The Crescent Stone by Matt Mikalatos
**We picked up an advanced copy at BookCon and we’d like to thank Matt and Tyndale House Publishers for the opportunity to review. This book comes out on Aug 7th and you can get it here.**
What I drank prior: I’ve literally been drinking since 11am. Started with vodka sodas. Then beers. Took a trip to the pool. Decided it was time to get schwasty and took 3 shots in one movie and continued with the beers. Movies watched: Shrek, Mulan, Set It Up (yes the Netflix original romcom with Taye Diggs. Shut up, it’s hysterical).
Spoiler-free Overview: So this girl Madeline has a degenterative lung disease and can’t breathe. She got a bf, he’s fine. Her lab partner is Jason. He literally doesn’t lie for some deep dark reason. He’s actually quite hystercal. OK! So. Madeline ends up in the hospital and some creepy guy who’s name starts with H (Jason calls him Hamburger and that’s funny) comes in all magic like and says “if you serve one human year in the Sunlit Lands, we’ll give you back your breath.” Ok cool. Long story short, Jason goes with her and his reward is daily pudding cups.
They go to this crazy beautiful magical place at war with the scary dark people, but Jason feels there’s something not right. Things happen. Plot thickens. etc. etc.
Spoiler-free Thoughts: I quite enjoyed this. The humor in it was on point. I did feel like there were some concepts that seemed an awful lot like other major fantasy series, but it didn’t take away from the story. It was more like “huh, I read about a similar magic system in XYZ series.”
Characters: I loved these characters. I thought Madeline was kind of dumb sometimes but most teenage girls are. I LOVED Jason so much. He was incredibly well rounded for what I originally thought was the comic relief character. He is that AND more. Hamburger was weird AF. The side characters are what make this boog go from good to great. They’re awesome and loyal and hysterical and weird and i could go on and on about them.
Plot: This is a very plot driven story. They’re at war, there’s weird magic shit going on, etc etc. I felt like it sped up and slowed down a bit over the course of the book but never was i like “GET ON WITH IT” ya know?
Writing Style: I liked the writing style of this. It was told in two POVs, and sometimes you need to tell the story from the both sides. So he did, but not in any sort of repetitive way.
World Building: It was interesting. Again, I felt like a couple things were taken from other stories, but that’s fine. There were some unanswered questions like the damn poison flower thing. The fuck was that about? Don’t leave me hangin with that question unanswered…..
What to pair it with: A hefeweizen. This is a great summer fantasy read
Rating: 4/5 Shots
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Until next time, we remain forever drunkenly yours,
Sam
