November Wrap Up 2019 feat. #Believathon! Ohhh There's a Lot to Say...

hi guys I'm Ashley and today Christmas has hit this channel I'm very excited about this this is what my videos are going to look like throughout the entirety of December so I hope you enjoy but before we go into full-on at Christmas and December mode I need to wrap up November and I feel like this video might be a long one because I read 12 books with Jim I did not expect in November I did also take part in the believe in the impossible read-a-thon I believe with on for sure which was hosted by my friend Gavin so I'll leave a link to his channel down below so instead of just splits in this video into University reads and non university reads this will actually be in three parts because I got to have university reads which I don't have many of and half of them were towards my dissertation so I do feel like some of you guys will enjoy that because it's Greek mythology the second section it will be a believeth on rapport and so all of those books will be children's books and then the third section will just be the other books I read during November so starting with my University read the first book that I read I actually borrowed from my University library because I didn't want to go and buy it for this one it was the country girls by Edna O'Brien this one essentially follows the lives of two teenage girls who live in Ireland and the sense of a convent as their equivalent to a school but as they grow up and become kind of young women or just in their later teenage years they decide that they don't actually like this convent and come up with this plan to make it so they will be expelled and then they can go out into the world and live a very different kind of life this is not a book that I would enjoy I knew that from the offset because it is essentially just following these two girls living life and I say very often that I find it very boring reading about the everyday lives of everyday people I'm very much a fantasy reader I need magic and weird things happening I need books about taking down magical governments or monsters or anything like that to keep me entertained so this book not my kind of thing from the offset however there was more to it that I found issue with than that because this is a very simply written book and that's not inherently a negative thing but there were certain things that kind of stemmed off that that became a negative thing in my opinion so for instance it felt very fragmented because it would just jump round from one event to another and skip over everything in between for example there was a part where within three pages a love interest came up out of nowhere and again within these three pages it turned from him not exist in to him saying you're the sweetest thing that ever happened to me and I was just kind of like excuse me and I'm not even exaggerating and when I say three pages because it happened that quickly that I went back and counted because I was like surely I've missed something here no just it happened that quickly and things like that happened all the way through so we just kind of jump between events happen in and didn't really have any kind of buildup it would just be like this happened and then this happened over here and then this happened over here and it was all very jumpy I also just found that with it being so simply written and with it being a fairly short book there were quite a few topics or issues that were very vaguely touched upon what I wanted to see them go into a much deeper conversation about because there's this really strange relationship between the two main characters so you have the main character and then her best friend but her best friend is regularly really awful to her and I just could not wrap my head around how this dynamic works because in my opinion her friend wasn't a very good friend but then she's calling her a best friend and saying that she couldn't really do all these things without her and I just needed more to be able to understand how this is working because I didn't understand it at all there were also instances of domestic abuse both in terms of wife and child and also depending how you read the situation possibly child grooming which does remind me I will have the trigger warnings for all the books mentioned in this video down in the description box but things like that as I said they were only touched upon and they kind of happened and then ignored in a way so I kind of wish that the book was a little bit longer or maybe just more concise in what it was telling is I don't know it just touched upon a lot of things you jumped a lot and didn't really give me a full story if felt like so I just didn't really enjoy this book it wasn't awful it was very readable I will give without much it was very quick to read as well but ended up written it two out of five stars the next book that I read for university was Longbourn by Joe Baker this one is a historical fiction and it's actually a retelling off writer prejudice but from the servants point of view now the servant in this or the main character servant is Sarah and if all said perspective she's very much one of the people who is constantly within the Bennet's household and she's very used to this one routine of working every day going about her chores but then that all gets kind of thrown of course because a new footman is introduced to the house as you can probably expect with the synopsis hinting towards dissident appearance of a man thrown everything of course this does include a romance and you know what I didn't hate it I wasn't invested in it but I do feel like it was well-written it had quite a slow build-up and it felt like an authentic build-up as well in terms of what this book is because it's a retelling of Pride and Prejudice I really enjoyed seeing this kind of behind the scenes view of what would be deemed as a quintessential English classic most people do know the story of Pride and Prejudice or if they don't they will know enough about the kind of classic stereotype to be able to know