Book Review: Wings of Fire: the Brightest Night by Tui T. Sutherland

Posted on January 31, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

The fifth and final book of the Wings of Fire Dragonet prophecy quintet is Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night (young adult fantasy, 308 pages) by Tui T. Sutherland.

“Sunny has always taken the Dragonet Prophecy very seriously. If Pyrrhia’s dragons need her, Clay, Tsunami, Glory, and Starflight to end the war, she’s ready to try. She even has some good ideas on how to do it, if anyone would listen to her. But shattering news from Morrowseer has shaken Sunny’s faith in their destiny. Is it possible for anyone to end this terrible war and choose a new SandWing queen? What if everything they’ve been through was for nothing? Buried secrets, deadly surprises, and an unexpected side to scavengers are all waiting for her in the shifting sands of the desert, where Sunny must decide once and for all: Is her destiny already written? Or can five dragonets change their fate and save the world … the way they choose?”

THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW.

I think this is definitely my favorite of these first five books, as I really appreciate Sunny as a character. We see that she’s not just this super positive, always “sunny” person and that she actually just really wants to help all the other dragons.

One of the things that really stuck with me was when she’s kidnapped by the NightWings so they can take her to Burn for a bounty and they see what her friends have to say about her when they can’t find her. They talk about how she’ll take care of Starflight no matter how upset she is, and how she’ll be happy no matter what and probably even forget about the prophecy in like a week. Even the NightWings who captured her comment on how her friends don’t seem to think much about her intelligence.

It’s like. Just because she believes the best of people and she finds the positives in any of her situations, it means her friends don’t think she has any intelligence and can’t take things seriously. Even from the very first book, the other four dragons don’t tell her they are thinking about escaping from the guardians the Talons of Peace left them with because they don’t think she can keep a secret.

Sunny knows she doesn’t have time to go back to her friends and get help and that she needs to deal with the three NightWings who are going to sell them out to whichever of the three SandWing throne contenders will pay the most for their information, so she follows them, steals the Obsidian Mirror and even leaves a super cryptic message which winds up scaring the NightWings, and follows them to the Scorpion Den. She does all these brave, smart things and none of her friends are there to see it or to help her.

But it’s while she’s on her own that she actually meets both her mother and her father, with her mother being the only one of the dragonet parents who desperately missed and searched for their missing eggs. Sunny’s mother, Thorn, is not what Sunny would have expected, but it’s still really awesome to get to see them interact.

So after everything Sunny goes through, she is definitely the hero of this story. It’s her idea that saves the day and it’s her compassion and ability to look beyond how other dragons / people see each other and their place in the world that allows her to look at the scavengers in a different way; those same scavengers that wind up saving the day. She gives everything around her the chance to communicate and that leads to unearthing the Eye of Onyx, which decisively ends the war and fulfills the prophecy.

I think it’s interesting to look at this story from the perspective of prophecies, as there probably was a bit of real prophecy involved, but also a lot of individual choices of dragons who wanted the prophecy to be real. Most of the dragons they encountered really were exhausted of fighting and desperately wanted peace but none of them felt as though they had the individual ability to make that peace happen. They all needed an outside source to prove that peace COULD happen.

Overall, this book is my favorite of these first five books, rating a solid four on my scale. I’m very grateful I purchased this book and will continue to reread it in the future.

Sutherland, Tui T. The Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night. Scholastic Press, 2014.

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Book Review: Wings of Fire: the Dark Secret by Tui T. Sutherland

Posted on January 29, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

The fourth Wings of Fire book is Wings of Fire: The Dark Secret (young adult fantasy, 295 pages) by Tui T. Sutherland.

“The mysterious NightWings keep everything hidden, from their home and their queen to their allegiance in the war. Now they’ve kidnapped their own dragonet of destiny, and Starflight is finally meeting the rest of his tribe – whether he wants to or not. The NightWings have also kidnapped several innocent RainWings, now trapped in teh dark, barren, miserable place that is the NightWing kingdom. Starflight wants to help the RainWings, but he’s busy saving his own scales and trying to find a way back to his friends. The fate of two kingdoms rests in his talons, and with no one to save him, Starflight will have to find a way to be brave … before it’s too late.”

