Once Upon a Bookshelf

Katie grew up in a small town in Texas, before moving to New York. She’s been living in the city one year now, and still can’t get over all of the strange things she keeps seeing, or why no one else seems to think what is going around the city is strange. Until she meets a group of people who offer her a job and tell her that she’s exactly what they’ve been looking for: someone who has absolutely no magic abililty within her. Apparantely, when you are a large company that deals with selling magic spells, having employees who have no magic in them is a very good thing, because they can spot enchantments or illusions that your competitors, suppliers, etc. may be using on you.

I normally don’t go for chick lit; it usually annoys me way too much, but there was just something about this book that really made me love it. Well, three somethings, really.

First, Katie is not a ditz - she actually comes across as quite smart, which is really refreshing. Second, she isn’t obsessed about finding a man. Yes, she does have a crush on a couple of men in the book, and at one point mentioned that it might be nice to actually have a boyfriend (as she hasn’t had one since she was a junior in college), but she in no way needs a man to survive. Thirdly, oh my goodness there are fairies, elves, ogres and Merlin. Merlin for goodness sake!

I must say that I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It was one of those books that you read in a day while you’re lying out beside the pool. I only regret that I lent out my copy of Once Upon Stilettos before I had the chance to read it. I didn’t think I’d get through this book quite this quickly, and be pining away for the next installment.

It’s been one year since Willow defeated Nezeral, and King Jarlath wants his son back. Willow has been given a seat on the council of the elves, but the elves haven’t told her any of the rules she has to follow while there. Due to a rule broken by her sworn knight attempting to protect her, Willow has been thrown into another one of the elves’ games - this time with Jarlath as the game leader.

A few months ago, Wood made a comment on her LiveJournal about how she hadn’t realized how similar her book was to the movie The Labyrinth, and so when I started this I had expected a whole lot of wonderful Jareth moments. Aside from the fact that there was a king named Jarleth and plenty of goblins around, I found very few similarities though.

Once I got into this book, I enjoyed it much more than the first book - I think it’s mainly because we get to see the Goblin King and creatures in his realm (kelpies and hobgoblins to name a couple), and I’ve always been drawn to darker parts in fantasy.

Plus, there’s an elf (okay, well, there are a number of elves), and I think I love him. He could be Dark, or he could be Light, but he’s absolutely lovely.

Treason Keep is the second book in the Hythrun Chronicles, and starts a couple of months after Medalon left off.

R’shiel is near death in Sanctuary, and the Harshini (a magical race of humans) are trying to bring her back to life. The Defenders of Medalon have formed a temporary truce with Damin Wolfblade and both are on the northern border of Medalon to fight off the Karien from invading.

The eldest daughter of the King of Fardohnya has just been married off to the Prince of Karien, and Karien is expecting Fardhohnya troops to help their invasion of Medalon. Of course, the Fardohnya king has his own ideas, and plans to invade Damin Wolfblade’s country, Hythria, while he is busy helping Medalon. Of course, what the king doesn’t count on is his daughter, Adrina, running away from her husband after the majority of her guard has been killed.

Wow, that makes the book sound so complicated, but it didn’t seem nearly so when I was reading it.

There are a couple of new characters, whom I adored. Adrina was such a horrible, spoiled and cynical princess and yet was one extremely smart cookie when it comes to politics and human intrigue. Then there is Mikel is a young Karien boy completely devoted to the Overlord (the Karien god, Xaphista), who has been taken prisoner by the Medalonians, and is befriended by the primal god Dace. (Which brings me to another thing. Dace is almost exactly the same character as Eugenides from Megan Whalen Turner’s series; I adore Dace but didn’t really like Gen, and I really can’t figure out why.)

In this book, R’shiel has to come to grips with the fact that she is the “demon child” - she was created by the primal gods in order to kill Xaphista, while Xaphista wants to kill the primal gods in order to become the only god. She has to realize that everything she has endured in life has been to make her into the sort of person who could be ruthless enough to kill a god. I’m really starting to not like R’shiel though. There were points where I just wanted to strangle the girl, and then other points just didn’t seem too realistic - she was practically comatose one moment and kicking enemy butt the next. Ah well, I suppose that’s to be expected from the legendary demon child, eh?

I enjoyed the book enough. There were points when I found my attention wandering, but for the most part it was good. As I said before, I loved the new characters, but … I found the book slightly predictable.

In fact, I’m starting to mourn the state of adult fantasy that is written these days. Or at least all of the stuff that I’ve read recently. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, because I do, but that it is all SO SIMILAR. I can tell you if a character is going to end up on the good side or the bad side after reading the first paragraph about them. I can (usually) tell you which characters are going to die to further the plot, and what trials the main character has to go through in order to become strong enough to do that which he/she was destined for. It’s getting rather redundant. I think I need to find something a little different. Huh.

A friend and I have been in talks for starting our own business, and we managed to pick up this book one evening. It covers so much of stuff you need to know beforehand as well as after you’ve started the business and does it all in language that is so super easy to follow. It’s great because a lot of the things mentioned in the book, we never would have thought about needing to do.

The book is written by a couple of women who started their own PR company, so they know what they’re talking about. They also have small sections from other women who have started their own businesses, so there is a wide range of experiences in the book to learn from.

I think that my favourite part of the book, though, has to be the fact that they have so many “top ten” lists in here that the little part of my heart that love lists will be reveling in it for months.

It’s always so exciting to come home from a day of wondering through used bookstores with another LMM book that you didn’t have previously. Let’s face it, unless you want to order them on-line, it is SO HARD to find one of her non-Anne or non-Emily books around here, even in the used book stores.

The Doctor’s Sweetheart is another collection of her short stories. The stories in the book are arranged in chronological order, and I have to say that I enjoyed the ones that were written later as opposed to the earlier ones.

Montgomery would sometimes rework her short stories to put them into their novels, so when I read the story “I Know a Secret,” I couldn’t help but giggle and picture little Blythe children frolicking about in my mind. Needless to say, that has become one of my favourite stories from this collection. I also really loved “The Garden of Spices” and “The Doctor’s Sweetheart.”