Category: book reviews

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Bookit Review: Stone Cold Fox

Posted on by sokorra

Title: Stone Cold Fox
Author: Hailey Edwards
Publication date:  2015

My Grade: B

My Review:

This short novel, or novella, is an adventure for Mai, Thierry’s best friend from The Black Dog series.  It starts off with Mai attending a fandom convention in Texas dressed up as Jareth from her favorite movie Labyrinth.   She is kidnapped by her childhood best friend and his brother, who want her to remember things that happened when she was younger, but she can’t.  She’s forced to re-evaluate her memories, and how much trust she puts in her friends, and her family.

Although it seemed almost too easy of a solution in the end, I did find this an enjoyable quick read.  I could definitely go for some more Kitsune books.

Hailey Edwards is going on my list for authors I am pre-disposed to read when new books come out.

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Bookit Review: New Dog, Old Tricks

Posted on by sokorra

Title: New Dog, Old Tricks
Author: Hailey Edwards
Publication date:  2015

My Grade: B

My Review:

I enjoyed this book.  It finishes the over all arc, in interesting ways.  I still felt a little lost among the background information, but Its less noticable this way.  We finally meet the Morrigan in person, and I can’t help but imagine Katie McGrath as the actress for the role should they ever make this into movies.

We get a little more backstory on Mac, Theirry’s father, and have Theirry coming to terms with both her family and her love for Shaw.  Mai and Shaw take a backseat for awhile.  This book is primarily Theirry in Faerie, so most of her Earth friends are not in it much.

There are more spin off novellas & Novels. I’m not reading the new series staring Gemini, at least now now.  I did read Mai’s spin off novella Stone Cold Fox, which will be the next book.

What I do love about this book is how the end result comes to be.  I won’t spoil it, but it was an inventive way to end things.

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Bookit Review: Lie Down With Dogs

Posted on by sokorra

Title: Lie Down With Dogs
Author: Hailey Edwards
Publication date:  2015

My Grade: B

My Review:

This book, the third in the Black Dog series by Hailey Edwards, is the best so far.  The story actually seems complete, the minor plot arcs are finished and not left to wonder.  Characters are actually developed, and information about Thierry’s past and her family is given.

There is actually a mystery for Thierry to solve in this one.  She’s kidnapped again, but not till towards the end, and it happens because she’s investigating something, not because some prince decides he wants an advantage in the royal competition.

The one thing I keep noticing is that she keeps saying that Thierry isn’t her name, but everyone including her parents calls her that.  I can only guess in the next book we will learn it or it was a one-time plot plan that never panned out yet never was completely irradiated.

This book sets up the final book (which I am currently reading) quite nicely as well.

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Bookit Review: Dog with a Bone/Heir to the Dog

Posted on by sokorra

Title:  Dog with a Bone / Heir to the Dog
Author: Hailey Edwards
Publication date:  2014/2015

My Grade: C

My Review:

I read these two swiftly together so its hard to really seperate them into two reviews, thus, I am doing a single review for both books.

Dog with a Bone is the first book in a series of four, and is a novella.  I get the sense it was written last because the original intent was it to be a trilogy (the other 3 books) but she wanted to set things up and wrote this.

The action is good.  The characterization not so much.  I’m going to continue reading and hope that the main character Thierry  (And thank goodness in the second one they actually sound that out because I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce that) gets some depth.  The most developed character in the book series so far is Rook, and he’s not even the main character.

Basically its not a horrible book, I’ve read worse and I don’t have much to complain about except that there is too much of the action and not enough of the heart that makes us care about what is going on.  But this is a series, so I will continue on.

This story also contains a lot of mythological/fantasy characters that I’m unfamiliar with and wish I understood better.  Perhaps that hinders my enjoyment of the series.

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Bookit Review: The Bette Davis Club

Posted on by sokorra

Title:  The Bette Davis Club
Author:  Jane Lotter
Publication date:  2015

My Grade: B

My Review:

This is a story about Margo.  It starts off with Margo at her niece’s wedding when the bride takes off and Margo’s sister hires her to chase after her niece.  She is accompanied by the groom, Tully, and the two end up going on a road trip across the US in pursuit, driving an 1955 sports car.

I actually enjoyed this book.  It plays around with cliches, and Margo’s almost always wrong in her assumptions.  She runs into a few interesting characters.  She also spends most of the ride reevaluating what she knows about her past, although the ‘flashback’ chapters come later then one would expect, and don’t tend to go into quite enough detail.

