Review: The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

Title: The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

Author: Shaun David Hutchinson

Genre: Magical Realism (my best guess, this one’s hard to categorize)

Trigger Warnings: Bullying, blood, gun violence, suicide, suicidal ideation, death of parent, child abuse (mention), toxic relationship

Back Cover:

Sixteen-year-old Elena Mendoza is the product of a virgin birth.

This can be scientifically explained (it’s called parthenogenesis), but what can’t be explained is how Elena is able to heal Freddie, the girl she’s had a crush on for years, from a gunshot wound in a Starbucks parking lot. Or why the boy who shot Freddie, David Combs, disappeared from the same parking lot minutes later after getting sucked up into the clouds. What also can’t be explained are the talking girl on the front of a tampon box, or the reasons that David Combs shot Freddie in the first place.

As more unbelievable things occur, and Elena continues to perform miracles, the only remaining explanation is the least logical of all—that the world is actually coming to an end, and Elena is possibly the only one who can do something about it.

Review:

I picked this up because it was immediately available at the library and a long time ago (I don’t know how long, but I haven’t been on Goodreads in a year and a half) someone I followed on Goodreads had loved it. So I grabbed it, more because it was available than from any strong desire to read it.

Looking at it from the outside I probably shouldn’t have liked it much. It’s very slow, with hardly anything in the way of plot, but I didn’t find the characters strong enough to call it character-driven either. A good seven hours of the nine-hour audiobook is Elena trapped in decision paralysis about whether she should do what the voices want or not. The plot is determined not to give her any information that would assist in that decision to force her to make it herself, which she was expending all her effort to avoid. If there weren’t so many interpersonal things happening between characters, it would have dragged a lot.

The characters do all have good character arcs though, so maybe you could call it character-driven for that. Elena’s love interest Freddie had the strongest arc in my opinion. Elena herself and her best friend also felt like they had some kind of good arc, but I’m not entirely sure I could put into words what it was. Even Elena’s mother and ex-boyfriend got arcs, albeit smaller, simpler ones.

Looking at it from this review, you might think this is a boring book. But weirdly, it’s not. By all rights it should have been – it’s very slow, all Elena’s attempts to learn more about plot-related things are foiled, she spends the vast majority of the book avoiding the one decision she has to make. But somehow, I liked it. Elena was relatable in her fear of making the wrong decision, the complexity of the relationships between characters was good, there was enough magic to satisfy my fantasy love while still having a very contemporary vibe. I can’t really tell you why, but I did enjoy this book.

Review: Cemetery Boys (DNF)

Title: Cemetery Boys

Author: Aiden Thomas

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, death, blood, ghosts, death of parent, injury to animals (mention)

Note: In DNF books, warnings listed only include the amount of book I read. There may be other triggers further on that I did not encounter.

Read To: 30%

Back Cover:

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

Review:

I like to think I am a forgiving reader. Sometimes I will look past a lackluster world for amazing characters, or mediocre characters for a stellar plot. But very rarely will I finish a book where none of the elements are strong enough to grip me. And unfortunately, that’s what happened with this book.

I really did like the idea. I am not usually into gendered magic systems, but I’ll put up with it for trans-affirming gendered magic. Yadriel’s family has magic in their blood – the women can heal and the men can summon spirits trapped on earth and release them to the afterlife. Yadriel is a trans boy and the gendered magic gave him boy magic but his hyper-traditional family won’t let him do the ritual to become initiated into magic as a boy. He decides to prove himself, summons a spirit to release, the spirit doesn’t want to be released until he finishes some unfinished business, and Yadriel falls for him. Death magic, getting a transphobic family to accept your gender, and falling in love with a dead guy are all a good start.

And the transphobia in this book is really well done (if you can say that about something like transphobia). Yadriel’s family isn’t malicious at all, they’re just stuck in tradition and don’t make an effort to understand. They still love him, but only their idea of him and they don’t want to learn that who he actually is is anything other than what they expect him to be. And Maritza was an interesting addition – someone who accepts and affirms Yadriel as he is, but thinks she completely understands transphobia because she’s vegan and their family doesn’t understand that either.

