 was the song he has written. Stab stab. You guys need to pull it together. How about paying an editor? I feel like it's never happened. I don't like zombies. I hate zombies. I avoid zombie at all costs. Hey guys it's Leana. I'm here today to talk about the best and the worst books that I've read so far in 2021. We're at the halfway point in the year, more or less. Pretty much exactly for when I'm filming this right now. More or less exactly for when it's going up. Hopefully if I edit in time. I figured now's a good time to check in and see what's been good what's been bad so far this year and therefore what are contenders for best and worst of the year overall when I do my end of year videos. So I narrated down I usually do 10 best and 10 worst end of the year so I did five best and five worst because we're halfway through the year. That seemed fair. Also I think I usually knew this because this seems like a thing that I would always think. I don't know that I've always specifically mentioned it as a rule for me. I don't pick rereads for either category. I mean well it would be really silly to have a reread in the worst category. I suppose now I think about it last year I totally could have because one of the worst books that I read was a reread because it had been a long time and I was rereading it and I was like dear god why did I ever like this. I suppose it's possible but yeah basically I don't do rereads because mainly for the reason that a lot of my favorite books are favorites and that's why I'm rereading them. So it would be like my whole best list would just be the books that I was rereading because that's why I was rereading them so they all have to be my first time through. All right so I figured we'd start with what did I figure. I went back and forth trying to figure out if I'd start with best or start with worst and I'm deciding right now because I don't remember what I decided. We're gonna start with worst and then we're gonna end on positive note. I think that's what I decided and I did rank them so they're they're not in no particular order. They are in a particular order. So worst books we're gonna do fifth worst first so the best of the worst to the worst of the worst and then we'll do the same thing with best books. We're gonna do the worst of the best and the best of the best. Okay enough explanations. I think you know what this video is. So the best of the worst or the least worst is deal with the devil by Kit Rocha. I still don't know how to say the other name. Yeah that's what that was the Blades and Blades and Blades book club pick for June and unfortunately Blades and Blades servers hasn't had a lot of good luck in 2021 with choosing books that all of us or even any of us like but as usual mine was the saltiest opinion. I hated deal with the devil. I am not entirely surprised by the fact that I hated deal with the devil. It's not like I went into it being like this is gonna be a new favorite. How could it let me down? When I picked it up I was like I hope I like this but I don't know because it's urban fantasy and it is rare. It is the exception. In fact I cannot think of any actual exception where I did like an urban fantasy. I don't want to say that's never happened but I feel like it's never happened. Wait unless then I always give the caveat of like well technically I guess Neil Gaiman writes urban fantasy because he's writing fantasies that take place in an urban environment. But when people talk about urban fantasy as a genre and the tropes that come with that I don't think Neil Gaiman is really what they have in mind. So yeah urban fantasy is not really something I gravitate towards and I would really never choose to pick it up. I really only ever read it because he'll make me read it. Anyway so um however however it was blurbed and compared to Orphan Black which is a show that I love. I actually need to catch up on that show. So I was like all right if it's like that I'm totally gonna be able to get behind that. It is nothing like Orphan Black. There is one single thing about it that is kind of like Orphan Black and that's why they mentioned it. But as usual whenever publishers are like it's like this for fans of this they're always wrong. So once again they were wrong. Orphan Black is excellent and this book was not. Even my co-hosts my fellow Blades and Bodice Rippers book club hosts I already said host well whatever. Yeah they they liked it better because they tend to like urban fantasy just as a genre. So even it's kind of like me with Grimdark where a lot of the time like because I like Grimdark fantasy even if it's not very good I enjoy the stab stab. I enjoy dark and and morally great characters so I'll be able to derive some enjoyment from a less good version of that thing. So for them I feel it's probably the same work. They like urban fantasy whereas I do not. So even though it's not like the best they've ever read it's it's a thing they generally like so they're like it's fine. So for me it was not fine and I hated it so much and I flowed through it as efficiently as I could so that I could be prepared for book club live show to discuss it and then never think about it again. Number Fuller uh fourth worst is Shadow of Night by Debra Harkness. This is the second book in the All Souls trilogy which is the Discovery of Witches series. I was actually really excited to pick up the second book. I didn't love the first book but based on how it ended and where I knew the second one would be going I was very hopeful that I would like it better that I would think that the first one is not great but the second one has the potential to be like actually kind of my jam and it was horrible. It was so so bad. I hated it so much. It was not better. It was not better. Everything that I disliked about Discovery Witches all of that got turned up to 11 so it was even worse than it was before because there were things in Discovery Witches that I was not loving. I was like so that stuff was just like front and center the forefront of the plot. That stuff being the like relationship stuff where it was like they were having the same