2019 Releases Revisited #2

hello everybody my name is rachel and welcome to my channel kalanadi today i'm going to be revisiting some older anticipated book releases once a quarter i do an anticipated releases list and then about a year later i'm supposed to come back and let you know if i've read them and if so what i thought about them and such i'm a little bit behind now the batch of books that i'm going to talk about today came out two years ago i'm still trying to catch up on these but it is an interesting batch um these are things from april may and june of 2019 and you've got pretty much everything things that i loved things that i feel very meh about books that i dnf'd books that i skipped etc so let's get into this so first up on this list the april releases we have amnesty by laura elena donnelly this is the third and final book in the amber lo dossier series i loved the first book amberla which i read four years ago now i think um i own this second book armistice and i still haven't read it which means i still haven't read amnesty i'm a little bit on the fence about whether i will actually finish this series just mainly because it's been so long since i read the first book and it just has never been high priority enough for me to to get around to reading them but i own book two and i would like to try reading that and at that point i will decide whether i want to finish the series or not i'm sure that this book is a very good um and i'm looking forward to new things from this author as well but sometimes things just aren't always a priority for forever then we go from that book to one of my favorite books of the year atlas alone by emma newman this is the fourth planet fall novel this is a science fiction series that i totally love i adored this book i think i did a separate review for it as well so i will link that if you want more thoughts it has been about two years since i've read it so um one of my favorite books in the series is after atlas and atlas alone brings back one of my favorite characters in the series he's more of a secondary character rather than a pov one but i i enjoy the series the premise the technology the plot so much uh so this was a great one i do recall it being different from the others um that i read because the main character was a little bit difficult to get into i didn't love her as a person but i did get very emotionally invested in what was happening to her and i will probably always remember this book for having a final paragraph that just punched me in the gut it was a good one another fantastic book is exhalation by ted chang this is his second collection of stories ted chang mainly writes at the novelette and novella length so a lot of these are longer short fiction pieces this is another one that i did an entire review of where i talked about every single story in it at length so once again i will link that if you want to check it out i really adored this and there were some definite standout stories in it both ones that i was rereading as well as ones that were completely new to me it was it was wonderful um i don't think anything can live up to his first collection for me because i have such intense feelings about stories of your life but his work is always so so good next up there is the buying of lot 37 and who's a good boy by uh joseph fink and jeffrey crainer these are the third and fourth volumes of the welcome to night vale podcast episode scripts there's a lot more in here than just the the podcast scripts though um there are introductions for every single episode there are really wonderful illustrations it's just these are fantastic collections i am a huge fan of the earlier days of the welcome to night vale podcast in fact i think who's a good boy is the fourth year and that is pretty much where my intense interest in in the podcast kind of ended this is the the high note where i kind of stopped listening to the episodes regularly but i love these script books they have been so wonderfully put together and if they ever put out any more i will probably get back into the podcast re-listen to episodes and re-read the scripts and all of that so these are great then there is a book that i skipped because i don't intend to continue with the series and that is the red stained wings by elizabeth bear this is the second book in her fantasy series the lotus kingdoms which is set in the same world as her other fantasy series that i quite liked but a different time period i tried to read the first book the stone and the skull and ultimately dnfed it because i just couldn't get into it it was just not grabbing my attention so i decided to not continue on with the series and i didn't try to read the second book either i have been loving elizabeth bear's science fiction her white space novels have been wonderful those are ancestral knight and machine so i'm mostly focusing on the science fiction that she writes now rather than her fantasy but yeah i think that basically this series has got some real slow burn writing and it just didn't work for me i love joe walton as an author particularly because all of her books manage to be very interesting and incredibly different from each other though right now i feel like she's kind of on this philosophical theological florentine history kick or something um which is lent you know so this is her novel that came out in 2019 and i don't think i could possibly quickly summarize what this is about but mostly it's it's like historical fiction alternate history specfic with healthy doses of theology as well this book follows gerolamo savonarola as he basically relives his life over and over again in i think an attempt to harrow hell harrowing hell is like a theological thing that i had never heard of before i read this book so yes um savonarola was a real person but this is a completely fictional imagining of his life where um he he's playing a very different role within i guess the the roman catholic church and everything it is really interesting and and i say that as somebody who doesn't know enough about these concepts or this history to probably grasp everything that walton is talking about and referencing and using it managed to still be a very interesting story without understanding everything i guess um and i was surprised at how much it gripped me by the end when it just went in a completely different direction from what i expected so walton never disappoints with her interesting ideas that's for sure then we're going to get into some books that i haven't read or i don't have that many thoughts about two years later so we have the deep by rivers solomon this is based on a song by clipping and i was really looking forward to it because it was such an interesting concept for a story um it's it's basically about um the transatlantic slave trade um slaves who are thrown overboard um the myth that they become