Entries tagged with au: leigh bardugo

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King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

King of Scars

3/5. A book in her Grishaverse, set after the Shadow and Bone trilogy (bleh, boring, avoid) and the Six of Crows books (much better, worth it if you like that kind of YA). About a young king possessed by a demon and also a spy mission in enemy territory undercovering a trafficking operation, also some understated YA romance stuff.

So, confession, I have been working my way through some stuff that has been on my TBR for a long time by way of a random number generator. Very booktube of me, I know. It’s actually helpful, though. In this case, helpful in solidifying that I’m still not in the YA place, even pretty “old” YA like this. Technically this would be new adult under the latest made up marketing gimmick, I believe. This is complexly written, with a lot going on, but I was only ever vaguely interested. Mostly, I just kept laughing out loud whenever the book reminded me, as it did periodically, that all these people – these soldiers and spies and heads of state, all collectively managing a war and a nation – are eighteen years old. It would be less funny if there were any actual adults in this book that aren’t irrelevant or evil, but there aren’t. Yeah yeah, I know, it’s part of the fantasy of YA. Doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.

Content notes: Trafficking, imprisonment, forced childbearing

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Ninth House and Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House and Hell Bent

3-4/5. Alex, who has seen ghosts all her life, is recruited out of the hospital bed where she is recovering from an event that killed her friends to go to Yale and serve in a secret society that watches over all the other secret societies that practice magic.

Real mixed feelings about these. When I was reading them, I loved a lot of the experience – the literal brutality and viscera of the magic, the repeated themes of struggling against the legacy of magic which has been mostly used to reenforce privilege, the strong sense of place, the way Alex’s trauma spun her life out of control and made her into a victim and also a predator. But then I’d stop reading and I’d mull a bit and go but wait . . . Alex is a person of color . . . who is experiencing Yale as an overwhelmingly white place which is pretty fucking weird in and of itself because elite educational institutions are really not overwhelmingly white these days – I mean mine sure weren't and some five second googling reveals that Yale definitely isn't – and isn’t it a bit uh-huh that the one black guy is . . . a cop? And I’d mull a little bit more and I’d think, wait so she was a drug user for like seven years and then apparently went cold turkey and now never thinks about using again ever? Sure, that’s totally how that works. And then I’d think, You know . . . that seemed to be deep and interesting when I read it, but you know now I’m not so sure? It seems to be shallowing upon consideration, not deepening?

So, an enjoyable experience (for values of, you know, *points downward*) but I think I will approach the next book with a bit more distance and a bit less face-first enthusiasm.

Content notes: Hoo boy. Gore, violence, murder, attempted and accomplished sexual assault of various sorts, underage sexual exploitation, consensual and nonconsensual drug use, mind control, I’m sure I’m forgetting things. This book must have been hell to market. I’m surprised they let her do it without an open pseud. Considering she’s written YA to date and this is about a girl going to college, it had to be hard to figure out how to pitch this so younger teens wouldn’t automatically pick it up, because wow, most of them should not.

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Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

Crooked Kingdom: A Sequel to Six of Crows

4/5. Sequel to Six of Crows. More of that – crew of misfits and thieves takes several runs at getting what they're owed.

This is prickly, difficult, very grown up for YA. On the surface it's about these hardened teenagers who have reluctantly come to care about each other, compounding and healing their respective damage as they work through a series of complicated cons. Beneath that, this is a book about consequences. The action and the echo. What grows up in the shadow you cast. How what you put out in the world is what you get back, but twisted. How the wealthy and powerful in that city are no different than the gutter rats trying to swindle them; how the two are an inevitable consequence of each other.

The heart of the book, for me, is a quiet scene, the sort of thing that movie producers like to ruin with music but that ought to be played to silence. Two people – one a girl turned to crime after she escapes the brothel she was sold to at fourteen, one a boy driven by revenge and his screaming touch phobia after he survived a plague in a pile of corpses. The two of them talking quietly and edgily about how they feel about each other and, exquisitely painfully, touching each other just a little bit. This book turns on that holding point.

Audio note: This is a multi-voice production with excellent casting, particularly for the women. And is tragically ruined by the fact that no one thought to coordinate the voice actors so that they pronounce proper names of major characters in remotely the same way aaaaaaargh. Painful.

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Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Shadow and Bone (The Grisha Book 1)

3/5. Bland paint-by-numbers fantasy about the girl who is taken to court after discovering her hidden power that might save them all. Boy am I glad I read Six of Crows, Bardugo's fourth book, first. That one is complicated and scary. This one – her debut -- is derivative in the dull way, not the fun way. And it's never good when the love interest is in deathly peril and I start vigorously cheering for his death, because that could only improve things.

I mean, I guess it's a demonstration of how fast a person's writing can improve?

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Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Six of Crows

4/5. Fantasy heist caper where the team of lowlifes and outcasts has to break someone out of the unbreakable prison, also politics.

"Caper" seems like the wrong word. Far too cheerful for this tense book that manages to balance grimdark with humaneness better than anything I've read in a while.

One of those books that I think is classified as young adult only because the protagonists are under eighteen. (Well, and because YA is often more lucrative). Because this is otherwise an entirely adult book about adult themes – the costs of survival, the rigged game of life when you don't hold power, being the dupe, being the one duping. I really liked this. The heart of this book is partly the heist, but it's mostly the team, and its interlocking sets of relationships, romantic and otherwise. It would be a wild oversimplification to say that this book is about hardened people coming to care for each other, because it is vastly more messy and satisfying than that. But if simplification you must have, there you go.

Oh, and did I mention half of the team is composed of persons with disabilities? Because it is.