Edens Zero

 THANK YOU NETFLIX!!!

It's rare to come across an anime here that I haven't already seen. Not only did I get a new one, but it was also dubbed. Now the debate on dubs vs subs will continue into eternity. I tend to prefer the subs but dubs have their benefits. First, you can do things like fold laundry or cook dinner when you don't have to read the show. Also, it gives me the chance to enjoy anime with my kids. 

My daughter and I binged this one in a one day. It was entertaining. The story begins with a young boy named Shiki who lives alone on a planet full of machines. Rebecca crash lands and suddenly the robots lose their minds and start trying to kill the humans. By the end of the episode, its revealed that this is for Shiki's own benefit. They need him to let go of his attachment to them and latch on to the idea of existing with humans and wanting to leave and explore space. This is important because the robots are doomed to shut down soon with no hope for repair and Shiki will be alone once that happens. 

Shiki leaves the planet with Rebecaa, his new BFF and gets to meet other humans for the first time. Watching Shiki's first interactions with other people was cute and funny the first few times but I eventually start to feel it was being overused. However, my kids were holding their sides laughing. So comedy hits you differently depending on your age. By the third episode, the newness of human society has worn off and Shiki is on a mission. He wants to travel to deep space and meet Mother, the mysterious entity who is apparently worshiped by the citizens of the galaxy. 

My only complaint would be that Rebecca looks too much like Lucy from Fairy Tail. It was definitely a strange experience seeing Happy repurposed as a robot. Of course, the artwork meets with my high standards. I would expect nothing less from the creator of Fairy Tail. Speaking of Fairy Tail, there is a cameo by Natsu and Lucy. There's a restaurant where they pop up in the background. 

All I can really say about this one is that it was a fun way to kill a few hours and kid friendly thus far. I'm ready for season 2. 

Onyx & Ivory

 Power through that first chapter! ^_^

I may not be being fair to those first 16 pages of this book. I had just finished previewing a cute little mystery book for my daughter. And riding the high of a good crime story can sometimes color your opinion of what comes after. With that being said, the first few pages of this didn't really hold me or draw me in. What held me going were two things:

1. The summary in the dust jacket "They call her Traitor Kate." 

2. Stubbornness: Once I start a story, I have to know how it ends. 

Now, if you've seen my goodreads profile you know that I am "currently reading" about 17 books. I confess, I got distracted by shinier and newer stories. But I will eventually come back to them. Woven was on my want to read list for almost 5 years before I finally took it off the shelve and read it. So there's hope for all those seemingly forgotten titles. Of course, I digress. 

Kate Brighton is the daughter of a man who tried to kill the king. The man was punished for his crime (beheaded I think) but the one who really suffers, is his daughter. She did what we would all do to shake off shame. She changed her name, moved to a new town, found a job, and tried her best to scrape out a living. But it is inevitable that people would learn who she was. This discovery was helped along by the palace making sure to print her picture and distribute it around the entire kingdom so she would have no safe place. And with her secret out, people waste no time raining even more misery upon her. 

Of course, this book isn't about Kate's social position. It's about how her secret magical gifts and her new job as a Relay rider bring her back in touch with her old life. There is Corwin, the prince she used to love...still loves, and the family secrets she has yet to uncover. I would say more, but then I might risk spoiling it for you. 

Overall, I give this one 3.75 stars. It would have been 4 stars, but I'm docking the author some points for teasing me. There's one scene I was waiting for because it was just a natural progression for Kate and Corwin once they were reunited, but author Arnett is a dirty tease. (hint, hint, wink, wink)

And as I have nothing else...Happy Reading! 

Dry

 It is very rare that I give a book 5 stars. 

Even more rare is finding a book that draws me in so deeply, that I finish it in less than a day. If not for my day job, this definitely would have been a one sitting read. 

I can count the number of titles that have been given this honor on one hand. And for the pleasure of giving me such a great story to read, I wanted to express my thanks to both authors. Now for the gritty details of the review...

