YA high fantasy – The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT: because I’m trying to divorce myself from Amazon as much as I can, I’m finally moving over from Goodreads to The Storygraph. From now on, my reviews will be available there @thebookishmutant.

I started the Sing Me to Sleep duology last year, and now that book 2 is out, I figured I would pick it up for Black History Month, but also so I could finally get some resolution! And I sure got a resolution…one that wasn’t as enjoyable as the first book, but nonetheless a twisty, romantic ending to a fantasy duology that balanced fun and social commentary.

Now, tread lightly! This review may contain spoilers for book one, Sing Me to Sleep. For my review of Sing Me to Sleep, click here!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Drown Me with Dreams (Sing Me to Sleep, #2) – Gabi Burton

Saoirse is on the run. Now that her siren identity has been exposed, she must flee to the other side of the wall that divides Keirdre from the rest of the world. Taking sanctuary with the budding Resistance, Saoirse discovers a world full of different species that Keirdre drove out of its kingdom, all waiting for the day that they can take back what is rightfully theirs. But tensions are brewing, and war is imminent. On the other side of the wall, King Hayes, her secret love, awaits, but do his loyalties remain with Saoirse? And will Saoirse be able to fend off the rising tides of war?

TW/CW (from Gabi Burton): murder, graphic violence, discrimination/segregation (fantasy), genocide themes, blood, descriptions of injury, imprisonment

You would think that a book that’s over 400 pages would have plenty of time to work out all of the wrinkles in the plot and the worldbuilding…apparently not. In a perfect world, Drown Me with Dreams would be a great second book in a trilogy, but in this world, it was a duology concluder that tried to do far too much. That doesn’t mean that it was bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly a step below Sing Me to Sleep.

Oops. I end up stumbling into books with startling relevance to the current climate, and oh my god, am I sick of using that phrase. But. Drown Me with Dreams does an excellent job of expanding on its themes of resistance, racism, and misinformation! Saoirse has now figured out that there’s a wide world beyond the walls of Keirdre that has been obscured by the racist regime in her home kingdom; now that she knows the truth, she’s exposed to a myriad of perspectives and has to do the work herself to deconstruct the lies she’s been fed all of her life. She meets dozens of new mythical species that have been respectively discriminated against by Keirdre, and finds out firsthand how many falsehoods that the ruling powers have upheld for decades. The simultaneous revelations and discomfort of Saoirse discovering the truth is such a wonderful thing for a YA fantasy book like this to explore—in the end, it’s up to us, in our varying experiences in the real world, to discover the truth about how our governments can shape (and mis-shape) the narratives we grow up on. I also love the themes of solidarity present—fantasy or not, I love that the kind of feminism that Drown Me with Dreams champions is the kind that holds celebrating individual experience and solidarity under shared oppressions in equal regard. It’s the kind of unity that I believe will push feminism forward, and it made for a powerful statement in Drown Me with Dreams.

Even though Saoirse and King Hayes were kept apart for the first half of the novel, Drown Me with Dreams had a great resolution to their romance! Was it classic, YA fantasy romance cheese? Yes. Was it good cheese? Absolutely. To paraphrase one of my high school English teachers, there’s a difference between gourmet cheese and “American cheese-food.” I’ve been a YA reader for quite some time now, and there’s a difference between cringeworthy cheese and high-quality cheese. Drown Me with Dreams falls into the latter category, 100%. There’s angsty angry-kissing aplenty, but it’s written believably. If anyone is looking to do slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romance right, look no further. Saoirse and Hayes weren’t just given enough time to have their romance develop—the stakes of their forbidden love were built up for the whole series, and their chemistry together made for some high quality smoldering. It’s not trying to be enemies-to-lovers in the way that most BookTok fantasy books try and fail to do—Burton’s given us a well-developed romance you can root for, and it made Drown Me with Dreams a standout read in that department.

In my review for Sing Me to Sleep, I mentioned that the book’s main flaw was that it was juggling far too many characters. In that same review, I commended Burton’s ability to craft a rich, layered fantasy world. Both of those aspects collided in Drown Me with Dreams with disappointing results. In Drown Me with Dreams, we finally see the world beyond Keirdre, and it’s full of all of the creatures that Keirdre drove out—dryads, goblins, sprites, you name it. On the surface, I was so excited to see this aspect of the world, but two main issues arose. The first was that we were introduced to a truckload of characters, almost 80% of which had barely anything memorable about them other than the fact that they were from a “new” species. Some of them were slightly consequential, but only just. I had so much trouble keeping track of all of them, which definitely muddied my reading experience. The second problem was that all of this worldbuilding was crammed into a single book—with a kingdom and world this expansive, it needed at least another book to develop fully, which hindered how fleshed out the world ended up being, after all of these promises of it being fascinating and new. (Also, I get the point about racist narratives being made with the goblins, but…what was the reason for making goblins into glorified elves? Why did they need to be conventionally attractive?)

