The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdome and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace

I found The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdome and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace by Pedram Shojai at the perfect time. Life has been incredibly stressful these last few years, throwing one thing after another at me (most recently: wildfires). So I welcomed a nonfiction book that I don't even remember putting on hold showing up to hopefully help me with stress management.

The Urban Monk looks at nine common areas that cause people in the modern world problems, including stress, time management, sleep, and money. Shojai examines each problem and uses his views as both a trained monk and a doctor of Chinese medicine to offer solutions. He then further provides "modern hacks" - things that people in the modern Western World can do now to help break the cycle of each problem. Each chapter also starts and ends with a case study, which is based off of real people that Shojai has helped.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading through The Urban Monk. I found Shojai's suggestions helpful and would really like to try them at length. I thought the book was good for a beginner like me (while I'm familiar with some of the things Shojai talks about, I've never really practiced them in real depth or for long). But at times the book does get a little repetitive-sounding. He doesn't so much repeat himself, as offer similar suggestions for different problems (he provides different meditations to try, or suggests different herbs that are helpful). The structure of each chapter is the same as well, so that adds to the repetition (and might turn you off of reading it if you don't like structural repetition like that). His word choice was also a little off-putting at times in that he uses a lot of colloquial language and swears, which seem at odds with the subject matter (but he definitely wasn't as off-putting as I found Chris Crowley in Younger Next Year). I think The Urban Monk is definitely worth the read if you are stressed out by modern life and looking for a new way of thinking about and approaching what life can be like instead.

Stay for a Spell

I absolutely loved Amy Coombe's Stay for a Spell! I saw it at work and the premise sounded like so much fun: a princess gets cursed to never leave a bookshop until she can find her heart's desire. Her parents decide to send all of the princes of the realm to try to help because as everyone knows, love's kiss from a prince is sure to break the spell. And so Princess Tanadelle (or Tandy, as we get to know her as), is trying to live her life in the bookshop while every so often she's interrupted by the arrival of another prince.

While sometime a bit predictable (I knew what the pirate Bash had left in Tandy's shop when he stole all her books on curses fairly early on), Stay for a Spell is such a fun read. I liked all the characters. It was super fun seeing all of the princes different spell-breaking attempts. And I was really rooting for Tandy to succeed: with her bookshop, with her curse, and with learning how to do things on her own. I also liked the direction the book went with Tandy's curse: her heart's desire wasn't something cliche. :)

 Stay for a Spell was the perfect cozy fantasy read. I'll definitely keep my eye out for more by Coombe!

Pirate Latitudes

I found Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes at a little free library recently. I remember really liking Timeline (which I believe I read before starting this blog). And it sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a read.

Pirate Latitudes is the story of the privateer Captain Charles Hunter, who, with the unofficial blessing of England's Governor of Jamaica, Sir James Almont, leaves Port Royal with a crew of "loggers" with the intention of attacking the Spanish port of Matanceros and stealing a treasure-laden Spanish ship. 

The narrative was a little all-over the place. At first the book seemed to be following Almont, but once Hunter was introduced, he quickly became the central character. I wish things had gone back and forth between the two characters though - stuff was happening with Almont at Port Royal with his new secretary, Robert Hacklett, that we didn't get to see.

 At face value, the story is interesting enough. Attacking Matanceros is a difficult proposition, and it was interesting how Hunter went about it. The stakes were also consistently high: his crew was captured early, narrowly escaping death. And even the aftermath of the raid against Matanceros was fraught with danger at every turn.

But this book is full of very unsavory and altogether unlikable characters. While in the end I didn't mind Hunter, I spent a lot of the book not caring what happened to him and his crew. Pretty much everyone was a terrible person doing terrible things. I know that this is a historical fiction book, so it's quite possible that there's some truth to the way everyone was acting. But I honestly didn't want to read about it. 

As someone on Goodreads said, Pirate Latitudes "comes across as a [. . .] project never intended to see the light of day." And I can believe that. In a lot of ways, it felt like the book wasn't polished - it was most likely still a draft that Crichton was working on, or something that he never intended to share with others. 

While I did make it through the whole story, Pirate Latitudes definitely was one of my least favourite Crichton books I've read (I honestly think I enjoyed Jurassic Park better, and I wasn't overly fond of that either). Unless you're a huge fan of his, or really enjoy historical novels about pirates, I'd recommend giving this one a miss.

