Sci-Fi / Fantasy Fiction Books
Offers
Reviews
 |
Dead to the World - Charlaine Harris
by loulou22 Dead to the World - Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse works as a waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Aside from her regular job as a waitress she also has the more unusual talent of mind reading. Due to this unusual gift the regular humans don't really like to get too close to Sookie, however as her telepathy doesn't extend to ... the Vampires minds she often finds herself spending time with the vampires, she previously dated the vampire Bill and sometimes she ends up working for them too. In particular she has been doing a lot of work for Eric, the head vampire of Louisiana, who also happens to be one of the oldest and most handsome vampires Sookie has ever met and regardless of his brutal Viking ways and strange sense of humour he is still a very likeable vampire in a way that he really shouldn't be, but Eric has a kind of charm about him, a charm which makes everyone he meets take a certain liking to him. So, when Sookie is driving home from work one evening and finds Eric running along the road towards her house, totally naked, what on earth should she do? Well, take him home of course! The only problem is, Eric appears to have completely lost his memory, he doesn't even know his own name! Once Sookie has convinced the naked Eric to get in her car and go home with her she sets about finding him some clothes and a safe place for him to hide during the daylight hours. She then contacts Eric's co-worker Pam to find out what has happened for Eric to end up naked and running down the road in the dead of the night. Relived to find that Eric is kind of safe Pam makes her way over to Sookie's house the following night to explain about the witches who have recently come to the area and have been wanting to do a business deal with Eric. When Eric refused their offer one of the witches appeared to cast a spell and Eric was gone. So now the hunt is on to find the witches involved and get the spell reversed and Eric back to his normal self. Sounds easy? Well, no. The witches involved in Eric's memory loss are some of the strongest witches around and they wont be backing down easily. They don't know where Eric is being hidden but they want to find him and drain his vampire blood. This puts Sookie in a very important position, she needs to be Eric's protector and hide him safely in her home, a place where the witches are pretty unlikely to look. This of course no only puts Sookie in yet another dangerous position but also makes Sookie highly involved in the whole situation, so as her bother Jason points out, she should be paid for her services. So, a few days later when Jason goes missing Sookie has a feeling that maybe the vamps are behind his disappearance due to his cheek of requesting payment, however when a witness comes forward and says she was with Jason when he disappeared and she thought she heard an animal outside the mystery of Jason's disappearance deepens. In the meantime, Sookie is finding the new Eric to be even more appealing with his memory loss. He cannot remember a thing about who he really is, he is scared and relying on Sookie to be there for him. With his memory loss Eric has rediscovered his manners and gentlemanly ways which Sookie finds irresistible, but she knows that it would be morally wrong to take advantage of Eric's state of mind. But with everything which is going on at the moment, the worry of her brothers disappearance, the witches search for Eric and keeping up with her regular day to day duties, will she be able to keep up her resistance? My Thoughts This is the fourth book in the True Blood series and I am still steadily working my way through them. After enjoying Club Dead so much I wasn't sure if the fourth instalment would continue so addictively as I wasn't convinced it was possible to write so many good books in a series without having at least one which was a let down. Dead to the World is certainly not the let down title, in fact it is even better than Club Dead! My favouritism for this particular book may be because Eric is my favourite character in the True Blood series, he is funny, charming and at very to the point about things. He makes many mistakes in the modern world which are amusing in themselves but combined with his sense of humour and the general way he is portrayed it all makes him seem like a very likeable character even though he is one of the oldest and most violent vampires around! In Dead to the World Eric seems to take the place of Bill as more of the main character alongside Sookie, so as you can imagine this is a bonus point for me right from the start and the book is filled with typical 'Eric' humour. Another part I enjoyed about Dead to the World was the test which was put on the strength of Sookie's morals. This was because throughout the series we are quite often reminded of Sookie's good upbringing and Christian background, sometimes to the point of it being rather annoying! So, to see Sookie placed in a position where she could potentially take advantage to an extremely vulnerable and in her eyes, rather hot, vampire who is staying in her house with no memory and a transformed sweet personality makes for rather interesting reading. There are many scenarios where Sookie tries to justify her actions to herself by comparing her actions to both what a good Christian would do and what her late grandmother would say if she was still here and this is interesting as it gives even more of an insight to the character Charlaine Harris is trying to portray. As with the previous books I found that this was a very addictive read, possibly even more so than the previous ones and as a result of it being so hard to put down I managed to finish it within a record of only 2 nights! Which is very fast for me as I usually have a habit of falling asleep when I read, but with this I somehow stayed wide awake as I was gripped from start to finish! In the first three books I found Charlaine Harris's writing style a little different as she uses American English, nothing wrong with this, it just isn't the style I usually read. However, in this book the difference