conflict over and over and over again and both being so immature and yet also so possessive and the insta love is just it's just insane and the like I will die without you is frankly exhausting where every other page the authors found a reason for them to declare their undying love and I'm just like we fucking get it. Can you just like have a normal day? Can you just have a normal conversation? Can you not be immediately aggressively possessive about somebody crossing the room and looking out a window and you're like how dare you look at a thing that isn't me. I'm losing you. You guys need to pull it together. The thing that I was excited about was the sort of the setting where I would be taking place and at first that kind of delivered for me but even that honestly really failed and shockingly because the author is a history professor and while I think that did help in in Discovery of Witches it actually I don't I mean in Shadow of Night mild spoilers for Discovery of Witches at the end of Discovery of Witches they're gonna they like jump in time so you know that in Shadow of Night they're gonna be literally in the Elizabethan era and so I was that's what I was excited about and it was just the fact that it drew attention to it to it drew attention to this itself which is something that I would have questioned anyway but then part of me would have been like well but we always kind of make this leap when we read fiction when we read historical fiction that they're gonna talk in a way that is comprehensible to us just like if you read about people in France but it's a book in English like I mean the assumption is that they're probably speaking French but it's written in English so you know like you just assume that it's kind of like being real-time transliterated kind of like this is meant to be French but even those in English so similarly the fact that they'd be speaking in a slightly more modern way so that you a modern reader can understand sure however when you have a present-day person like transported back in time this modern-day person would necessarily be confronted by people who look and sound and talk in a way that is almost unintelligible because of how different speech and vocabulary and language and everything were back then and so it's actually pointed out in the text how what's her face the main character whose name escapes me how she finds almost difficult to understand them and they find it very difficult to understand her and they there's all this big song and dance about explaining her way as some cousin who came from somewhere far away and that's why she sounds like she does because she's American that being said all of the dialogue was weirdly casual and modern and I was like you can't tell me that Christopher Marlowe speaks in a way that's hardly comprehensible to our modern-day person who's been transported to his time but then also have all of Kit Marlowe's dialogue sound like some guy that she went to university with like what so and it's just the relationship drama and the like weirdly like super accurate historical setting because she like nailed it as far as I can tell on the clothing and the customs and the food and the all of that stuff but the like how people are talking I was like I don't think so but I just I hated every second of it and I don't recommend to recommend the show it's not amazing but it's fun okay number three is from blood and ash by jennifer alarm and trout and this is another blaze and bodys and first look like I said not the best of luck in particular for me and there's been several that none of us have loved but I'm the one that usually is the one loathing they have a lengthy vlog of me reading from blood and ash so I discussed my feelings and my reaction at length in real time in that video so I don't want to say too much here because if you want like I think it's like half an hour 45 minutes so if you want my full thoughts that is there for you but suffice to say it was tropy and awful and the relationship was terrible and the actual writing like the the prose was was poorly constructed and grammatically incorrect and it was just all around horribly constructed it was a lot like shadow of night in terms of relationship being horrible the possessiveness and the the instillaviness of it and just the horrible cringy dialogue so it was kind of like shadow of night except shadow of night did have like at least there was clearly some knowledge of like a historical time period and of historical figures and how we could play with the actual timelines of real people to weave it into our witch and vampire love story even though I hated it I give it points for that because that does require some knowledge and effort from what an ash felt like no knowledge and no effort was put into it whatsoever and I hated it so much number two is a book actually like uh except for shadow of night for every book on my worst list is a book that I was obligated to read for some for one reason or another number two on my list is destiny's captive by Beverly Jenkins this is a book that Bethany chose for me to read when she and I chose each other's tbrs and uh again I have a vlog where I've logged reading the book she chose for my tbr so half of that vlog is devoted to destiny's captive because I hated it it's literally I think half the runtime of that vlog is me just like plowing through that and hating it again don't say too much here because I I talked about it at length already but suffice to say I already don't tend to gravitate towards romance they're unlike with urban fantasy there are some romances that I have liked historical romances so like I have enjoyed a lot of tessadere uh who Amanda introduced me to I love grace draven that's not historical romance it's fantasy romance but grace draven I'll read anything that woman writes I don't always love what she writes but I like most of it so I have there was the potential for me to like this I suppose it was historical romance with uh a ballsy heroine and some swashbuckling and piracy etc so I guess I can see why Bethany thought that I would potentially like it but the main