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_michelle_'s reviews
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The Long Road by Christopher Holt
This series is just a whole lot of meh. It seemed fine for the first two books; fine, not awesome. By book three with one more to go, I just can't find much merit in this series. It has no heart.
This series takes place in the southern United States, and it's just filled with the most obnoxious lingual stereotypes: idioms such as Y'all","Ya hear?", "Bless your heart!" and "You gonna get ate!" I'm southern, and I have never said anything of the sort.
I know this series is MG, but my mind keeps getting hung up on how electricity is still being supplied to homes and stores, despite humans having deserted most of the country. Working power occurs too often to be attributed to solar panels, and I can't see people still working the jobs required to produce energy when there's a scary virus that people from all walks of life are running from, and powering communities people have abandoned en masse is an odd risk to take under the circumstances.
Mostly, this series is just too bland to even care about. I'm done. I won't be reading the final installment.
1.0
This series is just a whole lot of meh. It seemed fine for the first two books; fine, not awesome. By book three with one more to go, I just can't find much merit in this series. It has no heart.
This series takes place in the southern United States, and it's just filled with the most obnoxious lingual stereotypes: idioms such as Y'all","Ya hear?", "Bless your heart!" and "You gonna get ate!" I'm southern, and I have never said anything of the sort.
I know this series is MG, but my mind keeps getting hung up on how electricity is still being supplied to homes and stores, despite humans having deserted most of the country. Working power occurs too often to be attributed to solar panels, and I can't see people still working the jobs required to produce energy when there's a scary virus that people from all walks of life are running from, and powering communities people have abandoned en masse is an odd risk to take under the circumstances.
Mostly, this series is just too bland to even care about. I'm done. I won't be reading the final installment.
The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud
5.0
The skull jar was at its funniest and the ghosts were at their creepiest. This book is leaps and bounds above its predecessors, and that's saying something! I can't wait to see where the author takes us in the next book, especially since there was still some unanswered particulars regarding the final haunted spot visited in the book, as well as a (gaping) wide-open ending that begs for a resolution.
Spoiler
I won't say what the cliffhanger is, but don't worry, our heroes are fine; it's not that kind of cliffhanger.
Chilling Ghost Short Stories by Laura Bulbeck
2.0
With a title like Chilling Ghost Short Stories, you'd think the collected stories would be spooky, right? If you said, "Yes," you would be wrong. The editor actually says in the preface that this collection is more of a study in the varied manner of ghosts, and the supernatural at large. But most people don't read that until the book is in their possession (at least I didn't), unlike the title! Can you say "misleading?"
Look, most of these stories are good, strictly speaking. Maybe not stellar, exactly, but not awful, either. They simply do not scare, and if that's what you read ghost stories for (like me), then you will be disappointed (like me). The Man Who Went Too Far, and perhaps two or three others, were both new to me and were intriguing; the other worthwhile stories are already classics and are widely available elsewhere (The Monkey's Paw and The Canterville Ghost, for example).
If you scare easily or hate gore, but have a fondness for the fantastical, disregard the title and give this one a go. Everyone else, give it a pass, unless you like collecting pretty books for your personal library (because, hey, no denying the book design does look pretty cool in physical form).
Look, most of these stories are good, strictly speaking. Maybe not stellar, exactly, but not awful, either. They simply do not scare, and if that's what you read ghost stories for (like me), then you will be disappointed (like me). The Man Who Went Too Far, and perhaps two or three others, were both new to me and were intriguing; the other worthwhile stories are already classics and are widely available elsewhere (The Monkey's Paw and The Canterville Ghost, for example).
If you scare easily or hate gore, but have a fondness for the fantastical, disregard the title and give this one a go. Everyone else, give it a pass, unless you like collecting pretty books for your personal library (because, hey, no denying the book design does look pretty cool in physical form).
La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
4.0
First things first, is this book up to par with the [b: His Dark Materials|18116|His Dark Materials (His Dark Materials #1-3)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442329494s/18116.jpg|1943518] (HDM) trilogy? Not just no, but a million times no. But considering just how perfect I think the original trilogy was, that doesn't mean this is a bad addition; it's just the opposite, in fact. The beginning started off pleasantly enough, but it took its time revealing the intent behind adding this installment to the HDM universe.
This first installment in the Book of Dust trilogy is a companion novel following Malcolm Polstead, a 11-year-old boy who works in his family's inn (the Trout) across from a convent. Malcolm is a kind, curious, sociable boy; he likes to spend his down time rowing his canoe through local canals and doing odd jobs for the nuns and the priory caretaker, thus allowing him to pick up knowledge and skills not often learned carrying meals and dirty dishes between the inn's common room and kitchen.
