The Jasad Crown by Sara Hashem REVIEW

Summary:

Held deep in a mountain refuge, Sylvia has been captured by the Urabi, who believe the Jasad Heir can return their homeland to its former power. But after years of denying her legacy and a traitor's bargain with Jasad's greatest enemy, Sylvia must win the Urabi's trust while struggling to hide the dangerous side effects her magic is having on her mind. 

In a rival kingdom, Arin must maneuver carefully between his father's desire to put down the brewing rebellion and the sacred edicts Arin is sworn to uphold. He is determined to find Sylvia, but Arin's search unravels secrets that threaten the very core of his beliefs about his family and his kingdom.

War is inevitable, but Sylvia cannot abandon her people again. The Urabi plan to raise the Jasadi fortress, and it will either kill Sylvia or destroy the humanity she's fought so hard to protect. For the first time in her life, Sylvia doesn't just want to survive. She wants to win.

My Thoughts:

I really wanted to throw this book out the window after that ending. Sylvia is forced to face the reality of who she is after years of hiding, as well as gain the trust of her people. They want her to raise the fortress, which will either kill her or make her go mad. Arin learns the truth behind his heritage and what his father has been doing. He is actually half-Jasadi, and he has no magic due to his father magic-mining him when he was very young. His father keeps the magic in his scepter, and is also part of the reason that Jasad fell. I loved learning all of these revelations and getting the full history of what happened to Jasad piece by piece. I could not put the book down, but I hate the ending. Sylvia dies and never sees those she loves again? While I understand not having a completely happy ending, this seemed like a bit of a cop-out. I think that it would have been better if she was consumed by her magic and everyone had to try to bring her back.

My Rating: 4 stars

Someone You Can Build A Nest In by Josh Wiswell REVIEW

Summary:

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.
However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.
Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?
Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life. 

My Thoughts:

This is such a cute, cozy story. When Shesheshen is attacked, she outruns them but falls from a great height. Homily finds her and nurses her back to health. Kindness isn't something she's used to, especially from humans, so she is wary. When Homily confesses that her family is hunting a monster that cursed her family, Shesheshen is confused - she has never cursed anyone, and while the cure demands her blood, she has no blood. She follows Homily to the town, partly out of self-preservation and partly out of love for her. But when the hunt starts, truths unknown come out of hiding.

I think it's really cool that Shesheshen's way of shapeshifting is in eating someone's remains and using some of their bones to imitate a human body structure. And while this is a romance, they don't immediately fall in love. It takes spending time together and learning about each other for feelings to form. The twist at the end I did not see coming, which was amazing. I do wish that there was more worldbuilding though. We mostly only see and know one area of this world, which is fine, but it would have been nice to know more about the area that the novel spends its time in, as well as to know more about the history of Homily's family.

My Rating: 4 stars

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata REVIEW

Summary:

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?

My Thoughts:

This is a strangely horrifying concept. Amane is growing up in a world where most people don't have sex anymore, and babies are created scientifically. Brainwashed by society's current norms and beliefs, she strives to integrate perfectly into this new world and holds strong distaste for how she was conceived. Married couples don't have sex, and when her first husband attempts to assault her, he is arrested by police and she divorces him. Her second husband becomes her best friend, but Amane still doesn't feel comfortable sharing certain details about herself with him. She wants sexual relationships, but she also doesn't want to turn into her mother. Things take a turn when they decide to move to the experimental city. Families aren't considered to be important, and Amane struggles to let go of those close to her.

The concept is very interesting, but the book doesn't really do much with it. I would have loved to learn about how this became the new normal for society, but there are only vague mentions of a past war that started the new system. Amane is a great character though, and I like that she goes back and forth with her opinions, not knowing yet what she really believes and wants, which is the driving part of the story. However, the ending seems abrupt and leaves more questions than answers.

My Rating: 2 stars

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones REVIEW

Summary:

Times have been tough for twelve-year-old Junior, his mom, and especially for his younger brother, Dino. When his dad makes a surprise visit late one night, Junior is desperate to make him part of their family again. The only problem is, Dad drowned eight years ago.

And bringing back the dead always comes at a cost . . .

My Thoughts:

Books by this author are either hit or miss for me, and this one happens to be a miss. Junior lives with his mom and brother off the reservation, and misses his dad a lot. One night, while Junior is sleepwalking, he awakes to see his father. Fueled by the need to see him again, Junior checks every night - only to find that in order for his father to stay, he has to take some of his brother's life force. Horrified, Junior decides to get rid of the shadow that looks like his dad to save his family.

This novella goes back and forth between past and present to tell the story, and we only really get to know Junior out of all the characters. However, even the character of Junior seems flat, and this shows in the time-jump epilogue to when he is an adult. And the decision he makes at the end seems contrary to the character we got to know - he's willing to sacrifice his brother to bring his son back. It makes no sense to get all that character development only to throw it away at the end.

My Rating: 1 star 

Cold Eternity by S. A. Barnes REVIEW

Summary:

Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth's most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago.

The cryo program created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld is long defunct, and the AI hologram "hosts", ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld's three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately. She starts to see figures crawling in the hallways, and there's a constant scraping, slithering, and rattling echoing in the vents.

It's not long before Halley realizes she may have gotten herself trapped in an even more dangerous situation than the one she was running from . . .

My Thoughts:

This was so good but too short. I wish some things were expanded on because a lot of it was intriguing.

Halley is on the run from her previous life as someone who helped a political candidate in their campaign. Her ex-boss used her as a scapegoat for the actions of an ex-employee, who started a riot to try to turn the public in their favor. Working on a ship full of bodies is a good way to hide - until it becomes clear that things are not what they seem. Celebrities' frozen bodies have been swapped out for lookalikes, and one of the AI hosts seems to be sentient and warning her to escape. But with a monster in the shadows and a boss that's all too eager to sacrifice her for his endgame, escaping seems impossible.

I do wish that we got more information on the history of the program's creator and his family. Other than a few descriptions of his actual life behind the public eye, we only know what the public knows. I think it would have been really interesting to explore more on the monster and how it came to be. Halley is a great character to root for, even though we don't know her full story in the beginning, and I do wish we got more about her life growing up (her family is part of what drove her to her previous job). The atmosphere was written very well to feel creepy and isolated.

My Rating: 5 stars