Review: Theodocia by Lizzy Ford

 

Another novella done and one story closer to the novel. I finally bought the first book in the duology. This short story follows Theodocia who is now the youngest ever High Priestess at just 18. 

I kind of forgot who this character was when I started this because it has been a good few weeks between my read of Lantos and this one. I keep these for when my kids have library events, and I can get through the 30 page books in 30 minutes.

But back to the topic, Theodocia has become the youngest high priestess and she is now a target for the other priestesses who have been in their roles for years and coveted the job. She is now in charge of Phoibe the little Crown Princess who was abused by the previous high priestess. Theodocia is also aquaitances with Lantos and is curious about his background and who his godly father is. He tells her immediately that Phoibe is in danger and also herself.

Theodocia also has a normal life or had before she gets this major job and has to move away. She lives with her boyfriend Niko who is a lowlife and a brawler. He gets a spot in the Gladiator guild and he is always spending money on weapons. He doesn't really care about her job and he wants her to decline the promotion to stay with him because he finally has a "good job" fighting and making money or to eventually make money if he survives.

But Theodocia also has another surprise and that she is pregnant. Right away Niko says he knows someone that can deal with their mistake and she asks him how he knows someone, and he tells her that he sent a good few women to him in the past and he doesn't know how many. I was so disgusted and was so glad that Theodocia left him. But the fact that he called her and still asked her to come back and give up her job and the baby was just another reason that I do not want to read his book. She also got a strike against her when she told him she loved him back at the end of the phone call...

GIRL.. NO. He is a walking red flag. The biggest and brighest one on Earth. 

Where Have I Been???// Sunday Post #74

 

 The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly from The Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

Hello.... long time no chat. I had a difficult time remembering when the last time I did a Sunday Post was and it was at the beginning of the year. This year has flown by and I am not sure how to feel about it. I am about to be contradictory here in saying that a lot has happened but not a lot has happened. 

So much has happened. My oldest got her permit at the beginning of the year. We are still homeschooling. Work has been crazy busy and taking up the time that is not spend on homeschooling my kids. My oldest is in 11th grade this year and we are focusing mainly on her needed courses for her diploma and it has been kind of stressful.

Reading has been ok. I have been behind on my reading goal most of the year, mainly because I was in a slump and whatever free time I had, I didn't want to spend it sitting down reading a book or listening to people read to me. 

My blog took a hit and the only things that I was posting were reviews and that was put on the back burner alot as well. 

At the moment, I am in a reading mood and want to read everything. I have 20 books left to reach my goal and I have a good mix of novellas, manga, graphic novels, romance and some fantasy. 

Here are my current reads for the week:

Review: Cursed Cruise by Victoria Fulton & Faith McClaren

 

This took me even longer to read than the first and I am annoyed that this duology or series is not for me. I am obsessed with the covers, but the scattered clunky writing was just bad awful. The characters had no developement from the last boook besides being more clingy and paranoid... that last is for good reason though. I counted about 3-4 mentions of the Titanic in the first two chapters alone and then the authors decide to throw in the captain of the titanic haunting the Queen Anne solely because it was built by the same company. STUPID! And the authors didn't use actual historical fact, they had the kids reference the movie.

I also hated from the very beginning, the rival paranormal investigation youtube channel. They are fake and it is implied. There was a very cringe and a gross moment where the sleezeball manager and the ghost gang tell them that sex sells and if they want and show on Creep TV, they need to be more sexual. He is telling this to 18 year old girls and a guy. 

I really really got annoyed with todays modern slang being used constantly. It got to the point where while I was reading that I was counting the word sus on every other page. The authors got really sloppy with this book. The more I think about it I want to give this a one star because the characters were sloppy. They enact the ghost code that no one goes by themselves, and then they immediately split up. In the first book when they needed to find Emma, Chase used an app on his phone to locate her phone. That was not used at all in this book.

