are sweeping across America;

⦿ New Report: 28% Rise in School Book Bans Over First Half of 2022-23 School Year

We know of Tokuda-Hall's brush with censorship because she was brave enough to talk openly about it - and the editor had laid out the publisher's thinking behind requesting it ... but how much censorship is happening behind closed doors and in acquisitions meetings, and taking the form of no offers coming in for a book that is seen to be too "risky" for a publisher? How much is it manifesting as books that won't ever see the light of day, authors going unpublished? Tokuda-Hall's shining a light on this one manifestation is highlighting the potential ramifications the world-over (New York is the centre of publishing, given that the North American is the biggest English-language market ... they choose the trends and blockbuster titles, they have Hollywood and Silicon Valley to help make a book go truly viral. Americans are the ones who have the most control over the future of book-publishing, and in light of this that thought is more worrying than ever).

I loved 'Love in the Library,' and I'm frustrated at the thought that it could have reached an even bigger audience in the country that would most benefit from reading it, if only a children's publisher had been braver.

The story of Tokuda-Hall's maternal grandparents is a tender and tough one; to have met and started their family in the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho is a testament to love conquering so much, in the face of xenophobia that still exists and persists to this day. Artist Yas Imamura's almost art-deco illustrations are gorgeous; muted tones, and always with the guard-tower looming (out a window, the corner of the page) they've done a brilliant job of balancing the soft with the hard visually, the same way Tokuda-Hall has done in the uplifting tone but serious-subject matter.

This book is marvellous and I highly-recommend everyone invest in a copy. For a local classroom, school library, personal collection - anything.

5/5

 

Black Moonlight Holds the BE Script by Teng Luo Wei Zhi

read on MTLNovel

*Synopsis

*Sorry, guys! I can't find one with a synopsis, so just refer to my previous post about Till The End of the Moon c-drama or read this review. 

8.5/10* * *I  have many thoughts on this book, and I do love reading non-standard romance, so bear with me here.
First thought. Despite a torturous romance story, the ending makes up for it. It's absolutely wonderful and explains quite a lot of behaviours on the male character's part.
Second thought. Till The End of The Moon c-drama series brought me here, and so far I have much more satisfaction with the novel itself than with its TV adaptation despite the atrocious translation. 
I understand the reasoning for the changes, I do. If the characters and story arc stayed as they are the drama wouldn't see the light of day and would be censored. I watched enough Chinese dramas to know the strict rules of how everyone should be portrayed morally.
 Tantai Jin is a proper antihero, and this romance is very dark. If you like R.Lee Smith books, you will enjoy this one. On the other hand, Li Su Su portrayal in the drama doesn't do her character justice. Her character is colder and more ruthless to Tantai Jin than it's shown on TV. Sometimes I didn't know who to feel sorry for more, Tantai Jin or Li Su Su. And in the latter part of the novel Tantai Jin firmly had my sentiments.
Third thought, the plot is very convoluted because it involves multiple timelines (at least 4), but you can also explain it pretty simply.

Our heroine, Li Su Su is a hundred year old immortal (very young by their standards) living in a world ravaged by a devil god and his army of demons. The world has no light and the immortals are slowly getting wiped out because no one can fight the evil overlord. The immortals last hope is to send someone 500 years back into the past when the devil god was still human and figure out how to remove an evil bone from him without killing the guy (which will instantly turn him into the devil god). The choice falls on Li Su Su for various reasons, and she is sent back to a body of a human Ye Xiwu who is ironically married to Tantai Jin, a human would be devil god.
The guy is a psychopath. A. He can not feel and process emotions apart from his need for survival B. His lack of emotions, his supernatural abilities and his very bad political standing as a hostage prince turned him into an object of constant abuse since the age of 6 when he was sent to be a hostage. So, yes, this did not improve his character, just made him deadlier.
Li Su Su's host, Ye Xiwu is an abuser herself. She is a spoilt rich girl who terrifies her household and who got married to Tantai Jin because he foiled her awful plan to ruin her love rival and turned it onto her to escape his life in the Palace. She beats him, humiliates him and generally wants him to die. In fact, when Li Su Su arrives into her body, the girl is nearly killed because Tantai Jin had enough and arranged for her own killing.
We are in for a great start, right?
Li Su Su is not an abuser, she is fair and stoic and has her mission in her sights at all times, but she also hates Tantai Jin's guts for all the suffering he will inflict in the future, so her desire to make him love her and find how to extract his evil bone, to protect his life is constantly warring with her deep seated hatred. 
She is tough, and so is he. When they end up adventuring together, there is always push and pull of hate towards each other, and his inability to figure her out in all her complexities only adds to his confusion. 
They are both awful and at the same time magnetic, and her redeeming him doesn't actually change his character very much. He just changes towards her, but because of his inability to understand his emotions he does not understand himself until much later in the novel.
Su Su is so concentrated on what she has to do, she doesn't allow herself to feel anything or to give him any leeway either. Add to it many many machinations of side characters, and this novel is an absolute rollercoaster.
 I really like watching the TV adaptation too because it just adds so much more richness to this story. It's changed, lighter and has comedic moments , which annoys me at times, and the characters are much more human, but the plot is more cohesive and easier to follow, plus the cast is gorgeous, especially Leo Luo/Luo Yunxi who is exquisite as Tantai Jin.
To conclude, this is not for everyone, and is easier to digest if you are familiar with xinxia dramas, and I also enjoyed it very much! This was definitely my catnip.

 

Full-disclosure; Briony Stewart is repped by my agency, Jacinta di Mase Management. However, my colleague oversaw Briony's hiring to illustrate this book - not me.

'The Garden at the End of the World' is written by Cassy Polimeni, illustrated by Briony Stewart and has just been released by University of Queensland Press (UQP). It's about; Isla and her mother going on an enchanting journey to the Global Seed Vault in Norway to discover a garden waiting at the end of the world.

The Global Seed Vault opened in 2008, and is apparently opened three times a year to visitors - which is what kicks this story off, when young girl Isla finds a special seed to donate from her home in Australia. It's such a complex and important backstory presented really harmoniously and brilliantly. Like when Isla's mother explains; 'They're ordinary seeds that can live for hundreds of years and turn into food. I suppose that is magical. The mountain protects them so children who haven't even been born yet will be able to grow and eat the foods we love.'

