SECRET SANTA BOOK REVIEW

Hello! It is finally time for me to do my secret 
santa book review! Now, first things first, you might  
be thinking, Sophia what are you on about? Well,
let me tell you. If you don’t know, I’m part of  
a collaborative channel called Worldhoppers and I
will link the channel down below. It was created by  
Elle from Elliot Brooks, Jashana from the channel 
Jashana and Jade from the channel bedtime bookworm  
and, as I mentioned, it’s a collaborative channel 
with lots and lots of different booktubers from  
across the world who read a variety of different 
genres, although the majority of us do read fantasy  
as a main kind of genre. And the aim of the 
channel is to raise money for charity so if  
you haven’t already checked out the Worldhoppers 
channel make sure that you do that, go and watch  
some of the videos, they’re all brilliant! One 
of the Worldhoppers, Andy – from the channel AndySmith,
which will also be linked down below, had 
this amazing idea to do a Worldhopper’s secret  
santa, where – those of us who were able to – signed 
up and agreed to read one of each other’s favorite  
books and then do a review about it to post 
on our channels today so that’s what you’re  
watching

right now! I can finally reveal 
that my secret santa recipient is Chris  
from ChrisBookishCauldron and I will, of course,
link his channel down below as well as the video  
where I heard about this book. So the video, well 
firstly, I didn’t know about Chris’ channel until this secret santa, which is part of why this 
is such a great idea, so thanks again to Andy for  
coming up with it and doing all the work 
to organise it, it’s really really fun! 
Chris has been on booktube for quite a while 
but I hadn’t come across his channel before and  
I discovered it, as I said, because of him being 
my assigned secret santa recipient. So, I’ve now  
watched some of his videos and i’m really glad 
that now that the news is out I can actually  
subscribe to his channel because I didn’t want 
to be obvious by randomly subscribing to him.  
He has a really eclectic reading taste so he 
does read a lot of fantasy, which I’m not mad about, 
but he also reads a lot of literary fiction, which 
isn’t something that I read a lot of, and so I’m  
really looking forward to potentially getting some 
recommendations from him for literary fiction that  
i could try out. He seems to like a lot 
of fantasy that sounds like it’s something that  
I would enjoy, so maybe I’ll enjoy some of the 
literary fiction that he recommends as well.   
He does seem to read a lot of under-hyped 
fantasy, which is great because I’m all about  
that, and that’s actually the video that I got 
this book from, an underrated fantasy books  
video. So I read City of Lies by Sam Hawke, which 
is actually a newer book. The second book has just  
come out this month, I think, this one came out 
in 2018 and this is a heavily political fantasy  
story, so if you like that – which I do, then this is 
a really great one. It’s told from two perspectives. 
The first perspective is Jovan and the second 
perspective is his sister Kalina. She is kind of  
a spy type character and Jovan is a poison tasting 
character. If you have watched my videos for a  
while then you will know that one of my favorite 
series of all time is the Chronicles of Ixia, book  
one of that series is Poison Study and it follows 
Yalena as she is released from prison and becomes a  
poison taster and I absolutely loved that trope so,
that’s why I was drawn to this one initially. But,
actually, this is so much more than that. So, the 
chancellor at the beginning of this story dies  
because of poison, but it’s unclear whether that 
was murder or an accident. Jovan is the  
poison taster for Tain, and Tain is the chancellor 
heir, so he has to take over as being chancellor  
when the chancellor dies. Jovan’s uncle, Etan, 
was the poison tester for the, now deceased,  
chancellor and Etan has also died! So, Jovan 
is now the poison taster for the chancellor  
as well. So, they have to kind of together figure 
out what has happened to the chancellor and to  
Etan, as well as dealing with a potential war 
and potential assassination plot, which might  
be coming after Tain as well. So, there’s a lot of 
threads going on in here. It’s a reasonably long  
book, it is 625 pages, so there’s a lot that goes 
into this and, as I said, there’s a lot of politics  
at play and it’s quite intricate but it’s not 
complicated. Sometimes when you read  
a political fantasy it can be quite difficult to 
follow what’s happening, but I didn’t find that to  
be the case with this at all. Although there was a 
lot of politics going on, there’s also that mystery  
element over here as well and it just all ties 
together really, really nicely. It was quite  
a nice simple writing style that was, again, easy to 
follow, easy to keep up with. There was a relatively  
large cast of characters and, as with the beginning 
of any epic fantasy series, that’s a little bit  
difficult to keep track of at the beginning but,
the names aren’t overly complex, which is nice.  
Funnily enough, this really reminded me of the 
Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison, which I read  
last year. I think that’s because it has 
this mystery element, and there’s all the politics,  
and there’s someone new in government that is
trying to deal with all of that, as well as being  
in charge, so even though the chancellor, or the 
new chancellor, isn’t the perspective character  
in this one – whereas in the Goblin Emperor the new 
emperor is the perspective character, it still had  
a lot of parallels. So, I think if you’ve read 
that, and you like that, then you would really  
like this too. The names are much more 
simple though, in the Goblin Emperor the names are  
so difficult to keep track of, but in this one 
that’s not the case. So even though you’ve still got  
quite a large cast of characters, and it takes a 
little bit of time to get your head around that, it  
is still relatively easy to follow and it was 
very very interesting. I’m definitely interested in  
picking up the rest of the series as it comes out.
As I say, book two has just come out i think it’s  
going to be a trilogy but i’m not 100% sure on that.
This one, as well, has some really good rep in it.
I’m not going to get too in-depth because 
I don’t want to spoil anything but, there is some  
physical disability rep and there’s also some OCD 
rep. I thought that the OCD rep was very very  
well done, and I will say, that both of those pieces 
of representation are in perspective characters. So,
that’s why I don’t want to say too much about 
it, because half the fun is figuring that out as  
you’re reading the book. But, I thought that both 
of those elements of representation  
were done really really well. So, I thoroughly,
thoroughly enjoyed this. I definitely think that  
it’s worth picking up. Thank you so much to Chris
for introducing me to this, I’m sure I’m gonna get  
so many more recommendations from Chris’ channel,
because he just has such interesting reading taste! 
So, I’d highly recommend checking out his channel,
if you like the kind of books that i like then, I  
think that he’s a perfect booktuber to watch and 
get some new kinds of recommendations that perhaps  
you haven’t heard about before. He actually just 
posted quite an extensive bookshelf tour, which I’m  
still working my way through. It is really, really 
great because he shows you all of the books on his  
shelves, broken down by genre.
I’m really enjoying that series so far and, like I
said, I’m really glad I’m now finally going to be 
able to subscribe to his channel, which is great
Also, of course, check out Andy’s channel 
and the Worldhoppers channel as well!  
And, that’s it for this one! Thank you so, so 
much for watching. If you like this video, and  
want to see more like this from me, then do 
think about hitting that subscribe button  
and I hope to see you here again soon. Thanks
Bye!

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