I just wish that the storylines of Elizabeth Walker and the little girl Mary were somehow more connected and ot two separate plots. I think that the reason the whole ship was cursed to begin with was a BIIIIGGG  stretch and it being because of the lost body of King Ramses... really an Egyptian curse.

The only thing I liked about this was that it had little snippets between chapters and it was as if the ship was a sentient being and we were being told how it felt during it's making and how it felt being used during WW2 and how the fear of the men kept it fed and how it hated being dry docked and how they would never find the king's body deep in its bowels. That was the only bit of good writing throughout the whole book. 

Review: Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap and Phantom Hourglass ( Deluxe Edition) Part 1 *SPOILERS*

 

My kids are obsessed with The Legend of Zelda video games and so is my husband. My middle daughter in particular is the biggest fan in tthe house and she has all of the deluxe editions. I bought the last one for her birthday last month and I told her that if she wanted it, I would get it and I would read them with her as like a buddy read. She has already read these several times and she has given me the reading order. 

I was going to start from publication date, but she knows me really well and knows that I prefer chronological order. So she has advised me to start with the Minish Cap and then stop at Phantom Hourglass. 

It may be hard to believe, but I barely know anything about The Legend of Zelda and the whole world. I only know a couple of character names and that is pretty much it. So we learn about the Picori and how they like to help people. Link is tiny in this and he goes to training at the Switchblade Dojo. Link is angry that his sensei is keeping him out of the competition and he yells at Princess Zelda, who ends up getting her way when she starts crying. 

So the championship ends when the purple dude Vaati wins and he ends up wanting the chest with the souls. He breaks the sword and turns Zelda into stone. The only way to break the curse is to have the sword and the Picori forged it. They have to get them to make a new one but adults can't see the Picori, only children, so Link volunteers.

I really like Ezlo. I like that he has a sassy side and helps Link to the world of the Picori. The Picori show up and take Link to their home. They give him a nut to eat so he can understand their language. He asks them to reforge the sword and they tell him that he needs to get the four elements that are scattered around Hyrule to complete the reforge.

Link and Ezlo head to Deepwood shrine to get the earth element and along the way run into slug monsters & poisonous mushroom spores. The Picori show up to help capture the poison in a jar and Link gets the Earth element. Link gets sent to the metallurgist to help reforge the sword. He meets the mountain Picori and learns that the blacksmith has retired and that the only way to get what is needed is to find the fire element.

Link goes to an abandoned big people mine and he uses a mine cart to get down the shaft faster and it reminded me of the donkey kong minecart game on donkey kong 64. HOLY CRAP... the gleerok's true form is gorgeous. It looks like a Pokemon.

Link is now on the hunt for the water element and he has to find Elder Librari. He lives in a book in the library and Link got help from a dog. He called the dog Pooch, which is what I call my dogs. Link head to the temple of droplets to claim the water element and he sees the mayfly fairy and learns her fate. I think it was heartbreaking that she sang for 7 days and then died. After Link gets the element, Vaati shows up. I kind of wish they showed up sooner because things were too easy. 

We get Ezlo and Vaati's backstory and how Ezlo was Vaati's master who were Picori. Was not expecting that, but I kind of should have because a talking cap that looks like a bird and the size of Vaati, but it was a nice surprise. Link and Ezlo are on the search for the fourth element and are studying the map for the wind tribe when a man shows up and ask them to visit a grave for him. He wants them to visit King Gustav's grave and he gives them a kinstone to show friendship. Link gets to the grave yard and goes into the grave and talks to the ghost of the King. The King tells them to take the Kinstone to a waterfall and then he will find the Wind Palace. 

Link defeats the fish monster in the sky and returns the wind to the wind tribe. Link learns that Vaati was there looking for the light force and they tell Link that King Gustaf was friends with the Wind people and entrusted the light force to them for safekeeping. Link gets the wind element and goes back to Master Melari to finish forging the sacred sword. 

