4.5 stars. I inhaled this slim David Mitchell novel in just a few hours yesterday. I was so pleased by Cloud Atlas earlier this year that I nearly jumped for joy when I heard he was putting out a haunted house story just in time for Halloween. I hardly ever dabble in the horror genre, but I’m glad I made an exception. While this book was definitely creepy, it wasn’t overly scary. It propelled me to keep reading and find out what happened next, but […]
Goblins and emperors and airships, oh my!
Maia is the fourth, much despised, half goblin son of the of the emperor of the Elflands. He has lived his whole life in exile, banished for the crime of being borne of a bride that the Emperor did not want. Uneducated, uncouth, and unpolished, Maia is ill-prepared to become Emperor when his father and three older brothers die in an airship crash. But Maia is thrust into the position and must learn how to govern, how to be always surrounded by people but forever […]
Mind the Gap
I was seriously afraid that I’d be wasting my time on yet another damsel in distress story where the awkward boy gets to find himself and be the hero, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bone Gap played with all those expectations and tropes in an unexpected way. This was shortlisted for the National Book Award, so I was hoping it’d be good. It was! Bone Gap is a strange town with some serious secrets. Finn and Sean are two young men/boys just […]
Books I Read With My Kid
So my kid has been getting into Star Wars lately. We’ve been working our way through the movies, of course. And then there’s the Scholastic book sales at the school, every other month or so. And they had the boxed set of the junior novelizations of all six movies. Can’t think of anything that would make a seven-year-old boy more excited to read. We’re reading them together, but I’m doing most of it, so I claim that I can claim these books as fully read […]