Bloodtraitor by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

An Apparently Spoilery Review

Originally Posted to GoodReads: May 30, 2016

THERE ARE POSSIBLY SPOILERS HERE. I DON'T REALLY CONSIDER THEM SPOILERS, BUT I'VE BEEN KNOWN TO BE WRONG. SO THERE'S YOUR WARNING.

So... I'm not sure exactly how to feel about Bloodtraitor. On the one hand, I liked the flashbacks/visions, I enjoyed the meetings setting up the fall of Midnight, I enjoyed the short references to the future of Nyeusigrube, and I liked the completely random glimpses of life outside of Midnight proper. On the other hand... Malachi was every inch the "second generation slave" he kept talking about, despite very few actions to the contrary. He was a blank slate who pretty much got shoved from one place to another so that the more major players in this little war could talk to each other. I would honestly have had a better time reading this story from someone else's point of view.

I've also come to the conclusion that The Maeve'ra Trilogy seriously suffers from being a prequel to everything but The Keisha'ra Series. The big players in those books put in appearances here but there's no tension because we all know they go on to all but star in other stories. Hell, no one even gets injured aside from the slave characters we don't even meet or care about... and the ever-boring Malachi. I honestly think there should have been a break in the first-person narrative style here to include, instead, a third-person omniscient narrative... or something. First-person just did not do this book, or perhaps even this trilogy, any favors.

I won't likely be rereading The Maeve'ra Trilogy any time soon.

Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Princess Ben is a semi-interesting take on both being a princess and fairytales. Ben herself isn’t the typical fairytale princess and has a rather abrupt ascension to actually having to act like one. The fairytale aspects show up now and again, but also permeate the narrative fully. Never felt like we stepped out of that realm and into our style of reality.

I find it somewhat infuriating that Ben’s princess lessons did not include matters of state. On the one hand: sexism. On the other: she’s heir apparent and should really have some schooling in matters of state as opposed to the needlework she’s clearly crap at. This is especially frustrating as Queen Sofia is running the country and is also female so… ya know, gotta love that double standard.

That’s not really the point of the story. The point, I think, is Ben finding herself as a princess. Figuring out who she wants to be as a person after losing her parents. Ben’s not super clever, nor stupid, just a girl with this weight put on her suddenly. It doesn’t help that the adults around her give her no time to mourn nor actually take any interest in her aside from molding her into who they want her to be. It’s entirely reasonable that Ben would act out the way she did.

I was amused by the magic book and its refusal to allow Ben to learn any more unless the room was completely clean. I do wonder if she ever went back to finish that particular job… it’s not mentioned in the coda. Anyway, it’s clear Ben knows exactly what she needs to know from the book anyway.

The ending was alright. Everything’s ostensibly tied up with bows even though nothing is absolutely perfect forever. That message was a fairly nice one to have included, even if it’s overshadowed by the bows.

I’m not really sure there’s much more I can say about Princess Ben. It was an enjoyable, mostly rollicking adventure.

This Was Supposed To Be Fun

Alternative Titles For This Post Are As Follows:

You Don't Have to Monetize Everything

I Just Craft For Funzies

Being Good At Beginner Craft Kits Does Not Mean I Should Start an Etsy

Stop Telling Us to Sell Our Crafts

So, I have recently become enamored with needle felting. I finally bought a kit and made a little dinosaur dude and then used the kit leftovers to make another slightly different one. These were Mr. Derp and Beatrice.

My boyfriend requested I turn Beatrice into a keychain for him. So I did. He took this to work and I received a text telling me that one of his coworkers thought it was cute and that she thinks I should start an Etsy. My response to this... "ma'am, that's a beginner project and you should maybe look up needle felting on Etsy to see why this little monster-thingy is unimpressive."

I have been unpacking this response to myself all morning.

