Anki
I received this book as an ARC, and I found the characters to be interesting and the overall premise to be intriguing. I enjoyed reading the story and found it to be reasonably well-written for a debut novel in terms of action and pacing.
Although I enjoyed the story, I did have a few technical issues with the writing itself. All the characters speak with more or less the same voice; there are very few distinct speech patterns. This makes it harder to differentiate between individuals, especially if there are no he said/she said tags on the ends of dialogue.
There are also some serious homophone issues that I hope will be addressed in the final publication. As Vestro, a kelpie, spends large portions of the story in horse form, it's somewhat important to remember that reigns are not reins, and bridal is not the same as bridle. Nitpicky? Perhaps somewhat, but it really jumped out at me while I was reading, and it threw me out of the story.
This book is the first in a new fantasy series that explores the possibilities of alternate realities and how things might develop differently depending on a series of circumstances. It also includes lots of puzzles and riddles, but in a way that makes sense through the storytelling. They flow naturally as part of the plot.[return][return]I especially appreciated the focus on family, though it did seem that Tick's parents were a little too accepting of all that was happening at times. Still, it was a nice change of pace to read a fantasy novel with a protagonist whose parents are both still alive, together, and involved in his life. Having involved family in a story creates a completely different dynamic than having an absent family (through either disinterest or death), and it tends to complicate matters, often in a delightful–at least for readers–way.
I expected something...different than I got with this book. I enjoyed the descriptions of the various yarns Saskia creates, and I felt that the authors did a good amount of research regarding spinning. I also found some of the twists they put into the story to be interesting. However, there were a few things that just didn't work for me.
I am not fond of the third person present tense as a point of view for literature in general. While it can be done well, it usually feels stilted and awkward. It also makes it difficult to get any real sense of the passage of time within the story.
They fleshed out the characters of the miller and Rumpelstiltskin, but the king remains solely a one-dimensional individual, unknowable and ultimately forgettable. This isn't really different from the original fairy tale, but I still found it disappointing, largely because the authors did take time to flesh out the other characters and add new people to the story.
Finally, the ending just bothered me. The book just stops without any attempt to resolve things, without providing any sort of denouement or conclusion. I realize this isn't much different than the original fairy tale, but we're looking at a retelling, not the original. Meaning they don't have to hold strictly to type.
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.
This was a pretty quick read, and I enjoyed it. There was enough description that someone not familiar with Forgotten Realms gets a grounding in the world, but not so much that people who are familiar with the world are wanting things to hurry up already.
My one real beef is that it ends on a cliffhanger, and we aren't going to see the next book for several months minimum (probably closer to a year).
This is one of those books where the concept is very interesting, but I felt that it sort of failed when it came to execution and getting the facts/setting right.
The setting is a Ren Faire–a permanent one. While there may be permanent Renaissance Faires in existence, all the ones I know of (at least in the United States where this book is set) are temporary things. They are open for a period of weeks or months, often in the late summer and through the autumn months. Given the descriptions, the Renaissance Faire depicted in the book seems more like a living history/reenactment museum mixed with a theme park.
On the storytelling front, well, it felt more like work to read this than anything else. I had trouble caring about the characters, and the mystery wasn't particularly compelling to me either. Nothing about it really had me wanting to read any more books in this series.
This latest installment of the Redwall series strikes a wonderful balance between classic Redwall adventures and something new, which is essential for part of a long-running series. Like most of the recent books, Doomwyte is set an unspecified number of seasons after the events in Redwall, but as near as I can tell before the books and records were moved from the Gatehouse into the library in High Rhulain.
The story itself stays pretty tightly focused on the Abbey and its surroundings, which is a change from many of the other books in the series which range from the northlands to far-flung islands and the great mountain Salamandastron on the shores of the sea. I enjoy both types of stories, and I am very happy to see that Brian Jacques can tell both equally well.
Doomwyte also draws more heavily on spooky and supernatural elements than most of the other Redwall novels, and I quite enjoyed that difference.
This was a fun book based on the Andromeda television series (but in an alternate timeline, near as I can tell). I enjoyed reading it, but it showed me that the ability to craft a tight, moving script does not necessarily translate to an ability to write smooth, polished prose. There were some technical/stylistic issues surrounding tense shifts that kept throwing me out of the story, and I'm fairly certain they were due to the inherent differences between scriptwriting and normal prose.
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.
One of my friends from college told me about this book and told me I just had to read it. I'm always looking for book recommendations, so I found a copy and read it. I promptly fell in love with the characters and the story–whimsical and practical all the the same time. As soon as I finished reading it I think I started again, and I've read it many times since then...when I'm not lending my copy out to people to introduce them to the wonderful story!
This is a fun fantasy adventure with a hefty dose of political intrigue and a good amount of romance. I still have a bit of trouble keeping all the Houses and factions straight in my head, however.
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.
I first read this my junior year of high school, and I fell in love with the story. I was borrowing the book from a friend, and when I got to the last page I immediately started over again (something my friend was none too pleased about; she took the book back from me). While I can't say that the writing is without fault, it's a fun and enjoyable read in a magical world.
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.
Adding human children into the mix with the rats of NIMH really starts to stretch the bounds of my suspension of disbelief. The levels of plausibility really start to break down, I think, and it's harder to sink into the story. Another difficulty may be due to the portrayed technology levels, which were perfectly fine at the time the book was written, but which date the book for readers today.
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.