Assassin's Blade// Book Talk

Hello Rad Readers!

Assassin's Blade is a compilation of five novellas that take place before the events of Throne of Glass, and it is so so so so great!

You are probably wondering if you should read Assassin's Blade before ToG and I would say definitely not. Though the events take place before, and there are things that happen in Assassin's Blade that are mentioned in ToG, but it is pretty clear that Assassin's Blade was not really meant to introduce us to the story. ToG is does a fantastic job at portraying Celaena to begin with, and introducing us to the characters and the world. Assassin's Blade doesn't really do that job because they are novellas, so I would definitely say that you should read the books in publication order: Throne of Glass, Assassin's Blade, etc... With Throne of Glass there was such an air of mystery around Celaena because though we knew she had an insane life before Endovier and coming to the castle, we had no idea what that life entailed. We were actually in a very similar position to Dorian and Chaol. We just know that she was an assassin. You can assume a lot from that, but there is so much more to her story that we come to know in this addition. It explains so much of her motivations, and I think, really helps you gain an understanding as to where the story will be heading as a whole.

I definitely think you should read this before you continue on with Crown of Midnight because there were already so many references to Assassin's Blade in Throne of Glass, and now I feel like I have a much better grip on the story and all the ins and outs.

I was super confused as well on which to pick up first, but when book series are a little wacky like this, (*cough cough* The Shadowhunter Chronicles *cough cough*) a general rule I always follow is to just read in publication order. Then you are sure to avoid spoilers.

SPEAKING OF SPOILERS... IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ASSASSIN'S BLADE, DON'T READ BEYOND THIS POINT!!!!!

In the first novella, I found Sam's story line to be really significant. It was nothing like Dorian's or Chaol's which is not what I expected. Him and Celaena were competitors and despised each other and I thought that was a good way to begin, because we know that competitiveness and anger is such an innate quality in her, it is very fitting and interesting to see where it had all stemmed from. Also, I absolutely loved Sam all throughout and the fact that we already knew how his story ended before it even started made things so much more tragic. He was literally the greatest and nothing Dorian or Chaol can do will even remotely amount to how dope of a character Sam was. RIP reader dudes... RIP...

Let's talk Arobynn Hamel... Oh what a journey we went on with him. At first I thought he was a good leader, and a good person in Celaena's life, because who would she really be without him, ya know? I thought he could be a bit like Chaol. Ohhhhh, how I was so so very wrong. I thought it was absolutely genius that the author portrayed him like that in the beginning and then slowly throughout showed us what an actually horrible person he was. I imagine she did that because she wanted us to experience that realization with Celaena.

A major reason why I thought this was such an important read in the series was because in ToG we see a completely heartless former assassin doing whatever she can to survive and be free. I LOVED that. I have said this so many times on this blog, but there is no better character trait in my opinion, then when a character has nothing to lose. It's fascinating, and exciting, and crazy. But anyways, we are introduced to what we assume to be a stone cold killer with no conscience, but in Assassin's Blade we see that she actually does struggle a lot with what she does and she does weigh her morals and thinks about what is right. Ultimately she chooses to do what will save her which I think is really dope because we see so many self righteous, 'I want to save the day and the entire world and put everyone else before me' characters and honestly it gets old. That also isn't who Celaena is. She's a fighter and a survivor. Celaena knows that her life is about freedom and fending for herslef. I think that is the coolest thing ever. Nonetheless I think it is interesting to know that is not in fact totally stone cold. We get to know he in much greater dimension this time around.

I liked how this did not feel much like a bind up of separate stories. Each novella was very related to one another so it certainly felt like there was a story arch. I also think that it made the pacing of the book much faster than that of ToG. My one complaint in ToG was that it moved fairly slowly sometimes. There were these epic moments of tension and violence and battle, and then these slow drawn out pages and pages of internal dialogue that I felt like we just couldn't get over. But anyways, each novella connected to one another seamlessly, so there was a story arch across the entire "book" I guess you could say, as well as in each separate novella. I really enjoyed being able to see how each novella touched Celaena's life in a different way, and how she carries the weight of these five events as she continues her journey in Throne of Glass.

