World Without End by Ken Follett

*This review contains spoilers.*

I picked this book because I had read Pillars of the Earth and seen that miniseries on Starz. I really, really loved Pillars of the Earth, and I liked World Without End, too, but not as much.

Essentially, it follows the descendants of Jack and Aliena, Merthin and Ralph, as well as Caris Wooler and her cousin Godwyn, and a pair of peasants, Gwenda and Wulfric.

Personally, and this has always been a problem with his books for me, I think it took a little too long...I am extremely impatient, and waiting ages and ages for characters to get together irks me to no end. I utterly adored Merthin, but the way Caris treated him bugged me a lot, and I loved Gwenda to death. I also had a bit of a soft spot for Ralph, even though he was the "bad" guy, just because he was not as bad as William Hamleigh of the original.

I find that the plot and even the characters are fairly similar to the original, but that has never bothered me, so read this if you liked the first one. It's also an excellent portrayal of life in the Middle Ages if you don't like that it has a similar plot.

Also, I watched the miniseries and I loved it! They cut out some stuff, hurried it along, and added more action and romance...so, you know, I was golden. It wasn't as good as the Pillars miniseries, but that of course had David Oakes in it, and you can't beat him. Anyway, this one had Tom Weston-Jones (of BBC America's Copper) as Merthin, so, of course, I died! Also, TV!Caris, played by Charlotte Riley (Cathy in my favorite version of Wuthering Heights) was so much less annoying than book!Caris. There was also much more of the royal family in the miniseries, which I loved. Oh, and the miniseries Ralph is ridiculously attractive; his name is Oliver Jackson-Cohen and I've never seen him before, but he is very, very attractive. Be warned, when he took his shirt off, I actually gasped I was so surprised there was so much hair there, but I got over that quickly.

Anyway, if you're undecided, I recommend the miniseries, but if you loved Pillars or really enjoy Medieval life, then I recommend the book and miniseries!

I bought a huge selection of books on  Black Friday, so look forward to more reviews!

The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan - Heroes of Olympus Book Three

*This review contains spoilers.*

So, The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan, third in the Heroes of Olympus series.

I absolutely loved this book. I really love the Percy Jackson stuff in general, as I love Greek mythology, and I think the books have the perfect balance of humor, action, romance and tragedy, i.e. the makings of a classic. Needless to say, I was ecstatically looking forward to getting this book, because I love all of Rick Riordan's stuff, and expected this to be no different.

 Even then I was surprised how much I loved this book.

Of course, I love Riordan's style, and the general premise of the Percy Jackson books, and you do, too, if you've searched for this post, i.e. if you're a fan of the series, this will not disappoint. Books where people lose their memories or are lost for some time usually irk me, and even though I love this series enough for that not to happen, I was very pleased that Jason, Piper, Leo, Hazel, Frank, Percy and Annabeth were all back together, knowing who they all are.

Another aspect of this book was the emotional growth of the characters. I feel like we saw a lot more of Percy and Jason in terms of how they feel about their leadership, which was a fascinating and enjoyable delve into their psyches. Also, and I've never really felt much of a connection to Annabeth, there was a little more depth to her, and I guess I saw her as less of an abstraction in this installment.

Okay, romance! Piper and Jason are wonderful...I think they have what I consider the ideal relationship archetypes for some reason, with him being a child of Zeus, and her of Aphrodite...it just feels like the way things should be...and they're all sweet and caring about each other and such. ...And Percy and Annabeth...I actually had a tear brought to my eye by this one. There was a point where Percy had just gotten Annabeth back, and he says that he always feels like he's walking on eggshells and that any second he might shatter his relationship...and that made my tear up, all vulnerable sounding and such. They were also more open then we've ever seen them, which I really enjoyed...and I've always nursed a bit of a thing for Percy...so, yeah.

In short, the book was absolutely excellent! The romance, the humor, the style, the mythology, the pacing, the plot, the everything was completely perfect! I even liked the ending...both joyous and tragic, in its way.

Complete Tangent: This book just brought me back to the good old days...I decided to read Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief in the stairwell of my middle school. I talked to some girl I thought I hated in chem my junior year because she had The Lost Hero...yes, it was probably started with 12 year old boys in mind, but I don't care. Warm and fuzzy feelings, I say! Not as many feels as Harry Potter, but just pleasantly familiar and good and such. I've started college, and I'm disappointed with the way it all turned out and I'm just kinda miserable about it...put Percy Jackson made me happy in a way I haven't been since I got here, and I thank him for that.