that that kind of book is a lot about appearances and what sort of social class you're in and all of those things are taken and puts in this book but from a completely different perspective and it's just really really interesting because we have completely different conversations towards identity and how things like class affect their everyday lives because the things that the Bennet sisters might really dramatically respond to don't necessarily matter to the servants at all sir it was really quite interesting to see it put into that perspective there was a kind of random part in this very detour down into backstory territory and stayed there for a very long time and it felt like throughout this book because it is a 400 page book and it felt like for about 250 pages we were following the direct timeline of Pride and Prejudice like we're pretty much parallel with it the entire time and then we just took a complete detour into backstories and I just complete we lost interest in that moment because we were following the story of Pride and Prejudice sir closely and then we just suddenly weren't and it wasn't just a slight detour this went on for at least fifty pages and I was like well when are we going to get back to this story because while it was part of that story it was this long ramble about one tiny detail and the reasoning behind why it was included and it definitely could have been done in a much shorter and concise way so didn't necessarily like that part story but for the most part really enjoyed reading this one and I did ultimately become invested in Sarah's story even though it's not usually the sort of thing that I've been picking up because it's historical fiction it's based off a classical book which I haven't be reading too much of the typical like Jane Austen Bronte sister kind of classic but I don't know it kind of did remind me why I like reading those sorts of classics maybe not right now because I am shying away from classics now that I have to do them so thoroughly in university but my look for them is still there somewhere under the surface it's just lying dormant for a while because uni has pulled out everything it can from that interest but yes I entered it right in the spawn at 3.5 out of 5 stars next up we go into dissertation read ona and this one is that the Penelope added by Margaret Atwood I know that so many of you guys have been waiting for me to read this book because every single time I mention Greek mythology retellings somebody in the comments is like have you read the Penelope art I have never read the Penelope ad so this one is probably one of the most famous at Greek myth retellings and it follows Penelope who is a deist this is why from the Odyssey you notice Lee being the story of a DC's going missing for 20 years so as you can imagine following his wife Penelope we're now reading her point of view while adhesives has gone missing during all this time she spend enough suitors like hundreds and hundreds of suitors who were trying to take her home I'll basically ransack in her house and also raise a child who is going to be the heir of this place that's being ransacked so and so she wasn't having the best time and Margaret wood decided to tell her story or a version of her story so like Longbourn this one kind of felt like a behind-the-scenes of an original story because as I said this one is the Odyssey but what was happening back her while all that was going on so I found that really interesting because you hear about all these stories and these heroic adventures and whatnot but then what happens to the people back home why is it the heroes are deemed the hero as far as the people who are left back home to deal with everything and to go through the suffering of grief and all these different things why are they not considered at all Penelope is also a figure who is very often made into a symbol for like the wife-to-be she is everybody's wife goals because she is the most loyal wife she is absolutely dedicated she did not stray away from Odysseus even though he was gone for 20 years so reading a perspective that is from her point of view was really quite fascinating because it made her human again one thing I really loved noticing in this book is that as time goes on and as years pass on and as more and more rumors pass about how Jesus is sleeping around with other people her anger levels just rise and rise rise and she just gets so impatient with all of the rumors all of the people bothering her in this entire time and that is completely justified and valid and it's just one of those things that I thought that I kind of just really love reading about I'm here women in Greek mythology so I think this is why I love Greek myths retelling so much because so many authors nowadays are showing women's anger because they're literally not given a voice and the most awful things could happen to them and it's just like that's the way of the world what a shame didn't love the sections about the 12 maids because there is a thing that happens towards the end of the Odyssey with 12 merits but I feel like those chapters needed something more I'm not sure what but they are presented as a kind of chorus as they would have been in the Odyssey didn't really hit me on any kind of level they just kind of felt like women shout in which is fine but because their chapters were so short and snappy compared to Penelope's it just got lost somewhere so I I don't know maybe that's the point because I have read articles about how this is meant to be given the voices to the 12 modes as well but then Penelope's is completely overpowering that what he did particularly loved about this book is just the ambiguity and the unreliability to it because all the way through this book Penelope is saying that this is the true story this is what actually happened while all the heroic myths of the Odyssey was happening Penelope also quite often takes pride in how she's tricking everybody one of the things she's most famous for is her weaving trick and so she takes pride in that she takes pride in how she's