Guardians of Dawn 1

 

I bought this back in 2023, but it's taken me this long to finish it. It's quite good, but we all know how easily distracted I am. Then time flies by without me even realizing how long it's been since I last cracked the cover. 

This was described as Cinder meets Sailor Moon. Cinder is in my TBR pile, but honestly, I think they should have just said Cinderella, not Cinder. 

This is definitely not a fairy tale retelling though. There are only the barest elements of the Cinderella story here. Orphan girl who's basically a servant for her stepmother, though her "evil stepsister" isn't evil. Meets the prince, though it's long before the ball and she spends a good chunk of the book not knowing who he is. Does get to dress up and go to a ball, including losing a slipper, but I think those are about all the parallels. 

Zhara's world is an odd one. There seem to be three types of people. There are magicians, who can wield a sort of magic based in writing spells using brushes. There is a group of magicians called anti-magicians, because they can neither use magic nor be affected by it. Technically, they're also magicians, but it's easier to think of them as separate. And there are regular humans. Magicians are open to being possessed by demons and they turn into monstrous beings called abominations. After this happened too often, one of the rulers decided to wipe out all magicians, so Zhara is growing up in a place where she has to constantly hide who she is. She also holds a lot of guilt because she blinded her stepsister when she was trying to heal her failing eyesight. So she puts up with her alcoholic stepmother's treatment and tries to make the best of her situation. 

She runs into the prince, thinking he's a student, and when their books are accidentally swapped, she gets a peek into the world of magic. Things keep happening and she, the prince and his palace BFF end up joining the Guardians of Dawn, a pro-magician group. 

The characters are all quite fun. 

Zhara herself is your basic teen girl hiding a secret. She's a giggly and bubbly and can be sassy and fun. She also holds a lot on her shoulders, so she's got a bunch of conflicting emotions and frustrations going on. As you probably guessed from the cover, she's the Guardian of Fire, though the reveal doesn't take place for maybe half the book.

Han is the Royal Heir. His dad is the actual prince, but Han is the Prince Charming character. He's also quite fun. He's a bit thick sometimes, as several of the characters point out, but he enjoys poetry as well as physical education, and he's hilariously innocent when it comes to double entendres. It's a running joke that's quite entertaining. (Oh, the names for the porn books!) 

Xu is Han's best friend in the palace. Xu is an interesting character, because of the pronoun setup the author has created. Basically, in this world, when you first meet someone, you use they pronouns until they give you their preference. Like there's a shopkeeper referred to as "they" until she introduces herself as "Mistress," which is when she becomes "she." Xu is always they. From little hints, you learn that Xu was born male and likes men, but that's it. I don't remember any other distinctions being given. Xu is flirty, promiscuous and likes the finer things in life. They're into expensive clothes and makeup and such. They're also very protective of Han, determined to get their prince to his majority (18). Definitely another fun character. 

Then we've got the northern Princess Yulana, Han's betrothed, who is the granddaughter of the man who wipes out a bunch of magicians, including Han's mother. Yulana is easily my favorite. She's epic. She's tall and a blend of masculine and androgynous. She's got red hair and freckles, which stand out in this East Asian-inspired fantasy world. She's blunt, funny, flirty, and very, very gay. Her nickname is Yuli and she's the Guardian of Wind. She can speak telepathically, though not read minds. She has an astral form that she can project and travel places. One of her first appearances has her meeting Zhara in astral form, so revealing she's Wind isn't exactly a spoiler. Also, by this point, she's been revealed as the third book, so it's pretty obvious. 

The last main character is Jiyi, who's a former courtesan turned writer/magical historian. She's not a magician herself, but she knows a lot. She's also the author of the most mentioned porn book, which is hilarious. Jiyi is another blunt character, but she's sassier than Yuli. She's got a short fuse and loses patience quickly, especially with Han. I think she's supposed to be a little bit older than the others, who are around seventeen. Zhara guessed her to be around twenty-one, but nothing was ever clarified. Jiyi is extremely beautiful, but also extremely doesn't give a fuck, and that makes her even more awesome. She and Yuli have a bit of a flirtation that I wish they'd done more with. Jiyi is called the Ice Princess, because she can be cold in personality, and there were a couple references to water when describing her. We know all the other guardians (the second book shows Ami, who's clearly Wood), so I'm wondering if Jiyi will become the Guardian of Water. Otherwise, it will be a new character we haven't met yet. 

Most of the book introduces the characters, their struggles, their motivations, and does a lot of world-building. The conflict is resolved in just a few chapters near the end, but it's an exciting read. 

I'm looking forward to getting into the second book. Ami's story is Beauty & the Beast-themed and we met the Beast at the end of Zhara's book. 

