review - THE HOLLOW KINGDOM

The Hollow Kingdom - Clare Dunkle
Genre: YA Fantasy
# of pages: 240 (pb)
Publisher: Henry Holt, Macmillan
Age-Level Suggestion: 13&up

In nineteenth-century England, a powerful sorcerer and King of the Goblins chooses Kate, the elder of two orphan girls recently arrived at their ancestral home, Hallow Hill, to be his bride and queen.

I just read this book again last night, and I have to say, I love it *MORE* than the first time!! The Hollow Kingdom is absolutely one of my all-time favorite books!! WAY TO GO, CLARE DUNKLE!!!! Thanks for writing such an amazing story :)

Original Review: Wow! I started this at 7 at night and finished at 2something in the morning! It was that engrossing! The fact that Clare Dunkle's writing was praised by Lloyd Alexander (one of my favorite authors of all time) really impressed me, and I see why. Though published within the last 5 years, she writes with a lyrical narrative not seen among today's more "urban fantasy/modern" authors. I can't really describe it, but it sounded reminiscent of Alexander's own work: simple yet elegant. And I have to say, I was and still am almost entirely in love with the story! Although the story's order of events were...unconventional (certainly like nothing I've ever read before) I was not bothered or uneasy in the least. If you've read the story, you may know what I mean: there are some things in fantasy stories that you just don't expect to happen, and when they do, it's very surprising, to say the least! And in fact, the sometimes shocking plotline is what I remember most about this story - the things you'd never expect to happen actually do - and from those shocking twists and turns comes an amazing, beautiful story that will stay with you forever. At least, this story will definitely stay with me forever.

This is a simple enough love story, and I found myself found it a little similar to the Phantom of the Opera scenario...but it is still different... It doesn't take an English professor to crack the major themes and the overall message of the story. Typical YA: sometimes those "messages" tend to be a little "after-school-special" for my taste, but still... great story, very well-developed characters, and an extremely talented

author.

PS... he's totally not described this way, but I couldn't help but picture the Goblin King as the one played by David Bowie in Labyrinth! I *LOVE* Labyrinth and you all need to watch this movie after you read the book!

book blogger hop!

This Friday, I think I'll head on over to the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Crazy for Books!

I've seen this a lot and just had to join in!

The Hop is a weekly event where book bloggers and readers can connect to find new blogs to read. It's a great way to network with other bloggers and make new friends!

So hop on over to Crazy for Books and sign up today! It's FUN!

I'm Back!

Hey buddies, I’m back! This week has been crazy, but it’s nearly over!
I do have some quick announcements:

First of all:
THANK YOU for all your sweet comments! Comments literally made my day – I love them like Skittles

Second of all:
I want to apologize in advance for the lack of reading and reviewing. It’s been 2 weeks without fun-reading, and that may extend into the next 2 weeks… BUUUT I will still be posting reviews, mainly of books I read before I started blogging.

And last:
Stay tuned, because I’m about to start 2 - not 1, but 2(two) – new contests! We all love contest! More info this weekend!

Hope all of you (grownups) had a good Tax Day! I’ve been daydreaming all day of how I’m going to spend my $2 refund :S


Have a great rest of the week!

taking a short break...

It's getting down to the wire for a lot of us school folks! Those papers that have been only occasionally worked on are now sneering, "You'd better finish me or else!"

If my research papers had voices, they'd most definitely sound like Lord Voldemort...or Gollum...

So for the next week, I'm going to attempt to get my stuff together but unfortunately that means taking a wee little break from blogging. I may be able to comment, but I won't be making any new posts. This will also be Week #2 of no-fun-reading :(

Hopefully I'll be back in a week. Until then, I'll miss all of you! It's always a great part of my day to "hang out" with all of you awesome blog buddies :)

See you next week!

Amelia's Authorquarium!

(Because I like creating really weird new words!)

Down in the left-hand column is my Authorquarium, where all my little favorite authors live!
In the Harry Potter universe, old headmasters live in their portraits; in my fantastical world, I'd have little miniature authors living in their very own Authorquarium...

I always have meant to say something about this and then I’d forget.

Here are just a few of the authors who live in my Authorquarium:

Frank Beddor James Dashner Shannon Hale

Rick Riordan Maggie Stiefvater Scott Westerfeld

- Most of these authors are active bloggers too, and in Maggie Stiefvater's case, she's got a livejournal and a blogspot! What a gal!

There seems to be something extra cool about authors who blog…maybe it’s because most of us are bloggers, but I just love thinking that these extremely busy people take part in something that I take part in as well. I don’t know, it just seems neat!

From now on, I won’t neglect my Authorquarium. Every other week or so, I’ll find one of my little authors to feature – I’ll give a little bio, talk about his/her major works, any interesting facts, website/blog information, and if anything particularly cool is going on.

Quick! Who are your favorite authors? If you had an authorquarium, who would you put inside it (in a completely imaginative and not-at-all-weird sort of way)?

Friday Finds [6]

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. Friday Finds is hosted by MizB @ Should be Reading

I seem to be on a pattern lately: 1) I either find/read books that no one's ever heard of/read yet (like Sapphique, for example) or 2) I find out about books that have been out for awhile and that everybody has already read/reviewed!

