Rescuing the Queen was easy, now Tania has to save the entire faerie realm. Now they must rescue King Oberon if there is to be any hope of winning the war. He is bound in an amber prison surrounded by bars of Isenmort, which will make his release very difficult, if only they knew where to find him. Tania, Edric and Tania’s two sister Cordelia and Zara set off on a quest to Ynis Maw, the end of the faerie world. They hope to find King Oberon, release him from his prison and join his power with Queen Titania’s to over throw the Sorcerer King. The journey is far and there are many obstacles to face. Will they rescue King Oberon in time and lead them into victory?

The Sorcerer King was my favorite book of The Faerie Path series. The characters were finally well defined, maybe it helped that I had gotten to know them in the three books. Even though the book is predicable at times, I still enjoyed the adventures to Ynis Maw and the new characters that were introduced. I loved the exploration into the faerie realm, as well as the never-ending supply of action and adventure around every turn. If you are a fan of the first two books, you will not be disappointed with the third.

Add The Scorcerer King to your Rental Pool

Tania and Edric return to the mortal world to locate Queen Titania, but that is the least of her worries. Her three day disappearance into the faerie realm, has left her parents in a whirlwind of despair and worry. There isn’t much surprise that when she returns home with a story of running off to find Evan that she is grounded. She may be in trouble with her parents but she still finds time to pursue the missing queen. Tania and Edric are able to locate the lost queen after they find that she is working for a law firm, but unfortunately she is away on business. Making contact with the lost queen takes a back seat when Tania’s sister appear in her bedroom and inform her of the doom that had fallen on the faerie realm. A doom that may crossing the realms to come after them.

The Lost Queen is book two of the Faerie Path. I did enjoy this second installment, but I felt that the story was a little rushed. Everything just happened so quickly, I think it would have been better if the plot would have been more drawn out. I realize that this is a fantasy but some of the actions and decisions that Tania’s mortal parents made seemed a little bit to convenient to the plot. I mean really, if I ran off for three days and asked my parents to go to Florida for two weeks, they would laugh in my face. This book may not be as complex as some other stories that involve faerie references, but there is a strong enough pull for me to want to read the next book in the series, The Sorcerer King.

Add The Lost Queen to your book pool.

Orphaned at an early age Mary Seymour’s life isn’t luxurious or pampered as you would think the daughter of a queen’s life would be. Her mother died shortly after she was born and her father was sentenced to death for betraying the crown, leaving Mary to become nothing more than a seamstress in a duchesses’s household. Soon after the death of her guardian, Mary discovers that she indeed has a destiny all her own. “Fetch the red queen’s daughter from the house of shadows. Bring her to your home beside the dark wood. School her well in the white magician’s wisdom so that she may go forth into the world and fulfill her calling when the virgin queen ascends the throne.” Lady Strange becomes Mary’s new guardian and she trains her in the ways of the white magicians.

When Mary reaches the age of sixteen she is invited to court by Queen Elizabeth and is soon made a lady-in-waiting. The queen’s court, however is even more corrupt then Mary initially believed. And the person that may possibly be the most dangerous of all, is none other than her very own cousin, Edmund Seymour.

The Red Queen’s Daughter is a perfectly blended masterpiece of historical fiction and fantasy. Although the real May Seymour, I found in research died in infancy, Kolosov’s story made me believe that she might have lived an extraordinary life. At times I thought the plot was becoming predictable, but it continued to surprised. The ending is very open, I would love to know more of the story. Perhaps there will be a sequel in the future, I can only hope! I immensely enjoyed this book, and I recommend it to all fans of historical fiction and fantasy.

Add The Red Queen’s Daughter to your book pool!

Anita is on the verge of turning sixteen, and her life couldn’t be any better. She has wonderful parents and friends, she has the lead in the school play, and she has caught the eye of the new boy Evan. On the day before her birthday Evan takes Anita out for a surprise, but the evening lands the two in the hospital. They both seem fine, but Evan has yet to wake up from the trauma. Anita on the other hand is having wonderful dreams of growing wings and flying out windows and receiving wonderful but mysterious gifts! She is visited by a young man in one of her “dreams” and is transported to the world of Faerie. Anita comes to realize that she isn’t dreaming at all. She is actually in the land of the Faerie and she is the long lost princess Tania. The man of her dream is faerie lord Gabriel Drake whom she was to marry before she disappeared into the moral world a mere 500 years ago. And that her boyfriend Evan is really Gabriel’s servant, Edric. In the sting of Edric’s betrayal Anita/Tania turns to Gabriel for comfort, but does he truly love her or is he after nothing but her power.

I really liked this book, I won’t say that I loved it but I did enjoy reading it. It is also the first in a series and from experience it seems that they get better as they go along, so I am hoping that I will enjoy The Lost Queen and The Sorcerer King even more. I felt sorry for Anita’s character, she really wanted to belong to the Faerie world, but I understood how she just couldn’t let go of everything that she knew. Some of the characters at times were a little transparent it wasn’t too hard to figure out who the bad guys were. Even so, if you like the fantasy genre I don’t think you will be disappointed with this book.

Add The Faerie Pathto your book pool.

