Words fountain from a silver quill pen . . .

Been a while, and I don't know how much longer it will be. I think I am going to move my book reviews over to Shelfari, although I might keep cross-posting them here a while longer. I have a huge stack of things I very much want to get read, so we'll see how this goes.

Read Standard Hero Behavior, by John David Anderson. Mason and Cowel are two teenagers in a town that has long passed its glory days. Darlington used to be a town of heros; Mason's own father was one of them. But Dirk Darlinger has convinced the town he's the only hero anyone needs, and one by one the old heros have gone, never to return. When Mason learns the town is in danger of being overrun by orcs, trolls, goblins, and other nasty critters, he and Cowel leave to find some real heros to save everyone.

Like the title implies, much of Standard Hero Behavior is a satire on various fantasy clichés as well as some aspects of modern life. Dirk Darlinger, for example, uses corporate sponsorship on various pieces of armor. A horse salesman talks about upgrading to the newest model and year-end clearance events. Mason has a book that teaches him about Standard Hero Behavior (SHB), but he also gets into situations that mock typical heroic adventures, such as a fight in a bar with a bullying man who wears a dress.

Unfortunately, the humor did not come off particularly well. The opening scene with the orcs is reminiscent of The Godfather, complete with goons named Tino and Vincent ("Vinnie"). Much of it seemed far too over the top; the book does a lot better near the end, when more of the jokes are due to character and not circumstance. The modern references were haphazard and felt thrown in rather than something growing out of the world.

Towards the end the book does improve a great deal. When the plot stops trying to force a laugh every other page, it gets a lot more interesting. Mason finds both his father and himself, and even though there's a happy ending, not all of the loose ends tie up.

Overall I think this would have been a lot funnier if, instead of being a story about Mason and Cowel, John David Anderson had written Quayle's Guide to Adventures for the Unadventurous instead. The excerpts Mason and Cowel read from it reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland. As it is, I give this book a rating of Neutral.

There is something so nice about children's books. They're not overloaded with prose. *grins* It feels good to know I can still get a book done in two hours or less when I have the right book.

Read Lady Friday, by Garth Nix. Arthur has survived the first four days of the week and gotten the first four parts of the Will and the Keys, but he still manages to fall headlong into Lady Friday's realm without a single backup. Which is not to say he's got to hunt down Part Five and the Fifth Key entirely himself. With a little help from old friends, Arthur is charging ahead. Leaf, meanwhile, has woken up in Lady Friday's realm, trapped with a Trustee that is definitely not interested in helping her out.

The week continues, and it's only getting worse. Arthur needs the power of the Keys now more than ever, but he can't use them without pushing himself closer to becoming a Denizen. Plagued by nightmares of the war in Thursday's realm, physical discomfort, and constant fear, he struggles to find non-magical ways to handle his problems. And he mostly succeeds. The coming books will show if he left himself enough wiggle room to prevail against the likes of Superior Saturday and Lord Sunday.

Another day, another new realm to explore. Friday's realm is as different again from the rest of the week, and the various parts are fascinating. The Paper Pushers amused me greatly, as much for the name as what they did. Lady Friday is more deranged than dangerous: getting to her is most of the trouble, and once Arthur arrives she goes down in about half a page.

Overall it was interesting to see Arthur's shifting motivations as the week rolls on. The Keys reveal a new ability, and the new part of the Will is vastly preferable to those before it. With any luck I'll be able to get my hands on Superior Saturday soon. Recommended.

Life has been a bit busy lately. But I have found a little time to read.

Read The Lost Ones, by Christopher Golden. Oliver and Collette are the most important players in this war between Atlantis and the Borderkind, but they're currently sitting in a dungeon after Oliver assassinated a king. The Sandman is back and out for revenge. Few of the Borderkind are left, and not all of them want to join the war. But no one is giving up just yet. The stories of the Legend-Born are rising, and Oliver and Collette have to step into destiny and discover the power they hold.

