[Wrap-up] Books, Music, and More: August 2019

Another month has passed. Another wrap up is about to be served to you! I'm still a bit in a slump but I'm also busy so I don't have a lot of time to read anyway. In August I finished three books, all of which I borrowed from the library as I finally got a library card. It's really freeing to have one again, to be honest. It has been a few years and I realized I missed that.

"Renegades" by Marissa Meyer

Pages: 576
Genre: Science-Fantasy
Age Range: Young Adult
Year of Release: 2017
Read in: English
Original language: English

This is a cute story about a world of superheroes and supervillains. In parts it is a bit cheesy but that's typical for the genre. In Renegades the group of that name defeated the big supervillain group "Anarchists" some years back, and the Anarchists don't like how things have turned out since then. Our main character Nova is one of them and ends up infiltrating the Renegades.

Overall, it has the typical superhero story qualities which you expect with various fascinating abilities. There are a lot of known abilities but Meyer thought up a few ones that aren't done as often or never have been done (though I don't really want to say that as most strange abilities can be found in One Piece at least). It also has typical YA tropes with the female and male characters potentially being involved in some type of romance. But I find it to be nicely done.

It is a cute story, nothing too new so far but it works really well for what it is and I would have loved it a lot as a teen. I'm eventually going to buy this book I think because I had a lot of fun with it and I will want to reread it at some point. Now I'm curious to see how things will turn out in the second book.

3/5★

"The Bands of Morning" by Brandon Sanderson

Pages: 447
Genre: Fantasy
Age Range: Adult
Year of Release: 2016
Read in: English
Original language: English

As this is the sixth Mistborn book and the third in the second era, I can't say a lot on what I think as it would probably spoil stuff. But I can say that I enjoyed this one more than the one before. Now details from the last two books and some unanswered questions from the first era are slowly being connected. We get more worldbuilding that surprised me at first but it made sense from what I can tell.

What I also still enjoy so much is the banter between Wayne and Way, and now the girls are also involved in such a fantastic way. There is one whole scene when they arrive at a hotel with all of them freaking out the owner over what could happen. Wax by testing out how he can throw himself out a window in case of emergency, Steris by being her usual overplanning self, Wayne being Wayne, and Marasi trying her best to be calming but achieving basically the opposite. That whole scene in itself was enough reason for me to enjoy this book much more than book five.

I seriously can't wait for the next book in this series. But I guess before that one I will finally delve into the Stormlight Archives.

3.75/5★

"Obsidio" by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Pages: 615
Genre: Science-Fiction
Age Range: Young Adult
Year of Release: 2018
Read in: English
Original language: English

The last book in a series really needs to connect everything that came before. Now we finally get all our characters together, working to achieve what they had planned and/or hoped for. I still find the first book to be the best but the last one did a great job at connecting everything and entertaining me a lot.

I mentioned banter before and in this series it's definitely what makes me enjoy book two and three a lot. I don't know how I would deal with the way the story goes without it. But in itself I do like the story about the teens trying to work against the evil doings of a big cooperation that thinks human lives are expendable for the good of the company. It is definitely a very modern story thanks to that and fitting for a YA story, as I feel many teens will be able to relate to that.

There is also a lot of tension again in this story and it made me sit at the edge of my seat. I probably have read too many adult novels by now to be able to deal with this tension properly, as in adult novels this usually leads to many deaths I never expected. In YA that is usually not the case.

4/5★

Latest Obsessions

I decided to add this category now even though it isn't book related because I want to talk about other things I enjoyed the past month(s). There are many more things I love and I don't feel like doing various single posts on that. But for some there will be.

Myrath - Shehili

As a huge music fan I would obviously put a CD on this list as well. Myrath is a metal band (power and symphonic, but for some reason also referred to as Progressive. I disagree with that but that's a whole different topic) from Tunisia. They influence their music with their culture's music in terms of instruments and singing styles and it's just so fantastic. They also call their music "blazing desert metal" which sums it up very well.

Their new album knocks it out of the park again and I'm so sorry that I only now got to finally listen to it. But I'm enjoying it so much! I can't wait to see them live later this year with Beast in Black. They were actually the reason I suggested to my friends that we should see BiB again this year (we already saw them in February and it was fucking amazing!).

Beast in Black

Which brings me to my obsession since last year's Nightwish concert in Hamburg: The motherfucking Beast in Black. An amazing Finnish power metal band with 80s synthie elements and lyrics mostly about the anime and manga Berserk. If this isn't a nerd dream made reality I do not know what is. Not to mention that Yannis got some awesome vocals. This band knows how to make a crowd go wild, so definitely a live band but unfortunately there aren't any professional live videos so far.

Druck - Die Serie

"Druck" is the German remake of the Norwegian webseries Skam, which was a huge hit apparently in Norway. There are a couple of other remakes which I've seen two of but so far the German one is my favorite of the remakes. It takes the original and creates something close to it but new. It's not copy-paste and that's really refreshing.

It's a teen series following the loves and lives of a group of girls and boys in Berlin. In the first season we see Hanna and her relationship with Jonas with the main focus on lies told for various reasons, the second season is about Mia and Alex and talks also about the issue of rape (I skipped this one because I already didn't care about the main couple in the original but I will watch the Druck one soon), the third one about Matteo's struggle with his sexuality and him falling in love with David, and in the fourth season right now we accompany Amira and see how she deals with crushing on Mohammed as well as general racism she has to endure. There are many more elements to the stories but they all have love stories at the center. Overall, it is a lot of fun and I kind of wish I had a show like this when I was a teen. Especially some parts of the Isak season (season three. Isak is the original character Matteo is based on) always get me.

I will actually in the near future post some review/analysis posts on the show but I have to finish the second season first before doing so. Or else I will never finish that post and I don't want to leave it out. (subbed version of Druck can be found here.)

Floor Jansen at Beste Zangers 2019

This woman will never not amaze me apparently. I remember being so reluctant to check out what Nightwish sounded like after Anette also left the band. I was never a big fan of Anette. She can sing but in my opinion was a horrible choice for the band as she didn't fit whatsoever with the music. Still, the songs written for her are fantastic. Anyway, I just wasn't too keen on whatever the band would have to offer at that point. And then I watched clips from the Wacken Open Air in 2013 and was blown away. I couldn't have been happier to get back into listening to Nightwish because Floor just. well, floored me.

And now she's on the Dutch show Beste Zangers and opened the first round with an absolute banger. The emotion she can transport through singing is so wonderful and I'm so happy that we get to see her perform in a show like that. We need more metal artists to participate in them because people love to forget that they are actual musicians and are very much underappreciated by the mainstream audience. I know there are many more in other genres as well but this is the genre I know best.

I so can't wait for the next few episodes. The other singers also cover an interesting variety of genres which makes it fascinating. I've never watched the German version but I know it's really popular as well. (Someone was so nice to sub the last Dutch episode in English here.)

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Disclaimer: I wasn't asked or payed to talk about any book, CD, artist or show mentioned. Anything is my opinion only! 

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