A Song of Wraiths and Ruin | Book Review | Spoiler Free | Overbooked [CC]

welcome back to dead good book reviews i’m judith 
and you’re watching another episode of overbooked  
the series where i talk about every single book on 
my shelf because i went into the woods one day and  
an old man was there and he told me to do this and 
made me promise but then when i went back to ask  
him some questions about it he had disappeared 
and all there was was a circle of mushrooms
today i’m going to be talking about a book 
that entered my life in 2020 i’m going to  
talk about roseanne a brown’s a song of 
wraiths and ruin showing you the cover  
some quick disclaimers before we start i’m going 
to keep this as spoiler free as humanly possible  
i don’t think i’m going to talk about any spoilers 
if anything comes up i’ll put spoiler skips  
i bought this book myself this is a y a fantasy 
book that released in june of 2020 and saw a fair  
amount of hype here on the bookish internet it is 
the first installment in a west african folklore  
inspired duology with the sequel a psalm of 
storms and silence is due to release in june  
of 2021. rosanne a brown was born in ghana and 
then moved to maryland when she was a child and  
now currently lives just outside of washington dc 
she has a background in writing fiction and also  
in journalism as ever i will have her website 
linked below so

that you can check out any more
information on her other books and anything else
you might be interested in this is a dual point of
view story we have two perspectives we have karina
and malik and karina is the crown princess of the
city ziran it’s a desert city karina was already
struggling to live up to the memory of her older
sister and then she’s forced into an even more
precarious position after her mother the sultana
is assassinated karina has to try and keep her
fracturing land together throughout this solastia
festival and also in the background she’s kind
of thinking maybe she might try and resurrect her
mother with dark magic but to do that she’ll need
the heart of a king and what better way to get a
king than to offer up your hand in marriage as a
prize for the winner of the solastia competition
malik by contrast is a young boy trying to
escape his war-torn country with his sisters
they want to start a new life in the city but
everything goes a bit wrong when his younger
sister is kidnapped by a vengeful spirit malik’s
forced into a deal where he can have his sister
back but only if he kills the princess and what
way to get close to the princess why it might
just be to enter that competition of course
i think you get the gist of where the story
is going on the surface level i could draw a lot
of comparisons between elements of this plot and
elements of various other ya fantasy books we’ve
seen over the years what i think that this book
does well and does differently is it combines
those tropes into something a little bit new
we’ve all seen the assassin finds their way into
the royal competition to get close to their target
thing we’ve read that book before but i think the
fact that this book balances that with karina has
her own agenda and she has her own subterfuge
going on and arguably it’s a little bit more
questionable than malik’s intentions all of
that combined along with a lot of the other
stuff that’s happening in this book makes the
book feel not too tropey y a fantasy while still
retaining a lot of the essence that makes that
enjoyable as a type of book to read in terms of
plot is exactly what i like in a book it’s a clear
structure of events as part of a competition love
a competition around which the rest of the story
can grow of course that does always run a risk the
second book won’t be as strong as the first one
because you don’t have that clear structure but we
shall wait until june to pass judgment on that i
really like this setting and i don’t just mean the
world and the culture but i think the fact that
this book takes place across a festival in this
desert city was really really powerful because
it brings together all these different elements
of society and it heightens the action and it
creates all these wonderful moments of tension
and celebration all just because of the way that
this book is set i feel like i need to reframe
this slightly i’m a little bit too high up can i
do that halfway through a video probably there’s
a lot of big things happening but because of this
kind of heightened atmosphere of this festival it
all feels very natural that’s not to say i’m not
excited to see more of the world beyond the city
after the sequel but i think the city is a really
really good setting we get a lot of the vibrance
of the culture and the people but also rosanne
a brown manages to balance that with a lot of
claustrophobia around the city particularly in
karina’s viewpoint just this is more an additional
note i am always a sucker for description of
clothing particularly formal clothing ball gowns
every all of that it just it hits home and this
book has a lot of really good clothing description
i enjoyed it i actually thought that the romance
in this book was very interestingly done and i do
mean that in a positive way i’ve said it before a
y a fantasy romance isn’t going to be for everyone
some people really do not enjoy them and that
is perfectly fine i think in this instance i
would be more likely to recommend this book to
somebody who’d been burned by y a romance before
don’t get me wrong some of the characters
get feelings for each other quite quickly and
those feelings are arguably kind of intense but i
think that intensity is really well managed what
we don’t have is i saw you one time in the street
we made eye contact and now i would jump in front
of an army for you one of the moments that really
stuck out for me is there’s a character reflecting
on what their life might be like if they
could be with another character and what their
feelings might be in the future and i thought
that was really interesting because so often
y a fantasy romance is about the here and now
it’s not really about the future beyond the odd
oh if only we could one day live together in an
epilogue and be very happy this was much more i
want to know where my feelings with this person
could go because i’m not gonna let them go there
yet and i just thought that was really interesting
in a way that i haven’t seen ya romance handled
very often a few things that maybe i didn’t enjoy
quite so much i wanted a little bit more from
karina and i think the issue was and this may be a
personal thing i find alternating between point of
views when it’s just dual point of view quite
difficult especially if you’re not seeing two
sides of the same scene so you have two characters
doing quite different things and i’d find i was
just getting into the swing of karina’s story
and then suddenly i’d be in malik’s story and i’d
have to get my head around that i just found it a
little bit difficult to do and maybe that’s just
me but it’s probably something to keep in mind if
you have a similar problem another thing that’s
probably personal preference i wanted a little
bit more out of the magic in this book and i think
it’s similar to other stories where the magic
isn’t a huge part of the setting to begin with
so maybe i went in with unrealistic expectations
but what i am hoping for in the second book is a
little bit more of an exploration of this magic
and what it means some comparisons if you are
interested in reading anything similar i feel
like comparing this to the orisha series by Tomi
Adeyemi is a little bit obvious and it will come
across as like i’m a white person who’s read like
all of the really popular ya fantasy by Black
authors i am going to recommend that because
i think it’s a good series so far and i am would
recommend it to you if you enjoy ya fantasy i will
also recommend Raybearer which i have recently
read when i’m filming this and i think was
absolutely phenomenal also really really great
ya fantasy if you have any more recommendations
for ya fantasy books by Black authors or adult
fantasy books by Black authors or sci-fi please do
put them in the comments below i’m always looking
to expand my reading in that area because i will
completely call myself out and say that i fall
a bit flat when it comes to recommending those
things the last recommendation i maybe have is
the first book in the mask of shadows duology
that’s what it’s called yes by lindsay
miller which is similarly a contest it’s
framed slightly differently but it but there were
some familiarities between this and that book and
i think maybe that would be something to explore
if you were interested do i think you should read
this yes i do i think it’s well worth a read
if you’re into ya fantasy and maybe you want
something that explores kind of familiar tropes
in a bit of an unfamiliar way but still delivers
on the same kind of feelings you get from those
tropes i will say this isn’t one of my top ya
fantasy reads i have others that i love a lot more
i think something about this is just a little bit
too slow for me but i think that when the second
book is out it’s going to be a really strong
duology when paired together and we will have to
wait and see until june to find out thank you so
much for watching this episode of overbooked i
hope it’s been informative and interesting you
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there’s gonna be some bloopers now as ever
i will have her website come on judith