598 replies to this topic

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Sounds interesting! I'll check it out.

[Mara=^.^=]

Just finished The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, the latest book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Naturally I'm a fan of the entire series, but this installment was particularly touching.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Just finished listening to Switched by Amanda Hocking yesterday. It's about a girl named Wendy, whose mother tried to kill her when she was six years old, claiming that she was a monster and she wasn't her child. She's always felt that there was something wrong with her, something that made her mother hate her and only love her older brother. When she's seventeen, she learns that she's a changeling--a troll who was swapped with a human baby at birth, so that she could have access to the wealth, education, and privileges that come with rich human upbringing.

 

It wasn't amazing or anything, but I enjoyed it. There are definitely some extremely typical YA book moments that do induce an eye roll, but I was able to get past those because I liked a lot of the characters, and thought that Therese Plummer's narration of the audiobook was fairly well done. Also, Wendy acknowledged occasionally acknowledged how typical they were. Like when she has to have a fancy rehearsal dinner, and her love interest is there looking dapper, she comments to herself that "of course he looks unreasonably attractive."

 

I think I'd give this book a solid three stars, story-wise. The performance of the audiobook would get four, so averaging out to 3.5 stars, upped to 4 because I liked the familial relationships and the ending.

[RocksmySocks]

Just read "Daughter of Smoke and Bone". It's YA fantasy, and started out really, really cool. Then it fell apart with a really cliche romance, which was super disappointing, because the fantasy elements were top notch and the mysteries were interesting. I liked the main character quite a bit until the sudden romance twist. It's Romeo and Juliet, but ignoring the lessons of Romeo and Juliet. Ugh. Wish they hadn't gone that route.

[Mara=^.^=]

Just read "Daughter of Smoke and Bone". It's YA fantasy, and started out really, really cool. Then it fell apart with a really cliche romance, which was super disappointing, because the fantasy elements were top notch and the mysteries were interesting. I liked the main character quite a bit until the sudden romance twist. It's Romeo and Juliet, but ignoring the lessons of Romeo and Juliet. Ugh. Wish they hadn't gone that route.

 

#YANovelSyndrome

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Katia11]

Read the last book in the His Mortal Assassins trilogy. Pretty good, but I had the end figured out long before it came. 

 

The love interest was too broody and not nearly as fun as in the other two books. 

 

On the good side the protagonist just really spoke to me and where I am in my life.

 

LIKE.. 

 

WOAH. 

 

 

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Just finished up Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby. Part mystery, part survival tale, and part love-letter to the power of stories, Icefall takes place over the course of one winter. The book stars Solveig, the middle daughter of a Norse king, who is forced into hiding inside a mountain fortress along with her siblings, a small contingent of servants and warriors, and a group of her father's berserkers. As the winter presses on, she begins to learn the art of storytelling from her father's skald (“poet of the living past”) and also forms a bond of fatherly/daughterly affection with the most fearsome berserker of the bunch. However, the unending ice refuses to break, and terrible acts of treachery soon make it clear that a traitor lurks in their midst. In the end, Solveig discovers and learns to wield her own form of power, but it comes at a great cost.

 

Perhaps the most compelling feature of this book is the way the author weaves in little snippets and side-stories at the beginning of each chapter...until finally, in the last third of the book, they all come together, and you finally realize the context in which Solveig is telling them. Freaking AWESOME, man. It was also refreshing to read a YA book with no romance to speak of...it gave the author more time to flesh out and develop a couple of really compelling platonic relationships. In fact, romantic love was portrayed quite negatively in this book, which was both unusual and interesting. If I had to nitpick, I'd say my primary complaint was the fact that the heroine's inner dialogue was a bit too...modern? I'm not sure. Something was a little off about it. But other than that, I would definitely recommend this if you're looking for a quick read.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

 

As you saw, I finished this today. I liked it a lot. I spent the whole book thinking the traitor was one person, until the invasion happened and I thought it was someone else only to be (falsely) led to believe that the obvious person was the traitor. Very well done.
 

