Hello and my apologies for the lateness of this reading roundup. I started a new role at work this week so it’s been a very busy week. I’m switching from shiftwork to a more regular Mon-Fri job, so my blog posts may be somewhat irregular until I get myself into a new routine. Please bear with me. I did read some great books over the last little while. I read and finished Furthermore, Shatter Me author Tahereh Mafi’s foray into middle grade. While it wasn’t really my cup of tea, the writing was beautiful. I will be writing a full review of Furthermore shortly, so keep an eye out for it. I hadn’t intended to pick up Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, but I started reading/listening to the sample and I was hooked. I’m about four fifths of the way through it, so again expect a review at some point in the future. This week I finally started to read another of the ARCs I received from BEA, Replica by Lauren Oliver. It moved up my TBR because of the EpicReads First 5 newsletter to which I am subscribed. This is a email where they send you the first five…
Empire of Storms is the fifth and penultimate book in Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass in which a former assassin uses her skills and her magic to save her kingdom. Being the second to last book in the series, it focusses very much on getting our protagonists into the right place for the finale. What I liked The pacing. Despite the fact that Empire of Storms is primarily focussed on getting the team into place for the final confrontation, Maas managed to keep the pacing brisk and the tension high. There were several points where I feared for our characters’ lives. There are several confrontations adding to the tension, even if the end result is moving the pieces across the chessboard. The characters and their group dynamics. This is clearly one of Maas’s real strengths as a writer. I loved the relationships between the characters and their journeys. It was wonderful that each of our characters has a unique skill set, developed over the course of the series, which will be vital in the cause to defeat Erawan. If even one person fails to play his or her part, the world is doomed. I personally have not read the…
Good morning. This is going to be a fairly brief roundup this week – I don’t have a great deal to talk about! One book I finished this week was The Bronze Key, the third in Holly Black and Cassandra Clare’s Magisterium series. The Magisterium series owes a lot to Harry Potter, set as it is in a magic school, following a protagonist linked to the Enemy of Death. This third outing sees our heroes trying to identify a spy in their midst all while keeping secret Cal’s connection to Constantine Madden. The Bronze Key is another solid outing in the series and I enjoyed it very much. While it doesn’t have Rowling’s wit, charm or gorgeous worldbuilding, I do like the depth that Black and Clare have given to their characters. It’s series I will certainly follow to the end. I gave The Bronze Key four stars out of five. I’m currently reading Sarah J. Maas’ Empire of Storms, the fifth book in the Throne of Glass series and am loving it so far. It’s funny to see on my GoodReads news feed how many of my GoodReads friends are currently reading this book! Expect more thoughts when…
Good morning. This week I’m going to do something different. Quite honestly, none of the books I’ve read over the last couple of weeks has inspired me enough to write a full book review for a post, so I’m going to do the Olympics book tag. Thanks to RiverMoose Books for bringing it to my attention. Ancient Greece: the book that started it all for you. As a child I was always reading. Like many British kids I grew up with Enid Blyton – I loved the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and the St Clare’s boarding school series. I’m not sure how well known they are in North America. I can also remember at school on Friday afternoons it was story time and the teacher used to read the Three Investigators stories. I loved those and read a lot more of them on my own. The first book that I can remember being totally and utterly sucked into though was the classic Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was around eleven at that time and I just couldn’t put that one down. This has led to a lifelong love of fantasy literature. Opening Ceremony: a series that…
Good morning! I’ve a lot to cover in this post vacation/hospitalisation reading roundup, so let’s get on with it, shall we? [book-info]The first book I read was Kate Elliott’s Cold Fire, the second in her Spiritwalker trilogy, a young adult fantasy series. I admit I really struggled with this book. It is the middle book in the trilogy and I really felt that. I liked the characters and the world and the dilemmas our protagonist had to navigate were interesting. The whole answer a question with a question scenario was wonderfully done. However, with no resolutions I still really had to force myself to complete this book, and I think it will be a while before I attempt book three. I gave Cold Fire three stars out of five. [book-info number=1]Hotel Valhalla Guide to the Norse Worlds by Rick Riordan pretty much does what it says on the tin. It is a slim companion volume to Riordan’s Magnus Chase series based on Norse mythology and provides a succinct and witty guide to the Norse pantheon. If you’re familiar with Riordan’s style, this is more of the same. Personally I’m not as familiar with Norse mythology as say Greco-Roman so this…