Review: Karma Under Fire

What kind of girl doesn’t love a good “enemies to lovers” storyline? Put a multicultural twist on it, and I’m hooked. That’s exactly what author Love Hudson-Maggio delivers in this fun, quick romp of a read about an American girl on a quest to start a jewelry business who meets an hot up-and-coming Indian chef. Both of them are in the process of being set up by their parents with arranged marriages — neither of which they’re excited about or even know about for a little while. They meet when Tej Mayur actually fires Harlow Kennedy from an account she’s working on at a lame job she doesn’t like. After her firing, she figures she’ll plan the rest of her life after taking a break from life while visiting India, where her best friend is getting married. But lo and behold, she gets on the plane and finds herself sitting next to Tej. It is uncomfortable and awkward, but ultimately they can’t stop thinking of each other. When her friend’s wedding doesn’t turn out exactly as planned, it makes Harlow rethink the entire notion of love and marriage. Meanwhile, Tej has zero interest in the marriage his parents surprise him with. Tej and Harlow spend a lot of time together, putting each other through tests and games. But the whole time, they are well aware of what they really want. Are they willing to reach out and grab it though?

The cat-and-mouse game becomes a little annoying, especially when Harlow agrees to let Tej set her up on dates with other men. And why is she suddenly so open to a possible arranged marriage when her mother is trying to set one up for her at home, and she has no interest in that one? I also found myself wondering how many American girls are really subjecting themselves to arranged marriages in the States these dates? There were several plotholes that threw me, but the love story and connection between the two main characters got me in the end. It is karma after all.

Movie vs. Book: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

As the prequel to The Hunger Games series, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a fun origin story on the evil of Coriolanus Snow, who essentially develops the modern-day Hunger Games that is then ended (spoiler alert!) in the final book of the series. The movie adaptation of this prequel novel does a pretty good job of sticking to the story, which is long. The fun surprise of both is that the Hunger Games only make up the first half of the story, but there is much more to develop afterward. Here are the few differences the movie does make from the novel.

1. The movie allowed Lucy Gray to finish her “performance” at the reaping
   • In the movie, when Lucy Gray has her name called at the reaping ceremony, she take the stage and performs. She is allowed to complete her performance because the audience is so awestruck by her talent and charm. In the novel, however, the evil of the people in charge of the Games shines through, as she is dragged off the stage, mid-performance.
2. No funerals for killed mentors :
   • In both the book and movie, a bunch of mentors for the Hunger Games are killed before the Games even begin. In the novel, each of the mentors killed are honored in a proper funeral, which delay the start of the Hunger Games. The funerals are eliminated from the movie.
3. Clemensia isn’t seen again after being bit by the snakes
   • As part of the torturing of the mentors in the story, one of them, Clemensia, is bitten by snakes. Coriolanus Snow’s relationship with Clemensia is complicated, as are many of his relationships in the novel. He sees her in the hospital as he recovers from his own injuries, but avoids visiting her as she recovers in the hospital. He eventually apologizes to her, and they reconcile, but the instance emphasizes the damage caused by the snakes. Much of this is eliminated from the movie.
4. Explanation and severity of the snakes
   • Speaking of the snakes, their power and the damage they inflict is a bit of a mystery in the novel. Corio has to figure out what they do and how they operate and harm people so that he can use that as a tactic to help Lucy Gray later in the games. But in the movie, Dr. Gaul outright explains to him and the other mentors what the snakes do, which drops some of the creepy mystery of it all. The snakes also seem a little more severe in the film, in that Lucy Gray almost dies from them at the end of the Hunger Games. In the novel, her singing keeps them at bay. In the movie, her singing calms them a bit, but they continue to still move slowly up her body until the mentors convince those in charge to end the Hunger Games.
5. Cornucopia bloodbath
   • In the novel, the Hunger Games competitors die more slowly and one at a time. In the film, the start of the Hunger Games is a bloodbath — similar to that seen in the other books and movies — where the competitors fight over supplies and weapons and instantly kill many of each other just as the Games begin. The movie is clearly trying to speed the plot along here.
6. Love story between Lucy Gray and Snow
   • The biggest bummer to me is that the love story between Lucy Gray and Snow is much better and more believable in the book. I believe they kiss sooner in the novel, and because the book is told from Snow’s point of view, the reader is getting more insight into his strong feelings for Lucy Gray. That helps in making it difficult to see how evil he really is until the very end. In the film, the love story is not as heavy of a focus. This is not a problem for the romance, but for the evolution of Snow’s character. Because the viewer is not seeing him as infatuated with her, he seems evil from the start, so his dark actions at the end of the novel don’t appear to be that shocking or haunting.

