The dashing young king, Nikolai Lantsov, has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country's bloody civil war -- and he intends to keep it that way. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried -- and some wounds aren't meant to heal. This is not really a book of spills and thrills, but its biggest triumph lies in its deep undercurrents, in the attention and care that Leigh Bardugo pours into her characters -- into their failures and successes, and their responses to trauma, threats, and uncertainties. Bardugo breathes vivid life into each one of her characters, and lays their hearts open to the reader, which is easily perceived through the multiple different point-of-views. As a result, there is a devastating sense throughout that the characters are being stripped down to their essence, revealed in all of their glassy fragility and heartfelt vulnerability. Fantasy, politics, inner-demons, and romance -- all used to support this novel through character development and unexpected turns in the story. The King of Scars duology is my favorite out of the entire Grishaverse series -- combining storylines and characters from both the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology. I absolutely loved this book, and would definitely recommend the series.
The only thing keeping this book from a full 5 stars is the fact that I'm still upset about a choice Leigh Bardugo had made in writing the end of the book. I won't spoil anything, but I will say, I have never cried harder over anything. This book opens where we left off with Wylan wearing Kuwei Yul-Bo's face, and our gang must rescue Inej, get revenge, and defeat the bad guys. But that doesn't even begin to sum up all of the action, adventure, and craziness that this novel entails. And as well as being dark and compelling, the characters and relationships we love become even more fascinating and developed. Kaz and Inej, Jesper and Wylan, and Matthias and Nina have come quite far with each other, and draw me in more and more as time goes on. This found family has been and always will be my favorite group from any novel. The ending was devastating, but it was absolutely amazing. It was the kind of ending a story like this deserves -- the kind that leaves you wanting more, but knowing that it finished in exactly the right place.
After tricking Prince Cardan to not only be king, but also into obeying her every command for a year and a day, Jude steps up as the new king's seneschal. With nearly the entire kingdom of the High Court of Faerie, at her command, Jude conspires of how to keep the throne from her evil step-father, Madoc, and hold it until her step-brother, Oak, is old enough to rule. Kidnappings, murder, betrayal, scheming, plot-twists, unexpected and unspoken thoughts, The Wicked King was a book I never wanted to end. Holly Black uses such captivating diction, dialogue, and imagery, it constantly had me yearning for more. If I could read this story over and over again for the first time, I would. Holly Black has a way of combining politics, war, calculating and powerful Faerie, and sub-plots of romance; nothing too overbearing or confusing. It has everything I could ever wish for in a fantasy book. I definitely recommend reading this novel to anyone and everyone.
The first book in Stephanie Garber's trilogy is a fantasy story about two sisters and their adventure at a nighttime, carnivalesque game. Scarlett Dragna leaves the tiny island where her and her sister, Donatella, live with their cruel and powerful father. Their exigence for leaving was the long awaited invitation to the legendary Caraval. Only, as soon as Scarlett and her sister reach the island, her sister is kidnapped. In order to save her sister, Scarlett must win the game. Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is a mere performance. Getting entangled in a game of magic, love, heartbreak, and manipulation, Scarlett must stay focused and find her sister within the five nights of the game, or Donatella will be lost forever. The less you know about the book, the better. The more confused you are, the more you will enjoy it. I sat down and read this book in a matter of a couple of hours. Plot-twist after plot-twist -- once you start to think you finally understand what is going on, Garber turns the story around and confuses you once again. This is a story I will never forget reading, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy with a bit of mystery.
Reviewer's Grade: 11th
The book is about a book loving kid named Ollie who after coming home from school sees a woman trying to throw a book into water. Ollie of course takes the book away from her and got a warning. The book Ollie got slowly connects to the farm she's visiting for a field trip. After the trip the bus breaks down and they find themselves listening to the bus driver and leaving into the fog. Which led them to a creepy place where scarecrows roam around at the night. Overall I loved to see the book slowly connect as the pieces began making sense. You get to see the characters grow emotionally and begin to understand each other. The eerie feeling of the book fits and the ending makes it feel like it's gone back to this small town and nothing ever happened.
