Fantasy Archives - Page 19 of 21

People of the Sword by Neil O’Donnell: Book Review

The powerful wizard Crarnock has decided to wipe out humanity with the combination of his magic and his goblin hordes. In order to mount a resistance, the people opposing him must put aside their prejudices, band together and work as one. My huge problem was that this needed a lot more editing. I'm not talking about just a few typos here and there, I'm talking about lots of typos, incorrect word usage that spell checker will always miss, characters saying gonna when their speech has otherwise been very formal, formatting mistakes, and more. It could also have used a general tightening up of the story line. I did read a finished copy, not an ARC. I would have had a hard time overlooking all of this even if it had been an ARC. There were about three gigantic info dumps. I will say that O'Donnell has obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this world he's created, from the history and mythology right down to the smallest details, but my eyes glazed over as I read about the religious history and shifting power between the knights and druids. One character was supposed to be telling another the history, but when that one character talks for pages and pages, I have to call it an info dump. The story itself was okay. I couldn't help but compare it to The Lord of the Rings. I don't want to go into that too much and give anything away, but I think even from my brief synopsis you can see that there's going to be a little similarity. There was a lot of similarity in the overall arc of the story, but the details were different, if that makes any sense. I honestly never managed to finish The Lord of the Rings,…

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: Book Review

When Max's family moves to the beach to avoid being caught in the city during a war, they don't realize that worse trouble is going to find them. First of all, I think the name Roland should be retired from fiction forever. It is impossible for me to read it without seeing The Gunslinger. When the character is supposed to be a normal seventeen-year-old boy, you see the problem I had. Anyway, I found it hard to pinpoint the age group of this book's audience. I didn't realize it wasn't for adults until I started reading it. The writing itself is easy enough for a middle-grade book. But there are a few things that happen that pushed it up into YA territory for me. I don't have kids though, so maybe I'm just naive about what kids read. If I'm not, I'm afraid this will struggle to find the right market. Not realizing this wasn't an adult book, I was disappointed when I didn't find Ruiz Zafón's gorgeous prose inside. I just adore his writing. The story itself was suspenseful and engaging. I was curious what was going on almost from the beginning and found myself reading more and more just to try to get to the bottom of things. I think kids who aren't too afraid of things that go bump in the night will enjoy it. As an adult reader, there were a few things that happened that I just didn't buy. I don't know any seventeen-year-old boy who is going to willingly start hanging out with a thirteen-year-old. Not without seeing his sister first. :-) I don't think the kids would have been left alone like they were. And I had problems with the story line surrounding Roland. As always, hats off to Lucia Graves for an…

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier: Book Review

Loosely based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses, among other fairy tales, Wildwood Dancing is the story of five sisters who disappear into The Other Kingdom for a fairy revel every full moon night. But when their father leaves them alone to spend the winter in another city, their cousin, Cezar, realizes something is going on and starts making their lives difficult. So maybe there's nothing deep or thought-provoking here. This was still a hugely fun book. It's pretty obvious that this is a re-telling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, but there are some other fairy tales thrown in. I enjoyed seeing how all of them fit together to make this tale. Jena is the second-oldest sister and the narrator of the book. I loved her. I have noticed in Marillier's other books that her female characters rock, and this one isn't any different. She's intelligent, capable, caring, but also maybe a little blind and naive about some things. Her sisters are a little bit of a disappointment. They don't really have huge roles to play, so they fall more into stereotypes. The pretty one. The smart one. The flirt. The baby. But for me, that just fell right into the spirit of a fairy tale. If you really think about it, aren't they generally peopled with stereotypes that prevent a lot of needless explanation? Cezar was bad enough for me to really despise him, but he didn't cross this weird line I have where I hate the bad guy too much. He was an insufferable, chauvinist prick who infuriated me, but at the same time I loved it. Go figure. Once I realized that there were so many stories being woven together to make this one, I started to worry a little that there was no good way to wrap…

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick: Book Review

I know a lot of you are going to disagree with me, but here goes.... Nora Grey is forced to sit next to the new guy, Patch, in biology class one day. He knows more about her than he should, and trouble starts to follow her around. I should have listened to Misty at Book Rat. I still haven't read her spoilery rant, but I will be hitting that as soon as I finish here. This was compulsively readable, I have to admit that. I read it in one shift at work. But, oh my gosh, I mostly loathed these characters. Nora is basically the girl in the horror movie who manages to run the wrong way at every turn, even if there's a door standing wide open in front of her, until she eventually gets herself caught in a dead end. You know how frustrating it is to watch that, yelling at the screen, "Don't go down to the deserted basement! Run out the freaking door!" Yeah, that was me reading about Nora. Vee, Nora's best friend, was just looking for trouble, and she definitely found it. Patch. Ugh, Patch. He pushed all kinds of the wrong buttons for me. I know a lot of girls love this bad boy, but I couldn't stand him. Bad boys should have a touch of sweet underneath everything. I never quite found that. Oh, at the very end, he comes through, but he's been such a jerk throughout everything that it was way too late for me. I didn't like the way that he was constantly teasing Nora, keeping her off balance, laughing at her, and disrespecting her boundaries. And, girls, let me just say that if a guy who says he loves you ever slams you on the bed and traps…

Storm Front by Jim Butcher: Book Review

4 Stars. Were there a few problems with this book? Yes. But it was fun, funny, suspenseful and original. I read it in one shift at work. I was hooked when Harry quips, "But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face." What a great line! Harry is a [...]