This is a really fascinating and important humanitarian endeavour, and I love that Polimeni and Stewart have found such a loving and wonderful way to present it so that kids (and grown-ups reading to them!) understand what's at stake, and what is being achieved.

A note on the Global Seed Vault at the end lays out exactly what an important topics this is;

The first withdrawal was made in 2015 to replace seeds lost when a gene bank near Aleppo, Syria, was destroyed by civil war.

In a rapidly changing world, the vault helps promote food security and crop diversity by providing protection for the earth's most important natural resources. So there will always be a garden at the end of the world, waiting to be planted.

And the illustrations are absolutely beautiful; cool-toned and magnificent, and on some pages (like the gorgeous end-papers) Stewart has used a combo of ink and printmaking to lay gauzy hints of leaves, ferns, and twigs as an overlay to the solid illustrations, and it gives certain pages a real sense of growth and germination. A silent, text-less spread showing the green shimmer of the Northern Lights is particularly impressive. But the whole book truly is, and a must-read for classrooms to kick-off what I'm sure will be important and fascinating discussions.

I'd so love it if Polimeni and Stewart made a little series of these topics - looking at the ways humanity is preserving nature for future generations (the gentle foreshadowing here is of course; climate change, but not presented in a scary way for too-young kids to feel that worry too soon).

I'd love, for instance, a book about Canberra's National Arboretum; '... designed to be a place of peace, beauty, recreation, research, and education. With 44,000 rare, endangered, and culturally significant trees from Australia and around the world, it is a living seedbank of international significance.'

5/5

 

From the BLURB: 

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life. 

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. 

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants. 

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

I listened to the audiobook of 'I'm Glad My Mom Died,' read by McCurdy herself. 

I went into this totally none the wiser about who Jennette McCurdy was. I was 20 when 'iCarly' premiered, so I totally missed the boat on this being my childhood. But when I was in New York in August last year, *this* book had just come out and was ~the~ talk of the town. I took pictures of it in bookstore window displays - kinda amused by the title, and very intrigued by the throwback Babysitters Club bubblegum cover - and was assured by booksellers in Australia that it was likewise launching here, and was (based on preorders) already a hit.

And indeed, hit it is. It won a Goodreads Choice award, according to Wikipedia has sold 200K copies (but I'd say that's now an outdated estimate, and was probably US-only. Based on buzz, I'd expect this to have reached 1-million sales worldwide).

What compelled me to finally listen to the audiobook was word of mouth amongst my friends, and seeing snippets of McCurdy appearing on the Drew Barrymore show. If Drew endorses, I do too.

I was therefore though, totally unprepared for what a WALLOP this book is.

Yes, it's about the toxicity of child-stardom (and a must-read for all those parents currently running social-media family accounts), but it's also detailing McCurdy's mental health fight and war through various eating disorders. It's also about her years of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, which I was really not expecting and took me completely off-guard.

Listening to this in audiobook - hearing McCurdy's voice crack through certain chapters - was such an emotionally wringing experience. Hearing her bring a certain charisma to chapters in which she presents events back in her childish innocence stage, of defending her mother's horrendously weighted and projected child-star expectation on her was really disarming. Even more so when McCurdy details that sexual abuse, but again presents it in the child-like way she used to reason her mother's actions to herself. And the chapters in which McCurdy's mother teacher her daughter how to calorie-count, and gives her a blueprint for eating disorders ... again; it's McCurdy tapping back into her old mindset when she very matter-of-factly recounts these moments - and that makes them all the more confronting and terrifying.

This book was brilliant. I am so glad I listened to the audiobook though, because I think without McCurdy's warm, humorous voice carrying through the dark and sinister moments, I would probably have put this book down and decided 'too hard, not in the right mood,' - and I'd have really been missing out on what has become a truly important moment for celebrity memoir, and a deeply cathartic and honest read in its own right.

5/5

 

Gals, gents, here is the thing. I've been shifting towards watching more Chinese dramas rather than k-dramas in the last few years for a few reasons. 

First, I am far more interested in fantasy, sci-fi and period dramas than modern day life. Call it escapism, but it's what I prefer in my books as well. Korean TV is limited in that regard. You would find plenty of good paranormal romance and urban fantasy in modern day setting or rarely in Joseon era, but the only full scale fantasy I've seen based in ancient times was The Arthal Chronicles (amazing series, by the way, and it's on Netflix, so go watch it!).

China on the other hand does film a huge amount of wuxia and xinxia dramas, lots of period pieces as well. And in the recent years, there were a lot of phenomenal dramas.

Secondly, there is a fantastic sense of aesthetics, tons of excellent CGI and great acting. Definitely, c-dramas have been becoming more and more pleasing to the eye.

Third, I love the rich history, culture and language. (I'm studying Chinese, so it helps.)

So, shift to these types of dramas for me was inevitable, and in the last year especially I've watched quite a few of incredible dramas, and sobbed at their endings too. This year, I'm on my third unforgettable drama, by the way. First two were reviewed on this blog already (Blood of Youth, The Starry Love).

Till The End of The Moon is my third, and it takes the cake only at 16 episodes in (it has 40 in total). Its greatness have been driving me crazy to a point when I really want to talk about it. 

First of all, people have been buzzing about this drama for a couple of years before it stated airing. The expectations were high because it's based on a popular novel and it has Luo Yunxi (one of my favourite actors) and Bai Lu. Also, Luo Yunxi is amazing in xinxia, and at playing morally grey characters. His character, Tantai Jin, is a total antihero!

This drama so far showing his whole range as he goes through a mass of difficult transformations. From a perfectly evil devil lord, to a bullied little boy of his own past unable to feel and process emotions, to a devious young man craving power to protect himself and destroy those who made him their victim (he totally reminds me a psychopath/sociopath there). As he amasses power there is one person besides him who through their love-hate relationship manages to change him and his behaviour. So, in other words, love changes him and his destiny.