character the main male character was so unlikable and I could not root for their romance because it opens with him blackmailing her into marrying him and then that just becomes like a cute running joke between them I just like as as a premise for their insta love connection turned blackmail marriage I was like no I could never grow to love somebody that thought it was okay to do this ever end of story and that's kind of the jumping off point for their relationship so it was doomed before it ever attempted to sale so there was there was many many many many things that I hated about it throughout thereafter but just as like from from the jump there was just no chance that I was gonna like this when that was how they came together I was like nope my number one worst book I hope I have the vlog up before this video goes up but that's a lot of fucking editing to do I stayed up until one in the morning last night reading this book and and therefore finishing the vlog in which I was reading it so I have a lot of footage at it and it is the worst book that I've read so far this year without question didn't have to think about it one of the worst books that I have ever read and that was Dreams of the Dying by Nicholas Liesau now this is self published so I feel I always say I would feel bad and I generally try not to go out of my way to shit on indie published or self published books or authors because they just they don't have a whole the entire machine of like Penguin Random House or Simon and Schuster behind them so I'm I'm like it feels like picking on a little guy however Dreams of the Dying in hard cover costs 40 dollars ah yeah you're gonna ask me to pay 40 dollars then I have paid for my right to complain about this because it was horrible and I even this wouldn't have saved it but at the very least again if I'm paying 40 dollars for this and clearly money was spent on artists for the cover design artists for all the maps artists for the b-series there's all this extra stuff in there that's why it costs 40 fucking dollars how about paying an editor because there were many many things in it that were not a matter of opinion they were wrong they were incorrect they were either grammatically incorrect or they were not the correct usage of a word or they were not the correct usage of an idiom where this this isn't a matter of debate this isn't a matter of taste this isn't a matter of anything like that this is a matter of this is literally wrong you needed to pay somebody to comb through this monstrosity and again I have so so much beef with all of it that again for me that would not have saved it but at the bare minimum for a book that costs this much I expect some polish and the the visually speaking it's very polished but clearly it's style over substance and that irritates me so much it's not dissimilar from films that rely on having a huge like star-studded cast amazing graphics a great soundtrack they don't have a story and this is not dissimilar so again there's clearly so much attention paid to the look of this thing and that's why I had to shell out 40 fucking dollars for this and the story and the writing and the prose was atrocious it was again one of the worst things that I have ever written at the very least I expect it to be not littered with so many errors where it's literally wrong but also the book was just non-stop soap boxing and info dumping when it wasn't soap boxing it was info dumping and it wasn't info dumping it was soap boxing and I it was so insufferable and so lacking in subtlety so lacking in elegance or nuance or complexity this this the philosophies that it was spewing at me were at the level of like a middle schooler who's just beginning to ask existential questions and the book purported to deal with with really difficult issues suicidal thoughts so trigger warning if you're thinking of picking this up which I obviously don't recommend but it deals with the main character is clearly dealing with some kind of trauma and mental illness and suicidal thoughts and there are other characters also dealing with these things but it's handled in such a like these characters don't feel like characters they feel like vehicles for the author to soap box and philosophize at us and the things he is soap boxing about and philosophizing about are just not worth 700 pages like the things that he's saying they are neither original nor deep nor complex but he's going on and on and on and on about it in poorly constructed English and using what should be characters who are making character decisions in an interesting plot to instead use them to spew these ideas at us at length but it was a horrible it was and I had so many like questions about that when it was philosophizing about these things that I was just like okay for one why does every woman in the story seem to be suicidal I mean more so than even the main character like that seems to be the female solution here is to just kill yourself I wanted to be if you've ever seen that video from like a long time ago um but there was there was a series of videos on youtube there were like a classic literature and how this could have been avoided if she'd had a sassy gay friend so it'll be like Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, all these kind of scenes where something tragic happens and then this guy who made the videos would be the sassy gay friend to put a stop to this I might favor it by far as Romeo and Juliet and I bring this up because if you I'm sure you know but spoilers for Romeo and Juliet did the two of them kill themselves at the end um and so you know Juliet has found Romeo dead and she's about to kill herself and in comes a sassy gay friend and she's explaining that well with Romeo is dead uh you know what am I gonna do and uh this sassy gay friend goes so we kill ourselves kill ourselves that's what I wanted to say to the character to the female characters in dreams of the dying and be like so we kill ourselves kill ourselves there was the mystery the the main plot like the the the central question and tension of the plot was resolved at around page 500 maybe 