Week 2 of the fantastical month of Wyrd & Wonder! And here’s an update on my progress.

I’m also tracking my progress on my Wyrd and Wonder TBR page and I have a shelf of all my Wyrd & Wonder reads on Bookshop.

Also stop by my PangoBooks site as I have listed some of these (plus a whole bunch of others) for sale.

Mini Reviews

Among the Beasts and Briars

While I loved Ashley Poston’s The Seven Year Slip, (a romance with a dash of magical realism), Among the Beasts & Briars did not quite make the cut for me.

Right off, I was rolling my eyes. Too many inconsistencies, and too many things that just didn’t fit. Then I was annoyed how naive Cerys was. I get that she’s only supposed to be 17, but she came across as much younger.

Clearly, I am not the target demographic for this book.

The story definitely has a Disney-esque fairytale feel to it. I am guessing that Poston is a huge Disney fan—from the title to the animal friends, the curse, and all of the Disney easter eggs, like:

But can you imagine? Me, dancing with that boorish, brainless . . .

Sadly, the story was underwhelming. I skimmed most of it and never missed a thing. The ending was, of course, predictable (from the first chapter).

This was goes off my shelf and onto my PangoBooks shelf!

Ruthless Vows

I wanted to finish Ruthless Vows. I wanted to find out what happened to Roman and Iris. I wanted to see their happy ending.

And yet. . .

I kept putting it down because I also didn’t want to finish it as I knew, KNEW, my heart would be torn to shreds by the end.

. . . And it was.

But I also have some mixed feelings about this book. While I enjoyed it (4 out of 5 stars), I didn’t love it like I loved Divine Rivals.

I think what I loved about Divine Rivals was the intimacy, the language, the emotion, the connection between Iris and Roman—first as rivals at the Tribune, then as letter writers, and then finally as lovers. But in Ruthless Vows, much of that was lost. Some of it because the story got so much larger, really zooming out to the battle between Dacre and Enva. And while the addition of the Graveyard felt authentic to a war of ideals (god vs god, so doesn’t there need to be an atheist side?), I think it also took something away from the story too.

So I struggle with how I feel about this book. Divine Rivals will clearly be one of my favorite, if not my favoritist fave, read of the year. Ruthless Vows will fall somewhere further down the list.

Mink River

I really wanted to like Mink River. A little magical realism + a crow named Moses. What could be better?

Well, I picked this book up the first of the month, then put it down. Then I decided to give it another go. And I tried, really. I finally called it quits at 23%.

This book, at least as far as I read, basically contains vignettes or interludes on various residents’ day-to-day lives. The story, if there is one, focuses more on the town than on any character. There doesn’t seem to be an actual plot.

At first, some of the prose was quite descriptive. But the run-on sentences made me skim more and more in an effort to try to find a plot. For example, from the first page (as is printed in the book):

Not an especially stunning town, stunningtownwise—there are no ancient stone houses perched at impossible angles over eye-popping vistas with little old ladies in black shawls selling goat cheese in the piazza while you hear Puccini faintly in the background sung by a stunning raven-haired teenage girl who doesn’t yet know the power and poetry of her voice not to mention everything else.

Yes, that is 1 paragraph as it is written. Run-on, no punctuation save for the one em dash. (And he seems to love em dashes as there are 4 on the first page.) And that isn’t the longest sentence.

It felt as if the author was trying too hard to be “literary.” Some sentences went on and on and on, with so many metaphors or descriptions. I had to often stop and reread a half page (or more) because I’d lose the thread of the sentence due to the lack of punctuation and run-ons.

He also uses the technique of repetition, which can work if not overused. But he would fill an entire page, and the use felt more poetic than prose. One page had the phrase “is on [her/his] knees” or “is kneeling” 37 times in a row. An entire page of listing characters and what they were doing on their knees. And that constituted an entire “chapter.”

At least that page did have individual sentences with periods.

The lack of punctuation also caused issues with any dialogue. While something like conversations occur, the author doesn’t use quotation marks. So I wasn’t clear if it was supposed to be dialogue or something else. So I’ll call it an “exchange” instead of “dialogue” because of the lack of quotation marks. Given that there was no plot, it was hard to tell. But these exchanges are written one paragraph at a time, often as short sentences, such as (again, as is printed in the book):

Yum, says the taller of the two men.
Yup, says the other.
Not everyone likes salmonberries.
Vulgarians.
I am told they are an acquired taste.
Vulagarians?
Salmonberries.
Yeh. Listen this afternoon we have to get back to work on. the Oral History Project. We promised that we would get back to work on it the day after the rains stopped and the rains stopped last night and we have to get to work We are behind something awful on the Oral History Project.
One of our best ideas absolutely. Whose idea was that?
Yours.
Was it?

And this exchange goes continues for page and a half. The dialogue didn’t always feel authentic, didn’t flow as a conversation would. It felt more like poetry than prose. And with the lack of plot, it really would’ve been better off being marketed as long-verse poetry.

