Still not spending as much time reading as I expected. I ended up not finishing half the books I checked out at the beginning of the summer...
Anything But Ordinary by Lara Avery, finished 7/5. The premise of Anything But Ordinary was really interesting, but it didn't really live up to it. Bryce was kind of an idiot and all of the characters are kind of static. Her powers were never really explained and didn't really even affect the plot as much as they should have, considering the description of the book. And it has a really disappointing ending. I think it might've been interesting as a series, maybe, but it didn't solve anything with the way it ended. It just introduced a lot of problems and just kind of left them there.
Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan, finished 7/11. This book series is going to be the death of me, I swear. I'd been trying not to read it in a hurry, especially because I still have a stack of library books from the start of the summer, but I ended up starting to read it again during an all-nighter and finished about half the book in one sitting this afternoon. And I loved it. I think part of that might've been finally learning to keep Google Maps open as I read. Even though I caught a couple little geographical inaccuracies, it was really helpful to build a more accurate mental map. And the geographical inaccuracies were really just because I'd been to Anchorage already and realized some of the street names in the book didn't match up exactly to real life. Anyway, I'm really glad I bought a copy of this book. And now I just want Mark of Athena. Right now. It ended almost the exact same way as The Lost Hero did and I really don't want to have to freaking wait to keep reading.
Vortex by SJ Kincaid, finished 7/14. You know, I don't think I ever wrote a review for Insignia. So I'll kind of combine them. I really like the premise of the series, since it's almost like Ender's Game but a lot closer to home -- also considering it takes place just across the Potomac. I've gotta admit, Tom is a complete idiot, but combined with the rest of the cast, his dynamic is super interesting. It's also kind of similar to Legend, I think, in the way of futuristic things and war and politics. Vortex did surprise me with what it pulled, so I'm really looking forward to reading Catalyst when it comes out.
Starglass by Phoebe North, finished 7/16. Starglass reminds me a lot of the Across the Universe series. It's mainly just because they kind of have the same premise, what with traveling in a spaceship to colonize a new planet. It was really interesting to read, and I've gotta say I did enjoy it more than I liked Across the Universe. There was one part that tied in to the end of Starglass that's a little questionable, but I'm hoping it'll be explained more in the coming book. I also wish there was more of the diaries that were given to Terra, but that's just something small.
Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan, finished 7/21. Mark of Athena, man. I think it might be my favorite so far. 600 pages, and I read it in 24 hours. That's a record. It was great. Annabeth is definitely my favorite character, and I'm super excited to cosplay her at Otakon. All of the characters are great, honestly, and there's so much more to everyone than I'd figured. Their dynamic is the best. They're so much stronger than I could ever be in the situations they've been thrown into. I didn't keep Google Maps open with this like I did for Son of Neptune, but they were moving out of my area of personal knowledge and more into what I'd learned back in, like, middle school, so I did pretty okay. I also didn't really have a computer handy for most of the time I was reading.
Allies by SJ Kincaid, finished 7/28. I was really only able to read Allies because the library happened to have a digital copy on Overdrive. And I really enjoyed it! I liked learning more about Wyatt, especially since it was kind of hard for me to remember what Insignia established about her. It was nice to learn things through her point of view, especially regarding her personal history.
House of Hades by Rick Riordan, finished 7/31. I ended up rating House of Hades a little lower than I had the first three books in the Heroes of Olympus series, but that is probably just because it came directly after Mark of Athena and I was still kind of reeling from that. It also was missing the dynamic that I had liked, since Annabeth and Percy were basically stuck in Hell and everyone was kind of struggling. It still was really interesting, though I have to say the ending wasn't as strong as the endings of the other books. I'm super excited for the final book to come out in the fall. I'm really curious as to how the series will wrap up. That said, I'm kind of torn as to how to feel about it ending so soon after I finally got into the series -- I'm glad that I'll be able to read the final book along with everyone else, but I've only been able to enjoy this for seven months, and it's ending.
No comments:
Post a Comment