The previously mentioned convent finds itself, for mysterious reasons that mostly exist as rumors to outsiders, carrying for an adorable baby girl. Malcolm, being the social butterfly he is, takes to Lyra immediately; in fact, the only person Malcolm has ever had trouble warming up to is the 16-year-old dishwasher at the Trout, Alice. Ultimately, Malcolm's curiosity and unwavering desire to help others leads him to trouble and he finds himself on the run for Lyra's sake, with a grumpy Alice in tow, during the worst flood in recent history.
As I write this review in the late hours of January 22, 2018, I've had access to the second book's title and basic premise, via Goodreads. It isn't something I knew when La Belle Sauvage came out, and I did find myself wondering what this series would contribute to canon if it only told events occurring exactly alongside HDM's. I still can't say for certain before [b:The Secret Commonwealth|19034943|The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2)|Philip Pullman|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|27058954] is in my hands, but if I'm right, I believe it will be pretty awesome.
The following book in the series, [b:The Secret Commonwealth|19034943|The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2)|Philip Pullman|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|27058954], is supposedly set to be 20 years from the setting of this installment and 10 years from [b:The Golden Compass|119322|The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1505766203s/119322.jpg|1536771]. It sounds like the book I've wanted for years, a Lyra who moves forward into the future beyond HDM; however, I still find myself wanting to see Malcolm and Alice. In the end, they grew on me as much as they grew on each other. October 2018 can't come soon enough!
This first installment in the Book of Dust trilogy is a companion novel following Malcolm Polstead, a 11-year-old boy who works in his family's inn (the Trout) across from a convent. Malcolm is a kind, curious, sociable boy; he likes to spend his down time rowing his canoe through local canals and doing odd jobs for the nuns and the priory caretaker, thus allowing him to pick up knowledge and skills not often learned carrying meals and dirty dishes between the inn's common room and kitchen.
The previously mentioned convent finds itself, for mysterious reasons that mostly exist as rumors to outsiders, carrying for an adorable baby girl. Malcolm, being the social butterfly he is, takes to Lyra immediately; in fact, the only person Malcolm has ever had trouble warming up to is the 16-year-old dishwasher at the Trout, Alice. Ultimately, Malcolm's curiosity and unwavering desire to help others leads him to trouble and he finds himself on the run for Lyra's sake, with a grumpy Alice in tow, during the worst flood in recent history.
As I write this review in the late hours of January 22, 2018, I've had access to the second book's title and basic premise, via Goodreads. It isn't something I knew when La Belle Sauvage came out, and I did find myself wondering what this series would contribute to canon if it only told events occurring exactly alongside HDM's. I still can't say for certain before [b:The Secret Commonwealth|19034943|The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2)|Philip Pullman|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|27058954] is in my hands, but if I'm right, I believe it will be pretty awesome.
Spoiler
Malcolm and Alice chance upon a faerie domain and meet a water guardian, for lack of a better term. The multitude of worlds exposed in HDM make this plausible, and pretty exciting. The flood seems to have thinned barriers for many characters who experienced odd sights and sounds, and the phrase the secret commonwealth came up near the end of La Belle Sauvage when people were questioned about these odd sightings. I believe that Pullman took Lyra's story back ten years just so he could add this bit, so that when Lyra does whatever she does in the next book, readers aren't scratching their heads in confusion as to what Lyra has to do with it.The following book in the series, [b:The Secret Commonwealth|19034943|The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2)|Philip Pullman|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|27058954], is supposedly set to be 20 years from the setting of this installment and 10 years from [b:The Golden Compass|119322|The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1505766203s/119322.jpg|1536771]. It sounds like the book I've wanted for years, a Lyra who moves forward into the future beyond HDM; however, I still find myself wanting to see Malcolm and Alice. In the end, they grew on me as much as they grew on each other. October 2018 can't come soon enough!
Tokyo Ghoul, Vol. 2 by Sui Ishida
4.0
A fun read, but I thought the anime actually gave a bit more depth to the characters, and the fight scenes were more fleshed out onscreen, as well. The character designs were a bit more refined in anime form, but they were still quite obviously recognizable here (I watched the anime before I came to the manga, so sorry for comparing it too much!).
The Log Goblin by Brian Staveley
4.0
Short and sweet, and one of the most perfectly heartwarming stories you could ever hope to read.
It's free on Tor's website, here.
It's free on Tor's website, here.
Haunted Histories by J. H. Everett, Marilyn Scott-Waters
2.0
I knew this was probably a bit too young for me; I read a lot of MG fiction, but it's different reading MG history, if you get me. The book does explain history very well for kids, I think, by managing to be straightforward without being condescending. I would have probably liked this very much as a kid. It just doesn't do anything new for me now.
A Bride's Story, Volume 1 by Kaoru Mori
1.0
I'll be darned if this isn't the most boring book I've read all year. I've read some disappointing books in 2017, but none were just so boring. Sometimes, it was also a little hard to distinguish some of the younger women from each other, including me getting the MC mixed up a bit.