Wonder Woman: Warbringer

First of all, guys, Leigh Bardugo is my queen. I love everything she writes. I'm going to a signing of hers later this month and let's all hope I'm not PMSing at the time because there will be happy tears. I'm stupid excited.

Second of all, I don't even care about DC all that much because all of their movies have been trainwrecks. But Wonder Woman was amazing. AMAZING!

So to have my favorite author write such an amazing story in my favorite genre: heaven, ya'll.

In Warbringer, Diana knows that she has a powerful legacy to live up to, and she feels wholly inadequate to it. She's the only one on the island of Themyscira who hasn't earned her place there. All of the other women have died and cried out to a goddess at their death. Diana was born there. So she has a lot to prove, but few chances in which to do it. Her mother won't let her leave the island on a quest, so she tries to prove it by winning a foot race. Because you don't enter a competition to lose.

But the path she takes leads her by the sea,  where she sees a ship sinking and hears a girl cry out. It is punishable by banishment to bring someone onto the island, but Diana cannot just stand by and let someone die. Obvs.

So she brings her to the island, only to find out from the oracle that this is no ordinary human: she's the Warbringer. A being around whom tensions run high and fights break out. Helen of Troy was the first Warbringer, and she passed the gene to women in her line as generations passed. And we all know what happened with Helen...

Alia has no idea she is the Warbringer. She's just a Greek/African American girl from a wealthy family that is beset by threats. So she is protected by security continuously, especially after her parents died and her older brother took over care of her. So Alia was not supposed to be on this ship in the Mediterranean (where I assume Themyscira is). She did it to be free for once. And see how that turned out? Rebellious teenagers get into all kinds of scrapes.

Diana learns that the ony way to prevent Alia from starting World War 3 just by being alive is to find the resting place of Helen of Troy. So begins a journey to Greece, on which they are joined by Alia's brother, Jason, his best friend Theo (also Alia's lifelong crush) and Alia's best friend Nim. And the whole way, different factions are chasing them to kill Alia because no one wants World War 3 and obviously the only way to prevent it is by killing an innocent 17 year old girl. Y'know, for the greater good and all.

What's the most amazing about this book is how epically diverse Bardugo made this cast, despite this story being a primarily Western (caucasian) one. Alia and Jason are biracial, Theo is Brazilian, and Nim is Indian and unabashedly gay.

What's not to love about this?

You get to see Diana in the modern world. The island has tons of books (even modern ones) and women from all time periods, so she's not totally behind the times, but it's different seeing something than reading about it. Hilarity ensues. And Diana is, of course, inhumanly strong, so her first meeting with Jason is pretty fantastic.

There's just so much winning with this book. If you love YA, strong female heroines, clever dialogue, and/or superheroes, you will love this book.

I feel like I want to read it again...

Like, tomorrow...

Should I do it?

The Epic Crush of Genie Lo

I was blown away by how good Genio Lo is!

First: Chinese mythology! So fresh and welcome!

Second: Badass heroine!

Third: Spectacularly hilarious!

Genie Lo is a Chinese high school student who is preoccupied with beefing up her college apps to get into an Ivy League school. She's also freakishly tall, which makes her stand out. And to top it all off, the new transfer student walks into class and claims her in front of everyone.

At first, I was like No! We don't need an aggressive male love interest! I thought we were past that.

And we are! That was not what was happening (though Genie punched him for it anyway).

Turns out, Genie is powerful. Like, tear down the gates of heaven powerful. And Quentin (the new kid) needs her help to stop the demons that are breaking into this dimension. Obviously, Genie thinks this kid is crazy.

But then she meets a demon. And she's one of the few beings on Earth who can actually help defeat them. As Uncle Ben said, with great power comes great responsibility. And she can't just ignore the evil demons going around trying to eat people. The problem is, how is she supposed do stop them and get into an Ivy League School?

There are so many good things about this story. Genie has a strong friendship with a girl named Yunie, even though she can't tell Yunie anything about why she keeps ditching study sessions to spend time with Quentin. (And it's not to make out). The relationship between Genie and Quentin grows slowly and perfectly. Most of the time, Genie is royally pissed off at Quentin. He kind of invades her life and she resists every step of the way. Unfortunately (in her eyes, not mine) he is gorgeous and she feels alarmingly pulled toward him. Finally, the book is just stinkin hilarious! I read so many scenes out loud to Joe because I kept laughing and I wanted to share with him what was so funny. And I want to share with you what is so funny! But then you won't be pleasantly surprised as I was and I feel like it would just diminish your reading experience if you decide to read it.

So go read it so we can talk about it!

The Novice

Not gonna lie, this was super lukewarm for me. The Novice is about Fletcher, an orphan adopted by a blacksmith. They live in a small medieval type town on the edges of the kingdom. In this world, humans are warring with orcs, and not really getting along with dwarfs or elves either.

So, you know, Lord of the Rings.

To help fight the orcs, there are soldiers called Battlemages. Battlemages have been tested for an affinity for summoning and can summon demons from another world. They capture them and use them to help them fight.

So, you know, Pokemon.

Fletcher has never been tested-he lives too far away and they don't test orphans for reasons having to do with bloodlines and the implications of people not from certain noble families having Battlemage blood. But Fletcher is given a summoning scroll out of gratitude for a kindness, and he accidentally summons a demon--something he's not supposed to be able to do.

He leaves home and travels to the main city, where there's a school for training Battlemages. There, he is able to reach out and make friends with a dwarf, an elf, and other humans, which was incredibly uncommon given the bad history between the races. But Fletcher is just generally a good guy. I mean, a really good guy. He sticks up for people, he's not racist or prejudiced, he tries to include everyone. Except maybe the nobles at the school, who are, in all fairness, absolute douches. Because, you know, entitlement.

The book wasn't bad. I just didn't get into it. You could definitely see the author was heavily inspired by other fantasy worlds. There were also strong elements of the Eragon series at work (I didn't enjoy that either). I think it's a great story for someone who is new to fantasy (or even new to reading) and hasn't seen many of these elements before, but I read A LOT of fantasy. For me, it felt like I'd read the same story before.

I will comment on a couple of things I think it handled well.

First, Fletcher wasn't the most talented Battlemage at school. I think it was cool that the author didn't write Fletcher to be more powerful than everyone else. When they were determining levels, my expectations were conpletely turned on their heels when he turned out to be just average. He gets better using technology because it's the only way he can win the competition they have to be in at the end of their year. Plus, this new tech only comes about as a result of his friendly collaboration with dwarfs. 👍

Second, I think the racism aspect was handled very well throughout this book. It's definitely iffy (but necessary!) to handle social issues in books, and if they're not done well, there's a lot of blowback. Go look at some reviews of The Black Witch by Laurie Forest. I couldn'teven finish it because it was so problematic. I think Matharu was sensitice, had an open main character, and showed the benefits of cooperation between different races (in addition to the reality of many people being against it).

Again, I can see the appeal this story had for a lot readers, and clearly tons of people love it. It just didn't thrill me 🤷‍♀️