This is probably my fourth reading of The Golden Compass and this time I read it aloud to my nine year old daughter over the course of several months at bedtime. She’s already read The Chronicles of Narnia, started the Prydain Chronicles, and is three volumes into Harry Potter so now seemed like a good time to introduce her to the His Dark Materials trilogy. I love introducing books to my daughter and watching her devour them the way I have. Reading this book aloud make […]
A Romping Fowl Time
Whew! Finally in the double digits for reviews! Last CBR I reviewed the first of the Artemis Fowl books, and I loved it so much I went hunting for the rest of the series. All of our favorite characters are back! Holly, Root, everyone’s favorite pre-teen mastermind, and excitingly, Mulch Diggums, who is my personal squee character. While this installment started out a little rocky, it finds its footing about a quarter of the way though and becomes the romping fun adventure we were all […]
Hard Topic Done Right
This YA novel has turned into a bestseller and has generated a lot of positive buzz. Angie Thomas, with her first novel, boldly takes on racism and police shootings through the eyes of 16-year-old Starr Carter. Starr is an engaging narrator who straddles two different worlds that will collide, forcing her to make hard choices about who she is and what she ought to be doing. We meet Starr on the night “it” happens. It’s spring break and Starr is at a house party in […]
Five novellas smooshed together. Still not sure about this author or this series.
The Assassin’s Blade is a compilation of five interrelated novellas that take place about a year before the first book in this series, Throne of Glass. Each one can be read separately, but work best together, showing how the infamous assassin Celaena Sardothien went from being rich, spoiled and deadly, to being a slave in the salt mines of Endovier. These five novellas go a long way towards rectifying one of the main complaints I had with that first book, namely that we were shown […]