I’m going to be honest – until this book, Starflight was not my favorite character. He still isn’t, but the neat part about having every book from the perspective of a different dragonet is how much broader an understanding of each character is provided within each story. From my perspective, Starflight hasn’t been a particularly useful dragonet of destiny before this book. The good news is he doesn’t complain much but the bad news is he doesn’t really do much, either.

With the Dark Secret, Starflight is shown to be a fairly relatable character, as he often just doesn’t know what actions he could take that would actually benefit the situation. He’s not much of a fighter because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and would much rather spend all his days studying and learning so he can provide knowledge to his friends when they need it.

Spending more time with the alternate dragonets of prophecy was also a very eye-opening experience for Starflight, as I think it really demonstrates to him that he and his friends are definitely not safe and can be replaced at any time and there truly is a plan to replace him and all his friends.

And then there’s the whole part about how he meets his father and finds out his father is responsible for kidnapping and torturing the RainWings and Starflight really doesn’t know what to do about that, as he is young and powerless.

I think this book is a really good example of learning how you can take even small steps that turn into big steps to do the right thing, even if your first small steps to those bigger steps are behaving in a way people you admire behave. In fact, that’s one of the best examples of surrounding yourself with friends who are different than you, with different strengths and weaknesses. He imagines what his friends would do if they were faced with the same situations and it helps him to make decisions and move forward.

Overall, this book is probably one of the more depressing ones in this series, as it shows how really crappy environmental conditions to lead to a lot of really bad group decision-making. I think it’s more a low three on my rating scale, but I’m still glad I bought it and will continue to reread it in the future.

Sutherland, Tui T. The Wings of Fire: The Dark Secret. Scholastic Press, 2013.

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Movie Review: Terminator: Dark Fate

Posted on January 27, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

This weekend’s movie was Terminator: Dark Fate which is probably my absolute favorite movie out of the entire Terminator franchise.

“Decades after Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day, a lethal new Terminator is sent to eliminate the future leader of the resistance. In a fight to save mankind, battle-hardened Sarah Connor teams up with an unexpected ally and an enhanced super soldier to stop the deadliest Terminator yet.”

As with Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Dark Fate doesn’t shy away from nudity, either male or female. And it starts so, so slowly. We start with the familiar scene of Sarah in the psychiatric ward, telling us about the nuclear war in August 1997. As this movie came out in 2019, we all know the future dreamed up by the first two Terminator movies obviously didn’t happen. So opening the movie with watching the T-101 come out of the ocean and shotgun young John was certainly a shock. And then, twenty years later, we’re taken to Mexico City, where we meet a naked woman who falls from a weird event on a bridge.

We then get a very nice scene with a brother and sister and their father at breakfast, on their way to work. And that’s honestly one of the very last slower, less threat scenes we get for quite some time. This movie just doesn’t stop, but all the action makes complete sense for the story.

It’s also honestly very, very refreshing to see the difference in Sarah Connor from the very first movie to now. It’s also really fantastic to see older actresses staring as action heroes. And also non-white, non-native English speakers as main characters in a franchise this huge.

So I won’t give away too much of this movie, other than to say it’s one of my very few five stars on my rating scale, which is as high as I rate things. I am extremely grateful a friend recommended this to me, as I’m ecstatic to rewatch it very, very frequently.

Terminator: Dark Fate. Directed by Tim Miller, Produced by James Cameron, performances by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, and Diego Boneta, Paramount Pictures and Skydance and Twentieth Century Fox, 2019.

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Book Review: Wings of Fire: the Hidden Kingdom by Tui T. Sutherland

Posted on January 26, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

The third book in the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland is Wings of Fire: the Hidden Kingdom (young adult fantasy, 296 pages).