Bai Lu plays a difficult character or even characters. First, she starts the drama fiercely hating Tantai Jin as their first encounter happens in the future where he destroys everyone she knows and loves while looking for an artifact as the devil lord. In order to stop him she is sent 500 years into the past, when Tantai Jin is still human and where she needs to try to stop him from dying and turning into the devil lord before she figures out how destroy the evil bone which would make him transform. Tantai Jin of the past is a weak hostage prince and a person without any political power, with strange cold appearance, bullied and betrayed all through his life by those around. Bai Lu , ironically, is sent into the body of Tantai Jin's wife, Ye Xiwu, one of his bullies, who tortures him for spoiling her devilish plans daily. Susu, the young immortal sent into the past, becomes a very different Ye Xiwu from the sadistic wife Tantai Jin remembers and hates, and slowly starts getting close to him, desperately trying to succeed in her mission. She is trying to be his moral compass and his anchor but ends up slowly falling for the would be evil god. 

There is a lot going on here, folks, and I don't want to spoil it for you, but suffice to say, the plot is EPIC. The heroes pretty much live through three lives (at least the heroine), just like in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (a 2017 c-drama which started my obsession). And can I just say, that Leo Luo (Luo Yunxi) is such an amazing actor for the character. He kills it. He is fragile but fierce on the edge of cruelty, full of sharp angles. His chemistry with Bai Lu is also off the charts. They are incredible to watch together. Magnetic.

CGI, world-building and sets here, the fight scenes, the overall aesthetics all add to the excellence of this drama as well. I am hanging on each episode by the way and watching fan made videos, which means I am obsessed. So much so, that I didn't want to wait till the drama finishes airing before starting to gush about it.

Phew! I'll spam you with pics and vids here and leave it at that.❤️

Here is the trailer by the way, or one of them.

And some of the OST❤️

 

From the BLURB:

The graphic adaptation of one of the world's most-loved books

'June, 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.' 

In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis forced teenager Anne Frank and her family into hiding. For over two years, they, another family and a German dentist lived in a 'secret annexe', fearing discovery. All that time, Anne kept a diary. The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Novel is a stunning new adaptation of one of the greatest books of the last century.

‘Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation’ by Anne Frank, adapted by Air Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky, came out with Penguin Random House in 2018. As of this month – the book is removed and banned from some Florida schools. Because a group of parents linked to the Republican Party, who complained over its ‘sexually explicit’ material, and a suggestion that it minimizes the events of the Holocaust. 

I’ve owned this edition for a long time, as someone who read Anne Frank’s diary when I was about the same age Anne was – 13 – when she started writing it. It’s one of those books that I think fundamentally changed me, and opened up the history of World War II in such a way as to hammer home the horrors of it, for regular people. I’ve seen most of the film and TV adaptations, and can vividly remember being shown the Elizabeth Taylor 1959 film in school. Anne Frank’s Diary, her story, remains one of those that remade me as a human-being, and set my moral compass from an early age. I have deep wells of joy, respect and grief for this book and its author, and I always will. 

I even visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam in 2008, a truly remarkable experience I’m privileged and grateful to have marked – because it had been something I’d longed to do since I was a young girl reading this other young girl’s thoughts, feelings, and memories for the first time. While there, I replaced my battered childhood copy with the 60th anniversary edition.  

When I heard that there was a graphic novel coming out, I thought it was a wonderful idea. A way to bring Anne Frank’s story to a new generation – and in vivid, visual colour. Yes, it would be interpreting Anne’s words with images she herself did not draw – but it would add new dimensions to her very personal diary, and make it accessible in an entirely new way and for even more readers; something I think Anne (a great lover of movies and magazines, who cut out images and posters and stuck them to her annexe wall) would have delighted in. 

And this graphic novel is – it must be said – stunning. I should really stop being surprised at how the graphic format elevates and opens up a text; the way it makes for a deeper, more critical intertextual reading because it’s asking you to marry text with images (something we all do on the daily) but the ways your brain has to fire up to connect what you’re reading and seeing, to sometimes realise that the images bely the text … that’s especially true here, and done masterfully. 

For one; David Polonsky is illustrating a great deal of rumour, imagination, and heady cocktails of fear informed by fantasy on behalf of Anne, both before she goes into hiding with her family and after. For instance; when her uncle arrives in Amsterdam from Hamburg, bringing word of how horrific life is for Jews in Germany now. Because this scene and its panels are Anne listening to her uncle recounting his first-person and firsthand experiences of the night of Kristallnacht, and the mass book-burnings; the drawings do reflect what we’ve seen in history books, and from photographs of the time. But very cleverly when the same uncle mentions rumours of a labor camp in Dachau (which he hasn’t seen, only heard about) and where people who are “not German enough,” are being sent - Anne says she can only imagine. And here Polonsky draws on and interprets that imagination – he uses Anne’s Jewish background to fill in the aspects of this horrific rumour that her mind can barely comprehend; and we see a call back to time before the Biblical story of Exodus, with modern-day Jews building a pyramid in the image of The Reichsadler ("Imperial Eagle") being overseen in their slavery by an SS guard. It’s a clever encapsulating of Anne’s currently childlike understanding of the bounds of human cruelty … looking at it with our modern knowledge though; of how truly barbaric Dachau was, part of a Nazi plan to solve ‘the Jewish question’ – this image is also working to signal that people in Amsterdam, upon the German invasion in 1940, really had no idea what was coming. 

This happens again, when one of the ‘annexe angels’ – Miep Gies – who helped the families in their hiding, recounts seeing one of her Jewish neighbours being taken away by soldiers. She also says that she met someone who’d managed to escape from a concentration camp – who tells her that the neighbour has probably been herded into one of the cattle trains to Westerbork … again; at this point, Anne and her family have no knowledge of what happens once these Jews go to the transit and concentration camps. She writes in her diary of them getting little food and water, of the poor lavatory conditions – alongside these musings, Polonsky has drawn an image of people snaking off one of these cattle trains, and lining up for food being served by white-hat chefs – this is as far as Anne’s knowledge and imagination can go, conceiving of terrible conditions. And to see this page is a gut-punch, because it’s so clearly the imagination of a girl who has no idea how bad things can get, will get. Polonsky has put a small dent in Anne’s too-innocent interpretation of what these “camps” can be – by placing gas tanks in the corner, with hoses running to the innocuous bunk houses. But it’s just off the page – in the corner – a creeping sense of dread and foreshadowing. 