tricked all these people how she's consistently done so but then what does that mean for our reading experience when our narrator is claimed and this is the truth while also taking pride in her lies I just found that really interesting to think about while I was reading it and I found that the ambiguity was really quite it was a really good thing to include because that same ambiguity is included in the Odyssey a lot of size of our trickery and who to trust and all that kind of things so yeah it was one of the things I'm very glad that Margaret would took from the Odyssey and included in this as well because trickery and wordplay is one of the most inherent things in the Odyssey so how many times can i say odyssey in this video I'm not even doing yet because just wait and see wait and see you guys but arrested this one at four out of five stars are you ready for it are you ready the oddest thing by homer translated by emily wilson this was a reread for me this is one of my favorite books but I had an apprentice translation before as I said before this is the story of Odysseus struggling to get home he goes to fight in the Trojan War majorly pisses off Poseidon and so it takes him another ten years to get back home on the way he stops at many different islands and on every single islands a different kind of trial a lot those Charles being things like women so yeah it's it's one of my favorite stories this is I always say that if you want to start for Greek mythology then this is the place to be because it's essentially just a fantasy book in this book you have monsters you have gods you have witches you have blatant insults which I found really really amusing to read about and especially if you're just us now and you kind of don't sit by the whole ancient classic stereotype if it being very like prestigious and academic this is a great place to start because Emily Wilson in introduction and translators now specifically makes a point that there's absolutely no reason for us to translate things in a more prestigious or difficult form of English compared to what we speak now because that more difficult form of English is no closer to ancient Greek them how I'm talking to you now so there's no reason to just not translate it as we would say it with this translation she also worked to remove gender assumptions so things like slaves being called when there was no actual blatant evidence of that things like that have been included in previous translations actually work to kind of get rid of that so I do just think that this is a brilliant translation of the Odyssey as far as I can tell anyway I obviously don't know ancient Greek and cannot translate it myself to compare but I have read under the translation I enjoyed that just as much but this one is written in the original format of a poem but it makes sense you know that's that's all we want from a book I'll read out the first stanza so that you can see what I mean with it being understandable tell me about the complicated month Musa tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy and where he went and who he met the pain he suffered on C and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home he failed and for their own mistakes they died they ate the sun-god cattle and the God kept them from home now goddess a child of Zeus told the old story for our modern times find the beginning see yes as I said it is fairly easy to follow and despite it being quite chunky book it's quite quick to get through and I would also recommend the audiobook if you can get hold of it so yeah really enjoy my reread of this it's full of annotations would definitely reread again will probably reread again and I rated this one at 5 out of 5 stars so then we move on to the believe of thumb books I read five books four believeth on they weren't the books that I had on my TBR to begin with some of them were but some of them I did kind of swap out but the first of those books was the house with chicken legs at myself' P Anderson this one is inspired by Slavic folklore on the story of Baba Yaga it follows a girl call Marinka whose grandmother is baba Yaga so she works to kind of help the dead go through the door and pass into the beyond now it said that myrrh Incas destiny is to follow her grandmother's footsteps and become the next you girl taken over this job helping guide the dead but Marinko doesn't want to do that all she wants is to be human she wants to have a settled life and make friends but that's kind of hard for us to do because her house house chicken legs I just gets up and moves so she can't really make friends it's kind of a difficult endeavor to do when you're always moving I really enjoyed this book I kind of predicted that I would because it is based a folklore and that's just that's my job I did find that it got a little bit too repetitive for my liking which was kind of expected with children's books because they do really like they remind their audience of what's going on but because the main crux of the story is Marinka just once in a friend and not wanting to take on the younger life that is repeated so often within this book and it was kind of this book was sitting around 3.5 stars for me it was enjoyable I'm really quite charming I really like the dynamic of the house in particular because as I said this house gets up and moves but it was so much more than that as well because the house kind of reacted to Marinka it really was as if the house had feelings whereas I thought it was just going to be the house can move and that's the extent of that so that kind of took me by surprise and it took me a while to get used to because I was like picture in a house just getting up and moving of its own accord it's not something I can imagine easily like just imagine sitting in your bedroom and then just simply go flying across the room because your house is decided it wants to go sit on a mountain somewhere like oh it really did work and it's not something I could never say that I've come across before in my life but I really enjoyed reading about that because