NEF
Classical literature, strapping swordsmen, mystery, action and a tinge of romance, and D'Artagnan - what's there to dislike?
In a modern book I would have condemned the rambling prose, but somehow the writing style fits with the story. Everything was part of the whole picture, and every detail tied in to the story. I loved the action, and the sword fights, and the intrigue and the plans and the character backgrounds - it's just amazing. And I discovered that apparently D'Artagnan's story continues in a second book! I've yet to pick it up (too many other books, gaaaah) but I hope it's just as good as The Three Musketeers.
I ought to create a bookshelf specially for books like this. I will call it Trainwreck because it will contain disasters I just couldn't put down. This book will be the first in it, and will sit alongside The Girl On The Train in all their weird, broken glory.
I can't remember why I got it. I only remember that I felt it was time for it to go, added it to the BOOK it to the finish line! challenge at The Challenge Factory and then didn't want to read it after all.
But commitments art commitments, so on a long train ride which included a long wait at the train station, I kinda forced myself to pick it up.
The book starts with Daniel, who goes down to the beach with the other kids to pick sea-hearts for their mams (mums). They falter. Down there, sitting near the line where sea meets beach, is old witch Misskaella, foul and scary as anything worthy of scaring kids.
And then, armed with that view of old-Misskaella, we dive into the past and meet young-Missk, before she turned into the hard-shelled, revenge-driven witch she was in Daniel's time. And oh, what a view it is.
As is usually the case with Trainwrecks, yo, I couldn't bear some parts of the book. I had to stop and breathe, which I hardly ever do with books. I had to think and connect, stop and think about implications.
I'd recommend it. It's compelling in certain ways, such as why Misskaella became such a horrid thing, and the relationships between the sea-wives and their children (which, you know, was the best part of the book), the intertwining of the lives, and how they all connect in the end. It's horrible in other ways, starkly, unforgivingly terrible, in how the sea-wives' arrival - unwittingly - destroy, shatter people's lives.
All in all, an excellent read (because you know how I like to torture myself sometimes).
It was an interesting idea, that of knots holding promises that sear your skin if you break them, and cause you a world of suffering forevermore - or until you are forgiven. That was the main reason why I started this book.
On the whole, it was a good story. On the other hand, it's not that good, I felt. It felt ordinary. The writing style and phrasing was okay, and the plot was interesting (I loved the part where even after Khareh becomes the villain he's still similar to the Kahreh he was before Raim was exiled, even if both versions are spoilt silly). But other than that - I would have loved to have seen more of Spirit-Khareh.
This is a one time read, I guess. Maybe I'll take up the sequel, but not right now.
It's a story about many stories, with one tale standing out above the rest. The story is basically The Arabian Nights', but with much more detail. I fully enjoyed it, even if it read a little too much like a history book for my liking.
I don't think I can explain what I liked about this book. You'll have to read it to find out.
My brother lent me this book. I never gave it back. It's one of the few books that I read over and over again; my fallback book when I need something to read and don't have (the time to choose) anything else (because i'm hopelessly late).
What hooked me was the prose and style - lots of adjectives, lots of description, lots of quirky lines - “events run in packs”, and “Mr Vandemar... did not look nigh unhinged with grief”, and “Some of us are so sharp... we could cut ourselves.”
After that comes the story. Who can begrudge a story that has villainous angels (oxymoron!), medieval courts established in subway train cars, mice that rule over humans, and the Marquis de Carabas? I want a whole book on the Marquis. I want to know how he got the whistle, why the Earl hates him, and exactly why the Birdman owed him that huge favour.
The characters were fantastic. Richard grows throughout the story. Formerly a boring desk worker, Richard begins to step up to his girlfriend Jessica (a.k.a. the Creature from the Black Lagoon), helps Door, goes on an adventure across dangerous, man-swallowing bridges, Floating Markets and murderous, plotting angels, trying to get his life back.
Does he? Well, read and find out. I loved this books, even though there were extra commas, weirdly-placed inverted commas, and several typos (how I suffered). Ignoring that, though, Neverwhere definitely scores on the higher end of the scale.
This book was my introduction to stories-in-verse. It was, as far as introductions go, a very good first impression.
The verse part, as far as I'm concerned, was not very poem like at all. It was more of a real story with sentences separated in the middle. Some lines rhymed, though.
The story, on the other hand, was enchanting. No magic, no - I meant that the storyline appealed to me. A lone woman in a camp full of men (I have some doubts about that) who has the knowledge to heal, who wants to fight as much as her men do, who finds first an enemy and then a friend in Gwen, who risks her life to save the people she loves... when the author tells it it sounds so much better.
Read it, if only for the lack of other things to do. It's good.