Ari Folman and Polonsky has done a brilliant job of condensing Anne’s diary into the quicker pace necessary for a graphic novel – for instance, Anne’s many passages and pages feeling inadequate in comparison to her older, kinder, smarter, more beautiful (to her mind) sister Margot, are eloquently and silently rendered in a page of comedic comparisons between the two – the silence, the absence of text, here also works for the annexe setting, where Anne says they spend much of their day paranoid about not making a noise (and even her pen scratching in her diary sets the other residents on-edge, for fear that they’ll be found out because of it – and even worse, that the diary exists as tangible proof and account of their subterfuge, and that of their co-conspirators and saviours). 

Something else that Folman and Polonsky do exceedingly well here is mapping Anne’s evolution of girlhood and womanhood. Yes, they’ve edited the original diary text and they haven’t included *everything* (because to do so would equate from a text-only of 400 or so pages, to roughly double that becoming 800 pages if they had to diligently interpret all of that and transpose text plus images …)  but they’ve kept in what is most crucial. And Anne’s maturing and explorations of her body, her feelings, and her mind are incredibly intrinsic to the spirit of the Diary, and Anne herself. So they have kept in the passages of her recounting asking her friend Jacque if they could show each other their breasts, and her desire to kiss her – of her saying that she finds statues of female nudes, throw her into ecstasy … they also include her developing a close friendship and romance with fellow annexe-dweller, Peter – while also pining for the boys she used to flirt and go with before the war. 

Why? Why is Anne’s budding sexuality and this sense of self so important to the story? 

the same text, from the 60th Anniversary edition of the Diary

I’d argue because it makes her human. Not some out-of-reach martyr but a regular girl with perfectly normal and relatable thoughts and feelings – who desired to spend a year in London and Paris one day, more than she yearned to settle down and get married … but who died in February or March of 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, at the age of 15.

And this is the true beauty and tragedy of Anne Frank’s Diary. What I first discovered it as a teenage girl, roughly the same age Anne was when she wrote it – the knowledge that a girl who sounded like me; who had the same thoughts, fears, frustrations, curiosities, worries, and desires as me, despite us living decades apart – that that same girl could be vilified and died, all because of her faith … it hits so much harder. She was one person amongst the six million European Jews, and at least five million prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims of the Holocaust – and to get to know her via the diary, was to lose her. To feel the loss of someone so vibrant and funny, bratty and capricious, talented and brave. It’s almost too much to think of what – and who – was lost in the Holocaust, who was brutally taken and what the world would look like today if this travesty had been avoided. We compartmentalise, to a degree, and think of Anne Frank – one among millions – taken too soon, and what a loss to humanity that is. ‘Anne’s diary ends here,’ are among some of the most tragic words in modern literature. 

Otto and Anne Frank knew the power of her own words too. He knew that his daughter’s diary was one way to put a human face on the tragedy of the Holocaust – because that became Anne’s intention too. In my 60th anniversary edition, the foreword mentions that one night in the annexe and using their secret radio – the families heard Gerrit Bolkestein (a member of the Dutch government-in-exile, broadcasting from London) spoke about wanting to gather eyewitness accounts of the suffering of the Dutch people under German occupation. All eyes turned to Anne (and she recounts this in her diary) – to which she starts going back and adding in passages to what she’s already written, tidying up certain sections, and crossing-out more mundane entries. This creates a second diary, effectively, so we have Diary A and Diary B. 

When Otto Frank returns to Amsterdam – the sole survivor of the annexe – he discovers that Miep Gies has saved Anne’s diaries, never having read them. Otto decides to honour Anne’s wishes, and edits the diaries with the intention of sending them to a Dutch publisher – he particularly edits out real names of people who don’t wish to be included, he doesn’t transpose certain pages about Anne’s mother (whom she had a fraught relationship with) and the more vicious takes she had on the likes of Mrs Van Daan and Albert Dussel (a combination of Anne’s signature quick-wit and quicker temper, made more volatile by living in close-quarters). And because this was a conservative time still, Otto edits out the more sexually-charged passages – since it’s really not the fashion to mention sex at all (don’t be shocked by this – there’s literally a British obscenity trial held in 1960, over the publication of ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’ by D. H. Lawrence). The version that Otto collates becomes ‘version C’ of the diary. 

The Dutch version is published in 1947, but it’s not translated into English until 1952 (if you want some idea of what a slow-sensation it was, it definitely had a slow-burn, word-of-mouth and rose in popularity). But it absolutely made an impact once it was translated more widely – again in my 60th anniversary edition, a quote from Martin Gilbert (one of the world's pre-eminent historians of the Holocaust); ‘Her story came to symbolize not only the travails of the Holocaust, but the struggle of the human spirit in adversity … Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British troops in April 1945. One of them wrote to me recently: “I was too late to save Anne Frank.” That shows the impact that her story has made, and will continue to make.’ 

And make no mistake; there was power in releasing the Diary, not least because antisemitism and post-war propaganda abounded, and this somewhat combatted it. As much antisemitism as existed in the years leading up to, and during World War II, it didn’t just evaporate with VE Day. And post-war lies started as soon as Germany fell; the idea that regular Germans didn’t know what was happening to Jews and other minorities and intellectuals targeted by the Nazis? A post-war lie. Heck, even upon publication, rumours began that Anne Frank’s diary was a hoax; to the point that when he died in 1980, Otto Frank willed his daughter’s manuscripts – the diaries – to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, who ordered a thorough investigation into their authenticity … and found them to be the real deal. And in fact from the versions a, b and c a new edition – ‘The Critical Edition’ was released, which also contains biographies of the annexe families and the Frank’s in particular. And it has become a legacy of both the Anne Frank Foundation, and Anne Frank Museum to spread the word of Anne Frank’s life and Diary, to ensure the text is as widely accessible as possible, for all time. 

So imagine my horror when I hear that Jennifer Pippin, the chair of the Indian River chapter of "Moms for Liberty," opposed the graphic novel in Florida school libraries for ‘sexually explicit,’ material and – my blood boiling at this point – an accusation that it “minimizes” the Holocaust. 

Such accusations are baseless and cowardice. It suggests a lack of literacy and common-sense that could only be course-corrected by listening more, and speaking less. But to be clear; Moms for Liberty is a conservative nonprofit that portrays itself as a grassroots parent organisation, but in reality has numerous ties to the Republican Party – and ulterior motives galore. 

