Hey there booktube Katie her and you're watching
Katie Loves to Read. Today I'm doing my
February wrap up part 1 so let's talk
about the books that i read at the start
of February. The first thing that I managed to
read at the start of February was the
Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson. I
read this both on audiobook and ebook, I
was taking full advantage of amazon
whispersync. This is the third book in
the Wax and Wayne series which is the
second of the Mistborn series. Its
Mistborn era two. It's basically a
wild-west type deal set in the Mistborn
world where all of the magic
comes from consuming metals and it
follows Wax and Wayne who are fighting
crime and doing random stuff. This one I
enjoyed but did not love I have to say.
Like I think in the end I gave it three
stars on Goodreads and I can't really
make my mind up whether it was a three-star or
three and a half stars but it definitely
felt like the weakest in the series to
me so far because i find it to be
incredibly predictable and also some of
the plot twists that it took didn't
really make sense to me
however what I did enjoy apart from just
being a barrel of laughs, lots of fun and a
high-stakes adventure is that we got to
learn a lot more about Steris or Staris
or however you pronounce her name who is
Lord Waxilium's wife and I'm actually
growing to love her in a way that I never
thought I would because she is presented
is quite an unlikable character in the
first book but over time you begin to
really get to know her better
and realise that you're seeing her as
society assumes her to be but there's a lot
more there and her and Wax are definitely
a very cute couple.
So yeah I'm excited for the next book in
the series because I enjoy the Mistborn
world and i have to say I enjoy the
humor of the Wax and Wayne series but
this just felt like the weakest one so
far for me. Next I listened to another book
on audio and that was The Tropic of
Serpents which is the second book in the
Memoirs of Lady Trent series. This is a
series about a lady who is a dragon
naturalist she goes on adventures and
writes about dragons there are a lot of
fun and
I love them dearly. Basically i was
looking for fun reads and I do like
these. I also like that they do deal with
deeper issues - they're dealing with
women's place in society, women in
science, this one even had a whole subplot
about periods which let's be real
we do not discuss periods in fantasy
half as much as we probably should
because unless in this new fantasy
world women don't have problems with
periods and periods aren't a thing then
presumably they need to be discussed if
you have a female protagonist. So we have
that there, we also had a character in this
who seemed to be asexual and I just found
that it was a very fun story and I found
like Lady Trent our main character
definitely got developed a lot more so
I'm excited to move on to the next book
in the series.
I think this second book was definitely
stronger for me than the first and I gave
it a 4 out of 5 stars.
Next I finished up a book and that was
a second book in the Rise of Empire
bind up so the second book is called the
Emerald Storm. So basically this is the
second binder of the Ryeria series
and each windup has two books so this is book
four technically but some people just
read the whole bind ups in one if that
make any sense? The Ryeria books
follow Royce and Hadrian who are two
thieves for hire to get involved in many
different problems. In the first one they're
accused of killing the king actually so
yeah they're generally a lot of fun. This
one for me I didn't enjoy quite so much
but I do wonder if that was because I'd
forgotten what happened in the previous
three books because i haven't read them
for a while so i think it may be
partially my fault as opposed to the
books fault.
These are high stakes, high action
adventures in an interesting yet still
fairly typical fantasy world.There is a lot of
political stuff going on which is
something I enjoy and in the end I gave
this a 3.75 stars/ three and a half
stars maybe i don't know. I think it was --
I found a little bit confusing and I
didn't find it as fun as normal but i
think that was because I was trying to
work out what was going on because I'd
forgotten the previous books if that make
sense. Then I finished an advanced read
copy and that was of The Hate U Give by
Angie Thomas i am making a full
spoiler-free review of this so don't
worry there will be a full discussion of
this, probably right after i finish
making this video actually. But this
follows our main character Starr who's at a
party one night and basically somebody
shoot someone or there're shots fired and
she's leaves the party and she and her
childhood friend end getting a car and drive
off you know in her friend's car and basically
they're stopped by the police and the
police end up shooting her friend and
killing him and they're both
African-American policeman is white and
she's the only witness to this fatal
shooting and this excessive use of force
and basically it explores the impact of
this on her community and on Starr herself,
on Starr's family, on the victim's family -
whose name I've forgotten because i'm
horrible person.
