Sarah

This is by far and away the best book I have read this year and possibly last!
I was enthralled from start to finish. This read like a Anderson fairytale with all the horror and resolutions that are not happily but are sort of fair.
I powered through this over the weekend as its so well written.
This will be up there with The Night Circus as a book I will be recommending to everyone because it just so good.

This was one of the sweetest stories I have read in a long time. A proper fairy tale fantasy and it had a dragon, a lost princess who is practical and not prissy and the magykal seventh son of a seventh son.
I will be reading the rest of the series very soon.

I really enjoyed this introduction to the world of Hercule Poirot.

This was a good, but not great place to start reading a Terry Brooks series.
I think most of the recurring characters (just a guess at which they were) were reintroduced sufficiently but I will not be continuing with this series until I go back to the beginning.

So once again I have found a book that I love that is a very short run.
I initially thought the artwork was a bit lazy as it looks very smudged and blurry. On closer inspection I found that the blurry effect was an overlay and the work underneath is quite good.
The story itself is a solid quest for home style story, with allies made on the way to come to the rescue during the final battle.
Mainly I liked the dragon but that goes for any story.

The ending of this was really well done but shocking which I liked.
This is the first book in the Alex Cross series.
Alex Cross is an african american police detective with a psychology degree who is investigating a series of murders in the black community when he and his partner (Sammy) is pulled off the case to investigate the high profile kidnapping case involving the child of an actress and the child of the minister of finance.
Patterson does a really good job building the suspense and setting the scene without making gorey descriptions. What he fails at miserably though is writing a sex scene that doesn't make you either spit take you hot beverage or just laugh at the patheticness of. Seriously, they so are terrible that I hope that is was nominated for Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
Thankfully that is not what I am reading these books for and I look forward to reading more in this series.

once again, as an Australian, we miss out on representation and recognition. Our ministry of magic really needs to pull its finger out and get some of our more spectacular magical creatures the recognition they deserve.
The rainbow serpent was not mentioned at all among the large serpents and they carve out rivers.
The Bunyip who are known to protect the local wildlife from outside forces.
Not to mention the world famous drop bear and hoop snake.
such a shame

Damn it now I have to buy the next one!

This was amazing. Really takes you back into the world of The Dark Crystal. I love the characters created by Brian Froud/Jim Henson and Brian Holguin really gives them a new dimension.
I was worried that is would look to cartoony but the way they have designed the speech “bubbles” to be jagged actually added something rather than detracted.
Loved it!

I listened to a dramatised version of this one from Libivox that was not to bad. In typical Bronte style it's quite depressing for the most part and a little bit predictable with it's mistaken identities, misheard eavesdropping and misinterpretations of affections causing characters to completely fly of the handle and overreact to the simplest events.
Doesn't hold a card to her sister's work Jane Eyre as far as I'm concerned but I've read a work by each of the three Bronte's now so there's that.
Worth a listen but at 500 odd pages I wouldn't like to physically read it.

This was exactly what I wanted coming out of the second book “The Dream Thieves” More Blue and more caves! Also we finally get to meet Malory with his service dog; Dog.
They follow all sorts of clues and Adam gets stronger with his powers of Cabeswater making his super power the awesomeness of chill.
They are still on the hunt for Glendower but unlike most young adults out for adventure, adults are in on the “fun and games” too. Unsurprisingly, I cried in this one, but I cry easy and for happy or sad bits.
Can't wait to get to the next one.

I listened to the BBC dramatisation version of this audio book and thoroughly enjoyed the voice acting. The story and the murder was set mostly in Petra, somewhere I truly wish to visit but even if I wasn't aware of this spectacular wonder, I would have had no trouble visualising the scene of the crime.
In normal Christie style, all of the evidence is laid out before us and I still was none the wiser as to the murderer until dutifully informed by Monsieur Poirot along with the rest of the dumb struck and gapping cast. I need to read more of these and maybe I will get a little wiser.

Sara is in a new city and stirring up trouble. I liked this volume but as an intro to the witchblade universe I probably could have chosen a better starting point. They do an alright job re-introducing characters but some are not as clear as if you had read earlier volumes.
That being said, the story line is solid, and the artwork is amazing with some beautiful full page spreads that would be great as stand alone pieces of art.
I will be reading more from this universe.