Lara’s Top Picks of 2023

Better late than never, right?! Here are my favorite 10 books of all the 26 books I read last year, in descending order, complete with links to full reviews of each of them. You’ll notice a small handful of Colleen Hoover books; that’s because I did a Colleen Hoover binge last summer and discovered they are a true guilty pleasure for me. Last year happened to be a year of great reads for me, and the top 5 on this list could have really gone in any order. Each of them was incredible.

10. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. It’s the ultimate story of “girl tries to fix boy,” but in this one, she actually does it. While people may hate that trope, I couldn’t put this book down.

9. November 9 by Colleen Hoover. Two lovers meet on November 9 every year as their love story grows. It’s a silly trope that’s been done before, and yet here, it still works.

8. Naturally Tan by Tan France. The Queer Eye host uses his memoir as a vehicle for also offering fashion advice and self-help tips he’s learned along the way. Eloquent and fashionable, just like Tan, himself.

7. Verity by Colleen Hoover. A thriller and page-turner that will make you feel a little icky, but that you won’t be able to put down. For those who like Gone Girl.

6. The Incomplete Book of Running by Peter Sagal. It will make you laugh, and it will make you cry. NPR Host Peter Sagal writes a compelling memoir about how running is not just for physical health, but for mental and emotional health and gets you through the hardest of hard times.

5. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. This is a fun novel for anyone who loves novels about: love, feminism, chemistry, cooking or parenting. Yes, it manages to tackle all of that into one powerful story.

4. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. Egan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad revisits many of the characters from that original book, telling what feels less like a novel and more like a collection of short stories about characters who are all somehow connected.

3. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. This is a one helluva page-turner told through the eyes of a journalist reporting on an elderly actress who recalls all the men she married over the years. But the real story is who Evelyn Hugo’s true love was, and how she and this journalist are connected.

2. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A sad and yet still hopeful novel, Tomorrow tells the story of soulmates, not in love, but in video game creating.

1. Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. A statement on mid-life in New York City, Fleishman is depressing in how deeply relatable the characters are as well as their perspectives on marriage, parenthood, anxiety and meltdowns.

Series vs. Book: Lessons in Chemistry

For a while, Lessons in Chemistry was one of the biggest literary hits. Every woman I knew seemed to be reading it. So when I finally got around to it, it was just in time for the new adapted limited series version of the book to debut on Apple TV+, starring Brie Larson. I’ve found the book to be slightly controversial. The controversy being over how much people actually liked it. Half of my friends absolutely loved it, and the other had no care for it. Some couldn’t even get through it. Personally, I thought it lacked some subtlety, but I really enjoyed the book and enjoyed the streaming series equally, despite the many changes it made. Here’s a look at some of those changes.

**Warning: SPOILERS BELOW

1. The TV series added a “Ms. Hastings” pageant

In the first episode, the series includes a Ms. Hastings pageant within Elizabeth’s office. Elizabeth, the staunch feminist that she is, doesn’t want to participate, but is forced into it and ultimately walks out early, much to the dismay of the other women participating. This addition stands to further show what an outcast Elizabeth is and how feminist and beyond her time she is. But as viewers and readers, I felt we were beaten over the head with this theme so many times that the addition of a pageant wasn’t necessary.

2. Harriet’s home life and connection to Elizabeth and Calvin

The series GREATLY revamped the Harriet character. In the book, Harriet is one of Elizabeth’s neighbors who comes to help her after Elizabeth gives birth to Mad. Harriet essentially becomes a nanny-like figure in the Zott family, and later befriends Elizabeth. She never had a relationship with Calvin and spends more and more time with the Zott family in part because her husband is abusive. But in the series, she is in a loving relationship with her successful husband doctor. Harriet is a lawyer, herself, and is involved in advocacy efforts in town.

