Following Pug through his trials as a boy in Crydee to becoming the most powerful magician on a foreign world and bringing the Greater Path magic back to his homeworld is amazing to say the least. The RiftWar Saga itself has 9 books. Three from the Midkemian side, three from the Kelewan side, and then I also include the 3 Legacy books that start 10 years after the RiftWar even though they aren't exactly during the RiftWar. There are things that happened which caused them to be linked to the RiftWar itself and having those three books puts everything into perspective.

I am missing one book still, A Shadow of a Dark Queen, because I had left it over at someone's home and when I went to retrieve it they told me it wasn't there and they'd never seen it. I was pretty darn sure I had left it on the coffee table, but never questioned them and never saw the book again. Eventually I'll buy a copy so that I can have a complete set again. People find it strange that I reread books! But when an author spends as much time on such an epic like this you end up having to sometimes. I've reread these books at least three or four times over the years as more books are written and added. I end up loving them more and more each time.

The SerpentWar Saga takes you on a journey to another part of the Midkemian world that no one knew was there, they have to travel by ship for several months to reach this other portion of land and because of it being such a long trip and most ships can't hold enough supplies to go that long without land, it's never been found or never proven to exist.

This new land, Novindus, is completely different from what the people of the Kingdom know. Instead of being ruled as the Kingdom or the other known lands it is more of a City-State system and whoever has the most money to pay for mercenaries stays in control of the land they've taken. Novindus never knows true peace and there is constant suffering.

The books in this series will take you to new heights in realism. You learn about the people from the nobility to the common, you learn their ways and thoughts, they have dreams and trials. You ride with them into battle and come out with bruises. The story brings you into it and you learn to love and hate throughout the story. You become entwined with the good and the evil, get upset when someone you enjoy following doesn't live to see another day and mourn their passing with the others in the story.

With so much detail provided in the books you feel as if you could close your eyes and be there with the people you're reading about. If you enjoy a good adventure story, these books are for you. You don't even truly have to enjoy fantasy, but that's always another plus. The worlds within are much like our own world during medieval times. So take a look at Magician: Apprentice and see if you wish to continue to follow Pug and others as their lives unfold, as they fight for the world they love, as they simply wish to live day to day in peace.]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.372 2008-04-02T20:23:09Z 2008-04-02T20:40:00Z

Sorry that I haven't been around to post regarding the books I've been reading lately. I have been slowly getting through Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. It's very good if you're deep into science fiction, for me, it's a bit much so I'm taking it slowly. I do play the game that was based on the book on occasion, Anacreon, and recently there was some kind soul who updated the game (neurohack, thank you) and although it isn't much more than it was, it's a lot better than looking at a few blips on the screen in DOS. Anyway, onto the Dark War Saga.

I have been working my way through the books by Feist regarding his world, Midkemia, for years now. I absolutely adore his way of writing. Midkemia is coming up against another huge war and Kelewan is involved now as well (the Tsurani home world). Pug and the Assembly of Magicians are working together in order to prevent the 2nd plane of existence from invading the first, which they live on. Pug, his son Magnus, Nakor and a new member of the group, Ralen Bek, are on a pilgrimage of sorts to the capital of the Dasati race in order to try and prevent this war from occurring. I don't know exactly what they plan to do and Pug sending himself messages from the future is a bit disconcerting regarding this in itself. Yes, that's right. Pug is sending himself messages from the future.

I also wish to mention that Macros the Black is back in the picture. I will not tell you where or what or how. Just that he is and you'll have to read the saga in order to find out why he is and what is going on with him. Turns out he got his just desserts, though.

This book is the second of this part of the Saga. So there isn't as much information as I would like. A lot of different people doing things and their stories being told. We've also been following someone on the Dasati plane to learn about him and that, of course, takes a very interesting twist as well.