between American English and English-English didn't stand out so much for me. I honestly cannot say whether it was because I was so into the story that I didn't notice or because I'm simply becoming used to the American English writing style, but either way it seemed much more of a smooth read than the previous titles. I can definitely recommend Dead to the World, so far, in my opinion the True Blood series just keeps getting better and more exciting and Dead to the World is the best so far. I do recommend that you read the books in the correct order as you will almost definitely become lost with what is happening and struggle to keep up if you jump straight in halfway through. As I have mentioned in all of my True Blood reviews so far, the books don't have any kind of age rating as far as I am aware and I think with the recent Twilight craze the idea of more vampire books may appeal to the younger generation, however I would say to be aware as there are quite a lot of sex scenes and sexual scenarios within the book which are described in a lot of detail so I wouldn't go buying these for the younger end of the teens! Price & Availability I was lucky when I bought my copy of Dead to the World because I found an almost complete set of the True Blood books, I say almost complete because it was all the titles which had been released up to that point, in my local charity shop on a trip home in August last year priced at 50p each! A bargain, as each book has an RRP of £6.99! Dead to the World and all of the other True Blood titles are widely available on eBay from 99p plus postage and packaging. My copy of Dead to the World contains 321 pages. Thanks for reading :) Read the complete review |
 |
A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire: Volumes 1-4 - George R. R. Martin
by trueblue79 Having been largely ignorant of George R.R Martin and the "A Song of ice and fire" books, I asked for them a s a Christmas present. 6 weeks later I'm almost onto the 5th book(s), and can't believe that I have gone so long without coming across this amazing set of books. I am a big fan of reading fantasy and horror, I grew up ... reading Stephen King, I loved the Lord of the Rings books and have read most of Raymond E Feist's books. However none of these come even close to the attention to detail and absorbing characters that Martin and dreamed up. It has been a long time since I have cared (actually really cared) about characters in a book and wanted my favourite (you will have your own, there are many, many to choose from) to win out in the end. Be careful who you choose to like though, because Martin doesn't pull punches when it comes to killing off characters, where other writers would never consider killing off a character Martin seems to revel in it. After the first big death I thought it must have been a trick, and the character would come back later..... how wrong was I!! Be ready to be surprised with the twists and turns and who is with who, and definitely get used to flicking to the back of the book where it tells you who is in what place and where they come from etc because it can be a bit confusing when you first get into it to get to grips with the large cast of characters. Don't let that put you off though, because these books are awesome!!! buy them and tell your loved ones they may not see you for a while! Read the complete review |
 |
City of Glass - Cassandra Clare
by elfbwillow1 City of Glass - Cassandra Clare Being an avid reader and am always on the lookout for new series' and I came across this series after checking out future movie previews, I came across a film in which will be released later this year (2013); City of Bones. The preview really caught my eye, and when I found out that it is a set ... of books I ordered the first one straight away. After getting three quarters of the way through the first book, I realised that I had to get the next couple of books immediately and kicked myself for not doing this sooner as I really wanted to continue the story without a break. My review of the first two books in the series, 'City of Bones' and 'City of Ashes' can be found on both Ciao and Dooyoo. This review covers the third book in the series, 'City of Glass'. City of Glass is part of 'The Mortal Instruments' book series, and there are, to date, five books in the series with the sixth and final book coming out in 2014. The books in this set include; City of Bones City of Ashes City of Glass City of Fallen Angels City of Lost Souls City of Heavenly Fire (unreleased) This series was originally meant as a trilogy, though the author decided to continue the set due to popular demand. I have only completed the first three books in this series so far so I can not tell whether it was a good idea to continue the series after its natural end, though I am hoping that it wont let me down, especially as I have already bought the fourth book! With all this said, I will now take you on to my review of the second book in this series; City of Glass. ********************** ANGEL OF DEMONS ********************** "You said you were going for a walk!? What kind of walk takes six hours?" "A long one?" A/N: Please bear in mind when reading this review that some spoilers from the first books may appear, though I will attempt to keep them to a minimum. Amid the chaos of war, the Shadowhunters must decide whether to fight with the vampires, werewolves and other Downworlders - or against them. Meanwhile, Jace and Clary have their own personal decision to make; should they pursue the love they know is forbidden? As with all these books so far, the synopsis as outlines above really does not do these books justice. It also focuses too much upon the side of Vampires and such like, and although this book more than its predecessors does run alongside vampires, werewolves and Fay, it is still not the main storyline. The main story follows the Shadowhunters - a group of people who are, in effect, demon hunters, though their personal storylines take president along the way, and thus, creates a much more well rounded story. As mentioned above, this was originally meant to be the final book in the trilogy, so throughout the book there is a strong feeling of that