Back on track: Basically, best book ever and you should absolutely read it!

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

*This review contains spoilers.*

It's JKR's first book for adults, I'm going to assume you know what it is about if you've looked this up and/or aren't living under a rock.

Before I give a judgment, I want to say that, of course, the style of this book was phenomenal, and just so engaging. I mean, it's JKR, aka the greatest storyteller ever, and the various narratives that made up this book were superbly woven together and completely engaging and I went through it rather quickly.

I also want to say that I think part of my childhood may have been shattered. On my other blog, I've enumerated many times the impacts which Harry Potter has had on my life, and how I have learned everything I ever needed to know from that series, even giving a speech on it in AP Lit, and that JKR is basically the gospel of my life.

And then I read this book. It frightened me, truly. Everyone in Pagford seems to being living lives of quiet desperation, and there is so much pettiness and meanness and incivility and I don't know what to think. I'm not even sure I can come up with a theme or message at this point, I'm so shell-shocked.

I don't know why the death and misery of this book is so much more hopeless than the death and misery in the Harry Potter series, but it just is....in Casual Vacancy there is no one side of goodness, not even one character that is truly good, or even sympathetic...

I miss children's literature...it was grand and sweeping and epic and had something worth fighting for in it.

Thanks for reading, I'll probably talk more about this book as I analyze it more.

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

*This review may contain spoilers.*

This book is absolutely phenomenal, and if you're thinking about getting it, just buy it, you will love it! The book trailer did not do it justice, in my opinion, I found it a bit hokey, but the book was wonderful, and much better than the trailer led me to believe.

I hadn't heard of Rachel Hartman before, which is explained when the inside front cover states that this is her "fantasy debut." However, I am very happy that I am now aware of this author, because she is awesome!

First off, I got this book because I was intrigued by the amazing cover I saw in an email from Barnes and Noble; it's like an antique wood engraving or something! Then, if you look underneath the dust jacket, it's bound in this golden color with a black leather type thing on the spine...it's really, really beautiful. Also, it's a good size book, too, nice and big!

I had my father pick this up for me, and he handed it to me around noon and I finished it just now (around quarter 'til nine), so that should give you an indication of how engaging a read this was! Books that I can finish in one day really, really go up in points for me.

The world in this book was just great! I, personally, get a bit of a Medieval feel from the clothing and system of government, but it's set in a completely fantasy world. Our protagonist hails from Goredd, but there is an abundance of other places and peoples referenced; I always like to feel like the world is a world that I have the privilege of peeking in on through the page, not like the world was created to allow for the story to take place, and I absolutely get that feeling from Seraphina.

I really, really, really like Rachel Hartman's style of writing. It's a very melodious, almost like it has a cadence of some sort, which is quite fitting, due to Seraphina's musical abilities. I find I am unable to describe it accurately, but it's very lush and magical; I enjoyed it immensely. I am definitely keeping an eye out for this author's future novels.

I also found Seraphina to be a great heroine. I really enjoyed the way she grappled with truth and her identity and such, and it really touched me.

...And, of course, the romance with Prince Lucian Kiggs. Yay, romance! This book didn't have an overwhelming amount of romance, but what there was was very satisfying. I liked Kiggs a lot, though I didn't get all melt-y over him like I do with other heroes, it was  more of a pleasant, heartwarming kind of a thing. I may or may not have engaged in some good old-fashioned fangirl squeeing during their final scene in the tower.

The mystery and intrigue and the anger and violence and prejudice and death in this book...I don't want to say it was gritty, since that would be very discordant with the overall tone, but it was ... real. For a book marked as for people 12 - 17 on the Barnes and Noble website, it was surprisingly sincere and deep and ... epic.

That's a good word...this is not a young adult novel, this is an epic. Okay, maybe not with an invocation of the Muse or an in media res opening, but it's just a broad, sprawling narrative that encapsulates a young woman's quest for truth and love, the politics of two kingdoms soon to be at war with themselves and each other and very universal themes that make this book one of the best ones I've read in a long time.

Final Verdict: Infinity and beyond/10. It was completely perfect, and I highly recommend you pick it up! I'm completely genuine when I tell you that if you are a literate individual, then this book is for you! It's just magical, really. I'm going to make one of the most radical statements I have ever made in my entire eighteen years of life: I believe this book to be the best fantasy book I have ever read, possibly ever written. The world was expansive and rich and real and the characters were genuine and lovable and the plot was intriguing and everything was just perfect.

