Gotta say, this one disappointed me. It is a truth universally acknowledged, the length of a series is inversely proportional to the quality of writing. Maybe not universally acknowledged, but it should be? We know Naomi Novik has mastered pacing, and can write, and is good at creating well-fleshed characters. However, if you didn’t know this about her and read this book, no one would blame you for thinking she was still figuring out her voice. Temeraire loses Laurence to a storm off the coast of […]
I still don’t know what to do with this.
It’s been days since I finished this, and I still don’t know what I think about it. I don’t even know if I liked it or if I hated it or if it was a good ending or a bad ending, or if it was even an ending. Like, yes, OBVIOUSLY it was an ending literally because the series is over, but good endings FEEL like endings, you know? Does that answer my question as to whether this is good or not? I have no […]
Blood Will Divide and Conquer
Rating: 4.5/5 Summary: Mare is a poor girl is a red village. Reds are inferior to the Silvers, who have silver blood running through their veins and incredible abilities to go with them. Mare believes she has no talent so she steals for her family. One night she meets Cal who gets her a job as a servant in the palace. It turns out Cal is a prince and not only a prince, but The Crown Prince of Norta. On Mare’s first day, she […]
Scary Picklemen Want Robots to be Evil
Manners & Mutiny is the fourth and final installment of The Finishing School series. The school in question is Madame Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Yong Ladies of Quality, a flying dirigible where the young lady students study manners and spycraft. The heroine is Sophronia Temminick who, along with her friends Agatha and Dimity, must save the school, London, and probably England from the evil pickle-themed villains, the Picklemen. Much of the action concentrates on discovering and thwarting the Picklemen. There is much less classroom time […]
How Many Wizards Does it Take to Beat an Evil Forest?
In some ways, Uprooted is a very typical fantasy novel. The heroine lives in a village where every 10 years the local wizard Dragon takes a village girl, and keeps her for 10 years. The wizards protects the village from The Woods which is full of evil spirits and general badness. The girls are allowed to leave after 10 years with enough money to support herself for a long time, and always say he never laid a hand on them. When the girl leaves though, […]
“The ox feels the yoke, but does the bird feel the weight of its wings?”
My wish for half-star ratings becomes ever more pronounced with my review of Siege and Storm, because where I gave its series predecessor, Shadow and Bone, 4 stars, it was probably more like 3.5 (I liked it a lot, but there were issues.) Here, I also give Siege and Storm 4 stars, but I’d just as soon bump it up to 4.5 (One minor irritation, but otherwise amazing!) As this is a review for a second book in a series, spoilers for the first book […]