A Conundrum!

The weekends are usually the busiest time for my fun-reading, so it was even more puzzling yesterday that I opted out of reading at all. The reason: I have no idea what book to read next?
Has that ever happened to any of you? Do those “In My Mailbox” or “Mailbox Mondays” ever get out-of-hand? My bookshelf is on the verge of a mutiny – they’re all screaming “Read me next!” and I don’t know which to choose!

My ongoing series at present is the Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney. I have 2 more books to go before I’ll be finished with them (for the time being) but I kind of want something a little different… Do you guys read all your series-books together or do you space them out? Take Harry Potter for example: did you blaze through them all at once, or did you read other books in between?

If anybody has any reading suggestions I’m all ears! Maybe I need a schedule or something…
For now, I’ve narrowed my options down to these two:

The Spook's Mistake (Wardstone, #5) / Child of the Dark Prophecy (Great Tree of Avalon, #1)

The Avalon series has a funny discovery history - or at least, I think so. A couple weeks ago I was at Borders picking up a couple books I have to read for class and this trilogy just caught my attention. They're pretty big hardbacks, so they were hard to miss. And I'm a sucker for pretty cover designs - I'll admit it! So it's managed to climb to the top of my TBR list even though I've only had it for a couple weeks...and what did I do the other day but go back for the other two! I've got a problem...I can't stop buying books!

I haven't heard much about them at all and I guess that adds to the allure :P Yes, I find books "alluring"! Oh dear!

So that, friendly bloggers, is my current conundrum - what to read next! Hints?! Suggestions?!

A Quick Recap

Books Read

The Spook's Battle

Reviews

The Spook's Secret

The Spook's Battle

My Posts

Reading Recap - January

Cover Wars! Most likely will be moved to Wednesday

Teaser Tuesday
Cinema Weekend

Friday Finds

Review - THE SPOOK'S BATTLE

This is definitely the axis book around which the series will start to evolve… and it’s about time, too – holy cow, this is book #4! I felt like The Spook’s Battle in particular was a long time coming. Why? Well, we finally start to piece together Alice’s background, and we also get hands-on dealings with the most malevolent witches in the County! After hearing about them for the better part of 3 books, I was excited to actually see them. We also get more insight into Tom’s family dynamics, including his mysterious mother and her quickly-unraveling past… interesting!

HOWEVER, the pacing of the overall series is starting to get on my nerves – the last 4 books have taken place roughly over a year’s time…that is waaaaaay to slow (in my opinion, at least). I said this in the review for The Spook’s Secret: I’m ready for Tom to start growing up! He’s matured so much emotionally, yes, but he still functions like a young kid... Alice is starting to slightly surpass Tom as my favorite character! She’s quite the underdog, though: nobody trusts her and everybody is just waiting for her to screw up. Now granted, she is a witch with a shady past, but come on, give her a break! It’s like your Typical Girl scenario: you’ve got a problem, but for some reason the menfolk can’t seem to get their act together and solve the problem, so you do it, then they jump on you because they don’t like your methods! Poor Alice! I can certainly relate, haha.

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND: one thing Delaney does really, really well is “connect-the-dots”. I love it when a series author finds ways to reiterate certain points from previous books into the current book. There were quite a lot of things from Apprentice and Curse, for example, that I managed to forget, so it was good of Delaney to remind me how everything relates to each other. The only thing I’m unsure about is his order-of-events. For example, he had a really good “recap” conversation between two characters where you as the reader are given an explanation for something that happened earlier on in the series – however, this conversation occurs at the very end of the story, so you go through 300+ pages of “WHAT THE?!?!?!” before you get your answer. To me, that’s not really suspense, that’s distracting. If I’m paying so much attention to a particular unexplained plot point, and I’m given no “hold-your-horses, I’ll-get-to-the-explanation-later” from the author (and authors do give you clues that they’re not going to leave you hanging – JK Rowling, for example) it becomes hard for me to concentrate on the rest of the story. Maybe that’s just me, though… So bottom line: Delaney does tie up loose ends and tie in his previous stories with the present one, he just does it at weird times… -

ANOTHER THING I really like about Delaney and this series: his creativity at times gets off-the-charts. No, he didn’t “create” boggarts, wights, and witches, but he puts his own personal touches on creatures and legends you thought you knew already, and the result is near-constant surprise on part of the reader. I was certainly impressed. On the other hand: the last 3 books in a row have pretty much used the same idea when it comes to your “creature of the dark” – a malevolent, spirit thing that has been/could be mistaken for some kind of godlike being. The Bane. Golgoth. The Fiend. I want something more original, please. Just having the three covens of evil witches would have sufficed, at least in my opinion. And that brings me to my next point:

This series is starting to move in the “philosophical direction” and I’m not sure how I feel about that. For one thing, I don’t find “those questions” necessary for good fantasy fiction: take a hint from JK Rowling, whose whole story revolves around witches and wizards, yet she never says anything negative about religion. Seriously, Mr. Delaney: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all! Now granted, I like stories that are about that cosmic, seemingly-metaphorical “Light/Dark” battle, but could we please not get religion-specific? Or at least, leave the religion-specific stuff to people like Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti who actually know what they’re talking about? Please?! Oh well, it may sound like I’m ragging on the series, but I really do like it! I’m definitely hooked at this point!





Rating: 4.5/5 - Despite my little snitty comments (haha), I really liked this book and highly recommend the whole series!

