Anki

Racso and the Rats of NIMH is a continuation/companion novel to [b:Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH 9822 Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Robert C. O'Brien http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166065688s/9822.jpg 839692]. Overall I think it maintains the same general feel of the original book (it helps that the author is [a:Robert C. O'Brien 6412 Robert C. O'Brien http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1201021621p2/6412.jpg]'s daughter), and it works well as a continuation. The total amount of time that has passed between the first and this one is a bit tricky to determine, but I don't know that it really matters all that much.

My feelings about this adventure path are...mixed. There is definitely a lot of potential here, and I have enjoyed running it for my game group. At the same time, it really feels like it was rushed to production as the first adventure path for D&D 5th Edition. I noticed a number of omissions and errors (incorrectly labeled map areas, unlabeled areas, labeled areas with no corresponding descriptions, etc) that I think would have been caught had there been more time available in the publication cycle.

In hindsight I think I would have been better served by choosing something else for my first experience as a GM/DM. Now that I have run it once I think I have a better handle on it, and I do want to run it again for another group. With additional preparations on my part.

I had a bit of a difficult time getting into the book, but once I got into the proper mindset everything just sort of flew by. I really liked the fact that it was set in our world rather than some random fantasy world since that added a very different flavor to the entire piece.



There were some unanswered questions at the end of everything, but I'm okay with that.

I wanted to like this book, or at least appreciate it. Seeing the trailer for the movie and reading the description for the book made it sound like an interesting near-future thriller. I still have hopes for the movie, but not see-it-in-theaters level hopes, more like catch-it-on-Netflix ones.

The book is at least competently written, but I still gave up on it halfway through and skimmed a bit near the end to get some closure. I just couldn't care enough any more, and not even making snarky notes on my bookmark index card was helping. The social commentary was too ham-fisted, none of the characters were really likeable, and I found myself wanting to tell all of them to take a long walk off a short pier wearing the finest in cement footwear.

I really liked the concept behind this book, but the execution of it frustrated me overall.

The premise sounded interesting, but I set this book aside in irritation after just two chapters. Reason? The narrator is shallow, whiny, lazy, judgmental, and more than a little annoying to me. Yeah, being older and unmarried isn't much fun, and working in a job you don't like would be draining, but all she seems to do is whine. Nothing is her fault, life is unfair, trying to change anything is just too hard and doomed to failure anyway because Reasons (which are, of course, immutable and also not her fault).

Maybe she gets better later in the book, but I don't have the patience to get to that point, if it even exists.

First, the positives...there were a lot of fun one liners in this book, a reasonable number of interesting characters, and essentially non-stop action. This made for a fairly quick read.

Unfortunately, for me the negatives rather outweigh the positives. Strike one, it's written in first person present tense. Mostly from the viewpoint of a single character (Durango), but there are some others thrown in there “when necessary”. I find first person present tense to be very tricky to pull off properly in fiction. It isn't bad here, but there are a few rough spots and it is hard to get a full sense of the passage of time (not withstanding the date/time stamps at the start of each chapter).

Strike two, starting in medias res combined with throwing a whole lot of unfamiliar terms and story elements at the reader with no explanations given whatsoever. While I am no real fan of the extended info-dump (it usually bogs down a story something fierce), having to piece together what things are and how they work with no confirmation as to whether or not I am doing it correctly isn't particularly fun either. There has to be a balance, and that balance wasn't present here. Having lots of flashy action only carries things so far.

Strike three, there's a definite sense of “story soup” going on here. I could see elements that track to Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek, Ender's Game, and samurai films. The tech seems very much subject to hand-wavium, and seems applied inconsistently throughout the story. I found it hard to get a real sense of time and place as a result. Particularly when you have a few characters in a far-distant, semi-dystopian future still quoting heavily from 19th century literature and 20th century culture (and people get the references without problems). Oh, and the mishmash of languages being dropped (untranslated, mind you) here and there, apparently for the purposes of flavour and world-building? Didn't work for me. There were too many of them, they weren't consistently applied, and it just came across as sloppy.

The story is also quite violent. This is to be expected as Durango and company are mercenary soldiers, but still. There were a number of places where it was really hard to follow the action, and on more than one occasion I found myself wondering just how things were supposed to work from a physics perspective. If I'm thinking more about the physics and logistics of a fight than the tension it is supposed to be building in the story, then I'd say something isn't working properly with the story.

I got this book through the B&N Nook Free Friday program.

So I might have stayed up really late last night finishing this book. Devouring it whole is probably a fairly apt descriptor. And now I want to read it again. Reread the whole series, really.

The marketing of this series fascinates me. I know I need to check the children's section of my local bookshops if I want to find them. They are classified as juvenile fiction, or maybe sometimes as YA (I can't say as I have ever found them shelved in the YA/teen section, however). When the series starts, Will and his friends are fifteen years old, but by this last book they are, at an absolute minimum, in their mid-30s. That's a huge range of ages for a series of books aimed at children, but somehow it works.

This sequel to [b:Tuesdays at the Castle 10508431 Tuesdays at the Castle (Castle Glower #1) Jessica Day George http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1331678412s/10508431.jpg 15414344] is a delightful continuation of the story of Celie and the Castle. I definitely hope there are more books to come; I want to learn more about these characters.

This book goes back to the first person narrative style of the Percy Jackson books. It was a pretty quick read and I enjoyed the story and the characters. Definitely looking forward to the next book in the series (and again, frustrated by the whole “read the book within a short period of time after it is published and you have to wait that much longer” element in play with new books). Luckily, there isn't a dreadful cliffhanger here, but more an element of anticipation that will hold me for the next year.