It has been too long since I read The Borderkind, so I was not entirely up to speed on a lot of things that happened at the beginning of the book. It dives right into the plot, with Oliver and Collette stuck in a dungeon with no way out. Blue Jay and the rest of the Borderkind that have helped them before go after them to rescue them, but the war they fight has to be one more of intrigue than power.

Frost's first words on being rescued are priceless. He continues to be the best character, though others such as Blue Jay get a chance to develop more fully. There are some interesting parallels going on with Sara and the detective that point back to Julianna and Ted Haliwell, but nothing was ever really done with that similarity. On the downside, Oliver and Collette really take a dive by the end of the book. I didn't mind when they turned out to have power, or even that they had some grand destiny as Legend-Born (though I thought it would have been more interesting if indeed they had tried to survive the whole time as ordinary people). No, the turning point for me was when Collette admits she has no physical strength to speak of and then somehow picks up a warhammer and brains someone with it. At the end of the book it's almost a deus ex machina how easily Oliver and Collette manage to do things that weren't even hinted at earlier.

Further, many of the myths seemed to die just for the sake of having them dead. What happened to Kitsune was particularly irritating. Nowhere does it say the kind of power integral to a myth might be removed, yet that's tossed in as an aside in the last few pages.

The Sandman and his eventual fate was one of the better topics in the book. Ted struggles to do something against the monster, as perhaps the only person who can do something against the monster.

Overall this was a disappointing cap on the series, with the exception of the Sandman. Don't read it if you haven't read the first two books or you'll probably just get lost. Neutral.

It's been a while. Hah. And here's why.

I finally beat Tales of the Abyss. *blinks* The first playthrough, anyway. *evil grin* I'm certain to go through it at least once more completely, though hopefully I'll always be able to carry forward enough to skip some of the really annoying sidequests (of which there were few, thankfully, and the "need lots of money" ones wouldn't sting so much if I carried over the ability to earn lots more of it).

So, thoughts. The plot is excellent. I was continually amazed at the ways they found to tie in pretty much everything in the world into the story. There were no random villages or random quests. Even the side skits managed to deepen characters substantially. Although I had known about Azeriuth from the beginning (pity I said I didn't mind spoilers back when it was all the rage with you guys; at least I refused to spoil the end for myself), the plot still continued to surprise me. The game designers put a lot of thought into the world, the politics, and the people, and it shows. Luke's moral dilemma about killing people versus being a burden on the others played out well.

I think my favorite part was that it was not a typical RPG. Luke is an anti-hero not so much in the sense that he is not good, but that he is the last person anyone would nominate. And the game doesn't promote his idiocy either. His change of heart is as amusing as it is fascinating, and by the end of it he had become someone worthy of respect.

Of course, the beginning of the game would've been intolerable without the supporting cast. Playing a spoiled brat can only go so far. Of course Jade is my favorite of the lot. His evil sense of humor is a large part of what makes the game so funny (Luke's abrasive comments being much of the rest of it). Natalia rubbed me the wrong way the majority of the game, and I doubt I will ever like her, but at least by the end I could listen to her speak without wanting to throw something at her.

Battle dynamics are a lot more interesting in live fighting versus menu fighting, even when you're at the beginning and have a handful of moves at your disposal. I think the next time around I'll try to get more creative with party-based tactics. Jade is, of course, an entire party by himself (generate FOF, use FOF, smack the enemy senseless after that), but I am almost tempted to try playing the game as someone else next time just to get a better feel for one of the fighters.

The music was mostly good, although a few themes wore on me rather fast, and I was not particularly impressed by the end credits song or the way the American release took the lyrics off the opening. That said, there were also some very beautiful themes, particularly in the last dungeon. And the option to hear some of them in music-box format was a nice treat (although I could also wish they had done some of my favorites that way).

Overall.... I think it's a real shame Final Fantasy continues its uninterrupted dominance of the RPG field. Tales of the Abyss soundly thrashes it in storyline, character development, and just plain fun. Highly Recommended to anyone looking for a game, whether story-based or action-based.

