A.J. Maguire

Category: Reviews

  • A Hill to Die On

    I’ve been watching the Bookish/Author community for a while now and I can’t help but notice some trends that are cropping up. Or at least a certain cycle of events that keep circling.

    It has become the popular thing to do to draw lines in the sand or find hills to die on. Some of these are in good fun, told in a tone of voice that proves the creator is merely claiming their opinion on something silly.

    Things like which Book Boyfriend is the best or which magic system they would prefer to live in. Things like this I have no problem with, they are meant in a joking manner and are both entertaining and fun.

    But then there’s the other type of Hill to Die On.

    Said with capitol letters.

    Things like, First Person POV is the best POV.

    Which, hey, if you love First Person and that’s where you go to relax and enjoy a book then hey… You do you! I’m so glad you enjoy those. I do too.

    However, there seems to be this trend that says “If you don’t die on this hill with me, then you’re wrong and you’re awful and we’re going to throw bricks at you until you come around to our viewpoint.”

    These Hills to Die On are everywhere.

    Audiobooks don’t count as real reading!

    Em-Dashes mean it was written by AI! (Reminder, this is utterly false and AI learned to write based on all of us authors, using tools we often use, so OF COURSE AI learned how to use the em-dash.)

    Clean romance versus spicy romance!

    Romantasy is killing literature!

    Now… because I am a human being, I have opinions on these things, but I have them with the understanding that my opinions and tastes are going to change as I grow. So, why would I want to die on a hill here?

    Further, why would I want to alienate people by deciding to plant my flag on that hill and start shouting it?

    Again, when it is all in a joking manner there’s no issue but these days it seems were are hunting for ways to divide ourselves. Instead of a Reading Community that is welcoming, we start congregating in subsects and ganging up on anyone who likes different things.

    I’ve watched it get super ugly.

    And I can’t help but wonder why.

    Why do we do this?

    Why can’t we say – Hey! You read? That’s amazing! What are you reading right now?

    And then, you know, NOT JUDGE THEM for what they choose to read?

    There doesn’t need to be a war here. If someone reads a book you don’t like, why does it matter to you? For the love of God, stop trying to control other people. Their decisions are not up to you.

    Yes, you can have an opinion, but don’t cross the line into – You are so stupid for liking that book.

    Or

    That book is ruining literature by merely existing.

    First of all, the hubris on that last accusation is so high that maybe you should take a few moments of genuine self-reflection. Literature existed long before you were born and it’ll survive long after you’re gone. Further, literature is a reflection of the culture and times in which it lives.

    I digress.

    And I suppose I have found my own Hill to Die On.

    Stop the division. Stop finding reasons to hate each other. Stop attacking people who have taken the time to read and stop trying to control people.

    You’re allowed your opinions. You can write them in your reviews and give your stars, one through five, but at the end of the day it is nothing more than your opinion. It is not something to foist on other people and demand they agree with you.

    We’re beautifully diverse. It’s alright to compromise here. It’s alright to be different. You live, you laugh, you love, you matter. And so does the person sitting next to you.

    Happy Reading, everyone.

  • Book Review – Heartless Hunter: The Crimson Moth by Kristen Ciccarelli

    Laying all my cards on the table here, I love The Scarlet Pimpernel. I watched every iteration I could find as it came through the silver screen, to include the TV series in 1999-2000. To FURTHER lay my cards on the table, our English teacher in the 12th grade showed us the 1982 version in class over one of those weird weeks in school.

    You know, the ones where the teachers were busy finishing up grades and didn’t want to assign anything more until they had caught up.

    I loved the hiding in plain sight. The facade put forward to make everyone else unsuspecting of the true nature of one’s movements. I loved the frightening civility covering a bloodthirsty and desperate time.

    And, of course, I loved the romance.

    So when I picked up this book I did so with a wary eye. I did not think anyone could quite grasp all of those lovely things and implement it into a fantasy novel.

    I have never been more pleased to be wrong.

    I devoured this book. From start to finish I loved it. This is basically Scarlet Pimpernel meets Witches and I am all for it. The enemies to lovers (to enemies) was weirdly satisfying. Normally the angst eats at me and I put those sorts of books down, but this one kept me turning the pages.

    There is some mild spice in this book, for those who need to be warned of that.

    Five stars. Well done.

