Publisher: Razorbill


Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Dark & Rich: Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi

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I received this book for free from Razorbill in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Dark & Rich: Beasts Made of Night by Tochi OnyebuchiBeasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi
Published by Razorbill on October 31st, 2017
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, YA
Source: Razorbill
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four-stars

In the walled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts – lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt.

Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj’s livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but 17-year-old Taj is cocky and desperate to provide for his family.

When Taj is called to eat a sin of a royal, he’s suddenly thrust into the center of a dark conspiracy to destroy Kos. Now Taj must fight to save the princess that he loves – and his own life.

I think there is this general conception that for a fantasy novel to be truly good, it needs to have about a 1,000,000 pages and at 304 pages, Beasts Made of Night is not a particularly long book. Do not and I repeat do NOT let that fool you. Tochi Onyebuchi packs a fucking punch in those 304 pages. World building? You got it. Adventure? You got it. A mother-fucking rebellion? YOU GOT IT. Beasts Made of Night isn’t just a great novel for fantasy readers but also for people too vary of the genre because of its reputation for long-winded novels that take lifetimes to get through.

Onyebuchi has a background in screenwriting and honestly, the high stakes and the quick pace of the novel really reflect this. For some people, this might be a bad thing because it might seem as a compromise on the world building but I definitely did not think that was true for the novel. The world of Beasts Made of Night is so incredibly rich and I felt myself being transported to it through detailed descriptions of foods, social settings, etc.

I think the only time the short length of the novel might have been a drawback is that it does mean we don’t get a leisurely introduction to the world that allows us to ease into a new setting that happens in so many fantasy novels but once I got used to being in the world of Kos, I found myself fascinated by the world Onyebuchi had crafted for his readers.

And perhaps my fascination with the world building shows because I’ve just spent two paragraphs talking about it but don’t you worry because Beasts Made of Night is also equipped with characters you want to root for. Taj is a complex character who is in flux like many teens (fantastical or not) and he is easy to relate to even if we may not always be stressing out about the same things. His internal struggles as he tries to understand the spectrum of good/bad is so real and I love how Tochi Onyebuchi writes his coming of age.

There are a number of secondary characters that aid Taj on his mission many who are worth mentioning but I won’t because I am lazy (but also because there are SO MANY of them.) I love that even though Taj has lone wolf vibes all over him, he still has friends? Who like him (most of the times)? And SUPPORT HIM? I know, so many surprises here.

There are so many reasons this book is worth reading and I honestly cannot even begin to formulate the words to really get these points across so I’d just like to kindly push y’all to read this book and join me in my little fangirl bubble while we wait to hear news about a Book 2.

Giveaway!

Three (3) winners receive:
One (1) hardcover copy of Beasts Made of Night

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Enter between 12:00 AM Eastern Time on October 2, 2017 and 12:00 AM on October 23, 2017.  Open to residents of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia who are 13 and older. Winners will be selected at random on or about October 25, 2017. Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.

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four-stars

4 Hot Espressos

READ THIS BOOK!!!: Empress of a Thousand Skies by Rhoda Belleza

Posted by on 02/28/2017 • 5 Comments

I don’t know how to start this review, guysssssss. Empress of a Thousand Skies WAS AMAZING. LIKE I ACTUALLY CANNOT even formulate words even though its been almost a week since I read it. ITS GOT EVERYTHING. People on the run, royalty, secrets, betrayal and hints of romances. YES, MULTIPLE ROMANCES I THINK. I could be wrong.

Did you really like Illuminae? Read this fucking book and love it even more. Seriously. ITS THAT GOOD.

Reasons to Read Empress of a Thousand Skies

1. The world building. I love the complexity of the world. I love that the racial struggles IRL are addressed through racial struggles within the novel and I love the commentary that is made through these struggles. Empress of a Thousand Skies is and tries to reflect on our society…

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Posted by on 11/17/2015 • 13 Comments

A fantasy with a Chinese-inspired setting? An isolated village high up in the mountains, full of deaf people? A heroine who regains her hearing back and aims to use it to make a difference? WOW, BADUM-TSS!

