Pendragons 🐉

Monday 28 November 2016

Mini Book Gift Haul

Luna & Saturn November 28, 2016 6 Comments

Hello fellow Pendragons! Today’s blog post is going to be us sharing some bookish gifts we received from friends and family last week! Thanks to everyone who gave us these wonderful presents! 🎁🎁🎁

We’ll give a quick run through of our thoughts on the books:

✏️ Throne of Glass Colouring Book: An absolutely stunning book. We’d like to properly review this in the future, but for now, we highly recommend buying it. If you love the Throne of Glass series, this is such a good accompaniment to it. It provides a vivid insight into the characters and their world, and the excerpts of different books on each page is excellent. Warning: Do not purchase this book unless you’re up-to-date with the series.

😇 Angelfall by Susan Ee: The first book in Penryn and the End of Days, we love this book for its humour and original characterisation. The protagonist - Penryn - is named after Penryn Road, a road sign from Interstate 80, and like the distinct naming of the character, this book will always stay as a distinct memory!

😈 Demon Road by Derek Landy: To be honest, we’ve never read this book. We’ve seen it at the bookstores a couple of times, but we’ve never picked it up. The shiny cover is enough to intrigue readers, and we must say, the promise of killer cars and undead serial killers is very captivating. Derek Landy is the author of Skulduggery Pleasant, which is has received very positive reviews from our friends, so hopefully, this book is amazing. (Did you see that, the angelic and demonic books are next to each other! OK, got it, we're nerds)

🗽American Gods by Neil Gaiman: If you’ve read our other blog posts, you’ll know that we absolutely love Neil Gaiman! American Gods is considered one of his finest works - if not the best - so we’re quite certain that this book will be immensely enjoyable.

🚣 Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien: Released this year, this novel tells the story of a young girl and her mother who invite a Chinese refugee home. This novel was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, so again, we have high hopes for this novel.

😉 The Good People by Hannah Kent: Aussie author Hannah Kent is well known for her 2013 novel Burial Rites, which exploded with favourable reviews in the same year. We have yet to try Hannah Kent, but our school librarian assured us that she is a talented writer, so it’s likely a nice read.

🌒 Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare: To be brutally honest, we’re not very fond of Cassandra Clare’s works. We loved The Infernal Devices, until Book 3, which marred our enjoyment of the series. The same applies to The Mortal Instruments; we enjoyed it, until after City of Glass, because we felt the series was being prolonged. Hopefully, Lady Midnight crushes those sour memories we have of Clare’s works. Clare is one of our love-or-hate authors, so perhaps Lady Midnight will be a loveable novel.

🚀 Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: Again, if you have read our previous blog posts, you will will understand that we LOVE Amie and Jay!!!!! This book took forever to come out - we might even be on the casualty list! (OK, that doesn’t seem super exciting, but still!)

And last but not least, thanks to Saturn for buying me (Luna) this wonderful word art for These Broken Stars. Here is a link to other Evie Seo works, which she sells on Society6. (Note to all international audiences outside USA: Society6 sells everything using the US dollar, so be careful if you’re not in the US!)

https://society6.com/evieseo

Have you read any of these books? Please pop a comment below and share your thoughts!

Saturday 19 November 2016

This Shattered World

Luna & Saturn November 19, 2016 2 Comments

Good morning everyone!!! Today's book review is This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. We hope you enjoy this mini review!

Review:

This book’s writing seems to float since it is slow and languid. When reading, you’ll get a sense that it’s so dream-like, despite there being a lot of action (as the story is set against a backdrop of war). We love how the writing is so beautiful that you can just dive right into it.

The brand new world is so amazing. It's more lively than These Broken Stars, as you'll know if you've read our review on it; there's so much to explore because it's a new planet, new world, new characters and new awesomeness. 🌠🌠🌠

The writing is great, but the plot is really, really slow - to the point it’s a fault. Nothing much happens, except that romance blossoms between Flynn and Lee. There are bloody deaths, excessive fighting and an underlying feeling of doom, but it all feels muted. There’s no fear clinging to the heart of readers that the beloved characters are in mortal peril.

None at all.