Overall, between the amazing story and the fantastic writing, this was an easy 5/5 stars. I would 100% recommend it!

- C8 ;)

P.S. I know that this a bind up, so it is not technically part of the core series, but I absolutely recommend reading it after Throne of Glass. I have heard that the further you progress with the series, if you do not have this background and this foundation laid out from Assassin's Blade it doesn't make as much sense. I also think that reading this will add a lot to your reading of the rest of it. I have heard that Queen of Shadows and Tower of Dawn are far less impactful if you do not know what went down in Assassin's Blade.

"Crooked Kingdom" Is Un-put-down-able!// Book Talk

What's up Rad Readers!

So, this is the second book in the Six of Crows duology. In Six of Crows, we follow six characters who take on an impossible heist which covers the whole plot of the first book. In Crooked Kingdom we pick up right where the last ended, and together they take on a new fight.

I cannot really give a spoiler free review on this since I am too excited about how great it was, and because it is the second book in this series so nearly everything will be a spoiler for Six of Crows. So, for those of you who have not read yet, I will leave you with this:

Kaz Brekker just pulled off the impossible heist, breaking into the Ice Court, but instead of divvying up their reward, his gang is right back to fighting for their lives. They'd been double crossed, conned. It's time for revenge, but it seems like it's always been that way for Kaz. Getting Inej back to the crew is one issue, but the other is that now, they are low on resources, allies, and hope. Kaz knows that your enemy's enemy is your friend, but what happens when his own enemies realize the same thing?

The whole world seems to be centered around Ketterdam right now. Everyone is trying to get what they can out of Jurda Parem, the deadly drug used against the Grisha, and Kaz has the key to it held hostage. He knows that is his token to getting the money he deserves.

People have learned what to expect from him (or at least they think they have), that this demon "dirty hands" is capable of doing anything. Some have even found out his one weakness. The lawless, dark streets of Ketterdam are in a battle for power, revenge, and redemption, and Kaz Brekker is the one to take down. In this exciting conclusion, the stakes are far higher than 30 million kruge. This is about a grudge, this is about revenge, and this is about what will be left after.

We all know how I felt about the first book in Leigh Bardugo's incredible duology, and Crooked Kingdom certainly didn't let me down! It took all that I loved in the first book and brought it a level up. I loved the writing, the world, the characters, and what I think I loved most was the themes! It was a thrilling, high stakes, and a truly fantastical conclusion to a story that I loved so much!

If you haven't read the Six of Crows duology, know that SPOILERS ARE COMING! Read at your own risk... :)

We finally got to read through Wylan's perspective which we never got in Six of Crows. We got to see his "origin story" if you will, and honestly, I was a little annoyed with him at times. He certainly wasn't my favorite character, but he definitely wasn't meant to be. I think it was supposed to perturb the reader that he was so disgusted with Kaz and the people that surrounded him. That he wanted to get out as soon as he could. He was raised as a rich kid in a city in poverty. He benefited off of the corruption that hurt the people he now was hanging out with. He is both too conscious and not conscious enough of his privilege, but once again, I think it was all intentional. I just don't like how all of the good stuff happen to the kid who kind of deserved it the least. He finds out that his mother was alive, he has a healthy relationship, he gets to make it out of all of this virtually unharmed. I just wish some of the happiness and good fortune was distributed equally. Personally, he was the least interesting character in my opinion. Still interesting though, but in comparison to these other characters that are absolute power houses, buddy just doesn't make the cut.

Jesper and Nina are just too funny, I love that they are the ones that keep everyone as "friends" and less of just criminal coworkers. They both struggle with an "addiction" of sorts, Jesper with gambling and Nina with the jury parem she took to save everyone. I think that these are the kind of themes that are really powerful in literature like this. It isn't thrown in your face or put into too simple of terms, or even put into such complex terms that you think you should write an essay for AP Lang on it. It was just impactful and eye opening and I think that it was awesome!