“The dragonets of destiny aren’t sure what to expect in the RainWing kingdom – Glory hopes to learn more about her family, and since the RainWings aren’t fighting in the war, all five dragonets think they might be able to hide safely for a while. But something deadly is stalking the peaceful kingdom, and the dragonets soon discover that RainWings have been mysteriously disappearing from the forest. When the RainWing queen won’t do anything to find her missing tribe members, Glory and her friends set off on their own rescue mission – which leads them right back into enemy territory …”

One of the interesting parts of this series I haven’t mentioned yet is how at the beginning of each book, there’s a map of Pyrrhia, as well as the NightWing Guide Dragons and every time I open these books, the urge to color everything is very, very strong. While I acknowledge that these books are mine, as I did in fact buy them, I’m still weirded out by the idea of “harming” a book. But I also did buy the official coloring book many years ago and I could just color that, but I don’t get the same burning desire to color the actual coloring book as I do to color the books of text. I am amused by this and perhaps will use the coloring of the front colors to actually color inside the books themselves one of these days.

But anyway.


This is easily my favorite of the Wings of Fire series so far. Glory is a very relatable character to me, as she’s motivated in this book by a severe sense of responsibility. When they arrive in the RainWing kingdom, the RainWings are so relaxed and chill that they don’t even know their own friends are missing. Glory is furious because she believes that someone should care if dragons are kidnapped and tortured, as well she should be.

By the end of this book, the dragonets of prophecy have met all three of their options for the SandWing throne and none of them would be very good queens. The queens are all brutal, manipulative, petty, and self-centered, which barely scratches the surface of their flaws and insuitability for ruling their respective dragon tribes. Even more, we see more of how the war is impacting all the dragons from all the tribes and how so many dragons don’t know what they’re fighting for or why and just want to go home to their families. Even though this is a fantasy series about a bunch of very young dragons, the horrors of war are accurate.

Those who order war are never those who pay for it.

I’m also interested in the alternate dragonets of destiny and the intrigue behind the prophecy. As much as Clay, Tsunami, Glory, StarFlight, and Sunny might disagree, especially in the first book and part of the second book, they are a family. The alternate dragons show that just because you’re raised together doesn’t make you a family, but the actual dragonets of prophecy have several options to split up throughout these three books so far and they still keep sticking together.

Overall, this is definitely a low four on my rating scale. I’m glad I purchased it and will continue to reread the entire series.

Sutherland, Tui T. The Wings of Fire: The Hidden Kingdom. Scholastic Press, 2013.

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Book Review: Wings of Fire: the Lost Heir by Tui T. Sutherland

Posted on January 24, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

The next book to continue my reading of The Wings of Fire series was The Lost Heir by Tui T. Sutherland (young adult fantasy, 296 pages).

“She can’t believe it’s finally happening. Tsunami and her fellow dragonets of destiny are journeying under the water to the great SeaWing Kingdom. Stolen as an egg from the royal hatchery, Tsunami is eager to meet her future subjects and reunite with her mother, Queen Coral. But Tsunami’s return to the home she never knew doesn’t go quite the way she had always imagined. Queen Coral welcomes her with open wings, but a mysterious assassin has been killing off the queen’s heir’s for years, and Tsunami may be the next target. The dragonets came to the SeaWings for protection, but this ocean hides secrets, betrayal – and perhaps even death.”

I think it was interesting to see things from Tsunami’s perspective, as it’s definitely vastly different than Clay’s perspective from the previous book. While Clay was loyal to his friends, he struggled most of his book to deal with the belief that he was supposed to be some sort of violent killer because he supposedly attacked the other eggs immediately upon hatching. Tsunami, though, feels as though protecting her friends means being willing to conduct violence upon their behalf. This was shown in the last book where she was put in Queen Scarlet’s arena of death and forced to kill another SeaWing, Gill, who had been deprived of any form of water for months, which drove him mad. Tsunami was forced to kill Gill in the arena, but at least she made it quick and minimized the spectacle portion of her time in the arena as much as possible.

So Clay protects his friends by physically shielding them, as he is the largest of the dragonets, and Tsunami protects her friends by removing threats to them.

At least in the beginning.

That’s one of the great parts about this series – we see the dragonets, who really are very young with limited experience in the world, have to learn and grow. As the book continues, Tsunami spends more time thinking about what actions would actually be best instead of just jumping into the fray. We even see her start thinking about how to solve issues non-violently. We see her stopping and thinking and this is a really important development.