    Here’s the PURCHASE LINK!

    Happy reading!

  • Book Review – Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

    For those of you who are still shaking their fists at KU and trying to boycott it, I am going to shrug at you and let you have your opinions. KU gives me access to books that I would otherwise not be able to snag on my monthly book budget. And before you suggest a library instead, I live on the top of a mountain in a small town. Not that I should have to justify my life circumstances to random strangers on the internet, but there you have it.

    Besides, and which has been pointed out by Indie Authors everywhere, boycotting KU doesn’t hurt the people you want it to hurt. It only hurts the Authors.

    That said, I recognize Yarros is a far cry from an Indie Author. I still read her books. Or at least I’m reading the Empyrean series. And I’m enjoying them.

    Still here?

    Awesome. Let’s review Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.

    The world in this novel opened up in a big way. I loved learning about the different cultures and watching as they fought to open the eyes of an entire nation to the lies it had been told. The characters all grew and I was excited to see Violet aligning back with her friends. The love story was fun but…

    And here I get into my criticism of the book…

    I hated the Cat storyline. I’m not going to get into spoilery specifics here, I’m just going to eye this with a healthy dose of “I thought these were adults” because it sure didn’t feel like they were being very adult. Especially given the fact that lives are at stake and literal war is happening.

    I recognize that the characters on the page might be categorized as ‘new adult’ given the ages at which they were introduced but there was a level of pettiness on the page that drove me absolutely insane. Which might have been the point, in which case, I applaud the author. I’m rarely that annoyed whilst reading, and you hit all the right buttons to get me there.

    Also… thank you, Yarros, for breaking my heart again. Didn’t think you could do it twice, but you did. And now I’m terrified to read the third book.

    I have it.

    My husband bought it for me.

    But I haven’t opened it out of some weird PTSD you’ve given me.

    Five stars.

    Happy reading, everyone!

  • Book Review – Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross

    A while back I read the first book in this duology – Divine Rivals – and I loved it. The magic was subtle, the war was tense, and the romance was sweet. I had to wait a bit to get to this second book because it was not on Kindle Unlimited (which is honestly the only way I can afford to read so many books) but once I spotted it on there I snagged it up.

    It should come as no surprised that I loved the second book too. We pick up a little bit after the first book left off, so the war is still in full swing and the newspapers for which Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt both work are still covering that war. Everything that I loved in that first book was present in this one.

    I don’t do spoilers but I will say that, while I loved this book, I loved the first one more. But I think that’s normal. It’s always a lot more fun to be actively engaged in the mystery and wonder than it is to have mysteries revealed.

    That said, it was a satisfying conclusion to a story I deeply enjoyed. I highly recommend this duology for any of my Fantasy lovers out there. For parents who may be checking, these books are rated SAFE for younger readers. There are no explicit scenes that are going to cause an uncomfortable conversation at the dinner table.

    Happy Reading!

    Purchase Link for Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross

  • Book Review – House of Beating Wings by Olivia Wildenstein

    This book was deeply creative and I enjoyed it. The world building was fun and the quest Fallon took was equally enjoyable, even if I had to sit back and shake my head at her hubris.

    I am not going to count this a spoiler since it’s in the blurb for the novel that if Fallon frees the crows she’ll be made queen, but I am going to say… I wish the character took ten seconds to really contemplate what being a queen would mean. This is where my head shaking started and I was torn between really liking Fallon and kind of… loathing her.

    Granted, the character is described as being 22 years old and it’s been a minute since I was that age, so I tried very, very hard to remember how self-absorbed I was back then. Try as I might, however, I cannot say I ever in my wildest dreams wished to be a queen. A princess, maybe, with the pretty gowns and the knight in shining armor where we equally saved one another (that equally bit has always been big on my priorities) but never the actual queen.

    You know, where you RULED people.

    And they were forced to do your will because QUEEN.

    The sheer hubris it took for the character to not only picture herself as queen, but actively begin pursuing the crows to see this matter come about, really irked me. To the point I put the book down twice to rant at my husband and son, both of whom deserve medals for their patience with me. I could have forgiven Fallon for this hubris if she had battled with the idea more, or if she had leaned harder on the whole loving Prince Dante thing, making her elevation to queen status more of a sacrifice she was willing to make to be with him than a personal goal.

