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Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series remains excellent, and this 5th book has all of what makes the series great: dead-on pacing, intricate (though never confusing) plotting, and effortless character development. If you’ve never read these books, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.
These are the 5th and 6th installments in Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra series, which along with the Mercy Thompson series is one of my favorites. Sagara’s skill at world-building is among the best in the fantasy genre, and she effortlessly melds lyrical high fantasy with fast-paced adventure. Each book in this series has raised the stakes, and by the end of Cast in Chaos, the tension has risen to fever pitch—a reckoning is coming, and I can’t decide if I want it to come sooner, so I can find out what happens, or later, so that the end of the series remains far off. Great, great stuff.
last weekend, and I gotta say that I really enjoyed the whole series: The Titan’s Curse (book 3), The Battle of the Labyrinth (book 4), and finally The Last Olympian (book 5) were all high 4 stars for me. The later books were better than the earlier books, and the whole series is addictive (I read all 5 books in the span of about a week).
If there’s one thing I have to complain about (this is what kept them out of the 5 star range for me), it’s that sometimes I felt like author Rick Riordan glossed over parts of the story to move between the main plot points faster. I felt like he could have gone into more detail in some not strictly essential scenes to help ratchet up the tension and bring you inside the characters, to bring you deeper into the story. The bottom line is that though I liked Percy a whole lot, I’m not sure if I loved him like I loved Harry.
That said, these books are highly entertaining and I strongly recommend them.
This past weekend was the first in a while where I didn’t have any plans with anyone, any plans to travel, or any plans to do anything, really. So I spent a relaxing weekend doing a little cleaning, catching up on my reading, and watching a couple of movies.
I picked up this book because I was interested in seeing the movie, and in my experience, if I’m going to see a movie and also read the book it’s based off, it’s better to read the book first, since the book is always better than the cinematic retelling. This did not prove to be the exception, but more on that later. The book itself, though made for a slightly younger audience and not quite as engaging as the Harry Potter books—how must it feel to have written something against which all other efforts in the genre are judged forever after?—was very entertaining and got me hooked on the series. Very nice, if a trifle predictable.
A strong follow-up to the first novel, this one develops the characters and the setting further, upping the stakes and building toward the (hopefully) epic finale. Better than the first book.
I know, I know, I said I was close to never picking up a Reacher novel again. And I actually hadn’t intended to, until my sister encouraged me to go back and read this one (the second to most recent book), because she thought it was a lot better than the Reacher books had been in a while.
And you know what? It was. My chief complaint with the past few novels was that Reacher himself seemed to be going through the motions and didn’t seem engaged in the story; if even he couldn’t get interested, why should I? Moreover, he hadn’t had a decent challenge since The Enemy or One Shot. Where was the conflict?
Gone Tomorrow, on the other hand, was a refreshing return to basics. Much more engaging and personal than its immediate predecessors, this one is as good as any of the Reacher books and better than most. If you’d become disenchanted with the series, this book makes it worth picking it back up again. Highly recommended.
This was a total and complete bastardization of the novel, one of the worst novel adaptations I think I have ever seen. Almost the only similarity between the two was that some of the characters had the same names—the makers took so many liberties with the story that they cut out perhaps the most crucial plot point. The movie looked exactly like what it was: a studio vehicle with clumsy product placement, a very thin plot, and gratuitous special effects. The end result had none of the charm of the book and was a huge disappointment.
According to the horse, HBO has given the production order to film a pilot for George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (the first book in probably my favorite fantasy series ever). I am. Freaking. Out.
Lots of good stuff at SimpleBits in the last week; just keep scrolling. Some things of note:
The WebKit development team recently redesigned the web inspector with a ton of useful improvements. Do not miss this!
Ork Posters – Typographic city neigborhood posters. Both Chicago and San Francisco are available. Super terrific!
Scroll is a new magazine on web design—available in both print and electronic format—brought to you by Web Directions. I haven’t had a chance to dig deep into this yet, but I am expecting great things.
The folks at SimpleBits have put together a custom Amazon store wherein they recommend books, music, etc. that they use to design. What a great resource!
You have no doubt gathered by now that I am a voracious reader; a day does not go by when I am not reading something for pleasure. And as you might expect, all this reading has had a salutary effect on my vocabulary, if only from exposure.
What I am trying to say is that it is not often, in the course of everyday life, that I come across a word whose meaning I am not sure of, or have never seen before. Which is why it has been somewhat of a surprise that in the latest book I’m reading, The Secret History of the English Language* (I know—gasp!—a book that will actually improve my mind), I have come across an impressive number of words I do not know**:
I have already hit the dictionary more in the last few weeks than I had in as many of the previous months, and I’m not even halfway through the book yet.
What are some words you have recently learned?
* Look for a review on my book blog in the near future; I can tell you right now it’s going to be a positive one.
** The book is actually not as stuffy as this list might imply. It is, in fact, interesting, delightfully snarky, and refreshingly—one might even say aggressively—unpretentious.
James Oliver Rigney Jr, author of the long-running fantasy series The Wheel of Time and better known to millions of fans by the pen name Robert Jordan, died on 16 Sept 2007 from cardiac amyloidosis. Jordan announced he had been diagnosed with the disease in March 2006 and vowed to beat the odds, but determination and gumption sometimes just aren’t enough in the face of a disease with a median survival time of just over two years. Jordan was in the process of writing the twelfth and final book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light, but the book was not slated for release until 2009 and is still incomplete. While there is hope that the book will still be finished from Jordan’s notes, this is devastating news to all of us who have been reading the series since 1990.
Had I not given up on The Wheel of Time shortly after book 6—not to speak ill of the dead, but it just wasn’t that good; it was dragging on entirely too long, and I hated the way Jordan wrote women—I’d be devastated too.
I first learned about this book, the first in a series of Japanese fantasy novels, by watching the anime series based on it a couple of years ago. I loved the series, especially because of its complex plot. Upon learning that it was based on a series of fantasy novels, I immediately became intrigued, but was destined to be frustrated, as there was no information at that time about a possible translation of the original books into English.
Now, though, Tokyopop has translated the first book into English and is selling a beautiful hardcover edition of it; I received my copy today. I’m very much looking forward to it. Stay tuned for my review!