Also, I don't think I shared my review of this on here, but the last book before Icefall that I read was Redshirts by John Scalzi. Basically, it's a book making fun of how often red-shirted crew members die in Star Trek. It follows the story of Ensign Andrew Dahl and his friends, who have all been recently assigned to the starship Intrepid, and consistently get stuck going on away missions with Captain Abernathy, Science Officer Q'eeng, and Lieutenant Kerensky, despite all warnings from fellow crew to avoid away missions at all costs, because he will most likely die.

 

This served as the first half of the book. And I loved it. It was absolutely hilarious, and I'm only moderately familiar with Star Trek, so true Trekkies would really like this affectionate parody.

 

But afterward, there are the "three codas," which explore certain themes from the first half in a more serious tone and use three different points of view and focus on non-main characters who are in the real world. This is the half of the book that really bugged me.

 

I would have given the book five stars if this only had the story about Dahl. Once it got to the three codas, it was much less exciting, and much less funny. It's like those sections were tacked on to have a serious half of the book, but they honestly don't fit after the regular story ends. If I'd been reading this myself in print, I'd probably be annoyed enough by those sections to rate it only three stars. But I listened to the audiobook and it's pretty hard to dislike something narrated by Wil Wheaton, so it ended up with four instead. But seriously. Don't feel bad if you skip the entire second half of the book. Once the Star Trek parody is over, you can stop because you're not missing anything if you don't read the rest.

[underwater]

I re-read the Narnia series. Good stuff!

Corinne

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Recently finished A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons (sixth HTTYD book), which was fun. Not as fun as some of the others--I liked the fifth a lot more--but still good.

 

Also, spent the last couple of days reading Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George. It's a retelling of the Norwegian Fairy Tale called "East of the Sun, West of the Moon." In a nutshell: a great big polar bear shows up at the cottage of a very poor family, saying that if their youngest daughter comes to live with him in his palace for a year, the family will have riches and fame and life will be good. Family agrees, and the girl goes to live there. Every night, a man sleeps in her bed and she can't see his face because it's dark and there are never any candles or anything for her to light. After a while she misses her family, so the bear lets her visit for a few days but tells her she can't spend any time alone with her mother or tell any details about her life in the palace. Of course, the girl does so and she ends up telling her mother about the man who sleeps in her bed every night but never does anything else. Understandably, the mother is extremely concerned that a man is in her daughter's bed sleeping, but is also concerned the man might not be human, but secretly some kind of monster, so she gives the girl a candle nub and some matches to hide on her person and see the man's face after he's fallen asleep. She does so one night, and finds an extremely handsome young man not much older than her. Some wax drips off her candle onto the dude's shirt and wakes him up. He's all like, "SHIT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" Turns out the guy's a prince, who's been enchanted by the troll queen to live as a polar bear by day and a man at night, and is to marry the troll princess, but if he can get a human woman to live in his palace and sleep next to him without seeing his face for a year and a day, the spell will be broken and he gets his human bride. But by seeing his face, the girl's nullified the terms of the agreement, and the prince is spirited away to the palace that is east of the sun and west of the moon. The girl travels all over the place, meeting and helping some old women who give her presents, and riding on the backs of the four winds until she reaches said palace. She bargains with the troll princess to get three nights with the prince, one for each of her gifts, but for the first two nights the prince is dead asleep. A servant takes pity on her and tells the prince not to drink anything the troll princess gives him and then he's awake on the third night to see the girl. At the wedding, the prince says he won't marry anyone who can't wash the wax stain out of his nightshirt. Troll princess and queen can't do it no matter how much magic they use, but the human girl tries and she gets it out. Trolls explode or something, prince and girl live happily ever after, the whole shebang.

