Book Review: Stars Above

About the book

Title: Stars Above
Series: The Lunar Chronicles #4.5
Author: Marissa Meyer
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Retellings, Science Fiction, Short Stories
Publication: May 2nd, 2017
Pages: 400
Read: February 2021

My Copy

Publisher: Feiwel And Friends
Edition: Paperback
Purchase Location: Book Depository

My Rating:

Goodreads Summary

The enchantment continues. . . . The universe of the Lunar Chronicles holds stories - and secrets - that are wondrous, vicious, and romantic. How did Cinder first arrive in New Beijing? How did the brooding soldier Wolf transform from young man to killer? When did Princess Winter and the palace guard Jacin realize their destinies? With nine stories - five of which have never before been published - and an exclusive never-before-seen excerpt from Marissa Meyer's novel, Heartless, about the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, Stars Above is essential for fans of the bestselling and beloved Lunar Chronicles.

My Review

Cinder was the first book I read last year after a basically 2-year reading slump (starting University was more stressful than I hoped, and I just couldn’t find the time to read for leisure). I immediately fell in love with the series, like hundreds of others! I’ve heard about the hype around the Lunar Chronicles for a while, but I only picked up my copy from where it was lying hidden in my bookshelf at the beginning of the pandemic last year. Immediately, I joined the rest of the fangirls and fanboys of this series. As I was also on a blogging and reviewing hiatus, I never actually wrote reviews about the series, which is kind of a shame! But that’s why I now decided to review Stars Above instead! It was kind of ironic, that I picked up a book at the beginning of the pandemic without knowing that it would also revolve around a pandemic!

Please be aware, that this review might contain spoilers for the entire Lunar Chronicles series!

Stars Above collects short stories from the character’s childhoods and a story that takes place after the ending of Winter. My two absolute favourite stories in this collection are without doubt Glitches and Carswell’s Guide to being Lucky. I always loved Peony, as she embodies the “good sister” of the two stepsisters in the Cinderella-trope, but in such a sweet and lovely way! I think there’s nobody that can dislike her. The way she accepted Cinder into her home, as the only person of that family, is so precious and makes me miss her even more! Teenage Thorne is just so adorable! Honestly, I wished his story would have been even longer and that we could have read more about him and Kate Fallow. I could read stories about Thorne all day long, they would never get boring to me.

Another character I absolutely adore is Winter. She’s just so precious and I feel like The Princess and the Guard just proves what a strong character development she already went through at such a young age. Her decision not to use her gift is finally fully. In my opinion it takes a very strong character to decide to not use a gift one has to manipulate others even if it means that you would suffer from it. We also discover how exactly she got her scar and it’s a truly disastrous treatment from the Queen and I feel a bit torn between absolutely hating her and starting to understand her character and therefore not hating her. It becomes clear now, that she truly loved Winter’s father and how broken she was when he got murdered. This just makes me want to read Fairest that much faster, as I’ve heard great things about it apparently gives the Queen’s character new depth!

In After Sunshine Passes By, we get to read about Cress’s development as a 9-year-old and how she ended up isolated in her satellite. As much as I like Cress’s character in the Lunar Chronicles, her story here is one that I struggled with. Apparently, a 9-year old girl is the most capable hacker of all Lunars? And she gets exiled to a satellite because she’s the only person capable (or just that the Queen knows of) of spying on Earth. This seems a bit far fetched to me, as I remember myself as a 9-year old and I could just about use a computer to play games. I’m struggling with accepting that a 9-year old would be able to teach themselves how to become a highly capable cyber-spy and basically hack into very highly secured systems… It just seems so very unlikely to me. They even mention that the Shells were barely able to read at that point because the Thaumaturges didn’t see the point in teaching them. So how would a 9-year old that thought herself to read a couple of years prior, be able to write programs and code by herself and then make sense of all the encrypted data that she has to scan through?

Coming from an IT background myself, there’s another story that I have some problems with. The Little Android: I don't really know what to think about this short story. The ending is a bit “trist” and depressing, but overall, I guess it’s cute. However, seeing as I study computer science, I just have a really hard time imagining an Android developing its own consciousness and for it to make decisions based on emotions and pain that it apparently feels… But it was really nice to read a short story in this world’s setting, with new characters that basically had nothing to do with the rest of the characters we already know, except some few mentions of Cinder.

Now the only book set in Cinder’s world left for me to read is Fairest! Can’t wait to start with that one, and I think I’m definitely going to pick it up sometime soon. But first, I need to get some other books off my tbr pile!

I'd like to know

Have you read any books in the Lunar Chronicles or even Stars Above? I’d love to hear what you think about it! So please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Comic Book Review: Supergirl (Reign Of The Cyborg Supermen)

About the comic book

Title: Reign Of The Cyborg Supermen
Series: Supergirl (2016 - #)
Author: Steve Orlando
Artist: Brian Ching and others
Genres: Comics, DC Comics, Superheroes
Publication: April 4th, 2017
Pages: 166
Read: February 2021

My Copy

Publisher: DC Comics
Edition: Kindle
Purchase Location: Netgalley
I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review

My Rating:

Goodreads Summary

Supergirl moves to National City! As Kara Danvers, average American teenager and high school student, Supergirl must balance her life as a superhero with her new life on Earth. But some demons from her Kryptonian past are coming back to haunt her, and Kara will find herself face-to-face with her father: the sinister Cyborg Superman! Critically acclaimed writer Steve Orlando (Midnighter) comes a new beginning for Kara Zor-El in Supergirl, Volume 1, Reign Of The Cyborg Super-Men a new series that is sure to appeal to fans of the TV series! (Collecting: Supergirl 1-6, Rebirth)

My Spoiler Free Review

So back in 2017 I was very actively reviewing and reading a lot of comics and books. Back then I was also active on NetGalley and sadly after I started University, I fell into a blogging hiatus, that just wouldn’t stop. Now I’m in my last semester of my bachelor’s and I finally found the motivation again to spend more time on reading and reviewing books (and graphic novels). I found out that I still had a couple of ARCs on my NetGalley account that I never reviewed, so I’m gonna try to battle that specific TBR pile.

