Blacksouls by Nicole Castroman

From Goodreads:
Edward “Teach” Drummond is setting sail to the Caribbean as first mate on the most celebrated merchant ship in the British fleet—until he rebels against his captain. Mutiny is a capital offense and Teach knows it could cost him his life, but he believes it worth the risk in order to save his crew from the attacking Spanish ships.

Sailing on the same blue waters, Anne barely avoids the Spanish attack, making it safely to Nassau. But lawless criminals, corrupt politics, and dangerous intentions fill the crowded streets of this Caribbean port. Soon, Anne discovers that the man entrusted to keep the peace is quite possibly the most treacherous of them all—and he just happens to hold Teach’s fate in his terrifying hands.

Life and death hang in the balance when Teach and Anne are given a dangerous mission. It’s a mission that will test their love, loyalty and devotion, forcing them down a path neither one could have ever imagined.

This book is slightly better than its predecessor. There is more piracy and more swashbuckling action than there was in the first one. Like Blackhearts this one goes by super quick, so it was easy to read in a few hours. The writing is a bit tighter this time around, and Nicole Castroman has improved her overall style. Like the previous novel, this one shows more and more of what Blackbeard's origins could have been (since there is very little background information on the real Blackbeard). It was interesting to see what these characters are like outside of England, and in a more typical pirate setting. 

What Castroman did really well this time around was show the corruption of the state, which seemed to be a chronic problem in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. You can really see how pirates had more honour than governors, and how the system can be really weak and filled with corruption. It was really fun to see Teach go on missions and essentially evolve into Blackbeard. We didn't really get to see that the last time around, so the payoff works well here. In addition, the characters this time around, for the most part, are less unlikeable and not so one-trick as they were in the first one. I felt more sympathetic for the characters this time around, and Castroman does a good job in portraying the pirate characters, and ensuring you don't feel much sympathy for the villains (especially the governor's wife, good lord that woman). Another thing that Castroman did well in this book is show the race relations between white people and people of colour. While there was some in the first book, she really upped the ante for it in this one. I'm not too sure if there will be a sequel, there's nothing on Goodreads, but where she left the characters off at the end of this one seemed to be a good conclusion if it is just a duology, but there were still some strings left untied, so there could easily be another book coming. 

One thing I dislike is how quickly things are resolved or happen "off-screen". A few characters die "off-screen", and it didn't really feel resolved because we're only told about it and not shown. I think it would have been more powerful if we had seen some of the death scenes actually happen, especially considering that we as readers were introduced to them and there was so much time developing them and their character - it takes away the stakes if we're only told and not shown (show, don't tell!) Another thing, many of the characters from the first book that added tension and put Teach and Anne's relationship at stake - they are rarely (if at all) mentioned in this one. The fiancee from the first book gets one fleeting mention, Teach's father gets two mentions and no one else gets mentioned. Not once. After all that buildup, even with the minor characters such as the fellow housemaids, and not even a peep in this one. 

The last act of this book was by far the most exciting part, when all the pirate-y things really begin. We're introduced to the supposed villain, which is when we really see the corruption of the state, and it's so action-packed and pirate-y and just good, swashbuckling fun. I'm hoping if there is a concluding novel after this one, it's all pirate fun.

Blacksouls is a definite improval on Blackhearts, but is still far from being perfect. In parts, it breaks the show, don't tell rule of writing. The characters are more developed, and there is more action and swashbuckling piracy going on, especially in the final act. Like the first book, it's good, but not great. If there is a concluding book, I will probably read it. On the whole, this book was fun, and I'm going to give it a 3.5/5

Blackhearts by Nicole Castroman

From Goodreads:
Edward "Teach" Drummond, son of one of Bristol's richest merchants, has just returned from a year-long journey on the high seas to find his life in shambles. Betrothed to a girl he doesn’t love and sick of the high society he was born into, Teach dreams only of returning to the vast ocean he’d begun to call home. There's just one problem: convincing his father to let him leave and never come back.

