Entries tagged with fantasy

Entry tags:

Book Nook

The Kinshield Legacy by K.C. May

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Light fantasy. Our unwilling hero goes on an epic quest and in the process collects a merry band of diverse fellows following him along. The bad guy is a nicely evil wizard and a few ghastly monsters from another dimension are thrown in for chills as well.

Very likeable characters, simple and straight forward storyline. Good choice if you are looking for an entertianing and unchallenging read.

My only bone of contention -- the ending is wide open and the next book in the series / trilogy (?) is not available yet. I really want to know what happens to Gavin and his motley crew now, please!

If you are interested, it's downloadable on goodreads for free. I think I actually spent (very little) money on it over on Amazon... *head desk*
Anyway... Next time I know better.

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

fantasy

Book Nook

A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hallelujah, I finally finished it. I must have been reading this on and off for three years. It's a great series, but this was a little too sedate.

Some of the most interesting characters--Jon Snow, Danaerys, Tyrion--where missing completely and others showed up too briefly or--like Cersei--too much! Whenever I read a chapter I really liked, it was followed by a chapter with a character that I disliked or simply wasn't interested in, so I kept putting the book down, sometimes for months.

Martin writes in the epilogue that he had too much material and it was a choice of splitting all the stories in half or telling the complete stories of just a few characters and keep the other characters for the next book. That's what he did and it was the wrong choice in my opinion. It made for a less than thrilling book.

And six years later the next book still hasn't been published. Should we assume that Martin got indefinitely stuck and it will never happen? It's a shame, because this is some of the best epic fantasy I have ever read.

Current Mood: bored

Entry tags:

Not so much...

Masques (Sianim, #1) by Patricia Briggs

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I love Patricia Briggs, her Mercy Thompson books are great fun. But this just didn't do it for me. She would probably have been better served to leave it as it was and never re-publish it or do a complete re-write. I finally tossed it last night after struggling through the first 70 pages and hoping it would eventually grab me. But no, it did not happen. It felt a little like bad fanfiction.

Entry tags:

Cath's Book Nook

A Lick of Frost (#6 of the Meredith Gentry series) by Laurell K Hamilton

From Amazon:
"Princess Meredith NicEssus of the Unseelie Court finally reaches an elusive goal in Hamilton's seductive sixth Meredith Gentry paranormal romance (after 2006's Mistral's Kiss). Half-human, half-faerie, Meredith is a former L.A. PI whose current full-time job is trying to get pregnant—trying at least three times a day, in fact, mainly with her devoted retinue of sex-starved guards—to insure her ascendancy to the Unseelie throne of night. Unfortunately, her bedding schedule has been interrupted by Lady Caitrin of the Seelie Court, who claims she was raped by three of Meredith's guards. Meredith must protect her faithful retinue from the terrible wrath of her uncle, King Taranis of the Seelie Court, and defend herself from the dangerous desire Taranis harbors for her. Hamilton depicts Meredith's erotic adventures in her usual breathless, overheated style, but also reveals a deeper glimpse into Meredith's introspective side as she reflects on her favorite lover, Killing Frost, whose strange fate finds her re-evaluating the costs of being a future queen."

Deeper glimpses? Not sure. I mostly read these books for the sex... ;-)

I am not exactly sure why I keep reading it--besides of the sex I mean. Pure stubbornness, most likely. I just want to see what happens next. The storyline is pretty far fetched, but I still buy into it more than into the magic described in Stolen (see my previous review). Also my imagination gets a great workout, trying to picture the outlandish looks of all of Merry's bed companions. I even pre-ordered the next book, Swallowing Darkness, on Amazon. It's supposed to be available here in November.

Which brings me to another topic. I have been surfing the BC forum a bit and have also scooted around on BookMooch and LibraryThing and noticed--not sure where exactly it was--that quite a few people seems to heavily dislike Amazon. Someone even described them as hell-spawn or something equally demonic. Why is that? Here is a question for my friends:

1) Do you order from Amazon? Why do you or why don't you?

2) Where do you get most of your books?

3) What do you do with your books, when you have finished reading them?

I obviously have thoughts on why Amazon might be perceived as the devil, but I am keeping them to myself for now. I want to see your answers first.

Entry tags:

Cathy's Book Nook

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials #1)

Amazon.co.uk Review:
”Lyra's life is already sufficiently interesting for a novel before she eavesdrops on a presentation by her uncle Lord Asriel to his colleagues in the Jordan College faculty, Oxford. The college, famed for its leadership in experimental theology, is funding Lord Asriel's research into the heretical possibility of the existence of worlds unlike Lyra's own, where everyone is born with a familiar animal companion, magic of a kind works, the Tartars are threatening to overrun Muscovy, and the Pope is a puritanical Protestant. Set in an England familiar and strange, Philip Pullman's lively, taut story is a must-read and re-read for fantasy lovers of all ages.”

Reading extract can be found here.

This is the adult version of Northern Light, which is published as Golden Compass in the US. No idea what makes it Adult, I haven't read the original version.

I bought the book after I had seen the movie “The Golden Compass”. I liked the movie a lot. My interest had been piqued after I had heard that people in the US had complained about the controversial religious undertones of the movie. I had also read somewhere that it was unlikely that the other two books of the trilogy would be made into movies because of that. Which is a shame, I’m sure it would have been entertaining. I am assuming that the people that had complained are not book readers, otherwise Philip Pullman would be on lots of banned books lists in the US. Although maybe he is. That’s not exactly a difficult achievement.

Anyway, book… The movie is a very close adaptation. Two events that happen at the end of the book, have been moved further forward in the movie and the actual ending of the book is missing completely – I guess too much would have been left dangling.

I did not like the book more or less than the movie. It was a close draw. Lord Asriel in the movie was a more likeable character and the voice of Ian McKellen is hard to replace in writing.

Would I recommend the book to others? Yes.

Will I buy the second book of the trilogy? Maybe. It is on my wishlist. Despite this being the adult version of the book, it felt a bit too much like Young Adults for me to enjoy it completely.

The book is up for grabs, let me know here or on BC, if you want it. If more than one person is interested, I will turn it into a bookray. The JE is here