Read Green Rider, by Kirsten Britain. Karigan never thought running away from her school suspension would endanger her life. When she finds a dying messenger and agrees to deliver his letter to the king, a simple journey turns into a nightmare. Hounded by a gray-cloaked rider whose arrows bind the dead to serve him, harassed by mercenaries and bandits, helped by the ghost of the Rider she found---life is anything but simple now. But she can't exactly back out now. More than her own life is at stake.

Karigan's flight is a nonstop adventure, rushing from one hidden pitfall to the next. The ghosts were my favorite part. They have their own agenda, and Karigan is maybe lucky, maybe not, to be the recipient of their attention. It certainly keeps her on her toes.

The beginning felt a little awkward to me. Not so much how she stumbled across a dying messenger and agreed to continue his mission, but more how she discovered the ability of her broach. It made me wonder how many other innocuous thoughts would lead to hitherto unexplained powers.

Despite that, once I got into the book it was a very good ride. Recommended.

Read First Rider's Call, by Kirsten Britain. Karigan has reluctantly joined the Green Riders to spare herself further embarrassment. Realizing she'd ridden through two towns in her nightgown was quite enough. But the intrigue at the castle is thickening, and ghosts are starting to bother her again. Well, one ghost. The First Rider's ghost. And she has her eye on Karigan...

I actually liked this better than the first book, which, although adventurous, was also fairly straightforward. This one twists through space and time, and the past gets a lot more attention and exposition. The tangle of relationships doesn't neatly work out.

What I didn't like was what happened at the very end, where rather than beat the enemy, Karigan just gave him a lift. That felt too much like "I don't know how to let her win at this stage so I'm getting rid of the bad guy."

Still, the plot is splendid and I do appreciate how both of those romances worked out. Recommended.

I'm not totally drowning in games...

Read Sea of Wind, by Fuyumi Ono. In the second of the Twelve Kingdoms books, Taiki was living as an ordinary human in Japan until the day he saw a white arm beckoning him from a corner of his yard. It draws him into the Twelve Kingdoms, a world where he is revered as one of the most sacred forms of life: a kirin. Taiki quickly grows used to his new life, but he is plagued by the worry that it's all somehow a lie. Taiki can't do anything all kirin are supposed to be born knowing how to do. How can he choose a king?

If you've seen the anime, Taiki's arc will hold no surprises. At the same time, that's a very good thing. The anime was incredibly faithful to the book, and those four or five episodes brought this wonderful novel perfectly to the big screen. The novel delves deeper into the thoughts of the major characters, which is particularly nice for Taiki himself. When Taiki is taming his first shirei, you can only imagine what he's thinking in the anime. The book details every moment.

The obsession with showing the kanji various things are written in might annoy some people, but I like that they kept that detail from the original novels. The translation is very good all around; I didn't notice any errors like I had seen in the first book. This can be read as a stand-alone since it doesn't connect much with the first book. Highly Recommended.

What, another book? *grins* Abyss has a hold on me but I still find a little free time...

Read Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman. Doctor Impossible has done it all: robot armies, dinosaur armies, fungus armies... and he still hasn't managed to take over the world. Being the fourth most infamous supervillian has its perks, but winning just doesn't seem to be one of them. When a lucky break gets him out of jail, he sets on the warpath yet again, determined that this time he will succeed.

Fatale is a cyborg, the newest recruit for the Champions, who were in their day the most famous band of superheros around. The Champions have been disbanded for a while, but the disappearance of one of their own has prompted them to investigate as a team once more. And then Doctor Impossible, their arch-nemesis, escapes from prison, and the chase is on.

This book is about superheros and supervillians, but it's also poking incredible fun at them. Many times Doctor Impossible muses about the mental condition of people who dress up in tights and go out to fight crime, or even the way he himself continues to try to take over the world when he knows he's doomed to fail. I also enjoyed how the past intersperses with the present, giving the character's backstory in bits and pieces.

