Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 I feel a little like I read this out of order a bit. I picked up The Hobbit  after I started The Lord of the Rings  trilogy because I didn't realize that it too had been recorded by Andy Serkis. I thoroughly enjoyed his reading of the novel. I had never read The Hobbit . I had only seen the Peter Jackson films. While I loved The Lord of the Rings , I found myself loving The Hobbit  films less. From the community reactions to those films when they came out, I knew that Jackson had embellished the story. I finally dug into the novel to find out how much. Bilbo Baggins is a Hobbit: respectable, normal, and non-adventerous. Gandalf is a wizard who decides to change all of that. After meeting Bilbo in the Shire one morning, Gandalf secretly invites 12 dwarves to come to Bilbo's house. Once there, they discuss plans to reclaim their ancestral home: The Lonely Mountain. The Mountain is now home to Smaug, the dragon, and they need a burgler to help them find the dragon's we...

 This book had so much hype on Bookstagram and the cover is beautiful. I picked it up hoping for a good fantasy read. Fourth Wing  by Rebecca Yarros follows Violet Sorrengail, daughter of the tough commanding general as she enters Basageth to become a dragon rider. Frail and easily injured, Violet must fight for her position in the college each and every day: outwitting the other recruits and surviving her squad leader, the son of the dangerous rebels. Can Violet make it to be paired with a dragon? I honestly got into this book looking for a good fantasy story. I was sorely disappointed. For all of its hype on Instagram, I found this book poorly written. Yarros used the f-word at every opportunity, even when it wasn't appropriate or necessary. This felt lazy to me and unimaginative. I didn't love the story either. It was a bit predictable and the main character bothered me. She acted like a teenager but was supposed to be 21. In fact, when characters started sleeping together,...

 This is one of Brandon Sanderson's "secret projects" that he wrote during the lockdowns in 2020. I've been really excited to read it! Tress of the Emerald Sea  is the story of Tress who lives on a planet made up of tiny islands and seas made from falling spores from the 12 moons. Tress lives on the Rock, a small island where they have to force people to stay. Tress loves her island, her cups (which she collects), and the duke's son: Charlie. Once the duke finds out about their relationship, he marches Charlie from the Rock and takes him to find a wife. Charlie swears to Tress that he'll resist, and sends a cup and letter at each stop. Then suddenly, the packages stop. It's announced that the duke is returning with his son and new daughter in law. When the ship arrives, the heartbroken Tress realizes that the duke's son is not Charlie. Indeed, the crew of the ship confirms that Charlie was sent to the evil Sorceress in the Midnight Sea and replaced wit...

 As an active World of Warcraft player before the Battle for Azeroth expansion, this was almost required reading. BFA is over and the next expansion came out like a year ago and I'm just now finishing this book. That should tell you all you need to know about how I feel about it. Before the Storm  by Christie Golden tells the untold story of what happens in the aftermath of the Legion's invasion of Azeroth. Faced with the death of his father, Anduin Wrynn must regroup the Alliance. Sylvannas has become ruler of the Horde, and with the discovery of Azerite in Silithus, she begins her plans. Neither faction can afford a war, and yet it is brewing on the horizon. Can Anduin bridge that gap and establish peace between the Horde and the Alliance? I... didn't like this book. Pretty much at all. I wanted it to answer more questions about why Sylvannas did what she did, but we STILL don't have all the answers to that, even an expansion later. It didn't answer my pressing qu...

All right, here's the one I've really been excited to do.  Of the entire Inheritance Cycle , the last book, Inheritance, was my least favorite.  I hated the beginning.  I felt like Paolini wasted the first 150-200 pages.  I felt that all the main characters did was whine about how bored they were.  Nothing important happens in those first two hundred pages.  Even the siege and battle of Aroughs wasn't that important, nor was it that interesting.  I felt that Paolini wasn't sure how to start the book, and stuck it on there to get page length.  Nothing important happens until the battle of Dras-Leona.  It took me two weeks to get through the first two hundred pages of Inheritance , and then a week to finish the remaining 650.  After the build of tension that the first three books have been slowly working up to, the beginning of Inheritance was a huge letdown.  The other books in the series start in the middle of the action.  ...

I've been seriously debating how I was going to approach my critique of this book for the past week-ish.  Of the series, I think Brisinger  is my favorite.  Paolini managed to keep the pacing up, he started in a good place by attacking the Ra'zac and ending with the deaths of Oromis and Glaedr, the attack on Feinstar, and the summoning of a Shade.  I liked the idea of Eragon's sword, and how Rhunon was able to get around her oaths.  The dwarves' deliberation over Hrothgar's successor was slow and felt a little dragged out.  However, it is understandable because few political matters like that are decided hastily.  The soldiers who couldn't feel pain was a clever and creepy problem to overcome.  Paolini managed to slow down the intensity to finish the book, leaving the reader desperately wondering how Eragon and his friends were going to defeat Galbatorix. Despite this book being my favorite, I still have a couple of issues. My first issue:...

I think the biggest problem I have with Eldest is Roran.  I just don't really like his character.  The evolution of his character just seems inconsistent, especially between Eragon and Eldest .  Perhaps the reason I don't like Roran is that there isn't much to work within the first book.  Paolini doesn't give you a real good idea of who Roran is between the first and second books.  In any case, Roran doesn't seem to line up.  At times, he even becomes almost an unbelievable character, especially during fight scenes.  Are his accomplishments realistic?  I'm not doubting that one man could convince an entire village to follow him from one end of the Empire to the other, but his fighting style, felling almost two hundred men by himself with a hammer, seems improbable.  I understand that people do crazy things for love, but Roran becomes completely different almost overnight as soon as the Ra'zac come calling.  It's hard to believe some of...

Book one of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, Eragon , came out when I was about thirteen or fourteen.   Funny enough, this book and Paolini’s young age at publishing fueled my intense desires to be an author.   It was an incredible book to me at the time.   As I read it now, I realize that it was definitely written by a teenage boy working on a debut.   Here are a couple of big signs.   1. Eragon is pretty short; less than 500 pages (books one, two, and three of Harry Potter also fit into this category).   2. The chapters are very short; usually only a couple of pages each.   3. The diction and voice are young.   As you proceed through the Cycle, it becomes obvious that Paolini’s style has matured, especially between Eragon and Eldest .   Is this a bad thing? No, absolutely not.   If the change had happened in the middle of either of these books, it probably would have been.   However, the jump in style in some ways mature...