This was a four star book up until the very end, then it turned into a three star book for me. Overall though, a good read and I look forward to seeing what happens in the next book.

Waverly Martin has lived her whole life on a space ship travelling through space in hopes of reaching New Earth and beginning human life again. She is expected to marry young and start a family to help populate New Earth. When their ship is attacked by a sister ship, everything is derailed.

I usually don’t get into space books, but this one drew me right in. Waverly is a smart, resilient girl and a good leader when she has to be. She’s with Kieran and expected to marry him, but she isn’t sure she wants to. The blurb hints at a love triangle between her, Kieran, and a boy named Seth, but honestly they spend so little time together on the ship there is hardly a triangle to be had. Which is good because Waverly is better than either boy.

Kieran and Seth are both fighting for control of the ship after the attack, and they both act like spoiled kids while trying to take control. Honestly, neither boy seemed like a good leader to me. I guess we’re supposed to fight for Kieran for most of the book, but he seems pretty incompetent for someone who was the captain’s intended successor. Meanwhile, Seth has a bad attitude, but at least he gets stuff done right.

The book felt almost like two books in one with the boy’s story and the girl’s story. The religious aspects of the book sort of threw me off because it didn’t feel like the author really knew where she stood on religion. Overall though, I think the author went very bravely out of the box by including the religious aspects as well as the idea of how far a crew in space will go if they’re unable to reproduce on their own. A very good book, but I hope it sorts itself out a bit in the next one and does something to make one of the boys more appealing for Waverly.

So apparently I was very confused reading this book, because I thought it was a sequel to the Land of Elyon books by Patrick Carman. Apparently Elyon is a well known name for God, who knew? All the same, this book was pretty good.

The book follows four teenagers as they quest to prove that they are worthy of being new leaders of the forest guard against evil beings known as the horde. Yes, the four of them are very stereotypical as many people have said, with the main character being the smart, quiet guy who is stronger than everyone realizes. Yes he is chosen as the one in all the land who can save the land. Yes, yes, yes. Here’s the thing, there’s a reason people use that sort of plot SO much, because if it’s done right it makes for an awesome story.

I can ignore the overused cliches in this book because the over arching story was good. I wanted to know who the horde were, and I wanted to know if the young soldiers were going to make it. The whole thing was pretty darn exciting if you ask me. Now, maybe if I had read the series for adults that this is based on, I wouldn’t have felt that way.

My main complaint would be the fact that this is is marketed as a YA novel, while it reads much more like a middle grade novel. That’s fine, it’s still a good book. The other complaint is using Alucard as the name of one of the bad guys. People, this is so overused. We get it, Dracula was evil and you can spell his name backwards.

Overall though, this struck me much like the Land of Elyon series did. They both feel like contemporary Narnia books where it is clear that the author has some very strong Christian beliefs, but I really don’t care about that because the story itself in engaging and exciting.

The Dragon’s Tooth was way better than I expected it to be. It falls into that category of books that try to fill the void that Harry Potter left. Books in that category run the gambit from totally awful to pretty damn good. This one falls to the pretty damn good end.

After the death of their father, Cyrus Smith and his siblings run the archer motel. Their mother is in a coma, leaving Cyrus’s older brother Dan in charge of Cyrus and Antigone. They’re getting along, but just barely. When a mysterious stranger shows up and demands to stay in room 111, the adventure begins.

The beginning of the book draws you in right from the start and by the time the stranger shows up you don’t want to put it down. They find out there is a lot more to their family history than they realized, and are taken to Ashtown to learn how to follow in their father’s footsteps.

Cyrus and Antigone are smart, capable kids who take on the challenges presented to them even when they find themselves alone in an unfamiliar, strange place. They’re loyalty to each other and the rest of their family is admirable. Of course, they bicker just like normal siblings, but that adds to the realism of the characters.

The fantasy elements in this book were very creative. Instead of falling back on a lot of the usual magical cliches, the author comes up with new and exciting ones. Ashtown has the same imaginative draw as Hogwarts and quickly makes you wish you were there. If you’re looking for a new exciting fantasy for you or your kid, this book is for you.

This book didn’t really do it for me. I really wanted to like it because it sounded so good. It was okay, there was a lot about it that I liked, but I almost stopped reading it a few times.

First off, as many people have said, it was very bold and interesting for the main character, Alex, to be blind. It was also nice that the two supporting female characters also seemed to be something other than your flat out white girls. Simmi was from New Delhi, and I’m pretty sure Sharpi wasn’t white either.

Alex was a pretty cruddy main character overall, but he was also a teenage boy and they can be really cruddy and stupid sometimes, so that was okay. It just felt a little like sometimes his rash behavior was used to move the story along without taking the time to explain why Alex was making that decision. There were a couple scenes that came so out of left field with no warning that I thought it was going to be a dream. Simmi and Sharpi were good secondary characters, but again, their decisions were rarely well explained or thought out.

The story itself was good enough that it kept me reading. I wanted to know what was going to happen, and why things were happening. The visions of Dax were probably the best parts of the book, but I felt like those were sort of bipolar as well. The payoff for the visions was a little lame too, but it’s clear the author is setting readers up for another book.

I’m not sure if I would read another one, probably if I didn’t have too much else to read, but I’m glad I didn’t buy this book.