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Book Review: House of Many Ways

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House of Many Ways
Howl’s Moving Castle #3
by Diana Wynne Jones
read by Jenny Sterlin

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fantasy

Charmain just wants to be left alone to read her books, and when she’s sent to house-sit for her great uncle, she think she’ll finally be able to read as much as she wants. But this is no ordinary house. Charmain’s great uncle is a wizard and his house is full of magic, which, along with the young apprentice who shows up looking for Great-Uncle William, encroach on Charmain’s reading time.

I liked this book a fair bit more than the 2nd in the series, but not quite as much as the first. It did bring back some of the charm of Howl’s Moving Castle, but Charmain is not a terribly likeable character. She’s naïve and fairly selfish, though I can’t that it’s all her fault, since she was clearly brought up to be entirely helpless. Like the other books, the story meanders for a while, which got a little tedious for me. There are hints at the plot here or there, but nothing particularly solid, at least until it started to come together further into it. Plus, characters from the first book show up around halfway in, and I certainly enjoyed that (and they’re more “present” than they were in the previous book). Overall, it’s not a bad follow-up to the whimsical first book in the series, and for others who have read the first and wonder if they should read more, I’d say at least this third one is worth it. For me, I may someday re-read Howl’s Moving Castle, but I won’t feel the need to re-read the rest.

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Book Review: Resistance

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Resistance
The Ilyon Chronicles #1
by Jaye L. Knight

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Christian fantasy

When the self-proclaimed emperor of Arcacia begins to crack down on the worship of Elôm instead of the nation’s moon gods, it leaves many of Elôm’s followers scrambling to hide their faith or hide themselves. Kyrin has been trained since a young age to serve the emperor, but drawing too much attention to herself right now is not a good idea, given her faith. Jace is half ryrik, a race that is believed to have no soul, which means that many believe he can’t have a soul either. But he has also come to believe in Elôm as the one true God, though he can’t help but wonder if Elôm could possibly care about him. Both find a possible home at a camp for fellow believers of Elôm and hope that they can keep their new home safe.

The overall idea of this book is good, sort of a take on the time of Nero persecuting Christians, set in a medieval-like fantasy world with at least 5 different races. I particularly liked Jace’s story arc, but Kyrin’s was underwhelming in comparison. Some exciting things happen with her for sure, but it just takes a really long time to get into it. I felt like a few hundred pages could have been cut from the book and details in those pages could have been either cut completely or sprinkled throughout the rest of the book in flashbacks, memories, general backstory. Most of this excess was probably Kyrin’s story, which is likely what makes me feel like her arc was underwhelming. But there’s also the fact that there are something like 8 POV characters, which is far too much. Too many people to try to get to know, especially considering that several of them are minor characters and thus do not need their own POV. And at least one of them just seems to be there to reinforce what we’re already learning about Jace, so again, unnecessary. If I were rating just the part of this that felt like the meat of the story, it’d probably be more like 4.5 stars. But man, it just took so long to get to it.

One thing I did appreciate about Kyrin, though, is that she’s still young in her faith and not perfect by any means. She’s trying to learn to lean on Elôm but struggles with fear, because she didn’t believe in Elôm and immediately become a perfect follower. That was a realistic angle I liked. The overall Christian parallel here is really interesting and well done. Because what I liked most came in the 2nd half or so of the book, I anticipate the story picking up from here and am looking forward to seeing where the series goes. My 15-year-old daughter read it first and recommended it to me, and it looks like the book is classified as “new adult,” so I do think that older teens up through adults who enjoy Christian fiction about persecution and standing up for one’s faith. You wouldn’t really have to like fantasy to enjoy it, I don’t think, since it’s fairly light on the fantasy.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

November Writing Challenge Day 28

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The Words: 3606 words today and 50k achieved! After yesterday, I realized I was only around 3500 words away from the end and knew I’d feel ridiculous if I took 3 more days to write that many words. I used to crank 2500-3000 words out daily during November. I didn’t have the time to devote to that most days this month, but I did today, so I set out to hit 50k and did it!

The Story: After hashing out some important details yesterday, I started a pivotal scene from yesterday over, and got to write a fairly momentous moment. I kind of stopped right before a huge reveal, and since I wasn’t really writing a draft of a book, I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to this. But knowing myself as I do, I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of what I wrote today will end up in some book in the future after all. It will need a lot of fixing up, though, and not just fixing typos and mistakes. I wrote some things that I realized later were incorrect, so it may be more of an inspiration for future writing than directly used. Still, this was an interesting exploration of a place and time that was just a nebulous void before this month, so it’s pure win!

Total word count: 50,160

Since this is my last day of writing, I want to make sure to share the final episode of the NaNoMusical. Be sure to watch the wrap-up!

November Writing Challenge Day 27

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The Words: 1287 words today, not bad for Thanksgiving day! I’m so close to the end. In past years, I’d easily knock that much out in one day, but this year has just been so rough.

The Story: I started a new scene today, one I had sort of written about in a past, but briefly, in a character interview with one of the participants. But I’ve changed how I want this to go down since then, and then while I was writing the scene today I questioned even some of that. So I ended up doing some brainstorming to try to figure out how I really wanted the scene to go. Then where I ended up meant that I needed to re-start the scene, so I ended it there and will work on that tomorrow.