 

Now, onto the retelling I just finished reading. I liked it. A lot. It was fun and actually really interesting that neither the main girl nor the bear were named until the very end. Tons of medieval Norwegian culture and influence, which I loved so much. My only complaint was that it was a bit slow at times. There weren't too many things to work with in the source material, but I've read another fairy tale retelling by the same author (Princess of the Midnight Ball, which is "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and my favorite fairy tale) and that book didn't have this problem of slow-moving plot. If it could have somehow seemed more fast-paced, or at least had some of the same-old, same-old cut out, it would have been a much better book.

[Mara=^.^=]

Eeeeey, I read that book too, Mary! I think I wrote a short review of it somewhere in this topic...

[Katia11]

Powered through all of the Falling Kingdoms novels that have been released so far. They were pretty good. Enjoyable and sort of fun.

 

Positive: The civil war bit was kind of interesting. Each country being represented by a point of view in the novel. Plus, one of these characters are inherently good, even the savior like character kind of has her moments of darkness which I found interesting. 

 

The romance: I loved most of the main couplings. I'm such a sucker for romance.

 

Negative: The bad guy had totally obvious bad guy syndrome. I mean could he get anymore cruel? Like think evil of all evil. They even call him the Blood King.

 

The savior character ends up sort of whiny and annoying. She also has way too much power. She's sort of like the avatar where she has total control of all the elements and she's the one destined to save the world or whatever. Also, there is no one else like her alive. 

 

One of our main characters has a creepy crush on his sister(who is not actually his sister thank goodness) but then later there's more weird stuff that sort of hints at incestuousness. (creeeeepy)

 

The romance (I know, make up your mind, Katie) So much romance. There are so many different relationships I almost had a hard time keeping it straight. "So who likes who now?" Ugh, frustrating.  I'd rather have one really fleshed out relationship then three or four different ones for the same character. 

 

Anyway, it was an enjoyable series and I'd definitely read more of it if there was more released.

 

Also, I read The Falconer. A fun, light read. The romance was hit you over the head obvious but I liked how bad ass the main character was. But of course instead of just being a normal girl who balls up and takes matter into her own hands she has the savior complex too. (rolls eyes). 

 

But it was enjoyable and I am looking forward to the next book. (Because this one left on one heck of a cliffhanger)

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Just finished The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. It's an alien-invasion apocalypse YA novel. It's told in alternating 1st person narrations by Cassie, a girl who lost her parents and got separated from her kid brother during the "waves" of the alien attack; and Ben, called Zombie, who went to the same high school as her and who has been taken into an army camp to be trained to defend against the alien horde. Cassie is trying to get to the Wright Patterson Air Force base, where she was told her brother was being taken, and after being injured by a Silencer--an alien hiding with a human face--she meets a boy named Evan. She has to decide whether or not to trust him, because he might be the only one who can help her save her brother. Or he might be one of the Others--an alien. Because Cassie learned after the 4th wave that the only way to stay alive is to trust no one.

 

I loved it. I listened to the audiobook on my Audible app, so I got to listen to two different narrators telling the story, and both of them were very, very good and really got the emotions right. There were some moments when I was just frozen in my seat with saucer-wide eyes terrified out of my mind about what might happen next, and other times when I actually laughed out loud. And it was interesting how the narrative was divided in two, but not evenly and not chapter-by-chapter. The first large chunk was narrated entirely by Cassie, with tons of diary-style flashbacks to before the Arrival, and afterward, up until the present. Then it switched to Ben, who narrated for a long time when we didn't hear a peep out of Cassie, and it went back to her eventually, and we got a bit from Sammy, Cassie's kid brother--in third person instead, which oddly fit really well instead of sticking out--and the Silencer who attacks Cassie before Evan finds her, and then it started to alternate a bit more frequently between Cassie and Ben, but still reserving several chapters for each before switching.

 

And there are a shit ton of chapters. Like 92. Except they're all really short--some only a couple of minutes of narration, which probably equates to just a handful of pages if you get the physical book.