So now, with all the information I have gained on what the Conclave, Pug and his travelling band, and the Dasati are doing I wait patiently for the next book to come out. Flight of the Nighthawks is the first book in the Saga and the next book is Wrath of a Mad God. It's really best to have read the entire series before delving into these books. It probably isn't entirely necessary, but you'd be better off knowing the entire story instead of starting somewhere in the middle of it. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.356 2008-02-08T22:00:31Z 2008-02-08T22:08:29Z

I'm finally ready to start the second book. I started this book several months ago, possibly June of last year, perhaps May. I had a really hard time reading this book and I don't know why. I haven't read romance...

Chelle I'm finally ready to start the second book. I started this book several months ago, possibly June of last year, perhaps May. I had a really hard time reading this book and I don't know why. I haven't read romance in a long time and this book is considered a romance yet there's a possibility to classify it as fantasy or thriller, too. I put it under fiction.

My sister read this trilogy and she said it took her a long time to read the first book as well but she had flown through the other two books. I am hoping that will happen. The first book is hard to get through because it has a slow beginning, then the excitement is pretty well spaced out with the 6 chosen getting to know each other through arguing, fighting, and rare conversations.

In order to know the background of each of the people involved I knew I had to finish the first book and now I have so I can start on the second. In this book you follow 6 chosen people who are to fight a war on another world to save all worlds. The timeline span thousands of years. Love is found, family is lost and found again, new things are learned by those who lived hundreds of years previous to the current time. Magic is involved intensively and some of it I find quite improbable. The magic I find unbelieveable is at the end of the book and has to do with online shopping. If you can't make it that far, flip to the last couple of chapters.

If you have read this book and would like to give a better review of it, please feel free to contact me to do so at chelle @ sweetly-evil.org. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.352 2008-02-05T22:20:54Z 2008-02-05T22:37:44Z

The Hero and the Crown is an older fantasy book, published way back in 1984 when Fantasy and Science Fiction were thrown into the same category because the books were so extremely rare. They were also such a tiny genre...

Chelle The Hero and the Crown is an older fantasy book, published way back in 1984 when Fantasy and Science Fiction were thrown into the same category because the books were so extremely rare. They were also such a tiny genre of the publishing industry that the publishers would pretty much take anything they could get because they knew there was a guarantee that it would sell, and it did. There were a set number, around 40K, of people who would buy fantasy and science fiction, and they'd buy anything they could get their hands on. Every now and then this number grew as more and more people became fascinated by the worlds these authors created. Now the genres are explicit, the lines are drawn, and it's no longer considered simply 'speculative fiction'. It's still fairly easy if you have a good start with magazines and short stories to get published in SciFi or Fantasy, but once you are in, it's extremely hard to get out and try new things.

The Hero and the Crown was a good story. The problem with me is that it wasn't well written. I stumbled over a few things through the book. The timeline was quite irritating as it would start out one place and the heroine would start thinking of another and the author would then enter that time. The book is short, only a mere 227 pages yet it took me forever to read it. I've read other books three times as long in a much shorter time period.

I think it would be amazing if someone actually was able to take this story and rewrite it. Give it more depth, more color, more of a streamlined approach. Music artists re-do each other's songs, why not have authors rewrite older fantasy and science fiction novels to give them a better go around the second time? I can see a huge issue regarding copyright and so forth, but what if the author (or the author's descendants) gave permission as long as they received some form of compensation for rewriting the story? There's another book that was written before this that does have to do with it, called The Blue Sword, but I highly doubt that I will ever bother to read it. If the writing in that book is anything like The Hero and the Crown then there's no way I'd bother to read it.

I do understand that fantasy and science fiction writing back that long ago was new and exciting, but that doesn't mean you should make up words for the heck of it, causing some people to pause and attempt to think as what you are attempting to describe. Unless, of course, there's a description to go with it. In fantasy, maybe people think of Medieval Times, so it would be msuch easier to refer to food from that time period if you were discussing a meal. Sometimes it's easier to go with what is known rather than to create your own words for (at the very least) food to get the story moving. It's very rare that a meal is so important that you have to create a whole new type of food anyway.