There are a few romances in the story, although the main one seems to happen without any lead up.   There are period mentions of how cute the guy is, but that is it till the end of the book.  Georgia’s story is confused as well.

Its a good read for a lazy afternoon, though.

There is a bittersweet element to this story.  Ms. Lotter was a professonal writer, writing columns in Seattle Newspapers but this is her one and only novel, which was self-published shortly before her death.  After she died, her family was contacted by a publishing house which published the version I read.  The daughter wrote a forward to the book.

Posted in book reviews, bookit, Uncategorized

Bookit Review: Lyon’s Pride

Posted on by sokorra

Title:  Lyon’s Pride (book 4 of 5 of the Talent & the Hive series.  Book 7 if you include the Pegasus prequels as part of the same group)
Author:  Anne McCaffrey
Publication date:  1995

My Grade: B+

My Review:

As many of you might already know, Anne McCaffrey’s The Talent & The Hive series is what gave me a love of Sci-fi/Fantasy.  Its the reason I got into Star Trek, Star Gate and probably even why I gave Star Wars a chance.

My mother had bought earlier books and had them in a box that I stumbled upon.  My first book was Damia, (although I later read The Rowan), and I made my way down the line, picking up the novels I didn’t already have.

This is the fourth book of the series, and continues the story of Damia’s oldest three children as they continue to deal with the Hiver situation.  Laria, Damia’s oldest Daughter is Prime (leading telepath/telekinetic) on Clarf, the alien homeworld of the MrDini. Thian and Rojer are helping the joint naval organization of Humans & Mrdini track and and observe the Hivers, a group of insectoid beings who think of nothing but colonizing, destroying all other life forms in their path.

Given that this is part of a series, its hard to review without having alot to explain.  Its very much a book of transition before the series finale, 2000’s The Tower & The Hive.    We see the three main characters develop into adults.  Rojer, the youngest at 16 at the start of the novel (perhaps 17-18 at the end of it), has the biggest emotional journey to go on as he is threatened by a MrDini Captain beat on annihilation of the Hivers.  Laria deals with the complications that come with running an important Tower, including learning when to find better coworkers.  Thian adjusts and settles more into his talents, leading his brother and several cousins in exploration of the Hiver Quadrant of the galaxy.

While Rojer has the most impactful story in this one, there is alot of information about the Hivers, who have been the antagonists since book one.

I recommend this book to anyone, mostly because its one of my favorites.  I do however recommend you at least start with Damia, which is book 2.  The actual first book is the Rowan, but some of the story is recovered in book 2 by Afra.

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Bookit Review: Jane, Stewardess of the Air Lines

Posted on by sokorra

Title:  Jane, Stewardess of the Air Line
Author:  Ruthe S. Wheeler
Publication date: 1934

My Grade: B-

My Review:

When I was younger, I liked this story alot.  Reading it as an adult I found it less likable.  Its not a horribly written story, but there isn’t much to grab onto.  The main character, Jane Cameron, is pretty much a Mary Sue.  By that I mean she has no flaws.  She graduated in the top of her class, is calm under pressure, is a natural at flying a plan, and anytime something big goes down she’s asked to be part of the responce team simply because she is so good at what she does.

I’m not sure she has any flaws except being in transit when people call her.    None of the other characters are really flushed out.  Quite a bit of them aren’t even given names.  Its a little difficult to figure out the passage of time because things seem to happen immediately even though realistically you know it must have been weeks.

On the positive front, its a Female protagonist who is not stuck in a love Triangle, who goes and gets what she wants from her career.  Even when people doubt her because of her gender, she stays firm.  And that is something I’m always glad to see.  Its especially good in a book written in the 1930s.

I definitely think this is a book that is good for younger readers if you want a book that focuses on a female protagonist.  Its a relatively easy read.  Some questions may be had due to cultural changes since 1934.  For example,  Jane gets paid $125 a month.  Using a online converter I found that is basically like being paid  $2,232.14

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Book-it 2012

Posted on by sokorra

Once again, I am going to be doing Book-it.  For those of you new to reading this blog, Book-it is a reading goal. We call it Book-it after the elementary school reading program where you got free pizza if you read a certian amount of books.  It was meant to promote reading in younger people.

