April Wrap Up!

So as it turns out, I didn’t read tonnes in April; but I read enough, considering how hectic April was! So this is my overall wrap up for everything, in order of reading them.

The Titans Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth  and The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

So as you probably assumed by the March Wrap Up I wrote a million years ago, I was reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. During April, I managed to read the final three!

I am absolutely in love with this series, mostly because I went into it with the expectation of “Okay it’ll probably be good, it is for middle schoolers and so the writing style might throw me off a bit but I’ll have fun!”

And what I came out with was, “oh my god these books were fantastic and I’m crying at the finale at 1am”.

The integration of the Greek mythology is seamless; there’s these small little nods to minor God’s and legends that are so funny, and just smart. They’re dropped in as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and it’s so laugh inducing. The major characters and appearances of the God’s are also all incredibly inventive and believable; Ares as this terrifying biker dude with hollow, fired-filled eye sockets, and Apollo driving a fiery Ferrari across the sky, are just a few of the fun, and simple but ingenious ways to present these iconic characters. I really cannot give the integration of mythology enough praise here.

The writing itself; yeah it’s a little middle-schooley, with Percy having pauses to talk to himself, but it’s honestly not that bad. It’s fun, it’s quirky, and as Percy grows up in the books, the language grows up with him. It reminded me of Harry Potter in that sense, and also in others; but I’m not as bothered by the similarities as most others on Goodreads seem to be. Maybe I was oblivious, but I was way too busy enjoying the Greek myths and the adventures to notice the similarities to Harry Potter (yearly occurrence focusing on a boy with a destiny). It’s a great bunch of stories all connecting to this epic and really satisfying conclusion.

Overall, I think The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian were my favourites; I’ll always have a soft spot for The Lightening Thief but these two final books were so so epic. The Labyrinth was so unbelievably creative; I was in endless awe of how it works, how it grew and how it worked with the original legends. It was so perfect and better than I could have ever imagined.

The Last Olympian was so unbelievably epic too; so many huge battles, a feeling of losing hope and tiring and being overwhelmed by the antagonists. And it was so tragic; the books definitely get more adult, and incredibly morbid as the finale closes in. The ending was also not what I expected, at all; it was so heart-breaking and such a huge twist.

Overall, I loved these books. They’ve earned a really special place in my heart, and I will be re-reading them again. Hopefully I’ll move onto the Heroes of Olympus sequel series, and having read the first chapter in an e-read preview, I am very excited to do so.

I Kill Giants by Joe Jelly and JM Ken Nimura.

I do not even know where to begin with this book. I fell in love with it from the moment I opened the first page and saw this;

Call me mushy but it really put a smile on my face.

And then I went into the book, and I did not put it down and finished it in a 35-40 minute sitting.

First off, the art work is fantastic. It took me a bit of time to get used to, with it all being black and white rather than the colour format I’m used to, but it was just so striking and such a unique, gorgeous style for a graphic novel.

Character-wise, our protagonist Barbara Thorson, is a delight. She’s a very angry, troubled teenage girl who believes in the existence of Giants and Titans – and she believes it’s down to her to fight and kill them with her mythological Norse hammer. However, her giant slaying beliefs, while she entirely follows them, are covering up something a lot more sinister in Barbara’s life.

I loved Barbara. She was so funny, if incredibly rude. I felt to her, like you tend to feel towards angry, suffering and funny young characters; frustrated, often annoyed, but completely endeared and wishing you could help them in their unhappiness. She felt like a realistic young character, and I was entirely convinced by every word out of her mouth and her story.

I also really liked the other characters, such as Barbara’s older, struggling sister, and her best friend she makes at school; Sophie. There’s also some fun, if pretty hardcore school bullies too. Overall, the characters are a lot of fun and they fit really well into the story and into the high school, dramatic mantra.

The story however, shines like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s so gripping, from beginning to genuinely devastating ending. The slow reveal of what’s going on in Barbara’s life whilst she fights Giants is so artistically and wonderfully drawn out, slow enough for the realisation to dawn on you in a horrifying, gripping way. It’s so tear-jerking (/tear-pouring), but so heart-warming all at once. The ending ties everything up so beautifully, and I am so in love with this graphic novel about a giant killing teenage girl.

Rat Queens by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch

I can only describe Rat Queens as an epic entanglement of all the elements that made Bridesmaids  and Game of Thrones awesome as hell. It’s just so great, and funny and absolutely unique in everything it does.

The characters are diverse and absolutely wonderful. They’re all well-written, very fleshed out women who all interact with each other in a realistic and great way – a way you’d expect from a group of long-term, ass kicking friends. The dialogue flows so smoothly, and every interaction that goes on in this book is an absolute delight.

There genuinely is not a boring moment; there’s epic fight scenes, magic, intermission scenes with brief romances. These women are totally unafraid to swear and are so open about their sexualities, and it’s entirely real – on some level, these are the conversations that a lot of women have with their close friends.

