Snatched Edges (Urban Saying) : (verb, noun, pronoun, life experience) when something shocking happens. When positive, it is amazing beyond words. When negative, it is the equivalent of loosing a fight or being so badly embarrassed by an opponent that (s)he pulls your hair hard enough to pull out your extensions or weave leaving to exposed to the world.
Also getting dragged or called out. So if someone insults you, they’re coming for your edges. So if someone is coming for your edges they just metaphorically snatched your hairline with their insult.
For the purpose of this blog post, it is being being pleasantly surprised by a great book. One that shakes up your Goodreads reviews.
There’s this humming feeling I get after reading a great book. This is the expanding of possibility and universe that a well-written narrative brings. If you’ve never experienced this, you are reading the wrong books and I highly recommend finding those written stories that leave you a tinge breathless because it’s bursting at the seams with awesomeness.
Less than an hour ago I finished The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh and I’m still riding the high of a well written science fiction and young adult book (two of my favorite literary genres), what better time to write a recommendation for the genre than now…
The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh
The book is magic. It’s riveting. It’s captivating. It’s poetic. It’s passionate.
Summary
Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, the boy king, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat by dawn. Khalid messes around and kills the wrong girl, the best friend of sixteen-year-old Shahrzad. And, this fearless badass of a sixteen- year-old, vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride but Shahrzad does not plan on being his next victim. Not only does she stay alive, but passionate prose unfolds as she falls for a king and finds that he isn’t the monster that she imagined and must uncover his secrets to save both of their lives.
Immediate reaction
I’m shook and I’m in love with this damb book. Who is Renee Ahdieh and where has she been all my literary life. I love her.
Why it’s epic
Poetic: This book flows like a poem, like a subtle historic tale that I somehow overlooked. You could swim in its prose. It captivates while soothing your mind. I’m here for everything that Ms. Ahdieh writes if it flows as flawlessly as The Wrath and the Dawn.
Hotter than 50 Shades of Gray: I’ve never read 50 Shade of Gray, a friend live tweeted her reading of it and if confirmed that the book was not for me, but I ran to a pretty well known book blogger and her first comment was, “the book is kind of hot, hotter than 50 Shades of Gray!” Not in a caveman pornographic, thrusting kind of way but it captures passion, love felt in your heart, mind and finger tips. What is to kiss a boy you are slowly falling in love with. Hold the hands of a girl you you’ve loved most of your life. The smell of someone you want to be with in every way possible. There is intensity in the way the narrator describes the eyes or the smile or the scent of the one they are nursing a growing infatuation for. It’s PG-13 while being rated R, if you know what it is to fall in love with your heart and mind first.
A++ for complexity: This world that Ms. Ahdieh created is filled with complex major, minor and fringe characters. She made a silent bodyguard intriguing and interesting. I’ve read many novels where the writer failed to build a strong major character (even through mutliple sequesls), this story gave me so many well developed characters, I was invested in nearly all of them with equal fervor. I shipped the nearly everyone with a back story.
My recommendation: Read it if you love well written YA and sci-fi that isn’t afraid to wax poetic at all the right moments.
Quotable AF
“She was a dangerous, dangerous girl. A plague. A Mountain of Adamant who tore the iron from ships, sinking them to their watery graves without a second thought. With a mere smile and a wrinkle of her nose.”
― Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn
“You are not weak. You are not indecisive. You are strong. Fierce. Capable beyond measure.”
― Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn
A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray
Summary
A Thousand Pieces of You is book one in this epic dimension-bending trilogy about a girl who must chase her father’s killer through multiple dimensions.
Marguerite Caine’s renowned physicist parents have just created their most astonishing invention, the Firebird, a revolutionary device that allows users to jump into multiple universes. But then Marguerite’s father is murdered, and the killer—her parent’s handsome, enigmatic assistant Paul— escapes into another dimension to escape the law.
Marguerite refuses to let Paul get away with murder, so she pursues him through multiple universes by leaping into another version of herself and taking over her other self’s consciousness and life, briefly experiencing how minor and major decisions by her, those she loves, and even society as a whole can have major and minor implications. Soon she discovers truth behind her father’s death is more sinister and dangerous than she first expected.
Why I love it
The Firebird Series is on my favorites bookshelf next to Pride & Prejudice, Dune, Eleanor & Park, & Kindred. Ever since dropping out of AP Physics in high school, I can’t help imagining the path my life might have taken if I saw that career thorugh to fruituion and ever the since my first sci-fi young adult book I read in middle school, I have been in love with the genre. For all these reasons an more, A Thousand Pieces of You and the entire Firebird series had me binge reading from beginning to end.
Oh, how I love this book! It is endearing, well written & lovely. The storyline is complex and the characters well formed. It was an amazing journey to embark on. It had the magic of Orphan Black and the epic feel of Dune. For me Firebird was near perfection, a 4 & 5 star series of books.
Quotable AF
“Every form of art is another way of seeing the world. Another perspective, another window. And science –that’s the most spectacular window of all. You can see the entire universe from there.”
― Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You
Summary
Darrow is a Red, the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like all Reds, he is little more than a slave, toiling beneath the surface of Mars and believing he is doing so to make the planet livable for future generations.
Darrow soon learns that he and his kind have been betrayed. That humanity has long moved to new heights generations ago and that vast beautiful cities have been thriving on Mars and many other once desolate planets. Darrow learns that Reds are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class called Golds.
Inspired by a thirst for justice, and fearlessly driven by the stinging and tragic death of his bold activist wife, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, where the most elite Golds, if they survive, go on to lead the entire society. Darrow morphs his body and mind into a weapon that could bring a society to its knees and free his people and others from inequality and tyranny.
What had me “shooketh”
This novel is an epic narrative of war, suffering, love & rage. I was transfixed to the end and beyond.
This book is:
Perfect
Powerful
Poetic
The book starts at a slow steady pace but keeps the reader engaged with strong and well form prose, but the second half of the book kicking into a sprinting pace and leaves you breathless, slightly frenzied and hungry for more!
Quotable AF
“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising
“I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.’
‘I live for you,’ I say sadly.
She kisses my cheek. ‘Then you must live for more.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising
“Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising
These are the books that made me smile. They made feel. They removed roadblocks in my imagination and in some ways helped me to remove road blocks in my own life. If you have an interest in this genre, give them a try.
What did you say?