Tag: Rebecca soler

Categories
audiobooks Fantasy Young Adult

Cursed by Marissa Meyer (Audio & Book Thoughts)

Cursed by Marissa Meyer book cover

The good news is that this book came out in November, and I’m reading it in January! ARCs aside I am nearly caught up with new releases and can start reading my backlog soon.

You can find my review for Gilded here, and now let’s talk about Cursed.

Bookish quick facts:
  • Title: Cursed
  • Series: Gilded #2 (Duology)
  • Author: Marissa Meyer
  • Publisher & Release: Feiwel & Friends, 2022
  • Length: 496 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐ ⭐ for fans of dark fairy tales and retellings

A quick note on the audio: narrated by Rebecca Soler, at 16.5 hours from MacMillan Audio in 2022

Here’s the synopsis from Am*zon:

Be still now, and I will tell you a tale.

Adalheid Castle is in chaos.

Following a shocking turn of events, Serilda finds herself ensnared in a deadly game of make-believe with the Erlking, who is determined to propel her deeper into the castle’s lies. Meanwhile, Serilda is determined to work with Gild to help him solve the mystery of his forgotten name and past.

But soon it becomes clear that the Erlking doesn’t only want to use Serilda to bring back his one true love. He also seeks vengeance against the seven gods who have long trapped the Dark Ones behind the veil. If the Erlking succeeds, it could change the mortal realm forever.

Can Serilda find a way to use her storytelling gifts for good―once and for all? And can Serilda and Gild break the spells that tether their spirits to the castle before the Endless Moon finds them truly cursed?

Romance and adventure collide in this stunning finale to the Rumpelstilskin-inspired fairy tale

My thoughts:

At this point I’ve read nearly everything that Marissa Meyer has published, and most of it has been consumed by listening to Rebecca Soler.  I’m going to get the annoying thing out of the way first and then talk about all the good things.

The thing is, I think Meyer really had to stretch to make this book 500 pages long.  There was a lot of repetition, a lot of explanation, and while I understand that she wants the reader to get the point, I feel like I would have been more bored if I was reading the text. That said, at this point we know that the Erlking is absolutely evil. Serilda is generally a pretty smart person yet she just kept begging and screaming and crying at him repeatedly over multiple instances, and I just got sick of listening to it.

So parts of both the audio and the text got to me. I just hate people that whine and the audiobook was extremely whiny at times, striking a small nerve.

So on to the positives. I applaud how far and how dark she took this story – even if I felt like the end was a total cop out. I was so devastated by the events leading up to the ending and … I would have just left it.

The lore, stories, action, and characters, were all pretty much on par with the first book.  I liked meeting the gods and monsters and generally appreciated the pacing of the book.  It wasn’t that I was bored, it’s just that the same type of situation between Serilda, the kids, and the king, repeated itself so much that it became more tiresome than shocking.

Not to say that there were not many good parts though. There’s plenty of fierce magic and snarky banter to keep the pages interesting.

TLDR/Overall: All of that said though, I highly recommend reading Cursed if you liked Gilded. It’s just more of everything and it’s difficult to find YA books that are willing to go quite as dark as this series.  With plenty of dark fairytale lore and fantasy imagery, you can’t go too wrong with Meyer.

Thanks for checking out my book and audiobook review for Cursed by Marissa Meyer. I obtained my copy through Libby and as always, all opinions are my own❤️

Categories
audiobooks Fantasy Young Adult

Gilded by Marissa Meyer (Audiobook Review)

I knew it was time to read Gilded now that Cursed is out and my library hold is going to be ready within a few weeks.  I have consumed everything by Meyer on audiobook after discovering Rebecca Soler as her long time narrator. I have no regrets at any point in this arrangement as I loved both author & narrator through Heartless and The Lunar Chronicles and beyond.

Anyway, it was a fun diversion to listen while flying last week. Let’s take a look at the book and then I’ll share my thoughts..

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: Gilded
  • Series: Gilded #1 (Duology)
  • Author: Marissa Meyer
  • Publisher & Release: Feiwel & Friends, 2021
  • Length: 512 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ for fans of dark fairy tales and retellings

A Quick note on the audio: 16 hours long and narrated by the ever excellent Rebecca Soler. Released in 2021 through MacMillan Audio / MacMillan Young Listeners.  On narration alone I give her a full ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Here’s the synopsis via Am*zon:

Long ago cursed by the god of lies, a poor miller’s daughter has developed a talent for spinning stories that are fantastical and spellbinding and entirely untrue.

Or so everyone believes.

When one of Serilda’s outlandish tales draws the attention of the sinister Erlking and his undead hunters, she finds herself swept away into a grim world where ghouls and phantoms prowl the earth and hollow-eyed ravens track her every move. The king orders Serilda to complete the impossible task of spinning straw into gold, or be killed for telling falsehoods. In her desperation, Serilda unwittingly summons a mysterious boy to her aid. He agrees to help her… for a price. Love isn’t meant to be part of the bargain.

