fantasy

Book Review: A World without Princes

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A World Without Princes by Soman Chainani

A World Without Princes (The School for Good and Evil, #2)
by  Soman Chainani (Goodreads Author), Iacopo Bruno (Illustrator)

3 out of 5 stars

Sophie and Agatha are back at the School for Good and Evil, except now the schools are divided between boys and girls. The girls want to make the boys their slaves, and the boys want to kill Sophie because they blame her for all the changes in the fairy tale world. Agatha wished that she could have Tedros as her prince, and Sophie will do anything to keep them apart. Sophie tries so hard to be good, but will her witchy evil side come out despite Agatha’s friendship?

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Book Review: The Cloud Kingdom

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The Cloud Kingdom by Máire Zepf

The Cloud Kingdom
by Máire Zepf (Goodreads Author)

5 out of 5 stars

This circular collection of fairy stories is set in the framework of a girl who makes a deal with the fairies after they kidnap her cat. If they return her cat, she agrees to read them a story every week. Each story leads into the next, as the characters in the current story begin to tell another story which leads us into the next chapter, similar to the story structure of The Thousand and One Nights.

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Book Review: Charlie Bone and the Time Twister

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Charlie Bone and the Time Twister by Jenny Nimmo

Charlie Bone and the Time Twister (The Children of the Red King, #2)
by Jenny Nimmo

5 out of 5 stars

Henry has been magically thrown forward in time from 1916, and the evil Bloor family want their revenge on him. Charlie Bone and his friends have to find a way to return Henry to his own time, or at least get Henry away from the Bloors.

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Book Review: The Ring of Five

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The Ring of Five by Eoin McNamee

The Ring of Five
by Eoin McNamee

3 out of 5 stars

Danny ends up at Wilsons Academy, a school for spies in another Lower World. They work to stop an army of Cherbs from invading the Upper World of humans. Danny makes friends among the spy cadets of the academy. Les is a thief with wings. Dixie can teleport anywhere she can see her way through. And Vandra has special healing powers. Together they learn all the skills they need to spy on the evil Ring of Five who control the Cherb army, but the most essential skill for any spy is the art of betrayal.

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Book Review: The School for Good and Evil

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The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

The School for Good and Evil (The School for Good and Evil, #1)
by Soman Chainani (Goodreads Author),Iacopo Bruno (Illustrator)

3 out of 5 stars

Sophie and Agatha are kidnapped and taken to the School for Good and Evil where villains and princesses are trained to follow their own fairy tales. Beautiful Sophie is put in the school for evil to train as a witch, and brooding Agatha is placed in the school for good to become a princess. At first, the girls think they must have been mistakenly placed in the wrong schools, but they gradually realize that the magic can see into their innermost hearts. The girls refuse to conform to the school’s training, insisting that good and evil can be friends, but are they right? Can Sophie and Agatha continue to be friends when everything in the fairy tale world is pushing them apart?

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Book Review: DragonLight

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DragonLight by Donita K. Paul

DragonLight (DragonKeeper Chronicles, #5)
by Donita K. Paul

Kale and Bardon are excited to join their friends Regidor and Gilda on a quest to search for the lost meech dragon colony in the North. But they are dismayed to hear reports of a religious faction perverting the truth of God and forcing people to adhere to rigid rules, stealing their property, and infiltrating the government. When they are attacked by small black dragons, they know something deeper is happening, and an old legend might be awakening. As they continue to search for the meech dragon colony, they hope to find answers to these mysteries that will help to defeat their enemies.

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Book Review: Games Wizards Play

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Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane

Games Wizards Play (Young Wizards, #10)
by Diane Duane 

4 out of 5 stars

Kit and Nita are invited to be mentors to a young wizard presenting a new spell design at the Wizards Invitational Competition. But their mentee, Penn, is a flamboyant jerk and they find it difficult to be patient with him.
Dairine is mentoring a shy Indian wizard, Mehrnaz, who has a brilliant design for a spell to stop earthquakes, but Mehrnaz has very low self-esteem due to her overbearing family. Dairine encourages her to have self-confidence, but Dairine is distracted with her own problems trying to locate her missing friend, Roshaun.

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Book Review: Tales Before Narnia

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Tales Before Narnia by Douglas A. Anderson

Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction
by Douglas A. Anderson (Editor)

4 out of 5 stars

This collection of short stories and poems includes works that influenced C.S. Lewis or were direct forerunners of some of his ideas. The list includes G.K.Chesterton, George Macdonald, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Grahame, and Edith Nesbit. There are also works from some of Lewis’s fellow Inklings, friends and acquaintances, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Roger Lancelyn Green, and William Lindsay Gresham.

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Book Review: Midnight for Charlie Bone

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Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo

Midnight for Charlie Bone (The Children of the Red King, #1)
by Jenny Nimmo

Charlie discovers that he has a magical ability to hear voices from people in pictures and photographs. His evil aunts are delighted, because now he can attend the prestigious Bloors Academy. But Charlie is not sure his new school is a nice place. He meets some good friends, but there are many mysteries at Bloors Academy, not all of them pleasant.

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Book Review: Reignited

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Reignited by Colleen Houck

Reignited (Reawakened, #0.5)
by Colleen Houck

The Egyptian gods have many rules that bind their powers, but the most important one is that none of the gods are allowed to marry each other, because any resulting child would drain the magic from the cosmos. And yet, Isis and Osiris fall in love with such a passion that they are willing to rewrite the stars to create a way to be together. Seth, the evil god of chaos, desires Isis for himself, and as he gradually gains more power, he tests his ability to unmake even a god.

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