lead up to an action packed finale. In the past two books we have been introduced to a whole array of different characters, and the discussions between characters about the world they live in, which in Stephanie Meyers own words is 'a story world I love to live in'. The past books have all seemed like a lead up to this final book, which is how it is meant to be, though it does make me wonder where and how the next three additional books will actually lay out. City of Glass takes place in the main City of the Shadowhunters, where a large assortment of Shadowhunters have come to plan the final battle against Valentine, though tensions are high and confusion is paramount as no one really knows how to defeat the rogue Shadowhunter. Meanwhile, Clary and Jace fight their own inner battles and work towards the final outcome, though will they be able to be themselves? Like the previous two books, I am drawn immediately into the story. The action takes place not long after the last book left off, and just in case there has been a break in your reading, recaps are subtly bought in to the first few chapters, with more subtle reminders throughout. These parts actually bored me as I was reading straight from finishing the previous books, and although I skimmed a number of these parts, I can see that they are placed very well within the text and will act as a reminder if the reader so needs it. Again, as with the first two books, the flow and style is absolutely brilliant, though unlike the previous books, there are a number of drawn out areas in which do read rather slowly. There are many points in the book which can cover chapters rather than mere pages in which would have read much better. Due to this, I did find myself reading a lot slower, getting frustrated with parts of the storyline, and skimming bits and pieces throughout. Luckily, on the whole, the action does stand out over the slowness, so my attention was not really lost and as soon as the story picked up again, I was well and truly immersed. One very noticeable point in this book was the errors made throughout. I did not really notice any grammatical or text errors in the previous books, though they may have been there, only more subtle. Here, there were a lot of different errors from grammatical errors to the wrong words used and such like. I could not tell you whether this was the authors error or a printing error, though they stood out a mile in many places and were very off-putting. In some parts I had to re-read sentences just to make sense of what was going on. Again, this may have been a factor in my slowness of reading this. The story probably best falls into the urban fantasy genre, though I feel that it can not comfortably sit in one particular genre or another as it is so jam packed with so many different aspect. There is a whole heightened amount of humour in this second instalment, as well as aspects of science fiction, love story, action adventure and many more, though many of these are subtle - such as the love story. Keeping with the idea of the love story in this book, I feel that I should mention a little about it as in many books, the love story becomes the heart and soul of the book and occasionally becomes too overwhelming and so the story becomes lost. Stephanie Meyer, author of the 'Twilight' series, also speaks highly of these books, so it may make a person wonder just how strong this part of the story is. The answer is, at the moment, it is not. It is a sub-plot which is certainly there for a reason, and this reason will becomes clearer to you when reading these books. There is not only the one love story either, and among all of the complex subplots in this area, the main story still overrules it. This is thankfully, in my opinion, a perfectly written sub-plot/s as I hate it when a book is all about the love or love triangle off the characters and the main storyline becomes hidden and pushed to the back. The story is written from a narrative view, though unlike many books, this switches from character to character. The main part of the story follows Clary, though we see various points in which we follow other main characters. This works out brilliantly and almost runs as though it were a movie playing in front of you. There is no confusion whatsoever, and the pace and flow of each and between each is simply perfect. As I have already read two books in this series previous to this one, I have already got to know the characters well. There are a few new characters which are introduced into this book, though the highlight stays away from them in the most part and continues to focus upon the main players. These main characters grow in strength in this book and we get to know their characters and inner feelings even more so compared to before. In the previous book, I felt that there were a few weak links in some of the minor characters, though I feel that this problem has been overcome in this one, and even the smaller characters have their place and play it well. There is a medium amount of violence in this book, and although it is written really well, it is wise to remember that this book does cover a war and so there is quite a number of emotional scenes which cover loss, death and betrayal. I would not say that any part is overly emotional as such, and I did not feel close to tears in any way, though these such subjects may concern some readers. The first book was extremely predictable in many ways, and although I felt it was not ruined at all by this as you might expect, it did become a little annoying. The second book was written better in this sense as it was far less foreseeable and held more unexpected twists and turns. This third book falls somewhere in the middle. Once the story gets going, it became easy to predict a large amount of the action, though there were still things in which came as a surprise, and the way predictable scenes eventually panned out did still hold some amount of surprise. So what makes this book any different to other books along these lines? The first story in this series was not unique at all in its storyline, so I did wonder whether this one would be any different as it seems to be going backwards from the second book. It