It really feels like that's a kind of rude response. Or maybe a humble one if you look at it from a certain angle. I'm not sure. But like, I'm also not wrong. But also, I feel like this is a response that a lot of non-crafty people have been giving me my entire life... and also some crafty people, like my mom. But also... I craft specifically for fun and relaxation and I don't really want to get into selling the things I make. I will occasionally make custom Christmas gifts for my family but... not every year because making even that amount of things just starts feeling like a chore after a while. I'm not into crafting for the mass production side of things.

I feel like people whose response to any type of crafting is "You should start an Etsy" think that's a compliment but I feel like it's closer to the "Oh, you'd make such a great mom" kind of thing you get while babysitting. It feels like I'm being threatened with more than I can take on. You don't understand how much goes into things like Etsy stores and it's frankly more than I feel like I can or want to take on. The same way I can be a good babysitter but having my own child is just... no thank you. Do not want. I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but there it is.

I'm also not going to lie, I've also said "You should start an Etsy" to my mom. She's been trying to get me and my sisters into crafting since we were kids. We come from a long line of crafters, so this is not weird. I've done cross-stitch, drawing, painting, and now needle felting. My mom spent most of my childhood cross-stitching and now crochets a lot. And I mean, a lot. She made a friend of mine a plush in the five days I was at her house. We all got crocheted things for Christmas the last couple of years. She made my dad a Granny Bael plush for his in-person author appearances. It makes sense to me that she should start an Etsy with just the sheer amount of stuff she makes. Not a thing, though.

"Etsy takes too much money from crafters. I won't "get an Etsy" or purchase from there." - My Mom

As a person who only occasionally shops on Etsy and isn't actually a part of any crafting communities, I don't know a lot about how Etsy actually works. I know they give you a space to sell your stuff and take some fees off the top. I have been hearing lately, though, that they've been charging too many fees for a lot of makers to continue using the platform. (My mom's quote came after I wrote this paragraph) That and figuring out shipping and things is a big reason for me not to start an Etsy. Again, I have no idea how any of that actually works, but I don't want to sell my stuff anyway so... much shrugging.

That brings me to another point: I craft for me and not for anyone else. Crafting, for me, is strictly a hobby. I don't do it very often and when I do, it's usually either something I wanted or a gift for a family member. Crafting is fun for me. It scratches a creative itch I can't get relief for anywhere else. I really feel like turning it into a side-hustle would leech the fun out of it. I don't want to leech the fun out of me leisure time, thank you. Even making a largish number of gifts for Christmas will often turn me off from doing it. It's just... let it be a damn hobby. We're living in a Capitalist nightmare world of "make money off everything you do" and it really just needs to stop.

I don't even make money off this blog! That's not to say I haven't tried. Google doesn't think my content is "high brow" enough. I don't do sponsorships because a) never been offered and b) I do this blog for fun and c) making it not fun means I stop doing it. I read or play or watch and share my opinions. That's it. For fun in my off hours.

I guess that's really my point with all this: if it's not fun, I'm gonna stop doing it. I put in my 40 hrs a week at an objectively not fun job. That's enough not fun for me. I gotta rest at some point and crafting helps me do that.

So basically: Stop telling crafters to get an Etsy.

Collegium Chronicles Series Overview

 Collegium Chonicles by Mercedes Lackey

This post will contain spoilers for Collegium Chronicles and previous Valdemar series on the timeline. You have been warned.

I had read someone's review of Foundation where someone said Mercedes Lackey was rewriting Harry Potter due to similarities between Mags and Harry and kind of the plot. (This was after I'd read Foundation) Though there are a few similarities in Foundation, Collegium Chronicles is definitely not Harry Potter rewritten for Valdemar. To begin with, the story takes a turn for the very dark very quickly. Mags is by no means a Harry type character. Mags is way more clever and thoughtful and actually athletic than Harry ever was. There is also Kirball, which I felt was much more fun to read than Quidditch and was definitely different from Quidditch. For one thing, all the players are actually engaged with the game at all times rather than having a Seeker off to one side trying to find the Snitch. That's pretty much where the Harry Potter similarities end. The additional characters don't even have one-to-one analogues once you get past Bear and Lena being male and female like Ron and Hermione are. Would I recommend Collegium Chronicles to Harry Potter fans? Yes, depending on the age of the Harry Potter fan. Like I said, Collegium Chronicles gets real dark, real fast.

