MapMaker - Lisa Moore Ramee

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When Walt and his family relocate to Blackbird Bay, Walt thinks it's the most boring place on earth. While his twin sister, Van, likes to spend her time skateboarding, Walt prefers to hide out in his room and work on his beloved map world, Djaruba. But shortly after their arrival, Walt discovers something extraordinary: He has the ability to make maps come to life.

Suddenly his new hometown doesn't seem so boring after all. And when a magical heirloom leaves Walt, his new friend Dylan, and Van stranded in t he fantastical world that Walt created, he'll need to harness his new power to get them home.

But things are changing. People have gone missing, and it's clear that a malevolent rival to the kingdom - a fellow mapmaker - has nefarious plans for Walt. If he's not stopped soon, Djaruba could become nothing but a shadow of itself or, worse, gone forever. And if a mapmaker can destroy one world, could Earth be next?"

📚📚📚 

On the one hand, this book is shorter than many of the middle grade books I've considered adding to my library, which is refreshing - stop writing 400-500 page books for kids, y'all, tighten that shit up. On the other, I wish there had been a little more development of certain things? That's not to say the book needed to be LONGER, necessarily, but I think perhaps some of the "Blackbird Bay isn't my HOME, having a twin sister who's taller than me SUCKS, my parents don't UNDERSTAND ME" angst could have been trimmed to allow space for other things. I am assuming there will be a second book at some point, so perhaps there will be more world building in book two.

Still, it's an interesting concept for a story, and I really enjoyed the characters. Solid story for map kids everywhere.

February Read Harder update...if you can call it that

Look, this will be a short update. Did I read the other books I planned to from January? No.

Did I read my February books? No.

Did I even request February books from the library or purchase them from my bookstore of choice? Also no.

I'm going to hold off on choosing new challenge books for now so I don't overwhelm myself in books I should be reading. Maybe I'll catch up during spring break.

Lore - Alexandra Bracken

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals. They are hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.

Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world, turning her back on the hunt's promises of eternal glory after her family was murdered by a rival line. For years she's pushed away any thought of revenge against the man - now a god - responsible for their deaths.

Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek her out: Castor, a childhood friend Lore believed to be dead, and Athena, one of the last of the original gods, now gravely wounded.

The goddess offers Lore an alliance against their mutual enemy and a way to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to rejoin the hunt, binding her fate to Athena's, will come at a deadly cost - and it may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees."

📚📚📚

 Dude...the plot twists in this book. I knew it would be good, and I'll tell you what, it did not disappoint. It isn't often that a twist throws me for a loop, but Lore left me reeling MULTIPLE times. It helps that there's like...deep deep lore (ha...pun not intended) that the reader is learning as they progress through the story, so sometimes it felt like I was just barely keeping my head above water with all of that, but MAN. Truly got me so good, in the most satisfying ways. Truly, reading this felt like swinging along a series of ropes or something, trying not to drop, and as soon as you thought you were in a rhythm and had a grasp on things, it was like NOPE! So masterfully done.

I want to talk details, but I don't know how to without potentially spoiling things, so I'll just say the characters - top notch. The plot develops at a great pace, with more detail revealed at intervals where you're juuuuuust starting to get frustrated, and then ope, here's another little kernel for you, my desperate reader, I hope you enjoy! 

I think my one wish after finishing this is that there had been a little more actual God lore included, not just the house lore, but honestly, this book was SO long, I truly don't know if that would have been feasible. And I think if it came down to more details about the pantheon and maybe making this a duology or less and keeping it a standalone book, I would come down on the side of standalone book. There are so few standalone fantasy books with solidly developed worlds, I really loved that. Plus even though we didn't get a lot of pantheon lore, what we got...was good. So hey, maybe I have no wishes. This was a great book!

The Only Road by Alexandra Diaz and musings on empathy

 This isn't even a review, I don't know what it is...but I finished reading The Only Road last night, and I don't know if a book has ever made me so emotional. It took me a while to finish because I had to take so many breaks to process those emotions, and I think more people should read books like this. It's a prime example of what freedom to read folks talk about when they praise the way reading exposes people to other viewpoints and helps (kids especially) learn and develop empathy. It puts you in the shoes of someone you may not otherwise understand in a way that just...frankly tore my heart out.

That said, I was thinking about some people in my life that I wish would read a book like this, and I realized that truthfully, even if they did I don't think it would make them feel any type of way. I don't think it would make them take a look at their attitudes about immigration, particularly people who come into the United States "illegally" (no one is illegal on stolen land, abolish ICE, our legal immigration system is a joke and seeking asylum is a fucking human right), and I think many of them are so dug in to their hateful rhetoric that they would manage to find a way to blame people in positions like the characters in The Only Road for the situation they were in.

And that just makes me sad and confused. I genuinely don't understand how people can hold such hatred in their hearts and be so closeminded and cruel and then just...walk around like normal. How do you exist like that? How do you justify it? It baffles me.