So if we're going to talk about it... I guess we have to talk about it... Mattias' death. I. DIDN'T SEE. IT. COMING. Usually I can sense when a character is going to be killed off. Be it my rad reader intuitions, or the author kind of foreshadows or leaves hints, or you just get the vibes, ya know? But this one came out of left field and it came FAST. When he gets shot AND THEN THE CHAPTER JUST ENDS I was like what. is. going. on. I was like he hassss to be okay. He must! These characters get beaten up, walk on high wires, fall from buildings, get stabbed and slashed, like what's a bullet wound, right? WRONG! I was so so so very wrong. The fact that when we get to the chapter where he is talking to Nina and he's bleeding and dying but trying to make everyone happy and okay and-- oh my gosh, it was so good. Obviously I was upset that he died, but it just made sense that not all of them would be able to make it through this insanity alive, and the way that he died was also so impactful. I loved how he hit us with that fire line about how "fear is how they control you," like, yes dog... yes... hit em with it. We see him as this jerk, brainwashed from his society and upbringing. He's racist, misogynistic, ignorant, and unaware. Then we get to watch as he relearns, starts to think through a different lens when he meets the people he was always told to hate. Then, to have him die when he finally understood all the misplaced hate in not only his life, but the life of "his people,"-- ugh! It really was incredible! He served as something that is so real in the world, that lots of people likely struggle with coming to terms with, and it was all just written so beautifully. It makes me so happy that these are the messages and themes to take in from the book!

Now finally, onto my favorite characters probably ever written, Kaz and Inej.

My dawg Kaz... ohhh mannn. I think I like Kaz so much because of how cunning, tricky, and smart he is. I love smart characters because you can always just vibe with them. There is never that UGHHH WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST DO THIS kind of feeling that all of us rad readers hate so much. But yes, if a character is quick and has some tricks up their sleeve, then they are automatically my favorite. We got to see some of this in the first book, but we really see his wheelhouse in Crooked Kingdom. What I also like about him is how he is smart and relatively emotionless. He is stone cold and doesn't care about what people think about it. He has one "Achilles Heal," and I like the development we see in that. I think that this does a lot for the depth in his character but we never see this cripple him really, because that is just not who he is. He is not the type of person to have weaknesses, and when he does have a weakness, he is not the type of person to fall to them easily. He is ruthless in what he will do to exact his revenge and I have said this before on Rad Reads, but my favorite point that a character can get to is the point where they realize they have nothing to lose, the point of no return. That they might as well do their worst. It is just so exciting and dark and fascinating. I cannot physically put my book down after that! I love how he has kept this grudge for years, that he hunted down the man that ruined him once and then allowed himself to become a nightmare. I was shockedddd at what he did to Pekka. When he hit him with the quick "I buried your son," HUH? WHAT? YOU DID WHAT!? Genuinely shocked, and I loved even more when we got to see Pekka's reaction when he found out that Kaz had been bluffing. When Pekka runs to try to save him and then he turns to Inej and is like "I've never seen the kid," DAWGGGGG... INSANITY!!!! I thought immediately to what Kaz had said in the first book about how once everyone think that you are a monster you don't need to do monstrous things, they will just believe what they hear. Certainly that was the case, and smart smart smart Kaz knew this and used it to his advantage. Once again, so impressive how Leigh Bardugo wrote him. He is also so representative of her intelligence. If we think his brain can go a mile a minute, just imagine the person who wrote him! He understands that the things he has done have been evil and he doesn't want to change for the better and neither does the reader!