I had very few nitpicks with the story. The biggest was that although Doctor Impossible purports to have an IQ of 300, his diction is extremely casual and it can be hard to tell his narrative voice from Fatale. Cadel in Evil Genius, for example, was easy to pin down as very smart from the way he talked and the detail about his hobbies; Doctor Impossible did most of his scientific work off-stage. A real pity, since I was interested in the Zeta Dimension and am sure the good Doctor would have quite a bit to say about it. The other nitpick was that I had hoped to see more of the final fight between Doctor Impossible and the New Champions. If that scene had been in Doctor Impossible's point of view rather than Fatale's, I could've seen a lot more of it.

But in any case, the book is a great deal of fun both for people who like superheros and for people who think superheros are highly overrated. I have high hopes for a sequel. Recommended.

It's been a while! I haven't been reading much since Christmas, unfortunately. Blame all the new shinies I picked up. *grins*

Read Midnight for Charlie Bone, by Jenny Nimmo. Charlie Bone is quite happy to be ordinary, but his life turns upside-down when he starts hearing people in photographs talk. Grandma Bone is delighted he's finally shown some talent, and immediately packs him off to Bloor's academy. Bloor's is a frightening place full of menacing people, but Charlie makes some friends there and uncovers traces of a mystery.

Like most children's books, good and evil are clearly defined, although towards the end certain characters started getting confused about where their loyalties lie. The powers, although central to the plot, don't take over. The story of the Red King weaves throughout the everyday narrative.

The only thing I thought could have been better is that it was hard to keep track of the rest of the endowed, since most of them weren't that involved in the storyline. It made the ending harder to figure out than it should have been.

Someday I will go back and write a full review for this. For now, Recommended.

Ah, recruiting over! Busy week, but airports are good for one thing for certain: I get a lot of reading done.

Read The Alchemyst, by Michael Scott. Sophie and Josh never expected Nick and Perry Fleming, the owners of a small bookshop where Josh works, to be people right from legend. Nor did they expect to get dragged into a millenia-old war against the powerful Dark Elders who want to conquer humanity. But they're not only in the war, they seem to be an important part of it. The prophecies of Abraham the Mage point to two people with the power to save the world or destroy it, the sun and the moon, the silver and the gold. Even if they do survive, can they possibly save the world?

The Alchemyst is based on quite a bit of history, and every bit of that was meticulously researched. The way it's presented, however, is very natural and not at all an info-dump. The past and the present intertwine to create a gripping story of a war that has been raging for hundreds of years. On one side, Nicholas Flamel, guardian of the Book of Abraham the Mage (at least until it was stolen). On the other side, Dr. John Dee: "an alchemist, a magician, a sorcerer, and a necromancer, and they are not all the same thing."

Rather unfortunately, the precise meanings of those terms are never explained. The necromancer bit is clear enough, what with all the walking dead and a clever bit of death magic, but the extent of necromancy's power is not revealed. It would have been nice to get a better explanation of the different areas of power. Another real annoyance was the fact that although Josh and Sophie have archaeologist parents (which in itself is something I find highly improbable, but I'm willing to let that slide), they often seem oblivious to fairly obvious myths. The desire to explain to younger readers makes Josh and Sophie come across as really stupid.

On the other hand, it is an engaging adventure, and I was very irritated to find out there will be sequels because nothing else is out yet... Oh well. Recommended.

Read The Icebound Land, by John Flanagan. Having been captured, Will and Evanlyn are sold into slavery. Although they continue to work towards escape, it looks increasingly unlikely in this land of winter. Meanwhile, Halt and Horace join forces for a rescue party. Their quest grows increasingly sidetracked as the well-meaning Horace trounces corrupt knight after corrupt knight and the locals start to see him as a wandering hero.

Like the previous two books, the strength of this one is its unexpectedness in the middle of all the familiar elements of an adventure set inside a vaguely medieval world. Knights, for instance. Various knights tend to guard bridges and roads and demand either tribute or combat. Halt's stance on this is as follows.