I don't know. This isn't a book review, and it's mostly me having a rambly existential crisis, I guess. It's just weighing on my mind, and I figured why not put it out there. I wish more people were willing to commit the sin of empathy.

Monthly Mystery Read

Shortly before the 2024 holidays, a meme started going around where as a "gift" someone was given 12 wrapped books from their TBR shelves, each labeled for one month of the year. Two of my sisters and I decided to do that for each other, and so far it's a lot of fun looking forward to unwrapping my new book on the first of the month to discover what it is. My January book was #VeryFatVeryBrave by Nicole Byer, which was SO good. It's also pretty short and is a photography book, so has lots of (incredible) pictures, which meant that I finished on January 1st and have been impatiently waiting for my next book reveal for the rest of the year that has been January.

And at last, yesterday was the day.

At long last, the February book reveal! And the February book is...

Drumroll, please...

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

Yessssssssss, I'm so excited! I've read a time travel duology by Alexandra Bracken and really enjoyed it. This one is modern day Greek mythology, which like...what's not to love? I'm definitely looking forward to it - will report back when I finish!

January challenge update - a.k.a. "I thought I wrote this already"

If you were to throw yourself a 13-13-13 birthday party, what would you plan? Because yesterday was my 13-13-13 birthday, and I find the idea of a 13-themed birthday party so much more fun than a 40th birthday bash. 40? So cliche. 13-13-13...who does that? (Probably no one, because it's weird. And I accept that.)

Speaking of births and days...how about that Read Harder challenge, huh? You'll never believe it, but I fuckin forgot that I came up with the roll the dice thing to choose challenges.😬 Sooooo yeah, I read two books for challenge #2, reread a childhood favorite book - Beauty by Robin McKinley and The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. Love them both so much, even though I find it silly as hell that the main "conflict" to Beauty when you boil it down is her not being pretty. Anyhow, after I remembered that I was rolling dice to choose which challenges to do, I started working on my challenge #5 books and challenge #24 books. Have I finished them? No. But I still have five more days in January, so there's time. So far, I like them, but man, in the current climate, The Only Road is making me cry even more than it normally would.

Pending completion of my January books in the next five days, for February I'll be completing challenge #6 and challenge #14. For #6, read a standalone fantasy book, I'll be reading Briarheart by Mercedes Lackey. My unofficial goal for this year was to choose books I could add to my school library for as many challenges as possible, but sooooo many middle grade fantasy books are part of a series, I got tired of looking for an intriguing standalone. Briarheart has been on my list for a minute, so it'll be good to finally read it! For challenge #14, read a comic in translation, I'll be reading Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, translated from French. I also kiiiiind of want to read Persephone by Loic Locatelli-Kournwsky, also translated from French, so I guess we'll see how my reading goes.

Castle of the Cursed vs. The Immortal Dark

Remember back in the roaring tenties, aka the 2010s, when two movies would come out and it was like...I mean, these are two versions of the same movie, did one studio pass and then steal the idea while another studio picked up the original? You know what I'm talking about, right? Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman - retellings, but still, same year? No Strings Attached, featuring Natalie Portman and famed rapist-apologist Ashton Kutcher, and Friends with Benefits, featuring dumpster fires Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake? (Per the IMDB trivia, NSA actually tried to title their movie FWB when their original title was rejected and couldn't because...you know, a movie with that exact title and the same plot was coming out a handful of months later...)

Anyhow, I guess this is a thing, they're called Twin Films, movies with similar plots coming out at similar times, which usually would get flagged but every once in a while slips through the cracks. This happens with books too, obviously, and while I always really enjoy reading a book and being like heyyyy I've read something similar to this before, this time I happened to read both books at exactly the same time, and it was a really interesting experience for me so I figured hey, why not blog about it. And here we are.

For starters, personally? These book covers are different variations on the same theme. Similar vibes.

Also, there's an orphaned main character who has lost the last of their known family due to mysterious and probably nefarious circumstances. Both, mostly unwillingly, take a journey to live at a place they find distasteful with an aunt they don't know and don't trust, where both end up allied (tenuously?) with a vampire. Both have lost their native tongue and attempt to relearn it. Both discover their families have complex, mysterious, and dark legacies. Both protagonists are dealing with mental health stuff, with PTSD in the forefront of that stuff.

There's more, but to be honest I thought I had finished this review days ago and foolishly didn't make any notes, so a lot of the more nuanced stuff I'm having trouble remembering and a lot of the less nuanced stuff is spoilers. So I'll just say, interesting experience reading two books that are so similar in overarching plot yet so different in storytelling style. If a person could only read one and asked me for a recommendation, I would say go with Castle of the Cursed if you like things that are mysterious, slightly creepy, but also relatively straightforward when it comes to worldbuilding. Go with The Immortal Dark if you like much more complex, lore-heavy stuff where the book is as much about building the world as it is about advancing the plot.