It is my policy to try and avoid spoilers. Despite my impatient nature, I'm not one of those weirdos who turn to the last page in the book and read it first. I want to reach the conclusion when I'm supposed to. So I will leave each of you to discover how the story ends on your own. 

In Dry, parts of Southern California end up in a massive drought called the Tap Out. So named because you turn on the faucet and nothing comes out. It's not as if the drought was an overnight event. It happened over weeks but no one was prepared or concerned until there was no water to be found anywhere. And humans, in their desperation will do anything and I mean ANYTHING to get a drink of water. For example, there was a part where teenage girls are selling their bodies to earn bottles of water for their family members. 

The book is YA fiction, so the author makes his point without needing to show the dirty details. I appreciate that because I passed this book along to my own 14 year old son once I finished reading it. Of course, we don't have too much time to feel sorry for these poor girls or to feel disgusted by the person exploiting them, because we are concerned how our main characters are going to survive without resources or their parents during this crisis.  

Overall, Dry had me feeling like I was reading the Doomsday Preppers Manifesto. Don't let that scare you. It wasn't preachy or creepy. It was more like an overly smug "I TOLD YOU SO." It left me thinking about all the luxuries I take for granted on a daily basis. And any book that makes you think or ask questions deserves to be called a work of art. 

There were places in this book that shocked me, such as pinning your hope for survival on a secret stockpile of supplies, only to arrive in the height of the crisis and find that one of your own family members has decimated the stockpile (I didn't see that coming). Or when a certain character is killed by his own parent. After you've lived a while or read a few hundred books, you start to spot the cliches and can easily predict where the story is going. It gets tiring to see the same thing a million times. So any time an author throws me a curveball, I fall in love with the story more. And it probably doesn't hurt that I spent 5 years living in San Diego County and being familiar with many of the places mentioned in the book. 

The basic point I'm trying to make is that Dry is worth your time. Put down that roku remote and happy reading!

Horimiya

I loved this anime!

It's been a while since I've seen a romance. I gave them up mostly because it's episode after episode of me waiting for the guy and girl to just admit they like each other, hold hands for the first time, and IF I'm lucky, they will kiss at the end of the season. Most of the time the writer leaves me waiting for the end of the series, all the while teasing with thousands of "almosts" that get interrupted with dumb gags or the relationship almost breaking apart because of a jealous meddler.

This one thankfully skipped most of the angsty drama stuff. The first 5 episodes are adorable, endearing, and a really authentic portrayal of how young relationships often begin. I watched them 3 times. Mainly because I just wanted to share this show with anyone in my house who was willing to give me 25 minutes of their time. But I've rambled long enough.

First, we have Izumi Miyamura and Kyoko Hori. They're in the same class but have never really spoken to each other. And they each have a secret: what they're like at school is totally opposite of what they're really like. For Hori, she's caught up in the reputation she's created at school. For Miyamura, he's just afraid to connect with people after having been bullied by others most of his young life. But thanks to Hori's younger brother Sota getting into a minor accident, these two meet and are able to see one other in their natural states. 

They become friends outside of school first and don't even begin to realize that relationship beginning to spill into their school world. Of course, one of the boys in class who has a crush on Hori does, and there is a brief moment where he tries to break them up before they get started, but Kyoko's not having it. In the end, he just has to get over her and get over himself.

And we're not left waiting too long for that first kiss. I don't have patience so I watched it subbed, but you can find it on Funimation in English if that's what you prefer. Overall, I give the story, the acting and the artwork 4 stars. 

Domestic Girlfriend

 This anime is probably right up there with a good Jackie Collins book. It's SCANDALOUS!! 

I had so much fun watching this one. From the available description, my first thought was that the main character and his new step-sister were going to get into a relationship behind the parents' back. And I was right. Only, the sister I expected him to get tangled up with, was not the sister he ended up with.

I'm not sure how to entice you to watch this one without spoiling the story for you. The basics are as follows:

Teenage boy goes to a mixer with his friends and leaves with a girl. He and the girl have a one night stand. After a week or so, he comes home and finds out that his father has been dating one night stand's mother and the parents are getting married.  If that's not awkward, I don't know what is. 