    I am sure there are people out there who are going to decry this opinion because “Why shouldn’t a woman have ambitions and want to be a queen?”

    To them I say… because becoming a queen forces other people to bow. And any time you put yourself in a position to have power over other people, you ought to take at least five minutes to check yourself, which Fallon never did.

    Again, if she had done this I would have forgiven her, but she never does, which leaves me in a weird love-hate relationship with the character.

    Ahem.

    I digress.

    Despite my love-hate relationship with Fallon, I enjoyed the book. She makes mistakes in her love life that I can relate to, and you can clearly see where the narrative is heading for the second book in that regard. The world building is interesting, the characters are complicated with equally complicated motivations, and you feel like there’s real history with them.

    4 out of 5 stars.

    BOOK PURCHASE LINK – House of Beating Wings

  • Book Review – House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J Maas

    So there has been a lot of conversation around this book. Some people hating it, some people loving it. Most people falling somewhere in between.

    I fear I fall “somewhere in between” loving and hating it.

    I’ve followed some of the arguments about how this is Bryce’s story and while many people may have wanted to see a larger gathering of talents and minds for this war, I’m afraid that’s not where I felt the most disappointed. I fully accepted that these people did not know one another and that a crossover beyond what we saw was unlikely to occur.

    The things that bothered me were not that Bryce was a turd to Azriel and Nesta, but rather that Bryce never seems to grow.

    Like… ever.

    The reason I loved the original Crescent City novel, and what had me picking up the second novel, was that Bryce grew an incredible amount in that first book. She underwent some horrifying things and she as a character grew from them. She is precisely the same person at the end of House of Flame and Shadow as she was at the beginning, and she really should not be.

    Enter the Spoiler Zone.

    I do hate giving spoilers, but the things that bother me about this book require some details, so here it goes.

    #1 – At no point did I fear Bryce would lose.

    Someone should have perished. Someone we cared about. They needed to LOSE somewhere in this novel, and in a big way. But even when they kind of-sort-of lost, that person was brought back from the brink of death and still played a major role in the end scenes. The book falls flat because nothing was really at stake.

    #2 – The… info-dump magic video-montage.

    This lasted… uh… for ages. And it gave way too much away. Sure, it was interesting at first, but I remember that every time we flashed back to Bryce in the cave listening/watching to the history that I started to groan and asked, out loud to my very confused husband; “We’re really just going to spoon feed me everything right here?”

    The book would have been far more interesting if some of this magic-montage-history-lesson had been corrupted somehow. Say, maybe, at the water parasites… and instead of just having Bryce show up and mention they have a water problem, the Ocean Queen could maybe have been investigating this all along since… you know… she’s an OCEAN QUEEN and innately tied to the water.

    But that’s just my gripe here. The big mysteries were explained and unveiled too early on.

    #3 – Hunt got sacrificed to Bryce’s awesomeness too much.

    My lord, if she mentioned Bryce doing all this amazing stuff in her pink shoes one more time I was going to lose my mind. What little Hunt was allowed to do never eclipsed or matched what Bryce did. Ever. It made him the weaker of the two, rather than her equal in the relationship, and this… This frustrated me the most. Relationships are built on give and take, and we read Romance and Romantic Fantasy to see two people come together and work out how this looks for them specifically.

    Hunt was constantly on his back foot and I kept waiting for him to have a moment where he got to do some of the giving, or even have his own idea that surprises us all where he narrowly skates through danger, but he was never given this opportunity.

    Now…

    All that said, I gave the book 4 stars. The series is a worthwhile read for worldbuilding alone, and the Ruhn and Lidia plotline had me invested through this book. In fact, Ruhn seemed to carry the novel the most as he and Lidia had the stakes I was looking for and seemed to struggle the most to overcome the circumstances and problems surrounding them.

    Happy Reading!

    PURCHASE LINK!

  • Star Trek – Picard – Review

    So!

    For those who haven’t been following along, I have a book titled Nora and the Werewolf Wedding that is due to hit bookshelves on August 9th. Nora Grayson’s character was born of a desire to see someone like Deanna Troi from the Star Trek universe stand center stage rather than as a background character. Because I love her. Because she was strong and gentle and complex and she challenged me to pay attention to the emotions around me.

    I have been doing a re-watch of all of the Star Trek Next Generation movies, but Season 3 of Picard came out and to my delight, Deanna Troi had a lot of screentime in it.