Definitely recommend this to those that enjoy magical girl-type fantasy and fairy tales. 

Finally Heard

I finally got around to picking this up and blew through it in one day. I loved Finally Seen, the first in this series. 

Finally Heard picks up with Lina dealing with puberty issues, as well as phone envy. She and her best friend Carla are the only two kids in their class without phones. Lina's family being poor, she doesn't want to bother her mom about puberty stuff and its added expenses. 

The entire book is basically about both kids and adults dealing with phone-related problems. The puberty stuff comes in second to all of that. Lina's mom is using Instagram videos to up her bath bomb business, with the help of Lina, Carla and Finn. The three kids even start earning money to help smaller local businesses make advertising videos. Which would have been the wise time for Lina to buy herself some of the things she wants, like deodorant or a bra. I mean, at least get the deodorant. Maybe I missed a line or two about what she was doing with the money, but deodorant also doesn't cost $14.99 like whatever she was looking at. There are plenty of cheaper options. 

So Lina's mom becomes too content-obsessed to see what Lina's going through. Lina should just talk to her mom about her body problems but instead gets hooked into the algorithm's ability to keep sending you videos about things you looked up once on a slightly-related topic. Everyone gets hooked on their videos doing well with lots of likes and comments, though that eventually slides into mean comments and cyberbullying. Even with Lina's mom. Both Carla and Finn have their own issues, too, which I'm not going to go into for the sake of spoilers. Mostly on Carla's part.

I think this book deals with a lot of important phone-related topics for both adults and kids, though I didn't like it nearly as much as Finally Seen. It was still a fun read and I'm hoping Kelly Yang continues to give us more from Lina. I like the modern world setting as much as I like the Front Desk series' older setting. 

GIRLS SURVIVE Part 12

Okay, I got REALLY behind on these. These came out back in August and I read the four graphic novels, but not the two chapter books. 

So I don't remember much about them, but I'll try to recall what I can. 

This one is set in 2011 during an earthquake. I remember liking it, but that's about it. 

 

Blah, it's the Salem witch trials. I hardly ever like this topic. I don't remember liking it here. 

And the Titanic. Not a topic I dislike but definitely on the overdone side. 

I should have taken a few minutes to reread these before typing this. Alas. 

Okay, this one I remember better, mostly because I've never read another children's historical piece on the Hindenburg. 

I liked it. 

Okay, now on to the chapter books that I just read a few days ago. 

I enjoyed this book, but Chernobyl is such a big topic and shrinking it down to fit in such a small book didn't work very well. I liked it a lot, but was definitely left thinking it could have been four times as long. 

The same applies to this one. Tiananmen Square is another topic that's just plain too big for such a short book. 

I would definitely have read longer versions of all three of these topics, including the Hindenburg. 

These are the two brand new releases for this series, having just come out on the first. 

I had never heard of the Sandy Lake removal until this book. I'm very glad it was written by an Ojibwe author! I liked it as much as one can enjoy such a sad and depressing story. The characters were good, though I wished the sisters were developed a bit more. 

This one I really enjoyed. I give this series a lot of credit for touching on topics I've never read in any other series before. Even if I'm left wanting longer versions of the stories, at least they're being told in some way. 

Penny and her older brother are passengers on the Lusitania, which was bombed by the Germans during WWI. So this has some similarities to Titanic stories but also is totally different. Like they weren't underfilling the lifeboats. They couldn't actually reach them to get into them because of the angle of the ship's sinking. Penny is one of the most likeable characters in this entire series, as is her new friend Mary. 

Always pleased for more Girls Survive!

Fern's School for Wayward Fae 1

This book was amusingly tiny. Not thin, but the actual book is smaller than books typically are. It's cute. 

Fern's School for Wayward Fae is a school in the nowhere realm, which is between all the other realms. Demifae are taken there by Fern, a mysterious redhead. The students remain at the school until they turn sixteen, which is when they must pick a realm to live in. There's Earth, where several of the students are from, and Faerie, with its warring factions of Seelie vs. Unseelie. There are also a ton of other realms, but those are the main ones. 

Rosemary has the unwanted gift of being able to see when/how people die. She doesn't know the exact when, but if the person is a lot older, obviously it's going to be in the long off future. Naturally, she creeps people out, including her mother, who ends up sending her off to an institution. Thankfully, Fern gets her out of there and she's handed off to her new mentor, Dante. 

There's a whirlwind of getting to know the school and its handful of inhabitants. Some are Seelie, so imagine the fairy tale-type fairies. The nice ones. Some are Unseelie, like Rosemary's new roommate. Trym is a banshee, who screams every night at 3:33am, so her roommates all have to wear enchanted earplugs or...die. One of the Unseelie is half-vampire, another half-ghost. (No, they don't explain the logistics, but at least Rosemary briefly wonders how that works.) Another is something that can travel through shadows. 