For more info, check out the author's website here, I'm going to go put this book on The Shelf.

Thanks for reading!

Perception by Kim Harrington

*This review contains spoilers.*

This book is the sequel to Clarity, about a teenage girl in Cape Cod who has psychic abilities and finds herself faced with a murder investigation as well as a love triangle.

My Thoughts:

1. I should mention that I loved the first book, so of course I picked this one up. 
2. I really, really enjoyed this book. It was so engaging that I can honestly say I read it in about two and a half hours. 
3. Just a random thing, the inside covers are done with this really natural looking green paper...it's like flecked with tree fibers or something. It's just a gorgeously bound book in general. 
4. Like the first book, I enjoyed the paranormal influence throughout...how normal it is to the Fern family, how embedded it is. 
5. Kim Harrington's style is just to die for! I love, love, love the way she writes. It's very accessible and fluid, but still very much poignant, in my opinion. 
6. The mystery in this book is just amazing! You really are kept guessing on all fronts. Twists and turns all over the place. 
7. I really did feel genuine prickles of fear on my spine. It's easy to get that through the visceral sense of cinematography and sound effects in a movie, but I rarely get that in a book. However, here, I was literally freaked out. Like, I read this from roughly 6:00 PM to 8:00PM and if it had been any later, I would've genuinely been frightened, Kim Harrington is that good. 
8. The love interests! Woooo! Can I just say I love Gabriel. His protection of Clare from Cody, his passion, his understanding, how he's willing to bank his future on her decision...just his general demeanor is very appealing. In the end, the love triangle was resolved in a very satisfactory manner. 
9. I loved the ending of this book. Clarity ended on kind of an ominous note, what with the creepy prediction from that other psychic in town, but Perception ended on a high note. 
10. I don't mean to be critical of the Young Adult genre (I am a young adult, after all), but I find that some of them are characterized by rather cheap thrills. That's fine, I mean, camp is a good, fun romp occasionally, but I really think that this book is better than that. I don't mean to say that I think it was necessarily an awakening of my soul or anything, but I did think a lot about relationships and popularity and people and my own life. You know, it kind of was soul-stirring, for me at least. 
11. I don't know what to tell you other than I thought this was a well-written, engaging, entertaining book that genuinely made me care for the characters and swoon a bit over Gabriel. (Not that it's hard to make me swoon.) This is pretty much what I want to get when I go to the store looking for a new book. 

Who Should Read It:

• Mystery fans! Seriously, I was guessing and having to re-evaluate and guessing again for a good two-hundred of the almost three-hundred pages of this book. 
• People who read the first one! This one is just as good, if not better, in my opinion. 
• Most people! I really like this as a book and highly recommend it. 

Final Score: 10/10 Pretty much perfect. Not in a way that I'd ever read it again, but in a reading it was a wonderful experience kind of way. 

I checked out Kim Harrington's website (here), and apparently her next book is called The Dead and Buried and will be available next year! Ah, I'm so excited! Definitely look that up (or click that link) because it sounds really good!

Thank you for reading!

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Recently, I purchased a bunch of classic novels from Half-Price Books, and this was among them. I was very excited to read it, and it did not disappoint.

My Thoughts

1. I absolutely love Sir Walter Scott's style - it's amazing! His language is simply enthralling, and I highly recommend this book just for that. 
2. I will allow my nerdy flag to fly high: Medieval England is very near and dear to me, so I liked that a lot. 
3. I mean, come on, Robin Hood was in it! Woo!
4. I'm not going to lie, everything Wilfred went through to marry Lady Rowena and even for Rebecca was just so touching, and I thought the relationships were wonderfully portrayed. 
5. I really can honestly say I cried while Cedric was in the dungeon waxing poetic on the degradation of his race (the Saxons), Scott is that good. 
6. Brian de Bois-Guilbert. I was rooting for him, too, licentious though he was. Something about him get niggling my brain, and I finally realized what it was when he approached Rebecca in her cell before her execution and told her he'd dishonor himself as a Templar, as a knight and as a man and not turn up at the trial by combat if she only promised to love him in return. She refuses, and he's hurt that death is preferable to life with him. Think on that for a bit, it should come to you.....Sir Guy of Gisborne to Marian in BBC's Robin Hood! When the people who laid siege to Nottingham Castle told Guy he could only take his wife with him, and he proposed to Marian and she refused him! Then, later in Ivanhoe, when the trial by combat is about to commence, Brian de Bois-Guilbert asks Rebecca to climb astride his horse and is prepared to sacrifice everything, most likely have to fight for their survival and ride pell-mell out of England all together, and Rebecca still refuses him! I wanted her to love him back, even though he had his vices, I just think it's horribly sad when that level of devotion is rejected. Back to the Robin Hood analogy, it does not hold true in that respect: Robin/Marian is my OTP and I will go down with that ship. However, I, personally, am somewhat co-dependent and have a thing for damaged men (and, you know, the appreciation for Richard Armitage in leather pants that I am sure is universal to the female population). 