3. Six-Thirty is a goldendoodle

In the book, the dog, Six-Thirty, is a former military bomb-sniffing canine, which would typically be portrayed with a German Shepard. Designer dogs like goldendoodles didn’t even exist in the time frame in which the series is set. But I understand this change as an effort to parallel Elizabeth being ahead of her time. She would have a dog that would wind up becoming trendy 40-50 years later.

4. Calvin is less of a loner

In the book, Calvin is a loner. He’s described as kind of funny looking, and no woman at his office has any romantic interest in him. In the series, Lewis Pullman portrays a much better looking Calvin than I had in mind. He’s friends with Harriet and her husband, and several of his female coworkers have crushes on him (though, they do still think he’s a bit of an oddball).

5. Mad goes to private school

In the series, Elizabeth’s daughter, Mad, goes to private school. The choice was to showcase how smart she is and that she was well beyond the level of her public school classmates. It was also a means to explain why Elizabeth would be seeking out a higher-paying job. But in the book, Mad doesn’t go to private school, and Elizabeth needs the money simply because they’re cash-strapped after the death of Calvin.

6. The protest

Going along with Harriet’s altered role as an advocate, her focus throughout the series is on protesting a highway that’s planned to be built in her predominantly black neighborhood. Her advocacy work culminates in a protest on the highway that leads to police violence on black people and political ramifications for Elizabeth, who also attends the protest. None of this is in the book, but I imagine it was added because the showrunners/writers felt there needed to be a Civil Rights component to the story because of the time period in which it takes place. This also serves as a way to make Harriet a black mirror for Elizabeth as another strong woman who’s ahead of her time in the way she sees the world.

7. Elizabeth hires Fran Frask

In the book, Fran Frask – we later learn – is hired by Reverand Wakely as a typist/assistant. In the series, Elizabeth hires her to work as her assistant. This allows Fran to have a larger role in the story, and for Elizabeth and Fran to connect and create a stronger friendship. It also leads to…

8. Walter has a new love interest

In the series, Fran is a love interest for Walter, Elizabeth’s boss. In the novel, the love interest for Walter is Harriet, who has finally left her abusive husband. Obviously that would not have made sense for Harriet in the TV series because in this version, Harriet is happily married. But I did love the idea of an interracial romantic relationship in the novel and the fact that Harriet found the strength to leave her husband. All of that is lost in the series.

9. No encounter between Elizabeth and Phil

In the novel, Elizabeth has a second sexual assault encounter. The first is in flashback from when she was younger. The second happens when she’s hosting Supper at Six and her boss’s boss, Phil, attempts to sexually assault her. She pulls out a knife, he passes out, and ultimately never returns to the show. In the series, none of this happens. And I wished it did! Mostly because Phil is a monster. But more importantly, it touches on Elizabeth’s PTSD and shows her continued bravery and strength.

10. Elizabeth’s ending

In the book, Elizabeth ultimately takes over Hastings Research, which allows her to complete her research and continue with even more. In the book, she leaves her show and becomes a chemistry teacher. It’s a nice – yet quite literal – homage to the title of novel, but it makes it so she never returns to her true passion of being a scientist.

Review: Befriending Your Body

As a yoga teacher and an eating disorder survivor, I saw this book in the self-help section of the book store recently and thought “I have to have this.” The subtitle is what got me: “A Self-Compassionate Approach to Freeing yourself from Disordered Eating.” I had recently gained weight and been struggling mentally with that, so I thought this book might help.

And it certainly did. The thing I loved about this book is that the author is not only a yoga teacher as well, but also a licensed clinical social worker with a PhD, so every aspect of her writing was well thought out and researched. She incorporates all of aspects of her knowledge in a layout touching on what she calls the nine phases of recovery: feeling broken, building compassion from the outside in, embracing your power and independence, becoming embodied, discovering self-compassion, approaching recovery with self-compassion, believing you are worthy of healing, finding healing and wholeness, growing into self-love. Within each chapter/phase, she includes her research findings, and she offers journal prompts and reflections as well as physical yoga practices all to help process disordered thinking, let go of it, and promote self-love, compassion and healing.

I folded down the corners of each of the pages with the practices with the plan to return to this book whenever I’m feeling down about my body. Having tangible things to do to help process these thoughts is incredibly helpful and makes this a book worth returning to over and over again.