Inej is just the homie, straight up I want to be her. She is so incredible. She has been through so many struggles that would break anybody easily, but she is still, not only so strong, but so kind as well. It takes a lot for somebody to go through all that she went through and still believe that there is good in the world. But, at the same time she knows that the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows and will certainly not act as such. My favorite quote from the entire series came from her, when she was fight Dunyasha on the tight rope (which by the way the times she faced Dunyasha were my favorite parts in the book probs). Dunyasha is talking about how Inej isn't a worth opponent for her, that she has been training all her life and was chosen by the gods to be the most deadly assassin and Inej's shadow, and how Inej is just a normal girl who learned her skills because that is what it meant to survive. This is meant to but her down, but in reality it sends a jolt of pride through her and she hits us with this fire line, "What about the nobodies and the nothings? We learn to old our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring the magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren't chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway."

Those are the bars of literature right there. Straight. Bars.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now. What can I say, I just really loved everything about this book. An absolute 5/5 stars on GoodReads. Cannot say enough good things about it.

Please love this book as much as I did,

- C8 ;)

P.S. the symbolism of the crow that we find out in the end... Oh. My. Gosh.

"Illuminae" Is God Tier Literature// Book Review

Hello Rad Readers!

I have just finished the first book in The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff and my mind is blown and I live with a new fear: the AI/Robot take over. If you are looking for a book to read during quarantine, this is the one to pick up for sure!

The way this book was written is positively incredible. It's like nothing else I have ever read; I will even dare to say like nothing else that has ever been written. I truly don't believe that there is any other book quite like Illuminae! It really isn't a "normal" book at all!

Allow me to explain...

This is a science fiction novel where we mainly follow our two main characters, Kady and Ezra. It starts after their planet is invaded by the Lincoln, a terrorist group, and this intergallactic/AI/biological warfare insues. The two get separated on the different evacuating crafts, and now everyone alive must fight, including them. As if risking their lives hacking classified documents and fighting on the front lines wasn't tough,

they also have a plague outbreak to worry about that has been documented to have horrifying effects. The Artificial Intelligence on the spaceship that should be protecting them may have become a little... too intelligent, becoming a threat as well.

That is the most synopsis I can really give you because that is all you have to know going into it. That is all I knew when I started it and I think that made the reading experience even more enjoyable because you are really just finding out what everything is about as it goes.

What makes this book so different is the way that the story is told. It is written in hacked documents: medical records, surveillance analysis, emails, journal entries, military files, a AI computer, and really just any way you can imagine aside from normal dialogue and narration. The illustration on the pages and the great detail the writers had gone into to make you feel like you are really reading files makes the reading experience two hundred times better and seriously pulls you-- nay, yanks you into the story. It makes it all so real and believable. The experience of reading this book alone is reason enough to pick it up!

I enjoyed this a whole lot more than I thought I would have. When you look at it you think it will just be a regular old cool science fiction book, but oh boy, it does not look as cool as it actually is! There was just so much depth in writing in this story. The characters were so well developed even though there was never a real narrator and the world was so brilliantly built and ugh! I am genuinely astonished by the way this book was written!

Okay, you are probably curious about the actual content of the story and less about its format and my obsession with writing styles, so let's get into that! The characters that we follow? LOVE THEM! I have never read a more accurate representation of actual teenagers! You either get something like The Vampire Diaries books where you think that the author never met a teenager and had never been to high school, or you get something like Turtles All The Way Down where you're like... these characters could be legitimately 30. Not the case at all with Illuminae. Genuinely the first page of the book you get such a good feel of who Ezra is. He's joking around, but not really joking, just being super sarcastic with this interrogator. So realistic of how teenagers actually are. Kady (who by the way because her name is spelled like this I kept on thinking of the Cady from Mean Girls) is this super hacker genius who is so relatable and funny, but also a really great character to get to know. She is smart and because of the way that the story is told you are always wanting to know more about them, but only in the best way. Not in the way where you feel like everything is too surface level.

