Hazel's Book Reviews

This is a devestating book. In its 1,000 pages, all of the main characters suffer immense trauma, going through ordeal after ordeal, scarcely experiencing any moments of genuine happiness. And it's easily one of the best books I've ever read.

It's a dark romantasy about a healer named Helena who worked for the Resistance against the necromancer army. The first third of the book takes place a year after the end of the war, after the Resistance had lost and everybody Helena had known and loved had died. Somehow, she ended up with Resistance secrets locked away in her mind, with scattered memories of the year leading up to the war's end. She's imprisoned in the home of the High Necromancer's right-hand man, who is tasked with forcefully extracting those forgotten secrets.

The middle ~50% of the book details the final year of the war, everything that Helena had forgotten. You meet and grow to love Helena's old friends, only to remember that they're dead by the start of the book, and you slowly witness exactly how everything ended up as it did. It's fascinating and heartbreaking, reading this vast middle section and knowing that they're destined to lose in the end.

This book is seriously dark, with every content warning under the sun, but it's also incredible. The plot is well-woven. The worldbuilding is sharp, and the magic system is very scientific-feeling. The characters are emotionally broken but very human, and the deep horror of war is written with a skilled hand. Alchemised is not for the faint of heart, but for those who are okay with dark themes, it is a phenomenal read. One to remember, for sure.

This is the first non-Mistborn Sanderson novel I've read. It's about two sister princesses—one proper and modest, the other free-spirited and carefree—who are trying to prevent the war between two nations after one of them is wed to the immortal ruler known as the God King. Warbreaker is sewn together by a unique magic system, one where people with power over "Breath" can awaken objects or even corpses.

This story's world, its magic system, and its characters are all quite compelling, though not to the same degree that the Mistborn trilogy was to me. The middle third was also just a bit too slow for my liking, and the arcs of the main characters weren't, for the most part, incredibly moving to me personally (which isn't to say this is a flaw in the book—everyone just has different experiences and relates to different things). That being said, I did really enjoy Warbreaker as a whole. I loved watching all of the little bits and pieces build up, knowing that there would be a plot avalanche at the end in classic Sanderson style. I loved its twists and turns, and all the moments where I audibly went "What?! That's crazy!" at a new revelation. It was certainly good enough for me to plan on reading its sequel, Nightblood, if it ever does get written. 

The Court of the Dead is the 19th entry of the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles. It's about a group of reformed monsters, including the Minotaur, who decided to leave their evil ways behind and pursue new paths in life. Nico and Will have to help their fellow demigods adapt to the new guests, and solve the mystery of what malicious force is causing the monsters/mythics to disappear one by one.

It's a good book, as good as any other Percy Jackson book Riordan has published in the last few years. Like many of his recent novels, it starts off a bit slow, but gets much more interesting as the plot picks up. The third act of this book was especially gripping—I read the final hundred pages in a single sitting. Riordan books are cozy—they're fun and adventurous with characters I've grown to love (including my namesake Hazel), and they are genuinely funny, but none of them have really surprised me in years. Maybe I'm just too used to this universe by now. As a side note, it makes me really happy that queer characters have become so normalized in Riordan's writing. Makes me feel like the world is healing, in some ways.

The Alloy of Law is about Waxillium Ladrian, a "Twinborn" who has both an Allomantic ability and a Feruchemical one. He teams up with fellow Twinborn Wayne and an academic named Marasi to learn the mystery behind the recent string of traincar robberies, while also starting to uncover the bigger master plan behind the operation. It's the first book of the Way & Wayne series, the sequel to the Mistborn trilogy. This book took me months to read—partially because my life has changed quite a bit since I started the book, and partially because it just didn't grab me like the original trilogy did. In the original trilogy, we see the protagonist go from nothing to a powerful warrior. That's engaging. In this book, though, the main protagonist is already a very competent person, both in fighting and in his detective work. He's compelling, but things are just less interesting to me when we're following someone who already knows what they're doing. It also doesn't help that the main conflict is much lower-stakes than in the original trilogy.

The writing is good, though—the characters are fun (Wayne especially), the magic system has been meaningfully expanded, and there's good worldbuilding. I've heard the rest of the Wax & Wayne books are more compelling, so I'll definitely continue the series once I've read a couple other books from the Cosmere universe (I've heard that this series is more enjoyable that way).

This is one of the most unique books I've ever read. It's based on the "antimeme" idea of SCP-055 and takes place within the SCP universe. It's about incredibly smart people fighting a cognitive/ideatic war without even knowing they're at war, or even precisely what they're up against. It's one of those stories that is difficult to entirely understand, especially on the first read-through—this was my second time reading it, and there are still entire sections that don't make much sense to me. Regardless, it's very well-written, contains incredibly compelling characters, and is wonderfully creative. Very excited for the reworked version to release in November!

This book's existence is fascinating. It tells the story of what a certain character was up to during the events of The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages. It's a relatively light read, with less than a quarter of the word count of book 1 (I was able to finish the second half of Secret History in a single sitting). I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as the previous three books—it's more of a side story, with less narrative depth and fewer interesting threads to follow than the main books. It's worth reading, and fills in a few gaps, but I'm more excited for the Wax & Wayne tetralogy.

I think it will be worth re-reading this book after I'm more familiar with the Cosmere universe, as a significant portion of it was a bit confusing to someone who had only read the Mistborn trilogy.

A review of this book said that Sanderson is an evil genius—I couldn't agree more. This book recontextualizes everything that happened in the first two books, even seemingly insignificant things. There were so many points while reading where I audibly went "No way, what?!". There were also a few big twists I was able to predict, and it made me feel so smart. I will forever be ridiculously proud that I correctly predicted the massive twist at the end of the book—the clues were set up so perfectly, and I managed to pick up on them. If I had any critique, it would be that for most of the book, the two major plotlines felt a little too separate, and so the reading experience could be a bit jarring from chapter to chapter. Still, though, reading this was an incredible experience, especially the crazy final chapter. The Hero of Ages is a phenomenal finale to the incredible Mistborn trilogy.

The Well of Ascension is a phenomenal Mistborn sequel. It follows a very different plot chapter-to-chapter, yet it does an incredible job of expanding upon previously established characters. There are huge twists in this book, ones I didn't see from a mile away, and they put so many previous moments into a different context. The primary magic system—Allomancy—is expanded upon, albeit less than I was hoping for. I believe that this book is essentially as good of a sequel to Mistborn as could reasonably exist, and what it has set up for book 3 is super exciting. I also find it interesting that this book puts much more emphasis on different POVs. Maybe half of book 2 is from the main protagonist's perspective, if even that, and it's done beautifully. The ending of the book is wild, but no spoilers here!

This is a contender for my new favorite book. It's the first part of the Mistborn fantasy trilogy, and is generally self-contained while still doing a great job of setting up a sequel. It has an incredible cast of complex characters and takes place in a well-thought-out world. Everything is tied together with perhaps the best and coolest magic system I've ever seen. Mistborn (aka Mistborn: The Final Empire) is about a girl named Vin who discovers she has the power of a Mistborn, and must use her newfound abilities to help overthrow an immortal tyrant ruler. For any fan of the fantasy genre, I cannot recommend this book enough. Once I got hooked (after 3 chapters or so), I couldn't put it down.