"It's to do with what these idiots call chivalry," he explained. "If he were to be killed or wounded by another knight in knightly combat, that would be quite excusable. Regrettable perhaps, but excusable. on the other hand, if I put an arrow through his empty head, that would be considered cheating. He's sure to have friends or relatives in the area. These morons usually travel in packs. And if I kill him, they'll want to come after us. It's a damned nuisance, as I said."

Exchanges like that make Horace and Halt's sections the best in the book. Will and Evanlyn start interesting, but once Will got addicted to warmweed his storyline really tanked. I am not sure what drug has the power to make addicts complete zombies when they aren't using it, nor what magical powers of quitting it allow him to just wake up out of it at the end. Like the previous two books, the ending is fairly weak (though Horace and Halt have a good ending for their share), but it's a lot better than the previous two. I hold out high hopes for the next book. Recommended.

I've got a few more to go, but very little time, so we'll see what happens. I'm officially part of a writing group now too, so I really need to get my butt in gear and get some story stuff done.

Rereading so many good things right now... and have a huge stack of crap due this weekend at the library, so I really ought to be better about setting priorities.

Read Dragonhaven, by Robin McKinley. Jake has spent his whole life at Smokehill, one of the only dragon preserves in a world where dragons are both barely tolerated and nearly extinct. His entire life goes out the window when he finds a dead poacher next to a dying dragon---and he decides to save the baby dragon's life. Quite apart from the practical trouble of taking care of something that won't recognize anything else as Mother, saving a dragon is highly illegal. If anyone finds out, all of Smokehill would be shut down. Jake himself would go to jail for a felony. But he can't just let it die . . .

In some ways this book reminded me a lot of Sunshine: a hero pushed beyond mortal endurance, struggling against the terror of being found out and the sheer weight of exhaustion. Jake makes an amusing Mommy. He's totally infatuated with the baby dragon, and despite the fact that he's the wrong size, shape, and species, he persists in caring for it.

That being said, reading one book about raising a baby dragon is a lot like reading any other. Interesting, engaging, but not nearly at the level of Sunshine for encouraging re-readings. But end of the book is almost like another story altogether. The whole legal mess with the poacher boils over, as do the problems inherent in running a park to show off dragons while at the same time trying to preserve them. Jake discovers more to dragons than he ever dreamed.

There were aspects I didn't like as much. The way the story mutates at the end into something where people randomly declared they were homosexual and other people started sleeping together was a little disturbing. It happens in Sunshine, somewhat, but at least there it's fairly well established from the beginning of the book that this is what to expect from those characters; here it felt like a big surprise. And not the good kind of surprise.

Also, I really hate how the story begins. It's about four pages of rambling before anything like a story picks up, and it's not rambling you can really connect with, either. It sounds like a writer having writer's block. Which it is, although the writer in question is supposed to be Jake. I find it hard to see how that can engage; even after having read the book, if I were to reread it I'd skip that section because there's no point in reading it again. (Contrast with Sunshine, which starts right at the moment the main character's life went to hell, at a hundred miles an hour).

Overall it's a McKinley book, and still good, but not the first thing I'd recommend to anyone looking to get into her stuff. It does leave well open the possibility of a sequel (which probably won't happen, if McKinley's track record is anything to go by), but ties up enough of the ends to be complete itself. Balance the generally solid writing against the subject matter and the fact that the end of the book kind of gets away from itself. Recommended.

Busy, busy, busy. But getting caught up on books.

Read The Wall and the Wing, by Laura Ruby. Gurl is an orphan living in Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless, with no talent at all for flying and no friends. That is, until she stumbles across a cat. She falls in love, but the headmistress uses that love to force Gurl to steal expensive items for her. And then there's Bug, the somewhat helpful, somewhat annoying boy who insists the cat actually belongs to him, since he found it in the hall after it had escaped Gurl's room. But the headmistress is not the only one who wants to exploits Gurl's ability to turn invisible. And those criminals will do anything to get Gurl on their side.