This book is largely about the town overall, not about individuals, which made it difficult to distinguish between the individual characters. Maybe I missed the deeper point or meaning because I didn’t get far enough into the book. But since I found it difficult to read because of how disjointed it was and how much the writing meandered, I couldn’t make myself read more than I did.

Sadly, my first DNF of the month.

The Unmaking of June Farrow

I had started reading Among Thieves but this one kept interrupting me, telling me to read it. Plus, the red door on the cover was just too tempting. I want to walk through it.

I had been ignoring this book because I didn’t care for her YA book The Girl the Sea Gave Back. (I reviewed it last week.). But the red door kept calling to me.

(Don’t you hate it when books get fussy and demanding that you read them?)

So I finally put down the other book and picked this one up just to shush it. I thought I’d read a chapter or two to satiate it, then go back to my other book.

I finished The Unmaking of June Farrow in one sitting.

Despite my dislike of The Girl the Sea Gave Back, I was completely engaged in this story. Maybe the difference is that one was set in an entirely fiction fantasy place and this one is set in a real(ish) place. Okay, so while this Jasper, NC doesn’t exist, the area, the Blue Ridge Mountains, is real. (I’d like to point out that there actually is a Jasper, NC over on the eastern side of the state near Morehead City, about 5.5 hours east of Asheville, whereas this Jasper is supposed to be north of Asheville, nearish the TN border.)

I don’t know what the difference is, but either way, I enjoyed this one far more.

She has crafted a beautiful, emotionally compelling story. The characters here feel authentic. And the time travel element, while a bit convoluted as most time traveling stories are, worked for me. (Honestly, as long as it makes sense for the purposes of the story, I really don’t try to think about it all that much.)

The one thing that I thought she might explore more is how and why the curse came to be. I mean if you’re going to call it a curse, then that presumes that someone placed it upon the Farrow family. Curses just don’t pop out of nowhere. I think that’s the one main flaw with this story. Where did the curse come from? Where did the locket come from? Where did the rules, like the 3 times rule, come from?

This one wasn’t on my #wyrdandwonder TBR, but I’m also not very good at following my own rules. Besides, this book was being cranky because I had been ignoring it. Sometimes the books know best & in this case, it was right—I did enjoy it.

Now I’m back to Among Thieves, which I hope to finish tomorrow and then start on Joan He’s duology, Strike the Zither and Sound the Gong, that reimagines the Chinese classic tale of the Three Kingdoms.

Fantasy Puzzles

You know it wouldn’t be me without doing at least 1 puzzle. Although I have been so busy reading, I didn’t know if I’d have time. But I couldn’t resist this Ravensburger puzzle called Magical Deer.

This puzzle has 1,000 pieces and the image is absolutely stunning. It’s hard to tell from my photo, but the deer’s antlers show the four seasons. The top of the left antler is winter, the bottom left is fall. The top of the right antler is spring, and the bottom right is summer.

Sadly, this puzzle was missing a piece. (Can you see where the piece is missing?) Worse, it’s discontinued, so Ravensburger can’t replace it.

But still a beautiful puzzle (even if my photo doesn’t do it justice).

I’ve already got another fantasy puzzle started. So check back next week to see if I’ve completed it.

The Daily Prompts

If you follow me on Instagram, then you might have seen (algorithms be willing) my Wyrd and Wonder daily prompts post (although I once again missed a few days, so days 10 & 11 are in one post and days 12-14 are in one post).

Day 10: From Storyhenge, I trekked to the Reaching Fingers, where I patiently waited to Strike the Zither until I had Sound[ed] the Gong. It was a long wait, but patience has its own rewards and at the beginning of this month, I was granted my reward. (The Three Kingdom Duology by Joan He. Sound the Gong was just released at the beginning of the month!)

Day 11: Then I walked to the shore where I obtained passage to the Bite Sized Islands. On the islands, I pondered the question “what do people need?” (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers. Delightful bite-sized fantasy books about a monk and a robot.)

Day 12: I was Swept Away by ART on a space adventure. (The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I bought book 1 because so many people recommended it. I thought I’d “give it a try” since it was a novella. I read it in one sitting & immediately had to order the rest of the series.)

Day 13: I returned from the Swept Away Straits to get mired in the Icy Wastes of Waiting . . . where I’ve been patiently staring into the muck for over a decade, just waiting to hear the end of Kvothe’s story. (The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. Book 1 already had its 10 year anniversary . . . in 2017, but still waiting for book 3!)

Day 14: In the meantime, while we continue to wait (and wait and wait), I once again took sail, this time to visit the Fountain of Youth where there’s a delightful bookstore run by an angel, who has a demon of a best friend who did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards. (Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. More angels, more demons, god, satan, the horsemen, and of course Death, who is everywhere—so many immortals!)

Stay tuned for the rest of my Wyrd & Wonder quest!

Wyrd & Wonder map by Ariana (IG: @booknookreview) with my journey added in red
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