it was so much more than I expected and come the end of this book in particular I ended up boosting the rates into four out of five stars particularly because of how the last 100 pages or so or handles grief all I can really say is I've personally never come across many books that write grief as I've experienced it all right - well I feel like this book does it really quite well especially for the audience as well and it just hit me in some kind of way that I was like oh okay I was enjoying this book when now this books making me have emotions and did not expect that sir as I said I did end up bumping up that written and written it four out of five stars oh and this was also for the prompt to read a book that is inspired by mythology or folklore next up I read at Little Women by Louisa May Alcott this one is it's a children's classic it was for the prompt to read a children's classic and it's so children's classic II basically I think there's a very specific feel surrounding children's classics especially some of the older ones like this because this very much reminded me of The Secret Garden for instance there's just something about this kind of story this some more queen boy has a very moralistic turn to the story so the story itself basically just follows a group of sisters so their father goes away to fight in the war and it starts on a Christmas and it's their first Christmas without their father around and in the beginning they're kind of talking about what they're aiming to do within that next year and what they're hoping to achieve while the father's gone so that he can come home and they can be like here's how things happen back home the book then just follows that year on them live in their lives but it's very much the sort of story which has a moral to the story in every single chapter so the basic layout of this book would be every single chapter would have an event happens one of the sisters something would go wrong it would be okay and in the final kind of page or paragraph their mother or I don't know someone else would come along and say this is why we don't do this or this is why we aim to do this instead because we want to be good girls it was quite charming to begin with but I became really quite tired of it it's almost too long the book to be able to do that in every single job so it was really quite tedious there is some weird kind of charm to children's classics and I did find myself interested in where all the sisters would end up because it very much fell into the thing this is another thing of children's classics as well it very much fell into the case of every character because there are four sisters so each of those four sisters had a very distinctive trait they would stick to and that is how you kind of tell them apart so in that sense they were flat characters because they only really had one or two traits given to them but I do admit that I did like reading about how these traits would clash or come together how these sisters were getting along and how that would change through the course of the year I did find it quite interested in that way at BOTS it was as I said quite tedious book come the end so I ended up reading this one two out of five stars no I didn't I roasted it three out of five stars so not good to talk about the next one for too long because it is just it's a typical one but I read the illustrated Harry Potter and the Goblet fire this one was for the prompt to read a book with magic in it for obvious reasons and yeah it's cupola fire I don't particularly well I do like it but it's my least favorite the series just because I feel like this takes a really sudden turn almost too sudden attend because the first three books are very much just a cycle of the trio survive in Hogwarts for a year and you know find out a little bit more every single year however they then reach fourth year and that just gets thrown completely out of the window the trio are not a thing oh they are but like not for a large part of the book there's a tribe is a tournament the worlds expanded beyond Hogwarts and goes quite literally worldwide you also find out a lot more about the government and who works there and it's just a hell of a lot of information really suddenly throwing on you they love the fact that the world has expanded like that but I just feel like it was all or nothing so I don't know I also just despise Quidditch and a lot of this book especially start of it is about Quidditch so it takes a lot for me to get through it it takes a lot for me to get through it but as much as this is my least favorite from the series I cannot deny that this is the book where you start seeing the complexity of the story come together because that is essentially one of my favorite parts about the series just all the tiny details and ties that come together to link every part of the story and how clever the entire plotline is it comes with a lot of alliances I find everything in this book annoying for yeah it's Harry Potter of course I love it anywhere I do wish that there were more illustrations in this because they were of course my favorite part of it that's why I got the illustrated edition but overall I rated it 4 out of 5 stars I then picked up north child by Edith Pitou this one is about a girl chorus who was born first in North and that means she is quite the adventurous child so her mother actually wanted enough children to be able to kind of have a child for every single part of the compass because he's very superstitious and she believed that every direction had a different kind of trait for a child but then it was predestined that if she ever had a North child that child would die on an adventure of some sort so she is adamant that she's not hopping a north child but then lo and behold Rose comes along no it does say on the back that when Rose grows but although she does end up going on an adventure she rides away on the back of giant right there and that is a whole story there so I was pleasantly surprised about this book because I did not expect the amount of Norse mythology