I’m also enjoying how the series shows us that our daydreams are often not as beneficial as the life we currently have. All five of the dragonets were taken from their tribes as eggs and therefore have no concept of what their lives are supposed to be like, but at the same time, they have all wished to meet their families.

Clay was disappointed to find his mother sold him for two cows and while his siblings would have loved him as part of their combat wing, that wasn’t actually the best option for either group, as he hadn’t been with them for the last six years and his own tribe of mismatched prophecy dragonets needed him. He already had the family he needed.

Meanwhile, Tsunami learns that being royalty isn’t nearly as inspiring as she thought. Her mother is so overly protective that she has her daughters attached to her via a harness so they have no life, time, or socialization of their own. Tsunami just wants to be free to go where she wants and to help her friends, which she realizes she can’t do if she’s put on the queen’s leash. Even though her mother loves her, it would be a prison, just of a different sort.

Overall, this book is going to join the first book as a high three or low four on my rating scale. I’m glad I purchased it and I will continue to reread it in the future.

Sutherland, Tui T. The Wings of Fire: The Lost Heir. Scholastic Press, 2013.

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Book Review: Wings of Fire: the Dragonet Prophecy by Tui T. Sutherland

Posted on January 22, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

Since I very much enjoy books about dragons, one of my librarians recommended The Wings of Fire books to me. The first book in the series is The Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy by Tui T. Sutherland (young adult fantasy, 304 pages).

“Clay has lived his whole life under the mountain. The MudWing dragonet knows that war is raging between the dragon tribes in the world outside – a war that he and four other dragonets are destined to tend, according to the mysterious Prophecy they’ve been taught. The five “chosen” dragonets were stolen from the their homes while they were still in their eggs – and hidden away for years – all to fulfill the Prophecy. But not every dragonet wants a destiny. And when danger threatens one of their own, Clay and his friends may choose freedom over fate … leave the mountain … and set the dragon world on a course that no one could have predicted.”

This book is an excellent beginning into the Wings of Fire series, as Clay is a wonderfully caring and loyal dragon, which is different than most modern depictions of dragons. From the very beginning, it’s obvious Clay is protective of his friends, extremely gentle, and also very young, as most of his thoughts when left alone are about food and being hungry.

I’m not actually going to say too much about the characters or the story, as I think this is a pretty fast, pretty good read all on its own.

Instead, I will talk at least a little bit about how much depth and planning must have gone into this entire series. So far, the Wings of Fire series is three books of five (so fifteen total) plus two legends books. There’s also graphic novels and coloring books. As a very interesting note, I actually purchased the coloring book several years ago without knowing anything about the series because I very much enjoy dragons and a dragon coloring book looked like a lot of fun! (Yes, I am a fully fledged adult and yes I still like coloring and yes I still like coloring dragons 🙂 )

Every book has a completely different main character, which provides a variety of different perspectives to an ongoing storyline, all of which is interconnected. I think the amount of planning, plotting, and general synchronization for this kind of world-building is really fantastic.

Overall, I enjoyed this book so much that after I finished borrowing it from the library, I went out and purchased the entire series so I can reread it whenever I wish. I’d say it’s definitely a high three or a low four on my rating scale.

Sutherland, Tui T. The Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy. Scholastic Press, 2012.

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Movie Review: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Posted on January 20, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

This week’s movie was Terminator 2: Judgment Day, to continue with my Terminator binge 🙂

“A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg.”

My version of this movie is the “eXtreme DVD” director’s cut version with 16 minutes of additional scenes not found in the theatrical release. And I can tell you right now that those 16 minutes were cut for good reason before Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in theaters and I think the next time I’m at a used movie store, I’ll see if I can find a “normal” version of this on dvd so I can buy that and maybe switch out this one.

Some of the extra scenes include:
-Extra time of Sarah hallucinating in the psychiatric facility, which I did not feel were helpful to her character development.
-Extra time with Miles Dyson and his family, which were interesting to show how dedicated he was to the project but not overly relevant to the plot.
-Extra time with Sarah and John in the abandoned garage. This scene showed how the T-101 taught John how to disable and reprogram it, which helps with questions about how he knows stuff in the future, but John’s little outburst about how he’s supposed to be the leader of the future and Sarah should do what he says just really pissed me off.
-No one needed or wanted to see the dog, Max, brutally murdered by the T-1000 after it kills Janelle and Todd. Like. Seriously. No one needs that. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re watching the extended director’s cut, skip the part where the T-1000 goes outside.
-Tons of little extra bits, like the T-1000 after the big rig explosion, and the T-1000 shaking off its shapeshifting.

