Month: August 2022

The Prison Healer

Seventeen-year-old Kiva Meridan has spent the last ten years in the notorious death prison, Zalindov, working as the prison healer. When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill woman alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal. Then a coded message from Kiva’s family arrives, containing a single order: “Don’t let her die. We are coming.” Aware that the Trials will kill the sickly queen, Kiva risks her own life to volunteer in her place. If she succeeds, both she and the queen will be granted their freedom. But no one has ever survived.


I’ll be completely honest, the first quarter of this book had me a little worried. It was good, but it wasn’t phenomenal. But my sister told me to read this book so I knew it must get better, and I’m glad I stuck with it. By halfway through the book, I was hooked. I guessed part of the twist of the book, but oh my god did the end take me by surprise. I found myself really liking the characters, even the ones you weren’t supposed to. Lynette Noni did a really good job making you see each character and who they were.

Now I’m all about a good romance, I read Sarah J Maas after all. This book wasn’t a romance. That’s not to say there wasn’t any romance, it just wasn’t a main plot point. I really liked that. I feel like making it a romance would have cheapened the book a little. The main plot would have suffered.

Overall, I truly enjoyed this book, and I’m excited to read book two. I would give this book 3.5 stars, with the potential that the next two books in the series could be a higher rating.

Rating

Song of Achilles

A thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War. A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner.


How do I even begin to write this review? I haven’t written a review in awhile (I’m the worst I know), and when I decided to get back to it, I said I wouldn’t review anything I haven’t recently read. But then I remembered this book (how could I ever forget it?), and I couldn’t not write this review. Now I’m sitting here and I’m trying to put into words how I liked the book, how it made me feel, what it meant to read it, and I’m coming up with nothing. No words to describe the absolute masterpiece that was Song of Achilles.

Here’s my best shot. Reading Song of Achilles was a journey. I first opened the book with high expectations and worry that it wouldn’t meet them. I thought it started slow, but quickly realized that was the point. This wasn’t a book about high action scenes, or epic adventures. Of course, both can be found in the book, but above all else this was a book about love. A love many dream of. It’s a book you fall in love with slowly, and when you realized that it happened your too far gone to stop it.

I won’t wax poetic about the book anymore. I’ll leave the review like this; this is the type of book readers think about for the rest of their lives. That they go back to over and over again. This is a god tier book. Five undeniably deserved stars. I wish I could go back and read it for the first time.

Rating

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