Books Read in 2010: The Great Fablehaven Hunt

Before I start, I need to mention that I forgot to mention a book that I had read, that being Sea of Monsters, the sequel to The Lightning Thief. I feel bad about forgetting it, and it has been added to the list after Howl's Moving Castle, and it will make this post add three books to the list.

Sea of Monsters
The Sequel to the lightning Thief, in this book we find Percy Jackson trying to survive a normal school (normal for him being what he is [a demigod]). It doesn't go well as it is attacked by monsters and Percy must get to the safety of Half-blood hill, where he discovers something awful that will affect the rest of the book and his quest.

I've already said that I love reading about mythology, and so I loved this book. It was a good follow up to the first one and made the situation regarding Percy's birth a little more ominous by the end. I also need to get a hold of the next three books somehow.


The Wheel of Time Book 2: The Great Hunt
These are huge books! The Wheel of Time is a classic series that is still going on, written by Robert Jordan and now Brandon Sanderson. The plot is so very very complicated to try and explain, especially starting at the second book, so I won't really try, I'll just say that yes, there is a dragon in this book (though a very different type of dragon).

These books take a long time for me to read. They are good books and enjoyable, but it seems that I have little interest to keep picking them up until about the second half when I find that I can't put them down. That's about 300 pages of dragging my feet to get to the good parts (and the good parts are really good parts, I must say) which is one reason I started reading 6 books at once, so that I would have something to motivate me through the first half of the book. I'm not trying to say that the first half of the books are terribly boring, a lot happens in them, they just didn't do it for me.


Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague
Yay Fablehaven! I'm really liking these books. And the best part? This one had dragons! Yay!

Okay, so this is the third book, and it takes place almost right after the second one. The ending of the second was filled with a startling discovery, and we spend a good deal of the third book investigating that discovery as it will shape the future of the Fablehaven books. We learn more about Kendra and her still pretty new abilities, and Seth becomes a much more important character.

Something awful is happening in Fablehaven (as hinted in the title), something far worse than ever before, that could destroy Fablehaven forever. But first, we'll take a side trip to another preserve that has a dragon on it! Sweet!

I'm thinking you should all read this book!

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign
Throne of Jade
The Lighting Thief
Howl's Moving Castle
Sea of Monsters
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star
The First King of Shannara
Inkheart
The Great Hunt
FableHaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague

Oh, and I guess you could go look at this.

Books Read in 2010: Dragon Thiefs

I was supposed to update this a long time ago, as I finished these books a long time ago. I am a champion procrastinator. Anyway!

Throne of Jade

This is a book about dragons! Automatic +1 awesome. Throne of Jade is the Sequel to His Majesty's Dragon and takes place during the Napoleon Wars. England and France are at war because Napoleon is being Napoleon, and instead of just fighting on land and sea, they also fight in the air with dragons! There's another +1 awesome.

The main dragon is called Temeraire and I'm sure that I've never pronounced that correctly. His captain is Laurence who was a ship captain before Temeraire hatched, and was then thrust into the air force. I think Laurence is a pretty cool guy, eh slays Frenchmen and doesn't afraid of anything. (Obscure Internet references FTW!)

The main conflict is that Temeraire is a super rare Chinese dragon and the Chinese want him back. Temeraire doesn't want to go back, and this causes problems.

This book was awesome and had tons of dragons (+1 awesome) and I was speaking in an English accent for weeks after reading it. If you like history and if you like dragons, you should totally read this. NEXT BOOK!

The Lightning Thief

While this doesn't have any dragons, it does have a lot of Greek Mythology. Like, if everything in Greek Mythology was true and what that would mean for today. Basically the main character is a demi-god and for a good part of the story he is trying to find out who is father is. He is eventually given a quest to stop a looming war by finding something that was stolen from Zeus. Hades is the primary suspect and so they head for the underworld and have lots of adventures on the way.

I'm a total nerd, and whilst reading this I had to look up Greek Mythology to better understand who the characters were and what their stories are. This made my inner nerd giddy. Yay for being a nerd!

If you find Greek Mythology interesting, you should totally read this series. Highly recommended.

List:
The Demon's Lexicon
Fablehaven
The Third Sign
Throne of Jade
The Lighting Thief

I'll have more to add soon. I'm reading six books at once, so it takes some time to finish them. Hopefully I'll actually add them when I finish instead of waiting for weeks.

Fantasy Mythology

One of the reasons I like writing fantasy is because I can create a completely new world, and then I can come up with how it was made, how the people in the world believe it was made, and how similar or different those two things are.

I like mythology in general. I mostly realized this because of The Lightning Thief which I am currently reading, which is all about Greek mythology. For Skies of Fire I knew what the people believed in, but I didn't really know what actually happened until recently in my writings when a plot twist surprised me and in order for that twist to make sense, I realized that I needed to know how this world was made, and by who, and a few minor events since then. This was fun. Even if most of it won't make it into the story, I still enjoyed thinking it up. It makes the world I made feel more real to me.

I'm also reading a book called "The Third Sign." In the first couple of chapters, a good deal of the worlds mythology is explained and revealed, and I loved it. It was interesting and unique and I liked learning about the world that I'm exploring through the pages.

Yes, I realize that I'm a nerd.

On a note about Fablehaven: I just read the chapter in it called "Inside the Barn." It was probably the weirdest chapter I've ever read in any book. I was like this while reading it O.o Not to say that its a bad book or that I'm giving up on it, its just weird is all. I'll talk more about it when I finish.