Book one was quite good. Well, as good as a book I gave 4 stars to, I don't mean to imply it was the best thing I'd ever read. Book two . . . not as good.I don't recall Sophie being so . . . overally emotional in the first book, but there just might have been more to distract me, what with a new world to explore and all, that I might have overlooked it. So, yeah, that was off-putting.For the most part the beginning of the book is good-ish. There are elements along the way of the thing that took

Fun and entertaining, but definitely not perfect. I like the world and I really hope the 3rd book goes into what exactly is going on there, but I kind of hate Sophie - she's obnoxious and bratty and childish. And the romance seems ridiculous to me - they're both annoying cold fishes and there are way more interesting pairings I'd be up for reading about. Anyway, I'll read the 3rd book and I'm sure I'll enjoy it but I'm not expecting anything life-changing.

I have every reason to have loved Child of a Hidden Sea when I read it in 2014. Circumstances conspired to have me read it at the same time that things were going well in life, and I was at a bit of a happy high. It was, as I called it, “pure indulgent fantasy,” the concept reminiscent of many old daydreams that used to entertain me when I was younger. And it was written by A M Dellamonica, an author I’d previously established was a damn good writer and who had great talent for writing phenomena...

Find the original review here at This is the Story of My(Reading) LifeA Daughter of No Nation wastes no time in throwing Sophie(and readers) right back into Stormwrack. For the past six months, ever since Sophie has been back on earth, she has been preparing for this moment as well. It was only a matter of time before she found herself back in Stormwrack. So when Parrish and Verena show up needing her help she's all to willing.A Daughter of No Nation is still a political fantasy. Which is very...

I had to give up on this travesty. Truly an unpleasant, protracted, agonizing experience. I was so excited by the idea of this alternative fantasy world, and was compelled to continue into the second volume after being significantly underwhelmed by the first book only because there was so much potential in the world-building. But instead, all I got was fucking Sophie being insufferable as all shit, all over again. I probably could've bucked up and made it through this madness if Sophie just wasn...

what's (unintentionally) remarkable about this book is the way that it unwittingly demonstrates, even in 2015, everything mary louise pratt and others have written so much about, re: anti-conquest and knowledge production as the tools of empire. the first book in the series was bad enough but this one almost beggers belief. that the protagonist is able to waltz into pretty much any situation and save the day using her superior powers of observation and also SCIENCE (always with the science!) whi...

I still enjoyed this a lot but I'm gonna be honest, I didn't really understand the plot. It may have to do with the fact that I was reading this while a lot of things in my life have been...stressful to say the least but it seemed like the whole major plot was pretty muddled/confusing/really hard to follow. But the world is just so cool, I love reading about it and being immersed in it like Sophie is! And love reading about all the other characters as well (Parrish, Bram, Verena, etc).

I hate the covers of these books, because they're so cool, and yet have NOTHING to do with what's actually in the books. I keep expecting rollicking pirate adventure fiction, but that is really not what's going on here. If anything, Sophie goes out of her way to keep wearing her regular Erstwhile/Earth clothes, and spent most of this book on land, so whyyyy is she dressed as a pirate on the prow of a ship on the cover? Anyway. I love the worldbuilding, I really do. Stormwrack is such a great cre...

A Daughter of No Nation isn't action packed, but it weaves a fascinating spell that sucked me in and kept my attention, when I only planned to read a few pages. The world is enthralling, the premise is intriguing, and I look forward to book #3.

Review cross-posted to my blog here: http://www.firstsightsecondthoughts.n...A Daughter of No Nation is the second book in the Hidden Sea Tales series, the first one being Child of a Hidden Sea. I read the first book not long before I started doing these book reviews, so I’m excited for the chance to review the second in the series. You see, I adored the first book. Sophie Hansa is a great protagonist, and the world of Stormwrack, created by A.M. Dellamonica, is amazing. It’s actually what gave

Bringing swashbuckling, fantasy, and police procedurals together into a perfect adventure on the high seas, A DAUGHTER OF NO NATION is even better than it's predecessor. For anyone who enjoys a touch of real world risk in their magic, this is an adventure you won't want to miss.Sophie's exploration of Stormwrack is the perfect balance of science, magic, and adventure. She is a scientist dropped into magical circumstances, and while she's well educated and dogged, her story is accessible in a way...

