Jan 25, 2012:

Took me 8 hours to marathon through the last book. You know, skip all the poetic verse, skim all the long descriptions… Now that I read the whole book, I have to compliment Mr. Sullivan for completing such a wonderful story. I was not let down. Every detail from the previous books makes perfect sense.

THIS IS “SPOILER” PART:

However, who the true heir was was no surprise. I’d been guessing that all the time, ever since Arcadius introduced the little girl, and then when they encountered Gilly. And there were many hints, like the fact about the emperors and how our two thieves were brought together… That spoiled the thrill. It should’ve done to make it more subtle, I think. Or it was me who shouldn’t have predicted too much… well, the author kept me waiting, what should I have done in the meantime?

And I was thinking that Royce was going to die. So glad that scenario didn’t happen.

END OF SPOILER.

But the simmering love, the unexpected mercy, even the last image of the story were very nice. The love has been there all the time, I noticed many clues from book #3 (or #4), and that was fun, paying attention to every single detail to guess. As for the mercy, that was a good move, because at once I was so sure that this one here was the real heir, and then another hint said that another person was the real heir. A bit of frustration and confusion for me. And I appreciate the humorous zingers from our old friends, they helped lighten things up.

However… I personally think Wintertide is a bit better than Percepliquis. Being put together in Heir of Novron, that last book would be just awesome. Yep I admit it, I’m sad that the adventure’s over.

I’m waiting for my copies to arrive so that I can do a proper reread.

There’s no doubt this series would make marvelous movies.

Time for another book review.

Markus Zusak is Australian. He’s the author of some books, 2 of them are pretty well-known under the titles of “The Messenger” (or “I Am The Messenger”) and “The Book Thief”.

I read elsewhere about The Messenger and people said it was good, but compared to The Book Thief, it was far more worse. Which gave us the impression that The Book Thief is super.

Well, indeed it is. I had a minor problem with the first chapter but everything got better and The Book Thief turned out to be one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Now, I don’t want to summarize the book (because you can find those info on Wikipedia) so just some of my thoughts (and others’, too) about it are put in here.

The book is mostly about some people living in the outskirt of Munich in 1940s. You may think there must be many deaths in the book. That’s right. Our narrator is the Death himself. Like one of my friends says, that is absolutely a brilliant idea of Zusak: Death working as a narrator gives us a neutral view on life. Living and dying mean nothing to this creation. He’s supposed to have no feelings. The book is full of grim and serious thoughts of his. Yet I find Death immensely humane. I don’t know how Zusak did this, but through Death’s perspective he made life and death and everything in between have many meanings aside just existion.

Now I’m coming back to the folks in Munich. They are all humane, loving, strong-willed and ragged. The Death usually inserts his serious thoughts and humorous comments every now and then when they’re least expected. War from his view is something horrible and unavoidable. However, he doesn’t linger on war. He stays with his thoughts about war’s victims and the colors of the skies.

The book is exceptional. Recommended to everyone from all range of ages.

The first book review I post here would be one of my favorite books: Wintertide, the 5th book in Riyria Revelations series by Michael J. Sullivan. So far, it’s the latest book, and the best of the first five books. The 6th book, also the last one in the series, is called Percepliquis and was delayed to be released on December 2011, according to a recent news I came across somewhere online.

Of course recommending a book which is in the middle of a series is tricky: few people will read it, no matter how persuasive you are. But I was so impressed by Riyria Revelations and have been waiting for the last book ever since, I think many people will agree with me. Mr. Sullivan isn’t famous now, but he will be soon.

Now, to give you a general idea about what Riyria Revelations is about, I’ll put a brief summary here.

There is this team, a duo called Riyria, which masters in thievery due to the incredible talents of the team members: Royce Melborne and Hadrian Blackwater. There is love, conspiracy, humor, beast, magic, knights, deaths and twisted plots.

Okay I know the so-called summary up there is a bit confusing. But how can I sum the whole first four books up within several lines? I can only give you names and the elements the series has.

The series was getting better and better. I gave the first book 3 stars, the second, third and fourth book 4 stars and this one definitely left them all behind. 5 stars for sure. This is a great dark fantasy for young adults, and if you are intimidated, no worries! Sullivan has a fine sense of humor to back it off.

SPOILER:

This book was touchy-feely. At the end, things got a bit hard for many characters: Royce, his partner Hadrian, the princess Arista, Degan Gaunt and also the Empress Thrace. And it also proposed a twisted plots in the 6th book: what was that the magician at the University held off?

I’m looking forward to the next book. It’s still June now. December is yet to come.