Tag Archives: fantasy

#BookReview ‘The Magician King’ by Lev Grossman @leverus #fantasy #magic

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As The Magician King begins, Quentin is living in Fillory. And he is king, or a king, one of four human kings and queens who rule this magical land. In the first book of ‘The Magicians’ trilogy by Lev Grossman, we saw Quentin accepted at a magical university in New York and finally find his way to Fillory, which he thought was a fictional world from a children’s book. Now, in the second book, he is living his childhood fantasy but is bored. Lev GrossmanLife is like living in a 20-star hotel and he is getting fat. Then one day, out hunting the Seeing Hare, one of the Unique Beasts of Fillory – this world is full of magical beasts which can talk or have special powers – a new adventure starts.
The big difference for me from book one of the trilogy is that the action starts straight away. All the setting-up has been done, the background is in place, Fillory is understood, key characters  are established. Most intriguing is the presence of Julia, who was Quentin’s love interest in the non-magical world, briefly at the beginning of the first book. Quentin was offered a place at Brakebills, the magical college. Julia wasn’t. But now she is a magician too. She learned her magic the hard way, in the magical underground in the ordinary world. And she is moody and edgy. She talks to the animals, speaks in an old-fashioned cadence, she dresses in black. She is interesting. I liked Julia.
Quentin and Julia set sail on a magical ship, heading for the Outer Island to collect overdue taxes. They end up back in the real world, trapped, and unable to return to Fillory. Of course they manage it in the end, via the underground magic network, trips to Cornwall and Venice, an Australian magician, and a dragon.
This book is three quests, one after another. The action is continuous. I saved books two and three to read while on holiday, and read them back –to-back.

Click the title below to read my reviews of the two other novels in the trilogy:-
THE MAGICIANS #1THEMAGICIANS
THE MAGICIAN’S LAND #3THEMAGICIANS

If you like this, try:-
‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt
‘In Ark’ by Lisa Devaney
‘Ferney’ by James Long

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MAGICIAN KING by Lev Grossman @leverus http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1rx via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Magicians’ by Lev Grossman @leverus #fantasy #magic

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In the first sentence of The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Quentin Coldwater does a magic trick with a nickel. A human version of magic. A great opening to a new fantasy trilogy. Lev GrossmanAnother series about magic, I hear you ask? Well this is nothing like Harry Potter. Quentin is due to sit an entrance exam for Princeton when he wanders into the grounds of a mysterious school in upstate New York. In a large room full of unknown teenagers, he sits the oddest test he has ever known. Then he is told he has passed and is accepted at Brakebills, a school of magic. For the first few months his best friend is a glass marble on which he practises his magic.
This is an adult tale. Brakebills is not Hogwarts and Quentin is a young man on the cusp of adulthood, with lingering adolescent depression and lack of confidence. The teenage magicians practise their magic, get drunk and have sex. At his ‘youngest’ moments Quentin remembers the magical tales he loved as a child about a land called Fillory. When he is down, he wishes he could escape to Fillory. And at first, he thinks Brakebills might be Fillory. But it isn’t because Fillory, of course, is fictional.
There are three books in the series and out of necessity in this book Quentin learns his magic. There were times I wished it would move more quickly, the carrot of Fillory is dangled in front of Quentin so much. In Harry Potter – oh how Lev Grossman must be tired of the comparisons – the threat of Lord Voldemort hovers from the first pages. There is no dark threat hovering over Quentin, just teenage angst, teenage love, and a longing to escape his daily life into Fillory. When he does reach Fillory, will it be what he expects?

Click the title below to read my reviews of the next two novels in the trilogy:-
THE MAGICIAN KING #2THEMAGICIANS
THE MAGICIAN’S LAND #3THEMAGICIANS

If you like this, try:-
‘Divergent’ by Veronica Roth #1DIVERGENT
‘Insurgent’ by Veronica Roth #2DIVERGENT
‘Allegiant’ by Veronica Roth #3DIVERGENT

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MAGICIANS by Lev Grossman @leverus via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1oy