Watership Down was made into a movie, oh, years ago. I watched it when I was a child, a very small child, and I absolutely loved it and watched it many, many times.
But - I still have nightmares because of it.
Exactly which part of this story is for children again? The part where Fiver envisions fields of blood and his warren's imminent destruction? Or the part where the Owsla hunts down the rabbits who escape the warren with Hazel and Fiver? Or the part where they are almost killed by Woundwort's warren? Or the part where they go rabbit-rescuing in the farm?
Criminy. This book was so... so... GREAT.
I read it at fourteen and loved it. Read it again at sixteen and loved it. Watched the movie again at seventeen and had nightmares for a week, but loved it. Hazel is amazing. Bigwig is so cool. Fiver is adorably wonderful. Hyzenthlay was nice.
Words do not suffice to explain what I feel with this book. Except that my one year old niece is not going to discover it until she's at least eleven.
And she will read it in bright daylight, safe and cocooned with her big guarddog-babysitters all around her. Yeah.
DragonSpell was interesting, in a way. Since this was meant for younger readers, I guess it just didn't appeal to my tastes. Still, even though it was written for a specific age group, it could do with a little bit more refining.
When they said Kale was a slave, they really mean a servant. No one would send a slave off to a far-off city with something as valuable as a dragon egg. More likely, they'd take it away. Granted, of course, that everyone seemed to love Kale, and treated her nicely. Still...
And Kale, for a girl who grew up in a small village, seemed to adapt to magical life waaaaaaaay to quickly. Might be because of her astonishing gift (rather nice, that was) or maybe because she was a wizard too, but I felt that she should have objected and struggled more.
This makes it seem like I have a grudge against the poor girl. Well, sorry, Kale. Your story was nice, but I got bored after the first book.
I got the book because it was : first, thick; second, by an author with a good rep; third, it was thirty dollars and more than four hundred pages long.
Oh, it also sounded good.
The beginning was kind of slow, but then the story started to pick up. Some parts of it were confusing, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the last few bits, but all in all, I liked this book.
It took me two and a half days of (almost) constant reading to finish it. I'm planning on reading it again soon.
I was expecting a fairytale with a pretty mask on, but what I got was a fairytale with the mask OFF.
I didn't exactly love the book (I'll forget about it until I see it next) but I did like it. It's a good read, but it's the sort of story you know will end in a certain way.
The friendship Ani had with her fellow Workers was nice, though. But the part about Geric the Guard falling for her, and then it turns out he's not Geric the Guard after all? That part was kind of... maneuvered, I felt, to fit the story's ending.
But all in all, it was a good book.
Spoilers ahead. I shall try and mask them, but I don't promise anything.
I don't usually like war stories. There are very few that I can read without hiding my eyes with both hands and peeking through my fingers.
Code Name Verity, though, sounded like the kind of story I could bear. I was desperate, admittedly (when you've got nothing but a bookshelf full of classics which have endlessly complicated sentences, you feel sort of daunted. Sort of), and I got CNV just because it sounded like the light read I needed to brace myself for the classical realm.
Man, was I wrong or what?
Verity was entertaining, brash, loud-spoken, the sort of girl I tend to avoid because they are bigger than life and I am not. At first glance, she is also a traitor, a snivelling little tattler, a crybaby and absolutely spineless.
She is not.
I found it a little bit difficult to believe that the Nazis would let her ramble on and on like that, giving out a few nuggets of information here and there in between hundreds of other useless words, but it's a story. I let it slide because I wanted to.
The story of Queenie and Maddie's friendship was bright and lovely and tender and rather otherworldly. The story of Maddie's love for planes was equally interesting. The story of the war and Maddie and Queenie's work descriptions and adventures in training was nail-biting and hilarious and heart-string-tugging and quite generally amazing.
But the ending... was something else altogether.
Quite simply, this book deserves a read. If Verity annoys you, skip ahead and read Maddie anyway.
Well, now I know I can't read this book in digital form. To finish it, I actually need to have the actual book made out of paper in my hands. Then I read it all through.
At any rate, thank you to my awesome brother for buying this for me. The story itself was dark and horrifying and just so... strange. My brother warned me when I started to read it, but I didn't actually think he was serious.
It's a good book, although I think I'll need to read it again to understand it. Ahaha. But while reading, my heart was thumping along to the action and suspense, and then when books were being burnt my emotions were in turmoil... my classmates told me not to read this anymore, because they said my expressions were painful to watch.
It's good. If you like misery on the first read. I have yet to start my second read. Hopefully I find the hope in there somewhere.
I first read The Westing Game when I was nine. Ever since then, I've been trying to read it again. Do you know how hard it is to find this book when your public library is never open because the people who run it are silly?
Well. Whew. It's hard.