Review: Sula

Picking up Sula as selection for my book club, I was excited to read my first Toni Morrison book! After all, she’s pretty legendary. I’d never heard of Sula and therefore didn’t know what to expect. While it wasn’t a page-turner or a book that I found myself thinking of throughout the day, it had some important themes and interesting tropes that lent itself to comparison with other contemporary black pieces of work.

Sula follows the friendship and journey of two best girl friends from a predominantly black neighborhood in the South from 1919 to 1965. It follows how the paths of the two girls diverge as Sula leaves town for years, loses contact with Nel and later returns after many affairs with men attending college. Nel, meanwhile, has stayed in town and become a housewife. Picking things up where they left off isn’t so feasible between the women, who though having suffered similar traumas, have different outlooks on life and ways of managing that trauma.

In Sula’s life, several of her family members have died as the result of fire, and they are not the only ones to do so in this short novel. The fire and burning theme was clear but almost too obvious. It was repeated over and over and could have been more subtle.

Sula also reminded me of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and The Color Purple (the new musical movie, which is my only point of comparison). The pacing of Sula reminded me of Do the Right Thing in that the entire time, the reader/viewer is witnessing microaggressions and traumas, but not necessarily knowing where the story is going. So initially, it feels like a slice of life story. Then all of a sudden, there’s a huge, aggressive climax (a tunnel collapse in Sula and the death of a black man in Do the Right Thing) when I realized “oh, this is what this was all leading to: absolute chaos and change, which is profound and unsettling. The setting of Sula, however, reminded me a lot of The Color Purple, and Sula, the character, reminded me of Shug Avery in Purple in that they are strong women who have the courage to leave town, have affairs and return home, not caring what anyone else thinks of them.

Again, Sula was not my favorite book, but feels like important literature about black culture and understanding.

Review: Better Not Perfect

A few months back, I was asked to mediate a discussion panel on mental health, perfectionism and overcoming obstacles and life’s challenges at the Women’s Day Out event in Schenectady, New York, and that’s where I met author Dr. Shai. More than an author, Dr. Shai is a motivational speaker and podcast host, who spoke so eloquently and powerfully at this event, she blew the crowd away, myself included. Once she mentioned that she was selling her book at the event, I knew I had to purchase a copy, not only to be a woman supporting women, but mostly because I was so inspired by her story. I knew that she had had a child at a young age, that she had battled addiction, that she had put herself through college and become an incredibly successful woman.

Reading her story was just as powerful as hearing it, in part because Dr. Shai is a natural storyteller. Even in print form, the reader can almost hear Dr. Shai telling her story as if listening to it in the form of an audiobook. Part memoir and part self-help book, Dr. Shai not only details the trauma she’s overcome, but gives life advice. That advice is applicable to every women, not just those who have faced similar challenges.

In addition to her personal story of young parenthood, education and creating a career, Dr. Shai shares deeply about the ways her upbringing, challenges and society influenced her need to always be “perfect,” and how she’s battled those feelings of perfectionism her entire life. She admits it’s something she still battles today but that she’s able to keep it at bay much more with years of practice, focusing on instead simply aiming to be better and being okay with that. A quick read, Better Not Perfect shares themes and sentiments that women, especially, need to hear and have reinforced over and over again.

Review: City of Girls

Recap: It’s 1940, upstate New York, and Vivian has just been kicked out of Vassar College. It was the all-girls’ school way of reprimanding the student who wasn’t taking things seriously and wasn’t passing her classes. But Vivian didn’t see the point, living in a time when women were only expected to marry after college anyway. After being kicked out, her parents sent to her Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg. With no plan, no focus, and no idea what it’s like to live in the city, Vivian is thrown into a world beyond her imagination. She knew Aunt Peg ran a theater in New York City, but that’s about it. She soon found it was theater that performed low-tier original shows full of dancers, showgirls and lackluster talent. But it was a unique community offering, barely kept afloat by the regulars who attended the shows no matter how bad they were. Vivian, who loved to sew and make clothes, was in her glory. Upon learning of her talents, she was made to be the costumer for the theater, giving Vivian an “in” to befriend the women who were faster, flashier, sexier and harder partiers than she. Among that group was Celia. It’s not clear whether Vivian wants to be Celia or be with her, but nonetheless she befriends her, and soon Vivian is “inducted” into the group of boisterous women.

