Tag Archives: Fantasy

The Blondes, Fates and Furies, And Again, The Fifth Season

Some strong reads in the last few weeks. I want to get Fates and Furies out of the way because I basically hate-read it. I just didn’t get what the big Story was. While I liked Mathilde’s backstory and some of her choices in the second half, I just couldn’t get over how fusty and edge-less it felt to me. Not enough rock ‘n’ roll for a story about young people in the West Village in the late 1990s… maybe because that’s where I lived…

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Elizabeth Smart, Scientology, Big Magic, Tearling

I have 18-20 books in my TBR pile right now and I want to read them all. Please remember me in your prayers, that my children would leave me alone so that I can READ! I have so much respect for Elizabeth Smart after reading My Story, her memoir of captivity and escape. Her faith in the midst of suffering is inspiring to me, and her commentary on the toxicity of purity culture eye-opening and brave. Leah Remini’s memoir Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology wasn’t…

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Last from Ruth Rendell, Fantasy Debut

I’m so sad to be writing a review of Dark Corners, because it’ll be the last book from one of my favorite authors of all time. Ruth Rendell died earlier this year and left behind a tremendous legacy. As her alter ego Barbara Vine she wrote beautifully complex psychological thrillers, and while her Rendell books were more procedural they still always had crazy amounts of depth. Dark Corners isn’t her greatest Rendell work (I reserve that praise for Judgment in Stone), but I was duly…

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Kid Stuff (Not Just for Kids)

I originally bought Abby Hanlon’s Dory Fantasmagory for my older daughter, who liked it at first then lost interest. My younger daughter (turned 5 today) picked it up and had me read the whole thing to her over 2 reading sessions. It’s an absolutely adorable tale of a little girl with a big imagination, and the illustrations are a lot of fun. She has all these imaginary friends and enemies who tend to take over her life and make her do things that her family…

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New Favorite Author, More Lloyd Alexander, True Crime, Hatchet

I had a great week in reads, after a miserable stretch of books that weren’t worth my time at all. And then I read All The Rage and the world is a better place because Courtney Summers is writing books. My love for Laurie Halse Anderson‘s Speak is epic and legendary, and Summers mines a similar vein (rape victim turned outcast) and makes it completely her own. So of course I completely freaked when I saw that they were interviewed together. YA authors can be…

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Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

Synopsis: When Seraphina, the half-dragon musician, discovers that there are others like her, she tries to unify them to live in freedom from persecution, but another half-dragon with greater powers has plans of her own. Review: First of all, I want to applaud Shadow Scale for its deft handling of exposition in refreshing readers’ memories of the events of the first book, Seraphina. It managed to get me back up to speed without forcing characters to tell each other things they already know, or spending…

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The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

One of my favorite books growing up is now one of my 7 year old’s obsessions. We just finished reading The Book of Three out loud, and have already begun book two, The Black Cauldron. Reading the books aloud has me appreciating Lloyd Alexander’s gift for dialogue. The characters are so much fun to voice, especially Gurgi and Eilonwy. His prose is simple and elegant and never descends into trite cliché or tired imagery. I’m teaching the book with our 4th/5th graders in our homeschool…

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In the Kingdom of Ice, The Princess and Curdie, Luckiest Girl Alive

I don’t tend to read a lot of non-fiction, but I’ve always been a sucker for stories about people trying not to freeze to death. In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Journey of the USS Jeannette was not only a suspenseful, exciting story, but it was exceptionally researched and suffused with narrative excellence. In 1879, the USS Jeannette headed off to the North Pole, captained by the capable and ambitious George Washington De Long. Their goal was to reach the North Pole…

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Seraphina Sequel! Station Eleven, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Praying Life

I just got my e-hands on an e-ARC for Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina, and it’s not disappointing. Full review will be posted on the release date. I joined a book club but missed the first meeting because production widow. I was so bummed, because Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven was a great one for a discussion. I have long been fascinated by depictions of our world with the lights off, but usually they leave me with the megrims and a sense of…

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The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

Synopsis: A week in the life of Auri, who lives in the world beneath the world and keeps things in balance by knowing the perfect place for everything. Review: Is it just me, or did Patrick Rothfuss just drop a huge bombshell about Auri’s role in the final Kingkiller book? The Slow Regard of Silent Things was WAY better than the Bast story in Rogues. I’ve always worried that Auri was going to be just another manic pixie dream girl, but here she comes completely…

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