the Fiction Demon

So I started with a terrible review, then did a mediocre review, and now I will do a positive review. Howl's Moving Castle is a very famous and popular young adult fantasy novel. It's been made into a movie by the Japanese filmmaker, Miyazaki. I've met people who claim not to like reading, but who will sing the praises of this novel, and with good reason. Howl's Moving Castle is about a teenaged girl who is cursed and turns into an old woman. She goes to live in a mysterious castle with the wizard Howl, to work there and try and get the curse reversed. I love the humor in this book. The first chapter, for example, is titled "Sophie Talks To Hats." The narrative voice is amusing and engaging, and the fantasy, fairy-tale feel is just great. The characters are fun and well-developed, and so are the relationships between them. Also, I want to talk about the title, because I think it's important to the book's success. Howl's Moving Castle is a wonder...

I like funny fantasy. I wish there was more of it. So I picked up this book because it sounded like it would be humorous, and it was. Some of the time. The Accidental Sorcerer is the first in the Rogue Agent series . Basically, the book is about Gerald, a very incompetent but goodhearted wizard living in a world with both technology and magic (the world is never explained very well). He gets fired from his job after playing a part in blowing up a magical factory and must find a new job, so he goes off to some other country with an insane king and becomes court wizard. Overall, this novel was mediocre. There were some great parts, particularly the beginning. I love the idea of a factory which makes wizards' staffs, and reading about it blowing up was even more fun. In general, I would have liked to know more about Gerald's word and how it operates, but instead I got dragged off to this unimportant little country which is still stuck in medieval times, like every other fantasy l...

This is the first book in Morgan Rice's The Sorcerer's Ring series, about a boy named Thor who is struggling to be a knight, defeat evil, be with the princess, all those things that boys do in cliche fantasy novels. Rice is a self-published author who has become very well-known. It's not because of the strength of her writing, though. This boek is truly awful. It's so bad, in just about every way. I agree with every sentiment expressed in this wonderfully-written review but let me add a few of my own. First of all, the prose is really terrible. There are grammar mistakes, awkward phrasing, continuity errors in the plot ... but okay, so we don't all have a talent for poetic language. Honestly, though, did this author even do ANY revising? At least try! The plot is, of course, a collection of every overused fantasy cliché ever. But, again, that alone is not enough to make the book the affront to fantasy that it is. The clichés were so poorly executed that I felt p...

On this blog, I plan to mostly do book and series reviews. I want to start, though, with a story that illustrates the value of fantasy in my life, and, I believe, in the world. Last summer, I had the privilege of studying abroad for a month in Cuba. I wanted to take classes I needed, work on my Spanish, and, most of all, test my ability to adapt to a new environment. The Caribbean sun was hot, the thick, wet heat that makes it hard to breathe, the language was difficult and isolating, and the food and customs were so foreign to me. Although I knew why I was there, and there were many things which I loved about the experience of living in Cuba, I could not help but feel uncomfortable and homesick. My roommates and others in my school group shared similar feelings with me. One of my roomates, a girl whose colorfully dyed hair melted and turned strange shades of blue and green in the humid heat, loved movies, and had brought a USB with dozens of them saved on it. As the days faded into h...