Ever is the only survivor of the car crash that killed the rest of her family. She moves to California to live with her aunt, but brings along something special – the ability to hear other people’s thoughts. Trying to survive high school in a hoodie and her ipod, she meets someone who is blissfully silent. Damen is handsome, clever, and hiding something. The first in a series of books, great for fans of Meyer.

The last of the Mortal Instrument series, this book picks up with Clary’s mother in a coma and her forced entry into the City of Glass. With a war about to break out amongst the magical groups, it is up to her and her friends to avert disaster and bring together all the warring factions (faeries, vampires, and wolves) to save their ways of life. A satisfying conclusion to a great series, which is going to be picked up with a prequel trilogy, and a future trilogy featuring a major character of this series. Looking forward to reading more of her work.

The third in the series with Enna Burning and Goose Girl. This time they travel to the kingdom they were at war with that Enna burned up to make peace, but well there are more fire starters and Enna is being blamed. The power of water speaking comes to play and well, you have to read all three.

The sequel to Goose Girl, a friend of now queen Isi learns the power to speak fire and during war she uses her power to destroy the enemy, and nearly burns herself up in the process. It’s creepy, but very good.

A retelling of the Fairy Tale “the Goose Girl” which I didn’t remember that I knew until I read this book. “If your mother only knew her heart would surly break in two” Anyone? Anyone?

Yeah, anyway, Shannon Hale adds a dimension of speaking powers. People speaking people can persuade others easily, while Isi, the princess and heroine can speak to geese and the wind. I know it sounds weird but this is a great book, and the sequels are equally enthralling.

The newest winner of the John Newbery Medal is incredible and very deserving of its award. Neil Gaiman somehow manages to meld murder, and death into a fantastic children’s book. This book grabs you from its first sentence,

“There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.”

The tale of how Nobody Owens grows up in a graveyard is simply wonderful.

This was the best book I have read in ages. Katsa, born with one blue eye and one green, was marked to have a Grace, a special ability. Which turns out to be a Grace of killing and fighting. But Katsa sees the evil around her and wants to help, not hurt others.

City of Ashes continues the story of Clary and her newfound family; wishing her family would be ‘normal’ again won’t make it happen. Her mother is in a magically-induced coma, her best friend Simon wants romance, and her new-found father (Valentine) is hunting Downworlders. When the Soul-Sword is stolen, the Inquisitor arrives to investigate and places the blame on Jace. Clary must work to prove his innocence and stop the murder of Downworlder children. The series is set in New York City, but she doesn’t rely on location to further the story. The second in the trilogy is just as well-written and past paced as City of Bones; Clare does a great job of giving all characters (even minor ones) great depth and the writing is sharp.

City of Bones starts out an AMAZING trilogy with well rounded characters, smart dialogue, and solid action. Clary Fray and her best friend Simon wander into Pandemonium, only to catch a group of teens in the act of killing a ‘person;’ the ‘person’ is no person and she is drawn into the world of Downworlders and Shadowhunters. Clary discovers that the life she thought she had only hid her mother’s dark past and her own special abilities. This book has fantastic banter and a solid plot. What I thought was truly refreshing was the character relationships, particularly the interplay between Clary, Simon, and her love interest Jace. Worth reading.

This story is based in a world aware of vampyres, but not one in which they are accepted. Zoey Redbird becomes ‘marked,’ and moves into the House of Night. There they teach those blessed with this gift how to control it; but this does not mean that all of those marked will survive the change. Zoey is given a special gift by the goddess and she must begin to learn how to use her gift while navigating the treacherous waters of (essentially) high school. Marked is the first book in a series by the Casts, a mother/daughter writing team. Great dialogue, sharp characters, and a solid plot make this an entertaining read for those interested in the vampire/fantasy genre.