Following her parents' deaths, Anne Barrett is left penniless and soon to be homeless. Though she’s barely worked a day in her life, Anne is forced to take a job as a maid in the home of Master Drummond. Lonely days stretch into weeks, and Anne longs for escape. How will she ever realize her dream of sailing to Curaçao—where her mother was born—when she's stuck in England?

From the moment Teach and Anne meet, they set the world ablaze. Drawn to each other, they’re trapped by society and their own circumstances. Faced with an impossible choice, they must decide to chase their dreams and go, or follow their hearts and stay. 

I like pirates and Blackbeard has always intrigued me. It also helps that I've been on a historical fiction bender as of late. And I like action-packed books with interesting characters, especially historical ones, of whom there is little actual knowledge and a lot of hearsay. I traditionally really like pirate stories. 

While there was a bit of setup for Teach becoming Blackbeard, it was mostly a historical romance novel with the romance occurring between Teach and Anne. Overall, this book is the epitome of being just OK. It was a very quick read, and I was able to get through both this book, and its sequel Blacksouls in the course of a day. The writing style is very simplistic and easy to follow. The plot moved quickly, making it easy to read this book and the second one both in one day. I like how each chapter followed either Anne or Teach, alternating between the two. That being said ...

I didn't really have an emotional connection to any of the characters. The only character I had a real connection with was a side character by the name of John. There was no real depth to their characterization and while they do have motivations for what they want to do, they are not portrayed in the most realistic ways. While the romance is not insta-love, it does not take long for the two leads to start making doe-eyes and declarations. The more minor characters and the "villain" characters are not really that exciting either. They're kind of stereotypical, and once they story is done with them, that's it. You don't hear or see from some of the characters ever again once they get their "comeuppance", which is kind of annoying. 

What this book does do well is set up a sort of plausible backstory for Blackbeard. It's kind of odd to have Blackbeard be a young man (I kept picturing Aiden Turner of Poldark) as opposed to a war-hardened pirate with a black heart (oh, hey, I get the title now) and no soul. Whenever someone mentions Blackbeard, my mind instantly goes to the Ian McShane Blackbeard from Pirates of the Caribbean or the Blackbeard on Once Upon a Time that shows up every once in a while to be an occasional foil for Hook (and is also so much fun, I wish he was on the show more often. But I digress). While a lot is known about Blackbeard's piracy years, not much is known about his pre-piracy days, so it was cool to see Castroman's take on it. 

Overall, this book is OK, the very definition of OK. Castroman provides an interesting take on a young version of Blackbeard, who is the more compelling of the two romantic leads. I found this book really easy to get through, and there were some really great scenes and a lot of excitement that I believe is building up to something. It was a quickly moving plot. This book was in no means bad, but it could have been improved upon in some ways, but it is a good debut, and fans of Y/A historical romance will enjoy it. I'm going to give Blackhearts a 3/5 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

From Goodreads:
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

I ... WOW. 

It's late when I'm writing this but I have to get this written and posted because oh, my god this book is so amazing and wonderful and good.

This book is amazing in every sense of the word. I really tried to take my time with this book, and this is a book that demands you take your time with. Beautifully written with lyrical prose that makes you ache and makes your eyes leak. Someone said that they could not remember the last time they wept that much when a book reached a conclusion regarding this book, which is something that I now understand. It wasn't just a few tears. It was ugly crying, full on weeping. This book is carefully and thoughtfully written. Author Anthony Doerr chooses his words meticlously. 

It would have been so easy to fall into all the tropes that are so common with World War II pieces, such as the evil Nazi commander. But Doerr does away with cliche and stereotype, and makes everyone in this book human. Not dissimilar to The Book Thief, you sympathize with pretty much everybody in this book, and get to see how World War II affected everybody, before, during and after its six-year span. Doerr creates this world masterfully. It is such a captivating book from beginning to end. While it demands you take your time with it, it is not a slow-moving book, rather, one that should be savoured rather than inhaled. I feel like books on World War II are like this on the whole, but this one more so than others because, like The Book Thief, has so much to say about war. The story, in addition, is told in a non-linear fashion, so we know part of the climax of the novel in the opening section, which adds suspense to an already suspenseful story. Doerr employs alternating focuses, between Marie-Laure, Werner, and a Nazi treasure-hunter, which works splendidly for this novel, carrying along the plot and adding many threads that all come together in a powerful way near the conclusion.

