unabridged_adventures's reviews
210 reviews

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

One for All is Lillie Lainoff’s debut novel. It follows Tania de Batz, the daughter of a former musketeer, who has become quite the fencer in her own right despite her struggle with POTS. Her only worries are making sure her mom lets her continue to fence and finding a boy willing to marry her. That is until her father is found dead while on a business trip. Tania’s worst nightmares come true, not only will she never see her beloved father again but she is immediately sent off to an elite finishing school for girls in Paris. She despairs that she will have to give up everything left of her father and her own wishes only to arrive and find out that the school is a cover for a small group of female musketeers trying to uncover a plot against the king. Tania becomes fast friends with the three girls and starts to discover that her illness is not the life-ending curse that she had thought it was.

It is categorized as an OwnVoices book because Lainoff has the same condition as her main character, and so do I. For those of you that don’t know, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, is “most often characterized by a drop in blood pressure, accompanied by an increase in heart rate, upon standing—to a heart rate increase of at least thirty beats per minute in adults and forty beats per minute in adolescents. The jump in heart rate is the body’s response to the blood pressure drop; the heart is trying to pump blood faster to get it through the body. Common symptoms of POTS include dizziness, brain fog, fatigue, headaches, nausea, heart palpitations, and many others. Doctors say POTS symptoms are most similar to congestive heart failure symptoms. Today, most POTS patients are forced to see multiple doctors to finally receive a diagnosis (the average diagnosis time is five years and eleven months). More than half of people diagnosed with POTS will be told by doctors that their symptoms are “all in their head.” Over a quarter of patients will be forced to see over ten doctors before they finally know the truth. For more statistics, information, materials, and/or to donate to POTS and dysautonomia research, readers can visit:

Dysautonomia International
National Institutes of Health
Hopkins Medicine (Johns Hopkins)
Mayo Clinic” (One for All (p. 390). Kindle Edition.)

This is the first time I have ever seen a main character with POTS, let alone any character with POTS, and it meant so much. One quote from Lainoff’s information at the back of the book really resonated with me, “When I was at my most sick as a teenager, I lost myself in books, despite never seeing myself in their pages. I thought that meant stories like mine, about people like me, weren’t worthy of being told. That chronically ill, disabled girls couldn’t be main characters. That because I was sick, I’d never be the hero of my own story”(p. 389 Kindle Edition). Every book that is written about disabled and chronically ill characters living their lives and just being human helps to heal the emotional wounds that so many of us have suffered.

I’ve always known that while I enjoy watching historical dramas and romances, I am not someone that would be able to survive in that world, and Tania’s experiences really underscored that. Theoretically, I understood that I wouldn’t have my medicine, that buildings would be even less accessible than they are now, and people would be less educated about my illnesses. But something that was surprisingly scary was thinking about the sheer lack of knowledge that Tania has about her condition. I hadn’t even really considered that if I were living in almost any other time period, neither my doctors nor I would understand what was wrong. I have enough medical trauma from trying to get doctors to listen and diagnose me with conditions they’ve actually heard about let alone ones that neither of us knows even exists. Lainoff does a very good job communicating this uncertainty in Tania’s life, no one knows what causes her illness or what effects it might have later on.

I love the way that Tania’s father helped make the house more accessible for her, changing the office into a bedroom for her on the first floor, the railings and fences for her to lean on and balance with. I especially loved the ribbon elevator that Henri built, climbing stairs seems like such a small thing until it takes almost all your energy to go up a single flight. The fact that all these able-bodied people went to the work of helping Tania be more mobile and independent is amazing.

All of Tania’s insecurities about people leaving her or judging her are so real for so many people. I love how each of the Musketeers reassures her in their own way that they care about her and aren’t going anywhere. Aria says it directly but you can see the same sentiment in the special clothing that Thea makes for Tania and the way Portia pushes her out of her comfort zone and reminds her that she is still a person, not just a walking illness. Good friends are vital when you have a chronic illness and while I have been very lucky to not have friends leave because of my illness, it is a fear that is constantly in the back of my mind.

So much about this book is incredibly validating to someone with POTS while still being a very enjoyable story for readers completely unaware of the condition. Tania is a compelling character regardless of whether you recognize your specific experiences in hers.

Lainoff’s story is well crafted if a bit predictable at times. I appreciated the discussion the girls had about the morality of their mission, whether they should be saving the King if he’s doing nothing for the people and the consequences that would affect the everyday people if the King were to die. All the girls come from different situations and classes and those experiences inform the way they interact with the world. They each have their reasons for joining the musketeers but they put that aside in favor of their duty to each other and the people.