Vaati impersonates the king and finds out where the light force and the elemental sanctuary is. Princess Zelda is the light force and so he takes it and becomes all powerful. Unfortunately, he doesn't know that the light force is pure and that his evil soul is warping it and trying to expel itself. Once Link hits him with the sacred sword, all of the curses that Vaati did are lifted.

The ending was so fucking adorable...... Ezlo leaving to go back to the Picori and Link being upset because he no longer has a cap and his head is going to be cold. The fact that Link goes back every year and talks to the portal and tells them he is getting a little taller.... rip my heart out. I give this story a 4 out of 5. The ending bumped it up a star.

The second half of this edition is the phantom hourglass and according to my kid, I can;t read that one yet. So when I get to it, it will be Part 2.

Review: Horror Hotel by Victoria Fulton & Faith McClaren

 

I am still reading some of my spooky TBR that I have out from the library and I hate returning bookks to the library unread because it feels like a waste of time for the librarians and my hubby. I have been obsessed with this cover ever since this book came out. I am a sucker for skulls on covers. I always judge books by covers and all that mumbo jumbo about not judging a book by their cover is just stupid. First impressions are everything. I thought this would be a good spooky book, and I did get a little spooked but honestly, I gave this a 2 out of 5 stars.

I went into this completely blind like I normally do. Right away from the dedication, I knew where this book was going to be set and what kind of plot this would be. This book is dedicated to Elisa Lam, the young woman who was found dead in the water tower at The Cecil Hotel in LA. If you have no idea who that is, go educate yourself and watch the heartbreaking elevator video that showed her last moments alive. There is so many conspiracies surrounding her death.

This book follow four kids who live in Vegas. Two rich kids and two middle class kids. They run a youtube channel called Ghost Gang and the boy Chase is so focused on hitting 1 million subscribers and getting the gold playbutton plaque. The other rich kid is a girl named Kiki who is TikTok famous. The other girl who Emma and she is the tech girl. The third girl is Chrissy. She is the one with the abilities and can see the ghosts in their death states and she can hear them.

These underage kids cross state lines without parental permission and go to the Hearst Hotel where a girl named Eileen Warring was found dead in the elevator shaft. 

These kids name drop Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. Now, I am a massive Ghost Adventures fan and when I read the sentence that talked about them, I had to dock a star. I was furious that the authors did not put factual evidence into this book if they were going to name drop popular ghost hunting groups. 

The sentence is that the hosts investigated the hotel.. true. Apparently one of the hosts got seriously injured and had to go to the hospital and quit the show after.... NOT TRUE. None of the hosts of Ghost Adventures has ever gotten seriously injured to the point where they quit.

After that, every little thing that was stupid started to grate on my nerves. There was also an unneccesary romance plot to try to make a love triangle or to speed up a relationship and honestly, it docked another star. 

I will be reading the second book in this series because like I said, I hate returning books to the library unread. I already know that I will not like the setting of this because I am not a fan of books set on boats and ships. 

Review: Flight of Icarus by Caitlin Schneiderhan

 

Season 5 is coming at the end of this month and I am excited and also upset. Eddie was by far my favorite character in season 4 and to be honest, in the entire show. Joesph Quinn rocked that hairdo and quoting Lord of the Rings made me swoon. 

I had to do a purchase request at my library because they did not have this one and I was the first one to get it when they bought it. I am sad to say though, that I ended up giving this a 3 star. The beginning had me hooked. I could picture and hear Eddie and it was just chef's kiss. But then the whole plot with his dad and them robbing a weed truck got my anxiety spiking. I started skimming the end chapters because I knew shit was going to go down. Of course I knew that nothing would happen to Eddie.... yet.

I like the formation of his band that we got a glimpse of in the show. I like that it had Hellfire Club. The thing that was the most unrealistic for me was the principal blackmailing Eddie and threatening another students future if Eddie didn't drop out. I also think that Ronnie should have figured it out and done something legal wise since she is the student who was threatened and she wants to be a lawyer.