Wow, this is probably the boringest blog in the blogosphere!

But yep, this week's Friday Find has actually been out since 2008...and I'm just now hearing about it.

Impossible - Nancy Werlin

Inspired by the ballad “Scarborough Fair,” this riveting novel combines suspense, fantasy, and romance for an intensely page-turning and masterfully original tale. Lucy is seventeen when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or to fall into madness upon their child’s birth. But Lucy is the first girl who won’t be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents and her childhood friend Zach beside her. Do they have love and strength enough to overcome an age-old evil?

There's actually a bit of a funny story behind my finding this book. My roommate and I are in this class called Literature for Young Adults, and there's this girl in class with us who is (like us) an avid reader, but whose reading tastes...are not like ours. And so a couple weeks ago, she was talking to my roommate, Lindsey, about how she had just read this book called Impossible, and she just went on an on and on about how awful it was, how she hated it, how she thought it degraded women or whatever...and she had the book with her. Well, my snide little roommate, who has just as much empathy as a cat, was like, "awww, that's too bad...FREE BOOK!" And so she got it and later was telling me, "Well if So-and-So didn't like it...I bet I will!"

(Note: do you have friends like that? They're your friends, and you love 'em, but you just have totally different reading styles?)

So Lindsey read the book and just finished it, and she marched into my room the other day and pronounced that she looooooved Impossible and thought it was interesting, romantic, and all kinds of awesome, and so naturally, I'm curious.

Has anybody else read this book? What did you think?

Previous Finds:

Last time: Lesley Livingston's Wondrous Strange & Darklight; Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It

Friday Finds 4: Beth Fantaskey's Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, Brenna Yovanoff's The Replacement, Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars
Friday Finds 3: Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, James Dashner's Maze Runner
Friday Finds 2: Katherine Langrish's Troll Trilogy
Friday Finds 1: Catherine Fisher's Incarceron & Sapphique, Sarah Addison Allen's The Sugar Queen

What did you "Find" this week?

Review - SAPPHIQUE

Sapphique - Catherine Fisher

Genre: YA Sci/fi-Fantasy
# of pages: 480 pages (UK paperback)
Amelia's Age-Level Suggestion: 14< (probably better suited for 8th/9th grade level and up)


Disclaimer: For those who have read Incarceron, or for those who are planning to read Incarceron: I've altered my usual review style and made it a little more vague just to be absolutely sure that I don't include any spoilers... so feel free to read this and maybe get a good idea of what is in store in this book.




This book was pretty good. I think I enjoyed it more than Incarceron, pretty much because I was familiar enough with the basic storyline and didn’t have to spend so much time figuring everything out. The pacing was pretty good, but the last 100 pages really, REALLY dragged…and it got to the point where I came dangerously close to not caring anymore…that’s not usually a good sign.


And yet… I don’t want to make it sound like I didn’t like the book, because I did…but Catherine Fisher is not the greatest author on the planet, and her writing style actually aggravated me. You know the phrase “show, don’t tell”? Well, she pretty much tells how characters feel/act, she doesn’t show. Characterization is definitely not her strong suit in this series – everybody was pretty wooden and it was hard for me to relate to them because they didn’t seem very real. There was just this hollow, shell-like feel to her characters and that was a major distraction. Claudia, in particular, was just incredibly frustrating. She was easier to relate to in Incarceron because you understood *why* she acted like such a conceited brat. In Sapphique, pretty much all of her conflicts have been resolved, so why is she still so MEAN?! It was stuff like this that made reading Sapphique a bit cumbersome. I didn’t really like Keiro, either, because to me he seems like the embodiment of Evil: he’s an individual with pretty much no conscience – he doesn’t know compassion or remorse, and according some of my teachers (and the Harry Potter series), true evil is that which is excessively vain and devoid of compassion or remorse for one's actions. I’ll admit it: I like it when characters “get their comeuppance” and he didn’t get any comeuppance!


Also, the ending…very mediocre and a bit bizarre. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the ending just really didn’t make sense if you take into account the overall story. It seems like Catherine Fisher spent so much time creating this really intense situation, and then the ending comes and it’s “ta da! We’re finished now! The end!” I think the first thing I said when I finished Sapphique was, “ohhhkay…I’m hungry.” Let’s compare that to another book…oh, say…The Last Olympian. I finished that book and was like, “OMG!!! WHAT AM I GOING TO READ NOW?!?!?!” *hyperventilates*


It was a pretty engrossing read, most of the way through. Catherine’s exceptionally imaginative, and the Incarceron series is one of the most thoroughly original books I’ve ever read in my life. However, her books aren’t the best books I’ve ever read.

Strengths: creativity and action.
Weaknesses: very wooden and shallow characters and a spiraling last 100 pages…and a lackluster ending.


Amelialand Rating:
V: this book was “darker” than Incarceron, I think, and so there was more action-violence and scary images; about a PG-13 level
S: a few innuendos, nothing major, but parents of >12 should be cautioned
L: swearing present, nothing ‘major’ but still present. My age recommendation: 13/14+ (great for older middle schoolers/high schoolers…oh and grown-ups too!)

Final Rating: 3.9/5. Almost a 4, but just a little under.