Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

I changed the name of my blog from Bookish Thoughts, to InkWellofWords! Woo-HOO! 
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Pages: 647
Type: #1 in Mistborn Trilogy
My Rating: 5/5 
Synopsis: In a world where ash falls from the sky, and mist dominates the night, an evil cloaks the land and stifles all life. The future of the empire rests on the shoulders of a troublemaker and his young apprentice. Together, can they fill the world with colour once more?
In Brandon Sanderson's intriguing tale of love, loss, despair and hope, a new kind of magic enters the stage - Allomancy, a magic of the metals.

Review: 

  This book was a truly fantastic novel. I've been trying to get into fantasy, especially adult, and this really helped me along the way. 
  Now the goodreads synopsis is a bit stingy, so I'll explain the rest of the details along the way. 😄
  The world itself is very unique. The nature described makes the place seem more like the future, what with ash falling, the sun we know as orangish-yellow being red, blue skies being unknown and black skies being more prominent and brownish plants taking the place of our green ones, and flowers being completely foreign. This screams future, but, the mannerisms maintained and the class division of noblemen and skaa, seems like the olden days. 
  Skaa are the lower class who are treated like shit and are enslaved. Because their population is larger than that of the noblemen, their respect is even poorer than that of an animal. They are slain heedlessly with no regrets. All in all, they lead miserable lives. Noblemen, on the other hand, are rich and throw balls, and wear suits and gowns and roam around in carriages. They are the ones who beat the skaa. 
  This world, known as The Final Empire, has been ruled by the Lord Ruler for the past thousand years. They call him a Sliver of God. There have been many failed rebellions over the centuries. 
  I found all of this extremely interesting. There was a lot of world building along the way, which I lapped up like a cat does milk. We get to see many different places and meet a bunch of different people. I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect. There is definitely a lot of character development as well as the story progress. We see a lot of characters become more mature and solved. 
  We follow a 16 year old, skaa street urchin, who is called Vin. She is part of a thieving crew, but somehow, she meets a 35-ish man named Kelsier, Survivor of Hathsin, Mistborn. He plans to overthrow the Lord Ruler. 
  I must now tell you of the magical aspect of the story now. Allomancy. It is a magic of metals. There are eight basic metals, which can be used to create and use different abilities. The catch, though, is that not everyone can do so. The people who can burn all the metals are termed Mistborn. Those who can burn only one are called Misting. And there are those who can't do anything. They are normal, common people. 
  I definitely found myself intrigued by Allomancy. It was sometimes difficult to follow, but mostly, was easy. I found the characters all different. I was sort of annoyed by Vin, because she was often frustrated and agitated and annoyed. I felt like she just couldn't be happy for sometime. She kind of grew on me though. I loved Kelsier. I found that most of these characters had some amount of depth to them and I really liked that. It made them have so much more to understand and gave the story a new twist.
  Speaking of twists, this one seemed hell bent on them. There were all these twists that I just didn't see coming. Or maybe it's just me being ignorant. Eh. 
  But I honestly think this book is a great start and it didn't even have a death-wanting cliffhanger. So yeah for that! This was a solid beginning to the trilogy. Really excited to read book 2! 

Friday, March 13, 2015

Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover

Genre: NA Contemporary Romance
Pages: 385
Type: #1 in Maybe 
My Rating: 5/5 
Synopsis: At twenty-two years old, Sydney is enjoying a great life: She’s in college, working a steady job, in love with her wonderful boyfriend, Hunter, and rooming with her best friend, Tori. But everything changes when she discovers that Hunter is cheating on her—and she’s forced to decide what her next move should be.

Soon, Sydney finds herself captivated by her mysterious and attractive neighbor, Ridge. She can't take her eyes off him or stop listening to the passionate way he plays his guitar every evening out on his balcony. And there’s something about Sydney that Ridge can’t ignore, either. They soon find themselves needing each other in more ways than one.


Review: 
  A brilliant tale of two very beautiful characters that you just want to read about on and on and on. The story is an absolutely gripping one. You're just completely immersed with no way out. I flew through the book. What is even better about the book is that it has songs that were written especially for the book. So you can listen to a particular song at a given time that encaptures the moment beautifully. That is so creative to do. I'm impressed, Colleen Hoover. Very reader oriented. 

 The characters were to die for. Literally. They all had so much depth to them. A lot of times we find ourselves stuck with characters (especially in NA), who have shallow depth or no depth to them. Shallow depth probably sounds very contradictory. But what I'm trying to say is that the depth to the characters is either silly or wannabe. I hope you get it now. But Hoover's characters certainly had genuine depth to them, which is very attractive. 

  Plot line wise, Hoover's story wasn't super original, I have to say. But her writing style makes up for it. It makes up for it a 100 per cent. The writing style is so beautiful and I'm just left with a jaw hitting the floor. The story was so gut-wrenching and sad but at the same time it made me want to jump about and smile and just... I could not stop thinking about the book. I thought about it and where the ending would head whenever I wasn't reading it. I was writing an exam the day after I started the book and by God! The frigging characters weren't ready to get out of my head! I just kept day dreaming about the book, but no worries, I finished the exam just fine. 

  I say that a romance is amazing when I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like a wave or something. It's kind of hard to explain it. But, when that does happen, I find myself loving the romance.  This book. Waves upon waves upon guess what, more waves. Not that I'm complaining. It's a fairly pleasant feeling. 

  I honestly loved the book and I really want to read other of Hoover's books. I have read slammed and the sequel, which were both great, but this one completely outshines them. The book doesn't have extremely sexual scenes, so if you're uncomfortable with that and think that this book might contain something racy because it is NA, then don't worry. This is pretty much like reading a YA novel with mature characters. I think anyone would enjoy reading this is they're looking for something refreshingly contemporary.