550 leaving 150 to 200 pages of falling action which was really just the main in main character who was inseparable dealing with his own internal struggles and emotional issues and just more soap boxing and philosophizing and just there is literally no plot anymore because the plot has been resolved what plot there was now it's just that it's literally just that for 150 to 200 pages why but for why yeah so 0 to 10 do not recommend okay so let's end on a positive note the best books that I've read this year so much happier this part of the video will be way shorter because I always have less to say about books that I love but number five so the worst best is Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland this is the second book in the Dreadnation duology I do think Dreadnation the first book in the duology is slightly a teeny bit better and um Mara who I buddy read this with um she and I talked about it and we kind of agree that the pacing would have worked better if this had been split up a bit differently because there's a point in Deathless Divide where there's like a big time shift uh there's a big time jump and it's quite jarring so it seems it seemed to us that it would make more sense to have split this up a little more differently because having that happen in the middle of the book it seems like that would be a better place to just end a book so either make this a trilogy or move some of this into the first book or something but like that kind of made this feel like kind of two disconnected halves and so like the pacing was a little off for that but over I still gave it five stars and I still really loved it and I still think it's incredibly excellent and one of the best YA books that I've read in a long time I don't like zombies I hate zombies I avoid zombies at all costs but I heard such amazing things about these books that I did pick them up and I don't regret it and I think it's one of the best examples of alternate history fiction one of the best examples of what YA can do and should do because YA just because you're targeting a slightly younger audience does not mean you can't deal with complex and difficult social issues but it also in a way that is is approachable for that younger audience but isn't talking down to it isn't dumbing it down isn't sugarcoating it is still confronting these things in all of their horror but in a way that is appropriate for the audience that it's geared towards yeah this this duology is a master class in how to do YA make it real make it dark make it relevant make it interesting make it thought-provoking and still be YA. Number four I have girl in the tower which is the second book in the winter night trilogy actually finished reading the winter night trilogy earlier this year I think I read winter of the witch in May and I didn't like it as much as girl in the tower and barren the nightingale I read this year as a reread so girl in the tower I think is my favorite in the trilogy it is really really excellent the winter night trilogy in general is really really excellent it is a retelling of various it's more it's not a retelling of any particular Russian fairy tale it is a retelling of like Russian folkloric elements so there is a lot of just different recognizable pieces of Russian fairy tales Russian lore Russian myth Russianiness Russian history as well the main one of the main things that I love about the series the thing that makes me love it so so much is Vasya the main character she is one of the best main characters that I've ever read and she really really came into her own in girl in the tower and barren the nightingale she's a child for a large part of the book I mean she's still incredible but I feel like it's already kind of an arms length narration style partly due to the folklore style it's told kind of in this more archaic sounding prose that is more in keeping with the fairy tale style so that already is more arms length and then the fact that she has a child is even more kind of I feel like you're at a distance from her in bear the nightingale in girl in the tower again she really comes in her own the plot was the most exciting the development of all the characters the most exciting the return of her brother as a character who we did meet briefly in the first book and I remember regretting that he kind of left the the scene quite early in bear the nightingale and so he comes back into it in girl in the tower and it's it's so good it's so good number three is the hundred thousand kingdoms by nk jemisin after finishing and loving the broken earth trilogy I began the inheritance trilogy and this was actually thanks to my patrons who wanted to buddy read it I was originally intending on reading the dream blood duology next but they wanted to read hundred thousand kingdoms so that's what we read and I really really enjoyed that I immediately went out when I say went out I went to my computer to order the next two books in the inheritance trilogy I'm hoping to get to this pretty soon although they are not direct sequel so there's no immediate rush like it's not like I need to read them for forget what happened in the first one they're kind of connected and in the same world but not a direct sequel in any event nk jemisin continues to be a new favorite author of mine this was really different from the broken earth trilogy it was more fantasy e and and yet it was immediately apparent to me that there are certain things that nk jemisin likes to put in her stories and likes to play with and it was interesting having read broken earth which came after inheritance in terms of when she wrote it but I read it first so to me reading it in this order it seemed to me that hundred thousand kingdoms was doing things that I had seen in broken earth and I was like oh you're doing that thing again except broken earth was her doing it again so it's it was like seeing kind of the the roots or the sprouts of these some of these ideas that she really fully flushes out and really kind of runs with in broken earth kind of seeing her kind of like dipping her toes into some waters that she's curious about