The Aggressive Reader

Tag: fantasy

  • An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

    Rating: 4.5/5

    Spoilers: Light but this book has been out for YEARS so I doubt I will be able to spoil anything at all!

    I’m finally making my way back into fantasy worlds! For a while there, I couldn’t care less about YA fantasy, adult fantasy or any fantasy whatsoever! An Ember in the Ashes might have just pulled me back in, and book two has just been purchased! This book reminded me of being a teenager again, devouring fantasy series. I’m very surprised and disappointed in myself that this was not one of those series! I remember it being huge when I was a teen, and I just didn’t get to it. I’m ecstatic that the day I got to it is here!

    An Ember in the Ashes follows two-character POV’s. One is a girl from a group called the Scholars named Laia, who loses her Nan and Pop to the ruling group called the Martials. The soldiers take her brother, her only family left so she finds a group called the Resistance and begs them to help her find him and to set him free. In return for their services, they make her a slave girl to the cruelest person in the Martial army and leader of the soldier school, the Commandant. Our second character is a Martial soldier (A mask) named Elias, who is about to graduate. More than anything, he wants to be free and has been trying so hard to find a way out because the life of serving the Empire is not what he wants. Laia and Elias will eventually collide in more ways than one and guide each other toward their goals.

    An Ember in the Ashes brought me a cast of characters that I was able to feel empathetic towards which is a huge win for the author, since it is so difficult for me to care about most characters in a book, let alone a series. I can’t continue a series if I don’t care! I’m so happy with how quickly I got through this book. At night, I could hardly put it down! Like I said earlier, I deprived my teenage self of this hit, but I will no longer deprive my adult self. Onward to A Torch Against the Night!

    Thank you for following up and happy reading!

  • The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

    Rating: 2/5

    Spoiler level: NOTHING BECAUSE WHAT COULD I SPOIL THAT WOULD ACTUALLY BE INTERESTING?!

    Soooo, I got through it! Well, mostly. I already knew what happened the last one hundred pages so I DNF’d the HELL out of it! I first read this book when it was released in 2020 and couldn’t even get through the first one hundred pages so MASS improvement there. I still have to say…as a huge fan of The Hunger Games series, I was excited to get a villain origin story for Snow but was left so FRIKIN disappointed!

    First things first, why was the writing so dull? Was I the only one that thought that? The Hunger Games series was well written to me but this…THIS Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes just drained my interest so quickly. I continued to read just to see if it got better but again…DISAPPOINTMENT! These characters…I couldn’t have cared less about them and their stories…I have not read a book with characters this dry for a while…even Lucy Gray couldn’t hold my interest. I really expected more from this origin story. I expected to feel the pain of the characters but the only one I felt for was a boy in the games named Reaper who had nothing to do with Snow at all! Again, couldn’t care less about the others.

    We learn about Snow’s past and his hardships with losing his parents during the war, but why did the writing not really do his pain justice? I’m about to use the word again so get over it but it was all just so…dull. I expected more from this book because Suzanne Collins had blown me away before, but this story just wasn’t for me. The odds were not in my favor! I am hoping to be in love with Sunrise on the Reaping, which is coming out tomorrow, March 18th, and I am PUMPED for it! I will be MIA for all of tomorrow because I am ready for Haymitch’s story!

    Happy reading!

    This book is gorgeous though!

  • The Evolution of my Reading

    You know what? I think a proper introduction to both me and what I actually like to READ is in order, because my reading selections have definitely changed for the most part since 2020. Am I reading more books that most people probably are avoiding instead of joining in on the trends? Maybe so but I’ve gotten a bit weirder as I age, and I see that as a good thing.

    First things first, my name is Mattie, and I am 28 years old. Only two years away from my thirties…SHEESH! My twenties have been a hell of a rollercoaster, and I expect my thirties to be a lot better! One thing that has never changed for me is my love of reading, even as a little girl, if I wasn’t terrorizing my classmates and family, then I had a book in my hand. But no kidding…I was a demon child. My VERY religious grandmother thought I was possessed at one point and shit…maybe I was with the way I acted LOL.

    I work a full-time job (because this world forces me too) so I obviously don’t get to read and write as much as I want to, and as all you know, there are always other responsibilities outside of a job that always needs to be completed…soooo yes, my hobby has been set to the side a lot lately which not only brings me sadness but causes my TBR to STACK up! Obviously, my responsibilities have to get done but I am starting to put more time into what makes me happy in this messed up world. I believe that you all should do the same.

    What do I love to read right now? HORROR, THRILLERS, and MYSTERIES…OH MY! Yes! Yes! I am a horror/thriller freak. Thrillers and mysteries have always been on my TBR growing up, but horror is actually quite new to me, as in just started reading more of it only two years ago. I used to be very huge into fantasy and historical fiction and still am interested in some fantasies but romantasy seems to be the name of the game right now…unfortunately for my unromantic ass. Are there romantasies that I’ve read that I’ve actually liked? Oh yes but it has gotten rarer with age. What I will say for any type of romance that I will read, THE MORE EROTIC, THE BETTER! I NEED THE DETAILS OF EVERYTHING!

    My current read as an example is Does it Hurt? by H.D. Carlton which I will review shortly and yes, that is what I mean by DETAILS! You’ve got other similar erotic romance like this then you better let me know in the comment section! But anyways, there will be books that I will read every now and then that force me outside my comfort zone and sometimes I will be surprised by how much I loved it…and sometimes it is exactly what I expected..WOMP WOMP. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you and reading what you think of certain books! I will be posting my first review soon so hang tight and get those judgements READY!

    PEACE!