I wanted to like this book, if only for the concept of everyone being able to fly, generally. But to say they can "fly" is pushing it. It seems to be more of a low float, as people who actually can go higher than a few feet are admired, and the Wings are those that can go up about ten stories. So people fly, sorta, but they also use various mechanical contraptions to get around because flight in and of itself isn't that useful.

And flight wasn't the only thing that makes this book different from our world. Cats are rare animals, birds of all types are the most common pets, and some type of magic is working, but it's never explained. Some of the changes fit, some were puzzling but I was willing to go along with (how, for example, a cat could become a rare animal when they can have so many kittens and the city's just full of prey), and some annoyed me with the randomness. The Personal Assistant, for example. Not a word spoken about these guys until ten pages before the end.

It's not a bad book, really. I just couldn't bring myself to care for it. The wacky hijinks and silly names will probably appeal to the kids this targets, but there were too many loose ends for me. Why did the mechanical monkeys work? What is the limiting factor keeping people from flying higher? What is magic and how does it work? Overall it's probably worth a read, but I'm rating it Neutral.

And it is SUCH a pity, because for the flying bit alone I was willing to give it a Recommended, until I saw how everything actually worked... or rather, attempted to work.

Been a while, I know. Baten Kaitos/Origins will be the death of me for maybe another month, until I've got both games beat and can take it slower on the replay. BKO is a definite replay, and I will probably replay that first just to have the joy of watching it the other way around my second time through.

Read Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy. Stephanie didn't know what to expect when her Uncle Gordon dies, but inheriting his house was definitely far from her thoughts. And then she meets Skulduggery Pleasant, a friend of her uncle, who saves her life the first night in her new house. A friend who just happens to be a skeleton that can use Elemental magic. A friend investigating her uncle's death. Stephanie teams up with Skulduggery and discovers a world of magic, intrigue, and danger. But as they get closer to the fabled Scepter of the Ancients, that new world is slipping closer and closer to war.

Stephanie might be twelve, but she's got a sharp wit and a lot of spunk. She has a lot in common with her uncle, or so everyone says... I would have loved to meet this uncle in more detail, except he dies in the first sentence. He's a writer, and it's a real pity his books don't actually exist. "She noticed the way he would set up a strong and noble hero and, over the course of the book, systematically subject his hero to brutal punishment in a bid to strip away all his arrogance and certainty, so that by the end he was humbled and had learned a great lesson. And then Gordon killed him off, usually in the most undignified way possible."

Skulduggery Pleasant is charming, powerful, and very sarcastic. He and Stephanie have a lot of great exchanges, and her literalism and his sarcasm play against each other perfectly. They're both obstinate when they want to be, good at making connections, and able to see through to the heart of things.

My only regret is that some of the secondary characters didn't get fleshed out as much as I would have wanted. Granted, given that the majority of the book is in Stephanie's point of view, it would have been very hard to set certain things up, but one of the betrayals was something I thought could have used a little more hinting earlier on.

On the whole, though, this is an incredible read and I am highly anticipating a sequel. I see something listed for April that looks promising, so hopefully soon I will get to read more. This volume comes Highly Recommended.

Took me a while, but I finally got around to reading the third book.

Read The Sword and the Flame, by Stephen R. Lawhead. Quentin has settled in as King and has built a family for himself. But Nimrood the Necromancer has returned, hungry for revenge. Nimrood kidnaps the Prince and Toli and stirs up the people of the realm against Quentin and Quentin's god. Quentin finds himself unexpectedly alone and descends into mad grief. Everything is being taken away from him: his son, his family, his friends, his faith. Will the promise of a new era indeed come to pass, or will it crumble like so much dust?

If you've read the first two books in the trilogy, you should have a pretty good idea what to expect right now. In fact, if you've read the above paragraph and can make an educated guess about the ending, you have the whole story. The most interesting thing about the whole book, for me, was seeing Quentin descend into madness. He's been so noble in both the previous books, pure in motive and in deed, that it was quite a change to see him raving at his friends and behaving very badly in general.