They encourage her to lose her virginity, to drink, to go clubbing, and Vivan loves every second of it. A progressive girl – particularly for that time – she has no shame about anything she’s doing. She simply wants to enjoy life, especially this big city life. Her Aunt Peg and Peg’s partner/friend, Olive, turn a blind eye to her outings and yet, always look out for her. That ultimately comes in handy.

Vivian is at the theater at a time when things start to blossom. Aunt Peg’s estranged husband, Billy, comes to New York from out of town and lives with them for a while. So does Peg’s friend, Edna, a superstar actress escaping the war in Europe alongside her handsome husband, Arthur. Billy, a writer, writes a new show for the theater, which Edna stars in. Suddenly smash reviews are coming in left and right and so are enormous audiences. Aunt Peg’s theater is the talk of town. And Vivian is living in the moment! But a sexually charged, alcohol-infused evening leads to a risque public moment – particularly for the 1940’s – that forces Vivian to leave the city, head hanging in shame.

And this, my friends, is just the first half of the book.

Analysis: City of Girls had been one of those books sitting at the top of my TBR List since it came out in 2019; I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I heard it was feminist (yay!), historical fiction (love!) and written by Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for her nonfiction smash, Eat Pray Love. So for several reasons, I was excited to dive in. I tore through it, though it is lengthier than my average read. It certainly entertained me, and I was riveted by the characters, but it was simultaneously both slow to start and then lost momentum at the end.

The first half of the book does a lot of scene-setting, introducing characters and offering a lot of exposition. The characters are a delight, and the dazzle of New York City, well, dazzles. But when one of my friends asked me if I’d gotten to page 250, I then had incentive to really power through the novel, and with good reason. The impact of page 250 is shocking and wild. At that point, I needed to keep reading to learn what happened next. The book is also told with a framing device of a now 95-year-old Vivian telling her story of her life to someone named Angela. The reader doesn’t find out until much later who Angela is, or how she’s connected to Vivian. So as the book continues, I became increasingly curious about who Angela was. But when I finally found out, it felt anti-climactic. And what’s most confusing is the book’s pacing. While the first half of the book centers around one year Vivian spends in New York, the second half tells the story of the rest of her life, speeding through decades and new characters. Vivian didn’t end up with any of the people I thought she would, and that’s probably the point. Ultimately, she ends up surrounded by strong women, a far cry from the “weaker” women described as her fellow classmates at Vassar earlier in the novel. And that womanly, feminist viewpoint is beautiful in its own right. I loved so many parts of this book. So much of it was fun, so much unexpected. But it also suffered from moments of meandering, and an ending that while nice, wasn’t as powerful as I wanted it to be.

MVP: Aunt Peg and Olive. This power duo becomes Vivian’s surrogate parents as her actual parents don’t legitimately seem to care much for their daughter. Peg and Olive are creatives, forward-thinkers, true New Yorkers through and through. The few scenes with them are some of the most powerful in the novel. They are the definition of strength.

Get City of Girls in paperback for $11.21.

Or on your Kindle for $14.99.

Review: The Candy House

Recap: In a dreamy, interwoven bit of organized chaos, Jennifer Egan once again delivers an exceptional story that’s not really a story, a tale with connecting throughlines, characters and themes but no real plot. It’s a tough one to explain to others. In fact, I tried to explain Egan’s storytelling to one of my coworkers recently who looked at me puzzled, and may as well have responded by saying “well, that sounds awful.” But what’s confusing, once understood, becomes brilliant and truly awe-some.

About ten years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan published The Candy House as a sequel, following some of the characters from Goon Squad. Those carryovers include Sasha, LuLu and Bennie among others. Egan does the same thing in this sequel as she does in her first book: each chapter reads like a short story about a particular character. A minor character from that story is then the “hero” of the next chapter, so the reader learns more about another person in the story. Then another minor character tells the story in the next chapter. That same thread continues throughout. The stories aren’t necessarily connected either. They’re just little slice of life pieces of each of these characters. Some stories are told in present day, some in the future, some in the past. There’s a lot of hopping around and putting together the puzzle pieces of who’s connected to who, how and on what section of the timeline.

