Winds of Change by Mercedes Lackey

Title: Winds of Change (Mage Winds Trilogy #2)

Author: Mercedes Lackey (American, 1950- )
Originally published: 1992

Page count: 460

Dates read: 9/10/23-9/25/23

2023 book goal progress: 17 out of 23

Author Challenge: Mercedes Lackey

Read my other book reviews for my 2023 goals HERE.




Description on back of book:
With Valdemar in dire peril, Elspeth, Herald and heir to the throne, has come to the Vale of the Teyledras Clan to seek mage training. Instead of finding a haven, the Vale's Heartstone, a source of mage power, is attacked by a mysterious, dark Adept Mage. Elspeth, still only a half-trained mage, and the Hawkbrother-Adept Darkwind must work together to tame the broken Heartstone.

First sentence:
"Elspeth rubbed her feather-adorned temples, hoping that her fears and tensions would mercifully go, and leave her mind in peace  for just once today."

Favorite quotes:
"There was a Tayledras saying: 'No arrow shot at a target  is ever wasted, no matter how many break.' It meant that no practice or lesson, however trivial it might seem, was a loss."

"She gathered her dignity about her like a robe, and walked off into the darkness, leaving him alone."

"Wintermoon stared at all of them with the impatient air of a man ready to strangle someone if he didn't get an explanation soon."

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 7.4/10 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 7
Atmosphere   - 7
Writing Style - 8
Plot                - 8
Intrigue          - 8
Logic             - 6
Enjoyment     - 8
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:

This was a great book! Elspeth continued to have a bad attitude and she also wasn't treating her Companion well. This was annoying, but Darkwind called her on her shit and her attitude improved. The book improved exponentially after that. I'm looking forward to the third book in this trilogy!

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Mercedes Lackey have the last words:

"All things could change. If he was the same person he was only a few years ago, he'd have already been sharpening knives and plotting revenge, but revenge seemed foolish somehow. How strange, that after a life like his, revenge seemed hollow compared to simple justice."

Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adams

Title: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Author: Douglas Adams (English, 1952-2001)
Originally published: 1979

Page count: 161

Dates read: 8/12/23-8/19/23

2023 book goal progress: 15 out of 23

An extra book for 2023!

Read my other book reviews from 2023 HERE.




Description on back of book:

It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. After that, things get much, much worse.

With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.

This classic plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most importantly, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .

First sentence:
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

Favorite quotes:
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t."

" 'You know, it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”

'Why, what did she tell you?'

'I don’t know, I didn’t listen.' "

"He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down."

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."

"All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place."

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 6.3/10 - ⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 8
Atmosphere   - 8
Writing Style - 6
Plot                - 5
Intrigue          - 6
Logic             - 4
Enjoyment     - 7
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:

This is a wacky, but hilarious book. You never know what's going to happen next.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Douglas Adams have the last words:

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Title: The 5th Wave

Author: Rick Yancey (American, 1962- )
Originally published: 2013

Page count: 457

Dates read: 8/21/23-9/2/23

2023 book goal progress: 16 out of 23

July/August Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub 

Read my other book reviews from 2023 HERE.




Description on back of book:

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one. Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets a mysterious stranger who may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother.

First sentence:
"Aliens are stupid."

Favorite quotes:
"That sounds crazy. Am I crazy? Have I lost my mind? You can only call someone crazy if there's someone else who's normal. Like good and evil. If everything was good, then nothing would be good. Whoa. That sounds, well... crazy. Crazy: the new normal."

"We were the lucky ones. We'd survived the EMP attack, the obliteration of the coasts, and the plague that wasted everyone we knew and loved. We'd beaten the odds. We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't."

"I've decided to trust him, but like somebody once said, you can't force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it. My problem is that buried box is like a scab I can't stop picking at."

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 8/10 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 9
Atmosphere   - 7
Writing Style - 9
Plot                - 8
Intrigue          - 9
Logic             - 6
Enjoyment     - 8
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:

This was a great book that kept you guessing until the end. It was a blast to come up with different theories and possibilities as I was reading this. I highly suggest it!

Book to movie review:

I went into watching the movie disappointed because I knew so much of the book was going to have to be glossed over. I think if you haven't read the book, it was a good movie. As someone who has read the book, you didn't get to know (and love) the multitude of characters in the book. Some elements of the book were just skipped entirely. It was the characters that really made the book and they didn't get the opportunity to shine through in the movie.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Rick Yancey have the last words:

"He looked at me and smiled reassuringly and said, "Everything's going to be okay," because that's what I wanted him to say and it's what he wanted to say and that's what you do when the curtain is falling - you give the line that the audience wants to hear."