I wish I could remember who recommended Seraphina to me, because I have absolutely loved these books. I wish there were more. In fact, halfway through reading Shadow Scale (Seraphina #2), I searched for #3 in my library’s database and had a tiny tantrum when I saw that there WASN’T one. Part of me was glad that I knew Shadow Scale would be it (at least for the time being), because it made me savor the rest of the novel, knowing this might be the […]
Losers Win Mostly by Accident
My review of this book on Goodreads was short: “Come up with crazy plan to steal from/ kill dragon, screw up everything but still win. Repeat. And cuss a lot. An entertaining book, but not great.” I stand by this. The gang of losers contains Will the down-on his luck farmer, Firkin the village drunk, Quirk the naive academic, and the mercenary duo of Lette she-bandit who wants a more peaceful life and Balur the lizard man. The fun thing about the group dynamic is […]
The Most Fun Librarians Ever
Did you ever wonder how all the books in the “Silence of the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” got in the Library? It might have gone something like this: Irene the junior Librarian for the Invisible Library, a secret organization that seeks out rare and unique books to collect in the library by traveling through different parallel dimensions with various degrees of technology and magic, goes on missions to retrieve them. She’s a pretty good secret agent, but sometimes she runs into unexpected adventures. […]
Forget the stupid rat-creatures. Stupid and annoying Phoney Bone, more like it
The three Bone cousins Fone Bone (renamed Hero Bone in my head), Smiley Bone (Comic Relief Bone) and Phoney Bone (Greedy, or frequently Insufferable, Bone) have been driven out of their home town of Boneville because Phoney Bone had some sort of get rich quick scheme and scammed the entire town, and now an angry mob has driven them off. They are wandering in the wilderness when they are attacked by a huge swarm of locusts and end up in a mysterious forest in a […]
In Russia, dragon flies you
(note before I start this review: HALF CANNONBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!) At this point, Blood of Tyrants being the eighth book in the Temeraire series, I am still very much on board the Temeraire train, but reading all of them in a row without the benefit of waiting between books (other than brief stints when the library is out of copies of whatever’s next) has meant that a certain fatigue has set in. I think I said in an earlier review that Novik has an incredible way of […]
Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now
THIS WAS GREAT. For reals. I really liked this one. It reminded me a lot of Uprooted, which is still on track to be my favorite book of the year (as evidenced by the fact that I bring it up in so many other reviews GIVE IT A REST, JENNIE). Interesting that they both involve dragons. Well. “Interesting.” Also, “dragons.” Anyway. (I’m not sure this needs to be said at this point of Cannonball but please forgive me if I can’t remember all the facts […]