I really feel like Collegium Chronicles is really an extended prequel to Herald Spy (which I have not read yet). There's not a lot that goes on that doesn't add to Mags' ongoing accumulation of skills. Even Mags' small circuit run had very little in the way of actual Herald training. We actually don't get a lot of Herald training for Mags. He's mostly either catching up in academic classes or running around for Herald Nikolas doing the spy training thing... and of course the kidnapping situation in Redoubt. Mags will clearly not be a traditional Herald and so getting too into the weeds about traditional Herald training would have been a little silly. Add to all this the fact that technically, due to how new the Collegium is, Mags is technically getting a more "traditional" round of training. He's taken under the wing of a Herald as an apprentice rather than being stuck in a classroom all the time.

Collegium Chronicles has a large focus on the lasting trauma that Mags suffered throughout his early life. There's not a book that goes by where Mags doesn't look back on dwell some on his life in the mines. I honestly found this a little annoying, but I realize through my own dealings with trauma (nowhere near the level Mags or others have gone through)  that trauma does color your life in ways you might not think about. It does make sense that Mags would keep coming back to it over and over again. One thing about this I found lacking though, was the hammering down of how old Mags is actually supposed to be at any given point. The timeline of Collegium Chronicles seems to take place over about three to four years, but I'm not even sure on that count. I assume by the end that Mags would be about 18, maybe? It's really hard to pin down, especially because of the pseudo-renaissance-y society that Valdemar has at this point... after all, Lena and Bear get into a huge kerfuffle about getting married when they did due in part to their age. I feel like the age thing is important here, because Mags' whole life before becoming a Herald Trainee was the mine and it would be nice to know how long that actually was.

All of the secondary characters in the Collegium Chronicles are very secondary. We get a little bit more of Bear and Lena during Foundation, but after that, they're just sort of floating in the background. Given how much stress was put on Master Sorenson during Foundation, I thought that group of high-born people was going to have more of an impact on Mags' life... they did not. We barely get any more Lydia after that and the focus definitely shifts toward Amily. Amily's characterization is mostly done through stressing how she's her father's daughter and really more into the research side of things. She is shown to be adaptable after the surgery to fix her leg and kind of becoming Bear's assistant during Bastion. Nikolas actually ends up with more characterization than anyone else. He is at the forefront of Mags' training and Mags seems to spend more time around Nikolas than pretty much anyone else besides Dallen. Dallen himself is actually my second favorite Companion after Yfandes. He's just a generally fun-loving Companion who has zero problems throwing shade when he feels it necessary.

I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the Kirball team. Gennie and Jeffers were probably the most active in terms of the narrative. They're also literally the only two I can actually remember off the top of my head. I liked Gennie a lot. She was a solid team captain and has a good head on her shoulders. I'm glad the Kirball team came together around Mags a few times, trying to shield him from the whole "foreigner" issue during Intrigues and from being overwhelmed when he returned from his kidnapping at the beginning of Bastion.

Other characters of note are of course Lita, Jakyr, Franse, Reaylis, and Bey. Lita and Jakyr serve as the adults in charge of Mags' circuit run. That's really where we get to know Jakyr even though he was the Herald that helped Dallen get Mags in Foundation. He, like Lita, are kind of in the background the entire time, but like, way in the background. I really enjoyed Franse and Reaylis. I gushed over Reaylis in my Redoubt review so I won't go back into that here. Bey was an interesting addition at the end of Bastion. I think he largely served the purpose of getting Mags some assassin training without actually having to train Mags to be an assassin. I feel like Bey's assassin skills would be super applicable to spying. I mean, clearly, as Bey spied on Mags and friends the entire time they were at the Bastion. I do wonder how much of Bey's spying got him in turn spied on by the vrondi... he did not seem bothered, so... I don't know. That whole situation was just odd.