I think that the second book in Marr’s series is even better than the first. Leslie is a troubled teen that has a difficult and abusive home life. To express herself and deal with her pain, she decides to get a tattoo. The tattoo design she chooses brings her into the realm of fairies (and not the pretty and happy kind). This is the latest book released in the series, although book three is currently in Advanced Readers Copy. Can’t wait.

Carolyn’s review made me realize I couldn’t find the review I (thought) had posted. This is one of my favorite young adult ‘series’ (second to Twilight). Marr has created a world of books loosely tied together by characters but they do not have to be read in order. Wicked Lovely is the 1st, and she has created a wonderful, magical world full of flawed characters and bad guys. The plot revolves around Aislinn; she can see fairies because of a magical gift she would give anything to not have. What I love so much about these characters is that none of them are traditional; the main love interest has piercings and there are tattoos. I love that Marr steps outside of the box, and this book is a fantastic suggestion for both young adults and adults.

The title of this book made me think that it was going to be fluffy and rather pink. But in reality it’s the story of hard working girls from a quarry village high in the mountains becoming educated while standing up for their home and way of life. This is one of those books that was far more meaty and poignant that I imagined it could be. The Newbery Honor most deserved.

This is a pleasant companion to Ella Enchanted. Taking place in the same world in the country of Ayortha where singing is the country’s pastime. A girl with a great voice and a talent for throwing that voice, but not looks ends up as the shallow queen’s lady in waiting.

I really didn’t like this one. I have read a lot of Levine, but here she is stretching. This is the story of a god who falls in love with a mortal who is to be sacrificed to another god because her father is dumb. It wasn’t that good.

This story was a really interesting one about faeries in modern times. I mean the sneaky, tricky, don’t want to get mixed up with faeries kind. The Summer King needs a queen, and she’s not interested.

It was a nice take on fantasy, a very modern faerie tale.

This was a better read than I thought it would be. The human characters are quite well written. It was the perfection of the vampires that made it so annoying. They have no weaknesses, or flaws. It made me want to punch the main one Edward in the face. I will however be reading the sequels and there were parts that were quite funny. The plot was on the slow side, but I actually liked this. It brought out the thirteen year old girl in me.

Philip Pullman’s second “little book” to accompany His Dark Materials trilogy provides the backstory for Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison. While the story of how these two fellow adventurers meet will be of interest to those who hold the series in a Harry Potter-esque cult status (where every word out of J.K.’s mouth holds biblical worth), the simplicity will leave those who appreciate Pullman’s carefully constructed novels wanting more.

The conclusion of the Abhorsen trilogy. I really enjoyed these. They are fun reads not too heavy, but with enough meat to make them stick.

I read Sabriel, the first book in this trilogy back over the summer, and it took until September that I was finally able to read the next 2.

Lirael does a nice job making the world in this series understandable, which was my big complaint with Sabriel. It’s a really enjoyable series.

So I’ve been waiting for this book for almost 10 years. This is the third book in a series that I began reading in oh, second or third grade. In all that time Bruce Coville has only managed to write that much. I am going to recommend to him that he should try NaNoWriMo next year to see if he can get these books going faster.

The problem being that the three books occur back to back time wise. Each ends with a cliff-hang that so far has had to last for years. I really enjoy the world that he has created and the characters that inhabit it, I just wish I didn’t have to wait so long for sequels.

Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad and leave her mother free to travel with her new husband. Only, things aren’t as simple as she expected them to be. She meets Edward Cullen, whose family is as unique as he is…vampires. While a ‘young adult’ novel, this could be enjoyed by adults as well. While I love the entire series, I admit it is flawed-particularly Bella’s sometimes immature narrative. But a great read.

I am working on reading the books before I see the movies. I don’t know how wise that is, since I always prefer the book, and would probably like movies better if I read the book after, but oh well here I am.

I really enjoyed Inkheart. The love that this family has for books is something I really relate too. How often have I struggled to escape the labyrinth of the written word? If you love books you will love this book.