I can understand creating different words for creatures, but to me a wolf is a wolf and a bear is a bear. Makes things that much easier and you can always concentrate on other things going on in the story. Make the creatures or monsters that your main character is fighting against the fantastic things that can't possibly be real. Then I can believe it.

Besides, in the story a dragon was a dragon, so why couldn't a wolf be a wolf and a mountain lion be a mountain lion? Perhaps now you understand my point. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.348 2008-01-29T22:33:20Z 2008-01-29T22:38:23Z

Honey kept telling me that I had to read this book, that I would like it. In a way I did and in other ways I didn't. The story kept you going because you wanted to find out the details...

Chelle Honey kept telling me that I had to read this book, that I would like it. In a way I did and in other ways I didn't. The story kept you going because you wanted to find out the details of what was really going on and you wanted to find out who the killer was. When there are many suspects and nothing specifically pointing to a particular one, you may end up getting yourself killed.

This book was like that. It wasn't a fast read for me until I was halfway through and I wanted to get through it so I could know who killed her and why and who was she really. Martin is a good writer from what I read in this book, he provided sketches of two of the ships in the book as well, which helps when going through the motions with the inspector.

Americans and Russians working together is something that happens, the joint venture was good for both sides and just because of that you knew someone had to screw it all up. Someone wanted to play spy, another was a killer, some were drug smugglers. You didn't know who was reporting to the KGB, you didn't know who was going to support the inspector.

All in all, it may have taken me a bit of time to get into the book, but it was definitely worth the sit down. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.343 2008-01-23T20:09:29Z 2008-01-23T20:27:25Z

If you've ever read any of the authors that I am currently featuring here, then you already know what the term Saga means. Sagas start out as a single novel, usually with no indication that there is going to be...

Chelle If you've ever read any of the authors that I am currently featuring here, then you already know what the term Saga means. Sagas start out as a single novel, usually with no indication that there is going to be a next novel. This also depends on the history of the author. Have they written trilogies before? Have they created an outline that can be continued into several more books? These are important things when writing stories that are going to be drawn out over a period of several novels, some of which are almost 1000 pages long.

It's not easy writing a novel, let alone several that link to each other intricately. I do however quite enjoy them. When you are reading a Saga you learn about the characters, you end up loving or hating them, but you always need to know more of the story, about what is going to happen to them next and are they going to save the world or will it all fall down and crumble around them?

There are a few Sagas I have read that started out as Trilogies. If you have read Raymond E. Feist, who a friend got me interested in many years ago, he started out with a simple orphan boy who ended up becoming a savior to a princess, then he became a slave, and after all of his trials became one of the most powerful magicians in the known worlds. This entire saga started with one book, called Magician Apprentice. I've read the book several times, I have all but a couple of books for the entire Saga, including the Kelewan based trilogy.

I love reading Sagas because you keep in touch with those characters you first meet. The world grows around them, they confront enemies who are trying to turn everything into chaos, they find allies in one of their enemies, loved ones die and new ones continue to defend the world they know and cherish.

The best thing about Sagas is that everything is based in the same world, or worlds in the case of Feists' Magician books, and there is always something going on that catches you, pulls you in and keeps you hungry for more.

You don't have to read fantasy in order to get a good Saga. You can get an excellent saga out of the Anita Blake and Merry Genty books by Laurell K. Hamilton as well. Nora Roberts wrote a trilogy, but I haven't finished reading it yet and I don't know if there are more books to it at this time. I also enjoy Catherine Coulter's FBI thriller books. Best to be read in order but they can stand on their own as well. These are the types of stories I love to read. Sagas keep you enthralled for years, watching characters grow, live, and die, then to watch their children to do the same. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.318 2008-01-09T03:27:56Z 2008-01-09T03:42:00Z

Anita is on the run in this book, when Edward calls her up and tells her that he just received a contract on her head. After your heart starts beating and you can breathe again he tells her he has...

Chelle Anita is on the run in this book, when Edward calls her up and tells her that he just received a contract on her head. After your heart starts beating and you can breathe again he tells her he has turned the contract down. He's decided that since he tends to kill more people around Anita he'd rather keep her alive than kill her and that means he needs to get himself to St. Louis in order to protect her from whatever the man with the money finds to replace him.