And then we get to all the things I did not like.

First, the characters. Yadriel wanted to be an official brujo so badly he did the ceremony himself – a good start. But when the spirit he summons has its own opinions, he wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything without looking to other people (mainly Maritza) for instructions, and when he didn’t get instructions he did his best to avoid acting. Maritza’s entire role seemed to be to deny Yadriel the instructions he wanted and then watch with amusement as he’s forced to figure his own stuff out. Julian swung wildly between “stubborn asshole jock” and “ADHD toddler with too much sugar” with no rhyme or reason, and whatever romance is being set up between Yadriel and him seems to be based on “he’s hot” because Yadriel seems to view him as inconvenient at best and active opposition at worst. (Although it could be an enemies to lovers romance, who knows.) Despite three very real ticking clocks, Yadriel avoided acting at all costs, and Maritza has no skin in the game and is just along to laugh at Yadriel.

The magic system actually isn’t bad, but there’s no worldbuilding around it. Yadriel’s family is a big extended Latinx family and his house is in the family graveyard, but there’s nothing beyond it besides “This graveyard is in Los Angeles, you know all about Los Angeles.” It feels like the family graveyard is an island disconnected from the real world it’s supposed to be in, and I have no idea how the magic fits into the world outside of the family graveyard, or if it actually is confined to the graveyard.

The plot does bring in a mystery of who killed Julian and how Yadriel’s cousin died, but it wasn’t enough to keep me interested. It was mainly Yadriel’s refusal to act that frustrated me so much. It isn’t terrible or even unreadable (if I had been in a more magnanimous mood while reading I may have finished it), and it definitely has some good things to say about transphobia, but perhaps I am just not as forgiving a reader as I think I am.

Review: Shadowshaper

Title: Shadowshaper

Series: Shadowshaper #1

Author: Daniel José Older

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, kidnapping, body horror, gore, racism, misogyny (mild), police brutality (mentions), grief (mild), body shaming

Back Cover:

Come to the crossroads, to the crossroads come

Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging with her friends. But then a corpse crashes the first party of the season. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep real tears . . . Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.

Where the powers converge and become one

With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one — and the killer believes Sierra is hiding their greatest secret. Now she must unravel her family’s past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for herself and generations to come.

Review:

I didn’t really have high expectations for this book. I’ve been in a reading slump when it comes to fiction, I only picked it because it was available immediately at the library, and I fully expected this to end up on my “this may not be a bad book but I’m not in the mood so I’ll come back to it later” pile.

And then it turned out to be really, really good.

The plot is fairly straightforward. It doesn’t take Sierra long to figure out who’s behind the dead shadowshapers, and there aren’t really any twists. The emphasis of this story is on magic and community, which are intertwined. Magic infuses the spirits of the dead into art, and shadowshaping is part of Sierra’s family history and legacy. One of the things that I love so much about this book is that even though shadowshaping was kept from Sierra, she refuses to keep it a secret. Her community of family and friends is strong, and when she discovers this magic she doesn’t think twice about sharing it with her friends. Shadowshaping magic is community magic, and she shares it with her community.

Also, the magic is pretty awesome. The spirits get put into art, from paintings to sculptures to music to stories, and Sierra draws and paints. When she needs help from the spirits, her artwork comes to life and helps her. The descriptions in this book are beautiful and vivid, which just makes the artwork coming alive even more awesome.

There are so many fantastic things in this book. Epic street murals, strong friendships, spirits both friendly and terrifying, a cute romance, fascinating magic, and an absolutely epic final battle. I loved the interplay between shadowshaping and community, and Sierra’s strong community is pretty much the only reason she managed to do as much as she did is because she relied on her community and they were there for her.

I really enjoyed this book, despite the plot being simple and twistless. There is a trilogy of Shadowshaper books, and even though this one wrapped up completely and could be read perfectly fine as a standalone, I might pick up the next book just to spend some more time with these characters doing this magic.

The Shadowshaper series:

1. Shadowshaper
2. Shadowhouse Fall
3. Shadowshaper Legacy