In Goon Squad, Lulu was a young girl. In Candy House, we meet her as an adult, where she is a spy (and has maybe the coolest chapter in the book?). Here, Lulu is also part of another chapter made up of emails sent between many of these interconnected characters, which further emphasizes the brilliant interweaving of everyone. It’s very “Love, Actually” and fun to read! The connections between the characters is one of the central themes of Egan’s books: that each person has an impact on another. But Candy House has another overarching theme about social media, authenticity and who you are versus how you portray yourself online and preserve yourself for the future — big themes about which we are already talking when it comes to AI and which make this story particularly relevant.

Analysis: What’s fun about The Candy House that I don’t remember from Goon Squad is that Jennifer Egan is playfully meta in her writing. Near the end of the book, she calls out the book’s title by writing “tongue in cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them.” It’s exactly what she’s doing with this book: trying to lure in a new generation of readers to her eclectic writing a decade after publishing her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that younger readers may have missed altogether. She goes on to question “do all roads start to converge after age 70?” The Candy House has an answer for that too: yes, or maybe even earlier.

When I read A Visit from the Goon Squad years ago, I remember being excited to read an award winning book. I liked it, but it didn’t have much of an impact on me. It took me a while to understand what was going on, and by the time I got it, I felt like I had spent so much of the book focusing on the wrong things and missing the beauty and creativity that was right in front of me. So sadly, it didn’t land. But for some reason, The Candy House clicked much more easily and earlier for me. Reading it felt like an adventure and made me appreciate Goon Squad and Jennifer Egan much more.

MVP: Lulu. There are a dozen characters I’d love to put here, but Lulu’s chapters were the most creatively written format-wise, and her character displayed such strength and a beautiful mix of masculinity and femininity.

Get The Candy House in paperback for $15.19.

Or on your Kindle for $13.99.

Review: The Emperor’s Soul

Recap: As a person who practices magical forgery, Shai is used to being condemned by her government and society, assumed a rascal to others. But the fact is she is so good at forgery that, though judged for her actions, her talent is not overlooked. So for 100 days, we are dropped Shai’s world, where she has been imprisoned, but tasked with forging a new soul for the Emperor. The Emperor is suffering from brain damage after a failed assassination attempt, and his team is hoping Shai will be able to forge his soul enough – and so well – that he may be able to continue serving as Emperor.

Though treated poorly by some in her imprisonment, her forgery talents continue to dazzle and amaze. Ultimately, Shai builds a rapport with some of those who are watching her in her cell. But even she wonders if she’ll able to accomplish this tall task in only 100 days. She hopes to not only forge the Emperor’s soul, but to improve upon it and make him a better person. But even if she accomplishes this, will it even matter? Or will she still remained locked up or worse, beaten or killed? Shai continues to build a magical forgery of the Emperor’s soul while simultaneously planning her escape, as the calendar moves closer and closer to her 100-day deadline.

Analysis: The Emperor’s Soul is a brief novella that can be found grouped within a larger text of fantasy author Brian Sanderson’s work. It’s also part of his Cosmere universe. Apparently there are 60 books created within Sanderson’s Cosmere universe, and I have to wonder if I would have better understood this one had I read some of the others. As a person who generally doesn’t read too much fantasy, I felt a little out of my league with The Emperor’s Soul. I found it difficult to get into this book, even though it was short. The way it started felt sudden, as if I were suddenly dropped into something without any grounding, much like Shai is dropped into prison not knowing what’s truly next for her.

I stuck it out of course, and ultimately found the themes of art (What constitutes as art? When does art turn political? How can art be used as a force of change?) and imprisonment (What’s the best way to treat prisoners?) interesting. But I wish I knew more about the character of Shai, the Emperor and ultimately more about the world in which they were living to better understand their motivations and the circumstances they were operating under. I imagine that if you’re a fan of Sanderson’s work, this is a fun, interesting read. But if you’re unfamiliar with his style or fantasy in general, it may be a tough sell.

MVP: Shai is the protagonist and obviously the most interesting character with quite a dilemma to take on. She shows growth and makes the less obvious choice to keep the reader interested. And being a badass female in this world of men is something I will always support.

Get The Emperor’s Soul in paperback for $16.31.

Or on your Kindle for $4.99.