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: Book Review

This book, the first in a series, is too big to easily sum up the plot and do it justice. Basically, Robert Baratheon led a revolt against the old king of the Seven Kingdoms when he was a young man. Now that he's middle-aged, he's found that he was more interested in fighting for the throne than he is in sitting on it. He calls on his oldest friend, Ned Stark, to take the office of the Hand of the King, and effectively leaves him to run the kingdom while Robert hunts, womanizes, drinks and has a good time. But people have noticed that Robert isn't truly a king, and his throne is vulnerable to vast conspiracies. That synopsis does this no justice. There are so many different plots woven into this epic, it's incredible. The characters are wonderfully depicted and complicated. The story is told through the eyes of many different characters. From Ned's daughter, Sansa, an 11-year-old girl who is too romantic and prim and proper for her own good, to the cynical dwarf, Tyrion, who is the king's brother-in-law, each character has something to say and a unique voice to say it in. But it never gets confusing. Just in case, though, there's a "family tree" of characters at the end to help keep everyone straight, but I never had to use it. For an 800+ page book, I really ripped through this. I picked it up to read just a little one night and I was over 60 pages into it before I realized it. For such a huge book, it really was hard to put down. I got sucked into each character's story and lost track of the time. And this happened every time I picked the book up. It's hard to maintain that kind…

The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb: Book Review

Calder is a Fetch, a soul who escorts people on their journey to heaven. One day he shows up at a Death Scene, waiting to see if an infant chooses to die or not. The woman holding the baby takes his breath away. She's beautiful and has a kind, caring, sad face. He can't get her out of his thoughts, and his work begins to suffer for it. The Fetch was okay, I just felt like I never really connected with anyone. I'm beginning to wonder if I really don't like third-person narratives and just never noticed before. Here, I just felt like I was told a lot of stuff and not really shown anything. I'm told that Calder has always felt like he shouldn't be a Fetch because he has trouble with obedience, but the little I see before the story really starts shows a guy who honestly tries his best. Eventually I was told that he's in love with someone, but I didn't really see it happening. Maybe the author was trying to keep the story short, but I felt like this book should have been longer to show me everything that was happening rather than just telling me and hoping that I accepted it. At the beginning, Alexis is a whiny, bratty teenager. I freely admit that if I'd gone through what he'd gone through, I would have easily out-whined him. But I have very, very little tolerance for angsty teenagers, so he really turned me off. There were times that I just wanted to shake Calder and tell him to start thinking. He finds out that there are two things he has to do. One of them was obvious to me from the beginning. It took him forever to figure it out. Calder ends up on…

Ash by Malinda Lo: Book Review

Ash is a re-telling of Cinderella, with more fairies and no fairy godmother. The style this is written in is not a style for me. It feels true to what I remember of the original Grimm's fairy tales, but that doesn't mean I like it. It's all third person, watching Ash do her thing, with very little dialog. I like my characters to talk more than that. I did like the twist on the tale, but I think that if you call yourself a conservative, you will dislike it a lot. No judgment, I'm just sayin'. And I think that's really all I have to say. It was okay, but I've honestly already forgotten most of it and I just finished it last night.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld: Book Review

Aleksandr Ferdinand is the son of the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He finds himself on the run one night with a few loyal men and a Stormwalker, a two-legged machine that sounds like something out of Star Wars. Deryn Sharp is a girl who loved to fly with her father. Now that he's dead, her only hope of flying again is to disguise herself as a boy and join the British Air Service. I loved this world that Westerfeld created. The Star Wars type machines of the Clankers set against the fantastical animals created by the Darwinists was just a lot of fun. Who doesn't love the idea of a whale that's evolved to fly? It was all just so whimsical that I loved it. And then to choose to set these people down smack at the beginning of World War I rather than in the future really just tickled me. I loved the illustrations too. The detailed pencil drawings added the perfect touch to the story for me. Alek and Deryn were great characters. They were both about fifteen or sixteen and they already had strong personalities, but I liked watching them grow and learn throughout the book. There was one point where I got pretty upset with Deryn, and I can't decide if I think she acted out of character or if people who blindly follow orders without any thought of their own just irritate the heck out of me. Either way, I got past it and she did too. For the record, I was not a huge fan of Westerfeld's Uglies, but I really did love this book. So if you didn't really care for his earlier book either, don't let that turn you off this new series. It was a great adventure story with amazing…

Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler: Book Review

Jane True is practically an outcast in her small town of Rockabill, Maine. She finds solace in swimming in the ocean, dangerously close to the whirlpool known as The Old Sow. When she finds a body in the water, her world changes beyond all recognition. The big draw for me was the cover. I love it! It does make the book like it might be YA though, and it is not YA. Sex. Lots of sex. Need I say more? This was a lot of fun, and I really liked Jane, her problems and her world. There's such a wealth of supernatural beings to choose from out there, it's nice to see an author taking advantage of that rather than dwelling on the vamps and weres. I don't know if I just had to get used to Peeler's style or if the beginning really was an info dump, but I was a little disappointed when I first started. I've been looking forward to reading this for a while, and I did not expect to be less-than-thrilled at the beginning. Jane's Libido killed me. It was practically a character, hence the capitalization I gave it. It's pretty clear what part of Jane is thinking, "This guy's super-hot!" without being told that it's her Libido. Or her Lady Bits. Or whatever. There should be a supernatural rock band called "Jane's Libido" worked somewhere into the series! Hee hee! I obviously think I'm funny. ;-) Jane is pretty funny. I laughed out loud pretty consistently throughout the book. Her descriptions of some of the "supes" she meets are hilarious, and I could appreciate her self-deprecating sense of humor. When she meets Trill the kelpie, my husband finally gave up and asked me what I was laughing at. Mostly he tries to ignore me…