I started reading this book in 2012, just a few years before the movie was released. This book is a personal favorite of mine that I have read over and over again. This dystopian story follows a boy who was placed in the center of a maze with several other boys and follows his journey as he uncovers dark truths and attempts to escape the maze. Personally, I love the attention to detail in this book and how it keeps you on your seat throughout the story all the way to the end. In no way was this book predictable. When I first read this book I wasn't aware that it was of a series, so I was delighted to find out there were more books because of how great of a story it was. I would recommend this book to tweens and up since there is some mature material such as fighting and dying (it doesn't go into gory detail). Overall, this is a great read that I would personally highly recommend!
Ivy Gamble is a private detective who can't do magic. Her twin sister, who she hasn't spoken to in years, is magic. And Ivy Gamble definitely isn't bitter about this. When Ivy is hired to solve a horrific murder at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages where her sister teaches, Ivy must face the losses in her past, the uncertainty of her future, and all the lies she's been telling herself.
Reading this book is like reading a short story. I mean that in the best possible way, in that the story is so tight and focused that it carries an emotional punch that usually comes best out of a short story. Some characters could be seen as one-sided, but for the most part every person in the book is given an opportunity to push beyond what they seem to be and surprise the audience in new and interesting ways. The two stars of the show would definitely be Ivy and her sister. Their relationship alone carries a depth and complexity I haven't seen in a while, and each on their own have a ton of layers to explore. I would also like to praise the worldbuilding of the book, mostly in that there isn't much of it. The book does enough to let us know what characters can and can't do, but it doesn't bother going to into a lot of unnecessary details. This is part of the reason the story is so tight and effective: the book trusts us all to have read books about magic schools, and doesn't bother trying to break the mold in a story that's about something completely different. I also like how the book is told through Ivy's point of view. It's well done in a lot of ways, mainly in the way it shows the twisty perceptions this book is about, and in how it shows Ivy herself. For example, Ivy spends much of the book obsessed with the fact that she could've been magic, but anyone reading can easily see that being a detective was the best path for her anyway. Its amazing how competent Ivy is, and how much that shines through despite her narration. I also like the plot twists this book does, how they're pretty predictable but are still so fun to watch unfold. The ending was surprisingly anticlimactic to me at first, but now I can see the way the book was trying to create a realistic ending, and let the audience hope for it to eventually be a happy one.
All in all, this was an amazing joyride of a book. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves magic, mysteries, complex characters, and stunning writing!
Reviewer Grade: 12
At first look, The School for Good & Evil may look like your classic and basic fantasy book with a little romance. Even though there is so much more, this book has so much depth to its plot, and just how the world is set up could be a whole book in itself. It starts in this little classic village that looks like any classic medieval village, maybe a bit more sophisticated. This village for the past 150 years has had two of their children aged around 16, boy or girl, taken from their village in the middle of the night and they are never seen again. The villagers try their hardest to stop this force that takes them, yet every year they fail. They go looking for them in the forest surrounding the village but every time someone has gone looking they go in on one side of the forest and appear out of the forest on the other side of the village. Then every year a book shows up full of stories, some including people who look like the children taken, the bookmaker then copies this book over and over to sell to everyone in the village. These stories are the classic fairy tales that everyone has heard of, as well as fairy tales we have never heard of. The village people have no clue where the children go or what happens to them except for the maybes in the books. Yet they know one thing, one child is good and one is evil.
