j wren pennington
okay, this is actually a well written book and the story is fun and different BUT....
i can't help being a little disappointed in the author for not putting together a “first-in-a-series” that does something more than just being the first in the series. 390 pages of exposition. there is some action, but there is no resolution. this, to me, is totally cheating.
that said, it is pretty good.
this one has some truly startling moments, but the author is too whiney and spends too much time telling you about his personal life. i don't care that you are a single father. that should have been covered and left alone in the first paragraph. i don't care that you wre unhappy working at a corporate giant. if i had wanted to read about these things, i would have sought a well written book about these aspects of life.
i wanted to read about weird paranormal activity and things that happened, so i read this. and it's okay.
it's like crack...actually, it's worse because you know what you're getting into when you are lighting chemicals on fire within inches of your face and inhaling the fumes, picking up a book should be a far more innocuous action. so just be warned....don't start until you have time to read 734 pages in one sitting.
oh, and the whole thing is like a gazillion times more intense if you have a fever and have been taking lots if NyQuil.
not exactly what i expected. i had read a number of reviews that compare “the magicians” to a grown up harry potter. i believe that is misleading.
while the basic day to day life of the story is potteresque, in that it's a special school for magic, the comparison really kind of stops there. the mythology and driving plot points are all chronicles of narnia, in a thinly fictionalized form of course.
honestly, i'm not sure what to think yet. i expected something different and so don't really trust myself to review it on it's own merits rather than how it differed from my own expectation. so i will say this only:
it is solidly written.
it was entertaining.
i learned 3 new words.
review european history from the 1850's to the 1890's before you start. also have google translator handy.
pretty intense....middle school level.
interestingly, the protagonist's are staying with their “aunts.” this is relevant to my interests.
this is a thoroughly engaging, wonderful book, however, i'm having a hard time describing it because it feels totally different from most things while also feeling so comfortable and familiar.
between the language and the strength of the characters we are introduced to, i swear this book like your most favorite pair of comfy pants. the language is so...personable. i really don't know how else to describe it. it is totally solid, so much so, that i almost forgot i was reading. i guess it just sounds the way i think? i don't know, i will think on this more...
the characters, while at first very reminiscent of firefly (that was enough to make me like it), are crazy well developed and engaging. whether they are like any other thing, i love them and i want to see how they are doing and cannot wait to read the next book because i love them.
i just finished this today, so maybe on further reflection, i will figure out the magic here, but there is some kind of magic that makes this story and these people absolutely darling.
i can tell you right now...she had me until they pulled out the ouija board.
i mean really.
BUT....it is quite a novel spin on the old ouija board story. i won't go into it because it would ruin the book, but i will say that it's totally worth reading. i stayed up late on halloween night to finish. perfect.
this really depends on what you want from the story. if you go into it wanting a really interesting plot, told from an objective point of view with little sentimentality, you'll really like this.
it has been pointed out that the characters are somewhat bland and the love story is boring and pointless. and that is true, but i find most love stories to be boring and pointless so it doesn't seem like a problem to me. and the blandness of the characters is offset by the richness of the language and descriptions of the city.
the author is telling you a scary story, and he manages to do so without tripping over his characters or getting bogged down in anything other than the point.
One of the best YA books I've ever read. Unlike Book Theif, this is not one of my all time favorite books, but it is definitely one of the best young adult novels to hit shelves in ages. in accomplishes this in a couple of specific ways. 1. it is not a series. what an fabulous idea! 2. there is a lot of story and not much fluff. there is more story in king's 360 pages than stephanie meyer could put together in 2000 pages worth of the twilight saga. and better yet, it is good story. with compelling characters and witty writing.
i like it. it's making me seriously reconsider my “ninja vs. pirate” ninja allegiance.
OH MY GOD THE TYPOS!!!!!! also, realistic fantasy books have this tricky part where they have to transition the protagonist from not believing in magic/fearies/vampires/wereturtles etc to believing and interacting with them. in this book the author tries to have the protag still be a skeptic at the end, so for every damn mystical thing the protag makes some realistic explanation for it and it is awful. just distracting my awful. there are a number of other issues as well. however, it was entertaining enough that i finished it. so there ya go.
this is a very interesting book, especially if you are teaching perspective. the basic premise is telling fairy tales from other from the perspective of another character, or taking a common fairy tale and telling it in a different time/place with different characters. some parts go a little beyond what i am willing to put into deciphering it, but there is definitely a lot more meaning to be mined.
i can think of very few people who would enjoy this book in the way that i did. it is not particularly easy to read, it is not particularly accessible; and yet the oddly esoteric subject matter is one that i am intimately familiar with. my education has a new perspective.
if you are a studier of theory (particularly anthropology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy), it may be worth your while.
this is an amazing story. it is all graphic, no text, and yet is amazingly complex. her style isn't my favorite maybe, but it is good.
fun read. unique, compelling, clever, at times violent and gritty, but in a very comic book sort of way. it's written in poetry format; don't think ellen hopkins, think dante allegheri. it doesn't seem to matter at first, but then you run across some lines here and there that would be trite and cheesy written into prose, but as poetry are rendered witty and even beautiful.
well played mr. barlow.
fantastic. compelling, original plot, but more importantly, delightfully written. wonderful use of language, description, metaphor. playful and dynamic characters. truly enjoyable.
this is a nice little book about a doctor's experience of bipolar disorder/schizphrenia. it stands on it's own as good piece of writing.
but...(i am sorry mark vonnegut, i know this sucks man) it was impossible for me to read this without being in “reading kurt vonnegut” mode. it's no surprise that the unique trick of words and paragraph like installments are present and used in exactly the same way. the poignancy is just as poignant and poetry is just as beautiful in it's practicality. there is less artistry and more description of a life, but here and there...
also, i had not read eden express before reading this. it is hard to think of kurt vonnegut as a good day/bad day person. it's hard to think of him as someone's father. it's even more jarring to think of him as someone's father who is difficult and hard and not what he wants to be. it's a good lesson, i'm glad i read it.
i agree that the below are all valid criticisms, but they are followed by the mitgating factor for me personally:
yes.....it's like reading boing boing in book form, but i like boing boing.
yes.....it is proselytizing, but i'm a member of that church.
yes.....it's speculative fiction with only minor amounts of technical detail. if i wanted technical details, i would read a manual or a technical journal, not a novel.
what i liked: the same things i like about doctorow's other books. economics and tech.
what i didn't like: the dialogue is pretty stilted, sometimes distractingly so. the story meanders a bit.
i found it entertaining. i enjoyed it.
i like wooding's writing. let me say that again, i like wooding's writing. his stories are not placating or and yet they are satisfying. he really gets that place between horribly predictable and overly complicated. yeah you might know where he's going, but he does a good enough job that you're happy to let him tell it they way he wants.
though technically classified as sci-fi, this is a total humanist liberal fantasy, and for that i love it. it's kind of like reading david levithan, who writes regular fiction that i would still catagorize as fantasy because there is no possible iteration of humanity where this could actually happen. not just because parts of the plot are over simplified but because people are simply not that good.
this, like those levithan novels, is a guilty pleasure. it feels good to think good of our species, even if it's only within the confines of an impossibly scenario.