On a perfect, ideal day, this would have been an absolutely great treat. Just from these few sentences, we can already feel the diversity of the premise!

But, alas, it is not a perfect and ideal day, because this book is boring and dull as hell. But hey, there’s one thing positive from this: I’m done with it! Yay!

First of all, let me just say that I’ve read the first book of Vampire Academy and I’ve read her GAME OF X series which I absolutely, absolutely adore (to the moon and back). I’ve seen what…

Tour: The Art of Getting Stared at by Laura Langston

Tour: The Art of Getting Stared at by Laura Langston

Posted by on 09/03/2014 • 10 Comments

I am so excited to be able to take part in the blog tour for The Art of Getting Stared At by Laura Langston. This book had such an important message that I think needs to be shared with girls of ALL ages. The unifying theme of this tour is for each participant to share what we would tell our younger self about body image/confidence if we had the opportunity to go back in time and do so. I would love to be able to go back to myself in high school and get it into my teen self’s head that the opinion of the people around me isn’t going to matter in a few years and that I should just make sure I am happy with myself and not…

Review: Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff

Review: Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff

Posted by on 08/11/2014 • 9 Comments

This was a straaaange book! But most importantly: it’s deliciously creepy!

Brenna delights us with some more of her gothic, morbid, yet marvelously fascinating storytelling in her newest release. Fiendish is compelling from the very first chapter. After a quick introduction to Clementine, a slight glimpse of who she was prior, we experience her entrapment inside this cellar, held in place by willow roots, while a decade passes. The cryptic but riveting manner with which the passing of time is described had me enchanted. It was, in a way, full of desperation and longing, though strangely beautiful. All of this occurs within the first few chapters, laying the foundation – and the promise – of an eccentric, highly original road to come. Once Clementine is set free, however, is when…

Review: The Merciless by Danielle Vega

Review: The Merciless by Danielle Vega

Posted by on 06/12/2014 • 23 Comments

AAAAAAAAAAH!

This was my reaction to much of this novel’s… happenings. It’s a horror through and through, and definitely not for the wussies or faint of hearts. After a quick introduction to our protagonist and the setting, we’re thrust into a house-of-torture kind of read where these girls have it in their head that one is a demon that must be exorcised.

“Most girls would just start a burn book.”

But not these girls! These girls opt for pulling hairs out of scalps and taking fingernails out. Yeah.. Excuse me while I go barf!

The book itself is more for the horror and shock value than substance. Character development is not especially strong, for instance. And I found myself frustrated by the number of times the protagonist “almost”…

Review: Minders by Michele Jaffe

Review: Minders by Michele Jaffe

Posted by on 01/27/2014 • 21 Comments

Minders is a futuristic story about a new science that allows a person to piggyback on someone else’s mind. During what’s called Syncopy, minders see what their host sees, read their thoughts, feel their pleasure and pain, however they can’t control anything, and their host don’t know they’re being watched.

I was quite surprised by the depth of this story. For the most part, it comes off as a contemporary novel inside a sci-fi bubble. We’re literally thrown inside Ford’s mind; someone hurt, broken, and deeply troubled by grief. It’s saddening to see his family crumbling from his brother’s murder. With a now useless mother, Ford is the one who has to raise his sister and put food on the table. He’s also starting to realize there’s more to…

Review: Vitro by Jessica Khoury

Review: Vitro by Jessica Khoury

Posted by on 12/13/2013 • 17 Comments

Closer to a 3.5 star.

While I didn’t like this one quite as much as Origin, it was still an exciting read set on an isolated island full of secret experiments and shady operations. Even if you haven’t read Origin, this is not actually a sequel; both are independent of each other. You could even say Vitro is more or less a refitted version of Origin. They both have a similar setting and mirroring scientific conspiracies. And Sophie, after a distressing email from her mother, gets trapped into its web of genetic alterations and unethical experiments.

What I found to be the best part of this novel is the vividly detailed setting. You get fully transported to this island that quickly becomes the heart of the story, and…