The story starts with two girls, Sophie and Agatha, two best friends, yet opposites. Sophie is your classic-looking princess who has flawless skin, long golden blonde hair, beautiful clothes, almost the best house in the village, and is kind to everyone. While Agatha is your classic-looking witch who dresses in all black, doesn’t care about her appearance much, lives in a graveyard, has a cat that seemed to come from hell, and her mother is the witch doctor of the village. Both the same age, everyone knew they would be taken, knowing which is good and which is evil. Sophie wanted to leave desperately and did everything she possibly could to make sure she would be taken, Agatha wanted to stay in her quaint little life and not leave the village, her mom, and her cat. When the day came that the children would be taken everyone in the village worked to blockade every window door and make sure everyone stayed inside, while everyone older lined along the forest. Sophie prepared to be taken, and Agatha prepared to save her best friend from being taken. Night fell and as it turned out both Agatha and Sophie were taken, it was not a fun ride; they were pulled through the forest, the branches ripping their skin, then flying above in the claws of some bird. The two girls then saw the castles, the school for good and evil, one castle bright and shining and the other dark and gloomy. A fog came in and the girls couldn’t see anymore, they then were both dropped first Agatha and then Sophie. Yet Sophie woke up in the swamp of the evil castle and Agatha woke up in the shining clear blue lake of the good castle, something no one anticipated.
This book was something I never expected, I thought it would just be a bunch of fluff and would be a really short, easy, and bland read. NOT AT ALL. This book changed my expectations of how books should be written. This book was like something I have never read before. The twist on how we see fairytales is insane and shows what we never would have thought happened. There are so many twists and turns that even though you know the general idea of the book, you have no clue what is going to happen on every single page. This book would be great for anyone that loves reading fairy tales, fantasy, drama, and a little bit of a dark side twist in books.
Reviewer Grade: 12
I first read this book when I was much younger and have read it many times since then, yet not in recent years. I just finished reading it once again about a month ago. Just like when I read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the very first time there was so much magic and wonder that engulfed me once more, and will again many times more.
It begins during the Blitz in 1940 with a family of four kids, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. They, like many other children during this time, go to the countryside of England to escape the war and be safe. Yet their time in the countryside will be much different than any of the other children’s. They arrive at this mansion owned by a professor, who has a housekeeper that doesn’t want children there and makes sure that they don’t touch anything. The four children don’t want to leave their family and their home in London, but the homesickness fades away quickly once they start to have fun in the house and find a world of magic and endless possibilities. Lucy, the youngest of the four, finds a wardrobe hidden away in a spare room in the house, in it are a bunch of fur coats. She makes her way through with her eyes closed as the soft fur rubs against her cheeks when she suddenly feels something prickly and cold. She finds herself in a wood in the middle of winter and a faint light in the distance, the light coming from a singular light post in the middle of nowhere and nothing to power it. Here she meets Mr. Tumnus, a faun, who invites her for tea and cakes. She spends hours with him and learns about the land she is in, Narnia which is in a 100-year winter, and that she is the first human in this strange land in a long time, as well as that there is a witch, the White Witch, who has enslaved all of Narnia. When she returned she had been gone for hours, yet to her siblings, it was mere seconds, they didn’t believe her and when they went to check the wardrobe there was no wood. Edmund was especially mean about it but followed her in the middle of the night and found himself in the middle of the same forest she described and Edmund met the White Witch. One day all four children were rushed into the wardrobe as the housekeeper gave tours of the house since it had many relics, and they found themselves all in Narnia, not at all ready for the adventure ahead of them.
This magical place and book always make me feel like I was there with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, as they had their adventures. The magic that C. S. Lewis was able to resonate with me every day as I too looked for a magical portal to a world unknown. This book is so enveloping as you read and finish it, it stays with you for years, making you think in ways you never thought of before. This book is an amazing book for anyone looking for an amazing fantasy book or a book that every time you read it you see something new.
