Rainy Day Reads

This is a book about Dennaleia, a princess who journeys to another country in order to marry the prince and secure an alliance. Once she gets there, she discovers she is more interested in the prince’s sister, however. As well as struggling with her feelings, her sense of duty to her country and trying to navigate new customs she is also trying to hide the fact that she possesses magic. Magic is considered a crime in her new country, so Dennaleia is doing all she can to suppress it, but it seems to be growing stronger at every turn.   It’s really hard to describe this book without giving too much of the plot away, so I will leave it at that. As for the world, it was a little confusing with all the different factions of people, but I’ve never had a great head for intricate world building, so maybe that’s just me. We follow both Dennaleia and Mare, the prince’s sister’s point of view, so we definitely get to know them the best. The rest of the characters all seemed a little flat...

To be completely honest I gave up on this pretty quickly. I just wasn’t in the mood for fantasy, but at the same time it just felt like this particular book wasn’t for me.  I got about 60 pages in, and already there were a number of characters, battles and timejumps. This made it pretty hard for me to keep up, and keep not only the characters but the timeline in order. So I decided to give it up rather than power through and perhaps waste a lot of time on this massive book, when I have so many other (hopefully) good books to read. If it was meant to be, this book will find its way back to me. But somehow I doubt it.   That’s really all I can say about the book. I am well aware that I probably didn’t give it a proper chance, but…I don’t really care. The next book out of my jar is “Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948” by Madeleine Albright. 

This is the first book in the Mistborn series, which I thought was a trilogy but it seems to be longer experience than that. There are currently 6 books out in the series, a 7th on the way and a number of in-between books (you know the 0.5 and 3.5 in a series).   This book is about the street urchin Vin, who comes to realize that she has powers, when a mistborn takes her under his wings. The book is set in a society ruled by what appears to be an immortal man, who holds the people in an iron fist using magic and a strict social order.  Vin finds herself part of Kelsier’s thieving crew who has a plan to overthrow the ruler and set up a new world order. She must learn how to use her new found powers in order to help the crew, while she struggles with trusting her new friends and navigating life as a court spy.  I really liked this book, but because it is so long I did begin to flag a little towards the last quarter or so, when nothing much seemed to be ha...