Review: The Runaway King

The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It's like KJ Parker (Fantasy w/o magic) except for kids...and that the King is moderately competent and cunning...
Anyway, I really enjoyed the first book, but for me the second one lost a little of the magic. It might have hurt that I just finished reading a writing book, which made the characters telling each other information each of them already knew solely for the benefit of the reader stand out so much more.
I also felt that this book took me a bit longer to get into compared to the first one. I also though a thing that happened at the end was a little campy. Too easy kind of.
Anyway, it's still cute, but I liked the first one so much more. From the last few lines, book three seems to be exciting, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Review: The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile

The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Okay so first of all I will say the book addressed everything it set out to, and though it had a limited scope, I knew that from the beginning, and that in fact was an asset. I read some reviews complaining about things not touched upon- those were out of the scope, and the whys were discussed in the beginning of the book.

What I loved was how easy it is to read. I can jump to a chapter, learn about an issue, see examples, and get exercises to solve the problems. It's not this huge step my step technical manual, it's not dense and it doesn't treat you like a child either. It's perfect for me and I love it, I completely plan on reading it again (I only did the first chapters exercises and decided to read though the whole book once before doing the rest to confirm my suspicions that this is a book I'll be reading again, and I'll be wanting to buy and have as a reference myself, as the copy I have now is from the library).

The only downside is in some of the examples in the beginning, all the issues were underlined, when I'd rather try to find them myself, and then all the fixes were in a paragraph written out, when I felt reprinting the passage with the fixes would have been a better contrast. It also would have made the book longer, and it's not something that I think is completely necessary, but the visualization would have been helpful.

And there were a few typos. Well, at least one, and it was a little awkward to see it.

But you can see I gave it five stars. The book is a great reference and I felt a surge of creativity while reading it, thinking of all the fixes I can make to my work to really bring it up.



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Review: The False Prince

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I loved this book! The first few pages didn't really capture me from the start, because I didn't know how long it'd take for the plot to take off, but about ten pages in I knew it was good. Reading it gave me a sense of nostalgia and deja vu for some great fantasy I read in high school.

Recently, I've had trouble with teen books for various reasons, and while this could have easily fallen into one of my pet peeves of the author withholding too much information from the reader, it didn't. The author expertly handled the main mystery in such a way that I knew it early on, but didn't feel like I had to know it or that from figuring it out there was no need to continue to read. Sometimes an author will be so mysterious that it's hard to enjoy the book, or even understand it, but that did not happen here.

I can't even think of one thing I didn't like. There was nothing that bothered me at all. All the characters were great, the main character was amazing, the premise was good, it was fast paced, and I can't wait to read the next book, which I've already requested from the library. It's been a while since I wrote a "review" but I liked this book so much I felt I should tell people. :)



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