Kirbur

Thank you NetGalley & Orbit for the advanced listener copy.

I liked this book a lot but there were some things that I found frustrating mostly having to do with Aila's love life, I wish less time had been spent on that overall. The best parts for me were all of the mundane things about working with animals and all the worldbuilding about how the magical creatures affect everyday life. I want to live in this world!

Aila is a main character that could easily frustrate readers, she has a lot of times where her anxiety overwhelms her and she'll start catastrophizing. and she also doesn't seem that great at a lot of aspects of her job, she is book smart but not real world smart. She takes things too personally and holds grudges easily. But all of these things were done in a way that felt very real and believable to me. She felt human and I loved seeing her passion for the phoenixes. I had a lot of fun following her work within the zoo and watching her try to work on her people skills.

I also really loved the relationship between Aila and her best friend, Tanya was always willing to call Aila out on her bullshit. The romance was the weakest part of the book for me because we don't spend nearly enough time with the love interest but exploring Tanya & Aila's friendship made up for that. Honestly, I feel like Connor (another zoo keeper that Aila has a crush on) could've been cut from the story completely and that would give more time to spend with the animals and with Luciana & Tanya.

The best part of this book by far is the animals, I love love loved all of the animals.

Thank you NetGalley and RBmedia for the advanced lister copy!

What a wild ride!

This was my first read from P. Djèlí Clark so I didn't know what tone to expect and was very pleasantly surprised by how hilarious it was.

I loved the main character Eveen and hope their will be more stories following her, or even just more stories within this world. We are given so much lore in such a short fast paced story and it would be very cool to spend more time in it.

Overall, I found this book to be very engaging and listened to the whole thing in one sitting.

Thank you NetGalley & Macmillan Audio for the advanced listener copy!

The Sky on Fire by Jen Lyons is a fast paced heist story featuring a fun cast of characters. The chapters were all very short which helped keep the pace moving.

I really liked our main character Anahrod, she felt very real to me and I was very invested in learning about her past. The planning and execution of the heist was well done, nothing ever felt too convenient, there were plenty of times where plans fell through and we got to see the group brainstorming together on next steps. I especially like that we got to see everyone play a part in how the story played out, none of the side characters felt redundant.

The magic and the dragons were awesome and I'm left feeling like we've only just scratched the surface, there is definitely potential if Jenn Lyons ever decides to tell more stories in this setting.

Overall this book was fantastic and I could see myself rereading it in the future!

Thank you Netgalley & Tor for the eARC and audio ARC copies of this book!

This book is very gruesome, Buehlman does not shy away from gore and at times I found myself disgusted by some of the descriptions. There were lighter moments sprinkled in throughout but as our main character Galva is telling this story after already having lived through it, I found that there was usually still a tinge of melancholy about what is yet to come.

I loved following Galva, she was an amazing character in The Blacktongue Thief and I'm really glad to have a book from her point of view. I would 1000% read another that is just the events of The Blacktongue Thief but from her POV, or any other stories from her POV for that matter. I loved getting a closer look at her relationship with the war corvids, as well as with her brothers. She also has a surprisingly lovely romance.

The narrator Nikki García's performance was amazing, she brought so much emotion to the story, the audiobook as a whole is very well done.

Overall, I think if you liked The Blacktongue Thief then you will probably also like this prequel. 

Thank you to NetGalley & Macmillan Audio for the ALC.

Hemlock & Silver had all of my favorite things from T. Kingfisher books: a lovable awkward woman, talking animals, very creepy horror elements, a romance, & of course her writing! I also loved the narration from Jennifer Pickens.

I was pleasantly surprised how romance focused this was, in that sense it's more in line with the Saint of Steel books than say Thornhedge.

I wanted to have thoughts about this being a Snow White reimagining but I really didn't think about it that much while reading. The iconography is there: the mirror, the apple, the pale girl, the poison, etc. but the plot itself was so much it's own thing that if it hadn't been directly called out as being a reimagining I might not have even noticed. I should also note that my only previous Snow White experience is the Disney classic and the Huntsman movies so take all of that with a grain of salt.

All in all, this is another fantastic book from T. Kingfisher that I would gladly reread.