Reviewer Grade: 12
I have always loved Greek mythology, so when I found this book I knew I would love it. I was right I loved it, it was amazing. The Lightning Thief centers around a pre-teen named Percy Jackson, who lives in New York and has trouble in school. He has been in and out of many schools, almost a different one each year. At twelve years old Percy always felt like an outcast, like he fit in somewhere just not anywhere. He struggled with dyslexia and ADHD. Every year at school he has had some strange occurrence that ends up getting him kicked out. He has a best friend, Grover, and an amazing mother, Sally. He also has a stepfather that is abusive and he has pushed his mother to leave him but she won’t. There is a reason though for all of what Percy has gone through in his life. After encounters with many horrible and terrifying events and things in which most try to kill him, he and Grover end up at Camp Half-Blood. At camp he learns many new things, his best friend isn’t human but a centaur, his father is the God of the sea, Poseidon, and there is a prophecy that he is destined for great things. At camp Percy meets Annabeth, a girl that is a child of Athena the goddess of wisdom and warcraft, she is crazy smart and very resourceful, yet also seems to be an amazing friend and person altogether. As the three of them go on a quest to find Zeus's missing lightning bolt and return it to him. Percy, Grover, and Annabeth set out across the country for a quest of a lifetime, all at the age of 12/13. Percy and his friends face monsters and things they never could have imagined.
This book was honestly one of the best books I have read ever, and I have read a LOT of books. Although it is for a bit younger age group it is still an amazing read for anyone who is looking for a lighthearted and funny fantasy and adventure book, combined with Greek mythology and overall great writing and plot structure.
Reviewer Grade: 12
As a continuation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians series comes The Lost Hero. A novel continuing the world of Percy Jackson with all new faces and plots. Just like the original Percy Jackson series, I loved this first book of the Heroes of Olympus. The Lost Hero begins with Jason, a kid who can’t remember anything of his past waking up on a school bus with other students and two people talking to him. These two people are Piper and Leo, his apparent best friends and girlfriend. He doesn’t remember either of them at all. Even though they remember him and all the memories they shared. Piper is a kid from a famous father who does bad things to get his attention. Leo is the comedic relief of the group and makes everyone laugh, while also being a genius with mechanics. They are all in a school for delinquents and their actions sent them there. They are visiting the grand canyon when all of a sudden monsters attack causing everyone to panic. Jason starts to speak Latin randomly even though Piper and Leo had no clue he spoke it and never heard it, and Jason didn’t know that he could either. Jason also refers to the Gods with their roman names as the monsters talk to them. They are rescued by people from camp half blood and as expected there are some familiar faces. They get to camp and realize why they act the way they do and are eventually sorted into their cabins and Godly parents. They hear a prophecy and are instructed to save Hera and hear a new prophecy. They start on their quest and along the way, they learn more about each other and build a friendship from scratch again starting from the school bus. They encounter many new and different minor Gods and Goddesses as well as new creatures and people never seen before.
Just like Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Rick Riordan can make new and exciting plots and characters. The amount of detail in this book was upped by a lot compared to his earlier works as they were much larger and could fit in much more story, allowing for a better and deeper story. I would suggest this book and the rest of Rick Riordan's books to anyone that loves Greek mythology, great writing, and as well as adventure, fantasy, comedy, friendship, mystery, and a little bit of romance all tied up into one great book.
Reviewer Grade: 12
An amazing and intriguing story about a girl who has lived in a town where a total of 17 people go missing in the same woods, gets lost in these same woods and has an adventure of a lifetime. This girl’s name is May Ellen Bird and she is the social outcast of the town she lives in and the town over, where she goes to school. She's considered weird for always collecting random things and always talking to her cat, Somber Kitty. While exploring her basically abandoned town she finds a letter in the crumbled and destroyed little box of a post office with her name on it, yet it was from 1951. In this letter there is a map for a lake not far from her house, yet there shouldn’t be a lake as in Briery Swamp, West Virginia has been a drought for years. She goes to look for it and sets out on a quest to find it full or not full. She finds it and falls in, after climbing out to her dismay she is now able to see ghosts. For some odd reason she decides to go back to the lake, falls in again and gets pulled to the strange world of the Ever After, where the story really starts to unfold with twists and turns, ghosts, and other things most people would be terrified of seeing.
