Fairyloot is a Young Adult book subscription box focusing on fantasy based out of the UK. Each month you receive a new Young Adult hardback book and four to five bookish goodies. Like most book boxes the hardback are special editions and the items are a combination of both practical things and more decorative items. July’s theme is Trials & Retribution.

The bookish items included this month are a set of metal straws, a letter open inspired by Lila from A Darker Shade of Magic, an album for art prints, a pin banner, and a pair of socks inspired by Gideon the Ninth. The monthly tarot cards features character art from Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye.

All Fairyloot books come with exclusive covers, generally signed by the author and include a letter from the author. This month the book is The Darking by Sunya Mara which follows the daughter of a revolutionary and a desperate prince who are trapped in a city at the eye of a magical storm. This edition also has stenciled sprayed edges, foiling on the hardcover, and art work on the endpapers.

August’s theme is Tell Me Lies.

Babel by R.F. Kuang is an adult historical fantasy where Robin Swift, an orphan from Canton, is brought to London by Professor Lovell to train to go to Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation better known as Babel. Babel is the center of translation and sliver working where both the original and translated words are carved on silver which embeds the sliver with a magical effect related to the word that enhances many things. Robin’s cohort at Babel includes Ramy, who is Indian, Victoire, a black woman of Haitian decent, and Letty, a white woman. As the story progress Robin learns about the Hermes Society who are a group working to sabotage the sliver working to slow England’s Imperial Expansion. When Britain is going to go to war with China Robin must seal with what is he willing to do or sacrifice to stop Babel.

This is a stand alone dark academia fantasy that grapples with different aspects of imperialism, colonialism, and racism that is embedded in the world and is still apart of academia today. This a an amazingly well researched book that at times can be heavy handed with the themes, it also fits with how the world works for these characters. As Robin gets used to the world of Babel as a reader you get comfortable with how this world work. However, when they go to China everything changes.

At a certain point you know things are not going to end well for these characters and the ending hurts but at the same time I’m not surprised with how it ended. For me it took quite a while to finish Babel but that is on me not the quality of the story or writing. I was already in a little bit of a slump when I started Babel and then I had a several month stint working at a museum with heavy material related to World War II. Personally after doing the work that I was doing I had trouble reading a book that deals with such heavy topics at the same time so I ended up putting Babel on hold. With that in mind I would recommend that if you plan to read Babel that you are in the right head space for the themes Babel deals with but overall I loved this book.

Thank you to the publisher for providing a review copy via NetGalley.

November was a very busy and stressful month for me as at the end of October, I found out that I had a kidney stone and my sister had her baby. That being said I did get though four fairly short books. In this wrap up I will also be including the last book I read in October as I read the last books in the series in November. I also didn’t really watch anything besides some reality TV and YouTube videos. Game wise, I’m slowly making my though the first Kingdom Hearts.

Books:

Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Twisted Ones and Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Fourth Closet by Scott Cawthon and Kira Breed-Wrisley. These are the 2nd and 3rd books in the FNAF book series following Charlie and the events around Freddy Fazbear’s that cause the pizzerias animatronics to become haunted. I have a full review discussing all the books in this series. Overall, they’re good for those interested in a more clear version of the events in the games/the lore of the games but as a stand alone story they’re not that good. The books are not badly written but the twists are very easy to predict and the story feels like it was written for a very young audience which is surprising given the fact that part of the main plot is the murder of children. 3/5 for the Twisted Ones but 2/5 for The Fourth Closet because I had stopped caring about the story and all of the characters at that point.

All the other books I read in November were part of the Wayward Children’s series by Seanan McGuire. These are Every Hart a Doorway, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, and Beneath the Sugar Sky. This series follows kids and teenagers who have traveled into fantasy worlds, have returned home, and how they cope or not cope with being brought back to a world that is now not really home.

Every Heart a Doorway follows Nancy a new student at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children who traveled to the Halls of the Dead. She is now back home and her parents want her to be the way she was before she left. Shortly after Nancy arrives at the school another student is murder and the plot revolves around who is killing the students and why. This book introduces multiple characters that we gain more information about both in this book as well through out the series and how these other worlds work on a scale of Nonsense/Logic and Virtue/Wickedness though it becomes clear that world can present themselves one way while their rule don’t seem the same. Every Heart is a great introduction to the world and series and I give it 5/5 stars.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones follows Jack and Jill, twin sisters that we met in book one, and tells the story of before they arrived at school and the world that they went to. Jack and Jill’s parents treated their daughters as one being a tomboy and the other a girly girl regardless of how they felt about it and that caused them to resent each other. When they arrive at the Moors, a world much like Universal’s classic horror movies, they finally chooses who they are for them selves with Jack working for a mad scientist and Jill becoming the favorite of the Vampire that ruled the town which changes everything forever. A great second book with I give 4.5/5 stars.

Beneath the Sugar Sky is the third book in the series and the blurb has spoilers for book one so I will only talk about it briefly. This book follows Rini, the daughter of one of Eleanor’s students, who has come to the past to get help in saving her mother and her world. Though the plot revolves around Rini the main narrator of the book is a new student Cora, who I really didn’t like so Beneath was a big let down for me and makes this book only a 2.5/5 stars for me. I will have a full review of the series posted soon.