This banning and the accusations heaped on the text are not about preserving young, innocent minds or ensuring a robust education about the horrors of the Holocaust. You know how I know it’s not about that? Because after ‘Adolf Hitler,’ Anne Frank’s name is probably the most-associated with the true horrors of WWII and the human travesty and shame of the Holocaust. Anne Frank and her diary have done more to spread awareness about antisemitism (that still rages to this day) and put a human face to the unfathomable grief and horror of that war, than anyone else in human history … It’s not about this graphic novel. There is nothing shameful or sinister in Ari Folman and David Polonsky’s version. 

Moms for Liberty – when that word means; ‘the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behaviour, or political views.’ What a noxious and pathetic lot they are. The only shame here exists for Jennifer Pippin and “Moms for Liberty,” who have more in common with Anne Frank’s captors and tormentors, than with Anne herself. 

The graphic novel is a glorious read that delights in showing the funny, robust, capricious and captivating life of Anne Frank during the darkest of times in human history – bringing her to life for a whole new generation, and in a newly accessible, visual format. ‘Anne’s diary ends here,’ but the lessons of it continue and will reach far and wide – if we fight for it. 

5/5 

 

The Queen's Price by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels #12)

bought on audio

Synopsis from Goodreads

Enter the dark and sensual realms of the Black Jewels in this sweeping story in the New York Times bestselling fantasy saga of three young women who must navigate life within the powerful SaDiablo family--and come to terms with Witch, the Queen who is still the heart and will of that family.

The Queen's price is to stand against what you know is wrong. To stand and fight, no matter the cost to your court or to yourself. Especially to yourself.

Zoey, a young Queen-in-training at SaDiablo Hall, is wounded...and vulnerable to taunts and criticism. When an opportunity arises to befriend a stranger seeking sanctuary at the Hall, she puts herself and others in danger by ignoring Daemonar Yaslana's warning to back off.

Meanwhile, the witch Jillian's family prepares for her Virgin Night, the rite of passage that assures a woman will retain her power and her Jewels. The trouble is Jillian secretly went through the ceremony already. Now she has to explain the omission of that detail to her powerful and lethal family. And the High Lord of Hell's daughter, Saetien, travels to Scelt to find out about Jaenelle Angelline's sister--and perhaps to discover truths about herself.

With some guidance from Witch, these three young women will learn when to yield because it is right--and when to take a stand, even if they must pay the Queen's price.

8.5/10* * *I am so happy with this book! 
Mostly, because it was a much stronger delivery than the previous two books, but mainly, because we went back in time to Jaenelle's experiences during the war, and it was powerful. 
In the last two books, she was a secondary character as Witch which made her very distant and cold. This book brought her back as a human. I missed those days, because Daemon was much more alive with her at his side. These days he is a father and a ruler and pretty much nothing else which makes for a rigid character. 
I was also laughing very hard at Gillian's conundrum with the virgin night and her newfound friend Brenda who was a force to be reckoned with. A shame, Brenda didn't get more limelight.
The tiger girl side story didn't do anything for me, because she was barely outlined, but the trials in Daemon's Court and Saetien's transformation were very engaging to follow. Surprisingly, her story of redemption, growth and finding herself was gratifying and relatable. She went from a spoiled, lost child to a young, blossoming Queen.
As always, excellent narration on audio. If I misspelled names here, please forgive me, as I was listening to the story rather than reading.What did you think of the story? Do you still follow this series?
Overall, excellent! Very much recommended!

 

From the BLURB: 

Simmering with protest and boundless love, Jazz Money’s David Unaipon Award-winning collection, how to make a basket, examines the tensions of living in the Australian colony today. By turns scathing, funny and lyrical, Money uses her poetry as an extension of protest against the violence of the colonial state, and as a celebration of Blak and queer love. Deeply personal and fiercely political, these poems attempt to remember, reimagine and re-voice history. 

Writing in both Wiradjuri and English language, Money explores how places and bodies hold memories, and the ways our ancestors walk with us, speak through us and wait for us.

it starts with smoke, it always starts with smoke ... 

I was in the city the other day and knew I'd have time to burn, so I took Jazz Money's 2021 University of Queensland Press poetry collection with me, and went to the Fitzroy Gardens to read. 

I am long-overdue in coming to the page here, though I bought the book when it first came out. But I am glad that I waited for the right time and feeling to be open to this remarkable collection - and it did indeed feel cathartic and prophetic to read it when I did, on a bright Melbourne day in the Fitzroy Gardens ... 

And how accurate in a collection about "the tensions of living in the Australian colony today," that I did read it in those Gardens - near where Cooks' Cottage (a house where the parents of James Cook lived, brought from England in the 1930s) presides, in tribute to the coloniser. In the gardens where blue gums were removed to make way for sweeping lawns and ornamental flowerbeds (to look like some place other than here, it seems). Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful but - it's colony. 

And just as Money's collection opens with smoke and the Djab Wurrung sacred birthing trees in Victoria (mother burred at the belly swollen as the great trees come to this place) which the Andrews government bulldozed to make way for a new highway in 2020, ... they - we - lost something, to the colony. To progress and control. Infrastructure and destruction. Money is exploring this constantly in beauty and horror throughout the collection, and it's an absolute powerful and masterful gut-punch. 

Lilac sky swollen 

lights. A slick black car 

on slick black roads. 

 

Stars don't shine in this town 

only satellites 

humankind's wandering wonders. 

I'd rather wish on circuits

than lost black stars 

Outstanding.

 

From the BLURB: 

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Then e created Gender Queer. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

'Gender Queer: A Memoir' by American graphic novelist Maia Kobabe came out in 2019, and has been on my radar since then, but I just never got around to getting my hands on it ... until an incident happened at a Queensland (Australian) public library that put the book back in my periphery in a big way; Gender identity memoir removed from Queensland library shelf, referred to classification board

The book is (as of March 26, 2023) still with the Australian Classifications Board (ACB) as far as I know and has been reported by the media here; Clock ticking on 'Gender Queer' censorship decision. And now having read the beautiful deluxe hardcover edition, for the first time ... I can only hope with my whole heart that common-sense and common-good prevails; and some of that bending towards justice happens, because this book is glorious and to deny the opportunity of young readers in particular to find the generosity of Kobabe sharing their story within its pages, would be an absolute travesty. 

