Tag: Tor Books

Books

Book 613: A Conjuring of Light (Shades of Magic #3) – V.E. Schwab

Geoff W

Disappointment doesn’t even begin to cover my thoughts on this. Did it end the series well enough? Yes. Did it inspire me to read more of Schwab’s writing? No. Am I even more concerned that she is being compared to Diana Wynn Jones? YES.

A Gathering of Shadows and A Conjuring of Light aren’t so much book two and book three of the Shades of Magic trilogy as they are part one and part two of book two of the Shades of Magic duology. All three of the books in the “trilogy” take place in incredibly short amounts of time with a four month gap between one and two/three.

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Books

Book 611: A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic #2) – V.E. Schwab

Geoff W

Well, this one was stronger than A Darker Shade of Magic, but I’m still not on board with the “natural successor to Diana Wynne Jones” promo-ing in her bio. (But honestly, I can’t blame her, if someone said that about me I’d probably get it tattooed on my body.) Do I think she could get there? Probably. Is she there yet? Not yet based on these to books, but she wrote seven other books I’ve yet to read.

My largest critique of the books/series still stands: Is this an adult book or a young adult book? I honestly cannot tell. There’s no explicit sex, there’s not really that much violence, the language is pretty much G-rated, and the writing and plot are relatively simple and straight forward. There will be MAJOR spoilers in this review so don’t read past this if you don’t want to know.

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Books

Book 610: A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1) – V.E. Schwab

Geoff W

I picked this up after seeing it on LouLouReads’ blog. The title intrigued me and then I read the official blurb and was like okay I like this idea of parallel worlds I’ll give it a go. Thankfully, my local library had the first two and I got them the next day and the third had a very short wait list.

Like LouLouReads I agree that the book was rather one-dimensional to start. I do feel that it grew, but I’m not sure Schwab’s writing deserves the accolade touted in her bio, “the natural successor to Diana Wynne Jones.” Those are some huge shoes to fill that Shwab might be able to do some day.

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Books

Book 20: Earthborn – Orson Scott Card

Geoff W

This book takes place generations after the last book which makes it both an outlier of the five books and a hell of a lot more confusing than it need be. As it has been generations, the stories of the first four novels have become legends and the legends have become myth and are religious in their overtone.

I was pleased however that Shedemi, the character I came to love over the last two books remained alive in the cloak of the Starmaster spending hundreds of years asleep and waking up to tend her garden of earth. Shedemi has finally decided that she needs to return to the planet and participate in life again, she can no longer remain solely as the gardener of earth. Her humanity has decided that she needs to interact with people and so she opens a school and causes all sorts of chaos.

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Books

Book 18: Earthfall – Orson Scott Card

Geoff W

This book was better than The Ships of Earth, but again I feel as if five books was a bit much for this story. It could easily have been split into two separate trilogies, but it wasn’t so we get the somewhat disjointed story through the first four novels and what appears to be a fifth book which may be completely unrelated.

Roughly half of this novel takes place on the spaceship Basillica, named after their abandoned town, and Nefai and Luet have proceeded to follow the Overlord’s plans and have kept a large portion of the children awake throughout the long journey to Earth in order to train them and have them ready to stand against Elemak and his supporters.

All hell breaks loose when a pre-set alarm lets everyone out of the stasis chambers and Elemak and his supporters realise that the children have had at least 10 years education and growth and he holds the ship hostage until finally he is convinced to return to stasis along with everyone else.

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