Keeping up with Terry Pratchett takes some effort. I believe this is the latest in Discworld. I really enjoy the new character of Moist who gets a second chance at life and goes from a criminal to the postmaster and in this book he becomes the chairman of the bank. Well, actually Mr. Fusspot the dog becomes the chairman, it’s all rather fun.

This is the third in a series I began more than a year ago, and since I didn’t reread the previous ones before this one I forgot most of what happened. Thankfully this isn’t the most complicated of plots.

I still don’t like how painfully short the chapters are, it makes the whole novel very disjointed and annoying. Someone obviously told this author that it was an effective means to create suspense and encourage the reader to keep turning pages, and he never bothered to learn any other strategies for accomplishing the same thing.

All in all, it was a fun read, and that’s about it.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages. The premise is so neat, you find a book that tells you how to be a wizard, cool, right? Well I found this book to be rather disappointing and confusing. The wizardry made no sense and was poorly explained. The only redeeming feature was Fred a white hole who has left his mass elsewhere.

This was the first book by a bestselling author to be first published in an audio form. It also happened to be the next in a series that I have been reading. Of all the books in the Circle of Magic series this is the most disappointing and frustrating. The whole first half of the novel includes petty bickering which gets the plot nowhere, does not flush out new characters and just basically made me want to pull my hair out. After that it was OK, but slow and monotonous, when a pending volcano eruption should have been exciting.

I happen to be a big fan of Ursula K LeGuin, but she tends to have a depressing side that I was worried about with this novel. Instead I was given a coming of age story in a land where people have strange gifts. This story is about protecting those you love, voluntary blindness and using gifts only for good.

I had no idea what to expect when I picked this up but the cover looked cool and I wanted something new to read. It turned out to be about a good necromancer in a world with some alternate reality problems and questionable religion. While not great literature by any stretch of the imagination, this was a fun read and I do want to know more about this world.

I wish I had not been told that this book was the prequel to The City of Ember. Actually, maybe it is okay that I knew, but it sent me into this really funny sort of expectant state. The novel is good and certainly DuPrau shows her ability to deal with reality just as well as her quasi-utopian giver-esque world. (And points for actually connecting the worlds.)

I was just so confused when I was twenty pages from the end of the novel and still had not figured out the connection from this book, to the first in the series. And actually although I was uneasy for two hundred pages, I think I have decided that I love this.

“So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.” That’s how Alcatraz Smedry’s account of his adventures begins and it’s a wild ride. Alcatraz discovers our world is controlled by Evil Librarians who have subverted all information. There are THREE more continents on this planet, but they’re hidden by the Librarians who are trying to subject them to their evil rule. Why don’t we know about these three free continents? The Librarians control all the mapping satellites!

ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS isn’t going to challenge Harry Potter. Just consider it training wheels for future readers of Philip K. Dick.

Oh Susanna Clarke and your dry and academic, magical British fairytales. I cannot get enough. These short stories, issued in collection by a fictional Australian professor of sidhe studies is short, often whimsical re-tellings of the most classic stories of the fairy.

She needs to just keep writing.

For those of you who have seen the movie please note that the end of the movie occurs about 3/8ths of the way through the book, and the rest is the best part. The book is 26 chapters long with each chapter beginning with letters A-Z.

What makes the Neverending Story so compelling to me is that it’s about the journey that one takes to discover what a person wants. It’s not about the journey of becoming an adult, but the much more difficult one of discovering oneself, and one’s desires.

I saw the movie and loved it, and while i am usually of the opinion that books are better than movies can ever be, find myself in this instance to prefer the movie.

While the book is darker, more adult and has a less violent ending, Neil Gaiman’s prose leaves something to be desired. And no words on a page can compare with Robert DeNiro dancing about in a corset and skirts with a heart on his cheek.

There are too many major plot elements that are identical from book to movie that reading the book was boring and anticlimatic. Although i liked the nonviolent solution from the book, i liked the movie’s actual ending better.

Just go see the movie, it’s one of the best movies that i have seen in ages.