Maia Kobabe uses e/em/eir pronouns – also referred to as Spivak pronouns - they are nonbinary, and queer and 'Gender Queer' is the memoir of how they fit the pieces of themselves together like a puzzle over the course of their child and young adulthood. 

What is particularly wonderful and connecting in the story, and makes the possible censorship ban in Queensland (and elsewhere, since the novel has been challenged in many schools across the US too) that much more saddening, is the fact that Kobabe really acknowledges the roles that pop-culture and fandom played in them figuring out who they are. 

I mean; 'Gender Queer' is a veritable *feast* of geekery - I myself was delighted to see references made to 'Strangers in Paradise' by Terry Moore, Archive of Our Own FanFiction writing, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Mont), 'Supernatural,' Tamora Pierce, 'Lord of the Rings,' One Direction, and David Bowie plus many, many more ... and perhaps - ironically, painfully - is the inclusion of how much the 'Harry Potter' fandom meant to Kobabe. It was a desire to finish those novels faster than their mother was reading one-chapter-a-night that pushed them to become a truly independent reader. But a figuring out of themselves via the media they consume plays such a big part in the story. 

Of Bowie's music for instance, Kobabe write; Bowie's music was the first that felt like mine, within a joyous illustration of their teenage-self vibing to the music in the middle of outer-space with the sun blazing as hot as their new passion, a rocket-ship zooming by and planet Earth waiting to welcome them back down with this fundamental new understanding of themselves, that Bowie has just gifted them ... YES! That's exactly what art can do.

Art changes people, and people change the world and I genuinely believe - I know! - that so many kids, parents, guardians, teachers, anyone! would be touched by this novel and have their understanding of gender and the binary lovingly, powerfully expanded through this tender tale. It's Kobabe rifling through their old diaries, fandoms, obsessions, crushes, and painful moments of body-awareness and self-discovery ... so generously gifted to the reader, and I myself was very thankful for the ways that they found to articulate and illustrate the complicated thoughts and feelings they were experiencing. I may not have had them myself, but I feel like I understand them because Kobabe writes with such patience and fortitude, I feel like my sympathy has grown. 

To deny the opportunities this book could bring would be the far greater injustice. It is perfectly aimed at older-teens in the young adult space, and to suggest it is inappropriate would be far more harmful. To all the young people who will see themselves within the pages, and no doubt feel the same sense of galaxy-bursting relief and happiness that Kobabe did upon hearing David Bowie for the first time.

C'mon, ACB - Let the children lose it, Let the children use it, Let all the children boogie ...

5/5

 

Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge by Paul Krueger 

bought on audio

Synopsis from Goodreads

A sharp and funny urban fantasy for “new adults” about a secret society of bartenders who fight monsters with alcohol fueled magic.

College grad Bailey Chen has a few demons: no job, no parental support, and a rocky relationship with Zane, the only friend who’s around when she moves back home. But when Zane introduces Bailey to his cadre of monster-fighting bartenders, her demons get a lot more literal. Like, soul-sucking hell-beast literal. Soon, it’s up to Bailey and the ragtag band of magical mixologists to take on whatever—or whoever—is behind the mysterious rash of gruesome deaths in Chicago, and complete the lost recipes of an ancient tome of cocktail lore.

8.5/10

* * *

This was such a quirky gem, I loved it!

There was pure grittiness and simplicity here reminiscent of Harry Dresden world but also the eccentricity of Genevieve Cogman's Librarians.

The super power here standing against the monsters in the dark are bartenders. So, there is a lot of historical reference to drinks and how they were developed and the historical trivia attached to them. I really, really appreciated it and it enriched the story for me immensely. So reminded me of Librarians!

The characters and the plot are condensed and to the point. This is urban fantasy in its purest form.

Bailey Chen just graduated from a university and is struggling to land a job. In the meantime, she works for her school friend as a bar hand until she uncovers the hidden mission behind the bartenders' frequent cigarette breaks and is tempted to join the team.

Being the perfectionist she is, Bailey uncovers an anomaly and a conspiracy and ends up fighting the established order to save her beloved Chicago from a disaster.

I liked the girl, and all the characters around her made me think of Buffy and her crew with their snark and goofiness at the same time.

This was a surprisingly fun listen, and I am looking forward to discovering more from the author, although I'm not sure if this book was a standalone or there is more in the series.

Overall, definitely recommended. Any fan of the genre would enjoy this read/listen.

 

From the BLURB: 

The special relationship between a child and his grandmother is depicted in this sumptuous book by an award-winning team. 

Inspired by memories of his childhood, Jordan Scott’s My Baba’s Garden explores the sights, sounds, and smells experienced by a child spending time with their beloved grandmother (Baba), with special attention to the time they spent helping her tend her garden, searching for worms to keep it healthy. He visits her every day and finds her hidden in the steam of boiling potatoes, a hand holding a beet, a leg opening a cupboard, an elbow closing the fridge, humming like a night full of bugs when she cooks. 

Poet Jordan Scott and illustrator Sydney Smith’s previous collaboration, I Talk Like a River, which received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award expored a cherished memory shared between a father and son. In their new book, they turn that same wistful appreciation to the bond between a boy and his grandmother. Sydney Smith’s illustrations capture the sensational impressions of a child’s memory with iconic effect.

