Mortal Engines Mortal Engines Quartet #1

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

Soon the city was lumbering in pursuit, a moving mountain of metal that rose in seven tiers like the layers of a wedding cake, the lower levels wreathed in engine smoke, the villas of the rich gleaming white on the higher decks, and above it all the cross on top of St. Paul’s Cathedral glinting gold, two thousand feet above the ruined earth.

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The Amulet of Samarkand Bartimaeus *

And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.

The Amulet of Samarkand is a fun book. It feels someone like a grittier Harry Potter, where instead of the bright and shiny flick of a wand, you summon demons. Instead of a fantastic hidden castle in the woods, you have Arthur Underwood–imagine if Harry was tutored throughout his magical career by a slightly more competent Vernon Dursley. And instead of a dark wizard coming to kill you because of an accident of your birth… well, Nathaniel does a pretty good job of bringing trouble down upon his own head.

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Lord of Chaos The Wheel of Time #6

Let the Lord of Chaos rule.

Rand is trying to rule Cairhien and Caemlyn, Tear and the Aiel. Egwene is raised Amyrlin Seat . Nynaeve discovers how to Heal that which should be impossible to heal. Mat begins to build an army and finds himself bullied into following Elayne and Nynaeve to Ebou Dar.

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The Fires of Heaven The Wheel of Time #5

The Fires of Heaven is mostly a book to extend what we’ve seen before.

Elida solidifies her control on the tower while the rebels come together to oppose her. Nynaeve tugs her braid. A lot. Elayne and Nynaeve end up in the circus (not even kidding) and with a captured Forsaken...

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The Forest

The Forest came out of /r/WritingPrompts:

[WP] Instead of Oceans, they are all big forests, that gets taller and darker instead of deeper, with more dangerous animals living further out in the forest. A person decides to cross the Mariana Trench

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Black Water Pendragon #5

I tried. Really I did. But when you read as quickly as I do and realize that you’ve already spent more than a month on one book, it’s time to move on.

I think most of my frustration with this book comes from the fact that Pendragon is a teenager and acts like it. He is hit in the face with a world where humanoid cats are the dominant species and humans are little more than animals and just cannot get it through his head. Over and over, he expects the world to work one way, despite all evidence to the contrary.

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