Sunshine Challenge - Blue

Droplets of rain pour down from the sky, each one carrying a bit of cold, a bit of sorrow. They fall so steadily that the individual tapping of the drops hitting the pavement begin to meld into a single synchronous sound. All else is quiet. Street lamps softly illuminate the night, creating a tiny windows through which to see the twinkling fragments. The icy sorrows hold shape in the air as they cascade down, alone, then shatter into a growing collective on the ground. They flow together, strengthening each other, until it's enough to drown in. In their number, in their strength, even in their sorrow, there is a gentleness. A caring thing to drown in. An easy thing, to stare endlessly at the navy sky, and the little pockets of light where the gentle sorrows shine.

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So, I don't 100% know what this one is about, but it's what happened when I tried to capture the vibe of blueness. Blue can be a sad color and a joyous one both, and it can be ponderous and serene as well as more energetic and chaotic. Personally, I find the shade of blue strongly affects what associations come immediately to mind. A saturated sky blue is energetic and positive, a pale, light blue very soft and dreamy, a deep blue reminds me most of the ocean, navy blue is more majestic and makes me think a tiny bit of the stars. I associate blue with ice and the cold, as well as introspection and serenity. Oh, and there is also 'the blues', as in the music style! Not in that style at all, but a song that came to mind was of course Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65, for meme reasons. Blue also makes me think of the intelligence and wisdom stats in Dungeons and Dragons, which is almost entirely because I already associated blue with mana in the Diablo series - the very blue spiritual force that fuels your magic spells. (I always need more mana lol)

Crown of Thunder Book Review

Crown of Thunder, written by Tochi Onyebuchi, is the sequel to the book Beasts Made of Night, which I read quite a while ago. Long enough ago that, hopping back in, some of the details were definitely fuzzy, and even though the important ones came back I'm sure my experience with the book was in some way influenced by the gap of time between my reading it and the first one.

Generally speaking, it was a pretty fun read. It had a very immersive, quick writing style that made it easy to feel invested in. The world building was a strength in the first book, and this one also continues to have interesting lore and fantastical elements. The characters were mostly likeable, though our protagonist Taj had moments where I kinda thought he was lame and annoying lol. He had moments when I liked him too though! I don't recall perfectly but that's probably how I felt about him in book 1 as well. I thought most of the other characters were pretty neat, so I didn't mind spending time with them, even if none of them quite reached any kind of 'fave' territory.

One thing I thought was interesting about this book and series is that it is part action story. There were quite a lot of fight scenes, and they were fairly detailed, and on one hand I found them fun (because I mean, I like action), but despite them being written in entirely easy to follow terms I still occasionally got confused in my mental image of what was happening. Not in any significant way, but still. Aside from those moments though I thought the frequent action was pretty entertaining. In particular I quite liked the scenes where magic was used, and that magic in this world is done through algebraic proofs. It made Aliya, our resident mage/math nerd, a fun character and a nice twist on the spell caster archetype (which is usually mostly or all spiritual).

We got to learn more about Arzu in this book too, seeing the land of her heritage and meeting her childhood best friend/crush, Juba, and I thought those two were nice together. Not that...they actually got to stay together due to the rules of their tribe (it wasn't because they were both girls, but because of the different roles they fulfilled in their society), which was a bit of a bummer especially since Taj and Aliya got to be together which was whatever I guess. Not bad, but I wasn't all that invested in it. Actually getting to have some of the book from Arzu's perspective would have been very cool, but alas.

There were a few themes in the book that I thought were a bit neglected, and some I just wasn't entirely sure if I fully agreed with or not, but nothing drastic enough to make me feel any anger at the book or anything like that. For example, it was brought up that even though aki were forced to eat the removed sins from rich people, that didn't actually say anything about if the person the sin came from felt less guilty as a result. I thought it was a good point and an interesting nuance to the way things worked, but it didn't really come up all that much later. The closest we got was the whole 'forgiving a person's sins is what brings Balance' thing which...on paper is nice, and it allowed for some pretty cool magic, but I thought it also started to get a little...preachy? In certain moments. Especially since the only group that was against this was a bunch of irritating, violent hooligans than I hated (it was so baffling to me how Taj ever thought there was anything appealing to their way of life, if anything it just made me think Taj must have been a lot more annoying in the first book than I remembered).

I did like at the end at least Taj didn't have to forgive the evil queen who had hunted him and slaughtered his city and friends, and someone else was able to eat the sins and remove the threat, but that whole thing was also a bit underdeveloped. Unless I just forgot details from book 2, Queen Karima was totally under-developed and mostly just detestable, and it isn't actually said what...happens to her in the end? She was there, did they arrest her? Kill her? Did they have any kind of plan for a new government once the monarchy was overthrown? I'm not sure if there's supposed to be a third book or not, if there is then not explaining everything in book 2 is fine, but if not then I stand by my feeling that the book's ending was good, but incomplete feeling.

I gave the book 3/5 stars on Goodreads, and I think that's a fair portrayal of my feelings for the book. It was fun to read, and had some definite strengths, but there were a few weaknesses and never fully grabbed my full excitement, even if I did find it immersive. It was a worthwhile read though, and if a third book did come out, I would want to read it and see what happened next.