Manners & Mutiny is the fourth and final installment of The Finishing School series. The school in question is Madame Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Yong Ladies of Quality, a flying dirigible where the young lady students study manners and spycraft. The heroine is Sophronia Temminick who, along with her friends Agatha and Dimity, must save the school, London, and probably England from the evil pickle-themed villains, the Picklemen. Much of the action concentrates on discovering and thwarting the Picklemen. There is much less classroom time […]
How Many Wizards Does it Take to Beat an Evil Forest?
In some ways, Uprooted is a very typical fantasy novel. The heroine lives in a village where every 10 years the local wizard Dragon takes a village girl, and keeps her for 10 years. The wizards protects the village from The Woods which is full of evil spirits and general badness. The girls are allowed to leave after 10 years with enough money to support herself for a long time, and always say he never laid a hand on them. When the girl leaves though, […]
“The ox feels the yoke, but does the bird feel the weight of its wings?”
My wish for half-star ratings becomes ever more pronounced with my review of Siege and Storm, because where I gave its series predecessor, Shadow and Bone, 4 stars, it was probably more like 3.5 (I liked it a lot, but there were issues.) Here, I also give Siege and Storm 4 stars, but I’d just as soon bump it up to 4.5 (One minor irritation, but otherwise amazing!) As this is a review for a second book in a series, spoilers for the first book […]
Insert Witty Shakespeare Pun Here
Another year, another attempt to complete a Cannonball goal, which I have dropped down to the quarter cannonball. My reading is not the problem here. It’s my reviewing that sucks balls. Also, my terrible, terrible, awful, beautiful Destiel fanfiction habit. I read like three books for the latter half of last year because of the sheer volume of fanfiction I read, it’s not even funny. Maybe ten books. Certainly no more than ten. Maybe fifteen. But whatever! This year I shall intersperse my crack habit […]