This book is definitely different from your regular fantasy book, as it ties in slight horror. I won’t lie when I had my suspicions about this book when I first read it, but they were infact wrong as this book sucked me in and captivated me with the depth and descriptive story. There is so much character development for all of the main characters and even the side characters as well, which is rare in most books, and there is so much description for every single little thing that you really get to know everything and everybody that you encounter throughout this book. I absolutely loved reading this book and I think many others would as well if you are looking for a slightly horrific book with adventure, friendship, and hardship along the way.
Reviewer Grade: 12
A Winter's Promise is originally translated from French, and the author's writing style carried over well. The story is about a girl named Ophelia who lives in a dystopian world where people can have special powers, hers being the ability to travel through mirrors. When Ophelia is engegaed to a man she's never met, she must discover what's most important: her freedom or her family's reputation. It's not so easy, however, with the fear that the family of her betrothed has malicious intentions. With that interesting premise, it was easy for me to finish the book. However, a lot of the dialogue was muddled for me because the characters weren't easily diferentiated. Though Ophelia was a headstrong main character, I was concerned by her dangerous choices and it felt like there wasn't any character development. If I put a bit more effort into understanding the world-building, this book would likely have a higher rating. Complex fantasy worlds aren't really my thing because it may take away from the characters, and it did in this case.
Grade: 12
I have always loved Greek mythology, so when I found this book I knew I would love it. I was right I loved it, it was amazing. The Lightning Thief centers around a pre-teen named Percy Jackson, who lives in New York and has trouble in school. He has been in and out of many schools, almost a different one each year. At twelve years old Percy always felt like an outcast, like he fit in somewhere just not anywhere. He struggled with dyslexia and ADHD. Every year at school he has had some strange occurrence that ends up getting him kicked out. He has a best friend, Grover, and an amazing mother, Sally. He also has a stepfather that is abusive and he has pushed his mother to leave him but she won’t. There is a reason though for all of what Percy has gone through in his life. After encounters with many horrible and terrifying events and things in which most try to kill him, he and Grover end up at Camp Half-Blood. At camp he learns many new things, his best friend isn’t human but a centaur, his father is the God of the sea, Poseidon, and there is a prophecy that he is destined for great things. At camp Percy meets Annabeth, a girl that is a child of Athena the goddess of wisdom and warcraft, she is crazy smart and very resourceful, yet also seems to be an amazing friend and person altogether. As the three of them go on a quest to find Zeus's missing lightning bolt and return it to him. Percy, Grover, and Annabeth set out across the country for a quest of a lifetime, all at the age of 12/13. Percy and his friends face monsters and things they never could have imagined.
This book was honestly one of the best books I have read ever, and I have read a LOT of books. Although it is for a bit younger age group it is still an amazing read for anyone who is looking for a lighthearted and funny fantasy and adventure book, combined with Greek mythology and overall great writing and plot structure.
Reviewer Grade: 12
I first read this book when I was much younger and have read it many times since then, yet not in recent years. I just finished reading it once again about a month ago. Just like when I read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the very first time there was so much magic and wonder that engulfed me once more, and will again many times more.
It begins during the Blitz in 1940 with a family of four kids, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. They, like many other children during this time, go to the countryside of England to escape the war and be safe. Yet their time in the countryside will be much different than any of the other children’s. They arrive at this mansion owned by a professor, who has a housekeeper that doesn’t want children there and makes sure that they don’t touch anything. The four children don’t want to leave their family and their home in London, but the homesickness fades away quickly once they start to have fun in the house and find a world of magic and endless possibilities. Lucy, the youngest of the four, finds a wardrobe hidden away in a spare room in the house, in it are a bunch of fur coats. She makes her way through with her eyes closed as the soft fur rubs against her cheeks when she suddenly feels something prickly and cold. She finds herself in a wood in the middle of winter and a faint light in the distance, the light coming from a singular light post in the middle of nowhere and nothing to power it. Here she meets Mr. Tumnus, a faun, who invites her for tea and cakes. She spends hours with him and learns about the land she is in, Narnia which is in a 100-year winter, and that she is the first human in this strange land in a long time, as well as that there is a witch, the White Witch, who has enslaved all of Narnia. When she returned she had been gone for hours, yet to her siblings, it was mere seconds, they didn’t believe her and when they went to check the wardrobe there was no wood. Edmund was especially mean about it but followed her in the middle of the night and found himself in the middle of the same forest she described and Edmund met the White Witch. One day all four children were rushed into the wardrobe as the housekeeper gave tours of the house since it had many relics, and they found themselves all in Narnia, not at all ready for the adventure ahead of them.
