Jackie's Forget Me Nots

Review:

Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa

Kindle Edition, 416 pages
Published October 2nd, 2018 by Harlequin Teen

One thousand years ago, the great Kami Dragon was summoned to grant a single terrible wish—and the land of Iwagoto was plunged into an age of darkness and chaos.

Now, for whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers, a new wish will be granted. A new age is about to dawn.

Raised by monks in the isolated Silent Winds temple, Yumeko has trained all her life to hide her yokai nature. Half kitsune, half human, her skill with illusion is matched only by her penchant for mischief. Until the day her home is burned to the ground, her adoptive family is brutally slain and she is forced to flee for her life with the temple’s greatest treasure—one part of the ancient scroll.

There are many who would claim the dragon’s wish for their own. Kage Tatsumi, a mysterious samurai of the Shadow Clan, is one such hunter, under orders to retrieve the scroll…at any cost. Fate brings Kage and Yumeko together. With a promise to lead him to the scroll, an uneasy alliance is formed, offering Yumeko her best hope for survival. But he seeks what she has hidden away, and her deception could ultimately tear them both apart.

With an army of demons at her heels and the unlikeliest of allies at her side, Yumeko’s secrets are more than a matter of life or death. They are the key to the fate of the world itself.

My Review
Shadow of the Fox is amazing! I love Yumeko-san the Kitsune. Kitsune is a Fox with magic abilities that mostly trick people into seeing things that aren’t there. They are demon like but Yumeko isn’t a bad kitsune, she doesn’t use her powers to harm anyone. She is useful.
The books intrigue begins and ends on a mysterious note surrounding a very young and seemingly ordinary servant girl named Suki, who lived and died in the royal palace chambers of Lady Sitome, the king’s concubine, who is also a powerful blood witch. In fact, she kills Suki for insubordination. Now Suki is a ghost aka a Yurei, who sticks around for reasons unknown, probably because she wasn’t ready to die, and she wants vengeance on Lady Sitome. It appears the ghost succeeds when the very same handsome flute player she meets, in the beginning, ends up stabbing Lady Sitome in the heart. I thought Shadow of the Fox was so well written, I never saw that coming.

The story takes us on a journey of sorts with Yumeko-sans being entrusted with a piece of a Dragon’s Prayer in the form of a small scroll. It is an important piece of paper because Legend has it, that every one thousand years, a mortal is given the opportunity to summon the Dragon and ask to grant 3(?) wishes for good or bad, only the person’s heart has to be pure, otherwise the dragon will tear its soul to shreds. Or something like that lol.
There are evil beings who are trying to find the 3 parts of the Dragons Prayer for themselves as well.

Anyway, Yumeko is given specific instructions by her Monk Master to find a certain man in the feather temple in a city far away. He will give her what information she needs, and where to take the scroll. I can’t remember the exact names and places off the top of my head, so you just have to bear with me 🙂

Yumeko encounters lots of trouble with weird creatures who would kill and destroy her. She knows she is being followed. She also meets a couple of travelling companions, who unbeknownst to each other have their own agenda for accompanying Yumeko along her way. Her companions are quite remarkable and if I am not mistaken one of them is the flute player guy that Suki met? I could be wrong. I haven’t checked but I am almost certain he is.

Original post:
Jackiez.booklikes.com/post/1890333/my-review-of-shadow-of-the-fox

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Jackiez.booklikes.com/post/1888204/shadow-of-the-fox-free-on-audio

Review:

Original post:
Jackiez.booklikes.com/post/1885702/my-review-of-the-name-of-the-wind

I’m thinking of embarking on another long journey through a fantasy novel. Being that we are in the month of May, means a month-long celebration of all things fantasy in Wyrd and Wonder. The Name of the Wind pretty much fits the description. Just the cover alone emits dark and sinister things. I think it is about the devil telling his story -history as it were. I don’t know but that is my first impression.

What do you think?
Have you read it?
Did you like it?

There are mixed reviews on Goodreads, enough to pique my curiosity.

Chapter One – A Silence of Three Parts
Something like a black spider as large as a wagon wheel called a scraeling, was met by Carter on the road and it killed his horse. He was hurt in the scuffle but manages to bring it back to the Waystone Inn. I think it was dead. But Kote, the innkeeper, is keeping a dark secret that nobody else knows about. It involves demons I’m guessing.

Ah, here is what I found about The Name of the Wind on Wiki. . .

“In the rural town of Newarre, the Waystone Inn is managed by an innkeeper named Kote and his assistant Bast. It is revealed that Kote is actually the renowned Kvothe: an unequaled sword fighter, magician, and musician, rumored to have killed a king and caused the present war in which the civilized world is embroiled. Bast is Kvothe’s assistant and student and a prince of the Fae. Kvothe has gone into hiding and assumed the identity of Kote in order to keep a low profile. Kvothe saves a traveling scribe known as Chronicler from spider-like creatures called scrael, whereupon Chronicler, recognizing Kvothe, asks to record his story. Upon consenting, Kvothe tells Chronicler that this will take three days (corresponding to the planned trilogy of novels).

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