This was an interesting read that raised some complex questions regarding identity, but there were quite a few frustrating aspects to it as well. Things like “we're going to continue keeping secrets even though that is obviously not the best course of action and has led to the majority of the problems we've encountered to this point” and some scientific aspects as well. Specifically, cloning and how it would work. Even identical twins--the closest thing we have to human clones--are not 100% the same as each other, so why should Bethany be so similar to Elizabeth, down to favourite foods and hobbies and physical abilities and all the rest? It just doesn't seem feasible to me, even if we are looking at a science fiction story.

Still, all told it is a fun, fast-paced read, and for the intended audience it should be pretty engaging.

This is only the second Louisa May Alcott book I've read, but I enjoyed it quite a bit more than [b:Little Women 1934 Little Women (Little Women, #1) Louisa May Alcott http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309282614s/1934.jpg 3244642]. I definitely want to read the sequel.

The concept and premise of this book are both of interest to me, and overall I enjoyed the story. But it definitely feels like a “set up the series” novel, which led to a few pacing issues, and there were times when word choices threw me out of the story.

All Princess Andromeda really wants to do is to be useful to her mother, the queen. Problem is, her mother doesn't seem to realise that Andie is competent at anything, and she marginalises Andie's accomplishments. It also doesn't exactly help matters that Andie is half-blind without her glasses, or that she doesn't exactly fit the standard for Acacian beauty (especially when compared to her mother, who is gorgeous).

I was able to identify reasonably well with Andromeda as a character, and I enjoyed the various twists on the story (even if they were telegraphed fairly clearly...which is actually something of the point in this series–the more you know The Tradition the better able you are to work with or around it. At the very least, you will be able to figure out what's going on to a greater degree).

The conclusion elements of the story seem just a little bit rushed, but given the type of book this wasn't exactly unexpected. All in all I classify this as a light, fun read.

The Harry Potter series is a very interesting phenomenon. I can't recall any other single media work that has captured the attention of so many people worldwide in such a short period of time. I felt this book concluded the series well, and that is what I was hoping for more than anything else.

How to put this... Maggie for Hire is a very, very average sort of urban fantasy offering. There are some interesting ideas in the book and a number of amusingly snappy lines, but ultimately I was not impressed enough to want to read more in the series. Witty banter without real substance just isn't enough for me.

I am not particularly shy when it comes to my general dislike of dystopian fiction. I tend to get angry when I read it, and since I read primarily for enjoyment and entertainment it makes little sense for me to seek out stories that do not provide those things. (There is also the fact that so much of the dystopian fiction I have read has strained my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point...that does not exactly recommend the genre to me.)

So with that in mind, based on the way people have shelved and tagged Partials on Goodreads and other book sites, I shouldn't like it. The thing is, while there are definite dystopian elements to this book, I would not classify it as dystopian fiction. It is much more a post-apocalyptic survival story, and that is how it is presented from the start. The dystopian elements are not the front and center focus of the story, and with that I find I can care about the characters. I think it not being in first person also helps with this.

Now I just need to find a print (or ebook) copy of the sequel to borrow.

I am pretty much always up for more Avatar, so getting this graphic novel was a welcome treat. This serves as a bridge (or the start of one, at any rate) between the first series and the upcoming Legend of Korra series.

My only real complaint is the length of the book, or lack thereof. The second volume doesn't come out until May, which is a frustrating wait.

The first time I read this book I had some trouble finishing it. At the time, I'd been reading Redwall novels almost nonstop, and the stories were starting to all be very similar to me.

However, several years have since gone by, and when I picked this book up again I eagerly devoured its contents. Perhaps not the best book in the series, but certainly a fine offering.

This was the fourth Redwall novel published, and I feel it marks a turning point in Brian Jacques' storytelling style. Certain stylistic elements have been tightened up, some things have been dropped, and you can tell he has a firmer grasp on the shape of his world as a whole. It's a lot of fun to watch the building of the Abbey and see how different things weave together across the books to create a full tapestry of story.

I discovered Friends With Boys online one day, shortly after Faith Erin Hicks started posting the pages to her website in webcomic form as a promotion for the upcoming print release. It quickly became one of my favourite comics, and I made sure to pre-order the print copy, knowing I wanted to have it in my personal library (particularly since after the end of February 2012 only the first sixteen pages of the book will be available for viewing online).

The print version is lovely. It is more or less trade paper size, so it sits very nicely in hand, and I love the cover flap detailing that creates the sense of it having a dust jacket. My only real complaint is a minor one: as with many, many other graphic novels, Friends With Boys has a few points where the edges of some of the panels get a bit lost in the spine of the book. It comes with the nature of the print medium, and there really is not any way to “fix” it and maintain the integrity of the art.

Bottom line: If you enjoy fun characters and slice-of-life type stories (with or without supernatural twists) definitely check this comic out.

I enjoyed these essays, but what continually struck me is just how different my life and cooking experiences are from the ones described in this book. I have never been to a butcher to purchase meat (I am not even quite sure where I would find a butcher in my area, though there must be at least one around). Many of the recipes call for cooking things “in the usual way”, but I am not even sure what the usual way would be. The recipes themselves are far more conversational than is typical in modern cookbooks.

I definitely would like to read it again, and try some of the recipes.

An excellent rounding out to the two previous Circle quartets. I do hope we get to see more of these stories, since there are still a lot of things to explore in this world.