Books

Book 233: The Demigod Files (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) – Rick Riordan

This was a super short collection of short stories and various addons to the Percy Jackson universe and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m picking up the other short story collection for The Heroes of Olympus series Riordan wrote and can’t wait to read it.

There were three short stories in this book: Percy Jackson and the Stolen Chariot, Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon, and Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades. Each one had characters from the Percy Jackson universe that you love, or love to hate and the writing was just as creative and humorous as that in the full length novels. In addition to this, the book is set up as a how-to/introduction guide to Camp Half-Blood and included add-ons about some of the campers, a map of camp, a packing list (diagram) and brief bios of many of the campers and key gods of Olympus.

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Books

Book 230: The Serpent’s Shadow (The Kane Chronicles #3) – Rick Riordan

My thoughts still stand from the first two novels. This series is not as great as the other two of Riordan’s series, the publisher really should have invested in a better copy editor and I’m still not convinced about the ‘transcription’ part of the story (it brought the author into the story in a way that Percy Jackson didn’t). Aside from that, this was a great ending to a mediocre trilogy.

The Serpent’s Shadow picks up right where The Throne of Fire ends. Looking back on my reviews of it and The Red Pyramid, I’m not sure what holes in the plot I referred to were but it didn’t feel like there was anything missing from this third book from the second. A lot of the characters that I remembered and enjoyed from the first two books made appearances in this novel and there were even a few introductions of new characters, although fleeting. Riordan seemed to have mastered the Sadie/Carter duality in this novel so that was great and I enjoyed their love interests although the parallel of the two was a bit weird and could be misconstrued as lazy.

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Books

Book 228: MaddAddam (MaddAddam #3) – Margaret Atwood

What a great ending to the trilogy. It wasn’t exactly what I expected and it definitely left me wanting more, but overall I think it was a great book. If I hadn’t read these books back-to-back with this book’s release I can definitely see how I could have been disappointed in this denouement, but as I didn’t have to wait for the next books in the series I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

Although I enjoyed The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam neither were as great as Oryx and Crake. I’m not sure if it’s the change in writing style, which was minimal or if the last two in the trilogy didn’t have the wonderment of discovering a new old world, but they just didn’t quite live up to the first book. All three made me feel emotions and were beautifully written, so I would definitely recommend them!

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Books

Book 227: The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam #2) – Margaret Atwood

What a great continuation of this series! And for a middle novel of a trilogy it definitely held its own which is not always the case. I also enjoyed reading Atwood from a different angle, although it was only a tiny bit different from her other books.

As I mentioned in my Oryx and Crake review every book I’ve read by Atwood has a single narrator who tells their story through a series of flashbacks. This book continues that theme, but rather than it being the same narrator there are two narrators, Ren and Toby, in this book telling their stories.

However, there were again SO many similarities. Each of the narrators, similar to Snowman/Jimmy, experiences the post-apocalyptic world in isolation until about midway through the novel. So looking back at all the characters of Atwood, they’re all isolated (physically, mentally and emotionally) and they all tell their stories from their own perspective. But this is not a bad thing! Atwood gets into each of her character’s minds and creates believable and unique characters which are amazing mirrors of humanity.

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Books

Book 226: Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam #1) – Margaret Atwood

I honestly cannot remember the last time I devoured a book this quickly or the last time I was this excited about a series. Let’s put it this way, I’m desperately trying to think of people to recommend this book to I enjoyed it that much. And I have no doubt I will devour the next two books in this trilogy as rapidly did this first installment.

Having only ever read The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin, It has clearly been some time since I read anything by Atwood. When I found out recently that she would be visiting Harvard Book Store to give a talk and read from her new book I KNEW I had to go see her if only to get my copy of The Handmaid’s Tale signed. She will be reading from her newest book MaddAddam and as I haven’t read the first two books in the MaddAddam trilogy I thought I probably should, so I picked up copies of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood from the library and I am SO glad I did.

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