The world and the characters in Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Beginnings are so much fun that it really annoys me how short the stories and the book are. To some extent, the two main characters are pretty standard. Lily is bookish, socially awkward, and talented with magic; she’s a wizard. Sebastian is friendly, good looking, a troublemaker, and has little magic talent, but he is a witch. This to me is a tradition buddy mystery-solving/adventure team. What makes them fun is their dynamic and […]
I think she’s part of another story.
I have been consistently conflicted about “The Dark Tower” series. Somehow, in spite of my frustrations, annoyances, aggravations, and declared boredom, I cannot put it down! This book, Book Four, Wizard and Glass, is a perfect example of this conflict: I am in love with the characters who come from “our” world: Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, the normals with whom, of course, we’re meant to identify, are the perfect hook for me. And then there’s sweet and loyal and probably brilliant, Oy, the billy bumbler […]
Harry the Wizard is back, with a bad migraine and Winter in his soul
Dresden is not only back from the dead—having spent an entire novel as a ghost!—but he is back with more guilty angst over endangering his friends and loved ones than ever before. The Winter faerie queen Mab still has her claws in Harry, and forces him to work with his worst enemy Nicodemus to pay off her debt to the scary dude. The job entails ripping off a certain Greek god of the underworld, no small task even for Harry. And, of course, that means […]
Dresden Files in short story format
This collection of stories from Butcher’s famous The Dresden Files are a nice discovery for someone who thought she had read all of Harry Dresden’s adventures and had to sit and twiddle her thumbs until Butcher’s inspiration—or publisher—next strikes. The stories range from Butcher’s first-ever Dresden story written as a college assignment to a post-Harry reminiscence, of a sort, by his would-be lover. The thing that makes these stories such fun is that they are written from various perspectives, including that of his enigmatic vampire […]