Who Should Read It

• Fans of Medieval romances/epic quests/knights in shining armor/damsels in distress, that kind of thing. 
• Fans of literature. 

This was an amazing book that I really enjoyed reading and have placed on The Shelf...10/10 at least...really, really, really good. If you're contemplating reading it or just looking for a book, you will not be disappointed with Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. 

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

*This review contains spoilers.*

It's time for another book review! You should expect a lot of classics from me, since I recently purchased a fairly abundant stack from a place called Half-Price Books, which I absolutely love, because they have such old, careworn copies of things - the Great Expectations I purchased even has someone's handwritten notes in it! I just love stuff like that!Anyway, I'm not reviewing this book for it's literary merit or syntactical elegance, so if you're looking for some kind of SparkNote like thing, go there, not here, this is just what I thought of the book.

Surprise, surprise, it's set in New England and centers around the eponymous House of the Seven Gables and its resident Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon, the new addition of Pheobe Pyncheon and the daguerreotypist, Mr. Holgrave. Long story short, the first American Pyncheon accused Mathew Maule of witchcraft, resulting in his death and Pyncheon receiving the land, so Maule cursed the house and the whole Pyncheon family for eternity.

My Thoughts

1. Some people might be put off by the vocabulary of this book, but it's something I love. Once you read lots of older novels, it just comes naturally for you to read and even think (and occasionally speak, to the dismay of my friends) in language like this. I absolutely revel in additions to my vernacular, and I found two wonderful ones: obstreperous and eleemosynary, meaning noisy; difficult to control and relating to charity, respectively. Now, don't you just want to incorporate that into your quotidian conversations?
2. Also, I like the overall premise of the book; I'm very interested in mystical stuff, and the book's window into the mid-19th century perspective on "Mesmerism" was quite fascinating. And, I mean, who doesn't love a good family curse/haunted house?
3. I really felt for Clifford. I wouldn't have spent fifty pages describing his many idiosyncrasies, but this is Hawthorne after all, so I don't know what I expected. Wasted potential is something that always gets me, mainly because I hate how I'm eighteen years old and have no discernible way of achieving my purpose in life. 
4. I absolutely adored Phoebe. She's the kind of person I strive to be, you know? Pleasant, kind, cheerful, that sort of thing. She struck me as very genuine, I suppose. 
5. Clifford's speech to the random old gentleman during his and Hepzibah's train excursion was completely fascinating. He discussed how the entire course of human history was basically an upward spiral; we were nomadic before, so shall we be again. 
6. Phoebe/Holgrave. I loved them, truly. They're no Darcy and Elizabeth or Heathcliff and Cathy, but they're up there. I like that they complete each other: Phoebe soothes Holgrave's oddities, and he awakens Phoebe to a different world. I also swooned when Holgrave realized he had hypnotized Phoebe but chose not to irrevocably complete that action. Their declaration of love scene was precious. It was heartfelt and genuine, and the way that they did it as Judge Pyncheon's body sat in the parlor reminded me of Robin's proposal to Marian in the BBC version of Robin Hood (2006), which was my absolute favorite proposal scene in the history of literature, cinema and television. 

Who Should Read It: 

• Fans of supernatural/paranormal mysteries.
• Fans of mid-19th century American literature
• Fans of Hawthorne, or even if you're indifferent, I suggest you give this one a try. 
• Romance lovers!

Overall Rating: I give this an 8.5/10. At no point did I actually weep or feel my heart swell, and I'm generally fairly emotional while reading, but I certainly believe reading this book to be time well spent. 

The next book I will be reviewing is Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. 

You may be wondering what kind of teenager spends the last summer before college in this manner. This kind is all I can say, though I say it with assurances that I do leave the house and visit friends occasionally. 

Thank you for reading. 

Feel free to comment.