Basically it's a black lives matter book
it's about the black lives matter
movement.One complaint I've hear about
All-American boys which is the book that
deals with very similar issues is that
it felt like the characters weren't very fleshed out, we only saw
them in regards to how the events played
and how the events had an effect on
them. We didn't get to see them fully
formed characters, in this book we
definitely get to see Starr as a fully-formed
character. We saw - see all of her likes and
dislikes. We see her interactions with
her family, her interactions with her
friends. We see the different micro
aggressions and forms of racism that she
has to deal with every day and I
thought that aspect of it was very well
done because I really connected to Starr
and I was really heartbroken for her and
for her community and terrified when she
got into situations that could put her
in danger. I loved her family and I just
I think I really loved everything
about this book. At the end of the day
though I think All American boys edges
it out slightly in my mind in terms of my
favorite book about as excessive use of
force against African-Americans just
because i found that that caused me to
engage in more internal reflection than
The Hate U Give did but that's not any
slight on this book. This book is
wonderful, it's really important that it's
out there and I gave it a 4 and a half out of
five stars. Then I finished an audio book
which I have such mixed completed
feelings about that I feel like I'm just
gonna word vomit at you but that was
Planet for Rent by Yoss and yes that's
his full name
he's a Cuban author and this was
translated from Spanish. But basically
it's about the future world where earth
has just kind of been taken over by a
bunch of people from other planets and
they just kind of exploit all humans and
we're just seen as basically the scum of
the universe and we're really just there
to give them entertainment and it
follows the lives of multiple humans
some of whom live on earth and some who
have left the planet and they're all
from Cuba I think specifically. It's got a
lot of descriptions of different alien
races which is something i always enjoy
and it's also actually supposed to be an
allegory for Cuba at the during the fall
of the Soviet Union and the different
crises that they faced in Cuba so it
explores a lot of different ideas like
brain drain, refugees trying to escape
and being repatriated illegally and the
power of art and sport to kind of allow
you to live a good life and to get out
and this idea of a very poor country and
high rates of crime and having to join
gangs and a lot of it has to do with sex
workers and sex in general and the role
it plays in different people's lives as
well as the way in which outside
countries exploited Cuba and put
pressure on them and yeah I think that's
generally what it was trying to get at. I
i did not have a great knowledge of Cuba
during the fall of the Soviet Union so I
ended up having to do a lot of extra
reading kind of fully understand this. I
think Clarisse from Clarisse Reads did a
really great job in her review of
speaking about it as someone who comes
from a former Spanish colony herself so
i'll link her view on screen. So i had
two major criticisms
of this novel that led me to giving
it a quite a low rating on goodreads. The
first of those being that because it's a
series of interconnected short stories
and never really had a cohesive story
line, it's just linked short stories and i
thought i was getting a novel so it's
kinda one of those situations where I
wish it'd have said that in the blurb
that it was a section of linked short
stories and then I would have gone with
my eyes open. So it's one of those
situations where i had different
expectations for something different
than what I got and then my other issue
is the way it treats sex and you all
pretty much now this stage that I'm
asexual so sometimes i just i don't get
the allure, the appeal of certain sections
of the book but I can appreciate them
for some people it makes sense. What
really bothers me about the treatment of
sex and sexualisation of characters in
this book was the final story that deals
with a young girl that I think it's
eight or nine who is really really
attracted to this man who is in a
position of power in her life and he
doesn't want to have sexual relations
with her but she's is just really sexualized
in the book and she's doing different
things to her body to make herself more
attractive to him and at the end of the
day he said you are you know I I was
attracted to you and it all just seems
so incredibly effed up in my head that I
just I couldn't I couldn't deal with it. It
wasn't for me at all i don't think it
was necessarily written in an erotic
tone that you were supposed to be
getting off on this little kid but it
just felt disturbing to me and it's
probably trying to underline a real
fact of life in Cuba but for me I was just
like no stop. I wish I'd known this
because I wouldn't have read this book
so in the end I gave it a two out of five
stars.
Now onto to graphic novels very briefly.
The first of these is Embroideries by
Marjane Satrapi who wrote Persepolis
this is about the sex lives of women in
Iran. Are you sensing a theme that i'm
picking weird things for me? But this was
amusing novel about a bunch of women
gossiping and I enjoyed it
I will have to say. What I did find a little
bit difficult is that i found it
difficult to follow who was who because
the art style is all black and white, at
times some of the women were kind of
blending into one for me and I was
having to read it really slowly to make
sure i knew what going on. I think part
of that might have been that i was tired
but yeah like kind of bothered me. I
didn't love the art style and Persepolis
so it's kind of replicated here so i
should have kind of known that that
was gonna happen. Although it's very
short so i think with graphic novels it
can be hard to develop an idea but i
thought i did a good job and in the end
gave it three and a half out of five
stars. I'll try to be quick with my last thing and
that's El Deafo by Cece Bell, an own voices
graphic novels about Cece Bell's experience
with hearing loss as a child. It's
nonfiction, I think some aspects of it
are fictionalised but basically it's
about losing hearing from meningitis and
having to wear hearing aids in school
and how that affected her and how the
other children treated her and how she
came to think of her hearing loss as
almost a superpower - not a disability but
ability that she had that nobody else
did. It was really sweet but also very
self-reflective - like it caused me to
reflect on myself and how I view other
people around me and just also on how
cruel kids can be without intending to
be cruel or without realizing that
they're being cruel but I thought the
art style really cute and it suited
the story that was being told. Everyone
is bunny rabbits which is fun and in the
end I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars. I
really enjoyed it and would highly
recommend it and it's great for
diversity bingo
if you're doing that. Anyway those are
all of the books that i have read
recently there will of course be another
wrap up for the end of February but that's about it
for today. Rhank you guys for watching
and I'll see you in my next video bye!
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