Ribbon

A twenty-something woman from Earth is reborn in a fantasy world. Reborn in the most literal sense. It's not written in gross detail but there is a first person childbirth scene from the perspective of the baby. This is one of those books that is about a child but isn't for children. It covers the first twelve or thirteen years of Alanna's life but she has a young adult's capacity for using bad words.

The first third of the book is set on a farm, which is very exciting for a fantasy farming fanatic like me. Alanna has to learn girl chores like washing dishes or sweeping, but sometimes the farm needs all hands on deck. She also sometimes goes foraging in the forest with her brothers. Once her magic is discovered, training with the local wizard takes up much of her time.

Alanna is a bard and it's very much the utility caster type. She learns some healing, create food, create water, and other minor spells that another spellcaster could do better. Magic is rare in this world, so that “other spellcaster” is rarely an option.

I found it hard to keep track of Alanna's physical age. The narrative reminds us sometimes but she has the mind of an adult so she feels older. The book occasionally changes from Alanna's perspective to other characters, still first person. The character is made clear at the start of each section and the voices are distinct. A small child won't be told everything, so it helps give context for things happening around her.

The worldbuilding is cool. Border farms, small towns, big cities, and everything in between all feel distinctly different. Two religious sects are fleshed out as well as several professions. It also has, quite honestly, the most interesting take on fantasy world birth control I've ever read.

There is no grand climax or resolution in this book, but also no cliffhanger. It definitely feels like a web serial. The author's Goodreads lists five books currently.

Content warning: Pregnancy loss

For a Disney Princess book, this one is pretty good. It's about Rapunzel as a young child, bored and lonely in her tower, teaching herself various hobbies and befriending Pascal. She isn't good at painting or baking at first but she practices and practices until she gets good. She's very relatable to little girls reading/listening to this story. Young Rapunzel is adorable of course and there are a couple pages where you can play “find Pascal” in the pictures.

It's like Da Vinci Code for kids, without the blasphemy. I wasn't expecting much but Maze of Bones is a fun read. The main characters have a pretty typical sibling relationship, which works since the main focus is the puzzle solving. They have a lot of clue-chasing rivals and I had a little trouble keeping track of them all.

I'm a little concerned at how long this series is going to be. This book only gets through the first clue. If this becomes a 39-book series, I'm out.

Maisie Hitchins, who dreams of being a detective like the Sherlock Holmes expy who lives nearby, stumbles across two mysteries at the same time. Who abandoned that darling puppy on the cover? And what about the stolen sixpence in the book's title? Children's mysteries have to hit a delicate balance, not too obvious nor subtle, not too trite nor serious. The Case of the Stolen Sixpence is right on the mark.

There are wonderful illustrations, sprinkled throughout the book, of the characters and events. Maisie has wonderful curly hair, which is generally under represented in media.

Time to reset the “books since last sexual assault” timer! It's not as clear cut as in the first book, but it's very uncomfortable and I'd say it crosses the line. I believe this is the first book with the main couple having premarital sex.

The book starts out strong emotionally. Fran is married, his brother is attracted to her, and then husband dies and they both struggle with survivor's guilt. She deals with it, he runs away with it. And then Michael drops that part of his character because he wants to bang.

Content Warning: Bullying. Skip the prologue if you can't stand scenes of bullying. You won't miss anything vital, as everything it contains is referenced when pertinent.

Content Warning: Sexual assault. And we're supposed to forgive it.

The story starts as a “pretend we're dating” scheme as the blurb describes, but quickly switches to “he's damaged but I can fix him with love.” As Daphne repeatedly points out, she has three older brothers so she's used to the rough ways of men. Aka she's “not like other girls.” Simon doesn't talk much due to a stutter he's mostly conquered, but otherwise he's pretty standard. Daphne's mother is the best character. I'd enjoy a book from her perspective, manipulating her children into marriage.

Oh and the sex scenes are super vanilla.

Most ancient creatures books stick to dinosaurs but not this one! Once Upon A Mastodon teaches about prehistoric mammals, with awesome art and typical Seussian rhyme. There's some tricky words to read aloud but the rhymes don't hinge on getting them right most of the time, so you've got some wiggle room.

