Fourth Wing

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros                                            Fantasy, Action, Dragons

(from Amazon)  Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.  But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.  With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.  She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.  Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.  Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.    

(My Review)

This book has been wildly popular - and hard to get a copy of.  I felt it lived up to the hype.  Young Violet is well-suited for a life among scholars, but her life is turned upside down when she is summoned to join the "dragon riders".  As a "dragon rider" cadet, she faces many dangers, not just trying to bond and ride a dragon, but also from other cadets (due to who her mother is).  What Violet lacks in physicality, she excels in intelligence and quick thinking.  She even finds romance.  

Yellowface

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang                                                  Asian American Literary Fiction

(from Amazon)  Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

(My Review)

June is a struggling author, who makes a life-changing decision when her successful-author friend, Athena Liu, dies in her presence, along with a manuscript she has just completed.  June decides to re-edit it, and claim it as her own.  This satire is such an interesting discussion of authorship, plagiarism, and representation. Interesting read.

 

Warrior Girl Unearthed

Warrior Girl Unearthed (The Firekeeper's Daughter, Book 2) by Angeline Boulley     

                                                                                     Multicultural Thriller and Suspense for Teens

(from Amazon)  Perry Firekeeper-Birch was ready for her Summer of Slack but instead, after a fender bender that was entirely not her fault, she’s stuck working to pay back her Auntie Daunis for repairs to the Jeep.  Thankfully she has the other outcasts of the summer program, Team Misfit Toys, and even her twin sister Pauline. Together they ace obstacle courses, plan vigils for missing women in the community, and make sure summer doesn’t feel so lost after all.  But when she attends a meeting at a local university, Perry learns about the “Warrior Girl”, an ancestor whose bones and knife are stored in the museum archives, and everything changes. Perry has to return Warrior Girl to her tribe. Determined to help, she learns all she can about NAGPRA, the federal law that allows tribes to request the return of ancestral remains and sacred items. The university has been using legal loopholes to hold onto Warrior Girl and twelve other Anishinaabe ancestors’ remains, and Perry and the Misfits won’t let it go on any longer.  Using all of their skills and resources, the Misfits realize a heist is the only way to bring back the stolen artifacts and remains for good. But there is more to this repatriation than meets the eye as more women disappear and Pauline’s perfectionism takes a turn for the worse. As secrets and mysteries unfurl, Perry and the Misfits must fight to find a way to make things right–for the ancestors and for their community.                                   

(My Review)

Perry stumbles into an internship working in her tribe's museum, and begins to learn more about stolen artifacts and the struggles to repatriate tribal artifacts that have been stolen by private, and even by scholarly collectors for hundreds of years.  The author is excellent at introducing and even educating readers to important multicultural information, without feeling you are being lectured.  The story also covers the very real topic of the high rates of disappearance among indigenous women. The characters are real and engaging.  There is a suspenseful mystery and even romance.  This was an excellent sequel, but could definitely be read as a stand-alone.