Review: Amari and the Night Brothers

Amari and the Night Brothers 

Rating: 5/5 

Buy or Borrow: Buy! 

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

Amari Peters knows three things.

Her big brother Quinton has gone missing.
No one will talk about it.
His mysterious job holds the secret . . .

So when Amari gets an invitation to the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, she’s certain this is her chance to find Quinton. But first she has to get her head around the new world of the Bureau, where mermaids, aliens and magicians are real, and her roommate is a weredragon.

Amari must compete against kids who’ve known about the supernatural world their whole lives, and when each trainee is awarded a special supernatural talent, Amari is given an illegal talent – one that the Bureau views as dangerous.

With an evil magician threatening the whole supernatural world, and her own classmates thinking she is the enemy, Amari has never felt more alone. But if she doesn’t pass the three tryouts, she may never find out what happened to Quinton . . .

It's brutal honesty time when it comes to this book, I'm not going to hold back and I'm going to tell you straight up that this is not only one of my favourite books of the year...but one of my ultimate favourite books! I completely fell in love with this book and I didn't want it to end at all. I'm so, ridiculously excited for this series and to see what it's going to throw at us next because it blew away all my expectations and didn't even end how I thought it would and changed my assumption of how this series was going to go! 

I know I say this a lot, about books grabbing me from the start but this one truly does pull you in, grab you and keep a tight hold. I whizzed through the first few chapters because I couldn't put it down and that was a running theme throughout the book! I found it almost impossible to put down, I kept wanting to read just one more chapter and then one chapter turned into two. I had to know what was going on and I was so intrigued by the plot and the world being built. I was just as amazed by everything being shown to us as Amari was! I also think this is the fastest that I've ever been hit with the feeling of wanting to crawl into a book, both to experience the world and deliver a smackdown to a character that really deserved it! I was seriously only a few pages in! 

Honestly, this book is completely brilliant, I giggled so much, gasped in wonder and had so much fun reading this book. It's a little bit like Men in Black but for Supernaturals instead of aliens and there were so many awesome departments and imaginative elements to it. 

Amari I rooted for from the beginning, I can't speak as to accurate representation but I really loved having a black main character and I personally think the oppression she encountered because of her skin colour were wonderfully portrayed and will certainly make readers think about their own actions and prejudices.  I just wanted Amari to get a cool badge and be a hero and see that she is just as good and amazing as her brother. I loved her so much, she's already claimed a place in my heart as one of my favourite characters, she's got the snark and the courage that I love and find inspiring. I got a little emotional when she started to accept herself and discover for herself that she's holding herself to an impossible standard and that she's good enough just as she is. It's a whole journey that really hit me in the heart and made me do some thinking! I just feel like Amari is a really fun, fresh voice throughout the book. 

Speaking of her brother, I have to say I loved the relationship between Amari and Quinton. I've read so many books with the characters hating their siblings, or falling out with them constantly that I really enjoyed reading about a strong sibling bond. I just wish we could see more of him! I'd also love to see more of Elsie the weredragon and Amari's best friend! I felt like she was a really great support to Amari, willing to help her unquestioningly and Amari encouraged her to be courageous in her own way as a result of that. Dylan...I was fifty fifty on him for most of the book and there's a couple of great surprises with him that I wasn't expecting because Alston lured me into a false sense of security even though I had a little voice niggling at me. When it comes to his twin Lara...she's a nasty piece of work but after the end of the book I'm quite hoping she might be redeemable. My point is, the cast of characters are brilliant and each really stood out and made me feel various different things. 

Amari and the Night Brothers is so imaginative, there's all different kinds of magician including technology! We've got all kinds of creatures with intriguing history to them and I'm going to hold out some hope for a companion book about them all. It's wonderfully plotted, with a great pace to it and incredibly well thought out and entertaining. 

I read this book so easily, I never wanted to put it down and I had a burning desire to get back to it and read until stupidly late at night. If University and assignments weren't a thing, I 100% would have done an all nighter for the first time in years to read this all in one go. I'm going to be brutally honest once again and say that I found this book to be a great comfort to me. I'm sure I'm not alone with finding this new lockdown a little tougher than the others and combined with University I've been pretty miserable lately. But luckily, I picked this book to read at the right time and took so much comfort in being able to vanish into this world of magic and the supernatural. This wonderful world that exists alongside ours and hidden within it. 

Amari and the Night Brothers has some great humour, action, mystery and a whole lot of imagination and heart to it. It's a really, genuinely fun read and Amari's journey to accept herself really touched my heart. I could tell within 20 pages that this was going to be a new favourite of mine and I can't wait to go back to work and start pushing this into people's hands and recommending it because I need everyone to read this book now!

Review: The Dark Archive

 

The Dark Archive

Rating: 5/5

Buy or Borrow: Buy! 

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

Danger is part of the day job for a Librarian spy. So Irene's hoping for a relaxing weekend at last. However, her jaunt to Guernsey proves no such thing. Instead of retrieving a rare book, she's almost assassinated, Kai's poisoned and Vale barely escapes with his life. Then the attacks continue in London - targeting those connected with the Fae-dragon peace treaty. 

