Stephen King is not my favorite author. That is not to say that I think he is a bad author. His writing is captivating and he can make a reader interested in some of the most minute details of a scene without feeling long winded or tedious. My problem with his writing style tends to be in his tendency to go on long tangent chapters. While the chapter will be compelling, and I would not skip a single word, they mostly wind up not actually adding to the story a lot of times in my opinion. On top of that, the intense homophobic and racist comments and actions that characters (including main characters) have in his books, kind of makes me question how he sees the world at times. I say all this to say that I do not usually pick up one of his books unless I have an additional reason to do so.

In the case of The Running Man, I was actually unaware that it was a book. As with most people born in the 80s, I have seen the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. I had never paid attention to the credits back when I saw it, so I never knew Stephen King had a hand in that movie at all, much less written the book it was inspired by (I do say inspired by because if you have read the book you know it was not based on the book). If you had told me that he had a hand in that movie, I would have thought you were crazy. It was simply not something that screamed "Stephen King wrote this!". Then I saw the trailer for the new The Running Man movie. The difference between the old movie and this one is greater than the difference between Avatar: The Last Airbender show and the movie. The trailer also happened to say it was based on the novel by Stephen King, so now I have to read it. 

This was a great read, in my opinion. It did not read like a normal Stephen King book at all. There is a note from the author at the beginning of the book that explains why that is. It's actually an interesting reason that pretty minds come to, sometimes he just doesn't feel like writing as himself and would rather be someone else, and in this case, that someone else is Richard Bachman. 

Now he still tends to lean heavily on racist and homophobic comments throughout the book, so that hasn't changed, but he doesn't go on tangent chapters like in his other writings. It all remains pretty on point, and that really lets you bond with the character. 

Now, if you haven't read it or watched either movie, and you want to remain unspoiled, this is about where you should stop reading.

The book is about a man named Ben Richards who is unable to remain employed for more than day labor due to being blacklisted. His daughter is sick and he doesn't want his wife going out to prostitute herself in order to get money. This leads him to going to the television network in order to find work in one of their many reality gameshows. After a long vetting process, he is finally allowed to join as a contestant to the most dangerous game show the network has, The Running Man. The basic premise of the show is that the contestant is put out into the world where they are now the most wanted person in all America (possibly the world, not 100% clear on that). The viewers can actually call in sightings of the contestant and receive money as a reward for their aid, so it's the contestants against literally everyone. They get paid $100 for each hour they remain alive, and even get bonuses if they kill any of the law enforcement or hunters that are after them. They must make it 30 days to receive the ultimate prize and be free from the show. Each day they must mail in videos for the network to air during showtime. If they don't they are still hunted, but they no longer get any money.

So that's the basics. Ben Richards gets signed up for it and goes on the run, getting help wherever he can and knowing all the while that no matter what happens to him, if he can at least go long enough his wife and child will be able to have a fair amount of money to survive off of.

If you've seen the 80s movie, you may already be confused, because outside of the, "Survive the Game and win money" aspect of this, not much is the same in that iteration. The newer movie does a lot better with following the story. They still made many creative changes to make it a better movie to sell to the audience, but at the end of the day, it is still not too close to how the book goes.

I don't want to give away all of the book, so I won't get into more detail than that, and that if you like happy endings, stick to the movies. Richard Bachman is not afraid of a sad but satisfying ending.

To be quite honest, I am not typically a huge fan of prequels of any kind. There are some that take place in the same universe and have more world building information with a stand alone story, and those are typically the ones that I'm more okay with since I will still have no clue how it ultimately will have to end. Others where they contain characters from the original source material are not quite as interesting to me unless they are very well written. Even then, I will always have the knowledge in the back of my mind that I know how this ends. Unfortunately this is the latter of the two types of prequels. Does that mean I did not enjoy it? No. Suxzanne Collins is a brilliant author, and the writing is done well enough to where I still felt for the characters that I knew the ultimate conclusion of. 

At the end of the day, I did not find this story as engaging as I found the previous prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The previous book took place a great deal earlier in the history of the world, and therefore, more characters in it were unknowns. I had no clue how their story would ultimately end, nor did I truly know how the entire story could end. As the main character of that book was a young President Snow, the only real thing I knew was that his story would not end with his death or with him becoming a good person.

This book follows a young Haymitch Abernathy, and as I have read the original trilogy, I am fully aware of multiple things going into this book: I am aware that Katniss' mother had a friend that went into the games with Haymitch, I am aware that there were 48 tributes, I am aware that Haymitch will be the final victor, I am aware that something Haymitch did (the apparent thing from what we have already read being the use of the forcefield to make his final kill) caused the Capital to retaliate against him so that he became the drunken defeatist he was when we first met him in the Hunger Games.

This is a lot to know about a story before going into it, but as they say, it's not about the ending, it's about the journey. There are signs that Suzanne Collins was planning to write this book way back in Catching Fire. She purposely made sure that the 50th hunger games replays were mysterious. She also never truly let Haymitch speak of them. All of this does create an air of mysteriousness that helped for writing this book; because, for all that we knew, we had no idea how things went from point A (Haymitch being picked as a tribute) to point C (Haymitch wins and becomes a drunkard).