Even though this is the director’s cut (which I do not enjoy), this movie is still one of my top favorites. The story is fascinating, the effects are a great mixture between computer and real effects, the characters are well-developed and consistent, and this movie does what the Terminator didn’t – it ends at a point of hope for the future of humanity. Sarah, John, Miles Dyson, and T-101 were able to change the future. They saved the world. And now two are dead and Sarah and John are on the run and can’t ever return to the United States. They can never tell anyone what they did because no one would believe them and they have no proof that their actions will actually change anything. But there’s that hope that they did, in fact, save the world.

Overall, this movie is easily a four on my rating scale. I’m happy I own it (but I’ll be happier once I own a theatrical release and not the director’s cut) and I rewatch it constantly.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Directed by James Cameron, performances by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Robert Patrick, Artisan Home Entertainment, 1991.

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Graphic Novel Review: Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughn

Posted on January 19, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughn (graphic novel, 800 pages) is a massive graphic novel I’d heard about in passing but never read until now.

“Paper Girls follows the story of four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls (Erin, MacKenzie, KJ, and Tiffany) set in Stony Stream, a fictional suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. As they are out delivering papers on the morning after Halloween, the town is struck by an invasion from a mysterious force from the future. The girls become unwillingly caught up in the conflict between two warring factions of time travelers.”

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY **NOT** A SPOILER FREE REVIEW

There’s a lot of nostalgia going around right now for those who were young in the 1980s and this story is reminiscent of that, with the first issues of this monthly comic produced in October 2015, a full year before Stranger Things aired, and also takes place in the midwest.

When I first started reading this graphic novel, I had no idea what was going on. I thought the name Paper Girls might have been some sort of word comment about the paper cut out dolls from when I was younger? Something about maybe how girls were seen as two-dimensional and only useful for accessorizing? That was certainly incorrect, as the term Paper Girls actually refers to these four young women who are out delivering papers first thing in the morning after Halloween. It’s been so long since paper delivery was even a thing that I never even though about the people back in the 1980s and 1990s who actually delivered the papers. And the fact that newspapers would actually employ people as young as twelve? I’m not surprised.

This was probably the most fascinating look at time travel I’ve seen in any media, as everything in this story is cyclical. This was such a deep and complex story with fantastic, flawed, and realistic characters. These characters were dirty and messy and confused and everything it means to be young and trying your best to survive in a world of science fiction with no right answer.

I’d like to hope that they do actually change their future – that by stopping the generational interference and time war, maybe they buy back a little of their lives. When they first meet the adult Erin in 2016, she’s 30-40 years old, still living in Stony Creek, unmarried, and still working for a crappy salary with the same paper, and it doesn’t seem like she has many friends or anyone she talks with outside her extremely successful pilot sister, Missy. When they meet adult Tiffany in 2000, she’s struggling just to make ends meet and is back to living with her parents. The only future KJ in the story is the one near the end who is a clone of the original and used to help broker the peace arrangement and there’s no future Mackenzie to meet because of the time-traveler disease she dies of which their time thinks is leukemia.

Both future Erin and future Tiffany say the Paper Girls never really interacted again after that morning but I like to hope that Erin changes that by encouraging them all to ride together for the next hour or so before school starts. You can tell that each of them are changed by their time travel experiences, even though they don’t remember the actual adventure. The beginning of the story starts with Mackenzie as a foul-mouthed homophobe but in the same scenario at the end of the story, she’s mindful of her comments and I think she probably remembers her dream of KJ’s Bat Mitzvah and it left an impression on her.

Meanwhile, Tiffany actually turns off the video game instead of playing the final level and she thinks about actually spending some time living her life, which I think is a different path than what made her become the Tiffany they meet in 2000. And Erin does exactly what her older self suggested, which was to work harder to put herself out there and give people a chance.