This magical place and book always make me feel like I was there with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, as they had their adventures. The magic that C. S. Lewis was able to resonate with me every day as I too looked for a magical portal to a world unknown. This book is so enveloping as you read and finish it, it stays with you for years, making you think in ways you never thought of before. This book is an amazing book for anyone looking for an amazing fantasy book or a book that every time you read it you see something new.
Reviewer Grade: 12
At first look, The School for Good & Evil may look like your classic and basic fantasy book with a little romance. Even though there is so much more, this book has so much depth to its plot, and just how the world is set up could be a whole book in itself. It starts in this little classic village that looks like any classic medieval village, maybe a bit more sophisticated. This village for the past 150 years has had two of their children aged around 16, boy or girl, taken from their village in the middle of the night and they are never seen again. The villagers try their hardest to stop this force that takes them, yet every year they fail. They go looking for them in the forest surrounding the village but every time someone has gone looking they go in on one side of the forest and appear out of the forest on the other side of the village. Then every year a book shows up full of stories, some including people who look like the children taken, the bookmaker then copies this book over and over to sell to everyone in the village. These stories are the classic fairy tales that everyone has heard of, as well as fairy tales we have never heard of. The village people have no clue where the children go or what happens to them except for the maybes in the books. Yet they know one thing, one child is good and one is evil.
The story starts with two girls, Sophie and Agatha, two best friends, yet opposites. Sophie is your classic-looking princess who has flawless skin, long golden blonde hair, beautiful clothes, almost the best house in the village, and is kind to everyone. While Agatha is your classic-looking witch who dresses in all black, doesn’t care about her appearance much, lives in a graveyard, has a cat that seemed to come from hell, and her mother is the witch doctor of the village. Both the same age, everyone knew they would be taken, knowing which is good and which is evil. Sophie wanted to leave desperately and did everything she possibly could to make sure she would be taken, Agatha wanted to stay in her quaint little life and not leave the village, her mom, and her cat. When the day came that the children would be taken everyone in the village worked to blockade every window door and make sure everyone stayed inside, while everyone older lined along the forest. Sophie prepared to be taken, and Agatha prepared to save her best friend from being taken. Night fell and as it turned out both Agatha and Sophie were taken, it was not a fun ride; they were pulled through the forest, the branches ripping their skin, then flying above in the claws of some bird. The two girls then saw the castles, the school for good and evil, one castle bright and shining and the other dark and gloomy. A fog came in and the girls couldn’t see anymore, they then were both dropped first Agatha and then Sophie. Yet Sophie woke up in the swamp of the evil castle and Agatha woke up in the shining clear blue lake of the good castle, something no one anticipated.
This book was something I never expected, I thought it would just be a bunch of fluff and would be a really short, easy, and bland read. NOT AT ALL. This book changed my expectations of how books should be written. This book was like something I have never read before. The twist on how we see fairytales is insane and shows what we never would have thought happened. There are so many twists and turns that even though you know the general idea of the book, you have no clue what is going to happen on every single page. This book would be great for anyone that loves reading fairy tales, fantasy, drama, and a little bit of a dark side twist in books.
Reviewer Grade: 12
An amazing and intriguing story about a girl who has lived in a town where a total of 17 people go missing in the same woods, gets lost in these same woods and has an adventure of a lifetime. This girl’s name is May Ellen Bird and she is the social outcast of the town she lives in and the town over, where she goes to school. She's considered weird for always collecting random things and always talking to her cat, Somber Kitty. While exploring her basically abandoned town she finds a letter in the crumbled and destroyed little box of a post office with her name on it, yet it was from 1951. In this letter there is a map for a lake not far from her house, yet there shouldn’t be a lake as in Briery Swamp, West Virginia has been a drought for years. She goes to look for it and sets out on a quest to find it full or not full. She finds it and falls in, after climbing out to her dismay she is now able to see ghosts. For some odd reason she decides to go back to the lake, falls in again and gets pulled to the strange world of the Ever After, where the story really starts to unfold with twists and turns, ghosts, and other things most people would be terrified of seeing.