Anita almost gets taken out twice. Once in her apartment before the call from Edward, a second time at the new dance club owned by Jean-Claude, Dance Macabre, and again later on in the story by someone she put her trust into and genuinely liked.

Anita survives, so read the book. She sees Richard with his pack, becomes officially his Lupa without becoming a shapeshifter after proving herself to two of the wolves that she is dominant to them. Anita promises to protect them and they return the favor by trying to watch her back during the time of the contract.

Jean-Claude gives his protection to Anita and makes her a guest at the Circus so she will be underground and protected, surrounded by both wolvs and vampires. No hitman would want to go through that many bodies to get to anyone, especially when they all have supernatural strength.

The bond between Richard, Jean-Claude and Anita becomes magical, and not just metaphorically either. They create a triumvirate for the first time in this book between them. Anita becomes closer to Richard and has convinced him to kill Marcus instead of letting him live. She knows Marcus won't back down and will try to play dirty in order to kill him this time around.

There's another triumvirate in town, but I can't give you too many details, as that would give a lot of the story away. Gabriel, the scary were-leopard and Raina, Marcus' Lupa, both make a very horrifying appearance as well. The pages keep turning, the action is non-stop whether Anita is running for her life or falling in love.]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.310 2008-01-06T22:05:42Z 2008-01-06T22:25:47Z

Rawhide and Bloody Bones is going to get you if you're a wicked child. And he got them, too. Anita Blake goes up against more than just your average vampires in this novel, she also goes up against a...

Chelle Rawhide and Bloody Bones is going to get you if you're a wicked child. And he got them, too.

Anita Blake goes up against more than just your average vampires in this novel, she also goes up against a faerie and a nursery boggle named Rawhide and Bloody Bones. Everything that can go wrong, does. Anita gets captured by the Master of Branson in this story. Jean-Claude isn't strong enough to save her or protect her.

I don't know how to explain this story, it certainly kept me turning the pages. I read it in under 24 hours if you take out the time to eat, shower and sleep. It all starts out as an innocent zombie raising to settle a legal dispute between someone who bought property from a family that didn't own it, yet the court decreed that they did. So if it turned out that the bones dug up during construction were found out to be of a family plot of the people who did own it, the person doing the construction was going to have to buy it all over again, and that isn't going to happen because the family refuses to sell.

The family turns out to have fae blood running through their veins. Anita finds out what it's like to be around a faerie who's attempting to place a glamour on you. Larry's with her in this epic adventure and finds out what it means to work with Anita, not only as an animator, but also as a vampire hunter. It's sad to see him lose his innocence so quickly.

Anita also finds out there's a new quirk to her necomancy that is completely unexpected, although it was rumored possible from ages of old. The power over the dead doesn't just mean human, it means vampire. Anita raises a vampire, completely on accident, but it saved her life all the same. She doesn't get any time at all to even think about how it happened or why after breaking free.

Jean-Claude loses his coffin somehow when he makes the trip to help Anita make overtures to the Master. They steal his coffin because he didn't follow protocol. When he goes to retrieve it they dump it out in front of him from a back, broken and shattered to pieces. Anita sees what it really means to be a vampire during the day. She watches Jean-Claude slowly die as the sun rises and starts to reconsider her theory that vampires truly are dead.

Follow Anita as she tries to catch a killer and pedophile vampire, finds out what death really is, and almost falls into the seduction of Seraphina, Master of the City of Branson and her ghosts. Watch her find the link between a losing battle and defeating Bloody Bones.

I'm almost done reading the next book, the Killing Dance. Review will be up after I finish it. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.304 2008-01-04T22:25:01Z 2008-01-04T22:36:46Z

Nice name for a cafe, don't you think? The Lunatic Cafe is a haven for shapeshifters to hang out and act like normal humans, but there is nothing normal about them. Anita gets in thick with the local werewolf...

