Transitive Verve

Thoughts at a glance:   ***** (It was amazing!) Summary: This is the second book in a series, so please be forewarned that this review contains spoilers for book 1, An Ember in the Ashes . You can read my review for that here . Picking up right where Ember  leaves off, Laia and Elias are now the Empire's Most Wanted. They're both supposed to be dead, but instead, they are now escaping through the tunnels underneath Serra, with the Commandant, the Masks, and the new Blood Shrike - aka, Elias' best friend Helene - hot on their heels. Laia and Elias have a treacherous journey ahead of them as they attempt to travel to Kauf prison, to break out Laia's brother Darin, whom may or may not even still be alive at this point. Along the way, not only do they have to dodge the entire Empire (Martials, bounty hunters, etc), but apparently some otherworldly beings are after them as well, with some alarming consequences. A new narrator for this book, Helene Aquilla has sworn...

Thoughts at a glance: ***** (It was amazing!) Summary: Laia's life is changed forever when a group of the Empire's brutal soldiers - the Masks, so named for the eerie and off-putting silver masks they wear, which meld to their faces - raid her family home one night. After her grandparents are slaughtered and her brother taken away to endure god knows what, she seeks out the Resistance fighters to help her get him back, becoming a slave in the household of the cruel and violent Commandant of Blackcliff Academy. Elias' life is changed forever when, instead of graduating from Blackcliff and then deserting his future as a Mask (as he had planned), he becomes one of the four Aspirants fulfilling a prophecy to vie for the title of Emperor. Now instead of being free of Blackcliff, the Empire, and especially the Commandant (who also happens to be his mother), he finds himself committing the unspeakable acts he never wanted to commit in the first place, for a chance at a great...

There is a neverending battle between those who love e-readers and those who love physical books. I fall somewhere in the middle. I love my Kindle, I love how easy and convenient it is to own hundreds of books and to be able to access them at any time, and I like how easy it is to read privately on a Kindle (because, let's face it, no matter how well-written a book is, if it has an embarrassing cover, I won't be carrying it in public). But I love physical books too. I know people talk a lot about the smell of books, but to be honest, I don't sniff books, unless there is some scratch-and-sniff feature to it. Old books smell like... really old books. Like dust and must and other people's hands. So the "old book smell" is not what draws me to physical books. Nope. What wins me over? Beautiful endpapers and interesting design features. These are things that you absolutely need physical copies to appreciate.