Irene knows she must stop the plot before the treaty fails...or someone dies. But when Irene and friends are trapped underground, in a secret archive, things don't look so good. Then an old enemy demands vengeance, and a shocking secret is revealed. Can Irene really seize victory from chaos?

I say this every single time I review this series, but it genuinely is one of my absolute favourite series and I always look forward to each new book in the series! They've never let me down yet and The Dark Archive is another brilliant trip into the world of The Library. 

The prologue certainly sets us up for a wild ride, reminding us of Irene's new Fae apprentice and informing us that there's been several kidnap attempts already so already we're feeling the intrigue! Then it's straight in with the action and the introduction of a criminal mastermind for Vale to contend with. That's the thing about Cogman's books, we dive straight in and there's plenty to hook you and keep your attention and you know it's going to be good. I really do love how quick they are to pull me into the world and the plot, and this one has a particularly nice balance of action and sleuthing. 

Irene continues to be one of my ultimate favourite characters, and Kai...well, I'd love to be as unbothered as Kai about being poisoned. It was almost hilarious how chilled he was about the whole thing! I love that even though he's been with us for the entire series, there's still more to learn about he and his family and this book delivers with that. We briefly meet Kai's cousin, and then his older brother Shan Yuan who quite frankly, I really wanted to smack more than once. I find Kai's family so interesting and I spent the whole book side-eyeing Shan Yuan because I couldn't figure out if he's really that bad or if there's some room for redemption for him. I still haven't quite decided even after finishing the book! Of course, while meeting more of Kai's family we get to delve a bit deeper into the dragon world again and meet the technological side of it with a tech whiz elder dragon! 

I can't speak about Kai without speaking about he and Irene's relationship, which I continue to love with every fibre of my being! They work so well together and they're strong for each other and ugh...I love them. 

I'm going to be honest, when it comes to Irene's new apprentice Catherine...I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about her at first. She bugged me a bit in the beginning because she didn't listen but at the same time, perhaps I just settled into a groove with Kai and Irene and her changing things up irritated me as a result! I did come to understand Catherine more as the book went on and she definitely proved herself capable of being Irene's apprentice despite some minor hiccups as we went along. I will say that I'm looking forward to seeing more of her and see what happens after the events of the end of the book! 

There's lots of tension as Irene and co are all targets of a mysterious figure called The Professor, and an old face comes back to wreak havoc. The screeches I let out at some of the reveals in this book! While there's plenty of tension, there's also a good amount of action to go along with it, which makes it quite a hard book to put down! 

I love the multi POV's, the switches are always nicely timed and each POV brings us something different. We don't rehash the same scene over and over from a different perspective instead they're used to push the story forward and add to it. We've got Irene following one path, Kai going down another route with the dragons and then Vale doing some good old traditional detective work/Sherlocking. I'm also always here for getting a look into the minds of other characters, particularly one's like Vale that we don't always see a lot of! 

Essentially, everyone's stuck in London while an evil genius tries to kill them in many different ways, and they try to figure out who it is with a building sense of foreboding towards the end. I did get a chuckle out of how blasé they were about the attempts on their life at this point! I feel like the storyline for this book helps to keep the series fresh, it's less about retrieving a book and returning it to the Library and it's a change of pace so the series doesn't get repetitive. Not that I don't love the book hunting and all the different worlds, but I loved exploring more of the world that Irene has chosen as her home and we even get to visit an invention exhibition where things get a little...wild. 

The plot builds up wonderfully and the pieces click together one by one. I really love that old villain's aren't just brought back for the sake of it, or the shock factor, there's a very good reason for it and it usually indicates that something bigger is going on. I have to say, the last few chapters were nail biting for me and for a minute there I truly thought that we'd lost Irene. I was sitting there, staring at the page trying to figure out what was going on, what was going to happen and how the series could continue without her! Then there's the reveals...like I said, there was a lot of screeching. Particularly over one, and lets just say I've had my suspicions about Irene and her background! I'm still curious about it, the mystery isn't entirely solved but we're given a tidbit of it to tide us over! 

But as if that all wasn't enough...there's the epilogue. As if the wait for the next book isn't going to be hard enough as it is! I was reading it trying to figure out who was who and what exactly's going on at this point!  It's ramped up my anticipation for the next book to a ridiculous degree, I'm already impatient for it! 

Honestly, these books are one of the highlight's of my year ever since I read an advanced copy of the very first book! I wait with baited breath for the new one, plan specifically when to read it because I know I'm going to procrastinate a little from reading it because even though I've had an entire year to prepare myself...I'm still not quite ready, and then I binge read the whole thing in a couple of days and don't know what to do with myself after! I'm being genuine when I say these books never let me down, ever. 

The Dark Archive is another strong instalment in the series, I whizzed my way through it and found it impossible to put it down as I enjoyed every single page! There's action, tension, intrigue and more depth continuously being added to the characters and their backgrounds with more new tidbits and reveals to ramp up the intrigue for the next book!