kind of exploring a bit uh so I kind I don't know if it is I don't I have no idea if it would be better to read this first and then broken earth or the way around but I certainly can recommend reading broken earth first and then this because it was really fascinating to kind of see the seedlings of these ideas and be like oh I see I see the beginnings of some of these ideas so in any event I loved it so much and if you want if you're worried about starting jemisin and her stuff being too difficult or too intimidating hundred thousand kingdoms reads more like a fantasy book uh it's still really inventive and unique because it's nk jemisin but it's more in caping with a more fantasy narrative style than broken earth is so it might be slightly more comfortable to pick up as your first jemisin possibly potentially number two second best is royal assassin by robin hob I also finished the farce trilogy this year um and once again I like the second book the best uh royal assassin chef's kiss knockout five out of five stars I would die for night eyes it's amazing I I really liked an assassin's apprentice and also assassin's quest I not it's not that I disliked them but royal assassin I think is it is the best of the trilogy I think it is the one that it is where all of the best things about the trilogy get the chance to shine so Fitz is at an age now he's not a child anymore um so he's a fully full-fledged adult so it's kind of easier to follow his story and kind of be with him he's a fully developed his relationship with night eyes so night eyes fully gets to be part of this story when night eyes is the best and buck keep is one of my favorite settings so you get to see lots of buck keep not only buck keep but lots of buck keep a lot of the political intrigue that's kind of begun to to be a thing in the first book really kind of takes off and becomes really messy and intriguing intriguing that is intriguing great great english lana anyway I just I think it's really really excellent a lot of all of my favorite things about the trilogy basically either happen or are the most best in that one the one thing that I think maybe shines a little more in the third one is the fool but the fool is amazing in all three books and the fool is always one of my favorite things in all of the books and there's lots of the fool in royal assassin as well so yeah 10 out of 10 loved it so much habis mcqueen and the number one so far this year is a surprise not not a huge surprise but I'm just surprised by how much I liked this that is empire of silence by christopher rockio um this had been sitting on my shelf for some time because I'd heard it recommended and praised in particular by people who are fans of name of the wind and whenever fans of name of the wind are like I like this too young girl is like what so I'd ordered a long time ago but I just hadn't got around to it because there wasn't any urgent reason to so I just hadn't yet and then alex alex neavis um hauled it and I was like I have that I've been meaning to read that let's read it so we buddy read it and now we're gonna buddy read the second and third books as well and both of us really really loved empire of silence so we talked about it for like two hours in the live show on my channel so if you want to watch the replay that's available and it's a debut it is such a strong debut he at one point uh he being alex said during the live show that we were trying to discuss it and be balanced and fair and professional book reviewers so in theory you're supposed to sort of talk about pros and cons and and he was like there's there's nothing that I would like I can't think of anything that I would say that I didn't like or that I would change and I was like yeah pretty much there's things about it that weren't maybe completely perfect but all around is the one of the best books that for sure that I've read this year and just generally that I've read like it is a new favorite and I'm hyping it to everybody all over the place it is somewhat similar to read rising in terms of the fact that this is a sort of it's a futuristic space opera that is heavily influenced by Rome Roman culture Roman names Roman social structure having kind of these like noble families that own things and are genetically different from poor people they are longer lived and larger and and stronger so in that sense it's a little bit reminiscent of red rising in terms of just at the setup but as a debut I will say emperor of silence is a far stronger debut than red rising the book is red rising the book is far from my favorite in that series and I think is it is a fairly weak debut like it's it's pretty good for a debut from an author who was like 23 when he wrote it you're like that being the case that's pretty solid standing next to empire of silence which is also a debut you're like well that empire of silence though like that's that's knockout stuff and I hear from everybody and that's what everyone was saying in the chat when we talked about it during the live show is that empire of silence is the weakest one just like with red rising only red rising I thought was kind of weak and I didn't think of fire of silence was weak at all in any way I cannot find a flaw and this is the weak one so I am so stoked to read howling dark next month with Alex so the discussion will be on his channel hopefully this video goes out before that discussion happens but I don't know I am a mess and editing takes a million years yeah empire of silence number one no question about it if you haven't read it read it if you haven't heard of it go look it up then order it then read it you will not regret it so yeah those are my best and worst so far in 2021 let me know in the comments down below if any of these books are on your best or worst lists if you agree or disagree with me about the ones that I've read that you have also read if I have inspired or discouraged you from picking any of them up whatever you want to let me know I post videos on saturdays other random times as well but nothing saturdays so I can subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see you bye