Category: Young-Adult

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m a sucker for fantasy that promises a strong female protagonist, and this book delivered. Other than a propensity to randomly cry, Zora is a competent woman. And while her motivation is not as noble as that of other female protagonists, it is a legitimate one. After all, nothing is more dangerous than I woman scorned. 

I enjoyed the book well enough to read it through and to have an interest in a sequel, but it’s evident that this book has much more potential than what was delivered. The plot is solid, but the world wasn’t. We are introduced to a magic system that is never explained and the world with rules and laws that seem arbitrary. As a result, certain stakes just don’t hold the weight that they could. 

The major downfall of this book is over-simple writing. The writing is not that of a final book, not even a second draft really. There are many scenes that would benefit from being drawn out that just aren’t and at times the writing just seems incomplete. It’s a quick read as a result, which isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s just missing something. 

I enjoyed the book, I’m interested to see more. I feel like first books in YA fantasy series are allowed an amount of leeway for the author to focus on what they think is the most important thing to set up, in this case, that was the characters and plot. I’m open to a sequel in the hopes that it fleshes out this world more because there is definitely great potential.

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Like with many books I read, I went into this book relatively blind. I’ve never heard of the author, I’d seen the cover, and skimmed the synopsis. My interest was immediately piqued with the little I was able to glean from my quick lookover. I do this because I don’t want to have many expectations when going into a book; and let me tell you, that really paid off because this was yet another five-star read. 

Hush is an exceptional debut and introduction to an interesting and vividly created world. I don’t always know what to expect from YA Fantasy, with the world or characters not being fleshed out as well as standard Fantasy. This book exceeded this notion though, with well-developed and sympathetic characters as well as a world depicted through beautiful but clear descriptions. I found that I could imagine the event of this book quite clearly, without the usual fuzziness I tend to experience with some fantasy novels. 

There were times where I found myself annoyed with the protagonist but in a good way. I was able to understand her motivations and actions, even if I didn’t agree with them. This made me like her quite a bit, though because she felt like a real person. She’s not perfect, but not in the manufactured sense. Her reactions felt organic to the situations, and that was refreshing. 

I am in love with the magic system (let’s just be honest, all of the world-building really). It fits well with the plot and themes the author presents and provides an amazing allegory for our society. After reading it, I found myself thinking about how the book relates to things going on in the world, and my mind was just blown. This is definitely a book I see myself reading again and again, and in doing so, I hope to pick up on the more minute details the author’s provided us. 

I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It’s truly a gem that deserves to be read by many.

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Okay, let’s start with the positives of this book: the cover is absolutely gorgeous. It was what brought me into this, at least the primary thing that did. The second was the concept, it’s an interesting concept, one I’d generally be interested in reading. 

The only thing was… this book is bad. Like, really bad. It was almost a herculean task to get through this one. The writing was very inconsistent and the writing told much more than showed. The sentences were stifled by their poor grammar usage and the excessive use of Japanese words throughout this English book. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, especially with words that are commonly used in English, such as katana, but words that otherwise would have been translated if this was a translated piece were left in this book. Words with easy translations, such as “baka.”

Honestly, this book reads like a bad anime fan-fiction. The book definitely seems to romanticize Japanese culture in a short-sighted matter. This book just isn’t worth the time.

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