In 2020 I read author Jordan Scott and illustrator Sydney Smith's debut picture-book together, I Talk Like a River - about a young boy frustrated with his stutter, being taken on a day-trip by his Dad to reconnect with nature and learn to go slow, and take it easy on himself. 
That book - beautiful, gentle and empathetic - ended up winning the Schneider Family Book Award, and it has lived in me ever since. It was a perfect picture-book, and all the more powerful for being based on Scott's childhood which he wrote about in a short letter at the back of the book; about how is Dad would pick him up from school on "bad speech days," and how now as an adult he sees his stutter as a beautiful part of himself and how he communicates. 
I have been waiting for a second book from the duo ever since, and now it's finally here in 'My Baba's Garden' and it's just as stunning and powerful. 
This time in a letter at the start, Scott writes about 'My Baba' - explaining that this tale is also from his own childhood; of a young boy and his Polish grandmother who emigrated to Canada with her husband, the boy's Dziadek, after the terrible World War. The boy would be taken to his Baba's house (a renovated chicken coop beside a freeway) every day and she'd walk him to school; on rainy days being sure to pick up worms the weather scattered on the pavement, to be put to use in her beautiful and lush garden. 
The kicker - and connection to 'River' - is that the boy's Baba does not speak English, and he does not speak Polish. They communicate through touch, laughs, facial expressions and little rituals - like kissing food that's fallen on the floor, and then eating it immediately. 
This is another beautiful and timeless tale of communication and finding grace in ourselves and each other, the natural world, and little sacred rituals in the ever day to ground and connect us. Sydney Smith's darker illustrations with pops of red and yellow to draw the eye serve the story so beautifully, particularly in the rain-soaked pages where even droplets on windows are captured beautifully. 
I hope these two have more books in them, because I absolutely love being floored by the power and art in a story of such big ideas presented so tenderly through a child's lens. These two and their tales are *magical*!

5/5

 

The Starry Love (2023)

watched on Youku, 40 episodes

Synopsis from MyDramaList

The queen of the human tribe gave birth to twin girls. Respected by the entire tribe, the older sister Qing Kui, who is gentle and kind, is betrothed to the heavenly prince. The younger sister, Ye Tan, smart and cunning, shunned by her own people, is betrothed to the demon prince. Due to a mix-up, the two sisters are married off to the wrong husbands. It paves the way for two beautiful romances and also ignites a conspiracy that shakes the four realms.

(Source: ChineseDrama.info, MyDramaList)

~~ Adapted from the novel "Xing Luo Ning Cheng Tang" (星落凝成糖) by Yi Du Jun Hua (一度君华 ).

9/10

* * *

I loved this so much, peeps! And also cried quite a few times in later episodes. This is a gorgeous xinxia comedy which is quite rare in Chinese drama land. Latest successful experiment which blended comedy with drama was Love Between a Fairy and a Devil last year. If you haven't watched it yet, what are you doing with your life?! Please do! It's amazing. And it was a huge enough hit to get on Netflix. 

The Starry Love takes a classic trope in drama land "wrong carriage, right groom" and turns it into perfection. The prim and proper sister Qingkui who was being prepared to become a heavenly princess all her life is taken into the Void Realm to become the wife of the demon prince, and her rebellious troublemaker of a twin sister Yetan who studied The Void all her life is up in the Heavenly Realm trying to clear the mess she created trying to save her twin from a loveless marriage while dealing with her groom, Youqin, who has a huge stick up his behind and infuriates her so much.

Lo and behold, Tan and Youqin are made for each other, and she is slowly falling for him, while her sister Kui falls for a cunning, manipulative Chaofeng, the third prince, who is pretending to be weak and frivolous while fighting his other brothers for the throne.

When Youqin starts warming up and feeling something for Tan he suddenly dies saving his realm from a disaster he was preparing all his life to deal with, but Tan manages to save shards of his soul to try and revive him later. The fun twist to it, that now she has to find his soul shards as men in Mortal Realm and make them fall for her so they can merge into Youqin again. Much comedy ensues, and kudos to Cheng Xing Xu who had to play 5 different characters and managed to pull this off!

The whole cast was so talented. You really couldn't choose between two sisters, their partners and the supporting characters. Their acting was chef's kiss, especially Chaofeng's assistant with his constant snarky commentary. Also, both main male characters were total eye candy. 

I can only sigh happily and wait to see these talented youngsters in more excellent dramas. They were wonderful!

Trailer

 

Smolder by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake #29)

 *Review copy obtained through Netgalley*

The wedding of the century between vampire hunter Anita Blake and the vampire king of America Jean-Claude is almost here, but an ancient evil arrives in St. Louis and even Jean-Claude’s unmatched power isn’t enough to save them. Only with the return of a lost love can they hope to combat the monster and save their loved ones and every vampire in the country from being consumed by darkness.

Release date March 21, 2023

2/10

* * *

Okey, first hear me out before judging my 1-star review.

First of all, I am a very old fan of this series and I firmly believe that the quality only went downhill after Obsidian Butterfly. But. Since then, I've fully embraced the fact that the b-movie type of quality of Anita's reverse harem world is its own brand. People can love it or hate it but they still read it and get exactly what they expect from it.

Which is why my 1-star rating is fully good-natured. Yes, it was that terrible and yes, I rolled my eyes and enjoyed the predictability of the plot when 90% of action is a big, unending therapy session for Anita and her big bad puppy pile of lovers, and only 10% is an actual advancement of the plot. I read this while being stuck on a long flight and despite not having read the last 4 or 5 books in the series, I have not missed a thing, my dear readers. 

*SPOILER*

Richard is back! And it actually made me feel much livelier. I miss the time when Anita only had him and Jean-Claude to worry about and you didn't need the spreadsheet for the rest of her partners.  Ah, those were the days.... Anyway, get ready for a lot of talking, where the most amusing part of it is talking about feelings while you are in the middle of an emergency sex to ward off an attack (yes, non-fans, I know how it sounds!) and Jean-Claude already asked you a few times to stop yapping and just concentrate on getting bonked.

There is not much else going on, but the ending shows that at least a few chapters of the next book will be fun, cause Anita's family is here for the wedding. And there is a high chance I'll read it just for the hell of it.

Enjoy it or hate it at your own risk, but you have been warned.

 

The Harp of Kings by Juliet Marillier (Warrior Bards #1)

bought on audio

Synopsis from Goodreads

A young woman is both a bard--and a warrior--in this thrilling historical fantasy from the author of the Sevenwaters novels.

Eighteen-year-old Liobhan is a powerful singer and an expert whistle player. Her brother has a voice to melt the hardest heart, and a rare talent on the harp. But Liobhan's burning ambition is to join the elite warrior band on Swan Island. She and her brother train there to compete for places, and find themselves joining a mission while still candidates. Their unusual blend of skills makes them ideal for this particular job, which requires going undercover as traveling minstrels. For Swan Island trains both warriors and spies.

