My triumphant(ish) return to blogging.

A while back I was thinking a lot about this blog, and blogging in general. In the past 2 years, I have written less than 10 posts, which makes me really sad. I think I've figured out what the reason for that is.

It seems that over the past few years, blogging has turned from something you do for fun into something that you have to run like a business. It feels like it's about taking the best pictures, writing the most click-baity titles, integrating with Pinterest and Facebook, being active on Twitter and Instagram, tracking SEO stats, and dozens of other things that just go over my head. It seems like every other blog these days is solely about blogging, for goodness sakes.

I got overwhelmed by that, and I felt like that was what a blog had to be. I felt like I had to do that, but the thing is, I don't want to do that. I don't want to optimize everything for Google and Pinterest. I wish I cared about that, but I really don't.

I just want this to be about writing. I miss sharing my thoughts here, logging my mail and creative endeavours, and documenting my life.

So I let go of that comparison. My blog isn't going to be the most professional thing that you have ever seen, and maybe my formatting will be a little wonky, and maybe my posts will be too long and rambly, and maybe my pictures will be a little too dark. And that's okay. This is about my life behind the yellow door, and it's good the way it is.

Expect to see more of me around here in the future. You'll know it's me because it won't be polished. But it'll be me.

Red Rising || Pierce Brown

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the colour-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. He spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Inspired by a longing for justice, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

Red Rising is unlike anything I have read before. It does feel heavily like a mix of The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Braveheart, with some Greek and Roman mythology thrown in, and the result is something completely unique.

Good things:

• The cast of characters was fantastic. I felt like they were all well developed, with depth to each of them, even the side characters. There were some characters that I expected to behave in a certain way, and they didn't, which I found very refreshing.
• The world that Brown created is amazing. He just drops you into this totally different time and place, and it was so well crafted. It was totally believable. 
• I found the plot really compelling. The twists and turns kept me turning the pages.

Not so good things:

• Toward the end of the book things played out a little too conveniently. I wasn't sure if I could let my guard down or not; it felt like something bad should be around the corner because that's usually what happens when things seem to be working out for the main characters, and that totally threw me off.
• It wasn't too much for me, but this books is often quite brutal and bloody. There is a heavy battle element to this book, which is where that comes in, so I just want to point that out for people who don't handle things like that well. I would definitely recommend this for more mature readers.

A tip for readers: I suggest keeping a list of who all of the characters are as you encounter them, just their name, the house they're associated with, how they relate to Darrow. There is a large cast of characters and sometimes it was hard to keep track of them, especially people that we hadn't seen for a good chunk of the book. Luckily, book 2 does have a list of the cast, but that would have helped me out a lot in this one. 

Overall thoughts:

Red Rising was such an intense ride. I have book 2 sitting on my shelf, and book 3 was published in January, so I am really looking forward to seeing where things go for Darrow! 

The Graceling Realm || series review

This year I made a resolution to write a review for every book I read. As you can tell, I am doing pretty well at that (/sarcasm). But it's not too late in the year that I can't get caught up! So here we go!

The first book I finished in 2016 was Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore. It's the final book in the Graceling Realm trilogy, so I'm just going to review the series (as evidenced by the title of this post).

The Graceling Realm trilogy is a YA fantasy series. The books of this series feature a different main character, but they all tie in together. Bitterblue is the direct sequel to Graceling, and features characters from Graceling and Fire. Fire is a companion prequel to Graceling, but I wouldn't read it first because it would have spoilers for Graceling.

Some series stats:


In this world, there are people known as Gracelings, people that have with an extreme skill, or "grace". They are born with different coloured eyes, which is how they are able to be identified. Katsa, our main character in the first book, is graced with killing. Being the niece of a brutish king, she is forced to be his personal assassin, even though she loathes every minute of it. She is part of a secret council that goes performs tasks that seek justice against the crown. One day a prince named Po comes to the council and asks them to find his missing grandfather, believed to be kidnapped by one of the neighbouring kingdoms, and our story takes off from there.

Fire takes place many years before Graceling, and it tells the story of a girl named Fire, the last human monster living in a wild country. Monsters in this world are brightly coloured versions of regular animals, and they also possess the ability to control minds. Fire has this ability but she is very reluctant to use it, as she doesn't want to force her will onto innocent people. However, Prince Brigan needs her help to uncover a plot against the king, and convinces her to come to King City to become a part of his investigation.

The final book in the series, Bitterblue, takes place a decade after the events of Graceling. The young Queen Bitterblue has ascended the throne of Monsea, and she must unravel the mysteries surrounding the reign of the previous king, who was a tyrannical ruler.

Good things about this series:

• The world building in this series is amazing. It really felt like a proper fantasy world, with many rich elements woven together. 
• The characters were very strong, and for the most part they showed good development over the course of their respective stories. Strong female protagonists are always good.
• The romances in these books feature slow-burning, "will-they-or-won't-they" relationships, which I quite enjoy. 

Not so nice things about the series:

• My main complaint about this series is the very casual attitude toward sex that Cashore depicts. It's nothing at all for people to have sex outside of marriage, with multiple partners, and we also see several homosexual relationships and an implied bi-sexual character. The middle book, Fire, is the worst one for this. One of the male side characters sleeps with nearly every female character introduced in this book. All of the women just accept this as how he is, and they have no qualms about the situation at all. There is also a very convenient plant that serves as a "morning after" device, and the only negative depiction of a sexual encounter at all in this series is that a female character gets pregnant because she didn't have any of this plant on hand. [I realize that others might not share the same opinion on this topic, these are just my personal moral convictions.]
• Bitterblue suffered from some pacing issues; it felt like at times the story was just spinning it's wheels because Cashore was trying to build more mystery, but really it just felt the same things kept happening over and over. It could have been a good 100 pages less and not suffered at all. 

Overall conclusion:

I think that Kristin Cashore is an excellent writer, and if you want to get into fantasy but are intimidated by it, this would be a good place to start. 

If you are bothered by the sexual elements I mentioned, just skip Fire altogether. It does have elements that are fascinating regarding the world, but you won't miss anything at all if you read Graceling and Bitterblue as a duology.