Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Today I’m guest posting for Savindi over at The Streetlight Reader in return for her amazing guest post while I was on vacation.  This time I reviewed the second book in the Giver series: Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry.  So was the second book better than the first or did it suffer from the dreaded Book 2 Syndrome?  Click on the link to find out!

And while you’re over there, check out some of the reviews and articles Savindi has written on her own blog.  She reads a lot heavier material than I do, so you’ll be sure to find something to appeal to your intellect.

The Singing Sword by Jack Whyte

The Singing Sword by Jack Whyte

(Cover picture courtesy of The Templar Trilogy by Jack Whyte.)

Born of the chaos of the Dark Ages, the dream of eagles produced a king, a country and an everlasting legend—Camelot.

It is 395 A. D., and as the Roman armies withdraw from Britain, anarchy threatens the colony that will one day be known as Camelot.  Creating their own army and joining with the Celtic people of King Ullic Pendragon, the colonists emerge as a new breed of Britons, ready to forge the government that will be the Round Table and its Knights and to prepare the groundwork for the future coronation of Arthur, first High King of Britain.

I’m the sort of person that loves doing jigsaw puzzles, which is part of the reason why I loved The Singing Sword.  It’s a lot like a jigsaw puzzle, what with tiny, barley recognizable pieces of the Arthurian legends slowly being dropped into place.  We got the outline or the edge pieces in the first book in A Dream of Eagles (formerly known as The Camulod Chronicles), The Skystone, and now we’re starting to fill in the easy parts.

Publius is obviously more mature than he was in the first book and it’s almost more interesting to see this more mature, worldly point of view as he and Caius struggle to build up the Colony.  Their alliance with King Ullic, the growing threat of foreign invaders reaching Roman territory and an old villain reappearing made The Singing Sword very exciting and an entertaining read.  Of course, there are the bad parts of the novel as well and I would definitely not recommend it for people who are sensitive to gore.  Jack Whyte writes as Publius would have in the times and is less sensitive to the violence all around him.  Therefore, it’s difficult for someone with modern views on violence to accept the ancient world for what it was, but The Singing Sword feels all the more authentic for that.

Not only is Publius more mature than when we left him at the end of The Skystone, all of the other characters are more mature.  Their newly acquired maturity does not mean that they’re boring or that they don’t have character arcs.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Fans of the first book will love to see their favourite characters change even more and will learn to love the new generation that helps bring the legend of Camelot closer to reality.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa

The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Allison Sekemoto has vowed to rescue her creator, Kanin, who is being held hostage and tortured by the psychotic vampire Sarren. The call of blood leads her back to the beginning—New Covington and the Fringe, and a vampire prince who wants her dead yet may become her wary ally.

Even as Allie faces shocking revelations and heartbreak like she’s never known, a new strain of the Red Lung virus that decimated humanity is rising to threaten human and vampire alike.

[Full disclosure: I received a free ARC ebook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

Well, I must say that I enjoyed The Eternity Cure even more than the first book in the Blood of Eden trilogy, The Immortal Rules.  And considering how much I liked the first book, that’s really saying something.

The Eternity Cure includes betrayals, new revelations, old friends (and enemies) and one of those villains that is just unable to die.  Julie Kagawa never was one for sparing her characters any pain, but wow, poor Allie really does go through a lot in this second installment.  This is definitely not a case of Book 2 Syndrome.  Allison has matured quite a bit and become more accepting of her life as a vampire when the story starts out and she has changed even more by the time it ends.  Her search for Kanin certainly isn’t an easy one and it brings her into contact with an old friend and more than a few old enemies.

As for the plot, all I can say is that it takes more than a few twists and turns.  There were even some I didn’t see coming, especially that heart-wrenching cliffhanger ending.  It was incredibly difficult for me to tear my eyes away from my computer screen the whole time, even for nourishment or sleep.  If you loved The Immortal Rules, I guarantee that you’ll like The Eternity Cure even more.  So go ahead and pre-order your copy!  It releases on April 30 of this year.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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The Best and Worst of March

No, this is not some weird April Fool’s day joke.  Honest.  Although, looking at my stats this month, I sort of wish it was.  My overall monthly views are up from February at 3,488 hits and 1,998 unique views, but they are still lagging behind the record-setting month of January.  This very likely has to do with me taking so many holidays and posting reviews of obscure books.  Obscure books = less search engine traffic = less overall views.  I’m happy to say that as far as I know, I’m home all of April, so we’ll see if this is a new disturbing trend or only temporary.

Now here are my 5 best posts for March:

1.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

2.  1984 by George Orwell

3.  The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

4.  Matilda by Roald Dahl

5.  What Makes a Character Memorable?

We have two newcomers this month!  Both 1984 by George Orwell and my article What Makes a Character Memorable? are completely new to my Best and Worst series.  I have to say that this is a refreshing change from the usual five that top this list.  Of course some of the regulars are still there, but at least there seems to be more traffic going to my newer articles.  What about my ‘worst’ articles, though?

1.  Queste by Angie Sage

2.  A Curse as Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce

3.  The Fourth Wall by Walter Jon Williams

4.  Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare

5.  Extras by Scott Westerfeld

Once again, every single book at the list of the worst five articles is completely new.  Notice that they’re all book reviews too?  It seems my articles are more popular, as I observed long ago.  Well, at least the good news is that my worst articles keep rotating and aren’t like the best articles where it’s pretty much the same 5 every month.

So how did March go for you?

Look What Just Arrived! (#9)

Carrie Pictures 2012 288As you guys know, I was travelling.  As you also know, that means only one thing: new books.  The only real question is: what did I buy?  So here we go:

  • Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
  • The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
  • The Singing Sword by Jack Whyte
  • The Courtesan’s Lover by Gabrielle Kimm
  • Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
  • Beyonders: Seeds of Rebellion by Brandon Mull

To be fair, I’ve already read and scheduled my review for The Singing Sword because I took it with me to read on the plane.  So I’m not as far behind on buying, reading and reviewing as it seems like.

I picked up  Prince of Thorns because Savindi from The Streetlight Reader has been raving about Prince of Thorns for a while now, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about.  Grave Mercy both appealed to me when I read the blurb on Amazon a while back and because it was the talk of the YA blogosphere for a fair bit of time.  We’ll see if it’s worth the hype.

I picked up Beyonders: Seeds of Rebellion by Brandon Mull because although I absolutely hated Fablehaven, I enjoyed the first book in his new Beyonders series.  Also, I needed a new book at the airport in case I finished The Singing Sword on the way back.  The Courtesan’s Lover had both an intriguing blurb and was on sale, so I picked that up as well at the bookstore.  The Ghost Brigades is the second part of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series.  I figure that since the first book was so funny I cried from laughing at some parts that if nothing else, the second book will be an entertaining read.  Knowing John Scalzi, though, I’m pretty sure it will be far more than that.

So what books are you guys reading this month?  See any books here that you loved/hated/need to read?