I also noticed a few things about magic in Valdemar that were interesting, to say the least. Reading through these books in chronological order has me questioning how quickly Valdemar seems to have forgotten things over the years. It's also a tad weird, because (according to the Valdemar Wiki) it's only been about 50-some odd years since Vanyel died. It just seemed really weird to me that things like Mages and the magic they wielded would have faded into obscurity so quickly. The Heralds of Mags' time rely solely on whatever mind-magic they might have and don't seem to have any curiosity as to, for instance, Vanyel's magic would have worked. I know that all the Herald Mages were basically killed off with Vanyel, but I find it really odd that Valdemar has absolutely no mages anymore, at least not until Elspeth in the Heralds of Valdemar series. I probably shouldn't be surprised that the information has been lost and turned into heresay so quickly, but I am and it's sad. I guess the combination of Stefan and the Companions really did a number on the information about magic being more common place. The fact that the Companions are semi-actively discouraging their chosen from even trying to delve into magic or the potential of the Mage Gift probably helped all this along. We see Dallen just be like "it doesn't matter" when Bey unwittingly gives a bit of this kind of info to Mags... and of course no one knows what's going on with the Magic Stone focus thing-y holding the Herald Web together. Companions are a bit sus, man; I do not approve.

Overall I really do feel like Collegium Chronicles is a prequel to Herald Spy. Mags is getting his training and managing to set up both support and information networks. There isn't really a strict progression of one year to the next, which does make sense given how Companions end up deciding when to choose their partners. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending to Collegium Chronicles. I feel like it'll just bleed into Herald Spy, but I guess I'll have to start that and see.

Bastion by Mercedes Lackey

A Spoiler Free Review

Bastion is actually where Mags gets a 99% normal “year” training to be a Herald. I rather enjoyed this one, though it doesn’t actually feel like a finale at all. Not that those things are mutually exclusive, but… yeah. Bastion had Mags and friends headed out on Circuit for that last bit of training they all needed… and for a change in Mags’ identity apparently.

I know that most of the Heralds series are either duologies or trilogies and The Collegium Chronicles is the longest series. However, that really doesn’t mean we can’t remember the important bits of what happened in the last four books. There were several instances of straight-up text-lifting in order to refresh us on Mags’ memories. As soon as I realized this, I skipped them wholesale. I feel like, had I read them, they would have dragged the momentum of the current story down.

I was not expecting Lita to be the “other person” added to Mags’ band during Circuit. I like that Jakyr had someone he knew well to bounce off of and Lita turned out to be a good addition overall. I also feel like Jakyr got some more fleshing out here, which was good because most everyone else is still fairly flat. The story isn’t really about Bear, Lena, Amily, or the adults, but it would have been nice for more of their personalities to come through. I think Lena barely did anything in Bastion worth her actually being there, to be completely honest.

I was pleasantly surprised to see an empty Tayledras Vale. I would have thought there might be more of those dotted around Valdemar, but I guess not. I was also actually surprised that Jakyr had met some Tayledras. Guess at least one Herald a generation is their quota.

On another note: the Companions are apparently burying even the very idea of magic and mages. Dallen telling Mags “it doesn’t matter” during Bey’s little sharing session confirms that. On the one hand, this makes sense as there apparently weren’t any Mages born between Vanyel and what’s-her-face-Princess-something… On the other hand, I feel like it puts Valdemarans at a disadvantage to cultures that have more than mind-magic to go on, like the Tayledras and Karsites. Just in The Collegium Chronicles we have the Heralds being completely in the dark about the vrondi and that was actually kind of important but reduced to a footnote.