While I recommend Masterminds, I cannot recommend the audiobook. Each chapter shifts perspectives between the kids and the audiobook uses different readers for each. Most are good but one reads dialog for the female characters with a really annoying voice. The other readers read the girls normally so it's inconsistent and annoying.

The book doesn't end in a cliffhanger but it's definitely not a satisfying conclusion. Have book 2 ready.

Darker and edgier horse book, for those outgrowing Misty of Chincoteague but not ready to leave horse books behind. Unless carnivorous horses appeal to you, I recommend the Heralds of Valdemar books instead.

The audiobook has different readers for the male and female leads, which works well enough until the two have conversations with one another. The female reader makes everyone sound very young, mid-teens usually. The male reader makes Sean sound 25-30. Someone really dropped the ball on making the audiobook mesh.

Incredibly trite. Good for tweens who still love fairy tales but are taking an interest in fashion and love triangles. For anyone else you've got to be pretty bored.

There are little scraps of distopian future, reality show, and politics tropes and more focus on any of those could have made it more interesting but mostly it's all about fashion, bland friendships, and PG makeout scenes. The narrator dodges saying words like “sex” or “rape” but the topics come up multiple times.

I listened to the audiobook, which is incredibly lackluster. The reader has just one “male” voice, so it can get confusing on the few occasions two males are actually interacting. Her “female” voice is her normal speaking voice, so there's no variation there. Spoken aloud, the names of the two love interests, Maxon and Aspen, are similar enough that I got confused several times.

Young owls are being kidnapped and indoctrinated into a cult. Soren realizes what's happening before the brainwashing takes hold and struggles to find a way to escape and maintain his individuality.

This is a pretty disturbing book. So many horrid and manipulative things happen in this owl cult. Great but not for the fainthearted young reader.

Two high school beauticians. A boy with great ambition, who only makes over already beautiful girls. A girl with no interest but great skill, who makes over girls who need more work but have great inner beauty. She doesn't want to be a beautician but gets dragged into a make over competition against the boy.

Is it shallow? Yes. Is it pretty? Yes. Is that good enough for a “high school experts” manga? Probably. At least in this first issue, none of the main characters have fallen in love with each other. So that's a relief.

A civil engineer gets pulled into an elf body in another world where elves are an oppressed race. While the subtitle says to expect kingdom building, it takes two thirds of the book to get to it.

Elf Empire combines whimsy, modern American quips, and high fantasy.
* Whimsy: Leo befriends a dragon who acts like a large dog and there are humanoid rabbit folk.
* Quips: He introduces “that's what she said” to this world, among other things.
* High fantasy: Dragons, golems, orcs, wargs, elves, etc. All the staples.

The game system of this world isn't the default/generic type some LitRPG sticks to and Leo struggles to figure it out. It's creative and gives the “alien world” feel... but I tuned most of it out after a couple minutes of listing ability options at the first level. Most of the time the author sticks to detailing only the relevant parts, thankfully.

While the world starts fairly light, we soon get into very heavy topics including racism, slavery, genocide, sexual assault, ableism, and gruesome violence.

Audiobook: Characters yell at each other a lot, which the narrator depicts by yelling farther away from the microphone. It doesn't hurt your ears but it draws attention from the book to the medium itself. Each major character has a distinct voice and Leo has two - a posh British elf speaking voice and an American inner voice.

There are a few errors that made it into the audiobook recording, where “Leo” and “Lily” get mixed up. Always in a “you know what they mean” context but it will annoy sticklers.

Claire is a rival character in an otome game and she's already getting her bad ending. Sometimes she dreams of being a college girl whose roommate is playing that otome game, but which world is real - or maybe both - is unclear.

This is a very pretty addition to the “otome game is real” shoujo manga trend. All the major characters have distinct appearances and Claire's clothing changes with her status in life. There's some really nice scenery too.

The magic system isn't fleshed out in the first volume other than how people receive their magic and power levels. There's a ritual with the water of a sacred fountain and the color the water shines reflects how strong they are. Silver and white are best but Claire gets light pink, which is very low tier and unheard of for her family.

After a rough start, everything coincidentally goes very well for Claire. This is a relaxing read, not dramatic or stressful at all. Some readers will be bored to tears, others will love it.

The formatting on Kindle takes some getting used to. Pages go right to left but panels go down from the left side then right.