Which brings me to my second major gripe: this series should not have been a duology. Not only are we introduced to a staggering amount of worldbuilding that only amounts to a single book, the same goes for the plot. A full resistance movement, the tensions within said resistance movement, the looming threat of war from multiple sides, and the fallout from said monumental war are crammed into 424 pages…should be enough, right? Most of what I described only happens in the last 2/3rds of the book, and nothing gets nearly the attention it deserves. We get dragged along with a pointless red herring of a love triangle (only for Saoirse to end up with her main romantic interest and for the other guy to just DIE GRUESOMELY? I didn’t really care about the guy, but pour one out for Carrik), and all of the interpersonal conflict rarely lasts, only providing detours on what should’ve been a rich plot on its own. As with the worldbuilding. Drown Me with Dreams should have had at least one more book to expand on everything. It’s a case of Burton biting off far more than she could chew, to unfulfilling results.

All in all, a duology-concluder that didn’t deliver on its epic worldbuilding promises and rushed its climax to a dizzying degree, but delivered on its past themes and promised romance. 3.5 stars!

Drown Me with Dreams is the second and final book in the Sing Me to Sleep duology, which begins with Sing Me to Sleep.

Today’s song:

so uh guess who’s obsessed with the apple tv+ björk concert film

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Huntress is one of those books that just sat on my TBR collecting dust for several years. I decided to read it after finishing Ash a few years back, and I finally was able to get my hands on a copy from the university library. After remembering liking Ash, my expectations were average, and I was rewarded with a solid, strong fairytale full of darkness in unexpected places.

Huntress is technically a prequel, but it doesn’t necessarily require reading Ash beforehand, as its set in the same world, but hundreds of years earlier (you should read it anyway, though!). If you’d like to read my review of Ash, click here!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Huntress (Ash, #0.5) – Malinda Lo

Kaede and Taisin have been chosen for an insurmountable task: restoring order to the human world. For years, the sun hasn’t shone, the crops have dried up, and strange creatures have begun to breach the boundaries of human and otherworldly. The only way for them to seek answers is through the mysterious Fairy Queen, but the journey there may be more dangerous than what lies at the end. But as members of their party begin to die off, Kaede and Taisin must grapple with their futures—the future of the human world, and of the feelings they’re having for each other.

TW/CW: blood, fantasy violence, death, descriptions of injuries/corpses

“I don’t want to marry the man you arranged for me to marry because I don’t know him and I want to have control over my life”: good, good

“I don’t want to marry the man you arranged for me to marry because I don’t know him, I want to have control over my life, and also I’m a lesbian”: EVEN BETTER

It’s been a few years since I’ve read Ash, but reading Huntress doesn’t necessarily require a whole lot of knowledge of Ash‘s world to understand it. What remains, however, is that you have to remember that it was some of the first of its kind. Nowadays, YA is dominated by fairytale-inspired and fairytale retellings, some of which are queer, but stories like Ash and this companion were some of the first ones to do so—and some of the first to be openly queer. If you remember that (and if you can get past the painfully dated cover), you’re in for a fun ride—a dark and atmospheric piece of high fantasy filled with all sorts of danger and strange creatures.

Lo’s world is pretty distinctly High Fantasy™️, which I’ve been jaded with as of late, but her unique spin on it was enough to create a captivating world. Although the magic system was a little hazy, Lo’s descriptions of the barren landscape and treacherous forests created a world that felt real enough to step into. Even more captivating were the creatures that inhabited this world—everything from unicorns to horrifying changelings; the mythology around them and the stakes they created propelled the story even more. Plus, it’s always refreshing to have non-European inspiration for a high fantasy novel; in the author’s note, Lo explains that most of the book was inspired by both Chinese and Japanese mythology.

What I remember about Ash was how much I loved the main couple, but with Huntress, that was a little bit less of the case. In fact, I found Kaede and Taisin to be almost interchangeable (accentuated by the sporadic POV changes), but still compelling enough to root for. Most of the other characters were rather underdeveloped and forgettable, but Lo has a grim solution for the problem—killing them off. For me, it was Con who stole the show; he was the only character with a distinct personality, and it was a very lovable one at that. He’s the kind of character who probably would’ve been lumped in as the love interest in any other YA book, but having him as a platonic friend was so much more endearing.

Even though I loved Lo’s worldbuilding, I still wish that more was explored; we only got tidbits of the creatures in the Fairy Queen’s kingdom, and especially since the main villain was introduced so late in the book, I wished that we’d spent less time on the road and more time near the destination. The journey was interesting, sure, but it would’ve been more interesting to explore the more alien, unfamiliar corners of the world Lo created.

All in all, a solid piece of fantasy that made good use of its dark, barren atmosphere, but could’ve pushed it even further. 3.5 stars!

Huntress is a prequel to Ash, and they are the only books set in that universe. Malinda Lo is also the author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, the Adaptation duology (consisting of Adaptation and Inheritance), and several other books for teens and adults.

Today’s song:

found this and “Metal Mickey” in a video somebody made of a medley of Britpop riffs, and…maybe I should check them out now?

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Tag: YA high fantasy

Book Review Tuesday (2/18/25) – Drown Me with Dreams (Sing Me to Sleep, #2)

Book Review Tuesday (11/8/22) – Huntress (Ash, #0.5)