Tag: poetry

Review: The Poet Empress by Shen Tao

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The Poet Empress with a matcha latte

Alexis:

The Poet Empress follows Wei, a poor girl from the rice fields of her kingdom who becomes a concubine to the Azalea Dynasty’s heir. The Azalea Dynasty is struggling: the emperor is dying, the heir/prince is violent and cruel, famine is striking the land, and poetry magic is lost to all except the powerful.

Wei must learn to survive in a world cruel to women, even if it means learning poetry magic herself to craft the most powerful spell of all.

What I Liked: 

I bought this book because it sounded similar to A Song to Drown Rivers, which was a devastating book that I loved, and I was right! However, be warned that, no matter what marketing you see, The Poet Empress is not a romantasy or romantic fantasy. It’s a dark, political, historical fantasy that explores the theme of love—and suffering.

(Also, as an aside, the cover is completely covered in sparkles, which I was not expecting! It was a fun surprise). 

I love a good political fantasy, so I was glad to pick this one up. It’s a brutal, often depressing read, yet I found myself rooting for Wei and hoping she would be able to navigate the cruel world of court intrigue without losing herself. 

Tao’s writing is gorgeous, and I found myself impressed that this is her debut! I definitely look forward to reading more of her books in the future. 

The poetry magic, called literomancy, was such an interesting concept, and I wished we got even more of it.

I love how Tao explores humanity. She does an in-depth exploration of how decisions and your upbringing can affect your life, and she truly shows how no one is perfect or wholly good.

What I Didn’t Like As Much:

The pacing was sometimes a little off. When I got to the middle of the book, I found myself waiting for more plot points to happen. However, everything else was so well crafted that this doesn’t affect my overall rating!

VERDICT: 🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶/5

Review: The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward

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Trigger warnings for sexual assault, drug and alcohol addiction, and domestic and physical abuse

“They are not ours, the stars/and have never been.”

Anna: Let me just say that when I bought this in the $1 section of Strand, I didn’t know that it was a memoir told through poetry. I am not a huge fan of poetry, but The Terrible blew me away. Most of it is told through narrative style poems, which helped make it less scary for newbies like me. But there were some really beautiful poems in here that were much more experimental in form than I was not expecting to enjoy. 

Yrsa grew up with her ultra religious grandparents in Northwest England. We follow Yrsa’s childhood, her troubled relationship with her mother, her love for little brother, and her journey into adulthood and ultimately finding herself as a poet and a person. Be warned–this is extremely dark and in some ways is largely the story of Yrs’s struggle with drug addiction. I could not stop reading and flew through it. I especially loved her relationship with her little brother. My only complaint is that I think the final poem tied everything together a little too nicely.

Maybe I’ll read more poetry now?

VERDICT: 4 out of 5 books