Published in 2008, Grip of the Shadow Plague is the third book in the Fablehaven series. This time around, Fablehaven is being threatened by a plague which turns everyone into a nightmare version of themselves.
This was a great transitional book. It sets the scene for most of the things to come and didn’t quite feel as tacked on as some.
Great read. You have to keep going…
Book four of the Fablehaven series and published in 2009, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary takes our heroes gain another of the artifacts they need to oppose the Society of the Evening Star.
Another fun read. We get to learn about dragons in this book and even meet a very special dragon. The book is set up for young readers so Seth and Kendra are the main characters. They are starting to learn how special they are and people are falling like flies around them. Seriously! The author doesn’t have any problem with bumping folks off in these books. It has sort of a Disney level of disproportion here. Worse than death can happen to folks at any time and the others seem to get over it a little too quickly… But that’s just a thought.
Great books. I will likely read them again at some point.
The 3rd book in the Game of Thrones series, A Storm of Swords is the continuation of plots and characters too numerous to explain in a brief summary. However, at 973 pages, it can fit “much and more”. Published in the US in 2000, the book was only beaten out by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the Hugo Award.
The plot continues to thicken. Surprisingly, I haven’t gotten bored of it as of yet. The narrative is convoluted but compelling. The language can be base and imagery brutal. However, I continue reading. It has sucked me into the story and I just keep listening.
This book is not for children and even I wonder if I’m old enough to read it… However, I did enjoy it.
Published in 2018, Where the Crawdads Sing is the first novel of Delia Owens about an orphaned girl raising herself and the community around her. Known as the “Marsh Girl”, she is used to life on her own but she can’t just go to where the crawdads sing…
This was a very well written book so I can understand the groundswell of support behind it. My wife was surprised I read it as most of her friends had read it as well. I guess a book with a strong female protagonist isn’t normal husband material.
I wasn’t that surprised by the ending but I didn’t want to believe it. The foreshadowing of the praying mantis tipped the scales on the hint. Again though, I didn’t want to think of her as anything but a pure well doer. It does bring up the uncomfortable truth of all people having to set up boundaries and enforcing them. As she was on her own, it was really left to her to defend herself. As the husband and father, I feel this weight and can understand where she was coming from.
I’m mixed on whether to recommend this or not. If folks are talking about it than sure. If not… Well, I wouldn’t be running out to get it.
Book 2 of the Fablehaven series, published in 2007, we see a revisiting of Seth and Kendra to the world of Fablehaven. This time around, Seth is tricked to bring back a powerful demon who gets stronger and stronger until he has devoured Seth. However, this is just the start of the ploy to take down Fablehaven itself.
This book was a fun read like the book before it. The author has an easy style which is relaxing and yet keeps you engaged.
This is a great book for young readers
Published in 2012, The Innocent is the first of 6 books featuring the hit man “Will Robie”. Will ends up saving a young girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As with the rest of the David Baldacci novels, I really enjoyed it. Everyone likes a good underdog story and this was a great one.
A good read.
This is the first of many mystery books by Sue Grafton or book 1 of the “The Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Mysteries”. These book are each titled with a letter from the alphabet. Starting from A through Y at the time of this review.
Kinsey Millhone is a private eye who is hired to help prove a woman who had already been convicted of murder was really innocent.
This was a fun read. I was refreshed that the book didn’t spend so much time on the sexuality of the main protagonist who is a woman. The book was written in 1982 so I didn’t quite know what to expect. I was concerned it would have been a throw away quasi romance novel or something else. These days I’m sure we would have had to hear a whole diatribe on her sexual preferences…
However, it was just a mystery novel about how a woman private eye went about life and solved her case. I liked it.
A good read if you like mystery novels.
Fablehaven is one of several preserves which house mystical creatures are alive and well and kept in check by a treaty which keeps them from running amok. Fablehaven has a human caretaker, Stan Sorenson, who tries to keep the peace along with his wife Ruth and other helpers at the preserve.
Fablehaven is the first of 5 books by Brandon Mull and was first published in 2006.
Great book. My sons have read the series so this was one of several books I read just to make sure I knew what they were reading. It was a lot of fun. It is full of teen angst and general goofiness. The one thing I had a hard time getting use to throughout the series is how quickly people get over other folks and creatures dying. A main character will pass away and everyone just kind of moves along…
If they like fantasy, they will love this book.
Book two in the Game of Thrones Series, A Clash of Kings roughly parallels the 2nd season of the series on HBO.
It’s a great story but this book is not for kids. (Sometimes I wonder if it is for me…) There is a good deal of strong language and base circumstances. The author starts to give everyone more depth in this book so some characters are easier to like and some you liked turn out to be pretty terrible. On the whole though, everyone is pretty terrible in the series. It certainly doesn’t portray a rosy outlook on life. I have no desire to see the video version.
It takes a bit of work to remember everything that is going on and everyone and how they relate to each other. I made the mistake and put this down for a while and it took a bit to get up to speed.
I enjoyed reading it but this is not for young readers.
This is the last of the Percy Jackson series and he and his friends square off against the earth itself in the form of Gaia. It was released on October 7, 2014 and Disney Book Group announced they were going to print 3 million copies for the first run.
Just like the others in the series, it was a good read and kept me entertained. It reads like you would expect a young adult book to read with a good reflection of awkward moments pretty much all youth experience at some time or another.
There were a number of “demi-gods” that we followed through their journeys so there were at least 2 stories going on at the same time. I think it was an effective way to represent teamwork and I liked that Percy wasn’t the only one in the limelight.
Good read for the kids. Make sure to start the series with the first book though.