All posts tagged City of Bones

Series I Want to Finish Someday (And One I Don’t)

By Brookelorren on 34 Comments

Today is Top Ten Tuesday, sponsored by That Artsy Reader.  Today’s theme is Series I’ve Given Up On, but since I don’t really have many of those, I’m modifying it a bit, and am doing Series I Want to Finish Someday (And One I Don’t).  Since a lot of the series that I have been reading have recently finished, I don’t have a full 10 to give you, but I’ll give you what I have.

Ace of Shades CoverI just recently finished reading Ace of Shades by Amanda Foody (I hope to review it next week).  This is the first book of a planned trilogy.  Since the other two books in the series aren’t out yet, I can’t exactly read them yet.

I don’t know if I will buy the follow-on books or get them at the library yet, however.  I only paid $1.99 for the first book on my Kindle; although I do plan on reading the remaining books in the series, I don’t know if it’s a book I want to read over and over and over again, like some of the books that I buy.

City of Bones CoverCity of Bones is a series that I am currently on the waiting list for at the library.  I’m currently #7 on the waiting list for the next book, City of Ashes.  At some point I’ll get to the top of the waiting list and I’ll probably review a bunch of books from these series in quick succession.

While I didn’t give this book a five-star review, I did enjoy it, and (I peeked ahead) I’ve read some excerpts from her later books and am looking forward to getting to them.  Someday…

An Ember in the Ashes CoverAn Ember in the Ashes is the first book of Sabaa Tahir’s tetralogy.  I just read her first three books for the first time this month, and I absolutely love them!  I’m looking forward to the last book coming out next year, especially since the characters are still in distress, and I’m hoping that Ms. Tahir helps them save themselves and at least lets them be a little happy (if not, there’s always fanfiction).

I definitely plan on pre-ordering this one as soon as it becomes available.  Since the last book in the series A Reaper at the Gates, just came out, I don’t know when that will be.

Warcross coverWarcross is the first book in Marie Lu’s latest series.  I pre-ordered this on April 10th this year (only reason I know is because it was the day that The Fates Divide came out, which was another book that I eagerly looked forward too).

Out of the three series that I’m looking forward to reading, this is the one that I’m looking forward to the most.  Fortunately, I only have to wait until September to read it (less than 3 months now!).

The One Series I Don’t Plan on Continuing…

I won’t say that I will never read the rest of the Illuminae series, but I don’t have any plans to do so any time soon.  If I do continue reading these, it will not be on the Kindle.

This book was really difficult to read on my Kindle.  The concept is pretty cool.  There are different files to read, and it is very graphic.  It doesn’t translate to the Kindle well at all, because I wasn’t able to resize the pages, making it hard to read.  There were graphic pages where the words swirled around, which were also difficult to read on a Kindle.

I think what disappointed me the most about Illuminae, however (the Kindle visual problems are quite easy to fix by reading these books in hardback) was how in the very middle of the book, the story completely pissed me off.  I can’t say why without giving away spoilers, but I went to google the ending in order to find out whether it was worth finishing or not; even then, I put down the book, went to bed, and finished it the next day.

As far as I know, the next books aren’t continuations of this story, but tell the story from a different angle, I don’t think I’m going to finish.  I’m not interested enough to continue reading this book at the moment.

City of Bones was… Good

By Brookelorren on 16 Comments

City of Bones CoverSo I’m late to the party.  I just got around to reading City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, which is an 11 year old book.  I found it to be… good.  It’s not great, but it’s good.

I saw this book while looking through Goodreads 2018 releases, and found that Clare’s Queen of Air and Darkness is listed as highly anticipated.  I can’t start in the middle of a series, of course, so I clicked around and found this book which started it all.  Fortunately, my local library had it (although now I’m waiting to read book #2 and I’m tenth on the waiting list).

The book is about a girl, Clary, who stumbles upon a murder that only she could see.  Shortly after that, her world is completely upended when she discovers that the world that she believed to be true isn’t all there is.  Not only are there demons, werewolves, Nephilim, and vampires, but her family is a part of that world.  Over the course of this book, she discovers the truth about this world around her, and about her family.

I did enjoy this book.  Enough that I immediately got on the waiting list at the library to read the second book in the series.  I’ll probably end up reading all of the books, although that might take a while, since there’s quite a few books in this series, and there’s a waiting list at the library for most of them.  I didn’t enjoy the book enough to go out and buy the entire series.

There were a lot of things I liked about this book.  I liked the characters and their relationships.  I liked the imagery and the world-building.  I enjoyed the plot and kept wanting to read more.  The mythology was interesting.

There were some things that this story could have done better, however.  This wasn’t one of those books that sucks you in and grabs you and won’t let you go.  I’m not going to be fangirling over this book years from now after I’ve read it for the fourth or fifth time.  There were a couple of things that I found a little odd — the main character’s life was uprooted over the course of 24 hours, nearly everything she had is gone — you would think she would have a stronger emotional reaction to it.  The mythology was a little mishmashed, and that could have been better.  The final thing that I think could have been written better was, towards the end, where the characters are finding out these big revelations and… I would think that their emotional reactions would have been a little more pronounced.

This being one of Clare’s earlier works, I’m looking forward to continuing on with the series and seeing her develop as an author.  Since I’ve waited so long to read the first book, I can quickly catch up.