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
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!