Also, despite knowing This Shattered World is the sequel to These Broken Stars, it’s more like a companion novel. There are a different set of characters and the link between the two books is only stated at the very end of the novel- which is pretty annoying. We went through the book saying “Huh?” a lot because many subplots seem so irrelevant. But don't worry, it all makes sense in the end. It was a nice touch to the book.

However, something I (Saturn) found a bit jarring - sweet, but jarring - is Lee’s past. A page about her life always appears at the beginning of each new chapter, or a change in point of view. This page is so at odds with the book’s main plot as it is often a dream and ruins the book’s climatic battles and fights. And even more irksome is the reason as to why these pages are included doesn’t appear until the very, very END of the book. We understand these pages are scattered in the book so THAT the when the big reveal happens at the end, readers don’t feel cheated, but maybe there is a more subtle and discreet way of dropping hints? And maybe trying to link these pages with the entire novel, not just the very end? (This is just Saturn's opinion, Luna absolutely LOVED IT)

Favourite Quote:

We feel this review is a negative review but it’s not. We really like the book but it, but not as much as These Broken Stars. We picked it up thinking it’s going to be an action-packed sci-fi with undertones of romance. Instead, it’s the other way round. A romance with undertones of action packed sci-fi. If you like romance, by all means READ THIS BOOK. Or if you’re bored, try out this book. The writing is real nice and pretty, and the plot is actually stunning.

Rating:

So pop a comment below on what you think of the book:):):):)

Friday 4 November 2016

Trigger Warning

Luna & Saturn November 04, 2016 0 Comments

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Hello everyone! Today we’re going to do something a little differently by reviewing a novel that is not from the YA genre. It’ll also be different in the sense that’s it’s a collection of short stories, rather than one story. We’ll be reviewing Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman and we hope you enjoy it.

Series: None

Author: Neil Gaiman

Genre: Fiction, Short Stories

Publisher: Headline

Pages: 303 pages (Paperback)

So first off, we’ll provide a list of the short stories in Trigger Warning so you know what the short story titles are.

Now to the actual review: we must admit, we were quite underwhelmed by the book. We’ve read Smoke and Mirrors as well as Fragile Things, so we were expecting Trigger Warning to pack a punch, only it didn’t. On the title cover of Trigger Warning, it says there are ‘disturbances’, but honestly, it isn't even that disturbing. An example of a disturbing short story by Neil Gaiman would be Snow, Glass, Apples - that was disturbing, but also very well written. Nothing in Trigger Warning even comes close to it.

Our favourite short story in this collection would be ‘The Truth is a Black Cave in the Mountains...’ It is such a straightforward manner of narration, but the simplicity is what makes this short story so enjoyable. A quote from Sun that we agree applies to this story is that it ‘drags the fantastical out of the mundane’. A quick overview of the tale: a dwarf (Luna got Tyrion-vibes from the protagonist) visits a man who will take him to a mountain with enough gold to last him a lifetime, and thus, their quest begins. We don’t want to spoil anything, other than the characterisation and writing is stunning. We loved it.

However, on a sour note, there were quite a few stories we simply didn’t enjoy. A Calendar of Tales was quite confusing, and literally, like the short story title, it’s a collection of short tales within a short story. Another one we weren’t too fond of is A Lunar Labyrinth. It was a good story, no doubt, but it is a bit too predictable, so there isn't any suspense that made us want to read more.

We suppose that the main setback is that this book isn't very rich, if you can understand what we mean. Gaiman’s ideas are exceptionally creative as always, but there was something lacking in his writing. He didn’t capture our imaginations and pull at our heartstrings as well as his other stories.

But in spite of that, there were moments when Trigger Warning is exceptionally gripping. The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury has a very touching message, and this is our favourite quote: ‘God who knows all things, I have no prayer books and I do not know any prayers by heart. But you know all the prayers. You are God. So this is what I am going to do. I am going to say the alphabet, and I will let you put the words together’.

To sum up, Neil Gaiman has delivered another short story collection titled Trigger Warning. It’s not his best work, but it’s quite nice. Our ratings are below. Please drop a comment below and tell us what you think of Trigger Warning and Neil Gaiman!