I actually had already read Supergirl back in 2017, but never got around to reviewing it, so I decided to start with this volume and reread it today! I honestly couldn’t remember much of the story anyways. And rightfully so, it’s a bit confusing, even for the Rebirth series. Supergirl once again battles the Cyborg Superman, who she battled in the New 52 area already. But now he appears to be her father? And he’s obsessed with bringing Argo back to life and basically “revived” the entire population with Brainiac’s technology. But for them to actually come alive they need the people of earth’s life force and attack Earth in order to kill National City’s citizens in Zor-El’s personal vendetta against Supergirl. It seems very strange to me that in such a massive alien/robot attack, no other superhero from Earth tries to save the city. It’s all left to Supergirl, the D.E.O. and CatCo to save the citizens. I feel like this would have been a scenario where the Justice League should have been involved?

But, there’s also good in this volume. I really liked the Artwork! However, I now am surer than ever, I don’t particularly like Steve Orlando’s writing (also after having read his Wonder Woman stories). I had bigger hopes for this volume, as I’m a big fan of the TV show!

I'd like to know

Is anybody else still on NetGalley? How are you keeping up with your reviews? And have you read Supergirl or watched the TV shows? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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Book Review: Legendborn

About the book

Title: Legendborn
Author: Tracy Deonn
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Magic, Arthurian Lore, Retellings, LGBTQ
Publication: September 15th, 2020
Pages: 503
Read: February 2021

My Copy

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Edition: Paperback
Purchase Location: Book Depository

My Rating:

Goodreads Summary

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw. The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates. She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

My Spoiler Free Review

Wow just wow! This book deserves a full 5-star review and nothing less from me! It covers so many important current topics in a wild and gripping adventure! Grief and trauma, racist macro and microaggressions, racist violence, ancestral pain, love and more.

The struggle of choosing between going to sleep at 2 am because you have meetings in the early morning again, or just to continue reading throughout the entire night because the book you picked up is THAT good, who knows this feeling? Legendborn is exactly what put me into this situation for 3 nights in a row. The moment I picked it up and got entranced by this story influenced by Arthurian lore I had troubles remembering that I had work to do and other real-life things that needed my attention, like cooking food, sleeping, showering, etc. I was immediately absorbed in this book.

Bree Matthews, the protagonist, is such a strong character. She does not let anybody discriminate her without calling them out on it, and sadly this happened a couple of times. Tracy Deonn puts a lot of Older White Men to shame in this book (and rightly so) and the pure truth behind these happenings, and that this occurs nowadays more often than we’d like to think, made me angry at the world. Bree, being only 16, has to struggle with so much already, and even though there are hints at a love triangle, this is only secondary to all her other problems and her trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. Her path to find out the truth about her heritage and her ancestry was filled with plot twists, some not even I could foresee (and I usually pride myself on being able on foreseeing A LOT).

On another note, I have to admit, I felt like I saw some references to Twilight. Am I the only one? In the beginning I already got a Twilight meets Shadowhunters feeling when we got to meet Sel in the woods.

The Part That Might Contain Spoilers

But then on page 349 I felt absolutely given right with this passage: “How would you like me to carry you? What would please you, Page Matthews?” (Sel) […] “Piggyback.” (Bree) “Excuse me?” “You heard me.” “Like that movie-“ “Shut up.” And then Sel says after Bree crushed her forearm against his Adam’s apple: “I do need to breathe,” […] “I’m not actually a vampire.”

I also felt a bit of fear about Nick and Bree, who I absolutely shipped from the beginning, because they “got together” so early in the book. I think it was in about the end of the first half when they first kissed and then I was immediately filled with dread because I’ve read too many stories where an early “coupling” is a very bad sign. Most often, something happens to one of the pair or there’s a love triangle that destroys the relationship or other things. Here, however, it felt quite appropriate and I can think of worse things that could have happened to the two of them (yes I know, Nick being kidnapped is definitely a bad thing!). But I mean, at least nothing big happened between Sel and Bree that could have immediately killed any hope for Bree and Nick’s future, … if you know what I mean. I am 100 per cent on team Nick + Bree! But I guess we will have to wait on the sequel to see how things continue!

The big plot twist I was talking about, that I could not foresee, was that Bree turned out to be Arthur’s heir. The moment Bree discovered this truth was filled with so much ancestral pain and to think that things like this probably happened so many times in those days is just dreadful. So many people today cannot trace back their line of ancestry for that many centuries (because they weren’t given the means to), and it pains me to think how many (slave) women/families have been faced with such evil. I figured that Bree’s ancestry would be somehow connected to Arthur, but I actually thought that she would turn out to be Lancelot’s heir or something of that sort. I am very excited to see how Bree will handle this Arthur heritage and of course her other heritage that comes with Rootscraft in the sequel!

I hope that for everyone who picks up Legendborn, this will become your new favourite book as it has become mine!

I'd like to know

Have you read Legendborn? I could talk about this book for many more hours, and I’d love to hear what you think about it! So please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! Does anybody have any other Arthurian retellings recommendations?