THe Book-it we have here doesn’t really have any prizes except being able to say you read 50 books in a year.  I suppose if you want to, you can make your own prize levels if you so wish.

This year I’m also going to attempt to review books that are new to me.  I have a few books I tend to re-read every year so I won’t be reviewing them unless someone specifically asks me what I thought.

The Book-it runs from Jan 1 to December 31, and the goal is to read 50 books.  The guidelines for books are that it be able to be bought on its own (Short stories can only be counted as individual books if you bought it separately. A book thats a collection of seperate short stories is 1 book, not whatever number of shorts it has).  Text books can count if you do alot of reading in it (so no to math books, but lit books would count.  I’m counting my history books this year).

Graphic novels if they have a good bit of text to go with them can count. Comic books don’t.

There is a sort of cheat system I’ve developed.  ONe semester I had to read a bunch of selected readings.  It wasn’t a full book so I didn’t feel I could count it as a book, so I develped a method so that they can count.  Basically 5-10 of those can count as a book as group.  It depends on the length.  Shorter ones have a higher group #, longer ones smaller.

I’ll have a page with a list of books that I have read.  As well as my 100 movies goal.

I’m always open to book recommendations if you have any.

Posted in book reviews, bookit

Anne McCaffery’s Pegasus Trilogy (review, and general Fan babble)

Posted on by sokorra

One of my favorite series was Anne McCaffery’s Talent series.  It was the story of The Rowan, an orphan girl who had strong telepathic and telekinetic powers which her children and grandchildren inherited from her. The first book is about The Rowan (The Rowan), The second is about her daughter (Damia). The next three books (Damia’s Children, Lyon’s Pride and The Tower & the Hive) are about her grandchildren and their friends/family.

I thought this was the end of the story (though I wanted it to continue, as it was (and is) my favorite sci-fi series), but as I was wondering through the book store a few years back, I stumbled upon ‘Pegasus in Space’.  I noticed the name Peter Reidinger, a name I recognized from the Talent series as Rowan’s boss and Father-figure. So I picked it up, but I never ended up reading it till recently.

Continue reading “Anne McCaffery’s Pegasus Trilogy (review, and general Fan babble)” →

Posted in book reviews, book vs Movie, bookit, film

Book Review: Fantastic Four (Movie Novelization, Peter David)

Posted on by sokorra

Title: Fantastic Four
Author: Peter David (Based on Screenplay by Mark Frost, Simon Kinberg, and Michael France, who were inspired by Marvel)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Movie Novelization, some romance
Summery: Reed Richards, Victor Von Doom, Ben Grimm, and the Storm siblings go up in space to hold experiments with a cosmic cloud.  Things don’t go as planed, and the crew is hit by the cloud instead of being protected by the stations shielding.  Suddenly Reed can stretch his arms further then natural, Susan can be invisible, Johnny can turn into fire, and Ben has transformed into a man made out of rock.  Victor seems unharmed, but slowly he is transforming into a metal alloy, which turns to to be a bad combination with his mood.

Yeah, bad summery.  You can probably get the gist if you watch a cartoon, or read the comic.  I tend to stick to the film when it comes to Marvel stuff.  And I should probably mention that there are slight spoilers here if you are a Fantastic Four newbie.

I have read Peter David novels in the past.  He wrote one of my favorite Star Trek novels, Imzadi.  That was slightly different then this, as Imazdi was based within that universe while Fantastic Four is based directly on a script. I bought this after watching the movie so I already had the characters set in my head as the actors.  I liked it the first time through.  I decided to re-read it for this year’s bookit 50, and liked it again.

There was one issue I had with this book this time through.  Since the second movie hadn’t been out before I read the first movie’s novelization it didn’t phase me the first time, and I don’t think I even realized it till this time reading it.  The novel has a Frankie Raye, which if you have seen the second film you know she’s a character in that film.  One quite different then the one in this novelization. Although this does give me ideas for a fanfic where they ARE the same person (I doubt they are.  I just think it was a matter of Peter David doing his homework and the writers of movie II not taking his novelization into account when they wrote it.  Movie trumps book in this case)

Like with Willow, this book had some scenes that never made it to film or were cut during the final edit (and there are a few in the deleted scenes on the DVD).  Some scenes were completely different.  Like the scene where Reed and Susan talk about their relationship?  Happens in a different location then in the movie.

I enjoyed it. Its a good novelization.

Rating: 4/5
Bookit # (2/50) of (1/52)