like mermaids so it's it's set in this like mermaid society and follows a character whose role in their society is basically to remember their horrible difficult history so that the others don't have to and it's a really great idea i did like it but i didn't come away with many thoughts on it actually um i think it may just not have been for me in fact this may be my first hint that i don't particularly care about mermaid type stories there's so much more going on in the deep than just that of course but i was actually surprised that i wasn't as invested in it i didn't have as strong feelings about it as a lot of other people did one that i haven't read is unraveling by karen lord i still very much want to read this i'm constantly kicking myself before not reading more of karen lord's books because i should i think i'll really enjoy them but unraveling in particular i haven't read because i haven't had access to it at the library and i kind of keep forgetting about it so i should just interlibrary loan that off on a completely different direction we have a non-fiction book hacking the code of life how gene editing will rewrite our futures by anessa carey i have really enjoyed nessa carey's other non-fiction books on genetics i felt like she's had a much more like technical complex deep dive look into the field of genetics in the past and i really enjoy that hacking the code of life is her quite short book about um the recent advances in gene editing with crispr cast nine technology um so this came out obviously in 2019 and i can say already that it's it's probably a bit dated there are already things that have happened with that uh the you know the real world use of crispr cast nine that this book doesn't talk about so i think it was actually a good introduction to what crispr is um it was a very easy read and i would recommend it for people who are new to this topic um but it surprisingly wasn't as technical as i expected from carrie so i still liked it but i think i get more out of her other books on the topic the lesson by cadwell turnbull this was an interesting debut novel about kind of i don't know exactly an alien invasion or just a very odd alien contact in i believe the virgin islands i thought the setting of the story was really awesome i remember very little else about it unfortunately what i do remember is that i came away from it thinking wow this was a good debut novel and i really need to read more by turnbull in the future i know that he's got his second novel coming out later in 2021 and i will definitely be reading that um but yeah not a lot of thoughts in this particular one i liked it it wasn't extremely amazing but it was enough to get me to pay attention to turnbull's writing career now broken places and outer spaces by anetti okorafor this is a short book based on a sort of autobiographical ted talk that okorafor gave it's about i think essentially overcoming adversity and how she became a writer um she had scoliosis like most of her siblings as a child and her surgery to correct that left her unable to walk and she had a lot to overcome after that event and that's when she started writing a lot um i really enjoyed learning more about okorafor because i've been reading her books for years now i just didn't know very much about her as a person so this was interesting um it was it was a good read not one that i think i would ever return to because i i got what i needed to out of it oh whoops i accidentally skipped a book so uh children of ruin by adrian tchaikovsky you all know i loved this book i really really loved children of time and children of ruin picks up after that and it's it's one of tchaikovsky's big chunky sci-fi novels i adore them this is one that i did do a review video on and i will link that because once again much fresher thoughts on it in that video um but this just continued a lot of the stuff that i loved from the first book about evolution and biology and a non-human species that become space-faring it's fantastic empress of forever by max gladstone this one unfortunately was a real disappointment i was really looking forward to it because i've loved gladstone's other books i've really enjoyed his style and i thought this was going to be a really fun fun like romp i guess i it was compared a lot to guardians of the galaxy and i had to dnf it i tried reading this book twice i tried reading it in print and then i tried listening to the audiobook i never got very far into it i found the main character this woman to just be kind of boring and insufferable and too perfect at everything and i didn't care enough about what was going on to actually get past the setup and into the real plot so possibly this is one that would have been like really like picked up after the the first couple of chapters and i would have been interested in it at that point but i didn't care enough so sadly not gonna come back to this one and then the last one is another fantastic one hex arcade stories by yoon ha lee i describe this collection as basically yoon halley's fan fiction of his own character jedao this is definitely a great collection to read if you've loved the machineries of empire series that started with ninefox gambit and also if you really like the character of jadao so many of the stories in this ranging from flash fiction to short stories to even a full-length novella are about jadal um i thought it was great and i particularly enjoyed the um the novella glass cannon which kind of serves as a fourth installment in the machineries of empire series i thought it was great and it really added something to that series it kind of made me rethink a bit how i thought about repentant guns ending so yeah very enjoyable not the place to jump in if you are interested in yoon holly's fiction though i think this is best read if you're really already invested in the hexarkate itself in the machineries of empire world um it probably won't make a lot of sense actually if you haven't read those things before so that is it for these books from april may and june of 2019. like i said before it's kind of a mixed bunch but there are a number of things in this that i really enjoyed and a couple that turned out to be favorites of the year for me so i call that good um let me know if you've also read any of these leave your comments and thoughts down below thank you as always for watching and i will be back again soon with another video and until then [Music] bye oh yes if you're wondering what my t-shirt says my parents gave it to me and i promised i would show it in a video so it says that's what i do i read books i knit and i know things this is a perfect summary of my life

Channel: Kalanadi

Views: 1,024

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Booktube, BooktubeSFF, Book Reviews, Book Releases

Id: STmTRK340xA

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021