Book 3: The Magician King

For book three I went with The Magician King by Lev Grossman.

Author Links: Website / Blog / Twitter / Goodreads

Buy it now: Amazon / Barnes and Noble







Before I go into a book summary, let me first say that this is the second book in a series. The first, The Magicians, I read last year. I will try not to spoil too much about The Magicians here, but be forewarned that there may be spoilers to that book as I write my summary and review for The Magician King.

Book Summary:
This book picks up after The Magicians, Quentin Coldwater is now royalty in Fillory along
Julia Wicker, his crush from high school, and Eliot Waugh and Janet Pluchinsky, his friends from Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. As the story starts, Quentin has become bored with his life as king of Fillory and is searching for some adventure, something to fill his dull life. He decides to commission a ship so that he and Julia can collect back taxes from a remote island. Once there he learns of a magic key on a nearby island, and upon finding the key, he and Julia wind up back on Earth. Attempting to return to Fillory become his unintended quest. On earth he and Julia team up with Brakebills' graduate Josh Hoberman and his friend Poppy. Upon returning to Fillory, they find that the entire world of magic is in danger, and that only they can save it.

Parallel to this adventure, Julia's backstory is unfolded. Being that she is a hedge witch (meaning she learned her magic on the streets instead of in a school) her path was much different than that of Quentin's (which is told in The Magicians). After failing her entrance exam to Brakebills, Julia tries to find out anything she can about magic. After years of learning everything she can from the underground world of magic, she catches the eye of an elite group of magicians who, like her, failed their entrance exams but found a way to become powerful regardless. The group teaches her everything they know, but when they decide to further their magic by summoning a god, things go askew and Julia finds herself transformed.

My Review:
I knew going into this book that I probably shouldn't read it, but I did anyway. The reason I say this is that the first book was filled with swearing, sexual references, and graphic scenes. The only reason I read this one was because I wanted to know what happened after The Magicians, the same reason I will probably read the third book when it comes out.

The story itself is very engaging. It's a mix of a really dark Harry Potter with the magical world of Narnia. Some people feel that Grossman ripped off these books, and while I understand why they believe that, there were enough differences for me to feel that this was not completely accurate. I really liked getting to see Julia's background as a hedge witch in this book. After reading The Magicians and seeing how strict Brakebills is about how to use magic, it was very interesting to see the contrast of that in the underground world of magic. Julia quickly became my favorite character in this book, as I didn't really like Quentin in the first book, I still didn't really like him much in this book. He is not who I would choose as a main character in a book. No matter what happens to him, he's never content with his life. Every time he gets exactly what he wishes for, he is unhappy about it. Seriously, you are a powerful magician living as a king, get over yourself!

As far as storyline goes, I kind of felt like the quest to save magic took backseat to Julia. I didn't find that I really cared much whether Quentin and Julia returned to Fillory or whether magic was saved, I just wanted to read about how Julia became who she is.

All in all, this book was okay. I don't know that I would recommend it to people as there is some VERY graphic parts, including a rape scene, along with a TON of swearing. This is not a book for teenagers in any way. That being said, Grossman did end the story in a way that makes me want to find out what is going to happen in the third book, so I give him props for that.

My Rating: 4/10

Book 2: Paper Towns

For book two, I decided to finish out my John Green book set by reading  Paper Towns.

Author Links: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Tumblr

Buy it now: Amazon / Barnes and Noble








Book Summary:
The book begins in Orlando, Florida when the protagonist, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, and his neighbor and friend, Margo Roth Spiegelman, both nine-years-old at the time, find the body of one Robert Joyner, a divorced man who had committed suicide. Flash forward to high school. Q and Margo are no longer the close friends they used to be. Margo is popular and dating starting shortstop Jason Worthington while Q is a band geek, who isn't in the band but spends all his free time there with his best friends Marcus “Radar” Lincoln and Ben Starling.

Margo finds out that Jase has cheated on her with her friend Becca, so she enlists Q's help to get back at them in a night he will never forget. The next day, Q wonders if Margo will begin eating lunch and hanging out with him and his friends since she is upset with the popular kids, but she doesn't show up for school. After going missing for three days, Margo's parents file a report with the police, but decide that since this is the fifth time she's run away, they don't care if she comes back. After learning that Margo has run away, Q discovers a poster of Woody Guthrie taped to the back of her window shades. This leads him to a string a clues that he believes will ultimately lead him to where Margo has run, so he, Radar, Ben, and Margo's friend Lacey all team up to hunt her down.

My Review:
Paper Towns is my second favorite book by John Green. The story was really interesting, and I liked it a lot. About half way through the book I wasn't sure if they were going to find Margo at all, and if they did find her whether she was going to be dead or alive. Because of this, I did what I always do (and people think is crazy), I read the last chapter of the book. Most people think that ruins the book, but I like to know where a book is headed so I can prepare myself.