Chi plays with other kittens around the neighborhood and I teared up a little because one has no family or home. Chi learns how to stay warm when it's cold out and dry when it rains. Very cute and full color but the baby talk translation (“pway” instead of “play”) is annoying.

I didn't approach this as a game system, but rather worldbuilding ideas. There are a lot of great concepts that make sense if applied to various magical girl anime and manga. Toward the end of several sections, ideas are given for how things might change depending on the maturity level the players want. From the straightforward and simple Pretty Cure types, to the moral and ethical dilemmas of Madoka Magica subversions. This is a great resource for magical girl enthusiasts.

Your enjoyment of King's League is going to depend heavily on how you feel about pop culture references in books. Like accidentally opening the pour side of the pepper container instead of sift, this book has too much for my taste and I found it hard to enjoy the otherwise fine book.

This is a VR MMO LitRPG but the real world still has some relevance. Dirk sells in-game items for real-world money and often has to choose between keeping gear to survive in-game or selling it to pay rent and buy groceries.

The King's League game sounds miserable. PKill encouraged, extremely harsh penalties for dying, and painfully slow progression. Dirk soon finds an overpowered god-helmet that increases his experience gains, so at least we don't have to suffer for long. He discovers corruption among the highest level players and most popular streamer and sets out to overthrow their tyrany. Hopefully not get evicted from his apartment.

The fight scenes are well written and varied. Dirk fights lots of different monster and player types, solo and occasionally in a group. Locations are varied and described well. There are only a few characters but they each have different voices.

Content warnings: Player killing and bullying, objectification of women, fat phobia, giant spiders, the R slur once. The closest the book gets to having a female character is one conversation 97% of the way through.

Despite how it seems from the blurb, the bulk of this book takes place prior to the magic academy. The journey there drags, especially since teleportation magic exists and the adventurers have a high level mage.

The book is mostly first person, from Nico's point of view. The tone shifts between a believably inhuman dragon to extremely human, including some modern slang. It made it difficult getting into the story. Some chapters change to third person limited, from the perspective of Cami or one of the adventurers. These often rewind the action to overlap with what we've already seen from Nico's perspective.

Be warned, this book ends on a mild cliffhanger.

Freshman Drive is less LitRPG as it is science fiction with some kind of nanobot based system. The system encourages better habits like eating well, doing laundry, and maintaining good hygiene. In exchange it excelerates the healing of Deke's sports injury. The stats don't have much context or effect events. He eventually gets abilities to play basketball better.

The story centers around jocks and cheerleaders in a college setting. Deke's nerd friends are the only really likable characters, but the constant references to legally-distinct-Firefly get old. Early on there isn't a whole lot of basketball but in the last quarter there are a lot of games described in detail and I found myself skimming heavily.

I think this book is well written and technically very good, but it's very much not for me. It covers Deke's freshman year of college, so presumably this will be a four book series.

Content warnings: Depression, self harm, domestic abuse, needles, steroids, gross bodily fluid stuff

Apocalypse Parenting starts slow and low-stakes. The power goes out and there's a bunch of aggressive rodents in the yard. I promise it picks up. The anxiety ramps up slowly but steadily throughout the book.

Meghan is home with her three kids, aged 9, 6, and 3. Her husband was on a business trip when everything started so she has to figure this out on her own and hopefully with neighbors she barely knows. Apocalypse Parenting feels like an exercise in “How would YOU survive the system apocalypse?” Childrens toys are repurposed and barely-remembered facts from television shows are used to survive. I'm not sure readers outside North America will find it very relatable.

Casual Farming has far more combat than I was expecting. Crabgrass and other weed monsters attack the farm constantly until Jason builds a fence. As the farm grows, it attracts more interesting monsters, but the first half of the book is lots of boring critters.

The first chapter is six years in the future, so we already know who Jason will eventually marry. That sucks the tension out of all romantic relationships and rivalries. That's a shame because only the first relationship chronologically has any chemistry and we know it's not going anywhere.

Things I like:
- Every chapter is one day and starts with the same wake up text. It cements the “farm game” feel.
- The nearby dungeon functions similarly to one in an adventurer based gamelit story but it's not Jason's career so the story doesn't focus on it too much.

Writing could really use an editor but is fine by gamelit/KU standards.