4 Stars. I was much happier with this volume than with the previous one. I’m on firmer footing with love stories, however fractured they may be, than with a retelling of Animal Farm.There’s not really a big plot arc here–it’s more like a collection of short stories than a novel, but I enjoyed them. I particularly liked the […]
Fables: Animal Farm by Bill Willingham
3 Stars. Eh. Three years have gone by since I read this and I just got around to reading Volume 3. I remember that I do like this world and concept a lot, and I enjoy the artwork, but I did not like this retelling of Animal Farm. I somehow missed the classic novel […]
Fairest by Marissa Meyer: Book Review
3.5 Stars. I’m finding this hard to rate. On the one hand, it is well-written and exciting and everything that I expect from this series. On the other hand, it’s Levana. Oh my gosh! I despise this character! I tried hard to find something to like and to see her as more of a victim than a victimizer and that worked for maybe the […]
Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier: Book Review
Caitrin is on the run from a bad situation at home. With only the clothes on her back, a few coins, and her box of scribing tools, she just wants to get away. Her money runs out late one evening in the middle of nowhere. She finds her way to a village called Whistling Tor. […]
Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann: Book Review
I walked into the library on my lunch break to pick up a nonfiction book for my before-bed reading. I have enough unread novels at home. I was not going to check out any fiction. I grabbed the book I was there for and then started wandering the fiction stacks. It couldn’t hurt to just […]
Cress by Marissa Meyer: Book Review
4 Stars. Holy smokes. When does the next one come out? November? *sigh* For some reason, I thought this series was a trilogy, so I expected everything to be wrapped up neatly. I just got more and more stressed out as everything fell apart. Let’s face it–Cinder and company are very much the underdogs. But things just got worse […]
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde: Book Review
Welcome to an alternative England, where characters from nursery rhymes investigate nursery crimes and the investigation is more focused on getting a good story than on getting a correct conviction. Jack Spratt and his new partner, Mary Mary, have just been assigned to investigate the death of Humpty Dumpty. But this seemingly straightforward investigation is […]
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer: Book Review
4 Stars. I didn’t like this quite as much as Cinder but I definitely still enjoyed it. By introducing Scarlet, Marissa Meyer managed to avoid my common complaint that the second book in a series is just filler. Had she stayed exclusively with Cinder’s story, I’d probably be complaining. By shifting the focus, she fills in a lot […]
The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey: Book Review
In the Five Hundred Kingdoms, a force called the Tradition tries to fit likely young men and women down the well-trod paths of fairy tale characters. Now it’s trying to work its magic on Princess Rosamund but Godmother Lily is doing her best to thwart it. The Queen has just died and Lily sees the […]
Die, Snow White! Die, Damn You! by Yuri Rasovsky: Book Review
Synopsis from GoodReads: With the premiere of two new film versions of the Snow White tale, Blackstone enters the fray with its own adult, edgy, and not altogether serious full-cast exposé of fairy-taledom. At last it can be told! Was Snow White really as pure as the driven snow? Did her allegedly wicked stepmother get […]
Tithe by Holly Black: Book Review
Kaye Fierch’s mom is a wannabe rocker. When her latest boyfriend attacks her, Kaye and her mom are left with no choice but to move back in with Kaye’s grandmother, who lives on the shore. When Kaye was younger and they lived there, she had a lot of faerie friends. Now she’s looking for them […]