Waiting on Wednesday: The Problematic Edition.

This week I'm waiting on:

Wandfasted by Laurie Forest. Wandfasted is a prequel to The Black Witch. It is due out on July1, 2017. Hopefully it gets a cover soon! You can pre-order the Kindle version here.

Problematic Review: Sad Perfect by Stephanie Elliot.

Another rant/review this time for Sad Perfect by Stephanie Elliot. This author has been the victim of a rather vicious attack on Twitter. Please show her some support: https://twitter.com/stephanieelliot

Problematic Reviews: The Black Witch

I decided to film my first book blogger video on Youtube today. I decided to keep it simple. So many other book bloggers already stand in front on bookshelves n stuff. I decided to film where I actually spend most of my time reading, in bed!





I also decided to do a little written review since I ranted a lot in this video.

Review of The Black Witch by Laurie Forest:

The Black Witch was a pretty damn cool book! It was both fun and thought provoking. I had a gran ole time reading about Ellroeen and her adventures at Verpax University. She starts off the book as this very ignorant young lady who is raised by her uncle with her brothers. Elloreen basically grows up in the middle of nowhere. She is not exposed to different cultures and ideas until she goes away to school. The Black Witch does an excellent job of exploring what makes (some) people prejudice. All of the races are kind are pretty much segregated so, they have no real knowledge of each other. Elloreen goes to Verpax and learns that much of what she grew believing was a lie. It was fun to watch he grow up and learn about how her world really works.

There was a shit ton of characters in The Black Witch. We are introduced to some truly evil villains like Fallon and her family. There are also two sort of love interests, but no love triangle (yet). I would have to say I'm absolutely #teamlukas. I feel like her will eventually come around. There was also a lot of cool fantasy creatures. Even dragons! We also meet some good guys along the way. I'm anxious to see what happens in the upcoming books! We are left with a lot of questions that need to be answered!

The Black Witch is honestly one of the most progressive young adult books I have ever read. I'm absolutely stumped as to why it has received so much hate. I mean just look:

1. Elloreen arrives at school as a conservative with little knowledge of world history.

2. Elloreen learns to become more open-minded thanks to her liberal professors.

3. There is a bad guy who comes into power overnight and wants to basically close the borders.

4. There are a very diverse group of characters.

5. They speak out against sexist stuff like the forced marriage of 13 year old girls

6. There are giant kick-ass feminist women
.
I could honestly go on all day.

Anyhoodles... The Black Witch has a pre-quel coming out in July called Wantfasted! You can pre-order it here.

Problematic Book Releases:May 2017

I've decided to start a new monthly feature called: Problematic Book Releases. I will list and briefly discuss all of the "problematic" books being released during the given month,

May is a busy month for the whiny special snowflakes. We have quite a few "problematic" book releases. 

Week of May 1st:

The Black Witch by Laurie Forest. This book caused quite a stir among sjws after the Blogger Who Shall Not Be Named wrote an extremely misleading 8.7k word review. All the other sjw blogger (sheep) jumped on the anti-tbw bandwagon, and suddenly The Black Witch had a 1 rating on Goodreads. All because of ONE REVIEW. Seriously, look at all those 1 star reviews. 95% of them link to her original review. 

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas. Apparently this book is ace-phobic. The accusation is just too stupid to discuss. Seriously folks, it hurts my brain. 

The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr. The main character memory issues. This book romanticizes them or something. Yet another issue too stupid to discuss. MY POOR BRAIN. I'm losing brain cells here folks. JUST STOP IT! 

The Wishing Heart by J.C. Welker. A "white-washed Aladdin." Thanks for that one Elle. The one person on Twitter who is far too cute to be so evil. 

Week of May 8th: 

The Traitor's Kiss by Erin Beaty. An old sjw favorite, "cultural appropriation." SIGH

Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy. Twitter sjws freaked the fuck out when the summary was released.

The Girl Who Wouldn't Die by Randall Platt. This book offended some snowflake author on Twitter. A book about a Jewish girl in 1939 Poland has anti-Semitic stuff in it. SHOCKING! This same snowflake went on to call a Nazi Liker and a piece of shit. It must be nice to have the kind of privilege that lets you get away with behavior like that. Imagine the outcry if any author on this list went on Twitter and called readers pieces of shit. YEAH. It would be a shit storm. 