Even though Heck and Naldo tell the Paper Girls that you can’t change your fate, maybe this time, they do. Maybe that last fourth dimension green eyeball thing touched Mackenzie before they all got brainwiped and sent back to 1988. Maybe it cured her of the time disease and she gets many more years ahead of her and has a better chance of a more fulfilling future.

I’d like to hope so.

Anyway.

Overall, this has become one of my favorite graphic novels and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reread it since I impulse purchased it some time ago. It’s easily a five on my rating scale and one of those few stories my brain continues to chomp on, even though I’ve reread it so many times. I’m glad I bought it and will probably continue to reread it for a very, very long time.

Vaughn, Brian K. Paper Girls. Artist Cliff Chiang, Colorist Matt Wilson, Letterer and Designer Jared K. Fletcher. Image Comics, 2021.

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Book Review: An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows

Posted on January 17, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

The next winter holiday book exchange was my choice, An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows (fantasy, 437 pages).

“When Saffron Coulter stumbles through a hole in reality, she finds herself trapped in Kena, a magical realm on the brink of civil war. There, her fate becomes intertwined with that of three very different women: Zech, the fast-thinking acolyte of a cunning, powerful exile; Viya, the spoiled, runaway consort of the empire-building ruler, Vex Leoden; and Gwen, an Earth-born worldwalker whose greatest regret is putting Leoden on the throne. Pursued by Leoden and aided by the Shavaktiin, a secretive order of storyellers and mystics, the rebels flee to Veksh, a neighboring matriarchy ruled by the fearsome Council of Queens. Saffron is out of her world and out of her depth, but the further she travels, the more she finds herself bound to her friends with ties of blood and magic.”

THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW

This book was another I had to special order, as it was not available in the brick and mortar store closest to me, but I first read about it on a post about queer main characters. I’m very glad I ordered it and that it came in time for me to ship it to Pennsylvania for the holidays. The weather across the entire United States right now is so bitter and cold that it’s the exact perfect time to stay inside and read 🙂

The main perspective shifts between Saffron, the main character who follows Gwen through the portal, Gwen, a middle-aged woman who has been world-walking for most of her life, Zech, a young woman with special magic, and Viya, a very spoiled consort’s ruler. Multi-perspective books can often be jarring for me, but this was a very smooth read, which I definitely finished in one day / sitting 🙂

An Accident of Stars is a very realistic portal fantasy, which also starts out pretty violent and dark, which I definitely appreciate. The main character is the prime example of “wrong place / wrong time” in chapter four, where she gets caught up in a fanatic’s religious ceremony, resulting in the loss of two fingers from her left hand, and this happens after all her hair has been shaved off by that same fanatic. I think one of the really good storytelling aspects of this novel is how once Saffron is disabled, she’s never magically healed. She has to learn to adjust her life and her expectations to her new situation. There’s no way for her to go home, not until the portal-maker is healed and rested enough to send her back to Earth. Kenan society doesn’t have doctors or a type of magic that can do anything your normal, healing body can’t, so no regrowing limbs. Oh, and there’s also no anesthetics, so she just gets to deal with the pain.

I think it’s positive to show characters dealing with loss and having to work through both the pain and the psychological trauma of events outside their control. Though, there aren’t any behavioral health experts in Kena and Gwen and Saffron both have to work together to come up with a story which will make Saffron’s life easier once she does return home. Saffron and Gwen both know Saffron needs to go home but her main priority for going home is actually to take care of her family. She knows her parents and younger sister are probably worried sick about her and she knows that their worry is both something that will negatively impact the rest of their lives and also something they would never have closure on if she never returned.

Even as Saffron and Gwen work to get Saffron home, so many other things keep happening to prevent her from going home any sooner. They are forced to flee their stronghold in Kena into the Veksh far north; a culture vastly different than Kena where Zech pulls a “trust me” and Saffron winds up in a life-or-death trial for both of their lives. While Saffron is successful in her endeavor, this is another event causing physical and psychological trauma. They both wind up with massive facial and body scars and Saffron also gets a tattoo. So many things she’s going to have to explain and deal with when she returns home.