Their mission: to find and retrieve a precious harp, an ancient symbol of kingship, which has gone mysteriously missing. If the instrument is not played at the upcoming coronation, the candidate will not be accepted and the people could revolt. Faced with plotting courtiers and tight-lipped druids, an insightful storyteller, and a boorish Crown Prince, Liobhan soon realizes an Otherworld power may be meddling in the affairs of the kingdom. When ambition clashes with conscience, Liobhan must make a bold decision and is faced with a heartbreaking choice. . . .

8.5/10

* * *

Yes!!! This was about my favourite healer and blacksmith's daughter and an adoptive son. And I had no idea about the connection until I started listening to The Harp of Kings.

What a gorgeous story, like everything else I've listened to from Marillier so far. I feel like her books really benefit from the audio format.

She knows how to weave magic into her stories where even names hold some power over you. 

You can split The Harp of Kings into two main plots. First is the investigation into the disappeared harp, and the second is coming back home into the fae world. I loved both, they were filled with so much love and kindness. I think this is Marillier's greatest skill: to intersperse her fairy tales with bright flashes of light, small kindnesses her heroines/heroes show to strangers like in fairy tales of old, what these acts lead to and the dark forces opposing them.

Overall, a great listen which filled me with warmth, much recommended!

 

A League of Nobleman (2023)

Tencent, China, 29 episodes watched on Viki

Synopsis from MyDramaList

Zhang Ping is an impoverished orphan who comes from a provincial part of the country. He has come to Beijing in an attempt to take the civil service entrance examination but must eke out a living by making noodles to sell on the street. While he is unsophisticated in his manners and is something of a dreamer, he is exceptionally perceptive - and also quite nosy. That means he is naturally gifted when it comes to solving puzzles and getting to the bottom of mysteries.

Meanwhile, Lan Jue is a young, well-mannered minister who hides a secret from his youth that he does not want to reveal to anyone. As Lan Jue is going about his business, trying to solve a case, his path crosses with that of Zhang Ping. Despite some misunderstandings, Zhang Ping manages to help Lan Jue solve the case - although the former also inadvertently learns the latter's secret. But this incident turns into the beginning of a remarkable partnership.

The two men develop a close bond - despite their very different backgrounds. And together, they resolve to solve all manner of mysteries, including what really happened to Lan Jue's father - and rid the royal court of corruption once and for all!

~~ Adapted from the novel "The Mystery of Zhang Guo" (张公案) by Da Feng Gua Guo (大风刮过).

8/10

* * *

This is a bromance drama, one of the first ones which was allowed to come out after the new laws came into force in China in 2021 and most of the dramas of this genre got indefinitely shelved. I watched a review which talked about how this drama had to be severely cut so it could pass a review but to be honest I haven't noticed. 

What I did notice was gorgeous filming, colours and sounds. It had a distinctive sense of esthetics and felt at times eery. I might not have loved it, but I liked its mood and mysteries.

The mysteries were beautifully presented, and I loved how most of them identified as magic in the beginning were revealed as tricks to manipulate people later on. 

Also, the pairing of the investigators was classic. A sophisticated, elegant and brilliant politician on one side and a very straightforward, abrupt and without any artistry poor guy on the other side. They messed up each others plans for awhile until they figured out that they are better off working together.

An interesting drama, and by Chinese standards not too long, at only 29 episodes. Recommended.

 

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas ( Crescent City #1)

bought on Audible

Synopsis from Goodreads

Sarah J. Maas's brand-new CRESCENT CITY series begins with House of Earth and Blood: the story of half-Fae and half-human Bryce Quinlan as she seeks revenge in a contemporary fantasy world of magic, danger, and searing romance.

Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life-working hard all day and partying all night-until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She'll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.

Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose-to assassinate his boss's enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he's offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.

As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City's underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion-one that could set them both free, if they'd only let it.

With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom-and the power of love.

8.5/10

* * *

Fabulous world-building but parts of the plot made me roll my eyes hard.

First of all, this very much reminded me of Karen Marie Moning's Fever series. There was something of Mac and Barrons in Bryce and Hunt's pairing although this couple is not as dark and complex.

Secondly, I absolutely loved the eclectic mix of species in this urban fantasy. There was everything from angels to vampires and fae. And all of it steeped in magic and technology.

So, a big A+ for the world Sarah J. Maas introduced to the reader. It was incredibly tasty.

As for the plot development, it was not as strong.

First problem. Predictable but not very believable attraction between Hunt and Bryce. It felt too forced to me the way Hunt went from an unfeeling, cold facade to someone with such volatile emotions. It just didn't feel right for his age and experience.

Secondly, his involvement into the conspiracy came out of the left field for me. Like, what? It was like a deux in the machina. Nothing previously led to this particular plot development.

And the last and worst problem was the convenient villain monologue. Really? Someone just stood there and confessed all they did on record. Just their level of carelessness and stupidity was unforgivable. It was a total cope out to me where instead of showing us something we had a literal villain telling us what they did and how they did it. Disappointing.

Still, I enjoyed this audiobook very much, and there was a moment when it even brought me to tears. I bought the next installment in the series and will be listening to it very soon.

Despite minor problems, much recommended.

 

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance #3)

bought on Audible

Synopsis

Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate.

The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it's all we dream about, the hideously slim chance we'll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.

And now the impossible dream has come true. I'm out, we're all out--and I didn't even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother's prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn't kill enclavers, I saved them. Me, and Orion, and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: we saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves of the world.

Ha, only joking! Actually it's gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war on the horizon. And the first thing I've got to do now, having miraculously got out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.

* * *

8/10

I enjoyed this series very much, but I would say that book 1 and 2 impressed me more than book 3. The solution to their problem in the end felt like a bit of a cope out.

 Still, I have loved El, the prickly main heroine from the get go. Naomi Novik excels at writing outwardly dislikeable heroines, grumpy, cynical and sassy, but secretly kind and self-sacrificing.

The best part of the whole trilogy is its world-building. It's excellent and so engrossing, that you can't help but fall into the world of The Scholomance, the Enclaves, the never-ending squabble for power and survival in between. 

Juliet Marillier and Katherine Arden might be more poetic in their writing but Novik takes the reader to darker places and underscores how heavy and twisted the price of magic can be. She is also excellent at blending the modern world into it.

The Golden Enclaves is not without problems, but the series overall is a solid 4 star read or listen. I listen to it on audio and the narrator was fabulous. 

Much recommended, folks.