Rosemary becomes closest to Essie, who's a djinn and learning his wish-granting powers. When he goes missing, she's determined the adults aren't telling them the truth, so she, Trym and two other students are off to the rescue, which involves a lot of realm-hopping in search of the passage to Earth. 

I really enjoyed this. I like all the different abilities and the faerie politics. It ended on quite the cliffhanger, too. It's a quick read, but not too quick. I'd say it's middle grade, but definitely also adult-friendly. 

Forever Fairies 1-4

I am such a sucker for anything fairy, even teeny little books for 7–10-year-olds. 

The four fairies in these books wake up and climb out of their flowers on the same day. They're referred to as Sprout Wings and they join the older fairies in the Forever Tree. They'll be going through a series of four tryouts to see which pod each fairy will place into. The pods are sort of like Disney Fairies and their talents, only there are only four.

Lulu is the sporty one, so of course the pod for her is the Flutterflies. Lulu is better at flying than the others, so she's a perfect fit. Each of the tryouts features some mishap the fairies have to surpass, often involving troll characters that aren't bad, but tend to cause a lot of trouble. 

Nova is the fairy who loves animals, so she wants to be part of the Shimmerbuds. These are the fairies that make medicines and help heal animals. 

Coco's dream pod is the Twinklestars, who are the bakers. 

Coco and Nova are my two faves, although I like Zali a lot, too. 

And finally, little Zali wants to be in the Sparkleberries, who are the creative fairies. 

The illustrations are cute. The stories are cute. It's no Disney Fairies, but it was a fun read. 

Goddess Girls Super Special 2

After all these years, it's the final Goddess Girls book. Sigh. 

I was pleased the final was another super special. I still love that these are called super specials. Very BSC. However, I was not a fan of the plot. 

The girls argue over what exactly happened on Athena's first day at MoA, so they get the bright idea to travel back in time to see. Athena's spell goes awry and they end up 1,111 years in the future. In Rome. And meet their Roman counterparts. 

The girls have mixed feelings about Rome. Persephone is the most open-minded, interested in learning all she can before they leave. Athena and Minerva clash over how the Romans changed the Trojan War story. Artemis and Diana mostly get along, though Artemis is the most disturbed meeting someone so like her. Aphrodite and Venus like each other a lot, but Aphrodite feels Venus is better than her, as well as Mars being better than Ares. 

The book is mostly them checking out Roman culture, spending time with their counterparts, and then trying to figure out how to get home. 

It's not a bad book, but spending time away from MoA with brand new characters isn't what I wanted from a world I'm going to have to say goodbye to. I would have liked time with each of the past characters, even a brief cameo or mention on how they're doing. Just to wrap things up somehow. I'm going to miss Goddess Girls. It was a really fun series.

Daughters of Shadow & Blood 3

I got really behind on my reviews thanks to the hurricane wiping out our wifi for almost a month. 

I can't remember when I finished any of these, and my memories are a bit fuzzy now, but I wanted to make little posts on them anyway.

This is the final volume of the Daughters of Shadow & Blood trilogy. Three wives of Dracula, three books. 

Elizabeth is the fair wife. Her backstory is set in 1878 when she's visiting Berlin with her husband, who's some sort of diplomat. I think they were English. Elizabeth gets caught up in a murder mystery that seems to have some sort of connection to her missing father. Her backstory is the least interesting of the three wives. 

In the present, the action is heating up. Adam's ex-girlfriend Clara has been abducted by the vampire that has been a presence in the past two books. You know, the one that seems to be Dracula? Yeah, he isn't. He's Jonathan Harker. He and Elizabeth are working together to find the same medallion everyone wants. So we've got Clara stuck with those two while Adam and Arkady are trying to save her and find the medallion. Everyone's all together at the end, including Elena and Yasamin, the first brides. 

Turns out Dracula was trapped in some sort of spell by Elizabeth and Jonathan. They aged him and made him forget his life. I think that's how it went. Adam manages to break the spell and ends up turning vamp himself. I forget how they undo this. Ugh. I shouldn't do book reviews this long after reading. Anyway. I can't remember what happens to Jonathan, but Elizabeth is cursed by Dracula with the same spell. In the past, she was the one who killed her dad and she's easily the most evil of the three brides. Dracula and Yasamin go off together. Adam's spell is undone and I think he and Clara got back together. 

It's much better than it sounds. Even though Elizabeth's backstory wasn't that engaging, the action-packed stuff in the present day makes up for it. I enjoyed this trilogy a lot.