Total word count: 46,554

November Writing Challenge Day 26

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The Words: 1666 words today, about as close to exactly par as I’ve gotten all month. I thought about stopping at 1200 words, since I got such a late start tonight, but I remembered that I may not get more than a few hundred words tomorrow, so I need to save my lead for that.

The Story: I moved on to a completely new scene today, which was actually something that connects more directly with the novel I’m working to publish soon, “Power.” It was fun and a little sad. tomorrow I will probably go another entirely new direction that promises to be quite interesting too.

Total word count: 45,267

November Writing Challenge Day 25

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The Words: 1860 words today, despite planning to cut it a little short. The site I use to track my word count (https://prowritingaid.com/novel-november) tells me that I can write around 1300 per day instead of 1667 and still finish on time. I may just do that, since it’s been a struggle to hit par lately. I’m really glad I did this again this year, but it’s been rough!

The Story: Garend got a little indignant during today’s writing as he learned about some lies he’s been told all his life. I’m still writing about this class he’s in to learn about the history of Newland, but I think it might be about time to move on to something else tomorrow.

Total word count: 43,601

November Writing Challenge Day 24

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The Words: 1759 words today. Passed 40k today, and we’re in the final week!

The Story: I kept going with Garend in a class about the history of Newland today, which gave me a chance to put into words the ideas I’ve long had about the origins of certain elements in my world but never really written down. Though I still have some decisions to make about some of the details, this is giving me a chance to explore it, and it’s really helpful. And since I’m not drafting an actual story, I don’t mind staying here for a while.

Total word count: 41,741

With 6 days left of NaNoWriMo, be sure to check out episode 5 of the NaNoMusical, where the stresses of the month catch up to the characters in my favorite song of the whole thing!

November Writing Challenge Day 23

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The Words: 1491 words today. I had a Thanksgiving get-together today with my husband’s side of the family, so I took my Alpha with me and wrote around 500 words while waiting for everyone to arrive. When I was home later, I sprinted for 15 using the Sprinter site and got the rest of the words. I probably could have gone on to hit par, but I’m really tired. It was a ridiculously bananas day at church this morning! At least I’m still almost a full day’s word count ahead, which will be helpful on Thursday when my side of the family is getting together for Thanksgiving.

The Story: I’m having quite a bit of fun with a class that Garend has been put into in Newland, basically a history of the country and a history of one of their most intense secrets. Garend is barely even joining the discussion, but it’s the first time I’ve had a chance to really hash out this history, and actually, I am writing it 2 different ways, because I haven’t decided which will end up being the real history.

Total word count: 39,982

November Writing Challenge Day 22

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The Words: 1717 words today using the Sprinter site again. I was really drowsy this evening, so I can see even more mistakes than I normally make when trying to type fast, but I still managed around 800 words in one 15-minute sprint, and then just set the goal to 867 words and wrote until I’d hit the day’s par.

The Story: I’m starting to jump around to some of the scenes I brainstormed a few days ago, which is at least one way to keep from dragging on in the same main “plot” that I’ve been writing for more than half the month, but isn’t my preferred way to write. So it’s sort of good, sort of bad. I know that my heart isn’t in this story anymore, which is sad, but the good thing about NaNo is that it gives you a reason to keep going forward for a short amount of time. Then I can stop and maybe never revisit this month’s writing again.

Total word count: 38,491

Book Review: Odd Thomas

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Odd Thomas
Book #1
by Dean Koontz
Read by David Aaron Baker

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Paranormal thriller

Odd Thomas can see dead people, but he can also see dark shade-like creatures that tend to congregate at sites of future disaster. Between these two things, Odd is drawn to help bring justice for victims and prevent future tragedies. He works as a short order cook in a small town in California, and when he sees a large congregation of these creatures, which he calls bodachs, interested in a particular customer, he does his best to investigate so he can try to stop whatever future catastrophe might have drawn so many bodachs.

Leaving aside the paranormal aspects, this book is a thriller mystery and a race against time to stop a massacre. Adding the paranormal aspects back in, and the overall story here is engaging and inventive. Odd himself is a sympathetic hero, if maybe a little too naïve and Gary Stu-ish. He tends to draw people to himself by being a nice, quiet guy and has more than one mentor-type character. The background Koontz shows us for Odd make me happy for him that he has these other people in his life to counter-balance some truly awful parents.

I’ve only read one Koontz before this, and I loved it, but this time, I found that his tendency to describe things in way more detail than necessary slowed the story way down. There was also a lot of focus on sex and references to body parts for a book with a main character that isn’t sleeping with his girlfriend. And a couple of the major side characters I did not particularly care for. They were just over the top in their personalities. I listened to the audiobook, and I don’t know if it would have been better to read it, so I could skim some of the descriptions or worse, because then I would have struggled to get through some of it and taken a lot longer to read it. Either way, I enjoyed the book more than not and was actually kind of annoyed with myself for not clocking the slight twist at the end before it happened. Also, I am very glad that I had already read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie before reading this book, because Koontz full-on spoils it! Overall, I like the world Koontz has set up here and Odd Thomas himself enough to continue the series. I think most people who enjoy paranormal thrillers would enjoy it, but just keep in mind the slowness.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!