Friday Finds

I just found another fun meme - and another one from MizB @ Should Be Reading. Friday Finds are books that you've heard about during the past week. For me, I'm taking it a step further: these are books I heard about and may potentially read.

If you have any information on any of these titles please lemme know! :D

My finds this week:

Incarceron - Catherine Fisher

- (American edition, right) Hardcover, 2010; 464 pages

- (British edition, left) Paperback, 2007; 464 pages

- Goodreads reviews: 37% (5 stars), 41% (4 stars), 15% (3 stars), 4% (2 stars), 1% (1 star)

Incarceron -- a futuristic prison, sealed from view, where the descendants of the original prisoners live in a dark world torn by rivalry and savagery. It is a terrifying mix of high technology -- a living building which pervades the novel as an ever-watchful, ever-vengeful character, and a typical medieval torture chamber -- chains, great halls, dungeons. A young prisoner, Finn, has haunting visions of an earlier life, and cannot believe he was born here and has always been here. In the outer world, Claudia, daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, is trapped in her own form of prison -- a futuristic world constructed beautifully to look like a past era, an imminent marriage she dreads. She knows nothing of Incarceron, except that it exists. But there comes a moment when Finn, inside Incarceron, and Claudia, outside, simultaneously find a device -- a crystal key, through which they can talk to each other. And so the plan for Finn's escape is born ...

The Sugar Queen - Sarah Addison Allen
- Hardcover: April 2009 by Bantam (first published in 2008)
- Goodreads reviews: 27%(5 stars), 42% (4 stars), 24% (3 stars), 6% (2 stars), 1% (1 star)

Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter is her favorite season, she’s a sorry excuse for a Southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother’s house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night…. Until she finds her closet harboring Della Lee Baker, a local waitress who is one part nemesis—and two parts fairy godmother. With Della Lee’s tough love, Josey’s narrow existence quickly expands. She even bonds with Chloe Finley, a young woman who is hounded by books that inexplicably appear when she needs them—and who has a close connection to Josey’s longtime crush. Soon Josey is living in a world where the color red has startling powers, and passion can make eggs fry in their cartons. And that’s just for starters.

AVPM - Part II!

(Early) Cinema Weekend

Here's my early Cinema Weekend! This "movie" you can watch on your computer - brought to you by the good folks @ youtube!

Okay, this is one of my favorite videos of all time. Actually, it's more of a production, because it's close to an hour long - shorter than most films nowadays, but still something you'll need to curl up somewhere and watch :D Here's the story: a couple of years ago, a bunch of theatre kids at Michigan State got together and put on a musical version of Harry Potter. The production's gotten so many hits that they've released a cast recording (free) and from what I've heard, they're talking about touring the production. This is definitely for all Potter Fans out there - and if you're not a Potter Fan, you just might enjoy it anyway!











(PS the scurvy thing will only let me post each scene separately--so I'll be working on getting the whole thing up!). So I created a category just for this - "A Very Potter Musical" over on the left side...

Review of THE SPOOK'S SECRET (Wardstone, #3)

Much, much, MUCH better than the Spook's Curse, thank goodness!

In this third installment of the Wardstone Chronicles, Thomas Ward and his master, the Spook, head over to Anglezarke for the winter season. While there, Tom uncovers more secrets about the Spook's shady past, including a menacing former apprentice bent on destroying the Spook - and the whole County.

Delaney's flair for descriptions has returned full force! Like in The Spook's Apprentice, the setting played a substantial role in the shaping of the story, and Delaney has an obvious knack for truly illustrating each scene. - One of the things I didn't like about its immediate predecessor was the impertinent and condescending tone of the story - in other words, there was way too much of an agenda. Here, for the most part, we go back to a basic story: there's action, there are revelations, there's character development, there's intrigue and suspense, and true to the series' overall nature, a bit of horror too. Now I will say that the Designated Supernatural Creature of this story is almost identical to the Designated Supernatural Creature of The Spook's Curse: a mysterious and seemingly all-powerful spirit-figure that is likened to a pagan god. That bit of repetition was a drawback, as was the Spook's continued crabbiness to all things "churchy".

But the bread-and-butter of Spook's Secret lies in the revelations: we learn so much about the Spook's past here and it's a rollercoaster of a story, too. There were so many twists and turns (like on a rollercoaster - only without the tummyache) that every time I thought I had things figured out, I found myself mistaken. I liked the Spook, then I hated him, then I liked him again, etc.

The best characters, though, are Tom and Alice. Tom especially goes through so much in this book, and it's so enjoyable to watch him mature! I'm ready for him to start aging, though. The three books so far have amounted to only a year's time and I personally like series books to get a bit more sequential: 1 year between each installment seems ideal, not one-right-after-the-other. I think going into Book #4 he'll be 14...hopefully. I want him to grow up!

So much, much better than The Spook's Curse, but still not as good as Apprentice. The series lacks a Main Villain character, so there seems like a lack of focus...idk, that may just be me. And Delaney still is really ambiguous when it comes to philosophical stuff... and that gets on my nerves. For example, he's got this godlike spirit that is powerful enough to "snuff out your soul," yet he's pretty much at the beck-and-call of human summonings? That's awkward, Mr. Delaney! Make up your mind! Oh, well. Mr. Delaney probably knows that I'll keep reading the series anyway, cause I'm a sucker for Tom Ward, haha.

Rating: 4.5/5. Slightly under the Perfect-5-Star rating, but very very good!