Isles of the Emberdark

I was so excited to hear that Brandon Sanderson was writing more of his Secret Projects! I asked my partner for the newest one, Isles of the Emberdark, for my birthday and couldn't wait to start reading it!

Isles of the Emberdark is a sequel to a novella Sanderson wrote some time ago. But rather than asking readers to go track down said novella, he incorporated it into the first part of Isles. I absolutely loved the first part of the book! It introduced the protagonist, Sixth of the Dusk, and went back and forth between his present day, where he is struggling to find purpose in his life, and what happened five years ago that led to his current predicament. Dusk was a Trapper, working on the most dangerous island on his world. But the world has changed, and no longer has need of Trappers. Plus with the arrival of people from other worlds, Dusk's people are struggling to navigate through the politics, trying desperately to hold onto their independence. It falls to Dusk to make one last treacherous journey to try to find a solution to his people's struggles.

Unfortunately, after the first part ended, the second part switched narratives to a different character, Starling. While she and her crew were interesting, they weren't who I wanted to be following, and I had a hard time getting myself to continue reading (even knowing that they were going to meet up with Dusk eventually). But I did, and I made it through, and was eventually rewarded with reconnecting with Dusk. And once that happened, I did enjoy the story a lot more. Though I did find myself wondering at times why Starling was there (other than to explain stuff to Dusk) - most of his story could have happened without her.

In the end, I enjoyed Isles of the Emberdark, though not as much as the other Secret Project books I've read. That said, I would very much like a sequel of some sort to see what would happen next! :)

The Faraway Inn

Continuing my quest for cozy fantasy novels, I came across Sarah Beth Durst's The Faraway Inn. I didn't realize it was a young adult book, so I was originally a bit surprised to find the main character, Calisa, was still in high-school. After a bad breakup with her boyfriend, Calisa decides, at the encouragement of her moms, to go and spend the summer helping her great aunt, Auntie Zee, at her bed and breakfast. But Zee isnt interested in her help, originally telling Calisa to go home, but then relenting and letting her stay for a few days. So Calisa takes it upon herself, with the help of Zee's absent landlord's son, Jack, to start cleaning and fixing up the place, hoping to get into Zee's good graces and be allowed to stay for the rest of the summer. 

Of course, not all is at it first seems. The guests are odd, and there's magic afoot. But with Zee's two rules (don't ask questions, and don't open any doors without permission), how will Calisa figure out what's going on?

...Quite easily, actually. She'll just break the rules every chance she gets. This was my biggest pet peeve of the story. I hoped Calisa might be able to figure out what was going on through some other means. Maybe she would start piecing things together as she was cleaning, or discover things in the library (with the help of the very-helpful library ladder). But nope. She just kept asking questions every chance she got (mostly of Jack), and opening doors (and even stealing her aunt's master key to get into some of the guest rooms) to figure out what was happening.

My other peeve of the story was how over the top Calisa was whenever she so much as glanced at Jack. Yes, he's very handsome. I get it. I don't need to be reminded of it with like every thought you have when you're speaking with him. Thankfully this calmed down a bit by about the midpoint of the book. 

That's also when the book started to get a little more interesting. Auntie Zee disappears while going to get supplies, and after trying to hold the fort, so to speak, for a bit, Calisa and Jack start looking for her. Their adventures take them into some pretty interesting places and they meet some really interesting people. Plus they end up getting to know the few guests at the inn a bit better and helping them out.

Most of the characters were quite good, too. I really liked Jack, and how earnest he was. He was so good-natured and dependable, even though he was obviously struggling trying to maintain everything with his father missing that you just couldn't help but like him. Mulligan was a rather odd guest, but I quite liked him because he was so different (and like Calisa, I had fun trying to figure out if he was something like a vampire or not). The mirror was pretty funny. And I really liked Melidor, the dryad, and her story of taking the time she needed to decide what she wanted for herself, rather than just giving in to the demands of her family.  

Also: Steve, the obviously-he's-a-dragon lizard that Calisa finds in a linen closet. He's very much like a cat, hanging out with Calisa and wanting to be involved in whatever she's doing. I enjoyed him just hanging out and tagging along with her and Jack wherever they went.

 While I had some issues with this book (and Calisa in particular), overall I did enjoy reading The Faraway Inn. :)

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves

I can't remember why I wanted to read The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves. But when I first started reading it, a friend of mine saw me with it and said it was good. So I had really high hopes for it....and almost stopped reading it because I found it rather boring in the beginning. 