Anyway, the Westing Game was almost everything I remembered it to be. The plot was okay, still had that mystery, and enough time had passed that I didn't remember who'd done it, but the writing was sparse. I felt like I was reading a newspaper.
Still, it's one of those books that you carry around in your head, waiting for the right moment to spring it on someone - “Oh, you like that sort of book? Alright, try The Westing Game, it'll send you up the chimney.”
When me nephew turns eleven, and if he likes books, this is a book I will recommend to him.
Did not finish.
Lent to me by a friend, I felt obligated, driven even, to read it, but no. I just can't.
I was disappointed with how oblivious Tintin seemed to be, and how events just conspired with him to save him and work things out for him. Real life doesn't work like that!
Perhaps I'm not used to reading comics like these, or perhaps I'm too used to reading manga, but I just couldn't get into it. I shan't consider ever going back to it, either, because I'm returning the book this week and that will be that.
I finally started the book after having it on my shelf for, well, forever, but I didn't enjoy it much. I'd say at all, but I did like the starting. The world was very interesting, with it's doomed-yet-still-surviving aura it had going on. I like the Japanese base it had - it made the book feel familiar, and interesting. but the plot didn't stand out. I gave up after the second chapter, I'm sad to say. maybe I'll start it again one day, but for now it's not something I'd recommend to anyone.
Started out good, and then went downhill very fast, because I discovered that the blurb doesn't quite give the proper impression of the book.
I went in expecting a young guy to grow, to encounter hardships, to be confused. I like it when there's more than a touch of misery in books like these. Makes the characters seem real, and less like the problem-free, gifted, irritating person Whill was.
Yes, he's never know his parents. He has Abram (and Teera, for half his life) to make up for that. Nothing beats knowing your very own blood relatives, but when you have a loving substitute instead you can't really complain.
Yes, he's a good fighter. But are you telling me that a child who's only ever encountered “Abram and the random mountain bandit” can take on an experienced, talented, older KNIGHT of the HIGHEST order and win? With sheer luck, yeah, maybe. But it's not really believable.
Also, Whill throws gold coins around like it's free water. I mean, two rooms, dinner and breakfast and stabling for horses is about four silvers, and apparently one gold coin is worth way more than that - and yet Whill throws one gold coin here, another few there, “keep the whole bag” over there! Even building a ship costs only 32 gold coins! For all the smartiness Whill is supposed to have, he's clearly never thought of or even heard about saving.
I just had to get that out there. Been bugging me ever since he won the tournament. Even the fact he won the tournament bugs me.
At any rate, into my meh-meh shelf it goes, because this is not something I'd like to read again anytime soon. Maybe for a kid I know, but I feel too old for this. Whill's got too easy a life for my taste.
Oh, will my streak of pumpkin pie never end?!
This book is a lot like Of Beast and Beauty, in which I went in expecting Apple pie (which I LURV) and got instead pumpkin pie (which I don't). Whereas in Of Beast and Beauty I didn't like it mainly because of personal taste, here I just lost interest, kind of like falling into obsession over custard buns and eating nothing else for days, and then waking up suddenly to realize that no, I don't like custard buns anymore.
I read the first few chapters, turned a page, and put the book away.
I reeeeeally didn't like the female characters - catty, nosy and proud as they were. The spoilt brat the MC rescued was, certainly, rich, but also certainly arrogant - and his best friend was just as unlikeable.
Or should I say unrelatable? I like my characters to leap off the page and snuggle into my head and carve themselves a place in my heart. Sometimes, if they're shy, they are allowed to stand next to me instead, and tell their story from a distance. But they are never allowed to email, text or write their story, because I just won't get it. I enjoy stories emotionally, not intellectually.
I'm really sorry, but Ship Breaker was not my cup of tea. I didn't finish it. Perhaps the world was too foreign to me; perhaps the characters not something I could understand.
I hope you have better luck.
If I pushed myself, I'd be able to finish this, you know. It's surprisingly readable.
My problem was the plot. I got as far as the part where the narrator (whose name I still don't know!) - where the narrator's mother stays the night in his room and they read a book together, before I gave up. That far, and nothing happened, not counting countless memories and feelings (it's called In Search of Lost Time, but it doesn't seem to me like he's lost a lot of time - he remembers so much I got underwhelmed).
I'm aware that this is a masterpiece, and nearly 30k+ people will disagree with my rating and my opinion on this - but let me remind you that you are not me. I am probably being tastelessly blasphemous in my choice of literature, but know that I never read every word of LOTR either (although I did finish that one, even if it took a ridiculously long time).
So no, I didn't finish this, and I am sorry, if only because of its fame and charming writing.
Think of pie. Beautiful brown crust, soft and slightly crunchy, baked to perfection. You cut a slice out of the gorgeous slice, pick up your fork and carve out a bite, revelling in the first few seconds of delish crust... until you reach the pumpkin filling inside.
