Bogormen

Title: Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3)
Author: Seanan McGuire
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 157
Date read: October, 2018

Beneath the Sugar Sky returns to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the "real" world.

Sumi died years before her prophesied daughter Rini could be born. Rini was born anyway, and now she’s trying to bring her mother back from a world without magic.


The sequel to "Every Heart a Doorway" (there's a book #2 as well, but as far as I understand, that's more a companion novel or a prequel than a sequel) and every bit as good as the first one. I love the idea of having doors open between worlds in a sort of structured manner, and being able to place these worlds on a compass appeals to my geeky side.

Where EHaD mostly takes place in our world, this time we get to visit other worlds and see how they function. Must admit, I don't think I'd feel particularly at east in either, but they're fun to visit through writing :-)

Awesome, surreal books that definitely need to be part of my physical library at some point.

Title: Mosquitoland
Author: David Arnold
Genre: YA
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 345
Date read: October, 2018

When her parents unexpectedly divorce, Mim Malone is dragged from her beloved home in Ohio to the 'wastelands' of Mississippi, where she lives in a haze of medication with her dad and new (almost certainly evil) stepmom.

But when Mim learns her real mother is ill back home, she escapes her new life and embarks on a rescue mission aboard a Greyhound bus, meeting an assortment of quirky characters along the way. And when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.


I liked it, but didn't love it. I enjoyed the writing style and really liked the friendship Mim struck up with Walt and Beck, but taken as a whole, the book was far too depressing for me to fall in love with it. At one point I thought the book took a crazy, twisted turn (you'll know if it you've read it) and was ready to toss it across the room, but unfortunately that turned out not to be the case. The ending was better than I had expected, and I'm glad Mim realized that Kathy wasn't all bad... but I still wish it hadn't been quite that open.

Title: Last Chance
Author: Sarah Dessen
Genre: YA
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 246
Date read: October, 2017

Always the outcast, Colie doesn't expect her trip to the North Carolina coast to change a thing. But when she finds a job waitressing at the Last Chance cafe, she also finds acceptance, new friends and the beginnings of romance.

Very stereotypical YA except that it for once focused more about starting to accept and love yourself rather than finding romance (although of course that featured to). I wasn't blown away by it, but liked it well enough.

Title: Gemina (The Illuminae Files #2)
Author: Amie Kaufmann & Jay Kristoff
Genre: Sci-fi, epistolary
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 500
Date read: October, 2018

Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.

Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.

When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.

But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.


Soooooo, I may have read this book in a day :-D Well, it IS a quick read, thanks to its unique writing style, and now that I knew what I was in for, I didn't have the same issues getting into the book as I had with the first one. I really liked both Hanna and Nik, and didn't miss Kady and Ezra as much as I had expected to (although I'm really looking forward to seeing them all together in the next and final book in the series). Once again, there were twists and turns I hadn't expected, and though I'm not sure I really got all of the pseudo-science behind some of them, I don't care :-P My favourite part of Gemina were Hanna's journal entries. Great addition to the chat / radio logs and surveillance cameras.

Can't wait to pick up the last book and see how everything works out.

Title: The Boy on the Bridge (The Girl With All the Gifts, #0)
Author: M.R. Carey
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 3/5
# pages: Audiobook ~12hrs
Date read: October, 2018

Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy. The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world. To where the monsters lived.

Good, but nowhere near as good as "The Girl With All the Gifts". I would recommend having read that one first though (even though this is a prequel), or you'll miss out on some things near the ending.

I don't remember the plot moving as slowly in TGWATG as it did in this one. I do realize that part of that might have been because I listened to this as an audiobook and read the other one, but it still seemed like M.R. Carey was still setting the stage by the time the book was almost over. Possibly simply because I expected more or a climax than what I got. It's definitely more character-driven than plot-driven... and apart from Khan, I found myself pretty indifferent to most of the characters.

I did still enjoy it though, and never really considered giving up on it.