Labyrinth Lost

By: Zoraida Cordova

Narrated by: Almarie Guerra

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Nothing says Happy Birthday like summoning the spirits of your dead relatives. Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can't trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange marks on his skin. The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland.

©2016 Zoraida Cordova (P)2016 Recorded Books

enjoyable

This story is beautiful. I really like it a lot, I totally recommend it, also the performance was so good.

Absolutely perfect

I don't really have words for how wonderful this book was. Intersectionally feminist with a wholly unique plot, and beautiful prose to boot. I don't know if there will be more in this series. While I'd be thrilled if there were, this is also a beautiful stand-alone.

Excellent story and performance

Really love the diversity in this book as well as the worldbuilding. The characters were interesting and the narrator did a great job of bringing them to life!

I loved everything

The performance was perfect! I loved this story from the start. Finally a book I can relate to as a BIWOC.

engaging story

I loved it, but I admit I struggled with some parts. I loved that it was a story by, for and centered on latinx culture. I adored that Alex, the mc, was bisexual and liked both her love interests were of color, despite one of them being passing.

It was also cool that she was reluctant to be a receiver of her great power, and wasn't just "ready" like a bunch of ya books.

The parts I struggled with only centered on the way eurocentric features were exhaulted over the latter. Nova had blue-green eyes, and his features were often described with much more flattering tags than brown eyes and skin.

Alex even went as far to say she was plain because she had brown eyes. Sigh...

As an afro-latinx person, I totally understand our culture does blend a number of cultures, but a lot of the black people were in passing, had skin described as food or night, or were kind of magical negros(I'm sure it wasn't intentional).

It may not be as obvious to non-black latinx folx, but you can always tell by the description tags when an author isn't black.

I would've given it a five had it not been for that. I loved it so much, its just when it rubs you wrong, it affects your feeling about the story.

Before I go though, I loved that Rishi, Alex's bestie and crush was Indo-Guyanese, you hardly ever see desis of Guyanese origin in mainstream novels.

For those curious, Alex is Mexican and Puerto Rican (with Ecuadorian and Panamanian origin) because I'm Caribbean afro-latinx, so I like to know that kind of thing. This reminded me of Disney's Brave, and Brave was so amazing, do that's a testament to how much I enjoyed!

Convoluted plot, unmotivated characters

Didn't make that much sense. I wanted to like it because of the diversity and culture behind it but all that rich mythology was squashed into obstacles for the (very whiny and not very smart) protagonist. Great idea, badly written.

Fascinating urban fantasy

It's quite incredible that I actually enjoyed this book. You see, it started with three strikes against it.

1, it's urban fantasy, which I very rarely enjoy.

2, it's written in first person, which drives me nuts.

3, it's written in present tense, which is almost never done well and almost always feels like a gimmick to create artificial immediacy (and usually fails to do so).

So, you might ask, why did I read this book?

Well, 2 reasons.
1, I'm trying to branch out into books I wouldn't normally read.
And 2, I'm a long time listener of the Writing Excuses podcast and they recommended this book a while back.

So here we are.

To start things off, the narrator was quite good. She has a good assortment of voices, well chosen pacing and tempo, and skillful vocal inflections. My one complaint is the inconsistency (or, to be more accurate, global consistency) of her accents. Every character speaks the Spanish words with the correct accent, but no character speaks in accented English. In fairness, no one is described as doing so, by some characters felt to me as though they should/would.

Okay, the story did start a bit slowly with a slice of Alex's daily life. However, once the story starts moving there is a lot of action, intrigue, and fascinating mythology.

There is a relatively obvious twist near the end and a sweet, if predictable, romance.

I spent a fair portion of the book not being overly fond of Alex, as willful ignorance is something that really irritates me.

In the end, though, she redeems herself and becomes a wonderful character.

I'm not certain if I'll continue the series, as I'm still hesitant to willfully enter into a book with three strikes against it from the get go. But we shall see.

Great book ..

It really draws you in with the storyline, can't wait to read the next book..

Lovely Read!

Had shocking twists o hadn’t expected. Overall enjoyable. Felt some places lagged but overall a great YA fantasy

Good YA Story

An excellent set up and plot, but I fell asleep listening on an airplane and missed a few chapters. I didn't feel like I needed to go back and re-listen. I'm glad I read it as it was a good, YA story full of magic and twists, but not my favorite in this genre.