May 19 - 24, 2019

Kingdom Cold by Brittni Chenelle

A free copy was provided by NetGalley in trade for my honest feedback ☺ So excited about that site!!

Recommended: sure!
For those who enjoy the fight-for-your-crown plot line, and unexpectedly realistic characters in this otherwise unrelatable setting for modern-day people (unless you're modern-day royalty, I suppose!)

Summary:
When the fighting of her country's endless war spills into Princess Charlotte's her own courtyard, she's delighted to call off her arranged marriage with Prince Young. After fleeing with her stoic betrothed, they finally escape one battle and immediately find themselves in another. A sleazy new suitor is suddenly scheming for her hand --- and her kingdom --- and suddenly Young doesn't look so bad as an ally, if not a husband. Trying to save the kingdom Besmium from being overrun with enemies begins with figuring out who among their own they can really trust.

A very bold ending that I deeply applaud. I'm hoping Kingdom Soul delivers just as much in the sequel!

Overall, I quite enjoyed the story! The characters had distinct and developed personalities that consistently carry through in their actions, and have the miraculous ability to actually talk to each other (instead of that thing where the conflict would be resolved by a short chat). We got a few chapters from the perspectives of the not-quite-main characters, which actually worked really well to add depth all around and tangle you up by making you feel a bit sympathetic even for the villains.

The places I stumbled were the grammatical errors, particularly issues with missing commas. Those really stand out to me, and it took me out of the story at best, and at worst made me actually not understand what was happening. There were also a few times when actions were inconsistent (such as Charlotte saying she sat up to talk to her mother, then when her father entered the room "it was almost enough to make her sit up". I'm like, girl you're already sitting up??).

These are small issues that can easily be solved with a second pair of eyes taking a look at the text though, and the driving force of characters and story was solid!


Skeleton Women  by Mingmei Yip
Recommended: yes, BUT...
for those who are interested in 1930s Shanghai (and let me tell you, everyone should be. it was a crazy and wondrous time), and emotional development of characters, and flexibility of mind to accept a very different culture and set of norms. Don't have high expectations for action-plot or romance.

So what DIDN'T work for me was the romance and the amount of tangible action. The main romance was very weak and frankly, Jinjin annoys me as a useless whiny pretty boy. And even though this is a story around a trained assassin working in a world of top-tier gangsters... there was not nearly as much tension as you'd expect from that setup.

However, I really enjoyed reading this. The way it's written is what I liked best, since the character is very consistent in her thoughts and actions. I felt a stab of pride understanding her many "The Art of War" references from reading it last year, and combined with the 36 Stratagems, I liked hearing her interpretations of them in her life. The descriptions of sex are odd and sometimes funny to a 2019 American woman (a woman's "gate of mystery" will never not crack me up), but again, they felt fitting to the character and sometimes were actually rather beautiful. The writing and the setting were the strengths here for me, more than that actual events. Which seems kind of odd, now that I'm writing it out, but hey, I like what I like.