Any good writer and all of the “how to write better” books will tell you that the key to writing better is… reading. It makes sense; how can you learn to better your skills if you’re not reading what other writers have been able to actually publish?
I’ve talked a little bit about my decision to get back into the writing groove in my first post on this blog, but it wasn’t just writing that fell to the wayside for me over the past few years. Reading did, too, so as part of my commitment to get back into the swing of writing and actually finishing my novel, I also made the commitment to read more.
So far, so good! Well, good enough that I have at least a halfway decent wrap-up for this month. I also have way too much on my TBR list, but I’m trying to keep expectations realistic at least for this first month.
Anyway, enough rambling from me. On to the wrap-up!
June 2020 Book Wrap-Up
Okay, sorry, one last thing. I’ll be honest: I didn’t start making myself get into the habit of reading again until about halfway through June, so I’ve only read two books in their entirety this month.
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Even though I said I haven’t been doing much reading lately, I did read all of The Grisha Trilogy (also by Leigh Bardugo) back in January. Aaaand… I didn’t love those books. The worldbuilding was cool, I’m super into the concept of Grisha, and I even have some favorite characters (Nikolai Lantsov 4 Lyfe), but I will probably never read the trilogy again.
Six of Crows, however…
HOOOOO BOY.
Worldbuilding? ON POINT.
Character development? ON POINT.
Relationships? ON POINT.
Okay, okay, let me give a quick summary so you know what I’m talking about. Six of Crows is a fantasy novel set in the same universe as The Grisha Trilogy. It follows the story of six teenagers—Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Wylan, Nina, and Matthias—who are all involved in the criminal underworld, specifically a gang called the Dregs. They are put to the task of stealing something incredibly valuable (I won’t spoil what) from a place called the Ice Court, which was built as an impregnable fortress.
From the back cover:
The Ice Court had been built to withstand an onslaught of armies, assassins, Grisha, and spies. When Inej said as much to Kaz, he simply replied, “But it hasn’t been built to keep us out.”
His confidence unnerved her. “What makes you think we can do this? There will be other teams out there, trained soldiers and spies, people with years of experience.”
“This isn’t a job for trained soldiers and spies. It’s a job for thugs and thieves.”
Think Fantasy Ocean’s Eleven.
So as I’m sure you can gather from my earlier gushing, I enjoyed this book a lot. Admittedly, it started out a little slow as the Dregs geared up for the heist, but I understand why it had to be that way. There was sufficient seeding and planting leading up to the parts where we actually got to read about the big heist, as well as plenty of character building.
You might be worried that with a cast of six characters that all carry equal weight in the heist, someone might get shafted in terms of character development. As the incomparable Bailey Sarian would say: nay nay. Each character’s backstory is thoroughly explored, so you understand the hardships and trauma these characters have gone through. You understand what has shaped them to be who they are. You empathize with them and you root for them; you want them to succeed.
And as for the heist, I was wondering how Bardugo would keep the energy and tension up for half the book, and BOY HOWDY, did she deliver. I won’t get too into it so you can be all excited and surprised when you go and read it for yourself. Suffice to say that not everything goes according to plan, and the stakes just get raised over and over and over again until you’re thinking, “There is no way they’re getting out of this alive.”
All-in-all, it was a great book, and I learned a lot from it about how I want to build up my characters and conflicts in my own story. And you can bet your sweet ass Crooked Kingdom is already on my TBR for July, seeing as Six of Crows left off with a pretty dire cliffhanger.
To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo
To Kill a Kingdom is a fantasy novel (shocker, I know) that is, essentially, a retelling of The Little Mermaid. In this version, mermaids are actually different from sirens, and the story follows a siren named Lira. Known as the Princes’ Bane, Lira is required to steal the heart of a human on each of her birthdays, and the only hearts she steals are those of princes’. Her mother is the evil Sea Queen, and one day Lira will take her place, and for her seventeenth birthday, she is tasked with taking the heart of a price-slash-siren killer named Elian. Other stuff happens, but I won’t get into that because spoilers.