I waited and waited for this to come out and i jsut realized that i didn’t post about it (probably because i couldn’t remember my username and password)

So the latest for GGK (Guy Gavriel Kay). It’s a real departer for him. This novel is actually set in modern day. And somehow he manages to link together alot of my favorite things, archaeology, photography, storytelling, magic.

A photographer and crew including his son are summering in the south of France (the poor things) when Ned (the boy) stumbles into a 2500 year old love triangle that dates to when the Celts lived in France and the Greeks were just beginning to explore it.

So much is purposfully left unsaid that i dont’ feel right giving more away, but the prose is poetic and thoughtful and very refreshing.

While this may be a little bit unorthodox for Reading to the Rain, Flotsam is the best book i’ve looked at in ages. This is the most recent Caldecott Medal winner (an award given annually to the best children’s illustrations) in fact this book doesn’t contain a single word of text. This wordless book is beautiful, poignant, mysterious, exciting, and thought provoking. It shows the story of a boy on a beach, when a mysterious underwater camera washes up on shore. He develops the film inside to discover an exciting and fantastical underwater world. Then the last picture is a picture of pictures reaching back to the past and showing all the children who have ever dicovered the same thing. I really recommend this book to anyone, not just children or those who read to them.

I have been told that i need to comment on this book. So i read it between 1 and 8 am on July 21st. I really enjoyed it. I liked how all the places and all the people that harry has come in contact with over the previous six books came back. right down to gringotts, and even sirius’ motorbike.
The use of the short little references has been a strength of the series but i thought we had seen most of them. I didn’t expect Grindlewald to be as important as he is. I am glad to know more of Dumbledore’s past, and to know even the little things like how dumbledore’s nose was broken. I knew that the room of requirement was important and especially the room where harry hides the half blood prince’s book. the diadem being there was super cool.
there was a lot of death, the only one i didn’t expect was Dobby and that was the only time i cried during reading. i’m torn about harry’s death/not death. part of me wanted expected and thought he had to die. and yet part of me is relieved that he didn’t die.
the epilogue, i have mixed feelings on this as well, i see that JK wanted to show that the trio were happy and that the wizarding world has been rebuilt and all, but it was a lot on the corny side. i have been more satisfied by the interviews.
I may write more later this laptop and my fingernails are driving me nuts.

Oh man. Well, we knew it was coming, and after my strong distaste for the Half Blood Prince let me warn you now this is not going to go well for Ms. Rowling.

Spoilers will almost certainly follow.

I had two main requirements which were necessary for me to like the book, which were:

1. If there was a wizarding war (which includes any wizard battles) I expect lots of deaths.
2. Of Harry, Ron, & Hermione, at least two must die, if one of these is Harry, then Voldemort must also die. If Voldemort dies, Harry must be one of the two.

My reasons for these are more complicated but are briefly as follows. In war, people die, and since there aren’t hundreds or thousands of soldiers to throw at Voldemort, many of our main characters must die. The second is more complicated, but if you were the bad guy and you knew your main target constantly hung out with two of his best friends, then those two are escalated up the target list nearly as high as Undesireable Number One himself.

In my opinion (this is opinion because of the first point), Rowling failed on both counts. The second is more obvious- here are the spoilers- Voldemort (in theory) died; Harry, Ron, and Hermoine all lived. Even if you count Harry as dying (which I don’t – and I think her little avada kedavra only took out the Voldemort part of you, theory is bogus) that is still only one, and I required two. As for the first, she had a few good deaths that were real and believable but most of these came early in the novel, since her battle scenes are rushed and we have really little time to feel any sadness over the loss of people in those last one hundred pages.

Sidenote: All of the trained aurors can get killed (except Kingsley – and I am not even sure he is techncially an auror) but not Ron or Hermoine (or Ginny, Luna, Neville, and a bunch of other kids who never get mentioned- cough: Cho).

