Daybreak on Raven Island by Fleur T. Bradley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I absolutely loved the characters in this story. The three kids who get trapped on the island are unique and memorable, and each has a distinct set of goals and motivations. Tori is a soccer goalie suspended from play due to bad grades. She hates being on the prison island because it reminds her of her brother who was just arrested. Noah is afraid of everything. He has been since his mother died. But he's willing to face his fears on the haunted island if it means getting a chance to see his mom's ghost. Marvin wants to be a movie director, and what better place to film a horror flick that a spooky, abandoned prison island? The three alternate having the narrative perspective, and each voice is unique.

The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes by Wade Albert White
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I liked this book much better than its sequel (which I read first). While the story was still a little "pull the main character along," there were a lot more plot twists and character development.

The main character is named Anvil, and she is joined by her friend Penelope from page one as they attempt to escape the orphanage where Anvil is being held prisoner. After a fortunate turn of events that sees them away from the orphanage, the two girls are joined by a boy named Hiro, and together they set off on a whirlwind adventure.

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I definitely enjoyed this story more than the first installment in the series, The Eye of the World. I think the writing was smoother and the threads fit together a little more naturally. These books are designed to be read in order, so a lot of the plot and character growth that happens in this book is directly dependent on the events and reveals of book one.

Let's start with the characters. Rand continues to be the central protagonist, though he is not always the most important character. This is definitely a large cast story, which it kind of has to be to get that epic quality one would expect from this type of book. I liked Rand better in this story. While he started off annoying (pushing his friends away to save them), and he still made plenty of mistakes, I feel like he solidified as a character in this book. He no longer felt like an empty shell narrating events as they happened around him. Even when he made bad choices, at least he was actually choosing things.

Other Worlds Ink has a new book out in the hopepunk cli-fi Writers Save the World anthology series: Save the World. And there's a giveaway.

Climate change is no longer a vague future threat. Forests are burning, currents are shifting, and massive storms dump staggering amounts of water in less than 24 hours. Sometimes it’s hard to look ahead and see a hopeful future.

Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This third installment to the Enchanted Forest series is told from the narrative perspective of the witch Morwen. This added an amusing dimension because she can speak to her cats, which were quite entertaining characters. Other than Morwen, the characters of Cimorene, Mendenbar, Telemain, and Kazul returned. They were joined by a rabbit named Killer who, due to a habit of eating things he shouldn't, was under a ridiculous number of enchantments that combined to turn him into a six-foot flying blue donkey with oversize wings. Killer's main character traits we're that he whined a lot about everything and was constantly hungry.

Droplets of Magic by Emily Bybee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Droplets of Magic is the forth book in the Unstable Magic series, but I didn't have any trouble diving right in and following along. There were references to events that clearly happened in earlier books, but those only added to the feeling of the story being set in a wider, more intricate world.

This book is a love-at-first-sight story--a trope that I don't tend to like because it often forces the characters into an emotional intimacy that I have trouble believing--but the character interactions in this book were still believable and the romance played second-fiddle to the main plot, so I won't hold that against it.

Angel Fire East by Terry Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Angel Fire East is the third book in Terry Brooks' Word and Void series, and the conclusion of the trilogy. It is not a stand-alone book, so don't start here. Read Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word first.

This story picks up ten years after the second book (fifteen since the first). We're back in Hopewell, Illinois with Nest Freemark, and demons have come knocking. This story describes the third and final time she and John Ross cross paths.

The Last Kids on Earth and the Skeleton Road by Max Brallier
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Skeleton Road is book 6 in the Last Kids on Earth series. These books really need to be read in order, so I'm going to assume that if you've gotten this far you've already read the first five books and I don't need to cover things like basic character introductions in this review. The one character note that I will mention is that I enjoyed getting to know Dirk a little better and hearing some of his backstory.