This mystery allowed me to feel a great deal more. I felt sad for Haymitch when he felt sad. There were many surprise twists that I had no way of knowing, and as the mystery surrounding Haymitch's past is revealed, I felt a sense of closure to his story. 

At the end of the day, I did love the chance to get to know a beloved character more, but it was by no means as compelling as the original books. However, I would recommend anyone and everyone who enjoyed the original books to read this book.

As for those of you who may not have read the original books yet, please read this book first, but do not read the epilogue until you have finished the whole series.

I tend to get my books from the library, and this particular one took being on the wait list for a few months. Granted, that was a shorter wait than the first one which took almost a year to get. 

Long story short, I absolutely loved it, just as much as Throne of Glass; however, I loved it in a different way. Certainly it follows the same characters as the first book, but this time she is the King's Champion, and that actually affords her a great many freedoms with it. She is still required to do certain tasks throughout the book, but whereas the first book was all about "how will she survive and come out on top" this one is more about how she has moved on while working for the king she loathes so much.

I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, so I won't get into too many of the details of the actual story. I will however reference things from the first book, so if you have not read that one, go read it! It's a wonderful read and you don't need to read a review of the second one before enjoying the wonders of the first book.

As I stated earlier, this book shows Celaena working for the king, but early on you do find that she is not doing exactly what she is being told. She's not trying to incite a rebellion or a revolution or anything that big, but she does feel uncomfortable working for the king. At the end of the Throne of Glass, the king made a threat to her, and she is taking that threat seriously; therefore, she is making sure to not do anything so careless that she endangers the lives of her friends, but she also can't stomach doing all the things the king asks of her.

This becomes more difficult with her most recent assignment, wherein she must kill someone she knew back before her capture and imprisonment. She is told that he is a member of a rebellion. Since this job hits a bit closer to home, she manages to get some extra time to work some things out.

This is where things truly become different than the previous book. In Throne of Glass, all she was able to explore was the castle and the castle grounds. With her new position and new found freedom to do things, she is able to explore the town more, so we as the readers are now able to see more of this world that the author has created. 

During the investigation, we get to learn more about the world's history, and even begin to uncover the secrets to the king's rise to power. 

On top of all that, as if that was not enough to get you interested, we get to follow Celeana's emotional journey with her past as well as her present. 

I do my best to write my characters as real people, and I believe this author has done that too. I truly felt for Celeana, as well as the prince and Chaol. Though you may have originally heard of these books through the severely questionable BookTok recommendations, I vouch for this book with my whole heart.

I had no clue about what I would be getting into when I picked this book to be my audio book while I was at work, but I can truly say that I enjoyed this book from begining to end. 

It takes place in a fantastical world where many people are born with specific styles of magic, and they each learn how to utelize it in different ways. I suppose an easy way of thinking about it is like Avatar the Last Air Bender, but for a hundred different things instead of just the elements. As the title of the book indicates, the Truthwitch is the focus of this book. The Truthwitch being a young woman named Safiya. Truthwitch's are rare and due to that rarity, rumors have been spread about them, but their main power simply lies in their ability to know the truth from a lie. This does include illusions and even mental manipulations, though, so between the ability to know for certain when a person is knowingly lying to you about what they plan to do, or even how they are acting and the ability to discern illusory and mental manipulation magic, it can be pretty useful. This is why Truthwitches are both feared and sought out. 

Her friend (though the term chosen sister feels more accurate) is a Threadwitch by the name of Iseult. Threadwitches are able to see energies surrounding people as well as their connections to others. The story follows many people in different places, but overall, I feel the main protagonists of this story are Safiya and Isult, as the story begins and ends with the story their choices made.

It begins with the two of them being forced to leave town because of some trouble they got into. The trouble led a Bloodwitch to them, and Bloodwitches can follow a person to the ends of the earth so long as they picked up the scent of the person's blood. 

Not thinking that the trouble they got into was too bad that they would never come back, they packed a few things and made a plan to leave town until things cooled down. As the book is 432 pages, you can imagine that a few things happened along the way. I won't spoil any of that though. I will just say that this book had wonderful action, and interesting magic system, well thought out and easy to follow politics, and enough nail biting drama to keep you intrigued and looking forward to the next book.

I found this book randomly as a Rick Riordan presents book. I had no clue about the Hmong culture before going into this. This meant that unlike things such as the Egyptian, Greecian, Roman, and Norse stories that I have read from Rick Riordan's books, I was completely in the dark with all the characters and stories that I was introduced to. The thing that made it most interesting to me was the fact that the author is very aware that many people will not know much about these myths or the Hmong culture in general, so the book helps you out with most of it. Introducing you to it and educating you on it, but in a way that makes it to where you don't even realize that's what's happening.