Five Nights at Freddy’s better know as FNAF to fans started out in 2014 as an indy survival horror game by game designer Scott Cawthon. It became a huge hit on YouTube with creators such as Markiplier and MatPat of GameTheory played and created video’s about the game. The game quickly became a sensation spawning multiple sequels and hundreds of videos on YouTube. In the game you play as a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza which unbeknownst to you the animatronics that move around at night are attempting to kill you as they contain the souls of the children the went missing/were murder at the pizzeria years ago. The goal of the game is just to survive the night as the game get progressively harder.

In 2015 Five Nights at Freddy’s The Silver Eyes was released as the first book of the new FNAF book series which I will need to briefly talk about to review books 2 and 3, so there will be some spoilers as this review goes on. Also the books tell the events of the game in a different way so you don’t have to know much about the game series to understand the books but you will catch things faster if you have.

The Silver Eyes starts out in 1995 when our main protagonist Charlotte “Charlie” returns to her home town of Hurricane, Utah to attend a ceremony about a scholarship created in the honor of her childhood friend Michael who along with four others were murdered at Freddy’s, the business that Charlie’s father helped run. Charlie with her friends Jon, Jessica, and Carlton decide to visit the old pizzeria and find that an abandoned shopping mall was built around it. From there its murderous animatronics and finding out what really happened at Freddy’s all those years ago. Overall, book one is not the best written book but the story is solid and it can be read as a stand alone. It would be a good introduction to kids or younger teens that are interested in both the books and the games without the jump scares and horror more prevalent in the games.

To review books two and three, I will have to spoil somethings from book one and the ending of book two. If you want my overall thoughts to the series please skip to the second break at the end of this post.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Twisted Ones starts a year after the end of book one with Charlie now at college and taking classes on artificial intelligence and robotics. After the events of the previous year that happened at the old pizzeria and the death of William Afton, Charlie is experiencing nightmares about the animatronics and the kidnapping of her twin brother, Sammy. When a body shows up with the same attach marks as previous victims of the animatronics Charlie, Jon, and their friends are drawn back into the world of Freddy’s. It turns out that Afton Robotics created other animatronics that were not the same as the originals from Freddy’s and they can change one’s perception of them. While finding out what is going on with these different robotics companies it turns out that William Afton is not as dead as everyone thought he was and confesses that he didn’t take Sammy but Charlie. The book ends with Jon believing Charlie is dead but then she shows back up on the very last page.

Book two is much more gory than book one and is intended for an older audience but the writing still felt younger to me. This is really where the books started to lose me. I love the lore behind this series but this book took some of the worst and most confusing elements of the games and did them worse as they take the forefront of the story.

Finally, book three Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Fourth Closet. Book three is much more Jon’s story than Charlie’s as we start off a few months from the end of book two with Jon still believing that he witnessed Charlie die that night but there’s someone who looks like Charlie and isn’t really acting like her is around. The entire story focuses on Jon and the others attempting to find out what really happen to Charlie and putting to rest everything about Freddy’s. It become very clear early on that Charlie is not really Charlie and we are given more of her families back story. Somehow, once again Afton is not actually dead and he mainly wants to find out how Henry, Charlie’s father, was able to essentially give a soul to an animatronic. The plot twist, which is very predictable, is that Afton killed Charlie years ago and that the Charlie in the story is a robot. The ending creates a clean slate as all the animatronics are destroyed and Afton is finally, truly killed but the story is very confusing and looses any emotional connection. I only finished these books because I like the lore of the games.

As for my thoughts on whole series I feel like it’s very average. I give the series three out of five stars only for the fact that I like watching people play the games and I enjoy the lore. However, as a book series the first one is the best as the story is fairly simple. As the series continues it takes some of the most confusing elements from the games and doesn’t do well explaining things or making a cohesive story. I would only recommend these books for fans of the games or those wanting to know the base story of the games without either watching and playing the games.

OwlCrate is a young adult book subscription box where every month you receive one new hardcover book and an assortment of bookish goodies connected to the monthly theme. October’s theme was Lost in the Bookstore and was the first time two books were included in the box.

The October box would be my third box from OwlCrate and is my favorite so far. Besides the book every box includes a spoiler card explaining each item in the box, a booklet with more information about the book and items chosen, a collectible pin, and an announcement card for the next months theme.

The items in the October box included a Choco-mint Truffle Tea from the Tea Spot and a heart-shaped tea strainer to brew the tea with. A pair of book nerd socks from Out of Print and Underlined. A small canvas clutch purse designed to fit most small books to protect books during travel and a Harry Potter themed art print. For subscription boxes the items that I prefer to get are practical items that can be useful or things that I would like the look of but could never justify buying myself.

The October box included two books Pride by Ibi Zoboi and Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa. Owlcrate always gets exclusive signed versions of the books and letters from the authors. This month the books also came with matching bookmarks.

Pride is a contemporary modern retelling of  Pride and Prejudice set in Brooklyn. Honestly, I have no interest in this book because I have never read Pride and Prejudiced nor am I a big fan of contemporary books. But since it was included in the box I will try it out to see if there is anything that I would enjoy.

In comparison, Shadow of the Fox is a book that I’ve been considering buying anyways. The story follows Yumeko, a kitsune shape shifter who is on the hunt for an ancient scroll that will grant one wish at the end of each millennium.  Based on Japanese folklore and culture it sounds like a great fantasy adventure.

At the bottom of each months box there is a sneak peek at what the next months theme so November’s theme is Rise from the Ashes.