Well, turns out there is another, older sister. The older sister just so happens to be the school teacher our main character has been secretly in love with for his entire time in high school. But the elder sister is tangled up in a messy relationship of her own: she's in love with a married man.

At some point, just as the leading man is trying to get over his unrequited love for the teacher and get under (or is it on top of) the younger sister, the school teacher starts hinting that she wants a relationship with him. That she wants to shed the unhealthy side chick status and date her student instead (because that's soo much better...NOT!) 

Really, she just gets jealous when she sees him getting close to the little sister. And so, well, I'm sure you can guess. Anyway, if you like the occasional dose of guilty pleasure in your life, then I definitely recommend this one. 

Five stars! This one does not have an English dub at the moment but that doesn't make it any less worthwhile. 

Severance

This novel by Ling MA had high and low points. 

One high point is chapter 7, when the main character flashes back to a time when she visited her family in Fuzhou and spent an evening wandering the streets with her favorite cousin. We get a glimpse of family grievances on display when her father and his brother get into a fight. This chapter was beautifully written and truly transported me to a hot, sticky night in a foreign land. 

One of the low points, about 5 pages in an earlier chapter where we get an indepth tour of how a bible is produced. That chapter almost made me give up on this story. But the redeeming quality of chapter 7 reminded me about my personal compulsion: once I start a story, I have to finish it. Good or bad, I'm compelled to know how it ends. 

Of course, as endings go, the book leaves me hanging. Sure, our main character manages to extricate herself from one problem and find a sort of freedom in going it alone again. And then that's it. She just starts walking. In my mind I'm screaming, "And Then What!!!"  LOL

I have a love-hate relationship with books that leave me with unfinished business. I spend too many hours thinking about what the character would do next. If I were the author, where would I send them? If I were the character, what would I do?

And to her credit, Ms. Ma gives us ample opportunity to get to know Candace Chen. We know that she is capable, an inherent loner, and likes routine. Even without the author telling us, we know that she will find a place to settle, develop a routine for herself and create a new life. But, that doesn't mean I don't want specifics. 

Overall, the story is well done. We are given a female protagonist who has to live with some extremely unusual circumstances. And the real irony is the severance that she received that she never gets to spend.

I gave the story 3.5 stars because of the ending and because there were too many flashbacks into the main character's life. The synopsis on the cover led me to believe I was getting a story that was more about the dystopian world the characters were left in after the collapse of everything. Instead, I felt as though I spent more time living in the main character's personal dystopian lifestyle before society fell apart, because she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life.

A Deadly Education

The premise of this book was exceptional. The execution, less so. The work reads more like the author's notes. Rather than allowing the reader to experience the story, we are told again and again the same repetitive information (as if we were goldfish with 3 second memories).

The book is first person, written from the perspective of the main character and I take no issue with that. My issue was that the author over explained and still somehow managed to leave out descriptions that would let you form a clear mental image of the world she built. It was really a waste for such a creative design.

Now, there is a heated discussion happening on goodreads reviews about the book being racist. There were many different cultural references that were cited in one person's opinion. As a reader, as a woman of color, I didn't get that feeling. Many of those issues about the character not stopping to appreciate the culture of the languages she was learning was explained (about 100 times too many) about how there were no teachers and that information was simply a means of survival. 

At best, the author was culturally insensitive. When people, marginalized groups, see themselves represented in a work by someone moderately successful, they have hope that you have done your research and are going to showcase them in a new and brighter way to the rest of the world. When they see themselves as after thoughts or regurgitations of stereotypes that have been thrown at them in cruel ways on a daily basis, they will be first disappointed and later, infuriated. 

For those who love this book and this author, rather than saying others are stupid for feeling that way, take a step back and remember that your world view has been shaped by different experiences. You feel and think differently and that's okay. Someone else will read the same passage and relive traumas from their past, much like the main character of this book whenever she thinks about all the people who fear her and tried to kill her simply because of her affinity. 

Overall, I give the book 3.5 stars. The second half being slightly less tedious than the first. Helped along by the character finally coming out of her shell and opening herself up to other people.