So I read 26 books in August which I am very proud of. I also completed 6 bingos in the Summer Bookish Bingo challenge.
1. Sunstone Volume 1 by Stjepan Sejic ***** – This is the first graphic novel I have read, while I love manga I had never read anything similar to Sunstone. I really enjoyed Sunstone mainly for the reason I love erotic fiction and this was just a more visual style of storytelling.
So I finished the summer bookish bingo with 6 bingos and I was very happy. The books I read are listed below.
So the summer card is almost finished I have 3 books left to read in 3 days to complete it but I have six bingos so far. SIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Book review
Title: The epic crush of Genie Lo
Author: F. C. Yee
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Rating: *****
Review: The opening to Genie Lo was great we meet Genie a very high achiever at SF Prep school, on her way there she witnessed a mugging and although she tries to help she ends up running away. The boy being beaten up turns out to be a new student Quentin Sun. Quentin is very strange for one his language is almost archaic in style, he has no marks despite a heavy beating and he is drawn to Genie. His first words to her are “you belong to me”. Yee really knows how to set the stage. It doesn’t take us long to realise there is something not quite with Quentin, but Genie’s very headstrong personality for perfectly with Quentin’s. I also really liked Yunie who is Genie’s best friend as she is just as headstrong but in a slightly different way. Through a series of very strange coincidences Genie and Quentin are forced to work together and even though she still doesn’t like him Genie begins to think that Quentin isn’t so bad.
Book Review
Title: Prince of Thorns
Author: Mark Lawrence
Genre: Epic Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Rating: *
Review: Dark, gritty and full of death. That’s pretty much sums up this book. From the first moment you read, you are thrust into a world of destruction and nothing seems to be fair game. Mark Lawrence’s first book Prince of Thorns is set in an alternate reality of our Earth. He references Plato and Sun Tzu but none of the countries he uses are of the same name. “Technology” is part of this book but it’s masked by using spirits/ghosts and alchemy to disguise it.
Book review
Title: The Sculptor
Author: Scott McCloud
Genre: Graphic novel
Rating: *****
Review: The first thing I noticed about the Sculptor was it is quite long for a frantic novel at almost 500 pages. The premise is what intrigued me the most a young study makes a deal with Death and can create anything he wants but only has 200 days left to live. We meet David a down and out sculptor who has nothing left to lose, while he is drinking away his troubles and the last of his cash he bumps into his uncle Harry who has supposedly been dead for a while. Harry offers to grant his wish of being a famous sculptor once more in exchange for his life. David aliens most of the offering whether it was real or just a drunken hallucination but come sunrise it all makes sense and David now has 200 days before he does. Along the way he meets a girl called Meg who sort of becomes his muse.
Book review
Title: Kindred
Author: Damian Duffy
Genre: Graphic novel
Rating: *****
Review: This graphic novel is an adapted novel so I was very excited to read it. We meet Dana and her husband as they move into their new home when Dana suddenly disappears. Dana appears by a river and helps save a drowning boy after giving him CPR she ends up having a rifle pointed at her when she suddenly reappears back home. It turns out that Dana travelled through time, when this happens for the second time she learns the boy she saved is called Rufus and he somehow called her into his time: 1815. Dana learns that Rufus and a young girl named Alice are her own ancestors, but this doesn’t explain why she is being thrown through time. The time Dana finds herself in is a very dangerous time for black people and she learns first-hand the cruelty of white people towards the blacks.