I've got nothing against pumpkin pie - most people enjoy it, including my mother.
But I don't. And that was my dilemma with this book. Of Beast and Beauty started off really nicely, with a princess in distress but who was not going to wilt, and a fighter waiting for the right moment to strike...
But then they met, and I discovered the pumpkin filling and lost interest.
The writing was good and easy on the reading, but I just don't like the plot. There were things I had problems with - like the fact that Gem had a child. That didn't fit him at all (and I also don't like a plot where there's a child out of wedlock, unless there's some stunning feature to reconcile me to the idea). Isra danced and spoke to thorny roses which drew blood. I think. I can't remember that well, but no. I don't much like roses in the first place, and now they draw blood? And do they bite? I think they bit someone. No. Just no.
So I skipped everything between the first and last chapters, and went straight to the end, which I will not recount here. Go read it yourself. I have to say the ending was plausible. Not my favourite type (it was bittersweet. Fine for chocolate, but not in most books), but it at least calmed my troubled heart. Hahaha.
I won't say not to give this book a try. My personal tastes marred the story for me. But the writing is good, so maybe if you like pumpkin pie you could give this a try.
(That rhymed!)
It started out well. I enjoyed the beginning, which despite being slightly confusing, was exactly the kind of abstract storytelling that I enjoy. After that, around the part where the boys are choosing a leader, things started to fall apart, and I began to skip pages. I think it was because this was one of the books on my exam reading list, and the exam was the next day, so the pressure might have influenced me. I'll go back in a few months and reread. The plot, though, is interesting, and it got me an A on my writing exam :D
I want to scream. I read [b:Thorn 51265989 Thorn (Dauntless Path, #1) Intisar Khanani https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563394270l/51265989.SX50_SY75.jpg 19122499], the prequel to this, and that reads like most other Goose Girl retellings I've ever read. Then I see that it has a sequel. Unusual. I'd hoped for more of Allyra, who is clever and responsible and warmly practical. Instead this book is about one of her attendants, a horse breeder's daughter with a turned foot and a pronounced limp, with no unusual beauty or riches. And it was glorious. I wanted to scream at the ending. It is a horribly well-placed cliffhanger, and unfortunately makes so much sense where it is. At one point in the book, I wondered if the series was meant to be a story of morals. Both the princess and Rae wonder about the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, the difference between which becomes ever more greyer, it seems, when you weigh that against the wellbeing of a nation. Throw in several Thief Lords, an unfriendly court, increasingly dangerous opponents, and a tonne of secrets, and you have a surprisingly political fairy tale with a tinge of romance. I loved it. I especially love how it ended - I cannot wait for the third book, because almost certainly Rae is going to grow into something even more terrifying and wonderful as she was here.
It started out well. I enjoyed Tali's personality throughout - she's vivacious and charming. Arion is serious and witty, so I liked him too.
And then Tali fell in love. And the book turned into a list of cliches.
I dnf just about the point where Talon is revealed.
This was the only book of this series I enjoyed. I think it's worth a read for the world itself, since the magic, the plot, and the characters are charming, interesting, and dazzling.
I just cannot get over all the “protecting helpless females” that goes on.
The first thing that struck me was the art.
[Complete review, with pictures, links and a trailer, here.]
The artwork is right up my alley: realistic to a certain degree with graceful lines that express motion quite well. The attention to detail was amazing: it made me linger over the panels, admiring the lines, the background, and the characters.
On Goodreads, Memento (Harmony #1) by Mathieu Reynes has an overall rating of 3.88 with 69 ratings (as of 23/12/17). My impression of Memento: now this is real art - and it's 58 pages long, too!
4 STARS.
I was struck throughout by how put together the panels are. Sometimes, in comics, especially where there are limited pages or limited space, the panels don't flow, but become random scenes of the story, giving off this really jagged feel. With Memento, though, the story flowed smoothly for the most part (very few places felt rushed, like the transition between Mahopmaa's ritual and Harmony seeing Nita after the ritual, but these don't stand out too badly).
The font choices matched, for the most part. I did feel that the bubbles were too generic: it'd have been nice if the shape of the bubble matched the font type - shouting would go in jagged, spiky bubbles, for example.
The plot itself was good. I would have preferred more answers to my questions, but I don't feel put out by that. Instead, I get the feeling that Memento was planned pretty well, with a beginning-middle-end that draws the reader in. There were quite a few different points to follow - four? five? - but not too bad. They would tie in eventually, I hope.
In other words, if I saw the sequels in bookstores where I live, I'd probably get them - if just for that amazing, eye-candy art.
DISCLAIMER: NetGalley provided me with a free copy of this book in return for my honest review.