I’m not going to lie – the end of chapter 22 was really, really hard. While this isn’t a spoiler free review, there are some parts of stories best left revealed by those who read the book for the first time. Even though this book has established that absolute miracles aren’t a thing, I kept hoping there would be a magic way to fix what happened. Obviously, there wasn’t, but I still held out hope for something better.

Reality isn’t like that, though. It never is. Sometimes, things just suck. And all you can do is keep moving forward as best as you can.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much, even though the end of chapter 22 was rough. I’m curious to see how Saffron deals with being back on Earth and I’m going to order the next book as soon as I travel back to civilization again. I think this is easily a high three or even a low four on my rating scale. I’m happy I bought a copy of it, I will definitely reread it again in the future, and I intend on buying the other book in this series and maybe other books by this author.

Meadows, Foz. An Accident of Stars. Angry Robot Books, 2022.

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Graphic Novel Review: Enola Holmes: the Graphic Novels Book One by Serena Blasco

Posted on January 15, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

Another of the winter holiday book exchange books was Enola Holmes: the Graphic Novels Book One by Serena Blasco (graphic novel, 188 pages).

“Step aside, Sherlock! The famous detective’s strong-willed younger sister takes center stage in this vibrant graphic novel based on Nancy Springer’s bestselling mystery series. Fourteen-year-old Enola Holmes wakes on her birthday to discover that her mother has disappeared from the family’s country manor, leaving only a collection of flowers and a coded message book. With Sherlock and Mycroft determined to ship her off to a boarding school, Enola escapes, displaying a cleverness that impresses even the elder Holmes. But nother prepares her for what lies ahead …”

I’ve seen a few screenshots of the Netflix film and it looks a lot like the film spends a lot of time focused on Enola’s love interests, which is completely different than the graphic novel. I think one of the key parts about this graphic novel I enjoy so much is Enola’s freedom, intelligence, and distinct lack of interest in romance. She is, after all, only fourteen years old and I think stories like this are critical to young humans growing up, as I believe there’s currently too much of a push to sexualize young women pretty much as soon as their gender is identified. This book was remarkably refreshing in how Enola lives her life.

The art work, coloring, pencils, and story are all so different and well-done. The color and art are definitely a unique design not seen often and it took me a little bit to get used to it, since most of the graphic novels I read are more along the superhero lines. The interesting part to me about the different art style is how much this entire graphic novel felt like Victorian-Era London.

There’s telegrams, horribly uncomfortable women’s clothes and societal expectations on women and women’s clothes, trains, common bicycle use, stage coaches, insulting views on women’s intelligence and their role in society, the Big Eastern steamships, simple yet believable disguises, secret codes, and flowers with meaning.

The best part about this graphic novel is how Enola uses those same societal expectations to her own benefit. She knows women are basically invisible, so her very first disguise isn’t to dress up as a boy but rather to dress in all black as a widow. She uses this disguise to board a train to London, going right into the area under her brothers’ noses because she knows Sherlock especially will be looking for her to disguise herself as a boy.

She even finds a way to invent her own corset so she can carry all her belongings on her secretly because no one would ever suspect to check the corset of a lady. It’s ingenious and it using the strengths of being a lady of those times to her full advantage. It’s also dressed as a widow where she’s able to rescue the twelve-year-old viscount, Tewksbury, by finding that he actually ran away. Tewksbury seems very intrigued by the idea of people dressing outside their genders and there is probably negative romantic undertones because she’s just trying to rescue him.

One of Enola’s best disguises, in my opinion, is Miss Ivy Meshle, where she pretends to be a secretary for a people finder and then pretends the people finder is always gone so the citizens wind up giving her the information instead. She then uses this information to run her own investigations and is fairly successful. Miss Ivy Meshle is vastly different than the Silent Sister of the Streets, who honestly does more good for the downtrodden than I’ve seen from anyone in this era. It’s refreshing 🙂

Overall, this book is a lot of fun and is probably a four on my rating scale. I’m very glad it was sent to me so I own my own copy, I’ve already reread it once and will likely continue to do so in the future, and I’m definitely going to find the next installments in this series.

Blasco, Serena. Enola Holmes: the Graphic Novels Book One. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2022.

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