*** Possible Spoilers ***This was the winner of an Aurora award for 2016. I'm not sure why. I did make it through the entire book but it was a struggle and I thought about giving up numerous times. Fortunately near the end of the book the author got serious about her story and stopped trying to annoy the reader by focusing on her heroine's lack of maturity. Most people seem to like it and most comment on the impressive amount of world-building that was done. I have to concede that the world-buil...

Huge thank you to Raincoast/Tor for this ARC!Let me preface this review by stating how much I adored Child of the Hidden Sea. I WAS IN LOVE WITH IT! I found it just a unique and refreshing take on both time slip fantasy and pirates. Just the fact alone that pirates are such a dying breed in literature make me depressed considering how much fun and roguish they can be.And here's the kicker: I was so excited about a sequel for Child of the Hidden Sea because I loved the world, I thought the charac...

Likes:ø A couple of intriguing mysteriesø Romance between proper, rule-following Parrish and quirky Sophie.ø Geeky Sophie. Her scientific approach and examination of everything, gave me opportunity to learn a lot of different facts about wonderful world of Shipwreck.Dislikes:ø Sophie was very naive and childish at times. Listing all the times when this was obvious would take hours and spoil a lot of what happens in the book. But take an example when she refuses to eat food prepared by slaves. Bu...

This whole series was so frustrating because it almost got it right every single time. I kept reading hoping for a change but... nope. Logical fallacies, mild mysterious, weird romance, mc that speaks and acts years younger then she is supposed to. I kept thinking certain issues with writing and plotting would be ironed out as the author progressed... nope. It is much worse to want to enjoy books and find it difficult then it is to outright hate a book. This was a frustrating series to read.

2016 Aurora winner, and seriously, WHY? Was the field that abysmally bad?It's still a very interesting world, I find most of the story itself captivating (except maybe for the Corsetta/Rashad subplot, which was unexpectedly more boring than it could have been). We do learn more about the world, and I inhaled every bit of it. There are interesting characters, though most could use a little more attention. The turtle subplot is fun, and Sophie actually shines in it. Her interactions with her broth...

Like the first novel in this series, the best part of Sophie's adventures in a pre-technological, magic-filled, Age of Sail world is the mixing of modern and ancient sensibilities. Sophie's interior voice is thoroughly modern, providing very funny no-nonsense commentary on a world without notions of forensic science. She sails into the world and solves a mystery, falls in love, fights with her sister, and is clueless whether her father is a psychopath or not. However, I found little interest in

I am continuing to enjoy this series, and I appreciated the expansion of worldbuilding in this installment. I did find the various threads of the plot to get a bit muddled at times in this installment, much more so than the first book, which had a pretty clear arc. Sophie continues to be an enjoyable protagonist, though I did find her naïveté regarding Cly a bit exaggerated at times given that she is supposed to be more of an analytical scientist. I enjoyed getting to see Bram, Verena, and Parri...

In Child of the Hidden Sea, Sophie learns that her birth parents are, in fact, magic-using seafarers from an alternate dimension. In A Daughter of No Nation, she gets to know her father a bit better, and struggles to find a place in a world that doesn’t necessarily want her, or her weird ideas about science.This book is about discovery, about forming and testing hypotheses, about collecting and integrating data and questioning your assumptions and figuring out how to respond to unpleasant truths...

In the middle of reading. Worldbuilding is fantastic, best book I've read with it. Worldbuilding gets better with this sequel (except for the magic system, which seems to have mildly changed (view spoiler)[ Now they need to describe intentions too? I thought it was the object that solely laid the cause. More simplistic, but would make much more sense. (hide spoiler)]. Romance is...perhaps not this author's strong suit.Protagonist is annoyingly immature. She goes on about how Verena is an annoyin...