My Thoughts On: Fire by Kristin Cashore

Fire by Kristin Cashore…

I loved this book! If anyone keeps up with my reviews, you may remember that I read Graceling not too long ago and was quite disappointed to find that Fire was not a sequel but a companion. I was so irked that I put the book down and vowed to read it a little later.

When I picked it up a few days later, I was hooked right away. I felt like I was living in the Dells right along with Fire and Brigan and the others. I felt like I was fight alongside them and plotting how to fight the upcoming war. It was fantastic. I held my breath at times and my heart sped up at times. And THAT makes a great book.

Kristin Cashore says on her blog:

Fire, Graceling’s stand-alone prequel-ish companion book, takes place across the mountains to the east of the seven kingdoms, in a rocky, war-torn land called the Dells.
Beautiful creatures called monsters live in the Dells. Monsters have the shape of normal animals: mountain lions, dragonflies, horses, fish. But the hair or scales or feathers of monsters are gorgeously colored— fuchsia, turquoise, sparkly bronze, iridescent green— and their minds have the power to control the minds of humans.

Seventeen-year-old Fire is the last remaining human-shaped monster in the Dells. Gorgeously monstrous in body and mind but with a human appreciation of right and wrong, she is hated and mistrusted by just about everyone, and this book is her story.

Cashore does not mention each of the characters you meet in King’s City or in Little Grays or how each of these characters’ lives cross with each other. But I find that in her sophomore effort, I can see her character development become more complex, which is more interesting to me as a reader. Cashore mentions on her blog that you do not have to read Graceling to fully grasp Fire, but my personal preference is that I wish I would have read Fire first. The one and only character that is present in both books would have been more understandable to me had I read the second book first…especially since Fire was meant to take place approximately thirty years before Graceling (according to Kristin Cashore’s FAQ on her blog).

All in all, a fantastic book.

My Thoughts On: The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg

I love Elizabeth Berg. I read her books voraciously. For some reason, she gets me everytime.

To each of the men and women in The Last Time I Saw You, this reunion means something different—a last opportunity to say something long left unsaid, an escape from the bleaker realities of everyday life, a means to save a marriage on the rocks, or an opportunity to bond with a slightly estranged daughter, if only over what her mother should wear.

As the onetime classmates meet up over the course of a weekend, they discover things that will irrevocably affect the rest of their lives. For newly divorced Dorothy Shauman, the reunion brings with it the possibility of finally attracting the attention of the class heartthrob, Pete Decker. For the ever self-reliant, ever left-out Mary Alice Mayhew, it’s a chance to reexamine a painful past. For Lester Heseenpfeffer, a veterinarian and widower, it is the hope of talking shop with a fellow vet—or at least that’s what he tells himself. For Candy Armstrong, the class beauty, it’s the hope of finding friendship before it is too late.

As Dorothy, Mary Alice, Lester, Candy, and the other classmates converge for the reunion dinner, four decades melt away: Desires and personalities from their youth reemerge, and new discoveries are made. For so much has happened to them all. And so much can still happen.  -excerpt from summary inside book cover

I don’t have much to say about Elizabeth Berg and her writing except that she is one of my favorites. I read everything she writes and I always enjoy it immensely. I love the way she phrases her words and sentences. She takes up considerable space in my infamous book of quotes. I’m a fan, I think, because I’m every person she’s ever written about.

I loved this book. Plain and simple. Just like all the rest of them. When it was over, I closed the book, took a deep breath, and was sad it was over.

Go get a big cup of coffee and start one of Elizabeth Berg’s books. You’ll love her stuff too.

My Thoughts On: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Kristin Cashore says this about her first novel, Graceling:

Graceling, my debut novel, is the story of Katsa, who has been able to kill people with her bare hands since she was eight. Katsa lives in the seven kingdoms, where very occasionally, a person is born with an extreme skill called a Grace. Gracelings are feared and exploited in the seven kingdoms, and none moreso than Katsa, who’s expected to do the dirty work of torture and punishment for her uncle, King Randa. But then she meets a mysterious stranger named Po, who is also a Graced fighter and the first person ever to challenge her in a fight. The two form a bond, and each discovers truths they never imagined about themselves, each other, and a terrible danger that is spreading slowly through the seven kingdoms.

This book was recommended to me a long, long time ago and was way, way down on my reading list. It has been checked out of the library each and every time I have been for over a year. So I figured it to be a great book. The person who recommended it to me has never let me down ever. I finally found it at the library, snatched it up, and read it. And I liked it.

If books play in my mind like movies as I read them, then this one sort of had the appearance of the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series; I can’t really explain why. I don’t necessarily think that has anything to do with the story but more with the way I created it in my mind. I found it to be a very young adult-oriented fiction book but it took me much longer than the Percy Jackson books.

I had the second Kristin Cashore book, Fire, at my side as I closed Graceling this morning and picked it up immediately and excitedly…only to find that it wasn’t a continuation of the story of Katsa and Po but a companion to Graceling. I was very bummed about that. So bummed, in fact, that I decided to put Fire down entirely for now and start something totally different.

The entire story of Graceling was so descriptive and filled with action and imagery and information until it basically dropped off in the end. I would have loved a little more resolution for almost all of the characters in the story. I think this novel would make a fantastic and visually stunning movie if anyone would dare take it on.

All in all, I would recommend this book to some people but these people are very few in my circle. But that is probably because of my age (sniffle, sniffle). I’ll read Fire soon.

I really, really hope I see this movie made into a good movie.

My Thoughts On: The Book Of Lost Things by John Connolly

This book was crazy! First of all, this was my first John Connolly book. I was drawn to it while walking though the book section in Target one day. I thought it had a really neat-looking cover. I snapped a picture of it on my phone and picked it up at the library to read. So, I went into this thing basically knowing nothing except that the cover was pretty neat.

What a strange trip! Twelve-year-old David ends up in a crazy fantasy world after a WWII bomber plane crashes in the garden outside his house. The fantasy world is sort of a mish-mash of all of his books with non-traditional bits and pieces of well-known fairy tales thrown in to make it kind of interesting and, well, a little dark. I recognized Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, and Little Red Riding Hood…but none of these were like my sweet Grandma told them to me!! Very interesting.

There was a character, the Crooked Man, who I found sort of remarkable. I won’t give it away, but I found him to be sort of extraordinary. John Connolly’s imagination is quite amazing and I am sort of sad to know that this book was outside of his normal genre.

I read quite a few other book blogs where people said this was their favorite book or one of the best books they’ve read in a long time. I certainly didn’t breeze through this one like most of the young adult fiction books I’ve been reading lately. This one took time because of all of the imagery and information to process. It was like a wonderful movie played inside my mind while I was reading, and I think that was what took me so long to read it.

I loved it. I’m almost sad it is over. I wish I knew someone else who read it. Absolutely amazing. So weird and interesting. Loved the Crooked Man. Loved the transformation of David from boy into adulthood.

Way to go, John Connolly.