The characters are all so well-rounded and compelling. They are the farthest from caricatures you can possibly get. These characters felt so real, and you can really see these people existing in France and Germany. Each character is sympathetic in one way or another, some more than others, and there are no black-and-white characters; even the characters that are the more "villainous" (for lack of a better word) have motivation that is plausible. Having taken an extensive, year-long history course on the everyday people of modern Europe, I know for a fact that these people did exist or could exist. Doerr did his research on the War's affect on people and it paid off, because I can very vividly imagine Marie-Laure and Etienne and Werner existing and living through World War II. These characters are beautiful representations and portrayals of people living during wartime France and Germany.

Doerr's writing style is beautiful and lyrical. As I've mentioned, he takes his time with words. Not in a mundane, boring way, but in a way that makes you pause and think about what he is saying. He spent ten years writing and perfecting this story and he writes it in such a way that even in the less-sad parts, my eyes were pricking with unshed tears. This book is powerful, chilling, haunting and beautifully written. The prose is just wonderful and adds to the book.

All the Light We Cannot See is one of the best books on World War II I have ever had the experience of reading, and I have read a lot of books on World War II and the Holocaust. In focusing on the everyday people of the war, this book adds a lot of context to the time and how trying and difficult it was. I loved everything about this book, and cannot recommend it enough. I give All the Light We Cannot See 5/5. 

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

From Goodreads:
'It came from the woods. Most strange things do.'

Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss.

These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll.

Come take a walk in the woods and see what awaits you there...

WOW.

I read this collection in a graphic fiction course I was in for a few weeks before dropping it this past semester, and this book was the first one on the syllabus. And my god this book is amazing. I loved reading this book so much. As I'm sure I have mentioned, I love fairy tales and I love fairy tale retellings. Carroll weaves old-timey feeling with horror, which worked so well with the creepy and amazing artwork. I am glad that I read this during the daytime and not at nighttime as I'm sure I would have been sleeping with the lights on. 

The artwork is incredible. It adds to the overall chill factor and creepiness. Carroll's artwork is equally stark and lush, using few colours to create a scene. This book is so creepy. Even though it's fairy tales, this is not your Walt Disney fairytale. These are creepy, grim and horrifying fairy tales. The artwork combined with her writing and unique conventions for re-telling classic stories in an unsettling way. Each of the five fairy tale re-tellings had something interesting and unique. Each one was unsettling in its own way. Although it was visual storytelling, it unsettled me as much as a non-graphic novel would do, probably due to the words and the storylines that go with it, which is a sign of good authorship (I dislike horror movies for this reason, because most of them rely too much on shock horror or jump scares, rather than unsettling the audience). 

You are really able to feel a lot from the images and prose. The stories are deep and have active heroines at the forefront, which is great to see. While each story is individual, there is a slight thread that weaves through (the thread being, venturing into the woods). The woods represent darkness, loss of innocence, entering the unknown, which Carroll plays on and feeds into the fear of the unknown. There is a line in the epilogue that really drives this all home and makes it all the more wonderful.

Through the Woods is wonderful. I loved every page of it. It is without a doubt the best favourite graphic novel I have ever read. It opened up a whole new genre of fairy tale re-tellings for me, and I am so glad I had the opportunity to read this collection. It was tense from the word go, and did not ease up on the unsettling and macabre nature. I'm going to give Through the Woods 5/5, and would advise not reading it at night.