Soon Serilda realizes that there is more than one secret hidden in the castle walls, including an ancient curse that must be broken if she hopes to end the tyranny of the king and his wild hunt forever

I think it’s fair to begin by saying that Gilded is darker and more along the lines of Heartless and other more typical fantasy books, than say, The Lunar Chronicles was.  Gilded is obviously a Rumpelstiltskin retelling and by far one of the darkest YA books I’ve ever read. Meyer brings in other such lore as The Wild Hunt & The Erlking in order to create a wild fairytale world full of ghosts, curses, undead, trickster gods, and more.

It’s really a dark fairytale in every sense of the genre, and I’m here for it.

Stories about stories are some of my favorite plot lines.  I can’t go into detail without spoilers so I’ll just say that I loved Meyer’s attention to the storytelling and exploration of story itself, and *the twist* was perfect.

I immensely enjoyed the plot although I felt that 500+ pages was way too long.  I liked the lore and stories about the realm and meeting the kids and all the other mystic creatures and world building, but 500 pages just felt like it dragged at times.  I think it’s more noticeable in fairytale retellings too where we know the bare bones of the plot already.  On audio I was ok but I could see where, on page, I would have been glazing over a bit.

The characters are pretty amazing too, I just love all of Meyer’s characters and how Soler brings them to life.  Serilda took a bit to warm up to but eventually I liked her, and was all about Gild.  The kids are cute and seem well written for their ages.

Content wise… a few things besides the length affected the rating. Meyer got to mildly touching on a few topics that I haven’t seen in her books before. Feiwel & Friends is usually good about this but they’re advertising age 12 at the lowest while the book contains mostly fade to black baby making (pools of sunshine and all that), children being found with their hearts eaten out, killing undead fathers, and other horrors… So … Idk, parents use caution.

For me though as an adult I enjoyed the book. Usually Meyer sticks to pretty age appropriate content but as I said, this is a more typical dark fantasy novel than her others.

Overall I think it’s great for those who like characters and curses, stories about stories, dark fairy tales, a twist of romance, and everything else we have come to expect from Meyer.   

Thanks for checking out my book and audiobook review of Gilded by Marissa Meyer. Stay tuned for my thoughts on Cursed soon.  I listened through Libby and as always, all thoughts are my own.

 

Categories
audiobooks Suspense Thrillers

The Priest’s Graveyard by Ted Dekker (audio/book review)

I officially no longer have rhyme or reason when picking my next audiobook 😂 

I found The Priest’s Graveyard through a Search for books narrated by Rebecca Soler, who is probably my favorite female narrator.  I have a few books by Dekker but not this one.  I do usually love vigilante thrillers too and Dekker has an absolutely fascinating upbringing and tendency to write on the spiritual side, so, let’s see how this one worked out for me

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: The Priest’s Graveyard
  • Series: Danny Hansen #1
  • Author: Ted Dekker
  • Publisher & Release: Center Street, 2011
  • Length: 368 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐ if you like psychological and vigilante thrillers that stay fairly clean

On the audio: about 10.5 hours from Hachette audio, narrated by Rebecca Soler and Henry Leyva 

Here’s the synopsis via GoodReads:

Two abandoned souls are on the hunt for one powerful man. Soon, their paths will cross and lead to one twisted fate.

Danny Hansen is a Bosnian immigrant who came to America with hopes of escaping haunted memories of a tragic war that took his mother’s life. Now he’s a priest incensed by the powerful among us who manipulate the law for their own gain, uncaring of the shattered lives they leave behind. It is his duty to show them the error of their ways, even if he must put them in the grave.

Renee Gilmore is the frail and helpless victim of one such powerful man. Having escaped his clutches, she now lives only to satisfy justice by destroying him, regardless of whom she must become in that pursuit.

But when Danny and Renee’s paths become inexorably entangled things go very, very badly and neither of them may make it out of this hunt alive.

So this is a pretty character based thriller, let’s start there. I liked Danny and what he was doing, I liked the brutal backstory of how he got from Bosnia to California and became the man he is today, both priest and calculated killer.  I also liked how Henry Leyva narrated him with the thick but understandable accent 

I even liked Renee at first. She seemed like someone who had made some bad choices and was able to rebound from them. The two characters seemed like a decent team, and of course Rebecca Soler can do no wrong and she was Renee’s voice.

Pause the thought on the characters –

Action wise, this is definitely a suspense novel at times and thriller at others.  Although the book was not exceptionally exciting, it had its moments of action and reckoning that kept me interested through out.

My favorite part was all moral debating that Danny did on how he justifies being a monster.  It was interesting too to see the symbols in names and other small spiritual elements that Dekker out into the story.  He doesn’t preach at all but there’s a small undercurrent of spirituality that would be concurrent with Danny as a priest.