does take a more unique path in many ways, though of course, there are only so many different stories out there so there are a number of similarities in this story as you may find in other stories. I feel that there is a similarity between certain parts of this story to that of the Harry Potter stories, which is a little worrying considering the authors past (see below), though I do think that there is enough significant difference to allow this story its own life, and even with these similarities, I still find myself loving this story world. One thing which I find very important in a book is the ending. A story can be written perfectly, though if the ending is wrong, then it gives me a really terrible feel to the whole book, almost as though I feel my time was wasted reading it, even if I did enjoy the rest of the story. So how does the ending of this book compare? To be honest, I was a little disappointed in the ending. It was not that it was a terrible ending, in fact it was everything I expected to a large degree, and it wrapped a lot of things up nicely, though it just was not as powerful as it should have been. Throughout the three books, this ending has been building up bit by bit, the action increasing as the ending grows closer. I expected so much more power and action than what there actually was, and for this reason I felt as if I had lost out on something. The ending was also very predictable, though there were a number of surprises thrown in at the last minute which made for great reading. Like the other two books, there is an epilogue which covers a chapter length. This is used to calm the story down and wrap up a few loose ends. Whilst it did this extremely well, the difference between the actual ending to the main story and the epilogue did not really give out anything more than to end the story again. The story was over 500 pages long in paperback form, which makes it the longest book in the series so far, though I feel that it could have been significantly shorter if certain parts had been condensed, which would have been possible. ************************************** CASSANDRA CLARE CONTROVERSY ************************************** I have mentioned this in much more detail in my review on the first book, though felt it significant to mention this once more especially as many people are starting to hear more about it through the movie coming out later this year. I have also read and heard a lot of negative feelings and thoughts due to this which may make people avoid the books, which is something in which I am glad I did not do. I heard about this only after I had begun reading the first book, and luckily by that time, I had already fallen in love with the story. The controversy I am talking about goes back to the time when Cassandra Claire (as she was then known) was writing various fanfictions (stories based upon actual books such as Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings). There was many a time in which her writings came under severe scrutiny about plagerism, as well as accusations of racism and sexism. After looking into this further, it seems that once Clare changed the spelling of her surname, took her old fanfiction stories down from the internet and began her actual novels, the plagiarism and such like accusations diminished. It is true that the first book was not unique in the slightest, though I have not really seen severe signs of plagiarism within these stories, even with the similarities I have mentioned. Hopefully that means this author has left her past behind her, and I would certainly not recommend staying away from this series due to it. ************************ FINAL WORDS ************************ "Oh, come on," Clary said. "You're a vampire, not Spider-Man." City of Glass is a fantastic third instalment to this popular series and is full of the excitement and action that the first one held, though due to the slowness and drawn out areas and the many small mistakes throughout, I do rate it slightly lower than the first two. Saying that, though, it is still a book I very much enjoyed and would still recommend it especially if you have read the past two books. It almost rounds the whole story up, even though we now know there is more to the set. The question is, will the next three be any good or will they be forced? It is not a book to read before reading the first one as it is a continuation. The RRP on this book is £7.99, though I was able to purchase this in'The Works' shop. Amazon also has this at £2.60 plus postage and packaging. These are fantastic lowered prices for a fantastic book. Read the complete review |
Sci-Fi / Fantasy Fiction Book |
||
|---|---|---|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Trudi Canavan / Hardcover / 528 Pages / Book is published 2012-08-02 by Orbit |
|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Amanda Hocking / Paperback / 356 Pages / Book is published 2012-04-26 by Tor |
|
|
1 review Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Alyxandra Harvey / Paperback / 368 Pages / Book is published 2012-07-05 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Christine Feehan / Paperback / 416 Pages / Book is published 2012-07-03 by Piatkus |
|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Steven Erikson / Hardcover / 688 Pages / Book is published 2012-07-31 by Bantam Press |
|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Daisy Meadows / Paperback / 176 Pages / Book is published 2012-03-01 by Orchard |
|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Daisy Meadows / Paperback / 80 Pages / Book is published 2012-05-03 by Orchard |
|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Andy Stanton / Paperback / 144 Pages / Book is published 2007-08-06 by Egmont Books Ltd |
|
|
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Cassandra Clare / Paperback / 448 Pages / Book is published 2011-09-01 by Walker |
|
|
1 review Genre: Sci-Fi / Fiction Book / Fantasy / Author: Michael Grant / Paperback / Book is published 2012-04-02 by Egmont Books Ltd |
|
| Sci-Fi / Fantasy Fiction Book Recommendations 1 ... 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ... back next | ||
| dooyoo Results 81 - 90 of 1868 | ||
