Worth slogging through book two just to get to this one. (And I’m still not convinced my reaction to that book wasn’t just me trying to read it at the wrong time.) This is the third and final book in the original Bartimaeus Trilogy (he wrote a prequel in 2010 but I think I’m going to pass on that one). It takes place three years after the events of The Golem’s Eye. Nathaniel/John Mandrake is high up in government now, in charge of what is […]
Middle book syndrome? Or just me?
I read the first book in this series a couple of years ago and liked it, but I never got around to finishing the series. Probably should have read it closer together . . . This was a perfectly serviceable follow up to The Amulet of Samarkand, and honestly I think my ‘meh’ reaction to it is mostly on me. The only real criticism I have of the book is that it was too long. This is supposed to be children’s/middle grade book, and it’s […]
If you judge success by the number of enemies you make, that was a highly successful evening.
I finished the first book of this series back in January and quite liked it, but wasn’t quite ready to pick up the rest of the series. Fast forward a few months and I decide to mainline books 2 through 5. I liked the rest of the books, though I think they may have suffered a bit for being read back to back. There is a definite structure that the books follow and by the third book I started to get a bit bored with […]
God rest her soul and may she never walk at night
The Screaming Staircase is the first book in Jonathon Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. series. It is a creepy ghost story murder mystery featuring young teen and pre-teen protagonists and it kept this many-years-past-her-teens lady up at night. There were some things about the world building that bothered me, though I can see why Stroud did what he did, however as a whole this book was highly enjoyable and I will be checking out the remaining four books in the series. This book is set in […]