Tag Archives: Trilogies and Series

After Birth, Garnethill Trilogy

Elisa Albert’s After Birth blew me away. So much so that I just wrote the author an email to thank her for getting it right, and immediately after finishing my library copy I preordered the paperback so it can live in my permanent collection. Ari is coming on her son’s one year birthday, but her postpartum depression and inability to heal from her traumatic birth experience has her coming undone. When pregnant Mina, a former rock legend, moves to Ari’s small town up the Hudson,…

Read More »

Fitz, the Fool, and Ann Rule

I like big books and I cannot lie This short story hater can’t deny That when a book comes in At 500+ pages My heartbeat starts to fly This week marked the release of Fool’s Quest, the second book in Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool trilogy. In preparation I re-read Fool’s Assassin, the first book, and I wasn’t just info gathering knowing that Hobb will jump right in without making the reader slog through clunky backstory. I was deliciously swept away by the story,…

Read More »

Uglies Trilogy and Detectives in Togas

I had mad love for Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy back when I first read it. Imagine a dystopia where until age 16, you are “ugly.” Then you get a whole bunch of surgery to become beautiful, and then live in paradise until you die. All parties, no war. Everything is beautiful, and Tally Youngblood can’t wait until her birthday–until she meets Shay, who tells her about the world outside, and asks Tally to escape with her. Tally is a great character–I think she’s more awesome…

Read More »

YA and True Crime Together At Last

More like I am indulging in a pet genre while researching books to use in homeschool coop next year. I’ll start with YA, and two by Karen Hesse. Letters from Rifka is about a teenage girl emigrating from Russia to NYC in 1919. Great character, wonderful historical detail, and lots of emotion made it a great read. I’d love to read it with the 4th/5th graders but it’ll have to wait because last year we read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, and there’s too much…

Read More »

The Silver Chair and Two About Murder

We finished listening to the audio version of The Silver Chair by CS Lewis this week. I have always loved the humor of this book (particularly Puddleglum), and Jill Pole was the Lewisian girl I most connected with. I got teary-eyed at the end listening to the tender depiction of good King Caspian’s death and resurrection into Aslan’s country. It means more to me now that I’m an adult then it ever could have when I was a child. The title Anne Perry and the…

Read More »

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…

Read More »

Seraphina Sequel (Awesome!), The Princess and the Goblin

I basically spent all my reading time this week finishing up Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina. I’ll have a full review on the release date in March, but I will spoil you for it by saying that it lived up to the full promise of the original–and then some! In read aloud land, we finished up The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, the Scottish writer whom CS Lewis admired so such. I was deeply moved by the story, which is fey in…

Read More »

Golden Son by Pierce Brown (Red Rising)

Synopsis: The second book in the story of Darrow, a liberated mine worker who has infiltrated the highest military ranks of the ruling class governing the colonized universe. Review: I was scared that Golden Son was going to get bogged down and disappoint me. Red Rising was such a knockout of a series opener and my expectations were high. I should have reread the first book before diving into Golden Son, because Brown doesn’t waste any time on exposition. It’s a good move, but I…

Read More »

The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks (Lightbringer)

Synopsis: In the third Lightbringer book, bastard son turned full spectrum polychrome Kip Guile finds himself fully immersed in politics and war, while ex-slave Teia discovers that her seemingly obscure talent for drafting a color invisible to all but a few might in fact make her a key player in the coming of the apocalypse–or its prevention, and ex-Prism Gavin Guile’s past sins wreak their vengeance on him as he becomes a color-blind galley slave. Review: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Brent Weeks’ strongest book yet and…

Read More »

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach Trilogy)

Synopsis: In the conclusion to the Southern Reach trilogy, the answers to the mysterious area known only as Area X may be revealed to Ghost Bird, Control, and someone with a deep connection to the enigmatic lighthouse keeper. Review: I read Acceptance about as avidly as I read the first two books in the series, making sure to read slowly so as not to miss any of the small pebbles and stones constructing the majestic stone wall that is the Southern Reach Trilogy. He knows…

Read More »