The main focus of the book, spiritually, is about how a new era of faith is built. There are a number of good discussions about faith, what it means to have faith, and the strange role the Most High takes compared to most gods. It can feel a bit like a sermon wrapped up in prose at times, but the points are good.

My main complaint, other than the book's straightforwardness, was that it never went into depth on certain things like Esme's marriage or Toli's role. Esme might not be telling anyone else what happened to her, but the narrative goes into her head often enough that it's frustrating not to get anything definite. Similarly, Toli has so little characterization that I'm left wondering at the end of the book if they ever did plan to get married.

If you liked the first two, read this one. If you didn't read the first two, best pick those up first, as this one explains nothing about the earlier books, despite Nimrood making his return. Recommended, with the same caveats that applied to the earlier books.

*stares at huge book piles* I need to get to work on these. Pity everything's so disorganized that it will take forever to find anything until I get bookshelves.

I had enough time on hold (see below) to actually get a book done. How sad.

Read The Warlords of Nin, by Stephen R. Lawhead. Ten years have passed since Quentin rescued the King from his imprisonment under Nimrood's sorcery. In all that time the land has been at peace, but it is this very peace and prosperity that brings the shadow of war. The warlords of Nin are marching over the land, bringing blood and fire. Quentin is drawn into this by chance, but his news of the invasion starts the war.

The problems of the last book still plague this one. Flat characterizations, a straightforward plot, a villain too cardboard to really seem threatening. Add to that a failing to explain anything that happened in the last book in any depth and you have a book that will not stand very well on its own. It reads a lot more like part two to In the Hall of the Dragon King.

And the romance. Ugh. The girls were sickeningly in love, and for the most part very helpless. Granted, they aren't knights. But I find it a bit irritating that the only female characters presented are the ones that sit at home and wait for their men to return. At least in the first book the Queen was slogging through the mud with them.

That being said, the faith aspect was equally present, and had a much larger role in the ending. Quentin faces much bigger challenges about what he believes: faith is easy until he considers it also puts him in line to be some great hero out of legend. Quentin does not think he can live up to it, particularly given his now-useless right arm. But like all challenges in the book, these are resolved fairly quickly and without much pain.

The battles were also fairly interesting, particularly the tricks revealed at the end. I am still wondering what the flashiness at the end was supposed to mean, although it was a nice fulfillment of the vision Quentin received in the first book. Durka kinda got dropped halfway through the book, though. I was expected Yeseph and his buddies to have one last scene before the end, and they never showed up.

I still hold these to be more children's books, although perhaps the torturous death scenes are supposed to change my mind. Or not. If kids are anything like I was as a kid, they'll eat it up. Treat it like a children's book and it's a nice story, but don't go looking for any profound depth. Recommended.

Ok, not a book rant, but a rant nonetheless. I had to call ATT today cause I had a dispute about my billing---they charged me twice for internet access this month. System hiccup, whatever, but basically billing me twice over for one thing. Mistake. So I call the number on my bill. Wait for fifteen minutes on hold. Get a lady whose first words to me are, "Oh, you're in KANSAS. You need to go to a different service area." Bleep, on hold again. Another fifteen minutes. Talk to a guy who handles this stuff. "Oh, I see they did charge you twice. You need to talk to Internet Services." Bleep, on hold again. By now the Christmas music is making me very angry... I never liked the songs they're playing, and they seem to be on repeat; I've heard one of them three times. Get to another lady, hopefully in the right department, and the first thing she does after taking my information (again) is put me on hold. No music this time. After maybe ten minutes of utter silence, back to the stupid hold message. Oh, and there's the music again. The same song. Another fifteen minutes. Get a guy who tells me company already knows the problem is there, and will be issuing a credit... next month. Great. So, sum total: wasted one hour of my phone minutes for something that was handled in about 30 seconds. Four people. @!#$()*# hold music. *headdesk* I need chocolate...