    I don’t want to give spoilers, so I am going to steer away from the main plotline and look at the Riker/Deanna marriage for a moment. Without giving too much detail here, they are having a rough time of things. Tragedy hit their family and they all had to deal with it. Deanna and Riker still love one another – which, let’s be frank, is refreshing to see in a world where relationships get treated like winter coats – but they are deeply hurt and not communicating.

    There is a point in the storyline where Deanna and Riker are able to talk about this and it is lovely. Granted, they are also in a lot of danger and the talk is only able to last a minute, but Deanna makes a valid and wonderful point in that you cannot skip to the healing part. Grief has its place. We cannot ignore it, no matter how much we want to.

    It’s become cliche to have a “strong” character shove their grief aside as though they will deal with it later so that they can “get the job done” on the screen or page. I know I have at least two characters in my own fiction that do exactly this – Trenna and Jorry, if you’re wondering – but there is always a reckoning for this behavior. And to be frank, Picard as a character is precisely this cliche. He has just had Deanna nudging him from the corner since Season One of Next Generation.

    Grief comes to everyone. We all learn to carry it until one day we look back and realize we have a scar instead of an open wound.

    I suppose this doesn’t seem like much of a Review for the show, so I had better make some quick notes.

    #1 – I loved it.

    My mother raised me on Star Trek. So I must say that I am 100% pleased with how they handled this final chapter of Picard’s journey. They treated the characters with respect. They gave us a grown up conversation about grief and parenthood and what it means to have true human connection. (Again, I don’t want to give spoilers this soon, so maybe I will dissect that last statement in full after a year has gone by.)

    #2 – I am sad to say goodbye.

    But the ending was lovely and they are in a good place. I want them to stay in that good place.

    #3 – I do hope a particular Crusher gets a spinoff because he was fantastic.

    Nope. No details there. Go watch the show.

  • Star Trek First Contact Re-Watch

    Yes, I really am doing a re-watch of the films.

    Why?

    For those of you who haven’t been following along, I am doing this because my up-coming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding features a character inspired by Deanna Troi from the Next Generation series. Deanna as an empath had a lot of power in that series, she brought to light that even the Captain of a starship sometimes needs some guidance navigating emotional waters, and the importance of confronting those emotions.

    I wanted to make a story where an empath was the centerpiece instead of on the sidelines, and I fear Star Trek First Contact reinforced that desire in me. Unlike Star Trek Generations, where Deanna had a lovely scene with the Captain discussing mortality, in this next movie she is more of a backdrop character. We see she is there. She has a small scene with a drunk character where Riker is highly amused to see her in an equally drunken state, but otherwise she has nothing to do.

    It is a little sad because there were a couple of opportunities in there where she might have been able to shine, but for pacing/storytelling purposes it seems she got the back seat in this one. That said, having Picard apart from Deanna, who might have been able to confront him sooner about his behavior, left some space open for Picard to have a bit of a tantrum. He got to go a little crazy precisely because Deanna wasn’t there to check him, so I can see why it was done.

    I still think Deanna could have been given more opportunity to shine down on the planet’s surface with the rest of the crew and all of the stuff going on down there, but, hey, such is life. I still enjoyed the movie and the Borg Queen Lady is still creepy enough to make me squirm.

  • Book Review – Crescent City by Sarah J Maas

    Alright, so we already know I was a fan of Sarah J Maas’s Court of Thorns and Roses, so it comes as no surprise that I enjoyed this book. It is a big book that you can settle into for several days/weeks depending on your reading speed. Personally, I had some time off with my kiddo during the Christmas holiday and, because this book was one of my presents (thank you, Husband!) I dove right in.

    I started this novel Christmas Day and practically lived in it for three days. The world Maas created was fascinating and the characters felt real and raw. Admittedly, I feared I wasn’t going to like the book at the beginning because I just did not have anything in common with Bryce and the partying life she enjoyed. I’m far too introverted to ever enjoy that lifestyle, but we read books to experience new things and so I trucked along until I could connect with Bryce better.

    That said, this review comes with a strong parental warning. I know several parents read this blog and I would not recommend this for your younger crowds. It has raw language and heavy sexual overtones to it.