Chelle Nice name for a cafe, don't you think? The Lunatic Cafe is a haven for shapeshifters to hang out and act like normal humans, but there is nothing normal about them. Anita gets in thick with the local werewolf pack and meets a few other interesting shifters as well, including a swan, who turns out not to be a shifter, but a human cursed by a witch centuries ago.

Shapeshifters are being kidnapped and some are being skinned, others are being hunted, one was killed by their spouse. I never did find out why. Perhaps he couldn't deal with being married to one of the monsters? Lycanthropy is considered a disease, there is no cure, but there is a vaccine. You can get it from a bad batch, just like you could get the flu from a flu shot but at least with the flu shot you wouldn't turn furry once a month.

Jean-Claude is back at it again with Anita as well, sexual harrassment simply doesn't cover the description and I'm shocked she hasn't killed him yet, but then again it is hard to kill someone you love, even if it is only in a dark twisted corner of your heart. He convinces her to allow him to start dating her since she is dating his possible rival, Richard the beta werewolf of the local pack.

There is so much for Anita to deal with, you'd think two men wanting to date her would be enough, but no, she almost gets eaten by one of the weaker members of the pack, she gets to kick some major ass of those who are hunting shapeshifters and she ends up with a certain someone's "pelt" encased in glass on the wall of her living room.

These are the details I can give you without ruining the story. She runs into another immortal creature, witches, and figures out who is making snuff films for Edward to go after. He seems to enjoy being around her being as she provides people, or rather supernatural creatures for him to kill.

Enjoy the violence all you want, be thrilled it isn't real. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.302 2008-01-04T06:34:39Z 2008-01-04T06:44:48Z

Ahh so I finished Circus of the Damned and I am still secure in my love for Laurell's writing. You feel everything that the characters do, when they laugh you may get the giggles, when they cry tears fill your...

Chelle Ahh so I finished Circus of the Damned and I am still secure in my love for Laurell's writing. You feel everything that the characters do, when they laugh you may get the giggles, when they cry tears fill your eyes. When they are hurt, you feel their pain and root for them to win over the bad guys.

Edward, known as Death, is after Anita again for the daytime location of where the Master of the City, Jean-Claude, sleeps during the day. What he doesn't know is that Jean-Claude is the Master of the City, so she lies to him and tells him it's someone else, someone who has been leading a pack of vampires and killing innocent humans.

Ok, so the humans they are killing aren't so innocent. They are members of a hate group called Humans Against Vampires and the pack is using them to help turn things back the way it was in the olden days where vampires weren't known about. Even if they could, I think it's a little too late since everyone knows about them, don't you?

Anita meets a vampire who's so old it makes her bones ache, he could possibly be 1 million years old, but no one will truly ever know. He controls snakes and Anita gets to meet a Lamia (half woman/half serpent) creature that tries to turn her against Jean-Claude.

You'll be disappointed in Anita at first with this book, but she comes around and gives a hell of a fight and just about dies trying to help others survive. And oh yeah, Edward uses his trusty flamethrower, you don't want to miss that!

So enjoy Circus of the Damned. Meet the hate groups against vampires and other non-human creatures (they even try to go after Anita). Meet Anita's new partner in animating, Larry, who's so green you'd want to kick him back to the college classes he should be retaking.

As were the first two, the third book of the Anita Blake saga are page turners, again I finished it in a little over a day. I am off to the fourth book for your pleasure, the Lunatic Cafe. Yes, it's a cafe.

I love the new covers that came out with the current prints. Can't decide which ones are my favorite though. Go enjoy Circus of the Damned, already!]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.300 2008-01-04T00:05:33Z 2008-01-04T00:22:20Z

I had to buy this book for school and I didn't think it would be of much help because it is mostly straight html based. The great thing about this book is that it's been updated to the latest standards...

Chelle I had to buy this book for school and I didn't think it would be of much help because it is mostly straight html based. The great thing about this book is that it's been updated to the latest standards and compliances and it's easy to find what I need right away.