In The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves, one hundred years ago, the emperor of a country (I think? I'm going to call it a country) disappeared. No one is entirely sure what happened, but the Sea God, who was like a brother to the emperor, forsook the people and disappeared beneath the waves, bringing dangerous storms to their shores. In a desperate attempt to stop the storms, the people started sacrificing women, known as Sea Brides, to the god. And the storms would abate for a year, at which point they would need to sacrifice another girl to the god. This year, everyone knows Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village, is going to be the Sea Bride. But when the time comes for the sacrifice, Mina, the younger sister of the man who loves Shim Cheong, sacrifices herself instead, wanting her brother to be happy and her family to be safe. But when she enters the Spirit Realm, home of the Sea God, everything is not as it seems: the Sea God has been cursed and asleep all this time. And Mina learns that she has just one month to break the curse before she becomes a spirit herself!

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves starts out as a kind of typical teen romantasy - a girl and a guy (Mina and Shin, in this case) who want nothing to do with each other end up thrown together and slowly start to respect and then love one another. Also, Shin just happens to be the immortal being who has been protecting the Sea God all this time (made me think of Twilight, honestly because Mina happens to be 16 - gave me some Edward/Bella vibes in terms of the relationship). Mina also is a typical headstrong female lead character - charging around and doing stuff even when people ask her politely not to. So that was all pretty annoying.

But then somewhere along the way, the narrative seemed to shift. Mina promised Shin she wouldn't leave his House without him....and actually listened. Shin always honored whatever he said he was going to do, and willingly took her to places to help her on her quest. Mina also got to know his guardians/friends/brothers (Namgi and Kirin) well, and everyone started to respect one another, even if they didn't 100% get along all the time. It was...refreshing.

I also really liked all of the main characters. Besides Mina and Shin, I liked the contrast between Namgi and Kirin. Not just the differences between their personalities, but also how they weren't what you would expect (Namgi in particular in this regard - he was a creature that even Kirin didn't really trust at the beginning of the story, but they became brothers in truth by the end of the narrative). 

While some of it was a tad predictable (I had strong suspicions pretty early on about the Sea God, though I will admit I started doubting them a bit as the narrative continued), I overall really enjoyed The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea in the end. It is a really good story about not just love but loyalty and family as well. I liked the world, I liked the characters, I liked the plot; I would be interested in reading more by Axie Oh one day! :)

Operation Bounce House

Someone recommended Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl to me a little while ago. While waiting to get a hold of it from the library, his newest book, Operation Bounce House, came out, so I decided to give that a try.

In Operation Bounce House, the people of New Sonora become the target of a corporation's new game, Operation Bounce House, where human players can pay to build mechs and fight against the evil "New Sonoran terrorists." Only....there are no terrorists, just a bunch of farmers who are trying to peacefully live their lives. But unknown to the game's creator, Oliver Lewis and his sister still have functioning bots who help them on their farm, including an advanced AI named Roger who coordinates the worker drones. And after they come under attack, Roger initiates their defensive mode. These farmers aren't going to just lay down and die while Earth steals their land: they're going to fight!

While I, overall enjoyed Operation Bounce House, I have to admit that the premise and plot made me very uncomfortable. I can see something like this happening, potentially even here on Earth right now. The way the Earthers talked about the New Sonorans being "other" and "subhuman" is a known propaganda tactic used in wars (I remember reading about how soldiers in the World Wars would call the enemy by different terms to make them not-human in their heads). So yeah, be warned if you're reading this book: it is very uncomfortable at times. 

 Plus, you know, a lot of people die. It's not a happy book.

But as I said, I still did enjoy the book. Dinniman is a really good writer, particularly in a cinematic sense: I could picture the action really well (and think this would make a fantastic TV series or movie). I loved all the characters and how they all worked together to try to stay alive (and how they decided to stick it to the game company). The worldbuilding was really interesting, how the main characters were part of the "orphan generation" because all their parents who were born on-world died (and how the fix ended up the thing the Earthers used to claim the New Sonorans were "subhuman," even though they were the same with the exception of that one change in their genes so that they wouldn't die like their parents did). 

I also liked how so much only happened because the Earthers were terrified. The very thing they feared would happen did happen only because they attacked New Sonora. Had they left the planet alone, nothing would have happened.

Operation Bounce House is a fast, addicting read (I stayed up really late to finish it last night). If you're okay with the dark subject matter, it's definitely worth checking out. But do be aware of the subject matter as it is an uncomfortable look at where our culture could go.