The rest of May: Nothing! They haven't had enough time to find any late May releases yet. Give it time. I'll probably be updating this list soon enough.

Edit: Not even 24 hours since I posted this, and I have a new book for the list. All books added since the original post will their titles in bold.

I'm still here!

I'm still around. I just needed to take a little break from "problematic" books, I've still been doing a lot of reading! I got my hands on Traitor's Kiss by Erin Beaty. Someone was complaining about it on Twitter a while back. I'm also trying to get a hold of The Black With by Laurie Forest. People have been raging about this book all over Twitter!

Problematic Review: Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth.

Found on: Goodreads. 

The Problem: A young adult author wrote a blog post basically claiming that Care the Mark was racist. This was all it took to start a with hunt on Twitter. The opinion of one person was enough to convince people (who hadn't even read the book) , that it was racist.  Twitter has been filled with comments about how white people cant have an opinion on racism. Right...there is nothing racist about telling a whole race of people they are not allowed to have an opinion. Anyways, the whole situation surrounding this book is why I'm blogging again. A very politically correct  attitude has developed among the young adult blogging community lately. If a ya author writes a book with all white characters they are racist, but it they include people of color they're culturally appropriating. So young adult authors are basically screwed no matter what they do. If is no wonder why so many authors now fear accusations of racism. 

Shortly before the release of Carve the Mark, Veronica Roth participated in this harmless interview. People with nothing better to do decided that to label CTM as ablest. This is easily one of the dumbest accusations I have ever seen. 

Trigger Warning: Review contains spoilers!!!

The review: Carve the Mark was surprisingly boring for a book with so much controversy surrounding it. It took me a very long time to get just half way through this book. I just felt like nothing much happens after the beginning. Akos just spends a lot of time hanging out with Cyra, Crya's brother pops in every now and then to do something evil, and this is all that happens for the first like 300 pages. I was expecting an adventurous science fiction novel, but it was more like a fantasy romance. 

I also feel like Carve the Mark tried to be a a little too much like Star Wars. Instead of the whole "I'm your father" thing we got , "We don't have the same father." Also there is the whole force like power that people develop in their teens. Not very original! 

I did enjoy the romantic relationship between Cyra and Akos, They don't fall in love instantly which is refreshing to see in a ya book. I really liked the two of them together. It gave me something to root for in this otherwise dull novel. I won't be reading the sequel just because I don't care enough to continue their story.

This is yet another problematic book, that doesn't deserve such a title. The entire time I was reading it  I was like "where is the racism?" Crya comes from a very diverse culture, which is mentioned throughout the book. It is also revealed that Thuvhe i.e. the white people started the conflict. There is just no reason at all to call this book racist!

Problematic Review: Max by Sarah Cohen-Scali

Found On: Twitter

The Problem: A whole bunch of sheep in Twitter were offended by the cover. They decided (without reading it naturally) Max was a problematic book, that "Normalizes Nazis.". I even saw one Twitter user apologize to all her Jewish friends. I honestly thing it is stupid to criticize a book for normalizing Nazis. Nazis were normal people like you, and me. This is what makes is so damn scary!

The Review:

Wow what a ride! I had no idea what to make of this book at first. Max is a baby, but he has the mentality of an adult. He remembers being in the womb and he can understand pretty much everything going on around him. It was kind of hard to get used to at first. I did eventually get used to it.

What I enjoyed most about this book was definitely, the relationships that Max develops throughout his childhood. Some of the stuff that happens with his mother is absolutely heartbreaking. This book made me cry on several occasions. He also develops a friendship with an older Jewish boy. Through this friendship, Max begins to question the things he has been brainwashed into believing.

Max doesn't not deserve to be considered a problematic book. There was nothing in this book that was pro-Nazi. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I suggest that all you Twitter sheep stop judging this book by its cover!

Amount of Times I Cried: At least 6.

Rating: 4 stars.