This book is definitely different from your regular fantasy book, as it ties in slight horror. I won’t lie when I had my suspicions about this book when I first read it, but they were in fact wrong as this book sucked me in and captivated me with the depth and descriptive story. There is so much character development for all of the main characters and even the side characters as well, which is rare in most books, and there is so much description for every single little thing that you really get to know everything and everybody that you encounter throughout this book. I absolutely loved reading this book and I think many others would as well if you are looking for a slightly horrific book with adventure, friendship, and hardship along the way.
Reviewer Grade: 12
I really liked To Kill A Kingdom because it appealed to both romance and fantasy genres. This Little Mermaid retelling combined with the plot of The Siren by Kiera Cass is adventurous and exciting. The main characters, Lira and Elian, are both cutthroat and unapologetic, which makes for a fun read when they interact. Although I wish they each had a little more distinct passions and slightly wittier banter, the ending was cool and the complicated treasure hunt leading up to it was cool as well. I would recommend it if you like the other stories mentioned above, and fantasy books in general.
Grade 12
If you're like me, you're a fantasy lover. If you're also like me, you've heard great things about this book. Most of them are true. A Magic Steeped in Poison is about Ning, whose sister is dying from a poison. Her last option is to compete in a tea making competition for a favor from the princess, and hope she has the cure.
Let's start with the obvious, the magic system is enchanting (pun intended). I've never seen anything quite like it, and I'd read a book just explaining exactly how everything works. Really, it's just refreshing to see a magic system that isn't 'pew pew, blast blast'. The plot is great too, and every stage of the competition brought something interesting. Ning is a pretty good protagonist, and I can't think of a time I didn't like her. Most of the characters are fairly strong, although nothing amazing. The princess is likable, but not perfect. The father has a bit of complexity. And I thought the judges were very well written. Really, I only had a few complaints.
The weakest aspect of the book is Ning's love interest. Kang is a nice enough character, but we don't know anything about him. If you've read the book, you're probably confused. After all, we know a ton about Kang's past. But that's the thing, we know about his past, not him. Can you think of a single personality trait he has? In the beginning he's super exitable (this never shows up again). Later in the book he loves history (never comes up before or again). Kang is just a generic, perfect boyfriend. There's nothing wrong with a shallow character, as long as the protagonist has some emotional distance from that character. With a love interest, the goal is to have as little emotional distance as possible. Other than that, everything is pretty solid. I would have liked to see some flashbacks with Shu (so we could get more attached), and maybe some more time with Lian.
Overall, I recommend this book, and I'm excited to read the sequel.
The BFG is the type of book you read once and continue to read over and over again. Personally, I have read this book several times all the way from elementary school to high school, and has remained one of my favorites to this very day (for more context I first read this book in school). From the crazy word concepts to the illustrations, this book keeps you interested with every page. I recommend this book to those in grade school and above; the language is easy to read as it tells the story from the viewpoint of a young girl. There isn't much I could say I disliked about this book, the end of the story was very heartwarming while the book kept you on you're toes all throughout. Fair warning, a frequent scene in this book is giants eating children, so if you are reading this to someone younger who may be scared easily, I would take that into consideration (in clarification the scenes are NOT graphic and are kid-friendly). It was an exciting read, and the illustrations do a great job at giving your mind something to picture as you read along throughout the book. The book isn't too long itself but I feel like it suits the storyline well. I gave this book 5 stars for several reasons, but the main idea is that: it's very well written and illustrated, a good read for young ages and above, and it is genuinely a very good book.