3.5 stars. I loved Wrede's Enchanted Forest series and her Cecelia and Kate series, so I was a bit let down by this book. The romance aspect seemed kind of unnecessary and underdeveloped, and the plots were interesting but nothing special. I did really like the characters, especially some of the ...
I really wanted to like this book. Eff is the kind of sensible, well-organised, competent heroine that not-so-secretly delights me, and I have a soft spot for the Little-House-with-dragons approach the book takes to a frontier story. The plot did move pretty slowly but I didn't mind overmuch, and...
Lord, I love these books so much. Searching for Dragons follows the adventures of Cimorene, but is told from the point of view of Mendanbar, the King of the Enchanted Forest. Mendanbar is as unconventional as Cimorene, and just as subject to being nagged about the proper way to do things. The c...
Kim has played the part of a thieving boy for most of her life, hiding her gender being the safer alternative to revealing herself as a girl in the dark underbelly of Regency London. But she knows this career path will soon come to an end, as at seventeen she is quickly outgrowing her disguise. W...
The first three books in the series are in 3rd pov, but this one is in 1st pov. This really makes the flatness of the characters stand out.The main character has no thoughts. No signs of intelligence or life. The kid is a 16 year old boy scout who only shows the barest of hints of interest in the...
Eltiron is having a rough month. First, one of his best friends, Jermain, was banished by the King, supposedly for treason. And Jermain thinks Prince Eltiron was part of setting him up for treason. Now, King Marreth's new advisor, the slimy Terrel has convinced Marreth to betroth Eltiron to the p...
[NB: This text has been edited since the initial review -- the number of stars has not changed. Spoilers abound.]The Magician's Ward follows Kim, the girl thief from Mairelon the Magician, as she enters her magical apprenticeship with Mairelon in London. She's in unfamiliar territory both in her ...
As others have noted, not all of these stories are from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. The dedication hints strongly at this: "For the people who urged me to try writing short: Jane Yolen and the denizens of Fidonet WRITING echo."The reader is faced with a question not often faced in antholo...
During a gap in my NetGalley reads, I was looking for an interim book and happened on Sorcery & Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the correspondence of two Young Ladies of Quality regarding various Magical Scandals in London and the Country. I liked the cover, and the blurb mentione...
Sometime between the ages of 12 and 16 I read a book that had something to do with a teenage girl in an icy world who was able to channel an internal fire--maybe something to do with underground fires--I can't remember. She and a male companion are banished or lost or something and at some point...
I love Patricia C. Wrede, so I had high hopes for this book, especially since it takes on a fairy tale that has not been retold to death. Apparently this was one of her earliest works, and it shows. Set in Elizabethan England, the characters speak in the dialect of the time, and it usually comes ...
Ugh. I really tried to get through this. The first book in the Lyra series is one of my favourites, & I was hoping this would improve. Made it up to a third of the way through, but couldn't take any more & gave up.We keep being flung between various different characters, with no real idea of who ...
1.5 stars. This third installment in the Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot series follows Cecelia and Kate 10 years after The Grand Tour. There's a mystery involving railroads and ancient magic, and James and Cecelia have gone to investigate. Unsurprisingly, Thomas and Kate find t...
Do you like shadows? Do you like magic? You... might?... like this book. Ringing Endorsement. The characters are simplistic but likeable, the plot actually moves really quickly, and the good guys win at the end. Hurraaaay! This book is probably objectively not very good. The prose is primitive a...
tThis book was cumbersome. Again, the authors engaged in the Letter Game, but this time the main characters, Kate and Cecily were side by side, involved in the same plot. It was interesting to see the different points of view with which they approached each event, but the way the story was set ...
Review brought to you by OBS staff member VerushkaBeware of SpoilersCaught in Crystal is part of Patricia Wrede’s acclaimed Lyra series of books, now published for the first time in ebook form. The series consists of five books that are loosely connected, but all are based on the same world – Lyr...
The Raven Ring is the 5th book in Patricia Wrede's Lyra series. I did not read the entire series, the first book didn't keep me engrossed, but the summary of this one seemed interesting enough for me to give it a shot. First off, I did not find myself at a severe disadvantage for not having read ...
HIS HAIR WAS CONSIDERABLY LONGER than I remembered, and his beard wasn’t so neat, but that was only to be expected when he’d been out riding circuit for two or three months. Professor Jeffries introduced him to Papa and Mr. Harrison and Lan, but when he got to William and me, Wash smiled broadly ...
He did a tidy transportation spell, Morwen had to admit, even if her own taste ran more to flying. The passage hadn’t even ruffled his dark hair. He’d clearly come prepared: The many pockets of his open knee-length black vest were bulging, and so were the pouches that hung from his wide black bel...
"There are two things. First, during our travels, we have visited a number of different antiquities, and it has seemed to me that some of them are similar, perhaps even related. Yet they were constructed at different times by completely different peoples. I was hoping you could explain the puzzle...
After ten years of study, I can dependably do the two spells Thomas taught me (finding him and calling him) and the spell Lady Sylvia showed me to keep my hair up, but I’m afraid that the fine points of magical cipher and anticipher will always be beyond me. I know Thomas despairs of me as a stud...