Dengeki Daisy

A great series of amazing characters. 

Dengeki Daisy is about a high school girl named Teru who lives on her own since her brother passed away from cancer. However she is not alone. She has Daisy. Her brother gave her a phone before he died and said that when she needed someone to talk to, talk to Daisy. At first she didn't want to, but as the mental need arose she began emailing him. Daisy has been her biggest support through her hardest times and she's never seen him in person. 

Enter Kurosaki. The janitor and groundskeeper at Teru's high school. Through some forced persuasion, he gets Teru to help take care of the school grounds. They start becoming friends and their punky relationship is one of the funniest things. The way they act around each other is hysterical. 

This series has computer hackers, gun fights, kidnappings, cute and amazingly funny romances, and secrets from the dead. Each of the characters is unique and has their own stories, which is sometimes hard to get. Teru's brother is such a good guy and I wish he was around for all of them. 

I think my favorite part in the series was when Kurosaki was trying to leave and Teru, in her own mischievous way, gets him to come back. Teru is a much different character than most of the other typical "shoujo mangas" heroines. Instead of being clingy and having little stars or flowers every time something cute happens, she often does something to change the subject or bops him on the head or something obnoxious. And what's awesome is that Kurosaki does the same thing back to her. Their relationships if funny and different. And they still have very cute moments to make your inner-chick-flick watcher squee. 

The premous of the stories and their adventures are different too. They are more high stake and the fact that computer hacking is even a thing makes it engaging and, again, different. Throughout most of the series there was always something that kept me going. If life hadn't gotten crazy, I would have finished it a month ago. I will warn that, for me, volume 14 and bits of 15 were slow in my opinion. There was lots of meetings that didn't seem to really do anything. But if you push through you'll very much enjoy the end. 

I very much enjoyed the series. 

Hero at the Fall

Hero at the Fall is the final installment of the A Rebel of the Sands novels and, boy, was it great.

After finally escaping the Sultan's harem while spying for the Rebel Prince, she finds herself trapped behind a magic wall inside the city with only half of rebellions leaders. The others have been captured and somehow taken out of the city to an unknown location. Amani, being a Djinni's daughter and also somehow injured, she's had trouble grasping onto sands she once controlled. After kidnapping the princess that betrayed them and finding how to get out, they start a long trip to find their Rebel Prince. They end up encountering more Djinni, Shadowalkers, invading armies, and old family, not to mention the golden killing machines that can vaporize people who are being commanded by the Sultan and power by her Djinni father and that's before they even get to Prince Ahmed and the others. She is steps up, feeling very much inadequate to lead the rebellion against the Sultan that always seems three steps ahead and always moving forward.

My favorite thing of this whole series is the voice. Even after a year waiting for this book to come out, I instantly felt at home back on the sands with Amani and Jin. There are some books that it takes a while to get back into the groove of a story. Not here. Alwyn Hamilton's voice that she presents is distinct and memorable  making it easy to step back into Amani's shoes and pick up right where we left off.

What makes this book great too is every moment there is something going on. We don't have a fall interest though the action tempers when people talk and discuss. We see the internal debate that is fighting insider her: the feeling of inadequacy because she's just seventeen and getting people killed, not intentionally of course, as wells as the "gifts" the Sin Maker that would help people live. Then, of course, there are the amazing moments when she sails over the Sea of Sands or faces the Destroyer of the World, and that is even before she reaches the Sultan. There is constantly something happening that kept me engaged and wanting more.

The books is mainly about Amani and there isn't much conversation between her and Jin or her and Shazad. There isn't much dialog in general comparatively to internal thought and storytelling. But that is okay here. It is set up as a storyteller would have told it and it fits well here.

The relationship between her and Jin is rocky here because of the stress Amani is under and does rely heavily on the previous stories. So if the reader comes to this book first, they would probably be disappointed in the building of this relationship because in Hero at the Fall is isn't really there. It is told of, but not given the opportunity to be shown here and, again, I'm okay with it.  There reaches a point toward the end when Jin and Amani become intimate. The moment is descriptive of her feelings more than physical touches. It was modestly done while still getting the point across. So, if that makes you uncomfortable, you can easily skim through and read the dialog or skip to the next chapter. If it doesn't bother you so much, I think it was done well.

I also have nothing bad to say about the characters. They didn't change/flip flop on themselves or do something uncharacteristically them. They grew as people do. They had their virtues and vices. We were given the internal dialog for Amani and her struggles that change throughout the book. I enjoyed getting to know them.

It was great fun and I'd like to read them again. The books before are A Rebel of the Sand and Traitor to the Throne.

Promise of Blood

Promise of Blood is a mix of the French Revolution and magic.

Field Marshal Tamas and his group of powerful Gun Powder Mages overthrow their king who was about to pretty much enslave their people to another nation because the debts were too high. Tamas successfully takes the city for the people and is rather successful at keeping it too. But then trouble comes calling not only from outside forces (the nation they were about to be sold off to, though not in so many words), but also from inside his own group counselors. Tamas is ambushed, kidnapped, severely injured, and almost dies often in this book as he's trying to find out who he can trust.

Adamat is a retired investigator who is hired by Tamas to find out information about a they dying words of cabals they were killing during this coup. Then to investigate who this traitor is among the ranks. But is he able to be trusted too?

Taniel, Tamas' son, is sent with his mute "savage" companion to track down the Privileged, a high powered sorceress, who decimated a portion of Tamas' troops. But there are more things gone one than just being a powerful Privileged. She seems more than just good.

Then also there is Malahi, this mysterious chef who appears out of nowhere, cooks the best food which also appears out of nowhere, and supposes himself a God.

This book actually took me a long time to read, comparatively. There were moments in the middle of a fight when I was willing to put it down and go get a sandwich, which is pretty sad. It seemed very slow going and it was hard to tell where our destinations were. There were few lamp posts in this fog and they seemed very far apart. You could chop the book up into two parts, I guess. Easily based on the "mystery" part that the investigator Adamat and what he finds out. But it felt weird because I didn't know where it was going.

It also got very bloody (hence the title) right off. Much like the French Revolution, there were mass executions of the nobility just so then they couldn't have claim to the throne. It dims down on the gore part as it goes on, so if you don't care for messy scenes and you can muscle through it, it'll get better. Though the fight scenes happen very often. As I said, Tamas gets kidnapped, ambushed, sliced and diced, and gets broken a lot. Though he doesn't heal instantly, so I'll give him that reality. But that was just Tamas, not everyone in this war.

This is not a romantic fantasy story in any real sense of the word. There are five girls who are named and alive in the whole book that aren't background characters. One is just a background character for this book who gets a few lines said mainly to Tamas even though she is Taniel's ex-fiance. Two are seen as crazy and trying to kill everyone. Another is a laundress who gets the most wordage on the page, but there still isn't much of it comparatively to the other characters. And the last is a mute, who is supposed to be mysterious and funny, which I guess she is, but there are other ways to make a girl mysterious without cutting out her tongue.

There is a lot of jumping in this book from different peoples point of view. Which I don't mind, but it had the tendency of shifting the time line a little, I think. It was a very character based book with their decisions making the story go forward. Which is okay, I personally would have wanted more plot points to help me guess where it was going.

It seemed seems the book was based around fighting and food. Lol.

I think it was well written and the mix  of gunpowder and magic is new. The religion that was created was intriguing and I would like to see how that develops more. The world setting and cultures of the people were well developed.

I will probably read the next ones in this trilogy because the characters that were developed were intriguing enough and the world was fantastic. I do hope that the girls do get some more voice and that the mute finds someway to speak through her sorcery powers.