references that are in this I also didn't expect it to be quite so fairy tale s because I could see so many ties to fairy tales in this like I saw you in the beasts in this book I saw The Snow Queen in this book there were so many stories being told within this book and I really really looked at because at Lincoln in with the superstitions and then all these four quartiles and mythology is I just oh I love it I love it so much weirdly though it did prove to be one of its downfalls because with the fairy tales that I could see in the story I kind of predicted how the ending might happen and I was really not too impressed when it did follow the owl because mainly because of the age of the character I suppose if I say like the fairy tale happy-ever-after momen it was a bit awkward when I just read about this child character yeah I don't know it was weird I didn't want it basically I also don't think that all of the characters were necessary so this is quite a few character perspective written oh my god let me think what characters have perspective so Rose had a perspective the white bear did the troll queen Neddie her brother and i think her father did as well or maybe it was just her brother oh no her father did as well so there are quite a lot of perspectives and I don't think all of them were necessary more specifically her brother I think her brother's chapters could have been said canal without any real detriment to the story it was just one of those situations where the same story was being told multiple times from multiple perspectives which did build a broader kind of story but because for instance her father and her brother would be in the same household there wasn't too much different between their storylines so it wasn't entirely necessary but I did really enjoy this book and I ended up written it what did I raise it i rated it 3.5 out of 5 stars and this one suited the prompts to really seasonal book and also to read a book with an animal character the final book that I read for believeth on it was of course frost art by Jamie littler this one is just things happen drew at this book okay so I have been saying probably for over a month in many different videos that I wasn't sure about this book because I didn't think it would be for me I I'm not sure why I kind of just had this idea when I read the synopsis and I saw the cover that this one would have struggled to kind of cross that bridge between and be enjoying it as an adult versus me and Jonah as a child so I was a sure about this book but then I got firmer I decided to read anyway because it's a great book everybody was talking about it so I also wanted to see what everybody was talking about and I am so glad that I did because this ended up being my favorite read if believeth on I am choked why I could not be more surprised so this one that follows a boy called ash who's at Paris disappeared when he was younger and he was kind of taken in by the communities that he lives in this community lives in raised platforms in a kind of snowy area and the houses and structures are built upon these rocks and on these wooden platforms so that they cannot touch the snow because they believe that if they touch the snow then the monsters that live underneath it will be able to sense that and will come out to fight and obviously cause absolute havoc but these monsters communicate through song and so singing is if you do sing then you're very much seen as having an association with the monsters answer you just don't do it you don't do it guys but of course one of the other things that actually remember about his parents as a lullaby that he sang to him and sir he always has this intense need to sing he just gets it so every so often to sing and it happens quite often when the monsters come out of the ground so every so often he just slip up and he does sing everybody kind of shunts him for this and sees him as an outcast they don't want him as part of this principle of course he doesn't her parents so what they're going to do with him but then one day there's an accident and his powers are actually revealed to the world and it just so happens that a band of people who are going exploring on this snow slough happens to need his help and so he's whisked away onto the frost and he goes in search of his parents I feel like that was such a rambley synopsis I'm I apologize if you didn't get any of that you who cannot help but love it because the main character Asha is such a cinnamon roll of a main character that you just have to root for him like he is so pure and small and just needs all the kindness in the world and didn't get any of it you can't help but root for him like look at him he's so small especially when you have illustrations all dry throughout like the illustrations for this completely won me over it was it really added something else to the story and I think it works particularly well because Jamie littler himself drew them so it's very much how he imagined them like there's no miscommunication here this is Jamie littler story and it's just such a charming story like it's so fun to read the cast of characters in this make it so fun and I really do particularly love the fact that singing is the magic power in this there's just something about that that wins my heart of every time because I love singing and oh I don't know I just feel like just so much this book that I enjoyed and I really loved talking about it during the live show that Gavin hosted so yeah this took me by surprise completely I ended it written it 4.5 out of 5 stars and we're still not quite done because I read another three books that were just there in no particular reason so the first one it was at my sister the serial killer by incan Braithwaite this one I read on script I felt like ages ago but I think that's because I generally just did not know level of interests was captured with me in this book so it's a relatively short book it's only 200 pages long and each page is quite fragmented at the the level of text on each page was very varied it could go from three sentences to a