 

This is apparently a trilogy (like a lot of YA, it seems), but only two books are out so far. Book 2 is called The Infinite Sea, and there's no word yet on what the third is called, but it's apparently coming out next year. I saw several hardcover copies signed by the author on sale at Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago when I was shopping for my Aunt Shellie's Christmas present, but I had to force myself not to buy it because it was $18 and I couldn't afford it.

 

I'd definitely recommend this to anybody and everybody--but especially people who like apocalypse fiction and/or aliens, or thrillers, or just really good characters and tight storytelling. I'd especially recommend the audiobook. I own it, so if I download the mp3 from the website, I should be able to just give it to you, if anyone asks for it.

 

I already got the sequel with my Audible credit for this month. Probably going to wait until Tuesday to start it, though, so I can listen while I drive to VT since my radio apparently no longer works and I can't play my iPod.

 

 

I also reread Anna Dressed in Blood so that I could read the sequel, Girl of Nightmares. Finished Anna on Friday, I think, but I kinda neglected my internship work to do so, so unfortunately I need to do nothing but solid work until New Years Even when it ends, to make up for it, so it won't be until the first at the earliest that I can start the sequel.

[Mara=^.^=]

I'd definitely recommend this to anybody and everybody--but especially people who like apocalypse fiction and/or aliens, or thrillers, or just really good characters and tight storytelling. I'd especially recommend the audiobook. I own it, so if I download the mp3 from the website, I should be able to just give it to you, if anyone asks for it.

 

Oh oh! I want it!

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Oh oh! I want it!

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

 

It's on its way. Turns out the files aren't mp3s like I originally thought, but special files that can only be played on certain devices. So I pirated a program that is supposed to remove DRM protection and convert into mp3, but it takes FOREVER. 

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Oh oh! I want it!

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

 

 

Here you go. And for good measure, here's the sequel. I've started it, but haven't gotten that far yet. Really need to sit down and let myself get swept in.

 

LINK

 

It takes up a lot of space on my Dropbox, though, so I'm going to take it down Friday night. Anybody who wants the files has to get them before then.

[Thore]

The last book I read was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. I actually enjoyed it as I have always had a fascination with military history and tactics, that and as I was reading it I was engaged in a war against 9 other nations in a game of Civilization IV (with mods) and just as I finished the book I wiped several cities off the map with a combination of nukes and biological weapons. I read the entire thing in between turns since the 9 AI took soooo long to take their turns, I got through a chapter like every 5 turns.

[Mara=^.^=]

I just finished the Star Wars expanded universe novel X-Wing: Mercy Kill, which takes place decades after the Wraith Squadron series. It was so good! Before that I read Dodger by Terry Pratchett - as per usual for that author, the story was super fun and had a protagonist you just REALLY wanted to root for.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Thore]

I haven't read any of that series but I did read the Republic Commando series and that has been pretty good so far. I have found it incredibly easy to justify all the things the characters have done from stealing trillions of credits to selling booby trapped explosives on the black market so that the terrorists they were hunting would kill themselves if they tried to use them. (and wipe out entire city blocks in the process) It is overall pretty well written and I am honestly rooting for the characters and yet I do not hate most of the antagonists I just see them as unfortunate collateral damage. Coincidentally after reading the series I have declared myself a born again Mando. I can now sing in Mandalorian, translate their war chants and best of all I know how to call someone an idiot/a**hole in Mandalorian. The bad side is people look at me weird when I'm in public singing the Vode An. (Brothers All)

[Mara=^.^=]

Coincidentally after reading the series I have declared myself a born again Mando. I can now sing in Mandalorian, translate their war chants and best of all I know how to call someone an idiot/a**hole in Mandalorian. The bad side is people look at me weird when I'm in public singing the Vode An. (Brothers All)

 

Niiiiiice. I've come to feel something like that for the Bothans. REPRESENT

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[JimmyxxCindy4EVER]

STAR WARS FTW!!!