With the author being one of the people working on the show, I am hoping that some of this story will be included in season 5 about Eddie, especially Officer Moore and the dumbass principal. 

I also think that the sex scenes could have been cut out because honestly this book didn't need an underage sex scene with Eddie being the one underage and Paige being an adult.

Review: Something is Killing the Children omnibus #1 by James Tynion

 

I have been wanting to read this graphic novel series for a while and Netgalley has an omnibus of the first four volumes. I went into this knowing nothing about this story. We follow a boy named James who is the sole survivor of a mysterious killing of three of his friends. There are other kids being killed and there are even more missing. He heard and saw what perhaps killed the kids. This woman named Erica comes into town to try to kill the monster. She approaches James and he wants to help. She has a massive map and she is marking where all of the bodies were found. 

Erica ends up getting arrested and blamed for being the killer because she is being suspicious. She calls out the sherriff for not looking for the kids who went missing first because he doesn't want to look bad. Erica and James go into the woods near where the first girl went missing. They find the cave and the guy at the restaurant Tommy, who also has a little sister missing follows them. He is pissed at the police for letting Erica go. He ends up shooting James and Erica stabs Tommy and gives him the ability to see the monster. There is also a little girl who is still alive but her name wasn't on the list of missing.

I am getting confused everytime it goes back to past chapters when James is with his friends on the night of the killings. Turns out it is memories while James is healing in the hospital. We get introduced to two people who work for the House of Slaughter. The guy named Aaron has to go take care of Erica because she has screwed up and the leaders are not happy. This is like mob style organization, called the Order of St. George. Erica busts James out of the hospital and she tells him how she first learned of the order and that her stuffed Octopus carries the demon of the monster that she killed when she was a girl.

All of the bodies of the dead children are in the school gymnasium because the morgue was not big enough and while the police have been getting parents to identify the bodies, the baby monsters have been gathering behind the school because they are hungry.

We have met the big guns at the House of Slaughter. The main leader is called the old dragon and it looks like a really old person with a metal mask permanently attached to its face. He or she, don't really know, they send off every single person of the order to go and clean up Erica's mess and to bring her back. They get to the town and close off all exits and disrupt cell service. They get to the gym to take care of the people by killing them and then kill the monsters. 

Erica does a ritual with Bian and James. She shows them what her monster looks like and that it can only hurt her. Erica ends up killing the brood of monsters and the Order of St.George make sure the sherriff arrests Tommy to help cover up the monster story and make him a scapegoat. 

Tommy is annouced as the killer and Erica talks to The Old Dragon. He tells her that she could have done things differently and now that Aaron is dead, she is the last black mask and that she can have Jessica's seat. Erica ends up renouncing the House of Slaughter and the Order of St. George. She gets on a bus and James is on there as well to go to his mom's house.

We get Erica's backstory and we see how she learned to trap monsters in stuffed animals. We meet Jessica who brought her into the order and is telling her about the initiation process and how the people will bully her and that she can be a bully back. I really like that Erica and Aaron got off on the wrong foot, but then Erica has a nightmare and Aaron is there when she wakes up and tells her that the monster is supposed to feed off of her fear and to not die because he wants a sibling. I thought that was so cute, and it makes me sad that Aaron is now dead.

I could not imagine having my favorite stuffy becoming a totem for a monster that was trying to kill me. I felt so awful that she had to use her favorite Octo to trap the monster. I was shook when it was revealed that the monsters use to be big like the one that killed Erica's parents and then the order started to use small ones, to boost Order numbers. While Erica is getting her tattoo, she gets told on what the differenct color masks mean. Erica meets the Old Dragon and he is fascinated with her because she is a monster and only a monster can tame and kill monsters.

I will definitely be picking up the rest of these volumes. I really like how the past and present were entertwined. It didn't leave off on cliffhangers and make me not interested in what was coming.