    Warnings aside, the story itself is excellent. I did cry at one part (NO SPOILERS) so the author gets applause from me there. I didn’t see the ending coming, but it was epic and heart-pounding and I quite enjoyed it. There were moments where the cast felt a little too big, but this was overshadowed by just how big the world is that she’s built here so while I might have had to remind myself who certain people were, those names added to the scope of the world itself.

    I loved the book and am excited to see what comes next for Bryce and Hunt.

  • Star Trek Generations Rewatch

    Why am I rewatching old Star Trek movies?

    So glad you asked!

    My upcoming novel Nora and the Werewolf Wedding was partially inspired by the character of Deanna Troi in Star Trek the Next Generation. Now, if you think it’s strange that a science fiction character could inspire a series of urban fantasy novels… Well, you’re probably right, but I never claimed to be normal. And really, we have my mother to blame here because she was the Star Trek fan.

    I fondly remember weekends with Star Trek marathons when my mother unfolded that super-heavy and not-quite-comfortable sofa bed so that we could all camp out in the living room. She was a single mom for the majority of my childhood, so she was asleep by 10PM, but it was fun watching her pretend like she could stay awake long enough to get the full experience.

    So it makes sense that an impressionable young woman like me would become captivated by a television show where a woman sat on the bridge of a starship. But Deanna Troi was not just “a woman sitting on the bridge” either. We got to see a lot of women strutting their strengths in the movies and tv shows when I was growing up, such as Ripley (Aliens), Sarah Conner (Terminator), and Princess Leia (Star Wars).

    Deanna Troi stands out because her strengths are gentleness, intelligence, and empathy.

    I know that there are some conversations about her costumes on the show, but I don’t want to get into that debate. We’ve all heard it before. Suffice to say, she had a major role to play in keeping tabs on the emotions of a wide variety of races living inside that fragile spaceship. So while I’m rewatching these movies – and yes, I chose the movies instead of the actual show because of time constraints, but I’ll obviously be rewatching the show as well – I am paying particular attention to Deanna.

    With that in mind, let’s dive in!

    Star Trek Generations Plot Blurb from IMDb: With the help of long presumed dead Captain Kirk, Captain Picard must stop a deranged scientist willing to murder on a planetary scale in order to enter a space matrix.

    First observation, I forgot Malcolm McDowell was in this movie. He has a captivating voice and makes for a fun villain, even if not the cleverest scientist. Knowing what he does about the matrix and all of its strange time travel, you would think he could have anticipated resistance from Picard and Kirk.

    Now, on to Deanna’s role.

    Troi’s involvement at the very beginning was quite satisfying. Being the empath that she is, she’s the one who knows immediately that her Captain has been given bad news. SPOILER ALERT – His brother and nephew have died and the grief that brings to the table forces him to confront his own mortality. However, she also senses that he needs some time to grapple with the shock on his own, so it is several scenes later before she walks herself into his room to ask him if she can help.

    The scene is quite lovely and while they are interrupted by PLOT happenings, it is a nice reminder that she has a true position and job to do on this ship. Her captain was in distress and she met that distress. When he tries to brush off the deaths as, “It’s alright, these things happen.” She confronts him – gently – by saying that no, it is not alright.

    We as a society often believe that grieving is a weakness of some kind, but it isn’t. Grief is a part of life. It’s one more thing that reminds us we are human and alive, and while it is painful it shouldn’t be ignored. Deanna’s presence at that moment in the storyline highlights that it is not only okay to grieve, but necessary. Even for the captain of a starship.

    The rest of the movie has Deanna doing starship things. She takes the helm when the helmsman gets injured during the space battle and is understandably busy while the ship (SPOILER ALERT) goes down. The one thing I do wish the movie had more time to explore was Data and his emotion chip. Deanna was an obvious choice for him to go to while wrestling with human emotions for the first time, but I suspect the pacing of the movie would have been dramatically hindered by adding such a scene.

    All in all, I deeply enjoyed this rewatch. William Shatner’s Kirk was a delight from start to finish, and while there were a couple of things that made me squint – such as Klingons bothering to take Picard prisoner only to throw him right down where he wanted to be instead of, you know, holding him prisoner as a bargaining chip, and the aforementioned shortsightedness of the villain – I am enough of a fan of the characters themselves to brush these off.

    Next month, Star Trek First Contact.

    Live long and prosper, dudes.