Guest Reviews from Kyria #1

I have something amazingly exciting to share today! I had a guest stay with me for 11 days, and while she was here, she managed to read all these novels. I’d just sent my other novels away for photographing, so I didn’t have any guarenteeded good things to share. Nevertheless, she set off into the ‘eBay category’ (these are books that got < 3 stars from me) and found some that suited her 17 year old fantasy reader tastes.

Based on her reviews, I’m going to reconsider reading ‘Whisper to Me‘ (which I just couldn’t get past the first couple of pages for) and knock ‘The Book of Whispers’ and “Linting and the Pirate Queen’ from my TBR pile.

Whisper to Me

This was perhaps the first non-fantasy/sci-fi book that I actually loved. At first, I thought that it was going to be absolutely terrible; it started off very slow and boring, and the lists at the beginning really threw me off. However, as I got further and further into the book, I found myself really enjoying it. There were only two real issues that I had with the book: the first was that all of the swear words were replaced entirely by asterisks. This interrupted the continuity of the book, and I found myself counting asterisks numerous times to try and guess the word. That said, I can understand why it was done: as the book goes further, there are a few places with just entire sentences of asterisks. This shows, to me, that it’s not about the actual words they are replacing, but rather the feeling that the main character gets from it.

My other issue is that the entire story is essentially an email to someone, asking them to forgive the author. This sets up the entire story as a cliff-hanger as a ‘will he forgive me?’ At first this really annoyed me, but over time I was able to just enjoy the story. I was pretty annoyed at the end, when the entire book ended up being the email and we never ended up finding out if he forgave her, but once again I can understand why that was done; it would’ve interrupted the continuity of the book to suddenly jump from this email, which has essentially been the entire book so far, to a real life scenario. 4.5 stars

Ariadnis

In brief: the one with the two cities and the trees and stuff. Solid book. This is the sort of general fantasy book that I loved reading when I was younger. It has a nice feel to it, and while at times it got a little hard for me to keep track of the characters, it wasn’t too bad. 4 stars

They Both Die at the End

This book was pretty good. Somehow, even knowing that the characters were going to die, the book was written well enough that I couldn’t help getting attached, and still felt sad at the death of the character. The book is a very different style to the type of book that I usually read, and it took me a while to get into it, but once I did it was pretty enjoyable. The ending wasn’t as good as it could’ve been, although I can understand to an extent why it was written the way it was, and it wasn’t altogether unsatisfying. 3.5 stars

The Graces

Quite frankly, this book confused me for quite a while. I spent a majority of the book not being sure whether or not the book was even supposed to be fantasy. In terms of character progression, and the relationships between the characters, the budding relationships between the characters was written quite well, although I was a little confused as to why the main character was first invited out to the spell.

Apart from that, the book was written well, and I did enjoy it. However, the ending was extremely unsatisfying, and as a reader, I felt like I was being tossed back and forth regarding the main character’s relationship with the graces. 3 stars

Elegy

In brief: fantasy pretender. This book was destined to be a young adult novel, but desperately wanted to be classed as fantasy, so the author threw in whatever weak fantasy link they could find. The book was good, but the fantasy add-on felt misplaced, like it was there purely to class the book as fantasy, and not to add any extra meaning or enjoyment to the book. It started off a bit slow, but once it picked up I really enjoyed it. That said, the ending was unsatisfying and annoying, and brings up some weird questions about a young girl and an old man who both remember loving each other. 3 stars

The Song from Somewhere Else

In brief: dimensions and stuff. It took me a while to become accustomed to having the images alongside the book, but I found it really nice to have a visual explanation of some of the events that were occurring. This book felt like it was written more to get a good review from critics than to be enjoyed by the average person, and felt a bit pretentious to me. That said, it was easy to understand and follow. 3 stars

Safe from Harm

This book really confused me. In the beginning, there were a lot of flashbacks/flashforwards, and at times it was difficult for me to even keep track of what was happening. As the book progressed, it got easier to keep track, but there were still confusing moments when I just wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

The end of the book was also really dissatisfying, but in a way that is worse than the usual dissatisfying ending. Most times, I just dislike how the book ended, or how things turned out, but here I wasn’t certain what even happened, and the book was vague regarding what happened to the daughter. 2.5 stars

The Book of Whispers

Not overly memorable. I enjoyed the book, but it was very average: not amazing, but not bad either. I was also a little confused at times, when I couldn’t quite understand why the characters were doing what they were, or how it would affect anything. I found it very challenging to relate to the characters. 2.5 stars

Linting and the Pirate Queen

This book was a fairly average book. Events moved very slowly and not a lot happened. The writing and story was also very simple. To me, it felt like the kind of book I would read after I’ve spent hours reading other books and needed to give my brain a rest. Perhaps not a great book choice for (almost) adults, but I would recommend it for younger children, perhaps around the age of ten. 2 stars