Nostalgia by M.G. Vassanji

From Goodreads:
 In the indeterminate future in an unnamed western city, physical impediments to immortality have been overcome. As society approaches the prospect of eternal life, a new problem must be confronted: with the threat of the brain's storage capacity being overwhelmed, people want to move forward into the future free from redundant, unwanted and interfering memories. Rejuvenated bodies require rejuvenated identities--all traces of a person's past are erased and new, complete fictions are implanted in their stead. On occasion, though, cracks emerge, and reminders of discarded lives seep through. Those afflicted suffer from Leaked Memory Syndrome, or Nostalgia, whereby thoughts from a previous existence burrow in the conscious mind threatening to pull sufferers into an internal abyss.
Doctor Frank Sina specializes in sealing these memory leaks. He is satisfied in his profession, more or less secure in the life he shares with his much younger lover, content with his own fiction--a happy childhood in the Yukon, an adulthood marked by the influence of a mathematician father and poet mother. But one day, Presley Smith arrives in Frank's office. Persistent thoughts are torturing Presley, recurring images of another time and place. As he tries to save Presley from the onslaught of memory, Frank finds clues that suggest Presley's past may be located in war-torn, nuclear-ravaged Maskinia, a territory located in the southern hemisphere, isolated from the north by fiercely guarded borders and policy barriers. Frank's suspicions are only intensified when the Department of Internal Security takes an interest in Presley. They describe him as one of their own, meaning his new life was one they created for him, and they want him back. Who was Presley before the Department remade him, what secrets are buried in the memories that are encroaching upon him? As Frank tries to save Presley from both internal and external threats, cracks emerge in his own fiction, and the thoughts that sneak through suggest a connection with the mysterious Presley that goes well beyond a doctor and his patient. 

Sigh. Nostalgia was shortlisted for the Canada Reads award this year, along with Fifteen Dogs and a few others. When I picked up this book for 40% off (for it being a Canada Reads title), a few of the clerks at the store were excited that I was reading this. Between that and the concept of the book - memory, immortality, death-denying, and coming to grips with mortality, I was excited to read this to see a version of the future. I was excited to read this, and to see why it was up for the best book of Canada of 2016. This was me going into this book: 

And this was me coming out of this book: 

This book really disappointed me. While the concept was great, everything else was lacking. The writing style was everywhere. Sentence structure did not exist; I had to re-read lines and paragraphs multiple times before I could make sense of it. Vassanji uses the same quoting technique that James Joyce did, using dashes to denote when someone is speaking. When Joyce did it, it was done in a way that was effective, made the reader feel as if they were intruding upon something that they shouldn't be. When Vassanji does it here, it makes it all the more confusing. Also, there were so many things that got past the editor that shouldn't have - like the fact that Frank is from Yellowknife in the Yukon??? Last time I checked, Yellowknife is in the Northwest Territories. Things like that, and the weird sentence structure should not have made it past the editor's desk. 

This book was such a chore to read. Like I said, the concept for it is really intriguing but it doesn't really have a payoff. Nothing really happens in the book all that much. You don't know anything about the characters beyond their credentials and what they're wearing, making them even more cold, detached, and unlikeable. I had no idea who any of these people were beyond their names. They were nothing more than vessels to me, just carrying the plot along. While plot-driven novels are fine and well, they're a lot better if there's something at stake. I know speculative fiction focuses more on speculation than it does on character, but I'd like to know what makes Frank and Presley tick. In not focusing at all on the characters, it removes a lot of dynamic that could have made this book a lot better. 

Overall, this book was far too easy to put down in favour of doing something else. It was really forgettable, despite having an interesting premise. The characters were really underdeveloped, and there were many plotlines that did not amount to much or anything at all. This book was a chore to read, and was not very memorable overall beyond the interesting concept. I'm giving Nostalgia a 1/5. 

The Mermaid's Daughter by Ann Claycomb

From Goodreads:
Kathleen has always been dramatic. She suffers from the bizarre malady of experiencing stabbing pain in her feet. On her sixteenth birthday, she woke screaming from the sensation that her tongue had been cut out. No doctor can find a medical explanation for her pain, and even the most powerful drugs have proven useless. Only the touch of seawater can ease her pain, and just temporarily at that.