So… How did this go from five stars to three stars? It got predictable. If I can predict something, it’s super predictable.  That isn’t the main issue though.

Towards the end, Dekker completely lost me on the “romantic” element. I’m just absolutely not believing that Danny would fall for an addlepated and traumatized drug addict (in recovery) who is frankly batshit crazy, unless Danny is batshit crazy too. Renee became annoying as hell, jeopardized their missions, put them both in danger, and was just bluntly an idiot.  Danny’s flawed judgement is about as bad as hers is if he wants to “love” her, and Renee literally just falls in with whatever man is in front of her. As soon as Dekker started portraying that idiot (with a long history of bad life decisions) as some kind of precious flower, he lost me.

The Priest’s Graveyard has a good premise, good action, good vigilante debates, and good audio, but it felt short overall for me mostly because of the improbable relationship that formed, even if the premise was an interesting psychological element.

A lot of people really liked this book and I would definitely recommend trying it if you like vigilante books.

Categories
audiobooks Science Fiction Young Adult

Winter (book thoughts) by Marissa Meyer

The Lunar Chronicles was a refreshing and binge worthy reading experience.  I am getting so sick of YA books with terrible language, dumb characters, s*x scenes that aren’t at all appropriate for the advertised age range…

Then I read this series! Whew. I binged all 5 books and also checked out the short story collection.  Zero swears that I recall, innocent romance that’s appropriate for both age and situation, and, even the gore was pretty well contained.  The battle scenes and fighting were exciting and delivered shocks without going to extreme.

So yes I 100% confidently recommend The Lunar Chronicles for both teens and adults looking for a fun, futuristic battle for Earth and beyond.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the final book in the series – Winter

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: Winter
  • Series: The Lunar Chronicles, #4
  • Author: Marissa Meyer
  • Publisher & Release: Feiwel & Friends, November 2015
  • Length: 832 pgs
  • Rate & Recommend: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Here is the summary:

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend–the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

We got a glimpse of the title character, Princess Winter, at the end of Cress, and also got some of her back story in Fairest. At first I wasn’t sure about her, since she is frankly nuts, but once we start learning more about the lunar sickness and how Winter refused to be like the rest of the lunar court, aka fake and using their glamours for ill, she becomes a much more likeable character.  Yes she is flaky but also strong enough to defy Levana for so long, and she is definitely not stupid.  Her strength comes out pretty evenly with the crazy and it’s an endearing combination.

Winter was a well loved princess who was prettier than a bouquet of roses and crazier than a headless chicken.

Also for some reason I thought that, due to the pets and the palace guard, that this would be an Aladdin theme … but it was definitely, very loosely, Snow White.

But anyway, the gang is back and there is more banter, more adventure, more kidnappings of Kai, and thankfully some hard won victories for the Rampion crew.

I like that the war and occupation of Luna wasn’t easy.  There were tons of civilian casualties, injuries and near deaths for the crew, trauma and everything else you’d expect from a war.   Parts of it felt a little Hunger Games ish with the gang going to different sectors to recruit people to overwhelm the Capitol.  Also reminiscent were the questions of sanity and PTSD after the conflicts and terrible things that were both done and witnessed.

I also liked how the main points of Fairest were recapped incase anyone hadn’t read it, although I still think that book enhanced the overall reading experience.

Best side character award definitely goes to Konn Torin in this one.  He turned the tide and came through in huge but subtle ways.  Everything would have been lost without him.  Bonus points to Alpha Strom too, that whole sequence with the wolf soldiers was something else.

I still think Scarlet is the most useless of the group.  It was great to see Cress really come out of her shell (pun intended) and be a hero! I have had some Cress coasters forever and it’s good to know what they mean finally.  Iko was another superstar throughout this one.

Meyer didn’t shy away from emphasizing either how brutal the Lunar regime was in itself.  As she really showed how the elite kept the outer sectors in poverty and submission it was the perfect grounds for a revolution.  There were those individual instances too like with Maha Kesley.  Everyone in the crew lost someone precious to them during the series.

One last thing to hit on the setting – I thought it was great to finally see all of Luna.  A lot of the history was finally given too, or at least enough to provide a background without bogging the story down.

The spot where the setting hit me the hardest was when Cinder hit the edge of the dome in the middle of the lake – and the crater was hundreds of feet below on the other side.  From that imagery to that of the Lunar palace I think Winter really tied things together well.

In a nutshell: four (five because honestly, let’s count Iko) unique main characters.  Banter and snark for days.  Adventure, plotting, war, rebellion. Heroes and villains. Dashing captains (haha had to mention Thorne somewhere). Happy endings.  Age appropriate content!  What’s not to love about this series?

Quick notes on the audio: this is obviously a pretty long audio, around 24hours.  Rebecca Soler made her first obvious OOPS in this one but considering it was the first noticeable one in 5 books, I was very impressed overall!  I think she added a lot to the book by voicing and interpreting Winter and the others how she did.  Definitely 100% recommend