There’s a lot more gore than I expected to – severed limbs, broken bones and grizzly deaths await. It’s so, so fricken excellent and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’m for sure going to be picking up volume 2.

PS: shout out to this page for making me laugh in the middle of a massive group of people while waiting for the Age of Ultron red carpet to open.

In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang

This graphic novel is a cute story that explores themes of women in video games, online guilds and whether the integrity of a game is what’s most important when real lives are at stake.

This novel is, off the bat, absolutely adorable. The art style is so cute and vibrant. It’s a lot of fun to look at, and the illustrations are gorgeous to look at, whether you’re in the real world or the online world.

The thing I enjoyed most about this book, were the themes that video gamers are still discussing and debating today. There’s themes of feminism and female exclusion from video games, particularly online. there’s themes of how “hardcore gamers” view outsiders or “newbies” who try and enter into their world, mostly about the hostility and bullying attitude some members can take in defense of something they consider theirs. There’s themes of online communication, of labour issues, of rules within games.

For a graphic novel that’s actually pretty short, it does fit those themes in well without it being crammed or overdone. Everything is well noticed in short amounts of time, and it’s done so well and beautifully.

I felt like I related really well to the protagonist of the story; she loves games, and she joins the online guild and it helps her feel a lot better about herself. Eventually, it does become that the video game world, does effect her real life and her self esteem – and I love that. Video games are so much more important than a lot of people give them credit for, and this book really captured that.

Finally, I did also read issues #1 and #2 of Noto’s Black Widow – I’ve already read up to issue #8, but I really wanted to re-read and make it all the way through. I’m so in love with this series; Black Widow is one of my favourite comic characters ever, and the artwork, the story, the capture of her character and the handling of her life is just so wonderful and absolutely awesome to read. She absolutely holds her own and where is my Black Widow movie Marvel?

So yeah, I didn’t read as much as I would have liked in April, but considering the amount of time I was at work, and then the three day Avengers fueled gap I took, I’d say I did okay!

Hopefully this week I will make my post all about the Avengers: Age of Ultron premiere, how I won Black Widow’s leather jacket and how I have no officially met all the Avengers. I’ll talk a little about the film too, but totally spoiler free because I’m not an absolute jerk!

Coming up next is my May TBR, which is a little ambitious but totally do-able. Totally.

I hope all of you are doing amazing, and if you’ve read any of these books, let’s chat about them!

Fare thee well,

Fran

March Wrap Up’s!

Good afternoon.

It has been infinitely long since I wrote on here, and I have read a few books! And now I would like to share those reads with you.

The first book I read/finished in March was Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas. I wrote a full review on the book which you can read here, but in short; I loved it, it was a great piece in the Throne of Glass series and I’m really really thrilled that Queen of Shadows will be out in September this year!

The next book, sadly, was a Did Not Finish, and that was Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles.

I just. No. I couldn’t do it. I was promised endless hilarity and a super fun read and I felt like what I got was a bland, overly sarcastic man who was just as boring as his friend who’s apartment he’s looking after. I got about 48 pages in and decided, life is too short to read a book that is boring you out of your damn mind. So I put it down and moved on. Sorry Mr Wiles!

I decided, I was finally going to pick up the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series by Rick Riordan.

The first in this series is The Lightening Thief, where we are introduced to a young man named Percy Jackson. Percy is having it pretty bad, especially by eleven year old boy standards; he’s been kicked out of countless schools, his grades are awful (mostly in part to misunderstanding teachers towards his ADHD and dyslexia), and his step-father is an abusive jerk. But all of that is about to become nothing to Percy when he discovers he’s part of a world of Greek Gods.

I have completely fallen in love with this series, and this was such a great introduction to it. This book is for sort of “middle grade” readers, but it does tackle some fairly dark, serious issues, such as ableism, domestic abuse, family relations – everything is extremely true to character and Percy is a really great portrayal of an eleven year old boy who’s been thrown into a land of myth and magic.

On top of that, the integration of Greek Mythology with the modern world is so seamless and creative; it includes all the big stories and characters, and their appearances are always an absolute delight. I really really enjoyed the characters and following them on their adventure, so much so I gave it 5/5 on Goodreads.

So naturally after such a great beginning, I had to move on to The Sea of Monsters.

The Sea of Monsters, I won’t blurb because it might spoil the first book. But know that it’s just as action-filled, dark and hilarious as the first, and involves Percy travelling to the infamous Sea of Monsters.

It felt…a bit shorter, and a bit less drastic and urgent than the first? But I still had a lot of fun with it, and gave it a 4/5 rating on Goodreads.

So these are what I read in March. I’m planning a March Book Haul because I bought seven graphic novels and four books, and I also plan to add all seven of those graphic novels and all my single issue comics and unread graphic novels to my March TBR, in honor of Age of Ultron coming out in the UK this month!