Rowling can maintain her points for getting children to read long books that are fairly difficult and dense, and motivating them to be excited to read, but since I am going to judge books as literature, and at this point I am trying to validate these books as a (the?) strong point of fantasy this decade (they may have to simply settle for top-selling), it is tough for me to get past this.

To close on a positive note, I think she did handle quite beautifully the problem she almost locked herself into of the classic fantasy quest with the Horcruxes, by creating the Hallows and also not focusing the books like a giant list of destroyed Horcruxes, one of my largest worried at the end of book 6. (I am afraid the other worry does remain, the strangely shifting intelligence of Harry/Dumbledore/Snape/Voldemort, and in the end I still question many of the decisions these four characters made – Gringotts?/Was that the best time?/You couldn’t have done anything better with the students at hogwarts?/Expelliarmus- that was all it took?)

The plot remains twisting and complex, interesting and original, many of the ideas are quite wonderful, even if in the genre of fantasy it might have little lasting impact, and even if the more recent books could have been improved hugely by a strong editorial hand.

Well I’ve had Stardust sitting on my shelf for some period of time, and I thought that I should give it a read before the movie comes out. After reading it I must say I’m a bit disappointed in myself for having waited so long. Anywho the book is by Neil Gaiman, who if you don’t know was the writer of the Sandman graphic novels. Mr. Gaiman won short story awards for those fantastic comics, until the people who give out awards decided that it was unseemly for a mere comic book writer to be winning them over and over again. Thankfully Gaiman then proceed to start writing short stories and novels just to keep winning the awards, or something like that, which is fortunate since every book he writes is amazing.

As to Stardust itself, the novel focuses on the quest of one Tristran Thorn. Thorn promises to bring his love the star that they both saw fall from the sky. However, living in the village of Wall, he must pass into the realm of Faerie to complete his quest. As his journey continues he discovers that stars are not so much metal as in our world as they are fantastically beautiful young women.

The novel is well written, the plot engaging, and the setting magical. While, I am unable to give this book 5 stars if only because I enjoy some of his other books more, you can not do much better than this when it comes to books, and thus I gladly recommend this to anyone looking for a good read.

The final book in the Harry Potter series, is a letdown. The author in her haste to tie up loose ends uses far too many contrived plots. This causes the book to feel significantly different than the rest of the series. The plot does not flow smoothly from event to event almost as if the author created a list of what had to happen and what plot lines needed tied up, and then wrote the events checking them off and sort of stuck them together. To be honest I would think the book should have been split in twain and then each half written up to the proper length. None the less the book is a necessary read even if it is a disappointing culmination to a fantastic series.

Watch for Green.

So without giving away any major plot twists, I think that the final Harry Potter book ties together a lot of the loose ends…and even important things that as a reader you didn’t realize were important until now. It certainly has a few slow points, but they build up the tension that you, as a reader, are feeling-knowing that the story is leading to something big. Normally after I have finished reading, I am left with this feeling of completion. This time, I was left emotionally drained; perhaps that is a combination of so many books coming together in one-but it took awhile to really sort out what I thought. I didn’t automatically think (as I would usually) – “what a fantastic book!” or “what rubbish!” it took some time to get there. This complexity of story is what makes her such a fantastic writer.

Update: Since everyone is discussing plot twists, I figured….why not. I think that the book started out strongly with the first chapter, and kept that pace for the first third of the book. When the trio set out on their own, it certainly slows down with their camping-and that’s where the book starts to disappoint. The buildup is necessary but slows the reader down. However the end was worth it; Snape turns out to be neither good/evil, just human. She doesn’t try to change him-the decisions he makes revolve around his love for Lily. Harry represents everything that he lost and at the end he still hates him. When Dumbledore’s background is slowly revealed it seems like such an important part of the plot I almost felt-DUH-why did I never really think about where he comes from, much in the way that Harry does. More later…

December

The Second in the Abarat series this is another picture book adventure of Candy in the Land of Arabat. This one gets more into the secrets of Candy and her connection to the crazy place.