Jordan’s life is a mess. It all started three months ago when her dead ex-boyfriend shows up outside her winder. Yes, he is still dead, but he didn’t commit suicide like everyone thought, he’s a vampire. Every night it is the same routine, Jordan let me in, you know I’ve always loved you. Jordan despite fantasizing that he does still love her can’t bring herself to let him in. She is afraid. She doesn’t go out after dark because she knows he will be there waiting for her. Jordan has three good friends but she doesn’t really feel like she fits in. She has social anxiety and finds it hard to deal with people at school, so she misses a lot of class, adding to her messy life. But then there is Danny, the boy that she liked before Michael and the boy that she may still like, he might just be worth living for. When Jordan realizes how evil Michael really is, it may be too late.

Uninvited didn’t really do anything for me. It was a really quick read, and the storyline lacked real strength. The characters were mediocre and lacked depth. I can’t say that I really related to any of the characters either, they were all complete messes. I think this story could have been better if it would have actually started when Jordan met Michael, so you would have some real insight into their relationship. I didn’t understand why she thought she still had feelings for him, when he just went around and slept with all the girls in school after they broke up. I was hoping for a good read and I was left very disappointed.

Add Uninvited to your book pool.

This book has a lot of potential. It filled my mind with questions, and urged me to read on. However, those answers finally came, they seemed ill-thought out and rushed. It was as though the authors of House has chosen the first clichéd ending that came to mind and rolled with it.

The book centers on the story of a married couple who are facing issues in their marriage, as well as their own personal demons. They become stranded and venture to a nearby house to use a phone. There the meet another couple in the same situation. Their brief attempts to find rescue go nowhere, and soon they find themselves in a confusing world with a man intent on killing them stalking them through the house.

Needless to say, this is no ordinary house. If it were the book would probably have gotten a different title. The house becomes an entity in and of itself, changing to represent each person’s individual nightmares. This is intriguing. You think you’ll find out more of their character by what they see, you’ll get more back story, more depth. Sadly, I never really felt that I did. Again, facts are thrown out but they never truly seem to explain the characters’ motivation or history.

I was strangely hopeful that this book would continue to be as compelling as it started out to be, but I was disappointed in the final forty pages. This would make for a good plane read if you like the supernatural.

Rent House at Bookswim

- Kristin
Diverxtrme

I have read several Patricia McKillip books and really enjoy the imagery and poetry of her books. The prequel to Solstice Wood, Winter Rose, is one of my favorite books by Patricia McKillip. Unfortunately, Solstice Wood did not meet my expectations.

The story takes place in a modern setting instead of a far off place and time. Sylvia is the distant descendant of Rois Melior from Winter Rose. Solstice Wood in turn is a distant descendant of Winter Rose. Instead of drawing me in, the story felt disconnected and remote. I couldn’t relate to the characters or feel their emotions in the way I have come to expect in Patricia Mckillip’s books.

The story is told from the viewpoint of several different characters adding to the disconnected feeling. Just when you start to get used to a character and the way the think and feel, the story switches gears and you have to start seeing things from the view of a different character. Because of this, you never really get attached to any one of the characters.

Solstice Wood was a disappointment when I was hoping for a story that would pull me in and make me feel the characters longing and hunger and anger and love. Try instead some of Patricia McKillip’s other books such as The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Winter Rose.

Rent Solstice Wood at BookSwim.

Some novelists darken with age, expressing ever deepening gloom about the human condition as they glimpse the bigger picture. (Exhibit A: Philip Roth.) Others, unaccountably, soften. In the latter category is Ian McEwan, the British writer who began his career in the 1970s and ’80s with a string of macabre books about incest, depravity, and murder, but whose more recent work glows with a sweetly romantic faith in the human potential for happiness. In particular, domestic happiness. It is not easily attained, however, this happiness of McEwan’s. And it is almost always under assault — by the demented stalker of Enduring Love, by Saturday’s disenfranchised intruder. In his latest novel, the exquisite On Chesil Beach, the threats to the good life are more prosaic but no less deadly: immaturity, impatience, the impulsive wrong decision.
”They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible,” begins this compressed, crisp, but warmly specific fable. The year is 1962, and Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting are dining in their hotel suite on England’s Chesil Beach. They are deeply in love, a state that McEwan treats tenderly and with utmost respect: ”They had so many plans, giddy plans, heaped up before them in the misty future, as richly tangled as the summer flora of the Dorset coast, and as beautiful.”
Moving gracefully between the two, McEwan captures both their shared joy and their terrible private worries, almost exclusively about what will transpire when they approach the ”four poster bed, rather narrow, whose bedcover was pure white and stretched startlingly smooth, as though by no human hand.” Edward — eager, ordinary — fears ”arriving too soon.” Florence agonizes not about arrival, but the journey itself. Sexual squeamishness has never been written about more adroitly or sympathetically. In a wedding handbook Florence finds ”certain phrases that almost make her gag: mucous membrane, and the sinister and glistening glans. Other phrases offended her intelligence, particularly those concerning entrances: Not long before he enters her…”
Put like this, you can hardly blame her. But toward that portentous bed and their future they proceed, Edward and Florence, with their anxieties as well as their ardent, fragile love. To reveal what lies in store would lessen the pleasure of reading this small masterpiece, though it’s hard to imagine that anything could spoil it. “A”