full page numbers there really weren't more than that they're all very short snippets so this story follows a woman who I think three times in a row now has been called by his sister's to help get rid of her husband's body or her boyfriend's body I don't think she ever marries any of them so I think this is the third time this happens and so this woman is kind of like is my sister a serial killer because this is happening a bit too often and this whole self-defense thing doesn't really stand the test any of all like what's going on is this actually what the book is about she's kind of debating what to do about this like why her moral stance your system by her sister but also possibly a murderer what do you do about that this book is basically 200 pages of conflict like it's just the sisters bickering it's the relationship between them two and what it means why girl morality stands when you're in defense of a family member I really cannot explain why I didn't have any interest in this book I thought it would be really interesting I thought that this dynamic would really capture my attention because I feel like if it was that kind of thing in a fantasy book I'd be sat there like wow that's a really difficult situation how are we going to get through this whereas I was reading this and just didn't care don't have a clue why Cannot I just I can't pinpoint now it's really frustrating me I've been thinking about this all month but to me it did essentially just feel like 200 pages of sisters bickering I did like feeling the anger rise like I feel like it did a really good job at building up the frustration at the main character because there would be the initial like she's helping her sister out from this really dramatic event trying to deal with the guilty feeling that's falling around and the sense of suspicion that she feels from other people but then tiny events would in in their day-to-day life which would build and build and build until eventually like you know you felt the frustration and I feel like it did a really good job of showing that other than that though couldn't really say I was all that interested so I was really surprised by that because I thought it's too much of fishbook that's kind of like a murder mystery would have no problem doing that but um I was wrong so I rested this one two out of five stars next up I read 9,000 by Leigh bardugo this took me forever to read absolutely forever I think it took me about three weeks four weeks I don't know it was in many regions locks this follows a girl called Alex Stern who is one day part of a very horrific crime everybody dies besides her but where she wakes up in hospital she's actually met by person who offers her a full grin and a full scholarship to Yale University because she can actually see ghosts and this is very much a sort out thing for the society the highest her so she becomes part of the ninth house which is a secret society that is almost like a warden for the other secret societies so Yale University there's a lot of secret societies that kind of double in a call magic and there needs to be some kind of border between what's okay and what's not the ninth house includes two people who watch over that so because you can see ghosts and because she has this ability and this connection to the dead Alex has brought into this and you know becomes part of all this occult stuff not too long after Alex starts at this university there is actually a murder of the young girl and it seems to Alex that everybody is kind of brushing this murder under the carpet they're not really looking too far into the investigation they kind of just threw down the most obvious answer and then left it but Alex believes there's something most of this murder and so she starts digging this is essentially a dark academia kind of book with two mysteries going on along the plotline there's ghosts all that fun stuff I had high expectations for this I really enjoyed the dark academia atmosphere and I do feel like the Abbado God did a really particularly good job of capturing that as I said there are two mysteries that runs throughout this book to me it felt like both of them ended up a little bit too long-winded for my liking they were both pulled out too far and just carried on for too long it took an awfully long time to get anywhere with either of them and then the links that were made between them were just a bit I don't know it was kind of like why I think it's that sense of I don't get it which carries on as well because my other main problem with this was the believability of the characters in other words I didn't believe any of the characters at all like their personalities were basically built through was being told what they're like and how would the people see them I don't feel like we discovered the characters I feel like we were told what they were like but for some reason my perception didn't add up to why I was being told and so when we read the scene and did react to something I wouldn't believe what they were doing because I was like I don't I feel like I I said it's a really difficult thing to explain because I've never come across this before like I've never just straight up not believed that character would do something so my main thing is that Alex the main character she is constantly thinking in her brain that she's much more dangerous these years she would kind of talk about how people don't realize how dark she could be and that she has this history inside her and that she can be that person but it was never acted on it took an awfully long time to actually get to the backstory that would stand this kind of thinking but then we'd suddenly have a scene where this previously quite reserved character would just punch her hand through a lot of glass and I'm like why I don't know what happened because usually I persistently body was pretty good at making of characters like six of crows is great in terms of characters so I just don't understand what happened I mean I'm confused that did ultimately let it down for me because I just couldn't believe