The entire story from start to finish was so action packed and intense and suspenseful. I would read a line and I would be like WHAT! NO! WHAT? NOOO? And I would have to reread it, like, twelve times to make sure that my eyes weren't deceiving me because of how crazy the information I had to process was! You think you have a feel for what is going on. The entire time you are like oh, okay, I get it, space war! But then the story hits you with a curve ball and you are like what! Evil computer! Then you are like okay, I get it space war but with an evil computer in the mix as well. But then you are like WHAT! A PLAGUE! And then you are like I have no idea what could happen next and I cannot stop reading because I have to find out!! That was my reading experience in a nut shell...

One of my personal favorite parts, a little off key, was the guy that would transcript what was going on in the monitors. I felt like it was so funny and realistic! You have a bunch of kids stuck on this spaceship running from terrorists and they are all forced to work for the war efforts, and in the middle of this crazy intense story you have the MOST incompetent absolute DUDE writing down so very poorly what was going on in the monitors. Genuinely so funny, I thought this was genius and it was such a highlight in the book for me! It goes to show how funny, yet high stakes this book was. I don't read very many genuinely funny books, so this for me was a great refresher and a total win!

If you are looking for something so completely different with young relatable characters, a great story line, a will they or won't they make it kind of feel, lots of war and computer and sciencey-spacey really fun and interesting stuff, than Rad Readers, this is the book for you!

That is all I have to say for the non-spoilers, so IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK STOP READING NOW...

Okay, tell me why I had to go on the emotional roller coaster of Ezra dying and then living and then dying and then living and then dying and then living! Don't get me wrong, it was thrilling to read these twists, but my heart just couldn't take it! In the middle of the book when AIDEN (the computer) is recounting what happened in the battle, and then Ezra's name pops up in the Death Bloom I was like... wait... what? I was shocked but then I was like-- NO WAYYYY a character so essential to the story gets killed off like thissss in the middle of the book, and it gets glossed over so easily. So, when he popped up in the IM talking with Kady in the next couple pages I was like, oh okay, we are chilling.

So, then we get to Kady who "escaped" the Hypatia and she is on the Alexander and we think she is about to rescue Ezra and the whole crew. BUT NO! AIDEN had Kady on the Alexander and started talking to her and she was like "where's Ezra" and AIDEN was like "Ezra isn't here..." I was like WHAT and then when we found out the AIDEN had hacked Ezra's IM and was pretending to be him the whole time after he died!!!!!!!!!!!! Rad readers, I cannot even express to you accurately in words --even if I had the expansive vocabulary of Shakespear himself-- what that did to me. I seriously had to put the book down and I just held my head for a moment in shock and amazement and "oh-my-gosh-ness" if you will. I had to take a three minute "oh my god what just happened" and a quick "ahhh gahhddddd I should have knownnn" session before I went back to reading because that is how good that twist got me.

THEN we are like, okay... regroup... Kady has nobody else, her mom had died a while before (and can I just say, the way that was revealed... genius) Ezra is dead and Kady now has no way out. SO HEART BREAKING! She is going to die too. :( The computer is weirdly almost obsessed with her I think? The people with the plague are about to eat her or something (which by the way, that was quite a frightening and thrilling and fantastic story line in this book and it wasn't even one of the main plot points!), she basically kamikazed herself because there is no way she survives AIDEN's explosion and there is no way she makes it to the Alexander in time, but she SURVIVES!? When I tell you that is the last thing I expected, I mean that is the LASTTTTT thing I expected. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (That is what I envision the authors saying as they were writing this book, because there always just seemed to be more!) Kady messages the leader of the Lincoln who... get ready for this one because it is a zinger... IS EZRA'S MOM!!!!!! WHAT!!!!!????? And Ezra's mom calls Kady out for lying. About what you may ask? ABOUT EZRA ACTUALLY BEING ALIVE! HE WAS ALIVE! KADY WAS JUST TRYING TO TRICK THE LINCOLN! Oh my god, seriously even in the last ten pages there was a story altering twist. AMAZING!

Okay, I am basically out of breath right now because of how invested I am in this book, so I think it would be best for me to just stop right there.

I loved this book, Rad Readers! Definitely added it to my "favorites" shelf! An easy 5/5 on GoodReads!

- C8 ;)