This is the best damned book I have read in a very long time. It is definitely right up there with Harry Potter and Eragon and you should go and read it NOW!!!
The story is about Sonea, a slum-living girl, who discovers she has magic powers. I can’t really tell you anymore because the story’s a bit like Harry Potter and Eragon where it kind of chronicles her journey and there isn’t really one main event that happens.
Let me tell you how much I enjoyed it. As soon as I finished the book, my first thought was to get the hell online to check if the second and third books have already been published (which they are) so that I can get my Trudi Canavan- hungry hands on them. My second thought was to see if Borders has an online catalogue to check if they stock the book so that if they don’t, I can buy it online IMMEDIATELY so that it will get to me as soon as possible. And my third thought, which underlay all the other thoughts as I thought them was to blog about it so that the few people who read this blog will get to experience similar joy from reading this book.
If the second and third books are as compelling as this first one, the series will skyrocket to the lofty heights of Number One Favourite Fantasy Book. Because not all of the Harry Potter books were amazing (Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix I am talking to you!) and because 90% of Eragon’s ideas and characters are stolen from other books (of course, if you haven’t read any of the books his ideas are stolen from then Eragon is truly amazing and actually, though I don’t really want to admit it, better than the books he stole from).
In other book related news, I must say that I am truly and unalterably disappointed with the turn Artemis Fowl has taken. The first 3 books were fantastic (with the first and third being slightly more so) and then Opal’s Deception came. Which had it’s moments. But, Eoin Colfer, you well and truly lost me with The Lost Colony. So much so that I couldn’t even bear to read it a second time, despite barely remembering what the story was about. And to think I would skulk around in the children’s section reading your more than slightly retarded publication on Artemis Fowl’s secret files. I even forgave the fact that it was blue and shimmery and gimicky. I even bought your other non-Artemis Fowl-related books assuming that the ingenuity exhibited in Artemis Fowl must surely manifest similarly when channeled elsewhere. And I even forgave you when it was not.
I can be understanding. In fact, the first thing I did when faced with such a writhing mass of unabating disappointment was to try to understand. I’ve come up with a few answers. Perhaps you only wanted to write 1 book. Perhaps you only wanted to write three. But with great success comes great responsibility. The responsibility to your publishers to write more! MORE! And so you did. Unhappily. Dispiritedly. Producing books. Just books. And not the inspired works of art that were the first three in the series. Why couldn’t you have discovered, midway into your fourth book, the wonders of Sid Vicious and sticking it to the man? Sure it might cause a small falling out with your publisher when, in a flurry of rock and roll, you stalk out tearing the yet-to-be-published fourth book from its makeshift binding and throwing the remains in the bin next to the elevator as you manically press the down button. But at least it would protect your fans from a lifelong psychological scar of intense disappointment. Surely this is more important!?
Whoops. Those sure were some vibrantly expressed views!