The book introduces you to the main character, Pahua, and her family at the start. The author tries their best not to info dump on you more than would be understood for someone telling you a story. It's written from Pahua's perspective, and therefore the way the story is told comes from the perspective of a middle school girl. She's had to deal with people thinking she's weird all her life for various reasons such as being Hmong in America, the fact she sees spirits and interacts with them, and even living life as a child of divorced parents. She has found ways to cope, and they are natural ways someone might cope with any number of these.

Once the story actually gets started, you feel for the girl as she is thrust into a world she had only heard in stories years ago when she was younger. The author's way of helping the reader understand the myths is done through her own ignorance of her culture. Essentially, she knows just enough to constantly get her into trouble, then manages to figure out enough to get her out of trouble, and most of the time it is through non-violent means. This makes even more sense when you remember that the girl is like eleven years old, so how could she stand up to many of these creatures?

The thing that I found to be my most eye rolling moments were also done well. Yes, I rolled my eyes, but it was not at the story telling, it was that I kept yelling at the book "Listen to the cat!" The cat I refer to is this cat spirit that has attatched himself to Pahua, by the name of Miv. He is probably my favorite character in the book, because even though he is dry and kinda salty, he is shown to care about Pahua a number of times.

Of course you can't have a book like this without having the badass fighter too, and that comes in the form of a Shaman Warrior girl named Zhong. Though she's about the same age as Pahua, she's been training for this type of stuff for a while. In terms of character growth, watch this girl. She has wonderful growth from annoyed (and annoying) to good friend. 

From the first mistake that triggers everything and until the end where you learn a great many truths, this book held my attention, so I fully reccomend anyone give it a read.

The first time I heard of this book was when my youngest child became obsessed with the movie adaptation, and while the movie is a fun story, it was nothing compared to the book. I read it to him as a bedtime story but soon found myself extending our storytime because I fell in love with the book.

It follows Sophie in much the same way as the movie at the start. She works in a hat shop, is her family's oldest child, and becomes cursed. While wandering in search, she comes across the wizard Howl's castle and makes a deal with Calcifer.

Unlike the movie, however, Sophie has two sisters and Howl is infatuated with one of them. She stays on as a cleaning lady, just like in the movie, but this is about where the similarities end.

As I said, the movie was fun, but the book has so much more in it. The magic, while slightly less spectacular, it has so much more depth to it. The adventures that occur give so much more life to the world and make you so much more invested in everything that is happening.

I recommend this book highly to anyone and everyone, for it has something in it for everyone out there. 

I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free for this book, but if you have not read up to this book already, I would reccomend not continuing further than this sentance. 

I began this book as soon as I finished the previous one simply because I needed to know what happened next. If it has been a while since you read Dead or Alive, I will remind you that at the end of that book Valkarie became the Child of the Faceless Ones. In terms of cliffhangers, this particular cliff hanger took the case. Not since Darquesse have we seen such a dramatic moment in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, so obviously I needed to see how the author handled this drastic alteration in Valkarie's character.

The last time he did something like this, with the appearance of Darquesse, the next book actually began with Stephanie, or Valkarie's reflection. That was an interesting way to do it. It allowed us to see the world through slightly different eyes, but he would not be able to do something like that again since Stephanie died, nor would it even make since to do something like that. 

Within the first few chapters of the book it gave us a wonderful answer to this question though. It was intriguing how he chose to do this, and even gave me some insight into how some people in the real world. 

I read Marissa Meyer's book, Fairest, earlier this year and the way that Derek Landy wrote Valkerie as the Child of the Faceless Ones character reminded me somewhat of how well Marissa Meyer wrote Levana in that book. For those of you that are unaware, Fairest is a prequel book to Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series. It follows the events that led to one of her antagonists rising to power, and more interestingly, it follows the events from the perspective of said antagonist. It is a brilliant way of showing how the protagonist of a book does not neccesarily have to be the good guy or even the person that you like, yet you still need to read on.

While Derek Landy was not forced to write a villain and make you like them, he did put himself into the position of writing someone going through something that was entirely out of character for them. The feeling I got from reading the first half of this book was very much the same feeling I have when I am watching someone make poor decisions and being powerless to stop them because they believe themselves to be right.

Moving away from Valkarie for a moment. Another thing that you may recall from the ending of the previous book is the fact that the Faceless Ones have begun returning. Not only that, but what happened to Ogre, and what are Sebastian and Darquesse doing? If you have theories about either of them, I will tell you now, you are probably wrong. I had my own theories, and it was fun to watch as my theories changed and then I discovered most of them to be wrong.

Derek Landy writes his Skulduggery books in trilogy formats, so once a third book comes out you know that all the events will be coming together to answer almost all of your questions before giving you new questions to ponder as you finish the final chapter.

Thus far trilogies have ended with the Faceless Ones coming to our world and then being sent away along with Skulduggery himself, The Necromancers trying to end the lives of billions with their Death Bringer, Darquesse believing she destroyed everything in the universe then going off to fight the Faceless Ones, and an actual Kaiju battle. 

If you, like me, have no clue how Derek Landy can surprise us anymore, then I would love to see your face when he does it once more. 

At the end of the day, I am still so happy that I discovered this series, and I am lookng forward to whatever he does next.