Book #39 of 2024: Book of Nightmares by John Peel (Diadem #6) This was the last of the original six Diadem books published by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998, after which the middle-grade fantasy series would lie dormant for almost a decade until getting revived under another publisher. Presumably that’s also why it’s the first …
Continue reading “Book Review: Book of Nightmares by John Peel”
Book #33 of 2024: Book of Earth by John Peel (Diadem #5) This is by far the best of the original six Diadem novels published by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998 (and perhaps of the entire series, which resumed many years later under Llewellyn). It picks up on the cliffhanger ending of the volume before, …
Book #375 of 2021: Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson This reread is the final book I’ll finish in 2021, and since that’s a bit of an occasion and author Stephen R. Donaldson is one of my favorites, I decided to review each of the stories in the collection individually. As …
Continue reading “Book Review: Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson”
Book #307 of 2021: The Suspicion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #24) If I’m being honest, this adventure is fairly inessential and a bit cartoonish, especially in its abrupt ending of Visser Three and his troops agreeing to just walk away from the ‘Andalite bandits’ in an exhausted temporary truce. But I kind of love …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Suspicion by K. A. Applegate”
Book #301 of 2021: The Pretender by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #23) This Animorphs title feels built around a single scene near the end, when our current narrator sits down to hear a piece of news about his family that most readers likely already learned in The Andalite Chronicles, published the previous year. He is …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Pretender by K. A. Applegate”
Book #295 of 2021: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #2) This prequel is the richest and most complex entry in the Animorphs franchise yet, even more so than The Andalite Chronicles, which I believe was the last time in this series reread that I ventured that claim. It’s also the earliest …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by K. A. Applegate”
Book #289 of 2021: The Solution by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #22) [Note — this review is more spoiler-heavy than usual! It was too hard to discuss this volume without getting into specifics.] A chilling end to the saga of David, the reluctant recruit who has gradually blossomed over the course of this trilogy into …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Solution by K. A. Applegate”
Book #283 of 2021: The Threat by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #21) So it turns out, most of what I’d remembered from this story arc about the new kid David joining the Animorphs actually takes place in the next / final book of that unofficial trilogy. Luckily, this middle volume is a lot stronger than …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Threat by K. A. Applegate”
Book #277 of 2021: The Discovery by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #20) Well, I’ve been wanting the Animorphs series to grow more serialized, and it’s hard to beat the introduction of a new member, for the first time since Ax’s arrival in #4 The Message. (That would ordinarily be a bit of a spoiler, as …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Discovery by K. A. Applegate”
Book #271 of 2021: The Departure by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #19) Cassie is in crisis. The latest Animorphs battle wasn’t even that bad by the scale of what they’ve faced before, but as sometimes happens, it was enough to push her to a breaking point. A pacifist teen forced yet again to kill, she …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Departure by K. A. Applegate”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more