#BookReview ‘The Queen of the Tearling’ by Erika Johansen #fantasy #Tearling

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The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen is a ripping adventure story which feels like a medieval tale except for the occasional references to plastic surgery, Harry Potter and mascara. For a debut, it is skilfully handled. Erika JohansenThis, the first of a trilogy, is a dystopian society, post-something [an un-named event] which caused people to feel their homeland [an un-named country] in The Crossing [across an ocean, as a boat was lost] to their new land of the Tearling [on an unspecified continent]. Behind them they left science, books, medicine, education, art, television, you name it they left it behind. They fight with knives and swords.
Into this context is thrown a 19-year old girl, raised in secrecy by an elderly couple in rural seclusion. She must become queen of her mother’s nation or it will be lost to the evil ruler of the neighbouring state. Kelsea Glynn had a studious childhood, learning history, mathematics, languages, and how to trap and skin a rabbit. She reads a book a day [including The Lord of the Rings], not something your usual heroine does. Add treachery, slavery, corruption, prostitution, child exploitation, and all sorts of other dastardly deeds, and you will see why this is a page turner. Kelsea, the girl-turned-Queen is thrown into the middle of this and expected to fail. But she doesn’t.
There is more to this than just a thriller, the world of the Tearling has been meticulously constructed by Erika Johansen with its own history, myths and customs. It has the makings of a classic fantasy series.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title to read my reviews of the other Tearling books by Erika Johansen:-
BENEATH THE KEEP [#PREQUEL TEARLING]
THE INVASION OF THE TEARLING [#2 TEARLING]
THE FATE OF THE TEARLING [#3 TEARLING]

If you like this, try:-
‘The Magicians’ by Lev Grossman #1TheMagiciansTrilogy
‘The Ship’ by Antonia Honeywell
‘In Ark’ by Lisa Devaney

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE QUEEN OF THE TEARLING by Erika Johansen via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p2ZHJe-19P

#BookReview ‘Allegiant’ by Veronica Roth #YA #fantasy

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The tone of Allegiant, the third in the ‘Divergent’ trilogy by Veronica Roth, is different. Tris lives in Chicago where every citizen belongs to one of five factions, each representing a human virtue. But Tris doesn’t fit in and is searching for a new world. Veronica RothKey to the change of tone in this book is a change in point-of-view, which is split for the first time; between Tris and Tobias [Four]. Getting a male perspective is interesting, and I guess Veronica Roth took this approach to add more tension to the storytelling. It certainly highlights the lack of communication between the two. But at times, I lost track of whose thoughts I was reading.
The book is full of strong female characters, but not strong in a good way. Evelyn, head of the factionless; Edith Prior, Tris’s ancestor, whose mystery hangs over this third book. The world Tris knew in Divergent and Insurgent has been shattered by violence so she and Tobias set out beyond the fence to find a new world. Except the new world is not green fields, but just as violent and unequal as the world they are escaping.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in this series:-
DIVERGENT #1DIVERGENT
INSURGENT #2DIVERGENT

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bear and the Nightingale’ by Katherine Arden #1WinternightTrilogy
‘Dark Earth’ by Rebecca Stott
‘The Secret Commonwealth’ by Philip Pullman #2TheBookOfDust

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ALLEGIANT by Veronica Roth via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-Pt

#BookReview ‘Insurgent’ by Veronica Roth #YA #fantasy

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Insurgent, second in the fantasy trilogy by Veronica Roth, is action-led and the pace fairly trips along. Everyone living in the post-dystopian city of Chicago belongs to one of five factions, each represents a human virtue. When the factions disagree, there is a struggle for power. Veronica RothHeroine Tris is a complex mixture of two factions: her upbringing in Abnegation [considerate, selfless] and her adopted faction Dauntless [brave, daring, reckless]. This dangerous mixture gets her into trouble and that drives the story along. She is confrontational, brave, but often makes questionable decisions. She distrusts Four’s father and believes he is misleading them: ‘…sometimes, if you want the truth, you have to demand it.’ Demand, not ask: this tells me more about Tris than about Four’s father Marcus.
As this is the second novel of the trilogy there is more time for characterisation, we see more of Tris’s inner world in Insurgent compared with Divergent. She is maturing into her divergent personality, ‘I drift off to sleep, carried by the sound of distant conversations. These days its easier for me to fall asleep when there is noise around me. I can focus on the sound instead of whatever thoughts would crawl into my head in silence. Noise and activity are the refuges of the bereaved and guilty.’ And she is both.
I had difficulty keeping track of the huge list of characters and longed for a cast list. But more importantly is the lack of clarity about the main enemy: who is it? There’s lots of infighting to keep track of too, petty squabbles some of which have carried forward from the first book and which I had forgotten. I made the mistake of not reading the books back-to-back which would have really helped.
Tris’s confusion reminded me of my teenage years, confusion is universal: ‘Sometimes I feel like I am collecting the lessons each faction has to teach me, and storing them in my mind like a guidebook for moving through the world. There is always something to learn, always something that’s important to understand.’ Like all young people, Tris must learn there is no cut-off date by which she will have learned everything, adults continue to learn until they die.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in this series:-
DIVERGENT #1DIVERGENT
ALLEGIANT #3DIVERGENT

If you like this, try:-
‘Beneath the Keep’ by Erika Johansen #prequelTearling
‘Children of Blood and Bone’ by Tomi Adeyemi #1LegacyofOrisha
‘La Belle Sauvage’ by Philip Pullman #1TheBookOfDust

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview INSURGENT by Veronica Roth via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-Po