Today I finally fixed this layout. Looked fine most of the time to you, right? If not, let me know and send a screenshot so that I can take a look at it. Anyway, I was having problems positioning and for some reason every time I submitted a new entry it would move the right-hand menu below the entries. Confusing, no? It was to me, as I had to add a new /div tag underneath the entries section of the template in order to put it back where it belonged. I knew I needed to find a new way to fix this template.

So I yanked out the book that I hardly looked at during class and looked up positioning. I am not very well versed with positioning and I normally use margins to do all of the positioning for layouts. Obviously this wasn't working and I needed to do something more proper. I added position: absolute to each section and then told it how many pixels from the top and left I wanted the middle and right columns.

Even this was confusing because I had to adjust them to each other or something. In Photoshop, according to the ruler, the right-hand column is 655 pixels from the beginning of the image. Yet I only had to set it for 300 and some odd pixels in order to position it properly.

Same with the width from the top. Middle and Right are both set at 50 or 60 pixels respectively from the top instead of the amount it would be according to Photoshop's ruler. I don't understand this one bit, but tha'ts fine with me.

This book helped me in my time of need and for any web designer that's always a plus. So I am definitely going to recommend this book for every designer out there who needs to know the little things about web design that change or aren't always remembered.

I know there is always a way to do what I need to get done and there's always a right way to do it, this book showed me not only the right away to do it, but how to do it as well. ]]> tag:www.corner.sweetly-evil.org,2008://5.298 2008-01-03T21:12:49Z 2008-01-03T21:31:49Z

Book 2 of the Anita Blake saga, The Laughing Corpse, won't leave you in tears laughing your pants off. It will make you shiver and shake in fear if the main killer creature in this book were real. Anita's schedule...

Chelle Book 2 of the Anita Blake saga, The Laughing Corpse, won't leave you in tears laughing your pants off. It will make you shiver and shake in fear if the main killer creature in this book were real.

Anita's schedule is filled with a killer zombie, a queen of voodoo, attempting to keep the master of the city arm's length away and attempting to keep doing her job as well without being killed for it.

If you can't stand gore, I suggest you not bother with this series. If you can handle gory movies like Saw and its like, then you can handle this book. People get torn apart, children get eaten, it's that horrific. If this book were reality I'd never live in St. Louis or anywhere else crazy supernatural things like this happened, but with my luck they'd come to me.

The Laughing Corpse is a comedy club owned by the new Master of the City, Jean-Claude. Anita doesn't know until she chooses it as a place to meet him regarding his so-called claim on her as his human servant.

Alas, if this were the main story of this book, it would have been a pleasurable read, not that it wasn't mind you, because it was. Anita kicked ass and took names. She saved a womans life and probably a few families' lives as well. This book gives you the reason as to why she wishes to be cremated at her death and I sympathize with her.

Anita also gets to meet up with the Queen of Voodoo, Dominga Salvador, the woman no one would ever piss off and looks so sweet and grandmotherly you'd never think she was filled to the hilt with evil. She creates zombies and puts their souls back into their rotting bodies, of course, the body stops rotting when she does that, but still, who would want to be replaced in their dead body? Not I.

Dominga isn't thrilled that Anita refuses to help her in her enterprising business and sends along a few things to entice her, or perhaps just kill her, she was pretty pissed off about it. There's a lot of violence in this book due to the main creature that is killing people, ripping them to shreds and eating them. I advise you again to not let the kiddies read these books. They'll end up with nightmares.

The book is still quite the pageturner it was when I first read it, I finished it in a day and started book three, the Circus of the Damned, again. I have read over half of it already and will be posting a review as soon as I have reread it. Yes, I love these books. Honey keeps harassing me to read something new. I will, but for now I want to finish off these books quickly and post the reviews of them. I hope those of you who ran out to by Guilty Pleasures also bought the Laughing Corpse as I recommended, if not, run out and get it today or click on the Amazon box to the right to get your copy through them. There are new versions of these books out with new covers, they are wider, thinner and I really liked the new designs. I hope that if you do take the time to read these books that you enjoy them as much as I have.]]>