Speaking of Bey, he is easily the most well rounded secondary character of the lot. He’s clearly got a personality on him that vaguely clashes with his assassin thing. I liked him a lot.

Bastion was an alright end to an alright series. Definitely went out with less of a bang than I maybe thought it might. I dunno, I enjoyed it overall.

Favorite Lines

:Yes, well, civility is an art form not practiced nearly enough,: Dallen observed

"The person who throws his weapon at the enemy is an idiot. A few moments after that, he will be a dead idiot." - Mags

Pocket Apocalypse by Seanan McGuire

A Spoiler Free Review

I honestly spent a good portion of Pocket Apocalypse being very, very annoyed in the direction of Riley Tanner and the members of the Thirty-Six Society who agreed with him. I have never been a fan of people who ignore the advice of experts in their midst or those men who think they actually have a say in who their daughters end up marrying. Pocket Apocalypse had both of these things and it bugged the ever-living-hell out of me.

It was quite interesting to see Lycanthropy actually treated as a disease, although clearly not as fatal as Alex and the Prices thought. I'm also interested in the concept of rhino lycanthropes... it's not often at all that herbivores end up as a lycanthropy strain in any universe.

I'm not sure how to feel about Shelby's family. They're much more dedicated to security than the Prices (as evidenced by Dominic not getting the third degree in the short story "My Last Name" (available on Seanan McGuire's website)). Not sure I agree with how crazy they are about it, though. Also the fact that Riley kept calling Alex "Covenant Boy" the entire time... I very much dislike how hostile Riley is toward Alex. I get it, he's the dude fucking your daughter and you don't approve. Get over it. He's here to help, as he keeps saying. Ugh.

The Thirty-Six Society was semi-interesting, as secret cyrptozoologist societies go. They really seemed more like doomsday preppers than cryptozoologists. I guess that kind of makes sense, given Australia and all. I dunno, they were largely just kind of around as camouflage for the werewolves and additions to the Alex bashing.

Basil is my new favorite Cryptid. He's pretty awesome and I hope he gets all the Tim Tams he wants. Seems like he deserves them.

I got a little teary eyed reading the final battle. Like, good tears or the happy variety. Something about the entire family teaming up in that last moment with help from Dr. Jalali... it just made me happy.

So anyway, I very much enjoyed Pocket Apocalypse as a whole... once I got past the Alex bashing. It was fairly entertaining and the antagonist didn't come out of nowhere this time, so that was nice.

Favorite Lines

"Hello," she said. "Have you heard the good word of Wadjet, Protector of Egypt and great snake of the Milky Way?" - Dr. Helen Jalali

"I think you'll find that when you're looking for a patron goddess to consume your eternal soul and save you from the fires of your current religion's afterlife, Wadjet is absolutely the best choice available." - Dr. Helen Jalali

"No one's kidnapping a priest," scolded Charlotte [Tanner]. "It's rude to abduct the clergy."

Short Reviews Batch 6

Omens by Kelley Armstrong
A Spoiler Free Review

Originally Posted to GoodReads: May 15, 2016

The opening book to Kelley Armstrong's new Cainsville series was pretty darn spectacular for an opening. There were intriguing characters, a nice mystery, and some twists on "powers." I very much enjoyed "Omens," so much so that I was up until 2 AM reading last night and spent most of my morning reading as well.

"Omens" really ramps up toward the end, though it is by no means slow getting where it's going. There are intriguing mysteries set up that will carry through the series, some introduced right at the end, which was a surprise.

I will happily follow Olivia, Gabriel, and the rest of Cainsville into the events Olivia has apparently launched herself into.

A Wizard Abroad by Diane Duane
A Ridiculously Short ReRead Review

Originally Posted on GoodReads: May 30, 2018

I'm pretty sure this book is why I was so disappointed reading Crimson Death by Laurel K. Hamilton. You get a really good feel for Ireland in this book. Not to mention the story is really good.