I enjoyed the character Q a lot. Although he doesn't have a strong voice, he was a great character that I found myself really routing for by the end as he comes to figure out not only who Margo really is but who he is as well. Along with him, I liked the secondary characters of Ben, Radar, and Lacey. In the beginning of the book, Green makes you want to dislike Lacey. He turns her character around quickly, and she adds the much needed female perspective to the group. Plus, being the only character other than Q who knows Margo at all, she is the only one who is truly worried about Margo which creates a nice bond between the two of them. Although Ben and Radar are great characters, I think that they are there more for comical relief than anything else, even though Radar definitely progresses the story at times with his knowledge of computers and the internet.

By the end, I found myself really bothered by Margo. I just didn't like her at all. I thought she was super selfish and needed to get over herself. Her character is probably my biggest issue with the book. She's just kind of a jerk, and I wanted Q to get over her and find someone better to be in love with. Other than that, there were parts of the story that were slightly confusing to follow, and I needed to reread a couple pages to understand what was going on. But, that could be more that I was reading quickly than an actual issue with Green's writing.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed myself through this book. I would recommend it to others, but be warned that there is some salty teen talk and sexual references, though nothing overly graphic and I don't believe any f bombs (I'm not totally positive about the f word, but I don't recall there being any).

My Rating: 8/10

Book 1: An Abundance of Katherines

So for Christmas my parents got me this book set:

 

And being that I love John Green (seriously, he's awesome...check out the vlogbrothers on youtube and be amazed by his awesomeness), I was super excited to open this. Now, at this point I had already read The Fault in Our Stars* and Looking for Alaska, so I started with An Abundance of Katherines.

Author Links: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Tumblr

Buy it now: Amazon / Barnes and Noble








Book Summary:
The main character is a seventeen-year-old child prodigy named Colin Singleton, and he's dated a lot of girls named Katherine. In fact, he's dated only girls named Katherine (spelled as such)...nineteen of them to be exact, and they all seem to dump him.

After being dumped by his most recent girlfriend, Katherine XIX, he and his best, and only, friend Hassan Harbish decide to go on a road trip. They end up in the town of Gutshot, Tennessee where they meet Lindsay Lee Wells and her mother Hollis. When Hollis offers them a job and a place to stay, they decide to stick around Gutshot. While there Colin comes up with a theorem that he believes will be his big Eureka moment that will transform him from child prodigy to genius, an equation that can predict the outcome of any relationship.

My Review:

So, ultimately I liked An Abundance of Katherines. It had a fun storyline that was easy to follow. It's an original concept that's humorous and super quirky, which I loved. One of my favorite things about this book is all the footnotes explaining things Colin says, and trust me, some of them you will actually need to look at to understand what he's talking about. Colin is really smart, so he has a very hard time making friends and doesn't fully understand some of the nuances of human interaction. I found the scenes where he doesn't fully understand why people do certain things very amusing.

One thing that started to get slightly annoying was the fact that Colin likes to anagram anything and everything, so there are tons of times in this book where he randomly starts anagramming.  By the end I was just skipping over those parts. Because the storyline is so easy to follow, I found myself zoning out at times and realizing that I didn't remember anything from the last page, but it never really mattered enough for me to go back and re-read it. 

All in all, this book is a fun coming of age novel that I believe teens and adults alike would enjoy. As far as swearing goes, the characters use the word "fug" to replace the f word, and I believe most, if not all, other cursing is done in other languages. There are some sexual references along with one sexual scene that is slightly graphic.

My Rating: 7/10

*I read The Fault in our Stars twice last year. It is by far my favorite of John Green's books. You will laugh, you will cry...it has everything you want in a book. If I was reviewing it right now I would be giving it a 10/10. I would definitely recommend you check it out!

2013 Book Challenge

So, I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions. I think they're slightly ridiculous. I read that statistically around 45%  of Americans make resolutions, but only about 8% end up following through. That's a lot of failure. So instead of resolutions, I try to set goals for myself to reach throughout the year, even long term goals that last over the course of multiple years.

One of my complaints from last year was that I didn't read as much as I usually do. Now, don't get me wrong, I still read quite a few books, probably more than the average person, but I love reading and didn't get to nearly as many stories as I wanted to. This year I decided to change that by making a book goal for myself. I decided to attempt to read 52 books in the year 2013. To many that may seem like a lot of books, but to me, and other avid readers, it's really not. It's an average of one book a week, and easily accomplishable goal seeing as I can read a book in a mere 3-4 hours.

Since I'm going to be reading all these books, I thought, "Why not review them while you're at it?" I love recommending fellow readers to books I've read, so this is an easy way to do it. So, come, join me on my journey!