Emily
I really wanted to like this book. It has all my usual catnip - Scotland, time travel, handsome men, paranormal women. But I didn't. I felt like this book must have been written during NaNoWriMo, because of all the crazy jumps, the plot-stuffing, and the lack of characterization for all but the main character. It had an interesting premise - a family of time-traveling women? Cool. But the rest was just... lacking.
Aileas, in particular, bothered me. I felt like the author tried to make her evil because of her personality, but it seemed like she was mostly evil because she was ugly. Most of the description of her focused on her being fat, man-like, large, red-faced, etc. All the servants seemed to hate her because she was ugly. Then Trulie comes and the day is saved, because she's so little and pretty! Come on. Aileas could have been made into a much more sympathetic character, even redeemed. Hello, she was abused by her father, Spoiler had a child with a man that she seemed to care about before she got married, saved her sister from their father, was ignored by her husband, who flaunted his mistress in front of her (even had her LIVE in their house)... in any other story, those sets of circumstances would have made her a heroine. But because she was ugly, she had to be the bad guy. Way too simplistic.
So, yeah. I really wanted to like this book... but I didn't.
I found “Shades of Grey” to be an interesting concept. A world where people can really only see a few shades, and they're ranked by the colors they can see - very novel idea. The character of Jane could have used a little more fleshing out, but since this is apparently the first novel in a trilogy, I'm sure it'll come later. Looking forward to the next one!
It's not very often you find a great YA novel about a dystopian future. It's even more rare when part of the book involves the protagonist killing people. This book had both, and a riveting storyline to boot. I was able to relate to Katniss, although the love triangle felt a little tacked on to appeal to the Twilight crowd.
Terry Pratchett is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. He's funny without resorting to puns (usually,) a little sarcastic, and just overall fabulous.
I greatly enjoyed the fact that this book picked up where the last one left off, and didn't just leave Rincewind... hanging. A great book overall, and I'm looking forward to continuing my journey into the Discworld.
I'm not a Trekkie. I used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was a kid, but not really so much since then. I haven't even seen most of the movies (although I did enjoy the recent reboot movie, take that as you may). Given all this, I probably didn't get half the in-jokes that I'm sure are sprinkled throughout this book.
However, I really, really liked it. It was funny without being over the top, thrilling without keeping me up all night, and a well-paced, fun read. I would recommend this to any Trekkie/er, certainly, but also to anyone who's just looking for a fast, fun read.
For way of background, I used to be able to tear through books quickly. Three, four days for a book this size was my average. Then I got a job, and got married. The last book I read had about a hundred less pages, and took me about a month to read.
I finished this book in three days.
The mystery was amazing, and the ending actually managed to surprise me. The characters were multi-layered and realistic, and even though Larsson did devolve into preachiness at a few points, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
I enjoyed this book, and the concept of a group of “wallflowers” taking their destiny into their own hands and finding themselves husbands, instead of passively waiting for a man to choose them. I'm not 100% sure I liked the heroine, she seemed a little less fleshed out than I usually like, but the hero was excellent. A common man, intelligent, and quite devoted to her.
I adored this book. Maybe not as good as the Kushiel series, but Moirin was an engaging protagonist, and her adventures in Ch'in were interesting and original. I missed my old friends in Phedre, Joseline and Imriel, but it was nice to know that they're remembered well and have become legendary. Five stars.
Not one of Julie Garwood's best. Her history was fairly bad (King John was far more worried about subduing the Welsh and trying to keep the rest of his French territories from slipping through his fingers than he was about the Scots) and the relationship was very rushed. I like a nice long development, but I never really felt like I knew MacHugh or Gabrielle at all. The whole book felt rushed really, and the gold of St. Biel was a bit of a MacGuffin.
Yet another quirky lower-class-woman-marries-rich-lord type of book, but as I enjoy those, I have no problem getting around any hangups about that. There was a lovely little exotic twist that I suspect the author has used in previous books, since it wasn't completely fleshed out about a society of ninja-like folks, so I'll have to check it out and see what else I can find.
The thing about the Spiderwick Chronicles, for me, is that they're short and an incredibly easy read. I can zip through one in less than half an hour. Which causes a bit of a problem - why exactly are they five separate books? They're so short and so easy to read that it would have made more sense to make them all one book. I suppose it all boils down to one word - money. You make a great deal more money from five separate books than one bigger book. But they're lovely books anyway, and a great deal of fun to read.
This is probably my favorite book. It is in fact the second time I have read it, but it's still amazingly awesome. It's a retelling of the Tam Lin ballads from Scotland, set in a college in the 1970's and populated by incredibly bright people who quote Shakespeare and Keats in regular conversation and discuss the literary merits of The Wind in the Willows. Basically, it's how I always imagined college would be, but better. Not to mention it's gorgeously written and the supernatural elements are skillfully woven in so that they almost seem like every college campus should have them. I won't go into what they are, because that would ruin the book and you should all read it.
This book is the sequel to Twilight, another amazing read. It was quite nearly as good. It also broke my heart. Quite literally, my chest hurt the entire time I was reading, and I got it out of the library yesterday morning, finishing before midnight. Needless to say, it was exceptionally difficult to put down.
The book opened with Bella, the heroine of the last novel, becoming a year older than Edward, at least a year older than he was when he became a vampire. She gets a paper cut during her birthday party at the Cullen's house, nearly causing a riot, and Edward decides to leave her for her own good. Why she couldn't see through that... well, no, I did understand. She felt inadequate next to her surrealistically beautiful boyfriend, and her own self-doubt allowed her to believe he didn't love her anymore. So anyway, she spent months in a fog of misery before she realizes that if she places herself in danger, she can “hear” Edward's voice.
It was amazing to me how Meyer could make me feel Bella's heartbreak. I plowed through the novel, feeling a hole in my chest just like Bella's the entire time. This would definitely not be a good book to read if the love of your life had just dumped you, but for anyone else it's a lovely, moving tribute to the intense infatuations of adolescence. I can hardly wait for the next book.
I started this book February 26th. I finished it February 27th. It's almost 500 pages long. Yes, it's a YA book, but the print is normal sized, not huge, the words aren't tiny, it's not an “easy reader” in any sense of the word but in how hard I found to put it down.
The essential plot is that the heroine, Isabella (or Bella) moves to a little town called Forks where it is perpetually rainy. Being that this town is set in the northwestern peninsula of Washington state, this is believable. She's 17, a junior in high school, and starts school as an outsider.
No as much an outsider as the Cullens, though, the preternaturally beautiful quintet who sit by themselves at lunch, never eating, one of which is her lab partner. Edward rather hates her at first, a state that Bella finds totally shocking, but he has his reasons. He's a vampire, and she's his perfect meal, as well as the only person he's ever met whose mind he can't read. However, he's a vampire that only drinks the blood of animals, and the temptation she poses is nearly irresistible. The fact that they fall in love and start dating only makes it worse. Imagine dating someone made out of the world's most scrumptious chocolate.
Maybe this book is so amazing to me because Edward is totally the guy I always wanted to date in high school: smart, unbelievably gorgeous, sweet, polite. But the characterization of Bella and Edward, not to mention the rest of Edward's vampiric family and Bella's human one, is truly amazing. Yeah, it's a YA book. But we should all read something young once in a while.
Too short. I felt like Hamilton was rushing to get the book out and had to cut it in half. I was very disappointed that it only contained a couple of hours of the day, and very little really happened.