ashurredly's reviews
453 reviews

I've been wanting to read some Rebecca Roanhorse for ages, so I checked out Race to the Sun because there are waiting lists on all her other books at my library. I was skeptical about if I would like it because it is targeted at middle grade readers. But it's so good! Nizhoni's voice is very clear and funny. I wish this book had been around when I was 13.

I was _so mad_ when I finished this, which is how I know it's good.

There were places where this book dragged a bit, but it's overall a good end to the trilogy. It could have been really easy for the ending to go wrong. The events of the trilogy were so horrible that there had to be losses for the central characters in order for the ending to feel true. But this isn't a grimdark story, so the losses couldn't be something that would shatter the characters forever. So Jamshid and Muntadhir get to live and be together though I suspect they both wake to nightmares pretty frequently. Ali and Nahri have a real shot, but Ali sacrifices his djin self-hood.

I don't quite buy Nahri never returning to Egypt as a sacrifice. That's one area where I think the series didn't benefit from the five year jump from book one to book two - there's so much feeling that would have happened in those five years, but we end up seeing/knowing very little of it. It's almost like nothing happened in those years. I think Nahri knew from the beginning she would never really go back, so that aspect wasn't surprising to me.

I do think having to grapple with how she loved Dara and how she didn't really understand what he was partially because he was her first love was fitting. I was surprised at their goodbye scene and its intensity because I don't quite buy Nahri still having that kind of feeling for him still. I'm glad she didn't have to kill him because I think that would have been more weight than Nahri could carry. Doing penance is in some ways more fitting for Dara than death, but I also don't quite trust that he won't fall to either his own arrogance or someone else's persuasiveness and end up a mass-murderer again. I would feel much easier about the ending if Dara had died...that might be the point though.

4.5 stars. I wish this had been maybe a hundred pages longer and that the twins' had had chapters of their own. The world of this story is so interesting and I love a good, gay, retelling of a fairy tale (Beauty and the Beast! Beast is a dragon!). But it felt like the world and the characters didn't have enough time to really get fleshed out. I'll definitely reread and see if I like it more when I know more about what to expect.

Not gonna rate this one right now because I'm not even sure what I think. This book was a lot and I'm not sure how I feel about it, especially the ending.

Picked this up because my library system is featuring a collection of winter holiday ebooks. I didn't enjoy it, exactly, it's something I think I would have liked more in a lit class where I could talk about it with other people. It's a historical collection of Christmas stories written by Black writers. The earliest was published in 1885 & the last in 1953 and I struggle a bit with falling into older writing styles, especially in more literary fiction as opposed to fairy tales. I am glad I read this collection, though. I learned some interesting historical facts & genuinely enjoyed the humor in a couple of the stories.

I didn't see it on Goodreads, but the version of this that I read is actually two books/long essays. One is The Rise & Fall of Black Wall Street and the other is called The Seven Key Empowerment Principles. I liked the first books and parts of the first chapter of the second. My interest was in reading an account of the burning of Black Wall Street written by a Black author, as opposed to Walker's purpose which is more about inspiring Black people to achieve financial success. I didn't realize that when I bought the book, so I ended up skimming most of the second half. The advice seems fine, but not particularly unique, and I am skeptical of writing that uses so many CAPS per page. However, if you want a brief intro to the Tulsa Massacre, I would recommend this book.