The plot was engaging and the climax was explosive, I could have just used a bit more falling action to wrap things up. Overall, I’d give One for All 4.5 stars.

If you've read the book, check out my spoilerful discussion about the representation of dating while disabled: https://unabridged-adventures.com/one-for-all-romance-rant

Content Warnings

Saint Death's Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for letting me read an e-ARC of Saint Death Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney. There is no way that I could write a blurb for a book whose events and plot twist and turn like Lanie’s hair on the front cover, so I’m just going to use the publisher’s:

“Nothing complicates life like Death.

Lanie Stones, the daughter of the Royal Assassin and Chief Executioner of Liriat, has never led a normal life. Born with a gift for necromancy and a literal allergy to violence, she was raised in isolation in the family’s crumbling mansion by her oldest friend, the ancient revenant Goody Graves.

When her parents are murdered, it falls on Lanie and her cheerfully psychotic sister Nita to settle their extensive debts or lose their ancestral home—and Goody with it. Appeals to Liriat's ruler to protect them fall on indifferent ears… until she, too, is murdered, throwing the nation's future into doubt.

Hunted by Liriat’s enemies, hounded by her family’s creditors and terrorized by the ghost of her great-grandfather, Lanie will need more than luck to get through the next few months—but when the goddess of Death is on your side, anything is possible.”

C.S.E. Cooney has crafted a vibrant and vivid fantasy world with multiple intricate cultures based around 12 gods and their powers and if you can manage to get into it, the experience is lovely. That being said, there is so much exposition in this book that it took me about 10 chapters to figure out what was happening and you must be prepared for a very character based book. The plot is an illusive creature ducking in and out of view at times and while I am personally okay with following Lanie through her daily life, I understand that not everyone would be. Cooney’s extensive vocabulary and use of footnotes to provide more family history for the Stone’s creates an atmosphere equally as eccentric as her main character.

Lanie makes a wonderful character to follow as she attempts to balance her own natural compassion against the expectations of her sister, their ghostly grandfather, and the rest of Liriat, that she be a cold heart necromancer chomping at the bit to pull skeletons out of living bodies. The vibe of this book is borderline dark academia with the extensive amounts of studying and experiments that Lanie runs and scholarly friends that she makes throughout the book.

The romance that Lanie has with her love interest is one of my favorite things in this novel. The way that she can be as weird or withdrawn as she wants or needs at the moment and her love interest is still hanging on her every word. Their devotion to this macabre girl that could hole herself up in a lab and not talk to them for weeks to months on end is heartwarming. So many of my highlights in this book were just conversations between the two of them that I loved. Reading the letters that the two write to each other was lovely because you could just see how they want to tell the other everything minute detail that has happened in their life and the other wants to read it just as bad.

I loved learning about the different cultures and their views of the gods, specifically the original Quadiíb religion, which is the only one to still hold all twelve gods in equal reverence and balance, and whose language must be spoken in meter and rhyme. The variety of characters that we meet from there provide their own unique perspectives on the practice of magic. The question of heresy or honesty, compassion or judgment, is broached many times but left open for the audience to decide on their own. One of my favorite moments in the book was the acknowledgment of how trauma shapes not only one’s view of both their own culture and religion but of others as well.

The world Cooney has crafted is so effortlessly queer. Lanie’s love interest uses they/them pronouns as do their ommer (gender neutral form of aunt or uncle with the respective term for their descendant being niephling). On four Holy Days made up of the solstices and equinoxes, many people crossdress and use different pronouns. Anyone can be with anyone else regardless of gender. And the important thing about this is that none of it is questioned or unusual, it just is.

Overall I’d give Saint Death’s Daughter 3.75 stars. I truly enjoyed this book and am considering getting my own physical copy but the amount of time it took to get into it and the plot that comes and goes as it pleases was enough to bring it down from 4 stars.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Go to review page

adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

There was something about this novel that was so real. I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about New York and Jemisin effortlessly taught people like me what the different boroughs are and the various experiences of the people living there without having almost any exposition. We end up loving each different version of New York that the characters see, just because they love it and we can see it through their eyes.

Winter's Heart by Robert Jordan

Go to review page

medium-paced

4.5

I think this was actually my favorite of the series so far!

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

Go to review page

5.0

Utterly brutal. This book ripped out my heart and stomped on it.

Content Warnings