Now Kathleen is a twenty-five-year-old opera student in Boston and shows immense promise as a soprano. Her girlfriend Harry, a mezzo in the same program, worries endlessly about Kathleen's phantom pain and obsession with the sea. Kathleen's mother and grandmother both committed suicide as young women, and Harry worries they suffered from the same symptoms. When Kathleen suffers yet another dangerous breakdown, Harry convinces Kathleen to visit her hometown in Ireland to learn more about her family history. In Ireland, they discover that the mystery—and the tragedy—of Kathleen’s family history is far older and stranger than they could have imagined.  Kathleen’s fate seems sealed, and the only way out is a terrible choice between a mermaid’s two sirens—the sea, and her lover. But both choices mean death… 

I love The Little Mermaid. It's one of my favourite Disney movies, and the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, while not exactly subtle in its preachiness, remains one of the most dark and haunting fairy tales I've read with a very grim ending. Imagine my excitement when I found that there was a modern retelling that sort of combines the two (but mostly draws from Hans Christian Anderson's original tale). While it was not as good as I hoping it would be going in, I still found many merits in this book.

Ann Claycomb is a very good writer. I found her writing style to be original and unique, and it kept pulling me in for more to see what was going to happen next. She really brings something new to the table with this retelling and it was cool that she added the generational plotline to the book. I really liked how in between each chapter there was a mini-chapter from the mermaids' perspectives, which added another layer to the book. That being said, I found that the story dragged a little bit in places, especially in the first half of the novel before Kathleen and Harry go to Ireland and Kathleen starts to realize what is really going on. I found myself enjoying the second half of the novel more so than the first half of the novel once everything starts to come to fruition. I liked how Claycomb set up Kathleen as a character and incorporated the main fairy tale into Kathleen's mystery malady. While it did seem a bit plot device-y here and there, overall it worked well, and fit in with the overall magical realism that Claycomb had going on in this book. 

I didn't find many of the characters to be that relatable or likeable. I would have liked to see more of the minor characters such as Tom, who is in the same program as Kathleen and Harry, or Tae, Robin's partner. Tom especially didn't really amount to anything once everything came to a conclusion, besides being one of Kathleen's confidantes and friends. This book has the same character narrative structure that Indelible had, with three focal characters. Two characters (Harry and Kathleen) took first person narrative, while one character (Robin, Kathleen's father) had a third-person narrative. I feel like it would have been more interesting and I would have been able to relate to the characters a bit more if it was one narrative in the third person, or if it was told entirely from one of the mermaids' point of view. These characters were not totally unrelatable, but I feel like they could have been more relatable too.

All in all, I would say that The Mermaid's Daughter is a good, but not great book overall. For the most part it was an intriguing story that picked up in the second half. While the characters were not especially likeable (but not unlikeable), the writing style was really good, and there were many additions and connections that Claycomb made, which added to the book overall. I'm going to give The Mermaid's Daughter a 3.5/5. I liked it, didn't love it, but I will probably read it again in the future.     

Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

From Back Cover:
It is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates, family dramas, and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where all you need is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

I sailed through this book. I feel like I would have enjoyed this book more if I had been younger when I read it. I just couldn't latch onto it in the way that I latched onto the movie, which was also written and directed by Chbosky (isn't it odd when the writer of a book writes a script for a movie that tells the book's story so much better?). Since I'm almost 24, it's been a while since graduating high school, but I can tell you that I was a misfit all through high school. I really felt for the character of Charlie, and found he was a compelling narrator. I liked how it was written in epistolary form, with Charlie writing letters to an unnamed, never-seen, "Friend". In doing so, we do not see all the details of what Charlie is describing them, as he is recounting them after they happened, and are forced to fill in the blanks.

Of the coming-of-age stories I've read, this one is a bit more bleak and gritty. I mean, Charlie doesn't have to fight a bear and discover he's a man, but the topics addressed in this book are darker than most contemporary novels. Topics addressed include sexuality, assault (both physical and mental), suicide and drugs. It's an interesting read, and I found the characters to be as well-rounded as could be, considering we are seeing them only second-hand through the words of Charlie's letters. I did find this to be an effective book in having Charlie learn about himself and come into his own. None of it felt unrealistic or contrived in that sense.

All in all, this was an OK book. I liked the characters and the emotional journeys they go on, but I think I might have been too old reading this, and would have connected to it more at a slightly younger age. I found the writing style to be well-done; Chbosky is a good writer and creates a mostly realistic world of navigating high school and yourself. I'm going to give Perks of Being a Wallflower a 3.5/5; it wasn't a bad book and it dealt with trauma and self-discovery in a believable way. It was a good read, but not great.