Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Wolf by Wolf, by Ryan Graudin. Iron to Iron, by Ryan Graudin.
I read these two books in the wrong order, but I think it might have worked better for me personally that way (though most readers probably would like it better the correct way).

I read Iron first. Set in a world where the Nazis won and have since taken over most of the world, once a year the National Socialists hold a weeks long motorcycle race that only the best boys can enter. Except this year a girl entered, using her twin brother's name.

I loved the author's writing so much, so very very much. I highlighted so many cool descriptions, fun word choices, and sentence with such interesting structure. The race was exciting, the relationship (not romance-type relationship) was great. I loved every moment of this book.

Once I was done, I realized I was supposed to have read Wolf first. Oh well!

At first, I liked Wolf a lot less than Iron, because it had a supernatural (sort of) element. While in a concentration camp, a young Jewish girl was experimented on, and through that gained the power to shapeshift. If I hadn't read Iron first, I might have stopped reading at that point. Everything about the world the story was set in was very realistic, so that power was jarring to me.

That power actually bothered me through the whole book, even though I otherwise loved the story. It wasn't until the end that I realized that the superpower didn't matter: It was just a way for the author to tell this great story.

Very rarely do I gasp out loud over a book, but not only did I do it multiple times during Wolf and Iron, I also did things like whisper "Oh no!". So many twists and unexpected things, yet they were all natural, realistic parts of the stories.

Both books: Very recommended!

The Raven and the Reindeer, by T. Kingfisher. The book's blurb describes this as "A strange, sly retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen". The basics of the story were familiar, I've read other books using Snow Queen as their source materials, but I really, really loved all the twists and changes the author added to this one. The characters were great, I loved the relationships between them (friendships and otherwise), and I really loved the ending.

Also very recommended!

Dropped books:

Moon Chosen, by P.C. Cast, DNF 2%. Nothing about the book worked for me. Hated the writing style, the characters were uninteresting, and the story didn't hook me. Many Goodreads reviews called it wildly racist, though I didn't get far enough in to have an opinion on that.

Coyote, by David L Foster, 3%. I have zero memory of this one, even after reading through the Amazon reviews. I read it three full books ago, so my bad on that.

Bridging Infinity: 30%. A scifi anthology. I read through/skimmed the first few stories, but none of them worked for me.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 2 + 3 + 30 = 35%
Previous abandoned book total: 527%
New total: 562% (five books)