I liked this book a lot. Listen, I’m not hard to please. Give me a halfway decent world, some interesting characters, and snappy writing, and I’m there. To Kill a Kingdom had all of these things. The icing on top of the cake is that the main romance follows the enemies-to-lovers trope, and I eat that shit up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
One thing I’ll say about it is that it felt REALLY fast. Where Six of Crows felt very slow and drawn out in places, To Kill a Kingdom felt fast. To Kill a Kingdom was the epitome of Everything Happens So Much. The book (at least on my Kindle) was only 345 pages. I felt like it could have EASILY been 500 pages and still been an enjoyable read.
The thing that felt fastest to me was the worldbuilding. It was extremely snappy and efficient. The story takes place in a world with 100 kingdoms, and only a handful are actually given names. Also, considering there’s a ton of travel in the book, the actual layout of the world is never revealed to us. While I appreciated that I was able to get everything I needed to go along with the story without dawdling, I was still also hungry for more.
I think it’s definitely a worthwhile read, especially if you like the enemies-to-lovers trope and/or The Little Mermaid.
To Be Read in July 2020
Like I said before, I’m trying not to bite off more than I can chew when it comes to my TBR for July. After all, I’m just getting back into the swing of reading, and I do work full time on top of working on my novel, so I don’t have a ton of time to devote to reading. However, there’s SO MUCH on my TBR that I’m itching to get to, so only choosing a few books was really, really hard.
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Surprise, surprise! Six of Crows is actually a duology, and Crooked Kingdom is its sequel. As I mentioned, Six of Crows ends off with a cliffhanger, and I’ve been DYING to find out what happens next. I honestly don’t know anything about what happens in this book other than it made my favorite BookTuber, readwithcindy, have an emotional breakdown.
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
I’ve been making a concerted effort to read diverse speculative fiction, and one of the books that kept coming up in my searching was this one. I hate to even say this because JKR is absolute trash, but it’s been heralded as the “Nigerian Harry Potter,” which I understand is high praise but also doesn’t feel like it at this point. HOWEVER, that’s neither here nor there and has nothing to do with the quality of this book.
I read the back cover, and it’s about a Nigerian girl named Sunny Nwazue who doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Though her features are West African, she has albinism. She soon becomes part of a quartet of magic students who are tasked with hunting down a career criminal who knows magic, too.
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
So, I’m white. I’ll put that out there right now. And I have been doing a lot of thinking and self-reflecting on the Black Lives Matter movement and protests recently. I’ve given money as much as possible and signed as many petitions as I can. I keep myself aware, and I retweet and post information to help others as often as I can.
However, I know it doesn’t end there, so I’ve been making a concerted effort to read anti-racist books. I actually started Stamped from the Beginning in the last third of June. However, it is a MUCH longer read than I anticipated (with good reason!), so I was not able to finish it in time for this wrap-up.
In this book, Kendi chronicles the history of race and racism in the United States using a few main historical figures as his anchor points: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis.
On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume 1 by Timothy Hickson
I actually cheated on this book and started it in June, too. However, I got distracted by Six of Crows and Stamped from the Beginning and wasn’t able to finish it before the end of June.
As you might imagine, this is a non-fiction book on writing and worldbuilding. Listen, the title is straightforward for a reason. So far, the book is addressing mostly the “writing” part, which I feel I have a halfway decent handle on after seventeen years of practice. I’m actually more interested in the worldbuilding part of it since I’m undertaking a fair bit of worldbuilding for my novel, and I want to make sure I’m doing it as effectively as possible. We’ll see if this book offers anything new in that respect in July.
Side note, I found author Timothy Hickson on YouTube. He has a great channel where he talks about worldbuilding in a HUGE variety of works out there, but how I actually found him was through a video essay he did about the psychology of Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Highly recommend!
Well, that’s all I’ve got to say about this post. If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I hope you become intrigued by some of these books and pick them up for yourself.