★★★★☆ Don't remember this, but I read the rest of the series.

The Briar King

Greg Keyes

I read The Briar King eleven years ago (23-Oct-2011). I don't remember it at all. However, I bought the rest of the four-book series (Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone). At the time I was a new professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, having just moved there from UT Southwestern Medical Center. The point is, I was VERY busy. If I took the time to read four books, I must have liked it a lot.

On that very thin basis, I'm rating it four stars.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Alana in show-biz

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★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

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★☆☆☆☆ Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition

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★★★☆☆ Ghosts and grief

Installment Immortality Seanan Mcguire I read Seanan McGuire 's Discount Armageddon in May, 2021. It was the first book by McGuire I had ever read, and I was immediately hooked. It was full of life, and so funny! The Aeslin mice alone were worth the price. I subsequently went on to read every extant Incryptid novel and story, as well as McGuire 's Octboer Daye series, and eventually every work of fiction she's published that I could find. The first two thirds of Installment Immortality are puzzling. They do all the obvious, concrete things right. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. This is the second Incryptid novel focused on Mary Dunlavy, who has long been one of my favorite Incryptid characters. The plot is intricate, complicated and unpredictable enough to be interesting, and yet not so complicated as to be difficult to follow. It continues the old Price Family vs Covenant of S...

★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

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★★★☆☆ Drivel with occasional brilliance

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★★★☆☆ Good fairy stories, dreary ruin stories, and a John Hughes movie

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★★★☆☆ What is it like to be an octopus?

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★★★☆☆ Good-bye Earl, or Small powers do great things

Nettle & Bone T Kingfisher I believe the first T. Kingfisher book I ever read was A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking , and the second Minor Mage . (I had, however, read some of her middle grade works published as Ursula Vernon , and I was aware that Kingfisher and Vernon are the same person.) Nettle & Bone feels to me very like those two novels, but with a little of the joy let out. Both A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking (irresistible title!) and Minor Mage feature child wizards with very limited powers who are called on to do far more than anyone has a right to expect of them, and who rise to the challenge. The first quarter of Nettle & Bone is exceedingly grim. It's the all-too-familiar story of a wife suffering, as the publisher's summary says, "at the hands of a powerful and abusive" husband. She's a princess and he's a prince, but that matters only in that it accen...

★★★★☆ Matrimonial predators

The Brides of High Hill Nghi Vo We catch up with Chih, who is accompanying the Pham family -- Mr and Mrs Pham and their daughter Pham Nhung to the castle of Lord Guo. The Phams are a family of merchants down on their luck, and Nhung has been proposed in marriage to Lord Guo. She and Chih met cute, and she asked them to accompany her to Lord Guo's castle for the marriage negotiation. Chih appears to have a mini-crush on Nhung, which she appears to encourage. Chih desperately misses their neixin Almost Brilliant, who is mysteriously absent. Nhung is naturally worried about being married. Chih, who knows many stories, true and fictional, about husbands and wives, would like to reassure her, but cannot honestly do so. Stuff happens. You will recognize the story pretty quickly. It's Bluebeard. You probably already figured that out -- the plural "Brides" in the title kind of gives it away. In this one Chih faces serious personal danger, more immediate than in any other S...

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