Whilst I am yet to read any of Homer's works, I am familiar with the story of Odysseus so this retelling from the perspective of his long suffering wife, Penelope with its fabulous feminist bent was wonderful.
I even liked the poems read by the chorus of the 12 hanged maids. They had a powerful rhythm to them that strengthened the accusations of the maids ill death. The chorus is a tradition of the greek play so it was a fitting use.
Margaret Atwood doing another wonderful job of speaking for those without voice.

This was fantastic! The plot jumped all over the place for the first 300 pages with hilarious results and considering the main objective of the Character Fabrigas is to jump to another universe, this works beautifully.
One of the things I loved the most of the pop culture references. I wish the “traditional sea shanties” had continued into the second half of the book because the image of a dirty, disreputable rabble of grisaled sailors singing mixed up versions of pop songs is one of the funniest things I have read...ever!

The second half of the book is where the plot settles down and goes in a more linear fashion. This is where the action really heats up and once the homunculus shows up we're really cooking with gas.
Awesome book really worth the read.
I want more from these universes.

A nice collection of short mysteries solved with all the flare we expect from the legends of Holmes and Watson. The best in my opinion being “The Scandal in Bohemia” where we meet the only woman to outwit the great detective, “The Five Orange Pips” involving the possible ruin of the KKK, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” where we see the good in bad people and the bad in those seen as good.

This was great! The fake ads at the end of each issue about treible products that some sadly existed in the past (tapeworms for weight loss) and could very well exist (pills to make women more compliant, sound like frontal lobotomies anyone?) mixed in with sadly true stats about domestic violence.

Women are held to ridiculous standards by the “Fathers” and anyone who doesn't reach these ideals of feminine beauty, behaviour or stereotype is shipped off to the prison planet Bitch.
Keen to see where this one goes.

This is a re-telling of Snow White set in the 1920's told mostly by the beautiful sketched illustrations. A very quick “read” (There really isn't much to read).

This would have been a 2 star if not for the ending. I really liked the art work but I found the story just a bit too simple. I thought that is could have had a little bit more in the way of plot to fill out what could have been a really meaty story. Ok not great.

So this was a bit of a mixed bag. I really like the final conclusion of the story line between Snow and Rose Red and some of the Final Story of .... pages but there were just too many of them that I didn't care about. These made it a bit tiresome. Over all quite good but sometimes too much of a good thing is actually too much.

A cute, short window into a world where magic exists but comes as an awful price. The world has been taken over by brambles that are death to touch. Each small work of magic causes more brambles to take root and grow and the only way to fight back is fire and the people are losing the fight. The Alchemist makes it his life's work to find a way to fight back that will free the world from the choking hold that the bramble has on them. But will it come at the cost of his family?
I just wanted to read more of this world. What came before when magic was used freely? What came after?

Lots of tying up loose ends in the filler pages with the series of “The last tale of....” including the 3 blind mice, Jack, fly catcher, Simbad, Cinderella, prince charming, Beauty and the beast (jr) and Briar Rose. I especially loved cinder's final story as it was done in a highly realistic detective noir style of artwork.
Mrs Duglas is a tenuous position with the possession of Bigby as he runs bloody rampage through the city of New York with some interesting magical consequences.
Everyone is taking sides for the final battle with, what looks to be Snow and Rose Red, looking to be on opposing sides with their magical armor of black and gold, respectively, mysteriously appearing when they are close.
I will be eagerly reading the final volume asap.

I did not find this book as compelling as other Sherlock Holmes books that I have read. This seemed like a filler story simply to introduce Dr Watson's to be wife Mary and the “mystery” itself was a little lacking.

I freaking loved this book. Firstly I listened to it rather than read it but I actually think that added to the experience. This book sooooo reflected the “spiritualism” I grew up with from my Mum, to the point where I asked her if she had read it in the 80's. She hadn't but now I think she should. It's even more enjoyable knowing that Dick apparently really believed this. Its great!

I got about 80% of the way through this and I don't know if it's because I reading it at the same time as another book that I am really loving but I just don't care what happens at the end of this story and can find no motivation to read it....and if I'm forcing myself to read something in my own time Im not going to read it.

I am loving this series and my new favorite character is Manon with her “savage” steed Abraxos!