anything that was happening so I ended up writing this one three out of five stars because I did enjoy the story to some extent and I do really like talked academia atmosphere for it I don't know it was a weird one so then the final book that I read I feel like has kind of some of the same issues because this one Prince of thones by Mark Lawrence again just one took me quite a while to read this one follows a prince called rogue who runs away from the castle and ends up leading a band of criminals because he is kind of on the hunt for revenge so when he was younger when he was 10 years old he witnessed his mother and his brother be murdered by account in the neighboring country and since that day he has been absolutely set on revenge he has sworn that he's got to find this count who killed off his mother and brother and he's got to kill him in return I'm not going to say much more than that as vague as that sounds because I really struggle to see what goes into spoiler territory because this book takes so long to get anywhere that you are 100 pages in and nothing really happens or rather just the same old thing happens because this book starts really really violent it is a very violent book there are many trigger warnings so when look at the description box so the first 100 pages are just this boy going around run second places killing everyone having a delightful time with it apparently and it's really not until about halfway in that things actually start happening so I don't know where to draw the line between what's the spoiler and what's not because there's not too much for me to tell you about the beginning but then if I tell you anything more than that you've I've spoiled like half the book so as I said I was at read in the spawn of quite a while and it is a pretty recent read so if you've seen any of my recent reading vlogs then you probably know that my main issue with this was the age of the main character because as I said this is a prince but I have also called him a boy because when we start out he's 14 years old he does turn 15 during the course of the book and I just didn't believe this was a thing because the way he was talking the way he was acting I had to well I would have aged him up in my head if the book allowed me to forget about his age but he didn't but I just did not believe that a boy of 15 years old could lead a band of criminals and apparently be so hell-bent on revenge that he is completely undefeatable purely out of ruthlessness because this boy didn't have any kind of training with a sword but apparently he's just so hell-bent on revenge and just does not give down that he can go around killing everybody and no one will ever be able to stop him and I was like I feel like there's a floor there this is essentially an absolutely awful book like the it's just violence it's pure or - violence it's really gory doesn't show you where from the details but if you're not bothered about a violent somewhat gritty fantasy book I'm not particularly bothered about it sir I read it it was like does not my problem is the fact that a 15 year old who had zero training in anything to do with murder is apparently doing all this just no no no also it's a fantasy book but there's like barely any fun to see things until the last 100 pages and that is like wow because that was another thing as well there were quite a few different fantasy elements but they were kind of just thrown in at random and introduced really suddenly so I think as a whole this book just had very little reasoning behind anything it did so there was no reason behind like why different elements of fantasy things would pop up like necromancer's pop Department nowhere and then there was like a spirit in a wall and I was just like I don't really understand what's going on because there's no real ties between everything it was almost like there was a lot of ideas and not quite enough links between them so I didn't hate this book like I did keep reading it and there was something that kept me reading I think it was the tone of the writing because it almost reminded me never night and they had the very blunt approach it was somewhat sarcastic but it wasn't super never as good as another night but it did keep me reading so I didn't rest in this one three out of five stars but I don't think I will be continuing to series I might try out what the books for Mike Lawrence because I think those ones will buzz interest me more and hopefully have more reason and understanding behind it but in this I'm just baffled absolutely and completely baffled so these are not quite all of the books that I read in November because one that I borrowed to on script and then Harry Potter which I haven't picked up so um I don't for more books to this pile and these are all the books I read in November it was a weird month for reading I think that's the best I can say about if you've read any of these books and please do let me know your thoughts on them I feel like I had many faults on many books so room help me stretch them out and actually make sense of them please but for now I hope you enjoyed this video if you did there room to leave a like and a comment to let me know that yeah if you're not subscribed already then please consider doing that down in the description box you'll find all the information to the books I brought you in this video all of my social media and some bookish free travel as well so be sure it's gone look at that if you haven't already but for now I hope you have another day and I should see you next time with a new video bye

Channel: A Frolic Through Fiction

Views: 3,090

Rating: 4.9428573 out of 5

Keywords: A Frolic Through Fiction, AFrolicThroughFiction, AFTF, booktube, booktuber, bookblog, bookworm, reader, literature, literature student, uni, university, books, reading, vlog, november wrap up, reading wrap up, the penelopiad, ninth house, leigh bardugo, the odyssey, emily wilson, believathon, believathon wrap up, middle grade

Id: -L34tnU_I5A

Length: 40min 55sec (2455 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019